By: Rahul Adhikari
March 31 2023
No, Senator Ted Cruz didn't tweet the same message after every mass shooting incident in the U.S.
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
An edited image has been shared, falsely claiming that Ted Cruz posted the same condolence message after every mass shooting incident in the U.S.
Claim ID d9708818
Context
A post circulating on social media claims that U.S. senator Ted Cruz used identical tweets or "boilerplates" to respond to all mass shootings in the United States. The viral image includes screenshots of 12 tweets, allegedly posted by the Texas senator, that carry identical language except for the location, all in response to various mass shooting incidents.
A user posted the picture on Twitter on March 28, which has garnered over 25,000 likes and 1.7 million views. The caption reads, "So @tedcruz, you use the exact same form response for every mass shooting? You are a vile human being." Several other social media users posted the same image on Facebook and Twitter.
In Fact
On May 25, 2022, Cruz, a member of the Republican Party and the Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008, responded to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that took 21 lives and left 18 people with injuries. The senator wrote on Twitter, "Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde. We are in close contact with local officials, but the precise details are still unfolding. Thank you to heroic law enforcement & first responders for acting so swiftly."
A screenshot of this tweet has been manipulated to make a collage of 12 tweets, each with different locations. Searching Twitter, Logically found Cruz's tweets about the New York, El Paso, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Newtown shootings. Each tweet had a different message of condolence. Additionally, Cruz did not tweet about shootings in the other locations mentioned in the tweet screenshots, such as Sacramento, Indianapolis, Rochester, Virginia Beach, and Parkland.
We noted that some of the years and dates in the tweets are incorrect. For instance, the shooting in Buffalo, New York, occurred in May 2022, and Cruz tweeted his message on May 15. However, the tweet in the collage is dated April 2022. Similarly, as mentioned in the tweets, the shooting in Rochester occurred in September 2020, not 2021.
The viral post has been circulating since the shooting happened at the Covenant School in Nashville, where the attacker killed three young students and three school staff members. Cruz expressed his sympathy and commented on the incident on his Twitter account, writing, "Heidi and I are praying for the entire Nashville community right now. May God's comfort be with the Covenant School in the wake of this evil atrocity."
Apart from Cruz's original message of condolence about the Uvalde shooting, the tweets in the collage do not exist. The Republican senator is known to use similar phrases in his tweets, but we found no evidence that he has reused the same template. The same claim was also viral in 2022 and was debunked by several fact-checking organizations.
The Verdict
The viral image claiming Cruz uses a Twitter template for mass shootings is a digital manipulation. The tweets shown in the image are edited versions of a tweet he posted on May 24, 2022, in response to a shooting in Uvalde. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.