CLAIM: A compilation of screenshots presentations that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has tweeted same messages after 12 mass shootings within the U.S. from 2012 to 2022.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The picture starts with an actual message Cruz tweeted following Tuesday’s capturing at an Uvalde, Texas, fundamental faculty, however the next 11 tweets were fabricated to seem like he used the very same message with a unique town title each and every time. A seek of Cruz’s lively Twitter accounts, internet archives and a database of deleted tweets, presentations he didn’t time and again tweet the similar message.
THE FACTS: Within the days following the mass capturing in Uvalde during which a gunman fatally shot 19 youngsters and two academics, some social media customers are expressing frustration on the frequency of mass shootings within the U.S. and criticizing officers’ responses to them.
One submit circulating within the aftermath falsely claimed that Cruz, a Republican senator, were recycling same messages of make stronger for sufferers following different massacres, handiest swapping within the title of town the place the mass shootings happened each and every time.
The submit options a picture appearing 12 tweets purportedly from Cruz. The primary screenshot reads, “Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the kids and households within the horrific capturing in Uvalde. We’re in shut touch with native officers, however the correct main points are nonetheless unfolding. Thanks to heroic legislation enforcement & first responders for appearing so abruptly.”
The remainder of the tweets proven use the similar textual content however substitute “Uvalde” with other places. The places indexed are New York, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Rochester, El Paso, Virginia Seashore, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown. The timestamp of each and every tweet additionally adjustments.
“Those mass shootings occur such a lot that Ted Cruz truly were given a template able to tweet each time they happen,” one Twitter consumer mentioned Thursday, together with the photograph that purported to turn a selection of the nearly-identical posts. The tweet had received greater than 16,000 retweets and 40,000 likes as of Friday morning.
The textual content within the first tweet, appearing Cruz’s reaction to Uvalde, is actual. However the date within the fabricated screenshot is mistaken. Cruz tweeted his message on Might 24, now not Might 25.
The remainder of the purported tweets incorporated within the symbol aren’t correct, in step with complex Twitter searches and exams of internet archives such because the WayBack System, and a ProPublica database that incorporates Cruz’s deleted tweets since 2013.
Whilst Cruz has used some words more than one occasions in tweets about mass shootings — as an example “lifting up in prayer,” and addressing the “neighborhood” and “first responders” — he has now not used an same template.
And Cruz didn’t tweet in any respect from both his non-public Twitter account nor his senator account in keeping with the mass shootings that took place in Sacramento, Indianapolis, Rochester, Virginia Seashore and Parkland.
The dates indexed within the fabricated screenshot falsely claiming to turn Cruz’s responses to shootings in Buffalo and Rochester also are mistaken. The date given for the Buffalo capturing is indexed as April 2022, when the capturing took place the following month, in Might. And the Rochester capturing is indexed as September 2021, however that capturing took place the yr prior, in 2020.
A spokesman for Cruz didn’t right away reply to an emailed request for remark.
This is a part of AP’s effort to handle extensively shared incorrect information, together with paintings with out of doors firms and organizations so as to add factual context to deceptive content material this is circulating on-line. Be told extra about fact-checking at AP.
