Here’s what a U.S. senator does: Make laws, authorize and appropriate federal funds, provide for the common defense and the general welfare, regulate commerce among the states and with foreign nations, declare war and maintain and regulate the military, impeach federal officers including the president, advise and consent to treaties and appointments of judges and federal officials.
For the record, a U.S. senator doesn’t do anything when a snowstorm hits his or her home state. If they happen to be home at the time, maybe they can help their neighbor shovel the driveway. And sure, they can press the White House to declare a state of emergency and dispatch federal money to help, but that’s about it.
On the other hand, the governor has broad responsibilities, as do mayors of cities, such as providing emergency shelters and plowing the roads. They do the heavy lifting.
So why all the hand-wringing about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) leaving the suddenly snow-filled state of Texas and heading with his kids to Cancun for a little R&R in the Mexican sun?
Here’s why: He’s a Republican. Oh, and there’s another scandal (a real one) involving a Democrat that the media really wants to ignore.
Cruz was seen boarding a plane and, with social media, the photos quickly went viral. What followed was the dumbest “scandal” ever.
The New York Times did some quality investigative reporting and penned a piece headlined: “Ted Cruz’s Cancún Trip: Family Texts Detail His Political Blunder.”
Text messages sent from Ms. Cruz to friends and Houston neighbors on Wednesday revealed a hastily planned trip. Their house was “FREEZING,” as Ms. Cruz put it — and she proposed a getaway until Sunday. Ms. Cruz invited others to join them at the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún, where they had stayed “many times,” noting the room price this week ($309 per night) and its good security. The text messages were provided to The New York Times and confirmed by a second person on the thread, who declined to be identified because of the private nature of the texts.
As the “scandal” was spiraling on Thursday, Cruz released a statement saying he had flown to Mexico “to be a good dad” and accompany his daughters and their friends. He also said he was flying back that afternoon.
“My staff and I are in constant communication with state and local leaders to get to the bottom of what happened in Texas,” Cruz continued. “We want our power back, our water on, and our homes warm.”
“We left yesterday, the plan had been to stay through the weekend with the family,” Cruz told reporters outside his home after he returned. He said the snowstorm, which left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power, “has been tough on a lot of folks” and recounted how his own family had been reduced to huddling around the fireplace after they lost power.
When his daughters found out that school had been canceled for the week, Cruz explained, they suggested taking a vacation. “They said, ‘Look, why don’t we take a trip? Let’s go somewhere where it’s not so cold.’”
“Look, it was obviously a mistake, and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it,” he said, adding, “I was trying to be a dad.”
The mainstream media went wall to wall with coverage about Cruz — for good reason. “The liberal primetime hosts on CNN and MSNBC overwhelmingly kept their focus on Sen. Ted Cruz while virtually ignoring the growing legal woes plaguing Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo,” Fox News reported.
“The embattled governor earned less than three minutes of coverage across the six most-watched shows on the liberal networks. The GOP senator, however, collectively earned over a whopping 46 minutes of coverage,” Fox said.
“ABC ‘World News Tonight’ gave Cruz’s Cancun trip four times more coverage Thursday than Cuomo’s nursing home scandal despite revelations this week that the Democrat is under a federal investigation and was called out for bullying a fellow Democrat and threatening to ‘destroy’ him,” Townhall.com wrote. The program dedicated nearly four minutes to the GOP senator’s trip and just 55 seconds to the Cuomo’s growing legal controversy.
Democrats have joined New York GOP leaders in calling for accountability after Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa told Democratic lawmakers that the Cuomo administration hid the state’s nursing-home COVID-19 death toll to avoid federal scrutiny from the Trump administration’s Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, a Democratic New York state assemblyman claimed Wednesday that Cuomo threatened to “destroy” him after the lawmaker criticized Cuomo’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as it related to the state’s nursing homes.
