Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) was called out on Saturday for his failed predictions regarding COVID after sharing a tweet about the new variant.
Cruz made reference to the new, highly mutated variant known as Omicron, which was first detected in Botswana and South Africa. The World Health Organization warned that the mutation can spread even quicker than other variants, including among vaccinated people.
Various countries—including Britain, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Israel—have implemented travel restrictions and flight bans to limit the variant’s international spread, The New York Times reported.
On Nov. 27, Cruz quote tweeted a post by Michael Knowles that read “Spoiler alert: there’s always going to be another variant,” with the words “true that.” Knowles is a host on The Daily Wire, a right-wing online news site and media company.
The Republican Senator’s recent tweet earned more than 15,000 likes and over 800 commented replies.
The comments section was filled with right-wing politicians, media personalities, and regular folks mocking the variants and railing against Democrats.
MSNBC and NBC show host Mehdi Hasan said in a tweet that Cruz and other right-wing conspiracists “are trying to suggest new variants are part of some nefarious Democratic conspiracy to continue the pandemic forever.”
Yet just last year, while many people and businesses were still following lockdown and mask regulations, Cruz claimed that the country would suddenly go back to normal if President Joe Biden became president. The senator suggested that the concerns over COVID was nothing more than political theater designed to hurt then-President Donald Trump.
“The same Cruz said last year that the pandemic would ‘magically’ disappear if Dems retook the White House,” Hasan said in the tweet.
Hasan is referencing an interview Cruz gave last year in which he said:
“If it ends up that Biden wins in November … I guarantee you the week after the election, suddenly all those Democratic Governors, all those Democratic Mayors will say, ‘Everything’s magically better. Go back to work. Go back to school.’ Suddenly the problems are solved,” Cruz said in the interview.
But the senator has been proven wrong. COVID regulations continue to exist throughout states and businesses, the media is still covering the pandemic, and vaccine eligibility continues to expand.
Hasan added that conservatives like Cruz “can’t even keep their pandemic-era conspiracies straight.”
Twitter users were quick to amplify the tweet while calling out Cruz for his remarks.
Just this month, the senator from Texas introduced a bill to block the federal government and public schools from mandating COVID vaccinations for kids.
The Daily Dot reached out to the senator via email.
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