A longtime friend of mine has dug up an interesting body of remarks from one Republican U.S. senator about a man, a fellow Republican, who was running for the presidency.

The senator is Ted Cruz of Texas; the presidential candidate is Donald J. Trump.

My friend, Beaumont Enterprise editorial page editor Tom Taschinger, took note of how Cruz’s tone toward Trump has changed since he ran against the president for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

Here is what Cruz said two years about the guy who defeated a large GOP field to win the nomination and ultimately the presidency; I encourage you to read it carefully:

“This man is a pathological liar. … He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everyone else of lying. … The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, ‘Dude, what’s your problem?’ … If you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it. … He is proud of being a serial philanderer. … He describes his own battles with venereal diseases as his own personal Vietnam.”

Wow, eh? Sure thing.

Has the president changed fundamentally since then? Heavens no! A 70-something-year-old man doesn’t turn miraculously from what the Cruz Missile described above into a paragon of virtue.

I get that Cruz was running for the same office that Trump eventually won when he offered the blistering critique. Still, Sen. Cruz was right the first time. To think this guy — Trump — got elected president of the United States of America.

Ugghh!