Make No Mistake, Pittsburgh-Ted Cruz Doesn’t Give A Damn About You
By: Nathan Matsko
Tags: Ted, Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, Unions, Labor

Ted Cruz is a champion for the working class-when they’re within earshot, that is.

photo credit: @gcoppa via Unsplash

Ted Cruz is nothing if not a great actor, and he plays many, many roles.

Sometimes, Ted plays the Conservative intellectual. When not typing out his manifestos regarding the political controversy of the day on one of his two Twitter accounts, he’s playing cover for his political allies on his podcast, The Verdict. In it, he and co-host Michael Knowles take care to break down issues with laughably little objectivity. Even with the “diverse” range of guests including Conservative celebrities, QAnon conspiracists, and Trump administration officials, this verdict seem a little… one-sided, somehow.

Other times, Ted likes to play a rigid constitutionalist; a principled, logic-driven individual dedicated only to finding the truth. While “grifter” is certainly shorter and definitely more fun to say, it’s almost an insult to the profession. Most seasoned, semi-competent grifters will at least try to hide any potential hypocrisies while saying things they don’t actually believe. Ted, on the other hand, isn’t so good at this. He will rail on about the censorious left and how freedom of speech is under assault out of one side of his mouth, but finds no fault in suggesting that Universities practicing boycotts of Israeli goods in support of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination should lose federal funding out the other. A ban on Twitter is akin to the authoritarian hellscape of Orwell’s 1984, but trying to label “Antifa” as a terrorist organization in a bill which interchangeably uses “Antifa” and “Left-Wing protests” without pause is business as usual. He will scream from the mountaintops about the danger that Black Lives Matter protests pose, but makes excuses for himself and his allies after inciting a coup attempt.

Need I go on? Ted doesn’t just lack principle, he is a medical anomaly for making it this far in life without developing a functional spine.

But perhaps none of Ted’s emmy-worthy performances are more infuriating than his “everyday working man” schtick.

You see, Ted says that he supports the working-class American above all. For some reason, he has made Pennsylvania a central part of this routine. In 2018, he rallied behind Union leaders at a struggling Philadelphia refinery to throw his weight behind Union jobs. To be more specific, “good union jobs, jobs that provide for your families and provide for your kids and provide for your grandkids,” in his own words. He’s maintained this stance and even referenced Pennsylvania just yesterday, immediately following the Inauguration. In a criticism of President Biden’s executive order which served as a recommitment to the Paris Climate Accord — an agreement which was the subject of President Trump’s ire since its inception — Cruz insisted that Biden had sided with the citizens of Paris over the citizens of Pittsburgh, insinuating that re-entering the agreement would be a net loss for Americans.

Now, this statement is both misleading and — to put it frankly — stupid, but where was he coming from? It could be that Cruz genuinely fears what will happen to jobs in the coal & industrial sectors as a result. A genuine concern for sure, though coal’s decline has been a trend for decades. It’s also important to note that his claims have little basis in reality. Moving towards clean energy would create many more job opportunities than would be lost due to the shift. The real “job killer” is Climate Change, which could result in the loss of nearly 80 million jobs worldwide — and is a problem that Ted has completely disregarded. Maybe Cruz is genuinely confused, and thinks that “emissions” are some sort of currency, and America is being forced to syphon these “emissions” to the French? While he’s never been a believer in Climate Change, certainly such a silly scenario could never apply to an Ivy League alumnus such as himself?

Ted is no fool. He knows that his words have as much value behind them as his vintage campaign T-shirts do: absolutely none.

Ted Cruz has reliably held one of the worst scores from The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, voting in a way that benefits workers a whopping SIX PERCENT of the time in 2019. Whether he’s denying workers access to affordable healthcare or fighting to keep wages stagnant, it’s quite counter to the rhetoric he espouses. So why does he claim to care so much, and why Pittsburgh? Why does this Canada-born Texas Senator, raised by a Mother from Delaware and a political exile Father from Cuba, care about Pennsylvanians with such passion?

To someone like Ted, who only cares about Pennsylvania when there are fans to pander to, Pittsburgh is just a shell of the metropolis it used to be: a dying city anchored to a dead industry. Though the Burgh’s population has been on a steady decline since the city’s industry faded away, those who still call the city home have seen a 24% rise in average income from 2000 to 2017. Pittsburgh did not throw in the towel when industry collapsed — rather, it adapted. The city has been diversifying its economy in a big way. Natural gas has provided new opportunities for laborers, while the city’s STEM fields and technology sectors are continuing to grow, thanks in large part to the city’s universities. Pittsburgh’s efforts have in fact earned tremendous praise as a shining example of a diversified economy, hosting the G-20 summit as early as 2009. This is not to say the city is in any way perfect — COVID-19 absolutely hurt Pittsburgh just as much as it hurt most other cities in the country — and a shrinking or stagnant population is always a cause for concern. That being said, the second chance that the city has made for itself cannot be denied.

Alas, that doesn’t matter to Ted Cruz. In reality, it isn’t the workers he’s concerned about. If that were the case, he wouldn’t act against their self-interest in just about every possible way. For him, Pittsburgh is a quip, and its working class population is a tool to support his own political aspirations. It was the case when he argued for the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of votes coming out of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and it is so now. It doesn’t matter what the facts are, or how much evidence there is to disprove his claims, so long as he can fool some poor souls into working against their own self interest, or God forbid, subscribing to his podcast. When there’s an agenda akin to his crusade against Climate Change to be pushed or a snappy Tweet to make, he’ll remember us. Once he’s made his point, he’ll move on to pretending to care about someone else. Even if you consider yourself Conservative, we can agree: Pittsburgh deserves more respect than that. Pennsylvanians deserve more.

Ted, as a lifelong resident of this state, I have a request: Keep Pennsylvania out of your mouth and out of your propaganda.