In a newly released recording of a phone call between Sen. Ted Cruz and Fox News and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the Texas Republican urged her to stick to the facts in her coverage of the 2020 election because rumors and baseless claims of voter fraud would not work in court.
“It can’t just be, you know somebody tweeted this. It’s got to be demonstrable facts that can be laid out with evidence because that’s what a court of law is gonna look to, not just an allegation but actual facts,” Cruz said in the tape that was given exclusively to MSNBC’s Ari Melber on Thursday.
However, despite knowing the facts about the election, Cruz took the opposite approach during a speech on the floor of Congress, where he proclaimed that lawmakers could not certify the 2020 election without considering the baseless claims.
“Let me be clear, I am not arguing for setting aside the result of this election. All of us are faced with two choices, both of which are lousy,” Cruz told his colleagues on January 6, 2021. “One choice is vote against the objection. And tens of millions of Americans will see a vote against the objection as a statement that voter fraud doesn’t matter, isn’t real and shouldn’t be taken seriously. And a great many of us don’t believe that.”
“On the other hand,” Cruz Continued. “Most, if not all of us believe we should not set aside the results of an election just because our candidate may not have prevailed. And so I endeavored to look for door number three, a third option. And for that, I look to history to the precedent of the 1876 election, the Hayes Tilden election where this Congress appointed an electoral commission to examine claims of voter fraud, five house members, five senators, five Supreme Court justices, examined the evidence and rendered a judge judgment.”
Watch Melber’s response to the recording in the video below:
