Jimmy Kimmel hits back against Ted Cruz over Bernie Sanders tweet

Senator Ted Cruz used a Jimmy Kimmel Live! clip to mock Senator Bernie Sanders supporters, prompting a response from the late night host.

The Jimmy Kimmel vs. Ted Cruz feud is alive and well. The latest chapter in the back-and-forth between the late night comedian and senator from Texas came on Wednesday night.

As you may recall, Kimmel and Cruz had their dispute culminate in a one-one-basketball game back in 2018. While Cruz may have won the game, Kimmel has continued to score points on the senator with jokes and bits on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Cruz may have inadvertently reignited things recently when he tweeted out an attack on supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders has become the clear frontrunner among Democratic candidates for president, making him a bigger target not only for his opponents in the primary, but for Republicans like Cruz focused on the general election.

On Feb. 17, Cruz tweeted out video from a Jimmy Kimmel Live! bit asking random people on the street to name any country on a map. Of course for a comedy show, it was edited together to show those people couldn’t do it. Cruz took it upon himself to present the video as featuring supporters of Bernie Sanders.

Wednesday night, Kimmel responded and set the record straight. And to take it one step further, he pulled the same gag again but this time asked for people’s political affiliation before the geography test. Here’s how that went:

The message here isn’t that Republicans are uninformed or uneducated. It’s that a lot of Americans struggle to locate other countries on a map. It may be a rare thing these days, but the point of Kimmel’s bit was not political commentary.

Unfortunately, Senator Cruz turned it into one by using an unrelated clip to dismiss Sanders’ supporters. It’s an especially tough look when Cruz’s tweet ended with a call for facts and truth to rule the day.

It is another example of things backfiring on Senator Cruz. He may have won the basketball game over Kimmel but the comedian had comebacks for every one of Cruz’s attempted jokes. And don’t forget what happened when Ted Cruz tried to go head-to-head with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. We’ll have to wait to see if Senator Cruz decides to risk responding to Kimmel again.

The real lesson here is that if you’re in Los Angeles and a camera crew with a map stops you, keep moving. Unless you know your countries, you don’t want to end up on Jimmy Kimmel Live! or in the middle of a beef between a comedian and Ted Cruz.