Ted Cruz’s cringe-inducing beer stunt, explained

Ted Cruz can’t seem to help himself. The Republican senator from Texas rarely passes up an opportunity to grandstand, to troll the left or deliver right-wing talking points. His Wednesday interview with Newsmax, though, was particularly cringe-inducing, even by Cruz’s standards.

In some kind of oddly coordinated stunt, Cruz stood for an interview in front of a group of Texas ranchers and ranted about how the Biden administration has “Come out and said, ‘Drink two beers a week.’ That’s their guideline!” As he said this, he reached off camera to grab a bottle of beer, unscrewed the top and tossed the cap to the ground with finely calibrated faux rage.

He continued: “Well I gotta tell you, if they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my a**.” He then took a sip, and then the group of ranchers assembled behind him followed with swigs of their own beers. Then, in a moment of cosmic hokeyness, the host of the Newsmax show pulled out a bottle of (nonalcoholic) beer in the studio, and took a sip as well. Cruz proudly shared a clip of the interview on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter:

You may be wondering what on earth is Cruz talking about. Well, the Biden administration would be too, because it’s a made-up crisis.

This talking point originated from a Daily Mail interview with George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Koob, a scientist, is not a Biden administration appointee. His job is to oversee an agency under the National Institutes of Health that researches and shares information about the effects of alcohol on health. Among other things, it publishes recommendations for the number of drinks people should consume to reduce the likelihood of alcohol-related health problems. Currently, the NIAAA’s guidelines recommend that men have no more than two drinks in a single day, and that women have no more than one drink a day.

When the Daily Mail asked Koob what “direction” the recommendations might take when they’re up for renewal in 2025, Koob replied, “I mean, they’re not going to go up, I’m pretty sure.”

If alcohol consumption guidelines “go in any direction, it would be toward Canada,” Koop told the Mail, and noted that he would be watching Canada’s “big experiment” with interest. Earlier this year, the Canadian Center on Substance Use and Addiction recommended two drinks per week to reduce alcohol-related health risks.

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I’m not qualified to weigh in on the scientific or public health merits of Canada’s recommendations, which caused a bit of a stir when they were published earlier this year. Regardless, we must repeat that Koob said the guidelines might change toward Canada, in part based on data from its “experiment.”

That didn’t stop Cruz and others on the right from using Koob’s comments to make an utterly absurd leap. (When Fox News’ Peter Doocy asked White House Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about Biden supposedly limiting Americans to two beers a week, she replied, “Where is this coming from?”)

Again, no guidelines have changed yet, and there is no guarantee they will match Canada’s more restrictive shift. More important, these are health guidelines. They’re not laws, and they’re not enforced in any way. In fact, they barely carry any weight of stigma. As any casual observer of any college bar or binge-drinking related statistics can easily attest, a lot of Americans don’t pay attention to them. I’d venture that most wouldn’t be able to accurately identify the two-per-day (and 14-per-week) drink limit for men that’s been around since the 1990s.

The responsibility of this agency is to inform the public about alcohol-related health risks, not determine how much risk people choose to embrace in their lives. One of the joys of a free and informed society is that people get to weigh their decisions about how to balance health and enjoyment with the most robust information about the potential costs of their lifestyle.

It would’ve been interesting if Cruz had wanted to contest the possible downsides of Canada’s suggestions and advise against their adoption in the U.S., drawing on the expertise of public health experts. It’s possible, for example, that recommendations veering so far from a country’s cultural norms might have the unintended effect of making people not take them seriously at all, even if the recommendations are scientifically sound. But that’s not what he was doing. Instead, Cruz pounced on an opportunity to fear-monger and propagandize about liberal totalitarianism. And he looked like a fool while doing it.