A couple of weeks ago, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, made the capital mistake of calling the people who invaded and vandalized the Capitol “terrorists.” My dear young Tailgunner, that simply is not done. He was severely chastised on teevee by Tucker Carlson, which resulted in Cruz’s retreating to his default posture: groveling.

“The way I phrased things yesterday, it was sloppy, and it was frankly dumb.”

But Carlson wasn’t satisfied and further upbraided Cruz, who, we should all remember, is a United States freaking Senator. So, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Cruz had another opportunity to rehabilitate his modern conservative bona fides. The subject was domestic terrorism, and one of the witnesses was Jill Sanborn, a national-security expert for the FBI. So Cruz brought out one of the right’s more odiferous new conspiracy theories: that a former president of the Arizona Oath Keepers named Ray Epps was an FBI provocateur who helped gin up the rioters on January 6. This already has been merrily debunked from here to Saturn. But fealty to the bullshit is the coin of the realm in Cruz’s politics these days. So he cleverly maneuvered Sanborn with questions she said she could not answer. This will be interpreted all over the wingnutosphere, and in Cruz’s future fundraising appeals, as “stonewalling” Cruz’s masterful interrogation.

This is the latest deflection strategy as the walls close in. It will be evidence enough for some people that Sanborn declined to give up the details of an ongoing investigation. But those people are never going to trust Ted Cruz again, because he once put a toe over the line of True Belief. (Senator Tom Cotton was on the Epps case on Tuesday as well, and he has yet to commit even the slightest heresy.) Ted Cruz now carries the mark of the beast. Thank you, sir, may he have another?

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.