A pro-Trump Republican tried to defend Ted Cruz and it backfired massively

Political commentator Dinesh D’Souza has flared tensions over the Texas energy crisis with a bizarre defence of state Senator Ted Cruz’s absence.

The Trump-supporting conspiracy theorist claimed on Twitter yesterday that Cruz’s trip to Mexico is the “best thing for the state right now” because he is not using up “valuable resources of energy, food and water that can now be used by someone else”.

Right.

The mental gymnastics required to justify a state’s leader leaving in a time of crisis is quite something, yet D’Souza has doubled down on his comments since by retweeting them as the events unfolded.

While many agreed Cruz’s presence in Texas is virtually useless, it was for very different reasons.

Texas is currently experiencing its coldest winter in decades. With people resorting to boiling snow for water supplies, other state representatives are calling it a ‘humanitarian crisis’.

Meanwhile, Cruz was seen to be boarding an aeroplane to Cancun, Mexico with his family as 2.5 million Texans were left without power due to severe weather and infrastructure failures.

People on Twitter have retaliated to the comments in their thousands, responding that people might have reacted differently if, for example, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to flee New York in the midst of a similar crisis.

D’Souza claims the justification also lies in the limited role of what an elected Senator is supposed to do.

He added that “the simple truth is that Senators don’t do a whole lot other than VOTE. The rest of it is mainly fundraising, posturing, photo ops, etc.”

This has been quickly toppled by the actions taken by former Democratic representative Beto O’Rourke, who lost to Cruz by one of the states’ closest ever margins.

While Cruz was departing the country, he was at the helm of a phone bank operation that has connected hundreds of thousands of residents to essential resources.

D’Souza’s fiercely conservative links date back to Ronald Reagan’s presidency, where he spent time as his adviser. He was pardoned by former President Trump back in 2018 for illegal campaign contributions made several years prior.

Here’s what he had to say about it.

The product of some of Republican misinformation’s widest spread memes was born from the notion that Barack Obama spent Hurricane Katrina playing golf - despite not being elected for another 3 years. It commonly crops up in arguments against his validity as a US president.

We’re yet to see if diehard Republicans will ever feel content leaning on that excuse again.

Cruz addressed the press yesterday to say the trip was “obviously a mistake”, made because his two daughters were “cold”.

Shockingly, this hasn’t halted the number of equally freezing Texans calling for his resignation.