Ted Cruz, the U.S. Senator from Texas who lost to Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries, and narrowly won back his Senate seat in the 2018 midterms, decided to “honor” the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the August 28 anniversary of his “I Have A Dream” Speech.
But things don’t always go as planned.
Wednesday marked 56 years since the late civil rights leader spoke his momentous words at the March on Washington. Cruz attempted to capitalize on the occasion with a tweet touting “equality,” “justice,” and “humanity,” and Twitter essentially told the longtime politician to miss them with the BS.
“On this day, 56 years ago, Dr. King gave his mighty I Have a Dream speech from the steps on the Lincoln Memorial,” Cruz tweeted. “His vision—of equality, of justice, of humanity—resonates today with trembling power. Today, listen again to the entire historic speech.” Cruz also included a link to the audio version of King’s delivery.
Within moments of Cruz’s post going live, Twitter users began to call out the Senator for supporting Trump, a man whose actions go against many of the values MLK held. The hypocrisy led one user to say, “Don’t believe Dr. King would approve of concentration camps or voters suppression. Don’t believe he would approve of destroying public education. Denying healthcare with pre-existing conditions. You preach a lot Ted but you don’t practice much.”
Though commentators pretty much agreed that King’s words were still significant today and needed to be remembered at a time like this, most of them wanted Cruz to keep MLK’s name out of his mouth —or keyboard for that matter.