First, although neither man is particularly constrained by truth or facts, Cruz is even more ruthless and cutthroat. Cruz is best- known for his self-interested willingness to shut down the government over his pique du jour.

But he revealed his true character even earlier in his Senate tenure when he went after former senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), President Obama’s nominee for defense secretary. In a manner that evoked the worst of Joseph McCarthy, Cruz smeared Hagel with unsupported insinuations that the nominee received money from foreign governments or extremist groups. There seems to be no argument too low for him to make — for example, his recent, four-Pinocchio claim that “the overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats.”…

Second, while Trump’s efforts are in the service of self-promotion, Cruz’s are all that plus the implementation of an extreme-right ideology. The fact that senators of both parties despise him has tended to obscure the substantive threat he poses to the country…

In fact, Cruz is by far the more doctrinaire and ideologically extreme. You can see Trump making a deal — on taxes, on funding Planned Parenthood, on implementing Obamacare, you name it. Cruz, not so much. Jeffrey Toobin’s 2014 New Yorker profile of Cruz was fittingly titled “The Absolutist.”