Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz reposted and later deleted a tribute on X to legendary performer Dolly Parton after the X user changed the account name to troll Cruz.
The X user, @lebatardshowfan, had shared their "favorite clip" of Parton, who died Tuesday following a brief battle with cancer. Cruz reshared the clip some time later. Parton is shown during one of her many appearances on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
However, Cruz didn't seem to catch that the X user changed their public account name to "Ted Cruz's tiny dick" to troll the GOP politician after noticing his retweet. Cruz's post, in which he referred to Parton as a "Legend" alongside heart and prayer emojis, was up for a while before he deleted it. However, social media users are known to be quick with their screenshots, so the name change circulated anyway.
You can see the post below.
@lebatardshowfan/X; @tedcruz/X
The X user eventually changed their name back—and even had a message for Cruz, writing:
"Thanks for the retweet, Ted."
"Remember in 2016 you told the RNC Convention to “vote your conscience” and then ultimately gave up having any backbone and backed Trump who called your wife ugly?"
"Fun times."
The bumbling Cruz was quickly mocked by other social media users.
Cruz has made some NSFW gaffes on social media before, such as a 2017 incident in which his Twitter account "liked" a hardcore adult video.
Although liking a post does not necessarily share it, the now-infamous tweet appeared on Cruz’s verified profile, resulting in a series of telling screenshots.
At the time, Catherine Frazier, Cruz’s senior communications adviser, stated “the offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter." This statement added to the confusion, as the "like" was not a tweet and suggested that someone unauthorized had accessed Cruz's account.
Cruz later told the press “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." He said the matter "was a staffing issue, and it was inadvertent, it was a mistake, it was not a deliberate action."
@jessicachastain/Instagram
