Trump’s indictment bolsters re-election bid, Texas Senator Ted Cruz says in Fort Worth
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz thinks Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg may have made “the single largest in-kind contribution to the Donald Trump presidential campaign” by indicting the former president, he told the Star-Telegram at a Fort Worth appearance Wednesday.
Cruz was at the Fort Worth Club to speak with members of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. He took questions from the media shortly after the talk ended.
Trump was indicted Tuesday on 34 felony charges related to hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Cruz, a Republican, called Tuesday a “dark day” and said Trump’s indictment was “political,” “an abuse of power,” “baseless” and “frivolous.”
“Listen, if you don’t like Donald Trump, the answer is to try to beat him at the ballot box,” Cruz said. “The answer is to trust democracy. What we’re seeing Democrats do is to try to use law enforcement to target their enemies because they don’t trust the voters.”
He believes the case against Trump will be thrown out.
Cruz thinks Bragg’s willingness to “weaponize” the DA’s office to indict Trump because of “partisan hatred” has already rallied Republicans behind Trump.
“As a purely political matter, I think this has backfired badly,” Cruz said.
In his talk with Fort Worth Chamber members, Cruz discussed his priorities for creating jobs. He took questions on employee retention, the energy industry, national security and education priorities. He also spoke about his decision to speak at the Houston NRA convention held shortly after a gunman murdered 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary Uvalde.
Cruz told chamber members that backing out of the convention would have been a mistake because it would have bought into the media’s narrative that mass murders were the fault of those “who were standing up to defend our constitutional rights to defend our families and defend our communities.”
The Texas senator also discussed school choice, calling it the “civil rights issue of the 21st century.” He said Texas was lagging behind other states on the issue.
Cruz didn’t end his speech without giving a nod to Fort Worth, which he called “amazing.”
“Frankly, if the principles of Fort Worth were followed across the country, we would be on a much better path than we are,” he said.
This story was originally published April 5, 2023 at 1:18 PM.
