CNN’s Clarissa Ward is the truest example of public service – Ted Cruz could take notes

As Kabul was captured by the Taliban and thousands of Americans and Afghan refugees mobbed the airport to escape, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward stood in front of the fallen US embassy, unarmed, with her head covered, and interviewed Taliban fighters and Kabul residents – performing a simple, brave act of honest journalism.

This was apparently too much for Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who attacked Ward in an effort to score cheap political points from thousands of miles away.

“Is there an enemy of America for whom @CNN WON’T cheerlead? (In mandatory burkas, no less),” Cruz tweeted from his iPhone, possibly from his $2 million home in Houston. Ms Ward did not actually wear a burka, but rather a hijab.

CNN’s public relations account fired back at Texas’ junior senator, reminding its followers that Cruz booked a flight to a luxury resort in Cancun, Mexico earlier this year as his constituents were left without power after the grid failed amid a winter storm. More than 200 people died during the storm.

While Donald Trump is no longer president, Cruz is carrying on Trump’s tradition of treating the free press as “the enemy of the people” in order to appease the Republican base. The GOP’s constant attacks on journalists have undoubtedly contributed to the US ranking 44th out of 180 countries on the World Press Freedom Index.

In September of 2020, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press documented 238 press freedom violations following the summer of Black Lives Matter-related protests across the country. This includes the attack on freelance journalist Linda Tirado, who was permanently blinded after Minneapolis police shot her in the face with a foam bullet that broke her goggles, and the tear-gassing of a 17-year-old reporter covering protests in Portland, Oregon for her high school newspaper.

All of these attacks on journalists, both physical and rhetorical, undermine the United States’ claims of being a beacon of freedom. Even while the United Kingdom enjoys a higher press freedom ranking than the United States (the UK currently ranks 33rd), it does not have press freedom written into its Constitution as the US does. And when the United States’ constitutionally protected freedoms are undermined by its own elected officials, it lends credibility to arguments made by groups like the Taliban that the United States is more oppressive than it lets on.

Essentially, Ted Cruz’s attack on Clarissa Ward is doing more to help terrorists and hurt America than Clarissa Ward’s honest reporting.

And if Ted Cruz wants to criticize support for the Taliban, he should turn his gaze toward his own party. On 15 August, as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban, the Republican National Committee quietly deleted a webpage praising Trump for a deal he brokered with the Taliban before he left office. An archived version of the page shows that the RNC specifically mentioned a deal the Trump administration made with the Taliban to withdraw 5,000 troops in exchange for the Taliban not allowing Afghanistan to be party to “transnational terrorism.” Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a co-founder of the Taliban, was freed from prison with other Taliban fighters as part of a deal Trump struck in 2020. Less than a year after that deal was brokered, Baradar is now in charge of the Taliban forces that just took Kabul.

Clarissa Ward donning a head scarf and putting her safety at risk to show the world what’s happening in Afghanistan is the truest example of public service. Ted Cruz using his six-figure, taxpayer-funded salary to attack journalists is decidedly not.

Carl Gibson is a freelance journalist and columnist. Follow him on Twitter @crgibs.