The Twitter account of Senator Ted Cruz ’92 liked a porn video on Tuesday morning. On Wednesday, Cruz clarified that a member of his staff accidentally liked the post from @SexuallPosts.
It took an hour before the video was unliked early Tuesday morning. “[T]he offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter,” tweeted Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier just after 2 a.m.
Later that morning, Cruz told reporters the incident “was a staffing issue and it was inadvertent. It was a mistake.” He added that a “number of people” had access to the account and that he was not the one who liked the video. Later, he joked that “[p]erhaps we should have done something like this during the Indiana primary.”
Cruz’s denial fell on the deaf ears of @SexuallPosts, which thanked the senator “for watching.”
“Follow for the Same Porn @TedCruz Watches,” reads its Twitter bio.
Cruz quickly became subject to mockery from screenwriter Craig Mazin ’92, Cruz’s freshmen year roommate, who tweeted, “Now imagine Ted Cruz is doing this four feet below you in the bottom bunk bed.”
“Sadly, the fact that Ted Cruz jacks off to mediocre porn spam is the most human thing we can say about him. This is actually his high point,” he wrote on Twitter.
Mazin declined to comment for this article, writing “I’ve said all I have to say about it,” in an email.
In 2007, as a Texas solicitor general, Cruz defended a state law banning the sale and advertisement of sex toys in order to protect “public morals.” His legal team argued that “obscene devices do not implicate any liberty interest” and that “any alleged right associated with obscene devices” is not “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.”
“There is no substantive due process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship,” reads the brief.
“Ted Cruz thinks people don’t have a right to ‘stimulate their genitals.’ I was his college roommate. This would be a new belief of his,” tweeted Mazin last year.
Cruz explained in an interview on Wednesday that he was just doing his job as solicitor general, saying that he thought the law was “stupid” and “idiotic.” He also asserted his belief that “consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they want in their bedrooms,” and criticized the media for being “obsessed with sex.”
Cruz’s presidential campaign team also drew criticism when — unaware of her background — it cast a porn star in a campaign video.
In his book, “A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America,” Cruz recounts how he, as a 26-year-old law clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, watched porn with some of the justices in order to determine whether Internet porn should be regulated. “As we watched these graphic pictures fill our screens, wide-eyed, no one said a word,” Cruz wrote.
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