It took until last week for Ted Cruz to pray his way to an endorsement of Donald Trump. But if Cruz’s ultra-conservative fans feel like he sold out everything he believes in to get back in the good graces of a man who attacked him, his wife, and his father, the truth is a bit different. Because Cruz actually sold out weeks ago.
Just six weeks after he dropped out – and more than a month before Cruz would dramatically snub the nominee at the Republican National Convention – the senator quietly began renting his vast donor email file to his former rival, pocketing at least tens of thousands of dollars, and more likely hundreds of thousands, that can be used to bankroll the Texan’s own political future.
For all the hand-wringing, soul-searching talk about how much thought went into his decision, Cruz was already helping Trump for the same reason that so many are willing to get into the great orange morals-free zone—for the money.
The exact details of Trump’s financial arrangement with Cruz are unclear, and loose federal record-keeping makes it impossible to verify. But an email rate sheet obtained by POLITICO shows that Cruz asks campaigns to pay more than $22,000 for the right to send a single email his list of 280,000 digital donors. He charges more than $51,000 to ping his full email file of 1.28 million supporters.
Trump rented Cruz’s list multiple times. He sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ted and sent numerous fundraising requests to Ted fans, pushing them for the critical bucks needed so Trump could channel their money back to his own pocket.