Ted Cruz Tries To Poke Fun At Being Called The Zodiac Killer
Sen. Ted Cruz winked back on Wednesday, which made a bunch of people on Twitter unhappy.
The Texas Republican tweeted a nod to the popular meme that he’s actually the unidentified serial murderer known only as the “Zodiac Killer.”
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 18, 2017
Cruz was responding to a string of tweets set off by Sen. Ben Sasse’s admission during Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that he had just spilled Dr. Pepper on Cruz.
One Twitter user told the Nebraska Republican that if he were “sitting with the son of the guy who killed Kennedy I might do worse than spill some Dr. Pepper.” That tweet was in reference to a paper-thin conspiracy theory suggesting that Cruz’s father helped Lee Harvey Oswald pass out flyers supporting Fidel Castro about three months prior to Oswald’s assassinating President John F. Kennedy.
Sasse came back with his own snark, claiming he was wearing a “Lee Harvey Oswald Was Framed” T-shirt when the soda spilled.
full disclosure:
i was wearing my "Lee Harvey Oswald Was Framed" t-shirt https://t.co/93lKIizkVO— Ben Sasse (@BenSasse) October 18, 2017
In a clear attempt to be playful, Cruz answered Sasse’s remark with an image of a Zodiac Killer letter.
Which may have drained all the fun out of the meme. Twitter users had a lot to say about it:
— Sam Grittner (@SamGrittner) October 18, 2017
I think Ted Cruz just admitted to being the Zodiac Killer. https://t.co/xwwJcO9CS3
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 18, 2017
https://t.co/0PgASvIPn8 pic.twitter.com/ePUmNs0AbR
— Cates Holderness (@catesish) October 18, 2017
take: if ted cruz had tweeted that during the campaign, he'd have dad-joked the meme right out of existence, sparing his campaign a headache
— Tony Romm (@TonyRomm) October 18, 2017
A joke has been "Cruzed" when it is no longer viable or funny. that's the term now
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) October 18, 2017
The real Zodiac Killer wrote a series of anonymous letters to Bay Area press in the late 1960s and 1970s claiming that he or she had killed 37 people. The Zodiac Killer meme is a joke that started in 2013 when @RedPillAmerica tweeted that Cruz would give a speech entitled “This is the Zodiac Speaking.” The internet picked up the idea and ran with it.
All of this is to say, Cruz isn’t the Zodiac Killer, but he’s awfully ready to play along ...
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.