Ted Cruz rants about comedians, late night TV, and mask-wearing before shouting at people to ‘just have fun’ in wild CPAC speech

• Ted Cruz’s CPAC speech began with a joke about the Cancun scandal and ended in a guttural scream about freedom.
• Cruz railed against late night TV, mocked mask-wearing, and expressed his support for Trump.
• “That is our party,” he yelled, “and these deplorables are here to stay.”
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Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s speech at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference went off the rails Friday as he shouted about late night comedians, mask-wearing, and President Joe Biden.

“Orlando is awesome. It’s not as nice as Cancun, but it’s nice,” Cruz began, referring to the scandal he sparked when he left storm-ravaged Texas for Cancun with his family last week. The Republican senator returned to Houston a day later after drawing sharp criticism for leaving the state he represented for a vacation in the middle of a devastating winter storm.

—The Recount (@therecount) February 26, 2021

Later in his speech, Cruz issued a rallying cry in support of former President Donald Trump.

“There are a whole lot of voices in Washington that want to just erase the last four years, want to go back to the world before where we had government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists,” Cruz said.

“Where the Republicans’ compelling message was, ‘Republicans: we waste less,'” he continued. “And they look at Donald J. Trump and they look at the millions and millions of people inspired who went to battle fighting alongside President Trump, and they’re terrified and they want him to go away.”

“Let me tell you this right now: Donald J. Trump ain’t going anywhere,” Cruz added even though the former president once suggested that the senator’s father helped assassinate John F. Kennedy and insinuated that his wife was ugly.

Cruz also reappropriated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” line to underscore Trumpism as the future of the party.

“That is our party,” he yelled, “and these deplorables are here to stay.”

Here are some other highlights from Cruz’s speech:

• Mask-wearing is virtue-signaling: “We’re gonna wear masks for the next 300 years,” Cruz said. “And by the way, not just one mask – two, three, four – you can’t have too many masks! How much virtue do you wanna signal?”
• Railing against comedians and cancel culture before telling people to “just have fun”: “You know, Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t tell comedy anymore because then he jokes that funny is canceled,” Cruz said. “You know, ‘SNL’ is unwatchable. The late night comedy, they stand up and say ‘We hate Donald Trump.’ Yeah, no kidding. We didn’t get that the last 9,000 times you said that.”
• Democrats are trying to turn skaters into socialists: “And let me tell you, right now, in Los Angeles, there’s some skater kid who’s 19, who’s told that it’s hip and chic and cool to be a leftist socialist, man,” Cruz said. “Who’s gonna hear a message, ‘Wait a second, these guys don’t want me to speak? Think? Have fun? Do what I wanna do?'”
• There were no “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations in Houston last year because of the Second Amendment: “In Houston where I live, I have to tell you, there weren’t any rioters because let’s be very clear, if there had been, they would discover what the state of Texas thinks about the 2nd amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Cruz said.

Cruz rounded out his speech by warning that the US is in a period of “dark days” and that “the country will come back to sanity.” He added: “And mark my words, 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year and so is 2024 as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American.”

In closing, Cruz quoted William Wallace and screamed, “Freedom!”

—CPAC 2021 (@CPAC) February 26, 2021