Heidi Cruz, wife of Presidential hopeful Ted Cruz, has been forced to answer to a persistent internet meme that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.
“Well, I’ve been married to him for 15 years, and I know pretty well who he is, so it doesn’t bother me at all.” Heidi told Yahoo News in a cafe interview in Carmel, Indiana.
“There’s a lot of garbage out there.”
Heidi Cruz is in Indiana supporting her husband in the lead up to the Indiana primary. Yahoo News asked for her reaction to a series of jokes that Comedy Central host Larry Wilmore made at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night, where he repeatedly called her husband “the Zodiac Killer.”
Heidi Cruz responds forcefully to people who call her husband Ted Cruz the Zodiac Killer https://t.co/qoswDFEvh9 by @hunterw
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) May 2, 2016
The dinner, affectionately known colloquially as Nerd Prom, traditionally features humorous speeches about the candidates. Larry Wilmore’s bit on Ted Cruz mentioned the words “Zodiac Killer” at least seven times. “Come on that’s absurd,” he said “Some people actually liked the Zodiac Killer.”
He even brought up Cruz’s penchant for buying 100 cans of soup at a time. “Not making yourself look less like the Zodiac Killer, Ted Cruz,” Wilmore warned.
“I don’t even think Ted Cruz wants to be president. I think he’s just crisscrossing the country Zodiac killing.”
According to Know Your Meme , the origin of the meme goes back to this tweet in 2013 which makes a vague association, and then this one in 2014 which began the hashtag #TedCruzIsTheZodiacKiller. It wasn’t until someone suggested that everyone Google “Is Ted Cruz The Zodiac Killer?” and enough people got on board to make it trend.
It took until February of this year for someone to point out that Ted Cruz was born after the first murders, proving that to a Millennial, everyone over 30 is as old as each other.
Not everyone is convinced, and Salon ran a (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek tweet framing Heidi Cruz’s remarks as not a full denial.
Heidi Cruz doesn’t exactly deny that her husband is the Zodiac Killer https://t.co/AEBNWFWxWw
— Salon (@Salon) May 2, 2016
It has not been a good week for Cruz, endorsement-wise. Republican John Boehner came out of retirement just to describe Ted Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh,” a claim that satanists were quick to reject . “Christians can’t just push Cruz off on Satanists,” said Lucien Greaves, founder of the Satanic Temple.
Ted Cruz has remained a consistent second-place runner in the Republican presidential primary elections after frontrunner Donald Trump, but has proven himself a game contender, winning 12 states as of this writing. He has accrued 565 of the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination, while Trump rides a very comfortable lead at 996.
His campaign has not been without real-life controversy, beginning with questions about his eligibility for the office of President due to his being born in Canada, accusations of dishonesty from his opponents, giving him the unfortunate moniker “Lyin’ Ted” from the Trump camp, and his controversial positions on women’s reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, the mixing of church and state, and military interventionism.
Cruz last made headlines with his April 27 announcement that if he secures the nomination he’ll pick Carly Fiorina as his running mate, a controversial move pundits say was an attempt to gain some last-minute momentum in the race since candidates don’t formally select running mates until after securing their party’s nomination.
“After a great deal of consideration and prayer, I have come to the conclusion that if I am nominated to be president of the United States that I will run on a ticket with my vice presidential nominee Carly Fiorina,” Cruz said during an Indianapolis rally.
[Image by John Lamparski/Getty Images]