Ted Cruz Lickspittle Watch, Part III

It seems almost a daily occurrence now: Ted Cruz fawning over the greatness of President Trump and defending the lovely man’s honor before all who will listen. Within hours of my last post on the topic comes this remarkable moment from Cruz’s appearance on “Fox and Friends” — you know, on that pro-Trump network that wouldn’t give Cruz a platform during the primaries (I’ve cued the video up to the key moment):

Here’s the video’s (campaign) money quote:

Most of the media, they’re just out of their minds! They have what I call Trump Derangement Syndrome where all they can do is attack the president all day long on the scandal of the day.

“They have what I call Trump Derangement Syndrome.” What Ted Cruz calls Trump Derangement Syndrome?!!

So not only is Cruz now all the way into the Trump cult camp, spouting the standard puerile insult the cultists use to demean anyone who dislikes Trump or his presidency — the typical schoolyard-style “You’re mental!” nonsense — but he has also, apparently, started attending Trump’s megalomania classes, here claiming the “TDS” cliché as his own coinage.

Good grief. 

If you go back and watch that moment of the video again, you will notice, in case you missed it the first time, that Cruz is already chuckling knowingly about the media’s anti-Trump bias before the Fox talking head even gets to that point in his question. In other words, Cruz knew what the question would be before it was asked, and was therefore delivering a scripted response. This truth is highlighted by the fact that as he delivers his series of bromides about TDS and the media “lighting their hair on fire,” while the host who asked the question smiles and bobs along with him, the other two hosts on the big couch are completely deadpan and unresponsive — they are patiently awaiting their respective cues to join this rehearsed “chat.” In other words, they already knew the gist of what Cruz was going to say even while he was saying it.

Furthermore, Cruz immediately slides into talking about another pro-Trump talking point related to the president’s “terrific decision” and “bold leadership” to save “blue collar jobs,” during which he takes a glance down at notes apparently in front of him but out of camera view — the literal talking points for the interview — while Fox instantly posts a subtitle announcing the very policy Cruz is supposedly spontaneously mentioning.

After this point, the blonde leggy thing in the middle of the screen suddenly comes to life in order to ask her question about the Iran deal, to which, once again, the first words of Cruz’s reply return to the rah-rah motif: “Well, once again I think the President did exactly the right thing….”

I’ve noticed that since the 2016 primaries, Cruz has begun to look increasingly fat and sloppy, both inside and out. He needs those Trump voters in Texas, I suppose. It turns out he is not quite the “tell-it-like-it-is” principled muckraker constitutionalists thought they had found, after all. To put this another way, if the GOP establishment had realized how weak and obsequious Cruz could be, and how predictable a spokesman for the party line, they might not have put all their marbles in Trump’s basket in order to stop him in the first place.

I wonder if he’s kicking himself for having worked so hard for years to create that troublesome, anti-McConnell, Tea Party rebel image, given that it has turned out to be an insincere stance anyway.

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