Senator Ted Cruz joked about his trip to Cancun amid a crisis level in Texas last week, with frigid temperatures, widespread power outages, and burst pipes flooding homes.
At this year’s conservative political action conference on Friday morning, Cruz (R-Texas) made the comments as he began his speech.
“God bless CPAC,” the Texas senator began, “I have to say Orlando is great. It’s not as pretty as Cancun, but it’s nice. “
The comment was laughed at and taken to breath by the crowd.
The event, which was moved from Washington, DC to Orlando, Florida due to restrictions due to the coronavirus, kicked off Friday morning with comments from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Cruz is doing damage control after the scandal, which broke out after he was caught flying to the Mexican beach town with his wife and two daughters, ages 10 and 12, days after Texas was paralyzed by a one-time winter storm.
He was forced to interrupt his trip and fly back home the next day and deliver a mea culpa.
Cruz was scrutinized by the mini-vacation optics – and because he left the family dog, Snowflake, home alone with no power or heat.
“Apparently I fed Snowflake to the wolves,” Cruz said, rubbing the impact away. “He was at home with a dog sitter. The heat was on a bit again. The whole thing is a bit absurd. “
He has also said his wife, Heidi, was “pissed off” that text messages with her inviting neighborhood friends about the family trip had been leaked to the media.
During his fiery CPAC address, Cruz also addressed former House Speaker John Boehner, who hit the headlines on Thursday after an Axios report revealed he offered the Texas senator a expletive message in his new book.
“Oh, and Ted Cruz, go yourself,” Boehner reportedly says as a side note in the audiobook recording of his upcoming tome.
The message is not in the text of the book entitled “On The House: A Washington Memoir.”
Boehner appeared to cover the report in a tweet on Thursday, where he wrote, “I poured myself a glass of something nice to read my audiobook. You can blame the wine for the expletives. “
The tweet included a photo of the former House speaker sitting by a microphone with a glass of wine in hand.
Cruz initially didn’t comment on Boehner’s reported diss diss: until he hit the CPAC stage.
“You know yesterday, John Boehner made news. He suggested I do something anatomically impossible. To which my answer was: who is John Boehner? “