Texas senator Ted Cruz, one of the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, is one of the most obnoxious people around. Even his colleagues in his own party seem disgusted with his arrogant, preening, headline-hogging antics. So that raises the question as to whether it would be ever possible for him to come off as a sympathetic figure in an exchange with anyone.

We now have an answer. It turns out that in an interview with Mark Halperin, a hack journalist and someone who delights in gossip rather than news, Halperin actually came out looking much worse than Cruz by repeatedly asking him a series of questions that seemed designed to probe whether he was genuinely Hispanic.

Larry Wilmore rightly skewers Halperin’s interview.

The Daily Show also got in its shots at that terrible interview as part of its review of recent election developments, looking first at Mike Huckabee’s shameful hucksterism pushing fake diabetes cures and then Ben Carson’s absurd hyperbole before getting to Halperin.

(This clip aired on May 11, 2015. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)