Ted Cruz Reportedly Also Flew To Jamaica On July 4 During Pandemic
Flying to Cancun is apparently not the only time Ted Cruz fled unfavourable conditions in Texas; it’s been reported that he also travelled to Jamaica amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The Senator came under fire this week after being spotted at an airport boarding a flight to Mexico while his fellow Texas residents suffered with blackouts, a loss of water and food shortages due to a brutal Winter storm.
Cruz quickly did a U-turn and returned to the US just one day later, admitting his trip was a ‘mistake’, but a new report from The Washington Post suggests he made a similarly misguided trip last year, when he travelled to Jamaica during the Senate’s Fourth of July holiday break.
The trip came a few months after the coronavirus outbreak, when the importance of staying at home and avoiding unnecessary travel had already been made abundantly clear. At the time, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had issued a recommendation that Americans ‘avoid all nonessential international travel’ in an attempt to minimize the risk of contracting the virus.
Two people with knowledge of Cruz’s schedule, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the senator’s private travel plans, told The Washington Post the Senator flouted public health recommendations to visit a longtime friend from college.
A few months later, Cruz took to Twitter to criticise those who flouted coronavirus restrictions. He branded some Democrats ‘hypocrites’ for violating rules they had promoted themselves, specifically calling out Austin Mayor Steve Adler for taking a ‘private jet’ to Mexico.
Ironically, Cruz followed in these hypocritical footsteps this week by telling Texas residents to ‘just stay home’ days before leaving for Cancun.
Speaking on the Joe Pags radio show on Monday, February 15, he commented: ‘I was speaking this weekend with a meteorologist expert who was saying (that with) the combination of these two storms, we could see 100 people lose their lives this week in Texas. So, don’t risk it. Keep your family safe, and just stay home and hug your kids.’
After returning from Mexico yesterday, February 18, Cruz said that in hindsight he would not have gone on the trip, adding: ‘I was trying to be a dad.’
Current CDC advice still recommends that ‘you do not travel at this time’, further implicating Cruz as a hypocrite for criticising Adler, but notes that ‘all air passengers coming to the United States… are required to have a negative COVID-19 test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before they board a flight to the United States.’
The Senator claimed that he took a coronavirus test Thursday morning and received a negative result before boarding an afternoon flight back to the US.
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