"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," Ted Cruz said. Cruz: I won’t be a ‘servile puppy dog’ for Trump At a Texas delegation breakfast that erupted into chaos, Cruz sticks to his guns.

CLEVELAND — The Texas Republican delegation breakfast erupted in chaos Thursday morning as Sen. Ted Cruz explained why he was still not backing Donald Trump, even as he pledged not to vote for Hillary Clinton.

He didn’t intend to “go like a servile puppy dog" and back Trump after the nominee’s attacks on his wife and father, Cruz said in one of his many passionate remarks during the breakfast.


Cruz’s doubling down on his refusal to endorse Trump followed his spellbinding speech Wednesday, in which he urged Republicans to vote their “conscience” rather than calling on them to back the nominee, his bitter primary rival. That decision sharply divided even his home-state delegation, which has long idolized Cruz.

As the senator walked the Texas delegation through his thinking in giving Wednesday's speech — he wanted to outline core conservative principles, he said, and the Trump campaign knew not to expect an endorsement (“Why not?” yelled a man) — his remarks were punctuated by a mix of heckles, cheers and anguished questions from the party activists who know him best.

“Are you going to vote for Trump?” one delegate demanded.

“Your word is your bond!” a woman told the senator, reminding him of his pledge to support the Republican nominee. “If you didn’t believe it … then you shouldn’t have said it.”

“That’s it!” chimed in a woman, standing up to give a thumbs up. “Hear hear!” yelled another man.

Cruz didn’t rule out an endorsement in the future. But he insisted that the mere fact that Trump is the Republican nominee is not reason enough to rally behind him.

“This isn’t just a team sport, we don’t just put on red jerseys, blue jerseys, and yay! This is about principles, ideas, standing for what we believe in,” he said. “I have to say it was somewhat dismaying that apparently some of Donald’s biggest partisans right down front, when they heard ‘you should vote for someone you can trust to defend freedom … immediately began booing. I gotta say, that’s a little bit troubling.”

Cruz spent several minutes explaining why he gave such a controversial speech the night before, stressing the need to champion conservative principles and to hold all candidates to those expectations.

“I work for you, I work for you,” he said moments after some supporters hissed “sit down” to a man holding a Clinton/Cruz 2020 sign. “You have every right, I’d say even duty, to hold [elected officials] accountable. That’s why I’m here this morning. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to turn tail and run. That ain’t gonna happen.”

And the delegation didn’t hold back either, especially as Cruz opened up for questions (“Can anyone imagine our nominee standing in front of voters answering questions like this?" he asked).

Asked if he would vote for Trump, even before the official question period began, Cruz said he would "answer the same way I'll answer many, many times. … 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.

He was also pressed on his refusal, so far, to honor the GOP pledge to support the nominee that he took as a presidential candidate.

"The day that became abrogated was the day that became personal," Cruz said, referencing Trump’s comments about his family during the primary. "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 slander and attack Heidi I'm going to nonetheless go like a servile puppy dog" and stick to the pledge anyway.

“You gotta get over it!” one man in the audience yelled.

“This is not a game … right and wrong matter,” Cruz shot back, as he also argued, “I would note, sir, you might have a similar view if someone was attacking your wife. I hope you would.”

The question of whether defending his family’s honor was reason enough to stay on the sidelines for now was a matter of heated debate in the hallways of the over-air conditioned Marriott outside the ballroom where Cruz spoke.

"This is like an engagement and the guy you're going to marry goes out and does these things that is abomination to the vows you're going to take, then you have a right to reject that person and not marry him," said Maggie Wright, a tearful Cruz supporter from the Texas delegation.

"He admitted it was personal," said another delegate dismissively.

"It's personal to me because of what Trump did to him and his family and Ted’s father!" she replied.

People struggled in his family, the man interjected, "and I got over it. I'm tough."

"He should forgive!" chimed in a third delegate.

Nearby, Steve Toth of Conroe, Texas, walked up to Thomas Mathis, a vocal critic of Cruz's, and called him a "coward."

"I'm a Texan," Mathis said.

"No, you're a coward," Toth replied.

"Those are your opinions. You come to my house and tell me that, it'll be different," Mathis warned.

Toth started in, "If he said that about your wife, he said that about your daddy--”

“Put your fingers down!" Mathis interjected, as Toth jabbed a finger at him. “If he said that about your wife, your dad, I hope you’d do the same thing.”

“What, divide the party?”

“It’s about character and integrity,” Toth said.

The exchange ended with both men calling each other cowards.



"I would have loved to have seen Ted support the candidate. I want to see us come together, but at the end of day, it wasn't my mom, it wasn't my dad, it wasn't my wife" under attack, Toth told reporters later.

He added that he would support Trump and that there was still time for party unity.

Speaking with reporters after Cruz’s speech, the senator’s former campaign manager, Jeff Roe, stressed that while Trump’s attacks on Cruz’s family negated the unity pledge, Cruz’s big objections to Trump still centered on principles.

“How do you sign the pledge and then not do it? That pledge, we said on the campaign trail when it happened, the day it happened, and mostly since, but everybody stopped caring as much, is that when he took this race and what Donald Trump said about his family, that was the end of the pledge,” Roe said. He went on to add, “That doesn’t mean Ted can’t get to a position where he supports Trump, and that’s what the principles are about.”

Asked whether an apology for the personal attacks would help, Roe replied, “Oh no, this isn’t playground stuff, no.”

Roe warned Cruz, as they rode the elevator together ahead of the breakfast, that the home-state gathering could get tense.

“Any rational political person here would not go,” he said. “Right? Like, you got a bad case of the flu last night. That’s the first measurement. The second measurement is, when he goes, don’t take questions. Like, give a speech, juice ‘em up, and then get the heck out of the room. And he’s sitting there taking questions…a lot of questions…I was proud of the way it went.”

But Roe went out of his way to stress that an endorsement could still come.

“He hasn’t made the final decision if he’s going to support or not. I don’t want to lose the facts of that. I mean he has said, with great clarity, and I would like to expand upon it today, we would love and would pray that we get to a position where we could support Donald Trump,” he said. “That would be good for everybody. But … Ted has to have the knowledge that the person who he’s supporting with his vote is going to honor the principles and priorities that’s made our country and our party great. So that’s going to take time and he’s going to watch it.”

Back onstage, Cruz agreed that there was still time.

“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."

Cruz also appeared to rule out a third-party bid against Trump and 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."

"What I wanted to do last night was lay out principles I believe we should stand for as Republicans," he explained. "In that speech last night I did not say a single negative word about Donald Trump," he continued, to applause.

Cruz did, however, obliquely criticize the nominee's handling of the convention speeches and agenda.

“If we go to November and the dominant word voters hear is Trump," he said, "Or ... if it's Hillary or [her] email server, we're going to lose. You want to know how we win? We win if the dominant message voters hear is freedom."

