← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
I never thought that I would care about who ascended to the number three party leadership position in the House. But believe it or not, the House conference chair race seems to signal a whole lot about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Liz Cheney is out. Elise Stefanik is in. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back. Verdict with Ted Cruz. Senator, usually we talk about very heady things from the Senate from the upper chamber on this show. Now we've got to talk about the lower chamber. I hate to bring the tone down here, but this race, this, in an ordinary year, this would be sort of a nothing story has come to dominate the news cycle and the left is making a lot of hay out of it because there's infighting in the gop. So they like that. But Republicans are paying a lot of attention too, I think, because, because there's a big split here for the future of the party. You had Liz Cheney was in the position and she spent a lot of her time bashing conservatives in the Washington Post and other left wing outlets. Then you had Elise Stefanik, who has a more liberal voting record actually than Cheney, but she, I guess, was more loyal to Donald Trump and she was nicer to the conservative base. You then had Chip Roy, who I seem to recall, you know quite well indeed a very conservative member of the House. He was challenging Stefanik for the position. It's a little insider baseball, but I, I think that this probably could have some big effects on the party.
- [01:33]
Ted Cruz
Yes and no. I actually don't think it's that big a deal going forward. I think the press wants to turn it into World War 3 because their favorite topic is Republicans infighting.
- [01:44]
Michael Knowles
Of course.
- [01:45]
Ted Cruz
And it's also the only way Democrats can keep the house in 2022 is if we have a civil war on the Republican side. If we don't have a civil war, I think we are very likely to take the house in 22, and I think we've got a decent shot at taking the Senate. Okay, look what the House Republican Conference did. It had to do. Liz Cheney could no longer be in a leadership role because she'd lost it. I actually like Liz. I get along perfectly fine with Liz. I don't agree with her on everything. When it comes to foreign policy, she's much more of a neocon. She's willing to send the Marines at the drop of a hat. I disagree with her on that.
- [02:24]
Michael Knowles
With a name like Cheney, one could infer this thing.
- [02:28]
Ted Cruz
Look, she believes that sincerely. I just, I think she's wrong. But what caused this? So she hates Trump, and she had criticized Trump. She voted to impeach Trump. And then there was another effort to, like, vote her out a couple months ago, and it failed. It failed resoundingly. It failed, I think, two to one.
- [02:47]
Michael Knowles
That's why I remember that had she.
- [02:49]
Ted Cruz
Just shut up, she would have been fine. It actually would have been very simple for her to say, I've said everything I'm gonna say on that. I got nothing more to say. And she would still be Republican conference chair. They had a vote on it 2 to 1. What was weird is she decided that it was somehow made sense to spend every day attacking all of the other Republicans.
- [03:14]
Michael Knowles
Do you think was this an accident, that her emotions ran away with her, or do you think this was strategic?
- [03:20]
Ted Cruz
No, I think she was on tilt. Look, if someone who is supposed to be your leader is attacking every other member of the party every day, at some point, it's like, all right, enough already. You can't be our leader. You can have your views, but you ain't leading us if you say we suck every day long. And so she forced Republicans to vote her out. I don't think it's indicative of a broader civil war, because I actually think Liz's views are really a tiny fraction of the party.
- [03:52]
Michael Knowles
Because you hear this in the media and I'm, you know.
- [03:55]
Ted Cruz
Cause the media all hates Trump. And so if Liz hates Trump too, she's in the majority position. Look, a couple of weeks ago, Liz had a comment blasting me and saying that, you know, I should be ineligible for support. And it was funny. I actually, my press team said, okay, what kind of comment should you make on this? And we sort of talked back and forth what sort of comment I should give. And like I said, I like Liz. I don't have personal animosity. And so the comment that I came up with, as I said, you know, I think I'll just say, well, you know, I think she has a very promising future as an MSNBC contributor beyond.
- [04:35]
Michael Knowles
This intra political house race, you know, or the meta political, I guess, the politics of politics. I'm interested in some of these other races around the country because a lot of us are looking at 2022 and then ultimately at 2024. You've been involved. I mean, you've made big endorsements. There have been races that have taken place. Where does the party stand when we're actually facing the voters?
- [04:58]
Ted Cruz
Look, I think we're in a very good position. I told you, I believe 2022 is going to be a very good election. There's actually an earlier moment than that which is you've got a couple of states that have off cycle elections. And so Virginia, for example, Virginia's electing a new governor in 2021. And if you look historically, the last time you had a Democratic White House, a Democratic House of Representatives and a Democratic Senate was 2008. Barack Obama was elected with Democrat majorities in both houses. They passed a radical left wing agenda. 2009, the next year, Virginia elected a Republican as governor, Bob McDonnell. And Virginia is often a canary in a coal mine. Cause it's the first chance voters get to express their views on where things are going in Washington. I think Biden, Schumer and Pelosi are going radically left. And I think Virginia, we've got a very good shot at electing a governor. So the Republican nominee is a guy named Glenn Youngkin. Glenn is a friend of mine. So I endorsed Glenn in the primary and I campaigned with him. So last week I was on the road with Glenn, did, I don't know, seven or eight rallies all over the state. Interesting the way Virginia picks its governor. They did a modified convention where they had delegates. They had about 50,000 people who were delegates to a convention. And it was a distributed virtual convention, sort of a Covid thing. It was weird. So it wasn't a primary, but it wasn't like an in person convention. So it was a strange election to campaign because you basically got 50,000 people who were eligible to vote. Who are the people who have registered to be delegates?
- [06:46]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [06:47]
Ted Cruz
And in the rallies, I mean we had the two days of rallies, we had several thousand people come out and I think we ended up seeing in person in those two days, probably about 10, 10% of the delegates who ended up voting.
- [07:01]
Michael Knowles
Some people are saying I sound like President Trump now. A lot of people are saying everybody's talking. Some people are saying that your endorsement was decisive.
- [07:10]
Ted Cruz
Certainly for the people that came to the rallies, I think to many of them that was persuasive. And I do think my going and barnstorming with him also helped him bring out a lot more people to the rallies. So there's sort of a double. You can drive a narrative, you can communicate, there's a, you know, a vouching process of, okay, look, I as a voter may not know so and so, but if I trust you and you know, so and so that that means something. And then I do think that the, particularly in this sort of weird distributed convention, getting the people to come out to the rallies. I think there were some people that came to the rallies that were coming because they were supporters of mine. Yeah, but they saw Glenn, and he's impressive. Like, when you see him in person, he's an impressive guy. He's a likable guy. And I suspect there's some people who came to the rally not knowing if they were gonna back him or not, who I think when they left, decided they were gonna back him.
- [08:08]
Michael Knowles
Now, Senator, I wanna talk for a second. About two weeks to slow the spread turned into about 14 months. But now it seems we're on the other side.
- [08:15]
Ted Cruz
There's been insanity the entire journey, and the entire journey has also been marred by a consistent refusal to science masked in a facade of science. And our guest today, Steve Dase, who is a dear friend, who is a brilliant thinker, a brilliant writer, a fearless conservative, has written a book. And so, Steve, tell us about your book.
- [08:44]
Steve Dace
There are two things that are really hallmarks pillars of our healthcare system that the average American, if they were faced with a serious healthcare decision in their own lives, would be granted automatically. And they have been denied via public policy collectively for the last year. The first one is informed consent. You have a right to consent to a treatment to know whether the treatment is worse than the disease that's been denied us. In fact, in the last few days, ironically, a lot of the data that people like me were called crackpots for disseminating for the past year about masks and lockdowns and shutdowns and social distancing numbers and where this six feet originated from, a student's term paper and all these other things. It's funny, just in the last couple of weeks, now suddenly they want to confirm all these things because apparently somebody's internal polling is really, really bad. The only science that evolves that fast, guys, is political science, if you know what I'm saying. Okay, so that's the first thing is informed consent. We were denied that. The second is the right to a second opinion. I mean, somebody comes to you and says, boy, you've got a really terrible mass on an appendage. And I've got to remove that appendage so it doesn't spread to the rest of the body. That might be true. Before you give up an appendage, you're probably gonna go get a second opinion because you kind of like your appendages. And there have been experts from the very beginning at some of the most renowned centers of academia in the world. Oxford, number one rated university in the earth, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, some of the top rated universities in America that have had varying opinions and contrarian opinions from a public policy standpoint on how to deal with this pandemic. And they have been almost exclusively ignored. In fact, recently Governor DeSantis in Florida hosted a panel with them. And that panel got banned on YouTube because apparently some skinny jean wearing avocado toast obsessed engineer at Facebook knows more about COVID 19 than Dr. Martin Koldorff at Harvard, who designed the Vaers incident website for the cdc. That is the world in which we live. And it's why we've kind of had this hammer meets nail ham fisted, one size fits all authoritarian solution over the last year instead of solutions that might have actually solved some things.
- [11:03]
Ted Cruz
So let's talk about lockdowns, which was a draconian step that was imposed across the country. What was the scientific basis for lockdowns? Does it make any sense that we saw the entire country voluntarily shut down and destroy trillions of dollars of value, destroy people's lives? What was the basis for this?
- [11:27]
Steve Dace
There was none really. The notion of quarantining the healthy. I mean, Ted, this has never been done in human history. Quarantining the healthy during a pandemic, during an outbreak. We did this for two reasons. One, this was experimented. This was an experiment that came from a student term paper that somehow made its way into some halls of science late in the Bush administration, George W. Bush, they looked at it and thought, wow, that's stupid. It's never going to work. And somehow we ended up doing it last year. And then a lot of this also came from the Imperial College model that was released on March 16 of last year, which says, by the way, that it doesn't know for certain how coronavirus is spread. Now. I don't know, man. I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. But I kind of think that when your model on transmission of a virus admits it doesn't know how a virus is transmitted, maybe that's a problem. Your model is a problem. Okay, but it said if we didn't do these social distancing issues, if we did not do these things where we put people away for a period of a few months and let them come back out, and then if they did, the virus would return. So we'd have to do waves and waves of these lockdowns and reopenings over the course of several years. That's because millions and millions of people would die if we didn't do it. Here's the problem with why this all didn't work because it all began from a flawed assumption. Well, really a couple of flawed assumptions. Number one, that the Chinese were telling the truth. That was a flawed assumption. These were. I'm really shocked that the nation that was faced with its first open trade war from the United States in decades and was on the heels of unprecedented civil unrest in its chief financial district of Hong Kong when a virus broke out, thought the best thing for the rest of the world to do was to economically shut down. What a weird coincidence. So we didn't have Wuhan for luck. We'd have no luck at all. All right, so we couldn't trust the Chinese. That's number one. These were all their solutions. But then number two, because we didn't understand that the virus was primarily an airborne spread contagion. That's why there's no real outdoor spread. That's why your loose fitting cloth masks don't work. We heard about droplets and fomites for months and months and months, when in reality it is an airborne contagion.
- [13:40]
Michael Knowles
Steve, I wanna talk for a second about the subtitle of the book. The title is the Fauchian Bargain, but the subtitle refers to the most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history. We're sitting here with a United States senator, with a legislator. I thought that the way laws were made in this country, correct me if I'm wrong, was that the legislators legislate and the executive who is also elected enforces the law. But somehow we've gotten into this position where these technocrats, these eggheads, are governing the country and have much more power than our elected officials.
- [14:15]
Steve Dace
You apparently watch the same Schoolhouse Rock, Michael, that I did growing up. I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, right? But you know, it's funny, as Congressman Thomas Massie was tweeting yesterday that he was on a domestic flight and the flight attendant came on and said, under federal law, you must wear your mask at all times. And Massie's like, wait a minute, I'm the guy. I'm the only guy on this plane that makes laws. I don't ever remember voting on any such law. All right, but that's one of the main points we raise at the very beginning of the book. Michael is in the introduction that even though there's a singular figure here in Anthony Fauci, he has been the point person on this all along. The reality is he's 80. If he had retired at 75, 70, like a lot of other Americans do, particularly ones looking at the pension that he's got staring him in the face. It would have just been somebody else. That another creature would have emerged from the black lagoon. He is, pardon the theological pun here, legion that this is what the technocratic administrative state produces. It might have been Debbie Bedazzle your face shield burks instead. Or Francis Collins, who went from mapping the human genome to being fully vaccinated and wearing masks outside.
- [15:22]
Michael Knowles
Who.
- [15:22]
Steve Dace
Who knows who else. It would have been some other nameless, faceless bureaucrat no one else had ever heard of until now. But this is the way that the system works. We pass the buck of accountability. Well, these are what our experts told us. These are what our technocrats told us. This is what the bureaucrats told us. And then you have no way of going at them. They're never elected. Your elected officials wash their hands of it. Well, we just did what the experts in the bureaucratic class told us to do. And the notion of government by the consent of the governed, Michael, is just tossed aside.
- [15:54]
Ted Cruz
So if you write a sequel to the book and it's Dacian Bargain, what should our leaders have done? If we can go back in time and Steve Dace is in charge, the Wuhan virus begins. What should we have done?
- [16:13]
Steve Dace
There's two things I would have done if I were the oracle at Delphi and consulted in the matter. The first is to me, I don't believe the 15 days to flatten the curve. I think it was. I wouldn't have made that decision, but I think it's an understandable decision. I think it's like in a basketball game when the other team's on a scoring run and your coach calls a timeout to, to thwart their momentum. And so I think, hey, we're getting all this unprecedented heat pressure. Don't know if we can trust what China's telling us. Let's just get a to, baby, and let's just sit this one out for a couple of weeks and see what we're dealing with. The 30 days to slow the spread I believe was the absolute worst decision in the history of the US Presidency because the entire narrative was lost from there during the 15 days. That's when President Trump and his advisors should have brought in John Ioannidis from Stanford, Scott Atlas from Stanford. Jay, I can never pronounce his last name correctly. From Stanford, Sunitra. I want to say thank you, Michael. Appreciate it. For the solid. Bring in Sunitra Gupta from Oxford. Members of the center for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford, scientists from Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Katz from Har from Yale, Dr. Rish from Yale, Dr. Koldor from Harvard. Put him in a room with Debbie Burks, put him in a room with Francis Collins at nih. And Anthony Fauci put all those people in a room, put em on camera. It's a steel cage match of expertise. There's wisdom in a multitude of counsel. Let em put their heads together, let em bounce ideas off of one another. We never did that. We never consulted a second opinion. And essentially allowed Anthony Fauci to use the Trump White House as his ascendancy to potentate status, unassailable status.
- [17:55]
Ted Cruz
Well, and Steve, you'll recall how a number of weeks ago I had reporters in Washington freaking out because I wasn't wearing a mask while doing a press conference and talking to a TV camera. And this one reporter in particular threw a fit and I observed, look, everyone here has been vaccinated. Why? You know, I watched the CDC's announcement last week and in particular their explanation on Sunday that the science has evolved. Is it new science that vaccines work or was this always, Look, I haven't been wearing a mask for a lot of weeks on the Senate floor. Ever since I got vaccinated. I'm like, okay, look, I believe in science. I have a vaccine. What, what the hell am I wearing a mask for? And yet there were only, as of last week, there were only four senators not wearing masks. There was Rand Paul, who hasn't worn one throughout it. I was the second. And I haven't worn a mask for well over a month now after I got vaccinated. Roger Marshall, another medical doctor, was the third who didn't wear masks. And actually, just starting last week, Jim Risch from Iowa became the fourth. And he finally said, all right, to hell with it, I'm taking my mask off. I gotta say, Yesterday after the CDC announcement, I walked onto the Senate floor and 2/3 of the people are maskless. Chuck Schumer is maskless. And I just stood there and basked in the freedom. You know, we had Joe Biden's, you know, pseudo State of the Union address where everyone wore a mask in a chamber where everyone there had been vaccinated. Is this a new evolution of science that vaccines work? Or was the CDC full of crap when they said people who are vaccinated should wear 19 masks and be in an isolation chamber?
- [19:50]
Michael Knowles
Well, you see, it's quite clear. I think it gets to Steve's subtitle here. No, science changed, but what changed were the statements from these bureaucrats, these very powerful bureaucrats. And then everybody, including Chuck Schumer, Fall in line. I suppose we can be happy in the short run that we get to take the mask off. We get to breathe the sweet air of freedom, at least to some degree. But to your point, Senator, and Steve, to your book, we may well see a sequel of this soon. So can we hold on to our freedom?
- [20:19]
Ted Cruz
And I will note there are at least some of my Democratic colleagues who I think should keep wearing the mask. And if only they could tighten it a little bit because some of their words are still getting out. And if we could just tighten those masks, that really would be a public service.
- [20:33]
Michael Knowles
You know, on that very important medical advice. I believe we need to leave it there, gentlemen. But I strongly recommend that everybody go out and get the Fauchian bargain, not only because you will learn a lot, not only because it's very important as a political matter, but also because it's a very funny title. Steve, thank you so much for being here. Senator, we've only got a minute or two left, but I cannot let you go without bringing up this mailbag question. I think it's very important. And, you know, we're talking about all sorts of politics and the politics of politics and this insider baseball stuff. So if you think that the number three position in the House doesn't matter, let's talk about the Prince of England. This is a question from Carl. Carl wants to know. Senator Cruz, would you please explain to the limey overseas how the First Amendment is most certainly not bonkers? Thank you. Love the show, Carl.
- [21:31]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, that pissed me off.
- [21:32]
Michael Knowles
For those who don't know, Prince Harry is even still a prince, the erstwhile, the sometime prince, the artist formerly known as Prince Harry, called the First Amendment bonkers in an interview.
- [21:44]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, he kind of reminded me of King George and Hamilton as sort of this foppish nitwit singing to the colonies. You'll be back.
- [21:57]
Michael Knowles
You'll be back.
- [21:58]
Ted Cruz
Please continue. You'll get a microphone in front of you.
- [22:01]
Michael Knowles
That's only for the subscribers.
- [22:03]
Ted Cruz
We need to have subscribers. That's worth talking about.
- [22:07]
Michael Knowles
Well, if the pitch is that they get to see me do a soft shoe, I don't know that that's going to be the strongest sales pitch, but yes, it would be great to.
- [22:14]
Ted Cruz
So would you do it in full costume of King George?
- [22:16]
Michael Knowles
Oh, that's the only way I would.
- [22:18]
Ted Cruz
Good, good, good. I'm glad. Look, I mean, Prince Harry, I don't care if you're here. I actually like the whole Megan Markle thing. I find it difficult to find something I care less about. So listen, I don't. I don't necessarily fault the guy for saying, I want out. Fine, you know, okay, you want out. But don't be a pretentious leftist nitwit. And if you do come to our country, fine, you want to come to our country, great. Like, don't. Don't have such an arrogant, elitist condescension to this country that you don't bother to understand anything we're about. He's ridiculing the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And I get that leftists don't believe in free speech, that they want government control, because you know what? It would be really nice, I'm sure, from his perspective, if he could silence anyone from criticizing him, of course. But that's not the way it works. But freedom is a powerful thing. And by the way, the last British monarch who said, you can't have freedom, we threw their tea in a harbor and kicked their ass in a war. Right.
- [23:22]
Michael Knowles
There is something to it, I guess. There actually is a bit of a through line when we're talking about the House race or other races around the country, or even Prince Harry, which is there's something very unseemly about this ingratitude to your family, to your adoptive country, to this great political system that's given you a lot of rights to your constituents. That, to your words, that condescension, that arrogance, that elitism is really whatever the future is for the conservative movement, for the Republican Party, for our politics, that ain't it. If that is the future, then count me out. I want to be out of that. But of course, we're going to see how that future is going to break, not just in the Republican leadership, but in these races. 2021, 2022, and then ultimately 2024. But we'll have to, I suppose, hold it there for now. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [24:22]
Steve Dace
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, jobs, freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.