"We need to see how the Democrats respond,” Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said. | AP Photo Ted Cruz: Democrats 'getting nuttier' after Trump win

Donald Trump’s surprise victory in last week’s presidential election has sent Democrats into a “bizarre spiral of getting nuttier and nuttier,” Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday morning, and Republicans will have to see where the minority party lands before deciding how closely to work with them on the president-elect’s agenda.

“Well, listen, we need to see how the Democrats respond,” Cruz (R-Texas) said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” when asked how much cooperation the GOP should seek across the aisle. “I think the lesson they took from this election is they weren't liberal and extreme enough and they've got to get even more whacked out and disconnected from the American people. I hope some saner heads prevail in the Democratic Party. I hope there are Democratic senators who actually want to come and do the job we've been given.”


Cruz said he spent much of his Trump Tower meeting earlier this week discussing with the president-elect the mandate that he believes he and the Republican Party have been given by the American people. The Texas firebrand said “it is time to put up or shut up” for the GOP and that he is looking forward to working with Trump on the “incredible opportunities” that the party has before it. He specified repealing the Affordable Care Act and confirming conservative Supreme Court justices as two goals he is especially looking forward to tackling.

The Texas senator has been floated by some as a possible pick to be Trump’s attorney general, a selection that would bring together two men who bitterly attacked each other during the GOP primary. Trump pinned to Cruz the nickname “Lyin’ Ted,” retweeted unflattering photos of the senator’s wife and accused his father, without evidence, of being involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Cruz, for his part, has called Trump a “pathological liar,” a “sniveling coward,” a “serial philanderer” and “a small and petty man who is intimidated by strong women.” At his party’s nominating convention last summer, Cruz urged Republicans to “vote your conscience,” a speech that earned him loud boos from the convention hall.

Asked on Fox News if he would accept a job in the Trump administration, Cruz demurred and said only that “I'm eager to work with the new president in whatever capacity I can have the greatest impact defending the principles that I was elected to defend.” He said he and Trump had a “far-reaching conversation,” but he would not say whether a Cabinet post or any other role was discussed.

Despite protests in many major cities and on college campuses across the country, Cruz said it is his belief that Americans of all political persuasions are “excited” by the prospect of a Trump presidency. Those demonstrations, he said, have put “hypocrisy on rank display from the left” that was so insistent during that campaign that Trump pledge to accept the election results.

“All of the folks jumped on their high horse and were lecturing to President-elect Trump, 'You've got to accept the results of the election,’” Cruz said. “Look, these are now the idiots who are laying their bodies down in front of cars and disrupting traffic. We had an election. The people spoke. Democracy is a powerful, powerful way of choosing.”