Alyssa Milano and Ted Cruz Meet, Leave with Different Perspective

Liberal actress Alyssa Milano recently wrote an impressive op-ed in CNNin which she described why she met with Texas Senator Ted Cruz and how the meeting affected her.

“I was raised Catholic. I’ve read the Bible, cover-to-cover. A few times. I pray daily. I am a believer. And I sure as Sunday don’t remember any passage where God says we have a right to an AR-15,” she wrote. “I tweeted about it, asking a largely rhetorical question about where in the Bible these alleged gun rights exist.”

To her surprise, Cruz responded, and not in a snarky way.  He explained that these were serious issues that demanded a serious conversation.  So that’s what they had.

Here’s what she said about the meeting:

What resulted in our back and forth on Twitter was a meeting in his Washington office, where we discussed gun laws, the role of government, and the state of the relationship between the Congress and the American people. I brought Fred Guttenberg, whose precious 14-year-old daughter Jamie was murdered in Parkland, with me so that a person who was personally devastated by gun violence could speak to the emotional truths of that experience. And I also brought my friend, Ben Jackson, a veteran and brilliant man, with whom I co-founded NoRA, who could speak to the weapons we were going to discuss.

She went on to describe how nervous she was to meet with him.  Not because he was a Senator, but because she hoped to convert him to her side.  She felt the gravity of the situation weighing on her.

Mostly, I met with the senator because we can’t fix the problems that face this nation unless we talk with people who disagree with us. The truth is that no matter what happens in the 2020 election, there will always be two parties in the Senate which will be close to evenly divided. If we keep living solely in our echo chambers, we will only hear what we ourselves say. And our nation will continue to suffer. 

I know we didn’t change his mind on how we fix gun violence in America. And he didn’t change ours. But maybe we understand one another a little better. Here’s what I came away with that I wasn’t so sure of before the meeting: Ted Cruz is a human being. He is a real person. He isn’t a villain in a movie. He cares when these shootings happen. When people on my side of this fight say he doesn’t, they’re wrong.

Perhaps it is very 2019 for me to point out how great it is that they talked and left seeing each other more charitably, but this is where we are.

Good for and Milano and Cruz for actually sitting down and talking. We need much more of this. Positions may not change, but we will see each other as humans, which is all too uncommon today.

Hat Tip: CNN

Image Credit: Flickr by Victoria Pickering