Sen. Ted Cruz is chalking the media’s “obsession” with his recent trip to Cancun up to “acute Trump withdrawal.”
The Texas Republican, who returned to his home in Houston on Thursday after he attracted public ridicule for his decision late Wednesday to travel with his family to Cancun, Mexico, as his state faced a historic winter storm and power grid failures, argued that journalists’ fixation on his recent travel was driven by the relative quiet of former President Donald Trump since departing office.
“I will say, to venture into practicing medicine, that I actually want to diagnose the media. The media is suffering from acute Trump withdrawal, where for four years every day, they could foam at the mouth and be obsessed with Donald Trump, and now that he has receded from their day-to-day storyline, they don’t know what to do with themselves,” he said during an interview with conservative radio host Dana Loesch.
THE CRUZ CANCUN STORY IS TRIVIAL COMPARED TO CUOMO’S ACTUAL SCANDAL
While conceding that “it was dumb to do,” Cruz insisted he was trying to be a good father to his children by evacuating them out of the state.
“I was trying to be a dad and take care of my family, and I think all of us across Texas were taking care of our families,” he added.
The 2016 presidential contender also acknowledged the divergent coverage of his vacation and that of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has attracted controversy for a now-reversed executive order allowing those with COVID-19 into nursing homes and subsequent reports about undercounting in the nursing home death rate.
“I think the conduct of Andrew Cuomo’s administration is deeply concerning. … His aides have admitted to that they were actively lying about these policies,” said Cruz, who called for a congressional inquiry into Cuomo’s actions in addition to the one reportedly being conducted by the Justice Department and FBI.
Cruz noted that the “deadly serious” policy mistake that “may have cost thousands or even tens of thousands of lives” is being glossed over by the mainstream media.
“The mainstream media doesn’t want to cover it at all. You know, Chris Cuomo wants to play footsie with his brother and have a hugfest because CNN doesn’t want to cover news, and nobody else covers it,” he said, adding that “our media should leave the game of politics and being partisans and actually be journalists and cover the news.”
Coverage of the nursing home scandal was sparse across the major media networks. A Fox News assessment published late last week found the Cuomo scandal received fewer than three minutes of coverage across the six most-watched shows on CNN and MSNBC, while 46 minutes were dedicated to Cruz’s trip to Mexico. Additionally, ABC News spent under one minute informing viewers of the federal investigation into the Cuomo scandal while dedicating almost 4 times more airtime to Cruz’s vacation.
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Cruz offered a theory on why the media focused on his travel plans more than the Cuomo controversy.
“Donald Trump broke the media, and so they don’t want to do that,” he concluded. “They just want to engage in political attacks.”
