Ted Cruz Calls Democrats ‘Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys’ Over Israel-Hamas

Senator Ted Cruz described members of the Democratic Party as “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” during a podcast where he discussed President Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict.

On the April 8 episode of his regular podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican told co-host Ben Ferguson that President Biden had “turned hard against Israel,” that the White House was “undermining and abandoning” the Middle East state in its conflict with Hamas, and that Democrats in Congress were allowing that to happen.

The Biden administration has increasingly called for Israel to do more to avoid civilian casualties in its war with Hamas, and the killing of seven aid workers in an airstrike in Gaza on April 1 was described as “unacceptable” in a White House readout of a call between Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

New York Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers said in March that Netanyahu was an obstacle to peace and called for a new election in Israel.

Cruz criticized Biden’s calls for a two-state solution after the war is over, as well as comments made by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on April 3, when she said there were “alternative ways to deal with Hamas in Gaza.”

“A different way,” Cruz said on the podcast, after playing a clip Jean-Pierre’s press briefing, “is literally, we will show every terrorist in the world you want what you want, commit horrific acts of mass murder and get the idiots and the press and the pacifistic, appeasing, cheese-eating surrender monkeys of the Democrat [sic] Party to give you what you want.”

Cruz’s office did not respond to a request for comment sent by email from Newsweek.

The phrase “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” was coined in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons, in which Scottish Groundskeeper Willie is teaching French to a class of elementary schoolchildren and says in a thick Scottish accent: “Bonjourrrrrrr, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!”

It is a pejorative term aimed at French people, poking fun at the stereotype that they enjoy eating cheese and surrender quickly during times of war.

According to data collated by the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, France is the third largest producer of cheese worldwide, but a report by the International Dairy Federation said the nation was the largest consumer of cheese. It is not clear where Democratic Party members sit in the cheese-eating league.

France surrendered to Germany in June 1940 as German forces swept across Europe during World War II. Countries that surrendered before France include Demark, Belgium and Norway.

This is not the first time Cruz has used the phrase when criticizing Democrats. He said it during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2022, to some laughter. After the event, one critic responded, “What? Conservatives don’t like cheese?!”

At CPAC in 2018, he said that “the Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson and Republicans are happily the party of Homer, Bart, Maggie and Marge,” during a discussion about the gun control debate in America. The Simpsons showrunner Al Jean responded on X (then known as Twitter), saying: “Ted Cruz says Maggie Simpson would vote for him. I think Ted’s the one who could use a pacifier in his mouth.”

The former Republican presidential candidate also performed impressions of characters from the show during an appearance on Good Morning America and has often talked publicly about his fondness for the long-running cartoon.

In 2021, when he left Texas for Cancun during a winter storm that caused mass power outages, Cruz was compared to Mayor Joe Quimby, the corrupt and hapless leader of Springfield where The Simpsons is set, who in one 1993 episode escapes the town for the Bahamas, amid a viral epidemic.

Following his trip, Cruz said it was “obviously a mistake.”