Usually, it takes at least one full day in Cancún to do something embarrassing you’ll never live down.

But for Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), it took just 10 hours — from when his United plane touched down at Cancún International Airport at 7:52 p.m. Wednesday to when he booked a return flight back to Houston around 6 a.m. Thursday — for the state’s junior senator to apparently realize he had made a horrible mistake.

Cruz landed back home in Texas almost exactly 24 hours after he departed, saying he was ready to take on the devastating winter storms that have left millions of Texans without power or safe drinking water and at least 30 dead in the state.

But his brief tropical sojourn yielded at least two unflattering nicknames on social media — Cancun Cruz and Flyin’ Ted — and prompted a Twitter-fueled news cycle that seemed to unite a broken nation.

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