Saturday Night Live took a jab at Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s recent trip to Cancun in a cold open.
In a sketch hosted by Chloe Fineman playing Britney Spears, Aidy Bryant portrayed vacation-style Cruz wearing cornrows and beard.
“Hola, everyone!” Cruz said.
“Hey there, Ted. You look tan!” said Spears.
“I’m not tan. I just cried myself red over my fellow Texans. That’s why I drink in their honor.”
When pressed for an apology from Spears, Cruz replied, “Yeah it's real bad... And now I'm in a little bit of hot water, which I'm told is a thing that nobody in Texas has.”
“The whole trip was the girls’ idea! They love Cancun,” Bryant as Cruz continued. “There’s so much for kids to do – the topless beach, shots at Senor Frogs, swimming with sick dolphins. They love it.”
Cruz has come under fire for heading to Cancun while a historic winter storm plunged his state into chaos.
Outed by Twitter users when he was pictured in the airport on Wednesday, he returned to Texas on Thursday, admitting he had made a mistake.
In a statement released 12 hours after he was seen boarding the flight, Mr Cruz said that he took a spontaneous trip to appease his daughters. But purported text messages sent by Ms Cruz painted a different picture from the one offered by her husband.
In the texts obtained by the New York Times, Heidi Cruz reportedly told neighbours on a group thread on Wednesday that her home was “FREEZING” as she invited them to join the Cruz family on a trip to the Ritz-Carlton resort in Cancun, adding that they had stayed there “many times”.
Offering an explanation for flying out amid the winter weather crisis in his home state, Senator Cruz admitted to reporters that it was “obviously a mistake.”
SNL took another shot at the Texas Senator during the show’s “Weekend Update” segment, where co-anchor Colin Jost joked that “if you hate Ted Cruz, this is a pretty fun week.”
“Cruz initially released a statement saying he only went on vacation because his daughters made him go,” continued Jost. “And if you think it was bad to throw his daughters under the bus, Cruz would like you to know that that statement was his wife's idea.”
Jost kept going, skewering the Senator’s choice of face covering on his way back from Cancun. “I just love that after he abandoned Texas, he came back in a Texas flag mask like nothing happened,” Jost said. “That's like Jared and Ivanka walking down Fifth Avenue in ‘I Love New York’ shirts.”
