Ted Cruz Verbatim Says, “Let’s Stop Attacking Pedophiles”
The Texas senator made a Freudian slip in a congressional hearing.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz thinks we need to “stop attacking pedophiles.”
The Texas senator made the brutal (potentially) Freudian slip during a Senate hearing about crime on Tuesday.
“Senator Booker also said we should have bipartisan agreement. I think that’s a great idea, we should have bipartisan agreement,” Cruz said. “How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop murders?’ How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop rapes?’ How ’bout we all come together and say, ‘Let’s stop attacking pedophiles?’”
Cruz didn’t even stop to correct himself. He immediately started to push the narrative that the National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C., virtually stopped crime.
It does not really make what Ted Cruz said much better, perhaps just a pure mental slip. Who is to say pic.twitter.com/G2VVnCFOkT
— ThePoliticalPlaybook (@TPP2025Pod) October 1, 2025
Many were quick to point out the irony in Cruz’s statement, as he truly has been protecting pedophiles. The senator, along with almost all of the Republican Party save for Representatives Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have actively opposed measures that would release files on Jeffrey Epstein—offering posthumous protection to the serial sexual abuser and his wealthy friends (like President Trump).
“These people are so deep in their culture wars they can’t even string a sentence together without accidentally showing you where their minds are,” one X user wrote. “And somehow this is who’s writing our laws.”