Ted Cruz positioned himself as a defender of President Donald Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud that doesn’t exist. The lies Cruz echoed from Trump ultimately led to this week’s deadly riot, so now the Texas Republican is facing major blowback for that decision. It wasn’t a wise move for Cruz to put a girdled fascistic septuagenarian above his constituents, but here we are. Two major newspapers from Cruz’s state have had it with the Senator’s part in inciting the armed insurrection. The Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News want Cruz to resign, because as the former noted, “Your lies cost lives.”
“Cruz knew exactly what he was doing, what he was risking, and who he was inciting as he stood on the Senate floor Wednesday and passionately fed the farce of election fraud even as a seething crowd of believers was being whipped up by President Trump a short distance away,” the paper states.
“Cruz, it should also be noted, knew exactly whose presidency he was defending,” it continues. ‘That of a man he called in 2016 a “narcissist,” a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.”’
The paper notes that “those terrorists wouldn’t have been at the Capitol if you hadn’t staged this absurd challenge to the 2020 results in the first place.” While saying that Cruz may not be prosecuted for inciting the deadly riots, the newspaper writes that “there is no election to hold you accountable until 2024. So, we call for another consequence, one with growing support across Texas: Resign.”,
Stay up-to-date with the latest news!
Subscribe and start recieving our daily emails.
The San Antonio Express-News had a similar call for Cruz to step down and called for Trump to be impeached and convicted.
The paper calls for Cruz to be “expelled from the Senate,” adding that, “He, too, must be held accountable for his efforts to undermine the presidential election.”
‘It was Cruz who gathered support of other senators and senators-elect to object to the formal counting of electoral votes, not because there was voter fraud but because of the “unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities,”‘the paper writes.
And it is Cruz who said only after the siege the “president’s rhetoric was irresponsible” and “we are now in the process of a peaceful transition of power to the next administration, the Joe Biden presidency.” He could have said this long before. After an insurrection is too late.
“It remains to be seen if the assault on the Capitol is a warning sign or a turning point for this nation,” the op-ed concludes. “If we seek a turning point in support of democracy, then those who have damaged it must be sanctioned and repudiated.”
For our country to heal, people need to be held accountable so that this never happens again. Americans are reeling from multiple crises, and Trump and his Republican enablers just added another one to the list.
Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr, under Creative Commons license 2.0
