Cruz Control

Photos: AP Images

Fourteen years when Ted Cruz was still trying to become Senator Ted Cruz, I interviewed him for the first time. This was back in 2012, when political candidates still had to kiss babies, shake hands, and pretend to enjoy county fair food. During that conversation, Cruz told me that one of the reasons he was running for Senate was to protect and defend Israel and the Jewish People.

At the time, while I did appreciate the assurance, I made sure to file it under: Things politicians say when speaking to a visibly Jewish reporter.

But 14 years later, the line hit different. As the world has come to realize, Cruz wasn’t just saying it. In fact, he’s built a Senate career around it. He said it before October 7, before the campus encampments, before the online right discovered that blaming the Jews garners more attention than minding your own business and reading a book, before Israel became the subject of daily moral lectures from countries whose idea of civil liberties is letting prisoners choose which wall to face, and before Jew-hatred achieved bipartisan participation.

I started the conversation by reminding him of what he had told me back then, and I asked what had given him the confidence and conviction to stand so firmly with the Jewish People through all the hostility Israel has faced since.