By now we are all familiar with that most scornful of monikers bestowed upon the Republican senator from Texas by former President Donald Trump, however, the new nicknames Ted Cruz is amassing on Twitter are not ones that can be repeated here, for obvious reasons. This would be due to the fact that Cruz decided in his infinite wisdom that a short trip to Mexico was the right thing to do ‘for his family’.
This ill-timed jaunt to the sunny climes of Cancun, currently bathing in a warm and comfortable 75 Fahrenheit, comes at a time when his fellow Texans suffer in their homes in freezing or near-freezing temperatures due to a huge winter storm and widespread power outages. According to the National Weather Service, there is still much more to come.
The Texas Democratic Party, among others, were quick to demand that he should and must resign from the Senate, however, Cruz was just as quick to mount a somewhat spurious defense after photos and videos showed him and his family leaving the Lone Star State and its freezing constituents.
The Senator claimed that his two daughters, who are 12 and 10 years old, had asked him and his wife to take them to Mexico after the Cruz family themselves lost electrical power.
Being a doting father first and a politician clearly unaware of how the optics would play in the eyes of the general public and fellow politicians alike, he duly obliged them, telling reporters “We were trying to be good parents”. He would also try to soften the outrage by saying “I started having second thoughts” about the trip “almost the moment I sat down on the plane.”
How Cruz thought a weekend trip to Cancun staying the luxury Ritz-Carlton on the Yucatan Peninsula would be a good idea, especially after retweeting a post from FEMA that said “Are you looking for a place to stay warm during this freezing weather?” and had links for warming centers in Texas, is beyond the pale.
To add insult to injury for the people of Texas, Cruz would release a statement before quickly hopping on a plane back to Texas that read “My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas.” A statement that strains credibility. This, however, isn’t the first time Cruz’s credibility has been called into question in the last few years.
His relationship with Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 was a bitter and deeply acrimonious one with the eventual winner ridiculing the physical appearance of Cruz’s wife, falsely accused Cruz’s father of being linked to the murder of John F. Kennedy, and baselessly alleging that Cruz won the Iowa Republican caucuses through election fraud.
Cruz would ‘fight back’ by calling Trump a pathological liar and morally unfit for the presidency before quickly ejecting his spine when it was politically expedient for him to do so by not only endorsing Trump’s presidential campaign but going on to be one of his most fervent and dedicated acolytes.
That spine would continue to be laid at the feet of Trump when the President went from sitting to former after the 2020 election.
This latest political faux pas by the Texan Senator, who is now into his 9th year on the floor, comes soon after he faced backlash and widespread public and political criticism for filing objections to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, citing the now wholly debunked election fraud conspiracy theory touted by the former commander and thief.
He continued to stand on shaky political ground when he helped popularize and legitimize these baseless claims that lead to the storming of the Capitol Building on Jan. 6 in which 5 people lost their lives, one of them being Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, left 140 injured, a nation traumatized and democracy itself cowering in its office bathroom.
While Ted Cruz is desperately trying to show contrition by admitting his Mexico trip was ‘obviously a mistake’, the people of Texas are currently asking themselves as they shiver, if re-electing Cruz as their representative in 2018 was also an ‘obvious mistake’.
RELATED POST: Who Supported Trump’s Stolen Election Lie?
