← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Bernie & Ted Fist Bump Keeps The Rails Moving And Dems Try To Silence Truth On Biden/Ukraine Corruption
00:36:30
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- [00:00]
Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And we've got a lot to talk about in the show today, including some breaking news on Hunter Biden, also this big rail vote. But even more shocking than that is the fact that Senator Cruz apparently, and we're going to confirm this, fist bumped with Bernie Sanders. Now, before I deal with Hunter Biden, Senator, I just need to know this really happened. This wasn't fake news on the Internet.
- [00:26]
Ben Ferguson
It is true and accurate. Bernie and I fist bumped on the floor of the Senate today.
- [00:31]
Ted Cruz
And if rapture alert. If you're not right with the Lord, get right with the Lord. Because when things like this happen, you never know what could happen next. We're going to deal with that vote in a moment. But Senator, there's some fireworks that happened this week and it has been spreading and that is you asking questions, some pretty tough questions in a Senate confirmation hearing that dealt with the issue of Hunter Biden. Now, before I play this clip of this question, set the stage for everybody so they understand what this was about and this confirmation and why it mattered and was relevant to bring up Hunter Biden.
- [01:11]
Ben Ferguson
Well, this was in a hearing for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee this week. And in particular I was questioning an individual named George Kent, who is a State Department employee and he was a senior State Department official that handled things concerning Ukraine. He's been now nominated by Joe Biden to be the ambassador to Estonia. So he was having his confirmation hearing. And you may remember George Kent, he wears a bow tie and he was one of the Democrats star witnesses in the impeachment of Donald Trump. And he had all sorts of bad things to say about Trump. But he also said in front of the House in sworn testimony that he had raised with the Biden and the Obama White House concerns about Hunter Biden's being on the board of Burisma and that the office of the vice president had blown him off and said we don't have time to deal with this. And so I questioned him. I had a poster board behind me with a picture of his sworn testimony saying that he had told the White House that it raised the appearance of conflict of interest. And so I questioned him again under oath on that. And one of the things he was saying was, well, Biden didn't do anything to benefit the corrupt oligarch who was paying Hunter Biden a million bucks a year. And that's just not true. And so I question about that.
- [02:36]
Ted Cruz
I want to play this. And one of the things that you're going to play is one of my favorite pieces of audio that just shows not just the corruption of the Biden crime family, but the arrogance of the vice president at the time where he was basically saying to the Ukraine, unless you get rid of the prosecutor that's investigating the company that my son's on, you're not getting any money from the United States of America. You read that quote when Biden had left the vice presidency and was literally bragging about how much power he had to get this done. Here is that back and forth and then the Democrats shutting you down.
- [03:13]
Ben Ferguson
It's interesting someone who disagrees with you, Mr. Kent, is Joe Biden. And I want to read from what he said on January 23, 2018 at the council of Foreign Relations. Quote, this is Joe Biden speaking. And I went over, I guess the 12th, 13th time to Kiev and I was supposed to announce that there was another billion dollar loan guarantee and I'd gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and yet Yatsenyak, that they would take action against the state prosecutor, the prosecutor that was investigating Burisma. And they didn't. So Biden continues. I said, no, I'm not going to. We're not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You are not the president. The president said, I said, call him. I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars. I said, you're not getting the billion dollars. I'm going to be leaving here. And I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said, I'm leaving here in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. Let me ask you something. Do you think Joe Biden holding $1 billion hostage to force the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor that is investigating the corrupt oligarch who's paying his son a million dollars a year? Did getting that prosecutor fired bad benefit that oligarch?
- [04:30]
Gene Shaheen
Thank you, Senator Cruz.
- [04:32]
Ben Ferguson
Senator Van Are you going to allow him to answer the question? Madam Chairman, I am not going to.
- [04:35]
Gene Shaheen
Allow him to answer the question.
- [04:36]
Ben Ferguson
Why are you covering for the vice president? Do you not want to answer that question? He said that the vice president nothing to benefit.
- [04:43]
Gene Shaheen
I think it's unfortunate for you, Senator Cruz, to put in position that are uncomfortable the nominees to be our ambassador.
- [04:51]
Ben Ferguson
This is because this is sworn testimony. I understand that you want to cover for the vice President that he is.
- [04:58]
Gene Shaheen
Going to raise those concerns anytime.
- [05:00]
Ben Ferguson
Was his testimony true or false? Biden did nothing to benefit the oligarch. I don't let him answer the question. Why are you afraid of him answering the question?
- [05:08]
Gene Shaheen
I'm not. I just want to move on.
- [05:09]
Ben Ferguson
But you won't let him answer. I asked a yes, no question. Will you allow him to answer the yes, no question? Yes.
- [05:15]
Gene Shaheen
You can answer yes or no.
- [05:16]
Ben Ferguson
Thank you. The prosecutor who was fired by the Ukrainian parliament did nothing to investigate Slutchevsky.
- [05:23]
Gene Shaheen
In everything that Vice President Biden, the.
- [05:25]
Ben Ferguson
The State Department and the US Embassy.
- [05:27]
Gene Shaheen
Did, acted in good faith to reduce corruption and help the Ukrainians.
- [05:31]
Ben Ferguson
So firing him did not benefit the.
- [05:33]
Gene Shaheen
Thank you, Senator Cruz. Senator Van Hollen.
- [05:36]
Ted Cruz
I was shocked by how fast they decided to go past you on that one. Has that happened to you very often? I mean, how does these rule work for people that don't understand the rules?
- [05:45]
Ben Ferguson
Okay, so the person chairing the hearing was Gene Shaheen is a Democrat senator from New Hampshire. And she realized that the question I asked was a real problem because it showed real corruption on the part of Joe Biden. So she didn't want him to answer. But this is where the Democrats, frankly, they're just not very good at this. They're not very good at being chairman because they're so obviously scared of it that it is very unusual. It pretty much never happens that if you ask a witness a question, a chairman in the Senate won't let the witness answer, but she didn't want the answer. And I guess she thinks that I'm just going to roll over and meekly go, okay, I don't want an answer to my question. But it's like, no, you are transparently covering up for Joe Biden. And it's obvious to anyone watching. And you know the kind of way she stammers, well, you're making the witness feel uncomfortable. Well, you know what? That's actually what you're supposed to do when you're questioning someone for a confirmation hearing. And when. When she finally gave in and realized how obvious it was that she was trying to cover up for Joe Biden, she said, all right, you can answer. He gives the smarmiest, most dishonest answer. He makes perfectly clear that he is nothing but a partisan hack. When he's like, oh, the prosecutor that was invested in the gating the oligarch wasn't actually investigating the oligarch. That's not true. And Joe Biden only wanted good government. Really? Then why did his son get a million bucks a year when he didn't know a damn thing about oil and gas and he couldn't Speak Ukrainian. He was there for one reason, which was to get Joe Biden to get the prosecutor fired. And it was a good investment. That oligarch is glad he paid Hunter Biden that money. And Gene Shaheen. They don't want the American people to know about it.
- [07:28]
Ted Cruz
I also think it's important that people understand this ambassadorship right now is probably more important than it's been in a long time because it's right there in Estonia, dealing with what's going on in Ukraine, dealing with what's happened in Russia. This matters right now. That's one of the other reasons why this question you asked was so important.
- [07:46]
Ben Ferguson
Well, and I will say his answer, look, Kent, is someone who there are a whole bunch of State Department bureaucrats who like to hold themselves out as nonpartisan and just principled public servants. Well, his answer, and by the way, he did actually demonstrate some courage when Obama was president and that he raised the issue with the White House and said, hey, I'm worried about this. But now he's decided he hates Donald Trump. And so everything Joe Biden did was honorable. Never mind what he said in sworn testimony before the House of Representatives. Now he just speaks like he's Karine Jean Pierre giving the Democratic talking points. And I think it illustrates that he's a partisan and he's not bothering to hide it anymore.
- [08:29]
Ted Cruz
One of the perks of her doing what she did was now everyone's talking about this story. It's gone viral on social media. It would not have gone viral if there would have just been a normal exchange between you and the nominee. And that may be one of the blessings in disguise here is now people are really focused on this. I want to move to the rail vote. Obviously. We talked about the fist bump with Bernie Sanders. Before I do that, though, I want to remind you guys about our good friends over at Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is the only conservative Christian cell phone company in the US they use the same exact towers that your cell phone you have in your hand is using right now. And switching to them is pretty awesome because not only can they save you money, but when you pay your bill, a portion of your bill every month goes back to support conservative causes and candidates that protect and defend our first and our second Amendment rights, the rights, the unborn, and even help with adoptions. If you've never checked out Patriot Mobile, check them out. Go online to patriotmobile.com verdict. You can call them as well. 972 Patriot use promo code verdict. And you'll save money as well and get free Activation. You can keep your same cell phone and your same cell phone number. Plus, every time you use that phone, you'll actually be standing up for the beliefs that you stand for right now. Patriot mobile.com verdict or call them 972patriot. Make sure use the promo code. Verdict. Senator, you had this vote and we did our last podcast talking about this rail vote, and things changed in this vote. The Senate voted to impose this rail contract. It reject the measures granting workers seven paid sick days, for example. This was a contentious vote that passed this resolution posing a contract on the freight rail workers. This was a big lie from the beginning, from this administration. They said we were never going to get to this point. Everything was figured out before the election. Then after the midterms, they're like, just kidding, we may have a major strike which would be catastrophic to our economy and to shipping and everything else that we deal with on the rail system here. Now, this vote happened. Explain your vote and how it's possible that you and Bernie Sanders were in essence, on the same side of this.
- [10:45]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, so we had today three different votes on the rail issue. And we talked about this in the last podcast. But what happened is the freight rail companies had been in negotiations with their unions for many months and they reached an impasse and it went to a presidential advisory board, which is allowed under statute. And the presidential advisory board made a recommendation and then that recommendation was sent before the unions. And of the 12 different unions, four of them voted it down. But those four actually represent more than half the rail workers in America. So it's, so it's, it's a majority of the rail workers voted no and they didn't want it. And their principal area of disagreement. So the deal had some things they like. So it had a 24% pay increase over five years. Now, I would note that sounds great until you remember that we're having 8% inflation each year under Joe Biden. And that means over five years, compounded, you're looking at about 40 to 50% inflation, a 24% wage increase. That's about half of the inflation under Biden. Doesn't sound nearly that good when you, when you realize what Biden's done to the economy generally. But what the workers in particular were upset about was sick leave, that they did not have any policy in place where they could get sick leave if they got sick. And in particular, if you wanted sick leave, you have to put in several days in advance. And the problem is you often don't know if you're going to be sick several days in advance. You know, it's, it's kind of strange to say, hey, I'm planning on having the flu a week from Wednesday. Like, like that's not, not how people work.
- [12:34]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, that's not how it works. Right.
- [12:36]
Ben Ferguson
So now look, the railroads say, well, we've got to run a railroad. We got to know what's going on. And so it's easier for us logistically if, even if you're sick, you got to come in. And the workers understandably don't like that. So more than half of the workers voted down the deal. What happened? Well, Joe Biden, before the election, and you pointed this out just a second ago, had told the American people, this issue is resolved. Everyone's agreed, we fixed it. We now know that was a lie. What he did was kick it down, down the road a couple of weeks to get it past election day. And then we were headed to, in days, a nationwide rail strike which would have a catastrophic impact on the economy. The cost of the economy is over $2 billion a day from a rail strike. It's actually 2.8 billion, close to 3 billion a day. And so what the Biden White House decided to do was essentially tell the union workers, go pound sand. We don't care that you want this. Biden asked Congress to pass legislation ratifying the tentative agreement that had been put before the workers that the workers had voted down. And the Democrats, because they are more concerned about being partisan than actually about standing up for the workers, decided to support Biden in that, in that effort. Now, we had three votes today on this. The first one was a vote to delay everything for 60 days and to extend what's called the cooling off period for 60 days. And I don't think Congress ought to be deciding this. I think negotiations between labor and management ought to be between labor and management and they should work it out. And if they've reached an impasse, they should go back to the bargaining table and try to work it out. And so I thought a 60 day cooling off period for them to continue to negotiate made an awful lot of sense. Let them figure out the right answer to that. Unfortunately, the White House whipped against it and that failed. So the Senate decided we're not going to have a 60 day cooling off period. We're going to vote right now.
- [14:45]
Ted Cruz
What was the reasoning behind that? The White House, I mean, you would think they would have wanted to make, in theory, union workers happy. That would have made, I would assume, some union workers happy. That 60 day period. What was the reason behind the White House saying now screw the worker on this and we're going to stick with the big guys and the big companies.
- [15:03]
Ben Ferguson
You know, I don't really know. They didn't articulate themselves, they didn't explain themselves. I think it was just a question of power, which is when Democrats address union workers they tend to think almost exclusively in terms of union bosses. And the union bosses are typically hardcore Democrat partisans who are writing all the checks to the Democrats. And so Biden and the White House think, if the union boss is happy, I'm happy. In this instance, what happened, the union bosses had, had negotiated this deal. It was the members who were unhappy. It was the members. When they put the deal before the members, the members voted it down. And remember, today's Democrats routinely put policies in place that hurt union members. When, when Joe Biden the first day in office canceled the Keystone pipeline, he eliminated 11,000 high paying jobs, including 8,000 union jobs with a stroke of a pen. The Democrats don't really give a damn about the union workers as long as the union bosses are on board. I think they believe in just power rather than actually caring about the lives of the workers. Well, what you and I talked about beforehand is I didn't think Congress should be in this business. And actually when we talked about it beforehand you said, well, do you intend to vote for Bernie Sanders had a provision to give the workers seven days sick leave. And last podcast I said no, I wasn't planning to vote for that. And the reason was if you just put that up alone on the floor, I'd vote against it because I don't think Congress ought to be deciding this. I think we ought to have labor and management negotiate it and reach an agreement between the two of them. Well, once the Senate voted down my amendment with Dan Sullivan to delay everything 60 days, it became abundantly clear that the Senate was going to vote for the White House and management deal. They were just going to say to hell with the workers, we're throwing out what the workers want and we're going to force this deal on them. They were just going to screw the union members. Once it was clear we were going to do that, then when we were voting on the sick leave, listen, I think the request to have seven days sick leave over the course of a year is a very reasonable request. I didn't think the unions were being unreasonable. And given a choice between the Senate cramming down a deal that, that that benefited one side or being more fair and reflecting the the union workers reasonable request I voted for the sick leave. That was Bernie Sanders amendment. So I supported Bernie in that. And there were a total of six Republicans who voted that way. So most Republicans voted on the other side. But, but I was, I was, I was proud to stand with, with, with the union workers.
- [17:52]
Ted Cruz
What precedent does this set moving forward, knowing now, and I'm talking about from a union perspective, because this could be, in my opinion, a civil war brewing that they didn't see coming if, if. If the Democratic Party is the party of unions. Right. And that's what they always say. I mean, we saw this as a big issue in Michigan and the governor's race there. We saw this in, in Virginia. We've seen this in other places like that. But this was a big, quote, union moment. And the White House said to the unions, screw you guys, we're going to go with your employer, not with you. I think this could be catastrophic for them moving forward.
- [18:31]
Ben Ferguson
Look, I certainly think if you're a rail worker, you're paying attention to this. And by the way, the state with the most rail workers is the state of Texas. There are about 17,000 freight rail workers in the state of Texas. And, you know, I was proud to stand with them. And I think what this reveals, and it's something the Democrats reveal day in and day out, is that they. Their view of unions is as long as the union bosses are in their back pocket, they're happy and they're willing to just screw the workers all day long if they think the bosses will be okay with it.
- [19:08]
Ted Cruz
Does this strengthen or weaken the union bosses? The fact that they couldn't get this deal done on behalf of their workers, does this make the workers basically say, all right, well, you guys don't do anything for us. We know who you take your orders from.
- [19:24]
Ben Ferguson
You know, I don't know. You would certainly think there are going to be some workers who are pissed off, and I would understand why they're pissed off. I think wanting to have the ability to take a sick day if you're actually sick is not a particularly crazy request for a worker. And it was really quite striking that the Biden White House got virtually every Democrat to march off a cliff. It was interesting. Right after I cast the vote on the sick leave, I walked over to Bernie. You mentioned the fist bump. I walked over to Bernie and he stuck his fist out and gave me a fist bump. He was actually the one who initiated it. And I said, bernie, I just voted with you. And I said, I don't know if that hurts me more, if it hurts you more.
- [20:13]
Ted Cruz
Well, and they were even. They were even all in on Chris Hayes on msnbc. Chris Hayes was talking to Bernie Sanders about this vote and there was a, there was a pretty darn funny moment. Take a listen for everybody that probably missed it cuz you weren't watching msnbc.
- [20:27]
Gene Shaheen
So there's a dear colleague letter out from Speaker Pelosi about the votes tomorrow. And they're saying there will be two votes, a vote on the deal, a vote on seven days paid sick leave. So then I guess the question becomes, it comes to the Senate. I assume Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will probably have two votes. Can you get 10 Republicans? You got Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio basically all but singing the international tongue in cheek because they're doing it in a kind of trolling fashion. I thought you would appreciate that, Senator.
- [21:00]
Ted Cruz
I love Bernie there because he's laughing. And this is when politics just gets weird. And it makes me happy at the same time that it's not every day that you and I would ever imagine we're sitting here talking about you fist bumping Bernie Sanders and this type of almost like Saturday Live humor on a real news channel for that moment.
- [21:20]
Ben Ferguson
Well, when I went over and Bernie fist bumped me, he said, I always knew you were a socialist, but listen, it is not being a socialist to stand with working men and women. I believe passionately that I think Republicans, we should be the party of jobs. We should be a blue collar party. That's who we should stand and fight for. And so, you know, I will say there are times when Bernie and I overlap. Like I can recall one other time where he and I voted together, and that was a couple of years ago. We both voted in favor of allowing the reimportation of drugs, pharmaceutical drugs that US Pharma companies sell, say to Canada and they sell them really cheap in Canada and really expensive in the United States. And I voted and said, you ought to be able to import it back to Canada at the cheap levels. Because what's happening is essentially the big pharma companies are using US consumers to get their profit and they're subsidizing foreign overseas sales. And I don't see any reason why the federal government should protect their price fixing. And so I happily voted for that. Bernie did too. It failed. A bunch of Republicans and a bunch of Democrats voted against it. And where I would say sometimes you see the far left and far right coming together is skepticism of massive corporate power. And in both of those instances you can get some overlaps of what would otherwise be strange bedfellows.
- [22:51]
Ted Cruz
There was a very interesting moment that happened, and it was a compare and contrast between the White House's opinion on Twitter and how they're monitoring Twitter like they're the Communist China. And then watching closely what, what. What is happening with Elon Musk pushing for more free speech on the platform and then comparing it to what Apple is doing and how the White House is happy to look the other way with Apple. I mean, doing things to help the Chinese Communist government cracked down on their people, silence their people. And there was a very interesting back and forth between Martha McConnell, I'm a big fan of hers at Fox, and John Kirby in front of the White House. I want to play part of this because it tells you everything you need to know about this White House and the hypocrisy with these two big companies and how they're treating them so differently.
- [23:47]
Gene Shaheen
And we've been clear about this all around the world. We want individual citizens, no matter what government they live under, to be able to communicate freely and openly, transparently and reliably. And we've made that clear with respect to Iran, and we certainly continue to make that clear here. With respect to China, have you made that clear to Apple? Apple's a private company, Martha. They have to make decisions, and they have to speak for those decisions. But here at the White House, here in the administration, we want to see that individual citizens, whether they're protesting or not. But in this case, I know that's the context we're talking about, are able to communicate freely and openly. But why not say something to Apple? Because we were just told the other day that the White House is keeping an eye on Elon Musk and Twitter. So why would you say that from the podium? You didn't say it, but Jean Pierre said it, and not call Apple out for helping the Chinese government to suppress their own people's ability to communicate. Again, I think we've been very clear and consistent on this. Certainly publicly, we've been very open about our desires to be able to see citizens communicate. And, you know, Apple, if this is a decision that they're making, then they should have to speak to that. But we, you know, we're not. We can't, and we aren't in the business of. Of telling private companies how to. To execute their. Their initiatives. Twitter's a private company, too. So why is Twitter getting one treatment, Apple's getting another, is my question. Well, these are completely two different circumstances. You're talking about the potential. Well, you're Talking about the, the potential for perhaps foreign investment and involvement in the management of Twitter. That's a different issue than what we're talking about here, which is a business decision by Apple with respect to how one of their applications is being utilized by the. By a foreign government and that government is China.
- [25:30]
Ted Cruz
I mean, Senator, I want to hit pause here because I want to get your initial take on this. The White House is trying to claim that these two companies are totally different and the scenarios are different. They're not. You're basically telling one company we're really going to look at you and may crack down you and the other company is actually doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist government and silencing people. And the White House is completely looking the other direction.
- [25:53]
Ben Ferguson
Well, first of all, good on, on, on Martha McCallum for holding him to account. That that was really effective questioning. And it John Kirby realized he was in real trouble because what he was saying was utterly incoherent. Why has the White House not said anything to Apple about their willingly participating in the Chinese Communist government oppressing and silencing the protesters? Because the Democrats are in bed with China because they support the policy. Look, Apple disabled airdrop. They are literally the instrumentality of silencing the protesters and they're acting effectively on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party in doing so. I think what they're doing is disgraceful and shameful. Well, and you won't say that is Joe Biden.
- [26:44]
Ted Cruz
Well, and you had the Apple CEO walking the halls of Congress. Luckily there was a Fox reporter that tried to ask the question the Apple CEO. Here's how that went down. And he said nothing and tried to walk away from her multiple different directions.
- [27:00]
Gene Shaheen
Do you support the Chinese people's right to protest?
- [27:05]
Ted Cruz
He's right there.
- [27:07]
Gene Shaheen
Do you have any reaction to the factory workers that were beaten and detained.
- [27:10]
Ben Ferguson
For protesting COVID lockdowns?
- [27:14]
Ted Cruz
Right there.
- [27:15]
Gene Shaheen
Not saying you regret restricting airdrop access that protesters used to evade surveillance from the Chinese government. Do you think it's problematic to do business with the Communist Chinese party when they suppress human rights?
- [27:36]
Ted Cruz
And there he does, he walks into some other, I'm assuming Democrats office. The Apple CEO there, Senator, I mean, just wouldn't say a word. I mean he's right there. He's right next to the microphone. He could have said anything. He said not a single word.
- [27:50]
Ben Ferguson
Well, because they can't defend what they're doing because they are in bed with the Chinese Communists. You know, even the simple statement I stand with the protesters, he can't say why. Because he's manufacturing a lot of his products in China and because he desperately wants continued access to the Chinese market. He looks at China and he sees dollar bills as far as the eye can see. And this is a problem with a lot of corporate America. A lot of the Fortune 500 is eagerly complicit with Chinese atrocities, even with murder and torture and concentration camps, because they think they can make a buck off of it. We see the same thing with the NBA, who's terrified to criticize the Chinese Communist Party in any way, shape or form for the same reason. It's all about money. But what I liked about the questioning with Martha McCollum is that the utter hypocrisy when it concerns Twitter, where Twitter, you know, Karine Jean Pierre said, we're keeping an eye on them. And by the way, John Kirby's answer. Well, we're concerned about foreign ownership of Twitter. No, no, that is not what Karine Jean Pierre said. The question that was asked by this lefty reporter is Twitter is allowing free speech and millions more new people are signing up for it. Aren't you worried that all of these people are hearing free speech and they might hear, quote, misinformation, which is the left's code word for anything they disagree with? Yeah, and that's what Karine Jean Pierre responded to with, we're keeping an eye on it. It wasn't foreign ownership. It was. The two are identical, actually. Listen, the White House, the Biden Harris White House, when a company is doing what they want, they're happy with them. And when a company is not doing what they want, they abuse them. The reason they don't like Twitter is that under Elon Musk, Twitt, Twitter has stopped censoring conservatives and the Biden White House wants their opponents censored. The reason they're happy with Apple is the Biden White House is perfectly happy with the Chinese Communist government censoring and silencing the protesters there. In both instances, it's Democrats supporting censorship and using power to silence dissenting voices.
- [30:29]
Ted Cruz
How concerned do you think Democrats are in Congress and the White House that they not only can they not control Twitter any longer, but Twitter is going to quite possibly expose what they were doing behind the scenes with Twitter. I think that's one of their biggest fears, is that Elon Musk is going to put all this out there and it's going to show a level of collusion that would only be described before you see it in real life as the most extreme, quote, alt right conspiracy theories that show that the Democratic Party was working hand in hand, the media was working hand in hand with Twitter, and that would also mean big Tech, obviously, Facebook and others. And that we're going to find out that they were 100% influencing elections, including maybe even on the local state level, where they were silencing candidates. And possibly again, from what we've seen from Elon Musk, that the throttling of candidates and not allowing for the people that follow you to see things. I mean, if you're doing that nationwide and you really think about this and you're tweeting as a conservative. Right. Let's use a perfect example in Georgia right now. If Herschel Walker tweets and no one sees it, but Raphael Warnock tweets and everybody sees, especially in a geographical area that's important to him, AKA Georgia, because that's where people can vote. And this is what Elon Musk, in the last 24 hours, seems to be tipping his hat to a little bit, that this was far beyond just censoring or silencing information. The whole entire system center may have been rigged.
- [32:09]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, listen, I think when this information is revealed, I think it is going to exceed the most fevered paranoid fantasies. I think it was so thoroughly corrupt. It was so blatant. I think big tech oligarchs believe they're utterly unaccountable. And I am thrilled. I think it's one of the most important things. It's one of the things I've urged Elon to do, which is make it public, make it transparent, just shine the light. And I think you're going to see lots and lots and lots of communications from Democrats saying, silence this person because I don't like what they're saying. We know that Dr. Fauci communicated in writing repeatedly with Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook.
- [32:55]
Ted Cruz
And he couldn't have been the first one, right? I mean, let's connect those dots for people quickly. Senator, if a guy that really no one knew about, right. I mean, Fauci, and then he becomes massively famous, and then he starts using these back channels to silence and censor people in certain things and certain ideas and certain theories, he didn't just think that was possible out of thin air. Somebody had to explain to him how the system worked. Hey, man, we do this all the time. Hey, this is how you do it. Hey, here's the contact. This is how we roll this out.
- [33:30]
Ben Ferguson
Well, to be fair, at that time, Fauci was pretty famous because it was during COVID so he was already front and center. He was the face of the response of medicine and the government. But Fauci, so like, one of the things in writing that he asked Zuckerberg to do is silence, is suppress anyone saying that the origins of COVID were the Wuhan Institute for Virology, the Chinese government lab. Now we now know that the overwhelming weight of the evidence suggests that is in fact the origins of COVID So Foushee was literally asking him to suppress true information because it didn't fit his political narrative. We also know that the FBI asked Facebook to, and I believe Twitter also. Yeah, and Twitter as well, to censor stories about Hunter Biden's laptop because they said it had all the hallmarks of Russian misinformation. We now know that's false, that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true. And yet Big Tech was more than happy to operate on behalf of the deep state at the FBI and silence it. I think Elon's making this public. It's one of the reasons why Democrats are freaking out. You know, Jim Carrey is leaving Twitter. Oh, the world will be so empty without his ostentatious leftism. You know, Hillary Clinton is freaking out. It's one of the reasons, by the way, you know the, the corporate America behemoth that is fighting Twitter the hardest, that that would be Apple. Apple was the single largest advertiser on Twitter. They've halted all their advertising, which is a huge blow to Twitter. Why? Because even though Apple is happy to silence and suppress Chinese protesters, it is mad at Twitter that it's not willing to silence and suppress American protesters. And this is all the same thing. Apple and the Democrat party and Jim Carrey and Hollywood and the deep state at the FBI, it is all part of the left wing behemoth, the multi tentacled hydra. And I gotta say, I think they're terrified at what releasing those emails and texts and the records are gonna reveal. Because my prediction is as bad as you think it is. It is worse.
- [35:56]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, well, and then the question becomes, how does Congress react to that? And that's why this show will be so important. Don't forget, we do this show three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Make sure you hit that subscribe button or auto download. It doesn't cost you a dime. You just automatically get the shows each and every day. You can also tell Siri and Alexa, play verdict with Ted Cruz and it will do it automatically. Don't forget to write the five star review as well. And share this at that little share signal and share it with your family and friends on all your social media platforms. The senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.