Charles Krauthammer: Ted Cruz Guilty of Committing 'Act of Rather Amazing Hypocrisy

Conservative political pundit Charles Krauthammer said Monday that Sen. Ted Cruz(R-Texas) is guilty of "rather amazing hypocrisy" for blasting Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but failing to go after fellow Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

[sharequote align="right"]"It is an act of rather amazing hypocrisy..."[/sharequote]

The syndicated-columnist contended that because Cruz hopes to gain Trump supporters when the real-estate mogul drops out of the race, he won't criticize him.

Krauthammer said that left him guilty of hypocrisy.

"It is an act of rather amazing hypocrisy to refuse to attack Trump on the grounds - and these are the grounds that Cruz invoked - of not wanting to attack another Republican, and then, within hours or days, to go on the floor of the Senate and to call your own party's leader a liar," Krauthammer said on the Fox News Channel.

A representative for Cruz declined to comment specifically on Krauthammer's allegation, but pointed to comments the Texas senator made on the "Howie Carr Show" Monday about former President Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment.

"The 11th commandment doesn’t mean that you never disagree with another Republican on policy, on substance, on record," Cruz said. "Remember, Ronald Reagan primaried Gerald Ford in '76. But he didn’t attack him and say he’s a no-good, unethical person."

"He said, 'We need to stand for principle.' So what I said about McConnell wasn’t attacking him personally, it was simply talking about his record," the senator added. "He said this, he made this commitment to me, and then he broke it. And it was laying out the facts and it was very calm and orderly just walking through, telling the truth. You know there’s an old quote often wrongly attributed to George Orwell but it’s a powerful quote, which is: 'In a time of universal deception, telling the truth can be a revolutionary act.'"

This story had been updated with Cruz's comments on the "Howie Carr Show."

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