Mike Huckabee, who has remained bitter throughout the 2016 presidential process that Ted Cruz got the support from major donors that Huckabee thought would support him, attacked Cruz again on Facebook after Cruz’s speech at the GOP convention Wednesday night, calling him by Donald Trump’s nickname for Cruz, “Lyin’ Ted.” Huckabee wrote:
The question of the night was whether Ted Cruz would honor his word and support the nominee or earn the moniker “Lyin Ted” given to him by the man who won. The question was whether Cruz would make his speech about HIS future or the future of the country. And that question was answered when Ted Cruz chose to not keep his word that he (along with me and every other GOP candidate) gave one year ago in that very arena where tonight he put his own ambitions above country.
Donald Trump did something no previous nominee has done—he allowed Ted Cruz to speak without his promising to support the nominee. I’ve spoken at every convention since 1992, and I can attest to the fact that no one got near that stage without supporting the nominee. Trump trusted Ted and was rewarded with a betrayal, but the delegates in that arena booed Cruz off the stage and out of Cleveland.
First, Huckabee might want to note that in late March, Trump himself said he would not support the nominee if he wasn’t the nominee. At A CNN Townhall event, prompted by Anderson Cooper querying whether he would honor his pledge to support another nominee, Trump answered, “No, I don’t anymore. No, we’ll see who it is.” When Cooper responded that Cruz had not said that he wouldn’t support the eventual nominee, Trump replied, “He doesn’t have to support me.”
Second, Huckabee’s assertion that no nominee has allowed someone to speak who didn’t endorse him is incorrect. As Streiff of RedState has pointed out, Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the 1976 convention in which he did not endorse Gerald Ford.
Third, Huckabee’s vendetta directed at Cruz, in which he writes that Cruz didn’t speak about the future of the country, is ludicrous. Virtually all of Cruz’s speech outlined a vision for America consistent with the ideals of its founders, unlike Trump, whose own denigration of America the very same week was amply demonstrated in an interview with The New York Times.
What is truly ironic is that Trump devotees have taken to calling Cruz a sore loser, when the real sore loser is Huckabee, who has never forgiven Cruz for winning over donors whom Huckabee was counting on for his own presidential bid.