The Texas senator stumped for Trump for the first time on Thursday. | AP Photo Cruz refuses to say Trump's name as he stumps for him

Just because Ted Cruz is hitting the trail to campaign for Donald Trump does not mean, apparently, that he has to utter the GOP presidential nominee’s name.

The Texas senator stumped for Trump for the first time on Thursday, joining Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, on the trail in Iowa. But Cruz could not bring himself to so much as say Trump’s name onstage.


Instead, he dedicated his speech to slamming the Affordable Care Act and warning of what Hillary Clinton's appointments to the Supreme Court would mean for Americans.

“Putting a Republican in the White House and keeping a Republican Senate is the whole enchilada,” Cruz said. “We are one liberal justice away from losing our constitutional rights.”

He also declared Clinton too corrupt to serve in the Oval Office, and followed Trump’s lead in calling for a special prosecutor to go after the Democratic nominee.

“There needs to be a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute the corruption of Hillary Clinton,” Cruz thundered. The crowd began to chant “Lock her up!” Cruz grinned widely.

Cruz, who defeated Trump in the Iowa caucus and was one of Trump’s fiercest critics late in the race, also took the chance to tout some of his own policy proposals.

“We need to pass a simple flat tax and abolish the IRS,” Cruz said, stating one of his most oft-repeated campaign lines. Trump’s tax policy proposals do not include a flat tax.

While Cruz and Pence were all smiles on Thursday, their relationship, too, has at times been awkward.

Pence did endorse Cruz ahead of the Indiana primary in May, but the tepid nature of the announcement — which included heaps of praise for Donald Trump — left Cruz allies baffled and miffed.

“Pence may be an example of how not to do it,” one person close to the Cruz campaign said at the time. “If you’re going to go in, go in and make a difference.”

And it was in Pence’s state of Indiana that Cruz launched his most impassioned, searing broadside of the campaign against Pence’s now-running mate, calling Trump “utterly amoral,” a “serial philanderer” and a “pathological liar.”

"This man is a pathological liar, he doesn't know the difference between truth and lies," Cruz said, going on to add, “Whatever lie he's telling, at that minute he believes it ... the man is utterly amoral.”

He went on to drop out hours later, on the night of the Indiana primary, which Trump won easily. And three days after that, Pence endorsed Trump.

Still, Pence, who has acted as a conduit between Trump and rank-and-file Republicans on Capitol Hill, has kept lines of communication open to Cruz, meeting with him in Washington in September, months after Cruz famously told the Republican National Convention to “vote your conscience.”

Cruz went on to endorse the Trump-Pence ticket later that month. He will hold a second event with Pence Thursday afternoon in Michigan.

“Sen. Cruz and I,” Pence told the Iowa crowd on Thursday, “are very good friends.”