Ted Cruz Is Finally Talking About That Crazy Porn Tweet: “It Was A Screw-Up”

In the early hours on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 12, Senator Ted Cruz's official Twitter account happened to like a tweet. For @tedcruz, that wouldn't necessarily be unusual, given that he has liked 1,243 tweets since he signed up for the service in 2009. But this was no ordinary tweet: it was an explicit pornographic video clip from a user called @SexuallPosts. And obviously the internet went f*cking bonkers. But now, finally Ted Cruz talked about liking a porn tweet, saying a staffer "accidentally hit the wrong button."

Sure, Ted. A staffer.

In an interview with CNN's Dana Bash on Wednesday, Sept. 13, the Senator said of the incident, "It was a screw-up."

Well, that solves that, I guess?

But Cruz's interview is rife with all of the double-talk and general... Cruz-ness that makes him (allegedly) the most hated guy in the Senate.

First, there was the whole good-guy spiel. It was just a misunderstanding, no big deal. Cruz said,

Look, it was — we had a staffer who accidentally hit the wrong button and it was a screw-up. I will say Twitter went crazy with it. It became trending. As soon as we found out about it, we pulled it down. And it's generated a lot of amusement.

You don't say.

And when Bash asked Cruz whodunit, Cruz responded, "I'm not gonna out the fella. I mean, we have dealt with it internally, but I'm not gonna throw someone under the bus." Nice guy, that Ted.

Except that he totally threw said unnamed staffer under the bus, by repeatedly putting the blame on this unnamed person: "It won't happen again," he told Bash. "It has been dealt with."

Even though he didn't name the guy, Cruz insinuated that his own hands were clean of the whole incident. Which is still a roundabout way of pointing the finger. (The same finger that, perhaps, liked an inappropriate tweet at an even more inappropriate time? Hmmm.)

Then there's this puzzler: "We had a staffer who accidentally hit the wrong button."

Anyone who uses Twitter knows the odds of a staffer who happened to be logged into his boss's very public Twitter account finding his way to a porn account and accidentally liking a tweet are... extraordinarily small. When you're managing more than one account, it's very easy to tell which account you're on, unless the fates aligned to make Cruz look low-key pervy.

Maybe this Unnamed Staffer butt tweeted his way to this unfortunate circumstance. (Butt-tweeting has happened before.) But, I mean, wrong button? Look, Cruz is notoriously marbled-mouthed, but "wrong button" insinuates purpose: almost like someone was deliberately on @SexuallPosts and accidentally liked the tweet rather than, I dunno, navigating away.

Finally, Cruz tried to use this as a "gotcha" moment for the liberal media.

Bash asked him what he thought of the irony of being accused of watching porn, when he tried to ban the sale of sex toys while he was the solicitor general of Texas.

His response? "No, actually, that's a good example of where the media runs with things that are just totally false."

Bash asked what was false about the inquiry. After all, Cruz did defend a Texas law banning the sale of sex toys, arguing that people don't have "due process" for self-pleasure.

Cruz shot back, again trying to defend himself while turning the inquiry into a critique of the media. He said, "It was a stupid law... I think it's idiotic. But this is an opportunity for knuckleheads in the media to claim, 'Oh, isn't this ironic that Cruz wants to ban these things?'"

But Cruz regularly cited his time as solicitor general (which included that case) as a means to boost his credentials as a conservative Christian politician during his presidential campaign. Not to mention, Bash got him to say that "consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms."

This entire exchange -- particularly the latter half -- is a pretty stark, even ironic departure from his pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-Planned Parenthood stances, and it forces him to walk back his proud defense of that weird anti-sex toy law.

Cruz, then, is the one who got got.

This incident, which I am now officially calling Porn Tweet-gate (catchy, I know), seems fishy.

Almost like a high-level politician made a very embarrassing mistake and blamed it on someone he refused to name BECAUSE THERE WAS NO ONE TO NAME. A-HA!

But in all seriousness, the comedic horror of watching a professional journalist ask a professional politician whether or not he liked a pornographic tweet in the middle of the night is peak 2017. So, what's next? Who knows? Maybe Cruz will take this as an opportunity to come out as a real-life Councilman Dexhart.

Or maybe his staffer will just be more careful next time.