Why This 2020 Tweet From Ted Cruz Is Coming Back To Bite Him
If you need proof of the adage that you need to be careful about what you post online, because it lives forever, you need only look at Senator Ted Cruz of Texas who is back in the media crosshairs for something he said in August 2020, when California was suffering from wildfires, extreme heatwaves, and rolling blackouts (via Insider). For whatever reason, Cruz decided it would be a good idea to retweet a message from the California governor's office, which advised residents to conserve energy by turning off unnecessary lights and setting thermostats higher, with the comment: "California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity. Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA's failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don't like air conditioning."
It might have struck Californians as tone-deaf then, but the tweet hasn't aged well, since a deadly winter storm wreaked havoc on Texas' power grid, leaving millions of homes and businesses without power in sub-zero temperatures (via CNN). And because it's the ever controversial Ted Cruz, there was no doubt that social media would revive that old tweet and give back as good as they got.
Twitter quickly called out Ted Cruz for his old tweet
One Twitter user lashed out at the Texas senator, saying, "Huh ... so Texas is now Third World ... A month ago, Texas was talking of seceding — now y'all begging for disaster relief." This particular Twitter user, who hails from New Jersey, also reminded Cruz of how he voted against relief during Hurricane Sandy. "Y'all got 4 inches of snow — suck it," he added.
Another social media user simply told Cruz, "Might wanna delete this one, dummy."
One Texan tweeted the grim reality of living through the winter storm at Ted Cruz, saying, "Texas is now unable to perform even basic functions of modern civilization. Needed to charge my phone in my car weathering 16 degrees so that it would have enough power to call into work because our power grid is a joke. I was tempted to sleep in my car and not my 39 degrees home."
University of Houston energy fellow Ed Hirs offered a grim prognosis of what happened to the state's energy grid as he spoke with the Houston Chronicle. "The ERCOT [Electric Reliability Council of Texas] grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union," Hirs said. "It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances." He added that while the company did undertake best practices for maintenance, the extreme weather was beyond what it could cope with.