Trump: I wouldn't accept Cruz endorsement

Donald Trump would not accept Ted Cruz's endorsement even if he offered it to him, the Republican nominee said Friday, two days after the Texas senator declined to back him in epic fashion during his convention speech.

"He's fine. I don't want his endorsement. If he gives it, I will not accept it, just so you understand. I will not accept it," Trump said. "It won't matter. Honestly, he should have done it. Because nobody cares. And he would have been in better shape for four years from now. I don't see him winning anyway, frankly. But if he did, it's fine."


"Although maybe I'll set up a super PAC if he decides to run. Are you allowed to set up a super PAC, Mike, if you are the president to fight somebody?" Trump asked his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, at a campaign event in Cleveland.

Firing back at Cruz after the senator on Thursday explained that he would not honor the RNC pledge after Trump personally attacked his wife and suggested his father was involved in John F. Kennedy's assassination, Trump spent minutes attempting to clarify and expand.

"I didn't start anything with the wife," Trump said, referring to a pro-Cruz super PAC that in March circulated a photo ahead of the Utah caucuses of his wife Melania posing nude for GQ in 2000. "Really successful. She didn't need to marry me. She was making a lot of money, believe me. I had to work hard to get her to marry me. It wasn't that easy. It's true. You think I'm kidding. So they released this picture, which was, you know, to the people of the state of Utah. I love Utah. I love the people of Utah. But that's not where you want to necessarily send a risqué picture. Everybody in Utah got a picture. And I don't think they showed that it was GQ I don't even think they showed. They took the GQ off. They cut all the stuff off.

Trump continued, "And I'm saying it just to clear it up. I didn't do anything."

Trump then referred to his retweet of an unflattering side-by-side image of Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz, calling Cruz's wife on Friday "a very nice woman and a very beautiful woman."

"I have to tell you, I think Heidi Cruz is a great person," Trump said. "I think it's the best thing he's got going, and his kids, if you want to know the truth. In a certain way, although he's got good intellect but he doesn't know how to use it."

Cruz, Trump said, "was a good debater but he didn't go well in the debate against me. According to every poll. I mean, every poll, this great debater except he lost in every single poll in every single debate.

"So that takes care of the Heidi thing. Because Heidi is a terrific woman," Trump said. "He said that was a PAC. We had nothing to do. A lot of us are political people, right. We're not babies. His people were on the PAC. So he said we have nothing to do. We had -- now, probably you could trace it down with emails but they’re pretty smart, probably it's just phone calls."