If you’re anything like me, you were idly reading stuff on Twitter this morning and you wondered why “Heidi Cruz” began trending. Heidi Cruz is the long-suffering wife of Senator Ted “Zodiac Killer” Cruz, who is up for reelection in Texas. His opponent is Beto O’Rourke, the charismatic, good-looking, badass Democrat. Will Beto win? I hope so. Do I think Ted Cruz is a charisma vacuum who likely murders hoboes? Yes. Do I also have some kind of weird sympathy for Heidi Cruz? Maybe. So that’s why Heidi Cruz started trending – The Atlantic did a soft-focus interview with her about how her life is kind of crazy and maybe we should have sympathy for her. The problem is that even Heidi Cruz fully admits that she knew what she was signing up for when she married the Zodiac Killer. The details in this piece… well, here’s a small taste:
She loved the Zodiac Killer at first sight: He was “super-smart” and “really fun” and looked like a “1950s movie star.” “It was love at first sight,” she told me.
His first gift to her was a pearl necklace: Call me every day when your day is done, she instructed him. And he did call her, every day that spring, at about 3 or 4 a.m. Later that summer, Ted gave her a strand of pearls. Probably fake, she still thinks, but they were from Bergdorf Goodman. And this was special: She’d mentioned once that she liked to go to Bergdorf’s, to look at the china and other delicate things behind glass, and he’d listened.
What he insisted on for their wedding: Heidi found herself planning a May wedding to a man who, for all his pretension, insisted they play “A Whole New World,” the popular Disney song, at the end of the ceremony. She didn’t understand: They had a band, she told him—a violinist, no less! Why on earth would they play a CD? “Because no one can do Aladdin,” he said. She relented, and it became a theme of sorts. Or that’s how she remembers it, anyway. On a magic carpet ride.
What she wishes she had known: “I would say to younger women: Be intentional about your decisions. And I do appreciate that Ted started our life together with that song, because there’s some truth to it. He’ll be like, ‘It’s such a great life! We have so much adventure ahead! It’s like our magic-carpet ride.’ And sometimes I’m like, ‘I hope we don’t hit the cement.’”
First off, I would be out the door as soon as the guy insisted on playing a song (off a CD!) from Aladdin. I don’t care if it’s a beautiful song. That sh-t is tacky at a wedding. But the entire piece reads like that – Heidi is more sympathetic than her husband, but to be fair, Charles Manson is more sympathetic than Ted Cruz. She comes across like a rich, bored housewife with ennui. She’s not dripping with self-pity, to her credit, but you can tell that she’s like “I could have had a successful career on my own, why did I subjugate my own interests to marry the Zodiac Killer?” Plus, her husband ended up kissing up to Trump after Trump attacked her looks. Why would you stay with a man who did that? The Atlantic never asks.
Some reactions to The Atlantic article:
Heidi Cruz is a 'victim' according to the Atlantic. Victim of what? Victim of being married to Ted Cruz. Ok, now I understand. That makes sense. #ThursdayThoughts
— John Lundin 🌊 (@johnlundin) October 18, 2018
I give a lot of credit to Heidi Cruz for being able to stand by her husband @tedcruz after he accepted the endorsement of a man (@realDonaldTrump) who verbally and brutally attacked her in front of the nation.
That's why I support @BetoORourke
— Ed Krassenstein (@EdKrassen) October 18, 2018
Photos courtesy of Getty and Avalon Red.
I lol-ed at this quote:
“Yeah, we’re seven years into this, and we’re not buying a second home anytime soon.”
Cruz makes $174K as a senator. Never feel sorry for this woman. Or any Republican.
I’m sure their first home is grander than any home I will ever own in my lifetime.
Oh noooo, no second home, poor them!
Yeah that seemed pretty tone deaf. She’s the primary breadwinner and he makes 174k a year? So she must be making quite a bit more than him. Like, that’s an astounding amount of money to make per year for just about anyone else in America.
She’s a leader at Goldman Sachs. She makes way more money than he does.
God help me, I thought that story about the pearls was cute. But still, Ted cruz zodiac killer is trash, so…🤷
Honestly, no shade intended, but is she wearing a Lyrca jumpsuit in that first picture?
I think so… in teal and with a white belt no less.
I read the whole article with jaw dropped both at what the reporter revealed and all of the questions the reporter blatantly failed to ask. For me the most revealing part was where she says she told the kids she would have to quit her “wealth management” job so Ted could run for president, and her little girl asked her if she would get a paycheck for being first lady, and when she told them “no,” the child said then this is a bad idea–wow. Her kids are waaaay smarter than her. And she has always lived full time with the kids in Houston for her career while he’s off in DC. Kind of shed new light for me on the repeated videos of the kids pushing Ted away when he tries to hug them. He’s a stranger to them.
At least she seems to be raising some smart daughters.
I couldn’t believe either that the reporter didn’t ask about how Heidi feels with her husband groveling to Trump after the horrible things Trump said about her! It’s the most important question and it wasn’t asked! Maybe restrictions were put on the questions.
I think that was one of the questions that the reporter was barred from asking. Rafael needs Orange Turd’s endorsement so Heidi is not allowed to say how she really feels!
Heidi I would divorce this schmuck for sucking up to the Orange diaper. Where’s the loyalty?
Yup, and they seem to think he’s just as gross as we do. The videos of his daughters running away from a hug or flicking him away when he tries to give them a kiss is the funniest non-funny stuff ever.
Beto needed to keep going after Cruz for bowing to trump despite everything he personally attacked him and his family for. What kind of man are you Ted?
My thoughts:
1) No shade on the Aladdin song thing. It’s your wedding, Ted, you do you.
2) I’ve never seen Heidi before, but she looks like your average botox-y wealthy white woman to me. Not that it’s ever okay to call women ugly, and not that I expect anything Trump says to make sense, but… ???
3) Ted Cruz is still a terrible human
She is complicit. Remember how his daughter reacted to him?
I feel like Heidi Cruz and I watched very different 1950s movies.
Maybe she always sided with the villians.
Lmao seriously
She’s a psycho by association. Ladies. Stop letting evil politicians get up in yo panties.
She’s not team human. She’s team asshole
Yeah, its frankly disgusting how materialistic she and Ted Cruz are; talking about buying her a pearl necklace, how much she like shopping at high end department stores, their lavish wedding, wanting a 2nd home. Ugh, these people have no identity beyond their greed.
She really is. As for this piece, I think the interviewer was trolling her. It’s pretty cutting, in a sly way.
I am so irritated with the media’s need to “humanize” and elicit empathy for those that willingly engage with and/or marry sociopaths.
Agreed.
These stories are all so nauseatingly cutesy and infantilizing. She’s HBS and works at Goldman, has worked in the Bush administration as an economic director etal. These stories about pearls and Aladdin are such a distraction from the horror show that she and her husband, whom she willingly married, are aiding and abetting.
Sorry but no. Zero sympathy. He was always a terrible human being with terrible beliefs about women and gay people and people of color. That interview is criminally bad.
I often wonder is the societal pressure for marriage still so great that one would look upon Ted Cruz at any age w/ the desire to walk through this life with him for years in matrimony.
The pressure to be a married woman in the bible belt to a powerful God-fearing man, yes. It’s more important than self-respect, apparently. @Chaine pointed out that they’re basically living separate lives, and that clearly how she’s justifying it to herself. Out of sight, out of mind. Enjoy the paychecks because I hope you’re miserable for the rest of your life.
Her husband is licking the boots of the man who called her ugly…
I feel nothing…NOTHING…but contempt…and wanting her and her ilk to get as FAR AWAY FROM POSITIONS OF POWER AS QUICKLY AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE!
October 22. That’s the first day I can gleefully cast my vote for Beto.
Yes, please. My mom and I use the vampire emoji to stand in for Cruz when we text. The sound of his condescending, supercilious, fake, unctuous voice makes me want to run amok. He never says anything that doesn’t sound like it is wrapped in 17 layers of smirk and condescension. I cannot WAIT to vote for Beto and I hope and pray that he wins. Ted Cruz is a terrible person for thousands of reasons, but as God is my witness, if my husband ever kissed up to ANYONE who said such awful things about me the way that Cruz buried his nose in trump’s butt, he would be my ex so fast your head would spin. 13 years and two kids be damned. I have my limits, and apparently a better sense of self-worth than Heidi. She can sit her whiny ass ALL THE WAY DOWN. I loathe her stupid husband and I loathe her by association.
“The sound of his condescending, supercilious, fake, unctuous voice makes me want to run amok.”
Lol and yes, this is how I’ve always felt about him. Same with Paul Ryan and the other Tea Party goons, doing everything they could to thwart Obama, offering nothing in the way of policy other than enriching the 1% and being the key players that got us to Trump as POTUS.
I don’t know what’s going on with their marriage, but I have no sympathy for any woman who married Ted Cruz. Heidi Cruz is sitting there in Texas–not far from where children are separated from their parents and being held in detention centers!! She is in a prime position to help these children and families, and instead she supports a man who is helping keep them there! I’m sure she has never even visited these kids, or given them one thought! Meanwhile she tries to pretend she’s Mother of the Year. It’s outrageous. These children are the real victims, not Mrs. Ted Cruz. Shame on The Atlantic for giving her sympathetic coverage.
My mom sang A Whole New World at her BFF’s wedding ceremony (this was her friend’s second marriage). The marriage did not last (though it did last awhile), so I think playing any music from Aladdin is a no go for me.
Whaaa?? She is a managing director at Goldman Sachs and probably makes $1M a year. She didn’t give up a GD thing. I do not feel an iota of pity for this woman.
Well then his wife is literally the only person who likes him and thinks he’s fun.
Ted’s college roommate said he was a straight up a-hole. Literally every person in the Senate BOTH repub and dem HATE him. Then, there’s this famous quote from Al Franken: “I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz. And I hate Ted Cruz.”
I don’t know how she can be married to Grandpa Munster. The fact that so many people dislike him in general and think he’s odious in so many ways, but she loves him? She’s like Melania. Everyone tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she’s proved herself to be just as disgusting as her husband. If the reporter dug slightly below the surface, I bet they’d come up with some stuff that makes her marriage to Grandpa Munster finally make sense.
God I miss Al Franken.
Me too! I would have loved to see him interrogate Kavanaugh!
I know, I laughed when she called him “fun.” He is utterly humorless and charmless.
I know John Boener hated his guts because he was the ringleader of the govt shut down. Govt employees I hope you remember what Rafael did and forgo voting for this loser.
I think Joe Kennedy is right when he said Beto would play out better to a national audience rather than Texas. I really don’t think he’s going to win but would love if he ran for President. I really don’t want any of the old guard…not Warren, not Biden and definitely not Sanders. Beto would be the first gen X President and he does have mad charisma.
By some definitions of Generation X, Obama belonged to our cohort, too. Obviously others would define him as a tail-end baby boomer. But to me, culturally the baby boomers had to have lived through the 60s and early 70s and had it define their young-adult lives. Think of the endless kerfuffles about what the various baby boomer presidents and presidential candidates did or didn’t do in Vietnam. Obama was too young to have gone to Vietnam. Like many more Gen Xers than boomers, he was also raised by a single parent. Culturally it’s indisputable even if the calendar is debatable: He was our first Gen X president.
This is a good point and I don’t disagree with you. But Beto is exactly my age and I clearly identity with his gen x 90’sness.
I thought Ted was catholic so I am surprised a priest let them play that song at the wedding ceremony. I used to play at church weddings and they were very strict about that. No phantom, no Disney. Just religious music or some classical. Also musicians could have found sheet music to play the song instead of using the CD. It’s a pretty easy song to learn.
Just for the record, I am not a Ted Cruz supporter. But why are you referring to him as the Zodiak Killer? That is not a cool, flippant reference to make. As a resident of Northern California, those crimes have not been solved, and many families are still in pain.
Don’t make flippant stupid references.
Here’s the answer about “why”:
It’s an internet meme that has been around since about 2013. Ted Cruz was born in 1970, after the killings started, so clearly he isn’t the Zodiak and no one who shared the meme seriously thought he was. I think the meme originated because people found him to be creepy and made a joke out of it.
Didnt trump call him the Zodiac killer? I thin n that’s why they’re saying it.
I’ve seen 50s movie stars and Rafael is not a 50s movie star. He would be a villain in a Doris Day movie.
I think I read on Twitter that she’s also quoted as saying Rafael’s govt pay check is too small so they can’t own more than one house. Boo hoo. Rich people’s problems.