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Wow! Our town hall with Senator Ted Cruz was a huge success!
We had well over 500 people in attendance, plus 5 satellite groups watching in their counties, plus 200 people watching the livestream from home. This is a new record for us.
If you would like to watch the livestream of the event, you can do so at these two links:
VERY IMPORTANT! Click here to watch the announcements we shared, which have some big news relayed in them, including a family fun event in September, and a new "Certified True Texan" program we are launching. The certification program consists of 5 classes, starting with Constitution Boot Camp next month in all locations! The announcements were pretty long -- 20 minutes! -- because we also were celebrating our 12 year anniversary! Woohoo! Happy birthday to us! Feel free while watching the video to just skip to whatever parts you want to see.
This is the townhall with Ted Cruz.Make sure you watch to the very end. We had to hold Cruz accountable on a pretty touchy subject. After he endorsed Abbott from our stage based on their friendship and a gift Abbott gave his daughter, I had a story to tell...
There's no denying it was just a great, fun night with wonderful patriots. Yes, there were some establishment hacks in the audience, and the typical leftist troublemakers, but most of the 100s of folks in the room were salt of the earth, God fearing, hard working, Americans. Love it! It's always a good night when we get to hang together.
A big thank you to all those who submitted FANTASTIC questions. There were so many! As we were reading through them we kept saying, "Oh, that's a good one. We have to ask that one." But as our pile of "must-haves" grew bigger and bigger, we knew it would be impossible to get to them all. Even so, you guys really impressed me, and that's not always easy to do!
Thank you also to the volunteers, and to Fran for her awesome moderating. Great job, everyone!
Don't forget -- we all meet again for our regular monthly meetings in September, including our new location in Erath County! Plus in September/October we've got Constitution Boot Camps every weekend. And our big, fun, family event is in September too. Yikes! We must be crazy to keep the schedules we keep but we do it all in an attempt to build community and grow the army. We want to know you! Join us!
Julie McCarty True Texas Project CEO (volunteer)
PS. Here's something I shared on Facebook today...
I'm pleasantly surprised! The Texas Tribune did a great job exposing the tone of the Ted Cruz "endorsement" of Abbott, which isn't much of an endorsement at all. It came across as a guilty apology with an underlying message of, "I kinda HAVE to do this, but YOU don't."
The fact that Ted announced this at our event definitely helped to downplay it. There was no big photo op and grand announcement with the two of them fawning over each other. No video of them together. Not even a handshake. Abbott wasn't even there and seems to have had no say in how or when it was done. This could have been a huge event given both of their positions...and any other time it would have strategically been just that. Instead it was done in a place he knew would draw boos, and the story becomes controversial instead of impactful. I don't like that Ted felt obligated to do it, but I think he did it the best way possible. Abbott's only response was a tweet that was trashed in the comments by both sides of the aisle.
