Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the Donald Trump-loving senator who once called the president-elect a “sniveling coward,” on Monday derided MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for reconnecting with Trump after criticizing him.
“I’m not even sure they were kissing the ring. I think they were kissing a little bit lower than that,” the senator told Fox News’ Sean Hannity of the “Morning Joe” personalities.
“They’re desperate for relevance,” he added.
The irony wasn’t lost on critics, who pointed out that Cruz was once a fierce Trump critic. The senator, who ran against Trump in the 2016 GOP primary, called his opponent a “small and petty man,” a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral” before Trump was elected president.
He eventually became an ardent Trump sycophant even though the former president insulted his wife, Heidi Cruz, insinuating she was ugly, and linked his father, Rafael Cruz, to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The “Morning Joe” hosts have faced backlash from progressives and conservatives alike, and tanking viewership numbers, after they met with Trump at his Florida resort after the election.
They said they had agreed to “restart communications” with Trump even though they don’t “see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues and we told him so.” They were some of Trump’s most vocal critics on cable news in recent years, and in the lead-up to the election, likened him to a fascist.
See some of the reactions to Cruz’s crude hypocrisy below: