Senator Ted Cruz of Texas will not apologise for promoting conspiracy theories about the attack on Paul Pelosi after video was released showing the assault on the husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The Texas Republican spoke to TMZ at Reagan National Airport and called the video depicting David DePape assaulting Mr Pelosi “utterly unacceptable” and the actions of a “deranged lunatic who should go to jail for a very, very long time”.
Previously, Mr Cruz had quote-tweeted conservative media figure Matt Walsh, when he said “I do know that trying to paint a hippie nudist from Berkeley as some kind of militant right winger is absurd and will always be absurd.” In response, Mr Cruz tweeted “truth.”
But recordings of conversations with Mr DePape showed that he did indeed espouse militant right-wing views. In a jailhouse interview, Mr DePape said that Democrats, including Ms Pelosi, engaged in a “record-breaking crime spree.”
“When Trump came into office, what they did went so far beyond spying on a rival campaign. It is just crazy,” Mr DePape was recorded saying. “Honestly, like, day in day out, the person who was on the TV lying every day was Pelosi.”
Mr DePape told San Francisco Police Department Sgt Carla Hurley that his plan was to hold Ms Pelosi “hostage.”
“If she told the truth, I would let her go scott-free,” he said, but that if she lied, “I was going to break her kneecaps.”
Almost immediately after the attack, many in right-wing media began to circulate rumors about Mr Pelosi and Mr DePape, even implying that Mr Pelosi and Mr DePape were engaged in a gay lovers’ affair. Twitter executive Elon Musk tweeted a discredited rumour as well.
But Mr Cruz showed little signs of contrition.
“The day it happened, I said my prayers were with the Pelosi family,” he said.
