Washington’s intraparty knives are out—quietly, of course. Secret audio obtained by Axios is pulling back the curtain on a tense showdown between Sen. Ted Cruz and President Donald Trump, exposing frank talk that never made it to the campaign trail.
The recordings, reportedly captured in mid-2025 shortly after Trump rolled out his high-profile “Liberation Day” tariff plan in early April, feature Cruz venting to Republican donors about a heated late-night call with the president and fellow GOP senators. According to Cruz, the lawmakers “urged him to stand down” on the tariffs. The effort, he said, went nowhere.
That call “did not go well,” Cruz told donors. Trump, he said, was “yelling” and “cursing” at Republicans who dared to question the strategy.
“Trump was in a bad mood,” Cruz added.
Cruz recounted exactly how he tried to frame the stakes to the president, issuing a blunt electoral warning tied to kitchen-table economics and retirement savings:
“Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people’s 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10-20% at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, [and] face a bloodbath.”
According to Cruz, the message only escalated the clash. He warned that the tariff push could hand Democrats a gift in the midterms.
“You’re going to lose the House, you’re going to lose the Senate, you’re going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.”
Trump’s reply, as Cruz relayed it to donors, was blunt and unmistakable:
“Fck you, Ted.”*
To be fair, Cruz’s private concerns mirrored his public posture at the time. In early April 2025, he openly warned that sweeping tariffs could be “terrible for America.” Markets initially shuddered when the policy was announced. Since then, however, Wall Street has roared back—undercutting the panic narrative. The Dow Jones has climbed 28%, the S&P 500 is up 40%, and the Nasdaq has surged roughly 50% since last April’s dip.
But the audio didn’t stop with tariffs. Cruz also appeared to be drawing battle lines for the future of the party—specifically the 2028 presidential race. In the recording, he took aim at Vice President JD Vance, arguing that Vance’s worldview is less organic than advertised.
Cruz told donors that Vance and his “anti-interventionist foreign policy” were shaped by conservative media star Tucker Carlson.
“Tucker created JD,” Cruz said. “JD is Tucker’s protege, and theya re one and the same.”
