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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
$28,841,673,978,652. That is the national debt of the United States. Democrats want to add a lot more money even to that colossal number. And the fight over raising the US Debt ceiling is the epicenter of what's going on in Washington right now. President Joe Biden demanding that Republic Centers get out of the way, that they use this opportunity to push through the most radical aspects of their agenda and using the debt ceiling crisis to do it. What happens if the United States defaults on its debt? It's never happened before. We have no idea what will happen now. Washington playing with fire. This is VERDICT with Ted cruz. Welcome back to VERDICT WITH Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles and I have a whole lot of questions here. Senator, we'll get right into it. Very simply, I hate to ask a stupid question, but even I, and I pay a lot of attention to these things. Even I don't quite understand what this is. What is the debt ceiling? Why does the debt ceiling matter? Why do the debt ceiling fights come up every few years? And what happens if we do not raise the debt ceiling and default on our debt?
- [01:31]
Ted Cruz
Well, probably the easiest way to think about it is like it's the limit on your credit card. The debt ceiling is the cap on how much money the federal government can pass. And it's a statutory limit that's passed into law that limits how much the United States government can borrow. Just like if you have a credit card that has a $10,000 limit, you can't borrow 11,000. And if you want to borrow more than 10,000, you have to get on the phone and try to ask them to raise it to 15 or raise it to 20. That's the same principle as the debt ceiling. It is a tool designed to try to force Congress to confront spending and to rein in out of control spending and out of control debt. And the debt ceiling expired on July 31, the end of July. Now the Department of Treasury has the ability to kind of push the date when the US Needs to borrow back a couple of months. It's called using extraordinary measures. And so Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, is able to delay the date to sometime to mid to late October. But if the debt ceiling is not raised, then the United States government cannot continue to borrow money. And so that puts pressure on Washington. We're right now in the middle of a battle because of two things. Number one, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have the total and complete ability to raise the debt ceiling on their own. So Democrats control the Senate, Democrats control the House, Democrats control the White House. There's a process called budget reconciliation. We've talked about that quite a bit on this podcast. Budget reconciliation is the process that comes from the Budget act in 1974. The part that is really relevant and that comes up with some regularity is it is the major exception to the filibuster. So ordinarily, to move to proceed to legislation in The Senate takes 60 votes. Under budget reconciliation, it only takes 50. And so Schumer and Pelosi and Biden, because they have control of all the elected branches of government, have the ability, with just Democratic votes, to raise the debt ceiling. And they could have done it a week ago, they could have done it a month ago. They could have done it three months ago. So what's happening? Schumer and the Democrats are nervous, and they're nervous because the Democrats are in the middle of a massive spending spree. I mean, it is reckless. It is the biggest spending spree since World War II. It is massive. And in the face of that, Democrats don't want to vote for the debt to pay for their trillions in new spending. So what Schumer is doing instead is he keeps bringing up the debt ceiling in a legislative vehicle that requires 60 votes. So he doesn't want to use reconciliation, which he can, and there's nothing Republicans can do to stop him from using reconciliation, but he wants to bring it up through a vehicle that requires 60 votes. Why? Because he wants 10 Republicans to vote for raising the debt ceiling. He doesn't want it to be just Democrats who own their trillions in debt.
- [04:57]
Michael Knowles
What's amazing about that explanation, which I think spells it out pretty well, is it's the opposite of what we're being told in the media. What we're being told in the media is that Republicans who are fanatical about spending and they're neurotic about not raising the debt ceiling, and. Or they're opportunistic, or they're cynical. They are holding America's good credit hostage because they don't want to vote for this thing. But what you're saying is, actually, Chuck Schumer could pass this tomorrow. So it's really Chuck Schumer and the Democrats who are holding this hostage and who are drawing this out and making a big spectacle of it. What happens? Just at a practical level, I guess we're kind of dealing with a crystal ball here, because it's never happened before. But what would happen if we just defaulted on our debt.
- [05:43]
Ted Cruz
It would be a catastrophic impact in the market. It would cause the stock market to tumble. It would cause bonds to tumble. It would cause the credit rating of the United States to be downgraded. The cascading effects could be enormous. It would be wildly irresponsible. No rational person wants to see the United States default on its debt. America pays our debt. And I gotta say, it's worth stopping and reflecting at what a wildly different position we are in today versus 2014. And if I can take us back to the way back machine, to 2014. So 2014 was my second year in the Senate. So I was still a freshman and a newbie. And the single biggest fight I have had in nine years in the Senate occurred on the debt ceiling. Occurred on this issue. And it's. As you know, I've written two books. Last year, I wrote One Vote Away about the Supreme Court. Great book. Go buy it. But the first book I wrote was called A Time for Truth, and A Time for Truth was my life story. I wrote it in 2015. The opening chapter of my first book, A Time for Truth, is entitled Mendacity. And it is the inside story of the death ceiling fight. So let's go back to 2014. 2014, Democrats controlled the Senate. It was Harry Reid instead of Chuck Schumer, who was the majority leader. Republicans controlled the House. Barack Obama was president, and there was another debt ceiling coming up. We were going to our Senate Republican lunch, and every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all the Senate Republicans, we have lunch together. And at one of the lunches, Mitch McConnell, who was the minority leader at the time, he stood up and he said, I've got a great plan. I want all of us to consent to unanimously consent to lower the threshold for Harry Reid to raise the debt ceiling from 60 votes to 50 votes. Now, in the Senate, you can do pretty much anything by unanimous consent. But unanimous consent, as the name suggests, takes all 100 senators agree. So Mitch said, I want all of us to unanimously consent to lower the threshold for Harry Reid from 60 vote to 50 votes. And the beauty of it is, once we do that, we can all vote no. The Democrats can all vote yes, and we can all tell our constituents at home we voted no on the thing we just consented to allow happen. And I was sitting there, I was frankly expecting leadership to come up with some sort of kind of lame and tepid strategy. It had not occurred to me that their strategy was absolute and total capitulation from the outset. And so I sat there in the room And I just raised my hand and I said, Mitch, you need to understand there is no universe in which I will consent to lowering the threshold for Harry Reid and Barack Obama to raise our debt from 60 votes to 50 votes. I was elected by the people of Texas promising to do everything humanly possible to stop the out of control spending and debt that is bankrupting our kids and grandkids. And I'm not willing to do it. Michael, there is nothing I've done in my entire time in the Senate that has generated more rage, more fury, more red faced senators yelling and cursing at me than that simple act of objecting. It was much worse, by the way, than the Obamacare. It was much worse than the Obamacare filibuster. So leadership was mad that I had spent 21 hours filibustering Obamacare the previous years. They were mad about that. But when I objected to their scheme to raise the debt ceiling, it, the fury it it caused was massive. It's fascinating how much things have changed from 2014 to now. In 2014, Republican leadership carpent bombed me, attacked me, planted editorials criticizing me. So for example, the Wall Street Journal, which by the way, when Republican leadership is mad at you, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is their preferred whipping post. And it's where they take you out. And it comes straight from Republican leadership. They go to the Journal. The Journal wrote an editorial entitled Minority Maker and it said Cruz is going to ensure that Republicans remain in the minority in the Senate forever and that Harry Reid remains majority leader because he is fighting and objecting on the debt ceiling. Now, I point out they wrote that in 2014 and just a few months later we had the elections in 2014. And you know Michael, in the Old Testament, if someone came forward and said they were a prophet, the Old Testament actually discussed what you should do. You should ask them to make short term prophecies, short term predictions and see if they come true. Well, the Journal's prediction that I was going to make Republicans a permanent majority, it turned out not just a little bit wrong, but categorically wrong. And In November of 2014, we won nine Senate seats, we retired Harry Reid as Majority Leader, and we won the biggest majority in the House of representatives since 1928. And so miraculously, standing and fighting also wins elections. The voters like it when Republicans don't roll over and surrender to the Democrats.
- [11:27]
Michael Knowles
Well, this I think is what really relates to what's going on right now today. Because I politically, I came of age during that era, from 2010 to 2014. The Tea Party movement.
- [11:39]
Ted Cruz
Your election actually was like, you've politically come of age.
- [11:43]
Michael Knowles
I'm still coming of age, actually. You know, I can't wait to get a little hair on my face.
- [11:47]
Ted Cruz
I thought this was like a teen drama.
- [11:51]
Michael Knowles
I remember even when I was fresher and facer at the time, I remember every Republican, every conservative who was worth his salt was focused on the debt, on deficit spending, on this idea that the inheritance we're leaving to our kids is debt. I mean, what kind of a country does that? What kind of a generation does that? That we're actually gonna be responsible. We're gonna get our own house in order. We're going to enact these principles that we all like to talk about. And then your story here, I think is very important. What happened is the Republican leadership in those back rooms just said, yeah, that was all bunk. We're not gonna follow any of that. We're just gonna make it easier. That was just a way to win elections. And now when we're focusing on this debt fight, it seems to me that many Republicans and conservatives don't really care anymore. I mean, that focus from, you know, 10 years ago, it seems to have moved onto other issues. And I wonder if it's because we just got burned during the Tea Party and nothing really changed.
- [12:50]
Ted Cruz
Well, look, I say a couple of things. Number one, if you go back to the 2014 fight, it's important to note what I was fighting for at the time, and I was not fighting for never raising the debt ceiling. I've never been someone who promises I will never raise the debt ceiling. We've got, Typically the figure is about 40% of what the government spends is borrowed money. So unless you're prepared to instantaneously cut government spending by 40%.
- [13:17]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [13:17]
Ted Cruz
That's not a reasonable position to say we will never raise the debt ceiling. My position in 2014, my position today is that I'm not willing to support raising the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by meaningful structural reforms that address spending and rein in the out of control spending in 2014. The case I made at the conference is I said, look, if you look historically, the debt ceiling has been the lever point where we actually get spending constraints. So at the time, these figures are a little bit out of date because they're 2014 figures. But at the time of the last 52 times, Congress had raised the debt ceiling. So this comes up a lot. 27 of those times, Congress had attached meaningful spending reforms to the debt ceiling. So, for example, the Budget control Act in 2010 which made major progress reining in out of control spending that came through a debt ceiling fight. Graham Rudman probably the most significant spending restraint legislation enacted in the law in modern times came through a debt ceiling fight. So it is possible to make progress on spending by using the debt ceiling as leverage. And so what I argued in 2014 is let's not let this lever point go. Let's use it to actually honor our promises to the voters. Some of the differences, number one, I think Republican leadership has learned, unlike in 2014, 2014, they thought I was bluffing. At this point, they don't think I'm bluffing anymore. So nobody asked this time. Ted, will you consent to lower the thresholds? Reporters asked. They ran up and said, hey, Cruz, are you gonna object to lowering the threshold? I was like, yeah, of course. But what was interesting is when people learn you don't bluff, nobody in the conference thought I would possibly not object. They're just like, yeah, okay, Ted will object to that. So that option ain't gonna work. So leadership didn't even try it. A second difference, and this is an important difference, is unlike in 2014, when we had a Republican House, now they've got a Democratic House, so now they can raise the debt ceiling on their own without us. We can't stop them. I wish we could, right, but we can't stop them.
- [15:40]
Michael Knowles
There does seem to be a lot of turmoil within the Democratic conference. I mean, I guess this is a slightly related matter, but in a very different context. Kyrsten Sinema, one of two semi moderate Democrats in the Senate, is being accosted everywhere she goes. She's being accosted on airplanes. She was accosted in the bathroom by an illegal alien screaming at her to push for a mass amnesty. This is a. We always lament civility breaking down. And sometimes it's exaggerated and at sometimes it's real. But this seems to be crossing a line. When you follow female senators into the bathroom and start screaming at them, by the way, as a foreign national demanding that you give legal status to millions of people.
- [16:25]
Ted Cruz
Now look, that is exactly right. And the degree to which Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin are being harassed, you look at cinema and these left wing activists. She teaches a university class in Arizona and they followed her into her class, they harassed her class, and then they followed her from her class into the restroom. She went into the stall to use the restroom and they sat there filming it and berating her. And by the way, they were so proud of what they were doing. They were Filming, doing it. As you noted, they also harassed her on the airplane. They harassed her in the airport. And I gotta say, yesterday there was really something shameful because Joe Biden was asked about it and he just said, you know, it's part of the process. What utter crap. I mean, that was an opportunity for Biden to show some leadership and say, you know, no, you don't harass someone and chase them into the ladies room. That is not the way people behave in a civilized democracy. But the left is so angry that they believe intimidation and threats are an appropriate way of behaving. And right now, they are trying to rain the nastiest pressure imaginable down on Cinema and Mansion to pressure them to flip their votes. At least so far they haven't. This is on the big Bernie Sanders $3.5 trillion socialist budget. Right now, Manchin and Sinema are saying they're not gonna support it, that it's too big and it's too irresponsible, and the left is furious.
- [18:06]
Michael Knowles
Well, Senator, I do have to ask you, though, I can't believe that I'm giving Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt. It feels very unnatural to me. But I do wanna ask if he's got a point. Biden says, if you're in public life, you're gonna get accosted. People are gonna yell at you. And it does happen. To. To what degree is this historic incivility that we're seeing not just with cinema, but in recent years, even on, say, both sides of the aisle? And to what degree is this just business as usual?
- [18:36]
Ted Cruz
Look, it actually is markedly different in the last couple of years. When Donald Trump got elected, the left lost their mind. He broke them. Their brains are broken. And I can tell you it is very, very different serving in public office. Look, I've been in some contentious battles, but it's only been the last couple of years. Remember a couple of years ago, Heidi and I were at a restaurant in D.C. and a group of screaming, angry anarchists came in, harassed us. We had to leave the restaurant because we didn't want to disturb the other people who were having dinner. And they chased us down the street and into a dark alley. I mean, it had the potential of being a very dangerous gathering. It was a dozen angry leftists with Heidi and me, and it was threatening and serious. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelly Paul, the Black Lives Matter protesters. When Trump gave his speech at the White House during the RNC convention, they were scared for their lives. They had police officers that were fighting back. What was close to a riot and Rand and Kelly both were frightened that they were going to be seriously injured, if not worse. This has all gotten nastier than it used to be. I can tell you in nine years I've been in the Senate for eight of them. I never had a protest at my house in the last year or so. I've had probably 25 or 30.
- [20:09]
Michael Knowles
Wow.
- [20:10]
Ted Cruz
We now have 24 hour security at the house, which, which we have to do because the protesters have gotten so nasty. They have showed up at 5 in the morning banging pots, shining flashlights in the windows of our neighbors, including neighbors who have little children, screaming profanities, dropping the F bomb at five in the morning designed to wake people up and harass them. And so what is happening to cinema, by the way? Manchin. Manchin, when he's in D.C. lives on a houseboat. And he had protestors row their kayaks up to his houseboat and engage with him at his houseboat. This is a far nastier form of engagement than used to be. Typical. And I think it is, as a result of Trump's presidency, the left just, they convince themselves he's Adolf Hitler and so all rage and fury is justified in opposition to someone who they hate so much.
- [21:09]
Michael Knowles
You know, it's an interesting case study. I mean, I'm sorry that you're going through it, but you are kind of an interesting case study here because you were outspoken, you were something of a firebrand the minute you got to the Senate. So it's not as though they ignored you just because you were a wallflower. And then later on they started going after you. I mean, going back to 2013, 2014.
- [21:28]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, this never happened in 2013. 2014. This never happened.
- [21:32]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. So this, something clearly has changed. And you know, I mentioned to try to sound nice and open minded, I said that there is incivility on both sides of the aisle. But we really should not make a comparison here. When you have Maxine Waters saying, go get up in their face, go shout at in public, meaning Republicans, when you have Hillary Clinton saying you can't be civil with your opponents, when you've got the sitting vice president now, Kamala Harris, bailing out rioters and looters, that is a very different thing than what the Republicans are doing. But the Republicans are being uncivil as well, though much less violent. And this is the way they're being uncivil is they're chanting, according to the news report. Let's go, Brandon. Senator, can you explain that to me?
- [22:14]
Ted Cruz
Well, it's an amazing phenomenon that seems to be occurring at college football games across the country. And it appears to be spontaneous, but very large groups of people are chanting expletives at Joe Biden. And in particular, they're chanting, f Joe Biden. But they're not abbreviating it. And it's a fairly remarkable thing that seems to be springing up. And the story you're telling is there was a NASCAR race a couple of days ago, and the winner of the race, whose name was Brandon, was being interviewed, and the crowd behind him is yelling and yelling loudly, f. Joe Biden. In clear and very distinct words. And the NBC interviewer who is interviewing him says, oh, the crowd's so excited, you can hear them chanting, let's go, Brandon. And you just watch the clip. That is not what they're chanting. In her defense, NASCAR races are loud. Maybe she had headphones on. Maybe she couldn't hear. Or maybe it was one of the more remarkable examples of fake news. I did tweet and asked, is NBC News gonna issue a correction? Because I'm quite confident they were not chanting, let's go, Brandon. And it's now become a thing. In fact, the Daily Wire I saw is selling let's Go, Brandon shirts. I gotta admit, I was awfully tempted to have verdict. Just steal the idea and do the same thing. We may put a let's go, Brandon shirt on our cactus friend. You know, I find it in the world of fake news, it was a pretty remarkable moment.
- [24:03]
Michael Knowles
It was. This was what was so shocking about the whole thing, is there are a great many people in this country who believe that Brandon should go. Go himself, let's put it that way. And so obviously there is something of a popular uprising here, especially when people are rowdy at games and things like that. And it's the gaslighting, I think, that got people that the media would tell you, no, don't believe your lying eyes, don't believe your lying ears. And even this ties into something probably a little more urgent and serious to people.
- [24:34]
Ted Cruz
By the way, quick story, I'll tell you on that. So when I first ran For Senate in 2012, my opponent was David Dewhurst, and he was the lieutenant governor of Texas. He was worth about $200 million. He was viewed as unstoppable and unbeatable. He had universal name ID. I was at 2%. Nobody had ever heard of me. I didn't have any money. I didn't have a prayer. And there was a moment, really, when everything flipped. So the primary, neither of us got 50%. And on primary night, he got 44%. I got 34%, which shocked people because no one got 50. We went to a runoff. And in between the primary and the runoff was the Texas state convention, about 15,000 activists from all across Texas. It's the largest Republican convention in the country other than the National Republican Convention. And Rick Perry, who was a friend, but in that race, Rick Perry had endorsed David Dewhurst. And he was there speaking, and he said in his speech, and he was speaking the day before I was gonna speak, he said, everyone should vote for David Dewhurst for Senate. And the entire convention erupted in boos, Loud, angry boos. And it was sort of a. It was a wild moment because at that point, all of our supporters felt they were alone. Like, this Cruz character has no prayer. Nobody else is voting for him. You can't win. And like, each of the activists looked and holy cow, everyone else was booing. Well, afterwards, Rick Perry did a press conference where reporters asked, wow, the whole convention booed you when you said David Dewhurst name. And Perry, to his credit, he said, no, no, no, no, no. They were not saying boo. They were saying do, do, as in do hers. And that was pretty damn funny. I mean, I was like, okay, it's not true, but that's a pretty clever.
- [26:32]
Michael Knowles
That's thinking on your feet, though. That is thinking. Yes, Do Hurst. Do Hurst.
- [26:38]
Ted Cruz
Yes.
- [26:38]
Michael Knowles
Well, you actually. You do see this phenomenon. And sometimes it's to express their anger at Brandon or Joe Biden, depending on your interpretation. Sometimes it's at a political convention, and sometimes it's bubbling up from the way that the government is actually working. And this is something you've been seeing for months and months now, specifically with regard to critical race theory and gender theory in schools. Parents are showing up to their school boards and they're pushing back on these policies, and they're saying, no, get this nonsense out of the classroom. This is harming my child's education. We don't want any part of it. So there have been many protest movements in the history of the United States, going back a very, very long time. Very recently, we had a protest movement last year, the BLM and antifa riots, which often turned violent and resulted in lots of people dying and lots of businesses being torn down and places being set on fire. And we were told those were mostly peaceful protests. Well, now we are hearing from the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, that the parents who are showing up to protest radical gender theory in kindergarten classrooms are very possibly domestic terrorists. A Memorandum just went out. The Attorney General instructing the the DOJ to watch the disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats against school administrators, board members, teachers and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation's public schools. The department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to counter them. Are we now at the point where we believe that people throwing Molotov cocktails at federal buildings last year in 2020, they're mostly peaceful protesters, but parents protesting radicalism in their kids school, they're the domestic terrorists.
- [28:25]
Ted Cruz
I wish you were exaggerating, but the statement you just made on its face is so utterly ludicrous. And it's also true. You know Merrick Garland, who's the Attorney General, he was a court of Appeals judge for 20 some odd years, as you recall. He was who Barack Obama had nominated to the Supreme Court to replace Scalia. But he didn't get that vacancy because we didn't take it up because it was the presidential election year and Republicans controlled the Senate. And we said the voters are going to decide who fills this seat. Merrick Garland is now Attorney General. At his confirmation hearing, I asked Garland, he actually had a reputation as a court of appeals judge for being relatively fair and impartial. He was not viewed as a hard partisan when he was a judge. And I cross examined Garland at his confirmation hearing and I said, look, under Barack Obama, the Department of justice was politicized and it was weaponized. It was turned into a weapon to target people that were perceived to be the political enemies of the White House. And that includes the irs that went after Tea party groups, went after pro life groups, went after pro Israel groups, that includes the intelligence community and the FBI that went so far as wiretapping the Donald Trump campaign and sending in people wearing wires to record them. And I asked Merrick Garland, will you commit, if you're confirmed, not to use the Department of Justice as a partisan weapon to attack the other side? And he made that commitment. He said he would not. That memo you're holding is really disturbing because I think he has been breaking that promise almost from the moment he got there. But that memo is the clearest example of it. So look, we're seeing a phenomenal example of democracy in action in that parents are rising up at school board meetings and expressing dismay over critical race theory that's being taught in schools, that our kids are being taught lies. They're being taught that America is fundamentally racist. They're being taught that all whites are racist. They're being taught that the entire history of America is a history of oppression, and these lies are dividing kids based on racial lines. And parents are upset about that. They don't like it. And so they're going to their school boards and saying, don't teach this garbage to our kids. That's actually how our democratic process is supposed to work, that elected officials are supposed to be accountable to the voters. The left doesn't like accountability. They like to be insulated. They perfectly happy to harass people they don't like, but they themselves don't like to be held accountable. But now the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland, is saying they're going to treat a parent going to a school board meeting as a terrorist and a threat, and they're going to go after them and they're going to persecute them. And this is absurd. It is a ridiculous abuse of power. And listen, you pointed out last year, the BLM and Antifa riots. They burned storefront after storefront. They robbed, they looted, they murdered police officers. And yet the Department of Justice treated it as isolated issues. Look, they were firebombing a federal courthouse night after night after night. And yet the Department of Justice, you know, this DOJ under Merrick Garland treats it as just, oh, isn't that nice that they're literally throwing Molotov cocktails. This is sad that the Democrats. Look, Covid has really revealed this as well. Democrats are. They are authoritarians. You want to know the basic difference between liberals and conservatives? Liberals are comfortable using the coercive power of government to force you to comply, to force you to obey. Whereas conservatives believe in liberty, believe in individual choice. You can say what you want, even if it is dumbass stuff. You can say it on religion. You can believe what you want, even if it's dumb stuff. You can go worship a golden calf in your backyard if you want to. We believe in individual choice on vaccines. Look, you and I have talked about vaccines. I believe in vaccines. I've taken the vaccine. My family's taken the vaccine. But individual choice means it's up to you whether you get a medical procedure, whether you take a vaccine. Gavin Newsom is ordering every school child in California to get the vaccine. That is horrific. It is a violation of medical privacy and autonomy to do that. And the left doesn't care. And so when it comes to parents protesting the radical Marxist theories being taught to their kids, the Department of Justice will come in and threaten mom at the PTA meeting. We're gonna put you in handcuffs. Holy crap. That is offensive.
- [33:34]
Michael Knowles
This is the Irony is that the left is all for liberation and expression and dissent is patriotic and protesting when it suits their interests. But then, of course, the moment that a concerned parent says, actually, I don't think little Johnny should be told that white people are evil and that America's a rotten place and that boys can become little girl, you know, maybe we should just stick to the, you know, reading, writing and arithmetic. Maybe we should stick to the basic building blocks of education. They are labeled as domestic terrorists. And what is so dismaying to me is, as you said and as you made clear during his confirmation hearings, Merrick Garland was the moderate one. He's supposed to be one of the most moderate people in the entire administration. So that is a great fear. And actually something else that you touched on here is democracy in action. Who sets these kinds of standards? Who decides these things? What is our public square? What does it look like? We only have a very.
- [34:31]
Ted Cruz
And let me make a brief point on that, Michael. Let me make actually two points on that. Number one, some of the sort of Twitter lefties have said, oh, well, this is threats. Let me be clear. Nobody has a right to, to threaten anyone. Nobody has a right to carry out violence. And if you have someone who makes a threat of violence or carries out violence against a school member, school board member, even if they're some nutty lefty, if you have violence against someone, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail. That violence is not acceptable. Secondly, look, I going back to the point about harassing Kirsten Sinema in the ladies room. The parents are doing this at school board meetings that are designed to be a forum for parents to be able to express their views. They're not going to the homes of the school board meetings. They're not going into the bathroom with them. They're going to a public forum. And, and, and I am all for. Listen, I mean, I've done hundreds of town halls. I've had people come and disagree with me, and I'm perfectly fine to get in, in a robust discussion in a forum that that is appropriate for that. I'll tell you one time, it's kind of fun. I don't know, 2014, 2015. I was actually part of a protest at the White House against the Obama Iran nuclear deal. And there were protesters from Code Pink that showed up. Code Pink, the sort of lefty group. They were there screaming and yelling and they were angry and, and I actually stopped and I said, all right, look, the First Amendment gives you a right to speak. It gives me a right to speak. But it doesn't give either one of us a right to shout the other down and prevent people from hearing what we have to say. So I said, I'll tell you what, pick someone from your group, you tell me who. Pick whoever it is, come on up here and I'm going to hand you this microphone and I'm going to let you tell this crowd why you think the Iran deal is a good deal. Now, I'm going to give you a response and you may not like my response. And so they selected Medea Benjamin, who's one of the founders of Code Pink. She came up there and I said, now look, if I give her this microphone, you guys don't get to be disruptive and scream and yell and shout everyone down. And we proceeded to have, I think it was a 15 or 20 minute debate on the merits of the Iran deal, was all televised. If you go online, you can Google it and watch me debating the head of Code Pink on the Iran deal. That, that is, that's democracy in action too. So I'm not saying that, you know, but there's a difference between that and following someone into the bathroom while they're trying to, trying to use the facilities.
- [37:16]
Michael Knowles
Right. And this actually ties in pretty directly as we think of the way our public square has changed. Now. So many of these debates happen on social media, and as big tech companies get more and more and more power, they seem to be controlling speech in the republic. And if you control speech in a republic, you basically control the whole thing. The way we govern each other is that we persuade one another and deliberate and debate. There is a story here, and I know, as always, I'm running late and we've only got a little bit of time left, but I really want to touch on it because you were there, you actually saw it firsthand. There was a Facebook quote, unquote, whistleblower. This is a woman who is calling out what she seems to think are the most nefarious activities and operations at Facebook. But what's strange here, and what has me feeling a little weird about the story, is typically whistleblowers against entrenched powers are sort of quieted by those powers. They're not promoted, they're suppressed, they're pushed to the side. And yet this whistleblower is being lauded in the media by established Democrats, by other people in what you might call the ruling class. So what is going on here? A lot of conservatives don't like what Facebook is doing when they suppress our speech. But what is the angle coming out here from this whistleblower.
- [38:33]
Ted Cruz
So there are two things that are going on, two major concerns about Facebook and this so called whistleblower is at the intersection of them both. The first thing that is going on is that Facebook has a practice of targeting children and in particular teenage girls. And Instagram, which Facebook owns. The algorithm is designed to appeal to teenage girls, but also to reinforce very negative trends with teenage girls. So for example, body image problems and eating disorders and suicidal tendencies. The algorithm feeds all of that. And, and I don't, you don't have to take my word for it. You can actually take Facebook's word for it. So the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago broke a bombshell story that Facebook conducted its own research on what is the effect of our product on kids and they're marketing to kids. And they concluded that teenage girls in particular Instagram was really toxic. And British girls, 13% said they had gotten their suicidal ideas from Instagram. American girls, 6% of them said they had gotten their suicidal ideas from Instagram. And so Facebook had this research which was handed over to the Wall Street Journal and the Wall Street Journal reported on it. We've had now three hearings in the last couple of weeks in the Senate. I participated in all of them with Facebook witnesses. The Facebook witnesses have been terrible. They're essentially giving the Sergeant Schultz defense. I hear nothing, I see nothing from Hogan Heroes, a show before you were born, Michael, but a great show.
- [40:30]
Michael Knowles
Before I was a glint in my father's eye.
- [40:33]
Ted Cruz
But I used to watch it as a little kid with my dad. Hogan Heroes was awesome. So their defense. So I've asked, I've asked. There were two witnesses from Facebook the last two weeks. I've asked them, number one, is this research true? They say, well, no, it's out of context. I said, great, what's the context? Oh, no, no, we won't release the research. We're not going to tell you what the research says. But we don't like what the Journal reported. And I said, okay. The Journal reported Mark Zuckerberg personally reviewed this research. Is that true? Two senior Facebook witnesses. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what Zuckerberg knows. Who knows, who knows? No, no, no, we're not going to say anything about what Zuckerberg knew. I asked another follow up, which is, has Facebook quantified how many teenage girls have taken their lives because of your product? Facebook witnesses refused to answer that question. And I asked the natural follow up. Okay, you got research telling you that your product is Hurting children. What'd you do to fix it? What changes did you implement to fix this problem? And the short answer is the Facebook witnesses said, nothing, Nothing, nothing. We didn't do a damn thing. So this week, the so called whistleblower who had been an employee at Facebook was testifying. I asked her the same questions. She was actually much more cooperative in the question. She said, yes. That's what the research said. She said yes. Zuckerberg was aware of it. She didn't know if they'd quantify how many teenage girls had taken their lives because of Facebook's product. But in terms of what they did to change it, she said not a damn thing. In fact, she watched the testimony of the previous two Facebook witnesses. She said it was amazing when you asked them that question. She assumed they'd come out with a five point plan. We did the following five things in response to it. Which sort of anyone, you would think if you got a report that you were marketing a product that was killing children, you would think you would say, all right, how can we change this so that doesn't happen? She confirmed Facebook didn't do anything. So on that, the hearing we had today, there was actually bipartisan concern about that. Both Republicans and Democrats, Nobody's defending Facebook in what it's doing to teenage girls. And the analogy that most frequently gets invoked is the tobacco companies, when the tobacco companies, you know, Joe Camel, when they marketed to kids to try to get them addicted to cigarettes as young teenagers so they would be lifelong customers. Facebook is kind of falling into the same category of deliberately engaging in business practices that hurt kids. That's category one. Category two is political censorship. And we've talked a ton on this podcast about political censorship. In category two, there is a yawning divide between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Most, if not all Republicans in Congress are very worried about political censorship, about Silicon Valley billionaires silencing conservative views they disagree with most congressional Democrats. Not only are they not worried about it, not only do many of them deny that it exists or that it happens, their position is we want more of it. We want more censorship. Silence every extremist voice, and that's their code word. When you hear liberals using the word extremist, what they mean is you.
- [44:14]
Michael Knowles
That's us.
- [44:15]
Ted Cruz
What they mean is any conservative. What they mean is any libertarian. What they mean is Donald Trump. What they mean is anyone who voted for Donald Trump. What they mean is anyone who's pro life. What they mean is anyone who believes that there are two genders. All of that they believe is extremist and they want social media to silence it all. And so the hearing today. And listen, my sense of this whistleblower is that she's very much politically on the left, so she wants Facebook to censor even more so on that component. Yes, the media and yes, Democrats are jumping on this whistleblower because they're trying to use her testimony to further their preferred political outcome, which is for Facebook to censor every conservative view so that the only view anyone is allowed to express is the left wing view.
- [45:08]
Michael Knowles
Another bait and switch. Another. If you focus on the legitimate problems at Facebook, which we would all acknowledge and use that as a way to push through even more censorship of conservatives, you're seeing this happen a lot around the country right now and a lot around Washington. There is one place where you will not be censored. That is on the Verdict Live fall tour. We are coming to schools hopefully near you. We're going to University of Wisconsin Madison on the 13th of this month. So just next week we are going to Texas. We're going to Texas A and m on the 14th. It's going to be a great deal of fun. I can't wait to see everybody there. We've got more schools that are going to be announced, but get ready.
- [45:53]
Ted Cruz
So, Michael, where can they get their tickets? How can they go? If they want to come see either University of Wisconsin Madison or Texas A and M, how can they come see Verdict Live?
- [46:04]
Michael Knowles
You've got to go to yaf.org that is the young America's foundation partnering up with us for this fall tour. Head on over there. Click on the tour. Click on your school. You can go get all of the information there. It's going to be me. It's going to be Senator Cruz. It is going to be our trusty cactus friend. We didn't get time for the mailbag. Don't worry. We're gonna have a whole lot of time for the mailbag in person with all of you. You can also stream the events live. You can do that on the Young Americas Foundation, YAF or Verdict YouTube channels. We can't wait to see everybody in person. But for now, Senator, we have to say goodbye. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [46:52]
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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.