Ben Shapiro defends Ted Cruz over Cancun trip fiasco despite slamming Nancy Pelosi as 'elitist' for salon visit
Republican Senator Ted Cruz has landed in hot water after he recently flew with his family to Cancun, Mexico, while most of his home state, Texas, faces massive power outage and freezing temperatures during a once-in-a-century winter storm that has ravaged the state the past few days. However, conservative commentator, Ben Shapiro, who once slammed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over her visit to a salon during Covid-19 ordinances in September 2020, has jumped to Cruz's defense.
Cruz admitted the trip was "obviously a mistake" as the public called for his resignation and he ended up putting the blame for the trip on his daughters, saying that he wanted "to be a good dad". He has since returned to Texas on Thursday, February 18, following the blowup of the controversy.
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Shapiro's comments came on his show, 'The Ben Shapiro Show' hosted by The Daily Wire. In it, he criticized the outrage over Cruz's Cancun visit, which while Shapiro admitted was "bad optics," he slammed politics as being "performative. Shapiro said, "Meanwhile the media are going nuts today because Ted Cruz, apparently, is in Cancun. Now, I will admit that this is bad optics. Of course it's bad optics. Whenever there's a crisis, if you are seen to be having any sort of good time because our politics are incredibly stupid, this mean that you're responsible for the crisis. Everything in politics is performative right now."
Ben Shapiro: "It's not a real time crisis that Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, can do anything about...Do they expect Ted to go there with, like, a blowtorch and start defrosting all of the pipelines?" pic.twitter.com/Y36OWJLsXz
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) February 18, 2021
He continued, "Members of Congress don't do anything for a living. All they do is gather once every so often to spend too much of your money. And so, everything becomes performative. Right? The reason why AOC is a star is because she goes to immigration facilities and takes photoshoots outside of immigration facilities being emotional in response to what is going on, apparently, inside the immigration facilities," referring to House Representative (D-NY) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's visit to migrant detention centers at the border.
Shapiro then said, "I mean, the more performative you are in politics the better you do these days. That is just the reality of the situation. So I get that it's bad optics for Ted Cruz to take his family on vacation to Cancun right now. It even sounds bad."
He continues, "But let's be real about this for just one second. This is one of the stupidest aspects of our politics. What exactly -- it's not a real-time crisis that Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, can do anything about. Because the senator from Texas is, in fact, in the United States Senate. He is a federal officer. Right? He is a federal elected official. This is up to the mayor of Houston and, like, the governor of Texas and all of the people who are state-level officials."
Shapiro then wondered whether Cruz was expected to use a blowtorch to defrost pipelines, saying, "I just wonder, what is Ted Cruz -- do they expect Ted to go there with, like, a blowtorch and start defrosting all of the pipelines? He can do what Beto O'Rourke does and he can tweet out a bunch of links of people who are helping out. I'm sure Ted's already done that."
He continued, "But the notion that the gravest of all sins is that you took your family to a place that is not Texas in the middle of a bad situation in Texas -- my favorite part of this is all the journalists in their heated apartments in New York who are tweeting angrily about all of this. 'I can't believe Ted Cruz would do something like this.' Oh, yeah, I see you there on the ground handing out food. Really well done there, really well done.
Contrarily, Shapiro was much more critical of Nancy Pelosi's visit to a salon in September 2020. At the time he said, "Everybody who owns the hair salons has to shut down their business but Nancy Pelosi, she can get her hair done today because Nancy Pelosi is a very important person. Unlike you, and unlike me, and unlike anybody else, the rules don't apply to Nancy Pelosi." He also slammed Pelosi's "complete disconnect" comparing her to 18th-century French queen Marie Antoinette, saying, "Let them eat outdoor hair salons."