Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was photographed at the Parthenon in Athens one day after he said he spoke with President Donald Trump about deadly flooding that struck several Texas counties last Friday, The Houston Chronicle reported.
A tourist in Greece’s capital took a picture of Cruz as he was with his wife touring the Parthenon and shared it on Bluesky, the newspaper reported. The photo was taken at around 6 p.m. in Greece, about 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
“We are in Athens, Greece with our entire family,” Bluesky user Tom Rocchio wrote in the post. “Children and grandchildren. Guess who was found with his family at the Parthenon yesterday. TED F’ING CRUZ.”
Half an hour later, Kerr County, Texas, officials held a press conference to confirm that 27 people were dead, the Chronicle reported.
Since then, 111 deaths have been confirmed, including 27 campers and counselors at Camp Mystic, a girls’ summer camp, with 173 people missing, according to NBC News.
On Friday, Cruz wrote in a post on X that he had spoken with Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The governor was also traveling out of state when the flooding started, but he returned to Texas that evening, the Chronicle reported.
“Please pray right now for everyone in the Hill Country, especially Camp Mystic,” Cruz wrote. “Today, I’ve spoken with Gov Abbott, Lt. Gov Patrick, the head of [Texas Division of Emergency Management] & President Trump. Multiple helicopters are performing search & rescue. President Trump committed ANYTHING Texas needs.”
Cruz took a flight from Athens on Sunday morning and landed in Texas that night, CNN reported. His office told the news network that he returned home “as fast as humanly possible.”
“The senator was already in the middle of a preplanned family vacation travel overseas when the flooding occurred on July 4,” Cruz’s office told CNN in a statement. “Within hours, he spoke by phone with Gov. Abbott, Lt. Gov. [Dan] Patrick, Texas Emergency Management Director Nim Kidd, and President Trump, working to ensure that the maximum federal assets were available for search and rescue.”
At a press conference the following day, Cruz said his call with Trump was within the first few hours of when the floodwaters struck, the Chronicle reported.
“It was still early in what was transpiring,” Cruz said Monday. “I said, ‘Mr. President, everything we’re hearing right now, this appears to be bad. Really bad. There may be a very significant loss of life unfolding right now in Texas.’”
This is not the first time Cruz has been criticized for going on vacation during a natural catastrophe in Texas.
In 2021, Cruz took a trip to Cancún, Mexico, as a massive winter storm left millions in Texas without power. After he returned home from that trip, he told CNN that leaving the state “was obviously a mistake.”
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