On Saturday morning, failed Presidential candidate ‘Lying’ Ted Cruz tweeted that former Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 director James Gunn should be prosecuted for his tasteless Twitter jokes.
Pretty much immediately everyone pointed out that you can’t prosecute someone for making bad jokes online, which you’d think someone who champions the First Amendment as much as Cruz would know. Embattled by criticism, he was forced to clarify his comments by saying the following:
This is a non sequitur. Several of his tweets refer directly to his having had sex with children. Yes, his speech is protected, but any criminal actions are not. If he’s telling the truth — if he has in fact molested young children — then he should be prosecuted. Now.
Alright fine Ted, yes, if James Gunn was actually molesting young children and then gleefully tweeting about it he probably should be prosecuted. However, they were clearly provocative, juvenile jokes and you’d have to be willfully bone-headed to read them any other way. One perceptive commentator pointed out that Cruz clearly knows these are jokes, too, but also knows that his political future may depend on him climbing into bed with all manner of far-right wackadoos, so the more he massages their egos now the more he can cash in on it at a later date.
The cherry on top of all this is that Ted Cruz is no stranger to off-color behaviour on Twitter. Back in 2017, his account ‘liked’ a graphic porn clip featuring two men and a women going at it, thus directing his followers to hardcore pornography. Cruz claimed it was just a staff member who didn’t realize he was logged into his Twitter account, but can we really believe a man who claims you don’t have the right to masturbate? Or, as his college roommate, screenwriter Craig Mazin put it: “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.”
Anyways, for those asking if James Gunn will be prosecuted, the answer is of course not. This is just a notoriously slippery politician trying to clamber aboard the latest bandwagon to roll through town. Remember folks, this is your daily PSA to steer well clear of Ted Cruz and any and all Ted Cruz-related situations.
