Ted Cruz Invokes ‘The Simpsons’ Along Party Lines, So Al Jean Pacifies Him

Ah, good ol’ Ted Cruz is back in the news — and this time he’s dragging Springfield’s most famous family into the partisan brawl. Seems the Texas senator glommed on to The Simpsons during an appearance at CPAC today.

Some reporters at the GOP chum-fest quoted Cruz as saying, “The Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson and Republicans are happily the party of Homer, Bart, Maggie and Marge.” And before you could say “Ronald Reagan embracing Bruce Springsteen,” he was called out by the Twitterverse for the tone-deaf comparison.

D’oh!

But one of the snarky response tweets came not from some rando Simpsons fan but Al Jean, an original writer on the ageless Fox toon and its showrunner since 2001. Take it away, Al:

As Nelson Muntz would say, “HA-ha!”

Now, before we note that Maggie Simpson is slightly below voting age, let’s take a moment to remember that time when Cruz was running for the Republican nomination for president in 2015 and attempted to show BuzzFeed and the American public just how hip and fun he was. If you haven’t seen this, be warned: You can’t un-see it.