Cruz muses on color of purple finch

In the Rewrite, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell presents some of the strangest moments in Ted Cruz's 21-hour fake filibuster.

Sen. Ted Cruz spoke on the Senate floor for 21 hours Tuesday and Wednesday about why he thinks Congress should defund Obamacare. Eight Republican senators helped Cruz bear the load of his faux filibuster by asking verbose questions.

“At least one of those senators, Rand Paul, reportedly tried to talk Cruz out of doing this meaningless stunt,” said MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell in the Rewrite Wednesday. “So Cruz was able to attract something resembling support from only 8% of the United States.”

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Twenty-one hours is a long time. When Cruz began to read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham, the fake filibuster’s relationship to health care became tenuous. When the hour got particularly late (or early), Sen. Mike Lee of Utah asked Cruz a number of questions that had nothing at all to do with the Affordable Care Act.

Lee wanted to know such things as the length of the 100 Years’ War, the origin of Chinese gooseberries, and the color of a purple finch.

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“I would tend to think it would be purple,” said Cruz, “but I would think wrong if that were the case because a purple finch is crimson red.”

“Is it any wonder,” O’Donnell noted, “that more Republicans didn’t want a piece of that action?”

Check out the Rewrite above to see some of the strangest moments from Ted Cruz’s 21-hour talk-a-thon.