Culture

Ted Cruz Responded To Donald Trump By Proving His Aaron Sorkin Fandom

Something truly wonderful happened during Sen. Ted Cruz‘s response to Republican rival Donald Trump while discussing the pair’s most recent spat with CNN New Day co-anchor Chris Cuomo. The former Texas tea party candidate wasn’t all that pleased with threats Trump made against his wife, Heidi Cruz, late Tuesday night on Twitter. And while the circumstances of Trump’s particularly nasty tweet didn’t paint a nice portrait of Cruz’s supporters, the results were almost as good as a West Wing walk-and-talk.

The top contenders for the GOP presidential nomination weren’t all that pleased with one another after the Make America Awesome PAC, a pro-Cruz group, used photos of Trump’s wife, Melania Trump, in a series of ads targeting Mormon voters in Utah and Arizona. Hence why the Donald decided to lash out at Cruz on Twitter (instead of the super PAC responsible for the ads).

In his response Wednesday morning, Cruz quoted a line verbatim from the Aaron Sorkin-scripted The American President, the 1995 film starring Michael Douglas as a widowed president and Annette Bening as a lobbyist who start a relationship. Washington Free Beacon journalist Lachlan Markay put together the above mashup of the offending Cruz and Douglas lines, and the similarities aren’t just uncanny. They’re practically plagiarized.

Here’s Cruz:

“If Donald wants to get in a character fight, he is better off sticking with me, because Heidi is way out of his league.”

And here’s Douglas:

“You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, ’cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.”

As one of Markay’s Twitter followers noted, this wasn’t the first time Cruz had used his allegedly co-opted “out of your league” line. When the Washington Post ran an editorial cartoon targeting the candidate’s daughters, Cruz unleashed his paternal fury with an amalgamation of the same phrase:

So when all else fails in the 2016 election season, at least we have Sorkin to thank indirectly for some of its more pertinent lines. Literally.

(Via Lachlan Markey on Twitter, Washington Free Beacon)