CLEVELAND _ Donald Trump's family and top advisers pounded Ted Cruz on Thursday for refusing to endorse the Republican presidential nominee, saying the Texas senator deserved the booing he got from delegates Wednesday night.
Eric Trump, one of the candidate's sons, called Cruz "classless" for refusing to use his prime-time convention speech to honor the pledge he signed during the primaries to back the eventual nominee.
"When he didn't do the right thing, people went crazy," Trump told CBS. "I never heard boos like that. The house, this whole auditorium, was literally shaking with boos. I mean, how do you get booed out of your own convention? By your own party and your own delegation? It was unbelievable."
His brother Donald Trump Jr. said big Republican donors from Texas had told him they would never again write checks to a Cruz campaign. Despite the party's obvious fracturing at a time when it's seeking to unite, he also suggested the delegates' loud snub of Cruz had rallied Republicans behind his father.
"If there were a couple detractors left, they got on board," he told MSNBC.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former presidential hopeful who now advises Trump, was more blunt, telling CNN: "I think it was awful, and quite frankly I think it was selfish."
Piling on was Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign chairman. "Frankly, he was the only speech in the convention that was poorly received by the body in the hall," he said.
Manafort told reporters that Trump, who spent months trashing the senator he'd nicknamed "Lyin' Ted," had been magnanimous to invite Cruz and all of his other vanquished rivals to speak at the convention.
"Sen. Cruz, a strict constitutionalist, chose not to accept the strict terms of the pledge that he signed," Manafort said Thursday.
