Trump and Biden news - live: Cruz ‘trying to be a good dad’ with Cancun jaunt as Ivanka rules out Senate run

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Jon Sharman,Joe Sommerlad and Justin Vallejo
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Snow falls outside the White House in Washington, DC (Al Drago/EPA)
Snow falls outside the White House in Washington, DC (Al Drago/EPA)

Donald Trump should be allowed to return to Twitter, Microsoft’s billionaire founder Bill Gates has said, telling CNBC he thinks it is eventually likely to happen while admitting that the ex-president’s false narrative that his election defeat to Joe Biden was the result of fraud was “corrosive”.

Republican senator Ted Cruz is meanwhile under pressure after being accused of going on holiday to balmy Cancun, Mexico, while his home state of Texas is shivering through its sixth day of biting low temperatures and heavy snow, which has left pipes frozen and millions still without power as Mr Biden’s administration responds by sending out disaster relief measures, including diesel fuel and generators.

Mr Trump has meanwhile been on a media blitz following the death of conservative talk radio polemicist Rush Limbaugh, remarking that there are “a lot of great polls out there” when asked if he will run for president again in 2024.

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  • Ted Cruz is seemingly returning to Texas after 11 hours in Cancun

    Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is seemingly already returning from a very short — and very inconsiderate — family vacation. Millions of Cruz's constituents lost power earlier this week thanks to a massive winter storm that struck the state. Hundreds of thousands of households still didn't have electricity as of Thursday morning, while many more Texans were dealing with burst pipes and other consequences of the deep freeze. But on Wednesday night, Cruz was seen boarding a plane with his family headed to Cancun amid a storm that had already killed several Texans — as well as a pandemic that had killed thousands. Democrats spent a good 11 hours ridiculing Cruz's terribly timed travel before, on Thursday morning, a person who appeared to be Rafael "Ted" Cruz was spotted on the upgrade list for a Cancun-to-Houston flight. Here’s the upgrade list for this afternoon’s flight from Cancun to Houston. Looks like ⁦@tedcruz⁩ is on his way back, ⁦@danpfeiffer⁩. He’s just narrowly missing the upgrade list That’s assuming that “cru, r” is him. And I do. pic.twitter.com/CqfKa5rJfG — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) February 18, 2021 Texas Democrats have already been demanding Cruz's resignation with the craftily named "FledCruz.com." After all, Cruz himself had called out "hypocritical" Democrats and other officials who'd urged constituents to stay home during the pandemic — while out of the country themselves. As of Thursday at 11:30 a.m. ET, Cruz and his team have not commented on the trip. More stories from theweek.comThe parts of Texas not on its ERCOT power grid appear to have weathered the freeze with few outagesTrump comes out of hidingTexas governor walks back Fox News comments on Green New Deal, says gas, coal failed in Texas freeze

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  • The parts of Texas not on its ERCOT power grid appear to have weathered the freeze with few outages

    Texas is nearing the end of what Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called "a once-in-every-120-year cold front," but that doesn't entirely explain why more than a million households still had no electricity early Thursday, after three full days of below-freezing temperatures. Plenty of places in the world keep their power on in prolonged arctic weather, and so did parts of Texas. Those edges of Texas, including El Paso, "are primarily in areas outside of those supported by ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the electric grid for 90 percent of the state and operates separately from federal oversight and regulation," KHOU 11 Houston reported Wednesday night. After the 2011 winter freeze, El Paso Electric, on the Western Interconnect grid, spent heavily to "winterize our equipment and facilities so they could stand minus-10 degree weather for a sustained period of time," Eddie Gutierrez, an El Paso Electric spokesman, told KHOU. So this year, "we had about three thousand people that were out during this period, a thousand of them had outages that were less than five minutes." On the other side of Texas, near the Louisiana border, the city of Beaumont also appears to have weather the storm without massive outages. Entergy, which powers Beaumont on the Eastern Interconnect grid, told KHOU it also winterized its infrastructure after the 2011 storm. Weatherizing power generation and extraction equipment is voluntary in Texas, though the state legislature will probably revisit that strategy when it dissects ERCOT this year. More stories from theweek.comTed Cruz is seemingly returning to Texas after 11 hours in CancunTrump comes out of hidingTexas governor walks back Fox News comments on Green New Deal, says gas, coal failed in Texas freeze

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  • After blizzard of criticism, vacationing Senator Ted Cruz to fly back to frozen Texas

    U.S. Senator Ted Cruz flew into a storm of criticism on Thursday after leaving his home state of Texas, grappling with a deadly deep freeze, for a holiday jaunt to the Mexican resort city of Cancun. The 50-year-old Republican lawmaker cut his trip short after his travels were reported, stopping briefly in Cancun airport to speak to media on his way out of Mexico. "With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends," Cruz said.

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  • The Daily Show solves Texas blackouts with 'America's most renewable resource: the insane hatred of AOC'

    "A freak winter storm slammed into Texas, causing blackouts for millions of people," and after three days, things are "awful," Trevor Noah said on Wednesday's Daily Show. "I know people were praying for Texas to go blue, but not like this. I mean is it too much to ask for just one apocalypse at a time?" All over Texas, "pipes are frozen, temperatures are below zero, ice is everywhere — forget Texans, this would be too much for Elsa," he joked. Texans are struggling to get heat, water, and food, but "luckily for them, their leaders have stepped up in their time of need" — to blame windmills and Democrats, Noah said. Look, this is embarrassing for Texas Republicans, he said. "I mean, this is the state that prides itself on its oil and gas industry, and now that industry has failed spectacularly." But GOP state leaders and their cable news allies are getting "so desperate to just let fossil fuels off the hook" they're blaming Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and the nonexistent Green New Deal, he added, and that "is f---ing insane." "This just goes to show you, no matter what happens, no matter how far removed she is from the problem, conservatives can and will always find a way to blame the boogeyman, AOC," Noah said. That's clearly "disingenuous, but the good news is it's led to an amazing breakthrough that might just solve Texas' energy problems forever." That breakthrough, unveiled in a fake ad, "draws power from America's most renewable resource: the insane hatred of AOC." Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) "has been working hard to somehow push the blame to Democrats and the Green New Deal, which doesn't even exist yet," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "And Tucker Carlson is helping him out by blaming it on windmills," an accusation so wrong "even the expert Tucker dragged on the show to talk smack about windmills wasn't willing to get into it." Meanwhile, President Biden told a CNN town hall "he's tired of talking about Donald Trump and referred to Donald Trump as 'the former guy' — which I love, because he will hate that," Kimmel said. "Joe knows that the way to deflate Trump is to ignore him, but it's hard, he's like a 2-year-old — you worry that if you take your eyes off him for a minute, he'll flush your keys down the toilet." More stories from theweek.comThe parts of Texas not on its ERCOT power grid appear to have weathered the freeze with few outagesTed Cruz is seemingly returning to Texas after 11 hours in CancunTrump comes out of hiding

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