MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Two days after Thursday’s debate strained the peace between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, events on Saturday, when they crossed paths here, shattered it, with each man unloading on the other.

“You give a campaign contribution to Ted Cruz, you get whatever the hell you want!” Trump charged at a tea party gathering here on Saturday afternoon, two hours after Cruz worked the same room.


At a morning event in Fort Mill, Cruz told reporters, “Given the fact that for much of his life Donald was financially supporting those politicians, writing checks to Hillary Clinton, writing checks to Andrew Cuomo, it’s a fair inference he supports their policies.”

Trump, for his part, called Cruz a “great hypocrite” for failing to disclose loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank in an FEC filing and repeatedly poked at the senator on social media, tweeting a picture of Ground Zero with the question, “Is this the New York that Ted Cruz is talking about & demeaning?”

But the risks for both men — who share an outsider appeal to grassroots Republican activists — are great. Polls show Cruz is the second choice of many Trump voters, and with an eye on the businessman’s following, the Texas senator had carefully avoided criticizing him for months. At the Myrtle Beach gathering, most Tea Party activists interviewed said they admired both candidates. Many said Trump and Cruz were their top two choices.

When Cruz spoke here, he did not mention Trump’s name, though some of his more veiled swipes were clearly intended for him.

But Trump was less cautious, and was punished in return; when he said Cruz was beholden to donors, many of the conservative activists responded with boos.

“Well, excuse me. Excuse me. He didn’t report his bank loans? Excuse me,” Trump said, as boos continued to fill the room. “He didn’t report his bank loans. He’s got bank loans from Goldman Sachs. He’s got bank loans from Citibank and then he acts like Robin Hood. Say whatever you want, it doesn’t work that way.”

Seconds later, Trump brought his speech to a close.

At the event, there were also signs that battle lines are hardening between the candidates' supporters, even among those who say they like both men, as pre-primary campaigning enters the home stretch.

"I knew it would come to this point eventually, especially with Iowa coming up," said Anthony Lamura, a 44-year-old Trump backer, of the Cruz-Trump conflagration. But Lamura, who also liked Cruz until this past week, insisted that Trump will hold his own. "He's a tough SOB."

Justin Favaro, a Cruz backer who drove down from Charlotte, N.C., was standing next to Lamura and overheard his remarks. Favaro advised: "All he has to do is point out Trump's liberal past, that he's not a true conservative. As long as Cruz can point that out, he'll do well."

Cruz made exactly that case to reporters on Saturday, referencing a nearly 20-year-old interview Trump gave in which he laid out his support for abortion rights, including a woman’s right to have a partial-birth abortion.

“I recognize what Donald says on the campaign trail today is fairly conservative, but voters are far more discerning,” Cruz said. “They’ve learned over and over again, politicians don’t tell us the truth.”

Cruz and his allies are confident that he’s in a strong enough position in the polls to push back forcefully. And there is the sense that after Trump spent more than a week raising questions at every turn about whether Cruz was eligible to run for president—he was born in Canada to an American mother—he had to respond. His backers are relishing Cruz’s more combative new posture toward Trump.

"I was proud of Sen. Cruz for standing up to the bully,” said Dan Tripp, the South Carolina state director of Keep the Promise, a pro-Cruz super PAC, in an interview at a Cruz event the previous evening. “Sometimes you have to punch the bully in the nose. I think he did that, he did that effectively and walked away with no blood on his face…I think it was time. You can only push someone so far before you have to stand up and correct the record.”