A collage of 12 tweet screenshots purporting to show United States Senator Ted Cruz used the same text to respond to multiple mass shooting incidents in the country, is fake
BOOM found that except one tweet, all other tweet screenshots in the collage are fake.
Six people including three children and three staff members were killed at a private Christian school in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee on March 27, 2023, when a gunman opened fire.
The police identified the shooter as Audrey Hale (28), who was a former student at the school. Hale was fatally shot by officers not long after they arrived at the scene. Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake stated that the shooter was a transgender person and added that they were still in the initial investigation to say if it actually played a role in the incident according to NBC News.
The graphic showing a combination of 12 identical tweets is being shared to criticise Cruz after the recent Nashville school shooting as the Senator has not been in favour of stricter gun control measures in the US and has opposed gun control legislation.
The first tweet in the graphic reads, “Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde. We are in close contact with local officials, but the precise details are still unfolding. Thank you to heroic law enforcement & first responders for acting so swiftly.”
The other 11 tweets have the same text shown using the same text but different locations in place of “Uvalde”. The other locations mentioned are New York, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Rochester, El Paso, Virginia Beach, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown. All these places witnessed incidents of mass shootings previously.
The graphic was shared by the Twitter user Chris Davis (@14storiesCA) with the caption, "you use the exact same form response for every mass shooting? You are a vile human being"
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The claim is also being shared on Facebook.
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The same graphic has been viral since 2022 and has been previously fact-checked by several fact-checkers.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the claim that US Senator Ted Cruz responded to 12 incidents of mass shootings in the United States with identical tweet text is false and except for one tweet that mentions Uvalde, all the other 11 tweet screenshots are fake.
After the Uvalde shooting, Cruz had tweeted the text seen in the first screenshot.
Using advanced Twitter search, we were able to establish that none of the other 11 screenshots with identical text mentioning the places New York, Sacramento, Indianapolis, Rochester, El Paso, Virginia Beach, Pittsburgh, Parkland, Las Vegas, Orlando and Newtown, were tweeted by Cruz from his official Twitter handle.
Click here to view the advanced Twitter search results, with the keyword 'shooting'
Cruz also tweeted about the Nashville school shooting on March 28, 2023. The text of his tweet does not match the text used in the fake screenshot.