There are conservatives, there are hardcore conservatives, and then there are conservatives who have been meme-ified as the Zodiac Killer. To put it differently, Ted Cruz doesn’t do kinder and gentler. He likes to squabble. He likes to fight. But once that fight is over, Cruz might just become your best friend.
During the rough and tumble of the 2016 primary, President Trump said that Cruz’s dad helped kill JFK. There were shots back and forth. Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar,” and a “sniveling coward.” He tweeted that Trump “can’t be trusted with common sense. Why would we trust him in the White House?”
But once it was all over, Ted Cruz responded by shepherding hundreds of Trump’s judges through the Judiciary Committee—including three Supreme Court picks. By 2018, Cruz was praising Trump as “a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America.” And at the Republican convention in Milwaukee last summer, Cruz bellowed, “God bless Donald J. Trump.” No wonder Trump once called their relationship “a little bit of a romance.”
Ted Cruz is practically synonymous with the word conservative. Look it up in the dictionary and you’ll see a picture of Ted Cruz explaining why a hospital for kittens is a waste of taxpayer money. A product of Harvard Law and the Tea Party, he was MAGA before MAGA, the counterelite before it was cool. Now, Ted Cruz is understandably doing a victory lap. Because the vibe shift that happened this November was a shift in his direction—and arguably one he helped facilitate.
Today on Honestly, Bari Weiss asks Cruz about the hostage deal, what he thinks “maximum pressure” on Iran should look like; China; the TikTok ban; the tech titans swarming D.C.; the border; the deep state; woke campuses; and cutting off federal funding to universities.
Watch the whole, wide-ranging conversation at the top of this post.
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Ted Cruz' comment about the dangerous impact of Chinese influence via TikTok: "to push propaganda and very harmful content to our children that pushes self-harm, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, antisemitism, anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism." Isn't that exactly what the previous administration and all woke-based governments and organizations also did and still do?
Maybe the need is for more parents to take responsibility for their children's development in all aspects of their lives. And, if the parents complain about the real challenges in doing so, maybe what government could do usefully is to set up self-help meetings without facilitators in which parents can peer mentor each other.
what a great interview. well prepared and delivered. a candle burns for real journalism.