Ted Cruz Commercial Doesn't Even Try To Be Accurate, Honest.

With the Nov. 5 general election only a few days away, there’s no better time than the present to take a really close look at yet another political TV commercial, regardless of how hard we’ve tried to avoid the seemingly unavoidable clips in recent days.

We’ve already fact-checked a Colin Allred commercial as well as a Ted Cruz commercial, but since that time, each candidate has rolled out new ads as polls indicate the race for Cruz’s U.S. Senate seat is as tight as it's ever been. We’ll get to Allred again before Nov. 5, but for today, we’re taking a look at one of Cruz’s recent offerings.

And before we get started, we'll say that some commercials are easier to fact-check than others. When an ad makes news for being brazenly misleading, it’s worth noting, which is the case with Cruz’s “Radical” TV spot. Not long after the ad begins, a pair of what appears to be female teens are shown on the screen. One wears a Westview (Oregon) school-branded hoodie and the other a track and field tank top with the words “boys in girls sports” in all caps running at the bottom of the screen.

In short, it’s detestable to frame the picture of minors in such a way without context of any kind. But in the spirit of objective fact-checking, the presentation is blatantly false.

According to The Dallas Morning News on Tuesday, school district officials from Beaverton, Oregon, sent a letter to the Cruz campaign requesting the ad be pulled from airwaves and to clarify that the picture featured minors and that it was used without their consent. There was also another important matter the district wanted to clear up.

“In addition, the ad implies that at least one of the athletes in this photo is transgender. Please know that both of these athletes were born female and identify as female; they are not transgendered,” the letter read.

In response, the Cruz campaign had to resort to some rather drastic back-bending to make the situation seem not so absurd. A spokesperson for the campaign told KGW 8 News in Oregon that “the picture features a female athlete who spoke out against boys playing in girls’ sports after participating in a track meet where a biological male beat female athletes and impacted individual and team medal results.”

None of that alleged context, let alone information on the track meet in question, is mentioned or noted in any way in the TV spot.

As for the rest of the ad entitled “Radical,” we took a closer look at the claims.


THE CLAIMS: “Boys in girls’ locker rooms,” “Boys in girls’ bathrooms,” and “Boys in girls’ sports.”

THE FACTS: The notion that Allred’s “vision for America,” as stated in this ad, includes allowing boys to use girls’ facilities or play on their teams is more than misleading. This was the main theme in the ad we fact-checked not too long ago. Allred is not on record anywhere as saying that he is in favor of any of that. As noted in small print on the bottom of the screen, these claims are made based on Allred’s opposition to House Resolution 734 and his support for House Resolution 5 in 2021, also known as “The Equality Act.”

HR 734 sought to ban transgender students from participating in sports on a team that aligned with their current gender identity. Allred stated at the time he felt the act discriminated against transgender students, not that it kept students who were currently boys from entering girls’ facilities. HR 5, on the other hand, “prohibits discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit, and the jury system.”

THE CLAIMS: “Now Colin Allred is demanding drag shows on American military bases, taxpayer funded sex change surgeries for men and women in uniform and taxpayer funds for sterilizing minors.”

THE FACTS: We could make this one short by stopping to debunk this claim when it gets to the word “demanding.” As noted with a partial picture of a letter signed by Allred and several other members of Congress, there’s a request, not a demand, that certain provisions targeting LGBTQ military members and LGBTQ relatives of military members be removed from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the 2025 fiscal year.

Rather than “demanding” that drag shows occur on military bases for example, the letter Allred signed “strongly urges” that “a provision establishing a statutory ban on drag shows” be removed from the 2025 NDAA. A similar distinction can be made for the claims that Allred “demands” taxpayers pay for gender transitioning procedures or for the “sterilization” of minors. In the letter requesting NDAA changes, “provisions restricting medically necessary care for transgender service members or their family members” is being called out.

To clarify, gender-affirming care, regardless of age, includes a great deal more than surgeries, and is “supported by every major medical association,” as noted in the letter.