Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has labelled New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a “parasite sucking on the taxpayer” because she collects a federal paycheck – just as he does.
Cruz was guesting on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Monday evening when he lashed out at “radical extremists” like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and AOC in a warning to viewers about what is at stake if Republicans lose November’s midterm elections.
“The stakes are, do we hand over the Congress and the country to a bunch of radical extremists?” the senator said.
“You mentioned people like Elizabeth Warren and AOC. Let’s take AOC this week – AOC had this bizarre take on the history of America, and she said our revolution was a revolution against the billionaires.
“Basically, she retold it as a Marxist revolution, and I don’t know whether that is more ignorance or ideology, but it is both together.
“If you look at the American Revolution, who were we fighting against? We declared our independence from totalitarian government, from King George III, from government that taxed you and controlled you just like AOC and Elizabeth Warren and Ilhan Omar want to do.”
Not finished there, Cruz laid out his own alternative interpretation of American history, portraying it as a triumph for “American free enterprise capitalists” instead.
“Who was the American Revolution funded by?” he asked, before answering himself: “It was funded by people like Robert Morris, who was the wealthiest person in the colonies, it was funded by people like George Washington, who in modern terms was worth about $600 million, people like Thomas Jefferson.
“It was American free enterprise capitalists who invested in seeking freedom, and by the way, AOC also said it is impossible for anybody to earn a billion dollars.
“Which, look, I recognize for her given that she was a bartender, that is probably true, and there is no disrespect to bartenders… But she went from that to being a government employee and a parasite sucking on the taxpayer.”
Members of the House of Representatives like AOC are paid a salary of $174,000 a year as standard, precisely the same figure as members of the Senate like Cruz.
Having already devoted an entire episode of his podcast to “AOC’s Twisted Commie History of America“ earlier in the day, the senator continued his lecture by saying: “Think of Henry Ford, who invented the Model T, who invented the assembly line, and basically created the American middle class, you don’t think that produced billions of dollars?
“Look at Elon Musk, making electric cars, making self-driving cars, sending rocket ships to the moon, he’s going to be sending rocket ships to Mars, and yet these left-wing zealots say if you are successful and you are producing and creative, you are bad, we want to take everything from you, and we want to put a bunch of Washington politicians in charge of your life.”
He concluded: “I’ve got to say, Sean, if you’re a 25-year-old guy starting your career, or a 25-year-old woman starting your career, that is a horrible, dystopic future, and if they take over the Congress, God help this country.”
Cruz went on to accuse the left of harboring a “profound ignorance” and “lying to young people,” even insisting that the likes of himself and Hannity were the real “social justice warriors.”
“We want to see people do better, we want to see poverty overcome,” he explained. “The greatest enemy poverty has ever seen is the American free enterprise system. Nothing has lifted more people out of poverty.
“If you want to come from nothing and achieve the American dream, it is capitalism that the leftists are trying to destroy that produced that, and yet they are trying to lie and deceive young people, and it is getting real traction, which means we have to push back.”
With the likes of Steve Bannon already sounding the alarm over the midterms, panicked by President Donald Trump’s sliding approval ratings, new Emerson College polling published late last month indicated that Democrats have a 10-point advantage over Republican candidates.
The GOP has reacted by piling more than $300 million into their campaign war chest while Trump is already crying fraud, threatening to send in an “Election Integrity Army” to oversee ballot counting in every state, again stoking fears that the vote will not be free and fair.
He infamously complained that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him, despite losing multiple court cases attempting to argue the point, but was entirely silent on the integrity question in 2024 when he won.
