Texas SenatorTed Cruz continues to face fierce pushback over the timing of his trip to Mexico amid the winter weather crisis in his home state, with leaked text messages from his wife revealing that she had extended an invitation to her neighbours to join them on their getaway to Cancun.
Senator Cruz, who arrived at the airport with a large suitcase on Wednesday, is being criticised for going on a holiday with his family even as his state constituents were struggling without steady electricity, heat and running water in the middle of record-breaking cold temperatures.
In a statement released 12 hours after he was seen boarding the flight to Cancun, Mr Cruz said that he took a spontaneous trip to appease his daughters. But the purported text messages sent by Ms Cruz paints 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.”
“Anyone can or want to leave for the week?” she wrote, according to the NYT. “We may go to Cancun.”
In the reported texts, Ms Cruz detailed the plan to stay at the Ritz-Carlon in Cancun from Wednesday to Sunday. The resort costs $309 per night, she told the group.
Though Senator Cruz abandoned the trip amid calls for his resignation but, so far, neither the lawmaker nor his wife has commented on the reported messages.
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.”
“Whether the decision to go was tone-deaf, look, it was obviously a mistake, and in hindsight, I wouldn’t have done it. I was trying to be a dad,” Mr Cruz said.
“And all of us have made decisions… when you’ve got two girls who’ve been cold for two days and haven’t had heat or power, and they’re saying, ‘Hey look we don’t have school, let’s get out of here.’ I think there are a lot of parents that’d be like, if I can do this, great,” he said.
