Fired Parler CEO John Matze, 27, says he was 'stabbed in the back' by heiress investor Rebekah Mercer - as house Dems demand list of investors and creditors after Trump was offered 40% stake in app

• John Matze, 27, was fired as Parler CEO, the social media app he co-founded in 2018, by the board last week 
• He blamed investor Rebekah Mercer, a conservative mega-donor and daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, for his termination
• Matze says he was 'betrayed' and stabbed in the back by Mercer, who helped fund the app back in 2018 
• He claims he was fired because he wanted to ban QAnon and crackdown on white supremacists but was met with resistance from the board 
• Investor Dan Bongino slammed it as a lie and insists it was the other way round 
• The app has come under fire for being among social media services used to plan the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol 
• It has since emerged that Trump was reportedly in talks to acquire a 40 percent stake in Parler in exchange for him agreeing to post on the social media app first
• House Democrats are now demanding a list of Parler investors and creditors 

By EMILY CRANE FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED:  9 February 2021 

Fired Parler CEO John Matze says he was 'betrayed' and stabbed in the back by heiress investor Rebekah Mercer over his termination - as House Democrats demand a list of investors and creditors after it emerged Trump was offered a stake in the social media company.

The 27-year-old has claimed that he was fired by the Parler board last week after trying to ban QAnon conspiracy theories and crackdown on white supremacists across the social media app he co-founded.  

He blamed Mercer, a conservative mega-donor and daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, for his termination.

'I feel like it was a stab in the back by somebody that I thought I knew. And so for me, you know, I would never do business with her again,' Matze told Axios on HBO. 

'I thought I knew her. She invited my family on trips with them and everything. I thought that she was, generally speaking, I thought she was being real. And then she just abruptly has her people fire me and doesn't even talk to me about it.' 

Fired Parler CEO John Matze told Axios on HBO that he was 'betrayed' and stabbed in the back by heiress investor Rebekah Mercer after he was ousted by the board last week

The 27-year-old blamed investor Rebekah Mercer, a conservative mega-donor and daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, for his termination. She is pictured at Trump Tower in New York back in December 2016

Matze said Mercer, who he first met while working as an IT consultant for her father's firm, helped fund Parler in 2018 and she became a controlling shareholder of the social media app. 

He claims Mercer became more involved in the operations at Parler ahead of the election. 

Matze said a rift formed during an internal disagreement last summer after he wanted to more broadly define the term violence in the companies terms of service.

He claims it came to a head around the time of the Capitol riots last month as Amazon decided to remove Parler from its web-hosting service and Google and Apple removed the app from their online stores.

Matze claims he was met by resistance from those within Parler when he pushed for increased moderation in order to get the app back online. 

In a leaked memo to employees announcing his termination, Matze squarely blamed Mercer for his firing, writing: 'Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed.' 

The app has come under fire for being among the social media services used to plan the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. 

Parler has come under fire for being among social media services used to plan the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. The executive shake-up is the latest woe to befall Parler, which remains effectively offline after Amazon Web Services last month revoked server support

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Parler experienced a surge in users after Twitter banned Trump amid pressure to curb incendiary speech. Trump also was banned by Facebook and Instagram.

Matze has previously said Trump contemplated joining Parler under a pseudonym.

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In a leaked memo to employees announcing his termination, Matze squarely blamed Mercer for his firing, writing: 'Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed.'

He told Axios on HBO that any potential deal with Trump was a lose-lose scenario. 

'I didn't like the idea of working with Trump because he might have bullied people inside the company to do what he wanted. But I was worried that if we didn't sign the deal, he might have been vengeful and told his followers to leave Parler,' Matze said. 

It has since emerged that Trump was reportedly in talks to acquire a 40 percent stake in Parler in exchange for him agreeing to post on the social media app first. 

Matze and two other Parler advisers met at Mar-a-Lago in June to discuss the deal

He did not mention that meeting during his Axios interview despite talking about the deal.  

It comes as House Democrats asked that Parler hand over a list of investors and creditors in the wake of news that Trump was offered a stake. 

'These negotiations reportedly occurred while President Trump was still in office,' House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney wrote in a letter to Parler chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick. 

Mercer, whom Matze has blamed for his firing, is the daughter of Robert Mercer (pictured above together), a hedge fund manager and the co-founder of the now-defunct political data-analysis firm Cambridge Analytica

REBEKAH MERCER: THE CONSERVATIVE DONOR AND ACTIVIST 

Rebekah Mercer, 47, is a prominent conservative donor and activist.

Based in New York, she was briefly a stock trader and was married to a high-ranking Morgan Stanley executive. 

She is now listed as 'retired' or 'homemaker' on financial declarations.

Others give her a different title: the 'First Lady of the Alt-Right.' 

Her father, Robert, is the co-CEO of Renaissance Technologies hedge fund and is estimated by Bloomberg to be worth at least $1 billion.

The Mercers for years donated to the Koch brothers' political network, but started to act alone after the Republicans' failure to unseat president Barack Obama reportedly led Rebekah to say the Koch network was full of 'fools.'

They initially backed Ted Cruz, pushing him to take a harder line on immigration during the presidential primaries, before switching their allegiance to Trump. 

Publicity shy, their money, according to a December 2017 report in Quartz, is spent on Breitbart, Cambridge Analytica, a machine gun company and a horse farm in Florida. 

Maloney specifically asked for stakeholders with 'direct or indirect ownership interests' and any entity that Parler owes $10,000 or more to. 

In the wake of his Matze's firing and the bitter fall out, Parler investor Dan Bongino publicly slammed the ousted CEO as a liar.

In a statement to DailyMail.com, Bongino slammed Matze's comments about his firing as 'inaccurate and misleading'.  

Bongino, a conservative podcast host and commentator, said that Matze had 'difficulty reconciling guidelines enforcement on the one hand, and free expression on the other.'

'We intend to demonstrate that there is no conflict between these, because the free exchange of ideas requires the exclusion of (threats of) violence.'

In a separate Facebook livestream, Bongino said: 'I'm really p***ed off right now... The relationship with Parler and the CEO did not work out because the CEO's vision was not ours. Everybody clear on that? Our vision was crystal clear.'  

'This site was going to be a free speech platform or it was going to be nothing,' Bongino said. 'The vision of the company as a free speech platform was mine and the two other owners, and we were resolutely committed to that.'

'We could have been up in a week, if we had just bent the knee and followed all the ridiculous Apple edicts to become a heavy-moderation site to the left of Twitter. 

'We don't want garbage on our site either and we took the proper steps to do that, but we were a free speech site.'  

Bongino also hinted that 'terrible decisions' were made under Matze's leadership that led to the site being taken offline, without offering further details.

'We needed to get up and fight back, some terrible decisions were made in the past, that led us to getting put down by Amazon and others,' he said. 

The executive shake-up is the latest woe to befall Parler, which remains effectively offline after Amazon Web Services last month revoked server support over 'egregious content' on the app after the Capitol riot.

Apple and Google also removed the app from their stores, making Parler effectively unavailable on smartphones. 

JOHN MATZE'S FULL MEMO TO PARLER STAFF OVER HIS FIRING

On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision.

I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.

Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation.

I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands.

I want to thank the Parler employees, the people on Parler and Parler supporters for their tireless work and devotion to the company. They are an amazing group of diverse, hardworking and talented individuals and I have the utmost respect for them. Many of them have become my second family.

After that, I'll be looking for new opportunities where my technical acumen, vision and the causes I am passionate about will be required and respected.

I want to thank all the people of Parler that supported me and the platform. This has been the true American Dream: an idea from a living room to a company of considerable value.

I'm not saying goodbye, just so long for now.

Congress opens investigation into Parler's relationship with Trump amid impeachment trial

House committee launches probe into Parler’s reported negotiations with the Trump Org. following Capitol riot

By JON SKOLNIK
FEBRUARY 9, 2021 

Donald Trump & Parler (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

The House Committee on Oversight and Reform penned a letter on Monday to Parler's chief operating officer Jeffrey Wernick, demanding that he hand over documents regarding the company's stakeholders, creditors, ties with Russia and newly reported ownership negotiations with the Trump Organization.

The primary signatory of the letter, Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, D-NY, asked about a report that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the platform if the former president committed to making "Parler his primary social network." The deal would have required that Trump exclusively use Parler as his primary social media for at least four hours beore re-posting the same content to other social media platforms.
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According to a Buzzfeed report, talks between Parler and the Trump Organization kicked off during the summer of last year and continued through November until they were derailed by the Capitol riot on Jan 6. However, Trump's former campaign manager Brad Parscale and campaign lawyer Alex Cannon had reportedly met with Parler's CEO, John Matze, as far back as 2019. Legal experts told Buzzfeed that the deal may have been in violation of anti-bribery laws. Matze –– who alleged that he was booted out of the company after pushing for more rigorous content moderation –– said in court filings last month that Trump had intended to create an account on Parler under the pseudonym "Person X."

In an interview with Axios, Matze expressed that he remembered feeling apprehensive about partnering with the Trump. "I didn't like the idea of working with Trump, because he might have bullied people inside the company to do what he wanted," Matze explained, "But I was worried that if we didn't sign the deal, he might have been vengeful and told his followers to leave Parler."
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Chairwoman Maloney's letter also argued that Parler shirked its responsibility to moderate right-wing radicalism leading up to the riot, citing "numerous Parler users" who "have been arrested and charged for their roles" in inciting violence.

"Immediately after President Trump exhorted his supporters to "show strength" during his speech," Maloney stated, "the term 'civil war' surged into one of the top five most frequently used terms on Parler. One user wrote, 'Be men fight back and f--- them up. Civil war is upon us.'"

Back in mid-January, Maloney called on FBI Director Christopher Wray to launch an investigation into Parler "as a potential facilitator of planning and incitement related to the violence" and "as a repository of key evidence posted by users on its site." It was then that Maloney also casted doubt over Parler's financing and ties with Russia.

The House's new letter sent on Monday revisited those same concerns.

"Parler reportedly allowed Russian disinformation to flourish on its platform prior to the November 2020 election," the letter claimed. While disinformation was removed from other social networking platforms, it wasn't scrubbed from Parler.
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Chairwoman Maloney also demanded answers as to why Parler was reinstated on a Russian hosting service.

"When U.S. hosting services cut ties with Parler for repeatedly failing to moderate content advocating violence," Maloney stated, "Parler re-emerged on a Russian hosting service, DDos-Guard, which has ties to the Russian government and counts the Russian Ministry of Defense as one of its clients."

According to Matze, Amazon, which removed Parler from its online marketplace two days after the riot, only did so because "it knew there was a possibility that Trump might obtain a Parler account." Amazon, however, has denied these allegations, maintaining Parler's removal had "nothing to do with politics."

JON SKOLNIK
is a staff writer at Salon. His work has appeared in Current Affairs, The Baffler, AlterNet, and The New York Daily News.

Extremists on Telegram exploit Parler’s de-platforming to ramp up recruiting

Rebranded Proud Boys Telegram group saw massive subscriber growth after it was converted into a refuge for Parler users

@DFRLab

Feb 11 · 

(source: @maxbrizzuto/DFRLab)


Following the announcement that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would be removing Parler from its servers, a newly rebranded group surfaced on the messaging platform Telegram. The “Parler Lifeboat” successfully positioned itself as a refuge for the soon-to-be de-platformed crowds from Parler and experienced explosive growth over the next several days.

The DFRLab’s investigation into the group showed that it was formerly a public group for the violent extremist organization the Proud Boys that was renamed to reflect the impending migration of users sympathetic to far-right views following Parler’s de-platforming.

Right-wing extremists have used Telegram’s platform design and affordances, such as the channel- and message-forwarding features, to direct users to increasingly violent content. In December 2020, the DFRLab reported on a UK-based white nationalist community that included white supremacist and antisemitic narratives alongside disinformation about the U.S. elections.

Parler Lifeboat

The earliest records of the community that is now the Parler Lifeboat date back to July 18, 2019, when it was named “Right Wing Chat Squad.” Despite being publicized as a “public chat” the group was technically shielded from the public eye by way of a proxy group which served to vet newcomers before granting access to the real group.

Invitation to the proxy group named only with a period. Instructions to join the official “Right Wing Chat Squad” group include a redacted phone number for users to reach out to in order to join the group. This message was pinned in an official Proud Boys channel. (Source: Telegram)

The earliest record in the channel data, dated June 21, 2019, shows the community migrating from a private group titled “Right Wind Chat Squad V3.0” to a public group of the same name. The most recent name change occurred on January 10, 2021, roughly 10 hours prior to Parler’s removal.

DFRLab analysis of the Parler Lifeboat group shows how the community’s name changed over time since the channel’s inception. Blurred are three group names that targeted a female member of the community. (Source: @maxbrizzuto/DFRLab via Telegram )


In preparation for de-platforming, the Parler Lifeboat was promoted by the official Proud Boys account among their final posts on Parler. At the time of the Parler platform takedown by AWS, the post had been viewed upwards of 1 million times.

Archive of Parler post promoting the group as seen on the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine. (Source: Parler/archive via WayBack Machine)

The Parler Lifeboat group was also promoted on Telegram internally. Due to Telegram’s simple community search feature, the inclusion of “Parler” in the name of the group worked to elevate the community to the top of Parler-related search results, which spiked after the platform was taken down.

Posts to the “Parler Lifeboat” group as reflected in the group history data. (Source: @maxbrizzuto/DFRLab via Telegram)

Analysis of the message history shows abnormal activity in the month leading up to the January 10 spike. Since Parler Lifeboat was a Telegram group, rather than a channel, the administrators had the ability to remove content from the record. Between 23:16 UTC on December 1, 2020 and 13:59 UTC on January 10, 2021, the group’s records have been redacted. Records show that members continued to join the group — at a rate of three or four users per day for the month of December, which supports the notion that messages were removed retroactively by administrators, though notices of new members joining were not.

With the knowledge that Proud Boys were centrally involved in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the group administrators could have decided to delete the group’s message history in the lead-up to the felonious events that transpired in order to protect contributors from possible legal repercussions.

Chat history records show that invites witnessed a concurrent spike with messages on January 10, 2021, reaching a peak of nearly 14,000 invites from January 10–11, 2021.

Cropped view of the Parler Lifeboat message history (top) and invite history (bottom) between November 1, 2020, and February 3, 2021. Note that while invites can be posted in the chat as messages, the above “invite history” data is categorized separately, as an “action,” in Telegram chat history downloads. (Source: @maxbrizzuto/DFRLab via Telegram)

The massive volume of invitations to the group may be in part the result of Parler evacuation efforts. Members were invited to the group at intervals ranging from every few minutes to every couple of seconds for the greater part of January 10, the day Apple and Amazon announced they would join Google in removing Parler from their services.

Not all of the newcomers to the Parler Lifeboat were necessarily new to Telegram or unacquainted with the Proud Boys or other extremist communities on the platform, however. The Lifeboat was promoted and shared on 41 other channels and groups on Telegram, some of which were extremist communities that espoused white supremacist ideologies and Nazi propaganda. Positioning the Parler Lifeboat within an established network of extremists online would expose unsuspecting Parler refugees to harmful influencers from more extremist corners of the platform.

Telegram channels that promoted content from the Parler Lifeboat and mention the Parler Lifeboat channel. Note white supremacist communities and symbolism; names redacted, but group icons include swastikas, Nazi propaganda, and the number 88 (a popular coding for “heil Hitler” via the initials “HH” as “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet). (source: TGStat)

At its peak, Parler Lifeboat had grown to a subscriber base of upwards of 16,000 users according to data from TGStat, an open-source Telegram analytics tool. Once the Proud Boys had successfully attained a moderator position to review thousands of prospective channel members, they took precautions to distance themselves from the Proud Boys name. Newcomers were welcomed to the community with open arms and a pinned message that expressly stated that Parler Lifeboat was “not affiliated with any group.”

Pinned message as seen in the Parler Lifeboat Telegram Group. (Source: Telegram)

As more and more users piled into the group, the Proud Boys continued to brigade their messaging, though the sheer volume of posts made Proud Boy-specific content less visible, mixed with more general pro-Trump content.

A sample of some of the images posted on the chat before and after January 10, 2021. Note the change in tenor that posts experienced over the time frame.. (Source: Telegram)

On Telegram, forwarded messages from other channels can be inspected to get an idea of what kind of content is valued in the community. Judging from the differences in reposted content before and after January 10, 2021, the influx of displaced Parler users affected the sort of content that was shared in the group.

Top 15 communities from which messages posted to the Parler Lifeboat channel were forwarded, from June 21, 2019 until the January 10, 2021 de-platforming; left, and after de-platforming until the time of publishing; right. (Source: @maxbrizzuto/DFRLab via Telegram)


The appearance of more hyper-partisan channels and media outlets mark a departure from the Proud Boys-related content and hardline right-wing political influencers promoted in the group prior to January 10, 2021.

Since the peak on January 10, the community has seen some members unsubscribe. This exodus mimics that of the aforementioned U.K.-based U.S.Voter Fraud channel, where user retention began to fall off after topical discussion settled down.

Parler Lifeboat subscriber counts provided by TGStat shows that it is leveling off. From open-source data, it is unclear how many subscribers the channel had prior to January 10, 2021, but at the time of publication the community has 13,257 subscribers. (source: tgstat.com)

For extremist communities, the utility in drawing a large crowd does not come from the peak in engagement and sudden visibility; rather, the lasting benefit for these groups in engaging in such a maneuver is to recruit those visitors that stick around long after the frenzy of posting is over. Though the “Parler Lifeboat” failed to retain some of its subscribers, those that remain are now exposed to more extremist content, as Proud Boy contributions begin to make up more of the conversation.


Max Rizzuto is a Research Assistant with the Digital Forensic Research Lab.

Follow along on Twitter for more in-depth analysis from our #DigitalSherlocks.

Ted Cruz is an embarrassment to Texas (opinion)
By James C. Moore 


Two images that have been circulating on social media capture the culture and government of Texas to a T.   

© KTRK

One is a drone video showing Stateline Boulevard, the border road that divides the two cities of Texarkana, in Texas and Arkansas. On the Arkansas side, the pavement is cleared and plowed. The Texas roadbed is buried in snow.

The other image is that of Ted Cruz, Texas' Republican junior senator, traveling to Cancún, Mexico on Wednesday, while millions of his constituents were freezing at home, many without power, water or food.

What's the matter with Texas?

I have long insisted that a kind of frontier ethic still informs life down here in the Lone Star State. The old American myth of rugged individualism and self-reliance and neighbors helping neighbors. But that doesn't explain our overwhelming distaste for government.

Almost every conservative Texas politician elected in the modern era has won by running against perceived evils in Washington and Austin. The most successful of these anti-government outsiders have settled into long careers on the public payroll, with great government benefits like health care and pensions, which the regular citizens they serve have increasingly found difficult to acquire.

© Provided by CNN James Moore

Texas's attitude toward government has become deadly.

The winter storm that was too much for Cruz offers a clear example of the tragedies that can accompany policies that are too conservative to make sense, but calculated enough to make some people money.

Texas fancied itself as independent from the rest of the Union, so it built an electrical grid all its own. The entire purpose seemed to be avoiding federal regulation and keeping energy cheap. Washington would have no say about what we Texans did regarding fuel prices and service delivery. Nor would we stoop to buying or borrowing power from the rest of the country.

The real reason, of course, was profits for energy companies. Supply and demand are easier to manipulate when there are no federal laws protecting consumers and the grid. The energy industry was able to ignore warnings about winterizing its natural gas, coal, and oil-powered infrastructure. We're Texas. We don't have those problems.

Until we do. Which is just another manifestation of anti-government, fossil-fuel-fixated conservatism that denies climate change.

The Texas grid, operated by the ironically named Electric Reliability Council of Texas, (ERCOT) collapsed because it was not designed or equipped to handle extreme weather like the current deep freeze. ERCOT supplies about 90% of the state's power, but does not pay plants to be on standby for emergencies, which means electricity prices can dramatically spike during peak demand.

Our governor, Greg Abbott spread a profound lie on conservative television that frozen windmills and solar caused the power failures that left millions freezing in the dark. He blamed the Green New Deal, which does not presently exist. He failed to note that renewables make up barely more than 10% of the state's total energy supply.

Abbott's predecessor, Rick Perry, suggested that Texans would rather suffer days of blackouts than submit to Washington's oversight. He said this even as people were freezing to death in their cars and homes; at least 21 people have died. Perhaps, their final thoughts were that they were grateful to Texas for the state's superior energy independence.

In Texas, we have learned never to expect much more than entertainment from our government and politicians. In that department, we are as grand as our legend. Last August, Cruz boldly mocked California's electricity problems during their heatwave and fires, tweeting that the state was "unable to perform even the basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity."

More hilariously, Cruz ridiculed the Austin mayor for flying to a Mexican beach during Covid after urging his city's residents to stay home.

Senator Sensitive will be performing his comedy act for at least four more years.

But Ted Cruz, as Texan Jimmie Dale Gilmore sings, is "just a wave, not the water." The state's governmental infrastructure is over-populated with people who brag about a pay-as-you go government while avoiding political criticism by hiding taxes in bonded indebtedness approaching $60 billion.

The state's gas tax has not been raised since 1991, and consequently road construction is being increasingly privatized and monetized for corporations that charge onerous tolls for profit.

To constrain Washington's reach in Texas, the past two governors have refused to expand Medicaid, which leaves about 5 million residents without health insurance, including an estimated 625,000 children.

And because conservatives have an aversion to an income tax, they have made Texas over-reliant on property taxes, unless, of course, you are a corporate interest looking for a handout or huge tax abatements.

We Texans ought to be embarrassed. But Cruz has shown how our state's conservatives avoid embarrassment by being slippery and disingenuous. Caught out at the airport -- taking vacation in the midst of a pandemic and energy crisis in his home state -- Cruz later admitted to a mistake in judgment. But not before he tossed his own daughters under the wheels of the plane.

The father of the year said he wasn't abandoning his state during a deadly emergency, he was lovingly protecting his girls by escorting them to Cancun to make sure they were safe.

The people he left freezing in Texas were not.

'I got no defense': Ted Cruz responds after viral tweet mocking California energy policies resurfaces amid Texas storm

esnodgrass@businessinsider.com

(Erin Snodgrass,Grace Panetta) 2 days ago

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas speaking with reporters on Saturday.

 Alex Brandon/AP

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas responded Tuesday morning to online criticism over a resurfaced tweet.

In August, Cruz mocked what he described on Twitter as California's "failed energy policies."

His post resurfaced Tuesday as millions of Texans went without electricity during a winter storm.

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas struck a rare conciliatory tone Tuesday after Twitter users lambasted him for a resurfaced August tweet in which he mocked what he described as California's "failed energy policies."

Millions of Texans have been left without electricity for sometimes-lengthy periods of time over the past few days because of severe winter weather.

Many accused Cruz of hypocrisy for criticizing California's power infrastructure over the wildfires and extreme heat waves that plagued the West Coast last summer when his state's infrastructure had proved unable to handle its own inclement weather.

"I got no defense," Cruz tweeted Tuesday, responding to the critiques. "A blizzard strikes Texas & our state shuts down. Not good."

In August, Cruz responded to a tweet from the California governor's office urging people in that state to turn off unneeded lights and limit their use of appliances. He described the state as "unable to perform even basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity."

He then said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as well as the Biden-Harris presidential ticket wanted to make what he called California's "failed energy policy" the national standard.

"Hope you don't like air conditioning!" he tweeted last year.

Now, Texas' power grid has been overwhelmed, with a higher-than-usual demand for electricity coinciding with a supply threatened by large amounts of ice and snow and freezing temperatures. As of Tuesday evening, more than 3 million Texans were without power, according to the outage-tracking site PowerOutage.us.

The power outages, which have included rolling blackouts meant to limit the strain on the system, have affected designated warming centers and shelters.

Cruz's concession received a mixed response, with some urging the lawmaker to seek legislative action to help the millions across the region affected by the freezing temperatures.

"Stay safe!" he tweeted.

AND THEN TUESDAY NIGHT HE FLEW OFF TO CANCUN

 RESULTING IN MORE EMBARASSING MEMES

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment (plawiuk.blogspot.com)