Ted Cruz of Texas, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and nine other Republican US senators or senators-elect said on Saturday they will reject presidential electors from states where Donald Trump has contested his defeat by Joe Biden, “unless and until [an] emergency 10-day audit” of such results is completed.
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Trump has refused to concede, though Biden won more than 7m more votes nationally and took the electoral college by 306-232, a margin Trump called a landslide when he won it over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
The Trump campaign has lost the vast majority of more than 50 lawsuits it has mounted in battleground states, alleging electoral fraud, and before the supreme court. On Saturday night, Trump urged his Twitter followers to “be a part of history” and join a protest march in Washington DC against the election result on Wednesday.
On Friday, a federal judge dismissed a suit lodged by a House Republican which attempted to give Pence, who will preside over the certification of the electoral college result on Wednesday, the power to overturn it. An appeal was rejected Saturday night.
Nonetheless, the senators and senators-elect who issued a statement on Saturday followed Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri in committing to challenging the result.
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On Saturday, Utah Senator Mitt Romney described as “nonsense”, the idea that a congressional audit would restore trust in the election, saying the American people trusted federals judges more than Congress.
In a statement, he said: “The egregious ploy to reject electors may enhance the political ambition of some, but dangerously threatens our Democratic Republic … President Trump’s lawyers made their case before scores of courts; in every instance, they failed.”
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But Cruz and Johnson were joined by Senators James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), John Kennedy (Louisiana), Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee) and Mike Braun (Indiana). Senators-elect Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Roger Marshall (Kansas), Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) also signed on.
“The election of 2020,” they said, “like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”
No hard evidence for such claims has been presented. …
Regardless, the senators said Congress “should immediately appoint an electoral commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.”
The senators made reference to the contested election of 1876, which ended in the appointment of such a commission.
“We should follow that precedent,” they said.
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Cruz, like Hawley, is prominent among Republicans expected to run for president in 2024, and thus eager to appeal to supporters loyal to Trump. On Saturday, Christine Pelosi, daughter of House speaker Nancy Pelosi and a member of the Democratic National Committee, referred to the bitter 2016 primary when she tweeted: “Ted Cruz is defending Trump’s assaults on democracy with more energy than he defended his own family against Trump’s assaults on his wife and father” (Pengelly and Bryant 1-3).
Cruz didn’t address the mob that stormed the Capitol and he has forcefully denounced the violence.
But he was one of the leading voices amplifying President Donald Trump’s demand to overturn the election. Video published by The New Yorker shows rioters saying Cruz was on their side as they occupied the Senate. Spotting Cruz’s notes objecting to Biden electors, one says: “Cruz would want us to do this, so I think we’re good.”
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Cruz pegged his objection to Biden electors to a demand for Congress to create an emergency commission to investigate allegations of election misconduct.
A 10-day delay would help the country accept the outcome, he insisted, though critics pointed out he could have demanded an inquiry without trying to invalidate tens of millions of votes and President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
Cruz didn’t just lend a vote, though. He led a group of 11 senators whose objections triggered the challenges, trying to outflank Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the first senator to declare that he would object to Biden electors when Congress reviewed the Electoral College votes.
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“For two months, Cruz joined Trump in beating the drum of election fraud until Trump loyalists were deaf to anyone — Republican, Democrat or nonpartisan journalists, not to mention state and federal courts — telling them otherwise,”wrote the Houston Chronicle in one of several Texas editorials calling on him to resign. “And yet, Cruz insists he bears no responsibility for the deadly terror attack.”
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In a round of damage control interviews with Texas TV stations in the days after the riot, Cruz distanced himself from Trump in a way he hadn’t done since they reconciled after the bitter 2016 primaries.
“The president’s language and rhetoric often goes too far,” he told KTRK-TV in Houston, calling Trump’s speech to the crowd that would soon storm the Capitol “reckless” and then asserting that “I have disagreed with the president’s language and rhetoric for the last four years.”
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[GOP strategist Alex] Conant said Cruz’s efforts now to put distance between himself and Trump come across as “inauthentic” in a way voters aren’t likely to reward.
“Any politician who appears calculating at a moment of national crisis is doing himself no favors,” he said (Gillman 1-2, 5-6).
John Oliver returned from a lengthy hiatus on Sunday night, lambasting Sen.Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the Republican Party for treating Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial as “a complete charade.”
Oliver missed quite a bit of news while away — his last show aired in mid-November when the news was still focused on Trump’s refusal to concede and his allies’ shameless support of his baseless voter fraud claims.
“It’s been a weird time. But we have to start with the impeachment trial that took place this week,” Oliver began, adding, “Democrats put on a compelling forensic case about Trump’s clear role as instigator of the January 6th riots, and in response, his attorneys mounted a defense that could be charitably characterized as ‘incoherent.’”
The host later condemned Cruz, whose role in the impeachment trial was to essentially act as a juror, for meeting with Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial.
Oliver then cut to a video of Cruz explaining what he said to Trump’s lawyers in the middle of the trial: “I said, ‘Look, you’ve gotta remember you’ve already won.’ There are not 67 votes to convict. There are 55 votes to convict, plus-minus two.”
Oliver went after the senator for admitting that Republicans treated the impeachment trial as “a complete charade,” noting how disheartening it is to hear that come from a member of the “world’s most deliberative body.”
“I said to them, ‘You gotta remember, the outcome is predetermined, nothing means anything and this entire process is a complete charade,” Oliver said mimicking Cruz. “‘Now, hands in everyone: Dead eyes, empty hearts, Ted Cruz.'”
“The fact that Republicans were going to acquit the former president no matter what is a pretty depressing sign of just how deep Trumpism runs in their party,” he continued, adding that support for Trump is “even worse” at a state level, as legislators even participated in the Stop the Steal rally on Jan. 6 (Idliby 1-2).
On Monday, Senator Ted Cruz urged his constituents to “stay home,” warning that winter weather beating down on Texas could be deadly. On Tuesday, he offered a shrug emoji and pronounced the situation “not good.” Then, on Wednesday, he decamped for a Ritz-Carlton resort in sun-drenched Cancún, escaping with his family from their freezing house.
And on Thursday, many Americans who had been battered by a deadly winter storm, on top of a nearly yearlong pandemic, finally found a reason to come together and lift their voices in a united chorus of rage.
FlyinTed, a homage to Donald J. Trump’s “Lyin’ Ted” nickname, began trending on Twitter. TMZ, the celebrity website, published photographs showing a Patagonia-fleece-clad Mr. Cruz waiting for his flight, hanging out in the United Club lounge and reading his phone from a seat in economy plus. The Texas Monthly, which bills itself as “the national magazine of Texas,” offered a list of curses to mutter against Mr. Cruz.
For a politician long reviled not just by Democrats but also by many of his Republican colleagues in Washington, Mr. Cruz is now the landslide winner for the title of the least sympathetic politician in America. After leaving freezing Texans to melt snow for water while he traveled to go work at the beach, Mr. Cruz offered little more than the classic political cliché — time with family — as an explanation, citing his daughters’ desire to go to Cancún as the reason for his trip. Even his dog became a player in the drama after a report that the Cruz family had left the aptly named Snowflake behind with a security guard, stirring fresh outrage on social media.
“He’s a person that people enjoy disliking,” said Bill Miller, a veteran Texas lobbyist and political consultant who has worked with members of both parties. “And now he’s been mortally wounded. It’s like he bailed out on the state at its most weakened moment. It’s an indefensible action.”
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His opportunism often enraged fellow Republicans. After voting against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy, Mr. Cruz lobbied Congress five years later for billions of dollars as Texas cleaned up from Hurricane Harvey.
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… But in his moment of crisis, Mr. Cruz’s four-year campaign to reclaim his position as a darling of conservatives appeared to be paying off, as several of Mr. Trump’s allies rushed to his defense. …
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Sean Hannity, the Fox News host and a friend of Mr. Trump’s, cast the trip as akin to Mr. Cruz’s dropping his daughters off at soccer practice — never mind that this outing involved a plane flight to a $309-per-night resort.
“Now, you went and you took your daughters to Cancún and you came back,” Mr. Hannity told Mr. Cruz in a Thursday night interview. “I think you can be a father and be the senator of Texas all at the same time and make a round-trip, quick drop-off, quick trip, and come home.”
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When it came to explaining his visit to a Mexican resort, Mr. Cruz showed unusual restraint. After pictures circulated online of him boarding a flight, aides said the trip was a previously planned vacation. Then, his office said he was simply escorting his daughters down to Cancún to join friends — like any “good dad” in the midst of an enormous meltdown of basic societal infrastructure — and had always planned to return on Thursday.
After nearly a day of uncharacteristic silence, Mr. Cruz returned home on Thursday, bearing a Texas flag mask, a suspiciously large suitcase and a classic political excuse.
“It was obviously a mistake and in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it. I was trying to be a dad,” he told reporters on Thursday, a striking admission from a politician who built his career on ceding little ground. “From the moment I sat on the plane, I began really second-guessing that decision.”
For others in his home state, there was little to guess about the incident.
“Nothing brings Texans together quite like the opportunity to rip Ted Cruz a new one,” Gene Wu, a Democratic state representative in Texas, wrote on Twitter (Lerer 1-4).
U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz joined with their Republican colleagues Friday to block a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a 54-35 vote.
While the bill establishing the commission passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House last week, Senate Republicans effectively killed the proposal by way of the filibuster. In the Senate, 60 members are needed to move a bill to an up-or-down vote, breaking the filibuster, and Republicans successfully stopped that from happening.
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Cruz released a statement after the commission was defeated, saying that he opposed it because it was "politically motivated."
“… With multiple investigations already underway, I do not support the politically motivated January 6 Commission led by Sen. [Chuck] Schumer and Speaker Pelosi."
The bill was modeled on the 9/11 Commission, which led to sweeping government reforms in order to prevent terrorist attacks.
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"Republicans in both chambers are trying to rewrite history and claim that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest that got a little out of hand. And now this," Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said on the Senate floor after Republicans blocked the commission. "We all know what's going on here. ... Republicans chose to defend the big lie because they believe anything that upsets Donald Trump might hurt them politically" (Livingston 1, 2).
After spending a day being slammed by TV pundits and fellow conservatives for describing last year’s U.S. Capitol insurrection as a “violent terrorist attack,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz walked back his comments on Thursday.
The Texas Republican attempted to clarify his intent on FOX News program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” calling his own words “sloppy” and “frankly dumb.” Cruz insisted he was referring only to the rioters who attacked police during the breach of the historic building.
“For a decade, I have referred to people who violently assault police officers as terrorists. I’ve done so over and over and over again,” Cruz said Thursday.
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His appearance came one day after Carlson lambasted the junior Texas senator for his choice of words during a Wednesday U.S. Senate committee hearing about the oversight of the Capitol Police during the 2021 riot. During that hearing, Cruz acknowledged the “solemn anniversary” of what he called a “violent terrorist attack on the Capitol where we saw the men and women of law enforcement … risk their lives to defend the men and women who serve in this Capitol.”
The mob — made up of President Donald Trump supporters attempting to interrupt certification of the 2020 election — attacked police officers and caused millions of dollars of damage to the Capitol. Lawmakers and staff inside hid in fear for their lives as protesters breached the building carrying zip ties and wearing tactical gear.
Cruz was objecting to the certification of Arizona’s election results at the moment the Capitol was overrun. He was among several Texas Republicans who tried to cast doubt on President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump, who continues to peddle baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Many conservatives have spent the past several months downplaying the seriousness of the Capitol attack, which led to thousands of injuries and five deaths. About 140 officers were injured, and two officers involved in the response have died by suicide, according to a report in the New York Times.
On his program Wednesday, Carlson accused Cruz of echoing Democratic talking points at that day’s Senate committee hearing.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Carlson said. “You’re making us think maybe the Republican Party is as worthless as we suspected it was. That can’t be true. Reassure us, please, Ted Cruz.”
On Thursday, Cruz said he asked to come on Carlson’s show so he could better explain himself. Cruz said he understood why people were angry at his use of the word “terrorist” but insisted that he would never use the same word that “Democrats and the corporate media have so politicized” to describe the “patriots” that were at the Capitol that day to protest the results of the presidential election.
At the time of the breach, Cruz argued, he was asking for Congress to investigate potential voter fraud in accordance with the law.
“It would be ridiculous for me to be saying that the people standing up and protesting to follow the law were somehow terrorists,” he said. “I was talking about people who commit violence against cops.”
Democrats and the media, Cruz said, “are trying to paint everyone as a terrorist, and it’s a lie” (Harper 1-2).
Three weeks after groveling to Tucker Carlson to beg forgiveness for calling the Jan. 6 insurrection what it was — a "violent terrorist incident" — U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz has sent out a fundraising email suggesting the FBI orchestrated the attack.
Far-right conspiracy mongers including Fox News host Carlson have repeatedly pushed the bullshit notion that Deep State actors, including FBI agents, ginned up the Jan. 6 mob assault to discredit then-President Donald Trump.
That crackpot theory, of course, has been widely debunked. But that didn't stop Cruz, R-Texas, from seizing on it in a bid to separate far-right conspiracy kooks from their hard-earned lunch money.
"What are they trying to hide now about the events of January 6, 2021?" Cruz asked in the Jan. 22 fundraising message. "I’m working hard to expose the full truth and shine a light on whether there was any FBI involvement on that day… and the liberal media can't stand it!"
Cruz is a skilled enough rhetorician to give himself wiggle room by framing his insinuations as questions rather than statements. Even so, the intent is crystal clear.
"Did ANY FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events that day?" Cruz ponders before falsely claiming the agency regularly abused its power to do the Democrats' bidding. "We know the FBI has been misused in the past to target President Trump and our conservative movement and run interference for the Democrats."
Then Cruz drills down deep on a specific Jan. 6 theory popular in far-right circles, asking "Who is Ray Epps? Was Ray Epps a federal agent or informant?"
Right-wing pundits, including Carlson, have repeatedly, and without supporting facts, claimed Epps, a 60-year-old business owner who took part in the Jan. 6 pro-Trump rally was working for the FBI. The Washington Post recently spent more than 2,000 words explaining in excruciating detail why this has zero grounding in reality. But, hey, who needs facts (Nowlin 1-2)?
Works cited:
Gillman, Todd. ‘Ted’s Been Canceled’: Cruz’s 2024 Ambitions Hobbled by Capitol Riot, but He Could Rebound in Biden Era.” Dallas Morning News, January 16. 2021. Net. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/01/16/ted-cruzs-2024-ambitions-hobbled-by-capitol-riot-but-in-a-twist-biden-era-could-help-him-rebound/
Harper, Karen Brooks. “ Ted Cruz Called the Jan. 6 Riot a “Terrorist Attack.” Now He Says He Misspoke.” Texas Tribune, January 6, 2022. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/01/06/ted-cruz-tucker-carlson-capitol-attack/
Idliby, Leia. “John Oliver Mocks Senate GOP’s Impeachment Trial ‘Charade’: ‘Hands in Everyone! Dead Eyes, Empty Hearts, Ted Cruz!’” Mediaite, February 15, 2021. Net. https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/john-oliver-mocks-senate-gops-impeachment-trial-charade-hands-in-everyone-dead-eyes-empty-hearts-ted-cruz/
Lerer, Lisa. “How Ted Cruz Became the Least Sympathetic Politician in America.” New York Times, February 19, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/us/politics/ted-cruz-mexico.html
Livingston, Abby. “U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz, John Cornyn Vote against Commission To Investigate January Insurrection.” Texas Tribune, May 28. 2021. Net. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/27/ted-cruz-john-cornyn-senate-insurrection-commission/
Nowlin, Sanford. “Ted Cruz Sends Fundraising Email Suggesting the FBI Was behind the Jan. 6 Insurrection.” San Antonio Current, January 28. 2022. Net. https://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/ted-cruz-sends-fundraising-email-suggesting-the-fbi-was-behind-the-jan-6-insurrection/Content?oid=28093202
Pengelly, Martin and Bryant, Miranda. “Ted Cruz and Other Republican Senators Oppose Certifying Election Results.” The Guardian, January 2, 2021. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/02/ted-cruz-republican-senators-reject-election-result-biden-trump
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