Ted Cruz mocked for past comments online over Texas power woes

US senator Ted Cruz is facing another wave of online criticism after Texas’ energy authority asked state residents to conserve power and warned of grid shortages following his own attacks aimed at liberal states that faced similar issues.

The backlash started on Monday after the power grid of Texas urged state residents to conserve power amid a heat wave in the state, less than a year after the state’s junior Republican senator mocked California for the exact same reason.

A news release from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) urged Texans to “reduce electric use as much as possible” through Friday, as a result of an energy shortage brought on by outages at power stations.

According to the statement, a “significant number of forced generation outages” was responsible for the problem.

“We will be conducting a thorough analysis with generation owners to determine why so many units are out of service,” said a spokesperson for ERCOT.

“Ted Cruz might use this #ERCOT power crisis to go down to EPCOT and demand answers, and no I did not spell ERCOT wrong that second time,” tweeted filmmaker Jeremy Newberger, referring to Disney’s Epcot theme park in Florida and a previous scandal Mr Cruz faced for leaving Texas on vacation during devastating winter storms that left millions without power.

Others mocked Mr Cruz for posting a tweet Monday amid the outages that accused Democrats of being unwilling or somehow against saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the US flag, with many making references to his support of objections to the certification of the Electoral College results earlier this year.

“Certified election results didn’t used to be controversial, you traitorous twat,” wrote The West Wing star Bradley Whitford.

“Heartwarming: Senator Reunited With Lost Flagpole Used as Weapon in Insurrection He Incited,” quipped The Daily Show With Trevor Noah in a tweet.

The power shortages come less than 12 months after California faced power outages in August of 2020, though California officials at the time only asked state residents to conserve power for a few hours.

Mr Cruz jumped on the opportunity to attack the blue state and nationally-recognised Democrats including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the time, claiming that the power shortages caused by a heat wave were actually the result of liberal policies.

“California is now unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity,” he tweeted at the time.

“Biden/Harris/AOC want to make CA’s failed energy policy the standard nationwide. Hope you don’t like air conditioning!” Mr Cruz added in the August 2020 tweet.

That tweet resurfaced Monday, with many critics of the Texas Republican including a former spokesman for Hillary Clinton chiming in.

“See below what Ted Cruz thinks of gov'ts in states that have power outages in summer. Ted Cruz's own Texas is warning about power outages in summer,” tweeted Jesse Ferguson.

Mr Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Independent regarding his state’s current power woes or his own past comments.

The Texas senator was previously ridiculed earlier this year after absconding to Cancun, Mexico in the aftermath of a winter storm that that left millions in his state without electricity or heat, many of whom were still struggling to stay warm while Mr Cruz left the state.

ERCOT also faced criticism over its response to that winter storm, as many residents faced skyrocketing energy bills due to issues with Texas’s state-run power grid at the time resulting from frozen equipment at natural gas plants as well as wind power farms.