Ted Cruz accused of ‘trying be Trump’ after bizarre Twitter rant about Paris

Texas senator and one-time presidential hopeful Ted Cruz was accused of “trying to be Trump” after embarking on a bizarre Twitter rant about the Paris Climate Agreement.

Cruz appeared to suggest that the pact reflects the “views of the citizens of Paris”, which it doesn’t – it just happened to have been signed there. He tweeted:

“By joining the Paris Climate Agreement, President Biden indicates he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh. This agreement will do little to affect the climate and will harm the livelihoods of Americans.”

He also included a link to a longer statement in which he further condemned Biden’s decision to have the US rejoin the international pact, which he signalled in an executive order hours after becoming president.

Trump withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, which almost every UN nation signed in 2016, on the first day of his presidency. He also moved to retract $2bn of the funding Obama pledged to help poorer countries reach their climate goals.

Each signatories’s goals and methods of achieving them are set by their own government. But the overall aim of the pact is to try to keep the earth’s temperature at no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels.

Most countries, including the US, are not hitting the targets they laid out for themselves in an effort to stymy the effects of climate change like extreme weather and rising sea levels.

The Paris Agreement is so-called because it was agreed on by 196 different state parties (i.e. not just Parisians) near the city. France’s relative irrelevance to the pact’s formation is best explained by AOC, who tweeted:

“Nice tweet Sen. Cruz! Quick question: do you also believe the Geneva Convention was about the views of the citizens of Geneva? Asking for everyone who believes US Senators should be competent and not undermine our elections to incite insurrection against the United States.”

AOC wasn’t the only one to ridicule Cruz’s tweet.

People also pointed out that the Republicans actually tried to disenfranchise the people of Pittsburgh by baselessly claiming that their state of Pennsylvania engaged in mass voter fraud. during the presidential election.

So whether Cruz was truly mistaken about the Paris Agreement or was, as some suggested, just “performing stupidity” for attention, his point doesn’t hold up. 

Maybe now that Trump is gone, both from Twitter and the White House, Cruz felt it was time someone else took their bizarre right-wing rants to the internet.