• What Happened: Sen. Ted Cruz told CBN News that Tucker Carlson has specifically targeted evangelical Christians and Christian Zionists, named Cruz himself as someone Carlson "hates most on planet Earth," and issued a direct challenge to the entire Republican Party including VP JD Vance to choose sides.
  • Why It Matters: Cruz also warned that antisemitism on the right is the most dangerous he has seen in his lifetime and compared the moment to Reagan's 1964 "Time for Choosing" speech. The GOP civil war over Israel, Tucker, and the direction of the party is now fully in the open.
  • Bottom Line: Cruz is not backing down and he is not being subtle. Every Republican in America now has to answer the same question he put to JD Vance: where do you stand?

Ted Cruz just picked the biggest fight in the Republican Party and he did it by name.

In a one-on-one interview with CBN News, the Texas senator delivered a broadside against Tucker Carlson that was direct, personal, and deliberate. Cruz did not hint or suggest. He accused Carlson of running a targeted operation against evangelical Christians who support Israel and said the former Fox News host has identified Cruz himself as the person he hates most on planet Earth.

"Tucker Carlson has said there is nobody he hates more on planet Earth than Christian Zionists and he names specifically me and Mike Huckabee," Cruz told CBN News. "I think it's unfortunate that I am the person he says he hates most on Earth. Now, why does he hate me? He hates me, number one, because I'm a Christian and that is my faith and I'm not going to run away from it or apologize for it. But he hates me number two, because I'm a Zionist."

Cruz framed the moment in the language of Reagan, telling CBN that the party now faces a defining choice. "Look, everyone's going to have to decide where they stand," Cruz said. "Ronald Reagan in 1964 gave a very famous speech, a time for choosing. And I think this is a time for choosing." Asked directly whether that challenge extends to Vice President JD Vance, who has a known friendship with Carlson, Cruz did not flinch.

The broader warning Cruz delivered was about the direction of the Republican Party itself. "I have seen more antisemitism on the right than at any point in my life," Cruz said. "It is dangerous and it risks consuming our party. I don't want us to make the same mistake Democrat leaders made a decade ago of just looking the other way and being silent."

Cruz also pushed back hard against what he called replacement theology, the belief gaining traction in some far-right circles that the church has superseded the Jewish people as God's chosen. "I think that is absolutely wrong," Cruz said. "If God breaks his promises to the people of Israel, that suggests that God could break his promises to Christians as well and I don't believe God breaks his promises."

The interview also covered the Iran war, where Cruz offered his most direct public comments yet on the possibility of American ground troops. He told CBN he is not concerned about a prolonged ground involvement but stopped short of ruling out a limited mission-specific deployment. "The reason I'm not saying no ground troops under any circumstances is, the president may well have an aspect of the mission that requires ground troops," Cruz said. What he flatly ruled out was a repeat of Iraq. "What's not going to happen is what we did in Iraq, which is sending in hundreds of thousands of troops to be there for years and to try to run the country. I think that would be a serious mistake. I would oppose that."

On the question of what replaces the Iranian regime if it falls, Cruz said the answer should be the Iranian people, not Washington. "I believe the people of Iran should decide who their next leader is. Our interest is simple: we don't want a government that is trying to kill Americans." A secular, pro-American Iran, Cruz suggested, would reshape the entire Middle East.

Cruz also voiced confidence that Israel could have won this war without the United States at all. "You look at the 12-Day War. Israel completely decimated Iran and they did almost the entirety of that war on their own. The Mossad, their intelligence penetration is extraordinary."

The Cruz-Carlson feud has been building for months. It is now fully public, fully personal, and the entire Republican Party has been handed a question it cannot avoid: choose a side.