WASHINGTON – Ted Cruz became outraged by the way he was treated for his abortive Cancun getaway, putting aside contrition for fleeing Texas as millions suffered without electricity and water last week.
The senator took aim at his wife’s paparazzi photos on the beach and whoever leaked his text messages on the trip. He blamed the outcry on hungry news media for a new obsession with filling the void left by Donald Trump’s exit from the national scene.
And he insisted they hadn’t abandoned the family’s poodle in a cold house, despite a photo of the dog staring out the front door, white and fluffy and perhaps desperate.
“I love Snowflake. He was at home with a dog sitter and in fact the heat and electricity were back on, ”said Cruz.
Remorse marked the first installments of a damage control tour inspired by the impromptu vacation to the Caribbean coast of Mexico. Cruz quickly moved on to penance, like serving a barbecue to the first responders and tearing the wet carpet of a voter’s flooded house.
The new chapter has a more difficult side.
“I was pretty pissed off,” Cruz said on the conservative Ruthless podcast Tuesday, adding that Heidi Cruz tried to find out who showed The New York Times she invites them to join them for a four night stay at the Ritz Carlton at $ 309 a night. “Here’s a suggestion: don’t be a – a hole. Like, you know, treat each other like human beings. Have… a minimum of respect.
This leak forced him to back away from an innuendo that he had never intended to stay one night – despite a huge wheeled bag saying otherwise – and that he was only commuting that Catherine and Caroline at the beach as a “good father” then they could escape from a freezing house.
In her invitations to friends, Heidi Cruz texted that the house was “FROZEN”.
Cruz said the house lost electricity on Monday night and got it back two days later. So, if Snowflake wasn’t without heat, as Cruz says now, the family didn’t have to leave the house to find a warm place to sleep.
The family flew to Mexico in the late afternoon of last Wednesday, went immediately to the Houston airport and aboard the flight by other sun seekers shocked to see an official from the State leave when millions of its voters lacked heat, electricity or drinking water.
Cruz was back in Houston in less than 24 hours, admitting that the trip was “obviously a mistake”.
The next day, Friday, New York Post posted pictures of Heidi Cruz on the beach in a red two-piece swimsuit.
Snowflake’s photo “was scary,” he says. “Frankly, even scarier, the paparazzi came down to the beach and took pictures of Heidi in a bikini.
“She is angry…. Heidi smokes hot, so I said, man, you look great, ”Cruz said on the podcast. “But I don’t think there are many women who would be happy to have journalists follow them to take pictures of their bikinis and then paste them in the pages of the New York Post. “
Cruz endured days of ridicule on the part of late-night comedians and Democratic detractors.
“I haven’t had as much negative media coverage since Northern California in the 1960s,” referring to a long-standing joke that he’s secretly the Zodiac, a serial killer active decades ago.
Self-mockery was associated with the annoyance of heretofore unidentified friends and neighbors who disclosed Heidi’s inducements to join them on a four-night vacation. He has noted that his neighbors include members of both parties and he realizes that not all are fans of him.
“Some people on our street put up Beto signs, which I thought was a bit – it’s a bit rude,” said Cruz, who passed Beto O’Rourke in the 2018 election. “But I didn’t. didn’t have a victory party in the front yard when we won. “
O’Rourke himself jumped into action when crisis hit last week, in contrast to Cruz’s initial instinct that as a federal lawmaker he has little to contribute to disaster mitigation.
The former congressman from El Paso raised funds and organized phone banks to connect needy Texans to heating centers and other resources. He berated Cruz for “spending his vacation in Cancun … as people freeze to death in the state he elected to represent and serve.”
On Monday night’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, Cruz’s former basketball rival aired footage of him loading a 12-pack of water into a car, sympathizing with his constituents and helping clean up a flooded house. during the weekend.
“Señor Fraud also invited cameras to shoot him while helping someone remove the carpet from a house that had suffered water damage,” Kimmel said, imagining the reunion when Cruz greeted Heidi and the girls : “How was the vacation? You’re having fun? I was in a parking lot pretending to hand out bottles of Dasani.
The senator’s damage control tour included a second segment with Sean Hannity on Fox News since his brief stay south of the border. On Monday night, as he did last week, Hannity promoted the debunked tale that Cruz intended to turn around quickly and was not ashamed to cut short a family vacation during a crisis.
“You dropped off your daughters in Mexico. You got home in a day, probably less than a day, and you have this scandal here, ”Hannity said. “You’re like 24/7 because you dropped somebody off and went home. I still believe that you can be a father and a senator at the same time.
Hannity likened it to a “cover-up” on other networks which he says has – wrongly – ignored claims that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has downplayed the number of Covid-19 deaths in the retirement homes last year.
“Where is the proportionality of the crowd and the media?” Hannity said.
Cruz adopted this turn, acknowledging that he suffered more cover and opprobrium than he deserves.
“You are right,” he said. “I think the media is hurting from Trump’s withdrawal… They don’t know what to do, so they’re obsessed with taking my daughters to the beach.”
Washington correspondent Tom Benning contributed to this report
