A Ted Cruz super PAC published photos of a scantily clawed Melania Knauss when she was a model back before she — maybe even after she had married the Trumpster. And so that page got flipped by the Cruz campaign, even the super PAC is not related, not officially associated with the campaign.  It was after that that Trump himself opened fire on Heidi Cruz and Goldman Sachs and whatever else it all was.

Greetings and great to have you with us, folks, as we roll on on the Excellence in Broadcasting Network.  Rush Limbaugh here at 800-282-2882, and the email address at ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

I just got an email with a question:  “Do you think that the Republican establishment will now like Ted Cruz any more than they did?”  It’s an interesting question.  The Republican establishment despised Ted Cruz for a host of reasons, not least of which was his personal attack on the floor of the Senate, Mitch McConnell.  They blamed Cruz for engineering a worthless government shutdown over Obamacare in 2013.

They really hated Cruz.  They just despised Cruz.  But some of the GOP Establishment hates Trump, hated Trump, don’t like Trump at all.  And here came Cruz last night, for all intents and purposes, Cruz said, I’ve never said a critical word of Donald Trump and I’m not gonna say a critical word, but by not endorsing Trump and uttering words that made it sound like he’d be fine if people didn’t vote for Trump, will that make the Republican establishment soften on Cruz and like him again, whereas they had previously grown to dislike him intensely.

Well, if not, if this does not cause the GOP establishment to soften on Cruz, he would at this point be despised by the GOP establishment and gave more ammo — one of the things about the establishment, you could tell last night, and I knew this was gonna be the case. Can I take you back to my appearance with Chris Wallace? Sometime back this spring, it was on Fox News Sunday, he asked me what I thought was gonna happen with all this.

And I said my best guess is and what I hope, by the time all this ends at the convention and we move on, that there’s gonna be, for the most part, unity, and everybody will focus on what needs to happen here and beat Hillary Clinton.  And for the most part, that happened.  You have some Never Trump outliers out there, but many of them were not in the convention hall last night.  You have some Never Trump outliers in the media, in the conservative media, and you have some Never Trump outliers in elected office, in the Senate and in the House.

But for the most part one of the reasons people got mad at Cruz last night is that despite the fact you can’t plug Trump and his campaign into the usual playbook of presidential campaigns and conventions, the one thing that is universal in terms of almost a necessity to win the White House, is party unity, and they were on the way last night.  In fact, I actually think as I said an hour ago, I think what Cruz did last night as actually hastened the unification behind Trump, particularly among GOP Establishment people who were gonna hold out.

They saw what not unifying looks like last night, and they don’t want to be in the same class as Ted Cruz.  They don’t want to be in the same room. They don’t want to be thought of in the same way.  They actually saw last night, the people who didn’t want to unify behind Trump, they saw what it looks like when the vast majority of Republican voters and convention delegates think that you’re not unifying, it’s not a pretty sight.

I don’t think this is going to lessen the establishment’s resentment of Cruz much at all.  And, in addition to that, I can tell by calls that we’ve had, calls that are on hold, emails I’ve had, a lot of Cruz supporters are disappointed.  Cruz has a lot of people that are devoted to him, and many of them, not all, but many of them wanted him to follow the script, you know, do what you have to do here and get ready for your next turn, get ready for 2020 and join the effort to beat Hillary Clinton.  All of this is academic if Hillary Clinton does not lose the election.

If she wins this election, all this is nothing more than an academic discussion.  Talking about who’s gonna be up in 2020, you talk about the epitome of selfishness, that’s four years from now.  We don’t want those four years to make 2020 important to somebody who’s not an incumbent.  That’s not what we’re angling for here.  I don’t think anybody is.  Now, I don’t know what contingent of GOP establishment who six months ago, three months ago were publicly saying and some of them for attribution that they would vote Hillary.  I don’t think that’s gonna happen.  I think they said it, I think they probably meant it when they said it, but I think when the rubber hits the road, they’re not going to, and they’re certainly not gonna be out there actively campaigning for Hillary Clinton, Republican, Republican establishment types.

So the unification is something that I think actually was hastened last night by what Cruz did, but he remains ostracized.  And he did further damage to himself by putting distance between him and some of his supporters who really did want him to follow the playbook, endorse Trump, and then vanish and let Trump sink or swim, maybe do a couple of campaign appearances or whatever, but don’t tie yourself to Trump, don’t link your success to his, don’t do any of that. But certainly appear to be a party guy, appear to be unified in the singular cause here of defeating the Democrats.

And that’s the case he didn’t make last night.  You know, vote your conscience is one thing.  But that I thought that maybe the biggest mistake, not endorsing, the non-endorsement, I think the bigger mistake that Cruz made, he explained that freedom’s under assault, he explained it as well as anybody has, but he didn’t close the loop. He didn’t make clear the difference a Clinton and Trump presidency would make to freedom itself and to the Constitution.  And I think that was a mistake.

I think his supporters, one of the reasons they love Ted Cruz is they don’t want Hillary Clinton and they want her defeated.  And I know he had some words for Hillary last night, but at the moment that he’s talking about freedom and its importance and how it was under assault, he just couldn’t bring himself to promote Trump as an agent to defend and protect freedom.  So he’s actually angered the GOP establishment probably even more.

He’s disappointed his supporters, a lot of them, who wanted him to follow the playbook and then do what he has to do to stay viable in the Senate for a 2020 rerun.  But now every branch there is in the Republican Party is loaded for bear against Cruz, and his gamble is that his revival or resuscitation now relies on Trump being defeated.  What a gamble that is.

Back to the audio sound bites.  Let’s stick with Cruz.  This is in Cleveland, this is at the Texas delegation breakfast. After he had explained in detail what he did last night, he stood there for Q&A from people at the breakfast of Texas delegates, and I woman said, “I supported you, and we’re family.  We can agree to disagree, and that’s okay, but you signed a pledge that you said you would support the party nominee.  As a girl, my mother and father said that your word is your bond.”

Well, she plagiarized Michelle, did you see that?  That Texas delegate has plagiarized Michelle Obama.  Wait ’til the media hears about this.  “As a girl, my mother and father said that your word is your bond, and if you didn’t believe that you were gonna do it at the time, then you shouldn’t have made the promise because your word is your bond.  And I supported you, too, and I expect you to keep your word and say that your word is your bond.”

CRUZ:  I tell you today, that pledge was abrogated.  The day that was abrogated was the day this became personal.  I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father.  And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I’m gonna nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, “Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.”

And with that, we found out why everything that happened last night happened.  We just lifted the lid off of all of it, and every explanation prior to that was not really quite there.  That explains everything right there, a grudge, a remaining anger, lingering anger over Trump’s insulting and character assault on his wife and his father.  And the Texas delegation was applauding that when he got revved up on that.

So a supporter tried to explain to him why the answer you just heard was idiotic.

WOMAN:  It is not about Ted Cruz or Heidi Cruz or Rafael Cruz.  It is about the United States of America.

CROWD: (cheers) USA! USA! USA!

CRUZ:  Ma’am, I agree with you emphatically. It is about the United States.  What I said last night is what I believe is the only path to saving this country, and it is not simply blindly chanting a name and yelling down dissenters.

RUSH:  Ooh.  “Blindly chanting a name.” Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump! That’s not the answer to our problems, he says, and shouting down dissenters.  Well, yeah.  Well, let’s go back to March the 3rd in Detroit.  This is live on the Fox News Channel, Republican presidential debate. Bret Baier and Ted Cruz.

BAIER:  Senator Cruz, yes or no: Will support Donald Trump if he’s the nominee?

CRUZ:  Yes, because I gave my word that I would and what I have endeavored to do every day in the Senate is do what I said I would do.

RUSH:  March 3rd is when Senator Cruz affirmed the pledge he had made the previous August.  I forget when it was that Trump came out and had seen a picture of somebody looks like Rafael Cruz passing out pamphlets near Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK was shot.  That must have happened after March the 3rd.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Joseph in Cleveland, welcome to the EIB Network.  How are you doing, sir?

CALLER:  Real good, Rush.  How are you hearing me today?

RUSH:  I hear you well, actually.  Thank you for asking.

CALLER:  Very good.  Very good.  I want to comment on the Ted Cruz speech, but a quick statement about Donald Trump.  And you thought Slick Willie was slick?  This guy’s unbelievable.  Now, regarding the —

RUSH:  Now, wait.  What are you referring to there?  What did Trump do that’s slick?

CALLER:  You pointed it out earlier, allowing Ted Cruz to do what he did —

RUSH:  Oh.

CALLER:  — to come in at that moment —

RUSH:  Yeah.

CALLER:  — and everything else that he’s been pulling is amazing.

RUSH:  If he did that, that’s pretty sharp. That’s pretty Machiavellian political.  That’s not rank amateurish if he did it, if that actually happened that way.

CALLER:  Okay.  I wanted to talk about the Machiavellian.  I’ve always heard that phrase, who is he and what does it mean to be Machiavellian.

RUSH:  Deceptive. It is manipulative. It is manipulating people into embarrassing, unfortunate circumstances that they think are going to be triumphant and good.

CALLER:  Okay.  Wonderful.

RUSH:  There are many different definitions for it, but it basically means to sell your soul to win, any number of things.  Read The Prince by Machiavelli.  If you have some spare time, and that will explain it all.

CALLER:  Okay.  Regarding the personal attacks against him and his family, I’d really like to ask Ted Cruz, is it all about you and not the people he represents?  And is there not a single issue that he could back Trump on, not even the border?  And who are you to take such a personal stand in your job as a public servant?

RUSH:  Okay.  So you’re basically wanting to know from Cruz, how come you make it all about you?  Why can’t you put aside these things and look at the bigger picture.  Is that your point?

CALLER:  Yeah, that’s the first question.  And, you know, he’s a public servant and, you know, he should be representing his people and not holding a personal grudge.

RUSH:  In his view, that’s what he’s doing by maintaining fealty to his principles.  He’s not capitulating, he’s not compromising at all, and he’s standing up for what he believes, which is what he’s told his supporters that he’s always going to do.  The way he’s looking at this is, I’m not gonna sell my wife out for convenience.  My wife, my dad was linked to the JFK assassination.  I’m not just gonna sit here and say, “You know what, no big deal.”  I’m not gonna sell my dad out.  I’m not gonna act like I don’t care what they say about my dad.

CALLER:  I believe that’s fine in your personal life, but you’re a public official and a public representative.  If I could make a quick comment on the John Kasich issue.

RUSH:  Yeah, yeah.

CALLER:  I think he at least should have opened the convention by welcoming the delegates to Cleveland and say good night.

RUSH:  I know.  I agree a hundred percent.  It’s his state.  He’s the governor.  They chose his state to hold the convention.  And it’s not like he doesn’t want to go to Cleveland, because we know that he’s been there before.  So something else is up his nose.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here is Dick in Utah.  Welcome to the EIB Network.  Hi.

CALLER:  Hello, Rush.  Thank you for taking my call.

RUSH:  You bet.

CALLER:  I have just a small statement.  During the primary, Donald called Ted Cruz a liar.  Last night, Ted proved that he was a liar but not endorsing Donald as he pledged to do.  So, two things happened last night.  One, Ted Cruz is a liar. Two, Trump was right again.

RUSH:  Boy, it’s brutal out there.  Man.  You are granting no quarter here, Dick.  So you’re saying “Lyin’ Ted” lied.

CALLER:  That’s right. He lied.

RUSH:  By not honoring the pledge.  So is there nothing that Ted Cruz said in explaining this that justifies it even partially, for you?

CALLER:  No.  Nothing.  He’s a servant of the people.  He should be following the people.

RUSH:  You know, this… You were not a Cruz supporter to begin with.

CALLER:  No.  I was not.  I am an independent that’s voting for Trump.

RUSH:  Okay.  It’s like the third or fourth caller today that has said, “He’s a servant of the people.” That comes before everything.  Third or fourth caller.  There must be a theme resonating out there in that regard — I mean, a specific. Somebody must be out there with this as a hashtag or a theme: “Servants should put it all aside. We matter first.” I appreciate the call, Dick.