Texas Sen. Ted Cruz actually praised President Donald Trump for calling him“Lyin’ Ted” and slapping him with other derogatory nicknames during the 2016 presidential campaign, saying it was “political genius.”

Cruz, one of the many Republican candidates who lost to Trump in 2016, admitted to Fox News host Sean Hannity that the nickname was “brilliant” because it turned people against him.

“My biggest strength was people trusting me,” Cruz said Monday on the podcast “Hang Out with Hannity.” “People trusted that I believed what I said, that when I said I would do something, I would do it.”

“It was actually, it was political genius,” Cruz told Hannity.

Though Cruz and Trump get along now, during the 2016 primary, Trump hurled insults at the Texas senator, calling him “Lyin’ Ted,” tying Cruz’s father to the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy and insulting Cruz’s wife, Heidi, for her appearance.

At one point during the Trump–Cruz 2016 feud, the president tweeted an unflattering photo of Heidi Cruz and threatened to “spill the beans” about her.

Cruz responded by condemning Trump, saying “real men don’t attack women.” Trump later admitted tweeting the photo of Heidi Cruz was a “mistake.”

On Monday’s podcast, Hannity revealed to Cruz that he had a private conversation with Trump, seemingly referring to the president’s rude remarks about Heidi Cruz.

“I yelled at him, let’s say using very New York-style language,” Hannity told Cruz. “I’m like, ‘Will you stop attacking people’s families?’ It went harder than that, but that’s all I said.”

Mediaite was the first to report on Cruz and Hannity’s comments.

While “Lyin Ted” helped Trump defeat Cruz in the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump eventually publicly retired the nickname in 2018, telling reporters: “He’s not ‘Lyin’ Ted’ anymore. He’s ‘Beautiful Ted.’ I call him ‘Texas Ted.’”

Since then, Cruz has been one of Trump’s strongest allies in the Senate and continues to support most of the president’s actions, voting with Republicans, on average, 86 percent of the time.

Trump is well-known to give his opponents nicknames – though they don’t always last.

Like his nickname for Cruz, Trump had also once insulted his now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio during the 2016 Republican primaries, calling him “Little Marco.”

Cruz also told Hannity he believed Trump’s nickname for Marco was “devastating.”