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Ted Cruz had good reason to be happy with himself as he settled by the pool at the luxurious Greek Mediterranean resort of Costa Navarino at about 2 pm on Thursday, July 3. He had just arrived in Europe earlier that day after a long flight from Texas, and it was finally time to relax.
He’d helped deliver Donald Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill with a narrow Senate victory two days earlier. Okay, so maybe millions of poorer Americans might lose their health insurance and food subsidies, but the boss and all those wealthy GOP donors were happy.
It was the Texas senator’s time for some R&R. Where better than the resort in Messinia in the southwest Peloponnese, with rooms costing upward of $600 a night and one of the most unspoiled and breathtaking landscapes on the Med.
According to one of our growing network of Swamp spies, Cruz was at the pool with two bodyguards on the afternoon before the most devastating floods in over a century hit back home. There had been emergency warnings in Texas, and the senator may have been more wary than most about being abroad when disaster strikes at home.
Cruz earned the nickname “Cancun Ted” Cruz when he skipped off to Mexico with his family to avoid the Texas Big Freeze in the winter of 2021. That was a billion-dollar weather-related catastrophe with a reported death toll of over 200 lives. At the time, the senator defended his sunshine flight by saying he wanted to be “a good dad,” but returned because “it didn’t feel right.”
Some Swampers may find it strange that Cruz, the great patriot, should choose to celebrate Independence Day in Greece, but it was what happened next that has some questioning whether the senator once more lost sight of his Lone Star.
He insists he hit the phones as soon as he learned about the horrific scale of the tragedy on Friday, but The Swamp revealed that Cruz took in a visit to the Parthenon in Athens before finally flying back to the disaster zone in Central Texas on Sunday. He stayed in Greece and continued to sightsee as rescuers scoured the floodwaters in Central Texas that killed at least 100 people, including 27 campers and counselors from a summer camp. Athens, incidentally, is a four-hour drive from Costa Navarino.
On Saturday, July 5, at about 6 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET)—more than 24 hours after the Guadalupe River burst its banks—Cruz and his wife were spotted by another Swamp spy lining up outside the Parthenon. “He was with his family and a lone security guard,” said an eyewitness at the iconic tourist site. “As he walked past us, I simply said, ‘20 kids dead in Texas and you take a vacation?’ He sort of grunted and walked on. His wife shot me a dirty look. Then they continued on with their tour guide.”
(If you missed The Swamp’s full exclusive story, read it here.)
But we want our loyal readers to know that The Swamp is the real deal and does not get sucked into the double-dealing ooze so familiar with D.C. denizens. So here’s a postscript for our loyal subscribers.
Cruz’s staff refused to offer comment on the record to The Swamp before publication but wanted to go off the record, to which The Swamp agreed, believing that Cruz’s aides were speaking to us in good faith. Our initial report therefore reflected their claim that it had been impossible for Cruz to get a flight until Sunday. After we published, Cruz’s communications director Macarena Martinez posted on X that she had spoken to the Daily Beast and said, “A bulls— piece published by a bulls— rag outlet with no credibility, and with no regard for the tragedy in Texas. The Senator is on the ground in Texas and arrived as fast as humanly possible. I explained all of this to their two-faced reporter.” Notably, Martinez denied none of the facts of The Swamp’s revelations, and The Swamp stands by its single-faced reporters.
And don’t forget, our spies are everywhere…from Annapolis to the Acropolis and the Pentagon to the Parthenon….
The Swamp is written by David Gardner, Farrah Tomazin, and Sarah Ewall-Wice.
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