Today is Halloween and in addition to the treat of celebrities dressing up in some truly clever costumes, the spooky holiday also comes with a few tricks — including one that backfired on Senator Ted Cruz.
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Earlier today, Cruz took to Twitter to post his Halloween greeting: a letter from the Zodiac Killer. Check the tweet out below.
Happy Halloween pic.twitter.com/jIgTaIMzep
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) October 31, 2018
It’s likely that Cruz meant this as a joke. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, a popular meme emerged in the form of mock-conspiracy theory that suggested that the United States Senator was also secretly the Zodiac Killer, a still-unidentified California serial killer from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.
Cruz, who was born two years after the first murder associated with the Zodiac Killer, has since come to take the meme in stride and has tweeted out one of the killer’s encrypted messages before in October 2017. However, today’s tweet hasn’t gone over particularly well. Many people have replied to Cruz’s Tweet this time around with comments critical of his choice.
While some of the replies are come from those who disagree with Cruz politically — one reply featured an edited version of the letter with the words “Vote for Beto” inserted into the cryptogram in a nod to Cruz’s Democratic opponent in the upcoming midterm election, Beto O’Rourke — others just felt it was in poor taste, or simply didn’t understand it was meant to be a joke about the meme.
One reply in particular was humorously “troubled” not so much by the content of the tweet but that Cruz seemed to be trying to get in on the joke about him.
“You’re not allowed to be in on the joke ted. Ted!” one user wrote.
Today’s Zodiac tweet isn’t the first time Cruz has stirred up controversy with the social media platform. The first time Cruz shared the Zodiac letter in 2017 as part of an extended joke with Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, he got some pushback from followers then, too. He also stoked controversy in September 2017 after his account “liked” a pornographic tweet. In that instance, Cruz later blamed it on a staffing issue.
What do you think about Cruz’s latest Zodiac tweet? Funny? Poor taste? Just a case of bad tweet recycling? Let us know your take in the comments.
