Sen. Ted Cruz on Why His Twitter Account Left a ❤️ on Porn 
 
 Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spoke to reporters on Capitol Hill about the pornographic tweet that was briefly “liked” by his official Twitter account Monday night. It isn't clear who with access to Cruz's Twitter account tapped the like button on the tweet — Cruz didn't say when asked about it Tuesday — but it was un-done overnight, a representative of his noted. "We're dealing with it internally, but it was a mistake. (Published Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017) 
 
 Cruz addressed the notoriety Tuesday, even joking about it before answering questions from reporters on Capitol Hill: "This is not how I envisioned waking up this morning." Asked if he was the person who liked the tweet, Cruz said, "It was a staffing issue." “It was a mistake.” 
 
 He said “a number of people” in his office had access to his account — contra Jimmy Kimmel and much of the critical Internet, who had assumed the senator himself clicked the heart, before someone else unclicked it after news of the “like” became an online joke. Late Monday night, someone with access to Cruz's Twitter account appeared to have "liked" a tweet featuring pornography. “OH MY.” 
 
 Well done @TedCruz using the power of "like" to illustrate the evils of porn #Weiner pic.twitter.com/SQDPh1cRTp — Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) September 12, 2017 
 
 It was gone by about 2 a.m., and the senator’s spokeswoman Catherine Frazier wrote shortly afterward on her own account: “The offensive tweet posted on @tedcruz account earlier has been removed by staff and reported to Twitter.” 
 
 That only raised more questions, including: Reported the tweet for what? (Published Wednesday, July 20, 2016) 
 
 The vice president of Pornhub released a statement on Tuesday, which read, in part: 
 
 
 
 
 
 "Following Ted's scandalous late night activity on Twitter last night, thanks to Reality Kings, we are making the video Ted liked available to the masses." And about 24 hours later, the owner of that account was among the first to learn that a U.S. senator’s name was listed among his contents’ endorsers. In a 2015 book, he recalled watching "explicit, hard-core pornography" with Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, whom he was clerking for at the time, and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, The Washington Post reported. (Published Friday, Oct. 13, 2017) 
 
 Some on social media Tuesday pointed to the time when Cruz, while serving as solicitor general of Texas from 2003 to 2008, helmed the office as it defended a state ban on sex toys. “So I hear I am trending with Ted Cruz,” Cory Chase wrote on Twitter in the late morning — long after the like had been revoked.
– Ted Cruz found himself fending off some embarrassing questions from the press corps Tuesday regarding porn. He blamed a late-night Twitter "like" of a risque clip from his official feed on a "staffing issue," reports NBC San Francisco. "There are a number of people on the team that have access to the account and it appears that someone inadvertently hit the like button," he said. Then somebody asked directly if he was the one who hit the like button. "It was a staffing issue," he replied, adding, "We're dealing with it internally, but it was a mistake. It was not malicious conduct." Cruz also tried to make light of the gaffe and all the attention it was getting. "If I had known that this would trend so quickly ... perhaps we should have posted something like this during the Indiana primary," he said. The Washington Post, meanwhile, can't resist digging into Cruz's memoir, specifically the part where he wrote about watching hard-core porn with Supreme Court justices back when he was a 26-year-old law clerk. (They were looking into whether online porn should be subject to regulations.) In the book, he recalls Sandra Day O'Connor muttering, "Oh my."