"The agony that Texas is feeling right now…there aren't words to describe," Cruz told CBS News Texas on Monday.

Amid catastrophic flash floods in central Texas over the 2025 Fourth of July holiday weekend, a rumor spread online that one of the state's U.S. senators, Ted Cruz, continued to sightsee while on vacation in Greece the day after disaster struck his constituents.

The Republican senator, who was on a planned family vacation, did not return to his state until 72 hours after the deadly disaster, which his spokeswoman said was as quickly as possible.