Oct 30, 2024
Ted Cruz's Anti-Trans Ad Features Minors Without Permission
A school district is demanding that Sen. Ted Cruz take down an ad featuring the images of minor athletes, falsely insinuating that they are transgender.
- 9 minutes
All in all, Red is pushing
an extreme liberal vision for America.
Boys and girls, locker rooms, boys and
girls bathrooms, boys and girls sports.
And he's just getting started.
I'm Ted Cruz, and I approve this message.
You might have noticed that the Ted
Cruz political ad that we just played
[00:00:18]
had a portion where individuals
had their faces blurred out.
We did that.
Ted Cruz and his campaign did not do that.
We blurred their images because their
images of minors and those images of those
minors were used without their permission,
[00:00:34]
and they were identified
as transgender students when they're
in fact not transgender at all.
So it turns out that because of the fact
that they were exploited
for this political ad,
the Oregon school district where the girls
or one of the girls is a student
[00:00:53]
is asking Ted Cruz to, you know, pull
the ad you didn't ask for for permission.
You're using images of minors
and you're misidentifying who they are.
So again, we blurred their faces.
But this is the moment
in question in the ad.
[00:01:09]
I get that it's a quick shot,
but it doesn't matter.
They're in the ad.
They didn't ask to be in the ad.
They didn't give permission.
This is insane.
This is insane. It's insane.
Look, look, I don't know
how parents do it, man.
I don't know how parents do it because I.
I'm so loyal and I love so deeply that,
[00:01:29]
like, if this was my kid, I.
I do not advocate for violence.
I'm just going to put it out there.
It'd be very difficult for me
to not act in a way that I would condemn.
Okay, I would certainly condemn.
But when it comes to my loved ones,
I mean, how.
[00:01:46]
Yeah.
Knowing what is likely to come
to those kids.
- Yes, yes.
- The right wing piranha descend on them.
Yeah.
If it was my kid, Ted Cruz.
Better flee to Cancun.
Yeah, is what I would say. Agreed.
Somewhere he'd be more comfortable.
So the Beaverton School District sent
a letter to the Cruz campaign demanding
[00:02:03]
that the ad be pulled down immediately.
Officials wrote in their letter
the two athletes pictured are minors.
The one on the left in the Westview hoodie
is our student, the family,
nor the school or school district ever
gave permission for this photo to be used.
[00:02:22]
In addition, the ad implies
that at least one of the athletes
in this photo is transgender.
Please know that both of these athletes
were born female and identify as female.
They are not transgender.
It is alarming that your campaign would
have produced, distributed promoted this
[00:02:41]
ad with false information, especially with
minor children involved, the letter said.
It asks that the ad be pulled from any and
all distribution platforms immediately.
So I'm going to pause for a second because
it's important to know the double standard
in advertising regulations.
[00:02:58]
I don't know if the lack of Regulations
pertaining to political ads
would basically protect Ted Cruz here.
But generally speaking,
generally speaking, they can lie to you
[00:03:14]
in political ads all they want.
False advertising is allowed in political
ads, which I'm sure you already know,
because you've seen political ads
that are full of lies when it comes
to companies advertising their products.
There are regulations
preventing false advertising.
[00:03:31]
So again, I don't know if there are
any regulations in place to go after
what Ted Cruz's campaign is doing here.
But there are minors involved,
and this is so deplorable and disgusting.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah, I think it's actually I think it's
important also to identify, I think
[00:03:48]
the three levels of how messed up it is.
So the ad that they released is, I guess,
especially messed up because they decided,
hey, we just need some kids.
Who the hell cares if they're even trans?
I mean, we don't really care
about this issue.
We're just using it for a political point.
Points to throw whatever kids you want,
and you're implying
[00:04:05]
that they're trans when they're not.
So that's especially messed up,
by the way.
If they were trans, it would also be
super, super messed up to take two random
kids school kids and use them to attack
your political opponents.
So even if they hadn't gotten that wrong
or cared enough to look into it,
[00:04:22]
that would still be messed up.
Also, if they hadn't used any photo
and they hadn't shown any kid but the ad
otherwise had been the same, it would be
super, super messed up because Texas is
a state that has a lot of people in it.
It's got a lot going on,
it's got a lot of problems.
[00:04:41]
And the idea that you and the closing days
of your campaign need to be doing what
so many Republicans are doing right now,
especially the Trump campaign,
where they're putting more money
into ads specifically about trans people
than like literally anything else.
The idea that that's one of the top 250
biggest issues facing Texas is absurd.
[00:05:00]
I lived in Texas for half a decade.
I know they've got other stuff they
can deal with the fact that needlessly,
people die of heat in the summers,
die of cold in the winters,
and no politician there
seems to give a damn about it,
or is going to do anything to stop it.
The fact that he's campaigning on this,
that spineless little weenie Ted Cruz,
[00:05:19]
when he's been also presenting himself
as some sort of moderate
and bipartisan all that is just grotesque.
So what they did, even how they could
have been a little bit less inaccurate
and that they did it at all, all
messed up. 100% agree with you on this.
Now, the ad did run during football games
in Dallas and Houston earlier this month.
[00:05:39]
A spokesperson for Cruz's campaign
said the ads are no longer on air,
on the air, but also, both are,
but both of them are still available on
YouTube, which is worse, right?
Like videos on demand
are sure easily accessible.
[00:05:56]
I assume less people will see it now
that it's not, you know,
being shoved in their faces on TV.
Yeah, you'd have to look for it.
And that's that's a fair point.
The spokesperson also said
that the picture features a female athlete
who spoke out against boys playing
in girls sports after participating in
[00:06:13]
a track meet where a biological male beat.
We all know it was implied by the image.
Let's put the image,
obviously the censored image back up.
Okay, what was implied here is
that one of them is a transgender athlete
who's far bigger
and is kicking the female athletes asses.
[00:06:32]
Like. And it's unfair.
Like that's the that's
the whole point of this image.
Even though both are biological females,
even if.
That's not what they were trying to do,
the mere fact that that a kid said
something means, oh, they're part
of our campaign now, that's it's a kid.
[00:06:47]
- No, it's a kid.
- Okay.
The photo was also featured
in a Central Oregon Daily News story
about outrage over a transgender athlete
competing in a track meet.
One of the girls in the photo
is quoted in the story saying she hopes
people are realizing that it's not fair
to the girls who are running.
[00:07:07]
But when the news outlet pressed them on
using the photo of minors without context
because remember, it's a political ad,
no one's going to know
the context behind the photo.
They're going to just look
at what's being implied
by the use of that photo in the ad.
[00:07:23]
So when they were pressed on that
the Cruz campaign didn't respond,
and the school district says
that the district also hasn't received
any response from the Cruz campaign.
And as for the actual substance of the ad,
Cruz's opponent, Colin Allred,
[00:07:38]
responded saying, quote, let me be clear.
I don't want boys playing girls sports
or any of this ridiculous stuff.
Ted Cruz is saying.
So, so, so an added level of the ad
isn't even accurate
as to what Colin Allred would do or says.
[00:07:56]
What his views are.
On the also kind of sucks that if you're
trans in Texas, you apparently
can't turn to either of them
to show you even basic decency so that
also sucks on top of everything else.
But it's also super inaccurate.
Colin Allred is not some radical commie
or anything like that.
[00:08:12]
- That's not him at all.
- I just, I wonder if we're ever going
to experience a day in American politics
where people running for public office
address actual,
important bread and butter issues
that are impacting, you know,
[00:08:30]
wide swaths of of the American population.
The dirty tricks, the divisiveness,
the toxicity, the defamation,
the libel, all of it.
I'm so sick of it. I'm so disgusted by it.
And I just I'm in.
[00:08:46]
I'm amazed at how much collateral
damage there is with this form of politics
and how little they care,
even when it involves actual human beings,
even when it involves actual minors.
I mean, the they cannot, like Ted Cruz,
cannot run on what he actually believes
[00:09:05]
and who he's actually there to serve
because he would literally
never get elected.
And also there is a downside
to one side or both sides being super
divisive and attacking each other.
It drives down turnout.
Not everybody cares about that.
Do you think Ted Cruz is like,
oh no, not as many Texans
[00:09:22]
will participate in the system?
That's such a that's what the laws are
designed to do is to drive down turnout.
Yeah.
I mean, if you don't hear any politician
addressing what you care about, like,
why would you be engaged in the electoral
process, in the political system?
[00:09:39]
Some do.
Like you pointed out in the first hour
about Harris's speech, like there
are some people trying to run on that.
And Biden also, you know, back in the day
when he could speak a little bit more,
he tried to do that quite a bit.
I think Harris handled it perfectly.
And anyway, I'm upset
about that whole situation,
[00:09:55]
and I think it's incredibly unfair to her.
- But here we are.
- Thanks for watching.
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