Sen. Ted Cruz has privately warned donors on at least two occasions that President Trump's trade agenda could wreck the economy and sink Republicans, even as he publicly casts himself as one of the president's staunchest Senate allies, according to recordings given to Axios by a GOP source. The Texas Republican, seen as a likely 2028 presidential contender, derided Trump's new tariffs and took direct aim at Vice President JD Vance at two donor meetings last year, one early in the year and one in the middle. Cruz portrayed himself as a traditional free-trade hawk and painted Vance as an extension of conservative commentator Tucker Carlson's more isolationist worldview. "Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker's protégé, and they are one and the same," Cruz said in one recording.
Cruz also recounted a late-night call with Trump after his tariffs were rolled out in April 2025, saying he and a few GOP senators urged the president to reverse course. He said the conversation "did not go well," describing Trump as angry and profane. Cruz told donors he warned Trump that if tariffs drove down 401(k)s and pushed up prices, Republicans would face an electoral "bloodbath" in 2026 and Trump would be "impeached every single week" if Democrats took control of the House and Senate. Trump's reply, according to Cruz: "F--- you, Ted." Cruz also mocked Trump's branding of the tariffs rollout as "Liberation Day," joking that he told his staffers anyone who used the phrase would be fired.
The senator further claimed Vance and Carlson helped push out former national security adviser Mike Waltz over his support for airstrikes on Iran, and that they were behind the appointment of Daniel Davis, whom Cruz described as fiercely anti-Israel, to a senior intelligence role. Vance has publicly backed the Iran strikes, while Carlson told Axios he had nothing to do with Waltz's removal or Davis' hiring. In a statement, a Cruz spokesperson called the lawmaker "the president's greatest ally in the Senate," said he "battles every day" to advance Trump's agenda, and dismissed coverage of the rift as an attempt to "sow division." The Texas Monthly frames the recordings as "a glimpse of things to come in 2028," predicting the GOP primary fighting between presidential hopefuls likely including Cruz, Vance, and possibly Carlson could get very "acrimonious."
The report comes as Cruz, on his podcast Monday, split with the Trump administration over the response to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis, CBS News reports. "Escalating the rhetoric doesn't help, and it actually loses credibility," Cruz said. "And so I would encourage the administration to be more measured, to recognize the tragedy and to say, we don't want anyone, anyone's lives, to be lost, and the politicians who are pouring gasoline on this fire, they need to stop." He was one of a number of Republicans criticizing the administration's response to the shooting.
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