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"What Donald Trump calls collusion is actually called coalition building, and it is how you win," Cruz said.

"To win you have to build a majority, and I understand that this is something very foreign to Donald Trump because he has not been able to build a majority anywhere," Cruz added, noting Trump has only won a majority of the vote in New York, his home state.

Trump has repeatedly dismissed the plan outlined late Sunday by the Cruz and Kasich campaigns that will clear a path for Cruz to campaign in Indiana and for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico, allowing him to focus his resources on picking up delegates there.

"It's exactly the opposite," Cruz said with a laugh during a radio interview with Tony Katz after the host asked whether the alliance should be viewed as part of an insider deal despised by voters."Collusion is often illegal in many other industries and yet these two Washington insiders have had to revert to collusion in order to stay alive," Trump said in a statement early Monday. He later bashed the deal as "sad" and tweeted early Tuesday that the "joke" alliance is "almost dead" after Kasich suggested that voters in Indiana should still vote for him.