Senator Ted Cruz has emerged as one of the most prominent conservative voices to defend Gina Carano after she was fired from Lucasfilm and Disney for espousing controversial opinions. The Republican politician took to Twitter on Thursday and stated that it was a mistake to fire the actress as she was an asset to one of its biggest franchises.
According to Cruz, the former UFC star was a role model for women, stating that her character, Cara Dune, shattered stereotypes in the galaxy far, far away.
He then went on to credit the actress as a significant factor in the pop culture franchise returning to its former glories following years of movies and television shows that polarized fans and gained subpar reviews.
“Texan Gina Carano broke barriers in the Star Wars universe: not a princess, not a victim, not some emotionally tortured Jedi. She played a woman who kicked a** [and] who girls looked up to. She was instrumental in making Star Wars fun again. Of course Disney canceled her.”
The senator’s Verdict With Ted Cruz co-host Michael Knowles also took to social media to weigh in on the matter. In a tweet posted by the political commentator earlier today, he noted that Disney has a sketchy history when it comes to opinions pertaining to Jewish people. According to Knowles, its employees will get a shock when they find out about Walt Disney’s opinions.
Cruz and Knowles are only two of several right-leaning commentators to leap to Carano’s defense. As the New York Post pointed out, Ben Shapiro, Jack Posobiec and others accused the company of having double standards.
As The Inquisitr previously documented, Carano was fired was sharing an Instagram story in which she compared people with unpopular political beliefs to Jews in the Holocaust. The post was the latest in a string of controversies pertaining to her online behavior in recent months.
Carano delighted the post shortly after it hit the image-sharing platform, but it had already been screenshotted and shared across social media, prompting “#FireGinaCarano” to trend. Lucasfilm released a statement afterward, revealing that she’d been let go and that the company has no plans to work with her again down the line.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”