Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has spent his career judging people for their sexual preferences and trying to vilify sexuality, may want you to forget about his Twitter “porn” scandal and the story about “cheating” on his wife with five different women. But despite no proof and lots of denials, the scandals refuse to die.
The porn scandal:
On Sept. 11, 2017, Ted Cruz’s personal Twitter account liked a post by another account named Sexuall Posts, which included an attached pornographic video. And things got wild.
Since most people have their liked Tweets publicly visible on their profile, it didn’t take long for someone to notice Cruz’s activity. People saved receipts and quickly spread the news with the help of screenshots from Cruz’s Likes page.
Of course, the story is more complicated than that. We don’t know for sure it was Cruz himself who did the “liking” of the video, as the senator claimed that, “There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button.”
To be clear, Cruz’s activities in his off hours shouldn’t be much of anyone’s concern. Frankly, if he does watch porn, it would almost be a relief to know he’s a normal human male and not an anti-sex cyborg. But living a public life that’s so openly scornful of sexual freedom, while also indulging in the modern conveniences of online porn in private, is truly infuriating.
OMG! Look at this like from @tedcruz's Twitter account!
😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/AQLxAGeiIq
— Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) September 12, 2017
People, and especially politicians, shouldn’t get to espouse virtuosity and sanctimony, make other people feel inferior for having sexual urges, then go home at the end of the day and live hypocritically to those beliefs.
The Cheating scandal:
On March, 2016, the National Enquirer reported that “pervy Ted Cruz” was “caught cheating” with five unnamed women. The bombshell report includes pixelated photos of the women allegedly involved with the first-term senator, but doesn’t give their names.
Cruz and two of the women — who have since been identified — have vehemently denied the allegations. Several reports in online journals and on Twitter identified one of the women as Katrina Pierson, a former Cruz aide, who rejected the allegations on Twitter:
Of course the National Enquirer story is 100% FALSE!!! I only speak to myself, however.
Carry on…
— Katrina Pierson (@KatrinaPierson) March 25, 2016
Despite the denials, however, the sordid story has made its mark, and will never go away.
Here’s why:
1. Cruz freaked out: Within hours of the Enquirer story hitting newsstands, Cruz issued an unprompted denial, practically ensuring that mainstream media outlets would cover it.
Rumors about an alleged Cruz sex scandal—including unconfirmed reports of a sex tape – had been circulating for months. But mainstream news outlets kept their distance. As soon as Cruz himself brought it up, the story became fair game, media experts said.
“When these stories become difficult to report is when nobody will speak about them on the record,” said Frank Sesno, director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. “But when they become a nightmare is when somebody denies it…When you hear every hour, ‘Ted Cruz denies allegations and accuses Trump of dirty tricks,’ It gets hard to ignore.”
2. The Enquirer was right about John Edwards: The last time the mainstream media ignored a salacious National Enquirer report about a politician and his seedy affair it turned out to be true. The politician was, of course, John Edwards, whose girlfriend Rielle Hunter had a baby with Edwards while his wife was dying of cancer.
While the senator denies the stories, the details are nevertheless alluring enough to keep people talking. Who can resist the idea that the evangelical senator could actually be a porn aficionado and that five women, at least some of whom are powerful and successful in their own right, would want to sleep with him?
