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Who owns The Babylon Bee? Ted Cruz shares satirical story thinking it's real news, Internet calls him 'stupid'

In October 2020, Donald Trump also mistook The Babylon Bee's satire as serious news and shared their story

Republican senator Ted Cruz has become the butt of jokes once again after he shared a post by 'The Babylon Bee', a conservative Christian satire news website. Cruz failed to understand the joke and considered it a serious piece of news, earning backlash from the netizens. 

In the context of the recent firing of 'The Mandalorian' actress Gina Carano over offensive post on Holocaust victims, The Babylon Bee shared a joke on Tuesday, "Disney Posts Job Ad Looking For Strong, Fierce Women Who Are Also Obedient, Submissive, And Docile". However, the Republican senator was in no mood for jokes when he shared the post with the caption, "I wish this was parody."

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Who owns The Babylon Bee?

The Babylon Bee, a satirical publication that is identified as a conservative Christian news satire website, has been entertaining readers for five years now. It has often been compared to the satirical publication, The Onion. 

The Babylon Bee was founded by Adam Ford and launched on March 1, 2016. He later sold the publication to 'Christian entrepreneur' Seth Dillon in 2018, while owning a small stake at the company, as he revealed in a blog post. Ford also cited reasons like the 'large-scale ills of Facebook and Google' behind the sale.

Presently, Dillon owns the magazine with Kyle Mann as the editor-in-chief. Mann has been associated with The Babylon Bee since its inception as a head writer and was promoted as chief editor after the transfer in ownership. 

The magazine has come under backlash and controversies time and again for its dissemination of misinformation in the name of satire and often publishing insensitive humor. 

Ted Cruz is not the first person to mistake The Babylon Bee's posts for serious news. One of their biggest controversies to date was in October 2020, when they published satirical news that Twitter had been shut down to prevent any negative coverage on Joe Biden. The news was shared by then President Donald Trump who took it seriously and termed the fictional incident as a 'case of leftist censorship', reported USA Today. This led to a stream of controversy when The New York Times questioned whether the magazine "traffic[s] in misinformation under the guise of comedy".

Internet tells Ted Cruz to try 'Google'

Ted Cruz's tweet created a flurry of hilarious reactions on Twitter within moments, with the public making fun of his unawareness. Some even raised serious questions like why was a senator funded by taxpayers' money, wasting his time on satirical websites. 

"There's a new thing, Ted. It's called Google. It's helpful when you don't want to look incredibly stupid. You might want to try it sometime," wrote one user. "Why is a sitting U.S. senator wasting his time misunderstanding bad satire on Twitter?" asked MSNBC senior producer Kyle Griffin.

"Ted, is this what earns you 174,000 of taxpayer dollars a year? Is this what donors get for their contributions? I can do this a lot cheaper," asked another furious user. "How are you this f**king stupid and a US senator?" this user did not mince words, ouch!