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The controversial senator is derelict in his duty to look out for Texans, but the internet certainly fulfilled their requisite task of mocking him over it.

The best internet memes about Ted Cruz fleeing Texas for Cancun

[Photo: Flickr user Gage Skidmore; rawpixel]

BY Joe Berkowitz2 minute read

It’s never a good sign when a Senator uses the shrug emoji in a tweet about dropping the ball in a disaster.

Yet this clumsy attempt at a mea culpa from Texas‘s chief culture warrior, Ted Cruz, proved merely an amuse bouche for the hearty meal of his botched response to the power blackouts in his state this week.

Fresh off telling Texans to “stay home” earlier in the week, Cruz has apparently fled Texas for the tropical confines of Cancun.

It’s not the senator’s first run in with hypocrisy during this crisis. Internet denizens with long memories reaching all the way back to summer 2020 resurfaced some of Cruz’s tweets mocking California politicians for allowing power outages to happen on their watch. Later, journalist Katy Tur asked Cruz to reconcile his recent request for federal aid after voting against relief for blue-state Hurricane Sandy victims in 2012, which flummoxed the Senator, who does not seem particularly accustomed to defending his positions.

Once the news of Cruz’s rumored Mexican jaunt broke out on Wednesday night, Twitter exploded with a combination of scorn and schadenfreude-y glee.

First, people mocked the inability to confirm whether Cruz was actually in Cancun.

https://twitter.com/HeroOfApollo/status/1362299368141914113

https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/1362281523693690881

Once reporters did indeed confirm the news, through both internet sleuthing and more traditional reporting, the tenor of the mockery shifted.

Comedian Blaire Erskine released a rapid response video, posing as Cruz’s spokesperson.

Memes abounded from the two most popular disaster movies that involve people freezing to death.

https://twitter.com/somebadideas/status/1362424660885970951

A lot of people made memes about one specific joke from The Simpsons involving a politician taking an ill-timed vacation.

https://twitter.com/Tweet_Dec/status/1362295389546831873

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So many people made that joke, in fact, that Simpsons meme master Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times tweeted out a disclaimer about it.

But not without tweeting his own relevant Simpsons meme, of course.

People also reached for other movies and shows, of course, with options such as Trading Places, Netflix’s Don’t F**k With Cats, and RuPaul’s Drag Race.

https://twitter.com/notn1co/status/1362432063786291209

Another popular mode was photoshopping a travel-bound Ted Cruz into disasters throughout history, both PR disasters and otherwise.

And of course, people couldn’t resist looping in classic Ted Cruz memes, such as the long-running joke about his potentially being the Zodiac, and that time he famously liked a porn tweet.

https://twitter.com/thor_benson/status/1362278048050069505

As funny as the whole Ted Cruz mess is, however, there is nothing funny about the people who are currently suffering in Texas. Here are six ways to consider helping them.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joe Berkowitz is an opinion columnist at Fast Company. His latest book, American Cheese: An Indulgent Odyssey Through the Artisan Cheese World, is available from Harper Perennial. More

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