While the internet at large continues to dominate everyone’s news feeds with jokes about Ted Cruz supposedly liking Twitter porn on Monday, the Texas senator spent most of the evening and morning avoiding the press. According to Politico, his senior communications advisor, Catherine Frazier tweeted earlier that the “offensive tweet” was subsequently “removed by staff and reported to Twitter.” Of course, the @tedcruz account didn’t actually post anything — it simply “liked” a pornographic post by another account — but little details like this don’t matter to the Internet.
Nor will, in all likelihood, Cruz’s official response to the matter, which he finally gave to congressional reporters late Tuesday morning. In a series of tweets, Frank Thorp and Ed O’Keefe quoted the former Republican presidential candidate’s response to his account’s recent activity, which unsurprisingly laid the blame on an unnamed staffer who didn’t realize what he or she was doing late Monday night. “There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account, and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button,” he explained. “It was a staffing issue, and it was inadvertent. It was a mistake. It was not a deliberate action.”
Hoping the whole thing would be treated (and forgotten) as one big joke, Cruz quipped, “Perhaps we should have done something like this during the Indiana primary.” Judging by the senator’s current popularity on Twitter, and all the new jokes his “staffing issue” remark are currently generating there and elsewhere, this probably isn’t going to be the case. After all, the President of the United States long ago made it a habit of blaming his Twitter account’s offensive retweets on interns. The only difference is, unlike Cruz, Donald Trump actually won.
https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/907618899168055296
https://twitter.com/owillis/status/907618356773228544
Ted Cruz: "I was hack….ing up a cough, during a major staffing issue, it was inadvertent, not deliberate, no malice, love the rapper "
— Tanya Chen (government name Tianyi if u're hiring) (@tanyachen) September 12, 2017
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/907627784587104256
Just In: Mike Pence no longer allowed to have dinner with Ted Cruz alone.
— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) September 12, 2017
(Via NBC News, Washington Post and Politico)