In the aftermath of last week’s mass murder of schoolchildren in Uvalde, I’m watching Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the man without a conscience who represents the grieving families there, when the thought occurs to me: Is there no one in the whole wide world whom Cruz would not sell out?
The TV news takes us back and forth in these awful hours in Texas. We move from heart-broken families in Uvalde to a scene of Cruz trying to slither away from a British reporter. But the reporter won’t go away.
He’s trying to pin down Cruz on the insane gun laws in America, which allow the slaughter of children while spineless politicians offer platitudes in response. The killing goes on because all those like Cruz are bought and paid for by the gun lobby.
He has pocketed more money from the gun lobbyists than any other U.S. senator — about $442,000, according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit dedicated to tracking election money.
So now he tries to duck this TV reporter, but doesn’t manage to do it before saying things that would embarrass any human being with an actual conscience.
“Is this the moment to reform gun laws?” asks the reporter, Mark Stone, of Britain’s Sky News.
“You know, it’s easy to go to politics,” Cruz says.
“But it’s important. It’s at the heart of the issue.”
“I get that that’s where the media likes to go,” Cruz says, trying to shift the topic. “The proposals from Democrats and the media, inevitably, when some violent psychopath murders people …”
“A violent psychopath,” Stone replies, “who’s able to get a weapon so easily. An 18-year-old with two AR-15s.”
Lacking a sensible response, Cruz wants to lose this guy. But Stone’s not going away.
“Why does this only happen in your country?” Stone asks. “Why only in America?”
Again, a non sequitur response. Cruz tells Stone, “You know what? You’ve got your political agenda. God love you.”
As he tries to escape, Cruz turns back long enough to say, “Why is it that people come from all over the world to America?” (Suddenly, Cruz is welcoming immigrants, instead of building a wall to keep them out?) “This is the freest, most prosperous, safest country on earth,” he says. “And stop being a propagandist.”
You believe this guy?
He answers a serious question about American gun violence by changing the facts (safest country on earth?), and waving the flag and hoping it’ll distract everyone.
But there’s not a flag large enough to hide the bodies of all those children — nor to hide the sheer political indifference of those on Capitol Hill in a time of national grieving and fear.
And so we have Ted Cruz sneaking off, and thus adding to his history of shameless, breathtaking sellouts.
Remember, this is the guy who heard Donald Trump say Cruz’s father might have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
And somehow Cruz managed to put this behind him, selling out his own father, as he kissed up to Trump.
When Trump took a shot at the looks of Cruz’s wife Heidi, Cruz initially remarked, “Donald, you’re a sniveling coward, and leave Heidi the hell alone,” before getting on the Trump bandwagon.
And let’s not forget the winter of 2021, when Texas was hit by its worst storm in decades, and Cruz was caught slipping off to Cancun rather than staying home and trying to help his freezing constituents.
When Cruz heard the furious reaction, what did he do? He tried to put the focus on his own daughters.
“I was trying to be a dad,” he said. “When you’ve got two girls who have been cold for two days, and haven’t had heater power, and they’re saying, ‘Hey, look, we don’t have school and …’”
Having sold out his father and his wife, was anybody shocked when he tried to sell out his own children?
The problem is, even in the bloody aftermath of mass murder in Uvalde, Texas, Cruz is like so many others on Capitol Hill, moral cowards willing to sell out anybody’s children just to protect their own heartless careers.
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