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Ted Cruz Heckled Out of D.C. Restaurant by Anti-Kavanaugh Protesters

'We believe the survivors!' activists shout

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was shouted out of an Italian restaurant near the Capitol Monday. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was shouted out of an Italian restaurant near the Capitol Monday. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, were heckled out of a high-end Italian restaurant near the Capitol on Monday night by a group of protesters chanting, “We believe survivors!”

A video of the episode shows roughly a dozen protesters crowding Cruz’s table at Fiola on Pennsylvania Avenue as he and his wife appeared to be getting up to leave.

“God bless you,” Cruz can be heard saying in the video as he wiggles his way past the protesters. He then turns back and says, “Let my wife through.”

One woman shows Cruz her middle finger.

A young man behind the camera is heard shouting, “Beto is way hotter than you, dude.”

The protesters’ main beef with the Texas Republican appeared to be his support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who has been accused by two women of sexual assault — once when he was in high school and another time when he was an undergraduate at Yale.

Kavanaugh has denied the accusations.

Christine Blasey Ford — a California psychology professor who said she feared Kavanaugh might “inadvertently kill” her during a high school party in the early 1980s when, she has alleged, the Supreme Court nominee pinned her to a bed and groped her over a one-piece bathing suit — will testify this Thursday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged with shepherding Kavanaugh to the floor for a confirmation vote.

Kavanaugh will also testify on Thursday.

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Cruz said at a 2018 Senate debate on Friday with Democratic challenger Rep. Beto O’Rourke that Kavanaugh was “unquestionably qualified” for the Supreme Court but that Ford’s allegations “are serious, and they deserve to be treated with respect.”

Cruz’s office did not immediately respond for comment for this story.

Cruz joins a growing list of Republican elected and appointed officials who have been shouted out of restaurants in and around Washington since President Donald Trump took office.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. And Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen left a D.C. Mexican restaurant after activists gathered to protest her department’s handling of the child separation policy at the U.S.-Mexico border.

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