Donald Trump and Ted Cruz showed up on Capitol Hill for the Stop Iran Rally on Wednesday, ostensibly united in their aim of maligning the Obama administration’s nuclear deal.
But once they actually started speaking, Cruz sounded like the senator he is, while Trump sounded unmistakably like a presidential candidate.
Cruz railed against the Iran nuclear deal in his roughly 12-minute remarks, sticking largely to policy, and only briefly weighing in on the presidential race. Trump, on the other hand, was there only because of the race.
“We will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning,” Trump said at the end of his address, before rethinking his pessimistic phrasing. “You will never get bored with winning. We never get bored. We are going to turn this country around.”
Only after presenting a litany of detailed arguments against the accord brokered by the Obama administration did Cruz get around to mentioning the 2016 race. “There will come a president who is not named Barack Obama,” he said to cheers, though he did not go so far as to pointedly say that the next president may, in fact, be Cruz himself.
Wednesday’s rally marks the first time the two presidential candidates have jointly headlined such a high-profile event. The side-by-side gave Cruz an opportunity to benefit from the media spotlight that follows Trump everywhere. But Cruz also risked having his voice drowned out by Trump’s presence, by now notorious for sucking up most of the oxygen in nearly any room.