This F*cking Guy: Ted Cruz

**Erin Ryan** (0:00)
Welcome to another episode of This Fucking Guy, the series where we spotlight one fucking guy making America worse and explain why they suck. I'm Erin Ryan, host of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:10)
And I'm Alyssa Mastromonaco, host emeritus of Crooked Media's Hysteria podcast.

**Erin Ryan** (0:15)
Alyssa, you just couldn't stay away, could you?

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:19)
It's been an entire week.

**Erin Ryan** (0:21)
Today's subject is so unappealing that I had to pause while researching this script because I was concerned that I was turning asexual. So let's get through this before my ability to be attracted to men flees to Canada and declares political asylum. Rafael Edward Ted Cruz was born on December 22nd, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Ted loves to spin yarns about his dad's bravery and being imprisoned and tortured in Cuba as a teenager, somehow getting out of jail and fleeing to the lovely fringed arms of Texas.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (0:53)
He loves that story because it makes him seem hero adjacent and not like a portly disaster vacationer he's become.

**Erin Ryan** (1:00)
But his father, also named Rafael, wasn't fighting against the communists in Cuba. He was fighting for the communists in Cuba. He was imprisoned and tortured by men working for Fulgenio Batista, the right-wing dictator who was overthrown by Castro in 1959 By Ted Cruz's own standards, his father probably deserved it.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (1:19)
Speaking to GQ in 2013, Cruz told a story that didn't fully make sense to Jason Zengerle, the journalist profiling him. Here's how Ted tells the story of his father's ordeal.

**Erin Ryan** (1:29)
Quote, my grandfather began searching for him and he just began visiting the jails, going to one after the other after the other. And he eventually found him. He had been beaten so much that there was not a spot of white visible on his suit. It was all stained with mud and blood and his teeth were dangling out of his mouth, end quote.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (1:47)
How Ted Cruz's grandpa sprang Ted Cruz's commie father from Batista's prison is never explained, nor does what Ted says happened next fully make sense.

**Erin Ryan** (1:57)
Ted Cruz says that his dad applied to the University of Texas at Austin and was admitted somehow without speaking a word of English. He traveled to the US on his student visa with a slide rule in his pocket and a hundred dollars sewn into his underwear. Always the underwear.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (2:11)
Always.

**Erin Ryan** (2:12)
Ted says his father washed dishes for 50 cents an hour to put himself through college and learned English from his math classes at the University of Texas.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (2:20)
Again, we implore you to ask the question how he got into UT without speaking any English.

**Erin Ryan** (2:25)
Rafael Cruz would later tell The Washington Times that he learned English from going to movies, not math class.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (2:31)
Ted Cruz told GQ in 2013 he ended up graduating with a math degree and getting a job and eventually starting a small business and working toward the American dream.

**Erin Ryan** (2:40)
Now, this sounds like a tall tale spun by a man who believes himself to be the byproduct of a god-making myth, but the real story of his family background is less Shawshank Redemption, more Royal Tenenbaums.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (2:51)
Rafael Cruz was granted asylum in the US after his student visa expired. He was in exactly the same shoes of hundreds of thousands of immigrants that his son now supports rounding up, imprisoning and deporting.

**Erin Ryan** (3:02)
Both Ted's father, Rafael Cruz, and his mother, Eleanor Wilson, had been married to other people before marrying each other. Rafael Cruz Sr. had two daughters with his first wife, Miriam and Roxana. Roxana grew up to be a medical doctor. She's now in her 50s, practices medicine in Texas and minds her own business. Miriam had a more troubled life, run ins with police in the 90s and 2000s, and she even spent time in jail for theft in 2004
In 2011, she died of an accidental drug overdose in Collingdale, Pennsylvania.

**Alyssa Mastromonaco** (3:30)
Cruz never talks about his half-sisters. They don't fit into the story he's written about himself. However, some years back, McClatchy DC reached out to his late half-sister's son, aka Ted Cruz's nephew, and the nephew told the publication that Uncle Ted had been one of the most important male figures to him growing up.

**Erin Ryan** (3:48)
But in public statements, it's almost like his half-sisters don't even exist. What does exist, however, is his father seeking and obtaining Canadian citizenship, Ted's birth in Canada, his parents' rocky marriage and divorce, his dad fleeing to Texas and finding Jesus there, Rafael somehow renouncing communism, his parents reuniting, the family stateside and eventually the family company going bankrupt and nearly losing everything.