Senator Ted Cruz agreed to a bit of self-depreciative humor by making a cameo in conservative satire outlet Babylon Bee’s "Californians Move to Texas" short video series.
In the clip, a couple that recently moved to a neighborhood in the Lone Star State is seen out campaigning for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke. “Hey! We’re out canvassing for Beto O’Rourke,” the man exclaims after the door opens. “Can we count on your vote?” the woman chimes in.
“No, I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got a lot of letter-writing to do,” a flustered Cruz responds as the camera pans, accidentally dropping one of the pages he’s holding as he slams the door shut.
“Excuse me sir, you dropped this,” the woman says as she picks up the page. Looking at the sheet in confusion for a few moments, the couple’s expression turns to horror as they flee the property, with the woman dropping the page, revealing it to have been written in the Zodiac Killer’s distinctive style of coded letters, numbers, and symbols.
Cruz’s name has been associated with the Zodiac Killer in popular imagination since his bid for the Republican nomination in 2016, with a poll by the Public Policy Polling sociological research firm reporting that a whopping 40 percent of Florida residents believed the senator may be the infamous mass murderer, even though Cruz was born in Canada in December 1970, one year after the killings stopped.
The claims led The Washington Post to conduct an exhaustive investigation into Cruz to conclude that *gasp* the politician was not actually the serial killer. Cruz’s wife Heidi confirmed at an event in 2016 that she had no evidence that her husband was the murderer after being married to him for 15 years, calling the claims “a lot of garbage.”
Users praised Cruz for his self-deprecating cameo, which he agreed to do despite the Babylon Bee poking fun at him repeatedly over the same meme.
“Lol, Ted Cruz embracing his meme energy,” one person wrote. “That’s hilarious. Mr. Cruz is a good sport for doing this,” another wrote. “I’m not a big Cruz fan but he gets major cool points for this. Way to laugh at himself,” a third chimed in.
Active in northern California in the late 1960s, the Zodiac Killer claimed the lives of at least five people. However, in taunting, cryptogram-filled letters to the media, the killer claimed to have actually taken 37 lives.