Ted Cruz tried to slither around the coverage of his holiday in Cancun, including an interview on Hannity to offset a series of lies once social media caught him at the airport. #TedFled because he’s really not all about the accountability or even patriotism considering his role in the insurrection.
Cruz's Cancún excursion? It was a real slap in the face to millions of Texans still in the dark. We talked about that with @TexasTribAbby.
Learn more: https://t.co/DIRfDqLcTI#11thHour pic.twitter.com/IlmaYsDnC4
— 11th Hour (@11thHour) February 19, 2021
Protecting the guy who is worried citizens he is supposed to be representing may want to ask him about the insurrection. https://t.co/0R8xEMSSj8
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 18, 2021
Cruz’s callousness about his constituents’ suffering is not just morally appalling. It is also—and this probably weighs more heavily on Cruz—politically dangerous.
Ted Cruz isn't a hypocrite. He's guilty of something worse: a sincere ideological failure of imagination and leadership https://t.co/oUeSViY90d
— David A. Graham (@GrahamDavidA) February 18, 2021
Cruz’s appeal as a politician, such as it is, has never been about being lovable or relatable, but the latest incident is embarrassing even by his standards. He was spotted on a flight to Mexico yesterday, amid a catastrophic storm that has left Texans without power, heat, and sometimes water, huddled in freezing homes and community centers as the state’s electrical grid verges on collapse. More than a dozen of his constituents have already died. Cruz is headed home today—if not necessarily chastened, at least eager to control the damage. In a statement, he said he took the trip at his daughters’ behest. Blaming your children is a curious tack for an embattled politician, but he doesn’t have much else to work with.
The pile-on was nearly as fierce as the storm. A Cruz tweet from December resurfaced in which he lambasted the mayor of Austin, a Democrat, for flying to Cabo San Lucas during coronavirus stay-at-home orders. “Hypocrites. Complete and utter hypocrites,” Cruz wrote at the time.
It is tempting to turn the “hypocrite” label on Cruz, but his sin is worse. Every politician is a hypocrite at some point. Cruz’s error is not that he was shirking a duty he knew he should have been performing. It’s that he couldn’t think of any way he could use his power as a U.S. senator to help Texans in need. That’s a failure of imagination and of political ideology.
“Ted Cruz sees his job as basically being a guy who records a podcast, goes on Fox News, and tweets snarky jokes. And increasingly, that’s what being a conservative politician is. It’s a form of performative trolling,” says @chrislhayes.
PICTURED: A dangerous refugee sneaking across the Mexican border. https://t.co/mXgY3kQMbe
— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) February 18, 2021
NEW VIDEO📽️: While millions of Texans are without power, Senator Ted Cruz abandoned them to take a vacation in Cancun. While Cruz was in the United Airlines VIP lounge, Texans were dying. Ted Cruz doesn't care about Texas families.
RT if you agree it's time to #CancelCancunCruz pic.twitter.com/dgnnkJZmdT
— ReallyAmerican.com 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) February 19, 2021
In the last half-century, there have been more and more power outages because of weather.
But there’s a way to make our power grids it more resilient. @umairfan explains: https://t.co/xpR2u1Rzaz
— Vox (@voxdotcom) February 19, 2021
Just drove by Ted Cruz’s house in Houston. His lights are off but a neighbor told me the block got its power back last night. Also, Ted appears to have left behind the family poodle. pic.twitter.com/TmLyGQkASy
— Michael Hardy (@mkerrhardy) February 18, 2021
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