Bob Schieffer Laughs In Ted Cruz’s Face

Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz was a guest on CBS’s Face the Nation. He made the often cantankerous Bob Schieffer laugh with his repeated denials of responsibility for last year’s government shutdown:

The veteran newsman led off his Sunday interview by simply asking if Cruz would be willing to once again hold the government hostage to try to get concessions from President Barack Obama.

“Well, Bob, with all due respect, I don’t agree with the premise of your question,” Cruz replied. “Throughout the government shutdown, I opposed a government shutdown. I said we shouldn’t shut the government down. I think it was a mistake that President Obama and the Democrats shut the government down this fall.”

“The question I asked you was, would you ever conceive of trying to shut down the government again?” Schieffer pressed, clearly not buying in to the alternate reality.

“As I said, I didn’t threaten to shut down the government the last time,” Cruz insisted. “I don’t think we should ever shut down the government. And I repeatedly voted…”

“Well,” Schieffer interrupted, laughing out of frustration. “If you didn’t threaten to shut down the government, who was it that did?”

“President Obama,” Cruz said.

Schieffer dropped his head as the Republican senator’s rant continued: “I understand the White House said over and over again that the shutdown is the Republicans’ fault. And I understand that’s what you’re repeating. But the reality is, I voted over and over again to fund the federal government.”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.