Actor Jim Carrey excoriated Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas up for re-election, in a blistering tweet sent out on the eve of Election Day.
In it, Carrey — who’d earlier expressed his support for Cruz’s Democratic rival, Beto O’Rourke, in a horror movie-inspired political cartoon — suggested that President Donald Trump had grabbed the senator “by the pussy.”
The line was, of course, a reference to the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump was heard telling host Billy Bush that, as a “star,” women “let you do” anything.
The actor’s takedown had been in response to a tweet posted by Cruz on Monday morning in which the senator had called out Carrey and his artwork depicting Cruz as a vampire disintegrating in sunlight.
“Jim Carrey made a mistake here: Vampires are dead, and everyone knows the dead vote Democrat,” the senator wrote.
Cruz has come under scrutiny for cozying up to Trump in the lead-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections.
The two men had been bitter rivals as GOP candidates during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump, who coined the nickname “Lyin’ Ted,” repeatedly hurled insults at the senator and, at one point, repeated a baseless conspiracy theory linking Cruz’s father to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Trump also retweeted an unflattering photo of Cruz’s wife and threatened he would “spill the beans” on her (though it was never clear what he’d been referring to).
Recent polls show Cruz in the lead in the competitive Senate race against O’Rourke — though his victory is by no means assured. O’Rourke, who has represented Texas’ 16th Congressional District since 2013, has seen a groundswell of support in the state. Recent polls show him trailing his GOP opponent by 6 percentage points.
