Mexican ambassador slams Ted Cruz: At least our politicians accept election results

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is fond of vacationing in Mexico, and he drew vehement criticism from Texas Democrats when he infamously headed to Cancun during the February 2021 crisis that found millions of Texas suffering record cold temperatures without heat or electricity. But recent negative comments about Mexico from Cruz, the Dallas Morning News reports, have angered Mexican government officials.

Cruz, referring to the killings of Mexican journalists and politicians, spoke of a “deepening civil unrest in Mexico and the breakdown there of civil society, the breakdown of the rule of law.” And Esteban Moctezuma Barragán, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, responded that at least political candidates in Mexico are willing to concede defeat when they lose elections.

In a letter to Cruz on February 17, the Mexican ambassador wrote, “I invite you to look at what happened in our federal elections last June. All parties, with no exception, accepted the results and kept moving forward to strengthen our democracy and freedom of expression.”

Barragán was obviously referring to the events that followed the United States’ 2020 presidential election. After losing to now-President Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes, then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed that the election was stolen from him — and on January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump’s supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol Building in the hope of preventing Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. Cruz was among the Republican senators who was willing to promote Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud. The far-right Texas senator has also promoted the nonsense conspiracy theory that the FBI was behind the January 6 insurrection.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has also been critical of Cruz’s comments about Mexico. On February 18, Obrador said of Cruz, “If he praised me, I might start thinking we weren’t doing things right. But if he says we are wrong, well that, for me, is something to be proud of.”