Ted Cruz likes to spend his time running away from natural disasters and
anything that could potentially help his constituents in Texas.
He also likes to spend his time engaging in political theater and
then searching himself on Twitter following the theater that he engages in.
Case in point, the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Jackson.
She's been dealing with the Senate hearings for her confirmation and
it has been an absolute clown show with one Republican senator after the other
engaging in culture war nonsense, asking her questions that have nothing to do
with the position that she's supposed to be confirmed for, just complete garbage.
And there was this one moment between Ted Cruz and Dick Durbin, Senator Dick Durbin,
who's the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that was incredibly
frustrating to watch and was very clearly nothing more than theater.
And immediately afterward, what did Ted Cruz do?
Well, why don't we read from Los Angeles Times reporter, Nolan McCaskill,
who said this and shared a picture.
Ted Cruz looks like he's checking his mentions after his back and
forths with Ketanji Brown Jackson and Dick Durbin.
He's had his head down during all of Cohen's testimony, even as Sasse and
Tillis are clearly listening to their Democratic colleague and
the nominee before them.
And so, luckily, there was a colleague of McCaskill's sitting behind Ted Cruz and
Kent Nishimura caught this image, you can see it on the lower right hand side,
it's Ted Cruz looking down at his phone, can confirm this,
he was searching Twitter for his name.
This was right after his exchange with Chairman Durban.
And you might be wondering, what was that exchange?
Unfortunately, let me remind you all of what that looked like.
>> Why are you not allowing her to answer the question?
There's not another senator here that you've not allowed her to answer
the question.
I'm not asking another question, but allow her to answer the question,
Chairman Durban.
Why do you not want the American people to know what happened in the Stuart case, or
any of these cases?
Chairman Durban,
I've never seen the chairman refuse to allow a witness to answer a question.
You can bang it as loud as you want.
>> Or I can just tell you, at some point you have to follow the rules.
>> Okay, well you let her answer the question?
You've been interrupting.
And, by the way, with Senator Graham, it went ten minutes over.
You've taken a big chunk of the time.
Will you allow her to answer the question?
>> You've given her, >> Why are you afraid of her?
She's welcome to answer it, right now.
Will you let her?
>> Senator Coons?
>> Will you let her? So, no?
You don't want her to answer the question?
>> Senator Coons.
>> Will you let her answer the question?
>> Chairman Durban.
>> Apparently we're very afraid of the American people hearing the answer to
that question.
>> We hear in the Senate, in this committee today,
are in the middle of a policy fight.
>> Yeah, that's what that exchange looked like.
And we've been covering the hearings.
We've been covering the types of questions Republican senators have been asking of
Judge Jackson and they're all steeped in manufactured culture war narratives and
nothing more than that.
I mean, you have Senator Blackburn asking her how she defines a woman and
we all know what that's all about, right?
Non-stop fearmongering about the transgender community, a community
that has been not only disenfranchised, brutalized, completely demonized.
One of the most powerless groups of people in this country have been used
as nothing more but a prop in their culture war narratives.
And while they engage in this theater, and that's all it is to them,
they're not interested in representing your best interest.
They're not concerned at all, at all about any type of economic
anxiety you may have despite their faux populist rhetoric,
they're not worried about anything that impacts your life day in day out.
They don't even care about the Supreme Court nomination.
All they see this as is a stage in which they are able to posture,
to engage in theatrics, to make it appear as though they're doing something,
when in reality they are doing nothing.
All of their time doing substantive things is fundraising.
And any time, there's any attention towards a political hearing, any type
of political debate or discussion, they just use it for posturing.
And while they manufacture culture wars, while they make powerless people out to be
the boogey men in this country, what they really end up doing is they cause harm.
They target individuals who are then bullied, who were then harassed, who
are then treated like they're some sort of demons, when in reality there are fellow
Americans who deserve our support, who deserve our respect, who deserve our love.
That's it.
The only reason why they're utilized this way and
treated with such hatred by these Republicans and by these lawmakers
is because these lawmakers have nothing else to offer their voters.
So you have this clown of a politician, Ted Cruz, engaged in that political.
Look at that clown.
Look at that little bitch, okay?
After Donald Trump calls his wife ugly goes in phone bangs with for
him like a freaking clown.
It's really hard not to curse on this show sometimes, okay?
Absolute coward, absolute coward, all right?
Little bitch boy.
Then he turns around and
pretends like he's a tough guy during a SCOTUS hearing, that's who Cruz is.
And what does this kind of stuff lead to?
It actually does have an impact on society.
It has an impact on the very people that they target in their line of questioning.
And I wanna share just some portions of this Twitter
thread from a mother who has a transgender daughter.
I believe this is in the UK.
But the theme is very similar to what we're seeing in the United States.
Because these are real people, okay?
These are not people engaged in theater.
These are not people who are posturing.
These aren't narcissists who engage in stunts and
then search themselves on Google or Twitter or Facebook.
These are real human beings who are impacted
by the garbage that we see from these cowardly politicians.
Millie Corner writes,
my daughter is in her second to last year of studying medicine.
She has a smaller frame than her cisgendered sister and
refuses to join any sports clubs out of fear of being confronted and harassed.
She fears meeting someone in a club and
having to out herself or being accused of deception.
I watch her neglect her studies and scroll through social media where I find
grown women my age telling her she's a fetishist, a pervert, a creep.
It devastates her.
Nobody knows of her trans status, and nobody ever will.
She is now utterly ashamed of herself.
These people are in parliament and the lords.
They are influencing legislation.
Parents of trans children are being charged in Texas.
The misinformation and smearing of the trans community has gone on long enough.
I refuse to lose my daughter over the sake of middle aged women.
So in this case she's talking about turf women or women who identify as turfs.
But think about what it's like to live your life in fear like that, right?
Think about what it's like to hear people in positions of power make you out to be
a terrible dangerous person when already you're going through something that's so
different from most people, that can already be so isolating in and of itself.
And now think about people destroying your life that way,
having that kind of negative impact on your life that way, just so
they can give their voters the illusion of fighting for them when in reality,
these are the same politicians who helped corporations rob their constituents, who
cover for corporations when they engage in wage theft of their constituents.
These are the same politicians who run away to Cancún,
just as hundreds of their constituents are dying in the middle of a natural disaster.
That's who Ted Cruz is.
If anyone deserves our disdain, it's clowns like him.