Ted Cruz trashed President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance in conversations with GOP donors last year, explosive leaked recordings allege.
The Texas senator, expected to run for president in 2028, slammed Trump’s tariff crusade and said he even threatened his staff with immediate firing if they used the phrase “Liberation Day” to refer to the day the sweeping taxes were announced, reports Axios.
Cruz, 55, told donors he and other senators expressed their tariff disgust with Trump in a lengthy phone call, warning it would tank the economy and lead to his impeachment. The call pushed past midnight and “did not go well,” Cruz told donors, with Trump “yelling” and “cursing” at the lawmakers.
Cruz claims that he received an especially explicit response from the president that night.
“Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath,” Cruz told Trump, according to the recording. “You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
Trump allegedly responded bluntly: “‘F— you, Ted.’”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Cruz’s office did not deny the contents of the recordings in a statement to Axios. Still, Cruz’s office claimed that he is still “the president’s greatest ally in the Senate and battles every day in the trenches to advance his agenda.”
Axios reports that the recordings were “nearly 10 minutes in total” and came from conversations in “early and middle 2025.” The site said the recordings were provided by a “Republican source.”
It is unclear which donors Cruz was speaking to.
Trump referred to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” in the 2016 GOP presidential primary and even went as far as suggesting that his wife, Heidi, is ugly compared to Melania. Still, Cruz has largely done Trump’s bidding in the Senate ever since, and he even campaigned for him in 2024.
Cruz, 55, is now believed to be eyeing another White House run, hoping to become a more traditional GOP successor to Trumpism. Standing in his way is the 41-year-old Vance, who is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination in the eyes of prediction markets.
Vance was “torched” by Cruz in the secret recordings, Axios reported. Sources also told The Washington Post last month that Cruz privately badmouths the VP to donors.
In the recordings obtained by Axios, Cruz claimed that Vance was a “pawn of conservative podcaster Tucker Carlson,” who is among Cruz’s biggest foes, having clashed with the ex-Fox News host in an explosive interview last summer over the Trump administration’s strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Cruz supported the intervention and has repeatedly criticized Carlson for his opposition to U.S. military support of Israel.
“Tucker created JD,” Cruz told donors, according to Axios. “JD is Tucker’s protégé, and they are one and the same.”
Publicly, Cruz has never explicitly linked Vance and Carlson. He alleged to donors that the ousted National Security Adviser Mike Waltz—of Signalgate infamy—was pushed out of Trump’s Cabinet by Carlson and Vance.
“[He] supported being vigorous against Iran and bombing Iran—and Tucker and JD took Mike out,” Cruz said, according to Axios.
Carlson told Axios he had nothing to do with the high-profile ouster.
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