A viral video captures the moment an activist confronted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at a restaurant just hours after his speech at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston.
The confrontation went down just days after Salvador Ramos, 18, killed 19 children and two teachers in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
“Why did you speak tonight?” Benjamin Hernandez asks Cruz. “Why did you come here to the convention to take blood money? Why, when 19 children died? 19 children died! That’s on your hands!”
The clip shows security pulling Hernandez away from Cruz and dragging him out of the frame. Cruz seemingly waves him off and sits back down at his table.
Hernandez is part of Indivisible Houston and ran for Congress in 2018. He ran to represent Texas’s 9th Congressional District, which covers parts of Houston.
Hernandez was able to engage with the senator by posing for a picture. After the photo is snapped, he immediately asks Cruz why he doesn’t support more stringent background checks when purchasing guns.
Cruz insists that background checks wouldn’t have stopped the shooter. Instead, he suggests the bill he introduced could have. But, Hernandez cuts Cruz off. Things escalated from there, and that’s when security intervened.
Following the exchange, Hernandez took to Twitter to further call out Cruz. “They can do something, but they just don’t want to,” he wrote. “So let’s let them have it.”
I wasn’t going to let that fucker walk into the restaurant where I was having dinner and not have him hear me. They can do something, but they just don’t want to. So let’s let them have it.
— Benjamin Hernandez (@TheBenjaminHdz) May 28, 2022
