Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday ripped Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R) for flying with his family to Cancun, Mexico, as Texas was hit with a devastating winter storm, specifically responding to reports that the senator left his dog behind.
“Don’t vote for anyone you wouldn’t trust with your dog,” Clinton tweeted Friday, without explicitly naming Cruz.
Reporter Michael Hardy on Thursday took a picture outside Cruz’s Houston home, in which the family’s poodle, Snowflake, can be seen looking through a glass door.
The image quickly went viral on Twitter, with Hardy later adding that a security guard at the home was left to take care of Snowflake.
Hardy noted that the power in Cruz’s home was out when his family left for Mexico, and that it came back on while he was gone, adding “Snowflake was in the cold for part of a day, but it could well have been longer.”
Cruz was spotted boarding a plane to Mexico on Wednesday with his family, and following backlash from constituents and fellow lawmakers, arrived back in Texas on Thursday after reportedly booking an earlier ticket home from Cancun.
He had reportedly planned to stay in Mexico until Saturday.
Snowflake quickly gained notoriety and sympathy from Twitter users, with one parody account, @TedCruzPoodle, gaining more than 2,500 followers by Friday afternoon.
The account’s Twitter bio reads, “Hi! I’m Ted Cruz’s poodle, Snowflake, living my best life while Texas freezes over & my a-hole dad is in Cancun. #Justice4Snowflake #TedFled.”
Upon arriving back in Texas on Thursday, Cruz admitted in an interview, “it was a mistake” to go to Cancun while many Texan households were without power in the midst of freezing winter storms.
“I was trying to be a dad,” Cruz continued. “And all of us have made decisions — when you got two girls who have been cold for two days and haven’t had heat or power and they’re saying, ‘Hey look, we don’t have school, why don’t we go. Let’s get out of here.’ “
In a video of the interview, a crowd of people can be heard chanting “resign.”
Texas Democrats on Thursday issued a statement also calling on Cruz to step down from his elected position, ripping the GOP senator for “jetting off to Mexico while Texans remain dying in the cold.”
Millions of people in Texas regained power Friday after days of outages across the state due to an electric grid paralyzed by the winter storm, though many are now facing a lack of safe drinking water.
According to The Associated Press, record-low temperatures in the state have damaged pipes that carry the water supply and jeopardized the drinking water systems, with local authorities now ordering nearly 7 million people in Texas to boil their tap water before drinking it.