There once was a time when Donald Trump and Ted Cruz detested each other.

Trump called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted”; Cruz called Trump “amoral,” a “coward” and a “pathological liar.” As I recall the back-and-forth as the men fought for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, I remember some sincere anger in their voices, particularly in Ted Cruz’s voice.

It’s two years later. Trump is now the president. Cruz is fighting for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat from Texas. Trump is coming to Houston tonight to campaign for Cruz as he battles Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke.

Now we hear Trump calling Cruz “Texan Ted” and saying he gets along so darn well with him, that he is willing to spend some political capital on his former foe’s behalf.

I do not believe for one instant that Trump now thinks highly of Cruz; nor do I believe that Cruz has forgotten the hideous innuendo and insults that Trump laid on him during the 2016 GOP campaign.

Trump posted that hideous video on Twitter that denigrated Heidi Cruz, the senator’s wife; and then he also suggested that Cruz’s father might have been complicit in President Kennedy’s murder, given that, according to Trump, the elder Cruz was seen in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald, the president’s murderer.

It was the video and the innuendo about Cruz’s dad that ignited the senator’s rage at Trump.

How in the name of letting bygones be bygones are we supposed to believe that the men have buried the hatchet — and not in each other’s skulls?

Meanwhile, we have O’Rourke fighting to regain the momentum that carried him to a position of having a puncher’s chance of upsetting Cruz.

He ought to dredge up the videos of Cruz and Trump talking trash to and about each other to help him make the case that the rally in Houston is a exhibition in political expediency.