"I had to speak the truth. It's going to be an interesting couple of days."

“I had to speak the truth,” Cruz said in a brief interview afterward. “It’s going to be an interesting couple of days. The chips will fall where they may.”

The speech was suspenseful to the very end. Cruz seemed to be building up to an endorsement. His began with an anecdote about the child of a slain police officer in Dallas, transitioned into a series of attacks on Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama and came to a logical point at which Cruz would finally let bygones be bygones and come together in the name of party unity.

Only it never came. Loud boos broke out near the end of the speech when it became clear Cruz wasn’t going to endorse Trump. The New York delegation — Trump loyalists for sure — began chanting “We want Trump!”

Any veneer of party unity was lost in an instant. “Ted! Ted! Ted!” the Utah delegation chanted. “Trump! Trump! Trump!” Arizonans shot back.