'A Pile of Lies': Ted Cruz Sets Record Straight After Magazine Calls Infamous Segregationist a Republican

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) tore into GQ magazine Thursday after the outlet published a correction to a pro-abortion article whose author wrongly labeled infamous segregationist George Wallace a Republican.

The article — “The Anti-Abortion Movement Was Always Built on Lies” — was written by Laura Bassett and comes ahead of the release of a new FX docuseries that purports to show Norma McCorvey, the “Jane Roe” in Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court case that legalized abortion, was lying when she became a pro-life activist in the years after the 1973 ruling (the claims of the documentary have since been called into question).

Cruz reminded Bassett that Wallace was, in fact, a Democrat.

2/x Also, Margaret Sanger—founder of Planned Parenthood, Dem’s hero & racist eugenicist—wrote “We should require mandatory sterilizations of those less desirable” & she wrote “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.“ https://t.co/ArGbdkI8qn

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 21, 2020

The error, first spotted by Real Clear Investigations writer Mark Hemingway, was ultimately corrected. The rewritten section now states:

The George Wallace, the longtime governor of Alabama, a Democrat who would later join the far-right American Independent Party, four-time presidential candidate, and outspoken segregationist who is often compared to Donald Trump, backed the legalization of abortion in the late 1960s because he claimed black women were “breeding children as a cash crop” and taking advantage of social welfare programs.

But as a report from The Washington Post about the four-time governor’s death stated, Wallace ran for president with the American Independent Party in 1968. Then, in 1972, he ran for president again — as a Democrat. He ran once more in 1976, before dropping out and endorsing then-candidate Carter.

Cruz ripped the magazine for promoting “a pile of lies,” which isn’t a stretch, given Bassett also bizarrely asserted it was the pro-lifers alone who denied one-term President Jimmy Carter re-election.

She argued the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of Liberty University and the Moral Majority that helped elect President Ronald Reagan, was becoming “uncomfortable” with “the spike in legal abortions,” so he and his Christian cohorts “went all-in on making abortion a wedge issue that could marry the Christian right and the GOP.”

“They founded the Moral Majority in 1979, a political organization that essentially used abortion to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term, and made reproductive rights the political rallying cry it is today,” wrote Bassett, asserting pro-lifers singlehandedly stole the presidency from Carter.

The "history" in the 'AKA Jane Roe' article from @GQMagazine is quite something. Did you know Jimmy Carter lost in 1980 bc the Christian right "used abortion to deny President Jimmy Carter a second term"? LMAO whatever makes yall feel better. pic.twitter.com/HHPOlg3TEd

— Dan Andros (@DanAndros) May 22, 2020

Never mind the fact that abortion is a moral aberration, not an insignificant “wedge issue.”

Cruz followed up his initial tweet by noting Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger once wrote, “We should require mandatory sterilizations of those less desirable,” and, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”

All of this comes as the FX series about McCorvey, “AKA Jane Roe,” is set to debut.

During an interview with CBN News, pro-life activist Abby Johnson, a former top executive for Planned Parenthood, described the claims of the docuseries as “patently false.”

“The abortion industry manipulated her when she was young into being Jane Roe,” said Johnson. “And I believe that they manipulated her in the very last year of her life. What I saw in the final days of her life when I spoke to her on the phone was a woman who was contrite, she was repentant, she was tormented by what she had allowed the abortion industry to coerce her into doing.”