Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is being mocked online following a recent interview in which he delved into the conspiracy theory that President Joe Biden plans to force Americans to drink two beers or less per week.
While speaking to right-wing outlet Newsmax, Cruz, standing in front of a group of farmers in Texas, seemingly staged a synchronized beer swig while telling the Biden administration to “kiss my ass.”
“What is it with liberals and wanting to control every damn aspect of your life? If they want us to drink two beers a week, frankly they can kiss my ass,” Cruz tweeted.
The claim first blew up this week after Peter Doocy, a White House correspondent for Fox News, asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre if Biden intended “to limit Americans to two beers a week.”
When asked to clarify, Doocy stated that the director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), Dr. George Koob, recently said that the U.S. may follow recommendations set by Canada urging citizens to limit their alcohol consumption.
Jean-Pierre responded by stating that she could not speak to the claims and that such commentary would be left “to the experts.”
Yet Doocy’s question and Jean-Pierre’s failure to answer was quickly seen by conservatives as evidence that Biden would soon mandate a two-beer per-week limit.
In reality, Koob had responded to questions from the Daily Mail last week regarding planned revisions to U.S. alcohol guidelines in 2025. Koob stated that the recommendations would obviously not encourage Americans to drink more, but could likely trend lower, like countries such as Canada have recently done, given society’s increased understanding of the adverse health effects of alcohol.
Despite such guidelines being exactly that, suggestions and not mandates, conservatives have twisted the issue into the latest culture war rallying cry. The NIAAA currently suggests that Americans limit their intake to one drink or less for women and two drinks or less for men—”on any single day, not on average.”
Clearly, those guidelines have never been enforced.
Cruz was quickly called out for breathing life into the conspiracy theory.
“Ted is trying to manufacture a fantasy that Biden wants to limit Americans to 2 drinks per week,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett wrote. “The truth: the director of the Nat’l Institute on Alcohol Abuse (which no one’s heard of) said in an interview that we *could* follow Canada’s lead recommending less alcohol use.”
But while many focused on the conspiracy theory itself, others were more concerned with just how cringe Cruz’s interview seemed to be. Numerous users also argued that the video looked obviously staged.
“These performative skits he & his idiot compatriots stage are laughable,” one user wrote.
Whether the two beers conspiracy theory will last more than a few days remains to be seen. The issue is similar to countless others pushed by conservatives in recent months, such as the claim that the Biden administration would be rounding up all of America’s gas stoves.
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*First Published: Aug 31, 2023, 10:49 am CDT
Mikael Thalen
Mikael Thalen is a tech and security reporter covering social media, data breaches, hackers, and more.
