Attention, Donald Trump supporters. If you can stop trashing Ted Cruz over his speech at the Republican Convention Wednesday night for just a second, I'd like to call your attention to the one person in the Donald Trump camp who ISN'T trashing Ted Cruz.
Donald Trump.
Remember this: Trump did not have to invite Cruz to speak at the convention, but he did. When Cruz accepted, Trump required Cruz to provide an advance copy of his speech to be approved or rejected by Trump. Trump did not have to approve the speech that he submitted for review, but he did.
You see, Donald Trump understands something that his supporters don't: If Trump is going to defeat Hillary Clinton, he's going to need all the help and all the votes he can get. That includes the votes of Ted Cruz and his supporters. Which is why Donald Trump dropped his acidic attacks against Ted Cruz the instant Cruz dropped out of the primary race. That's why Trump invited Cruz to the convention. And that's why Trump approved a convention speech script from Cruz that neither endorsed nor attacked Trump.
Trump himself is perfectly fine with Cruz's refusal to endorse him. Trump gets it. The primary was bruising, and Cruz has ambitions for the 2020 election that would be damaged if he backed away from his critiques of Trump. Trump did the calculus in his head and decided that, as long as Cruz avoided any direct attacks on Trump in his speech, letting Cruz speak at the convention would perhaps soften the anti-Trump stance of at least some of Cruz's die-hard supporters, show them that maybe Trump isn't as bad as they think he is, and perhaps turn some of them into Trump voters in November.
Donald Trump is fine with Ted Cruz. Donald Trump's supporters would be well-advised to heed Trump's strategy and approach and follow suit, rather than self-sabotaging the campaign strategy of the man they want to send to the White House.
By the way, consider this, too: Donald Trump just accepted, blindly, the promise from Ted Cruz that he would deliver the same speech that he submitted for approval, without any changes or unexpected attacks or slaps at Donald Trump.
For Donald Trump to so boldly accept such a promise from the man he once regularly labelled as "Lyin' Ted" means one of two things: either Donald Trump is all-too-naively willing to accept promises from people he believes to be dishonest, or, more likely, Donald Trump knew all along that Ted Cruz is not really "Lyin' Ted" but is actually a man of his word, an honorable man who will keep his promises. If the second explanation is correct, then Donald Trump actually just endorsed Ted Cruz as an honest man who can be trusted.
Ted Cruz did not say anything negative about Donald Trump at the convention. (The morning after was another story, but that was after Trump's supporters booed Cruz off the stage and then spent all night long going after him.) But it is said that actions speak louder than words, and in the end, Donald Trump's actions spoke far more loudly than Ted Cruz's words.
Vince Young is program director at AM-1060, WMEL-Melbourne, the "Talk To Me" station.
