title:  WATCH: Ted Cruz Pushes Birther’s Bizarre Star Wars Video Supporting His Presidential Run
text: Ted Cruz is promoting the work of a birther filmmaker who has created a bizarre YouTube video that casts the right-wing Texas senator as the hero of the Star Wars movies. Cruz s campaign pushed a link featuring the video in a blast email to supporters: In honor of the latest Star Wars movie, the team here at Cruz HQ wanted to share with you a YouTube video created by a fellow supporter that depicts Senator Cruz as a Jedi Warrior, fighting for the Constitution,  the Cruz campaign wrote in an email to supporters last night, linking to a fawning Breitbart article about the video.The video shows Cruz riding an elephant with a lightsaber made out of the U.S. Constitution moving from state to state, flipping them from Democratic blue to Republican red. The video ends with Cruz confronting President Obama flanked by a phalanx of RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and restoring liberty.The film was created by birther filmmaker Joel Gilbert, who produced the anti-Obama propaganda film Dreams from My Real Father. In that film, Gilbert indulges in the conspiracy theory that Obama s father was Communist Frank Marshall Davis. The video also uses fake images to smear President Obama s mother, claiming that she posed for sexual photos.Gilbert also claims that Obama has had plastic surgery so that his nose no longer resembles Davis. Gilbert also alleges that the president is secretly a Muslim, despite the ample evidence that he is a practicing Christian, and claims that the 2012 presidential election was stolen. He writes columns for World Net Daily, a leading pro-birther conspiracy website affiliated with Donald Trump.Pushing the video is just the latest example of Cruz s significant habit of stroking his own ego, often indulging in hyperbolic speech to cast himself and his campaign as central figures in a hero/persecution myth.Featured image via YouTube