Damn, it feels good to be Ted Cruz.
The Texas senator and Republican presidential contender released an ad Friday morning attacking Hillary Clinton that spoofs a classic scene from 1999 cult classic Office Space.
In Cruz’s version, the Democratic presidential frontrunner is seen smashing a computer that’s meant to represent Clinton’s home email server—the one at the center of an ongoing FBI investigation.
First look at new @tedcruz ad in SC targeting @HillaryClinton and lampooning classic ‘Office Space’ scene https://t.co/Mu1YI4KJZJ
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) February 12, 2016
Here’s the original, for comparison’s sake:
Though largely ignored in the Democratic presidential race, Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server, rather than the State Department system, during her time as secretary of state has provided Republican presidential candidates with a point of attack.
Soon after news of Clinton’s private email server broke last year, reports surfaced that Clinton’s team had deleted 60,000 work and personal emails from the server—thus, Cruz’s computer-smashing parody. FBI investigators were able to recover the deleted emails.
Clinton turned over roughly 55,000 emails to the State Department, which is intermittently releasing them to the public. The next batch is scheduled for Saturday.
The controversy now centers on whether Clinton or her staff sent classified information over the server. Some 1,600 emails, though not classified at the time they were sent or received, have since been deemed classified. Of those, at least 22 have received “top secret” classification.
Few details surrounding the FBI investigation, confirmed in a letter to the State Department legal advisor Mary McLeod, are public. James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, refused to tell McLeod the “specific focus, scope, or potential targets” of the investigation.
If it turns out that Clinton is the target of the investigation, well, expect her to have more than just a case of the Mondays.
H/T The Hill | Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
