RIOS DE LAS MIERDAS, TEXAS — At a campaign stop in his adopted home state of Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R), doubled-down on statements he made over the weekend implying that the man who stormed a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado last week was not an anti-abortion extremist as would be generally presumed, but is instead in Cruz’s view could be a “woman and a transgendered leftist activist” as was reported in right-wing media circles shortly after the attack.
“It is true, that in only right-wing, pro-life circles have I seen this implication that the shooter was in fact a transgender woman,” Cruz told attendees at the rally held at a local Chik-Fil-A, “but if we Republicans are going to stop believing right-wing conspiracy theories as fact, we might as well stop presuming Hillary is secretly gay, and that her husband bill personally killed Vince Foster as repayment to Saul Alinsky for helping him infiltrate the White House as a secret communist that oversaw one of the biggest peace time expansions of our economy ever.” Cruz reminded his audience that “right-wing conspiracy theories hold just as much water with good, clean, ammo-hoarding, apple pie eating patriots as the Bible does.”
After the rally reporters again reminded Cruz that it the shooter had made statements about “no more baby parts” which would seem to be a direct indictment of the kinds of rhetoric Cruz and his fellow GOP candidate former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina have used when discussing sting videos released by a right-wing, anti-abortion group called Center for Medical Progress. In the videos, whose veracity has been highly challenged after independent forensic analysis showed even the “unedited” tapes the group claimed to make available were in fact anything but unedited, CMP makes the case through selective editing and narration that Planned Parenthood is essentially operating a fetal parts for sale scheme, which many feel the Colorado Springs shooter was referencing when he made those statements.
“Look, of course the liberal media would want right-wingers to take responsibility for fostering a climate of hostility against Planned Parenthood using the very clearly deceptively edited videos,” Cruz said, “but since when are Republicans about personal responsibility — and I don’t mean just paying lip service to it,” the Texas Republican asked rhetorically. “Doesn’t it make far more sense that a left-wing radical would assault a place that they regularly defend against rhetorical attacks by the likes of Ms. Fiorina and myself,” Cruz asked, “than it would for someone who has been told that abortion is murder, that Planned Parenthood is selling the parts of murdered babies for profit, and that the guns he keeps buying in an effort to protect himself from the inevitable tyranny of a duly elected government give him the right, no the moral obligation, to take matters into his own hands?”
Senator Cruz would later tell reporters that “no amount of liberal spin” would change his mind about who the shooter was, or what his motives could have been. “This is the same liberal media that insists climate change is an urgent crisis despite at least 3 out of every 100 climate scientists saying otherwise,” Cruz bemoaned, adding, “and this is the same liberal, lame stream press that says that fourteen million dollars spent on Benghazi hearings has been a waste, and that the Civil War wouldn’t have started without slavery being a central issue. So why would we believe them about the potential motives of this shooter.”
“The bottom line,” Cruz said as he was ending the post-rally press conference, “is that myself, and Ms. Fiorina, and other candidates are going to have no choice but to essentially ignore how harsh our rhetoric has been. We’re going to have to refer to him as a shooter, and not a terrorist, no matter what reality dictates is the truth. Because you know what? Fuck reality! Conservatives don’t have to deal with reality, only with what we wish reality was, or what we truly believe reality is. Like that Hillary ordered a stand-down the night of Benghazi and that Obama is a secret Muslim from Kenya.”
The man accused of attacking the Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs will be arraigned in court later this week.
