It was a story tailor-made for Jimmy Kimmel, who has never been shy about his outright hatred of Ted Cruz. And on Thursday night, he spent most of his monologue criticizing the Texas senator for fleeing his frozen and devastated home state for what ended up being a short-lived getaway in Cancun.
“On behalf of all of us, we want to send our best wishes from Los Angeles to those of you who have been hit by cold weather,” the evening’s host sincerely began. “Hundreds of thousands of Texans are still without power. And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully landing on Mars, it was instead a senator from Texas landing in Cancun. “
“While his fellow Texans are freezing with the power outage, Ted Cruz did what any great leader would do when his state needs him most,” Kimmel continued. “He booked a flight to Mexico and said, ‘Bye, folks!'”
From there, he analyzed how bad the situation is on the ground in Texas, where roads are impassable, bathrooms are frozen, and people burn their furniture to keep warm. “And where was Mr. Texas while his constituents were suffering?” Kimmel asked. “Well there it is, snake on a plane! Ironically, he went to the same place where he tried to build a wall around it. “
At first, Kimmel explained, he wasn’t sure if the photos that appeared on social media were actually of the Texas senator “or just a man with a terrible medical condition called ‘looking like Ted Cruz.’
“But I didn’t want to post until I was sure it was him,” he said. So my wife spent a full two hours studying images last night, matching photos of her shoes, her mask, her wedding ring. It was like I was in bed with Sherlock Holmes. “
Eventually, reporters began to confirm that it was him on the flight. “So he loads his family on a plane to get out of town and unfortunately he’s been on TV kissing Trump’s ass for so long and for so long that everyone recognizes him even with a mask on,” Kimmel said. “They post all these photos of him and there is so much backlash that he has no choice but to immediately book a flight home.”
“Hypocrisy is out of the question!” added. “This is the guy who two months ago lashed out at the mayor of Austin for going to Mexico.” But that was not all. Kimmel also criticized Cruz for mocking Governor Gavin Newsom for being “unable to perform even the basic functions of civilization, such as having reliable electricity,” and attacked Chris Christie for going to the New Jersey beach that he ordered closed.
“But why settle for being the biggest hypocrite on the planet when you can also be a world-class liar?” The presenter asked, before meticulously breaking down the opening statement in which Cruz blamed his two young daughters for the entire debacle.
“With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends,” Cruz said. “Wanting to be a good father, I flew with them last night and will fly back this afternoon.”
“Now, he was careful not to say that he planned to fly back this afternoon because he wasn’t,” explained Kimmel. “He just said yes, and in fact, NBC News has a source that says he was originally booked to fly back on Saturday. He booked his return ticket at 6am this morning after he was arrested. But I guess we were supposed to believe that he was accompanying his wife and kids to Mexico and planned to come back the next day all the time … with a tote bag full like a piñata. “
The presenter also took a moment to poke fun at people who excused Cruz’s lies, such as “an idiot” named “Dinesh De-Douche-a,” who tweeted: “What could @tedcruz do if he was here in Texas? I’m hard-pressed to say. If you are in Cancun, that means you are not wasting valuable energy, food and water resources that can now be used by someone else. This is probably the best thing I could do for the state right now. “
“And more than 10,000 people liked that statement!” Kimmel exclaimed. “What country is this?”
But given that “for the most part, although no one believed this story about going back to work,” he said, “Ted decided to be honest”, admitting that the trip was a “mistake” and that he interrupted it due to reaction. “He also claimed that his struggle to be the best father in the world put him in a position that he realized was not good, just a couple of hours late.”
Speaking to reporters outside his home upon his return, Cruz said he “began to have doubts almost the moment” he sat on the plane.
“Yeah, as soon as people started posting pictures of him on the plane, they looked up and knew he shouldn’t be on the plane,” Kimmel replied. “How did you think he was going to get away with it? You know your judgment is terrible when this haircut is only the third worst decision you made this month. “
“Well, at least his vacation is ruined,” Kimmel concluded before urging viewers to text “ABC 13” to 41444 to donate money to aid Texas.
For more, listen and subscribe to The last laugh podcast.