Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Friday boosted a viral post targeting a respected tech writer, claiming that an article attributed to her was further proof that “the Left is beyond parody.” Naturally, the “article” was a complete hoax.
While he eventually—and quietly—deleted the tweet, Cruz has yet to publicly apologize for his attempt to own the libs via MAGA memes.
Earlier this week, a self-described shit-posting Twitter account fabricated a screenshot of a supposed cover story for The Atlantic written by Abby Ohlheiser, now a senior editor at MIT Technology Review.
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According to the meme, Ohlheiser’s article was titled “The Evolution of White Supremacy” and centered on Muslim parents in Dearborn, Michigan becoming “the new face of the far right” because they “oppose teaching pornography to children.” (The meme is an apparent reference to Dearborn parents—many of them Muslim—currently demanding the school ban certain books from the school library, including some with LGBTQ themes.)
It didn’t take long for conservatives to latch onto the fake image, widely sharing it on social media as it checked off several boxes regarding their confirmation bias of the liberal media. Even after Twitter took down the original meme for violating their rules on manipulated media, the post continued to make the rounds on right-wing Twitter.
Ohlheiser hasn’t even written for The Atlantic since 2014 and revealed on Thursday that they had been inundated with private messages accusing Ohlheiser of being a “groomer” because “some maga shitposter photoshopped” their byline on a fake article. (The fact that Ohlheiser uses they/them pronouns almost certainly contributed to both the meme's creation and the ensuing anti-LGBTQ vitriol aimed at them.)
Two days after the meme went viral, Cruz—who has seemed more focused on workshopping a right-wing media career than actually legislating—shared the image with his 5.2 million followers. In an effort to stick the landing, and without a hint of irony, he added: “The Left is beyond parody.”
The Texas senator, however, quietly took down the parody meme meant to mock the left about being “beyond parody” after users began noting that the article wasn’t real. One of those users was Ohlheiser.
“[A]re you fucking serious ted cruz,” they tweeted on Friday morning.
The former Atlantic and Washington Post reporter also wrote that “the past 24ish hours have been a Bad Time Online for me,” reacting to media critic Parker Molloy’s post that Ohlheiser has been targeted with a “bombardment of harassment” thanks to the fake post being shared by a U.S. senator.
Shortly after this article’s publication, an indignant Cruz tweeted about his disinformational dispatch: “Didn’t know it was fake. You guys are so insane, it could easily have been real. But it wasn’t. And so I deleted the tweet as soon as I found out.” His communications adviser also took to Twitter to claim the real issue at play here was the need to censor reading material. “Your outrage is misplaced,” Guest tweeted at this reporter following the publication of this article. “Why aren’t you concerned about the presence of sexually explicit books in public schools?”
And as Washington Post reporter Aaron Blake noted on Friday morning, this is far from the first time Cruz has peddled misinformation on Twitter, only to back-pedal and take it down. The senator has similarly deleted tweets that falsely claimed the National Guard was activated to “interdict” migrants on Martha’s Vineyard; falsely claimed a graphic video showed the Taliban hanging a man from a Blackhawk helicopter after the U.S. military withdrawal; and falsely asserted that an Ottawa “Freedom Convoy” protester was “trampled.”
Meanwhile, even with the knowledge that the meme was fake, some right-wing Twitter users have continued to justify sharing the hoax. “It seems this is fake and at Abby Ohlheiser’s expense. But its utter plausibility is the story,” tweeted David Innes, professor of politics at The King’s College. “Liberals are DEVOTED to sexual perversion & shaping kids with it.”
