Ted Cruz Beat Jimmy Kimmel in a Charity Basketball

From Esquire

In a Father's Day present to the nation's conservative dads, Texas senator Ted Cruz beat Jimmy Kimmel Saturday in a game of one-on-one. At stake was a $5,000 donation to a charity of the winner's choice-the anti-poverty Generation One Texas charity in Cruz's case, and the Texas Children's Hospital in Kimmel's.

The game was the culmination of a rivalry that got its start when Kimmel, in poking fun of Cruz's appearance at a Houston Rockets game, compared the politician to a blobfish.

Cruz, who played basketball in high school, promoted the match in a series of enthusiastic Tweets.

Kimmel didn't miss a chance to fire back, saying that Cruz issued the challenge because "he missed being humiliated by other men since he stopped running for president."

Charitable donations or no, the spectacle was fairly nauseating. Cruz, who defended the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border just five days ago, can now reap the benefits of a minor PR win while a humanitarian crisis plays out in his state. In facing off against Cruz in a friendly game, Kimmel handed some fun, normalizing press coverage to a far-right politician who once shut down the government just to make a point. So while thousands of migrant children languished in a Texas Walmart, one of the state's senators played basketball against a chat show host, while a blobfish mascot looked on. Team blobfish won 11-9.

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