Cruz: ‘Nasty’ for someone to leak wife’s texts
WASHINGTON — Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has a message for whoever leaked his wife’s text messages about the Cruz family’s trip to Cancún during the Texas freeze.
“It’s a sign of how ridiculously politicized and nasty and just … Just treat each other as human beings, have some degree, some modicum of respect,” Cruz said on an episode of “Ruthless,” a popular conservative podcast published on Tuesday.
Cruz talked at length about his decision to hit the beach while millions of Texans were left without power or running water for the first time since returning to Houston last week.
“I haven’t had this much negative press coverage since Northern California in the 1960s,” Cruz said, alluding to a meme that went viral during his presidential run that claimed Cruz was the Zodiac Killer.
Cruz has said the Cancún trip was “obviously a mistake,” but that he was trying to be a “good dad” and caved as his daughters asked him to get away from their freezing home, which was without power like much of Houston.
But the firestorm that developed after pictures of him boarding a plane from Houston went viral Thursday wasn’t the only repercussion of his decision to go. Text messages Cruz’s wife, Heidi, sent to a group of friends — in which she complained their house was “FREEZING” and invited them to a getaway at the Ritz-Carlton — were leaked to the New York Times.
Cruz said they don’t know who gave the texts to the media.
“We have a number of Republicans who are neighbors, but also a number of Democrats. We have a number of folks who put up Beto (O’Rourke) signs, which I thought was a little rude,” Cruz said of his River Oaks neighborhood, before joking: “I didn’t, like, hold a victory party in the front yard when we won.”
Cruz called a viral photo of his dog, Snowflake, looking forlornly out the front door of his home while he was gone “a little bit absurd” and “creepy.” He said the family had a dogsitter and power was back on at that point, but “apparently I literally fed Snowflake to the wolves.”
“Even more creepy,” Cruz said, was paparazzi followed his family around the beach in Mexico, even after the senator returned home to Texas. Heidi, he said, was also upset about that.
“I don’t think there are many women that would be thrilled to have reporters following them around and taking pictures of them in their bikinis and sticking them in the pages of the New York Post,” Cruz said.