Sen. Ted Cruz’s latest attempt at owning those danged libs failed miserably on Thursday when the Texas Republican fell for a tweet of a nonexistent news story supposedly published in The Atlantic.
Cruz tweeted a link to what looked like an Atlantic article headlined “The Evolution of White Supremacy” with this subhead: “In Dearborn Michigan, Muslim parents who oppose teaching pornography to children become the new face of the far right.”
Later, after many people pointed out that there was no such Atlantic article, Cruz deleted his tweet.
The story that was the supposed subject of the tweet does have a basis in reality. A group of Muslim parents recently did object to LGBTQ books being available to students, according to the Detroit Free Press.
However, the Atlantic never wrote about the controversy, and the author credited with writing the nonexistent article, Abby Ohlheiser, hasn’t worked for the magazine since 2014, according to WGHP-TV.
Naturally, Twitter users fact-checked Cruz’ post and found it fact-free.
Some people called out the senator for deleting his tweet of the fake article without publicly admitting his mistake.
When Cruz finally fessed up, he blamed a familiar scapegoat: the media.
“Didn’t know it was fake,” he wrote. “You guys are so insane, it could easily have been real.”
Some people decided Cruz needed to be reminded of other times he spread misinformation in his unending efforts to, yes, own those libs:
Meanwhile, the journalist Ohlheiser said having their name falsely attached to a fake news story made for a challenging day.