Ted Cruz, stung by his Cancún saga, blames the media that covered it.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke to a reporter at the airport before returning from Cancún last week.
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke to a reporter at the airport before returning from Cancún last week.Credit…Reuters
Less than a week after his instantly infamous escape to Mexico during the historic winter storm in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz has alighted on who he believes is the episode’s true villain: the media.
During an appearance on a podcast hosted by Josh Holmes, a former aide and close adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, Mr. Cruz criticized paparazzi for photographing his bikini-clad wife, Heidi, on the beach in Cancún, the New York Post for publishing the pictures, a reporter who wrote about his dog, Snowflake, and neighbors who leaked text messages that revealed the origin of the Cruz family trip was not what Mr. Cruz had said publicly.
“Heidi is smoking hot, so I said ‘Man, you look great,’” Mr. Cruz said. “I don’t think there are many women who would be thrilled to have reporters following them around taking pictures of them in their bikinis and sticking them in the pages of the New York Post, but that’s what goes by journalism these days.”
Mr. Cruz said his wife was angry that her text messages, first published by The New York Times, inviting their Houston neighbors to travel with them to Cancún in the midst of statewide power outages had been leaked and was investigating who betrayed her confidence. Mr. Cruz said he suspected it was one of his Democratic neighbors.
“She was over at our neighbor’s house walking through it,” he said. “We have folks on our street who put up Beto signs, which I thought was pretty rude.”
The two-term senator, who ran for president in 2016 and has not extinguished his White House ambitions, did not acknowledge it was wrong to leave his state as it was being battered by a deadly storm for a trip to the beach. (Though he acknowledged the trip was “obviously a mistake” after returning from Mexico.) Instead, he said on the podcast that his constituents and the news media should cut him a break.
“Treat each other as human beings,” Mr. Cruz said. “Have some modicum of respect. We just need to laugh a little bit and loosen up.”
— Reid J. Epstein The New York Times
