Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has taken a political beating over the past few days after it was revealed that during one of the most intense and deadly statewide winter storms to hit the state in recent history, he was on a plane headed to Cancun, Mexico.
Democrats were especially harsh in their criticism of Cruz’s trip, with some even banding together to pressure him to resign over the situation. Republicans were a little more forgiving, but former South Carolina lawmaker Trey Gowdy was certainly not one of them.
According to the Washington Examiner, Gowdy tore into the Texas senator on Thursday during an appearance on Fox News, slamming Cruz for being absent during the deadly winter storm event that crashed power grids in the state and resulted in numerous deaths.
“He never should’ve left. Leaders are the first to pick up a difficult task and the last to put it down. They don’t go to Cancun, and they don’t blame their daughters for it if they do,” Gowdy said, referring to Cruz’s recent excuse as to why he actually went to Cancun.
The senator claimed that he only boarded the flight to Cancun to escort his daughter to the popular vacation spot, who was going on the trip with a group of her friends, trying to be a “good dad.” Cruz said his intentions all along were to fly back the next day, although that story was picked apart by many in the media as Cruz’s wife was spotted accompanying him at the airport.
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“With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon,” Cruz said. “My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas. We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm. My team and I will continue using all our resources to keep Texans informed and safe.”
To be fair to Cruz, any reasonable person knows that whether he was in Mexico, Italy or Mars, well, it wouldn’t have mattered much as the state still would have faced the same outcome as it did with or without him present. But, critics of the Cancun trip, including Gowdy, argue that optics are everything and in times of crisis, the leaders at the top need to be on the ground.
Gowdy aside, because Cruz is a pro-Trump Republican, he’ll most certainly face the most extreme level of criticism for the move, when there are obviously other, more important things to worry about.
Had this been someone on the left, I guarantee you would have been hard-pressed to find more than a handful of news reports about it in the mainstream press.
ARTICLE SOURCE : thefederalistpapers.org
