Jimmy Kimmel dedicated a huge portion of his opening monologue Thursday to Ted Cruz's trip to Mexico in the midst of disaster in his home state. "The hypocrisy is off the charts!" said Kimmel, who's made no secret of his dislike of the Texas senator. "This is the guy who two months ago lashed out at the mayor of Austin for going to Mexico," Kimmel went on, per the Daily Beast. And he didn't let up.
- "While his fellow Texans are freezing with the power out Ted Cruz did what any great leader would do when his state needs leadership most. He booked a flight to Mexico and said, 'Adios, amigos!'" quipped the Jimmy Kimmel Live host, offering up photos of Cruz on the plane. "There he is, snake on a plane right there! Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build a wall around."
- "But why settle for just being the planet's biggest hypocrite when you can be a world-class liar too?" Kimmel said. He then traced the story from Cruz's claim that he was only being a "good dad," accompanying his daughters on a trip with friends, to the revelation that Cruz had planned to stay in Mexico with his family through the weekend.
- In a statement, "he was careful not to say he was planning to fly back this afternoon because he wasn't," Kimmel noted. "He booked his return ticket at 6am this morning after he got busted. But I guess we were supposed to believe he was chaperoning his wife and kids to Mexico and was planning to come back the next day all along, with a carry-on bag stuffed like a piñata."