Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz launched into an attack on Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker, even making a jibe about his weight, during an interview about President Trump’s crime crackdown.
Speaking on Chris Salcedo’s Newsmax show, Cruz was asked about Gov. Pritzker’s opposition to Trump’s plan to send National Guard troops into Chicago to support local law enforcement, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., this summer.
After Salcedo ran a clip of the governor delivering a press conference, the senator responded: “Chris, you really know how to p*** me off. What a disgusting, racist bigot JB Pritzker is.”
Cruz was seemingly taking offense at comments made by the governor about ICE agents targeting Latinos and continued: “Listen, I don’t want to get between JB Pritzker and the Domino’s Pizza line, but I’ll tell you what I am willing to get between is him and his open doors for every human trafficker, every drug trafficker, every MS-13 and Tren De Aragua gang member.
Pritzker wasted no time in responding to a clip of the exchange shared on X, remarking: “And I would never want to get between Ted and a trip to Cancun when there’s an emergency in Texas.”
The slam alluded to the senator’s ill-advised vacation to the Mexican beach resort in February 2021 while his state was being battered by a winter storm that left millions of residents without power and running water, forcing him to return home early under a cloud.
Cruz finished his remarks saying: “The Democrats claim that Latinos support illegal immigration. Well, I’ve got news for you, JB, in the state of Texas in 2024, Donald Trump carried the Latino vote and so did I, because our community, like every community, are the victims of the violence of these illegal aliens and gang members that the Democrats trafficked into this country.”
Fifty-five percent of Texas Latinos did vote for Trump in last year’s presidential election but, nationally, the Republican candidate picked up just 43 percent of the demographic’s support, compared to 55 percent for Democrat Kamala Harris.
At his press conference on Tuesday, Pritzker expressed his objection to having National Guardsmen descend on the streets of Chicago by saying: “I’m aware that the President of the United States likes to go on television and beg me to call and ask him for troops. I find this extraordinarily strange as Chicago does not want troops on our streets.”
In attacking ICE and its anti-immigration raids, he said: “They don’t actually care if you’re here and undocumented, they just care if your skin color is a little off of theirs, and if you’re Latino, they’re just going to target you… If they want to celebrate Mexican Independence Day [on September 16], they ought to be able to do that without being terrorized.”
Former Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot has also rebuked Trump over the planned deployment, telling CNN this week: “This is about two things: it’s about power and it’s about money.
“He wants to exercise his power, he wants to scare the heck out of immigrant communities, and he wants to use the pretense of the National Guard or the military coming into Chicago to boost up the ICE numbers.”
