Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) gesticulates as he speaks to media representatives on the fifth day of the impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump for instigating the fatal attack on the US Capitol in Washington, USA on February 13, 2021.
Erin Scott | Reuters
Will Senator Ted Cruz be known as “Flying Ted” now?
Early Thursday, social media broke out with multiple photos allegedly showing a masked Cruz boarding a plane in Houston and then flying to Cancun, Mexico, despite millions of its Texans froze from historically low temperatures and widespread power outages.
Hours after thousands of posts on Twitter shared these photos, other images showed someone with the Republican’s last name and the first initial of his legal first name – Rafael – waiting for a flight back from Cancun to Houston later Thursday morning.
NBC News has contacted Cruz’s office repeatedly about the pictures but received no response.
Former MP Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who lost a narrow Senate election to Cruz in 2018, beat him up during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday.
Cruz “is on vacation in Cancun as the people of the state he was elected to represent and serve are literally freezing to death,” said O’Rourke, who fought for months for the Democratic nomination for president in 2019.
On Tuesday, Cruz tweeted – in response to an article criticizing him for making fun of California’s power outages months ago -: “I have no defense. A blizzard hits Texas and our state closes. Not good. ”
In December, Cruz criticized Democratic officials for disregarding their own coronavirus pandemic restrictions, including Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler, who himself flew to Mexico for his daughter’s wedding in November despite urging Austin residents to leave to stay.
“Hypocrites. Complete and utter hypocrites,” wrote Cruz in his December 2 tweet.
Former President Donald Trump, who ran against Cruz in the 2016 Republican nomination contests, regularly mocked him with the contemptuous nickname “Lying Ted”.
But Cruz later became a passionate Trump supporter and last month tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to reject confirmation of Joe Biden’s electoral college victories in several states.
That verification process was interrupted on January 6th by the invasion of the Capitol complex by thousands of Trump supporters. Five people, including a Capitol Police Office, died as a result of the uprising.
