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The day before Thanksgiving, there was a car crash on the Rainbow Bridge, which links the United States and Canada near Niagara Falls, and Sen. Ted Cruz wasted little time turning to social media to tell the public what he knew of the incident. The Texas Republican’s online missive read:
This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack. Both attackers are dead, and one law enforcement officer was injured. I am praying that officer makes a full recovery and is able to spend Thanksgiving surrounded by family and loved ones....
Soon after, officials concluded that it was not, in fact, a terrorist attack. The FBI investigated and ultimately referred the matter to local police as a traffic incident.
It took a couple of days, but Cruz eventually deleted his online message, but not before some critics — including Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California — called the senator out for having peddled a claim that wasn’t true.
To be sure, the Texan wasn’t the only Republican politician to get this wrong, seizing on concerns before getting the facts, but what made this especially notable is that Cruz keeps doing this.
In September, for example, the GOP senator, peddled misinformation about non-existent Biden administration health guidelines limiting consumers to two beers per week. A month earlier, Cruz also pushed misinformation related to barriers along the U.S./Mexico border. Around the same time, he also used social media to disseminate misinformation about flooding in California.
Of course, for those who spend a lot of time online, it’s occasionally easy to fall for bogus information, especially when the fake items reinforce preconceived ideas. The problem for Cruz, however, is that this happens far more often than it should, especially in light of his powerful position.
Revisiting our earlier coverage, it was a couple of years ago when conservatives embraced purported footage of the Taliban hanging a man from an American Blackhawk helicopter. It wasn’t true, but Cruz promoted it anyway. The Republican lawmaker — a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — later backed off, saying the content he promoted “may be inaccurate.”
This came on the heels of the senator sharing a satirical item about a fake Disney job advertisement for “strong” and “docile” women. “I wish this was parody,” he wrote at the time, failing to recognize that it was a parody.
Soon after, Cruz told his Twitter followers that the White House’s “illegal vaccine mandate” had led to shortages of pilots and air traffic controllers. This wasn’t true, either.
Two months after that, the Texas Republican published a tweet complaining about Covid protections created by the “WA Government” — which he assumed meant officials in the state of Washington. It didn’t. The policies he blamed on “power drunk” Democrats in the United States were actually created by officials in Western Australia.
Three months after that, a Fox News figure pushed a claim about a protestor dying after being trampled by a Canadian policeman on horseback. The story wasn’t true, but if you’re thinking Cruz promoted it anyway, you’re right.
My personal favorite came last fall. The Associated Press reported that the right was circulating a purported cover story in The Atlantic about Muslim parents in Michigan and “the evolution of white supremacy.”
The story was entirely made-up — The Atlantic ran no such article — but Cruz nevertheless highlighted the nonexistent report, as if it were real. “The Left is beyond parody,” the Texas Republican wrote at the time.
The irony was amazing. As CNN’s Daniel Dale explained, the senator cited a parody as evidence that the left was beyond parody.
Many people have friends who always seem to be pushing false stories via social media. The friends tend to be embarrassed after getting caught promoting discredited nonsense, but they invariably do it again anyway, unable to shake the publish-first, think-second attitude.
Among Senate Republicans, Ted Cruz continues to be that friend.
After this happened to Cruz once or twice, common sense suggests he’d start exercising greater caution, but he apparently doesn’t much care. Some politicians go to great lengths to earn a reputation for honesty and reliability. And then there’s the junior senator from the state of Texas.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.