‘F**k you, Ted’: Leaked audio exposes Ted Cruz’s sharp rift with Trump over India trade talks
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "‘F**k you, Ted’: Leaked audio exposes Ted Cruz’s sharp rift with Trump over India trade talks")
File photo of US Senator Ted Cruz. Photograph: (X/@remedy_blog/)
A large portion of Cruz’s comments centred on trade talks with India. He told donors he had been “fighting” the White House to push the agreement forward and even named officials he said were blocking such deals.
After an audio recording of US Senator Ted Cruz surfaced, rift withing the Donald Trump administration have come into sharper focus. In the audio clip, the Texas Republican openly condemned Vice President JD Vance, White House adviser Peter Navarro and, at times, President Donald Trump himself over trade policy and the stalled India-US tariff negotiations.
As per an Axios report, the nearly 10-minute recording was shared by a Republican source and dates back to early to mid-2025. In the audio, Cruz speaks frankly to private donors, presenting himself as a conventional, free-trade, pro-intervention Republican while distancing himself from Vance’s more isolationist stance, an ideological divide seen as significant with a potential 2028 presidential primary on the horizon.
In the recording, Cruz also attacks Trump's tariff-focused trade approach, cautioning that it could badly harm the US economy and even raise the risk of impeachment. He describes how, following the rollout of tariffs in early April 2025, he and several fellow senators joined a late-night call with the President to urge him to reconsider.
According to Cruz, the discussion did not end well. He told donors that Trump yelled and cursed while speaking to lawmakers during the call, which reportedly stretched past midnight, the Axios report said. "Trump was in a bad mood. I have been in conversations where he was very happy. This was not one of them," Cruz said.
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Cruz cautioned Trump
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Cruz said he had cautioned President Trump that if, by November 2026, retirement savings had dropped by 30 per cent and food prices had risen by 10 to 20 per cent, Republicans would be headed for an electoral “bloodbath”.
"You are going to lose the House, you are going to lose the Senate, you are going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week," Cruz said he told the President. Trump's reported reply: "F**k you, Ted".
He also ridiculed the administration's branding of the tariff rollout as "Liberation Day". Responding to a donor who used the term, Cruz mocked that anyone on his team using those words would be "fired on the spot".
A large portion of Cruz’s comments centred on trade talks with India. He told donors he had been “fighting” the White House to push the agreement forward and even named officials he said were blocking such deals.
