Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) acknowledged Wednesday that he still wants to be president – days after he insisted the Republican Party isn’t going to anoint Vice President JD Vance as President Trump’s successor in 2028.
“It’s no secret that I want to be president,” Cruz said during an interview on Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s podcast.
When the Republican “Lt. Dan” host asked Cruz, who ran for president in 2016, if he plans to run again, Cruz responded, “Time will tell.”
“I will say, this is a bug that history has proved is rarely ended,” the senator said of his White House ambitions. “It is a permanent and often fatal bug.”
Cruz’s remarks come after he told MS NOW host Ali Vitali on Monday that the GOP hasn’t coalesced around Vance as the party’s 2028 presidential nominee.
“Oh, no – there is going to be a full discussion about who we are and what we believe,” he said.
“I’ll certainly be part of the discussion,” Cruz added.
The Texas Republican argued that ahead of the next presidential election, there must be a full-throated foreign policy debate over whether the GOP wants to be “an isolationist party that withdraws from the world or do we believe in American leadership.”
On economics, Cruz contends the party must decide whether it aims to be “a small-government, free-market conservative party” or a “big-government, nanny-state party.”
Vance, who has repeatedly described himself as a skeptic of foreign military intervention, is viewed by many as the favorite to take the mantle from Trump in 2028.
The vice president has said he won’t decide on whether he’ll run to succeed Trump until after the midterm elections.
Trump has also floated Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a potential part of the GOP’s 2028 presidential ticket.
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose term ends in January, is also believed to have interest in making another run at the White House.
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