Of Course Ted Cruz Won’t Shut Up About Kim Petras and Sam Smith’s Satan Set at the Grammys

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has a habit of fixating on pop culture tropes the way leeches latch on to blood vessels. He’s had major beefs with kid entertainment ranging from Sesame Street to the film Lightyear, and has gone to bat for former The Mandalorian actress Gina Carano.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Cruz just had to weigh in on the 65th Grammy Award ceremony on Sunday with one of his patented weird takes.

There was plenty of history being made on Sunday: Cruz’s fellow Houstonian, Beyoncé, became the most-awarded Grammy recipient ever with a total of 32 awards. She also lost the Record of the Year award to Harry Styles for his perfectly just all right Harry’s House, which pissed off a lot of people.

But Cruz’s focus was elsewhere.

Kim Petras, who on Sunday became one of the only trans people ever to win a Grammy and the first to win in the category of Best Pop Duo, was one of the acts performing live at the ceremony with singer Sam Smith.

Smith and Petras delivered a dramatic performance of their song “Unholy,” with Smith playing a cartoonish Satan surrounded by flames and writhing dancers made up to look like the crawling, undead Samara Morgan from The Ring.

Ted Cruz really, really hated the whole thing. And he had to tell all of Twitter about it. All day long.

First he retweeted a clip of the performance posted by right-wing commentator Liz Wheeler in which she had written that “demons are teaching your kids to worship Satan.”

Cruz’s two cents? “This…is…evil,” he added to the retweet on Monday.

Then he followed that up with a series of retweets posing as jokes with clips of the performance and captions such as “Preview of the DNC Convention” and “Meet the new White House Press Secretary.”

Then he capped it all by posting a video of late night host James Corden talking about Cruz’s tweets on the performance (yes, it’s all really meta) and making the joke that Cruz might’ve had too many drinks.

Cruz wrote along with the clip, “There is hope – late night TV may actually have a sense of humor.”

Next time your boss gives you any crap about taking a smoke break or for whatever other time suck distracts you from work, you should point out that this is how public officials spend their workday.

This…is…evil. https://t.co/SBrOgHfFcX

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 6, 2023

“Unholy” is a song about religion, but it’s not a glorification of Satan. The lyrics describe the feelings of hatred and self-loathing created by religions that exclude and vilify transgender people, according to a recent Petras interview with The Daily Beast. It’s a topic she’s explored in other songs such as “If Jesus Was a Rock Star.”

Judging by Cruz’s own logic, the senator himself has put out his own fair share of dubious symbolism. Like a few years ago, when Cruz responded to a tweet from the sports site Deadspin asking for pictures of the senator playing basketball. Cruz tweeted in response a picture of Duke University basketball star Grayson Allen because of their similar appearance. Duke’s team is called (gasp!) the Blue Devils! Even worse than devils, blue devils.