As Republican Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah appeared as a guest on Thursday's CNN Newsroom, host Brooke Baldwin almost begged him to speak negatively of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz as Chaffetz explained why he chose to endorse Marco Rubio in the race.
After her assertion that there was "negativity swirling around" Cruz, which failed to get Chaffetz to opine on why none of the GOP Senators has endorsed the Texas Republican, the CNN host pleaded for him to give her a negative reason for why he did not choose to endorse Cruz. Baldwin: "Why not Ted Cruz? Give me something. I mean, I see this look in your eye."
A few minutes into the segment, at about 2:45 p.m., after a discussion of Donald Trump's absence from the GOP debate stage for Thursday's debate on FNC, Baldwin brought up Washington attitudes toward Senator Cruz as she posed:
Who is obviously hoping to outshine Rubio is Senator Ted Cruz, who will finally get that center podium spot. Listen, I talked to a lot of people, there's a lot of negativity swirling around him. Quite simply, the fact that there is not a single Republican Senator who works with him on the Hill who is saying, "We like this guy," to me speaks volumes. Why is that? Why is not a single Senator publicly endorsing him?
Not taking the bait, Rep. Chaffetz brushed off her query about Senator Cruz and pivoted to praising Senator Rubio. Chaffetz:
Well, he'll have to answer that, but there's a reason why there's a lot of us of the younger generation, new, kind of upcoming conservatives, support Marco Rubio. Myself, Trey Gowdy, and a host of others, we're behind Marco Rubio because I happen to have met and spent time with every single candidate on both sides of the aisle -- some more than others -- and Marco Rubio is just that person who we gravitate to as that-
Baldwin then interrupted him to follow up: "Why not Ted Cruz? Give me something. I mean, I see this look in your eye."
Chaffetz again resisted as he responded:
I don't want to say anything negative about him. I can tell you the positives are just so great for Marco Rubio, and he's just an engaging personality that we trust. And Marco has actually passed some substantive legislation. When he went after those risk corridors and actually got that legislation passed in his first term, that shows success in bringing both sides of the aisle together that some of the other candidates haven't been able to do.
