Former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz believes the media–and in particular, cable news–bears some responsibility for what we’ll see this week in Cleveland, and then at the DNC in Philadelphia.
“We saw media as decision makers in primaries in a way we have never seen before,” Cruz told Politico’s Glenn Thrush. “I think Hillary’s nomination and I think Donald Trump’s nomination, I think the media played decisive roles in both of them.”
Cruz suggests media executives had an interest in elevating Trump and damaging the campaigns of Republicans like himself in an effort to set up a Trump-Clinton race the cable news titans believe Clinton will win.
“[Trump would] lose state after state after state and the media would say that he can’t be beaten … and the media liked to paint me as some whacked-out theocrat,” Cruz says. “I think many of the mainstream media players are liberal Democrats…they intend to vote for Hillary. They believed Donald was the easiest candidate for Hillary to beat. And I think many of them wanted him to win the nomination. I don’t think it was innocent decision-making behind this.”