MSNBC correspondent Katy Tur shut down Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday night for saying critics calling him out for opposing a 2012 relief package to aid the victims of Hurricane Sandy were engaging in “political sniping.”
“It’s not really political sniping,” Tur interrupted. “These are people who needed money and who needed funding right after that storm.”
As the unprecedented Hurricane Harvey’s aftermath continues to pummel Texas, lawmakers in New York and New Jersey have been criticizing their Texas colleagues for potential hypocrisy ― asking for aid for their state when they were unwilling to support relief for storm victims in another part of the country. At the time, all but one Texas Republican in Congress voted against a $50.5 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package in 2013.
“I covered those people,” Tur continued, speaking of the victims of Hurricane Sandy. “Many of them, just like those in Houston, lost just about everything they owned.”
Cruz maintained on Monday that he supports disaster relief but that Hurricane Sandy’s relief package was exploitative and “filled with unrelated pork.”
“Two-thirds of that bill had nothing to do with Sandy,” Cruz argued. “What I said then and still believe now is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list.”
As HuffPost’s Matt Fuller and Kaeli Subberwal previously reported, the Sandy relief package had short-term aid and longer term projects, some of which were geared toward future hurricane forecasting.
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