In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, Chris Christie attacked Texas Senator Ted Cruz for voting against a $50 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package.
The New Jersey governor blasted Cruz on Morning Joe for ‘using reprehensible lies’ to defend voting against a bill for ‘political gain’.
Christie said famously conservative Cruz was lying when he called the bill pork.
He said: ‘He was playing politics to make himself try to look like the most conservative guy in town.’
The Republican senator reiterated his claim about the Sandy bill Monday, saying ‘two-thirds of the bill had nothing to do with Sandy.’
Christie said: ‘I see Senator Cruz, and it’s disgusting to me that he stands in a recovery center with victims standing behind him as a backdrop and he’s still repeating the same reprehensible lies about what happened with Sandy.’
Chris Christie said Ted Cruz was lying about the Hurricane Sandy bill being mostly ‘pork’. He said the junior senator used his vote for political gain to prove he was conservative
Ted Cruz claimed the Hurricane Sandy relief bill was filled with ‘pork’ and that the majority of it had nothing to do with the 2012 storm
Christie called on Cruz to essentially apologize for claiming most of the bill had nothing to do with Hurricane Sandy. The 2012 storm killed 150 people and caused a total of $50 billion in property damage according to FEMA.
He told Joe Scarborough: ‘He should just stand up now and say, “You know, what I did was wrong.”‘
‘”I was wrong in 2012. It was the wrong thing to do. And now I hope that the people of New Jersey and New York are willing to let bygones be bygones and vote for relief for Texas.”‘
Chrisite implied he would be in favor of federal funding going to aid southeast Texas, saying: ‘We’re happy to be helpful now because we know what the suffering is like.’
According to the Washington Post, the bill did include aid for other 2012 disasters in addition to the hurricane that wrecked havoc on the east coast. The Post rated the claim three Pinocchios which indicates significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.
Damage from Hurricane County is expected to cost between $48 billion to $75 billion according to Enki Research.
Cruz said that Congress ‘will provide very significant resources for the people who have been damaged’ by Harvey.
According to the Los Angeles Times, at least 20 Texas representatives voted against funding for Hurricane Sandy.
New York Representative Peter King, a Republican, also criticized Cruz for his vote: ‘It was cruel, it was vicious, and something that I’ll never forget.’
But like Christie, he said he isn’t planning to vote against funding for Texas. He said: ‘I won’t abandon Texas the way Ted Cruz did New York.’