Ted Cruz: Trump's First Week, Texas vs. California, Immigration, DOGE, Greenland

Ted Cruz said Elon Musk was already calling him periodically for help understanding how the federal government works, giving Cruz a direct advisory channel into DOGE. Cruz backed the project but warned that real cuts anger beneficiaries and ultimately require Trump himself to embrace spending restraint.

Cruz said White House officials once sent him onto Air Force One to persuade Trump not to enlarge COVID stimulus checks, but he failed. According to Cruz, Trump brushed him off with the argument that “no one ever lost an election by spending too much money,” illustrating why Cruz doubts fiscal restraint comes naturally to him.

Cruz said serious spending cuts face a bipartisan congressional obstacle, with essentially all Democrats and roughly half of Republicans supporting major spending bills. He estimated only about 20 senators regularly oppose trillion-dollar packages and said meaningful restraint therefore requires unusually strong presidential pressure.

Cruz treated acquiring Greenland as a serious policy project, not Trump trolling, and said he had personally raised it with Denmark’s ambassador. When the ambassador told him Greenland was not for sale, Cruz replied that “everything’s for sale”; he also discussed the idea with incoming Denmark ambassador Ken Howery and planned to push negotiations from the Senate.

Cruz said Trump spent part of a two-and-a-half-hour breakfast with Republican senators, the day before inauguration, discussing the Panama Canal and alleged disadvantages facing American shipping. Cruz interpreted Trump’s posture less as a realistic attempt to retake the canal than as leverage for lower U.S. transit costs and reduced Chinese influence.

Cruz said Matt Gaetz’s attorney-general nomination was withdrawn because multiple Republican senators were prepared to vote against him. He regarded Gaetz as the major confirmation failure but expected the remaining Trump nominees to survive, with figures such as Marco Rubio receiving substantial Democratic support.

Cruz said he discussed with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a proposal that could dramatically shorten U.S. drug and medical-device approvals. His “RESULTS Act” would give the FDA 60 days to approve products already cleared in Canada, Japan or the EU, after which approval would become automatic; Cruz said Kennedy agreed with the approach.

Chamath Palihapitiya disclosed that he donated to Cruz’s first Senate campaign in 2012 even though he considered himself a Democratic donor at the time. He said the decision followed an encounter around a Peter Thiel event where Cruz impressed a largely Democratic group, showing their relationship predates Palihapitiya’s later political realignment.