Ted Cruz hits back at Tucker Carlson with Monty Python and Star Wars memes

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is not happy after his confrontational interview with far-right former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

During that interview, the pair clashed over Israel and the merits of getting involved in the conflict with Iran. Carlson asked Cruz if he even knew how many people lived in Iran, and exclaimed, "You don't know anything about Iran!" when Cruz didn't have the answer on hand. He also repeatedly asked Cruz to justify why he believed that Biblical commands for Christians to support "Israel" were equivalent to Israel, the nation established in 1948, or its current government.

Cruz hit back on Wednesday with a long string of posts to X, including some disparaging memes.

"I came to the Senate committed to being the leading defender of Israel, and I'm proud to have the support of groups like AIPAC and the American-Jewish community who advocate on behalf of a close U.S.-Israel relationship," posted Cruz. "The obsession over American Jews participating in politics has to stop."

Cruz also posted a screenshot of an article in The Atlantic from 2012, showing that Carlson at that time had said Iran "deserves to be annihilated." "Wonder what changed?" Cruz asked.

"The Ayatollah has been trying to murder President Trump for years. Tucker Carlson is running interference for that plot," Cruz wrote in another post. "This is an undisputed fact and anyone with access to the internet knows it."

But Cruz didn't stop there. He also posted a series of pop culture memes trying to ridicule the nature of Carlson's questions.

In one, he posted an image from the 1970s British comedy film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," showing the keeper of the Bridge of Death saying, "What... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?" implying that Carlson's questions were as irrelevant and ridiculous as those of the Bridge Keeper to King Arthur and his knights.

Another of Cruz's posts, appearing to reference Carlson's question about how many people lived in Iran, showed an AI-generated image of Carlson demanding Star Wars' Luke Skywalker answer, "What is the population of the Death Star?" evidently comparing a sovereign nation of millions of civilians to a superweapon the fictional Galactic Empire used to annihilate planets.

Carlson's confrontation with Cruz is not a one-off. The former Fox News host, an outspoken paleoconservative skeptical of foreign entanglements, has in recent weeks increasingly denounced President Donald Trump and the right-wing media ecosystem for playing with the idea of war with Iran.