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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
Bernie Sanders budget bill is threatening to bankrupt the nation. As it so happens, our intrepid co host has just returned from Las Vegas where he was pursuing what I consider to be a much more sober financial strategy. And that is gambling. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdicts with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowles. Senator, I know you've just come in from Vegas. You were just there in recent days and usually people would say, you know, you've gotta be careful with your money. This is not a good. But I think compared to what they're doing in Washington, you were positively responsible.
- [00:41]
Ted Cruz
Well, that's right. And you know, Reagan used to joke about that Congress spends like drunken sailors. And the thing he would say is actually they're worse than the sailors because at least the sailors are spending their own money. So in Vegas, what I was doing was actually was filming Poker After Dark. So it's a TV show that's on NBC Sports where you play poker. And it was a charity game. So I was playing. It actually was not personally impacting my bank account, but was playing for charity. But it was very cool because I was playing with a number of poker pros. I was playing with Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth. So Doyle, Texas Dolly is 88 years old. He's a two time winner of the main event in the World Series of Poker. Legendary poker player Phil Hellmuth also won the main event. Phil has 15 bracelets altogether. He's won 15 times. Actually, Doyle's won 10. So between the two of them, they have 25 bracelets. And I got a. I played poker my whole life. And so I gotta say, it was a real bucket list event to sit down and play with those guys. I'm not allowed to say what the outcomes were because the show will air probably in a couple of months. But it was a lot of fun. And interestingly, Michael, someone else who played was Clay Travis played, but also Mr. Beast played. Now, you may not know who Mr. Beast is, or maybe you do. Mr. Beast is a YouTuber who gives away money. And he's young, he's in his mid-20s, he's got something like 65 million followers on YouTube. And the interesting thing, Michael, so when Mr. Beast was coming, our girls, Caroline and Catherine, they didn't care at all about the poker players. They certainly didn't care that dad was playing. That was totally boring. But Mr. Beast, oh my goodness, they lost their minds. What do you mean you're gonna play with Mr. Beast? So Caroline and Catherine flew to Vegas with me. Because they wanted to meet Mr. Beast and they got to meet him. And he was nice, he was gracious. He actually filmed a little video with them. And I gotta say, you're a new dad. You will understand in a few years how ridiculously difficult it is to do anything that a 13 year old or a 10 year old thinks is cool. And so the fact that they got to meet Mr. Beast and I got to play with Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth was ridiculously crazy fun.
- [03:26]
Michael Knowles
Now, Mr. Beast seems like a pretty cool guy if he's giving out money willy nilly. I'm curious about how that kind of activity would relate to misunderstanding Mr. Bernie, who also seems ready to be doling out a lot of money. Unfortunately, he's doling out my money and your money and everybody else's money. But something tells me that no matter how wealthy Mr. Beast is, 65 million subscribers is a lot. Washington is about to give away more.
- [03:54]
Ted Cruz
Now, look, this is an orgy of spending the likes of which our country's never seen before. And as a Yalie, I know that I piqued your interest when I said orgy, but it's a different kind. And I got you on. You actually spit up on yourself, Michael, that was impressive. Look, the Bernie budget. Think about it. Last year, Joe Biden campaigned across the country as a moderate, reasonable centrist. You know, his basic message was he was competent. No more mean tweets, nothing scary. Just back to the norm. Yes. Return to normal, calm, quiet yesteryear. And there were some Americans who pulled the lever that was attractive to some people, and they voted for it. Well, fast forward to today, and Biden and Harris have given the party over to the radicals. So much so that that it is literally Bernie Sanders who is writing the budget. Bernie is the chairman of the Budget Committee in the Senate. He has written it. It is three and a half trillion dollars. It's already been bumped up to 4.2 trillion. So 700 billion, just as the first plus up, it may well get bigger. It is massive in spending. 4.2 trillion, by the way, to put it in context, is right about what the United States spent to win World War II. That's what Bernie's trying to spend in the next couple of months in his budget.
- [05:32]
Michael Knowles
On one bill.
- [05:33]
Ted Cruz
On one bill doesn't count the billions they've already spent. This is another 4.2 billion. It is funded by trillions in new taxes. They're raising taxes on everything. Families, individuals, small businesses, big businesses, capital gains, the death tax, all of Them going up by trillions. And this bill, Bernie himself has said this is the most far reaching, transformational bill considered by the Senate in a generation. Look, when a wild eyed, crazy socialist tells you, holy cow, this is big, that ought to scare you. And we're in September. Congress is going to try to ram it through. And it's my hope is we can stop it. I am leading the fight to stop it. There are two ways we can stop it. Number one, in the Senate, we got to get one Democrat to break from the herd. And the two most likely are Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. We're going to try real hard to get them to say, hold on a second, let's not do this. I hope that happens. I'll confess I'm not all that optimistic, but I hope it happens in the Senate. I'm very concerned that Joe and Kirsten are just going to give Schumer what he wants, that they're going to negotiate some piddling concession. So, all right, we'll jack up the corporate tax rate a percentage point lower than you were going to. Yay, look at the victory we've gone. And then they'll go along. I think the better prospect for defeating this is in the House. The House, there are, I think, 13 House Democrats who were elected in districts that Donald Trump won. And I think it is incredibly important in the next 30 days, in the next 60 days, that those House Democrats hear from their constituents, that they get phone calls, that they get lit up in the mail on the phone with their constituents saying very simply, do not vote for Bernie's budget. Don't bankrupt the country. And so I'm gonna be leading the fight to make that happen.
- [07:42]
Michael Knowles
So you're saying the political battle here is it's not exactly gonna be Republicans versus Democrats. It's not even gonna be over the much coveted Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema vote. But it's gonna be Democrats versus Democrats in the House. The radicals, or even the kind of, I guess the leftist mainstream now versus the sort of quasi moderates.
- [08:04]
Ted Cruz
So I hope so. On the pessimistic side, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have demonstrated a remarkable ability to crack the whip and force their members to just salute and like lemmings, jump off the cliff. And so maybe they'll do it again here. Maybe they'll get the Democrats to all obey. That being said, the best situation to get someone to defy their leadership is when their political life or death hangs in the balance. And for these Democrats in purple or Red districts. I think voting for Bernie's budget ought to be completely disqualifying and so putting the heat on them that you're gonna be out of a job, you're gonna be out of Congress, you're voted out of office if you do this. What we need to do is foment revolt within the Democrats. And sadly, as you said, it's not gonna be very really a Democrat Republican fight because all the Republicans are gonna vote no on this. In the Senate, all 50 Rs are a no. Even the wobbliest Republicans are gonna be no on this. In the House, it's probably the case that all the Republicans are a no as well. I think this will be a shirts and skins exercise. But if we are going to have a prayer at beating this, it's going to be causing a half dozen House Democrats to say, I'm not willing to fall on my sword to pass Bernie Sanders budget. That's not what my constituents sent me to do. That will take courage. And betting on Democrats to have courage is usually a bad bet, but it's the only path we have now in.
- [09:50]
Michael Knowles
Terms of the politics of this. The hope, of course, is that you just terrify these Democrats into thinking that they're gonna get thrown out of office if they spend. But I just wonder, are we sort of past that? I mean, at this point, are we hemorrhaging so much money and printing so much money and keeping interest rates so low that. Does big spending really motivate people to the polls in the way that it once did? Or are we just sort of in for a penny, in for a pound at this point in terms of the actual political ramifications?
- [10:25]
Ted Cruz
So I don't know that big spending has the same force that it did. I'm very concerned about it. I assume you're concerned about it, but I don't know that spending alone has the force. I do think trillions in new taxes has force. I also think inflation has force. And so where I think spending has a bite right now is people across this country are seeing gas prices go up dramatically. They're seeing food prices go up dramatically. They're seeing lumber prices go up dramatically. So they're seeing the price of homes go up dramatically. And I think people connect this crazy spending binge in Washington with the inflation, that when you spend trillions and print trillions of dollars of new money and you borrow trillions of dollars, that it causes inflation. And so I think both of those, the trillions in taxes and the inflation have real bite. I also think socialism has bites, that there's still, I believe, a large majority of Americans that want us to be a free enterprise economy and not a socialist economy. And the fact that this is Bernie Sanders socialist budget, I think is a bridge too far for a lot of voters. Now, whether the Democrats who are representing some of those voters in districts that Donald Trump carried, whether those Democrats are more scared of Nancy Pelosi than they are of their constituents, we'll find that out.
- [11:54]
Michael Knowles
I certainly hope so as well. That actually ties in with a mailbag question we got. I wanted to go a little heavy on the mailbags. I feel like we have not been doing enough mailbag and, and I get these great questions, so.
- [12:06]
Ted Cruz
And actually, for the record, I always wanna do mailbag and Michael always says, no, we shouldn't do mailbag.
- [12:12]
Michael Knowles
Who cares? I don't care at all what they say. Frankie F writes in. He says, with Tesla announcing that they are set to put out a prototype of a humanoid robot to perform repetitive and dangerous jobs that people ordinarily don't want to do. Is this the end of the world? No, he didn't say that. He asked, do you think there are any merits to UBI universal basic income or what will the labor force be like in the future? So if you're going to train all these little Terminator bots to do all of our jobs and take over the world, do we need to pay the people from the government like Andrew Yang proposed, Like other people have proposed in recent years to sit at home and not work?
- [12:53]
Ted Cruz
So let me take each piece of that question because they're, they're somewhat disparate. Look, the march of technology is frightening and disconcerting. And it's frightening and disconcerting because it displaces a lot of workers. And that's been true. From the locomotive engine to the horse and buggy to the automobile. We've seen massive dislocations. And those dislocations cause real pain. Progress is often difficult to go through. So when it comes to automation, the fear that robots are going to take all our jobs isn't new. I mean, I remember back in the 70s and 80s that we were worried that robots were going to take Japanese robots, were the Japanese car industry was going to defeat American cars. Robots were going to unemploy everyone. We've been hearing that for a long time. You know, it's interesting. This past week I went and toured a General Motors factory plant in Texas in Arlington. And it's a massive factory plant where they produce all of their big SUVs. So they produce the Suburban and they produce the Yukon and the Tahoe and they produce the Cadillac Escalade. And so I saw the assembly lines where all these are put together, which by the way is so totally cool, like being on an assembly line. And the mechanics of they're producing one truck a minute. So it's so cool to see them just rolling off. It takes about 23 hours to build a truck, but they're rolling off the line at about one a minute. And all of that's in Texas. Now there are a crap ton of robots on that factory floor that are doing jobs that used to be done by people. So you have robots, massive robots that are moving things, that are turning the chassis over and back, that are rotating, that are welding. But there are still thousands of jobs that are essentially directing the robots. And it's a different sort of job. It's not. There are fewer of the kind of hard lifting jobs that used to be on an automobile assembly plant or a truck assembly plant than they are that many of the things that require brute force now are automated, but other steps, either directing the automation or engage in kind of small, more meticulous things. You have men and women on the line that are working. I think the same is true. So for example, on robots, we're going to move in the next five, 10, 20 years, we're going to move to self driving cars. The exact timing of that is not clear, but when it happens, it's going to displace millions of workers, whether they are taxicab drivers, whether they're truck drivers. There are a lot of people who make a living right now, Uber drivers, who, when you have self driving cars, that job, at some point our grandkids are not gonna know what the job of being a driver is. That is disconcerting. I don't think the answer though is ubi. I don't think the answer is the government just sending everyone a check. I think the answer is a workforce developing skills that are needed going forward. That doesn't mean, as John Kerry dismissively says, learn to code. But it does mean that the needs of the economy differ and you develop different skills in response to that. And look, I will say ubi, the idea of paying everyone just a check every month, if it were combined with eliminating the welfare state, with eliminating all of the other expenditures, I can actually envision a world in which UBI made sense. It's not all that different from an idea that Milton Friedman proposed a long time ago, that the problem is any Proposal for new spending in our government is always additive. It's never replacing, it's never getting rid of all the other stuff even. It's just one more payment that is redistributing from people who are working and productive in society to people who are not. And so in anything resembling the practical political context in which something could be adopted, it would be a bad idea. And so I'd much rather deal with automation and robots by school choice and education and workforce development and training and helping people get jobs that are needed. And as I said, I just saw in the GM plant there are a crap ton of people that are needed to run the robots. And that need is not going away anytime soon.
- [18:10]
Michael Knowles
That's true. And we could be spending our time working on our firearm skills for when the robot Armageddon war happens. So I think that would be a good use of time. There is something also just inhuman about paying people to go away. You know, I mean, I guess the premise of a lot of social safety net programs is that you're giving people a leg up, you're helping them improve themselves. But if UBI just means paying people not to complain, well, while the robots do all of our work, I agree it's not gonna have a great effect on society. Now, speaking of putting people out of work, we have a question from Nick who says, senator, are Republicans considering invoking the 25th Amendment on President Biden?
- [18:52]
Ted Cruz
So Rick Scott, Republican from Florida, suggested that on TV about a week ago. To be honest, I think the real answer is no. I think it's being suggested. It actually wouldn't be Republicans who invoke it. It's the President's Cabinet who invokes it. So Republicans can't invoke it. And my take, I think that is exceedingly unlikely. There was a lot of talk about the 25th Amendment being invoked by Donald Trump, and it's a little on Donald Trump. Democrats pushed that and the media pushed that. And I think it is a species of the weaponization of our constitutional structures. Listen, the 25th Amendment is designed. If the President has a stroke and is completely incapacitated, that then you do have the capacity to make sure you have a president able to function. Biden has lost a step, to be clear. But the Republicans who are talking about using the 25th Amendment, they don't like the policy steps he's implementing. I don't like the policy steps he's implementing. I think they're terrible for the country. But. But I don't think the 25th Amendment is the mechanism to deal with that. The real mechanism to deal with that is, number one, fighting through the political process, but number two, winning elections.
- [20:12]
Michael Knowles
Right. And there's also the practical question of if, if the 25th Amendment were invoked by the Cabinet, then you'd have President Harris. I'm not exactly clamoring for that, and I don't see anyone else doing so either.
- [20:25]
Ted Cruz
Now, look, I think that's right. And you heard Rick Scott a week ago called for the 25th Amendment. Lindsey Graham has been calling for impeachment over Afghanistan. Listen, we just came through four years of the Democrats abusing the Constitution. And, and I don't think Republicans should behave likewise. I think we should beat them in elections, not abuse the constitutional structures. And, you know, when verdict launched in the midst of an impeachment, you and I talked about, then, the Democrats are ensuring that the next Democratic president, Republicans will want to impeach. Well, we're already seeing that happen. And I think, by the way, those drumbeats will grow. My prediction is in the next six months or year, you're going to see a lot more Republicans call for impeachment. You're going to see a lot more Republicans call for the 25th Amendment. Because there's a gravitational pull when one side weaponizes the constitutional structure. It becomes very difficult for the other side to resist that temptation.
- [21:35]
Michael Knowles
Well, speaking of weaponizing our constitutional structure, I don't know if you saw, there was just recently a tweet from Michael Hayden. This is the former director of the CIA, former director of the nsa. And someone had tweeted at him and said, hey, how about we send all of these MAGA unvaxed people, just send them all to Afghanistan. So we'll get an airplane of refugees from Afghanistan to America and we'll load it up with all those terrible conservatives and send it back to Afghanistan. And Michael Hayden, who was in very serious positions of power, specifically with regard to surveillance, said, that's a good idea. And the question we got from Kyle Hunter is, how dangerous is it to democracy when the top persons in intelligence and in the military are openly political? Is Congress ever going to engage in any real oversight of these people?
- [22:28]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, I think it's incredibly dangerous. It is indicative of the deep state. The Washington elites despise many of the American people. They look down on many of the American people as the unwashed masses. They despise Donald Trump. It's why the deep state was at war with the Trump presidency. Every single day of the Trump presidency. You know, it's interesting, just this weekend I was on the phone with a New York Times reporter who was writing a story on Covid, and his thesis was, you know, what is it among Republican primary voters that leads them to oppose vaccinations? And I was articulating all of the abuses of power we've seen from Democrats, whether Andrew Cuomo, whether Gavin Newsom, whether it is Joe Biden mandating that every soldier, sailor, airman and marine must be vaccinated, whether it is de Blasio mandating to go to a restaurant, you got to have a vaccine. And it was funny. The New York Times reporter said, look, look, look, I don't wanna talk about what the Democrats are doing. I wanna focus on the Republicans. I'm like, oh, really? That's a surprise. And he's like, well, what is it? And I said, look, I get that you wanna tell the story. You wanna paint us all as these Alabama yokels in overalls with hay sticking out of our teeth that say we don't believe in the sciencey thing. And I get for the New York Times, that's a very attractive narrative for your readers sitting on the Upper east side to smile and think condescendingly about the people to whom they are intellectual and moral betters. But it is a lie. It is a fundamental lie. And listen, I think among most Republicans, my view on vaccines, we've talked about it before. I believe in vaccines. I've been vaccinated. My family's been vaccinated. But I also believe in individual freedom and choice. You ought to have the right to make your own healthcare decisions, and the government shouldn't force you to make those decisions. Your employer shouldn't force you to make those decisions. And that used to be a mainstream view. And what I was telling the New York Times reporter, which he didn't really believe, is I said, look, you gotta understand, it's not just crazy right wingers who believe this. It's a whole lot of people that are like, why are you. There's a reason why vaccine mandates 70, 80% of the American people oppose them. And yet the I95 corridor of the smarty pants deep state elite thinks we're all idiots for disagreeing with Hayden's tweet. Sounds like something Dr. Fauci would say. And it's the same disease, which is terminal condescension, ignorance and contempt directed at the American people. And I think it's really, really dangerous when you combine that with power.
- [25:39]
Michael Knowles
You mentioned Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo. And I have a question from John, which is Andrew Cuomo is out. Gavin Newsom may soon be out. The media are turning on Joe Biden. Does this mean we're going to do well in 2022?
- [25:59]
Ted Cruz
Well, I will say at the outset that schadenfreude is not a pretty sentiment, but at times it is unavoidable. And schadenfreude. All right, let me turn to the linguist. What does schadenfreude mean, Michael?
- [26:14]
Michael Knowles
Schadenfreude is what we are engaging in right now and probably will be for the next few moments. It is the supreme delight at the pain specifically of Gavin Newsom and Andrew Cuomo.
- [26:25]
Ted Cruz
It is indeed. And I will say it's good to have confidence in your co host because we didn't pre plan that. So it really would have made me wonder about the quality of a Yale education if you said, I don't know. Damned if I know, some big German word. So look, it is delicious. A year ago, the media was lionizing St. Cuomo and St. Newsom. I mean, they were, look, they paid Andrew Cuomo five and a half million dollars for his books that nobody read because gave him an Emmy. And now to have Cuomo gone and a real chance that Newsom is gone, yes, that, that ought to be very encouraging for 2022. That despite the, the propaganda from the media, the American people are saying, hey, this stuff is crazy. And I think both of them, I think Cuomo, look, Newsom may or may not go. I probably handicap the odds of his being recalled at 40, 60. I think it's more likely that he's not. But 40 is real. And actually, let me ask you, as a California resident, you know California politics better than I do. What do you think happens to Newsom?
- [27:43]
Michael Knowles
So I think that they're gonna pull every trick in the book. There was actually one woman who received her ballot and it seemed that from the envelope there was a little hole cut out, two little holes cut out. And you could see just the placement of the question. Will you vote to recall yes or no? If you filled in the yes bubble, it was visible within that hole. Now, is this affecting every ballot? I don't know. I mean, this is just one woman posting her own ballot, but having experienced lots of shenanigans by the Democrats in California, wouldn't put it past them at all. Right now, the top choice to replace him is Larry Elder. Larry Elder is a great, more libertarian, but sort of libertarian conservative radio host. He's got a lot of name recognition. He, he is raising a good amount of money. They can't call him a white supremacist. Actually, they can. Larry Elder is very much a black guy, but the LA Times just called him a white supremacist. So never underestimate the depths to which they will sink. But he's really offering a plausible alternative to Gavin Newsom. The Jenner candidacy was not really going anywhere. There were a few other Republicans who were just not. They didn't have the name recognition, they didn't have the support. Larry Elder really does. Now. California is actually trying to go after him and say he didn't file his financial disclosures the right way. I mean, they're really pulling at every stop, which makes me think the odds are not great. But the fact that you can have a state where the Democrats registered Democrats outnumber the Republicans in such a serious way, and yet the Recall polling is 48, 52. I mean, within the margin of error. That's astounding.
- [29:24]
Ted Cruz
Well, you look at the policies that have been implemented by these blue state politicians. Shutting down millions of small businesses, destroying restaurants, destroying bars, destroying stores, destroying jobs, and by the way, maintaining a blatant double standard, allowing the giant corporations to stay open while destroying the small businesses. That double standard has been massive. Shutting down schools, tens of millions of kids, many of whom have fallen way, way behind in reading and writing and arithmetic and science and art and history. And all of this is being done by people who are demonstrably hypocritical about it. We just saw images of Nancy Pelosi at this shishi fundraiser with all these rich California liberals, none of them wearing masks. Obama just had his birthday party with all these rich Hollywood liberals, none of them wearing masks. And of course, the exception.
- [30:31]
Michael Knowles
Senator, I was gonna correct you, but yes, there was one exception, right?
- [30:37]
Ted Cruz
The waiters and waitresses, the people clearing the tables. And you know, it. Just like Nero and Caligula. There is one rule for the rulers and another rule for the subjects. And it is obvious the people implementing these policies understand they're a crock. I can tell you in the Senate on things like the mask mandate, when Democratic senators are talking in the hallway just to themselves, they take their masks off. And then suddenly when there's a camera around, they put their mask on. Because, you know, the virus is only contagious when you have a mask. When there's a TV camera there, if there's no TV camera, virus is not contagious. I mean, it's just. It's obvious crap. And it's performance theater. The same Nancy Pelosi who is Wining and dining rich liberals without masks is actively fining members of the House of Representatives $500 if they don't wear a mask, even if they've been vaccinated. And I think that double standard, it's not just Republicans who are pissed. I think there are a lot of independents pissed. And I think there are Democrats who are like, these guys are petty tyrants and enough is enough. And that is very encouraging for 22 and it's very encouraging for 24.
- [32:01]
Michael Knowles
There is no question that the Democrats who are most vocal about fear mongering on Covid and pushing the mask mandates and pushing the vax mandates, there is no question. And pushing the mask mandates, even with the vax mandates, there is no question that they do not believe what they are saying. They simply are not taking coronavirus as seriously as they want you to. If they were, then Gavin Newsom wouldn't show up to the French Laundry when he locked down the restaurants and sit shoulder to shoulder maskless. Nancy Pelosi wouldn't show up to her event. Obama wouldn't have his birthday party. I think the people know that. So if they do get booted out of office, and one can hope that that happens, there's one final question that we've just got a minute for, a very important question from the Twitter user. Neverwritten word. Senator, what's Your favorite drink?
- [32:48]
Ted Cruz
Macallan 18 neat.
- [32:50]
Michael Knowles
Macallan 18, a very fine choice. You know, once inflation jacks up the price of everything, we might have to downgrade to the 12. We might need to downgrade to sort of whatever.
- [33:01]
Ted Cruz
Well, you said favorite. You didn't say if I could afford it. You just said favorite, you know, preferably with a good cigar. And I will confess, I have enjoyed a Macallan 18 neat and a good cigar with our co host. And a final question. So as a former California voter, do you know if anyone in the recall, you know, with Larry Elder doing pretty well, have they started to use the phrase respect your elders?
- [33:29]
Michael Knowles
Oh, man. Senator, when we get off this call today, I think I have to call Larry. This is really good stuff. That slogan might put him over the edge. And then I hope that we can pop open a bottle of McAllen 18. Ideally, if someone else is buying, we can light a cigar to toast to that schadenfreude if the people really have woken up and start booting some of these petty tyrants out of office. But we'll just have to hold that for another time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz this.
- [34:07]
Ted Cruz
Episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In 2022, jobs, freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for con and help the Republican Party across the nation.