Panicked Republican blames shutdown fallout on 'Ted Cruz and his acolytes'

In an interview with Gretchen Carlson on her afternoon show on Fox News, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) blamed the swirling negative political fallout from the Republican shutdown of the federal government on "Ted Cruz and his acolytes." King, like many on the right Tuesday, looked bug-eyed with alarm at the negative feedback that Republicans have been getting for shutting down the federal government to score political points.

King seemed eager to blame someone in his interview with Carlson, whose new afternoon show, "The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson," debuted Monday.

"Senator, what do you do to bring the Republican Party together?" Carlson asked. "Because you know, right now, all the polls are blaming Republicans for this shutdown and it looks as if it's just all about the infighting," instead of what Carlson believes the media should be talking about, "Obamacare not working!"

"Yeah, that's right, and that's Ted Cruz's fault," insisted King. "Ted Cruz led us down this path. This was a disaster from the start, I could have predicted this. This is what the leadership should have predicted three weeks ago when they said they'd never pursue defunding because it was going to work against us."

"It's his fault, and he wants us to get him out of it," King fumed. President Barack Obama should have negotiated, sure, he said, "but this is all because of Ted Cruz and his acolytes in the House of Representatives. They led us down this dead end street."

Watch the video, embedded below, via YouTube: