News

14 Tweets On Cruz's Ridiculous Trump Endorsement

by Charlie Beckerman

On Friday, in a move that stunned fans of his "vote your conscience" line at the Republican National Convention this summer, Texas senator and former Donald Trump non-endorser Ted Cruz announced he would be voting for his former nemesis in a post on Facebook. While #NeverTrump Republicans may be floored by the announcement, Twitter is having a grand old time roasting Cruz for his reversal on someone he previously described as “a pathological liar,” “utterly amoral.” Cruz also called Trump “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen” — and he thinks this is the best presidential option.

The announcement on Friday has complicated implications for the race. Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump at this summer’s Republican National Convention sent shock waves through the political world (though some of us thought it was Cruz’s most level-headed moment) and many were not expecting him to give in to party pressure. But looking down the road to a possible Senate primary challenge in 2018, it’s possible that Cruz worried about angering Trump supporters, especially if Trump is victorious in November. And even further on, it could be hard to build a coalition of the right for a theoretical 2020 bid if Cruz has alienated the millions of Republicans who voted for Trump in the primary.

Regardless of the political calculus, however, one thing is clear: This campaign has gotten even sillier. Here are the best (and funniest) tweets that call it out.

And in the future, all politicians are going to have to do this when they get married:

Of course, the animated GIFs are Twitter’s greatest gift (greatest GIF?) of all.

Even The Daily Mail was getting in on the action.

But also, it wouldn’t be Twitter if things didn’t get a little vulgar.

The worst of it, naturally, is the hypocrisy, and even those these aren’t laugh-out-loud funny, they do paint a pretty strange picture of the race.

It’s still unclear how this changes the race — some people on Twitter even hazard that the endorsement could hurt Trump with more moderate voters — but whatever happens, it’s become pretty clear that we haven’t ever had a presidential race quite like this one. And here's hoping that it’s a long, long time before we have another.