More details are emerging about Wednesday’s closed-door meeting where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) evidently received an earful from his Republican colleagues, with one senator describing what transpired as a “lynch mob.”
A report published Friday by The New York Times shed more light on the private lunch, indicating that Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Dan Coats (R-IN) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) blasted Cruz for leading the charge to block funding for the Affordable Care Act, a quixotic effort that led to the government shutdown.
According to the Times report, Ayotte demanded that Cruz renounce attacks directed at Republicans by an unnamed “conservative group.” Politico reported earlier this week it was attacks levied by the Senate Conservatives Fund, the organization founded by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), that rankled Cruz’s GOP colleagues.
According to the Times, Cruz did not disavow the attacks nor did he offer a strategy for the defunding effort, prompting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to join the criticism of the freshman senator.
“It just started a lynch mob,” an unnamed senator told the Times.
