Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz was swiftly put in his place after attempting to mock Senate candidate James Talarico's masculinity on Fox News Monday night only to be reminded of his own lack of masculinity.
President Donald Trump has said Talarico is “a weird—a weird—candidate,” a line that was quickly incorporated into an advertisement from Paxton, who argued that that Talarico is unfit to represent Texans partly because of his supposed veganism.
Members of the right-wing have followed suit and described Talarico as an “effeminate, estrogenetic, catty, and totally embarrassing” candidate.
That of course includes Cruz, who made the following remarks to Fox News personality Sean Hannity:
"I gotta say, if you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, ‘masculine’ would not be one of them. I mean, this guy, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather.”
"This is also a guy whose campaign ran a vegan no-meat campaign because meat is destroying the world. He is opposed to oil and gas. This is the Democrat party."
You can hear what he said in the video below.
That's a laugh given Cruz has been known to run off when people in his state are suffering and can't even be trusted to defend his own wife.
Cruz faced considerable national backlash after he flew to Cancún while millions of people went without food and water as a result of the February 2021 Texas power disaster. At least 246 people were killed directly or indirectly; some estimates suggested as many as 702 people were killed as a result of the crisis.
Cruz claimed he went to Cancún to accompany his daughters, an apology that did not sit well with his critics. He insisted that his only faux pas had been simply "wanting to be a good dad," claiming he'd only accompanied them for a single night before flying back to Texas. However, Cruz’s social media accounts had not acknowledged any official travel.
And let's not forget that Cruz lost the Republican nomination to then-candidate Trump in 2016 then faced significant criticism for his often deferential attitude toward Trump during his presidency.
There is a contentious history between the two. Trump openly mocked Cruz's wife, Heidi Cruz, by comparing her looks to those of his wife Melania, a former model.
Trump also once suggested that Cruz's father may have been involved in the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy, claiming that Cruz's father was with Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald "prior to Oswald being, you know, shot."
Despite that, Cruz, who once referred to Trump as a "pathological liar," has gone all in for Trump, which is pretty sad when you stop and think about it.
People were quick to call Cruz out.
Talarico has taken the attacks from the GOP in stride.
Last week, he went viral for a speech he gave responding to attacks against his masculinity. In it, he stressed that "real men" "don't lie and cheat their way through life, they don't enrich themselves by stealing from other people, and they don't sell their soul to the highest bidder."
Talarico's remarks were jabs at Trump and Paxton, who both have long records of criminality. Paxton has since doubled down on the claims that Talarico is a "vegan."
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