BREAKING: Ted Cruz’s Political Stock Is Crashing After Secret Audio Exposes His Real Feelings About Trump

The MAGA Loyalty Test Just Claimed Another Victim

If Ted Cruz were a publicly traded company, investors would be scrambling to sell. His political stock is plunging fast inside Donald Trump’s White House after secretly recorded audio leaked, revealing Cruz privately trashing Trump’s tariff policy and mocking Vice President JD Vance—while publicly presenting himself as one of Trump’s most loyal Senate allies.

The explosive recordings, first reported exclusively by Axios, offer an unfiltered look at the familiar Republican two-step: praise Trump in public, panic about him in private.

And for Ted Cruz, this leak couldn’t come at a worse time.

A Blast From the Past: When Cruz Told the Truth Out Loud

Long before Cruz became a bowing, scraping MAGA loyalist, there was a moment—brief but unforgettable—when he spoke honestly about Donald Trump.

During the 2016 Republican primary, after Trump insulted Cruz’s wife and floated conspiracy theories about his father and the JFK assassination, Cruz let loose. He called Trump a pathological liar, a narcissist, and a man so detached from reality that he could pass a lie detector test while contradicting himself three times in one day.

Cruz described Trump as amoral, a bully driven by insecurity, and someone who weaponized anger rather than addressed it. It was one of the most scathing indictments of Trump ever delivered by a Republican senator—on camera, in public, with no ambiguity.

Then Trump won.

And Ted Cruz folded.

The Leak That Blew the Mask Off

According to Axios, the newly leaked audio—nearly ten minutes long—was recorded during private donor meetings in early and mid-2025. In those closed-door conversations, Cruz sounded far less like Trump’s “greatest ally” and far more like a man terrified of Trump’s economic recklessness.

Cruz admitted that after Trump rolled out sweeping tariffs in April 2025, he and several Republican senators urgently tried to intervene. They joined a late-night call with Trump, hoping to convince him to back off.

It went badly.

Cruz told donors that Trump was yelling, cursing, and furious, describing the call as stretching past midnight. “I’ve been in conversations where he was very happy,” Cruz said. “This was not one of them.”

Then came the warning Cruz claims he delivered directly to Trump—one that sounds eerily like a political obituary.

If Americans reach November 2026 with 401(k)s down 30% and grocery prices up 10–20%, Cruz warned, Republicans would face an electoral bloodbath. The House would flip. The Senate would flip. And Trump would spend the remainder of his term being impeached “every single week.”

This was not the language of a confident ally.

It was the language of a man who sees the iceberg and knows the ship is headed straight for it.

Public Loyalty, Private Panic

After the leak broke, Cruz’s office went into damage-control mode. A spokesperson insisted that Cruz is Trump’s “greatest ally in the Senate”, fighting daily to advance the president’s agenda and block internal dissent.

The statement dismissed the recordings as a pathetic attempt to sow division.

But the problem for Cruz isn’t division. It’s credibility.

Republican voters have learned to tolerate many things—but one thing they despise is disloyalty. And Trump, above all else, values personal loyalty. Cruz’s private remarks confirm what many already suspected: that behind closed doors, even Trump’s loudest cheerleaders are deeply worried about his judgment.

Why This Matters for 2028

The recordings also reveal Cruz’s long game. Axios reports that Cruz is positioning himself as a traditional free-trade, interventionist Republican, implicitly contrasting himself with JD Vance’s more populist, isolationist stance.

In other words, Cruz is already auditioning for 2028.

But that ambition creates a dangerous contradiction. To survive a Republican primary, Cruz must appear unwaveringly loyal to Trump. To appeal to donors, elites, and swing voters, he must signal that he knows Trump’s policies—especially tariffs—are economically disastrous.

The leak exposes Cruz trying to walk both paths at once.

And history suggests that never ends well.

The Republican Pattern, Exposed Again

Cruz is hardly unique. This is now a defining feature of the modern GOP. Republicans praise Trump publicly, echo his talking points, and attack his critics. Then, in private rooms with donors, they whisper fears about market crashes, electoral wipeouts, and authoritarian impulses.

They know the truth.

They just don’t want to say it where Trump can hear them.

But leaks have a way of ruining carefully constructed illusions.

The Final Irony

The most damning words in this entire saga don’t come from the leaked audio. They come from Ted Cruz himself—years earlier—when he was briefly honest.

Cruz said Trump cynically exploits anger, lies to his supporters, and thrives on insecurity rather than strength.

That assessment has aged remarkably well.

The difference is that now, Cruz is no longer the man calling out the danger. He’s the man trying to survive it—while secretly fearing the consequences.

And in Trump’s world, that makes him expendable.