TAMPA, Florida — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview here this past weekend at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit (SAS) that “openly racist” commentary from Democrats like a blogger paid by Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX) and even from even first lady Jill Biden are exacerbating a shift among Hispanic voters already underway from the Democrats to the Republicans.

During the interview, Cruz referenced how Jill Biden called Hispanics “breakfast tacos” in a recent speech in San Antonio and how Gonzalez—the vulnerable Democrat congressman in a South Texas district primed to flip to the GOP for the first time in over a century—paid a blogger who called Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX) “Miss Frijoles,” among other racist attacks.

“Democrats are openly racist,” Cruz said. “Their attitude toward minorities is they want Hispanics, they want African Americans, they want all of us to just stay on the plantation, shut up, and obey them. We saw Jill Biden come down to San Antonio and compare Hispanics—say ‘you are as diverse as breakfast tacos,’ which I got to say, as the son of a Cuban immigrant, is pretty damn offensive. Like, lady, we’re not tacos. By the way, every bit as hysterical, she tried to reference bodegas up in New York and she called them ‘bogedas’ which was a classic, rich, out-of-touch liberal trying to pretend ‘you minority people: shut up and vote for the Democrats,’ like you’re supposed to. The amazing thing about the taco line is that wasn’t a gaffe. That wasn’t like Joe Biden on a foreign trip just saying something stupid into the camera, which he does all the time. That was written into the teleprompters. The White House staff signed off on it. This Biden White House thought it was good to call Hispanics a bunch of tacos, so of course Vicente Gonzalez pays someone to call Mayra Flores ‘Miss Frijoles’ because their view—by the way, we also had a Democratic congressman get on the House floor last week and lambast Clarence Thomas because he is black and he’s married to a white woman.”

Cruz continued by noting that the “racism” Democrats espouse is “grotesque,” but he argued they get away with it because, with rare exceptions—he pointed to Breitbart News and Fox News as two outlets willing to regularly call them out—most media outlets ignore it.

“It is grotesque, the racism of Democrats and that they casually throw out these kinds of insults,” Cruz said. “You know what they count on? They count on that the corporate media will never report it and will keep it quiet. You guys will cover it. Fox will cover it. But in the corporate media it doesn’t exist and they will keep it silent forever.”

Those comments about the racial insensitivity of radical leftists came in a broader interview about a shift ongoing in the Hispanic community away from Democrats towards Republicans. Flores, who won a special election in South Texas just a few weeks ago, flipped a congressional seat away from the Democrats that had not gone Republican since Ulysses Grant was President of the United States way back in 1871—just six years after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. This Flores win came after significant gains that former President Donald Trump made in the Hispanic community in the 2020 election and wins from Hispanic GOP candidates and gains among the Hispanic community more broadly for Republicans in November 2020 and again in November 2021 in the Virginia gubernatorial election.

“I think it’s happening. I think it’s going to intensify,” Cruz told Breitbart News of the trend. “The reasons are a couple things. Number one, the Hispanic community is seeing what a train wreck the socialist agenda is. They’re seeing that everyday life is harder under Joe Biden. They’re paying more at the grocery store for food. They’re paying a lot more for gasoline. They’re seeing crime skyrocketing across the country. They’re seeing illegal immigration completely out of control—open borders. And, I think they’re fed up. They’re ticked off, just like the rest of Americans. And I got to say particularly in South Texas. South Texas is overwhelmingly Hispanic and it’s been Democrat for over a hundred years. It has been a bastion of the Democrat Party.”

Not only does Flores have a shot at holding her seat in November—a much taller task than the special election because of redistricting shifting the district more Democrat—but Republicans also have two more Hispanic women candidates in two other South Texas Democrat-held seats in Cassy Garcia and Monica de la Cruz, who similarly have shots at flipping those seats. Cruz predicted a red wave in Hispanic South Texas during this interview with Breitbart News.

“My prediction is I think South Texas is going to turn red this November,” Cruz said. “We saw the first inklings of that with a special election just a few weeks back. It was in a district in Texas that is right along the gulf coast. It runs from south of Corpus Christi all the way down to Brownsville, which is the southern tip of Texas. It’s right on the Mexican border. It is the second most Hispanic district in the United States of America and when we had the special election they elected a Republican—and not just a Republican, a Hispanic woman. The last time that district had a Republican member of Congress was 1871. That’s a big, big deal. There are two other districts next to it, both of which are represented right now by Democrats. I think we have a great shot at flipping all three of those districts and electing three Republicans—all Hispanic women who are conservatives—and one of the big drivers particularly in South Texas is they see firsthand the misery and suffering caused by Biden’s open borders policies. They see their hospitals overflowing, they see their schools overflowing, they see prisons overflowing, they see children being violently and sexually assaulted by drug cartels, and they’re fed up. You can’t go and see what’s happening on the border and defend it, and I think in South Texas the Hispanic community knows that firsthand.”