Ted Cruz hits back at Dems allowing 'mob' violence: 'They're refusing to protect their own citizens'

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Sen. Ted Cruz on local leaders blaming federal authorities as urban chaos continues

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joins Shannon Bream on 'Fox News @ Night.'

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is introducing new legislation that would help citizens take legal action against their elected officials if they're "wrongfully denying police protection in the situation of a riot."

In a Wednesday night interview on "Fox News @ Night," Cruz highlighted just how much of a "tough time" it is for America right now.

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"We're seeing violence and police cars being firebombed, police officers being murdered, and violent mobs within our cities. But even worse, in the face of that, we're also seeing Democratic politicians, Democratic mayors, Democratic governors who've somehow made the decision it's in their political best interest to allow the mob to carry out their violence," he said. "And, they're refusing to protect their own citizens. They're allowing these lawless autonomous zones to exist within their boundaries. That has never happened in modern times."

Federal officers use chemical irritants and crowd control munitions to disperse Black Lives Matter protesters outside the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse on Wednesday, July 22, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Cruz's new measure says that if an elected official bends their knee to mob rule and denies their constituents police protection, residents can "sue them and get triple damages" for any injuries or any damages to a home or business.

The senator said that while many minority-owned small businesses were looted and "burned to the ground," his colleagues across the aisle "didn't care" because it was in their "partisan interests to allow the mob to rage."

Cruz said that Democrats today were acting in the same way that their predecessors acted in the 1950s and 1960s.

"It's the same thing [that] Democratic politicians like Bull Connor did. It's the same thing that you saw Democratic racists who didn't want to segregate schools. And remember, Eisenhower sent in the Army and said, 'you're going to follow Brown versus Board of Education.' And you had elected Democrats -- and they were all Democrats who were enforcing Jim Crow --  who said, 'get your federal officers out of here,'" he told host Shannon Bream.

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"Well, guess what?" asked Cruz. "You don't have the ability to throw the federal government out. You don't have the ability to throw federal law enforcement officers out. And, you certainly don't have the ability to say, 'we're going to allow the federal courthouse or the federal building to burn.'"

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Cruz said if Chicago's liberal Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to "allow the mob to rampage in City Hall and occupy her office, that's her decision."

"Knock yourself out if you want to give in to the lawlessness," he said. "But, she doesn't have the right to give up the federal courthouse and neither does the mayor of Portland or the governor of Oregon or any of these Democrats who -- they've made a decision: the police are the enemy and the mob are their allies. And it's just, it's wrong."