As part of Time magazine’s annual tradition of influential people lauding other influential people, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lavished President Donald Trump with praise, despite all of Trump’s attacks against him and his family during their bruising primary battle two years ago.
In a short profile published Thursday for Time’s list of the 100 most influential people, Cruz wrote in glowing, lyrical terms about Trump’s presidency, calling the president “a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America.”
It’s quite the contrast from the 2016 GOP presidential primaries, when Trump branded Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” and launched a series of attacks against him and his family.
The then-GOP presidential candidate promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that Cruz’s dad, Rafael, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also denigrated Cruz’s wife Heidi’s appearance and threatened to “spill the beans on [her.]”
Cruz hit back, calling him “a sniveling coward” and warning him to “leave Heidi the hell alone.” Later, he also criticized Trump as a “narcissist,” “a bully,” “a serial philanderer” and “a pathological liar.”
The feud between the two men continued at the Republican National Convention that summer, when Cruz famously did not endorse Trump as the nominee or mention him in his speech. Instead, he told the crowd to “vote your conscience,” which was met with boos.
He later explained that he did not want to be “a servile puppy dog for maligning my wife and maligning my father.”
Two months later, Cruz endorsed Trump.
Since then, it seems that as long as Trump, in Cruz’s words, “is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo,” it’s fine to let bygones be bygones.