Senator Ted Cruz of Texas suffered an embarrassing flub Tuesday night when the first take of his response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address ended up online.

Ted Cruz Flubs SOTU Response

Cruz, a Republican from Texas who is said to be considering a Presidential run in 2018, pre-taped a short, 2-minute response to the President’s address Tuesday evening. Cruz appeared to have decided to record his response outside his office, without a script, and then upload the video to his YouTube and social media pages. In the original video uploaded to YouTube, Cruz begins strong, telling viewers, “It’s time to move on beyond President Obama.”

Alas, he only got out a few sentences before losing his footing. Cruz stopped, closed his eyes, waved a hand at the camera and said, “Meh, let me start again.”

Cruz went on to deliver a smooth response to be posted online. Unfortunately, the person responsible forgot to cut out the footage of Cruz’s flub in the first take, and the video was uploaded in its entirety. The video was quickly removed and replaced with the edited version, but media sites were able to salvage the clip, paving the way for the clip to go viral.

Cruz has since continued to speak out against President Obama’s speech, calling it “disappointing.”

Article by Olivia Truffaut-Wong

Olivia Truffaut-Wong was born and raised in Berkeley, California, where she developed her love of all things entertainment. After moving to New York City to earn her degree in Film Studies, she stayed on the East Coast to follow her passion and become an entertainment writer. She lives on a diet of television, movies and food.