Sen. Ted Cruz is calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the online crowdfunding platform GoFundMe after it ended a fundraiser that brought in $10 million for the Canadian trucker convoy protesting vaccine mandates and started refunding the proceeds.
"Today I sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking that the FTC open an investigation into GoFundMe into whether they've committed deceptive trade practices," the Texas Republican said on Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures."
"When people gave money, they gave it under the promise it would go ot the Freedom Convoy, not to whatever left-wing political ideology GoFundMe and other Silicon Valley companies support. They are deceiving consumers and it is wrong."
The platform said Friday that it was ending the fundraiser for the truckers' efforts on the ground that there was "evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation."
Initially, GoFundMe said the remaining $10 million raised would be given to organizations that were approved by Freedom Convoy organizers, rather than returning the donations.
However, it changed its action and on Saturday said it would refund the donations to the donors after an outcry from opponents, mainly Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said his state's attorney general will investigate the platform.
Benjamin Dichter, a spokesman for Freedom Convoy 2022, told Newsmax Saturday that the convoy's organizers have moved the fundraising efforts to another platform, GiveSendGo, and in less than 24 hours it had raised $1.5 million.
Cruz referred to the Canadian cross-border truckers as heroes and patriots who are "marching for your freedom and for my freedom."
"They're defending Canada, but they're defending America as well," he said. "That is courage on display that the government doesn't have the right to force you to comply to their arbitrary mandates, and they're standing up for freedom. Of course, big government hates it and is trying to crush them."
Cruz also spoke out against President Joe Biden's plans to nominate a Black woman as a justice to the Supreme Court, calling his decision to rule out other candidates "wrong" because the promise will "discriminate against race."
"If you or I try to do what Joe Biden has done, if your show put up an ad in the paper that your morning show is looking for a producer and only women are eligible to apply or you put up an ad that said only white men are eligible to apply or that said only native American women are eligible to apply, any of those ads would be illegal," said Cruz.
"Those laws still technically applied to the president in this appointment, but he's certainly violating the spirit of nondiscrimination. If he wanted to search for qualified applicants and find who he thought was the most qualified nominee and she happened to be an African-American woman, that's wonderful, but he's not doing that. He wants to discriminate based on race."
What Biden wants, he continued, "is a left-wing ideologue" but at the same time, "the modern Democratic Party supports quotas and they support racial determination."
Cruz, though, wouldn't say if he'll be an automatic no vote agains Biden's nominee, but if the president follows the pattern of his other judicial nominees, he'll oppose the choice.
"Biden consistently has chosen hard-left activists, political activists," said Cruz. "One of the nominees recently described himself as a wild-eyed left-wing activist, those were his own terms. The nominee described the hatred he has for conservatives. That again was his own terms. The nominees Joe Biden has put forth for the bench are more radical than any judicial nominees in our nation's history."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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