Ted Cruz shares fake photo of a shark swimming on a flooded highway as Tropical Storm Hilary batters California: 'Holy crap'

• Ted Cruz saw a photo someone jokingly shared of a shark swimming on a flooded highway in LA.
• He seemingly thought it was real. "Holy crap," the Texas senator tweeted about the fake photo.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas doesn't have the best track record responding to natural disasters.

In February 2021, the senator infamously fled for sunny Cancun as devastating winter storms crippled his home state. And Monday morning, he quote-tweeted an obviously fake photo of a shark swimming on a flooded highway that a Twitter user said was in Los Angeles, which is being hit by its first tropical storm in over 80 years.

"Holy crap," Cruz wrote about the photo, which was jokingly shared by Dan Katz of the newly-independent sports media company Barstool Sports.

Cruz quickly followed up with another tweet saying he'd been had.

"I'm told this is a joke. In LA, you never know…," he wrote. "And everyone please stay safe from the storm or otherwise."

As Snopes pointed out, the fake photo first surfaced in August 2011 after Hurricane Irene hit Puerto Rico and has since been regularly rolled out to trick people after high-profile storms.

It's possible, though unlikely, that Cruz — or whoever in his office tweets for him — was just doing a bit by sharing the photo. He once tweeted an obscure meme about TCU that was misinterpreted as a real prediction, and he once semi-successfully trolled the sports website Deadspin. On the other hand, someone in Cruz's office managing his Twitter account mistakenly liked a pornographic tweet, so he and his staff's social media acumen remains an open question.

A representative for Cruz didn't respond to a request for comment.