Ted Cruz is probably going to be the GOP nominee for president in 2016—not because most Republicans really like him, but because most Republicans really don’t like Donald Trump.
Cruz doesn’t get along with most people in Washington, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but he does have a reputation for being kind of a weirdo. Here’s a look as his some of his most awkward moments.
1) The time he tried to pick up girls in his paisley bathrobe
A number of Cruz’s classmates at Princeton told the Daily Beast that Cruz had an unusual habit of “donning a paisley bathrobe and walking to the opposite end of their dorm’s hallway where the female students lived.”
2) The time he tried to flirt with a crush in law school
A Boston Globe report in 2013 shed some more light on Cruz’s game with the ladies:
As they were entering their second year in law school, Melissa Hart agreed to give Cruz a ride from New York, where Cruz was at the end of the summer, back to Cambridge. She didn’t know him well, but he sought her out after she had been given a prestigious award for first-year students.
“We hadn’t left Manhattan before he asked my IQ,” Hart said. “When I told him I didn’t know, he asked, ‘Well, what’s your SAT score? That’s closely coordinated with your IQ.’ ”
“It went from, ‘Nice guy,’ ” she said, “to ‘uh-oh.’”
3) The time he aspired to world domination
This YouTube video of an 18-year-old Cruz, unearthed in early 2016, shows the future Senator discussing his grand ambitions:
4) The time all his Senate colleagues left him hanging
The New York Times offered an example of Cruz’s “popularity” in Washington:
Mr. Cruz is so unpopular that at one point not a single Republican senator would support his demand for a roll-call vote, known as a sufficient second, leaving Mr. Cruz standing on the Senate floor like a man with bird flu, everyone scattering to avoid him.
5) This weird fist bump with Marco Rubio
This wasn’t really Cruz’s fault. Rubio was nursing a cold during a GOP debate in March, and made things really awkward for everyone during the “shake hands and pretend to like each other” portion at the end.
6) The time he filmed his family
Another offputting video showed up on YouTube in December 2015—raw footage of Cruz and his family filming B-roll for political ads.
7) The time he tried to make matzoh in a suit
Cruz looked totally normal during a campaign stop in Brooklyn, making matzo and wearing a suit like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
8) The time he refused to wear a cheese hat in Wisconsin
Cruz rejected his own daughter when she tried to make him wear one of the famous Wisconsin cheesehead hats. His explanation: “The people of Wisconsin wear their cheeseheads so powerfully that I would not presume to intrude in the elegance with which the people of Wisconsin wear those hats.” That’s not weird at all.
9) The time he was the lead singer in a Christian metal band
Cruz rarely talks about his second job as lead singer and guitarist of Stryper, a Christian metal band that shreds. Hard.
Here he is performing the band’s hit song, “Always There For You.”
10) The time he went on a killing spree in northern California
Cruz has yet to definitively prove that he is not the infamous Zodiac Killer who murdered (at least) five people in northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He was never charged.