Ted Cruz, a man whose defining political moment was abandoning his frozen, powerless constituents to fly to Cancun with his family, went on Fox News this week to question whether Texas Senate candidate James Talarico is tough enough to hold office. No, really. That happened. With his whole chest.
What Cruz Actually Said Out Loud
According to LGBTQ Nation, Cruz appeared on Fox News and delivered this verdict on the Texas Democratic Senate nominee: "If you were making a list of 1,000 adjectives to describe this guy, 'masculine' would not be one of them. I mean, this guy, if a stiff breeze came by, it would blow him over like a feather."
He also hit Talarico for running what Cruz described as a "vegan, no meat campaign" and for opposing oil and gas. Cruz presented these positions as self-evidently disqualifying, which is a fun rhetorical strategy from a guy who let Texans freeze to death rather than cancel a vacation.
Talarico is the Texas Democratic Party's nominee for U.S. Senate and faces Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in the general election. LGBTQ Nation reports he has shown signs he could actually win, which explains why the GOP has apparently decided that the most effective strategy available to them is to question whether he eats enough steak.
The Smear Campaign Running Underneath All of This
The masculinity stuff from Cruz is not happening in isolation. LGBTQ Nation reports that Republicans have spent weeks calling Talarico transgender because he supports trans rights, claiming he is dating a man when he is not, and referring to him as a "freak" and a "creep," which are terms with a long ugly history as slurs against LGBTQ+ people.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller joined the pile-on last month, telling Fox News host Jesse Watters that Talarico is the Democrats' "first transgender senate candidate" and that he is "clearly transitioning into a female." Miller also joked that Talarico "doesn't belong in the Senate but in a cabaret show." A homophobic joke about musical theater, delivered by a man in a position of real government power, on national television. In 2026.
Miller capped it off by assuring viewers that Texans are "some of the toughest, roughest, strongest men and women" and will therefore vote for the "real conservative" Ken Paxton over "somebody with that much soy." Paxton, for the record, was impeached by the Texas House of Representatives in 2023 on charges including bribery and abuse of office. But sure. The soy guy is the problem.
The Internet Had Some Thoughts About Ted Cruz's Masculinity Credentials
The response to Cruz's Fox appearance was swift and merciless, and honestly the people of the internet deserve some credit here for staying focused on the most obvious angle.
As LGBTQ Nation reports, social media users immediately resurfaced the Cancun incident. In February 2021, a catastrophic winter storm knocked out power and heat for millions of Texans. People died. Pipes burst. Families huddled in cars to stay warm. Ted Cruz, United States Senator for the state of Texas, booked flights to Cancun and left. He eventually returned after photos of him in the airport went viral, and he blamed the trip on his daughters, which did not help.
Others pointed out that Cruz has spent years publicly supporting a president who, in 2016, posted a side-by-side photo mocking the appearance of Cruz's wife. Cruz called it "classless" at the time, then endorsed the man anyway, campaigned for him, and has stood loyally by him ever since. Make of that what you will when evaluating Cruz's theories about strength and toughness.
Why Any of This Actually Matters
It would be easy to treat this as pure political comedy, and honestly it earns that treatment. But the strategy the GOP is running here is worth naming clearly.
Falsely labeling a straight candidate as transgender, calling him a "freak," associating him with cabaret shows, mocking his physical build as insufficiently masculine: this is not harmless culture war ribbing. These are coordinated attacks that use LGBTQ+ identity as a weapon, designed to make those identities seem disqualifying for public office. The people launching these attacks are not doing it because they genuinely believe Talarico is trans. They are doing it because they believe being trans, or being perceived as gay, should end a political career.
That is the actual message. Everything else is just the delivery method.
The Dingo Take
Here is the thing about Ted Cruz questioning another man's toughness: it only works if the audience has forgotten everything Ted Cruz has ever done. The Cancun trip alone should have permanently retired him from any conversation about who has the grit to represent Texas. The fact that he stood up straight on national television and questioned someone else's physical fortitude, without apparently experiencing any sensation of irony at all, is genuinely impressive in a way that cannot be taught.
And look, the broader MAGA playbook here is not subtle. When your candidate is Ken Paxton, a man who was impeached by his own party's supermajority in the Texas House and spent years under federal investigation, you cannot win on the merits. So you run the culture war. You call the other guy a soy-drinking cabaret-loving transgender freak and hope enough voters are too distracted to notice that your guy has the ethics record of a carnival grifter.
Talarico, for his part, appears to be letting Cruz's record do most of the work. That is probably the correct call. When the man attacking you for lacking backbone is the same man who left millions of his constituents without heat in a deadly storm so he could sit by a pool in Mexico, you do not need to say much. The contrast is already there. All you have to do is point.
