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Reminder: Ted Cruz has always had a thing for erotic films
If you haven't heard yet, last night the official Twitter account of Senator Ted Cruz (a family-values Republican from my great state of TX) "liked" a hardcore porn video. The tweet was listed on the "likes" section of his Twitter account for over an hour before someone took it down. It was, obviously, too late. The unabashedly far-right Senator, who runs on a family values platform and is often referred to as the "most hated" person in Congress, was reamed on Twitter.
The porn site maxed out the branding opportunity:
Even right-wing writer Mike Cernovich couldn't resist:
I'm not here to knock the family-values Senator for his hypocrisy. The jokes are too easy, and they've already peaked anyway. Plus, watching porn is totally fine. In fact, this might be the most human and relatable thing Cruz has ever done.
But while on one hand it's unfair and hypocritical for us to make fun of Cruz (or his dead-intern-walking), on the other hand he's a fairly ugly hypocrite himself. The Senator pounds the Bible daily: A family values purist who, unlike you or me, has the power to turn, or tries to, these core "values" into policy that affects people who don't share these views. This is particularly sensitive to me, as a Texan: Famously, when Cruz was Texas attorney general he tried a court case involving a statewide ban on sex toys during which he argued there is "no substantive due process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes."
But the road of life has twists and turns, so I dug up this little YouTube nugget I remembered from a few years back: A video where an 18-year-old Cruz is asked, sitting in front of a gushing fountain at Houston Bible School, what his life aspirations were. His response, in part: "To be in a teen tit film."
Despite how much you might want to hate Cruz and believe he's being serious, let's be honest with ourselves and admit he's not. He clearly doesn't "aspire" to be in a soft-core B-movie. He aspired to Harvard and law and politics after that. That, however, doesn't mean his joke isn't sexist or that Cruz isn't a scummy person. He goes on to say (not kidding) that he aspires to "take over the world. World domination. Rich. Powerful. That sort of stuff."
It's unfair to make fun of Cruz for his sexual proclivities, but it's totally in-bounds to make fun of his hypocritical moralizing, especially this supercilious joke. Plus it's funny.
As for who to hold ultimately responsible for the tweet, Cruz unsurprisingly passed the buck. "There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account," he said, "and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button." Someone inadvertently watching hardcore Twitter porn on his official account.
At the very least, then, someone Cruz trusts with his official communications channels was watching hardcore Twitter porn. Perhaps it was Horatio. We might never know. That said, Cruz didn't speculate whether the purposes here were medical, or, if not, whether they were protected by due process. Can't take the fifth on this one, Ted.