Ted Cruz’s Dumb Turkey Meme Got Roasted By An El Paso Artist And The Internet At Large

Ted Cruz has embraced an amped-up version of his usual fight against “tyranny” during the pandemic. He slammed a fellow senator as a “a complete ass” for wearing a mask, long after Cruz declared that the virus would disappear after election day (because he argued that the pandemic is a ruse meant to boot Trump out of office). The evaporation of the virus obviously did not happen, but the junior senator from Texas has continued to push back against COVID-19 restrictions, even as his state — especially in El Paso — has watched its morgues overflow as patients succumb to the virus.

Over the weekend, Cruz illustrated his thoughts on the CDC urging people to not travel for Thanksgiving (and to only mark the occasion with family members already in their household) with a Turkey meme that reads “Come and Take It.”

In doing so, Cruz drew a (misguided) reference to the “Come And Take It” flag that hails back to the Texas revolution. He’s appropriating the saying as in an attempt to place COVID restrictions into the “culture wars”… because he apparently thinks the Left is using the virus to attack Thanksgiving and Christmas.

https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1330528132391202819

Iowa State professor Brian Behnken posted a useful thread about how the flag’s been previously appropriated by the right wing, including the Second Amendment crowd, for their own ends. He also points out how Cruz is “fixating on a manly, heroic moment in Texas history,” the Siege of Bexar, while completely losing sight of context. Instead, Cruz is rallying for his right to gather for turkey while food lines in Texas stretch for miles and his state is suffering from an unfathomable loss of life.

In the aftermath of Cruz’s turkey dump, further roasting commenced, including this illustration from El Paso Artist Patrick Gabaldon, who posted his own drawing of a PPE-clad worker attending to a dead body set against the El Paso mountains and the saying, “Come And See It.” The drawing blasts those who refuse to take the pandemic seriously.

“Maybe if people see the devastation, maybe they’ll acknowledge it, and so you know when I see the come and take it with the turkey, I thought well you should come and see it,” Gabaldon told KTSM. “You should come and see what we’re dealing with and what our healthcare workers what our brothers and sisters and grandparents are dealing with.”

The roasting of Cruz’s dumb Turkey meme continued on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1330609805673832459

https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/1330517611214479362

And of course we got a Zodiac Killer recipe, one that’s well done.