Kellyanne Conway has vehemently defended Ted Cruz’s Greece vacation while Texas was in the throes of deadly floods.
Conway has appeared as a guest host of the Hannity program in place of host Sean Hannity, over the past couple of nights, dubbed a Hannity Special. She is usually a contributor for Fox News, appearing on a variety of programs including The Five. Cruz was a guest on Hannity Wednesday night, which saw Conway congratulate the 54-year-old senator for his vacation after passing President Donald Trump’s controversial “big, beautiful, bill.” She added: “Good for you.”
The Daily Beast revealed on Monday the Texas senator was still on holiday in Greece 24 hours after the flash flooding began on Friday July 4.
His office said Cruz flew out of Athens “as fast as humanly possible,” getting a plane on Sunday morning and landing in Texas that night. The Daily Beast found several potential flight options that could have got him home earlier.
At least 120 people have now died after the flooding in Central Texas, with over 150 still missing.
Speaking with Cruz on Wednesday, Conway insisted the senator had earned a his family break due to the effort he put into Trump’s megabill.
In an emotional outburst over the backlash to Cruz’s delayed return to America, Conway said she couldn’t comprehend the “lack of compassion, the heartlessness, the lack of any kind of dignity, love” from his “colleagues on the other side of the aisle.”
She then stated, “Yes, you were on vacation with your family, good for you, because you worked tirelessly for weeks, if not months, on that big beautiful bill. And not a single one of the same Democrats now attacking you and President Trump dare vote for that bill.”
Barely taking a breath, Conway concluded, “So the lies have to stop but the sheer lack of compassion and heartlessness is something I just cannot abide, acknowledge and accept.”
Cruz did not directly address the timing of his return to Texas, but instead deflected to critics of President Trump.
“There are certainly partisans who in the face of every natural disaster they try to politicize it,” Cruz said. “If a hurricane happens, there are people on the left that say the hurricane is Donald Trump’s fault. So very quickly, people in the press and partisan Democrats tried to blame this flood on Donald Trump, those arguments are ridiculous.”
Cruz said an “enormous amount of both Republican and Democrats” in the Senate had reached out to him and said, “This is horrific, our hearts are breaking and anything we can do to help Texas we’re there.”
Prior to his vacation, Cruz’s work on the megabill slashed funding to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That meant $150 million cut from weather forecasting systems that disseminate information to the public. An extra $50 million to study climate-related impacts on oceans was also cut.
Cruz has form for being in warm climates during national disasters in Texas.
He was on a trip in Cancun, Mexico, in 2021 when a winter storm hit Texas, leaving millions without power or water. He said he returned from his vacation because “so many Texans were hurting didn’t feel right and so I changed my return flight and flew back on the first available flight I could take.”
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