Ted Cruz Defended Parents Doing Nazi Salutes At School Board Meetings, And People Pounced On Him

Ted Cruz redeemed himself for about half a second a month ago (while making an “evil” joke about the Zodiac Killer), but it was too good to last. The Texas lawmaker and Cancun superfan went back to the same ways that recently prompted one of the nicest guys in the world, Patton Oswalt, to publicly call him out, and that’s precisely what Ted does to people. So, it shouldn’t be a real surprise that Cruz stood up for one’s right to give Nazi salutes during school board meetings, although still, whoa, this guy is an elected U.S. official.

The topic arose as Ted and his GOP colleagues, during a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, attempted to argue that reports of school-board meeting implosions are greatly exaggerated. The subject’s clearly a heated one to even bring up in the Senate, just like it is in real life, and Attorney General Merrick Garland was on hand to defend his memo, which suggested that federal resources might be warranted to address the issue. After all, one need only witness the montage videos — many of which include Matt Baker, a dreadlocked California right-winger, shouting at the San Diego Board of Supervisors about Nazis and how “your children and your children’s children will be subjugated” — to know that MAGAs are really losing it over masks and vaccines. Well, Ted is here to defend people doing Nazi salutes at these meetings. Yep, he truly did this.

“During this hearing, I counted 20 incidents cited. Of the 20, 15 on their face are non-violent,” Ted began. “They involve things like insults, they involve a Nazi salute. That’s one of the examples. My God! A parent did a Nazi salute at a school board because he thought that the policies were oppressive.”

Cruz was really going in on Garland during this meeting, and he turned to him and asked, “General Garland, is doing a Nazi salute at an elected official, is that protected by the First Amendment?”

Garland responded, “Yes, it is.” It’s worth noting that Ted also tried to box Garland in by trying to rope him into a completely unrelated ethical question on critical race theory.

The point here is this: Ted’s an unhinged man on a MAGA mission, Nazi salutes are plain awful, and people are disgusted with Ted standing up for the gesture. After all, his selective defense of “free speech” evaporated when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem.

And one chose to keep it simple.