Houston Chronicle Editorial: Resign, Senator Cruz. Your lies cost lives.

In Texas, we have our share of politicians who peddle wild conspiracy theories and reckless rhetoric aiming to inflame. Think U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert’s “terror baby” diatribes or his nonsensical vow not to wear a face mask until after he got COVID, which he promptly did. This editorial board tries to hold such shameful specimens to account. But we reserve special condemnation for the perpetrators among them who are of sound mind and considerable intellect — those who should damn well know better. None more than U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

A brilliant and frequent advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court and a former Texas solicitor general, Cruz knew exactly what he was doing, what he was risking and who he was inciting as he stood on the Senate floor Wednesday and passionately fed the farce of election fraud even as a seething crowd of believers was being whipped up by President Donald Trump a short distance away. Cruz, it should also be noted, knew exactly whose presidency he was defending. That of a man he called in 2016 a “narcissist,” a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral.” Cruz told senators that since nearly 40 percent of Americans believed the November election “was rigged” that the only remedy was to form an emergency task force to review the results — and if warranted, allow states to overturn Joe Biden’s victory and put their electoral votes in Trump’s column. Cruz deemed people’s distrust in the election “a profound threat to the country and to the legitimacy of any administrations that will come in the future.” What he didn’t acknowledge was how that distrust, which he overstated anyway, was fueled by Trump’s torrent of fantastical claims of voter fraud that were shown again and again not to exist. Cruz had helped spin that web of deception and now he was feigning concern that millions of Americans had gotten caught up in it.