Ted Cruz had a good moment on Twitter last night. It started with an article at Politico which noted that Sen. Cruz has been trying to improve his relationships with fellow Republicans by holding a weekly basketball game. According to Politico, Cruz is “a surprisingly good jump-shooter with miserable form.”

That caught the attention of a writer at Deadspin, one of the surviving offshoots of the now defunct Gawker. Deadspin begged its readers to “snap a few photographs—or better yet, a video—of Ted Cruz in his raw, unbridled, soup-fueled athletic form.” That article then got circulated via this tweet:

Send us proof of Ted Cruz playing basketball https://t.co/MgGLnsscPf pic.twitter.com/mpxI5EBQkK

— Deadspin (@Deadspin) January 23, 2017

Sen. Cruz responded with a photo of Duke’s Grayson Allen. Allen has a striking resemblance to Cruz, something that has been pointed out many times before, including by the Washington Post. Here was Cruz’ reply:

what do I win? pic.twitter.com/9XuRmmIkJS

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 25, 2017

Immediately there were people suggesting Deadspin had been “owned” by Cruz. The folks at Deadspin apparently didn’t like that very much. Half an hour later they sent Sen.Cruz this crude response:

The response only amplified the sense that the school bully had just had his lunch money taken by the school mathlete. Hundreds of people were tweeting responses, nearly all of which judged Cruz the winner of the exchange. And then, about 15 minutes later, Cruz responded a 2nd time, again with a sense of humor:

You can see from the number of likes and retweets that this really got around. The response at this point was unanimously in favor of Cruz. I won’t even try to offer a sample of the hundreds of tweets mocking Deadspin but this one summed it up nicely:

https://twitter.com/TBCJay/status/824062705250291712

Eventually the editor of Deadspin weighed in with another classless attack on Cruz. He also began challenging people to meet him in the “UFC octagon.”

Not surprisingly, this response did not help the perception that Deadspin was having a meltdown. A sample reply:

https://twitter.com/Moj_kobe/status/824130884295069696

So I guess the moral of this story is don’t get snippy with Ted Cruz online or he might posterize you.