So far it’s been a very civil war.
The Cornhusker caper of 2019 was the latest in a 2-year-old Nebraska-Texas, low-level conflict, and it was certainly an escalation. Let’s take it back to the first showdown, which began innocently enough.
Back in October 2017, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., made a clumsy mistake during former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. While Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., laid into Sessions for his involvement with President Trump’s firing of former FBI Director James Comey, Sasse reached for a Dr. Pepper. As the junior senator tried to crack open his pop, he fumbled — and spilled it all over Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Friendly commotion ensued between the two senators, and Sasse delivered some unintentional comic relief to a tense hearing, leading him to begin his questions for Sessions with an apology. “I sort of added to the drama and distracted you for a minute, and I was paying enough attention that I dumped a Dr. Pepper on Sen. Cruz,” he said.
[Related: Ben Sasse, Jeopardy and what Americans don’t know about their government]
Later that day, Cruz tweeted out a photo of his office’s well-stocked official Dr. Pepper fridge, with a warning to Sasse: “MEMO TO OFFICE: Please place a picture of @BenSasse above the @drpepper fridge in our lobby. He is now cut off.”
Sasse shot back with a zinger referencing a popular conspiracy theory that Cruz’s father was involved with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, tweeting, “Full disclosure: I was wearing my ‘Lee Harvey Oswald Was Framed’ t-shirt” when I spilled on the Texas senator. Cruz replied with a picture of one of the “Zodiac Killer’s” cryptic death notes, embracing another conspiracy theory, which purports that Cruz is the secret identity behind the notorious 1970s West Coast serial killer.
After the tweeting died down, everyone involved in the incident went their separate ways. Franken resigned in late 2017, following charges of sexual harassment against him that drummed up a fury in the Senate. Sessions resigned about a year later, after months of dodging Trump’s wrath for his recusal from the Justice Department’s Russia investigation. Sasse kept mostly quiet. And Cruz, Cruz grew a beard.
But Texas remembers, especially when its signature soda is involved. Dr. Pepper is, as Texas Standard recounts, America’s oldest soda, created in Waco, Texas, in 1885. “Dr Pepper’s formula is held in two separate bank vaults in Dallas. Each vault has half of the formula and no one person knows the entire secret.”
[Also read: Cruz demands Yale documents concerning discrimination against students holding ‘traditional Christian views’]
So it shouldn’t have been too surprising that the unofficial cease-fire didn’t hold. In February 2019, someone slipped a copy of a crossword puzzle from the Los Angeles Times under Sasse’s office door. It was completely blank, except for the spot next to the 38-across clue, which was “Senator Cruz.” The anonymous crossworder wrote one word in block letters: “ZODIAC.”
“Thanks to whoever slid this under my door,” Sasse tweeted. Cruz took credit later that morning.
The pranking escalated in late April, when Cruz relocated his office to the same hall as Sasse’s office. While the moving crews were settling Cruz and his staff into their new digs, Sasse noticed the Dr. Pepper fridge sitting unguarded in the hallway. He rolled the fridge toward his own office and grabbed a staffer, whom he asked to film the heist.
The next day, Sasse tweeted the video with the comment, “Hey @TedCruz — fyi that your @DrPepper fridge is in a safe location,” he said. “But it’s time to finally come clean about what really happened on Nov 22, 1963. Start talking…”
[Read: Cruz joins actor, liberal activist George Clooney in condemning Brunei]
And Cruz did. Later that day, he issued a warning to Sasse. “In Texas, stealing a man’s Dr. Pepper is a hanging offense,” he tweeted, along with a link to the scene in “Star Trek II, The Wrath of Kahn,” where Khan tells Capt. Kirk, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Cruz followed up the next day with another response, asking, “Who is … going to soon pay for stealing my Dr Pepper fridge?” with a link to a recent “Jeopardy!” episode in which not a single contestant could identify a picture of Sasse.
As the Cruz crew plotted its revenge, Sasse’s staffers stuffed the fridge with cans full of corn. They also completely refurbished the fridge’s exterior, covering any reference to the emblematic Texas soft drink with decorations more fitting for its new Nebraska home: a paper sign reading “CORN” taped over the Dr. Pepper logo and a printed-out picture of a smiling corn cartoon.
A week passed with no response. Then on May 8, Cruz struck again. The Texas senator marched down to Sasse’s office, armed with a dolly and a giant wall made out of cardboard Dr. Pepper boxes, emblazoned with the catchphrase “TEXAS REMEMBERS” and marked with the crosshairs sign of the “Zodiac Killer.”
As Cruz loaded up the fridge and began wheeling it away, one of Sasse’s team called out to him.
“Sir, that’s our corn fridge,” he said.
“I understand that,” Cruz replied. “Texas remembers.”
Later, both Sasse and Cruz posted videos of the incident on Twitter. Sasse filmed only the theft, telling Cruz that he “can’t believe you’d just take our corn fridge that we’ve definitely always had and did not steal.”
But Cruz made a production of his repossession, putting together something of a short film, complete with Carl Orff’s operatic “O Fortuna” as soundtrack and, notably, a shot of him ripping the corn signage off the fridge, crumpling it up, and throwing the pride of the Huskers on the floor.
Your play, Sasse.
Nic Rowan is a media analyst at the Washington Free Beacon.
