'Horrible, twisted liar': Ted Cruz lashes out at Stephen King for his comments on Charlie Kirk

Stephen King and Ted Cruz

US Republican Senator Ted Cruz lashed out at the American author Stephen King for making comments on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was killed during an event on Wednesday.

The clash began after News host Jesse Watters said that Kirk was a patriot. In an X post, Watters wrote, "Charlie Kirk was not a ‘controversial’ or ‘polarising’ man. Charlie was a PATRIOT. This is a turning point, and we all need to turn in the right direction. Rest in peace, my friend."

King, while responding to this, said that Kirk advocated for stoning gays to death. This, however, did not go down well with Cruz, who said that King was a "horrible, twisted liar."

“You are a horrible, evil, twisted liar. No, he did not. Your party—which you shamelessly shilled for—sent $100 billion to the Ayatollah… who does routinely murder homosexuals. Why are you so dishonest & filled with hate?" Cruz wrote on X.

After this, King apologised, while mentioning that he read something on X and did not fact-check it. He also deleted the X post. The horrible, evil, twisted liar apologizes. This is what I get for reading something on Twitter w/o fact-checking. Won’t happen again," he said in his X post.

Cruz then accepted King's apology and said that both sides should respect each other and treat each other with decency, even if they have political disagreements. "All of us—on both sides of the aisle—should treat each other with respect & decency, even if we disagree on politics. Charlie did that every day, and I admired him for it," he wrote.

For the uninitiated, Kirk, who was a Trump loyalist and had controversial thoughts on LGBTQ, religion, abortion, race and the like, was shot dead during an event at Utah Valley University. He was shot in the neck.