CLEVELAND – Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) helped coordinate a July 7 meeting between GOP nominee Donald Trump and his former rival Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) because the nation is “hanging in the balance.”
Gohmert said he never expected Trump to invite Cruz to speak at the Republican National Convention without agreeing to offer a formal endorsement first.
“I heard they had a good meeting and Ted felt like it was a good meeting. I didn’t ask Trump to invite him to speak. In fact, Trump had made clear, ‘Unless he endorses me, he’s not speaking.’ I thought it was a reach-out moment. I didn’t expect it at all from Trump. Not only did he go have the meeting but he invited Ted to speak and he spoke last night,” Gohmert said on the final day of the GOP convention.
“I don’t know which is true, but I did see Trump earlier saying he saw a draft of the speech a couple hours before and didn’t care, no big deal, something like that,” he said in response to reports of some unnamed sources saying Cruz might have deviated from the original text of the speech.
“I didn’t get the impression that he saw it was going to be an endorsement.”
During an event in Cleveland on Friday, Trump addressed the lack of endorsement from Cruz: “”If he gives it, I will not accept it.”
Gohmert said he remains concerned about the relationship between Cruz and Trump because the nation is “hanging in the balance” and cannot afford a Hillary Clinton presidency.
“We can say goodbye to our First and Second Amendments. You lose First and Second Amendments, you are going to lose the rest of them. So, I mean, I really feel the country is hanging in the balance, that’s why I’m willing to go anywhere in the country because I know Ted knows the Constitution, he’s a Christian brother and I felt like he would be best – but at this point, we’ve got to come together,” he said.
“We cannot allow somebody that let people die at Benghazi, whether she was watching the drone feed refusing to send help or if she just went home and went to bed and didn’t send help and let them die. Either way, that’s a person who never ever should be allowed to get near the White House again,” Gohmert added.
PJM asked Gohmert if there could be unity in the GOP without a Cruz endorsement.
“That’s a really interesting question. The RNC kind of surprised me because I have been such an avid Cruz supporter; they asked me to speak to other delegations. They knew I had not endorsed Trump, so I spoke to Alabama, of course to my Texas delegation and this morning I was speaking to the Virginia delegation,” he said. “In a weird way, I’m getting the feeling a lot of people are coming together despite the non-endorsement last night.”
Gohmert said he has heard “a lot of Cruz supporters” ponder endorsing Trump on their own regardless of what Cruz decides to do.
“I’m getting the impression the end result may well be a group coming together in the end,” he said.
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