Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday the vote on Attorney General Loretta Lynch, which he missed, was a done deal and he has to balance running for president and voting in the Senate.
"It is true, the final vote that was on the confirmation vote at the end of the day, I was not there because I had to fly back for a campaign event," Cruz told the Iowa Caffeinated Thoughts blog, in a video posted Thursday. "But the reality is that vote was a done deal. The fight had been on the cloture vote, and there is no doubt to any observer that I had led the fight to stop her."
Cruz earlier said the cloture vote was the one which mattered, he blamed Republican leadership for allowing her to be confirmed.
"Then this week I flew back to Washington to vote against her on cloture. Cloture was the vote that mattered," he said. "It was the 60-vote threshold where if Republicans stood together she would not have been confirmed. Unfortunately, Republican leadership made the decision that they wanted to allow her to be confirmed, and I gave a long and passionate on the Senate floor pointing out that there are a lot of people across the country frustrated."
Cruz had voted no on her cloture vote in the morning to bring her nomination up for a final vote and spoke for ten minutes in opposition to her.
Cruz said he has to balance both running for president and his job in the Senate.
"And on the question on how you balance both, I have got a job to do in the Senate representing 27 million Texans, but I'll tell you Texans are also calling on me to stand up and fight to turn this country around and I have to say the energy and enthusiasm we have seen in the month since we launched this campaign has been breathtaking," he said.
"We have seen tens of thousands of volunteers from all over the country going to TedCruz.org signing up to volunteer with the campaign. In the first week of the campaign, we had over 51,000 contributions come online from all 50 states as people came to TedCruz.org, they gave over four million dollars, 95% of those contributions were $100 or less, and the reason is simple – people realize the path we are on is not working. They want to change the direction of this country, and I think they want someone who is going to tell them the truth and do what he said he is going to do."