Ted Cruz confronted by activist at restaurant over Uvalde shooting after NRA appearance
Channel: Papa Daddy Unscripted
Date: 2022-05-29

The confrontation was not planned, Hernandez said, "but I had to do what I had to do."

“It’s real easy to tweet, but it’s something else when Ted Cruz walks into a place where you’re having dinner. Now it gets real. For me, there was just no question,” he said.

Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Hernandez said he had to confront Cruz because "he isn't doing anything," adding that he was particularly insulted that Cruz didn’t back out of his planned speech at the NRA convention like other Republican lawmakers, including Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Sen. John Cornyn.

"Just the most simple things [Cruz] refuses to do," Hernandez said. "Plus, he shows up at the NRA convention. For me, that just lacks decency. At least Cornyn and Crenshaw pulled out.”

Speaking to the NRA convention hours before he went to eat sushi, Cruz insisted that “what stops armed bad guys is armed good guys." This is despite Texas authorities admitting earlier that day that Uvalde police had made the "wrong decision" to delay confronting the shooter for more than an hour, even as children begged 911 to send police.

"The media blames you, the millions of members of the NRA, for these crimes," Cruz said at the convention. "That is a lie. Nobody here has committed these kinds of unspeakable crimes. Everybody here is horrified.”

Earlier in the week, Hernandez and Daniel Cohen of Indivisible Houston left a cardboard cutout of the Texas senator outside the NRA convention venue. Scrawled in red marker on the chest of Cruz, who’s smiling and giving a thumbs-up, reads, “I murder teachers and children.”An activist confronted Sen. Ted Cruz at a Houston sushi restaurant Friday night to grill him about his inaction on gun reform and his attendance at the NRA convention, just days after a gunman went on a horrific rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and 2 teachers.

In video clips of the encounter shared on social media, a man, who is being escorted out of the restaurant by Cruz's detail, is heard yelling at the senator, "But why does this keep happening? And why did you come here to the convention to take blood money? Why? When 19 children died. Nineteen children died. That’s on your hands. That is on your hands. Ted Cruz, that’s on your hands!”

That man was Benjamin Hernandez, a board member for liberal advocacy group, Indivisible Houston, who happened to be dining with his wife at Uptown Sushi on Friday night, when Cruz walked in through the doors.

The 39-year-old Houston native, who runs a digital agency, had spent the entire day livestreaming the anti–gun violence protest outside the NRA convention, where Cruz was among the high-profile speakers, alongside Donald Trump, who didn't pull out of the event despite the Uvalde shooting tragedy.