Nobody seems to trust Ted Cruz anymore.
The Texas senator’s simple hurricane warning message was ill received by state residents late Sunday, apparently reminding the Lone Star citizens of another one of his climate misfires.
Cruz reshared an emergency relief video made by local businessman Jim McIngvale, better known as Mattress Mack to Houstonites, offering help should the storm take a turn for the worse. Cruz urged people to stay safe, ahead of Hurricane Beryl’s landfall.
“Mack is an American hero,” Cruz wrote on X. “Stay safe & avoid high water as the hurricane makes landfall.”
But sending a message of care to Texas residents reminded too many critics of 2021, when Cruz ditched his constituents—and his dog—during a historic winter storm to take a conveniently timed trip to Cancun, Mexico. That record cold snap, and Texas’s failure to mitigate damage to critical infrastructure, resulted in the deaths of 246 people.
Cruz’s vacation mishap also led him to propose legislation to reallocate airport security toward high-powered officials, a move that would have made it significantly harder for the press to catch him (and other lawmakers or judges) in efforts to bail during future bad weather. Ultimately, Cruz’s amendment was blocked in April by Mississippi Representative Bennie Thompson.
“I’m glad that sanity prevailed and this provision—which almost no one really wanted—wasn’t included in the final FAA bill text,” Thompson said in a statement at the time. “Congress should be focusing on improving TSA and keeping our skies more secure, not burdening its workforce and potentially diminishing security.”
