Cruz apologizes for describing Jan. 6 attack as terrorism
NEW YORK — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had desperation written on his face.
The conservative ideologue and potential 2024 presidential contender appeared on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show Thursday to apologize for describing the Jan. 6 insurrection as “a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol” a day earlier, the eve of its anniversary.
“The way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy and it was frankly dumb,” Cruz told Carlson, a powerful voice in GOP politics whose show is among the most-watched on cable news.
Cruz insisted that he had misspoken, though he has consistently described the riot by Donald Trump supporters as a terrorist attack in interviews and statements over the last year.
But Cruz’s capitulation to outrage from the Republican Party’s far right flank underscores the power it increasingly holds over leading GOP politicians and the influence held by conservative TV hosts like Carlson, who reach millions of viewers every night. And it shows how lawmakers like Cruz, who was once considered one of his party’s most conservative voices, now face pressure from a new guard of hard-liners who swept into power with the backing of Trump’s base.
Cruz has been increasingly open about his interest in mounting another run for the GOP presidential nomination, noting that historically “the runner-up is almost always the next nominee.”
Carlson had used his previous night’s show to excoriate Cruz for his “terrorist” comment. Others piled on.
“Shame on Ted Cruz,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a firstterm lawmaker and Trump supporter who has peddled numerous conspiracy theories and was recently barred from Twitter for her anti-vaccination comments. She called Cruz’s initial comments “irresponsible” and disrespectful of “MAGA patriots.”
“I’m so done with Ted Cruz,” echoed Trump ally Sebastian Gorka on Twitter.
Cruz, along with other Republican Party leaders, had previously described the events of Jan. 6 as “terrorism” without blowback.
“The attack at the Capitol was a despicable act of terrorism and a shocking assault on our democratic system,” Cruz said in a statement released by his office a year ago Friday. “The January 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol was a dark moment in our nation’s history, and I fully support the ongoing law enforcement investigations into anyone involved,” he said May 28.
As recently as December, in an interview with The Associated Press, Cruz said that on Jan. 6, 2021, “we saw a terrorist attack on the Capitol.”
He went on to say “anyone who commits a crime of violence should be prosecuted, and that anyone who violently assaults a police officer should go to jail for a very long time. That’s true whether you’re right wing, left wing or you got no wings whatsoever.”
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell has described the attack in similar terms. “American citizens attacked their own government,” he told the Senate after it acquitted Trump in its impeachment trial. “They used terrorism to try to stop a specific piece of domestic business they did not like.”
There is nothing surprising about that characterization. The FBI defines domestic terrorism as “Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.” In the Jan. 6 attack, Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to halt the peaceful transition of power and certification of President Joe Biden’s win.