Cruz confronted on airplane over school safety; Texas senator replies, 'You're a partisan'

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Cruz confronted on airplane over school safety; Texas senator responds

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to a passenger who confronted him over his Second Amendment position while getting off an airplane. (Nathan Barrera-Bunch/POLITICALLY+ /TMX)

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was heckled on a flight Thursday over gun control and school safety policies, prompting the senator to call the heckler "a partisan."

The senator, along with his fellow passengers, was preparing to exit the plane landing in Texas when a passenger filmed Cruz and began pressing him with questions.

"We’re in Houston? I thought we were going to Cancun," the male voice said in a video posted to Twitter. It was an apparent reference to a family vacation Cruz took last year amid statewide power outages.

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The man then got the senator’s attention by saying, "Senator, thank you for everything you’ve done since Uvalde. All those podcast episodes must have raised a lot of money for you." 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz responded to a passenger who confronted him about his Second Amendment views while getting off an airplane. (Nathan Barrera-Bunch/POLITICALLY+ /TMX)

The heckler criticized Cruz for voting against a gun legislation bill that passed through the House and Senate with bipartisan support and was signed by President Biden in June. 

Cruz responded by pointing to his proposed school safety bill that was blocked Wednesday by Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who accused Cruz of conducting "theater."

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Cruz asked the Senate for unanimous consent to pass his legislation that would have provided $15 billion to double the number of school resource officers, $10 billion to hire 15,000 mental health professionals for middle and high schools and $2.56 billion in security improvements for school campuses.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and other members of the Republican Conference leave a luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington March 24, 2021.  (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The heckler then asked Cruz whether he knew any of the names of the Uvalde victims, which included 19 students and two teachers in May.

"I do. And ask why Chris Murphy objected and stopped the biggest school safety bill that's ever passed yesterday," Cruz responded.

Privacy barriers and bike racks maintain a perimeter at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School July 13, 2022, after a video was released showing the May shooting inside the school in Uvalde, Texas. (REUTERS/Kaylee Greenlee Beal)

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The man then began to talk over Cruz as one passenger told the heckler to let Cruz "fly in peace."

"You don't care about the facts. You're a partisan, that's OK," Cruz said before turning away.