And when he sat down for a wide-ranging news interview that covered many of the day's most charged political debates, the senator reserved his most palpable excitement for recounting successful memes he had launched and hashtag wars he had won.Ĭruz's knack for fostering buzz within the internet's various political villages has been well-documented, with a track record that ranges from small, self-aware gags ( this hypnotic six-second video of Cruz waving an enormous American flag), to high-profile stunts ( reading Green Eggs and Ham to his young daughters from the Senate floor), to dramatic, unscripted confrontations ( getting booed off stage by a conference focused on Middle Eastern Christians after lamenting that some in the audience were "consumed with hate" and not sufficiently supportive of Israel). At one point, while posing for a photo, he spotted a life-size cardboard cutout of the Dos Equis "Most Interesting Man in the World" and pulled it into the shot with him, declaring, "We Latins need to stick together!" While recording a short video with some of BuzzFeed's producers, he was notably hands-on, tweaking the script on the fly to make the jokes his own, and tossing out self-deprecating ad libs. The besuited candidate - perhaps best known for leading the conservative crusade to defund Obamacare in 2013 that culminated in a government shutdown - strolled breezily around the office. Those instincts were on vivid display Monday, when Cruz visited BuzzFeed's New York headquarters as part of a promotional tour for his new book, A Time for Truth. But in a presidential race that will be fought largely on the battlefields of social media, Cruz's unique instinct for virality could be more disruptive than many realize. His unmatched ability to galvanize and command a right-wing army of avatars has already played a key role in his political ascent. More than perhaps any other figure in American politics at the moment, Cruz has proven himself to be a true-blue native of the social web - a politician who thrives on GIFable theatrics, shareable spontaneity, and clickable appeals to the kind of raw emotion and visceral identity that dominates Facebook feeds. Why? "I believe those in elected office should listen to the people," he said, "and social media is an avenue for doing that." He's also preternaturally good at it. Like any denizen of the internet, Cruz confesses that he sometimes has to ward off a nagging impulse to engage with the Twitter trolls hurling insults at him, but he remains committed to the morning ritual. "And actually my team will tell you, some of them - particularly the clever lefties - I laugh at." He maintains two Twitter accounts, one dedicated to his work in the Senate and the other to his presidential campaign, and he checks both frequently. "I read every leftist attack," Cruz boasted in an interview with BuzzFeed News. But there are also strangers calling him " terrifying," and " disgusting," and " insane," and " a pathological liar," and " a religious zealot dancing to the paymasters" (to take just a few examples from Monday). There are tweets from adoring tea partyers, of course. The cascading column of messages directed at the conservative firebrand is not exactly a hallelujah chorus. Ted Cruz is a populist, so the first thing he does when he wakes up every morning is reach for the iPhone on his nightstand and scroll through his mentions on Twitter.
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