Sen. Ted Cruz came to Tyler on Tuesday to tour the Genesis World Group Headquarters and discuss FIRST iZ, a drone to help emergency first responders, amongst other things with community and business leaders.
Cruz had the opportunity during the live demo to launch the drone for a “mission.” Spectators at the demonstration for the FIRST iZ watched as it took off and monitored the scene below as it would in an actual emergency situation.
“I had the great opportunity to tour the facilities here at Genesis, who is doing cutting-edge software, deploying drones like the one we had behind us to aid first responders and create jobs here in East Texas,” Cruz said.
According to Genesis, the FIRST iZ drone makes it easier for emergency response teams to see what has happened, be it a shooting, a fire, an accident or something else.
Genesis added this could have the ability to shave off one minute of each 911 response. The quicker response time could result in more than 10,000 lives saved per year, according to Genesis.
Cruz also took the time to voice his concerns about current events in America.
He said he always enjoys being in the community of Tyler and East Texas where he finds “great common-sense conservative values.”
“I think we need to be doing much more to bring jobs back to America and bring jobs back to Texas, back to East Texas, so that we don’t have a dependency on the Chinese communist government who is not our friends, and who has demonstrated a willingness to use that control over the supply chain as a tool of economic warfare against America,” he said.
Cruz added he believes East Texans are concerned about seeing a Socialist surge to the left in Washington D.C. He also expressed concern with new taxes being proposed, an open border in the South and more.
He mentioned that one of the most notable crises right now is the foreign policy crisis being seen in Afghanistan. He said no one can deny the pullout from Afghanistan was a disaster.
“They are not in a university faculty lounge looking to be embraced in the community of nations,” he said. “They are terrorists who want to kill us.”
There are currently thousands of Americans stranded in Afghanistan and, according to Cruz, it appears President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have no plan to get them out. Cruz said Afghans who risked their lives to help the American military were also stranded, now risking being murdered.
“The first priority right now needs to be rescuing Americans and we need to see a serious expeditious plan to keep Americans safe, to avoid Americans being murdered by the Taliban and to get them out,” Cruz said. “The second priority needs to be to get out those Afghans who assisted the military who risked their lives to do so.”
