As we reported yesterday, howls of outrage erupted among the Usual Suspects in the media, on the left, and to a certain extent on the right after Twitter sleuths discovered that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was spotted at an airport with his family awaiting a flight to Cancun, Mexico.
They ripped Cruz for leaving the United States for a much warmer country and climate at a time when millions of his state’s residents are without power and freezing. In a statement issued in response to media reports and tweets from Twitter sleuths, Cruz confirmed he had taken the trip to Cancun because “our girls asked to take a trip with friends” and he flew down with them. He also said he would be flying back home Thursday afternoon.
Since that time, Cruz – who has more or less admitted that the optics of the trip were bad – has been bashed up one side and down the other by the New York Times, CNN, and other supposedly objective media outlets for his actions even though, as my colleague Brandon Morse pointed out, it’s not like there was much of anything Cruz could do about the power outages in Texas no matter where he was.
What we didn’t hear much about yesterday, however, was what President Joe Biden was up to. The DC Examiner’s Joe Gabriel Simonson raised the question, but the New York Post had already provided the answer:
Cruz thing is troubling to say the very least, but where’s the president? https://t.co/eato1Ta4zS
— Joe Gabriel Simonson (@SaysSimonson) February 18, 2021
So just what was Biden doing Thursday in the middle of the winter storm that has blanketed swaths of the country? Calling a lid at 8 a.m., meaning there will be no more news coming out of the White House for the day and no more media availabilities:
Joe Biden called a lid today at 8 am. https://t.co/8sZlouopXW
— Kelly Jane Torrance (@KJTorrance) February 18, 2021
As per the norm, others in the apologist media rushed to Biden’s defense. Here’s CNBC/NBC News “reporter” Carl Quintanilla providing the official White House agenda for the day Thursday:
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) February 18, 2021
Despite Quintanilla’s valiant effort, he was alerted to the fact that the schedule he provided did not nullify the point:
Yes, that does not contradict this. https://t.co/vSiNeTyY55
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 18, 2021
Something interesting about the White House calling an early lid yesterday is that though Biden’s day was cut very short (something that, btw, happened quite frequently on the campaign trail), Vice President Harris’ schedule remained the same, fueling more speculation as to just who might really be running things in our nation’s capital:
President Biden took a snow day Thursday as DC received a half-inch dusting — but Vice President Kamala Harris carried on with scheduled in-person events.
[..]
Harris, who attended high school in Montreal, Canada, pressed forward despite the weather. She did not cancel a scheduled 11:15 a.m. event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House.
[…]
Biden, 78, spent Thursday morning receiving his daily intelligence briefing and a closed-door briefing on COVID-19. He had no scheduled events or briefings on his public schedule in the afternoon.
So Sen. Cruz taking a family trip to Cancun while millions of Texans are without power=bad. Pres. Biden taking a snow day while millions of Americans in numerous states are without power=meh, apparently.
The burning question of the day, though, is was Biden in bed by 7 p.m.?
As usual, the (D) behind Biden’s name makes all the (D)difference. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Related: Chuck Todd Does a Very Chuck Toddian Thing During Report on Texas Weather Conditions
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