by Ivan Couronne
CLEVELAND, United States (AFP) — Ted Cruz was addressing a crowd on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on Wednesday when he was upstaged by Donald Trump yet again.
Thanking his supporters more than two months after he withdrew from the primaries — his White House bid felled by Trump — the Texas senator was speaking in an open-air restaurant on Lake Erie a few miles (kilometers) from the site where Republicans are meeting to crown Trump the party’s candidate for president.
“Of 17 talented, dynamic candidates, we beat 15 of those candidates,” he said. “We just didn’t beat 16.”
“Our party now has a nominee, and I don’t know…” he added before booing from the crowd interrupted him, accompanied by fingers pointing upward.
Looking up, Cruz saw why: Trump’s Boeing 757, unmistakable thanks to its dark blue paintjob and giant TRUMP logo, was passing overhead.
“That was pretty well orchestrated!” Cruz said, laughing and turning to his campaign manager, Jeff Roe. “Jeff, did you email them to fly the plane right when I said that?”
The ultra-conservative lawyer came closest to threatening Trump during the primaries, and has built a base of loyal supporters who appear ready to stand by their man.
Cruz has yet to formally endorse Trump for the November election, and it is not clear whether he will.
But he made a surprise decision to agree to speak during the convention Wednesday night even though other Republican leaders put off by the billionaire’s divisive campaign have boycotted the event.
“I don’t know what the future is going to hold,” Cruz told his supporters on Wednesday. “What I do know is that everyone of us has an obligation to follow our conscience.”
“There’s a lot of talk about unity,” he concluded. “I want to see unity, and the way of unity is for us to unite behind shared principles, us to unite to defend liberty.”
His supporters in the crowd, many from Texas and Oklahoma, needed no explanation, interrupting him with chants of “2020, 2020!”
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