Iowa Rep. Steve King said on Thursday that Ted Cruz should have said he was voting for Donald Trump in his speech on Wednesday night.
When host Simon Conway said on Iowa's 1040 WHO radio that Cruz should have honored his pledge to support the Republican nominee and said he was voting for Trump, King agreed.
“Well, I do hear that," said King, who was one of Cruz's top surrogates during the Republican primary. "And I will say what I think he should have done is what you said. And I would have said it this way, now this is the Monday Morning quarterbacking for me and I want to confess that first. But when he got to the point when he said, ‘Vote your conscience, vote it up and down the ticket.’ Then, he needed to say, ‘My conscience tells me to vote for Donald Trump. I’ll be doing that. And I’m asking you to vote your conscience.”
Cruz told the audience on Wednesday to "Stand and speak and vote your conscience," garnering boos for his refusal to endorse the party's nominee.
King also said that he wished the crowd had reacted differently, adding that the resulting situation had damaged both the Trump campaign and the Texas senator.
“By the way, I have to say though that the Trump supporters in that crowd were not very gracious about this either," he said. "And that made it a lot worse. If they’d have just sat there and let that happen—there’s damage done to the Trump campaign and to Cruz.”