Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is facing scrutiny for his latest attempt to criticize Democrats. Although he claimed "The Left is beyond parody," his attack fell flat when he was slammed for sharing a fake article that was photoshopped with reporter Abby Ohlheiser's old byline.
Blogger Parker Molloy has taken to Twitter with a series of fiery arguments laying out the case against Cruz and offering the Republican lawmaker a timeline for Ohlheiser, who is currently with The Washington Post — not The Atlantic.
"So, someone created a fake story, slapped [Abby Ohlheiser]'s byline on it even though they haven't worked at The Atlantic since 2014, which has led to a bombardment of harassment, and now a U.S. Senator is sharing said fake article," Molloy tweeted.
The writer went on to further expound on the context of the fake story. "And when I say 'fake story,' I mean that the story literally does not exist," Molloy explained. It's just a mock-up that some right-wing troll made, and now these f***ing ghouls and liars like Ted Cruz are spreading it. 'Beyond parody,' Cruz says about something that isn't even real."
The writer added, "Before Cruz tweeted it out, [Abby Ohlheiser] was already being smeared with antisemitic, transphobic BS from people insisting that the article was real. Cruz (who had FINALLY deleted his tweet) is only making it worse."
"One thing that's interesting, however: in their attempts to find a "real" article to smear [Abby Ohlheiser] with, they DID find a real headline... but because it was written by Conor [Friedersdorf] their conservative buddy, they changed the byline in their photo edits," Molloy also tweeted.
"Also, this isn't even necessarily photoshop," the writer explained. "Anyone can go in and create mock-ups of articles in their own browser, with the correct fonts and everything. Look, I did this on my phone. It's easy. It's fake."
Although Cruz appears to have removed his tweet, screenshots are still circulating.
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