Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) didn’t exactly get a vote of confidence when he posted a racist lie about immigrants eating pets on Monday.
After Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance promoted a false news story alleging that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are supposedly abducting and eating pets, the Texas Republican decided to join in with his own anti-immigrant posts.
Cruz posted a meme with kittens that was captioned, “Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don’t eat us” and added three laughing emojis at the top, apparently for the lulz.
Former President Donald Trump and his MAGA followers have demonized immigrants as rapists and murderers even though data shows that they break fewer laws than natural-born Americans. Springfield police debunked the rumor about pets being stolen and eaten on Monday.
Cruz’s office did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s query about the falsehood he is spreading.
However, many people on X, formerly Twitter, called out the senator for trying, as one person put it, “to stoke partisan fears to win elections.”
Some commenters noted that people have demonized immigrants for decades by spreading inflammatory rumors about what they eat. (Cruz’s father is an immigrant from Cuba.)
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One person noted that Cruz’s post coincidentally matched up quite nicely with Russian talking points.
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