Cruz Critics Create Mock “Barbie” Doll Line Trolling Senator
Political action committee creates commercial and doll prototypes mocking the senator’s fixation on culture-war issues.
An anti-Ted Cruz political action committee has released an ad trolling the Texas Republican senator for obsessing over what he claims are hidden messages in the Barbie movie rather than more pressing political issues.
The “Lose Cruz” PAC’s ad mocks the senator’s obsession with culture-war issues — both real and imagined — by unveiling a collection of “Cruz-inspired Barbie dolls” mocking Cruz’s past actions, statements, or political positions.
The three Cruz-inspired dolls featured in the video show an “Insurrection Barbie”, with included a “Stop the Steal” button and podium to speak from as you attempt to “destroy democracy,” a “MAGA Podcaster Barbie” to help “promote the MAGA agenda” — a nod to Cruz’s own political podcast — and a “Cancun Barbie,” referring to the time when Cruz left Texas to vacation in Cancun while millions of Texans were left without power and water following a historic winter storm.
Cruz recently branded the Barbie movie as Chinese propaganda for a scene in the movie depicting a cartoonish map of the world, displaying a dashed line through the water surrounding the map’s crudely-drawn Asian continent.
Some have argued that the line is meant to represent the so-called “nine-dash line,” which Chinese propagandists have drawn on maps in order to lay claim to disputed territory in the South China Sea that other nations say does not belong to China. The controversy over the imaginary map led Vietnam, which has an ongoing conflict with China over where their maritime borders begin and end, to ban the film. The Philippines also initially flagged the movie over the map before eventually allowing the film to be screened, although the government has asked Warner Bros. to blur the line “in order to avoid further misinterpretations.”
The film’s distributor, Warner Bros., has defended the map of the world that appears in the film, arguing that the map is a children’s drawing and has no intended political meaning.
But Cruz — who frequently seizes on controversies that keep him in the public eye and allow him to pander to conservatives by ranting against various liberal “bogeymen,” including Hollywood at large — has insisted that the inclusion of dotted lines on the map used in the Barbie movie can only be interpreted as an attempt to push “Chinese communist propaganda.”
In a tweet, Cruz alleged that there may be a link between where many Barbie dolls are produced and the allegedly “political” message being pushed in the movie, writing: “I guess Barbie is made in China…”
A spokesperson for the senator told The Daily Mail: “Senator Cruz has been fighting for years to prevent American companies, especially Hollywood studios, from altering and censoring their content to appease the Chinese Communist Party.”
But the Lose Cruz PAC alleges that Cruz’s obsession with social issues — as he frequently rails against LGBTQ visibility, fixating especially on transgender individuals — or pop culture topics as evidence that the senator cares more about his public position and personal fame than his constituents’ needs or concerns.
Since the PAC’s ad was published and shared on social media, it has gained more than 400,000 views.
While the mock dolls touted in the commercial were initially envisioned as a fake product that would never result in a tangible product, the PAC gained so much feedback from Cruz-haters that it was inspired to create doll prototypes and deliver the dolls “inspired by his (lack of) work” to the senator’s office in the U.S. Capitol.
Today we delivered the “Ted Cruz Barbie Collection” to our part-time senator’s office.@TedCruz please enjoy Cancún Barbie, MAGA Podcaster Barbie, and Insurrection Barbie—inspired by you! pic.twitter.com/2DL9dN33fB
— Lose Cruz (@LoseCruzPAC) July 17, 2023
“Today we delivered the “Ted Cruz Barbie Collection” to our part-time senator’s office,” the PAC tweeted. “@TedCruz please enjoy Cancún Barbie, MAGA Podcaster Barbie, and Insurrection Barbie — inspired by you!”
The dolls are not available for purchase by the broader public. Thus far, Cruz has not publicly responded to the stunt.
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