Tell us how you really feel, Ted.
Sen. Ted Cruz pulled no punches in telling reporters Tuesday what he thinks about Donald Trump, leveling multiple broadsides against the GOP front-runner's character.
Cruz's remarks — on the day of the pivotal Indiana primary — were prompted by Trump, in an interview earlier in the day, bringing up a National Enquirer story that purported to link Cruz's father to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy.
"This is nuts," Cruz said while visiting a restaurant in Evansville. "This is not a reasonable position. This is just kooky."
After Cruz dismissed the Enquirer as "tabloid trash," he then took aim at Trump himself.
"This man is a pathological liar," Cruz said. "He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth."
And the jabs kept coming.
Cruz called Trump "a narcissist at a level that I don't think this country has ever seen. ... Everything in Donald's world is about Donald."
Not only that, Cruz said, Trump is "utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him."
Cruz's riff took on the feel of an armchair psychologist, chalking up Trump's outsized personality and at times outrageous statements about women to insecurity.
"Donald is terrified by strong women; he lashes out at them," Cruz said.
For good measure, Cruz also called Trump a "serial philanderer."
"And he boasts about it ... describes his battle with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam," Cruz added.
Trump, in a statement, dismissed Cruz as "desperate."
"It is no surprise he has resorted to his usual tactics of over-the-top rhetoric that nobody believes," Trump said. "Over the last week, I have watched Lyin’ Ted become more and more unhinged as he is unable to react under the pressure and stress of losing, in all cases by landslides, the last six primary elections — in fact, coming in last place in all but one of them."
Trump added: "Today’s ridiculous outburst only proves what I have been saying for a long time, that Ted Cruz does not have the temperament to be president."
