After an American politician, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), was seen fleeing from a reporter who questioned gun regulation in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, Mexico President López Obrador insulted him.
Obrador said during a press conference on Wednesday that Cruz and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) had both accused him of having ties to illicit gangs.
#ConferenciaPresidente. Exhibe @lopezobrador_ noticiero de @France24_es donde señalan que el senador texano Ted Cruz recibió 176 mil dólares de la Asociación Nacional del Rifle. pic.twitter.com/eTG2jpNPMc
— Jenaro Villamil (@jenarovillamil) June 8, 2022
Senators must “provide evidence” to support their accusations, he said.
Obrador then went on to criticize Cruz for accepting donations from gun manufacturers and lobbyists. Cruz has gotten thousands of dollars from the National Rifle Association, (NRA).
Last week, several dozen Texas teachers, school employees, and union officials staged a protest outside Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz’s office in downtown Austin on Tuesday afternoon, chanting “shame on you,” in response to Cruz’s comments in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
The demonstrators also demanded safer classrooms, stricter gun regulatory measures, and a pushback against rhetoric advocating teacher arming in the classroom.
“Educators are here to teach, not to police,” said Zeph Capo, the Texas chapter president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Following the shooting, Cruz has focused on improving school security and has criticized ideas to tighten gun laws and purchasing restrictions.
“The elites who dominate our culture, tell us that firearms lie at the root of the problem,” Cruz said in a Friday speech at the National Rifle Association conference in Houston. “It’s a lot easier to moralize about guns and to shriek about those you disagree with politically, but it’s never been about guns.”
Cruz claims that anyone seeking to tighten gun laws is attempting to “disarm America.”
Two Fridays ago, Cruz sat down to a sushi dinner that was interrupted by a man who confronted the lawmaker over his hard-line stance on firearms, three days after 21 people were shot and killed at an elementary school in the state.
The man shouted above security personnel as they walked him to the door at the end of the altercation.
“Nineteen children died! That’s on your hands! Ted Cruz, that’s on your hands!” he says in a video of the incident.
Benjamin Hernandez, the man, who confronted Cruz, told HuffPost that he was in Houston because his digital advertising firm was live streaming protests outside the NRA convention. “Oh, hell no,” Hernandez exclaimed as he saw Cruz stroll into the same restaurant where he was having dinner.
“A couple of days ago, I had caught that clip of Beto [O’Rourke] confronting [Texas Gov. Greg] Abbott, and I wrote something to the effect of, ‘Confront all these hypocritical assholes as Beto did.’ And it’s really easy to tweet, right?” Hernandez told HuffPost. “But then two days later, Ted Cruz is walking in this space where I am, and it’s like, OK, I have to go talk to him now.”
Despite the fact that other Republican politicians boycotted the NRA gathering following the killing in Uvalde, Texas, Cruz showed up and delivered a speech in which he maintained that guns were not to blame for the terrible tragedy.
Hernandez faked to pose for a photo with his arm around Cruz at the restaurant as a friend secretly recorded a video of him turning to Cruz after the false photo to discuss gun legislation.
