In what appeared to be a moment of misspeaking, anti-LGBTQ+ Republican Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) said in a recent congressional speech, “How about we all come together and say ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles’?”

During a congressional hearing on the current president’s actions addressing crime in cities — which seems mostly to be insulting large city mayors, ignoring higher-crime areas in red states, and then sending in armed federal officers against the mayors’ wishes — Sen. Cruz referred to Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) plea for Democrats and Republicans to “come together and have bipartisan agreement.”

“I think that’s a great idea. We should have bipartisan agreement,” Cruz said. “How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop murder’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop rape’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles’?”

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Same article as September for those curious if Raphael did it again, it’s just an old article.

    • Lukas Murch@thelemmy.club
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      5 days ago

      I have a feeling he was trying to say, “let’s stop calling people pedos”. That’s the best sane-washing I can do.

      Have we seen Cruz’s name in the ‘Trump Files - featuring Jeffrey Epstein’? Maybe he really is standing up for the Epstein class. He’s been known to lick Trump’s boots, every now and then.

      • Soup@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        The only people in the US being broadly unjustly called pedos are minorities. They are being called that by his party and the people who support his party.

        Don’t do work for this parasite.

      • GuyFawkesV@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Cruz is a piece of shit but I don’t recall seeing anything about him being the files, so guessing he’s just a bootlicker like you said.

        • fartographer@lemmy.world
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          It’s possible. It’s also possible that he just couldn’t afford to be in the Trump/Epstein files. Maybe his more affordable version of torturing children and animals is abandoning his dog during a freeze to fly to Cancun and then loudly blaming his children?

      • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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        I mean…

        “I think that’s a great idea. We should have bipartisan agreement,” Cruz said. “How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop murder’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop rape’? How about we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles’?”

        Seems pretty clear he had:

        Stop pedophiles

        In his head, realized he shouldn’t say that since he’s a spineless Republican and tried to pivot to:

        Stop attacking people

        And his mouth just said both at the same time meaning he said neither.

        The jumble that spilled out doesn’t matter, piece of shit that he is, he’s a great public speaker. He’s not trump or Biden who can’t string a sentence together. If he fucks up speaking it’s because he realized he was about to say something he couldn’t and panicked. So the value is in looking at what would logically have made sense in a debate for him to have said.

        It’s like GW Bush realizing he didn’t want a soundbite saying “shame on me”:

        There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can’t get fooled again.

        But we’re overdue for J Cole’s plan:

        Fool me three times, fuck the peace sign

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Yeah, Cruz is a terrible person and should be in prison, but this was clearly just a slip of the tongue. We should be mad at him about real things.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    4 days ago

    Just to be clear, ALL MAGAs are Pedophiles, or Pedophile Protectors.

    You know another name for a Pedophile Protector?

    Pedophile.

  • kn33@lemmy.world
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    September 30, 2025

    Not that I think it’s unimportant, but I wish we’d keep things current here.

    • discocactus@lemmy.world
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      They should just be forced to work in old folks’ homes. Cleaning bedpans and making meatloaf, not a child in sight.

  • _stranger_@lemmy.world
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    I wish that homunculus of a fleshbag had the empathetic capacity to feel any kind of philia. It might make him about literally anything but himself.

  • VitoRobles@lemmy.today
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    5 days ago

    For the past decade, senator Rafael Edward Cruz, who immigrated here from Canada and who goes by a different name for some reason, continues to be the most shittiest human being to everybody. From dead naming people, to blocking social services, to fleeing Texas when it got too cold, texas being the state he immigrated to.

    Yet people keep voting for him.

    • voxthefox@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      As a texan, it is crazy he is still a senator, our other senator, Corbyn, is equally as batshit insane but gets cover because Cruz gets all the press for his antics. Last election we were close to getting a democrat to oust Crus (Beto) but then just before the election the shooting happened in Beto’s hometown of El Paso and he went off the rails on gun control ,for a Texas democrat at least, which is basically a death kneel in Texas politics unfortunately and he ended up losing by a thin margin. It is unendingly frustrating to see the texas democratic party operate, constantly shooting themselves in the foot, pun intended.

    • chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world
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      Edward -> Ted is a pretty common preferred name. It’s very common for people to go by their middle or second name over their first. It’s also very common for Americans with non-English sounding names to adopt a more English-sounding name, whether it be a first name or a last name. For example, lots of Chinese people will have an English name they choose to go by, in addition to their legal Chinese name. And of course many trans people adopt different names post-transition, while not necessarily changing their legal name.

      You may be right in your implication that Ted Cruz prefers not to go by his birth name for political reasons. I just don’t like the association because of how it can affect all the people mentioned above. There’s nothing wrong with having a different preferred name from your legal name.

      • Art3mis@lemmy.world
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        My last name is spanish, but i pronounce it in public like an english word so that people can find it on lists 🫠

  • exaybachae@startrek.website
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    Well, it’s technically true. Pedophilia, attraction to children (prepubescent youths), is generally best addressed with acknowledgement, treatment, and management.

    Sexual assault, and rape, and predator practices are the crimes identified pedophiles are typically found participating in if their attraction to kids isn’t addressed appropriately beforehand.

    Ya’ll don’t really think being attracted to kids is a crime itself do you? Or that there aren’t thousands, or tens of thousands, of people out there that are attracted to kids and just don’t act on it, or haven’t been identified?

    Pedophilia, though specific in nature, is a similar subject to mental health in general, in how it’s treated by society. As it becomes more acceptable to admit to having mental health conditions, the instances of those conditions leading to dire circumstances dimishes.

    Be more proactive, and less reactive.

    Note: though it should be clear enough, I do want to specifically state that this message in no way promotes or supports criminal actions taken towards children or knowingly disregarding such actions if the assailants are rich, or any other such nonsense.

    Like being tall, or black, or gay, being a pedophile is a state of being, not an action, and people should not be attacked for their state of being, full stop. Crimes they commit are another matter entirely.

    • D_C@sh.itjust.works
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      I saw a documentary about three or four decades ago with a guy who was a paedophile. After watching it I felt bad for him, he basically said “I was never abused. To me it seems natural to think of children as sexual beings. I realise why it is wrong and I will never act on it.
      Think of it this way. You may find blondes beautiful, but you don’t know why. Now I imagine if everyone else was wanting you dead because you like blondes. That’s me. And no one will help me.”

      He looked for help in many different ways and places, the doctors, therapists, mental health clinics etc etc but they all just kept on reporting him to the police. I think in the end he tried to commit suicide, or he tried to chop his own balls off to stop the urges. It was something extreme. After that he got the help he needed anyways.

      I’ve looked for it a few times but never could find it again. I may be misremembering certain things, but the basics are her knew it was a mental disorder and wanted help. But only got it when things got extreme.
      These are the people who should get help.

      The ones like that obese orange child rapist should get the noose.

      • volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz
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        I’m so glad documentaries like that exist. It was documentaries like the one you mentioned that I stumbled across and that made me realize that “locking up all the pedophile monsters” was a narrative that would harm my children, not protect them. I can barely imagine how lonely and cruel such a fate must be and the bare minimum we can do as a society is to offer the help, support, and compassion to these people.

      • volvoxvsmarla@sopuli.xyz
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        It’s not, which is why OP put “technically” in the first sentence. And I think they did a great job differentiating the matter. It’s clearly not what Ted Cruz meant, yet his sentence in itself - taken out of his context - is correct. Pedophiles, as in people who have this attraction, are human beings. They deserve proactive help and support. People who abuse children are criminal( human being)s. They deserve to be treated as the human garbage that they are and be prosecuted. There is a venn diagram style overlap between child rapists and pedophiles. But it is not a necessity to have pedophilia in order to molest children (a lot of criminals assault children not out of sexual attraction but because of power dynamics), nor is every pedophile a molester or plans to eventually assault children. We need to focus on prosecuting child abusers no matter their sexual orientation, while helping people with pedophilic attractions without stigmatizing them in the meantime. Their lives suck as it is already.

        The Epstein case has drawn a lot of attention to pedophilia but we need to be really careful to not get lost here.

    • Soup@lemmy.world
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      So, we do understand “context” though, right? No one is hearing about a guy who never hurt anyone but who is managing their problem and thinking “I’m gunna go beat them up.” However, there do happen to be a whole lot of people on Cruz’s side of the aisle, including the president, who seem to be the absolute worse possible version of a pedophile.

      You haven’t said anything that nullifies, or even weakens, the arguments made or sentiments show in this post.

    • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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      We don’t call people pedophiles unless there’s evidence that they’ve abused children. I shouldn’t have to explain that. Playing these semantic word games makes it seem like you’re running defense for Ted Cruz, and I assure you he does not deserve that from you.