Ted Cruz Thinks He's Funny. He's Not

If there's one thing all of the current Republican presidential candidates have in common, it's that they all think they're funny, but they really aren't funny at all. In the comical spirit of April Fools' Day, Ted Cruz pranked his Twitter followers and released a video on his website to complete the joke. Since this election has proven to be about Donald Trump, Cruz included Trump in his joke and claimed that he had finally agreed to Cruz's proposed one-on-one debate. Hilarious.

Back in January when Trump refused to attend the Fox New Republican presidential debate because Megyn Kelly was a moderator, Cruz said he wanted to debate Trump "mano a mano." Since then, Cruz has continued to challenge Trump to a solo debate, presumably to prove to voters that he quite literally has what it takes to defeat Trump. However, as everyone probably guessed, Trump never accepted Cruz's offer for such an event. Well, until April 1, when Cruz thought the ultimate April Fools' Day joke was to say that Trump had finally agreed to debate Cruz alone.

Cruz was the first Republican candidate to acknowledge the ever-important holiday by attempting to make a joke on Twitter, but in staying true to who he is, his joke wasn't all that funny.

In an attempt to be funny this April Fools' Day, Cruz resorted to the lazy (and outdated) method of "Rick Rolling" someone — you know, where you lead them to a YouTube video and instead of playing what you think it will play, it actually plays Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up." I'm pretty sure the idea of "Rick Rolling" started around 2010, so unfortunately Cruz is at least six years late to the prank game.

Honestly, the funniest part about Cruz's joke is that he kind of reinforced his "Lyin' Ted" label that Trump so affectionately gave to him during this election cycle. On his website (and in the tweet), Cruz wrote explicitly that Trump "accepted my challenge to debate one-on-one." I understand that it's a joke, but it's also kind of just a lie when you think about it. Trump recognized this, too, and called out Cruz for, well, lying.

A joke becomes significantly less funny when it backfires and actually turns against you, which is sort of what happened with Cruz. Trump's Instagram video ad about "Lyin' Ted" quickly accumulated more likes than Cruz's tweet of the debate joke, so that made Cruz's joke even less funny.

Cruz's joke took a turn for the worse when a Trump parody Twitter account replied to the tweet with a nasty comment about the Cruz sex scandal. (Which, for the record, isn't funny at all, even if it's not true.)

I guess it's not like Cruz would wake up magically funnier on April Fools' Day, but at least he tried to join in the festivities? But there was that time Cruz was kind of funny when he said, while on Jimmy Kimmel, that he would run Trump over with his car. "If I were in my car and getting ready to reverse and saw Donald Trump in the backup camera, I'm not confident which pedal I would push."

Watch the entire video of Cruz's attempt at an April Fools' Day joke below.