Get PolitiFact in your inbox.

Pants on Fire for Facebook meme about Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, citizenship an online hit

This is the Facebook meme that caught our eye for a fact check March 26, 2015. This is the Facebook meme that caught our eye for a fact check March 26, 2015.

This is the Facebook meme that caught our eye for a fact check March 26, 2015.

By W. Gardner Selby April 2, 2015

Canadian-born Ted Cruz, the Texas senator lately embarked on a bid for president, conveniently flip-flopped on whether a candidate needs to be born in the United States to run for president, an online meme suggests.

We speak of the March 26, 2015, Facebook post shown above.

Flip-flopper, right? EXCEPT we found no evidence of Cruz making either comment. His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, told us the Republican Houston lawyer never has questioned Obama’s fulfillment of the constitutional mandate that a presidential candidate be a "natural born citizen." That is, Cruz wasn’t a birther as in someone maintaining the Honolulu-born Democrat was birthed in his father’s home country, Kenya.

We rated the Facebook meme Pants on Fire. And once the fact check was posted, it became our most-clicked fact check for the month of March.

Want more?

See PolitiFact’s updated look at whether Cruz, born in 1970 in Alberta, Canada to an America mother and Cuban-born father, clears the "natural born citizen" hurdle.  Most legal experts say so.

See Cruz’s complete PolitiFact report card here. See Obama’s report card here.

What else do you hear?

Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter

Browse the Truth-O-Meter

More by W. Gardner Selby

Pants on Fire for Facebook meme about Ted Cruz, Barack Obama, citizenship an online hit