During the increasingly tight senate race this year, President Trump promised to campaign for republican Senator Ted Cruz in the lead-up to the November elections. This caught the attention of Parkland school shooting survivor, student and gun control activist, David Hogg, who helped raise money to finance a billboard displaying Trump’s anti-Ted Cruz tweets from the 2016 presidential election.
“If I was a Texas Trump supporter, I would feel betrayed that I gave my vote to him based on his strong opinions of his opponents and only two years later he has reversed his opinion,” said Jacob Ratashak, sophomore.
Cruz opposes Democratic Congressman, Beto O’Rourke, who was backing an aggressive campaign and raised a sufficient amount of money in his bid to unseat the conservative senator. With Trump supporting Cruz during this election, came the resurfacing of
his old tweets, bringing attention to the 2016 feud between them. Such as when Trump repeatedly referred to Cruz as “Lyin’ Ted” during the Republican presidential primary.
“When Trump supports Cruz it undermines all of his statements
during the election. He also ran under the pretense that he was a strong leader that stands his ground and doesn’t bend to other people’s demands. This contradicts what he said [in 2016],” said Ratashak.
Hogg helped raise 9,700 dollars, much more than the original goal of 6,000 dollars, in less than 24 hours for the billboard campaign on GoFundMe, started by Houston organizer, Antonio Arellano. Advocacy group USA Latinx also helped organize the campaign. Nearly 500 people donated or contributed money. The main idea for the billboard was to display one or two of Trump’s anti Ted Cruz tweets. The billboard would be mounted to a truck with one tweet on each side and would be moved to several locations in Texas.
“In politics everybody has to be responsible and answer for anything that is said in the past that is different from what they are saying in the present,” said Trena Kirby, AP Human Geography teacher.
One tweet chosen by organizers was posted by Trump in February 2016 and reads, “Why would the people of Texas support Ted Cruz when he has accomplished absolutely nothing for them. He is another all talk, no action pol!”
“[Trump supporting Cruz] meets political ends that you need to achieve and a lot of times that means switching allies and switching alliances,” said Kirby.
Trump is scheduled to speak at a rally in October for Cruz and tweeted, “…Ted has my complete and total endorsement,” which was quickly mocked by Twitter followers.
