Ted Cruz Says A Valedictorian Was Almost Arrested For Praying — But That's A Lie

I guess if you can’t beat ‘em. You join ‘em.

Since Donald [t]Rump has been lying all over the place — he saw thousands of people cheering the fall of the Twin towers, just like he saw people jumping from the buildings from his penthouse four miles away — Ted Cruz has decided that he’ll just out-and-out lie to score points with his religious wingnut-gun-toting-anti-gay base.

During a town hall event this month, right here in South Carolina, Cruz preached, er, campaigned on that old favorite theme of his: Christian persecution … because no religion in the world is more persecuted than Christians; especially now, right?

But I digress. During his sermon, er, speech, Cruz brought up the woeful tale of Angela Hildenbrand, a public high school valedictorian who … he claims … was “threatened with jail if she exercised her right to pray during her graduation speech.”

As he explained, Hildenbrand was initially barred from leading prayer, but attorneys from the Liberty Institute — one of those conservative religious extremist groups — filed an emergency motion to let her pray, and won on appeal shortly before graduation. Cruz called Hildenbrand one of his “religious liberty heroes” and brought her onstage with him.

And the crowd cheered … though it was all a lie.

Hildenbrand was never threatened with jail for praying. In fact, every part of Cruz’s statement about Hildenbrand and what happened is a total lie; here’s the real deal …

This all happened back in 2011 when the family of Corwyn Schultz, one of Hildenbrand’s classmates, filed a lawsuit against the Medina Valley Independent School District, challenging the fact that speakers at the public high school graduation would often lead the audience in prayers and invocations; the district court judge sided with the Schultz family, ruling that graduation prayers violated the Establishment Clause.

And the idea that Hildenbrand was threatened with being sent to jail is a bold-faced lie, because, while there was a reference in the preliminary injunction to enforcement mechanisms, like say an arrest, that reference was aimed at the school district and not Angela Hildenbrand. In fact, Angela Hildenbrand was not even named in the initial lawsuit, but added herself as a defendant during an appeals process.

In the end, the court found that the prayers were student-initiated and not school-sponsored, and so Angela Hildenbrand was able to pray at graduation, and now she and Ted Cruz use her story, specifically the fabricated parts, to play up that so-called War On Christianity, when in fact these people, Cruz, the GOP, Angela Hildenbrand and her special band of Christians are waging a War On The Truth.

And I won’t do a rant on the idea of holding a prayer at a public event for a public school in a country where we have a Separation of Church and State, but I will leave you with one question:

Does anyone think that Ted Cruz would have told that story, much less hauled that student up on stage as a kind of show-and-tell puppet, if the student had wanted to praise Mohammed or Allah during their commencement speech?

Uh huh.

source: Reverb Press

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