We are now in the second day of one of the dumbest news cycles since Donald Trump got two scoops of ice cream.

Ted Cruz, who is a senator and not a state official, decided to take his family to Cancun for a vacation yesterday. That blew up into a media frenzy, including some stalker New York Magazine writer going to Cruz’s house to claim the Senator’s dog had been abandoned (narrator: the dog had, in fact, not been abandoned).

Tweet vs. story. pic.twitter.com/y0lTETrb2U

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 19, 2021

Cruz quickly changed course, boarding the next flight back and issuing an apology. Despite that, we’ve seen all manner of consternation over him making what was at worse a bad PR move. See if you notice anything about the idiocy posted below compared to the coverage of more recent, actual scandals.

The lesson from the Cruz incident is that Republican electeds know there are little to no consequences for their terrible behavior. We keep waiting for them to be embarrassed, ashamed and chastened. It ain’t coming…

— S.E. Cupp (@secupp) February 19, 2021

Again, Cruz boarded a plane, noticed his mistake, and came back. That was his great sin, and that sin was purely political as he has no actual power to affect anything going on in Texas right now. Yet, from Cupp’s tweet, you’d think he was the Zodiac killer. Well, I guess he is, but still, you get the point. He’s “terrible” for (checks notes)…taking a 12 hour vacation during a storm he has no control over? I mean, you can argue the optics all day long, but it’s hardly comparable to killing thousands of nursing home residents or locking down one’s state, destroying its economy, and then going to The French Laundry for dinner.

Here was CNN’s coverage.

CNN is giving tougher coverage to Ted Cruz for taking his family and leaving his freezing house than they're giving Andrew Cuomo who enacted a disastrous nursing home policy, lied about it, hid the results from the DOJ, and is now threatening officials who won't tell his lie. pic.twitter.com/S4UNKDAQ5y

— Eddie Zipperer (@EddieZipperer) February 19, 2021

This is how much CNN’s “Reliable Sources” media newsletter dedicated to Cruz tonight. 1/2

(No mentions of Cuomo) pic.twitter.com/fCf72nbfEt

— Cameron Cawthorne (@Cam_Cawthorne) February 19, 2021

Of course, Cupp, CNN, and the rest of the media couldn’t be bothered to spend even a fraction of this much outrage on Andrew Cuomo, whose nursing home scandal is actually a big deal. That’s not an accident or simply a matter of bias, either. It’s completely be design. The focus on Cruz is bad-faith garbage dressed up as concern. It’s meant to distract everyone from the things that really matter and affect the lives of normal people.

Right when it was revealed that the FBI is investigating Cuomo over the nursing home scandal, suddenly the media starts focusing intensely on the Cruz family's trip to Cancun. If you're a conservative going along with this obvious bullshit distraction technique, you're useless.

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 18, 2021

Journos successfully asked more questions about Ted Cruz in 12 hours than they did about Cuomo covering up nursing home deaths in eight months

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) February 18, 2021

Yesterday, I wrote on Democrat lawmaker Ron Kim alleging that Cuomo had threatened him and asked him to lie in relation to the nursing home scandal. That news cycle lasted about three hours, and that was mostly via right-wing media. Cruz gets on a plane and it’s a multiple day story?

Give me a break. We can all see what’s really going on here. This Cruz thing is almost wholly manufactured to cover for Cuomo. All it really deserved was a quick mention that he came back and apologized. He didn’t kill anyone. He’s not a governor who can make policy in Texas right now. He didn’t attempt to criminally cover up information and intimidate a lawmaker. Anyone spending more time on Cruz than Cuomo is just a disgusting hack, and that’s exactly what our media are made up of.

While Cruz is having his house stalked and his wife’s text messages released, there’s essentially no real investigative reporting going on up in New York despite us knowing about that scandal since May of last year. It’s a travesty, but it’s bigger than just politics and palace intrigue. People died, and that should carry more weight than the optics of a vacation. It won’t, though, because our news media are absolutely hopeless. If the Times, CNN, the Post, etc. never put out another piece of “news,” the world would be better for it.