Ted Cruz slammed for falsely claiming Rainbow Bridge explosion was ‘terrorist attack’ | indy100

Related video: Rainbow Bridge surveillance footage shows car speeding moments before explosion

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Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, has received widespread condemnation on Twitter/X after he incorrectly claimed a vehicle explosion at Rainbow Bridge on the US-Canada border on Wednesday was a “terrorist attack”.

Shocking footage shared online shows a Bentley speeding down a road on the US side of the Niagara Falls crossing before hitting a curb and becoming airborne. It then combusted, killing the two people inside who have since been identified as 53-year-olds Monica and Kurt P Villani.

While initially sparking fears of a terror attack (which led to both Canadian and US officials closing all border bridges and grounding flights at nearby Buffalo Airport), New York governor Kathy Hochul said on Wednesday that there was “no indication of terrorist involvement”.

The Buffalo branch of the FBI then concluded its investigation a day later to say a search of the scene “revealed no explosive materials, and no terrorism nexus was identified”.

Investigators are now exploring whether the incident concerned a mechanical failure, with Niagara Falls mayor Robert Restaino telling The New York Times that the Bentley in question was an older model and a mechanical glitch may have been to blame for the car suddenly accelerating.

Meanwhile, law enforcement sources told CNN the couple killed in the crash had planned to attend a KISS concert in Toronto which was cancelled due to frontman Paul Stanley being ill with the flu.

The pair reportedly headed to a casino near the border instead, with the crash happening after this.

As for Cruz, the politician shared a since-deleted post to Twitter/X on Wednesday in which he quote-tweeted a Fox News video of the incident and wrote “this confirms our worst fear: the explosion at Rainbow Bridge was a terrorist attack”.

He also falsely branded the pair killed in the explosion “attackers”.

The misinformation from a sitting US politician was met with outrage from other Twitter users:

This is so irresponsible. Ted Cruz, a United States Senator, declares a terrorist attack, when there was no terrorist attack.
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The \u201cit\u2019s too soon to jump to conclusions\u201d crowd following every mass shooting had absolutely no problem proclaiming a tragic car accident was an international terrorist attack. Their words are useless. @tedcruz @KariLake @VivekGRamaswamy @FoxNews @bennyjohnson @charliekirk11
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Ted Cruz tells us it\u2019s too soon to talk about the causes of gun violence in the aftermath of every mass shooting tragedy, but he didn\u2019t hesitate to rashly and wrongly tweet that America was under attack by terrorists earlier today. And his tweet is still up 11 hours later
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Ted Cruz refuses to delete this long debunked notion that the Rainbow Bridge incident was a terrorist attack.\n\nWhat can we expect from the guy who let trump diss his wife and his father before bending the knee.\n\nPathetic.
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This is reckless lie by a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, who followed Fox News as it careened off the speculation cliff.
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Ted, what you say now is\u2026 \n\n\u201cI would like to retract this tweet below. It was completely factually wrong. It was a mistake for me to share it and I apologize to my constituents and all the citizens of the United States.\u201d \n\nMan up.
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Somebody needs to tell Ted Cruz to delete this. What time is it in Cancun?
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Although Cruz eventually took the tweet down, he has not commented on the error, instead continuing to post to the platform as normal – including an attempt to ridicule Vice President Kamala Harris for showing a gas stove in a Thanksgiving photo with her husband, the Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff.

“Wait… that’s a gas stove! The same kind Dems want to BAN you from owning,” he quipped.

Except, that’s not true, as White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday that “the president does not support banning gas stoves, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

Yet this tweet is still up at the time of writing…

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