“It shows a lack of empathy,” one Texan told Fox 26 of Cruz’s trip. In Houston, a crowd of reporters and frustrated Texans waited for their senator to arrive. “What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable and a lot of Texans are hurting,” Cruz told MSNBC in an interview before his flight back to Houston. “I started having second thoughts almost the moment I sat down on the plane,” Cruz told reporters, adding that he “has a responsibility, I take very seriously, of fighting for the state of Texas.”Ĭruz, caught in a widening political scandal of his own making, attempted to project a civic-minded concern for the humanitarian crisis engulfing his state. He claimed that he immediately started feeling uncomfortable about the trip as soon as he buckled in for his departing flight. In a hastily-called press conference in Houston after his return on Thursday, Cruz called the trip “a mistake” and ruefully admitted that his original idea had been to “stay through the weekend with the family.” In his Thursday statement, he implied that this was his plan all along, but according to a source with knowledge of the situation, his flight back home was originally scheduled for Saturday, and he booked a new return ticket a few hours after landing in Mexico. So, Cruz headed back to the airport to return to Texas. Once Cruz landed in Cancun and presumably took his phone off airplane mode, the notifications couldn’t have been pretty. Still, planes are taking off-and landing. Extreme conditions have made transportation next to impossible in the state, as roads and infrastructure are not equipped to handle long stretches of sub-freezing temperatures. Some Texans are also running out of food. In order to stay warm, families are resorting to sitting in their cars, which has skyrocketed the number of carbon monoxide poisoning deaths in the state. Unlike Cruz, many Texans can’t get up and leave for sunny skies and are in fact literally freezing to death. In Austin, hospitals were reportedly resorting to garbage and biohazard bags to manually remove human feces from toilets. Hospitals, already strained by the COVID-19 pandemic, ran out of water and were forced to evacuate patients. While the senator was enjoying his in-flight amenities, millions of Texans were left without power and water.
“Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon.” “With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends,” Cruz said in the statement. He didn’t take any responsibility for leaving the state while it was in shambles, but instead blamed the trip on his daughters. It's a self-inflicted unforced error.After pictures of the senator started to circulate online, including images of him maskless in an airport lounge on Wednesday, Cruz said in a statement Thursday that he was on his way home. Politically, Cruz will never be able to get past this. Call it a lack of compassion, awareness of others suffering or whatever (I disagree it means any of that, but I have zero doubt mine is not a widely held opinion). Bush is still known for having his "Katrina moment." What Cruz did was meaningless in terms of any resolution of the issue. It was actually meaningless whether he did it or not, but the left can use their dominance of media to use low IQ imagery (which is effective) to vilify the right. Bush didn't land his jet for Katrina, and therefore couldn't understand the pain of those there. The WaPost has already run 26 stories about Cruz on this. As someone on the right though, there's zero room for error.
Cruz can't do anything for Texas in the short term.
Cuomo is under criminal investigation probes for stuff he has control over. The right does not get the leeway the left does on this sort of thing. As much as I like how Cruz votes and he's upped his meme game, he's not a good politician.
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