Ted Cruz Owns Up to Being A Child Abuser: 'I Spank My Daughters' — Big Media Won't Complain

NFL football player Adrian Peterson was arrested and suspended from the league for using a switch to discipline his son. But you can bet Ted Cruz will be mostly celebrated for spanking his daughters.

By Philip Bump
During a rally in Iowa on Friday evening, Ted Cruz made a joke that went over fine with his audience -- but was less popular once the wider world caught wind.

Replying to a woman who asked him about holding someone accountable for the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi in 2012, Cruz said that she was "exactly right." He criticized President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for "engag[ing] in deception" on the matter. Then he zeroed in on Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee for the presidency.

"We do know Hillary told her daughter Chelsea, 'Well, gosh, I knew it was a terrorist attack, while we were out telling the American people it wasn't,'" Cruz said. "You know I'll tell you, in my house, if my daughter Catherine, the five-year-old, says something she knows to be false, she gets a spanking."

He added: "Well, in America, the voters have a way of administering a spanking."

While it's never hard to find outraged people on social media, there was certainly an element of the response to Cruz's comments that struck a nerve. Former George W. Bush strategist Matthew Dowd, now a commentator for ABC, stated that Cruz was not "a real man" for using corporal punishment on his daughter. Others expressed similar surprise.

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