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Well, this is a title I thought I would never write…
This is a title I never wanted to write!
Quite frankly, I’m sick of even covering this, I’m trying to run a serious news organization here but guys like Ted Cruz won’t let me!
So here’s the deal… A very strange, disturbing, and very hilarious video is going viral today (advice to my friend MJ) in which a young Ted Cruz is allegedly waxing poetic about how much he loves buttocks – and sweating on buttocks and peeing on buttocks and all sorts of other very weird things.
I’m not kidding!
But I have to do a little fact-checking on this, which I’ll show you in a minute.
First, just look here:
So…is the video real?
Well, yes and no.
Let’s start with this fact-check I did via AI, which confirms that the video is indeed real and authentic, at least the first part of it:
Main source reference
an article from Time Reports on a video in which Cruz, as a high-school senior at Houston’s Second Baptist School in ~1988, jokes:
“Aspirations? Is it like sweat on my butt?” He says. “Okay, besides that… take over the world. World domination. You know, rule over everything. Rich, powerful…”
TimeA CBS News The article describes the same clip, saying it was uploaded to YouTube and appears to have been shown to Cruz at Second Baptist School in 1988. CBS News
newsweek Similar reports state that the video shows Cruz as an 18-year-old man at Second Baptist, wearing jeans and a tucked-in shirt, and making the same statement. newsweek
Houston Chronicle (via Chrono.com) It also confirms that the footage is from 1988, high school, and in the clip Cruise is quoted as saying “Take over the world – world domination…”. iti
Cruz’s Wikipedia page confirms his graduation year from Second Baptist School (1988). wikipedia+1
assessment
The coordination between multiple outlets (Time, CBS, Newsweek, Chronicle) provides strong evidence that the video is authentic.
Details align: time frame (~1988), high-school (Second Baptist School, Houston), Cruise’s scene age and attire, and key quote lines.
No reputable sources claim the same “butts” quote as your screenshot, but they do reference the “sweat on my butt” line, which is consistent with the structure of the quote you provided.
There is no apparent reliable source disputing the authenticity of the footage – that is, no major fact-checking concluded that it was faked or deeply altered.
as the best i
This video is straight from Funny or Die:
Anyhow, I think two things are true…
One, the part about the authentic Ted Cruz is creepy and weird enough in itself, which made it so ripe for satire.
Two, this video is really weird and scary and hilarious, and the fact that it would require “fact checking” probably tells you everything you need to know about the real Ted Cruz.
I am not a fan.