On the day before Thanksgiving an American and his wife reportedly drove their $300,000 Bentley across the Rainbow Bridge that starts in the U.S from Niagara Falls, New York, and ends on the other side in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.
They didn’t make it to the other side.
Their “speeding car crashed in flames,” Reuters reported Wednesday. The couple died. The New York Times reported the mayor of Niagara Falls, NY, “said the couple had originally been headed to a concert in Canada, and investigators believe it was a Kiss show that was called off after a band member’s illness.”
The Times adds that the FBI on Wednesday, hours after the crash, concluded it was not related to terrorism. The Reuters headline now also says, “terrorism ruled out.”
“Investigators were looking at the possibility that the driver had a medical incident, or there was a malfunction with the vehicle,” the New York Post reports.
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None of that information, which has now been widely reported, exists in a current social media post U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote on X (formerly Twitter), Wednesday afternoon, after the crash but before facts were known and widely reported. Cruz’s post has been viewed 4.8 million times.
“This confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack,” Senator Cruz, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, falsely claimed Wednesday afternoon. “Both attackers are dead, and one law enforcement officer is injured. I am praying that officer makes a full recovery and is able to spend Thanksgiving surrounded by family and loved ones. Thank you to our law enforcement officers who are remaining vigilant and working to protect Americans traveling for Thanksgiving.”
It was not a terrorist attack, a fact made clear quickly, despite reports by Fox News portraying it as a terror attack.
Cruz posted his false claims atop a Fox News report posted by far-right political commentator Benny Johnson, once called a “Pizzagate propagandist,” who also works for Charlie Kirk’s far-right group Turning Point USA.
Both Cruz’s post and Johnson’s posts are still up. Johnson’s video has been viewed 2.3 million times. A “readers’ note” was appended to Johnson’s video, pointing to New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s post saying, “No evidence of terrorism indicated at this time.”
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A “Readers’ note” was also appended to Cruz’s post, saying: “The explosion at the bridge Cruz references was determined to not be a terrorist attack, and instead an accident involving reckless driving.”
Senator Cruz, first elected to the Senate in 2012, is an attorney with a law degree from Harvard, and a former Texas Solicitor General. His official congressional biography adds Cruz was a “law clerk to Chief Justice of the United States William Rehnquist,” and, “associate deputy attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice.”
Cruz is very active on social media. Since his false tweet he’s made numerous posts on X, including promoting his podcast (“Stay entertained during your Thanksgiving travels by subscribing to Verdict today,”) five times, and late Friday morning promoting his book: “Perfect Black Friday Christmas Gift—The Bestseller Book Unwoke: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism In America.”
The Texas Senator’s false claim, which he has neither removed nor corrected in any manner, has led to tremendous outrage.
U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) reposted Cruz’s claim with a screenshot of an FBI statement that reads in part: “FBI Buffalo has concluded our investigation at the scene of the Rainbow Bridge incident. A search of the scene revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified.”
“This erroneous tweet is still up. Because the truth means nothing to MAGA fascists like Ted Cruz,” wrote former Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, who now writes a newsletter on politics and the media.
“Ted Cruz tells us it’s too soon to talk about the causes of gun violence in the aftermath of every mass shooting tragedy, but he didn’t hesitate to rashly and wrongly tweet that America was under attack by terrorists earlier today,” wrote gun violence prevention activist and Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts.
“What a monster is Ted Cruz,” wrote The Atlantic Norman Ornstein in response to Watt’s tweet.
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“This is embarrassing for you, Ted. Why not just delete this now that it’s completely bogus and wrong? Why prove to everyone you have zero sense of responsibility to the truth?” asked Christian conservative and attorney Heath Mayo.
“This is reckless lie by a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, who followed Fox News as it careened off the speculation cliff,” noted Brandon Wolf, the national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.
A former prosecutor for the New York Attorney General’s Office, Tristan Snell, served up this warning:
“By the way, anyone who continues to say the Rainbow Bridge crash was a ‘terrorist attack’ is potentially now liable for defamation by the families of the deceased. Ted Cruz, among others, should be looking for a lawyer.”
See the social media posts above or at this link.