The presidential candidates all signed a pledge last year to support the eventual GOP nominee, and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Thursday he's disappointed that his fellow Texan Sen. Ted Cruz backed out of the deal.
"I think he's got some explaining to do to the rest of us who did say we would support the nominee," Perry told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program about the Republican senator's failure to endorse Trump during his Wednesday speech at the Republican National Convention.
He continued that anyone who does not want to sign on to help Trump is helping presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's race for the White House.
"You're putting someone who's going to be [Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg's clone on the Supreme Court," Perry said. "Go explain that to your conservative friends."
Perry noted that he also did not become the nominee, and that Donald Trump defeated several other candidates to get the nod.
"If you don't want to support him that's your call, but this country is way more important than any one individual," said the former governor. "I don't get it."
Perry, appearing on the morning program for the second time with former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, joined with the military hero in complaining about protesters who were burning American flags near the convention site Wednesday.
"It's ignorance and it's upsetting," said Luttrell. "Look at the young, they have no idea how great this country is because they never have been outside of it … You carry your citizenship card around with you, hand it to the other guy who loves being here for whatever reason. That flag represents everybody under it and the men and women who fought for it, died for it."
Luttrell continued that he doesn't agree with people that claim they are able to burn the flag while exercising their right to freedom of speech.
"Burn the flag; that's a freedom," he said. "Then I have the freedom to take it away from them and tell them how dumb they are."
And while ignoring such protesters is "probably the best tonic," Perry said, there are "a lot of us who have worn that flag on our shoulders, who have served … but at the end of the day, you know, we can respond in a way that is appropriate. "
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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