Man facing charges for throwing White Claw at Ted Cruz claims he was 'trying to toss drinks' to senator

At a victory parade in Houston for the Houston Astros — who defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in baseball’s 2022 World Series — on Monday, November 7, cans of White Claw (an alcoholic seltzer) were thrown at Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Democrats and liberal pundits, including those who are often highly critical of the far-right GOP senator, have been quick to call out the incident as totally unacceptable.

The 33-year-old man accused of throwing the cans, Houston resident Joey Arcidiacono, is being represented by attorney Bill Stradley — who is saying that Arcidiacono never wanted to hurt Cruz, but simply wanted to share cans of White Claw.

On Wednesday, November 9, Stradley’s firm visited Twitter and posted an official statement from the attorney: “Political violence is never acceptable. What happened at the parade was not political violence nor 'aggravated assault with a deadly weapon’.... Instead, this was an Astros fan trying to toss drinks from his cooler to the Senator during a championship parade and not realizing how it would be perceived until he saw security's reaction.”

Stradley also said, “Many generous, fun, semi-stupid, legendary moments have happened during Astros championship parades. Hopefully, many more of those moments will happen in the years to come.”

Cruz, however, has said that he believes the cans were meant to injure him. On his podcast The Verdict, Cruz told listeners he was hit in the arm by one of the cans but wasn’t hurt; the podcast was recorded before Stradley’s official statement was posted on Twitter.