A day after Tucker Carlson publicly scolded him for the unforgivable sin of calling the Jan. 6 insurrection a “violent terrorist attack,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) hightailed it to the Fox News star’s show on Thursday night to grovel for forgiveness.
Yet, while Cruz repeatedly claimed he’d made a “mistake” due to “sloppy and frankly dumb” phrasing, Carlson wouldn’t let the Texas senator off the hook—prompting the one-time presidential contender to plead harder for Carlson’s approval.
Cruz, one of eight senators who objected to the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, drew Carlson’s wrath on Wednesday when he solemnly described the deadly Capitol riot as “a violent terrorist attack” during a Senate hearing.
Carlson, who has downplayed the violence of Jan. 6 and suggested the insurrection was a “false flag” orchestrated by federal agents, wondered “what the hell’s going on,” while accusing Cruz of “repeating the talking points that Merrick Garland has written.”
Tucker Scolds Ted Cruz for Calling Jan. 6 a ‘Terrorist Attack’: ‘What the Hell Is Going On?!’
In a moment that evoked Cruz siding with Donald Trump in 2016 after Trump personally disparaged his wife and father, the Republican lawmaker appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight to kiss the ring and beg the Fox News
News audience to forgive him.
“There are a lot of dumb people in Congress. You are not one of them. Smarter than I am. And you never use words carelessly,” Carlson kicked off the interview. “And yet you call this a terror attack when by no definition was it a terror attack. That was a lie. You told that lie on purpose and I’m wondering why you did.”
After saying he contacted Carlson the night before to ask to come on and tell his side, Cruz then claim the way he phrased his words “was sloppy and frankly dumb.” Carlson, however, was having none of it.
“I don’t buy that,” the Fox star interjected. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! I’ve known you a long time since before you went to the Senate. You were a Supreme Court contender. You take words as seriously as any man who’s served in the Senate. And every word—you repeated that phrase, I do not believe that you used that accidentally. I just don’t!”