Ted Cruz Is a Liar and a Hypocrite

GOP Presidential Candidate Lying Over Transgender People’s Use of Restrooms Hypocritically Admits They’re Not Even the Problem

For weeks Senator Ted Cruz has increasingly been attacking transgender people in his presidential campaign stump speech, and using them as the butt of his “jokes” about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He told an Indiana audience last weekend, “even if Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he shouldn’t be using the girl’s restroom,” as if that somehow were funny.

On “Meet the Press” Sunday, Cruz continued his anti-trans assault, thoroughly enabled by his compliant NBC News host, Chuck Todd.

“If you pass a law, as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and Barack Obama want, that says any adult man can go into a girl’s restroom if he feels like a woman at that minute…” Cruz said. That’s a lie, and the Texas Tea Party Republican Senator knows it is – or should, since Politifact called him out on it a week ago.

For the record, two-thirds of Cruz’s statements Politifact has scored are some degree of “false”:

 

But then, after making his false “any adult man” can enter the girl’s restroom claim, he all of a sudden switched gears – admitting, “listen, the real danger is not people who are transgendered. It’s people who are predators.” (He still hasn’t learned to say “transgender.”)

Here’s Cruz on CNN again today, spout thing the same lie – and getting called out on it by Jake Tapper. Cruz lies again, insisting Tapper is wrong:

But both times, Senator Cruz fully admits that transgender people aren’t the problem – cisgender people are the problem. And it’s just like those conservatives who claim that America must ban same-sex marriage, not because there’s any issue with two men or two women who love each other marrying, but because of the “slippery slope” that same-sex marriage would lead to – i.e. incest and polygamy – we must ban marriage equality for the sake of the children. 

Ted Cruz wants to take away the rights of people who aren’t causing any problems to protect Americans from the people who are the problem – when there are already plenty of laws that already protect Americans from the people who are the problem: sexual predators.

It’s literally insane.

To prove the point of just how insane and hypocritical Ted Cruz’s position – which is the same shared by many anti-LGBT conservatives, including North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, flip that logic around and apply it toward guns. 

We can’t enact gun control laws because the people who are criminals don’t obey the laws anyway, is the claim Second Amendment activists love to make. Those Second Amendment activists more often than not, by the way, are also anti-LGBT activists.

So, again, we have to make laws banning transgender people from using the restrooms that best correspond to their gender identity so sexual predators won’t use the restrooms they shouldn’t be, even though no transgender person has ever been arrested for molesting anyone in a restroom. And even though there are plenty of existing laws that already ban men from accessing women’s restrooms with the intent of engaging in criminal and nefarious deeds.

Yet, when it comes to gun control, we can’t enact sensible, logical legislation supported by nine out of ten Americans, conservatives – including Ted Cruz – insist, because criminals don’t follow the law and will find a way to get guns anyway.

Conservatives like Ted Cruz insist that government is the problem, then go out of their way to ensure that becomes true. 

“Every day,” Cruz promised in his “Meet the Press” interview Sunday, “my focus is going to be on reducing the burdens of Washington on small businesses, bringing manufacturing jobs back to this country, lowering taxes and then defending the Constitution and Bill of Rights.”

How does banning transgender people from using the restroom that makes the most sense based on their gender identity fit into that?

 

Image: Screenshot via CNN/Twitter 
Embedded graph via Politifact