Shortly after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) backed President Donald Trump’s baseless allegations that widespread voter fraud led to his projected loss against President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 election, Trump’s 2016 tweet accusing Cruz of voter fraud during the Republican primaries resurfaced.
“I believe President Trump still has a path to victory,” Cruz told Fox News on Sunday. “And that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to count any votes that were fraudulently cast or illegally cast, and we have a legal process to determine what’s legal and what isn’t.”
In the wake of Cruz’s comments, eagle-eyed Twitter users reminded the senator that he, too, was the subject of Trump’s voter fraud claims during the 2016 Republican primaries.
Trump could not believe that Cruz dominated the Iowa Caucuses in February of that year.
“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump tweeted.
In a follow-up tweet, Trump wrote, “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”
“Yet another #Trumpertantrum… @realDonaldTrump very angry w/the people of Iowa,” Cruz responded at the time. “They actually looked at his record.”
Trump’s 2016 “voter fraud” tweet has now received 8,400 retweets and 4,300 quote tweets, many of them from within the last day. People are using the tweet to argue that Trump always cries foul when things don’t go his way, and it makes sense that he would refuse to concede the 2020 election to Biden. They’re also mocking Cruz for defending the president when he was previously subjected to the same baseless allegations.
“Oh look, @realDonaldTrump has cried wolf 8,379 times. cc: @tedcruz,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) tweeted.
“Hey @tedcruz, I see that you’re amplifying Trump’s laughable claims that there was some national conspiracy to commit massive voter fraud,” historian Kevin M. Kruse tweeted. “Was Trump right back in 2016 when he accused you of committing fraud in Iowa? Or do you just buy this BS when it’s about other people?”
Cruz has not publicly addressed the apparent hypocrisy in these messages and has instead taken to beefing with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Twitter about Pfizer’s new COVID-19 vaccine.
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