Ted Cruz Slams 'Arrogant, Out-of-Touch' John Kerry for His Solar Panels Remark to Union Workers
Ted Cruz is picking his battles, and when it comes to the early days of President Joe Biden’s administration, the choice is pretty easy:
After Biden’s executive order last week canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and eliminating thousands of American jobs with just the stroke of a pen, the Texas Republican slammed the Democratic climate change agenda over how it’s affecting American workers.
But few faces in the Biden administration make a more convincing target than “presidential envoy for climate” John Kerry.
In a “Fox News Primetime” interview with Maria Bartiromo Wednesday night, Cruz took particular aim at a Kerry news conference earlier in the day, where Kerry went on record advising union workers who’ve lost their pipeline jobs thanks to Biden that they could go somewhere else for more politically correct employment.
“What President Biden wants to do is make sure that those folks have better choices, that they have alternatives, that they can be the people who go to work to make the solar panels,” Kerry told reporters.
It didn’t play well with Cruz, especially considering Kerry himself reportedly has a net worth of more than $200 million.
“What an arrogant, out-of-touch statement for a centimillionaire to say,” Cruz said.
“You know, ‘You little people, you know, I don’t like the choices you’re making, and so your jobs go away,’ as John Kerry said right there. ‘Quelle surprise!’ That the Democratic elites have decided that blue-collar workers, that union members, that men and women with calluses on their hands, they’ve made the wrong choices, in John Kerry’s words.
“That is not a unifying message,” Cruz said. “It’s not the job we should be doing, fighting for working men and women in this country.”
Check out Cruz’s interview here. His comments on Kerry start about the 3:45 mark.
Of course, Kerry isn’t alone among the current Democratic in-crowd who take a cavalier approach to jobs sacrificed on the altar of the progressive agenda.
On Jan. 21, a day after Biden celebrated his own new job in the White House by destroying thousands of jobs for pipeline workers, Cruz grilled Biden’s nominee for transportation secretary, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, on the same topic.
Buttigieg’s answer was just as condescending as Kerry’s.
“I think the most important thing is to make sure that we make good on the promise of the president’s climate vision as being one that, on net, creates far more jobs, millions, we hope,” he said. “I know that won’t just happen. We’ll have to do a lot of work to make sure that’s real.
“But getting this right means ensuring that there are more good-paying union jobs for all Americans delivered through that infrastructure vision.”
Cruz’s question cut through the word salad.
“So for those workers, the answer is, ‘someone else will get a job’?” he asked.
Biden Transportation pick Buttigieg defends the elimination of Keystone pipeline jobs: those workers need to get “different ones”@tedcruz: “That decision is the front end of a whole series of regulatory decisions … that will be eliminating [union, manufacturing & energy jobs” pic.twitter.com/OL6jnz0kIk
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 21, 2021
Buttigieg responded that “we are very eager to see those workers continue to be employed in good-paying, union jobs, even if they might be different ones.”
Cruz wasn’t buying that any more than any halfway sensible American should.
(Buttigieg’s Democrats aren’t just eager, they’re very eager to see workers “continue to be employed,” in jobs that will miraculously appear thanks to Democratic good intentions. Please. As the current White House occupant might say, “C’mon, man!“)
“I fear that decision is the front end of a whole series of regulatory decisions, one after the other, after the other, that will be eliminating union jobs,” Cruz said. “That will be eliminating manufacturing jobs. That will be eliminating energy jobs.
“And that is altogether out of step with what the American people want.”
That’s undoubtedly true. The 2020 presidential election might have installed Joe Biden and his leftist administration in Washington, but the forces that backed him — the ludicrously biased mainstream media outlets, the titans of social media and the leftist elites of Hollywood — didn’t and don’t represent American workers, unionized or not.
In addition to national security, Americans expect their president to care about jobs and the economy — areas where former President Donald Trump delivered on his campaign promises before the coronavirus pandemic struck. The fact that Biden could even mount a credible challenge to Trump’s presidency is more an accident of history than any historical shift in American outlook.
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A Democratic administration that relies on glib grifters like Kerry and Buttigieg to sell a shoddy con to American voters — trying to convince them to be content with job losses today on the basis of promised jobs tomorrow — is in for a rough stretch.
If Biden’s ham-fisted handling of his first few days in office is any indication, Republicans might already have their strongest battleground for the next four years picked for them.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
