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A video of Ted Cruz giving conflicting views on democracy after predicting Democrats will attempt to claim the midterms are rigged has gone viral.
The clip of the Texas senator, who voted to reject the 2020 election votes following the January 6 insurrection he was accused of inciting, was posted on Twitter by MSNBC's The Mehdi Hasan Show.
The video edits together recent comments made by Cruz on Fox News alongside remarks he made in the days before the January 6 attack, during which he told a group of Trump supporters they would "not go quietly into the night."
The video, viewed more than half a million times, also includes Cruz falsely claiming the 2020 election was rigged, as well as footage from inside the Capitol Building where rioters declare: "Cruz would want us to do this."
Ted Cruz just said that Democrats don’t believe in democracy… Huh?
— The Mehdi Hasan Show (@MehdiHasanShow) March 30, 2022
Once again, @mehdirhasan brings the receipts. Senator Cruz, meet Senator Cruz: pic.twitter.com/IAp12Ip26t
The clip was posted the day after the Republican lawmaker said Democrats "don't believe in democracy," and was meant to highlight the apparent double standards, given his attempts to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory while supporting Trump's false claims of election fraud.
"They know they're gonna lose, and Nancy Pelosi's not gonna go quietly. She's gonna scream. She's already preparing to scream the election was stolen," Cruz said on Fox News show The Ingraham Angle on Tuesday.
"And by the way, what she means by 'stolen' is people showed up to vote against Democrats. That's what stealing the election is. And remember, Democrats don't believe in democracy."
While sharing the video, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan said the clip shows "Ted Cruz versus... Ted Cruz."
"You *must* watch this short [The Mehdi Hasan Show] mash-up video on Ted Cruz's position on democracy *now* versus democracy on *1/6*. You have to," he said.
Both the clip and Cruz's comments to Fox News arrived after The Washington Post published a detailed report showing how Cruz attempted to keep Trump in power even after he lost the last election.
Former Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig, under whom Cruz worked at the Supreme Court, and whom he once described as "like a father," told The Post that the senator was a key figure in the events leading up to January 6.
"Once Ted Cruz promised to object, January 6 was all but foreordained, because Cruz was the most influential figure in the Congress willing to force a vote on Trump's claim that the election was stolen," Luttig said.
"He was also the most knowledgeable of the intricacies of both the Electoral Count Act and the Constitution, and the ways to exploit the two."
Newsweek contacted Cruz's office for comment.

About the writer
Ewan Palmer is a Newsweek News Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on US politics, and Florida ... Read more