He says Ted Cruz is God’s problem, not Satan’s.
A campaign dominated by big and difficult debates witnessed, perhaps, its most perplexing and certainly its most spiritual one yet on Thursday morning.
Is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) actually Lucifer?
It’s a question prompted not by conspiracy theorists who’ve wondered whether Cruz is the Zodiac Killer finally stepping out in public after decades in hiding. Rather, the charge was leveled by someone with a bit more gravitas: former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who told students at Stanford University that the Texas Republican was “Lucifer in the flesh“ in addition to being “a miserable son of a bitch.”
Cruz brushed off the insults at a press conference on Thursday morning, seeming at times to welcome the animus of a former lawmaker who embodied the Republican establishment.
But what about the substance of the charge, dammit? Is there, indeed, something satanic to the senator? Do Republicans in Congress see the dark threads of Luciferianism in their colleague from Texas?
To get to the bottom of this, HuffPost called up Lucien Greaves, a spokesperson for the Satanic Temple. His response was that Boehner was basically full of it, trying to absolve the worst of Christianity by calling him a product of Satanism.
“It is past time we stop blaming the activities of the upholders of the Christian faith on a Satanic philosophy,” Greaves told me. “Boehner is trying to convey that if it is bad and he disagrees with it, it is of Satan and Lucifer, and if it is of good, it is of Christ. That is what is problematic with the Christian ideology.”
“I don’t think Boehner is necessarily saying that he actually thinks Cruz is a Satanist because I just don’t think he is thinking that hard about the issues,” Greaves added. “These are simple-minded people. Our situation in U.S. politics is much worse than you can imagine.”
Lest you think that Greaves is a closet Cruz fan, lashing out at Boehner as a way to boost his candidate of choice, fret not. He despises the Texas Republican.
“I think he is a real disaster. I think he is possibly one of the worst. I think we have been on a race to the bottom for a long time now, and you keep thinking it can’t get worse and people would wise up after a clown like [Sarah] Palin or George Bush. But then you see people lining up around Ted Cruz.”
