Ted Cruz admits to leering at Yankees fan dressed in halter top during podcast

Texas Senator Ted Cruz appears to have had a whole barrel of fun while attending a recent Yankees post-season game, though it’s not the kind you’d expect an elected official to gush about on a podcast.

In Wednesday’s episode of the Republican lawmaker’s podcast, The Verdict, Mr Cruz spent nearly two minutes discussing how he struggled to not obviously gawk at a woman who was seated in the row behind him at Sunday’s Yankees game in New York.

“So in the seat behind me there is this gorgeous woman in a halter top,” Mr Cruz began in the episode, aired days after the senator was caught in viral footage being booed by fans at the same game where the Texas-native was cheering for the visiting Houston Astros.

His co-host on the show, Ben Ferguson, pointed out during the pair’s understatedly creepy conversation how others on social media had also noticed the woman, who was wearing a grey shirt with the word, “NFT” written across the chest and a cargo jacket over top.

Mr Cruz confirmed that he, too, like the social media commenters, had registered the woman’s attire and had discussed with his friend who had joined him at the game that he should resist the temptation to turn around and look at her, for fear that an unflattering screengrab would make him appear creepy or inappropriate.

“So I will say, my buddy Jeff leaning next to me, he sort of leans over and tells me, ‘Okay, she’s behind you. She’s selling an NFT.’ So she had some sign and she’s selling it and she has — to use the Monty Python phrase, ‘She has great tracks of land,’” Mr Cruz quipped, prompting the two podcast hosts to erupt in giggles.

The senator, who is married with two daughters, went on to highlighting how one bad angle could make him appear untoward.

“All we need is one video of me turning around and my eyes shifting down,” the father of two went on to explain, noting that all that was required was “one 24th of a second” where he was looking down and it would be on the front pages the next day.

“I have to admit the whole damn game. I’m like, ‘I’m looking forward or if I turn around, my eyes are up, dammit,’” he said during the podcast.

Later in the same episode, he admitted to having posed for a selfie with the same woman who earned the senator’s restrained gawking later in the game. She was “actually very nice,” he pointed out, but the picture, he emphasised, occurred before she revealed the NFT shirt.

"It was before. She was wearing a jacket or something,” he said. “She was just sort of the fan behind me until...she wasn’t.”