Sen. Ted Cruz said he will accept the 2024 election results if there is no "fraud," echoing a line that Donald Trump has used to prime his supporters to reject a potential loss at the ballot box.
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, the Texas Republican initially refused to answer when asked point-blank if he would accept this year's presidential election results, calling it a "ridiculous question."
Cruz repeatedly brought up the GOP talking point about voter fraud in 2020, telling CNN it was "widespread." (Multiple studies have come up with no evidence of the systemic or widespread voter fraud that Republicans have alleged, and former Trump Attorney General William Barr has also disputed that claim.)
After being pressed for an answer, he finally said: “If the Democrats win, I will accept the result. But I’m not going to ignore fraud.”
Cruz played an outsize role in the plot to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results. Days before the Jan. 6 riot, he had a private call with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg that showed the lengths to which he’d been going to help Trump overturn his loss. Then in 2022, he voted against advancing a bipartisan bill in committee that would make it more difficult to challenge future election results.
Like his previous efforts to downplay Trump's refusal to concede the election and the resulting violence at the Capitol, Cruz again brushed off the impact of Trump's 2020 lies in the CNN interview.
“We did have a peaceful transfer of power," he said. "I was there on Jan. 20. I was there on the swearing-in.”
Cruz is far from the first Trump ally to refuse to commit to accepting the 2024 election results. But as a leader in the Senate of the last challenge, he's well-positioned to do it again.