He now says he was pressured and coerced by prosecutors. But despite repeated claims to the contrary, Cohen still insists that the testimony he gave against Donald Trump was truthful.

There is an old rule in politics: words matter. There is an even older rule in a courtroom: sworn words matter even more.

That distinction is essential in understanding what seems to be the extraordinary reconciliation between President Donald Trump and his former personal attorney Michael Cohen — and the increasingly widespread claim that Cohen has now “recanted” the testimony he gave against Trump.

He has not.

Perhaps I am particularly sensitive to this question. Charged by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s thugs and pressured to give false testimony against President Trump in return for leniency in sentencing for the contrived process crimes I had been convicted for in a DC Soviet style show trial, I refused.

Michael Cohen chose a different path He told Trump’s persecutors what they wanted to hear.

President Trump has understandably seized upon Cohen’s alleged about-face regarding the prosecutors who pursued him. In January, Cohen accused the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and New York Attorney General Letitia James of pressuring him to provide testimony useful to their cases against Trump. Cohen wrote that he “felt pressured and coerced” to provide information and testimony that would satisfy the government’s desire to convict Trump.

I’m not sure President Trump understands that Michael Cohen has not recanted or withdrawn any of his testimony against Trump in the so-called hush money case brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. But saying “I felt pressured and coerced” is not the same thing as saying “my testimony was false.”

Cohen himself has gone out of his way to make precisely that distinction.

When Cohen appeared with Dan Abrams on SiriusXM and was directly asked whether his allegations of prosecutorial pressure meant his previous testimony was untruthful, Cohen answered unequivocally: “No, to the exact contrary.” He then said that nothing about his allegations of pressure should suggest that the information he provided was anything other than “truthful and accurate”

There is simply no intellectually honest way to describe that as a recantation. A recantation means taking back a previous statement. It means saying, in substance: What I told you before under oath was not true.

Cohen has not done that. In fact, he has specifically done the opposite.

This distinction became glaring during Cohen’s remarkable August reunion with President Trump on WABC. Trump repeatedly praised Cohen for supposedly recanting his testimony. “You took it back,” Trump told him, adding, “I wouldn’t even be talking to you right now if you didn’t, to be honest.” Cohen did not correct the President. That’s because he has taken nothing back. He said nothing.

That silence undoubtedly helped create the impression that Cohen had withdrawn his allegations against Trump. But silence is not a recantation.

And when Cohen was subsequently confronted directly with the question, he stood behind his sworn testimony. The New York Times, got this narrow but important factual point right: Cohen “has not taken any of it back.”

This presents a rather obvious contradiction that neither Cohen nor many of those celebrating his supposed recantation appear anxious to address. If prosecutors pressured Cohen to provide testimony designed to secure a conviction against Donald Trump, what exactly did Cohen say because of that pressure that was untrue?

Name it. Which statement? Which allegation? Which material fact? What part of his sworn testimony does Michael Cohen now withdraw?

Thus far, the answer is: none of it.

Cohen testified for Bragg in the Manhattan criminal prosecution that ultimately resulted in Trump’s conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records. He also testified in Attorney General James’s civil fraud case. His testimony was not incidental to either proceeding, although it was also not the only evidence presented against Trump.

Those were not television interviews. They were not podcasts. They were not Substack posts. They were sworn testimony in legal proceedings.

Cohen now says the prosecutors behind those cases were politically motivated and that he felt pressured and coerced by them. Yet he simultaneously maintains that what he told the courts was truthful and accurate. Both statements can theoretically be true. A witness can believe prosecutors exerted enormous pressure upon him while still maintaining that the testimony he ultimately gave was truthful.

But if that is Cohen’s position, then it is not a recantation.

The distinction is particularly important because Cohen himself appears acutely aware of it. When CNN’s Jake Tapper characterized Cohen as saying he had been “pressured and coerced” into testifying against Trump, Cohen corrected him. The comment, Cohen explained, was that he “felt pressured and coerced.” Cohen then added: “And I think the distinction is extremely important.”

Indeed it is.

Cohen is an attorney. He knows the difference between alleging prosecutorial pressure and admitting that sworn testimony was false. He also knows the potential consequences of admitting that testimony he gave under oath was knowingly false.Perhaps Cohen understands that to recant his sworn testimony now could open him to new State charge of perjury. Perhaps those encouraging Cohen to recant his sworn testimony understand they could face charges of obstruction if Cohen was given anything in return for his new claims.

This is not to minimize what Cohen has said. His accusations against Bragg and James are extraordinary precisely because he was one of the government’s most important cooperating witnesses. According to Cohen, prosecutors approached their investigations determined to build cases against Trump and pressured him to provide information useful to those cases. Those allegations deserve scrutiny on their own merits.

But they should not be embellished into something Cohen himself refuses to say.

There is another fascinating dimension to all of this. Michael Cohen spent years attacking Donald Trump in the most viciously personal terms imaginable. He wrote two anti-Trump books. He became a fixture in the anti-Trump media. He testified against his former boss. According to the Times, Cohen sought a pardon from President Joe Biden and, after failing to obtain one, subsequently resubmitted his pardon application with Trump’s name in Biden’s place.

Criticism of Alvin Bragg is not recantation. Criticism of Letitia James is not recantation. Saying prosecutors pressured you is not recantation. Calling the system politically weaponized is not recantation. Even seeking a presidential pardon is not recantation.

Taking back your sworn testimony is recantation.

Michael Cohen has conspicuously refused to do that.

Perhaps Cohen will someday say explicitly that material testimony he gave against Donald Trump was false. If he does, that will be major news, and it will raise profound questions about the prosecutions themselves as well as Cohen’s own conduct under oath.

But he hasn’t said it yet.

Instead, when finally asked the question directly, Cohen said exactly the opposite: the information he provided was “truthful and accurate.” President Trump has claimed that Cohen “fully RECANTED his testimony.” But the first half of that proposition is contradicted by Cohen’s own public statements. And it raises the question that Cohen has still declined to answer:

What, specifically, did Michael Cohen testify to about Donald Trump that was not true?

But there has not been a recantation.

Vice President JD Vance announced on Thursday that the Labor Department is suspending Microsoft from PERM, the process companies use to sponsor H-1B workers for green cards, accusing it of abusing the system more than any other employer. The suspension also covers Adobe and the outsourcers Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini. At the same briefing, he said nine universities will be investigated for allegedly using J-1 visas to undercut American graduate students and researchers: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, the University of Pittsburgh, UC Davis, Caltech, Arizona State, and MIT, Just the News reported.

PERM is the Labor Department’s check before a company can sponsor a foreign worker for a green card. The company has to show it looked for an American worker and offered the usual wage for the job. Passing that check is not the green card. The application still goes to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which decides whether the worker can stay for good.

At a briefing Thursday, Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the department will not accept new applications from the suspended companies and will not process pending ones, Reutersreported. Existing H-1B visas stay valid. Asked how long the suspension would last, Vance said it will “last as long as it needs to.” The action was an administrative suspension announced by the Labor Secretary, not a published executive order.

Vance said, “We decided to suspend the PERM program for Microsoft, which means they will no longer be able to take those H-1Bs and apply for permanent resident status within the United States of America.” “Our message to Microsoft is: You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers. You cannot lay off American workers and then replace them with foreign indentured servants.”

He called the recruitment test fraudulent. “They’ll put an advertisement in a small-town newspaper. They’ll go out there and say that ‘We have advertised for a position with our company, and nobody is responding to it.’ And they will use that lack of response to then go and replace American workers with what is effectively foreign indentured servants,” Vance said, the Associated Press reported. The recruitment step he described is a real, long-criticized feature of PERM. He offered the small-town newspaper example. It is not a finding that these companies did it.

No fraud finding has been issued. “The fraud is that they’re making representations when applying for this program that are fundamentally illegitimate and therefore ultimately illegal.” “There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft,” he said. Sonderling said Microsoft and Adobe were suspended because of multiple active federal investigations, and he also named Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini.

Vance tied the charge to last year’s layoffs. He said Microsoft cut 6,000 American workers while drawing 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. “For every worker that Microsoft laid off, they replaced that worker with 1½ foreign indentured servants,” he said, according to Fox Business. Those figures and the indentured-servant framing are his assertions, not a department finding. He called it a scandalous system and said foreign workers were being used like indentured servants to undercut American wages.

Sonderling said that since 2009 the named companies had requested almost 3 million foreign workers, received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals, and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications. “That’s hundreds of thousands of jobs that were taken from American workers,” he said.

Vance urged Congress to rewrite the program and said the administration would use the tools it already has in the meantime.

The suspension follows a September 2025 proclamation that imposed a one-time $100,000 fee on new H-1B petitions for workers hired from abroad, and Project Firewall, the Labor Department enforcement drive Reuters said has opened about 200 cases. The fee is not being collected. On June 8, 2026, U.S. District Judge Leo T. Sorokin in Boston set aside the agency actions that imposed it. On July 24, the First Circuit declined to pause that ruling while the administration’s appeal continues.

On the universities, Vance said the nine are employing J-1 visas for federally funded grants at a rate of about 61 percent, against a national average of 38 percent. “Something weird is going on at these universities.” That comparison is his assertion.

Labor Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito said subpoenas had already been served and investigations were underway. “Nobody will be getting a free pass because their name is carved into an expensive building,” he said.

The suspension left existing H-1B visas in place. It stops the named companies from filing new PERM applications and stops the department from processing pending ones until it is lifted. The administration says it is committed to keeping that suspension in place as long as it needs to, and to using the tools it already has while it waits on Congress.

The Albany Times Union, conceivably the most biased newspaper in the country, wants North Country New York voters to believe a Democrat is about to flip New York’s 21st Congressional District currently held by Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

Their evidence is a Siena Research Institute survey, released October 9, that has Democrat Blake Gendebien leading Republican Anthony Constantino 46 to 42, with independent Christopher Schmidt at 5 and 8 percent undecided. Read the ballot Siena actually tested, and the sample underneath it, and the lead dissolves. This is not a measurement of the election on November 3. It is a measurement of an election that will not be held. Schmidt is a write-in candidate not on the ballot!

The certified November ballot in NY-21 has two names: Anthony Constantino and Blake Gendebien. Schmidt failed to qualify for a line. A federal judge dismissed his challenge to the state’s signature requirement in August, and he is running as a write-in. Siena read his name to respondents anyway and parked 5 percent of the vote with him. There is another liberal write-in in the race who was not named. This is the second media poll of the contest to test a ballot that does not exist. A survey that invents a candidate, then treats his supporters as if they had somewhere to go on Election Day, is not polling the race. It is diluting it. 

The Sienna Institute conduct of this poll is both unprofessional and methodologically flawed and they know it

The rest of the sample does not describe this district. Elise Stefanik, who carried NY-21 62 to 38 and whose favorable rating in district polling has run between 56 and 62, comes in at roughly 50 percent favorable in Siena’s numbers, 50–44 in the published release. Bruce Blakeman republican candidate for Governorleads Democrat incumbentKathy Hochul by 15 points. Hochul lost this district by 23 points in 2022, and every poll the Constantino campaign has taken here has Blakeman ahead by 20 or more. President Trump is at 52 percent unfavorable in a district he carried by double digits. A survey can be internally consistent and still be wrong about the place it claims to represent. When the anchors of the district — the outgoing congresswoman, the president, the top of the ticket — all come in softer than the election returns and the other available polling, the congressional horse race sitting on top of those numbers is not credible.

The refusals make it worse. In any serious poll, refusals are not folded into the result as if they were evenly distributed non-answers. Here, 10 percent of Republicans and 9 percent of independents refused to answer, against 2 percent of Democrats. That imbalance does not stay in a footnote. It changes the weighted distribution of the sample. Siena’s own crosstabs already show Gendebien consolidating Democrats at 85–10 while Constantino is held to 65–21 among Republicans. Strip out a phantom write-in and a lopsided refusal rate, and the four-point Democratic lead is a rounding error inside a margin of error of 4.6 points on 496 likely voters interviewed from September 30 to October 6.

Follow the money, which does not lie the way a ballot test can. If NY-21 were actually a four-point race a month out, national Democrats would be spending as if it were. They are not. Gendebien reported roughly $500,000 in the bank on October 1, a poor number this late, and a candidate who has lost cash on hand over the past year while carrying a heavy bill load. His campaign is on television and little else. Constantino’s side is taking the rest of the advertising and tying Gendebien to Hochul. On fundraising calls, Gendebien’s own callers have been telling donors he has been losing ground and is down in the campaign’s latest internal poll. Campaigns do not beg that way when their private numbers match the public ones.

Siena has been here before. Its October 2020 poll of the old NY-22, taken September 27 to October 4 among 383 likely voters, had Anthony Brindisi leading Claudia Tenney 48 to 39. It was the only public poll of the race. Tenney won. The institute’s statewide record is no better. A pollster that misses a congressional race by nine points in the same media market does not get the benefit of the doubt when it misses the ballot, the refusals, and the fundamentals in the district next door.

None of this means the race is over, or that Constantino can ignore turnout in a midterm. It means the survey the Albany and Plattsburgh press is treating as a snapshot of NY-21 does not describe the election voters will cast. Two names are on the ballot. The district still prefers Republicans for Congress, 50 to 45 even in this sample, and prefers the Republican for governor by 15. Anthony Constantino is winning the race that exists. Siena polled a different one.

Gavin Newsom signed a 25% tax on private detention operators on September 29, 2026, and called it protection from President Trump’s “Orwellian” immigration tactics. It is a press release. The bill does not name ICE. In California, the operators it taxes are the ones running ICE facilities. Fox News reported that all eight ICE detention centers in the state are privately run. The tax also covers a state or local private detention contract. It does not take effect until July 1, 2028. Newsom will be gone. The next governor inherits the bill, and the fight.

Assembly Bill 1633, by Matt Haney of San Francisco, takes 25% of an operator’s California-source gross income starting July 1, 2028. The bill defines that income as gross income derived from or attributable to this state. Operators already pay the 8.84% corporate tax on net income. This is an extra levy on the gross. The legislative counsel’s digest says the tax is 25% of gross income “for the prior fiscal year.” Section 53002(a) imposes it on gross income “for that fiscal year.” Section 53006 makes the tax due on or before July 31 after the prior fiscal year closes. The digest and the due date point to the year just ended. The imposition line does not. The bill never resolves the difference. Newsom is term-limited and not on the 2026 ballot. His second term ends when the next governor is sworn in on January 4, 2027. The tax does not start until about 18 months after he is gone.

The check does not go to the high-speed rail line voters were promised in 2008, the San Francisco-to-Los Angeles system that was supposed to open in 2020. It does not go to roads, schools, or to the homeless. HUD’s 2025 count put California at 181,934 people, closer to a quarter of the national total of 745,652 than the 30% figure often cited. Fourteen of the state’s 44 continuums of care did not do a new unsheltered count, and HUD carried forward 2024 figures for those places. None of it fixes a project he already lost, the cities, or a power bill.

California’s average retail electricity price in 2025 was 27.63 cents a kilowatt-hour, more than double the national average of 13.63 cents, second only to Hawaii, and the largest absolute inflation-adjusted increase of any state since 2018, a 29.9% rise, according to an Institute for Energy Research analysis of EIA data. 

Through June 2026, the Center for Jobs ranked California first among the contiguous states for residential, commercial, and industrial rates. Industrial power ran 21.64 cents, about 160% above the rest of the country.

Commercial and industrial customers paid an estimated $21.5 billion more than ratepayers elsewhere for the same electricity. That is the renewable mandate, the transmission buildout, the cap-and-trade charge, and the permitting stack, passed through to the meter.

Refinery capacity shrank. In-state oil and gas production shrank. Gasoline stayed among the highest in the country. A factory does not need a speech to understand the math. It leaves. Instead, the signed law puts the money in a Due Process for All Fund for immigration-related services, the legal help and family services the backers said the tax was for. The fund is spent only upon appropriation by the Legislature. The companion bill that would also have created that fund, AB 2465, was vetoed on September 30, 2026. AB 1633 creates the fund on its own. This, all while the lost contracts keep dangling.

San Francisco was the signing. Los Angeles, Oakland, and San Francisco are the record: tents, open drug use, closed storefronts, and smash-and-grabs. His administration spent years calling that a housing strategy. This exemption does not sweep an encampment, reopen a pharmacy, or put an officer on a corner.

The Federal Railroad Administration terminated about $4 billion in high-speed rail grants on July 16, 2025, Obama- and Biden-era awards, after a review cited missed deadlines, change orders, and no viable path. California sued, then filed to drop the case on December 23, 2025. The court entered the dismissal on January 7, 2026. Reuters reported that the Transportation Department cancelled another $175 million that August. The Authority still aims the Merced-to-Bakersfield segment at 2033. The review said there is no viable path to that date.

The Authority’s own 2026 business plan puts an optimized Phase 1 at about $126.1 billion and a re-estimate of the full prior Phase 1 scope at about $231.3 billion.

The Department of Energy cancelled California clean-energy awards in October 2025. An SFGATE tally put the state share above $3.1 billion across 79 grants, the most of any state, including $1.2 billion for the ARCHES hydrogen hub. Politico put the state grid award at about $631 million.

Attorney General Rob Bonta said in May 2025 that California’s exposure on federal public-health grants was more than $972 million. A federal court then preliminarily blocked those terminations while the case went forward. The Department of Education ended about $350 million in fiscal 2025 grants for minority-serving programs. California, with 167 Hispanic-Serving campuses, took the largest hit: at least $20 million at community colleges and about $43 million at Cal State.

The tax fails to backfill the rail money, the energy awards, or the education grants. He signed a tax due in July 2028 and, in the same September 29 package, signed a shock-glove ban, more oversight, and a  ban on using state parking lots to stage immigration arrests. Those are companion bills, not provisions of AB 1633. Hans von Spakovsky of Advancing American Freedom told Fox the likely result is not fewer detainees. It is warehouses and office space, because the purpose-built centers got priced out of the contract.

None of this closes a facility, lays track, reopens a store, helps the homeless, or gives residents a refund on their power bill. It tells a contractor what California has already told the companies that left: the state will take a quarter of the California-source gross for a job it will not do. Newsom’s statement called the package transparency, accountability, and oversight.

Some already treat him as a 2028 candidate. The tribute fixes none of the record he would run on. A presidential bid would ask the country to overlook the state he governed and did not fix.

The framing that Cruz uses to describe one of the greatest Presidents in American history reveals his deep disdain for the country he claims to represent.

During the testimony of former Special Counsel Jack Smith before the Senate late last week, odious Texas Senator Ted Cruz launched an untrue and baseless attack on my mentor, and one of my personal heroes, President Richard Nixon.

Cruz said, “Well, let me say congratulations. Because you have succeeded where Richard Nixon failed, which is weaponizing the Department of Justice and the federal government to go after your political opponents. Congratulations, you are stepping into the shoes of John Mitchell.”

Cruz compared Smith to Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell, then said Smith’s abuse was “far greater than John Mitchell,” accused him of being “conscripted as a foot soldier for the DNC,” and called the conduct “the most egregious abuse of power in the history of the Department of Justice.”

The framing that Cruz uses to describe one of the greatest Presidents in American history reveals his deep disdain for the country he claims to represent.

Nixon was not a political marauder seeking revenge on his opponents, nor was he in a position where spying on his opponents was even a necessary act.

When you’re talking about Richard Nixon, you’re talking about potentially the most popular President in the history of the United States, based on election results.

Nixon’s first win in 1968 was narrow. His second was one of the largest landslides in modern presidential history. His job approval was solid, not extraordinary, until the Vietnam settlement briefly pushed it near 70 percent in early 1973.

In 1968 he beat Hubert Humphrey by a hair. Nixon took about 43.4 percent of the popular vote to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent, with George Wallace at 13.5 percent.

The electoral vote was 301–191–46. It was a plurality win in a three-way race, not a mandate.

In 1972 he crushed George McGovern. The final total was about 47.2 million votes (60.7 percent) to 29.2 million (37.5 percent), and 520 electoral votes to 17.

McGovern carried only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia; one Virginia elector defected to Libertarian John Hospers.

Coming out of the 1972 Election, President Richard Nixon had a mandate from the American people, a mandate that pathetic Senator Ted Cruz is trying to erase from history.

But why would Ted Cruz attack Richard Nixon? The answer is simple…

Republicans like Ted Cruz have always existed. Weak, spineless, immoral cowards who stand for nothing, while boasting of their false bravado.

Cruz, an effeminate Canadian-born fraud, and his betrayal of Richard Nixon highlights the divide within the Republican that existed in the days of Nixon, and continues into the days of President Donald Trump.

Richard Nixon represented the working class of this country, the backbone of America. The factory workers, the auto workers, the small businessmen and businesswomen nationwide. They are who elected Richard Nixon, and they were the main focus of Richard Nixon’s policies.

Much like President Donald Trump, Richard Nixon put America and Americans first.

On the other hand, establishment figures like Ted Cruz, who could be compared to any number of Republicrats of the Nixon-era, legislate from an entirely different perspective. Cruz comes from the Bush-era of conservatism.

While Americans that support Donald Trump believe in limited government, free speech, and the Constitution, Republicans like Cruz compromise, and even directly contradict these values, almost always arguing for Big Government, restrictions on free movement and free speech, especially online, and directly arguing against the rights enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

While Ted Cruz may play the part of a patriot, his record reads like that of a paper tiger.

As for his comments specifically relating to John Mitchell, Cruz couldn’t be more wrong.

The Watergate Special Prosecution Force proved that much of the evidence that was used to come after John Mitchell was entirely fabricated.

In a February 6, 1974, memorandum, WSPF lawyer Peter F. Rient identified 20 instances in which John Dean’s testimony before the Senate diverged materially from what was on the tapes. The Rient memorandum did not surface until 1997.

George Frampton, another WSPF lawyer, actually concluded that one key meeting Dean had described, deeply damning to Mitchell, “apparently didn’t take place, adding: “We probably would do well simply to omit Dean’s testimony about this.” In the same document, Frampton wrote about California attorney Herbert Kalmbach, the chief fundraiser of the “hush money” that was delivered to the Watergate burglars and their attorneys. Dean has always maintained that John Mitchell authorized the enlistment of Kalmbach. But the WSPF concluded: “Mitchell’s logs and schedule suggest…Dean exercised somewhat more discretion himself to forge ahead with getting Kalmbach into the picture than he has admitted.”

Ted Cruz obviously has no idea what really happened in Watergate.

Cruz not only has no clue what happened at Watergate, he’s also deeply corrupt.

Cruz told voters he and his wife liquidated their savings to fund his underdog 2012 Senate race. In reality, more than $1 million came from a Goldman Sachs margin loan (his wife Heidi worked there) and a Citibank line of credit.

He reported the money to the FEC as “personal funds” and did not disclose the banks as the source on campaign reports, as required.

The FEC later found the reporting inaccurate. In 2019 his campaign paid a $35,000 fine and signed a conciliation agreement.

Cruz called it an “inadvertent filing error.” The loans themselves were listed on his separate Senate personal financial disclosures, just not correctly on FEC campaign forms.

iHeartMedia produces and syndicates Cruz’s podcast. Between 2023 and 2024, IHeart paid roughly $630,000–$961,000 in “digital revenue” to Truth and Courage PAC, a super PAC whose purpose is getting Cruz reelected. Watchdogs argued this was an illegal corporate contribution or an undisclosed gift.

Cruz has also received luxurious gifts from donors, getting a $76,440 private-jet round trip to Turks and Caicos from Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani, a Goldman Sachs executive. Cruz has received charter flights, Astros tickets, concert tickets, and a Longhorns ticket from Texas oil and real-estate donors.

Not only does Ted Cruz operate on a corrupt basis while working as a United States Senator, but he also barely shows up to work.

Reports have been published detailing the fact that in some years, Cruz has missed upwards of 32% of the Senate hearings he was supposed to attend.

Current figures put his absences at eighth-worst in the entire United States Senate, meaning there are only seven Senators who show up to work less than Senator Ted Cruz.

In addition to having one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate, Senator Ted Cruz has also spent the last 10 years being a quiet, yet effective objecting force to President Donald Trump’s agenda in the Senate.

In May 2022 Cruz voted for the roughly $40 billion Ukraine supplemental, which the Senate passed 86–11. In a floor speech he said he would have preferred a smaller, more focused bill, but concluded continued military support was in the U.S. national interest while Ukrainian forces were winning with weapons already supplied.

The 11 Republican “no” votes included Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee. America First critics of open-ended Ukraine funding have pointed to this vote.

Cruz’s support for Ukraine is a prime example of his willingness to stab Republican voters in the back whenever it suits his political career, rather than the desires of his constituents.

Ted Cruz is wrong about a lot of things, but few statements by Cruz have been as egregiously false as his statements about Richard Nixon and Watergate.

Cruz’s history as a traitorous, barely-present neocon that devours the most blatant and disgusting kind of corruption in the Senate is just the cherry on top of his lies.

Thom Tillis, a retiring North Carolina RINO, spent the last few days doing what he would not do in a primary. He bashed the president who carried his state, and shopped a book about it. He took the act to 60 Minutes on Sunday and The View on Monday. The book came out Tuesday.

Tillis has served two terms. He was elected in 2014, sworn in January 2015, and leaves in January 2027. He knows the last general-election result. He is still arguing with it.

Sunday he told Ross Douthat the next Republican nominee cannot be a MAGA candidate, because that candidate could not win a general election. After a tough midterm, he said, Trump will have a heavy hand in the 2028 primary, and the party has to speak frankly about the profile it needs. Asked what was wrong with the president’s pick, he said it works in red MAGA states and will not work in a general. 

Trump won the popular vote in 2024 with about 77.3 million votes, carried all seven swing states, including North Carolina, and took 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’s 226. In North Carolina, Trump received 2,898,423 votes to Kamala Harris’s 2,715,375, about 51% to 47.8%, wider than his margin in 2020. Tillis is not arguing with a theory. He is arguing with a certified result in his own state, and he is losing the argument.

He knew it was coming, which makes the lecture worse. On October 23, 2024, he told Bloomberg Television that Trump would carry North Carolina by about the margin he won in 2020. The brand he now calls a general-election loser is the brand he was counting on to save his state. Trump won. Tillis is the one fleeing.

He is arguing from the door because the door is the only place he is brave. On June 29, 2025, the day after he and Rand Paul voted against advancing the One Big Beautiful Bill and Trump said he was considering a primary, Tillis announced he would not run again.

Trump called him a talker and a complainer, not a doer. That was generous. Instead of fighting for the seat, he wrote a book, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, and booked the two shows that exist to applaud a Republican who hates his own voters. Courage, on his schedule, starts when the primary can no longer hurt him.

It is no mystery. The primary he skipped already answered for him, and not in his favor. Michael Whatley, Trump’s endorsee, the former Republican National Committee chair, won the March 3 nomination with 64.6%. Don Brown, the next closest, took 15.6%. 

The general is against former governor Roy Cooper, who won the Democratic primary with 92% and leads the early polling. Tillis handed his voters a Trump-backed nominee, refused to defend the seat himself, and then went on CBS to say that kind of nominee cannot win. Whatley is on the ballot. Tillis is on a book tour.

Mitch McConnell was his mentor in the Senate, which tells you the ambition and the taste. Tillis named a dog Little Mitch after him, and in 2024 he said Little Mitch evokes the same emotions as Big Mitch, and that there is a reason he named a dog after Mitch. He still has the dog. He also rents McConnell’s carriage house in Washington. He votes with the party when the camera is off and saves the break for the shows that book critics of Trump.

On 60 Minutes he said he is the same conservative he was in 2014, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, for limited government and fiscal restraint. The only difference, he said, between him and people who call themselves true conservatives is that he has a long list of things that were ratified and they do not. The list is the deals that put him at war with the voters who elected him, recited now that those voters cannot retire him.

He claims he is filled with regret. He voted to confirm the Trump Cabinet, including Pete Hegseth. That vote was 50-50. His was the vote that kept the nomination alive, and Vance broke the tie. In the book he calls it the biggest regret of his career and wants Hegseth out. He writes that he also should have stopped Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and he names Tulsi Gabbard, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and Howard Lutnick among the picks he now faults.

On 60 Minutes he called Noem and Hegseth the poster children for people who should never have had the authority they were given, citing a $200 million Homeland Security ad campaign and Noem’s description of people who were shot as potentially domestic terrorists. The regret arrived after the votes, and after the primary he refused to face.

On The View the next day, Whoopi Goldberg noted that he calls Trump a snowflake and still calls him an amazing political talent, and asked what she was missing. Alyssa Farah Griffin asked about his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth, which he now calls the biggest regret of his career. Tillis said he had deferred to his former Armed Services colleagues, that they all made a mistake, and that he hopes Hegseth gets fired. Ana Navarro then asked why he confirmed nominees he had called unqualified, Hegseth and Kristi Noem among them, and why he had just voted for Todd Blanche. He confirmed the people he now criticizes, Hegseth among them, then said the confirmation was a mistake. That is not oversight. That is a man building a second career as the Republican who warned you, after he declined to cast the no vote when it counted.

The same pattern of inconsistency shows up in his account of January 6. On 60 Minutes, Tillis told Douthat the day was despicable, that the people who assaulted police should still be in prison, and that they were there for the president. He was not disgusted enough to convict. He voted against conviction and now says the trial was rushed. He kept the vote that protected his standing in the conference and kept the speech that plays on CBS and ABC. Disgust, like courage, arrived after the risk was gone.

Tillis claims at least 30 Republican senators share his reservations in private and will not say so because Trump would target them in a primary. His line was that martyrs are dead. Then do not call it a principle. Call it a head count. They are not on 60 Minutes or The View. He is, because he is done and he wants the booking.

Tillis will be remembered as a senator who won twice, narrowly both times, and then quit rather than face a third. In 2014 he beat Kay Hagan. In 2020 he survived by 1.8 points, 48.7% to 46.9%, after Cal Cunningham’s affair disclosure. He is not running from a rematch with Cunningham. He is declining the term. That is a thin basis for a lecture on who can win a general. He won a Senate seat twice. He did not win a presidential election. Trump did, including in his state.