Fact Check: Ted Cruz Does NOT Have A 'Template Ready To Tweet' Whenever Shootings Happen

Fact Check

  • by: Dana Ford
Fact Check: Ted Cruz Does NOT Have A 'Template Ready To Tweet' Whenever Shootings Happen Fake Tweets

Does Ted Cruz have a "template ready to tweet" whenever shootings happen? No, that's not true: The Texas senator tweeted in response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. But a viral tweet that makes it look like Cruz tweeted the same thing after other U.S. shootings is fake.

The claim appeared in a Twitter post (archived here) on May 26, 2022. It includes an image of what looks to be a list of 12 nearly identical tweets, just with different locations and posting dates. It opens:

These mass shootings happen so much that Ted Cruz really got a template ready to tweet whenever they occur.

This is what the post looked like on Twitter at the time of writing:

Twitter screenshot

(Source: Twitter screenshot taken on Fri May 27 13:19:13 2022 UTC)

Only the first tweet in the list is real. The rest are fake. Cruz's real tweet in response to the Uvalde shooting can be seen below:

A simple Twitter search shows he did not tweet the same thing after other U.S. shootings.

That's not to say that Cruz did not tweet in the wake of other shootings. He did. For example, here's what Cruz wrote after the May 2022 mass shooting in Buffalo, New York:

And here's what he posted after the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut:

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  Dana Ford

Dana Ford is an Atlanta-based reporter and editor. She previously worked as a senior editor at Atlanta Magazine Custom Media and as a writer/ editor for CNN Digital. Ford has more than a decade of news experience, including several years spent working in Latin America.

Read more about or contact Dana Ford

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