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Ted Cruz Isn’t Stupid — He Knows Exactly What He’s Doing
With his tweet about the Paris Climate Agreement, Cruz shows Trump’s fiercest supporters that he will carry the legacy.
I’m sure by now you’ve all read Ted Cruz’s tweet complaining about Biden rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.
If not, here it is in all its stupid glory:
Everybody’s first reaction was to mock the Senator’s apparent ignorance of world affairs or his obvious hypocrisy, pretending to defend the interests of a city, Pittsburgh, whom he tried to disenfranchise two weeks ago. “How could he be so stupid?” is a question on many’s lips. People laughed at the blatant pandering to Trump’s “I love the uneducated” base, but there is more to this tweet than meets the eye. It is part of a series of tweets that, together, make up a clear message to the most violent of Trump’s supporters that Cruz will “continue the fight.”
First of all, Cruz isn’t stupid or ignorant. An Ivy League education is no definite proof of intelligence, but as an alumnus of Princeton and Harvard Law, Cruz has benefitted from an outstanding higher education.
Second, as hated and despised as he is, Cruz is an experienced political operator. He knows how D.C. functions as well as he understands his constituents and, more importantly, he set himself up as one of the leading figures of Trumpism. Some of the terrorists who stormed the Capitol on January 6 boasted that “Ted Cruz would want us to do this,” demonstrating the influence he holds over these people.
We cannot use Hanlon’s razor here; this principle doesn’t work for someone as evil and calculating as Cruz. He must have another purpose, and the follow-ups to his tweet tell us what it is.
On the surface
The tweet's first and obvious intent was to enrage every reasonable American, and it worked like a charm. From Seth Rogen to AOC to thousands more people online and in the media, everybody took Cruz’s bait. To use Trumpian terminology, he did “own the libs” with his…
