No one believes Ted Cruz
That’s right, on 9/11 someone liked an explicit tweet using the @tedcruz public account, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s official Twitter page. Late night posters on Twitter held a match to that gas leak, and the news spread like fire across the United States.
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By the time Catherine Frazer, Cruz’s communications director, was able to remove the liked tweet from Ted Cruz’s official page, her efforts were employed much too late to save the situation. The post was already all over Twitter and other social media sites.
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With demands that the incident be clarified numerous and impossible to ignore, Cruz held interviews with the Washington Post, CNN and other news organizations on both Tuesday and Wednesday. He claimed that the liking of the explicit content was accidental. Multiple people are able to access the @tedcruz twitter account, so Cruz concluded that an employee must have been logged into the public page when they went about their business, and just not realized they were using the official account. At the end of one of the interviews, Cruz stated that there would be no repercussions for the rogue employee.
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That garnered a few confused head scratches.
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In any case, the entertainment industry does not seem to buy his excuse. In fact, many have had rather colorful comments concerning the “honest mistake,” as Cruz dubbed it. Jimmy Kimmel, the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! featured a discussion about the possible ethics employed when that like button was clicked. Airing Tuesday, only one day after the Twitter blunder, Kimmel was one of the first comedians to leap on the post’s amusing details.
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“If only he’d done something this perverted in the campaign, he might’ve been president right now,” Kimmel joked on the show.
At 11:06 a.m. on the morning after the post appeared in the public account’s “liked” tab, the New York Times also posted an article about Cruz’s mishap explaining the situation and then adding their own commentary. Hilariously enough, even the Twitter account that posted the explicit tweet decided to take advantage of the situation. Not only did they tag Ted Cruz in their follow up tweet, “thanks for watching ted!,” but they also posted in their account description that Ted Cruz watches their videos.
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Twitter itself lit up like a Christmas tree. As soon as people stumbled on the post, they tweeted brash comments regarding the date and nature of the incident. One such post, tweeted by @MagnoliaLove, was as follows: “It's 2017 and I just witnessed @tedruz liking porn in Twitter. What a time to be alive.”
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Another one that truly details the unity amongst fellow tweeters was posted by @Mr_LukeBenson: “It's truly inspiring to see Twitter put aside our petty differences, turn in unison and laugh at Ted Cruz.”
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These are only two of a few hundred thousand tweets that enticed some attention. Many more are certainly still in the making, and it will definitely be a long time before the media lets this little slip up slide. United States officials can certainly learn from Ted Cruz’s misadventure; don’t let employees handle official social media networking, folks.
