Ted Cruz
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who has tried to gin up outrage from his constituents by continually portraying mask and vaccination mandates as an assault on liberty, played a key role in making the unfounded claims about the Southwest outages go viral. He amped up the conservative rumor mill this weekend by tweeting “Joe Biden’s illegal vaccine mandate at work! Suddenly, we’re short on pilots & air traffic controllers. #ThanksJoe.”
Critical thinkers will note that the administration’s vaccine mandate for employers hasn’t even started yet, leaving no coherent explanation for why anti-vaxxers would be staging it on a random weekend with no announcement. The senator only cited a “very credible & senior source in aviation” who claimed there was a “sick out” leaving just three of 33 air traffic controllers in Jacksonville on duty a few days prior. Aides for Cruz didn’t respond to a request for further sourcing from the Dallas Morning News.
