Ted Cruz’s Ted Cruz convention speech outbursts in Dallas included repeated shouts that Democrats should be shot while he was speaking Thursday night at the American Airlines center. Cruz did not pause or respond as the remarks followed the names he used on stage.
Video footage showed at least one audience member shouting, “He should be shot!” after Cruz mentioned Zohran Mamdani, Abdul El-Sayed and James Talarico. The shouts came during the Republican convention on the first anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Dallas speech outbursts
Cruz accused Mamdani of wanting to seize the means of production, said El-Sayed felt an “obligation” to follow Sharia law, and claimed Talarico wanted to dismantle capitalism. The same shouted line followed each name. Cruz did not denounce the outbursts from the stage, and the record does not answer whether he heard them.
The timing added to the weight of the scene. JD Vance spoke of his friendship with Charlie Kirk during a headlining address, and the convention unfolded on the anniversary of Kirk’s assassination.
Abdul El-Sayed on
El-Sayed addressed the incident on ’s The Source With Kaitlan Collins, saying, “Look, I’m a dad with two daughters, and I hope those daughters get to grow up and live with their dad. This is what has become the norm in our politics … literally calls to violence and the inability for anybody to actually call it out.” He added, “We can learn to disagree agreeably, and when you hear that kind of call to violence, it should be shuddering to all of us.”
A spokesperson for Mike Rogers said Rogers condemned the remarks and “all political violence.” On Wednesday, a poll showed El-Sayed leading Rogers 47% to 44%, placing the threat-laced exchange beside a close race in Michigan.
Mike Rogers and Texas
The incident now leaves Cruz with a simple but unresolved public question: whether he will address the shouted threats after the speech. For El-Sayed, Mamdani and Talarico, the sequence is already clear — their names were followed on stage by a call for violence, and nobody onstage stopped it.
