Louie Gohmert: I Arranged Fateful Meeting Between Cruz and Trump

CLEVELAND — U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert said Wednesday that he played a key role in arranging a meeting earlier this month with U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican nominee Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. 

Gohmert, a Tyler Republican, told Texans gathered at the Republican National Convention that he pleaded with Trump to meet with Cruz at a meeting several weeks ago between  Trump and U.S. House Republicans. Gohmert said that entreaty led to a meeting between the two men hours later.

Cruz finished second in the GOP nomination contest, and the final days of the primary with Trump were some of the most bitter campaigning in American political history. The situation culminated when Trump publicly floated a discounted conspiracy theory that Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

Cruz is scheduled to address the convention Wednesday night. 

“If you would just sit down with Ted and talk,” Gohmert recounted of his words to Trump. “And he said, 'OK, I will do it.'”  

Gohmert added that Republican U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Cruz loyalist, immediately texted Cruz’s chief of staff, writing, in Gohmert’s telling: “Louie just got Trump to agree to a one-on-one with Ted. You need to make sure it happens today.” 

A meeting with Trump, Cruz and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus occurred hours later. 

“And from what I understand, it was a great start,” Gohmert added. 

• Read More Cruz Meets With Trump and Agrees to Speak at GOP Convention

In his remarks to Texas delegates over breakfast, Gohmert also addressed a recent flare up that made national headlines. In June, Democrats commandeered the House Chamber to protest for action on gun violence after a mass shooting in an Orlando gay nightclub. Gohmert was featured in national television broadcasts angrily yelling at House Democrats on the floor while colleagues anxiously tried to pull him away. 

“I felt like they were dishonoring the dead,” Gohmert said. “It was radical Islam that killed the people in Orlando.” 

He told the room of convention delegates Wednesday that the scene was the result of Democrats blocking GOP voices from being heard by physically blocking Republicans from the microphones, an act of dishonor toward himself and his colleagues. 

Gohmert also used his time before the delegates to weigh in on transgender issues, arguing against sex-change operations and citing the work of Paul McHugh, a former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital. 

“Dr. McHugh said, ‘We found that 80 percent of the time when people are having confused feelings about their gender as children, if you don’t do anything, they grow out of it and is never an issue,’” Gohmert said. 

“We don’t need to be making matters worse,” he added.

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