Ted Cruz trolled by Senate colleagues with Cancun trip memes in gym locker room: 'Welcome back, Ted!'
Ted Cruz was the subject of a prank in the locker room of the Senate gym on Wednesday morning following his notorious Cancun trip, according to a report. NBC reporters Carol Lee and Leigh Ann Caldwell reviewed materials provided by two sources, who recounted how gym rats in the Capitol complex came across color printouts of the Texas senator in his airport attire.
Lee and Caldwell wrote how the "rendering featured a manipulated photo of Cruz from his well-documented trip to Mexico, dragging his luggage across an arctic landscape while holding a tropical cocktail garnished with a slice of fruit in his other hand." "Bienvenido de Nuevo, Ted!" the printouts read, or "welcome back."
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According to NBC, one of the memes reportedly showed Cruz walking toward Sen Bernie Sanders' viral pose in mittens at President Joe Biden's inauguration and was photoshopped into an icy backdrop
The blowback against the Texas Republican intensified after Houston police confirmed they had received a request for security assistance from Cruz's office, and were obliged to send a detail with him to the airport despite a dearth of first responders amid the killer freeze.
That said, the memes were reportedly taken down sometime later on Wednesday. Cruz and his family members received considerable pushback as millions of Texans suffered without power or heat during the winter storm. According to The Sun, parents at the school attended by Cruz's children were furious and demanded they quarantine before returning to school. The Texas senator also faced backlash after he started giving out water shortly after returning to the state, sharing a photo of himself holding cases of Dasani and using the hashtag #TexasStrong.
Cruz admitted that the trip was "obviously a mistake," but ended up blaming his daughters for it, saying he was only "wanting to be a good dad." "In hindsight, I wouldn’t have done it,” he told reporters after returning to Texas. “I was trying to be a dad. And all of us have made decisions — when you got two girls who have been cold for two days and haven’t had heat or power and they’re saying, ‘Hey look, we don’t have school, why don’t we go. Let’s get out of here.’”
#SoIWentToCancun was trending late on Sunday, February 21, after a controversial statement given to CBS' Face The Nation by Cruz's office regarding his trip. "Before the storms hit, Senator Cruz spoke with a meteorologist about the seriousness of the projected storms. Senator Cruz connected the meteorologist to Governor Abbott, and warned Texans early on to take the storm seriously," the statement read.
Memes and GIFs poking fun at the Texas Senator inundated social media after the statement went viral online.
Earlier this week, a party store in Dallas unveiled an all-new piñata dedicated to Cruz, showing the senator wearing his Texas flag face mask with a gray shirt and jeans while carrying his suitcase and passport on his way to the holiday destination.