Ted Cruz seemed ready to accept the tidal wave of attacks crashing down upon him as the price of speaking his mind. Trump camp blasts 'treacherous' Ted Cruz Cruz doubles down as Manafort calls his refusal to endorse a 'mistake' that showed 'very bad judgment.'

CLEVELAND — A defiant Ted Cruz on Thursday refused to back down from his epic rebuke of Donald Trump during his prime-time convention speech, saying he would not be a “servile puppy dog” while denying that he said a “single negative word” about his former rival.

As the Texas senator doubled down, his critics fiercely bore down.


Trump ally Roger Stone called Cruz “a treacherous prick.” Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham called Cruz’s speech “a shame.” Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ripped him as a "disloyal Republican." And campaign chairman Paul Manafort said the Texas senator showed "very bad judgment."

Cruz, for his part, seemed ready to accept the tidal wave of attacks crashing down upon him as the price of speaking his mind. He smiled and waved through the boos as he walked offstage on Wednesday and afterward, was under no illusion about how his remarks would be received by the party whose nomination for president he sought.

"I had to speak the truth," Cruz said in a brief interview following his speech. "It's going to be an interesting couple of days. The chips will fall where they may."

At a Texas delegation breakfast Thursday morning, Cruz reiterated that he was not ready to back Trump.

He walked the Texas delegation through his thinking in giving Wednesday's speech, saying that he had given the Trump campaign ample warning that he was not planning to endorse the Republican Party nominee and that they had spoken three days ago, when the Texas senator made clear that an endorsement would not be forthcoming.

But he did not rule out an endorsement in the future.

“I am watching and listening to make that decision," Cruz said. "The election isn’t today. What I don’t intend to do is go out and throw rocks at Donald. I don’t intend to criticize him."

Nodding to Wednesday's outpouring of boos in the convention hall, Cruz urged Trump supporters to "not just scream and yell and attack anyone who would dare question our candidates."

"Are you going to vote for Trump?" a delegate demanded.

"I will answer the same way I'll answer many, many times," Cruz said. "I am doing what millions of Americans are doing. I'm watching, I'm listening. As I told you last night, the standard I intend to apply is which candidate I trust to defend our freedom, be faithful to the Constitution.

"But I can tell you I'm not voting for Hillary," he added.

Cruz also appeared to rule out a third-party bid against Trump and Hillary Clinton, though he stuck to the present tense.

"I'm not encouraging anybody to write my name in," he said. "I'm not a candidate in this race."

Asked about the pledge Cruz signed to back the Republican nominee, he said it was no longer operative.

"The day that became abrogated was the day that became personal," Cruz said. "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father. And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you [attack] Heidi I'm going to nonetheless go like a servile puppy dog" and stick to the pledge anyway.

Cruz’s public stance toward the Manhattan billionaire has evolved throughout the campaign process. The two began the GOP primary as anti-establishment allies in a crowded 17-candidate field that included bigger names and stronger fundraisers, with Cruz calling Trump "terrific" and refusing to condemn his more controversial remarks.

But as the GOP field winnowed, Trump and Cruz began to attack one another. The real estate mogul coined a nickname for the Texas senator, “Lyin’ Ted,” and threatened to “spill the beans” about Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, without elaborating what those beans might be.

Cruz countered by defending his wife and urging Trump to stick to attacking him, “because Heidi is way out of his league.” Perhaps the strangest attack from Trump came at the very end of their primary battle, when the Manhattan billionaire suggested with little evidence that Cruz’s father could have been involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.

After such a hard-fought campaign, Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, said Thursday on "Fox & Friends" that it was no surprise the Texas senator might not have yet warmed up to the Republican nominee. The Indiana governor, who offered Cruz a lukewarm endorsement ahead of his state’s primary, said the senator deserved credit for showing up at all.

“This is a tough and challenging primary. These were tough competitors,” Pence said. “I have been through a few tough elections myself, and I know those feelings can be strong. So I was grateful that he came and that he congratulated our nominee. I'm absolutely confident that in the days ahead you're going to continue to see this party come together and present the choice to the American people.”

Trump himself sought to downplay the significance of Cruz's remarks with a post to Twitter, one of many by the nominee throughout the night. The Texas senator's refusal to endorse was "no big deal," Trump said, even as he chided him for being booed offstage and for refusing to honor the pledge.

But Manafort was much more aggressive in attacking Cruz on Thursday morning, slamming the conservative senator at a news conference as a "strict constitutionalist" who "chose not to accept the strict terms of the pledge that he signed." Trump thought it important, Manafort said, that the other prominent GOP candidates be offered a speaking role at the convention. All who took Trump up on the offer, the campaign chairman said, honored the GOP loyalty pledge except for Cruz.

"Everyone who did attend in his own way said that they support the ticket, or are voting for the ticket or endorse the ticket. Only Sen. Cruz chose to slip away with something on 'conscience,' and frankly, [it was] the only speech in the convention that was poorly received by the body in the hall."

At least some of the booing that capped Cruz's speech was the result of a concerted whip effort by the Trump campaign, Cruz's campaign manager Jeff Roe told "The Chris Stigall Show" in an interview on Philadelphia radio. Roe said the Trump campaign was in talks with Cruz about the contents of the speech up until the senator walked out onto the stage. Once it became clear that Cruz would not be offering an endorsement to Trump and would not be praising him, Roe said, the "active whip operation got active.”

"There were certainly people being ginned up to boo," Roe said, according to a BuzzFeed report that detailed his interview. "But this isn’t a whining moment at all. This isn’t a whining moment at all. It was their convention."

Aside from the booing, the Texas senator quickly felt the repercussions of his speech late Wednesday when he was turned away from entering the box of billionaire casino magnate and GOP donor Sheldon Adelson, POLITICO first reported. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose speech followed Cruz’s on Wednesday night, was forced to pick up the pieces in a riled-up arena. The former speaker stretched to defend Cruz and spin his call for Republicans to “vote their conscience” into a pro-Trump sentiment.

Donald Trump Jr. confirmed Thursday morning that the Trump campaign had seen Cruz’s speech hours before it was delivered and knew that an endorsement was not forthcoming. Trump Jr. said his father opted to allow the GOP primary runner-up to speak because “he wants to show that he’s about unity, so he knew that was happening and he was a better man about it.”

Far from dividing the party, Trump Jr. said, Cruz’s speech actually unified the party behind its nominee and against the Texas senator.

“So if there was any doubt left going into yesterday, I think him doing that galvanized everyone. You heard it,” Trump Jr. said. “He did a phenomenal job bringing the party together. I would like to thank him for the greatest endorsement we could have possibly received.”

Eric Trump, another of the Republican nominee’s sons, called Cruz’s remarks “classless” and wondered aloud on “CBS This Morning” how the Texas senator managed to get booed out of his own party’s convention. He said the negative reaction to Cruz’s speech showed “the people in this room spoke for themselves.”

“Listen, I thought it was classless, to tell you the truth,” he said. “You know, if you’re going to go to a convention, you either go to support or you just don’t go at all. I think that’s politician 101, right?”

New York Rep. Peter King, who has been vocal in his criticisms of Cruz and once said he would "take cyanide" if the Texas senator won the GOP nomination, called Cruz an "a--hole" for not endorsing Trump at the convention. Asked on CNN whether he agreed with King's characterization, Republican National Committee chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer said, "I would probably use the same verbiage."

The criticism was somewhat more muted from former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who endorsed Cruz for president after ending his own short-lived bid for the White House. But even Perry was critical of his fellow Texan, who, like the former Texas governor, signed a pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee.

“If you don’t want to keep your word, then don’t be signing pledges,” Perry said. “I don’t want to have to go back to Texas and explain to people why I was part of the problem, not part of the solution.”

Kenneth P. Vogel and Burgess Everett contributed to this report.