The Press Box - Andrew Cuomo in Trouble, Ted Cruz in Cancun

Episode Date: February 22, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down how two politicians are finding themselves in trouble amid national disasters. They discuss Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes in New York throughout the pandemic (2:20) before weighing in on Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun amidst a winter storm that left millions of Texans without power, food, and/or water (21:20). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twice a week, Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay dissect the biggest topics in black culture, politics, and sports on their show, Higher Learning. They discuss the most important and timely conversations while also frequently inviting guests on the podcast and occasionally debating each other. Check out Higher Learning on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, buried in the Ted Cruz Cancun scandal, was this fact. Ted Cruz's dog is named Snowflake. Snowflake. What I want to know is, is that the best detail you've read in a news story since we found out Gary Hart went on a boat called Monkey Business? Oh, man. Well, I mean, Ted Cruz's own boat, I think, is called National Ambitions. So that's pretty bad, too. Snowflake, snowflake works on a lot of different levels. I mean, that was really just one of the poor dog being left alone in the freezing temperatures. But, That is just a wonderful, wonderful name for a dog,

especially for a right-wing politician who's, you know, disappointing the entire world. I think national ambition sprung a leak this week. No, but that is, and then the forlorn picture of the dog just gazing out of the door of the Cruz estate. I just don't, I don't know, you know, sometimes, again, the whole, the thing is, the whole idea of just Ted Cruz going, to Cancun was a seemingly ridiculously irresistible, too perfect for word story.

But then the fact that there was also a dog buried within it. Yeah. There's just, journalists can just take the day off, right? Like, we just, we can do some reporting. Maybe the New York Times is going to turn up Heidi Cruz's text. But otherwise, we'll just, just transcribe what you're seeing. Don't try to put too much polish on it. We'll be fine.

Coming up on today's show, it's real simple. We talk Andrew Cuomo, we talk Ted Cruz. All that more in the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Okay, David, which fallen political hero do we want to take on first? Andrew Cuomo or Ted Cruz? Well, given that you're really limiting my choices, one's funnier than the other one.

I guess we should be responsible and take on Cuomo first. That sounds good. This is quite a story, and it all ties back to Cuomo's handling of nursing homes during the COVID pandemic. And how many nursing home residents died of the coronavirus? So for a long time, journalists had stats to determine if a person in New York died of coronavirus in a nursing home. But the data released by the state made it difficult to tell when a person got coronavirus in a nursing home but later died in a hospital. Now, if you want to know how many nursing home residents died of coronavirus, you really do need the full set of data. So long story short, lawmakers finally got that data. And indeed, the stats showed that thousands more New York nursing home residents had died of the coronavirus in hospitals than we previously knew.

So why the delay in releasing that information? Well, Melissa DeRosa, a Cuomo aide, told lawmakers that they were worried about a probe from the Trump Justice Department. As the New York Post, which broke the story reported, DeRosa said, quote, we froze, end quote, out of fear that the true numbers would, quote, be used against us, end quote, implying that team Cuomo made a political calculation. Now, Andrew Cuomo, David, is not much of an apologizer, but he acknowledged that it was a mistake not to release the data. Democrats then started criticizing Cuomo, which brings us to the next part of our story.

According to CNN, Cuomo reached out to Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim with some major T.J. Ducklow energy. Kim told CNN, quote, Governor Cuomo called me directly on Thursday to threaten my career if I did not cover up for Melissa De Rosa and what she said. He tried to pressure me to issue a statement and it was a very traumatizing experience. Cuomo, and this is Kim talking, said, quote, we're in this business together and we don't cross certain lines. And he said, I hadn't seen his wrath and that he can destroy me. CNN did print this sentence. Quote, Cuomo's advisor denied that the governor threatened to destroy Kim.

Now, journalism tip, if you have to print the sentence that you denying that you are threatening to destroy somebody, you are already in trouble. The sentence itself is almost incriminating. Yeah. Woof. You know, there are so many, this and the crew's story, too. I mean, they're interconnected in so many ways. But we're going to be hard-pressed to avoid really obvious turns of phrase. Let's just jump right in.

The cover-up is worse than the crime, I think, is where we start on this one. Maybe not. Maybe the crime is the real thing. I mean, listen, he was right and being, I mean, somewhat justified and being worried about the Trump response because the right-wing had already become sort of obsessed with the nursing home deaths that had been admitted to, right? I mean, and that's not to justify anything that the Cuomo administration did, but like, but, but the idea that that, that, you know,

Trump wouldn't have targeted them over that sort of information. I mean, I think that's, that's probably correct. And that's not an excuse for what happened. I mean, I'm indebted, I should say, to my brother-in-law, Amit Prakash, who has a newsletter called No Politics at the Dinner Table and who has written just written about this. But this is a really wide, I mean,

this is a really, really huge issue, right? I mean, it wasn't just that they fibbed about the number. It was about, it was that they were worried, I mean,

they were so worried that the hospitals would be overrun. They passed this really weird blanket indemnity law that, I mean, that, that indemnified nursing homes

from anything that might happen, not just with COVID-19, but anything else that would happen during this period. And the nursing homes, unsurprisingly, are huge donors to Cuomo. They, and then even after it became clear that there would be space in the hospitals,

they made the response, they made the decision to keep sending elderly people in this condition to nursing homes, presumably to open the hospitals back up for non-COVID related procedures, which, you know, you can look at positively or, you know, suspiciously, depending on where you're sitting. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it reflects really poorly on, on Andrew Cuomo. And think that the biggest issue here, well, the reason why this has become such a big news story, media story, is because he was such a darling of the media during the early days of COVID-19. Now, does that, is there a direct connection to that between that and this? I don't even think there needs to be, you know, I mean, even during the, when we were talking

about him as a media sensation in what March and April, or was it even before that of 2020, it was in contrast to our president, right? It was this sort of, it doesn't, I mean, explicitly, what you and I were saying about President Trump at that point in time was it doesn't matter if you failed up to this point. It doesn't matter if you're failing as you're speaking, but there's a certain amount of duty

that just being present and being honest with the people who elected you and the people who didn't, you can be a good leader. and even admit wrongdoing or push the wrongdoing, push those investigations off to the future, and people will forgive you. I think people were, you know, open to Cuomo without being particularly suspicious

of the politics of the situation or anything that might be going on in the background. But now is the time when we look into the facts and we realize that there was, you know, I mean, anytime you're covering up death, you have to be held responsible for that. Well, yeah, I think there's two parts of the heroic glow you're talking about that settled over Cuomo last spring. The most obvious, which is pretty much what you just said, is he was not Donald Trump.

He was not saying that the coronavirus was going to magically go away. He was seemingly not saying like, oh, don't worry about this. We'd just figure it out. He was at least in, you know, performance, taking action, doing something. and you knew that when Donald Trump mostly disappeared from the scene, that every Democratic politician was going to get an extra layer of scrutiny. And when the coronavirus pandemic just entered a different phase, which it appears to have now that we have a vaccine. The second thing, David, and I think we even talked about this back last spring, was his defining quality has always been that he's a bully. That is like Andrew Cuomo's defining political quality.

I'm a bully. and in good times, and I get this from Jimmy Velkin to the Wall Street Journal, it would be, I'm a bully that gets stuff done. So during coronavirus, he was like, look, you may not personally like me. You may not, I may not be a warm and cuddly feel your pain kind of politician, but I'm out here fighting for you. Unlike the president, I'm fighting for you. So it was like almost his sort of defining quality got reimagined as a political action. asset. And he had this, and he had this great run, right? He felt he felt cocky enough that he published a book in October called American Crisis Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with a,

you know, sort of a grave-looking photo of Cuomo on the front with his handsfold. I mean, that, that is amazing in retrospect. That's how good, that's how high he was on his supply of media adoration at that point. Even when the book came out, there is a, there is a kind of concise subset of celebrity or particularly politician memoirs where part of the sales pitch is actually I didn't write that. That was my ghost writer. I did because if he had, if he spent time writing it, it's sort of damning, right? Yeah, it's the book.

There's also that he, we won an Emmy. Am I correct in saying this? I mean, there was a, you did. There was a, you know, the adoration machine. it was in full effect. And, you know, when you live up to sort of the caricature that your worst critics are drawing of you, it stings, right?

I mean, it's incredibly damning. You're right that sort of his caricature was used and was spun into a positive during this crisis. But meanwhile, the negative side of that character was just running rampant in the background, right? I mean, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, the whole situation is just really shocking. And then, you know, it doesn't, it's, but I'm not sure that, I mean, I don't, I think it obviously would have been much less of a big deal.

They'd been straightforward with this stuff. Obviously, it would be much less of a big deal if Andrew Cuomo weren't calling him threatening people on the phone. I mean, I don't know if it's just that the, the scrutiny that he's now under having become this sort of national figure has changed the calculus or that. that COVID has just sort of nationalized anything involving COVID. But, you know, he's operating like a old timey, like Tammany Hall politician here. And all you have to do is just point out of him and say it out loud.

And it's, and it's, it just makes you want to vote him out of office today. I think partly there's a nationalized critique of Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom here in California. Sure. Which is just bigger than, than their own states. But part of it's just like, we were always going to go back. as media, as the public, as lawmakers, as watchdog groups, and figure out what did politicians do during the coronavirus and what worked and what didn't and what was in retrospect the right decision and what was the wrong decision? That was always going to happen, right? Again,

it just, a lot of it got overwhelmed by the immediacy of the situation last year and then also the Trump administration's handling of the situation. But this was always going to be. and lawmakers in New York had wanted this data for months and months because they were thinking the same thing. As you said, Cuomo made a lot of decisions about nursing homes and hospitals, specifically, in the flow of people from one to the other. So they were always going to try to figure out, okay, what did that do? And that's a complicated question in itself. It's not just, okay, we sent somebody, you know, a nursing home had to accept somebody who had COVID-19. It's also you are opening up a bed in a hospital to treat somebody else with COVID-19, right?

Who may be at a different stage of that disease. It's a very, very complicated question, but they're trying to figure, we're trying to figure it out now. Yeah. And, I mean, and Cuomo himself, I think, was trying to make that point when he said maybe the most damning quote of this whole affair, which was, who cares if they died in the nursing home or died in a hospital bed, they died, right? I mean, that's the quote that will now accompany his name every time it appears in print. And it came off sounding really heartless. It was really heartless. The point I think I believe that he was trying to make is we should mourn their death regardless of how they died.

But it's what it sounded like. And in politics, these things matter is who cares if they died, right? And, you know, when you conduct your administration this way, people are justified in hearing that when you say, no matter what you say. And remember, that was a total, the opposite of heroic Cuomo from 2020. Yeah. He was, I do care, right? Message I care, to quote George H.W. Bush. Donald Trump was message I don't care.

I am. I can't emote. I can't do that. Cuomo gained so much currency because he seemed to care. And those kind of distinctions were important. What was really central to Cuomo's performance last year, and every, you know, every governor, every national figure, was that there, you know, it's easy to say we were all in it together.

But there was the feeling that we were sort of figuring out solutions in real time together, right? That even if you and I weren't decision makers, that we were sort of in on it, not even by proxy. We were there watching all these decisions be made. And the idea that, you know, and it was, you felt like, well, this is a tough situation, but people are doing their best. And the idea that there were sort of backroom dealings going on along the way. that people were playing politics, uh,

that's what's most saddening. You know, I mean, that's, that's, that's what sort of stings because, you know,

it's obviously, obviously it was a show. Obviously the entire Cuomo thing was like a performance. But, uh, for the reasons that it was necessary and for the reasons that it was effective, um,

you kind of, I mean, this just sort of blows the whole thing up. No. And I, And I feel you said 900 times on this podcast, performance is important in a national crisis. Donald Trump refused to give the performance. Even there's the baseline necessary performance of a leader in a time of a pandemic and the time of a catastrophe that's now almost killed half a million people.

Like he did it. So the Cuomo show with all those powerpoints and everything, that was important. That was effective. But the second half of that is you also get judged on what you actually did. Yeah. And like I said, now we sort of entered this phase. I want to bring up one amazing detail from the call that Cuomo made to Ron Kim. So Kim said, we're in this business together and we don't cross certain lines.

That's how he recap the Cuomo call. This was from a Cuomo aide who was disputing that characterization. The governor has three witnesses to the conversation. The operable words were to the effect of, I am from Queens to, and people still expect honor and integrity in politics. Now, I just love the thin line between, we're in this business together and we don't cross certain lines and, hey, we're both two guys from Queens and, you know, we have certain expectations.

I'm not totally convinced that those are actually different statements. That's a very, I mean, it's sort of like the, like the bill bar reading of the Russia investigation, right? You just get out there, you just, if you just say, oh, I have a counterpoint, no matter what you say after that, it's sort of interpreted as a counterpoint, right? It's amazing how politics and media sort of work together at times like this. I just hope to win the paperback edition of American Crisis Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic by Andrew Cuomo.

There's a little burst of the top and it's like now with a new afterward, you know, taking to task this entire lie by Letitia James or whoever is actually going to want to to put their name on that. Well, you said if Cuomo didn't write the original version, he could write the afterward. now revised extensively by Andrew Cuomo himself. That would be amazing. We should also have David. Ron Kim was not the only lawmaker who had an Andrew Cuombo experience.

Oh, no. CNN found three additional Democratic New York lawmakers. Quote, they said the administration had aggressively lobbied legislators to speak up in support of his handling of the nursing home-related deaths and that the threats were made against those who are considering a vote to strip Cuomo of his emergency powers. Continuing here, all three. legislators said they were aware of outreach from the governor in which he clearly suggested or explicitly threatened political retaliation if they did not stand by him. Also this, David from CNN, Cuomo's efforts to reach Ron Kim appeared to continue through the weekend. Kim said he received multiple calls from a no caller ID number, followed by

messages from Cuomo Wade saying the governor would like to speak with him again. Kim said he did not return the calls. He kept calling. Wow. Yeah. Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, I mean, I guess the obvious other lesson that you could learn from our former president is, as we said over and over again, it's not too late. You know, you can just start doing the right thing and I think people will appreciate it.

But maybe, obviously, Cuomo's had a long career of the sort of backstage, you know, Malfiz. And so here's a couple more terms of that, huh? All right, David, it's time for the Overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time, send your nominees to at the press box pod, where they are always gratefully received. Our mentions that last week and this weekend were just loaded with Ted Cruz jokes.

Loaded like Ted Cruz's suspiciously large suitcase was loaded on the way to Can If you have not followed this for some reason, Texas Senator Ted Cruz left his home state last Wednesday when millions were without power and water and went to Cancun. And then he said he only did it because he was dropping off his wife and his daughters. He was being a good dad, as he put it. A ton of great jokes, David. Most obviously, flying Ted. Flying Ted. We also had fled Cruz.

Fled Cruz. I enjoyed wasting away in Maga Ritaville. Someone sent us, it took him a second, but he got it. Someone sent us Clear Skies, Cold Heart, Ted Cruz, which is really good. We got Blame Your Daughters at Work Day. Someone else, anyone realized Ted Cruz has no problem crossing a border to give his family a better life. Hmm. And a personal favorite.

Appreciate the subtlety here. Fiesta over country. I love that. Fiesta over country. Thanks to Dan McDowell, Utah Mustaches for Warren, Ray's bait shop, Derek Burke, Ray McDonald, and many, many others. And finally, David, some very cool and inspiring video from the Mars Rover Perseverance, which touched down on the Red Planet on Thursday. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Perseverance Rover claims it was just dropping off daughters on Mars. Thanks to Sean C. Michael J. Anderson, Marcus Crats, Hugh Murphy, and Mike Casson.

If you kept your eye on the ball this week, congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, time for the notebook dump. And we did Andrew Cuomo. So now, David, it's time for Ted Cruz. Did you notice? And I don't even know if we need to do the blow by blow here because everybody knows the story at this point.

But did you notice Wednesday night when those first photos from the airport came out? that even resistance Twitter was like, I'm going to wait. I'm not going to pounce on these. Because this is so ridiculous, it can't possibly be real. And I'm going to look like fake news media if I jump on this.

And then the next day they turned out to be real. Yeah, I mean, people were still like doing high-res zooms in on like the COVID mask he was wearing on the airport to sort of establish whether or not that was him. At some point, it became clear that it was.

Well, I guess, I mean, I think it was when reporter David Schuster tweeted it. That's the one that I saw first and kept seeing passed around. He tweeted, just confirmed the Cruz and his family flew to Cancun tonight for a few days at the resort they visited before and then immediate editorializing justified. Cruz seems to believe there isn't much room to do in Texas for the millions of fellow Texans who remain without electricity slash water

and are literally freezing. I mean, this was a national joke. It was a national punchline. And this is what we will talk about every time Ted Cruz is on the national platform for the rest of his career, for the rest of his life.

But to human sakes, I mean, it's really, I mean, that's what's really significant, right? I mean, he's,

he, people were actually dying, you know, I mean, so far, like, dozens of people have died. I'm sure the death toll.

end up being significantly higher. And it could have been a lot worse. And Ted Cruz and his family decided to go on vacation. Yes. I mean, first of all, there was there is the lie that he couldn't have been doing anything. Of course he could have been doing something. Of course he could have been. Like either you are a powerful U.S. senator or you're admitting that you're not a powerful

U.S. senator. I don't think Ted Cruz wants to admit that. So of course he could be making phone calls, running things, or literally be out there handing out soup and manning a warming center. Yeah. He managed to find something that he could do when he flew back and had to, you know, make penance and, and, you know, look like he was useful. He found something to do, right? He went to parking lots and handed out water and cut brisket, whatever the fuck that is. And, and, I mean, I know what brisket is.

I'm just questioning the entire. usage of time. David and I I'm a big fan of Brisket. I really want Brisket now that I'm having this conversation. So I guess I do. I apologize to Ted Cruz

for making that joke. But, but I mean, he found things to do. The idea that there wasn't a bare minimum of things that he could do. And we, like you said, like, you know, in the last segment,

talking about Cuomo, performance matters, right? And I, and this is kind of the subtle inverse of that. But, you know, you can your mileage may vary on what kind of presidential or political scandals actually merit national discussion, right? I mean, you can say, oh, it's part of our politician's jobs to not have affairs and, you know, whatever, to face the music if they do. Whatever you think about that.

There is part of the job of a politician on any level, but particularly the national level of Senator Ted Cruz, is that you are perceived to be present and Karen. during a time of catastrophe, right? You are not just responsible to your constituents, but you need to be perceived to care about your constituents, like at least 1%. He found the energy or the necessity or his assistants did to tweet out storm warnings in the days leading up to it, right? He knew that this was a thing that merited discussion

and mourning and some modicum of care. And again, sort of like Cuomo, you sort of become your own caricature, right? I mean, Ted Cruz is, is forever was the most hated politician in D.C. amongst other politicians. And now the New York Times, you know, op-ed was how Ted Cruz became the least sympathetic politician in America. You know, he's going to wear that forever. And justifiably so. Obviously, the stakes of him not being there are not terribly high because I don't, I don't think he would have accomplished much if he were there. Um, but him leaving is, I mean, it's just, it's just so damning. I, I completely agree. And you know, I, I'm a vowed opponent of the phrase bad optics or bad look. And I always think, forget the optics. Was it actually bad? In this case, when you have Texans freezing in their homes, looking for a place to warm up,

looking, you know, being under a boil water notice. Yes, the optics of leaving for a trip to Cancun are important. Yeah. Absolutely they're important, especially because less fortunate people just can't get on a plane and go to a resort. Yeah. Like that is insane. And I mean, there are political stakes here, right? I mean, this storm, and this is not just about Ted Cruz, this is about Governor Greg Abbott and all the Republican leaders of Texas, Alan West, the whole up and down the line.

I mean, we could look back in time and say this winter storm is when Texas turned blue, right? I mean, and that's, and that might be extreme. Stakes are real and it's not just because this isn't a political argument like we're going to we're going to start looking at polls again It's no it's no accident. I guess that Beto O'Rourke and Both Castro but Julian Castro were out you know on on national television every single night talking about this But the reason why it's it's political in a in a broader sense, right? I mean it's like there is a leadership question here Ted Cruz like I said he might not have done anything he could have stayed in his house and tweeted a couple of times not done anything at all, but he didn't go to Mexico because he didn't care enough about

Texans. I mean, he doesn't care about Texans, right? But like, that's not the biggest part. The biggest part is that he could not, he literally could not imagine a thing that he should be doing besides doing that. Because all he cares about is his national profile and by, you know, by proxy his Texas profile. And he would have done something else. He would have been doing something else if he could imagine it, right? Governor Abbott got in front of a camera and didn't say anything helpful, right? I mean, no information. Just call 311 or check a website. Never mind that folks don't have internet access and owning a phone. And raging against green energy. Yeah. Like that's what he had time to do. And him and Tucker Carlson, all these people ranting against green energy. Exactly.

It's, it's, it's, this is the Republicans of Texas. They have not like abdicated leader, a leadership role in some ambiguous way. This is a very literal way that they have done this, right? And when they, when you have this like longstanding like bureaucracy argument, uh, it's like, it's so disingenuous on its face, but it's also this denial, right? I'm sure, like, Abbott and Cruz both said they're going to get to the bottom of what went wrong, despite the fact that,

like, this is a thing that, like, Greg Abbott is literally in charge of, right? You went wrong. Yeah, you went wrong. You, sir, went wrong. But again, if he had said anything helpful in his, like, too late press conference, like, there would be a little bit of forgiveness

when, but instead he's talking about, he's talking about windmills, you know? He's trying to deflect towards a lie. I just think that, you know, Ted Cruz is not as, as evidenced by this, Ted Cruz is not much of a meaningful politician on a day-to-day basis, right? But he's just sort of someone's, Ted Cruz's own idea of a politician.

And that's why I think this is going to just haunt him forever. Maybe it won't. Yes. This kind of performance of, you know, I am, I am the real ideologue here. I am, I am bigger than mere grubby day-to-day politics. Yes, that is very much part of the Ted Cruz brand. And we should say,

Just right before he left town, people were already obsessing about this like six-month-old Ted Cruz quote, or I mean a tweet where he said made fun of California for being, quote, unable to perform even basic functions of civilization like having reliable electricity, right? I mean, that was happening before he left town. And so it's, well. And I believe he may occulted that tweet before he left, really, and said, I'm, hey, well, I can't say anything right now, right? Like, look at what my state is doing.

I wonder if there's a calculation there because he knows every time he does he says something he like gives gives up an inch on Twitter. He agrees with AOC for five seconds on Twitter. And that just becomes this sort of national news story for a week. You know, and like maybe he thought he could just skate by on that. Yeah, but that that's again part of the brand. Right. Like I, I'm, you know, I'm a Republican, but really I'm kind of bigger than all this. You know, I'm bigger than Republicans. I'm bigger than, you know, grubby politics. I just exist on this on this level that. no one else does, but then he did just the cheapest thing in the world, which is go on vacation during a crisis. Yeah.

That's why it works against the brand quote unquote or whatever we want to call it that Ted Cruz has tried to build. And I just can't imagine him. You talk about politics. There's there's the politics in Texas. You know, will this make Texas a bluer bluer faster than it would have gone blue otherwise? There's also Ted Cruz clearly wanting to run for president again. Yeah. And how is every single of the 19 Republicans that are going to be on the stage, how is their first attack that, wait, didn't you just walk out on your state?

There was also the tidbit about him leaving his dog at home to freeze or whatever, which obviously a lot of people drew parallels to Mitt Romney having the dog on the roof. I don't, you know, I don't know the dogs are the most important issue here. But it is salliant that like that dog story about Romney was kind of all over the place when he was running for president, right? I mean, that was a constant refrain on the, on his, you know, during his campaign. And now Ted Cruz has done something. I'm not just talking with a dog. I'm talking about leaving the country. That is, you know, as bad, significantly worse.

And people, everybody was there in real time to watch it happen. You know, there's cameras everywhere at the airport on his return and his, you know, proud Texan. face mask. And talking about the national brand, you know, all you have to do is like look at Google news to find out that everybody is covering this, right? This isn't the New York, I mean, New York Times and Washington Post and everybody had a million different looks at it. But the New York Post, the New York Post headline is Ted Cruz's family seen soaking up the Cancun Sun while Texas shivers. Yahoo News. Ted Cruz invited his college roommate on the Mexico trip. He blamed on his daughters and People magazine.

Ted Cruz, this is when he got back, Ted Cruz hands out water after Cancun trip backlash as his daughter's private school speaks out. The daughter's private school, Politico did a big look at this, too, just constantly like missing, they're getting being toned deaf on the issue. But like it's, uh, it, we even talked about the fact that he should have been quarantining when he was out there cutting brisket in the parking lot, right? I mean, like, there's, like, basic like rules of the age of coronavirus. that he was ignoring, going there in the first place, but then just coming back,

like nothing had happened. And, you know, you would hope that this rubs off on people, right? Like, that should this reflect badly on Hannity who was there to help him clean up the mess? Like, yeah, but it won't. I mean, I did, but I do think it'll stick on Cruz. Absolutely, because there are political scandals that are bad and there are political scandals that are really, really easy to remember. Yeah.

And just stick to you like glue. And again, does this mean that Tech Cruz won't get reelected senator from Texas the rest of his life? I don't know. Probably, probably he might, right? But it certainly limits his ambitions beyond that. Yeah. I just think like it is so, it is so memorable. And how about, I mean, you're talking about like the Texas face mask in the airport.

How about those Houston cops that were walking him through the airport? Oh, my God. Southpaw on Twitter tweets, Big Orange County high schooler coming home from TJ, thanks to the efforts of the U.S. consulate energy when those cops are walking them through the thing. I mean, I think that you're right,

it's easy to remember, and it's easy to wrap your head around. I mean, it's, Ted Cruz is defining characteristic is that he wants to be president. And he, yes. Even if you,

even if you approve on him on those terms alone, I mean, I don't know who, would, but if you're a voter who's like, I want my senator to be president someday, this is like a huge I mean, flub in that department. He messed up at running for president. He didn't really

exactly. Like, he just, he just he just, yes, on basic political terms and basic moral terms, he best up. Yes. Like you can mess up on both. You know, like I shouldn't have done this because the people of Texas and I shouldn't have done this because I want to seek higher off. You can be wrong twice.

And Ted Cruz figured that out. I just want to pivot to Texanness for a second since you and I are, you know, notable, at least in our own minds, ex-Texans. This just brought up a couple of things to me. One is the way so many Texas politicians, not all, but so many Texas politicians talk about the rest of the country, especially California. You mentioned those Ted Cruz tweets. and I don't think there has been a Republican campaign for office in Texas in recent history

and probably some Democratic campaigns too that go, we're not going to let this state go the way of California. I'm not letting Texas turn into California. I mean, even the radio station I listened to the sports radio station in Dallas, used to have this promo that goes, we don't have guys on the station from the coast talking sports, as if that was such a terrible thing that someone. And that just drove.

me up the wall in the 22 years I lived in Texas. It also drives me up the wall now. It's just using California as a political prop for everything. Yeah. You know, and then we just, and again, I don't even care about the comeuppets, but I just think that was always so cheap. Listen, Texan is, I mean, Texas does have an identity that's different from every other place, you know, and I would tell people I grew up there in Kentucky, North Carolina, people in New York are like, oh, you're from the South. And I would just be like, well, I think the entire state of Texas would disagree with a big portion of that. It is an identity, you know, but it's a, it's a, and being standoffish, being quote unquote self-sufficient is part of that identity, right? And that leads to these sort of painting everybody else is what's wrong with the world and what's wrong with the country.

I mean, but there is, like, a direct parallel to what's happening, but you're, like, a direct parallel to what's happening, but you're, you're talking about and this, you know, issue, which is the reason, I mean, everybody in the world knows what Urquod is now and has done all the, you know, has read all the explainers and stuff like that. But the reason that the Texas power structure is set up in such a way is because, you know, 80 years ago or whatever, when they passed the Federal Power Act to regulate, you know, energy in the country, Texas was just like now we'll keep our, we'll be, we'll keep to ourselves, right? They were going to, you know, just they have their own separate power grid from the rest of America. and because if you keep it within the lines of Texas,

you know, setting aside the fact that they have gone and borrowed power from Mexico in the past couple of decades, then you're not going to be taxed and sort of for interstate commerce. This law for all intents of purposes won't apply. But, you know, there's this idea that it's sort of like, this is Texas is like rah, ra, we can do it ourselves. It's the kind of old school secessionist tendencies

that everyone in Texas is so proud of. but even like but really it was just the utilities right that are just like no we want to keep all the money for ourselves we like these major corporations we're just like no we're doing good we don't want to let the net we don't want other providers to come in and we don't want the government to come in and taxes and tell us what to do so i mean 80 years ago in texas these massive industries were hiding behind states rights and like rah rah texas is a pretense for keeping their money right i mean it's all like texan textant identity and this sort of like secessionist tendency is a real thing and there's some, you know, I guess positive aspects to it. But it's always, it's, it's, it's always, I mean, it's always BS on some level, right? I mean, there's always these giant corporate interests. They're more interested in times like this and pretending that windmills the problem to get rid of national, I mean, natural energy resources than to actually deal with the issues that are affecting human beings. Absolutely. And I, and I would just add to the way to, Texas politicians talk about California is the way Texas politicians, again, not all of them,

but many of them historically have talked about the country of Mexico. Yeah. And the way, you know, that just like they have used California as a political prop, they have used Mexico as a political prop to mean the country, demean the people of the country. Yep. I remember it was in the last decade that the Texas Department of Public Safety had a advisory warning people not to travel to Mexico, the whole country. like that that actually existed in Texas and then after you do all that oh i'm off to the all

inclusive resort oh okay i'm gonna i'm gonna do this but then you know when the weather is cold i'm i'm flying off to cancun oh well that's interesting how we square all that rhetoric i just unbelievable absolutely unbelievable all right it's time for david shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline yeah last tuesday's headline about bruce springsteen DWI was Blunder Road. And David, if we could just take one more swing at Ted Cruz, one more. Today's headline comes from a whole bunch of people, including E. Train, Andres Chavez, Ian Herbert and Andrew Joe Potter.

It's from the Washington Post. Dan Zach, who's always good, did a piece on cruise for the style section. And the Post used an airborne exploitation movie as its headline inspiration. what was the Washington Post strained pun headline all right uh i'm not sure how many airborne exploitation movies there are but uh snakes on the plane snakes on the snake on the snake on the snake on the newspaper so you couldn't quite that's more of a Texas observer kind of had oh you're right um so play with that just a little bit not snake but uh fake fake on the plane uh uh uh uh

I got on the plane when nobody was looking. I didn't think anybody. Sneak, sneak on the plane. Sneak on a plane. Would you have gone for the symmetry of sneaks on a plane? Yeah, yeah. I guess that would be kind of implicitly damning as children. And my guess is the Washington Post is above that, even if Ted Cruz himself is not.

Sneak on a plane. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.