Of all the sycophantic idiots I’ve been itching to roast since Election Day, two sit at the very top of my list: Ted Cruz and Tim Scott. Tim, your day is coming. I haven’t forgotten about your shameless ass. But today belongs to Ted Cruz, a man who has spent the better part of a decade demonstrating that a United States senator can possess two Ivy League degrees, a law license, and the personal dignity of a hotel bathmat.
Ted Cruz has accomplished something almost nobody in American politics manages. He is universally hated. Democrats can’t stand him. Republicans can’t stand him. His colleagues can’t stand him. Even people who agree with his politics seem to regard being trapped in an elevator with him as a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Al Franken said it best in his book Giant of the Senate: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.” Imagine being so personally insufferable that a colleague considers hatred a relatively generous assessment of your character. Franken gave the man an entire chapter, and when Amy Klobuchar ran a joke about Carnival’s infamous poop cruise past him, Franken suggested that Cruz was full of shit. He called Cruz “singularly dishonest,” “exceptionally smarmy,” and a sociopath, and described him on CNN as the toxic coworker who microwaves fish in the office. Franken’s wife, Franni, had an even better explanation: Cruz is the love child of Joe McCarthy and Dracula. Personally, I think that assessment is unfair to Dracula. At least Dracula had the decency to disappear when the sun came up. Ted Cruz will ruin your entire afternoon and then ask whether you have considered making a campaign contribution.
Franken eventually sold an “I Hate Ted Cruz” pint glass featuring a caricature he drew while sitting across from Cruz on the Judiciary Committee. Ted’s devastating comeback was to suggest Franken had too much time on his hands. That’s it. A Harvard-educated attorney, former presidential candidate, and sitting United States senator got publicly roasted on merchandise and responded with the verbal equivalent of asking to speak to the manager. When Franken guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live, he explained that Cruz is one of the most famous senators in America because “he’s a huge dick.” I have to admire Franken’s restraint. He spent years studying this man up close and somehow managed to summarize the entire research project in five words.
The hatred is bipartisan, which is almost touching when you consider how divided this country has become. In 2016, Lindsey Graham stood in front of a room full of lawmakers and reporters and said, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.” A Republican said that about another Republican, in a room full of Republicans, and the room laughed. You know you’ve reached a special level of political achievement when your own colleagues treat the hypothetical murder of you as a bipartisan team-building exercise. Lindsey Graham, a man who subsequently turned embarrassing himself for Donald Trump into a competitive sport, looked at Ted Cruz and decided there was a limit to how much bullshit even he could tolerate.
In the spirit of fairness, I’ll give Ted a modicum of acknowledgement. When FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatened ABC with “the easy way or the hard way” over a Jimmy Kimmel joke Trump didn’t like, Cruz called it a mafia shakedown “right out of Goodfellas.” He was right. Then, in the same breath, he called Kimmel “profoundly unfunny” and “bitter and nasty,” because Ted Cruz is physically incapable of doing something decent without immediately making everybody regret giving him credit. The man couldn’t defend the First Amendment without attaching a Yelp review of the comedian exercising it. Nevertheless, I’ll give him his one gold star. Somebody laminate it before he trades it for a photograph with Trump. That is where my generosity begins and ends, because Cruz has spent the rest of his career bending over, sticking his ass out for Donald Trump, and asking, “Would you like to kick me again, Mr. President? I can bend over a little farther if that helps.” If Trump ever told Ted to get on all fours and bark for an endorsement, I’d be less surprised by Ted’s compliance than by his insistence on knowing what breed of dog the president preferred.
And we certainly can’t forget how this spineless jackass earned the name Cancún Cruz. In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri left hundreds of thousands of Texans without power or safe drinking water. Families were freezing in their homes, infrastructure was collapsing, and people were trying to figure out how to keep their loved ones alive. Ted surveyed the emergency, considered the responsibilities of public office, and decided the most pressing question was whether the resort in Mexico had a heated pool. He packed up the family and flew to Cancún. When the photographs surfaced, Ted claimed that school had been canceled, his daughters wanted to take a trip with friends, and he was just being a “good dad” who planned to fly down and come right back.
A good dad? Well, isn’t that precious? So let me see if I understand this correctly. You wanted to be a good father, but you had absolutely no problem being a weak-ass husband when Donald Trump publicly humiliated your wife, or a weak-ass son when that same man dragged your father’s name into the Kennedy assassination. You could stand up for your daughters’ vacation plans, but defending your wife and your father was evidently a bridge too far. Ted, you went one for three in the family loyalty department and somehow expected everybody to give you a standing ovation. Meat Loaf famously sang that two out of three ain’t bad. This sorry bastard couldn’t even clear that bar. And the one category where he claims success involved abandoning his freezing constituents for a Mexican resort. His children deserved a good father. Texas deserved a senator who understood that public service occasionally requires you to remain in the fucking country.
Then the New York Times obtained family text messages showing the getaway had been thrown together after two days without power. Ted came home to a Houston police escort through the airport, at a moment when the department was already stretched thin by the storm, and to trucks rolling through the city declaring, “Texans froze. Ted fled.” Eventually he admitted the trip was “obviously a mistake.” No shit, Sherlock. A man who graduated from Princeton and Harvard needed a public-relations catastrophe to discover that abandoning your constituents during a deadly winter storm might reflect poorly on your job performance. Somewhere between “my daughters made me do it” and “I was just being a good dad,” did anybody consider telling the truth? Or is honesty considered an elective at Harvard Law School?
Here in Southern California, Karen Bass just received a rather unpleasant education in what absence can cost a politician. She was in Ghana as part of President Biden’s delegation when the fires tore through the Palisades and Altadena, and less than two years later she conceded the mayor’s race to Nithya Raman. Bass was conducting official business, and voters still held her accountable. Ted Cruz knew what was happening in his state, caught a flight to a Mexican resort anyway, offered a ridiculous explanation, and still managed to get reelected in 2024. Texans gave him another six years. He must have thought political consequences were something that happened to other people. Well, Ted, I have some wonderful news, and I hope you’re sitting down somewhere comfortable, preferably nowhere near an international airport.
Texas is blue, you miserable son of a bitch.
Oh, how I have waited to write those words. Texas. The Lone Star State. The Republican Party’s beloved electoral fortress. The state conservatives treated like the family ranch they would inherit regardless of how badly they managed the property. The state where Republicans spent decades congratulating themselves for having permanently defeated Democrats, only to wake up on November 4 and discover that the voters had changed the locks. Democrats swept the statewide races. James Talarico defeated Ken Paxton for the United States Senate. Gina Hinojosa defeated Greg Abbott for governor. And Ted Cruz, the man who once believed Republican dominance in Texas was as permanent as his willingness to embarrass himself, is now the last statewide elected Republican standing. Imagine spending your entire political career warning Texans that Democrats would destroy their way of life, only to become the lone Republican souvenir left over after voters finish cleaning house.
And the funniest part? Ted had to say it himself. In a post running more than 1,700 words, Cruz wrote, “Texas is blue. That is a hard sentence to utter.” Oh, Ted, you poor baby. Was it hard? Did your tongue cramp? Did somebody need to bring you a glass of water and a therapy dog? You spent years cheerleading for a political movement that treated cruelty as public policy and obedience to Donald Trump as a personality trait. You helped make the Republican Party so politically repulsive that Texas voters finally decided they had seen enough. And now the words “Texas is blue” are giving you emotional distress? Good. Write them again. Write them on the chalkboard a hundred times. Put them on your refrigerator. Hell, print them on a beach towel and take them to Cancún. You’ve already established that Mexico is where you go when Texas has a problem you would rather not deal with.
On his podcast, Cruz called the election a “blue tsunami,” an “ass-kicking,” and a “Watergate-level repudiation.” I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. Ted Cruz, of all people, was suddenly capable of recognizing a political disaster once it arrived at his own doorstep. For ten years, this man functioned as a human welcome mat for Donald Trump, and now he’s standing in the wreckage with a clipboard, conducting an inspection like some concerned building commissioner. He blamed the president he’s been carrying water for since 2016, declaring, “Tariffs have made everything too expensive, and the Iran war has dragged on too long.” Well, congratulations, Senator. You have successfully identified the fire after helping purchase the gasoline, distribute the matches, and disable the sprinkler system. Would you also like credit for noticing that the building is warm?
