Carly Fiorina Dismisses Her Past Attacks on Ted Cruz: 'Sometimes Players Foul Each Other'

Fiorina was announced as Cruz's vice president pick today.

ByABC News
April 27, 2016, 6:48 PM

— -- Ted Cruz’s newly announced running mate, Carly Fiorina, brushed off her past attacks on the Texas senator and presidential candidate today, noting that they were in the “heat of the political campaign.”

“We are in the Hoosier State, right?” she told ABC News’ David Wright during an interview in Indiana. “In a heated basketball game sometimes players foul each other.”

The interview followed Cruz’s formal announcement of her as his vice presidential pick should he win the Republican presidential nomination.

“This is a man I’ve gotten to know,” Fiorina said. “This is also a man I [would] have voted for long before I ever had a conversation with him about endorsing him.”

Fiorina, who ran unsuccessfully for the GOP nomination before dropping out earlier this year, once slammed Cruz as being just “like any other politician.”

“He says one thing in Manhattan, another in Iowa, whatever he needs to say to get elected and do as he pleases,” Fiorina said on CNN in January.

But today the former Hewlett-Packard chief insisted that Cruz will “do what he says.”

Despite the timing of Cruz’s announcement -- coming on the heels of Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s sweep of five primary states on Tuesday -- Fiorina insisted “everything” about this presidential election has been “unprecedented.”

“So, here’s one more thing that’s not like other election cycles,” Fiorina said.

She predicted the Texas senator will do “real well” in Indiana, which votes on May 3, and then attacked Trump.

“He doesn't represent me and he doesn’t represent my party,” Fiorina said of the real estate mogul. “He and Hillary Clinton are two sides of the same coin.”