Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is in a feud with Karl Rove, who is angry with the presidential candidate for suggesting Rove questioned former President George H.W. Bush’s mental faculties.
Rove, Cruz writes in his new book, “suggested that the elder Bush was too old to have good judgment anymore,” a characterization Cruz said he was “offended” by, according to an excerpt published on Breitbart News.
{mosads}Then, Cruz adds, Rove “pulled out the hammer” by implying that President George W. Bush would endorse Cruz’s potential opponent if he went public about a donation from President George H.W. Bush.
The charges, included in the Texas senator’s A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America, involved a confrontation between the two during Cruz’s brief bid in 2009 for his home state’s attorney general spot.
Rove disputes that characterization in a post on Medium on Sunday. He argues that his only concern had been about the former president being forced to take sides against a GOP incumbent attorney general and that he never threatened to have President George W. Bush endorse any potential Cruz challenger.
That all became moot when then-Attorney General Greg Abbott decided to run for reelection, and Cruz dropped out.
“When Mr. Cruz and I talked in 2009, I was not raising money for the Bush Library, nor was former President Bush 43 going to endorse some unnamed Dallas state representative for state attorney general, nor were any library donors ‘berating’ me,” Rove says in the post, pushing back against assertions made by Cruz.
“I am accustomed to being criticized for others’ political benefit, but am disappointed in how Senator Cruz decided to raise the name of one of the finest presidents our country has ever known, President George H.W. Bush.”
Rove’s statement also adds that Cruz continued to seek his advice after the phone call, chiding the presidential hopeful for a lack of experience.
“One piece of advice I offered was that he should stop describing himself as the “next Marco Rubio,” since he did not have Senator Rubio’s outstanding legislative record of accomplishments as speaker of the Florida House of Representatives,” Rove writes.
On Sunday night, less than two days before the book’s release, Cruz’s presidential campaign sent reporters three emails from 2009 that he said in a statement would demonstrate the “veracity of my account.” Those emails appear to show Rove arguing that Bush library donors who supported state Rep. Dan Branch, who had signaled interest in challenging Cruz if Abbott decided not to run, might not be inclined to donate to the library if the president chose sides in the attorney general race.
“I have known Karl Rove for a long time, and have considered him a friend,” Cruz says, adding that he knew the anecdote about Rove’s “disparaging remarks he made about President George H.W. Bush — would cause him some discomfort.”
“But I never imagined that his response would be a straight-out falsehood. It’s disappointing; this is why people are so cynical about politics, because too many people are willing to lie.”