by Dahleen Glanton
Somebody in Heidi Cruz’s close circle of friends is a snitch. And, according to her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz, she’s “pretty pissed” about it.
His description was a lot harsher. Appearing Tuesday on the conservative podcast “Ruthless,” the senator referred to such blabbermouths as “a.”
It’s hard to find common ground with the Cruzes, but on this issue, they are correct. A person Heidi Cruz trusted betrayed her, and she has every right to be angry.
Let’s be honest. We would be angry, too, if it happened to us.
It is obvious that the Cruzes are selfish and tone-deaf. You can’t get any lower than fleeing to the tropics while the people you represent in the Senate are forced to suffer in freezing temperatures without heat and water.
Wait, I take that back. You can go lower by leaving your helpless little pooch at home in a cold house while you head to a beach about 800 miles away by air.
We have to admit, however, that it’s been great learning the juicy details of how Heidi Cruz tried to get her friends and neighbors to join her family as they ditch Texas and flee to a luxury resort in Cancún for the weekend.
“Anyone can or want to leave for the week? We may go to Cancun there is a direct flight at 445 pm and hotels w capacity,” she texted to a group of friends and neighbors, noting that her home was “FREEZING.”
“Ritz Carlton Cancun $309 plus tax,” she added.
One of her friends leaked the text string to The New York Times. Another person on the string confirmed it. Neither wanted to be identified, the newspaper said.
Regardless how much you hate Ted Cruz’s brand of politics, that’s pretty lowdown.
The person who did this doesn’t deserve “whistleblower” status, even if it did prove that the senator is such a jerk he would try to pin the whole thing on his 10- and 12-year-old daughters.
In a statement released after he was caught and had to fly back to Houston, Cruz explained:
“With school cancelled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night.”
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that the person who leaked the texts is as awful a human being as Ted Cruz. The Times also had every right to publish it too. I would have done the same if such information had been leaked to me.
The sleaze factor is in the betrayal. If people on the string had a problem with the trip, they should have said so in the texts. No one had the guts to criticize her or say, “Heidi, I think that’s a bad idea.”
The senator suggested that it was politically motivated, perhaps by Democrats who live on his street and maybe the ones who put posters of his reelection opponent, Beto O’Rourke, in their yards in 2018.
My guess is that the informant believed he or she was doing America a favor by outing Cruz as a liar and hypocrite. Unfortunately, it was old news. We already knew that about him.
The bottom line is that Heidi Cruz was careless and perhaps a little bit stupid.
I’ve got at least a half-dozen text strings going with different groups of friends. We share a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t want made public, but we trust each other enough to know it won’t go any further than our cellphones.
Granted, we’re not talking about anything scandalous. It’s mostly stuff we’re watching on Netflix, the crazy news out of Washington and an occasional update on how our families are faring during the pandemic.
Then again, none of us is married to a U.S. senator. We don’t have to worry about what might get leaked to the media and turn what we thought was a private conversation into a major news story.
The fact that Heidi Cruz talked about traveling to Mexico so openly suggests that she didn’t have a clue that it was a bad idea.
It wasn’t just a political blunder; it was insensitive. It showed that neither she nor her husband has empathy for the suffering constituents who put him into office.
Maybe, she didn’t care.
The photo captured of Heidi Cruz frolicking on the beach in her bikini in the midst of the controversy shows how little the trauma others were experiencing back home fazed her.
The Cruzes are a sham, and everything they do or say from now on should be viewed skeptically. That includes when the couple hits the reelection campaign trail in 2024, maybe for his reelection to the Senate, maybe for president.
In Tuesday’s podcast, Cruz said the entire incident is a sign of how “ridiculously politicized and nasty” things have become. He doesn’t seem to realize that his divisive politics are a big part of the polarization that is sweeping the country.
He’d like for everyone to forgive and forget, to pretend as though he never boarded that plane for Mexico.
Clearly, he hasn’t learned a thing from the debacle. But maybe his wife has.
The next time Heidi Cruz decides to embark on a family getaway during a crisis, she probably won’t invite friends to join them. She and her husband will just hop on a plane and go.
Dahleen Glanton is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
