If the Texan Senator’s 21 hour filibuster in September was an effort to raise money for the Senate Conservative Fund, which helps Tea Party challengers defeat GOP incumbents and raised $2.1 million in September, Senator Ted Cruz is denying it. “It’s nonsense,” he said Sunday.

“I’m not interested in playing that game,” said Cruz, who received a hero’s welcome from his constituents in Texas Saturday.  “I understand you want to draw me into the back and forth,” he told CNN’s Dana Bash in San Antonio, “and that’s fun to cover,” but “this is a deliberate strategy” that encourages the media to “cover this like it’s a Hollywood gossip column.”

Cruz, who denied choosing sides against his own colleagues, told Bash on State of the Union that “what I’m choosing sides with is the American people.” Cruz said Obamacare is indefensible, “they don’t want to talk about the substance of Obamacare.” That’s why the strategy in Washington now “is to change the topic,” he said.