The Guardian
The junior senator from Texas skipped his state again to joke about his trip to Cancún and warn ‘Trump ain’t going anywhere’ An unchastened Senator Ted Cruz quipped: ‘Orlando is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancún, but it’s nice!’ Photograph: John Raoux/AP America’s political divide was on display on Friday as Joe Biden travelled to Texas to comfort victims of a deadly winter storm while Ted Cruz, a senator from the state, basked in Florida sunshine and joked about his recent holiday in Mexico. The US president, who made empathy the core of his election campaign, and the first lady, Jill Biden, were traveling to Houston for his first trip to a major disaster site since taking office on 20 January. At least 40 people in Texas died as a result of severe winter weather that caused widespread power outages and frozen pipes that burst and flooded homes. Millions of residents lost heat and running water, and more than a million are still under orders to boil water before drinking it. Biden was due to meet local leaders to discuss relief and recovery efforts, visit a food bank and meet volunteers. He was to be accompanied by Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, and John Cornyn, a Republican senator from the state. But Cruz was instead enjoying a temperature of 27C in Orlando, Florida, and lapping up applause from the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives, where former president Donald Trump is the headline speaker on Sunday. Addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Cruz made light of a controversy last week in which he flew to Cancún, Mexico, for a family holiday even as millions of Texans shivered in unheated homes. “Orlando is awesome,” Cruz said. “It’s not as nice as Cancún, but it’s nice!” The crowd laughed at the quip, which critics said showed Trump loyalists’ sense of impunity and shamelessness. Cruz went on to rail against “cancel culture”, coronavirus restrictions in restaurants and the “shrill” and “angry” political left. “We’re gathered at a time where the hard left, where the socialists control the levers of government, where they control the White House, where they control every executive branch, where they control both houses of Congress,” Cruz said. Ted Cruz places his mask on after speaking to a radio station set up at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images “Bernie [Sanders] is wearing mittens and AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] is telling us she was ‘murdered’.” Cruz put a shrill emphasis on the word “murdered” to mock the Democratic congresswoman who has told how she feared for her life during the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January. He went on: “And the media desperately, desperately, desperately wants to see a Republican civil war. Liberty is under assault and what are we going to do? I’ll tell you, we will fight.” Cruz was among the most prominent Senate Republicans who voted to challenge the result of the 2020 election. He issued a warning to members of his own party who want to “erase the last four years” and banish Trump’s “Make America great again” movement. “They look at Donald Trump and they look at the millions and millions of people inspired who went to the battle fighting alongside President Trump, and they’re terrified and they want him to go away. Let me tell you this right now: Donald J Trump ain’t going anywhere.” That promise got the biggest applause of his speech. Cruz went on to assail the new administration in comments that demonstrated what an uphill struggle Biden faces to make good on his promise of unity and healing. “These are dark days, and the media tells us this is the new ‘galactic empire’ forever and a thousand years,” Cruz said. “But already Joe Biden and the radicals in his administration, they are already overshooting, they are already going too far. Their policies don’t work. They are disasters. They are bad. They are destroying jobs. They’re stripping our freedom. And there is a natural pendulum to politics and the country will come back to sanity.” He roared loudly: “In the immortal words of William Wallace: ‘Freedom!’” Cruz is among numerous pro-Trump speakers at CPAC including former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley and congressmen Steve Scalise and Matt Gaetz. False claims that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden are a popular talking point at the conference. Joe Biden greets the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, at Ellington Field joint reserve base in Houston, Texas, as he arrives following severe winter storms. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images On Sunday Trump, 74, is expected to dangle the possibility of running for president again in 2024, a prospect that complicates life for other hopefuls including former vice-president Mike Pence, who turned down an invitation to CPAC, and Pompeo. There was vivid proof of Trump’s continued dominance of the Republican party when a golden statue of him was seen at CPAC. The kitsch monument is larger than life, with a golden head and Trump’s trademark suit jacket with white shirt and red tie. Bizarrely, the disgraced ex-commander-in-chief also appears to be sporting Stars and Stripes shorts. Attendees can buy $2 bumper stickers that say “Trump is my president”, “Biden is not my president”, “Trump 2024” and a picture of the 45th president with the question “Miss me yet?” One T-shirt has a picture of Trump with the slogan “Undefeated impeachment champ”; another shows Biden with an Adolf Hitler-style moustache and the words “Not my dictator”. CPAC moved from its normal venue in Maryland to Florida because of coronavirus safety restrictions. Organisers have told attendees to wear masks but a TV reporter who went inside the venue estimated that only about 60% of people were wearing masks correctly. During his visit to Houston, Biden planned to visit a mass coronavirus vaccination centre run by the federal government. This week he commemorated the 50 millionth Covid-19 vaccination since he took office, halfway toward his goal of 100 million shots by his 100th day in office. That celebration followed a moment of silence to mark the passage earlier this week of 500,000 US deaths blamed on the disease. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Thursday: “The president doesn’t view the crisis and the millions of people who’ve been impacted by it as a Democratic or Republican issue.”