Jimmy Kimmel Unleashes Scathing Rant on 'Hypocrite' Ted Cruz over Cancun Trip

The media frenzy surrounding Ted Cruz this week is prime late-night fodder as the Texan Senator fled his home state for a vacation in Mexico while millions of his constituents are without power in freezing temperatures.

Jimmy Kimmel did not hold back on the Thursday night installment of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and unleashed a scathing monologue on the Republican.

"On behalf of all of us we want to send our best wishes from L.A. to those of you who have been hammered by the cold weather," Kimmel began.

"Hundreds of thousands of Texans are still without power. And on a day when the most newsworthy landing should have been the NASA Rover successfully touching down on Mars, instead, it was a senator from Texas touching down on Cancun."

"While his fellow Texans are freezing with the power out Ted Cruz did what any great leader would do when his state needs leadership most," the late night host continued. "He booked a flight to Mexico and said, 'Adios, amigos!'"

Kimmel gave a rundown of just how drastic the situation is in Texas, showing everything from uncleared roads, to frozen toilets and fish tanks, icicles hanging from ceiling fans and how some residents are resorting to erecting tents in their homes and even burning their furniture and children's toys just to try to stay warm.

"And where was Mr. Texas while his constituents are suffering?" Kimmel offered. "Well, there he is, snake on a plane right there! Headed, ironically, to the very place he tried to build a wall around."—a notion that has inspired a wave of border wall jokes on Twitter.

Kimmel joked that he was unsure at first if the man photographed in the airport and onboard the plane was actually Cruz or "just a man with a terrible medical condition called 'looking Like Ted Cruz.'"

"But, I didn't want to post until I knew for sure it was him," he said. So my wife spent two full hours studying images last night, matching up photos of his shoes, his mask, his wedding ring. It was like I was in bed with Sherlock Holmes."

When the photos were officially confirmed to be Cruz on the flight, Kimmel then unleashed on the senator.

"So, he loads his family onto a plane to get the hell out of town and, unfortunately, he's been on TV kissing Trump's ass so much and for so long, that everyone recognizes him even with a mask on," Kimmel mocked. "They post all these pictures of him and there's so much backlash, he has no choice but to immediately book a flight home."

"The hypocrisy is off the charts!" Kimmel raged. "This is the guy who two months ago lashed out at the mayor of Austin for going to Mexico."

Kimmel also apprehended Cruz out for mocking California Governor Gavin Newsom for being "unable to perform even the basic functions of civilization, like having reliable electricity" when the state had power outages during last summer.

"But why settle for just being the planet's biggest hypocrite when you can be a world-class liar too?"

Kimmel then had a field day ripping apart Cruz's statement explaining his reasons for traveling and said that his wife had even predicted that he would blame his daughters.

In the statement Cruz put released on Thursday, the politician explained: "With school canceled for the week, our girls asked to take a trip with friends. Wanting to be a good dad, I flew down with them last night and am flying back this afternoon."

Kimmel continued: "Now, he was careful not to say he was planning to fly back this afternoon because he wasn't.

"He just said he did, and in fact, NBC News has a source that says he was originally booked to fly back Saturday. He booked his return ticket at 6 a.m. this morning after he got busted. But I guess we were supposed to believe he was chaperoning his wife and kids to Mexico and was planning to come back the next day all along—with a carry-on bag stuffed like a piñata."

Kimmel ended his spiel to joke that "as soon as people started posting pictures of him on the plane he looked up and knew he shouldn't be on the plane.

"How did he think he was going to get away with this? You know your judgment is terrible when this haircut is only the third-worst decision you made this month."

The comedian concluded with one last cutting remark: "Well, at least his vacation was ruined."

He urged his audience to text "ABC 13" to 41444 to donate money for Texas relief.