Sad Ted Cruz

Submission 17,646

Part of a series on Ted Cruz. [View Related Entries]

About

Sad Ted Cruz refers to a series of jokes made after former 2016 Republican Presidential Primary candidate Ted Cruz was filmed phone-banking in Texas, apparently on behalf of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who had famously belittled Cruz throughout the primary.

Origin

Cruz fought a contentious campaign against Trump in the primary. Trump had famously dubbed Cruz "Lyin' Ted," insulted his wife, and insinuated his father had a role in the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy. Despite this, and Cruz famously refusing to endorse Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Cruz eventually endorsed Trump in a Facebook post^[2] on September 23rd, 2016. On October 5th, 2016, Ted Cruz phone-banked on behalf of Republican candidates in Texas. The Dallas Morning News^[1] caught footage of Cruz leaving a voicemail to a voter while sitting in front of posters for Donald Trump.

Spread

The video began spreading on Twitter the following day as users joked that Cruz appears to be asking voters to vote for Trump, though in the footage, Cruz makes no mention of Trump. While the original video appears to have been deleted, a tweet by @LiamDonovan,^[3] which refers to the footage as "The final humiliation," indicates it was first shared by Dallas Morning News photojournalist G.J. McCarthy, who would later share the video again with a Dallas Morning News watermark.^[4]

Shortly after, Twitter users pounced on the footage and captioned it or doctored it with various sad memes, including Mad World, ^[5] Hello Darkness, My Old Friend, ^[6] Record Scratch, Freeze Frame, ^[7] etc.

The spread of Cruz-related jokes was covered by many media outlets, including Huffington Post,^[8] Washington Post,^[9] Daily Dot,^[10] and Business Insider.^[11] It was a Twitter Moment^[12] that day.