"The 'Barbie' movie is coming out right now. I’m the dad of two young daughters. This is going to be a big movie, particularly for a lot of young girls," Cruz said. "There’s a scene in 'Barbie' where there is this map of the world, and it’s drawn with crayon. I mean, it’s really a very simple cartoon. They’ve drawn what are called 'the nine dashes,' which is, this is Chinese communist propaganda, which the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the entirety of the South China Sea. And they don’t have any right to it under international law."
"It’s blatantly false and it’s Chinese propaganda. Well, the stupid little cartoon map has the nine dashes drawn on there. And they did it for one purpose and one purpose only, to kiss up to the Chinese communist censors. And I got to say that is shameful," Cruz said.
As for Cruz, he seems to be sticking to the QAnon-adjacent side of Hollywood these days. In June, the senator posted images of himself alongside actor Jim Caviziel ahead of the debut of The Sound of Freedom, a 2023 film in which Caviziel plays the role of a former federal agent fighting against a network of child traffickers. In his public life, Caviezel openly embraces one of the most extreme versions of the QAnon conspiracy theory that believes a global cabal of elites tortures infants and young children to extract a substance called adrenochrome from their bodies on an industrial scale.