Ted Cruz should have known better than to pick a fight with The Daily Show, as it resulted in him being ruthlessly owned by current host Trevor Noah with even former host Jon Stewart getting in on the action. But would Ted Cruz really be Ted Cruz if he knew better at all? (That’s one of those existentialist, rhetorical-type questions that you don’t need to answer, but feel free to spend the day pondering it.)
As the Trevor vs. Ted Twitter battle ended in a clear victory for the former, it seemed as if that might be the last we’d hear on that particular feud. But then Noah, bless his heart, gifted the world with might be one of the most epic takedowns of the Texas senator since Donald Trump called Cruz’s wife ugly. Though in this case, it seems highly unlikely that Cruz will just smile and nod in that patented Sniveling Ted Cruz Way (™ pending).
The video kicks off by going all the way back to a Fox News presidential debate from March 4, 2016, with footage of when, for a traumatic and nausea-inducing few moments, Cruz did his best to try and sound like a leader… all with having what appeared to be a booger on his lip. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: a booger.
As the narrator intones: “Establishment Republican candidates are making their last stand against Donald Trump. And Senator Ted Cruz of Texas (dramatic pause) had a gross booger hanging on his lip. And then, he ate it. As if none of us could see. This is Ted Cruz: The Booger on the Lip of Democracy.”
Presented in the tradition of a biographical documentary, awkward family photos and all, the brilliant 9-minute segment includes such insightful gems as describing Cruz’s youthful ambition as being “the same as any higher-order lizard: sex and domination” and saying that “young Ted Cruz was obsessed with boobs and power—two things he would struggle to get his hands on for the rest of his life.” It revisits Cruz’s early days as a lawyer, and his impassioned fight against the sale of sex toys in Texas, with the narrator wryly noting that, “In a show of selfless devotion to the law, Ted Cruz defended a ban on sex toys—even though he himself is a complete dildo.”
We’ll leave it to you to discover the segment’s many other magnificent moments, including Cruz’s truly terrible impersonations of Yoda and Darth Vader (which sound almost exactly the same, by the way, but certainly unlike anything George Lucas ever created), in the clip above. Just remember: You cannot unsee it.
