“I gotta say, Orlando is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancún. But it’s nice,” Sen. Ted Cruz told a crowd of attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.
Cruz’s opening remarks were referring to his flight to Cancún to escape last week’s snowstorm and power outage. The junior senator planned to stay for multiple days, but quickly returned after photos of him at the airport were posted on social media and went viral.
His 15-minute speech to devoted conservatives at their annual gathering was filled with plenty of hot air and railings against the new administration. He said socialists controlled all the levers of power, made fun of AOC for feeling unsafe during the Capital attack (“AOC is telling us ‘she was murdered,’” Cruz said, mocking her in a Bronx accent), and said that all leftist hate liberty.
“Let me tell you this right now, Donald Trump ain’t going anywhere,” Cruz said to cheers. “These deplorables are here to stay.”
Meanwhile, in Texas, deaths caused by the snowstorm are still being counted, lawmakers in the legislature are grilling state agencies over the grid failure, and President Joe Biden is visiting Houston to tour the FEMA vaccine super-site at NRG Stadium.
Cruz’s speech at CPAC arrives the same day as a poll by the Texas Tribune and the University of Texas at Austin shows Texans continue to have a polarized opinion of the junior senator. According to the poll, 45 percent of Texans have a favorable opinion of Cruz and 43 percent don’t — of course, similar polling shows the story isn’t the same nationwide and Cruz may have ruined his shot at becoming president with his escape to Mexico.
Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images
Fernando covers Texas politics and government at the Texas Signal. Before joining the Signal, Fernando spent two years at the Houston Chronicle and previously interned at Houston’s NPR station News 88.7. He is a graduate of the University of Houston, Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, and enjoys reading, highlighting things, and arguing on social media. You can follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93 or email at fernando@texassignalarchive.com
