On Tuesday, Sen. Ted Cruz played the working-class hero during a press conference with angry right-wing, astroturfed truckers. What are they fighting against? Something! It is unclear! Get back to me! Maybe mandates? Mandates that don’t exist? Basically! Cruz employed one of his new attempts at ingratiating himself with the Republican base (the one that soundly rejected him the last election cycle) by trying on some Trump-style lying about mythical-but-important men telling him he’s doing a great job. Considering how much of a loathsome liar Sen. Cruz is the chances that any story he related has an ounce of truth in it is between 0 and 0.001%.
This morning Mr. Cruz decided to play pretend a little more, sitting in the passenger seat of one such truck as the small group of "The People's Convoy," did another day’s worth of driving around the Washington, D.C., beltway. Convoy organizer Brian Brase told ABC News that what had been planned as a three-day event is now extending:
“We're gonna keep looping the beltway until heard. We're not going anywhere. We're not gonna leave. We're gonna keep doing what we're doing until we start getting more meetings like we just had today."
I guess he got some more money to pay for his costs?
What do they want people to hear? According to Sen. Ron Johnson, who along with Cruz met the truckers on Tuesday, "These are people that are fighting for freedom. It's just that simple." Hmmm. Maybe Teddy “Trucker” Cruz has a more material understanding of what is being demanded? "They want government to leave them the hell alone." Sounds good. They can send me their child tax credit checks—I could totally use it! Maybe these truckers might remember the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Relief Act?
As Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ) wrote:
What is he talking about? He’s talking about the Butch Lewis Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021. This bill helped to provide government assistance to underfunded and insolvent pensions. Pensions like truckers’ pensions. It was folded into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. That was the big piece of legislation that every single Republican voted against, including Teddy “Truckstar” Cruz. It is no surprise that GOP operatives like Cruz and Johnson continue to tout the successes of the American Rescue Plan that they voted against—the legislation was popular, as would have been the Build Back Better plan if it had passed.
A quick reminder:
As Trucking News reported back in December, President Joe Biden announced a plan to help grow the trucking industry in our country, to help them come out of the pandemic’s economic depression. Republicans like Ted Cruz have offered up … nothing. Less than nothing.
The Ohio trucker Brian Brase, who gets a lot of press as an organizer for the event, told audience members that Sen. Cruz’s political theater today was just the kind of thing needed to make that money! get the kind of attention they are looking for. “There ain’t no ignoring a senator riding in the lead truck.”
The People’s Convoy is funded by the non-profit conservative group American Foundation for Civil Liberties and Freedoms (AFCLF). As the Washington Post and others reported last week, that organization, fundraising money for this waste of our atmosphere, has a new director: Texas’ own Pamela Milacek, “whose arrest is sought, records show, by authorities who allege she violated the terms of her community supervision after pleading guilty to felony fraud and exploitation charges in 2020.”
I mean, are you even allowed to fundraise for conservative activism these days if you don’t have a fraud charge or conviction on your record? That’s not snark, it’s an actual question. As for the truckers taking up space on D.C.’s roads? Turns out that they aren’t supported in their delusional thinking the same way they are when they’re just staring at themselves in the review mirror.
Please remember, Ted Cruz is the person who blamed his children for his Cancun vacation while Texans struggled during a winter natural disaster that hit his state in Feb. 2021. Calling him a weak person with zero scruples is an affront to weak people with zero scruples everywhere.
Here’s an update on how things are going for Teddy “Working stiff” Cruz.
