Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) offered to make a bet with Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Tuesday on the Dallas Cowboys-San Francisco 49ers game. Both politicians are prolific tweeters and that is where the exchange took place. The Cowboys and 49ers play in the NFC divisional round Sunday.
I will make this open bet to @tedcruz — if the @dallascowboys beat the @49ers I won’t tweet for the rest of January. If the @49ers win you can’t tweet for rest of January. How Texan are you, Ted? Deal?
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) January 17, 2023
“If the @dallascowboys beat the @49ers I won’t tweet for the rest of January. If the @49ers win you can’t tweet for rest of January. How Texan are you, Ted? Deal?” he wrote.
I’m not sure what how “Texan” is supposed to mean but Cruz countered with his own offer.
Cruz responded, “How about we bet a Chinese dinner instead?”
Zing!
That, of course, is a reference to Swalwell’s relationship with a woman who turned out to be a Communist Chinese spy. It was a big enough controversy a few years ago that she left the country in 2015.
The “Chinese dinner” zinger was a reference to a controversy Swalwell got wrapped up in a few years ago with a Chinese national named Fang Fang or Christine Fang. Intelligence officials told Axios at the time that Fang used campaign fundraising, networking, rallies and romantic relationships with at least two Midwestern mayors to gain proximity to political power.
Fang reportedly took part in fundraising for Swalwell’s 2014 re-election campaign, although she did not make donations nor was there evidence of illegal contributions.
According to Axios, investigators became so alarmed by Fang’s behavior and activities they alerted Swalwell in 2015 to their concerns and gave him a “defensive briefing.” Swalwell then cut off all ties with Fang and has not been accused of any wrongdoing, according to an official who spoke to the outlet.
She may have not made donations to Swalwell and there may have not been illegal contributions but the whole affair brings into focus Swalwell’s lack of judgement. Did he not bother to vet his fundraisers? Pelosi allowed Swalwell to remain on the House Intelligence Committee despite the scandal. Kevin McCarthy, however, has not done the same.
“What I am doing with the Intel Committee [is] bringing it back to the jurisdiction it’s supposed to do. Forward-looking to keep this country safe, keep the politics out of it,” the California Republican told the media Thursday, according to a report from the Hill. “So yes, I’m doing exactly what we’re supposed to do.”
“If you got the briefing I got from the FBI, you wouldn’t have Swalwell on any committee,” the speaker said.
Yikes!
One outlet had an interesting take on the wager that Cruz apparently turned down. It says that everyone loses. If the bet had gone through, after the game is played on Sunday, one of them wouldn’t be tweeting for the rest of the month of January and we’d all win in that situation. This way, no one wins.
Swalwell once suggested the U.S. military would simply nuke the American populous if gun owners refused to hand over certain firearms; he has a penchant for doing the “my two-year-old child just said the most profound thing” convention that abounds on Twitter; and he urged those who were enraged by the Kyle Rittenhouse acquittal to assuage their anger by — you guessed it — voting. He also frequently gets into spats with other users, including one with Susan Sarandon, and is fond of posting pictures of the vile and obscenity-laden threats that he claims to receive as a result of his work.
As for Cruz, who was the most prolific Twitter user in the U.S. Senate last year, the man is so bad at posting that Jezebel compiled a list of the worst tweets he authored in 2022 alone. Some highlights from that list include blasting Sesame Street for urging young children to get vaccinated; making fun of President Joe Biden for going on vacation (not long after his own vacation scandal); and some painfully unfunny memes. The only bad thing about a Cruz Twitter hiatus would be that we might’ve missed another moment like the one in 2017 in which Cruz’s account liked a porn tweet on Sept. 11, of all days (he claims a staffer did it).
Heh. That’s a little bi-partisan snark.
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