Behind the Bastards - Why Ted Cruz S*cks: A Comprehensive Biography

Episode Date: October 30, 2018

This week, Robert is joined by Cody Johnston and Katy Stoll to discuss the Bastards of the 2018 Mid-Term Elections. And to start, let’s talk about a man that people of all backgrounds and beliefs can despise: Ted Cruz.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Secret anti-faw, super-soldier allies, whatever terms are appropriate. Frequent secret collaborators. And this week, we are talking about the midterms. Rather than doing a two-parter about one person, we have two distinct subjects for both episodes this week.

In this episode, the working title is Every Shitty Thing Ted Cruz Has Done in His Shitty Shit Life. The title is a lie, because I didn't have time to go through every shit. There's just so much garbage that Ted Cruz has done. But we are going to go back a lot further than I think most people know about. I'm very excited about this. I want to start by asking, when did you guys first learn about Ted Cruz? Do you recall your first Ted Cruz memory? I couldn't say my first memory of him, but I know it was around Tea Party times.

Yeah, that would make sense. Yeah, I would say that's around the same time for me. It's all a blur. Well, I want the listeners at home to know that while we're doing this, there's a Tide Pod that's been in the office the whole year now that I've been doing this show, and I've just been squeezing it, and it's gradually degrading. And you can see that it's going to burst at some point. So I'm going to pass this around, and we can all take turns squeezing it and passing it around. Maybe it'll explode in the middle of this session.

One can hope. It's really gross right now. You can see how gross it is. I thought that was a Tide Pod, and I was right. It'll be fun for the listeners at home to hear us squeeze a Tide Pod. Yeah, for the Tide Pod. Yeah, this is going to go soon. Yeah, it doesn't have much longer left in it.

All right, so, Ted Cruz. The focus of this week is the bastards of the 2018 midterm elections, and I want to make it clear to our listeners who may be more politically independent that we're not just declaring every Republican who's running right now a bastard, or at least I'm not. The people that we're talking about this week are folks that I think everyone in America can get together behind and agree are garbage monsters, and on that note, let's talk about Ted Cruz.

Yeah, yeah. Now, the tale of hell Ted Cruz came to be started decades before his birth in 1939. It started in Cleveland as any terrible thing start. In the late 30s. In the late 30s. Back before the Cuyahoga River caught on fire the first time of like a dozen times. I'm going to start with a businessman named Fred G. Clark. He was an executive, an anti-prohibition crusader, so that's nice.

He was a libertarian, very early libertarian, and a contemporary of the Koch family patriarch, Fred Koch, because for some reason, Fred's are all dedicated to destroying the social safety net. There's going to be a lot of Fred's this episode. Okay. Yeah, a lot of Fred's in an episode about a Ted. I got to say that's my least favorite name. Is it? Fred?

Yeah, there's something hardcore libertarian about the name Fred. Yeah, yes, there is. And that's not just a random joke. So anyway, Clark formed an organization called the American Economic Foundation. Its goal was to push and advocate for free market limited government ideals. He moved the foundation to New York City in the 1940s, and he set up a program to educate young Americans about the wonders of capitalism. Clark believed the free market worked because it was a self-correcting system controlled by the consumer. Since this self-correcting system was obviously perfect, there was no need for government intrusion into the economy.

Of course. Yeah. If you have a system that's for like, you say whatever you want, you do whatever you want, in order to make money and sort of take advantage of consumers, consumers have the power. Exactly. Think about like ISPs. That's why everyone's internet is fantastic, and nobody has complaints about their ISP, because we the consumers have the power.

Perfect example of what Fred is talking about. Perfect example. That's why the healthcare industry is famously without flaw, because the consumers are in control. It's definitely not broken from their perspective, so why would they try to fix it? And free is right there. I love free stuff. Free stuff? I love Boston Market.

So a free Boston Market, that's what I think of when I think of free market. That's just some good associations right there. They're brilliant. I'm going to get me a good rotisserie chicken that's been sitting on a warming plate for four days. For free. They're free. Delightful. Okay.

So the foundation published a pamphlet called How We Live and sold something like 3 million copies of it during the 1940s and 50s. It was an economics primer that basically outlined Fred's ideas about how the economy ought to work. In 1964, the American Economic Foundation had its biggest coup yet when it hosted that year's World's Fair in New York City. I found some New York Times coverage of the event. The title of the article is Free Enterprises, Hailed at Fair, Hall Dedicated and Torch of Truth, Lighted at Ceremony. Now, most of this article reads like the flavor text you'd find in a fallout game. It's pretty fun.

I love reading old New York Times stories from the 1960s. Here's a quote, an attack against Russian communist imperialist aggression and against big government in this country was delivered by John Davis Lodge, former governor of Connecticut and former ambassador to Spain. For the Russians, peaceful coexistence is a tactic, not an objective. For us, plausible appearances to the contrary, notwithstanding, it is surrender on the installment plan. Mayor Wagner praised the pavilion as a most valuable endeavor to explain in practical terms to the millions of visitors to the World's Fair, the daily economic benefits inherent in our free enterprise system. So this is the 1964 World's Fair?

Yeah. That is classic. That is just fallout. There's a lot. Yeah, there's just fallout. And you talk, a piece is just communism. We don't nuke each other, the Russians win. Yeah. It is just, it is just, they don't exaggerate at all on those games. No, no, no.

No, they take it right from history. They take it right from history. Now, a representative during this World's Fair from the American Steel Workers Union was quoted by The New York Times as noting ruefully that the exhibit completely left out labor. Weird. Weird that a major pro-capitalist foundation would ignore labor. Must have been an oversight. Must have been an oversight. It actually wasn't according to the American Economic Foundation.

One of their representatives assured The New York Times that, quote, labor was represented in the Hall's major exhibit, Mr. Both comes to town. This is a show in which Mr. Both has the dual role of producer and consumer, and the audience finds itself involved in the economy of a small town. That sounds awful. That is the height of, oh, that is branding right there. That is branding. Wow. Yeah.

I'm sorry, audience participation shows, you can get the fuck out of here. Yeah. You are labor. We're labor. The CEOs are labor. We're all labor. We are labor, yes. And you know what came about because some guy was sitting back and being like,

well, if it's an audience participation show, we don't get to pay for as many actors. Free labor being the best kind of labor. Yeah, make them pay to get in, and then they're in it. Exactly. And then they do the show. Don't you guys feel lucky? I really did look for video of Mr. Both comes to town because I still have no idea what it could actually have been saying. I'm sure it was a tour de force, but I found no evidence of it.

I do want to go off topic for just a second because the New York Times article, this all happened during like free market day at the World's Fair, but that wasn't the only day that it was that day at the World's Fair. So I want to read the end of this New York Times article. It just gives some weird insight into how strange America was in the day before Internet. Yesterday was also Law Day, and the Festival of Gas served as unlikely chambers for about 100 judges of the city in judicial robes. The day two was Betty Crocker Day, Loyalty Day, Northeastern Poultry Producers' Council Day,

Personal Affairs Day, and Kings County Day. And the list is growing. Today at the Fair will be Garden City, Boston, Massachusetts Tours Day, Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart Day, Scandinavian New York State Day, Temple or Elohim Day, Willingboro Township Day, and Crazy Hat Day. Crazy Hat Day? Well, that one's just fun. They saved the fun one for the very end. Wait, how many days was the...

I mean, let's count here. So this was yesterday was Law Day at the Festival of Gas. I need to know more about that. Also, I love like... I mean, what kind of gas? Loyalty Day. Loyalty Day. But also like Funny Hat Day.

But also Funny Hat Day. Well, no, that was the next day. So the day that this article is about was Free Market Day, Law Day in the Festival of Gas, Betty Crocker Day, Loyalty Day, Northeastern... It was like seven or eight days. All in one. All in one. Well, you know what, I think that's rude because you shouldn't have to share your special day

with several others, but, you know... I'm sorry, Katie, this is capitalism. And the more days you jam into a single day, you're getting four weeks for the price of two days. That's true. Just pledge your loyalty on the loyalty day. And you get a silly hat. And you wear a silly hat. Yeah.

Crazy Hat. Crazy Hat. Yeah, different days. Yeah, yeah. Fred Clark died in 1973, and the American Economics Foundation went rapidly downhill from there. They moved back to Cleveland in the early 1980s, which was not an inspiring time to move back to Cleveland. No. Everyone was doing the opposite, actually, in the 80s, if you recall.

Sorry, Cleveland, but... I mean, there's... You know. I'm, you know, from Ohio. I like places, but yeah. You're like, places. Not even wanting to go to bat for Cleveland. I'd say Cleveland's my least favorite city name.

Like the name of a city? Yeah. It just is like... Well, because I think that it must be a city founded by a guy named Cleave, and I can't imagine a guy named Cleave not being gross. The land of Cleave. Yeah. No, thanks.

No, thank you. Right, but yeah, like John Cleaveson or something. Just Cleave. No. This is my buddy Cleave. This is his land. We're going to build a city so gross the river catches on fire. A couple of times.

So yeah, the American Economics Foundation moved back to Cleveland in the 80s, and instead of hosting World's Fairs, they launched a massive mailing list across the country, essentially seeding the United States with far-right free market values. Most of what they did until their dissolution was send out pamphlets and mailers. One such pamphlet was the 10 Pillars of Economic Wisdom, a sort of 10 Commandments for Libertarian Free Market Economics as Fred Clark saw it. Now, the 10 Pillars had first been revealed at that 1964 World's Fair. I love the idea of like, the big reveal.

The big reveal. Everyone's waiting. No one knew what they were. We were all just getting money, not knowing where it came from. The music swells. Yeah. Full of curtain down here, they are. The Pillars strongly hint that the best possible world is one where workers listen to their

bosses and don't ask for raises, because asking for raises will decrease the amount of money workers take home. Of course. That's just basic economics. Yeah, that's math right there. This list of rubber-bearing capitalist wisdom wound up outlasting the American Economic Foundation and spreading throughout the Libertarian Right. It was picked up as an educational supplement by the Free Enterprise Education Institute.

Now, the Free Enterprise Education Institute was founded in 1976, three years after Clark died, by a fellow named Roland Story. He'd been a vaudeville performer, and an oil and gas industry businessman in Houston, which is a neat mix. He's all of them, yeah. He's a mix of the two things you assume would be most racist in 1976. Anyone still doing vaudeville in the oil and gas industry in Texas? He lived in Houston, and he decided that his calling was to indoctrinate young Texans

into the virtues of libertarian economic theory. Indoctrinate specifically. Oh yeah. Cool. Very much so. He ran like after-school specials and stuff, programs, and yeah. They know what they have to do. They know what they have to do.

Get them young. Yeah. One of Story's students called him the Santa Clause of Liberty. You guys enjoyed that. It's Liberty Clause. The Wilderness, which is now shamefully outdated. It was published in like 2016 when the election started out. It was about how that giant 16 candidate Republican primary slate came about.

The book was definitely written with the angle that like the Republicans are going to lose this election. Let's try to figure out how things got so fucked up, but that didn't happen anyway. No, no. They should have sat on that a little longer. They should have sat on that book a little bit longer, but it does give some good background into Mr. Story. Quote, Story educated his students about the brightest minds of free market economics.

They poured over Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and marveled at Friedrich Bastiat's denunciations of socialism as legal plunder. A veteran of vaudeville, Story liked to recreate constitutional conventions and assign students to play delegates in mock debates. So that's fun. Also I got a note. Friedrich Hayek, Friedrich Bastiat, both Freds. They are both Freds.

It's the fucking Freds. I'm more on board with that. Fred Coke. Friedrich, and also I apologize if there are any Freds listening. I don't think there are. No, if there are Freds listening, you have to pay reparations for the damage that other Freds have done. Yeah, I'm sorry.

We're sorry. It's your responsibility. That's the rules. Isn't there a Fred Claus movie? Fred Claus? Speaking of Santa. Oh, and Vince Vaughn is a libertarian. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bam. All checking out. It's all tied together. Good gracious. But if you are a Fred, the only thing that can stop a bad Fred with dangerous far-right ideology is a good Fred with. Name a good Fred with dangerous far-right ideology. I can't think of a good Fred with any kind of ideology.

Freds and Cleveland all taking a hit today. What about the Fred Savage who played the cute little boy in The Princess Bride? Fred Savage. Oh, you haven't heard about Fred Savage? Oh, no. Oh, man. No, there's a six part behind the bastards about Fred Savage. A lot of people lost hands.

Anyway, continuing on, Roland's story's most gifted student was a 13 year old boy named Ted Cruz. Oh, there it is. There we go. Rafael Edward Cruz, born on December 22nd, 1970, was the son of Rafael Cruz, a Cuban-American who fought against the Batista regime and fled his home country after Castro took power. His mother, Eleanor Wilson, was just some lady from Delaware. Ted Cruz was actually born in Canada.

His mom and dad owned a seismic data processing firm in Calgary before his parents split up and his dad moved the kids to Texas in 1974. Not long after that, his mom came back and the family stayed together until I think 1997 when they divorced. I don't know if these marital difficulties bled into the childhood of the young Ted Cruz. I do know that he was a brilliant student and a habitual overachiever in school. These aspects of his personality only increased when Roland's story began to groom him. You're not liking where this is going.

It's just that you get divorced, get back together, and then get divorced again. That's something else. That has to affect someone. I mean, you gotta assume, right? I just don't like knowing who Ted Cruz is and what he turned into, and he's been like, oh, like a wide-eyed kid who's moved to Texas and he's an overachiever. Good luck, buddy. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Roland is involved. Roland is involved. Stories after school study sessions had a huge influence on Ted's already conservative upbringing because his dad Rafael, who we'll talk about later, is pretty far right. But Rafael, his father, did later recall, quote, instead of reading comic books, Ted was reading Adam Smith. He was reading Milton Friedman.

He was reading Von Mises. He was reading Frederick Bastiat. So intolerable. Intolerable. Certainly doesn't sound like a kid anybody wanted to sit with at lunch. It's probably worth noting, since we did a two-part on the Koch brothers, that Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises both taught at Robert Lefebvre's Freedom School. If you remember from that Koch brothers two-part, the Freedom School was both funded by and

a major influence on Charles Koch. Other things, the Freedom School believed that slavery should be legal, as long as it's just free people selling themselves into slavery. Those words work well together? Yeah. I like that they make sense. What a hill to pick to die on. Unbelievable.

People sell themselves into slavery. Yeah. Just looking out at the world and being like, you know what the fucking problem is? Nobody can sell themselves into slavery. I also love like, there are so many libertarians out there who like, when you bring that up, like, well, that's not what we think, like, yeah, you literally do. The basis is a lot of the thought that underlies this ideology. My body, my choice, I guess.

I mean, but no, because you can't consent to being eaten by someone. My slavery, my choice. I need to say that I did not mean it when I said my body, my choice. Ludwig von Mises, in addition to being a pillar of libertarian economic theory and a major influence on young Ted Cruz, was a member of the Board of Advisors for the Mises Institute's Rampart Journal. His name is attached to several issues of that journal that include articles denying the Holocaust.

Just a fun little. I was waiting for the Nazi connection. Well, they support the Nazis and they work for the Nazis. There's always a Nazi connection. There's always a Nazi connection, and it is weird how many libertarian journals and writers in the 70s and 80s in particular, back before the Internet, were writing a lot of stuff about how the Holocaust didn't add up to them. Well, a lot of classical liberals really, really supporting Hitler in the early days.

That is weird. I don't know. There's no, I don't even have a bit about the Holocaust denial here. It's just a thing that people do. It's just a thing that people choose to do. Like some people might choose to be slaves, and that's just their choice. It's their choice, guys. Choice is what makes America great.

Now, shortly after he began working with story, Ted Cruz was picked to be a member of the constitutional corroborators. Guys, these are fucking dorks, my God. And you say that, Cody, as a dork. I'm a complete dork. I know. We've all made substantial chunks of our living making fun of Star Wars. I've been on podcasts where I only play Dungeons & Dragons, but these fucking dweebs, my God.

Now, just judging by that name, what do y'all think the constitutional corroborators might have been? Any guesses? Corroborating the Constitution. Cool kids. Cool kids. Cool kids. Some sort of judicial watch type.

Yes, that's what it seems like. That would actually be cooler. There were groups of five students. Each group of corroborators was five students who attended stories after school programs and trained to be able to write out the entire constitution from memory. They also read out a definition of socialism when they presented this, which was portrayed as being a direct opposition to the Constitution. Now the corroborators toured local chambers of commerce and rotary clubs, various groups

and associations, stuff like that, around north and central Texas. They toured and let them watch them write out the Constitution from memory? They would show up in front of groups of generally older conservative people, and these five kids would get a bunch of whiteboards out and they would write out the Constitution from memory using a mnemonic device that they'd memorized. These are children. Yeah, early teens. That's a good show, though.

Okay. I guess if you don't have Netflix, if good music hasn't been invented yet, which it hadn't been in the 80s. Yeah. In my day, we just watched kids write words on whiteboards. That was the only Netflix we needed. I love groups like this, like Charlie Kirk kind of person, or like even Paul Joseph Watson, who's like, oh, your fans are all over 60 conservatives.

And they just love that there's finally a young person saying what they're thinking. They just want to see a young person who agrees with them. It's perfect. It's amazing. Taylor's whole style. At least as old as the 1980s in Rowland's story. He was one of the first people doing this in a really organized way. So one of Ted's fellow constitutional corroborators was Laura Calloway.

She joined the group in her senior year at Deer Park High School. She'd been invited there by her friend, Jeff, who she had a crush on and who was on the debate team. This study group is how Story's Free Enterprise Education Center hooked most of its young members that even offered scholarships to sweeten the deal. Here's what Laura recalled later in a Medium post. The non-profit programs director, a jocular, round man named Rowland Story, sends us boxes of books, textbooks wrapped in shiny plastic, textbooks unavailable at school, but textbooks

that tell the real story behind our country's founding fathers. There are lots of quotes by Thomas Jefferson. Sounds like a Prager U situation. Sounds like a Prager U situation before the internet. Now, she enjoyed the study program and most of the people in it, with one notable exception. Ted Cruz. I've heard about him from my friend. She writes it in the present tense.

I've heard about him from my friends that he is a master debater and long-term member of the organization. When we are introduced, it is the first time I feel as if someone has sized me up, found me wanting, and moved on all before I finish hello. It is not a good feeling. I don't think I'm going to like Ted. Laura was about 30 years ahead of the rest of the U.S. in this. We're going to get into some more about the constitutional corroborators and the rest

of the evolution of Tedric Cruz, which is not his name, but fuck it. He might as well be a Fred. He might as well be a Fred. Fred and Ted basically. Fred Cruz. Basically the same. I think if I come into my Fred talk. But first we have to corroborate not the constitution, but products.

That people can buy? Yes. If I buy products, does it support you and your show? In a way. In a way. Absolutely. That's great though. And even better than that, as the consumer, you will have the power in this new relationship

you're entering into. I love having power. I love having power too. Let's all become powerful and listen to these ads. Yes. Can't wait. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations.

And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. And Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based

on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't

a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the

youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left offending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the

world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. We're talking about Ted Cruz and his youth as a constitutional corroborator. Let's put youth in quotes. Ted Cruz was born 43. Has not changed much since.

Now we're talking about Laura, who just announced that she did not like Ted Cruz in the first meeting. The instant she talked to him. At one point, Laura and her fellow corroborators were invited to an American Ideas seminar at the State Conference Center in Houston. They attended classes and lectures about the free market and limited government. One of their most important pieces of curriculum was the 10 Pillars of Economic Wisdom. That all ties together.

While Fred Clark, who wrote those pillars, was long dead by this point, and has now so forgotten that I barely found anything about him online, his ideas clearly spread to a new generation of young conservative. The 10 Pillars had a profound impact on Ted Cruz. His favorite pillar was the second. Government is never a source of goods. Everything produced is produced by the people, and everything that government gives to the people, it must first take from the people.

What? You know when the government builds roads? They take roads from you? And you have less roads, but the government has more? Yeah, yeah. Or like when the government provides an ambulance after you're in a car wreck, you have less ambulances. Well, you had an ambulance, but then you didn't, and then they gave it to the government.

That's how it works. I'm familiar with this pillar. Just like from living life in society and looking around, I could have guessed that pillar. I used to have a United States Marine Corps, but now that I pay taxes, it's completely out of my control. Yeah. They took it. But they gave it back to you?

Sort of. Sort of. Yeah. It's not the same. No, it's not. Laura described the American Idea Seminar as church camp for libertarians, which is certainly how it sounds. Quote, as if it's normal conversation, we discuss ideas over dinner, like, the only thing government

should do is provide for the common defense. Fire stations? Privatize. Medical care? Even Medicare? Definitely privatize. Education? All schools should be private.

Education is a privilege, not a constitutional right. What the fuck? What is fucking people? How do you even, like, start to talk about those kinds of topics with those people? I just want to live in a nation where poor children are free to be illiterate and sell themselves into slavery, signing their name, writing their marks on contracts they can't read. That seems like freedom to me.

Maybe that doesn't seem like freedom to everyone. No, that's freedom. I want to have to, I think education should be profitable, so all the decisions that one would make in giving somebody education is based off of how much money you'll make, which I think would give that person a good education because it's motivated by doing whatever in order to make money. Absolutely. And that's always been where our greatest advances have come, when the only thing on

the line was profit. Yeah, absolutely. That's how we cured polio. That's why Jonas Salk famously became a billionaire from the polio vaccine. That's why all of those NASA scientists who put a man on the moon got super rich. Yeah, that's absolutely true. That's 100%. That's the stereotype of the mansion-owning NASA scientist.

Those rich fat cat scientists sitting on their ivory Apollo launcher. One percent of scientists. Now Laura felt some disconnect in these conversations because she'd gone to a public school and she was at a public school and she thought she got a pretty good education. But despite some lingering doubts, she did find the whole experience almost intoxicating. The most exciting part for me is feeling important, being treated as a thinking adult and getting to spend the weekend at a fancy conference center. It is the nicest hotel room I've ever been in, and the banquet room has crystal glasses,

and there is a magic show, and the college kids have beer. It's awesome. So it signed me up. I mean, I should note, Texas in the 80s, you could drink and drive still. That was like 19, and ecstasy was legal. So this was quite the time to be in a hotel in the Houston area. I'm sure they had a lot of fun. So it's perfect, because it is just like, all right, we're going to say this, and then

old people are going to be excited, the young people are talking about these things, and the young people are going to be excited because they get to pretend to be fancy and old. That's right. Just a little feedback loop. And they get to feel like they're better than other young people who are busy getting educations and not being indoctrinated. Yeah. It's great.

I wonder if any current far-right media personalities had upbringings in any way similar to this. Wow. That's an interesting question. I bet nothing will come of that. Yeah, there's no way to look into people like Ben Shapiro or Charlie Kirk. Probably just tested. There's probably nothing there. There's probably no similarities.

So let's talk about the only time this ever happened. Now, Laura studied with Ted Cruz and their fellow constitutional corroborators to memorize the Constitution, as I stated. She claims Story hired a mnemonic expert to create a tried-and-true method for helping kids memorize the Constitution. This was necessary because Story's goal was to basically mass-produce constitutional corroborators to travel around and wow the easily wowable all around the United States. The time Laura was involved, there were at least six different teams of corroborators

touring the country at any given time. Laura recalled a usual visit. Quote, we arrive at a Rotary Club meeting and set up our easels and large pads of paper. Without notes, we use our clever mnemonic device, and we each write the headlines of our sections. Mine include articles four, five, six, and seven. Rooms full of almost all white men over the age of 50 wearing blue suits are very impressed. Yeah, that checks out.

That's the good stuff right there. God, I love it. Now, a major motivation for Laura and most of the other corroborators was the chance to win scholarships. During one speech competition hosted by the Fortune 500 Auto Parts manufacturer, Tinnaco, Laura placed first. Ted Cruz placed third. We have a picture of them receiving their awards, and you can see the barely restrained

fury in Ted's eyes. Now, this will be on BehindTheBastards.com. I got to pass this around and just get y'all to describe how Ted Cruz looks in that picture. Am I imagining that? Or does he look livid? His teeth are showing. That is the definition of all teeth, no smile. I'm smiling like they tell me to, but his eyes are dead, which we're also familiar with.

His eyes are like a doll's eyes. Yeah, he is familiar with what smiles should look like. He's had smiles described to him. It's the exact, because if you've ever heard Ted Cruz talk, he's got that like, here's how I talk to you. This is how a genuine person speaks, and that is that smile. That is that smile. Clearly, smiling was not one of the 10 pillars of economic wisdom, so he just didn't study

it. Now, Ted went to second Baptist High School, which was a fairly expensive private school in Houston. Not expensive. That's first. Now, according to the book he wrote before running for president, the title of which I have forgotten, and I'm not going to give in this episode. Fuck it.

Shut up, Ted. Fuck you, Ted Cruz. But according to this book that Ted Cruz wrote, Ted Cruz was one of the cooler kids that Ted Cruz is high school. Nice. Yes. Oh my God. Are you kidding me?

Ted Cruz might be, but I'm not. Quote, midway through junior high school, I decided I'd had enough of being the unpopular married. I remember sitting up one night asking a friend why I wasn't one of the popular kids. I ended up staying up most of that night thinking about it. Okay, well, what does it the popular kids do? I will consciously emulate that. That is sad.

That's where he learned how to smile. Well, that's everything. Because Ted Cruz, if you've seen the pictures of him, video of him with his family and stuff, he's consciously emulating a human being with a wife and children. Oh God, yeah. That's Ted Cruz. Anytime he tries to kiss his wife or child, it's just the worst moment of his life. They seem offended that he's near them.

There was an article today about his wife. We can talk about that later, but it was tragic. Oh, it's heartbreaking. Honestly, it's really sad, their relationship and how she basic, well, we can get to it. I would describe the way that human beings look when Ted Cruz kisses them, human beings that Ted Cruz is related to, the way they look when he kisses them. It's not like, you know, people get pictures of Melania and some of them look like a couple that's having a fight and they're a little angry or something like that, but most couples

will have moments like that in their relationship. When Ted Cruz kisses one of his beloved family members, it looks like almost gravitational force repelling them. Yeah, like magnets that are going further away. It's an instinct. It's not even emotional. Of course it is. There's coldness that you can see in relationships, but then there's just recoiling.

And how could you not recoil from that? How could you not? I mean, but how could you not? No, there's no way. This isn't even about his appearance. This is about his aura. Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, this woman remembers meeting him for the first time and, like, within seconds she's like, I hate him. I hate him. I hate this person. This is a bad human being. Yeah. Now, Ted says that in order to get popular, he got involved with sports, got contact

lenses instead of glasses, and was soon a regular party boy. He was even briefly suspended for smoking pot. What? I know. Yeah. He was a partian. Quote. On other occasions, he wrote, he was beaten up by drunk older kids at 2 a.m. and reprimanded

by the principal for a prank that involved covering a rival school's building and toilet paper and shaving cream, then fleeing in a 1978 Ford Fairmont with Wagner's ride of the Valkyries blaring out of the car stairs. Hold up. Does he think being popular includes getting beat up? Yeah, I think so. It's attention. Okay.

So now we see the disconnect here. Right. I'm well known for getting beat up by some older kids at 2 a.m. So, I mean, I will say a lot of people listen to Ride of the Valkyries while doing various things, but the choice of Wagner. Yeah. That's not good. A little fashy.

A little bit. Maybe not in those days, though. Maybe not in those days. People aren't aware of it. People didn't know. Apocalypse Now would just come out. Yeah. Maybe that's it.

Yeah. It was Apocalypse Now then. I know Ted Cruz is a big film puff. He likes art, so I'm sure that he was really into that. He does enjoy a nice art. He likes to eat it. I'm a big fan of the art. Many of Cruz's former fellow students and teachers do agree that Ted Cruz was widely

seen as very intelligent and gifted. He was the valedictorian of his class in 1988. He was always an outspoken conservative and always cleared that his goal in life was to get into politics. It seems like rather than becoming popular by acting less nerdy, Cruz actually gained most of what popularity he did have from his nerdiness. Second Baptist was a big speech and debate school, and Ted Cruz was a fantastic debater. Being someone who was in speech and debate in Texas, it is definitely a community that

attracts outspoken, annoying, opinionated, conservative kids, which I was when I was Ted Cruz's age and in a Texan high school, so I can guess what a lot of those conversations were like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, when he graduated in 1988, 17-year-old Ted Cruz wrote this description of his hopes and dreams in his yearbook.

Upon graduation, Ted hopes to attend Princeton University in major in political science and economics. From there, he wants to attend law school, possibly Harvard, and achieve a successful law practice. He then wants to pursue his real goal, a career in politics. Ted would like to run for various political offices and eventually achieve a strong enough reputation and track record to run for and win President of the United States. Presidency has been Ted Cruz's goal from the very beginning.

That just means he's a maniac. Yeah. That's all he does. Yeah. I mean, I was a 16-year-old conservative debater who wanted to be the president, and then I became an 18-year-old who had to pay rent and realized that wasn't a job, a good person once. Also, like, there's a video of him from high school, I think.

Oh, yeah. That's what we're about to get into. Yeah. So, in a video filmed in 1988, right after graduation, Ted Cruz lays out his ambitions in a much less polished fashion. And we're just going to play this whole video for y'all. Have you both seen this? No.

Oh, good. Katie, I'm excited for this. It's true. I love it. I can't wait. So, let's listen to the 18-year-old Ted Cruz. Talk about his hopes and dreams. Katie, I think you should be able to look at it so you can at least see him, because he's

a character. He's a character. Aspiration. Is that like sweat on my butt? What? No, no. Oh, I see. What do you want me to do?

What do I want to do in life? Well, my aspiration is to, oh, I don't know, be in a teen tit film like that guy who played Horatio. You know, he was in Malibu, Bikini Beach Shop. Well, other than that, take over the world, world domination, rule everything, rich, powerful, that sort of stuff. That was, of course, a fake Ted Cruz campaign ad using that. Now, normally, it would be unfair.

I did worse stuff than that when I was 18. Oh, yeah. I don't want anyone seeing the videos I made when I was 18. No, no, no. The thing that's interesting about this is that this is probably the best thing Ted Cruz ever did from a moral standpoint, because he's not actively harming anyone in that video other than, perhaps, the cameraman. So Ted did get to go to Princeton, and he went to Harvard after that, but his roommate

at Princeton was a guy named Craig Mazin. Now, Craig would later go on to write the screenplays for the Hangover Movie trilogy. Good on Craig, I guess. He's doing all right for himself. Weird that that took a Princeton education. Interesting way to use Princeton. For sure. I don't think he liked that.

Nothing against it. Of all of the movies that star, you know, the guy who was sexy for a hot minute, and then he got huge, and he played that sniper who lied about Jesse the Body Ventura. That guy. Bradley Cooper. Bradley Cooper. Oh, I thought, yeah, OK. Is he still alive?

He is. Good for him. Apparently, he's looking real hot in his new movie, A Star is Born. Good for him. He directed that Lady Gaga movie. And starred in it. There's Lady Gaga. She's still alive.

Fantastic. They're all still living. And Sophie is covering her face. Yeah. Anyway. She looks aghast. Well, you know what? You know more about those people than I know more about Ted Cruz.

So who is the winner now? Although everyone is about to know the same amount about Ted Cruz. Who is still alive. Who is still alive. Technically. That's disappointing. Now, when we get back, we're going to talk about what Craig Mason has to say about Mr. Cruz.

You know what I love is not Doritos, I do love Doritos, but I'm no longer giving free ad space to Doritos. Oh, wow. Well, I just feel a little bit like you got to move on. I understand. I mean, they're not answering your calls. You can't. They're not.

That's just, yeah, you have to, if you love something, let it let it go. Let it go. Let it go. And maybe it'll come back to you. And provide free ads for Stretch Island fruit leather, the only fruit leather that is currently sitting on the table as we record this podcast. That is true. Yeah.

It's the only one I see right now. Fantastic. All right. Here's some ads that paid us. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations and you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys.

As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. He's in a good and bad ass way and nasty sharks.

He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science.

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It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself

stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And we're back. We're talking about Craig Mazin, who, when Ted Cruz ran for president, his former roommate Craig Mazin, screenwriter of the Hangover movie series, got on his Twitter and started to talk about his opinions on his former roommate Ted Cruz. Turns out he doesn't like him very much. Now there's some interviews with Mr. Mazin, and like with Laura, it sounds like Craig pretty much hated Ted Cruz from the moment they met. Quote, I remember very specifically that he had a book in Spanish, and the title was,

Was Karl Marx a Satanist? And I thought, who is this person? Even in 1988, he was politically extreme in a way that was surprising to me. Wow. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's all, oh, it's all there. That's cool.

It's all there. No, it hasn't changed. For reference, here is a picture of Ted Cruz at the time. This is his yearbook photo, actually, from high school. And I'm going to hand this to, let's say, Katie, just describe for me as best you can to look on his face in that yearbook. Possessed? Yeah.

I mean, his eyes are kind of rolling back. It's almost like he's a shell of a man possessed by the spirits of two dead conservative ideal odds. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I know him. Yeah. I've seen this person.

Yeah. I've seen this person today, writing their opinions on the internet. Yeah. It's pretty remarkable. Now, the Daily Beast talked to Mason and several other members of Princeton's 1992 graduating class. These people all knew Ted Cruz at the time. And the Daily Beast concluded, after all their interviews, that, quote, the Ted Cruz

who arrived as a college freshman in 1988 was nearly identical to the man who arrived in Washington as a freshman Republican senator in 2013, which is one thing everyone agrees about with Ted Cruz. He has not changed at all since he was a child. I mean, yeah, when you're indoctrinated that early. Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to break through that.

No, you just dig in deeper. You're going to think that Karl Marx is a saveness. You already know the 10 pillars of economic wisdom. What else is there to know? Now Eric Leitch, who lived with Ted Cruz at one point during their time in Princeton, said, quote, it was my distinct impression that Ted had nothing to learn from anyone else. The only point of Ted talking to you was to convince you of the rightness of his views.

Oh, he's the worst kind of person. Yeah. Yeah. And again, very much sounds like a high school speech and debate kid. Yeah. I've resembled that at a time in my life. Normally you go into the world, you meet other people, you realize you're not as smart as you thought.

You encounter some surprises, you meet people with different backgrounds, and you become less of that. Ted Cruz never did. Yeah. Yeah. You slowly realize like, oh, I'm a dumbass. Oh, I'm an idiot. I don't have all the answers.

Life's really complicated. I should listen to other people. No, all you need is the 10 pillars. You have to be able to learn and grow from your mistakes to do that, though, so. I wonder if that's something we'll see Ted Cruz do, or if he'll just be continually noted as an unchanging monolith of men. At this point, it's too late. I don't want to do that.

Don't start now. No, no. Other classmates at Princeton called college crews abrasive, arrogant, creepy, and a crank. The Daily Beast notes that four former classmates all independently described him as creepy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, half of Congress.

Right. I mean, it's like you don't even need to say like, oh, someone said this about Ted Cruz is it correct? Just like describe Ted Cruz for a second. If there was a vote in Congress as to whether or not Ted Cruz was creepy, it would be the only unanimous vote our Congress has had. Ted Cruz would vote yes. Yeah.

They're finally some bipartisanship in kind of like, if we can't come together on this, what can we come together on? What can we agree on? Let's just start with the basics. Ted Cruz, gross as shit, right? Okay. Let's build from there. Ted Cruz seconds this.

Right off the floor, I'd like to grieve my colleague that Ted Cruz is absolutely creepy. Stares at me in the bathroom. Yeah. Ted Cruz apparently had a habit of putting on a paisley bathrobe and walking to the other end of the dorm where all of the women lived and just sort of hanging out there. No. No. No.

That's what Craig Mason says. I would end up fielding the girl's complaints. Could you please keep your roommate out of our hallway? Oh, that's so good. Ted Cruz. Now, Cruz played poker regularly with a group of upperclassmen and was apparently just as bad at that as he is at all the other stuff. He wound up owing $1,800 in 1980s money to several students.

Wow. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. That's like six grand a day. Oh my God. In college? Yeah. In college.

That's an insane amount of money. Yeah. It's crazy. Now, Ted Cruz's campaign spokesman in 2015 was asked about Ted Cruz being terrible at poker and she confirmed that Senator Cruz once had a, quote, foolish poker problem. He went to his aunt who worked at a bank in Dallas and borrowed $1,800 from her, which he paid in cash and promptly quit the game. Cruz's spokeswoman claims that he worked two jobs and gradually paid his aunt off over

the next two years. Physical responsibility. Physical responsibility. Yes. More than he's shown as a congressman, which we'll get to in a second. Now, in general, it seems like the kids who were in debate club with Cruz actually did like him and everybody else kind of hated him. His old debate partner speaks particularly well of Ted Cruz, quote, I consider Ted to

be very kind. He is a very, very gentle hearted person. He took me under his wing and was a mentor to me. He was very kind to me. I am a much smarter and much better person today because of Ted Cruz. What did he want from him? I don't know. I don't know.

You know. It seems like some people did like him. Really did like him. Well, I think it's probably just that like, that kind of relationship that he, like some people are looking for that kind of relationship and Ted Cruz only responds to that kind of relationship. Yes. Like he's sizing everybody up.

I'm like, you're useless to me. I think you're beneath me. So I'm not going to treat you well. Yeah. This. Oh, I can mentor this person. We're working together. Yeah.

I can indoctrinate him. And he's a debate kid who's never off. Other debate kids who are never off probably get along with him. Yeah. So one thing no one denies is that Ted Cruz was exceptionally good at speech and debate. He won a bunch of stuff. Here's how the Daily Beast described his place in that community. Late weekends included Friday night parties that Cruz often attended where he was remembered

to be sort of a stud with girls on the debate circuit. Princeton Debaters also said he spent extra time mentoring them to improve their skills even though they competed against each other. Ted Cruz. That's nice. That's nice. Pretty much everyone, whether they loved or hated Ted Cruz, agrees that he has not changed at all since he was a teenager.

After graduation, Ted attended Harvard Law School and pretty much immediately got into government work. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General of Texas and also the longest serving Solicitor General of Texas from 2003 to 2008. He argued in front of the Supreme Court a number of times, including to defend a Ten Commandments Monument at the Austin State Capitol. His proudest moment was arguing Medellin v. Texas before the Supreme Court, which defended the state of Texas' right to execute a Mexican citizen without letting him talk to his consulate.

Imagine that being the hell you want to die on. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of a complicated case, but that's sort of what it boils down to is they inform him he had a... yeah. Anyway. This is my soul escaping my mind. Slowly sliding out of you. That's the Ted Cruz effect.

For a long time, Cruz's ambition was to become the Attorney General at the United States, but rather than get in good with Mitt Romney and try to wangle a job as Attorney General if he somehow won in 2012, Ted Cruz made the, in retrospect, a wise decision to run for Senate in 2012 instead. Won in the primary and that victory was one of the most stunning upsets of the entire year. He was eventually swept into office by a wave of Tea Party sentiment that was still a big deal back in 2012.

He won the general election as well, and just like that, Ted Cruz was one step closer to his dream of becoming the president. Here's the young Ted Cruz, fresh-faced, looking good. I mean, that's all very objective. He's just such a dweeb. He's just such a dweeb. Such a dweeb. I love the pictures of Ted Cruz with a gun.

Oh my God. Because he holds a gun like someone who's had them described to him before. Right. That's about it. Yeah. He's aware of what they are. You mean the bacon? Oh God, yeah.

That's a bad one. So embarrassing. Yeah. He's trying to cook the bacon. It's like, what do you like? Wait, and he shoots it instead? No, no, no. You can cook bacon on any kind of gun that has a long enough exposed.

You wrap the bacon around, he shoots it, and heats it up, and then he eats it because he's a real Texan man. I used to live in Texas and did a bunch of shooting, and we would, for fun, you'd do stuff like crack eggs in the receiver of a Kalashnikov or something, and you'd line it with foil. And you can cook eggs. You can cook the eggs around, and the eggs will cook, and it's like a fun thing drunk people do on the weekends, not congressional candidates.

Right to prove you're like Texan clout, like, no Ted, this isn't you. No, you're not. You're not. You're Canadian. Right. And it's fine. Right. You don't need that.

Be okay with that. Be okay with that. So the next year after being elected, 2013, Senator Cruz made a name for himself in Washington, and by many accounts, not a good one. One of his first moments of prominence was arguing against the Women's Health Protection Act. Cruz said that this act, which would have essentially, there was a law in Texas that cut down by like half the number of abortion clinics that were allowed to be open in the

state by putting in new restrictions on them. This was a federal act that was supposed to basically stop that law and stop other laws like that all around the nation so that women could have more access to safe sexual health care and abortions. Ted Cruz called this a manifestation of a war on women, and he claimed Planned Parenthood was unnecessary because there wasn't a shortage of rubbers, which is the term he used. Gross. Really gross.

The sex haver has weighed in. Ted Cruz, actual sex haver. Now in late 2013, Ted Cruz was one of several House Republicans who threatened the United States that they would shut down the government and refuse to pass a new spending bill if that spending bill included any money for Obamacare. Cruz was one of the main architects of the shutdown, and he spoke for 21 hours in order to help delay the vote. He read Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor for a section of this.

Because politics is a serious business. The 2013 shutdown lasted 17 days and cost the United States an estimated $24 billion. Good job. Good job. Ted Cruz. Now, he was not the only Republican, obviously, who supported the shutdown. He's not the only Republican who argued against the Women's Health Protection Act. One of the things that stands out about Ted Cruz is the sheer vitriolic contempt that

he's held in by other Republicans. It's really the thing that's remarkable about him, and it seems to have started with John McCain. So McCain got miffed at Ted during that 21-hour speech he gave arguing in favor of the shutdown because Cruz compared Republicans who voted to approve the spending bill with Nazi appeasers. Oh, Ted, oh, Ted, you don't know what you're talking about. If you go to the 1940s, Nazi Germany, look, we saw in Britain, Neville Chamberlain, who told the British people, except the Nazis, yes, they'll dominate the continent of Europe,

but that's not our problem. Let's appease them. Why? Because it can't be done. We can't possibly stand against them. Not what Neville Chamberlain said. Not at all. Not at all what Neville Chamberlain said.

That is, uh, par for the course. I don't know why. I don't know why. Absolutely not. McCain, being a human being who's read a history book, was offended by this. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

He considered this inappropriate and shameful, especially since it was basically calling many Republicans who he was friends with, Nazis. McCain took to calling Cruz a wacko bird. One of McCain's advisors later told a reporter he fucking hates Cruz. He's just offended by his style. In 2016, when Ted Cruz was running for office, you remember there was a little bit of a controversy over whether or not he could be president, what with the whole born in Canada. Sure.

Right. Now, most Republicans were pretty adamant that Cruz was able to be president. John McCain said he didn't know in a live interview, which is a beautiful bit of John McCain's shade right there. Maybe. I don't know. Might be. Who knows?

Don't ask me. I'm John McCain and I fucking hate Ted Cruz. House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, called Ted Cruz Lucifer in the Flesh. Senator Lindsey Graham, also a Republican, said in 2016, if you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you. When Ted ran for president in 2015 and 16, only one of his fellow Congress people would stoop to endorsing him, some guy from Utah. His fellow Texan, John Cornyn, wouldn't even do it.

Yeah. Now, Cruz has been a consistent bigot after the ISIS attacks in Brussels in March of 2016. He suggested the government, quote, patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods to stop radicalization. He proposed banning refugees from Syria almost the instant they started fleeing from there. In 2015, he sought and accepted the endorsement of Troy Newman, an anti-abortion activist who is an anti-abortion activist in the same way that Hitler was an anti-communist activist. Newman has called for the execution of abortion doctors and said that the entire nation will be, quote, blood guilty until people start murdering abortion doctors in the streets.

According to progress notes that that same year, Cruz was interviewed and asked if he knew of a single pro-life activist who'd ever advocated violence. Ted Cruz said he did not. What do you do on this podcast if someone is speechless? Usually I just laugh. That's kind of my self-defense mechanism is just to giggle at this gargoyle of a man. It's just, I think this so many times every single day. Just say this to his face and record it.

And then when he says no, say, but Mr. Cruz, I have here on my phone, it's drawn up, it's right here. We know for a fact you sought this guy's endorsement out. Here's things he said. I'm presenting you with all of these facts that you can read right now. What do you have to say to that? God, it would be nice if there was some group of people in society whose job was to speak truth to people in power.

It would be really good if that job existed. That would be good. We shouldn't create that job. Did we just invent a new thing? Yeah, it's like almost like a fourth branch of government, like a fourth sort of institution that you want. Like an estate that's not one of the other three. Yes, you don't want one of the three, you want like a fourth one.

We'll circle back around on this. I feel like we're getting close to something. We can't call them the constitution corroborators though because that's already taken off. Could we just be corroborators? We could be the corroborators. We could be the corroborators. Okay. It's got your name in it, so that works.

We'll circle back on this. We'll figure out what that is later. Thank you. There's something there. No one's ever called me Rob, and I don't approve of people doing it, but in this case it's okay. Corroborators. Thank you.

Now, near the end of 2015, right wing gunman Robert Deer murdered three people at an abortion clinic. You may remember this. One week later, Ted Cruz claimed in an interview that Christians hadn't carried out terror attacks in centuries, stating this at a rally. President Obama gave a speech in which he said, yes, ISIS commits terrorist attacks, but so do Christians and so do Jews, and then he invoked the crusades in the Inquisition. Now, last I checked, those ended about 900 years ago, and I don't think it's asking

too much for the President of the United States to stay in the current millennium. Now, Cruz's reaction to the deer shooting is interesting, because he simultaneously shamed the news media for daring to assume that this massacre at an abortion clinic was a right wing attack, and he found a way to blame the left for the murders. His initial statement was that basically he floated the idea that deer was a quote, transgendered leftist activist, for really no reason at all but to be a dick, because it's just as plausible that a transgendered leftist activist shot up an abortion clinic as a right wing anti-abortion activist.

Yeah, I follow. I follow your logic, Ted. Clearly the same thing. Now, his slimyness during the 2016 primary knew no ideological bounds. At different times during his campaign, Cruz sent out a photoshopped image of Marco Rubio shaking hands with Barack Obama, the president's nerve. How dare a member of Congress. My God.

So, Ted, did you refuse to shake the President's hand for eight years? There's gotta be a picture of him shaking Barack Obama's hand. It's just like a normal human thing to do. Anyway, Ted Cruz sent out a robocall designed to trick Republican listeners into thinking Marco Rubio supported amnesty. The actual audio of the call was essentially nonsense in Spanish, but it included the words Marco Rubio, amnistia, and emigración ilegal, so that English-speaking Republicans who didn't speak Spanish but overheard it on the radio would assume it was a Marco Rubio ad reaching

out to Spanish-speaking voters by promising them amnesty. Wow. That is illegal. You'd think that would be an illegal kind of thing to do. You would think that would be a crime. That's incredible. You know what? I do think it is.

I would say so. I love that he definitely never had to answer for that. Nobody ever held him accountable for that. He also sent out a robocall attacking candidate Donald Trump for not supporting the Confederate flak. The recording started with a clip of Trump saying, put it in a museum, let it go, and then an announcer said, that's Donald Trump supporting Nikki Haley removing the battle flag from the Confederate Memorial in Columbia.

Trump talks about our flag like it's a social disease. What the? That's not your flag, man. No, it's not. It's the flag of an enemy we beat in a bloody war. Also, how did I just agree with something Donald Trump said? I know. I know.

That's the amazing thing about Ted Cruz is that now we're both sympathetic towards Marco Rubio and Donald Trump in the space of two paragraphs because Ted Cruz is that slimy. Fuck you, Ted Cruz. How dare you? Now another thing Cruz's campaign did was make a fake Facebook profile for South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy, who'd endorsed Marco Rubio. They had their fake Gowdy endorse Cruz instead and repeal his introduction to Marco Rubio.

Now the Cruz campaign officially denies they had anything to do with this, but come the fuck on. Who did it then? Who did it then, Ted Cruz? Guy who has done nothing but the shadiest things imaginable. One of Cruz's attack ads in the election was even banned because it basically blamed Marco Rubio for the San Bernardino terror attacks because he supported immigration reform. Get that man the presidency.

This is a guy we need in the Oval Office. Every time Ted Cruz has been on the campaign trail, his number one advocate has been his father. Rafael Cruz is a pastor and a fiery speaker who can say things out loud that Ted Cruz only gets to think. Here's a brief list of things that Rafael Cruz has claimed over the years. Number one, the United States is a Christian nation. Number two, Barack Obama is an outright Marxist who wants to destroy all concept of God.

Number three, Barack Obama should be sent back to Kenya. Number four, social justice is a cancer. Number five, gays and lesbians are a group of sexual deviants driving the political agenda in this country. Number six, Barack Obama is setting up death panels and in 2015 had established quote another tyrannical dictatorship with no control by anyone. You guys remember when Barack Obama established a dictatorship? I'd forgotten, so thank you for the reminder.

Weird year. Yeah, it was really weird because we voted for a new president and then the dictator was like, all right. Step down peacefully and did everything he could to make the transition smooth. Did everything he could. Like a dictator. Yeah. Classic Hitler move, making things easier for the next day.

Hate dictators. Classic Hitler move to accept the idea of a next guy. Now Mother Jones published an article about Pastor Cruz's wildest statements in October of 2015. This forced Cruz's spokeswoman to clarify that Pastor Cruz did not speak for his son. Then Mother Jones found documents that proved one of Senator Cruz's aides had worked to help Pastor Cruz schedule his appearances in booked gigs, including paid gigs, which is probably illegal, but just enough on the side of deniable that not much ever happened.

It's impossible to overstate how critical Papa Cruz has been in his son's rise. Ted Cruz is, as 100% of Americans seem to agree, a gross creepy weirdo. His dad, however, fought against a dictator and survived being tortured. He's an immigrant hero success story, whereas Ted is just a kid who is good at debate. On the campaign trail, Ted claimed that his lifelong desire to quote, fight for liberty had been born out of hearing his dad's stories of his time as a revolutionary. So that's what we're going to talk about next for a little while. His extensive research by the New York Times suggests that these stories of Raphael Cruz

are largely fabricated. Raphael Cruz claims that he was close comrades with a famous martyred student activist, Frank Pies, who died months after Cruz claims to have watched him die. Now Raphael also claims that he was given up by a double agent and tortured by the Batista government. He claims he threw firebombs and blew up buildings and was in general a badass revolutionary. But the Times talked to numerous Cubans, both in Cuba and in the United States, who were active in the country's rebellion at the time.

And in interviews, Raphael Cruz's former comrades and friends disputed his description of his role in the Cuban resistance. He was a teenager who rode on walls and marched in the streets, they said, not a rebel leader running guns or blowing up buildings. Here's the New York Times. Leonor Aristuchae, 79, a student leader in the 50s, whom the Castro government later hired to verify the supposed exploits of revolutionary veterans, said a term existed for people like Mr. Cruz.

Oya lateros, or wishful thinkers, people wishing and praying that Batista would fall, she said, but not doing much to act on it. Now, Leonard is obviously biased since she works for the government, but the New York Times also talked to former rebels who now live in the United States. They were all firm that Pastor Cruz had vastly exaggerated his part in the revolution. The truth seems to be that he was busted for carrying an illegal gun and beat up by the cops, but was never able to do much more than draw some graffiti. So if you're all up to date on American politics, you know that Senator Ted Cruz is currently

running to defend his seat from the Democratic challenger, Beto O'Rourke, who ran on a skateboard for some reason recently. It was a relatable thing to do if he had been running in Santa Monica, the only place I've seen this skateboard in the last few years. So during this election, this is a very tight race, obviously, Beto has raised substantially more money than Ted Cruz, but Ted Cruz is a Republican with a beating heart in Texas, which gives him a pretty significant advantage still to overcome. During this campaign, Cruz has continued to use his trademark super-gross slimy eelman

tactics. The O'Rourke campaign, for example, allows people to volunteer to send texts and to call voters on behalf of the campaign. Several Cruz people have apparently infiltrated the effort as a way to slander Beto. One of these infiltrators sent this text message out to random voters. Hi, it's Patsy here with Beto for Texas. Our records indicate that you're a supporter. We're in search of volunteers to help transport undocumented immigrants to polling booths

so that they will be able to vote. Would you be able to support the Skrass Roots effort? Oh my god. Hell yes. Oh yeah. That's the good stuff. That's the stuff you like, yeah. What the fuck?

You getting off there, Coder? No way are people making a big deal about this. Oh, because all you can do is just... It's just more lie. That's all he does. I'm sorry. That's so upsetting. It's super sleazy.

Yeah, it's really. Like last weekend I was doing canvassing and the very first thing they said, be respectful to the other people. Don't tear down other people's signs. Don't do like, this is we want people to vote and it to be fair. Actually, we respect each other in a democracy. Just don't... Like we're not like literal worms.

Yeah, like we're not all chomping at the bit to kill each other. God. Now, I'm going to throw in a little texanism here for the listeners in Texas who are about to go vote. Ted Cruz is oilier than a water burger rapper. Water burger is really popular in Texas. They're okay. That new link later, the other second was like, yeah, anyway, they talk about water

burger. Yeah, they talk about water. It's a big thing in Texas for reasons that are inexplicable to people who don't live there. I've seen the discussions that I just couldn't care less about. No, you shouldn't. You shouldn't. It's the heat stroke.

We're all of heat stroke in Texas and it damages people's brains. And water burger. That's very popular. Anyway, water burger. If you want to support the show, I will recant my statements about brain damage being the primary driver of sales for your hamburgers. It's actually the delicious taste. It's the delicious taste of water burger.

I actually like water burger. I don't know why. I'm just, I'm hurt from the breakup with Doritos and I'm just throwing shade on innocent brands. Yeah. Well, that's natural in a normal part of the healing process. Don't get into it. You know what else is natural in a normal part of the healing process.

So now there have been a couple of different variations on the having members of the Cruz campaign infiltrate the Beto campaign and send out blatantly illegal text messages. There have been a few different variations in this tactic. It's debatable. Obviously if Cruz had any involvement. Sure. I bet he would debate it really well. I bet he'd debate it very well.

He's a good debater. He's ready. He wants you to debate him about it too. It is worth noting that the Cruz campaign also sent out fundraising letters to raise money for the campaign in an envelope that said summons enclosed, open immediately and looked like a court summons. People who opened it, it was actually a summons to give the Cruz campaign money. It feels like something that could backfire.

It does. It does. He actually tried the same thing in 2015, but with a voting violation notice, prints it on top to make dumb people think they'd broken a lock. Grossest stuff. So you guys better vote for Ted, or else you're in trouble. You can't be honest about your opponent. You can't be honest about your own campaign.

No. It's so disgusting. There's nothing else to you that all you have is dirty tricks. Dirty tricks that Richard Nixon would be like, dude, get a dog and give a speech with a dog. Fuck, don't do this shit. It's not even like, it's just like scamming. It's like scamming.

It's embarrassing. You're just doing scammer tactics to get people to vote for you. Yeah. It's not even like, sometimes you hear about sleazy political stuff where it's like, well, that's evil, but it's genius. Right. Or, yeah, I was like, oh, that crosses the line a little bit, or like, oh, that's a little sleazy.

No, this is just like scammer tactics, blatantly. It's like he's trying to sign people from an MLM, but instead he's running for Congress. Yeah. Now, it's unclear at this point who's going to win at the midterm. It is unclear. Who's going to win that election. I think everyone listening to this can guess which side I'm on. I suspect more Republicans than will admit it.

Kind of hope Beto wins too. Yeah. Right. I think everyone's sort of in the camp of like, I just don't want Ted Cruz to be involved in our national discourse. And why is it so close? God. I mean, the fact that Beto O'Rourke has closed the gap so much is pretty remarkable.

It is. I mean, Ted Cruz was arguing the Women's Health Act thing was a manifestation of a war on women. I was in Austin at that point. I marched when Wendy Davis did her big filibuster. I marched on the state Capitol with a bunch of friends. I had a concealed handgun license at that point, and I carried a gun with me. And when we went to the state Capitol to protest, I was with several ladies, and they were searched

and had to empty all of the tampons out of their bags. They couldn't carry tampons into the Texas state Capitol because the guards were worried that they would throw tampons. But your gun was okay. I was led to take my gun into the Capitol House. Yeah. They loaded 40-caliber semi-automatic handgun. Oh, yeah.

I showed it. I showed it. They saw the gun on me. Oh, because you're a responsible gun owner. Because I'm a responsible gun owner. I showed them my license. I had a 45 rounds of 40 Smith and Wesson. There's something to this, though.

Women can't be trusted with tampons. Well, no. No. One big woman can't be trusted with tampons. What are we going to do with them? Shovel them up with their vagina? Well, they hurt someone. Who knows?

Who knows? If they throw a tampon onto... I mean, it is a potential projectile. Way deadlier than a 40-caliber round traveling at 1,200 feet per second. That is bonkers. Yeah, it's crazy, right? My God. Can you believe that shit?

That is... I mean, yeah, I can believe it, sadly. But, wow. Yeah. Now, it's anyone's guess, obviously, as to who's going to win this election. No matter what happens, though, I think the story of Ted Cruz is ultimately quite tragic. He was raised almost from birth on the very specific ideals of two different conservative ideologues, Fred Clark and Roland Story.

Both of these men are now dead, and most of their ideals have sort of fallen by the wayside, even in mainstream Republican society, hence the whole constant, expensive wars overseas. Ted Cruz, it's almost like he's the political equivalent of some sort of, like, A.I. defense system designed by an ancient race that then goes extinct. Yeah, and then the aliens go... There's a Star Trek Next Generation episode called The Lost Outpost, episode four, season one. And in this episode, the Enterprise and a Ferengi ship get captured essentially by this

planet, that's like, there's this defense system on it that was part of an alien empire 60 million years ago or something that has since fallen. And the A.I. that runs this defense thing doesn't know that the empire's fallen. That's kind of Ted Cruz. Yeah, he's still operating at full capacity, his systems online. Yeah, still attacking, doing damage, even though... But everyone that wrote the code is, like, dead and wrong. Dead and wrong.

It is tragic. And I think a really accessible reference for the audience. Great episode. Not a great episode. It introduced the Ferengi, which were pretty anti-semitic first. Females. Yeah. Yeah.

Little gross. Little gross. I mean, they're Ted Cruz-y in the wrong way. It's like a whole race of Ted Cruz-y. Yeah. Now, that's all I have to say about Ted Cruz. Hopefully ever. Hopefully Beto O'Rourke beats him.

Yeah, we may never have to talk about Ted Cruz again. Yeah, we may never have to talk about Ted Cruz again. Or, like, part of me imagines, like, okay, so he loses Beto O'Rourke. And then he's like, oh, well, now I'll find my principles, and I'll run against Donald Trump. And he'll, like, he'll try to primary him. Oh, man. Because he's a principled man who wants you to vote your conscience,

like he said that one time, and then totally flipped around. I was at the RNC, and the one moment in my life, I almost had an inkling of respect for Ted Cruz, is when he gave that speech where everyone was expecting him to endorse Donald Trump, and then he didn't. But then he did it anyway. They did it anyway, and it's just so embarrassing. Oh, it's so shameful.

Yeah, vote your conscience. Show shameful. Against the guy called my wife a dog. Yeah. They called his wife a dog. They said, you dare kill Kennedy? Oh, yeah. Just eating that pile of shit, and then needing to do that fake smile.

Yeah. Afterwards, like, ah. It's not even that he's spineless, and that it's that he's such an absence of spine that he lowers the bone density of people around him. Right. Yeah, and bringing back that article about his wife and her trying to spin it positive about stuff,

and it's sad, and maybe I'm reading between the lines, but I'm not, about her lack of respect. Like, she wanted it on to the freeway on ramp one night, because she had to give up her career to come do this for him. And then it was like, oh, a spiritual person on a Christian retreat was like, you put on God to help your husband. I love all that stuff. And like, that's what this article's about,

and she's just like, well, mm-hmm. Like, just kind of biting her tongue about her gross, spineless husband that she can't possibly be attracted to. No, no. I mean, we're not going to go into detail, but we can all picture what we would think Ted Cruz would look like during sex. Oh.

And it's gross. It's gross and it's uncomfortable, and I have to imagine it's gross and uncomfortable for his wife. For sure. Oh, yeah. Here comes the sex. She did say that when he was young. That's his move.

That's his move. Here comes the sex. Here comes the sex. Yeah. I'm kind of going to do a sex at you. He's going to sex towards you, Ted Cruz. All right, this has been Behind the Bastards. Katie, Cody, you guys want to plug the plugables

that you have to plug? Yeah. There are many of them. Move up to plug the plugables. We have a show. A new show? Yeah, a new show called Some More News. You can check it out on YouTube, also on Twitter

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All those things. You can do all those things. We participate. Yeah. Please give them money and get your news from them because it's not good news. There's no good news for me. Oh, it's no good news.

But it's well-delivered bad news. We have fun. We have fun. We try to have fun. We have fun being frustrated with the news. Better to laugh while the world burns than fiddle. Laugh with us. Yeah.

And I'm Robert Evans. You can find this podcast behind the bastards on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram and at BastardsPod. You can find me at I Write OK on Twitter. I also freelance articles for an investigative journalism concern called Bellingcat. You can go there and donate money to them too.

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And please go to T-Public and buy t-shirts. Fun t-shirt plug. You can get a DJ Stalin shirt and then you and I will own a shirt in common. And then if I ever meet you on the street, I will have to give you a high five. And please don't forget to support Stretch Island Fruit Leathers, the only leathers on this desk. The only leathers on this desk.

This has been behind the bastards. I have been Robert Evans. I love about 40% of you. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him,

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