Category: The Current Situation

Want to see the worst kind of American exceptionalism, espoused by an exceptionally terrible American, say, Ted Cruz? Look no further than this recent response to Rex Chapman’s tweet that Canada is providing the new COVID-19 vaccine to every Canadian who wants it for free.

Ted, who plays Trumpism’s pathological zero-sum game of “I need to win and everyone else needs to lose”, and who apparently hasn’t quite gotten over being born in Canada, decided that he needed to take a dump on something good that would benefit millions of people and likely save lives, since it had nothing to do with the U.S.:

That’s great. Just out of curiosity, which country was it that developed the vaccine? Wonder why.

What he didn’t know is that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine that Canada would make use of, was…

• developed in Germany,
• funded by Germany and took no money from the U.S.’ “Operation Warp Speed” project for its development, and
• was developed by two Turkish immigrants (again, I remind you: Immigrants — we get the job done).

When Ted Cruz tweeted that today’s Dems are the party of the rich, he was hoping that you wouldn’t look too deeply into his household’s sources of income:

Heidi Cruz did her masters in Europe and got her MBA at Harvard, and since 2011 has been the primary breadwinner of the family. This is in line with 40% of U.S. households, but might be concerning to social conservatives and other people who still live in the Bronze Age — in other words, Ted’s base.

Ted probably doesn’t think of his family as rich, since Heidi says she has to put in long hours to support her family, according to a 2018 article in Quartz. That’s because “rich” is a matter of perspective. Their guesstimated just-shy-of-half-a-million pre-tax a year doesn’t put him in the top 1%, so that means middle class, right?

As a managing director at Goldman Sachs, Heidi Cruz likely earns over $300,000 a year—without factoring in an additional bonus. As a senator, Ted Cruz earns an annual salary of $174,000 for his work as a public servant, placing him in the top 3% of American earners.

I will remind you that the U.S. median household income in 2019 was $68,703. I will also remind you that “U.S. median household income” means that if you lined up all the U.S. households in order, from poorest to richest, it’s the household in the dead center of the line.