Sean Hannity defended Sen. Ted Cruz’s controversial Cancun trip on his Fox News show Thursday. But the prime time TV personality ended up being contradicted by the Texas Republican himself.
Hannity invited Cruz to address the raging criticism leveled at him for jetting off to Mexico on a family vacation as people in his home state suffered deadly freezing conditions and sweeping power outages.
“Now, you went and you took your daughters to Cancun and you came back,” Hannity told Cruz. “I think you can be a father and be the senator of Texas all at the same time and make a round trip, quick drop-off, quick trip, and come home.”
However, Cruz had already acknowledged that he’d initially planned to spend the weekend in Cancun. As criticism mounted, Cruz cut the visit short and returned Thursday night, claiming he needed to be in Texas to assist in the relief effort.
On Hannity’s show, Cruz offered his latest excuse:
After a couple of days of the girls being really cold and it being in the teens in the 20s outside, our girls said, ‘Look, school’s been canceled for the week. Can we take a trip and go somewhere warm?’ And Heidi and I, as parents, we said ‘Okay, sure.’
“And so last night I flew down with them to the beach and then I flew back this afternoon,” Cruz continued. “I had initially planned to stay through the weekend and to work remotely there, but as I was heading down there, you know, I started to have second thoughts almost immediately because the crisis here in Texas, you need to be here on the ground.”
“As much as you can do by phone, and Zoom, it’s not the same as being here, and so I returned this afternoon and I’m here working to make sure to do everything we can to get the power turned on,” Cruz added.
The story also contradicted the right-wing talking point that he couldn’t actually do anything to help anyway.