“He’s lying about what Republican senators were saying in those meetings. He’s exaggerating,” Joe Scarborough charged. “He’s lying about his own party. […] A lot of people in Washington, including myself, we know what went on inside those meetings, and what Ted Cruz is saying is not true.”

“If there’s bipartisan agreement on Capitol Hill,” Jonathan Capehart jumped in, “it’s that Sen. Cruz is a bit of a jerk. Well, maybe not a bit of a jerk. He is a jerk. Democrats don’t like him, but Republicans really can’t stand him.”

His own party, he added, is sick of “nonsense.” The Senate is the “smallest of boats,” Scarborough warned. And if one member starts acting this way, “the oar, just accidentally comes around and hits him in the back of the head several times.” Fabricating stories won’t work in his favor, he said.