Ellie Shechet, a journalist of extraordinary tenacity, contacted over 75 of young Ted Cruz’ college classmates and cohorts in an attempt to verify a fantastic sexual rumor about the Presidential candidate over the last week. While the rumor fell through, the stories she collected over the course of her research are solid gold.
Here’s the highlight reel:
- “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone,” former roommate Craig Mazin said. “I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”
- Cruz was, according to a former classmate and current NPR host, the “most aggressive know-it-all in a school full of aggressive know-it-alls.”
- “When anyone in my class and I talk about him there is no one who breaks in and says ‘Come on guys, he wasn’t so bad,'” says former debate club member Sarah Poggi.
- “There are not that many people in my life who…bring up such bad feelings,” said Mikaela Beardsley, with whom Cruz got in frequent shouting matches over political differences, “…when he became Senator, I was like, ‘Oh my God, he called my mother a whore!‘ …[He said] that my mother was going to hell and was a whore.”
- “The very first thing he ever said to me was ‘Hi, I’m Ted Cruz, I assume I can count on your vote for student body president,'” said David Mountain, a former classmate.
- “There was no casual conversation with Ted Cruz,” Dae Levine, a member of the debate team with Cruz, said. “I remember him being completely competitive, laser-focused on winning and not on socializing….His conservatism, added to his calculated nature, added to his antisocial behavior, created this persona that was a bit of a villain. Now, did he want that? Maybe…It worked for him.”
- “I strongly believed that he wasn’t someone you would want to trust with a modicum of power“, said debate partner Shawn Halbert. “In my opinion, he was not regarded in the group as a person with substantial integrity.”
He hasn’t changed, either. Gawker’s Gabrielle Bluestone published the amazing headline Report: Ted Cruz Actually More Annoying Than Previously Reported, which tells the story of how no-longer-young Ted Cruz relieves stress by annoying the crap out of his wife with random Broadway show tunes.
Unfortunately, we seem to be down to three realistic GOP candidates: Mine Trumpf, the most aggressive know-it-all in a school full of know-it-alls, and…um…some guy. Not really an inspiring bunch. A glance into the life of young Ted Cruz doesn’t really do anything to improve that.
(Featured Image from public domain: handout used by Cruz in a campaign for Student Body President at Princeton)
