Abbott Gets Vows of Cooperation from President
He'd Disrespected as Cruz Beach Trip Ends Early

Mike Hailey
Capitol Inside
February 18, 2021

Governor Greg Abbott found himself at Democratic President Joe Biden's mercy on Thursday when the two spoke on the telephone on ways the federal government can help save Texas from a catastrophic winter storm that the state failed to anticipate.

After accusing Biden of plotting to kill the Texas oil industry based on claims that were false or dramatically exaggerated, Abbott forced himself to swallow enough pride to speak to the president who he'd verbally battered during his first month in office.

Abbott had changed his defiant tune earlier in the day when he requested a Major Disaster Declaration from the federal government that Democrats control now. The governor declared the winterization of the state's outdated power grid as a legislative emergency on Thursday afternoon.

Abbott followed that up with an emergency order tonight that waived state registration and weight requirements for commercial vehicles that are transporting food or other emergency supplies to people who've been trapped in homes for three or four days in some cases.

The timing of Biden's reaching out in a call that CNN reported couldn't have been worse for Abbott amid revelations on U.S. Senator Ted Cruz's abbreviated stay at a Mexican beach resort where he'd fled to escape the catastrophic winter freeze.

With Cruz as his most famous protégé, Abbott might have experienced humiliation at a record level after his own embarrassing week that began with a failed attempt to sweep the cause of the epic Texas power grid crash under the rug.

Abbott sought to falsely blame clean energy sources for the Texas crisis that's left millions of people without electricity, water and food in a growing number of cases during the past four days. The governor quickly learned that it would be impossible to cover-up the state's addiction to fossil fuels that set the stage for the power system collapse.

Abbott and Cruz both have appeared to be jockeying for potential presidential bids in 2024. The road to the White House would have wound through the Mexican Caribbean if Cruz is ever elected as Biden's replacement.

Cruz has been a magnet for the spotlight - having been the ringleader of the congressional Republicans who sought to overturn the democratic American election on the grounds of voter fraud without evidence.

Cruz's vote to deny Biden of the job that he'd won at the polls had been a signal in the minds of the Trump supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol where five people including a police officer died on January 6.

Cruz seemed to have trouble getting his story straight on the decision to flee his home state in the midst of a novel crisis on top of the coronavirus pandemic that's killed almost 43,000 people in Texas in the past 11 months.

The state's junior senator suggested at first that he'd been obligated as a father to take his daughter on a trip with friends after school had been cancelled for the rest of the week. Cruz clarified the excuse after the New York Times published tweets from wife Heidi Cruz on the family putting together a trip to the Mexican coast to get away from Texas where it was freezing in their home.

Cruz was greeted by a gaggle of reporters at the airport in Houston where he conceded that he's started to realize that the trip was a mistake the moment he sat down on the airplane for the flight to the south.

Cruz said that he'd thought about his reputation as a senator who fights hard for Texas and came to the conclusion that the people who'd elected him might need his leadership as a result of the bad weather.