The Senator and President Trump spar

While Texas AG Ken Paxton and U.S. Senator John Cornyn battle it out to see who will win the March GOP primary, the other Texas Republican in the Senate, Ted Cruz, got some publicity Monday after audio recordings were leaked.

Not boring, the interactions between President Trump and Cruz shows us what goes on behind the door, so to speak.

Here’s the story:

In an exclusive published Sunday, leaked audio recordings confirmed that Cruz privately warned President Donald Trump and Republican donors that the administration’s sweeping tariff policies could be “disastrous.”

Axios (axios.com) published the recordings. The media company, based in Arlington, Va., was launched in 2017 by several former Politico journalists.

According to the leaked recordings, Cruz warned that the administration’s “super-tariff” policy, introduced in April 2025, could “decimate the economy” and result in an “electoral bloodbath” for Republicans in the 2026 midterms.

Key details from the leaked audio, courtesy of Axios, include:

Midnight Confrontation: Cruz described a late-night phone call with Trump following the April 2025 tariff rollout where he and other senators urged the president to “stand down.”

Cruz stated the call “did not go well,” with the president “yelling” and “cursing.”

In all, according to the Axios story, there are approximately 10 minutes of audio.

The senator warned the president that the economy could prove to be a problem child by the time November rolls around. Especially if grocery prices are up 10 to 20 percent, 401(k)s down 30 percent.

Cruz to Trump:

“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.” (Source: Axios.)

Trump reportedly responded, “F**k you, Ted.”

The recordings reportedly show that Cruz mocked Trump’s branding of the tariff unveiling as “Liberation Day.”

While joking to donors, he said that he would fire any staff member who used the term "Liberation Day."

In response to the Axios exclusive, a spokesperson for Cruz maintained he is the president’s “greatest ally.”

Still, say some, the leaked tapes highlight a sharp private divide between Cruz’s traditional free-trade views and the administration’s protectionist agenda, still arguing that that foreign countries — not American consumers — are the ones bearing the cost of the tariffs.