The claim: In 2016, Ted Cruz tweeted, ‘I’ll believe in climate change when Texas freezes over’
Following Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun as his home state was dealing with the aftermath of an unprecedented winter storm, an image went viral purporting to show a tweet on climate change made by the Republican in 2016.
The image, shared to Facebook by many users across the platform, claims Cruz, R-Texas, tweeted, “I’ll believe in climate change when Texas freezes over.”
The posts claim the tweet was sent at 5:44 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2016, and the profile picture and blue checkmark seen in the image matches the one displayed on Cruz’s official Twitter profile.
“There’s always a tweet,” wrote one Facebook page in a post that has over 400 shares. “This 2016 Ted Cruz Tweet did not age well, and it has also frozen solid,” wrote another user in a Feb. 19 post with over 800 shares.
USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook users who shared the image for comment.
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No evidence of tweet
A search for the claimed climate change tweet on Cruz’spersonal account, @tedcruz, and his official Twitter page, @SenTedCruz, results in no matches.
There is also no record of the tweet on ProPublica’s Politwoops database that tracks deleted tweets by elected officials.
Additionally, the tweet does not appear in archived versions of Cruz’s Twitter page from September 2016 using the Internet Wayback Machine.
Steve Guest, a communications adviser for Cruz confirmed to Factcheck.org in an email that the tweet is fabricated. USA TODAY reached out to Cruz’s office for comment.
USA TODAY has previously debunked fabricated tweets claiming to come from politicians including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and former President Barack Obama.
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Cruz on climate change
The Republican senator has denied that climate change exists on multiple occasions and claimed that there is no scientific evidence to support global warming.
“Climate change is the perfect pseudoscientific theory for a big government politician who wants more power,” Cruz said in a 2015 interview with NPR. “Why? Because it is a theory that can never be disproven.”
Cruz has also repeatedly argued that there has been “no significant warming whatsoever for the last 18 years,” based on data from satellites, The Washington Post reported in 2016.
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Our rating: False
The claim that Ted Cruz tweeted, “I’ll believe in climate change when Texas freezes over” is FALSE, based on our research. There is no evidence of the tweet on his Twitter pages, or archived versions of them and his office has confirmed that it is fabricated. Cruz has previously made statements questioning climate change.
Our fact-check sources:
- Sen. Ted Cruz, accessed Feb. 21, personal Twitter page
- Sen. Ted Cruz, accessed Feb. 21, official Twitter page
- Politwoops, Oct. 19, 2012, Deleted Tweets From Ted Cruz, R-Texas
- Web archive, Sept. 16, 2016, Ted Cruz Twitter page
- Web archive, Sept. 12, 2016, Ted Cruz Twitter page
- USA TODAY, Jan. 16, Fact check: Fake tweet used to claim AOC called for a ‘purge’ of conservatives
- USA TODAY, Jan. 11, Fact check: Barack Obama tweet about Donald Trump’s Twitter ban is fake
- Factcheck.org, Feb. 19, Viral Posts Attribute Fake Tweet to Cruz
- NPR, Dec. 9, 2015, Scientific Evidence Doesn’t Support Global Warming, Sen. Ted Cruz Says
- The Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2016, Ted Cruz keeps saying that satellites don’t show global warming. Here’s the problem
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Our fact check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.
