Many people have a friend who always seems to be pushing false stories via social media. The friend tends 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. HuffPost noted:
Talking about the weather is supposed to be the safest conversation topic of all ― but apparently not for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). The smarmy Texas Republican retweeted a photo that supposedly showed a shark in the flooded waters of the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, but was, in reality, a variation on a hoax photo that’s been swimming on the internet since at least 2011.
Evidently, it started with a media personality who published a fake image on Sunday afternoon, claiming that a friend had “just” taken the photograph on a major Los Angeles highway, and adding that media outlets “have permission to use this.”
It circulated widely, despite being fake, and the senator was among the many who treated the item as real. After promoting the story to his millions of followers, Cruz ultimately conceded that the image he falsely assumed was real turned out to be “a joke.”
Of course, for those who spend a lot of time online, it’s occasionally easy to fall for misinformation, especially when the fake items reinforce preconceived ideas. It’s happened to those on the left, right, and center, and the GOP senator was hardly the only one who made a mistake with the shark-on-the- freeway image.
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 two years ago next week, for example, 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. 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.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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