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Exhibit 1: Cruz hijacks a gun violence hearing to spew irrelevant distortions about two of President Joe Biden’s nominees … both women of color.
Transcript!
CRUZ: You just said a moment ago that no Democrat favors abolishing the police. If that were the case, why did every single Democrat vote to confirm Vanita Gupta, a nominee for the No. 3 position at the Department of Justice who said last year in writing, in written testimony before this Senate, advocated abolishing the police. And she was confirmed by one vote. Every single Democrat was the necessary vote to confirm a radical who advocated abolishing the police, and just this week we’re taking up Kristen Clarke, another radical who has last year in testimony before the Senate advocated for abolishing the police. If you don’t support abolishing the police, why do you keep voting for nominees who advocate abolishing the police.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: As you know, Sen. Cruz, that is a complete distortion of their positions. We’re not here to talk about those nominees. If you want to stay, we can do it at the end of the hearing, but right now, we’re going to move on.
[Cruz leaves]
Shorter Blumenthal: “Sir, this is a Wendy’s.”
Regarding the substance of Cruz’s claims, one could plausibly say that Gupta, for instance, flip-flopped on some of her positions with respect to “defunding”—not abolishing—the police, but Cruz elides the fact that “defunding the police” actually refers to shifting resources toward social programs while redefining police officers’ roles, as explained in this Washington Post fact check:
Under this concept, some police officers would be replaced with trained social workers or specialized response teams in an effort to let police focus on violent crime, not drug overdoses or homelessness. The theory is that police would be better positioned to deal with rapes and murders if they were not required to deal with other social ills that sometimes lead to community confrontations with police.
Exhibit 2: Cruz tells us all how Republicans would behave if they had more control over elections.
Transcript!
CRUZ: This bill turns the Federal Election Commission from a bipartisan agency into a partisan agency—into a partisan agency controlled by Democrats. Why? Because Democrats want Chuck Schumer in charge of the Federal Election Commission. The effect of that, I would point out, would be that every Republican senator and every Republican House member will be fined, will be prosecuted by the Federal Election Commission. By the way, if this bill were to pass and miraculously Democrats were to lose power—and this is designed to make it impossible for Democrats to lose power—I ask you for a moment, which Democrat on this committee would want a Federal Election [Commission] controlled by Sen. McConnell? Because I guarantee you, every Democrat would then be investigated and prosecuted, and the Federal Election Commission shouldn’t be a partisan weapon designed to win elections.
Oh, nice to know that Republicans are looking for every possible loophole they can find to cheat and undermine confidence in our elections. Who could have guessed?
It’s hard to know exactly what Cruz is talking about here, given that he appears congenitally incapable of saying anything without brutally distorting reality, but it’s clear that Republicans have been lying about the For the People Act for some time now. Why would Cruz be any different?
Exhibit 3: Cruz lies (don’t be too shocked now) about undocumented immigrants. (If you don’t do Twitter, hit this link to unroll the thread.)
Ah, “facts.” Whatever. Who cares about facts anymore when you have an ex-president who continues to regurgitate pureed pabulum to an eager audience of hungry pups? No one in the Republican Party cares about facts. As Cruz amply proves in his Tuesday Cruzday adventures, they care about fact-adjacent morsels of easily disproven (if you take the time to parse them, that is) merde.
But then merde has always been Cruz’s animating force, as Chris Hayes points out in this post-Cancun Cruz clip:
Honestly, Ted’s Cancun trip—and the fact that he tried to blame the debacle on his daughters—is all you really need to know about him. As Hayes notes in the above clip, Cruz is basically “Rush Limbaugh with a Senate office.” He simply doesn’t care about governing. He wants to “performatively troll the libs,” as Hayes quips.
Yeah, that pretty well sums it up.
Cruz is supplying sound bites that can be run in advance of the inevitable Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity interviews he will do on these very same subjects. Right-wingers will then giddily note how Cruz destroyed those feckless snowflakes while deliberately ignoring all that dull legislative minutiae.
Of course, Cruz isn’t alone. He’s the modern GOP writ large. And now that the lead circus clown has left the tent, Cruz is taking his floppy-shoes tour to every corner of Washington.
I can only hope that our democracy holds longer than those bulging veins on Cruz’s neck.
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