During Tuesday night's GOP debate, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz referred to moderate rebels in Syria as "purple unicorns," insisting that neither exist. But it turns out that purple unicorns do exist — as emojis. According to Emojipedia, the unicorn emoji on Twitter is purple, and on Apple's basic emoji keyboard, it is a blend of purple and white. Twitter users poked fun at Ted Cruz for specifically referring to "purple" unicorns, as though unicorns of other colors are much easier to find.
While the purple unicorn emoji might be Cruz's biggest nightmare right now, he definitely has some other problems on his plate. First and foremost among these is, perhaps, his relationship with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. The exchanges between the first and second-place candidates have been confusing at best. When Trump discovered that Cruz had criticized him in private — Cruz's comments were picked up on an audio recording — he called the Texan senator "a little bit of a maniac."
And yet, during the debate, Trump laughed this off, saying that he's learned a lot about Cruz in the past few days. Cruz, in turn, talked about the comments he made in private without mentioning Trump at all. As Cruz works to advance on Trump in the polls — there is currently a 23 percent margin between them — it is clear that he is going to have to tread carefully.
But since it seems as though Trump and Cruz are momentarily friends again, let's get back to the more important issue at hand: the purple unicorn. Does Cruz know that purple unicorns might actually be real? Because many Twitter users certainly want him to think they are, while others satirized the senator's apparent belief that all other shades of unicorn are real.
Maybe Cruz should stick to debating policy with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio without bringing in mythical creatures. It seems unlikely that dragons or yetis will help him explain whether or not deposing Bashar al-Assad is a good idea. And yet, the imaginary Trump-Cruz ticket that was briefly mentioned during the debate, which you'd hope is rarer than Twitter's purple unicorns, was — for a fraction of a second — made to seem like a possible reality, and that is far more terrifying (and pertinent) than the question of a purple unicorn's existence.
Image: Apple
