If you were wondering who the most disliked politician on Capitol Hill was, the answer is Ted Cruz.
The Republican senator from Texas got dragged by his fellow lawmakers while they were attempting to dig into the background of Neera Tanden, President Biden’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget. During Tanden’s confirmation hearing, Republican senator attempted to point out how damning Tanden’s social media posts — many of which condemned Republican party leaders like Mitch McConnell and Cruz — were in light of Biden’s appointment. They wondered if she could do a good job of sticking to the president’s commitment to bipartisanship after calling McConnell “Moscow Mitch” and Senator Tom Cotton a “fraud.”
What they didn’t realize was they were giving audiences a live Mean Tweets reading on the Senate floor, and that their colleague, Cruz, would get the worst of it.
A lot of people, Republican and Democrat, can’t stand Ted Cruz but Tanden’s tweets managed to trash the insurrection-supporting senator with some truly stunning linguistic verbosity. At one point, Tanden was accused of tweeting that “vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz,” which, just … wow.
The very first question a Republican senator asks OMB nominee Neera Tanden during his confirmation hearing is about her tweets pic.twitter.com/7DbdzUTx06
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 9, 2021
I will never not be amused by Republicans reading tweets that own Republicans pic.twitter.com/3jDO7YjInG
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 9, 2021
Republicans also noted during the hearing that there were “nine pages of tweets about Ted Cruz” that they hadn’t got to yet. (Please, get to them!) And while it’s certainly amusing to watch politicians themselves so spectacularly, it’s also hypocritical, considering how they’ve been backstabbing each other under Trump’s example for years.
Of course, Twitter’s here to jog your memory in case you forgot:
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1359173031021731843
Mean tweets about Ted Cruz, you say? https://t.co/xbstfwtd0I pic.twitter.com/pPOnRsWpZr
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 9, 2021
https://twitter.com/JamesFales2/status/1359161705780178952
https://twitter.com/JimBeam823/status/1359163550917361667
This exercise in faux outrage aside, Jimmy Kimmel definitely has grounds to raise a fuss over this. You can’t just steal a comedian’s bits like that, even if you do work for Lord Voldemort.