In a series of recordings taken surreptitiously during several private meetings with donors last year and provided to Axios by one of those donors to further some agenda, Canadian immigrant Senator Ted Cruz recounted how he and his fellow Republicans in the chamber held a lengthy late night April 2025 post-“Liberation Day” conference call in which they begged and pleaded with convicted felon President Trump to back down from the suicidally stupid tariffs which, per Cruz, “did not go well.”

“Trump was in a bad mood. I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them,” Cruz said, then relaying what he told Trump: “Mr President, if we get to November 2026 and people’s 401(k)s are down 30 percent and prices are up 10–20 percent at the supermarket, we’re going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath 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.”

“Fuck you, Ted,” Trump then responded, according to Cruz. The Axios article is actually mostly about Cruz privately shit-talking Trump and neckbearded Vice President JD Vance, and the tariff anecdote leads into how the audio caught Cruz telling a donor that he told his staff “if anyone uses [Trump’s stupid ‘Liberation Day’], they will be terminated on the spot. That is not language we use,” lol.

“Tucker created JD. JD is Tucker’s protege, and they are one and the same,” Cruz said in another moment, which Axios says is significant because, while Ted’s hatred of Tucker Carlson is no secret, he had previously refrained from publicly linking Tucker and Jaydee. Cruz blamed the two for Mike Waltz’s exile to the UN, because Waltz had “supported being vigorous against Iran and bombing Iran, and Tucker and JD took Mike out,” failing of course to mention the “Signalgate” shitshow but also hinting at Cruz by extension accusing Jaydee of being anti-Israel and thus antisemitic.