during his visit to the Mar-a-Lago estate on March 18, he spoke with affiliates of Trump while negotiating the American Health Care Act. On April 6, shortly after the Shayrat missile strike, he released a statement displaying his interest in having Trump appeal to Congress to take "military action in Syria" to prevent Islamic terrorists from acquiring weapons stored in Syria. In April 2018, in the copy accompanying Trump's entry on the Time 100 most influential people of 2017, Cruz wrote, "President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo." Cruz's authorship was criticized by Charles Pierce of Esquire, Jay Willis of GQ, and CNN's Chris Cillizza. Friction with fellow Republican members of Congress Cruz has used harsh rhetoric against fellow Republican politicians, and his relationships with various Republican members of Congress have been strained. In 2013, he called Republicans he considered insufficiently resistant to Obama's proposals a "surrender caucus". He also called fellow Republicans "squishes" on gun-control issues during a Tea Party rally. Cruz's role in the United States federal government shutdown of 2013 in particular attracted criticism from a number of Republican colleagues. Republican Senator John McCain was reported to have particularly disliked Cruz; in a Senate floor speech in 2013, McCain denounced Cruz's reference to Nazis when discussing the Affordable Care Act. In March 2013, McCain also called Cruz and others "wacko birds" whose beliefs are not "reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans". During the 2016 Republican presidential primaries, John Boehner described Cruz as "Lucifer in the flesh"; in an interview, Lindsey Graham said, "If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you." In a heated Senate floor speech in July 2015, Cruz accused Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of telling "a flat-out lie" over his intentions to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which Cruz opposes. "What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again was a simple lie", Cruz said. His "incendiary outburst" was "unusual in the cordial atmosphere of the Senate", according to Reuters. In the same speech, Cruz assailed the "Republican majority in both houses of Congresses" for what he called an insufficiently conservative record. His speech, and especially