Senator Ted Cruz The latest attempt to take possession of these dangerous libraries failed miserably on Thursday when a Texas Republican was caught tweeting a non-existent news story supposedly published in The Atlantic.
Cruise tweeted a link to what appeared to be an Atlantic article With the headline “The Evolution of White Supremacy,” “In Dearborn, Michigan, Muslim Parents Against Teaching Children Porn Become New Face of Far Right.”
Cruise later deleted the tweet after many pointed out that there was no such Atlantic article.
The story that was supposedly the subject of the tweet has a real basis. A group of Muslim parents recently opposed making LGBTQ books available to students. According to the Detroit Free Press.
But The Atlantic never wrote about the controversy, and the author, Abby Olheiser, who is believed to have written the nonexistent article, hasn’t worked for the magazine since 2014. According to WGHP-TV.
Not surprisingly, Twitter users fact-checked Cruz’s post and found it fact-free.
Some have accused the senator of deleting a fake article tweet without publicly acknowledging his mistake.
When Cruise finally hit the ground running, he blamed a familiar scapegoat: the media.
“I didn’t know it was fake,” he wrote. “You guys are so insane that it could have easily become a reality.”
Some people decided it was necessary to remind Cruise that he had spread misinformation in his relentless efforts to own those libraries:
Journalist Allheiser, meanwhile, said he had a difficult day after his name was mistakenly attached to a fake news story.
This article originally appeared on huff post and updated.