GOP presidential primary rivals Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson secretly met in South Carolina on Thursday to talk about their
strained relationship, but the session was inconclusive, reports say.
"They agreed to disagree on the facts of what happened in Iowa," Ryan Rhodes, an adviser to Carson who was outside of the meeting, tells
NBC News.
The Cruz campaign said that a "visit" took place in a small office in Greenville, S.C., where both candidates spoke at the Conservative Review Forum Thursday night, NBC News reports.
According to
The Daily Beast, which first reported the secret huddle in a "storage closet" in a convention center where the forum was held, Carson agreed to meet with Cruz for 5 minutes. The pair talked for about 20-25 minutes to resolve the issue of dirty campaign tricks in Iowa, where Cruz's campaign told caucus-goers Carson had dropped out of the race, the outlet reports.
"There was a political play there and it didn't work for them," an unnamed source tells The Daily Beast. "The meeting didn't go as well as Cruz wanted it to go. Carson had a smile on his face and was looking right at him."
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