Tuesday night’s debate was not great for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. His opponent, Colin Allred, ripped him a new one, calling him an “architect” of the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, who was “hiding in a supply closet” when the mob finally entered the Capitol. “You’re a threat to democracy,” Allred said. “You cannot just be patriotic when your side wins.”
Lest we forget, Cruz is a uniquely slimy politician who has the dishonor of holding all of the self-serving, hypocritical, let-the-rich-get-richer policy positions of country club Republicans while also being the most hated man in Congress. But what has he actually done?
As he seeks a third term in the U.S. Senate — a job he seems to want only because his presidential campaigns failed so spectacularly — let’s recount the worst, weirdest, and most Ted Cruz-y things Ted Cruz has forced Texans to endure in his political career.
We saved the best for last.
Worst
Let’s start with some basics: Cruz voted against capping the cost of insulin. He’s talked about things like raising the retirement age and called Social Security a Ponzi scheme.
Most of us remember that Cruz abandoned Texas while thousands died from the power grid’s collapse during the freezing temperatures of February 2021. Maybe you even remember his dog, Snowflake, who was photographed staring out the front window of Cruz’s McMansion while he stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancun. But did you know he blamed the trip on his kids? He told reporters he’d flown to Mexico from Houston with his daughters “to be a good dad.”
He’s not even good at his actual job. The senator was so unhelpful in getting Trevor Reed, a Marine from Granbury, back home from wrongful detainment in Russia that Reed’s father publicly endorsed Allred in a searing ad: “Ted Cruz didn’t lift a finger for us when everybody else in the state did.”
Following the horrific slaughter of 19 children and two educators at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, the senator attended an NRA convention three days after the shooting. To make matters worse, parents of the victims begged Cruz to support banning the style of assault weapon that killed their babies. Cruz’s cold, reptilian heart was unmoved by the grieving parents.
In April, Rolling Stone reported that a campaign watchdog group filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging a Cruz super PAC was miscategorizing funds derived from his podcast “Verdict With Ted Cruz.” The complaint alleges that using the advertising profits from the podcast to fund a super PAC violates federal campaign finance laws.
As Allred highlighted on Tuesday, Ted Cruz literally helped come up with the plot to overthrow the 2020 election. He voted against certifying the election results from Arizona. Then when a violent mob, motivated by the lie he helped conjure up, stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Ted Cruz hid in an honest-to-God broom closet.
And of course: the abortion issue. He’s spoken about abortion in the past — like when he said he doesn’t support abortion exceptions in the case of rape because “I don’t believe it’s the child’s fault.” But recently, he’s been evasive on the topic.
That’s because it’s a key issue for a coveted, yet swayable, voter demographic: white women. When moderators asked Cruz to clarify his stance on the issue Tuesday night, as “a Texan and as a father,” he gave a nonanswer: “Abortion is an issue that many Texans, many Americans, care about.” Right, that’s why they’re asking you to discuss it.
He added, “That’s a decision that will be made by the state Legislature.” When moderators asked again, specifically about whether Cruz believes in abortion exceptions for rape or incest, he answered with a tirade about Allred. “Why is this an issue you won’t address?” a moderator asked. Cruz replied, “Why do you keep asking me that?”
It’s bad enough to have terrible policies, but it’s even worse to be a coward about even discussing them during a debate. For much of the debate, Cruz evaded questions, spewed lies about transgender Texans, and repeated the name of his own oppo website at least half a dozen times.
And really, he hasn’t done much else in his 11 years in the Senate. While Barack Obama was in office, Cruz authored a … courthouse renaming bill. And one that prevented the U.S. from giving visas to U.N. diplomats “that previously engaged in terrorist or espionage activities against the United States,” the Texas Tribune reported. During Donald Trump’s tenure, he did serve as chair of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space and Science — and he was responsible for a bill reauthorizing NASA. Fine. Cruz also pushed for tax breaks for victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria — and that passed. Good. Later, Cruz had a hot air balloon safety bill become part of other legislation. OK? But mostly, Cruz has run for president a bunch of times.
As Allred said on Tuesday, “I’ve never seen anybody who runs for office on what he hasn’t done. He’s been one of the least productive senators in the entire country.”
Shockingly, Cruz’s signature charm hasn’t made him very popular on the hill. Former President Trump called him “Lyin’ Ted” — and a thief and a fraud — and then insulted his wife and spread JFK-assassination-related conspiracy theories about his father, but Cruz eventually endorsed the man he’d referred to as a “sniveling coward,” “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” “serial philanderer,” and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen.”
But it’s not just Trump who hates Ted Cruz. Former speaker of the House John Boehner called him “Lucifer in the flesh” and a “miserable son of a bitch.” In response, former U.S. Rep. Peter King said, “Maybe he gives Lucifer a bad name by comparing him to Ted Cruz.” Perhaps former Sen. Al Franken put it best when he said Cruz is “the guy who microwaves fish” in the office, and, “Here’s the thing you have to understand about Ted Cruz: I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”
Possibly the all-time champion Ted Cruz hater, Sen. Lindsay Graham, joked in 2016 that “if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”
Weirdest
Would you put the Zodiac Killer in office?
In 2018, Cruz told members of the American Petroleum Institute in Houston that — despite being disliked — he tries to be a “joyful warrior,” joking about a Twitter handle called, “Ted Cruz ate my son.”
“I was really tempted to tweet, ‘He was delicious,’” Cruz told the lobbyists. The cannibalism joke was especially funny, given the fact that GQ once published a story under the headline, “More Evidence Ted Cruz Might Be the Zodiac Killer.” The infamous Zodiac Killer, who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, could be Ted Cruz. Probably not, given that he wasn’t born until 1970. But a bunch of people on Twitter had fun making jokes during that failed presidential run in 2016. And a PPP poll did show at one point that 38% of Florida voters thought that it was possible that Ted Cruz was the Zodiac Killer.
In fact, even The New York Times covered it. And Cruz’s wife Heidi responded to questions about it, telling Yahoo News that she’s sure he’s not a serial killer: “I’ve been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all. There’s a lot of garbage out there.”
“Ted Cruz Is the Zodiac Killer” merch, thankfully, also raised money for abortion rights.
Cruz may also be a very creepy neighbor. Texas-based comedian Tom Segura recounted a story during his Netflix special “Sledgehammer” in which his new neighbor — who just so happens to be Ted Cruz — welcomed Segura to the neighborhood by pondering the etymology of the word “motherfucker” and positing that a better insult would be “daughterfucker.” For what it’s worth, Cruz denied the story vehemently. And who wouldn’t trust Cruz?
In Cruz’s office, there’s a giant oil painting of himself making a losing oral argument before the Supreme Court. The portrait includes not one but four renderings of his image, according to GQ’s 2013 profile.
Also in 2013, Cruz held the Senate floor hostage for more than 21 hours in an anti-Obamacare speech during which he read from Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham.” That’s now the fourth-longest speech in U.S. Senate history. And earlier in life, Cruz gave this incredible theatrical performance (and yes, this is really Ted Cruz in this clip) in which he shouts, “WHY AM I PERSECUTED?”
Fine, so he’s not charming or brave. But you’d think food, of all things, would be a unifying force among Texas politicians. How hard is it to say you love barbecue and eat tacos?
Not to yum his yuck, but Cruz once told The Des Moines Register that he “despises” avocados. (“It’s the only food I dislike, and I dislike it passionately,” he said.) Instead, the man mostly just likes soup. A lot.
“When I married Ted, we got back from our honeymoon, and he went off to the store and came home by himself,” Heidi Cruz once said during a CNN Town Hall event. “And I was completely shocked to see that he arrived back at our apartment with literally 100 cans of Campbell’s Chunky soup.”
In a story we think about far too often, she continued, “I never bought 100 of anything. This was shocking to me, so we had a tough conversation about it. I said, ‘You don’t buy 100 of anything, much less canned soup. We can’t do this. I’ll be making things.’ He said, ‘No, I know you. You won’t be making things.’”
“So the next morning,” she added, “I loaded up our car before he woke up and returned every single can. And when I got home, I called my mother just to make sure I’d done the right thing as a newlywed. And she emphatically disagreed with me. And so when Ted opened the pantry, I had to quickly tell him that I would go back and buy those cans again.”
I think I speak for all of us when I say … what?
That same year, Cruz’s husband told Us Weekly: “When I’m away from the family, in Washington, D.C., my dinner is a can of soup. I have dozens in the pantry.”
Cruz once told Anderson Cooper that he loved the third Godfather movie — a film the Washington Post called “a failure of heartbreaking proportions.”
“You like the third ‘Godfather’?” Cooper asked, according to the Post.
“I am an odd —” Cruz said.
“I’ve never met anyone who liked the third ‘Godfather,’” Cooper replied.
“I liked ‘Godfather III,’ I will admit in public,” Cruz responded. “Everyone else hated it.”
See, that’s the kind of backbone Texans deserve. Unfortunately, it comes and goes.
In the five years Cruz served as Texas’ solicitor general, he once argued in a 2007 court brief that individuals have no legal right to use sex toys, even in the privacy of their own bedrooms. (He lost that case.) Ten years later — on the anniversary of Sept. 11 — Cruz’s Twitter account “liked” a pornographic tweet and then blamed a member of his staff.
“There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button,” Cruz said at the time. “It was a staffing issue, and it was inadvertent, it was a mistake, it was not a deliberate action.”
In a horrifying 2016 tweet, the TV producer Craig Mazin wrote: “Ted Cruz thinks people don’t have a right to ‘stimulate their genitals.’ I was his college roommate. This would be a new belief of his.” It’s true. Mazin really did live with Cruz in undergraduate school at Princeton during their freshman year. After breaking bad and tweeting about the experience in 2016, Mazin started posting about Cruz a lot.
“Getting emails blaming me for not smothering Ted Cruz in his sleep in 1988. What kind of monster do you think I am? A really prescient one?” Mazin once tweeted. In an interview with The Daily Beast, Mazin said a young Cruz wore a paisley bathrobe and frequented the girls’ end of the dorm hallway at Princeton often enough that it became an issue: “I would end up fielding the (girls’) complaints: ‘Could you please keep your roommate out of our hallway?’”
Mazin also tweeted: “I’m starting to feel like the U.S. should pay me reparations for my freshman year.”
Good luck with that!
Best
In December of 2018, Cruz grew a beard. It saved us the horror of having a clear line of sight to his guileless chin, and we thank him for it.