← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
5 Troubling Facts About Special Counsel Jack Smith, Plus Dems Pushing Spending & Gun Control!
01:07:53
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- [00:00]
Senator Ted Cruz
There's a special prosecutor that's been announced. So who is this prosecutor and where did he come from? We're going to give you the details on that. Also, a major spending bill working its way through Congress. What does it actually mean and why is no one talking about it? Plus, Democrats had some interesting things to say about your guns over the holidays and some dark messages about Thanksgiving. This is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Senator, good to be back with you after Thanksgiving. I hope you had a great time with your family. I know you played some basketball and beat up on some younger family members, so we should have that moment to gloat for you.
- [00:36]
Well, my nephew Diego, who's now 23, I've been playing basketball with him since he was about three. I will say he was captain of his high school team and he's a very good ball player. And so we went out Friday about three hours. So there's good news and bad news. We, we went to his old high school gym. I teamed up with a coach there. We played old guys against young guys. Old guys won. In fact, we won repeatedly, I think, I think one game we won 15 to 4.
- [01:01]
Not that you were, not that you're keeping count at all. Right?
- [01:04]
Well, of course I was. But the depressing thing is then at the end of the day, after about two hours of hoops, we then I then played Diego one on one for about an hour, and unfortunately, he beat me. Now, now, it was, it was pretty even for, for a kid who's 23 and is a heck of a ball player. The last game he beat me 16, 14, we played a 15 win by two. So I was pretty happy with that. If I hadn't screwed up and missed a layup, I would have beaten him. But I screwed up and missed a layup.
- [01:27]
See, I know that this will be admitted from the podcast probably about 10 years from now, right. When, when the scores change. So enjoy the moment while you've got it.
- [01:34]
Absolutely.
- [01:35]
All right. So a lot of people over the holidays took a break and there was some news that broke right before Thanksgiving, and it was news about the special prosecutor looking at Donald Trump. And then we got the name of the guy who's going to be the special prosecutor. And the question is, obviously, who is this guy? We now know something about him. We know that he's, one, not an unbiased guy, which is exactly what they tried to claim when they announced the special prosecutor. And two, he's a guy that also had deep connections to the Lois Lerner and the IRS when they were targeting conservative and Tea Party groups. Now, if that's your resume, it's not exactly a guy that's unbiased. It sounds like they brought in a killer to take down Donald Trump using the government and everything that he could have at his disposal with a special prosecutor.
- [02:19]
Well, I think there are five things to know about Jack Smith and they're all relevant, they're all important, and they're all being under reported by the corporate media. Number one, remember, this guy was hand selected by Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland could have appointed any special prosecutor he wanted. He picked Jack Smith. Merrick Garland knows exactly what he's doing. The hard partisans at DOJ know exactly what they're doing. They appointed Jack Smith to indict Donald Trump. That's why he's in there, is to bring the indictment and to prosecute him. It was the deliberate choice of partisans at doj. Now how do we know that their choice was actually a good one from the perspective of a left wing partisan? Well, four other facts. When Smith was head of the Public Integrity Unit. This is actually not the first presidential candidate or potential presidential candidate. Smith has prosecuted. Smith. His office led the prosecution of Bob McDonald. Bob McDonald was the governor of Virginia.
- [03:17]
Yeah.
- [03:18]
The time he was governor of Virginia, he was viewed as a credible and even a serious potential Republican presidential candidate. And then Jack Smith's office prosecuted him. They prosecuted him for essentially bribery. And there was a big donor in Virginia that had given a series of gifts to McDonald and his wife that certainly looked improper and raised significant questions about at least appearances. But Smith got a conviction, convicted him of multiple federal counts. That case went to the U.S. supreme Court. Do you know what the U.S. supreme Court did with it?
- [03:55]
I'm guessing it was probably one of those moments where they said no.
- [03:59]
So they reversed the conviction. What do you think the vote was in the Supreme Court to reverse the conviction?
- [04:03]
Only because I feel like I have insider information here. It was not good if you were on the team of the prosecution trying to go after him.
- [04:11]
Well, the vote was unanimous. It was nine to zero. That means every single justice, all of them, including the left wing justices, voted to vacate the conviction. Now let me tell you why, what happened? You had this donor that gave gifts to the governor and his wife, but in order to convict him, you had to show that the governor did an official act, essentially that it was bribery in exchange for an official act, like signing a bill or vetoing a bill or issuing an order. Well, he didn't do any of that. What he did is he set up a couple of meetings and he hosted a party. And the theory of Jack Smith's office was that was enough to be bribery. And here's what the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts, wrote the opinion. It's a unanimous opinion. I'm just going to read. Read it. Setting up a meeting, hosting an event, or calling an official, or agreeing to do so merely to talk about a research study or to gather additional information, however, does not qualify as a decision or action on the pending question of whether to initiate the study. Simply expressing support for the research study at a meeting, event, or call or sending a subordinate to such a meeting, event, or call similarly does not qualify as a decision or action skipping forward. Otherwise, if every action somehow related to the research study were, quote, an official act, the requirement that a public official make a decision or take an action on that study or agree to do so would be meaningless. Now, let me tell you a little bit more about what the unanimous Supreme Court said. Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents, contact other officials on their behalf, and include them in events all the time. The basic compact underlying representative government assumes that public officials will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns. Whether it is the union official worried about a plant closing or the homeowners who wonder why it took five days to restore power to their neighborhood after a storm, the government's position would cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships. If the union had given a campaign contribution in the past or the homeowners invited the official to join them in the annual outing at the ball game, officials might wonder whether they could respond to even the most commonplace requests for assistance. And citizens with legitimate concerns might shrink from participating in democratic discourse. Now, who all agreed with this? Let me, let me, let me turn to the next paragraph of the Supreme Court opinion. This concern is substantial. White House counsel, who worked in every administration from that of President Reagan to President Obama, warned that the government's breathtaking expansion of public corruption law would likely chill federal officials interactions with people they serve and thus damage their ability to effectively perform their duties. Six former Virginia attorneys general, four Democrat and two Republicans also filed an amicus brief in this course echoing those concerns, as did 77 former state attorneys general from states other than Virginia, 41 Democrats, 35 Republicans, and one independent. Now, I want you to realize that means the guy who's been appointed to head this led a prosecution against someone who was a sitting governor, against someone who was a serious presidential candidate. It ended his presidential candidacy, ended his career. In essence, ended his career. And he got the entire thing thrown out unanimously by the Supreme Court as a breathtaking expansion of federal authority. That's who Merrick Garland has appointed. Almost no one has reported on this fact. That's a pretty bad initial characteristic. But there's more. You mentioned Lois Lerner. Yeah, let's talk about Lois Lerner.
- [08:02]
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- [09:37]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, let's go back and remind people because they may have forgotten where, what, who Lois Lerner was, what was going on at the time, what administration was in charge when you used the IRS to go after and attack conservative and Tea Party groups and Christian groups, groups of faith, just because you wanted to silence them. And the federal government was used to do this.
- [09:59]
Well, that's right. So this is during the Obama administration. And what happened during the Obama administration. Lois Lerner headed a section of the IRS that the treasury inspector general called out for improperly targeting Tea Party groups, conservative groups, pro life groups, pro Israel groups, and for persecuting them. And it's worth noting. So my new book that just came out, justice how the Left Has Weaponized the Legal System. There's an entire chapter called the IRS Comes Knocking that details and lays this out. So I would encourage folks go buy the book, Justice Corrupted. You can read all about this, but, you know, today's sort of fevered partisan pitch, Democrats might say, oh, there was no IRS scandal. Well, you know who disagrees with that?
- [10:51]
Barack Obama.
- [10:52]
Barack Obama. Here's what Barack Obama said publicly. By the way, I'm reading from the New York Times quote, americans have a right to be angry about it, and I'm angry about it. This is a quote from Obama. It should not matter what political stripe you're from. The fact of the matter is the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity. So that's what Obama said the day after the Treasury Inspector General report came out. So he was embarrassed they were caught weaponizing the IRS and targeting their opponents. Now, what happened subsequently? Well, two things.
- [11:28]
And by the way, it was a brilliant point in his career when he had that press conference. He played it perfectly politically because he came out and looked like he was angry. How dare the government do this? How dare the IRS do this? I'm angry. This is wrong. I'm on your side, America. Even though he was the guy that was in charge of them actually doing.
- [11:46]
This, and yet understand the timing. Also, the Tea Party rose up in 2009 and 2010 in response to Obama's excesses. In 2010, we had a tidal wave election. Retook the House with a massive majority that was fueled by the Tea Party. Yeah, Obama was going into his reelect in 2012 and he was worried about the Tea Party. He was worried about millions of Americans he had angered. Look, I got elected in 2012. I was elected by the Tea Party. Those activists. I wouldn't be in the Senate without the Tea Party. And so the IRS targeting the Tea Party, it was a very real political threat that the White House was concerned about that they sicked the government on to try to stop. And it had a real effect. These activists began getting subpoenas, began getting investigations, began spending thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees. I detail in the book justice corrupted how Tea Party activists. It wasn't just the irs, osha, all sorts of federal agencies would descend upon them as they used the muscle, the machinery of the federal government to target their enemies. Well, what's Jack Smith's involvement in this? Well, he is at the time the head of the Public Integrity Unit at The Department of Justice.
- [12:59]
Can you explain what that unit's supposed to do in general? Because it sounds like it's a do gooder position. It sounds like this is above reproach kind of position. Why would we even bring that up? That that's where he was?
- [13:09]
So it's an important role, but it's a role that prosecutes public officials. So whether Democrats or Republicans, when there's official corruption, when there's bribery, the job of it is, look, if you have a crook in office who's on the take, they ought to be prosecuted and sent to jail. So that's an important office. The question is, what kind of job did Jack Smith do when he ran it? And we know, number one, he went after Bob McDonnell and the unanimous Supreme Court slapped him down for a breathtakingly over broad reading of the law. That does not. That's not a point in his column unless you want a partisan to go after Donald Trump, in which case it's a great point in his column if you're looking at it from a left wing partisan lens. But how about Lois LERNER? So in 2010, the New York Times wrote an article entitled Donor Names Remain Secret As Rules Shift, which opened with an anecdote about a conservative group. And that was much of the basis for what Lois Lerner did subsequently targeting the irs. What did Jack Smith do after reading it? Smith wrote to DOJ colleagues and let me quote, check out the article on the front page of the New York Times regarding misuse of nonprofits for indirectly funding campaigns. This seems egregious to me. Could we ever charge 18 USC Section 3 71, Conspiracy to Violate Laws of the USA for Misuse of such nonprofits to get around existing campaign finance laws and limits? IRS Commissioner Sarah Ingram oversees these groups. Let's discuss tomorrow, but maybe we should try to set up a meeting. So he saw this and said, hey, let's go after these Tea Party groups. Let's set up a meeting. Let's go after them.
- [14:53]
It was an opportunity. He sought to basically abuse the office which he was supposed to be in, that was supposed to be looking at corruption of officials.
- [15:01]
And by the way, the IRS in turn sent 21 discs containing 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax return information, including confidential taxpayer information, to the FBI in advance of this meeting with Lois Lerner. The documents were sent to then FBI Supervisory Special Agent Bryant Fitzpatrick. The fact that Jack Smith's reaction to this is, let's get another overbroad interpretation of the law to go persecute and Notice, he's not concerned about people on the left. He's not concerned about Democrat dark money. He's concerned about about the same conservatives that Lois Lerner was targeting, the same political enemies of the Obama White House. And by the way, here's what the Treasury Inspector general concluded in 2013. Quote, the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations. And when the IRS settled the case, ultimately, the IRS explicitly admitted that his actions, quote, were wrong and, quote, for such treatment. The IRS expresses its sincere apology. You know what didn't happen? Lois Lerner was never prosecuted.
- [16:17]
Which, if you go back to, there were Republicans that were calling for a special prosecutor back then to look at.
- [16:23]
All this, you're talking to one of them who loudly called for a special prosecutor.
- [16:27]
And that's the first time you probably heard this guy's name because they kept using his own words as part of the reason why they said we need a special prosecutor for the way that he was acting.
- [16:37]
Well, and it's even more than that. So the inspector general report comes out. The President of the United States says he's angry, and the American people have a right to be angry. Eric Holder is the Attorney General, incredibly, at the time, the most partisan Attorney General we'd ever had until Lorenta lynch and now until Merrick Garland. They keep ratcheting it up and getting more and more partisan. Eric Holder, when this happened, appointed not a special prosecutor, but just appointed a prosecutor within DOJ to examine it. That prosecutor happened to be a major donor to Democrats. A woman, I think her name was Barbara Bosserman, if I remember correctly, who had given over $6,000 to Obama and to the DNC. I stood on the Senate floor and publicly called on Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor who was not, in fact, a major donor to Democrats. DOJ ignored it. Not only that, when Lois Lerner was subpoenaed and came before the House of Representatives, she pled the fifth. She refused to testify. The House of Representatives voted to hold her in contempt of Congress. You know what never happened? She had never prosecuted for contempt of Congress. You know why? Because the only person that can prosecute is the Attorney General, is the Department of Justice. And Eric Holder refused to prosecute him. And by the way, Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress and never prosecuted him and never prosecuted. Amazingly enough, he chose not to prosecute himself. I mean, the corruption is deep, but it's not just that. So you have number one, Jack Smith is handpicked by Merrick Garland. You have number two, the debacle of the failed prosecution of Bob McDonnell unanimously reversed by the U.S. supreme Court. You have number three, Smith's involvement and significant involvement in the COVID up of Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting of conservatives and the refusal to prosecute it. But you have something else also. You have his wife. Now, who is his wife? Look, normally someone's spouse shouldn't be central to it, but his wife. You know what his wife reminds me of? His wife reminds me of the prosecutor that Eric Holder chose. His wife. It turns out like that prosecutor is a donor. A donor to whom? To Joe Biden. What year? 2020. His wife gave $1,000 to Joe Biden. Okay, so she's a Democrat, she supported Joe Biden, she's opposed Trump. All right, Lot of people fall into that category. There are a whole bunch of people that gave money to Joe Biden. That's not necessarily disqualifying. What else did she do? She was a producer of a documentary on Michelle Obama entitled Becoming. Now you start getting out there. Wait a second. She's a donor to Biden, She's a producer of a documentary. I would ask even. Look, ask yourself, how many partisan Democrats do you know?
- [19:27]
Yeah.
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Did any of them produce a movie.
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About Michelle Obama that is a poor first lady?
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Yeah. Puff piece on Obama? No. And by the way, that's not the only movie she produced. She also produced a movie called Dark Money, which is an attack on Citizens United, an attack on free speech. So his wife as a moviemaker has been an activist, but a left wing activist that is both pumping up Democratic politicians and also leading the propaganda effort to tear down the ability of individuals to speak in the political world. And those individuals are almost always on the right that the left opposes.
- [20:04]
Sure.
- [20:05]
Suddenly you read his comments a little bit differently that when Jack Smith is reading the New York Times. He says, hey, can we creatively prosecute them and go after them? This is a prosecutor who Merrick Garland put in there for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to indict and to prosecute Donald Trump. And it is the weaponization of the Department of Justice. And I think it's disgraceful.
- [20:27]
Let's go back to the prosecution of Bob that you mentioned a moment ago and how important that is, because people need to understand the definition of success here is just getting an indictment. Even if you get him an indictment and you prosecute and you find him guilty. Right. That would be a dream. But if it gets overthrown down the road, does it really matter? Because as you mentioned, Bob's career was over the moment he got indicted. Really the moment they started the investigation. You don't come back from that. And so my point is it's not necessarily putting Donald Trump in jail. They just, as you said, just want to indict him. They want to do it in a place that's going to be easy. We mentioned that on the last podcast when we talked about this. And then it's just saying, okay, we'll keep you out of the White House. That is success.
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They hate Donald Trump, but they also have a self righteous certitude that they believe what they are doing is just and good and therefore everything in the furtherance of it is just and good as well. Anything that hurts Donald Trump or for that matter, hurts Republicans. Remember, this is the same Merrick Garland that has signed off, has authored a memo to the FBI telling him to target parents as domestic terrorists. If they speak up at school boards, they. This is the same Merrick Garland that has authorized FBI agents to storm the homes of pro life activists with machine guns drawn at the crack of dawn while their children scream in the background. The left. And part of the reason they do this is because the corporate media doesn't report on it. So the facts I'm talking about, no.
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One'S talked about it.
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Have you seen, you can read it in something like the Washington examiner, you can read it on right wing Media. But where's ABC, CBS, NBC? How come they haven't talked about the failed Bob McDonald prosecution? And why did Biden put the guy in charge of that, by the way?
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Why not go interview the guy and go, what did this do to your career? What did this do to your life? Would this do to your family? How much did it cost you financially? Where's that profile piece that should have immediately come out? Hey, you were prosecuted by this individual. This is what they did to you. It all got overturned. Did you ever get your life back? And the answer I think we all know would be, no, I didn't get my life back.
- [22:35]
Now look, I will say so. Trump put out a statement blasting Smith and in particular focusing on his wife. And immediately the left has risen up. How dare you attack his wife? And listen, if that were the only criticism, it would raise questions. But it might not alone be disqualifying when you put his wife being a Democrat donor, his wife producing a movie on Barack Obama, his wife producing a propaganda film on so called dark money, on top of leading the failed McDonald prosecution, unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court and Smith's deep involvement in the Lois Lerner scandal. You know, it's like. Actually, I don't even have to say what it is like. It is almost exactly like what Merrick Garland did, which is taking the person in charge of the Detroit field office of the FBI who had the absolute disgrace of a sham, going after the people that allegedly targeted Governor Gretchen Whitmer to kidnap and murder. And when that story broke, we were horrified, said, okay, if they want to kidnap and murder someone, they should go to jail for a long, long time. Well, DOJ brought the prosecution and ended up everyone they prosecuted, not a single one they took to trial, was convicted on any count. And the reason, the basis for their getting off was entrapment. That the FBI had essentially suggested the idea and was pushing the idea. The special agent in charge of that office that, I mean, you want to talk about one of the ugliest black eyes on the FBI that. And again, I discussed this at length in Justice Corrupted. What did Merrick Garland do? That special agent was moved to D.C. and put in charge of the January 6th prosecutions. Again, going after the political enemies of the Biden White House.
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You do your political work well, no matter what the outcome is, we give you a promotion.
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But even worse, you do your political work horribly.
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Yeah.
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You demonstrate you're a partisan even though you're an incompetent partisan, and you lose either having the jury throw out your case or having the Supreme Court unanimously throughout your case. That's fine. Your job is to be a pit bull and bite. What happens next is not your concern. That's how this Biden gets to do that.
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Well, and we'll give you your next big job.
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Keep biting. That's the job they expect is attack, attack, attack, facts be damned, law be damned. And that is incredibly dangerous.
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Last question on this before we move on to the spending bill. That's important, but I think people want to know, how does this move forward now? Is it going to be quick? What's the timetable here? Or do they drag it out and try to hold over Trump's head since he's decided he's going to run for president? Or do they try to get him indicted quickly and then try to actually go to a trial? I mean, give us your guess on the playbook here of what they're looking at.
- [25:22]
I think they want to move quickly. When Merrick Garland appointed Smith, he said that the appointment is not going to slow down the timetable at all. I think that was one of the conditions of it. Smith has a reputation for being a very aggressive prosecutor, for moving quickly he is an attack dog. That's why they brought him in attack. I believe we will see Trump indicted within a year and I think in all likelihood within the next six months. I think by June of 2023 this DOJ will have indicted Donald Trump.
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And that's all for political calendar reasons.
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Yes, exactly, that. They want to go after him. They hate him. It is not driven, it's not driven by facts or law. They view it. Look, if you were a vampire hunter in the 15th century, facts or law didn't matter. If you encountered a vampire, you wanted to drive a stake into him. That's how they view Donald Trump. And it is with the same self righteous indignation that they're going after him and that this is an indictment. They started with a conclusion. We're going to indict Trump. Now they're trying to figure out on what. Let's go figure out some basis. Who knows? They're going to figure out whatever has.
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Figure out something because they don't even care if it sticks down the road.
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They want to nail him to the wall and they'll fig figure out a basis. Look, these are the same, this is the same political team that impeached Trump not once but twice and is now suddenly discovering that the shoe is on the other foot.
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Senator, I want to move to the spending bill that looks like Democrats are going to try to ram through some serious spending measures before Republicans gain control of the House. This is something they're going to try to do right before the holidays. I'm referring to Christmas, obviously. What's going on with this bill real quick because people need to understand they're about to spend a lot of our money.
- [27:17]
So, yeah, so there are two ways that the federal government is funded. One is through appropriations bills. And in an ordinary cycle, you have 13 appropriation bills that cover each of the different cabinet agencies and that are passed through the ordinary regular course. Congress almost never does that anymore. There's so much dysfunction in Congress that regular appropriation bills don't, don't move anymore. Congress doesn't do its job. That means that instead government is funded either with what's called an omnibus, which is grabbing a bunch of those appropriation bills, lumping them all together in one gigantic trillion dollar plus bill.
- [27:58]
What does omnibus mean? So many people hear this. It's a big Washington word. What does it actually mean for people? Because I get asked all the time on my show.
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I don't know, lots of buses, Omni bus.
- [28:10]
I was wondering if there was some way to that where that even came from.
- [28:13]
I'm sure there's someone that knows the etymology of it. It means a whole lot of crap crammed into one.
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It costs us a lot of money.
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And by the way, they contrast that to. Sometimes they refer to a minibus, and a minibus is basically a smaller omnibus. And mini is modifying omnibus, but omnibus is grabbing the appropriation bills and all ramming them into one giant bill that you then pass up or down, usually with no amendments whatsoever. The other way government is funded is through what's called a continuing resolution.
- [28:46]
Yep.
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Now, a continuing resolution is much shorter and it usually just continues government spending at the level it is at currently for a fixed period of time. Sometimes you have a continuing resolution. It's usually referred to as a cr.
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Cr? Yeah.
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Sometimes you have it for a day or a week, sometimes you have it for a few months.
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And that's usually what happens when there's a threat of a government shutdown. Right. We see at midnight on a Saturday evening a CR that's gonna last for a week or six days or three days, whatever. So the government keeps functioning.
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So we are right now in a cr. The CR expires the second week of December. Now, there's a reason that Democrats wanted it the second week of December. They wanted it, number one, after the election, when they knew what would happen.
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Yep.
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But number two, they want it right before Christmas because lawmakers get really fidgety before Christmas. They want to go home, they want to be on vacation. And historically, they're willing to pass all sorts of bad crap just to get home to get out of town and go home for Christmas. And so there is right now a pending and important debate in the United States Senate. Should we pass an omnibus in December or should we wait until next year to take up appropriation bills? Now, I view the answer as a no brainer. Hell no, we should not pass a Democrat omnibus in a lame duck session. And here's why. Why would we want to pass into law funding for the government through September 30 of next year, through the end of the fiscal year, with all the Democrat priorities that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have signed off on, when a month from now we're gonna have a Republican House of Representatives where we will have far greater leverage to pass appropriations that reflect Republican priorities.
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Sure.
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Rather than Democrat priorities.
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So that means you'd be in favor, basically, a cr. Yes, until the new Congress gets in that everybody just voted for, which obviously makes sense if you care about the voters, you care about what they said and the will of the people, you would wait until then to do it.
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So, and I helped lead a group of conservative senators and a handful of us publicly urged our colleagues, let's pass a until January or February of next year, wait till the new Congress gets in, and then we'll pass an appropriations bill, either appropriation bills or an omnibus. With a new Republican House of Representatives, there's a big battle playing out. What is happening is Republican leadership, and in particular Mitch McConnell, and also the outgoing ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby, who's retiring, and also the incoming ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Susan Collins, all of them want to pass this omnibus bill in the lame duck. They're perfectly fine with the priorities of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. And it is an open question whether all it will take is 10 Republicans rolling over and agreeing with the Democrats and they'll pass this omnibus. And a bunch of those Republicans who are likely to roll over are retiring Republicans who are getting ready to be fat cat lobbyists.
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And they want all the things in there, the pork bell spending that helps them with the lobbyists.
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And an omnibus is filled with pork barrel spending. It's filled with, I mean, it can be a couple thousand pages. Nobody has read the thing. It is put together.
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Just throw it in there, your line of what you want and to get your vote.
- [32:17]
Now, let me give you a historical context because you might say, okay, well, what typically does one do in modern times when there has been a change of control of Congress? No Congress in modern times has passed an omnibus. And let me focus on it. Since 1994, control of the House has changed hands in four midterm election cycles, 1994, 2006, 2010 and 2018. Never before has the outgoing House majority passed an omnibus appropriations bill during the lame duck session following the election. Let me give you those four. Let's break it down a little bit to give some substance. In 1994, historic massive Republican victory, Republicans won a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years. But the 103rd Congress, the Congress there, had already done its job. It had already passed the 13 appropriations bills before the lame duck session. So there were no appropriations bills before it. It didn't pass any. So 94, it didn't happen. All right, how about 2006? 2006, you had a Republican President, George W. Bush and Democrats took both chambers, the House and Senate.
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Yeah.
- [33:32]
The outgoing Congress proposed 11 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2007. Just two had been passed before the lame duck session. During that session, what did Congress do? Passed two short term continuing resolutions extending the date of appropriations through February. So that's what happened when Republicans were losing control to the Democrats. They said, okay, we can't pass our appropriations. We'd like to, but we can't. And by the way, they had a Republican president, so you want to talk about a very comparable situation. And they said let's do a CR and let the new Congress figure it out. How about 2010? Another big Republican takeover. Republicans retake the House. In 2010, the 111th Congress failed to pass even a single regular appropriations bill. So instead three continuing resolutions were passed to extend government funding. And then finally 2018, not that long ago, Democrats took control of the House. Prior to the 2018 lame duck session, Congress passed two minibus appropriations bills. So not all of them crammed together. They contained five smaller spending bills and a continuing resolution. That was before the lame duck. During the lame duck, lawmakers passed a continuing resolution to provide funding through December 21st. Congress then failed to agree on another short term continuing resolution resulting in a funding lapse. A government shutdown.
- [35:07]
Government shutdown, yeah.
- [35:08]
Until the next Congress convened. And by the way, that was driven by the Democrats, that was the Chuck Schumer shutdown, which of course the press didn't cover because it was a Democrat shutdown. And so that that doesn't count. So literally since 1994, this has never happened. And it comes down to the exact same question. Listen this, this podcast is coming out Monday morning. Monday at 5:30pm we're going to have the cloture vote on the marriage bill. And we're going to find out today at 5:30pm whether three of the 12 Republicans who decided to embrace gay marriage are going to stand up for religious liberty or not. And it will come down to if three of those 12 say I will vote no on cloture unless Mike Lee's religious liberty amendment is added to the bill, not given a fake up down vote that it will lose.
- [36:01]
It's got to be one in the.
- [36:02]
Same written into the bill. We'll find out at 5:30 today whether three of those 12 have the courage to do that. The question on this omnibus is the same thing. Are there 41 Republicans in the United States Senate who say hell no, we are not passing a Schumer Pelosi year long appropriations bill in the lame duck session. When we're getting ready to have a Republican House of Representatives, it ought to be that Republican House who negotiates with, sadly the Democrat Senate and adopts appropriation bills in January or February. That's a critical issue, I can tell you. Our leadership in the Senate wants to.
- [36:45]
Pass the Schumer Pelosi bill, which is just shocking. I say shocking. It's not shocking if you know the players, but it is shocking when you just won back the House. You're even in this situation. I also want to ask you about this. You know, is there a possibility if this gets into a fight? Because this is the new threat. You and I are both fans of the West Wing. There's a great episode in the West Wing about why you don't shut down the government. When they were going through a government shutdown, I remember watching one of the characters, Josh Lyman, he's like, you don't shut down the government. Here's why they blame you. They'll fine every person to claim they're having the worst day of their lives. They'll put it on tv, and this is why you don't do it. And now we see that be the threat. Anytime someone's like, well, if you don't do a CR or you don't do what we tell you we're gonna do and you shut down the government. Right, all hell's gonna break loose. Is that now basically used every single time you guys get to this point where it's a moment where you must stand up with like, well, blame you for shutting down the government.
- [37:38]
So it is. And we will have subsequent podcasts that go into depth on government shutdowns, on the history of it, what they mean, because we're getting ready to move into a new era where that could happen with a Republican House and a Democrat president where we could face shutdowns in the next two years. And I've talked on this pod about how I helped lead the leadership fight against Mitch McConnell. And one of the central questions I said is, are we willing to use the lever of government funding to fight for anything? And leadership was unwilling to commit to fighting literally for anything for the next two years, which is a big part of why people are so frustrated. What I will say on this fight right now, will the media characterize it as Republicans want to shut down the government? Yes, because the media is the left wing of the Democrat Party. They are dishonest and propagandist. So they've always characterized it as that. The irony of Josh Lyman in the TV show the West Wing is he was suggesting the media would blame the Democrats for shutdown. And the corrupt corporate media never does that. It's always the Republican fault, no matter whether it's the Democrats or not who do it. But here it's a simpler question, because we can easily pass a cr. Yeah, we can pass a CR and extend funding through January or February, which means the government doesn't shut down. The only reason we wouldn't pass a CR is if Democrats refuse to do so. If they say, nope, give us the Pelosi Schumer funding bill or we'll shut down the government. Now, will the Biden White House and the corrupt corporate media even then say it's Republicans shutting down the government? Yes. Will Republican leadership say the same thing? Maybe. One of the great ironies of these battles is Republican leadership is often on the side of a Democrat White House. But here the question ought to be real simple. Let's kick the can down the road a couple of months and let the new Congress elected by the American people that have given Republicans the majority, let the new Congress decide, do the spending.
- [39:40]
Bill for the new Congress, in essence.
- [39:42]
But by the way, what the Democrats are going to want to do is they're going to want to roll everything they can to the lame ducks. So they're going to want to roll, not just an omnibus spending bill, they're going to want to roll the debt ceiling into this also, because those are the only two levers the new Congress has if you want to change any policies, you either have spending or the death ceiling. Only two. So what are Schumer and Pelosi going to do? Let's take both of those levers away and let's kick it down as far as we can so that we render the new incoming Republican House toothless. I get why Pelosi wants to do that. I get why Schumer wants to do that. I get why Biden wants to do that.
- [40:21]
But why in the hell would the Republicans do it?
- [40:25]
Would the Republicans do it? And so I can tell you we've already had some really vigorous arguments in the Senate Republican conference room, and we're gonna have really vigorous arguments over the next couple of weeks.
- [40:37]
Over Thanksgiving, there was something else that happened that I think was shocking. My phone blew up. Full disclosure. My family in law enforcement, I own a gun store. And I started getting text messages because Joe Biden came out and said something about this basically lame duck session that you're about to come back to, coming after people's guns, but not just guns that they've, you know, been talking about for years, all now semiautomatic weapons. And I want you to see the clip from Biden and tell the American people, is this something to worry about or not? Take a look.
- [41:06]
The idea we still allow semiautomatic weapons to be purchased is sick, just sick. It has no, no social redeeming value.
- [41:17]
Zero, None.
- [41:19]
Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit through the gun manufacturer. Can you do anything about gun laws during a lame duck? I'm going to try. What will you try and do? I'm going to try to get rid of assault weapons.
- [41:29]
I'm going to try. That came out of nowhere obviously. Never let a crisis go to waste. Democratic motto here they see an opportunity because of the shooting that happened and they said ok, let's go after guns again. Now it's all semiautomatic weapons. They even put out a press statement from the White House. Could this go somewhere in the lame duck?
- [41:48]
So I don't believe it will. One of the things to understand, watching that clip, Joe Biden has no idea what he's talking about. Like when he says there's no socially redeeming purpose behind semiautomatic weapons. If you asked him what's a semiautomatic weapon, he doesn't know. Yeah, I know it's hard.
- [42:06]
He probably doesn't even realize he's been hunting with semiautomatic shotguns, which is a semiautomatic weapon that he now says no one should own, even though he probably has used one his life. In fact, based on the paperwork, the gun that Hunter Biden's ex lover threw away, his ex sister in law was a semiautomatic weapon as well.
- [42:24]
So. And look this folks that listen to verdict are smart, are educated and informed. You know what terms mean. But many of the Democrat advocates of gun control have no idea what terms mean. Many of the reporters and editors in the corrupt corporate media have no idea what terms mean. So they use the word assault weapon, which is a made up term that essentially means scary looking weapons. It's weapons that look like machine guns. But let's take the word semiautomatic for someone that doesn't know anything about guns. They hear the word automatic and they're like okay, that's gotta be a machine gun, right? And it's worth just explaining to listeners. And you guys know this, but maybe not everyone knows this. An automatic weapon, a fully automatic weapon is a machine gun and you hold the trigger down and multiple bullets come out. Think Rambo spraying a machine gun. The military uses M16s, they're fully automatic machine guns. Those are weapons of war. That's a phrase the Democrats like To use machine guns are weapons of war. They have also been functionally illegal in the United states for over 80 years. That means if you and I actually you can buy one because you have a gun store, you can have a very specialized permit to get a fully automatic machine gun.
- [43:43]
And it's very hard to do, by the way, even with our permits, even in the store, the amount of government paperwork, and I'm not necessarily complaining, I'm just saying it is still not easy.
- [43:52]
As a practical matter, it is functionally illegal for an ordinary citizen to own a fully automatic machine gun. So what does semiautomatic mean? Semi automatic means, and you know this well, you pull the trigger. Once a single bullet comes out, you pull the trigger a second time, a second bullet comes out. So for each trigger pull, another bullet is fired. Now you can contrast that to say a revolver, a revolver where you have to cock the hammer and then pull the trigger, and then you cock the hammer and pull the trigger. That's not semi automatic. There is an additional action or say a bolt action rifle where you have to cock the bolt and then fire. An enormous percentage of firearms in the United States are semiautomatic. A great many pistols, shotguns, rifles are semiautomatic. That is when Joe Biden says there's no reason to sell a semiautomatic weapon, he's talking about banning a vast swath of firearms in America.
- [45:01]
The majority of them that are bought and sold every day are semiautomatic in this country. And the one that saved my life in shooting was semiautomatic. The one that was given to my grandfather, to my dad, to me is semiautomatic. The shotgun that I use hunting that was given down for my family was semiautomatic. This is not some new scary weapon of war thing that they're trying to obviously put out there. But it worries me because even.
- [45:23]
But see, the Dems are taking advantage of people who don't know what the word SEM automatic means. And when they hear him talking about they're picturing Rambo with a machine gun, that's what they see in the camera, in their mind, because they're ignorant. And I don't know if Biden ever knew what a semi automatic weapon is, but today with his diminished mental capacity, I'm confident watching that clip, he has zero idea what he's saying.
- [45:48]
Is there anything that listeners need to do? Do they need to call about this? Or do you think this was him just shooting off the cuff? Or is this genuinely something Democrats to try to Sneak in there last minute.
- [45:58]
So I think it's him shooting off the cuff, pun intended. I think the chances of it passing into law are 0.00%. Might the House take it up and pass it? Sure. I mean, look, I don't know what the House will do on the way out. And the Democrats might decide they want to want a virtue signal, but to have it pass in the Senate would take 60 votes. And even as bad as the Republican conference is, they're not gonna be 60 votes for any sort of firearms ban. We had the battle over the gun control bill earlier this year that some Republicans signed up on. It didn't come remotely close to what Biden is talking about. And I will say, let's pause for a second and reflect on the predicate. Why is Biden talking about this now? And the reason is, of course, because you had this horrific shooting at the gay nightclub in Colorado. Now, look, I hate murderers. I think we need to be incredibly vigorous going after violent criminals. I think we need to. I've been leading the fight for over a decade to devote more law enforcement resources to getting violent criminals off the street before they commit crimes. It is an amazing, you know, this shooting the instant it broke. And of course, that it was targeting gay and lesbian individuals at a gay nightclub. Corporate media was in paroxysms of joy the instant it broke, because it fit their narrative perfectly of targeting the LGBT community with a mass shooting. Therefore, we should confiscate everyone's guns. And then suddenly, the narrative took a horrible wrong turn from their perspective. Number one, we found out initially that the mass murderer had previously threatened to blow people up, including his own family, with a bomb, and hadn't been prosecuted. That was kind of a wrinkle because it raised obvious questions. Why didn't they lock the guy up the last time he threatened a crime.
- [47:50]
Before he committed and killing his own family. Threatening, yes, With a bomb. Blowing up his own mother.
- [47:55]
But then the narrative came to a screeching halt when he filed a pleading in court that indicated that he identifies as non binary and uses the pronouns they and them. And suddenly you could hear the corporate media doing a collect it. Huh? What's it?
- [48:14]
Yeah.
- [48:15]
And magically, the story disappeared. Gone.
- [48:18]
Just totally gone instantly.
- [48:20]
And it is reminiscent of the horrific Christmas parade murder in Waukesha, where again, you had a black left wing racist who a George Soros DA had repeatedly let out of jail with a slap on the wrist, who drove his red SUV into a Christmas parade, murdering innocent people, running over the dancing grannies. Murdering children. And that story was in the news for about four seconds. Because now, look, I will say this. I think the Colorado shooter ought to be prosecuted and put to death. I believe in capital punishment, if you commit murder, especially mass murder, you deserve to die. See how many Democrats will say that. But I'll say this also, which is if this guy had been a right wing Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat, it would still be leading the news tonight. The press would spend two months putting this guy front and center. If he'd been the guy who allegedly attacked Jussie Smollett until we discovered it was made up, yeah, then the press would have gone crazy. But suddenly, because the mass murderer identifies as non binary, never mind, we move on. Because the narrative matters more than anything. And so they'll find another instance to blow it up to advance their political agenda. Because it's not about journalism, it's not about facts and it's not about stopping crime. No, it is about their political agenda.
- [50:00]
Well, and you'd think you'd learn from the situation if the guy threatened to blow up his own family. Maybe we should prosecute that. Maybe we should put him in prison. Maybe we should get him mental help. Whatever it may be, they will completely overlook all the warning signs that come. We start seeing this happen more and more. You see where there's multiple shooters now, there was warning signs before there's mug shots, before there's police interaction, before there's serious mental issues, before and immediately every time in many of these cities, the liberal prosecutors do not go after these people and they never go back. And look at that first part of the story there, which I think is the most frustrating for so many Americans and the victims who are hurt in these situations.
- [50:36]
Well, and look again, in my last book, Justice Corrupted, I have an entire chapter that walks through the George Soros prosecutors in case after case after case where they let violent criminals go and they turn around and commit more violent crimes. We're in the city of Houston where tragically we've seen left wing judges, and a left wing county judge in particular, who've advanced cashless bail policies that have resulted in murderers being released. And an amazing thing, when you release murderers, they turn around and commit more murders. And that if you want to stop murders, mass murders, or even single murders, I'm against all murders. If you want to stop them, the answer is not to disarm law abiding citizens, it's to go after the criminals.
- [51:20]
Lastly, Senator, Thanksgiving was very weird. If you're watching the tv, it was almost like Democrats really didn't want you to enjoy Thanksgiving with your family. Joy Reid came out with this diatribe on basically why you shouldn't be enjoying Thanksgiving.
- [51:35]
And before you play it, which we're going to in a second, let me just point out, on Thanksgiving, I wasn't watching Joy Reid. I was watching football. And let me just say, you've been in this business too damn long. If you turn Joy Reed on, you're doing something wrong, man.
- [51:50]
I got it sent to me and I was like, wow, that's interesting. This is how much these people can't enjoy even a holiday. Take a look at this Thanksgiving, the.
- [51:59]
Joy Reid
Day we gather with friends and family to enjoy turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. We throw on the game, catch up on our lives, and then discuss or quite possibly argue about religion and politics. For millions of Americans, it's a day of cherished traditions. And as Americans, we certainly value those traditions. But it's also important to unpack the myth of Thanksgiving. It is a holiday riddled with historical inaccuracies built on this myth that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of corn. A simplistic fairy tale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between indigenous tribes and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed. It's the truth Republicans want banned from our textbooks because here's the secret they want so desperately to keep. We are a country founded on violence. Our birth was violent. In 1619, a ship with more than 20 enslaved Africans landed in Virginia, ushering in two centuries of American slavery that left millions in chains or dead. And when those humans in bondage were finally free, a terrorist organization that was a card carrying member of polite society, the Ku Klux Klan, picked up where the Civil War ended, using violence to maintain white supremacy. The Klan and its ilk are still active. And as Americans, we continue to choose violence.
- [53:23]
Senator Ted Cruz
Where do you want to begin on that clip?
- [53:26]
Look, that clip is the modern American left. They hate America and they are devoted to lying about America. They're also hopelessly naive. So her comment that America was founded on violence. All right, I got news for you. Every country in the history of civilization was founded on violence. The history of mankind is, tragically or not tragically, a history of violence. By the way, the Native American tribes who were here were conquering each other and going to war with each other. And throughout history, whether it is Europe, whether it is Africa, whether it is Asia, you have millennia of one nation conquering another, one tribe conquering another, that has been as Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher, said, the state of nature is nasty, brutish and short.
- [54:18]
Yeah.
- [54:19]
So one of the things the left tries to do is to suggest that aspects of human nature that are true about America are uniquely evil about America. So we were founded on violence unlike no one else. Was just us, the utopian souls that have lived everywhere else. Secondly. So she immediately goes to 1619. This is the 1619 project, the incredibly revisionist history of false portrayal of America's history that was written by the New York Times. Now, the 1619 Project postulates that America's history didn't begin in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence. It didn't begin with the signing of the Constitution. It began in 1619 when the first ship carrying slaves arrived on America's soil. It also postulates that America's history is irredeemably racist and that today we are irredeemably racist. It also claims the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery. That latter claim is so absurd that multiple very well respected historians like James McPherson, like Gordon Wood have denounced it as ridiculous, as false. It was so bad the New York Times was forced to issue a correction because it was indefensibly false. What the left doesn't tell you, Listen. Was slavery. Horrific? Yes. Slavery is the original sin of the United States of America. Did indescribable murders and tortures occur under slavery? Yes. What the left doesn't tell you is America is not unique in slavery. In fact, most societies throughout history, slavery has been a significant component of it. Whether in Europe, whether in Africa, whether in Asia, slavery has been consistent for millennia. What is unique about America is not slavery. Tragically, that's been much of human existence. What's unique about America is emancipation. What's unique about America is that we wrote into our founding documents the Declaration of Independence says we hold these truths to be self evidence that all men are created equal. That was. You want to talk about a radical, a revolutionary statement. All men, not just some, not just based on race. Those documents that in turn those principles. And of course the Declaration goes on to say that are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Those principles became the basis for the abolitionists, became the basis for incredible patriots like Frederick Douglass, who argued slavery was fundamentally incompatible with American values and became the basis later for the civil rights movement. What she also doesn't say, she talks about the Ku Klux Klan. You know what she doesn't mention?
- [57:07]
There was the Democratic Party, that was the party of the Ku Klux Klan.
- [57:10]
The Klan was founded by Democrats populated by Democrats. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Klan, was a delegate to the 1860 National Democrat Convention. If you look at Klansmen, by the way, fast forward to Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws, almost every single one of them was written by a Democrat politician in order to prevent the voters from voting Democrat politicians out of power. And by the way, Joy Reid would say, well, that was long ago, not today. Well, let's go today. The governor of Virginia, just over a year ago, a guy named Ralph Northam chose to have a picture in his yearbook of a man dressed as a Klansman and a man in blackface. And he said he could have been one of those two, meaning he could have been the Klansmen that was the Democrat governor of Virginia just over a year ago. How about today, the sitting President of the United States, Joe Biden, the guy who doesn't know what day it is. Yep, Joe Biden just over a decade ago gave the eulogy of Robert Byrd, a grand Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan, had been the Senate Democratic leader in the Senate. He described him as a great friend.
- [58:20]
And mentor and even imply that America might be a little different if he would have become President.
- [58:25]
Joe Biden. Look, I gotta say, if you can't stand up and say, I've never given a eulogy at the funeral of a Klansman, yeah, maybe you ought to be a little more cautious about giving hectoring race lectures. But Joy Reid doesn't tell any of that. Instead, she wants to advance the false and pernicious lie attacking America. And to be clear, look, were atrocities committed against Native Americans? Yes, that is part of our history. She claims Republicans want to erase that history. No.
- [58:56]
Yeah, not true.
- [58:57]
We tell the full history, just not the partisan slant that says America is evil and uniquely evil. And the answer is to become a communist society. Which is what these advocates of the 1619 project, what these advocates of critical race theory, they are Marxists. They advocate communism. That is their solution to this. And so the reason Joy Reid and other leftists hates Thanksgiving is the same reason that they hate Columbus Day. It's because they hate America. And they believe fundamentally the founding of the United States of America was an evil act and we are an evil country. I think that is perniciously false. And I believe the United States of America has done more good than any nation in the history of the world. And we have a glorious history to be proud of. And I will point out the party that you and I are members of the Republican Party was founded to end slavery. We were founded in opposition of slavery. The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was elected and signed the Emancipation Proclamation. And so it is a dishonest history if you only paint America as bad, but that's what leftists do.
- [60:08]
The other part that was hilarious is I was looking at the White House and their Twitter feed, and I'm like, well, maybe Joy Reid took over the Twitter feed as part of her Thanksgiving to the White House. I don't know. But if you look at this tweet, and I love it because you can see right at the bottom, is obviously scheduled 9am perfectly. Native American roots are deeply embedded in this land. The Native American Heritage Day. We honor the enduring cultures and contributions of all Native Americans and recommit ourselves to fulfilling our nation's promise of equal dignity and respect for all. I'm fine with that, but it's like, can we just have a normal Thanksgiving and just enjoy our time with our family? Or do you have to, like, somehow, in essence, remind everybody how bad America is? That's what they're trying to do here.
- [60:51]
Well, it is, and it's interesting. So apparently. All right, so leftists have renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day. Yes. Because the heroism of Christopher Columbus in discovering the New World cannot be celebrated in their world. Now, apparently, this is new to me that they're not allowed to call it Thanksgiving, that they've renamed Thanksgiving Native American Heritage Day. And look, I think it's got the.
- [61:13]
White House seal right there. So it's not a joke.
- [61:15]
Look, I think Native American heritage is wonderful, should be studied, should be celebrated. It's part of the history of this country, a very important part of the history of this country. But so is Thanksgiving, damn it. Yeah, but like, the effort at renaming is because they're embarrassed. And I want to give a contrast. When our nation started, George Washington on October 3, 1789, issued a proclamation. And if you will indulge me, it's not very long. I want to read Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation. New York, 3rd October, 1789, by the President of the United States of America. A proclamation. Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor. And whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now, therefore, I do recommend and Assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these states to the service of that great and glorious being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be, that we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation. For the single and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of his providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war for the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty which we have since enjoyed. For the peaceable and rational manner in which we have enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge, and in general, for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and ruler of nations, and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all people by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations, especially such as have shown kindness unto us, and to bless them with good government, peace and concord, to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best given under my hand at the city of New York, the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789. George Washington.
- [65:25]
History matters. History matters.
- [65:27]
Can you imagine one sentence of this being uttered by the current president of the United States?
- [65:35]
No.
- [65:37]
This is a nation worth defending. And you know what? It's not just Washington who knew that. It's not just listeners to this podcast. It's millions of Americans across this country. And I gotta say, there was a video you sent me on Thanksgiving. You texted it to me, and it warmed my heart. I turned around and I texted it to my entire family, and I said, watch this, it is beautiful. And ultimately I tweeted it out to the world. But I want to close this post Thanksgiving Verdict with just watching a video of one American who still knows what is beautiful about this nation and still loves it. Can we play this video? Oh my God, look at the taxes.
- [66:49]
This is how I came. I tell you what, when I sent that to you, it was one of the coolest videos. I rarely get choked up, but I watched that. And to see that man talk about Cuba, talk about communism, talk about Fidel Castro and talk about this, the first paycheck, as he put it, where every hour counted, it makes you not take this country for granted. And I love that moment because it was. It reminded me of how thankful I need to be to live in the greatest country in the world.
- [67:38]
It is utterly beautiful. It brought tears to my eyes on Thanksgiving. It brings tears to my eyes now. And I just want to say to everyone, God bless America. I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas to all. This is Verdict.