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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
The news cycle always makes it feel like the world is on fire, but sometimes the world is actually on fire. And we have seen riots break out across this country, coast to coast. Arson, buildings burning down, all stemming from the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This is now spread out into a much larger movement, much larger action, to the point that National Guardsmen troops have been called in to help maintain the peace. Very, very overwhelming for a lot of us. Luckily, we will break down the whole story and what it means. This is verdict with Ted Cruz. Senator, a lot has happened since last Friday, since the last time we spoke. I can't even believe. I mean, it seems like just a completely different political situation now. And you see it everywhere. Not just on the news. You see it on social media.
- [00:58]
Ted Cruz
People.
- [00:58]
Michael Knowles
People posting various hashtags. And if you don't post a certain hashtag, you're smeared as a bigot and a racist. We're at each other's throats. I mean, literal buildings are on fire. I know you spoke on the Senate floor about this this week. What's your take?
- [01:16]
Ted Cruz
Well, listen, this has been a tough week in our nation's history. What we've seen all across the country has been really, really hard. How do you think through this? Well, I mean, let's start with some first principles. Don't murder people. Don't hurt people.
- [01:33]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [01:34]
Ted Cruz
Don't steal from people. You know, when it comes to the Constitution, every one of us has a right to free speech. Every one of us has a right to protest, to speak. But what you don't have a right to do is commit acts of violence. What you don't have a right to do is. Is shatter store windows. What you don't have a right to do is burn police cars. What you don't have a right to do is murder police officers. And so we're seeing all of these come crashing in. It started with something truly horrific, what happened to George Floyd. It was wrong. It was evil. It was grotesque. At this point, all of us have seen those eight minutes of video. What happened to George Floyd was wrong. And the criminal justice system needs to hold those who violated that, which in that instance was four Minneapolis police officers, one who put his knee on his neck and took Mr. Floyd's life grotesquely, and three others who stood around and didn't stop him. But then we saw the anger, the paroxysms that came out of that initially manifest in protests. Now, look, protests are perfectly legitimate. They are quintessentially American. We have the right under the First Amendment to Speak out. And to speak out for racial equality, to speak out for equal justice under law. The law should apply to everyone fairly, regardless of your skin color. And the protests calling for standing for racial equality were in the best tradition of America. But then we saw violent criminals, then we saw terrorists, then we saw looters and thieves infiltrate these protests and begin wreaking mayhem, begin destroying communities, begin committing acts of violence. And I gotta say to every one of those violent criminals who slipped into the otherwise peaceful protest and began rioting and committing acts of terror, what they did was not only wrong and criminal, it was bigoted. Because what they did is they tried to corrupt a legitimate expression of free speech and a laudable goal. A goal this nation was built on the proposition that all of us are created equal. They tried to corrupt it. And it was wrong. And I gotta say, watching our country burn this past week, it's been horrifying. It has been. And it's got to stop.
- [04:30]
Michael Knowles
Senator, I'm actually struck by the simplicity of your observation because it's something that we actually haven't gotten from the mainstream media, we haven't gotten from a lot of politicians, which is, let's go back to first principles. It's wrong to murder. It's wrong to steal. It's wrong to commit violence against innocent people. It's good to voice your own expressions of anger at injustice. It's good for justice to be served. Still wrong to steal. Still wrong to murder. I was watching cnn. That's a statement that I rarely utter. But, but I was watching CNN and Chris Cuomo, the brother of the Democratic governor of New York, Chris Cuomo, came out and explicitly defended violent protest, which also known as riots, also known as domestic terrorism. I mean, he said, actually show me where it says that protests have to be polite and peaceful. Could you show them where it says that, Senator?
- [05:28]
Ted Cruz
Well, there is this little thing called the United States Constitution.
- [05:31]
Michael Knowles
Oh yeah.
- [05:32]
Ted Cruz
And the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment protects the right of the people to peaceably assemble.
- [05:39]
Michael Knowles
It's right there.
- [05:40]
Ted Cruz
Peaceably. To assemble peaceably is right in there. So there's a difference. You can stand up and protest. And by the way, some of the most effective protests in the world have been peaceable, non violent protest.
- [05:54]
Michael Knowles
I want to touch on antifa and I think you've actually honed in here on what lies at the heart of this. It's not just Chris Cuomo going out and saying protests should be violent. It's like Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota, held up a photo, smiling with a Book called the Antifa Handbook. Smiling in photos with people in Antifa. Antifa stands for anti fascist. They don't behave like anti fascists. I mean, they do in the sense that they behave like radical communists and anarchists.
- [06:23]
Ted Cruz
When you march in and violently assault people, you are being fa. You're not anti fa. You're fa.
- [06:30]
Michael Knowles
You've gone full FA here. And you know, I think the president this week said that he wants to classify them as a terrorist organization. And a very, very basic definition of terrorism. They're using violence against civilians to achieve political ends. It's as simple as it gets. It seems pretty clear what is the role of antifa here and what does it say about the state of our country that you've got elected officials voicing support for them?
- [06:54]
Ted Cruz
Well, listen, for two years I've been calling on the Trump administration to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. I introduced a resolution last year in the Sen calling on Antifa to be designated because they go in and they commit violent assaults. They commit violent attacks. And these typically are young anarchists. They're often rich white college kids who wear masks. And look, they're sitting there with their thousand dollar iPhones saying, capitalism is evil. Let's burn it all to the ground. And interestingly enough, they're not burning their dorm room to the ground. No, no, no, no, no. That would be too much. They're going into the inner city and they're burning to the ground the communities that people have to live in. And it's grotesque, it's wrong. And look, Keith Ellison's son is a city council member in Minneapolis. He tweeted out that he stands with Atifa Antifa. They're literally burning his city to the ground. And these democratic politicians, and I'll tell you, if anyone behave worse than that, it's Hollywood celebrities. So Hollywood celebrities are all engaged in this virtue signaling where they're giving money to bail the rioters out of jail. And this is literally so, you know, I engage with some of these celebrities and asked, hey, wait a second, you know, Justin Timberlake was like, give money to this fund to bail the writers out of jail. How about you give money to a fund to rebuild the African American and Hispanic owned small businesses that have been burned to the ground by these violent criminals instead of bailing the criminal out of jail.
- [08:48]
Michael Knowles
Right, right.
- [08:49]
Ted Cruz
Help the innocent victims. And let's take another component of it. The words black lives matter.
- [08:58]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, this has been a contentious point.
- [09:01]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. It shouldn't be. Do black lives matter? Absolutely, yes. Unequivocally period, black lives matter. But here's the part that's deemed, oh.
- [09:12]
Michael Knowles
You can't say this, you can't say this.
- [09:13]
Ted Cruz
Black lives matter. Hispanic lives matter. Asian lives matter. White lives matter. Human life matters.
- [09:19]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [09:19]
Ted Cruz
And okay, so why is that a political statement? This is. So I actually had this conversation with my daughters today where they were talking about some YouTuber that raised a bunch of money for BLM. Of course, my daughters already know the acronym BLM. I'm like, so tell me, what does BLM stand for? And my daughter said, well, you know, equality. Equality's good. And I was like, yeah, that's certainly true.
- [09:43]
Michael Knowles
I love equality.
- [09:45]
Ted Cruz
But if you look at the radicals who are co opting the message black lives matter, what they're advocating is, number one, an absolute assault on police. And I'll tell you who it hurts. It hurts African Americans. It hurts Hispanics. You know why? Because when this happens, if you look at what happened in Ferguson, you look at what happened in Baltimore, there's something called the Ferguson effect, which is essentially that when cops feel like, okay, if I get an interaction maybe with a criminal and somehow it gets violent, my whole life can be destroyed, my career can be destroyed, my family can be destroyed. And the perfectly rational thing to do is, hey, I'm gonna step back, I'm not gonna engage, of course. And what you see happen over and over again is the murder rate skyrocket.
- [10:33]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [10:33]
Ted Cruz
We saw that happen in Ferguson, we saw that happen in Baltimore. And you end up with, if you are committed to the proposition Black lives matter, demonizing the cops will end up with more black lives being lost. More. Because, by the way, the people being murdered most frequently, right, by violent criminals, by gangs, are people in low income neighborhoods and often they're African Americans or Hispanic.
- [11:00]
Michael Knowles
Well, this is, I think, the key point here because, you know, people see that phrase black lives matter, and they say if you don't support this organization and the most radical leaders of this organization, then somehow you don't care about black lives. And the fact is, virtually, statistically, nobody in this country thinks black lives don't matter. Anybody with any political influence believes Black lives Matter. Anybody with any media influence believes Black Lives Matter. Anybody with any business influence, right? Major corporations donating millions and millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter. Anybody with an Instagram account or a Twitter account or a Facebook believes Black Lives Matter. Everybody agrees on this point. But some radicals, some people pushing things that are not so great, that are not so popular, are co opting that very basic message that everybody agrees with and using it to push radical leftist ideas that the vast, vast majority of Americans don't want. And it's so cynical and it's so bullying and it's so intimidating that I think a lot of people are just lost on what to do.
- [12:01]
Ted Cruz
So, Michael, I'll give an example. One of the agenda items of the radicals that are leading this movement is to use their phrase, defund the police. This past week, that was tweeted by Hillary Clinton's former press secretary, defund the police. Let me ask you for a second. How good do you think it would be for African American communities if there were no police officers?
- [12:26]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, not good.
- [12:27]
Ted Cruz
If just the drug dealers could run free, if the street gangs could run free. It's already. The murder rates are horrific. But how good would it be for your family or mine? How many Americans this week, as you watch the rioting, thought about the right to keep and bear arms?
- [12:42]
Michael Knowles
I'm sure the lines are around the line.
- [12:46]
Ted Cruz
How many thought about what happens if that mob comes to my house?
- [12:50]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [12:51]
Ted Cruz
And that is an extreme agenda, and it's not right. You know what? Here's the name the media doesn't want to talk about. David Dorn. David Dorn was a retired police officer in St. Louis, Missouri. David Dorn was shot by rioters. He was protecting the pawn shop. He's a small businessman. He was shot and murdered. David Dorn spent four decades serving honorably as a police officer. And David Dorn was murdered by this rioting. And yet the media doesn't want to talk about him.
- [13:36]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [13:37]
Ted Cruz
If you believe in Black lives matter, David Doran's life matters.
- [13:41]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [13:41]
Ted Cruz
I'll give you another name. David Underwood, who was another law enforcement officer, was murdered. Las Vegas, you had another law. Who was also. David Underwood is African American as well. We had two African American police officers murdered by this rioting. And yet the woke virtue signalers in Hollywood, on cnn, on Twitter, those lives don't matter to them at all.
- [14:07]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [14:08]
Ted Cruz
And it's wrong. Look, we should protect everybody's life and we should have a passion in this.
- [14:13]
Michael Knowles
Whole racial issue and this whole issue of the protests and the riots. I mean, in the fact of the riots and the protests, probably the most outrageous cynicism is that just a week ago we were told, if you go outside to do anything, you're killing grandma. You're endangering people of the coronavirus. If you go, God forbid, to protest any of the lockdown orders, you are a terrible, no good, awful person. And then this Week, we're told by the very same public health experts, by the very same politicians, everybody should go out by the hundred thousand to protest in this left wing narrative. I mean, people look at that and I think our capacity for outrage just goes out the window.
- [14:53]
Ted Cruz
Right. Well, look, one of the more ridiculous hypocrites on this has been Bill de Blasio in New York, who. De Blasio was asked this last week, so if you can come and protest and get much, much closer than six feet apart, can we go to church, can we go to synagogue? And de Blasio said, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because there's a history of racial discrimination in America, but there's no history of religious discrimination. What utter crap, by the way. Right?
- [15:20]
Michael Knowles
It's not true.
- [15:21]
Ted Cruz
I mean, you wanna talk about millennia of racial. Of racial discrimination, yes, but of religious persecution. I mean, we are in a country that was literally founded by people fleeing religious persecution. You look at the pilgrims who arrived here, they arrived to come to a land where they could practice their faith. And by the way, you want to talk about people persecuted for faith, you look at the Jewish community in New York City who de Blasio has singled out for persecution over and over and over again. You know, Jews In World War II, 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. To say there's no history of religious discrimination, it's absurd. Is a political, leftist, anti American narrative. That is nonsense. And the hypocrisy of it is really coming out amid all this chaos.
- [16:18]
Michael Knowles
2.5 million jobs added in May. The economy is now. I mean, the stock market surged when we got this news. Is there a chance that we could see something like a V shaped recovery? Is there a chance that we could come out of this thing pretty strong?
- [16:35]
Ted Cruz
Look, I hope so. The job numbers are fantastic. We're seeing states all across the country reopening. Texas is reopening. And let me say, this is a powerful sign. Open up the economy now. Let people go back to work. Now, that doesn't mean ignore all of the efforts we're doing. We can engage in social distancing, we can continue to be prudent, but open it up. Let people go back to work. Two and a half million new jobs. Now, we've had 40 million people lose their jobs, so two and a half million. But you know what? It's the first time in a long time we haven't seen job numbers that were several million going down. Right? So instead of going down, they're going back up sharply. And I hope we keep Seeing it go back up. The 40 million jobs that went away were self inflicted. We did this to stop the pandemic. Now let's let people open up. Let's let them get back to work and get the economy moving again. These job numbers are really encouraging and we need to keep moving in that direction.
- [17:36]
Michael Knowles
That's great news. And before we get to mailbag, cause I do want to hit the mailbag, there is one more story on the subject of destruction that I've got to get back to. Obviously, destruction's been in the news a lot, but it's important, I think, to talk about your absolute destruction of Rod Rosenstein's testimony before the Senate when you were discussing the gross mishandling of things over the past several years at the doj. Could you just tell us a little bit about this? Because I think for those of us who have been gaslit for years and years on this subject of how the DOJ was going after Trump, I think it was so refreshing to see you shed light on what was really happening.
- [18:19]
Ted Cruz
What we now know as more and more information has gotten public is that the Obama Biden administration politicized the FBI, politicized the Department of Justice, politicized the intelligence community and targeted them at the Trump campaign, targeted them at Donald Trump directly. They targeted them with wiretaps directed at Carter Page, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign. They targeted it with spies they sent in wearing wires, confidential informants to the Trump campaign, their opposing campaign. And they went after in particular General Michael Flynn, a three star general who'd spent his entire life fighting for this country. And they directly targeted. We now know that the decision to target them went all the way to the top. On January 5, 2017, there's a meeting in the White House, in the Oval Office. Barack Obama was there. Joe Biden was there. James Comey was there, the head of the FBI. And he reported to the president and to the Vice President about their targeting of Michael Flynn, the incoming National Security adviser. Sally Yates, who was the acting Attorney General, said she didn't know anything about it. So she learned that the FBI was targeting the incoming National Security Advisor from Barack Obama because the FBI was briefing the President directly. That is such an abuse of power.
- [19:43]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [19:43]
Ted Cruz
And if you look at everything that has come out, the inspector general report at the Department of Justice showed that the FBI was totally politicized. It showed 17 material misstatements that were made to the FISA court. It also showed that a senior FBI lawyer fraudulently altered evidence. And here's what he Did. Because it's worth remembering. I mean, it really is. It's like out of a bad spy movie. So they're trying to get a warrant to wiretap Carter Page, and they're trying to renew the warrant. And Carter Page is talking to a bunch of Russians. And so, look, if you're talking to a bunch of Russians, that's ordinarily kind of suspicious. Why are you talking to a bunch of Russians? Now, he is a Russia expert, but even so, there's a little bit of suspicion there. So the FBI sent an email to the CIA, said, hey, is this guy working for you? Because if you're working for the CIA on going after the Russians, then you probably ought to be talking to the Russians if you're working for the CIA. CIA sends an email back, yep, he's working for us. So CIA says in writing, carter Page is working for the United States government when he's talking to the Russians. The FBI lawyer takes that email and alters it and literally changes it 180 degrees the opposite. Instead of, yes, he's working for us. He alters it and creates a fraudulent document. No, he's not working for us. And that gets submitted to the court. If you or I did that in any court, in a traffic ticket.
- [21:16]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [21:16]
Ted Cruz
If you created a fraudulent document and submitted it, you would go to jail. I would go to jail.
- [21:22]
Michael Knowles
Wow.
- [21:23]
Ted Cruz
And so Rod Rosenstein was testifying. And by the way, Rosenstein signed one of those applications. And I laid out that history that I just walked through. And I said, listen, you were coming into a deeply politicized, corrupted law enforcement environment. There are two and only two possibilities. One, you were complicit in the weaponization of law enforcement against one political party against. Or you were grossly negligent. Those are the only two choices. And what we walked through, I said, look, did you know about the Steele dossier that was the basis of this whole application? The principal witness behind it said, oh, it's not reliable. It was all just a bunch of guys talking at a bar. It's not reliable. Did you know that? No. Did you know that there was a bunch of exculpatory information? No. Did you know that this lawyer had fraudulently created this document? No. Did you know that the guy was working for the CIA at the time? Did you know that the dnc, the Democratic National Committee, had paid for this oppo research pile of lies? No. And Rosenstein just didn't ask any of it. He was just a rubber stamp. He just said, well, the FBI told me that So I just listened to them and what it raised. Now, it's interesting. Rosenstein testified. He said if he knew what he knew now, he never would have signed it. He would not have approved the wiretap. That now means the next step is to go ask people like James Comey, go ask people like Andrew McCabe, the deputy at the FBI, because there were people lying and complicit. And the responsibility, I believe, goes all the way to the top. And I gotta say, in this hearing, one of the most interesting things, Michael, Senate Democrats so desperately wanted to change the topic.
- [23:21]
Michael Knowles
I bet they did.
- [23:22]
Ted Cruz
I mean, you could see the panic. No, no, no, no. Don't ask. And they just didn't care about law enforcement being abused. And look, I understand why Joe Biden is their nominee. They don't want anything that touches Joe Biden. They want zero fault. And they've elevated Obama to sainthood. So in their narrative, Obama could never do anything wrong and Biden is their only hope. But I gotta say, so I asked this week, yesterday actually, at a Senate hearing, I said, look, what would you guys think if Donald Trump did exactly what Obama and Biden did? What would you think if Donald Trump today sent the FBI to wiretap the Joe Biden presidential campaign? Right. What would you think today if Donald Trump sent in FBI spies wearing wires to the Joe Biden presidential campaign? What would you think today if Donald Trump directed the FBI to submit fraudulent evidence to a federal court to target the Biden campaign? And by the way, we also know that General Michael Flynn, that his identity was unmasked, was revealed by Joe Biden himself, personally and directly. Joe Biden did that. That's stunning. And I gotta say, also. So one of the things that became public in recent weeks, there's an email from Susan rice. It's dated January 20, 2017. Now, Michael, you and I both know what that date is. That is the date Donald Trump was being sworn in. So Susan Rice is the National Security Advisor. She's on her way out now. Think about it. Usually your last day in the office, what are you doing? You're packing up your desk to take the photos down, Picking up the plants. Take the photos down. She sends an email to herself. Just pause to think for a second. Your last day in the office, what do you want to do? You send an email to yourself. It's one of the funniest CYA emails you've ever read. She says three times that President Obama has directed this investigation into Flynn. And she says three times. It's by the Book. Buy the book. Buy the book, Buy the book. The only reason you send that is, is you're sitting there going, oh, crap, the new guys are going to come in and they're going to find out about all this. Let me write an email to say we're doing everything by the book. It the only reason you write that email is indicative of a deeply guilty conscience. I think we need to know who abused the political process. There needs to be accountability and those who broke the law need to be prosecuted.
- [26:07]
Michael Knowles
That's right. It's evidence of a guilty conscience. And the cleverness to realize this isn't going to be looking very good when the new guys get into power. Before we go, I've just got to get to a few mailbag questions here. First one from Margo. Why are you two still socially distancing? Go get a cigar together. Senator, your thoughts?
- [26:26]
Ted Cruz
Damn straight. Come to D.C. next week. We'll film that.
- [26:29]
Michael Knowles
Works for me. All right, John asks, what are the effects this will have on the 2020 election? Do you think this hurts Trump more or Biden?
- [26:40]
Ted Cruz
I don't know. I think 2020 is incredibly volatile.
- [26:45]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [26:46]
Ted Cruz
I think it depends, number one, on what happens with coronavirus. If the numbers suddenly start skyrocketing, that is really bad for America, but that's also probably bad for Trump as well. Number two, what happens with the economy. If we see massive job losses between now and election days, that's really bad for Trump. If we see, with the sort of thing we just saw in these job numbers, the economy coming back, that's really good. And this racial divisioning and division and rioting. Look, rioting I think scares people. I think it also shows just radical, how radical and extreme the Democrats are. It's really unmask them. That I don't think has helped Joe Biden. If a Democratic presidency means the radicals who want to burn our cities to the ground are put in charge, that ain't good. So how all of this plays out, I look at this election and I think there's a huge delta. What I hope we will see is I hope we will see the economy coming back, optimism coming back, hope and the promise of America. And if that's the case, we could see a really good election. We could see the president reelected by a big margin. We could see the Republican majority in the Senate grow, and we could see Republicans taking the House. That's what I hope will happen, that people will look at this craziness of Nancy Pelosi and the extreme radicalized left and say we don't want any of that. But this is uncharted territory, and so if things go really badly, we could end up with a terrible election.
- [28:37]
Michael Knowles
Right. Unchartered territory in many ways. Darryl asks, what's your take on the use of military personnel to help quell the riots? I know your Senate colleague Tom Cotton got the New York Times in a lot of trouble because he weighed in on this, and some of the younger Times staffers were very upset by it.
- [28:54]
Ted Cruz
Well, okay, so let me take two different issues there, because they're both worth addressing. The New York Times, you literally can't write satire about them anymore. They're so ridiculous and extreme. So Tom Cotton wrote an op ed in the Times that said, send the troops in, advocated for sending in the military to bring peace to the cities. And the New York Times began to have an epileptic fit. Like, their reporters began trembling. And one after the other, they were triggered, and they were mad. How dare you publish this view? This view is violence to me. And you've got reporters. You remember the old archetype of the tough, grizzled reporter, chain smoking. Was gonna speak truth to power, was gonna uncover whatever's going on. You've now got these pansies who are reporters that are just like, mommy. Scary words. Scary words. Hide me from the scary words. Like, okay, if you disagree with Tom Cotton. All right, buckaroo, here's a crazy idea. Man up and argue why you think he's wrong. That's okay.
- [30:06]
Michael Knowles
Write your own up, Ed.
- [30:07]
Ted Cruz
That's called free speech. And by the way, listen, I actually think. Tom. I don't agree with everything Tom said. You actually look at the substance of it. How do you keep cities safe in terms of how it operates under the law? The first line of defense are our police officers. It's why I'm so vigorous in saying, don't undermine our cops. Let law enforcement do its job. We've seen a lot of Democratic politicians basically tying police officers, hands behind their back, preventing them from keeping cities safe. And so the first line of defense are the police. The second line of defense is the National Guard. And so if the police are overwhelmed, you can call up the National Guard. That provides an additional wave of strength, and the military is available. Look, there is a long tradition of the military in a case of violent insurrection, in a case of rioting coming in. But the military is the third and final step. And so I think there's some Republican politicians that are showing how tough they are by saying, send in the Marines on day one. Well, look, if we need to. Yes, we need to do whatever is needed to keep people safe. But let's start with not handcuffing the police officers and let them actually protect our communities. And the military should only be a last resort, I believe.
- [31:26]
Michael Knowles
Right. Fair point. Much more. We'll have to leave it there. We'll have to wait until the next episode. But Senator, if that stogie invitation is real, I will call the airline right now, I will book a ticket and.
- [31:36]
Ted Cruz
I will see you in D.C. together. You and I are going to light some fires.
- [31:41]
Michael Knowles
That works for me. See you on the East Coast, Senator. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [31:54]
Unknown
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 don to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican party across the nation.