Inside the Trump White House, there’s growing conviction that Senator Ted Cruz has been deliberately undermining the administration ever since the earliest days of the second term, all to carve out space for his naked 2028 presidential ambitions. Aides and allies point to Cruz’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee as the perfect perch for quiet sabotage—slow-walking key nominations like Jared Isaacman for NASA (a Vance-backed pick), breaking ranks on free-speech fights, and publicly torching Tucker Carlson as an antisemite-enabler, a direct shot across the bow at Vice President JD Vance’s closest media ally. What started as subtle positioning has exploded into open proxy warfare, with White House insiders fuming that Cruz is running a shadow agenda designed to paint himself as the “responsible” hawkish alternative to Vance’s America First isolationism ahead of the next GOP primary.

The timeline is damning: respected pollster Rich Baris and multiple Trumpworld sources say the sabotage kicked into gear as far back as late January and early February 2025, right after inauguration, when Cruz began courting pro-Israel donors nervous about the party’s populist turn and staking out neocon-friendly ground on foreign policy. From delaying administration priorities to amplifying feuds that embarrass Vance, every move screams 2028 calculation—Cruz building a donor base among Jewish Republicans, burnishing his interventionist credentials, and distancing himself from the MAGA wing that Vance now embodies. Trump himself has stayed publicly cordial, calling Cruz a “good friend,” but behind closed doors the knives are out, with one source warning the president might dust off “Lyin’ Ted” to end Cruz’s career a second time.

This isn’t new—Cruz has been playing the long betrayal game ever since he bitterly fought Trump tooth-and-nail in the 2016 primaries, refusing to endorse at the convention and only bending the knee when it was politically expedient. Now, with Trump term-limited and Vance as the clear MAGA heir apparent crushing early polls, Cruz’s frantic maneuvering only confirms what the White House already knows: he’s willing to knife the administration today to crown himself tomorrow. In a party remade by Trump, that’s not ambition—it’s treason against the movement.