Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dialled up the conservative outrage machine, unleashing a fiery broadside at Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker during a Newsmax appearance.
He called Pritzker a “disgusting, racist, bigot,’ in what was supposed to be a discussion on Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops to Chicago.
Local Democrats have argued the plan is an attempt to intimidate immigrant communities in the city.
Newsmax host Chris Salcedo asked Cruz for his thoughts on comments made by Pritzker about the National Guard plan.
Cruz told Salcedo, “You really know how to piss me off,” before launching into his attack on Pritzker, calling the governor a racist bigot and making offensive remarks about his weight.
“You and I are both Latino,” he said to Salcedo, “and listen, I don’t want to get between J.B. Pritzker and the Domino’s Pizza line, but I’ll tell you what I am willing to get between is him and his open doors for every human trafficker, every drug trafficker, every MS-13 and Tren De Aragua gang member.
“The Democrats claim that Latinos support illegal immigration. Well, I’ve got news for you, J.B., in the state of Texas in 2024, Donald Trump carried the Latino vote and so did I, because our community, like every community, are the victims of the violence of these illegal aliens and gang members that the Democats trafficked into this country.”
Nationally, 43 percent of Latino voters voted for Trump in the 2024 election compared to 55 percent who voted for Vice President Kamala Harris. In Texas, 55 percent of Latino voters voted for Trump.
Cruz also accused the Democratic Party of consistently choosing to “stand with” murderers, rapists, and child molesters over innocent citizens “every time,” adding, “I don’t understand the mentality of that, but don’t you dare claim it’s because Latinos want you to.”
Pritzker has repeatedly asserted that Chicago does not want National Guard troops on its streets, stating in a Tuesday press conference, “I’m aware that the President of the United States likes to go on television and beg me to call and ask him for troops.”
“I find this extraordinarily strange as Chicago does not want troops on our streets.”
Pritzker has also slammed ICE, “They don’t actually care if you’re here and undocumented, they just care if your skin color is a little off of theirs, and if you’re Latino, they’re just going to target you… If they want to celebrate Mexican Independence Day, they ought to be able to do that without being terrorized.” Mexican Independence Day is on September 16.
Authoritarians thrive on your silence — be loud — for America. pic.twitter.com/ef8IpAgf5J
— JB Pritzker (@JBPritzker) September 3, 2025
Other local Democrats have joined Pritzker in repudiating Trump’s plan, including former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, who said on Tuesday that the move was a display of power on the president’s part.
“This is about two things: it’s about power and it’s about money. He wants to exercise his power, he wants to scare the heck out of immigrant communities, and he wants to use the pretense of the National Guard or the military coming in to Chicago to boost up the ICE numbers,” Lightfoot told CNN’s Kasie Hunt.
Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson called the president’s approach “uncoordinated, uncalled for, and unsound,” and said he had “grave concerns” about the potential unlawful deployment of the National Guard.
Trump set his sights on Chicago late last month as the third U.S. city where he could deploy the National Guard, following deployments in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
On Tuesday, Trump’s plan to continue sending the National Guard into American cities to combat crime and facilitate ICE raids and deportations experienced a setback after a federal judge ruled that his use of the National Guard in Los Angeles was unlawful.
Judge Charles Breyer found that the president had violated the Posse Comitatus Act by sending armed soldiers into Los Angeles to perform activities typically reserved for domestic law enforcement.
Breyer criticized the Trump administration’s “top-down, systemic effort” to use troops to “execute various sectors of federal law.”
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