Ted Cruz liked a porn video on Twitter and melted the internet

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the devout Southern Baptist who once argued Americans had no constitutional right to masturbate, shocked the internet on Tuesday when his official Twitter account inexplicably favorited a short porn flick.

Just after midnight, the failed 2016 presidential candidate and married father of two “liked” a two-minute video from @SexuallPosts, which featured a naked couple, a winsome blonde voyeur, and a cream-colored leather sofa.

Initially, Catherine Frazier‏, Cruz’s communications director, tweeted that the “offensive” post had been reported to Twitter, although she wouldn’t offer an explanation.

But Cruz later told reporters that the favorite was an accident and not “malicious conduct.” The senator wouldn’t name the staffer or what punishment they’d receive.

Others users, from journalists to comedians, quickly pounced upon the politician’s late-night Twitter activity. Debate raged as to whether the senator was enjoying an evening alone or a member of his social media team had made a job-ending faux pas.

To matters more ironic, when Cruz was solicitor general of Texas, his office filed a 76-page defense of the state’s ban on sex toys in 2007. The filing argued that Americans had “no substantive due process right to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”

As recently as 2016, Cruz also helped draft the GOP platform that decried pornography as a “public health crisis.”