Ted Cruz

He said in the aftermath, he said that President Trump was, quote, mad as a murder hornet that Noem claimed he approved the $200 million ads contract.

And and listen, John is a good friend of mine.

I talked to him today on the Senate floor and I just the number of nominees that his cross examinations have taken out is quite remarkable.

And I think it was John Kennedy's cross examination that that was pivotal there.

in the decision to shift from Christie.

Look, I like Christie personally.

I had dinner with her just a few weeks ago.

And I do think the results of the Department of Homeland Security in terms of securing the border have been very effective.

And so that is beneficial.

I think John Kennedy's line of questioning here was fair, and it was incredibly effective.

I also think – and we've talked about this on the podcast before –

that the messaging from the administration, particularly following the shooting of two different Americans in Minneapolis, that the messaging was wrong.

And it did real damage.

I think the messaging was, look, any time an American citizen is killed in a confrontation with law enforcement, it's a tragedy.

And we should see our officials acknowledging it's a tragedy.

We should see our officials saying, listen, if there's an officer involved shooting, there's going to be an investigation.

We're going to examine what happened and determine what exactly caused it.

And instead, the rhetoric immediately leaped to really aggressive rhetoric, calling both of the individuals using language like terrorists and seeking mass murder.

And that was hard to square with the facts of what occurred.

I think that rhetoric...