Watch an 18-year-old Ted Cruz ponder 'world domination'

A young Ted Cruz. — (Image credit: YouTube/Screenshot)

A mock campaign ad for Ted Cruz features the senator as a high school senior, with footage reportedly provided by an anonymous former classmate at Houston's Second Baptist School. The clip begins with someone off-camera asking Cruz about his aspirations in life, to which he replies:

"Aspirations? Is that like sweat on my butt? No. No. Oh, I see. What I want to do in life. Well, my aspiration is to, uh... Oh, I don't know, be in a teen tit film like that guy who played Horatio. You know, he was in Malibu Bikini Beach Shop? Well, other than that, uh, take over the world. World domination. You know, rule everything. Rich. Powerful. That sort of stuff."

Despite Cruz's facetious tone on camera, a scholarship profile from the same year sees him laying out a remarkably accurate plan for his road to the White House — well, so far, anyway. After Princeton for undergrad (check), Harvard Law (check), law practice and a political career (check and check), young Cruz wrote that he hoped to "achieve a strong enough reputation and track record to run for — and win — president of the United States."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.