GREENVILLE, South Carolina — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says if he’s president, he’ll have real estate magnate and current national GOP frontrunner Donald Trump on his team in more ways than one: working on trade and immigration.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Cruz says he’d bring Trump into his administration to negotiate trade deals. Last week, Cruz vowed on Jeffrey Kuhner’s radio program that he would hire Trump to build the wall along the southern border with Mexico.
“There is no doubt that Donald Trump would be a phenomenal negotiator with China and if you look at TPP [Trans Pacific Partnership], I have come out against TPP, it is an incredibly long and complicated mess of a bill,” Cruz told Breitbart News when asked if Trump would make a good negotiator for the nation’s trade deals.
It has more pages than the Gang of Eight amnesty bill and Obamacare combined. And I support free trade, but free trade that benefits American workers—that opens up foreign markets to our products, to our agriculture, to our goods and services. There is no doubt that Donald Trump would be a tremendously effective negotiator to help open up foreign markets.
Earlier in the day, during a press availability in his Greenville office, Cruz reiterated he has no plans whatsoever—as many other candidates have tried but failed doing—to attack Trump.
“Oh listen, I like and respect Donald Trump,” Cruz said when a reporter asked if he expected Trump to take aim at him now that at least one Iowa poll shows him ahead of Trump in the Hawkeye State. “I continue to like and respect Donald Trump. While other candidates in this race have gone out of their way to throw rocks at him, to insult him, I have consistently declined to do so and I have no intention of changing that now.”
A poll from Monmouth University released this week shows Cruz with a five-point lead over Trump in Iowa. Cruz’s 24 percent in that poll is five points better than Trump’s 19 percent. In third place is Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) with 17 percent and in fourth is Dr. Ben Carson with 13 percent.