Scott Wiener to Ted Cruz: “Everyone Hated You” in Law School
Gay California State Sen. Scott Wiener claps back at Cruz for conflating him with a disgraced former congressman.
Ted Cruz found himself on the receiving end of a vicious barb after attempting to mock one of his critics online.
California State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), a gay lawmaker who is considered a possible contender for former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s seat when she retires, slammed the Republican Senator on X for his interrogation of Adeel Mangi, who was nominated by President Joe Biden for a seat on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
If confirmed, Mangi would be the first Muslim appellate judge in the United States, but his nomination appears to be in jeopardy following a right-wing smear campaign portraying him as an anti-Semite.
Republican senators — eager to keep any Democratic-appointed judge off the 3rd Circuit — have demanded that Mangi offer his personal views on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, and the Israeli-Hamas conflict. The right-wing Judicial Crisis Network, a dark money group, has begun running ads accusing Mangi of being a “radical” and holding anti-Jewish views.
Wiener, who is Jewish, took offense at Republicans’ — and particularly Cruz’s — line of questioning, arguing on X that Mangi is the victim of Islamophobia, reported Raw Story.
“This nominee is highly qualified,” Wiener posted, referring to the standard that members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which Cruz sits, are supposed to apply when considering whether to confirm judicial nominees.
“Ted Cruz grilled him about October 7. That’s no different than grilling a Jewish nominee about Israel’s conduct of the war. Are they asking other nominees these questions? Of course not. Only the Muslim nominee.”
Cruz, well-known for his attempts to mock those on the political Left, wrote in response to Wiener, “Wait, I thought this guy was thrown out of Congress for sending naked pictures of himself?”
Cruz’s reference to nude pictures is a conflation of Wiener’s name with that of former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), who resigned from Congress in 2011 after becoming involved in a sexting scandal. The two men are not related, but have homophonous names.
Scott Wiener, who attended Harvard Law School, Cruz’s alma mater, replied, “Ted, remember when we went to law school together & everyone hated you?”
This isn’t the first time Wiener has reminded online social media users of his connection to Cruz.
During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Wiener was critical of Cruz’s aggressive questioning as he attempted to get Jackson to opine on culture-war issues that typically enrage right-wingers, such as critical race theory, same-sex marriage, and allegations of being “soft” on crime.
“Ketanji Brown Jackson was in my law school class,” Wiener wrote on X at the time. “Everyone thought she was a nice & brilliant person. Ted Cruz was a year ahead of us in law school. Everyone thought he was a major jackass, as he is demonstrating yet again today.”
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