Late Night Blasts Ted Cruz Photo Op

'Most people just drove away when he tried showing them his vacation photos'
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 23, 2021 10:00 AM CST

Late-night hosts who were on vacation during Ted Cruz's Cancun trip last week couldn't have been happier with the Texas senator's weekend photo op. Cruz had shared photos showing him meeting with first responders and putting water in people's vehicles with the hashtag #TexasStrong, which only added fuel to punchlines. What the TV personalities said:

  • Trevor Noah noted Monday Cruz was "doing the literal bare minimum for the sake of the cameras." "This is not going to cut it, my man," added the Daily Show host. "This is the politician version of coming home with flowers the day after Valentine's Day. It's not nothing, but your a-- is still sleeping on the couch."
  • "Ted Cruz is the husband who sits on his couch watching football all day, then sees his wife unloading a car full of groceries, waits until there's one bag left in the trunk, then goes outside and says, 'Oh, can I help?'" joked Late Night's Seth Meyers, per the New York Times.

  • "Ted Cruz is like the friend who offers to help you move, but every time you see him, he's just carrying the same box of pillows," Jimmy Fallon similarly remarked. "Yup, the photo op didn't work out too well. Most people just drove away when he tried showing them his vacation photos," continued the Tonight Show host. "Actually, Cruz wanted to do more, but he had a parasailing lesson at 3."
  • Late Show host Stephen Colbert spent time recapping the scandal, with an emphasis on Cruz's changing statements. He noted the senator had failed to mention that his college roommate was on the trip. Cruz at first claimed he was accompanying his daughters on a trip with their friends.
  • "Only Ted Cruz would think he can repair his image by touching a maskless constituent two days after getting off an international flight," Jimmy Kimmel noted on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "Like many of Ted Cruz's attempts to mimic human behavior, this one was Ted on arrival."
  • A day earlier, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver had also ripped into Cruz. "Ted Cruz—who remember, wants to be president—told the world he was bullied into international travel by tweens, then got cyberbullied into coming home by the internet, leaving his wife to solo-parent two kids on vacation in another country while trying to figure out who in her mom group doxxed her," he said, per the Hollywood Reporter. "It's all amazing."
(More Ted Cruz stories.)

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