Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) slammed Senate Republican leadership this week over the controversial border bill, arguing that they were helping House Democrats defeat the majority that Republicans have in the House.
Cruz made the remarks during an episode of his “Verdict” podcast with host Ben Ferguson while talking about how negotiations have gone over the last several weeks and the split the bill has created among Congressional Republicans.
“Senate Republican leadership has basically declared war on House Republicans,” Cruz said, adding that at the conference’s weekly lunch meeting, there have been highly charged confrontations over the contents of the bill. “And I had been standing up, as have a number of other conservatives making the case against this, and many of my Republican colleagues are getting really pissed off.”
He said that Republican senators have been pressing leadership about why they were working on the bill with Democrats when it has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House and that leadership responded by claiming that it would pass.
“Here’s really what’s accomplished: It is all about political messaging,” Cruz said. “This enables Chuck Schumer, it enables every Democrat running for reelection and enables Joe Biden to, number one, to not secure the border, to leave the crisis exactly as it is. But number two, to say, ‘Well, we wanted to secure the border, but the Republicans stopped us.’ This is all about giving political cover for Democrats.”
“The reason [Senate Republican leadership] wants to do it is once they’ve passed it in the Senate, use it as a club to beat the crap out of House Republicans and to defeat the House Republican majority,” he said. “It is literally Senate Republican leadership helping the Democrats in the House.”
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Cruz said that a few of his Republican colleagues who were claiming that Republicans were not passing the bill because they want to use illegal immigration as an issue in the upcoming election were lying and that they were helping Democrats by making those remarks.
“You are reading Chuck Schumer’s talking points,” he said. “And your lie will be used to reelect Democrats to the Senate and in the House. You’re simply being useful idiots. And sadly, they have no response to that; they just go back out and tell the reporters the same damn thing all over again.”
There is a 0% chance this failed border bill will pass the House.
It effectively normalizes 5,000 illegal aliens crossing the border per day—more than 1.8 million per year.
This is not a real solution. It is all about political messaging.https://t.co/EtJNmLSOly pic.twitter.com/c4icFXXhvk
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 6, 2024