Ted Cruz’s Incandescent Fury Over The ‘Barbie’ Movie (Which He Has Not Seen) Has Now Progressed To A ‘War’ Showcased By Fox News

Ted Cruz and pop culture references don’t mix too well. He once tweeted about Fight Club and received an immediate earful. He also weighed in on Watchmen in an inaccurate way, and lately, he’s had it in for the Barbie movie, of all things. This film has riled up Fox News as well because the conservative news network is seemingly irate about how the film (and specifically the Kenergy) is allegedly “emasculating men.”

For his part, though, Ted is steamed because of a quirkily drawn map that happens to show dashes in the South China Sea. Ted has been raging for days over what he believes is the movie’s communist propaganda, and he has trashed the movie’s “woke messaging.” He wasn’t content to let that be the final say, so Ted Cruz hopped over to Fox News for another dig at the Margot Robbie-starring fun flick.

Jesse Watters intro-ed Ted while declaring (to any Fox News viewers who haven’t been as obsessed as Ted with this story) that “[n]ine dashes signify Chinese ownership of the oceans, islands, and reefs. The Chinese believe they own the South China Sea, but they don’t.” The chyron shouted, “Ted Cruz Declares War On Barbie,” and Watters did ask, “Did you see the movie, or did you just see the stupid map?” Surprise, surprise: Ted has “not seen the movie, I have only seen the stupid map.”

“As you just showed, the map is drawn in like crayons,” Ted continued. “It’s roughly a map of the world… right to the east of where China is are nine dashes. To anyone who’s not really focused on geopolitics, the lines don’t mean anything. What those lines indicate is the Communist Party of China puts out official maps with those nine dashes, and they are asserting sovereignty over the entire South China Sea.”

In response to Watters asking whether Ted thought Warner Bros. did this as a message to China, Ted agreed: “This is really designed for the eyes of the Chinese censors and they’re trying to kiss up to the Chinese Communist Party because they wanna make movie selling the movie in China.” And this is actually the same sort-of argument that Ted had made about Fight Club, so he’s definitely on brand here.

Yet Ted’s “War On Barbie” has resulted in much laughter on social media.