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Protesters interrupt Ted Cruz's interview on 'The View'

Protesters interrupted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during an interview on <em>The View</em> on Monday.
The View/Screenshot by NPR
Protesters interrupted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during an interview on The View on Monday.

Audience members interrupted Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during an interview on Monday's episode of The View, demanding he address climate change.

The protesters repeatedly yelled, "Vote for climate now!" while Cruz spoke about inflation in the United States. As the shouting continued, show co-host Whoopi Goldberg urged the protesters to quiet down, saying during the live broadcast, "Let us do our jobs. We hear what you have to say, but you've got to go."

Cruz called the protesters "climate radicals" on Fox News but said it was important for him to reach Americans who do not typically consume media across party lines.

"I think it's important that conservatives reach much more broadly than just preaching the choir," Cruz told Fox News. "We need to reach a lot of the viewers of The View [who] have only seen one partisan story the whole time."

When asked if President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, Cruz avoided answering the question. Cruz was one of more than a dozen GOP senators to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election, calling for investigations into potential voter fraud. He instead refocused his answer to accuse journalists on TV of trying to get Republicans to admit the election was fair.

"There are a lot of folks in the media that try to — any time a Republican is in front of a TV camera — try to say, the election was fair and square and legitimate. You know who you don't do that to? You don't do it to Hillary Clinton, who stood up and said, 'Trump stole the election,'" Cruz told The View hosts.

The interview came a day after some Yankees fans booed and flicked their middle fingers at Cruz during a Yankees game against the Houston Astros.

"Get out of New York!" one fan yelled. Another yelled, "Go back to Cancún!"

Cruz came under fire for vacationing in Cancún, Mexico, at the height of the pandemic in February 2021 and in the middle of a deadly winter storm that left many without water and electricity in Texas.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ashley Ahn
Ashley Ahn is an intern for the Digital News and Graphics desks. She previously covered the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines for CNN's health and medical unit and the trial of Ahmaud Arbery's killers for CNN's Atlanta News Bureau. She also wrote pieces for USA TODAY and served as the Executive Editor of her college's student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian. Recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Ahn is pursuing a master's degree in computer science at Columbia University.