Vanity Fair: “Texas senator Ted Cruz, whose superpower is always doing the wrong thing, appears to have gone sightseeing in Athens the day after a devastating natural disaster hit his home state, killing more than 100 people, including more than two dozen girls and staff members from a summer camp. In addition to being in deeply poor taste, the revelation suggests that the lawmaker did not actually attempt to get back to Texas “as fast as humanly possible,” as his office claimed.
On Monday, The Daily Beast reported that Cruz was spotted at the Parthenon on Saturday, July 5, at approximately 6 p.m. local time, “more than 24 hours after the Guadalupe River burst its banks” and “a day after Camp Mystic announced that more than 20 girls had gone missing in the floodwaters.” Michael Rocchio, whose photo of Cruz at the Greek temple was posted on Bluesky, told the Houston Chronicle, “I get it, he’s on vacation. But after what happened, vacation or not, you should have been back on a plane on his way back to Texas to deal with everything that was going on with those poor kids in the floodplain.” Cruz left Greece on Sunday morning, arriving in Texas that evening.
After The Daily Beast published its story, a spokesperson for Cruz wrote on X: “A b****** piece published by a b****** 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.”