According to a report from The Daily Beast, Senator Ted Cruz was vacationing in Greece as tragedy struck his state. Over the July 4 weekend, flash flooding took the lives of at least 95 people in Texas, including 27 children and counselors at Camp Mystic, an all-girls camp along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
Cruz was sightseeing in Athens as first responders began launching search and rescue operations, The Daily Beast reports. The senator reportedly landed in Greece on Thursday, July 3; was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5; and is believed to have not caught a plane to San Antonio, Texas, until Sunday.
Cruz was accompanied at the Parthenon by his family and a security guard, according to a reported eyewitness, who told The Daily Beast: “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’” The senator is said to have “sort of grunted and walked on,” while his wife, Heidi Cruz, “shot [the source] a dirty look,” before “they continued on with their tour guide.”
During Cruz’s reported vacation, the senator posted about the flooding a number of times on social media.
He wrote on Friday, from his personal X account, “Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” adding that he’d spoken with Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and the chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, as well as with President Trump.
On Monday, Cruz reiterated that he had spoken on the phone with the Texas officials “in the first few hours of this flood” and had told Trump, “early in what was transpiring,” that “this appears to be bad, really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.”
On Friday and Saturday, Cruz shared messages on his official congressional X account, saying that he and his wife were “lifting up the victims of the central Texas floods in our prayers.”
The Daily Beast’s report recalls the infamous February 2021 incident in which the senator took a trip to Cancun, Mexico, during a historic winter storm that killed an estimated 246 Texans and left millions more freezing without power and drinking water.
During that 2021 scandal, which Cruz admitted was “obviously a mistake,” the senator shipped out to the tropics with his family, who wanted to escape the “FREEZING” weather, per texts from Heidi Cruz unearthed by The New York Times. Senator Cruz said he had planned to stay in Cancun for the weekend but returned to Texas early on “the first available flight,” as “leaving when so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right.”
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