← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Bombshell story on how the Deep State COVERED UP China's Complicity in Covid, plus Deranged Dems Want to Block Trump's Swearing In
00:36:40
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- [00:01]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. Senator. I. Let's just start with this. I hope you had a fabulous Christmas. And everyone else listening. I hope you had a fabulous Christmas as well. You got to give me some anecdote from Christmas Day. Did you get anything cool? Was there an exciting moment before we get into politics?
- [00:20]
Ted Cruz
Well, I'll just say merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year. Actually, Christmas was awesome. I. I was just at home with. With Heidi and both our girls. My parents were here. We relaxed, we had Christmas dinner. We had a big ham. I will say, we do have a new puppy. The new puppy is Rudy. Rudy is a golden doodle. He looks like a giant teddy bear come to life. He is Catherine's Puppy. He is 14 weeks old. Rudy yaps a lot. In fact, you may well get some. Some podcasts with Rudy yapping in the background, because I do many of these at home. And he is.
- [00:58]
Ben Ferguson
And I've met Rudy. He is cute, man. Like, Rudy is next level cute.
- [01:02]
Ted Cruz
He is majorly cute. And I will say, all right. On Christmas Day, so we had a ham, which was great. And at the end, I turned to Heidi and said, what do you think? Should we give Rudy the ham bone? She said, sure. So I tossed Rudy the hambone. And I cannot believe this little puppy became a wolf. Like, he began consuming, and he's, you know, he's tiny. He is the size of a teddy bear.
- [01:26]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, he's little.
- [01:28]
Ted Cruz
He's, like, chowing into this hambone. And then he runs into her bushes, and he's in his cave, and he is a wolf. And I'm sitting there. I'm kind of feeling mildly concerned. So I pull out my phone and I Google, should you give a puppy a hambone?
- [01:42]
Ben Ferguson
I cannot wait to hear what Google said back to you.
- [01:44]
Ted Cruz
And it turns out that Google says, no, this is a very bad idea. Hambones can splinter and they can stick in their stomach and kill your puppy. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, Catherine is going to kill me if I kill her dog. I'm in trouble. So I go try to get Rudy, and he does not want to give up the ham bone. And the problem is, as I'm approaching him, everywhere I go, he runs in the bushes and runs in the bushes. So I have to drag Heidi out of the kitchen because we need a pincher movement to come from both sides because Rudy is running. And we finally got him and got the hambone away from him.
- [02:17]
Ben Ferguson
Isn't it amazing how scary Google can Be, though, in those moments, it's like it tells you basically everything that is fun is no longer fun. Convinced that's what Google's job is.
- [02:26]
Ted Cruz
And he was such a happy puppy. This is. This is absolutely the greatest joy this. This animal has had since he has been on planet Earth. Was chowing into that ham bone until Heidi and I had to. But he had. He had actually. He'd eaten all the ham. So he was in the chewing into bone moment. We're like, all right, fine, that's probably enough.
- [02:47]
Ben Ferguson
That's enough. All right, so we gotta ask. How did. How did you get the name? Who named him? How did we come up with the name Rudy? Where did it. Is it. I mean, instantly, if you're a movie after our movie, everyone's gonna think, Rudy, we're going back to Notre Dame here. And the famous movie.
- [03:01]
Ted Cruz
Okay. Except for the fact that I didn't name the dog. Catherine named the dog. So Caroline has three cats.
- [03:08]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [03:08]
Ted Cruz
And this puppy was for Catherine, so Catherine got to name the dog and Rudy. It actually is connected. So our last podcast, by the way, if you didn't watch a Christmas Day podcast or didn't listen to it, and it is on YouTube, so you can watch it too, I'd encourage you to go back. It's a very different podcast for what we do normally, which is Ben and I talked about 25 of my favorite movies, and we went through a bunch of movies, and I love movies, and we go through a ton of them. And by the way, I told you this story, Ben, as we're getting ready to record, in the afternoon of Christmas Day, we went over to a friend's house a few blocks away from our house who had a Christmas Day party. And it was very cool. There were lots of people out walking their dogs and out on the street. And this one family stopped me, and this very nice woman said, hey, I listened to the podcast this morning. I loved it. Great movie recommendations. I'm going to watch them now. And so I thought that was very cool. Admitted it made me happy. But if you recall, at the very beginning of the movie podcast, you asked me what was the most recent thing I was watching, and I told you it was the Outer Banks. And the Outer Banks is this teeny bopper series on Netflix that Catherine is very into. And Catherine had asked me to watch it so that we could talk about the plot development. So I watched the whole thing. Well, one of the stars of the show is jj and the actor who plays JJ is Rudy. I don't remember Rudy's last name. Rudy Something. That Katherine knows his last name. But. But Rudy something plays jj who is the sort of, kind of cute surfer boy rebel. Sort of a lot of trouble. But listen, I can get why, if you're a 14 year old girl, he would be sort of a cute, attractive guy. So our puppy is named after the actor who plays J.J. in Outer Banks. But as a Houstonian, I'm treating Rudy. I call him Rudy T. Because I treat him as Rudy Tomjanovich, the coach of the Rockets when we won the NBA championship at 94 and 95. So for Kathryn, he's Rudy, but for me, I think the T is silent.
- [05:01]
Ben Ferguson
I love it. That is nice. And by the way, on the movie list, so you'll laugh, we got a new tv, right? That was one of those Christmas things. Have you seen these frame TVs where it puts up artwork on the TV?
- [05:13]
Ted Cruz
Oh yeah, you're getting highfalutin. I'm sorry, I'm not sure I can hang around such a. The fancy pants guy.
- [05:20]
Ben Ferguson
So this has been on the Mrs. List. And she's like, look, I just love it. It doesn't look like a TV hanging on your wall in the living room. It can have like art up there. So Black Friday, I grabbed the tv. So fast forward to today. My dad's in town and he's helping me mount this new tv. And my mother in law comes over and she's like, hey, I've got the list of movies that you guys talked about. Why don't you guys hurry up and put that TV up there and we'll watch one of Ted's favorite movies. And I'm like, okay, great. The only problem was we ran into a mounting issue with this fancy new TV because it doesn't mount like the other normal TVs in the world. And finally she gave up. She was like, I'll see you tomorrow or whenever and we'll watch the movie then. So I disappointed my mother in law, but she was excited about your list. So there is that there. At least there's a silver lining in the. In the mo. And I don't know which TV it was, but she had written down the list of movies that she had never watched that you had on your list. And then it turned into a thing. So now I have a feeling I'm gonna be watching some movies with the mother in law. She's a movie fan like you are. And then she asked, she goes, does he go to the movie theater? I said, yes, he loves to go to the Movie theater. Did you go to any movies over the holidays?
- [06:30]
Ted Cruz
I did. I saw Gladiator 2, which, which I enjoyed. It wasn't as good as Gladiator 1, but Denzel's awesome. Awesome. And so it was fun. And I.
- [06:39]
Ben Ferguson
So Rotten Tomatoes has their rating system. If we're gonna have a TC rating system, what's it. What would you have rated?
- [06:47]
Ted Cruz
Oh, I don't know. On, on one to five. I'd give it a 3.7. I enjoyed it. But. But Gladiator 1 is like a 4.9. Like, like, it's, it's. I don't remember was Gladiator 1 or in my top 25. If it wasn't, it could easily have been. Gladiator 1 is an awesome movie. Gladiator 2 is fine. And so hold on.
- [07:10]
Ben Ferguson
On a five scale zero to five, what is a perfect five movie? Just so everybody has a barometer here.
- [07:16]
Ted Cruz
The Princess Bride is right at the.
- [07:18]
Ben Ferguson
There you go. 5.0 there. I love it. All right, so let's get back to the world of politics as well. And as we said, I, I like it. We get to talk a little movies here. We got a 5.0 Princess Bride. If you've never watched it, if you, you better do it. That's just, it's part of. If you like this podcast that, that's like, that's like a price of admission. If you've not seen Princess Bride because you've watched it, what, 50 times in your life.
- [07:40]
Ted Cruz
Probably more. More than that. I did get from a friend for Christmas this year, a leather bound copy of the book the Princess Bride. The book, the Princess Bride is wonderful too, but the movie is exquisite. And, and I do take sort of odd, I don't know, like reverse psychology. Joy. The entire cast of the Princess Bride are all lefties. And, and they periodically get together and they do events to support Democrats. And many of them have been critical would be. And actually, oddly enough, Cary Elwes, who is the. Who is the Dread Pirate Roberts and also Wesley. So is the male lead in the movie is a big lefty who I've gotten in Twitter wars with. And he finally blocked me like he was bashing me. And these guys think I can't enjoy their movie because they're little communists. And so they say, no, no, no, you have to be a communist to enjoy my movie. I'm like, screw you, you made your art. It's for the world to enjoy. You don't get to decide how I enjoy it. And amusingly enough, so when I got into Twitter war with Carrie Elwes. I have in my office. You've been to my office in D.C. hanging on the wall is a signed photograph of Kerry Elwes's the Red Pirate Roberts. And it is inscribed not just to Ted, but to Ted Cruz. And. Oh, I don't remember what he wrote. I should remember what he wrote, but I don't. But it's signed by him. And it was my first year in the Senate, and we had an intern in the office who went to, like, a Comic Con convention, and he was there signing autographs, and she got him to sign it to me by name. And I think at the time, he didn't know who I was. Cause he probably would have refused to do it. But when we were in the Twitter fight, I took a picture of the framed photo of him inscribed to me on my wall and tweeted it out. And he got so mad, he blocked me.
- [09:24]
Ben Ferguson
That is actually hilarious. All right, so I have my Princess Bride story, and then I promise we'll get to the political world. So in high school, by the way.
- [09:31]
Ted Cruz
There'S a lot going on in politics.
- [09:33]
Ben Ferguson
There is. There is. But in high school, you can judge me for this. We had to do a book report on the Princess Bride. Had to read the book. You will not be shocked to know that when I was focused solely on playing tennis and trying to make decent grades, there is a chance I went and bought the Cliff Notes.
- [09:53]
Ted Cruz
Oh, not even the movie.
- [09:55]
Ben Ferguson
Not even the movie. The Cliff Notes. I was like, I got it. And then I overachieved, and I went and bought this, by the way, let.
- [10:01]
Ted Cruz
Me ask you something. Do our younger listeners know what Cliff Notes are? Do those still exist?
- [10:07]
Ben Ferguson
They do. Cliff Notes and Sparks still exist.
- [10:09]
Ted Cruz
Okay, so that's still a. I mean, look, it's been a while since you and I were in high school and college, so I haven't.
- [10:14]
Ben Ferguson
I think, look for Cliff Notes or whatever now. Right. Like. But. But. But if you look at them, it's that. So Cliff Notes is the one that had the. Or the yellow and black.
- [10:23]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, no, I remember them well.
- [10:24]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. And so someone in the class said, hey, make sure you get the Spark Notes. Well, the joke was on me. I was a new student at Westminster Academy, and my teacher. I will never forget her. Best teacher I've ever had in my life, Mrs. Perry. She made sure that every single question on your test for your book report could not be answered by reading the Cliff Notes or the Spark Notes. So I got an F. I got an F. It was the last the first time I ever bought Cliff Notes and the last time I ever bought Cliff Notes in high school because she made sure there was not a single question that could be answered from Cliff Notes.
- [10:58]
Ted Cruz
That is a good question. Benjamin, you have fallen for the second oldest blunder in the world. The first, of course, is never get involved in a land war in Asia. But the second, only slightly less famous, is never get, never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line and he falls over dead.
- [11:17]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, there you go. So there's, yeah, there's a, there's a study moment.
- [11:21]
Ted Cruz
I can do the entire damn movie. It really is, it's, it's, it's a sick party trick. And, and, and I gotta tell you, as, as a teenager, it was not effective for, for getting girls.
- [11:34]
Ben Ferguson
It was not. I have no doubt.
- [11:37]
Ted Cruz
I gotta say, being a tennis star, I'm sure was more effective in that, in that regard.
- [11:42]
Ben Ferguson
It definitely worked more than quoting Princess Bride. That, that's a low bar. I don't know what that's actually saying, but you know, barely there.
- [11:52]
Ted Cruz
But you know, I could go to a Dungeons and Dragons convention and then like hang out and be just fine.
- [11:57]
Ben Ferguson
Be honest. Did you ever go to one? Because I never did. I didn't know.
- [12:00]
Ted Cruz
I did not go to a convention. I did play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, but I did not actually go to a convention. It's sort of, it's kind of like Star Trek. I'm sort of a Trekkie and that I've watched all the movies. I've watched not 100% of the episodes, but most of them. And I really like Star Trek, but Trekkies are such so intense about it that I don't actually dress as Mr. Spock. So I don't feel like a full on Trekkie. I just really enjoy Star Trek.
- [12:28]
Ben Ferguson
The first TV show you and I would have ever connected on then clearly would have been the West Wing.
- [12:33]
Ted Cruz
West Wing is, is fabulous.
- [12:35]
Ben Ferguson
But that was. I've watched it, I don't know, six, seven times.
- [12:40]
Ted Cruz
See, I only think I've watched it once. I watched it when it aired live and that was before streaming. And Heidi and I were on the George W. Bush campaign at the time. So every night it aired Wednesdays, I think at 9pm and we had TVs at the end. We all had cubicles. We're all in little cubicles at 301 Congress Avenue in Austin, Texas. And at 9pm Wednesday, at the end of every aisle of cubicles was a TV. And we would stop and for an hour from 9 to 10pm Every campaign staffer would watch the West Wing. And. And we. I watched it live, but I don't know that I've ever watched a rerun of the West Wing. So I loved every episode.
- [13:17]
Ben Ferguson
Every. So every time I get sick, every time I'm like the flu or I've had a surgery, that's when I will binge watch it because I have the DVD set and it's like. It's like comfort food. It's like you're sick and you can kind of doze off and take a nap and wake up and you know exactly where you are in the series. And that's when I watch. I never watch outside of when I'm sick, but if I'm really sick in bed, laid up, it is West Wing for me the entire time.
- [13:40]
Ted Cruz
All right, let's get by the. By the way, what. What series are you watching now? This is a complete digression.
- [13:45]
Ben Ferguson
Oh, I'm 100%. I am all into Landman.
- [13:48]
Ted Cruz
Like, Landman is so good. Landman is. Is crack cocaine inserted in my veins. I. Billy Bob Thornton. I love the man. And Taylor Sheridan can write like nobody's business.
- [14:01]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, he's. He's like the new Aaron Sorkin of my life. And Sorkin, for people that don't know, he did West Wing and several other amazing shows.
- [14:07]
Ted Cruz
The American President.
- [14:09]
Ben Ferguson
American President, the movie app, Newsroom, the show on hbo. Did you watch the Newsroom, by the way?
- [14:13]
Ted Cruz
I did. It was well done.
- [14:14]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, it was one of. So it was one of those. And I actually knew a couple of the people that were, quote, consultants on that, the same way that Sorkin had consultants like Dee Dee Myers and others on the West Wing and they wanted to make it extremely accurate in the Newsroom. At the time, I was a commentator at CNN when Newsroom came out, and I binge like every time. I think it was every Sunday night. It came out at 9 on HBO and I was just like, watch it religiously. Those guys, like, you said, Sharon can write. But yeah, Land Landman right now is amazing. And then obviously they're wrapping up Yellowstone with this, like last season.
- [14:48]
Ted Cruz
And by the way, we are going to do a different episode that is not this episode, but we are going to do an episode like the movie episode on. On streaming series to watch because I've got a. I'm on a lot of airplanes and so I watch a lot of streaming series. But that will not be this episode.
- [15:02]
Ben Ferguson
It'll be last thing. What's the top one on Your list right now. What are you watching? Streaming. Besides Landman.
- [15:07]
Ted Cruz
So streaming. I'm watching the Gifted, which Caroline, my eldest daughter, asked me to watch that. It's sort of a mutant series that had two seasons. I'm in the middle of the second season of that. And, and then I'm in season seven of the Walking Dead, which I'd never watched the Walking Dead when it was on air. And so what I'm now when I'm.
- [15:22]
Ben Ferguson
On airplanes, I've never watched it.
- [15:24]
Ted Cruz
Oh, look, it's a bunch of zombies eating your face. Like, it's not. Is it literature? No, but it's fun. I'm enjoying it. And it is. You know, I do get strange looks on an airplane when I'm sitting there on a plane and people walk by and there's a zombie eating someone's face. And there's, you know, people who, who, who don't like me are like, figures. Yeah, he'd be reading exactly what I.
- [15:45]
Ben Ferguson
Expected he'd be watching.
- [15:46]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. For the record, I'm not rooting for the zombies. But, but, but haters gonna hate.
- [15:51]
Ben Ferguson
Haters gonna hate. I love it. All right, now let's get back to the political world. I enjoyed that, by the way. That was nice after Christmas. So Joe Biden's administration has got some cover ups going on at the Wall Street Journal center is reporting on behind the closed doors. We found out that the lab leak cover up was a legit cover up. And now since he's lost, it's like, oh, we can report on this now.
- [16:15]
Ted Cruz
Well, this was a story that came out in the Wall Street Journal December 26, and it really is a bombshell story and it describes how the federal government essentially the deep state under Joe Biden. But this is also true under Trump. The Journal article doesn't talk about Trump, but I'm very interested to what was happening under the Trump administration as well. But how the deep state covered up the evidence and covered up the scientists that were arguing that the COVID virus escaped from the Wuhan lab in China. And it focuses on in particular, it starts with Jason Bannon. So here I'm just going to read you the beginning of the article because it lays it out. A car and driver had been ready to whisk Jason Bannon from FBI headquarters early one morning in August 2021 to brief the White House on a novel virus that was killing hundreds of thousands of Americans and it stopped the world in its tracks. Bannon had been told by his superiors to be on hand in case the federal Bureau of Investigation was asked to join a top intelligence community briefing for the president. But the White House summons never came. Bannon, a Ph.D. in microbiology, had joined the bureau after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, when the agency bulked up its expertise to deal with the threat of germ weapons, toxins, and other weapons of mass destruction. But for more than a year, he had spent most of his waking hours on the COVID 19 virus that had seeped out of China in 2019. Frustrated by China's stonewalling, President Biden had ordered an urgent assessment by the US Intelligence agencies and national laboratories on whether the virus had leapt from an animal to a human or had escaped from a Chinese lab that had been doing extensive work on coronaviruses. The dominant view within the intelligence community was clear when Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, and a couple of her senior analysts briefed Biden's and his top aides on August 24, the National Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence officers who reported to Haines and that organized the intelligence review, had concluded with, quote, low confidence that COVID 19 had emerged when the virus leapt from an animal to a human. So did four intelligence agencies. At the time, the FBA FBI was the only agency that had concluded that a lab leak was likely, a judgment that it had rendered with, quote, moderate confidence. But neither Bannon nor any other FBI officials were at the briefing to make the case firsthand to the President. Quote, being the only agency that assessed a laboratory origin was more likely, and the agency that expressed the highest level confidence in its analysis of the source of the pandemic. We anticipated the FBI would be asked to attend the briefing, Bannon recalled in his first on the record interview on the subject. I find it surprising that the White House didn't ask. In this article in the Wall Street Journal, it goes on and on discussing Bannon, this FBI scientist, but also scientists throughout the federal government who had laid out evidence early on that Covid came from a Chinese lab, and that evidence was systematically shut down. It was systematically de emphasized, and it appears that it was systematically blocked from going to the White House under Joe Biden. And as I said, I'm very interested. The Wall Street Journal doesn't report this, but my suspicion is they were doing the exact same thing when Donald Trump was president.
- [19:39]
Ben Ferguson
So here's my question, and this is a political one. There are people that are really frustrated with so much that that happened around Covid, and the answers we didn't get. And Foushee lying to Congress the list goes on and on. And there's people that are frustrated. All right, now that Republicans are in charge, what are they going to do about it? Are they going to investigate? Are they going to hold people accountable if they were lying to us? Whether it's on the origins, whether it's the gang of function research, there's a long list. Should Republicans go down that rabbit hole and do that? Or is that going to be looked at by many Americans, like, move on already we've done. What are you doing already? There's a. There's a real political price that you could pay from being out of touch with what the American people want. I know there's people that are angry and are frustrated, but what should the strategy be come January 20th?
- [20:30]
Ted Cruz
I think the strategy should be serious transparency, and it should be accountability. It should be number one.
- [20:38]
Ben Ferguson
So you are in favor of accountability.
- [20:40]
Ted Cruz
For people that lie to Congress?
- [20:41]
Ben Ferguson
Okay.
- [20:44]
Ted Cruz
Let me start with transparency. And this is a conversation I have had the last couple of weeks with Pam Bondi, who's been nominated to be the Attorney General, and with Cash Patel, who's been nominated to be the Director of the FBI, and also with the nominee for the Deputy Attorney General, and with other senior law enforcement nominees. I've said very simply, make the information public. Make it public on January 6. The confidential informants that were there don't give the names, don't out obviously people who were undercover. But. But make the information public. It is a public interest. And on COVID 19, put the evidence out there and make it public. I believe China was directly culpable. And by the way, I will say this is a prediction that verdict laid out almost before anybody else. We had two different podcasts, I believe, in March and April of 2021, right at the very beginning of COVID where we laid out the evidence that the COVID virus came from a Chinese lab. And that evidence we're going to do for New Year's, we're going to do an episode going through all of the predictions that verdict has laid out that have come true. Because, look, we have not been shy on taking a risk, on making a prediction, making a counterintuitive. Look, when I said Covid came from a Chinese virus, at the time, that was almost universally labeled misinformation.
- [22:15]
Ben Ferguson
Oh, it was on social media. You couldn't post that. They'd shut you down.
- [22:19]
Ted Cruz
It remains remarkable to this day. I don't know why they didn't block verdict when we said it, because others were getting blocked. Somehow we got through and it is. And by the way, I will say it wasn't just this scientist at the FBI. Let me go back to the Wall Street Journal article. Here's a couple more paragraphs. Quote. Three scientists at the national center for Medical Intelligence, part of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, conducted a scientific study that concluded that COVID 19 was manipulated in a laboratory in a risky research effort. But that analysis was at odds with the assessment of their parent agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and wasn't incorporated in the report presented to Biden. The DIA Inspector General's office opened an inquiry in the spring into whether the scientists assessments was mishandled or suppressed. People familiar with the matter said, and look, I think this is important, number one, because we need truth and accountability. I think the Chinese government bears enormous responsibility for the people who died, for the millions who died. 1.2 million Americans are counted as having been killed with the coronavirus. Seven million people worldwide. It was a massive consequence. And the economy shut down globally. Trillions of dollars was destroyed. Millions of lives, trillions of dollars. And I believe the Chinese Communist government has direct culpability for that. And I think the Trump administration would be doing America and the world a service for making that evidence public. But I also think it's important. Listen, there's going to be another crisis. We don't want career bureaucrats within the government suppressing evidence that they don't like. We don't want career bureaucrats, the deep state, pushing their preferred narrative. You got to ask why they were leaning in so hard to protect China. Why was that the dominant narrative? And why was everything else shut down? Because the next crisis we face. Let's go back to the Wall Street Journal article, because we also saw the scientific community lean in like crazy. Here's another two paragraphs talking about two theories. One that it came from an animal naturally and the other that it came from a lab leak. Quote, those two theories have also divided the scientific community. In February 2020, more than two dozen scientists published a statement in the medical journal Lancet calling the lab leak hypothesis a conspiracy theory that would jeopardize global cooperation in the struggle against the virus. One of the authors was Peter Dasak of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that has worked extensively on coronavirus research with the Wuhan Institute. That statement was followed a month later by a March 2020 paper on the proximal origins of COVID 19 in which Kristen Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute and four other scientists argued that the virus wasn't purposely manipulated in the laboratory and almost Certainly had natural origins. Now, my view right now, based on the evidence that is public, I think it is overwhelmingly likely that the COVID virus escaped from a Chinese government lab. And I think it is likely. I wouldn't use the word overwhelmingly, but I think it is greater than 50% that the COVID virus was manipulated by those Chinese scientists through gain of function research to make it either more deadly, more transmissible, or more in particular, able to impact humans. That has not been as conclusively proven as has been has been proven, in my judgment, that it escaped from a government lab. It's possible it was a natural virus and they screwed up and it escaped. It is indisputable that China covered it up and did everything they could to suppress it after the fact. But I think it is more likely than not that not only did it escape from a Chinese government lab, but they created it through gain of function research. We need to know that. And I gotta say, the paragraph I read, Peter Daszak got a whole lot of Money at the EcoHealth alliance for doing research on coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute. There's every reason to expect he was deeply invested in not having anyone know that. And by the way, so was Anthony Fauci, and Anthony Fauci's culpability, Dasak's culpability. I hope we have congressional hearings on this. I hope we get to the bottom of what actually happened, because I think there is a virtue to transparency and clarity, both for accountability and responsibility for the Chinese Communist government, but also to prevent manipulating the science for the next crisis.
- [27:12]
Ben Ferguson
So, final question on this, and that's going to come back to Foushee. What does accountability look like for a guy like that?
- [27:19]
Ted Cruz
Look, I don't know. I think it is likely that Foushee lied to Congress under oath. Lying to Congress under oath is a felony. I've called repeatedly. I've asked Merrick Garland if he's opened an investigation, if he's willing to prosecute Foushee. Merrick Garland had no interest in prosecuting Foushee. As I'm sitting here right now, I don't remember the dates. I think it is likely the statute of limitations has expired on prosecuting him. So it may be. I'm not remembering the dates as you and I are doing this right now, but I think there's a good chance that Trump cannot prosecute Foushee for lying to Congress. But I think laying out that accountability is important. And I think the reason the Biden DOJ didn't want to do so is because this has been the most politicized Department of Justice in history. Foushee went before Congress and insisted that, that the US Government had not paid for, had not funded, gain of function research. And actually the NIH came back and had to correct that after the fact and make clear that what he said was false.
- [28:20]
Ben Ferguson
Which this, by the way, brings me to a perfect segue to the second topic I wanted to hit. And the way that you're talking about accountability maybe explains why we are now seeing Democrats write articles saying that it's time to steal the election from Donald Trump. In the Hill, for example, Congress has the power to block Trump in from taking office, but lawmakers must, quote, act now. This was an opinion piece written by two different individuals demanding that the Democrats refuse to accept the outcome of the election. So much for the party that's obsessed with democracy, right?
- [29:01]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. I gotta say, this is, this is an article that was in the Hill that it came out again on December 26, day after Christmas. It is entitled, Congress has the power to Block Trump from taking Office But Lawmakers must act Now. And it is by Evan Davis and David Schulte, who. I don't know either one of these individuals. I don't know anything about them. Their bio says Evan Davis was editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and David Schulte was editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal. Both clerked for Justice Potter Stewart. Davis is a New York lawyer, served as president of the New York City Bar, and Schulte is a Chicago investment banker. I don't know these guys, but it's been a long time since Potter Stewart served on the court. Which means these are not spring chickens. They were law clerks a long time ago. I mean, I clerked for Chief justice Rehnquist in 1996, and by the time I was there, Potter Stewart had been long, long gone. And I gotta say that the most screamingly funny part of it is they begin their bios with they were editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and the Yale Law Journal. Like, I'm sorry, these are presumably accomplished lawyers who are grown ass adults and they're quoting the Law Review they were on when they were 24 years old. That's just ridiculous. And it actually, it makes the rest of the article make sense. Because listen, part of the reason our academy is so messed up is you have people who are disconnected from reality, who are hardcore leftist, who are far too many people in our universities, are openly Marxist. When I was at Harvard Law School, there were more professors on the faculty who were explicitly Marxist than there were who were Republican. And it wasn't even close. There were more than a dozen by their own self description, Marxist professors. There was only one open Republican on the faculty when I was there. But what these two numbskulls are arguing is that Congress, when we come together on January 6, should block Trump from becoming president. And we should do so, they argue, under the 14th Amendment, Section 3 of the Constitution that says no person shall hold any office, civil or military, who having previously taken an oath to support the Constitution, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same. Now they argue this has been disqualification. The evidence of Trump's engagement in insurrection is overwhelming. It has been decided in three separate forums, they write, two of which are fully contested with the active participation of Trump's counsel. The first was Trump's second impeachment trial. The second contested proceeding was Colorado's five day judicial process do judicial due process hearing where they found that Trump had engaged in insurrection and barred him from the ballot. And finally there is the bipartisan inquiry of the House select committee to investigate January 6th. Now, the stupidity of this argument literally leaps off of every syllable of every word that they have written. Let's take the first, okay? A bunch of partisan Democrats impeach Trump because they hate him. And by the way, to be clear, verdict was launched in response not to the second impeachment, but in response to the first impeachment trial. Because we have seen lawfare against Donald Trump. Trump derangement syndrome is real. It is a serious mental illness. These people are friggin nuts. They hate his guts. They've lost their minds. And at this point, understand these two numbskulls and every other Democrat who engages in fantasy about this is an election denier and an insurrectionist. They are trying to say we don't care that the voters voted. We don't care that the result was overwhelming. We don't care that of the seven contested battleground states, Don Trump won not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, but seven. All seven. We don't care. We are angry leftists and their argument is we should block it. Now, to be clear, they said there were three, three different proceedings that had determined he was an insurrectionist. The first was the impeachment trial. Of course, the impeachment trial is two parts. One is the impeachment in the House of Representatives and partisan Democrats did impeach him, but then it went to the Senate and there was a trial. And at the end of the trial, Donald Trump was acquitted. They ignore that fact. That literally is not mentioned in the rap ad. The second is the Colorado the radical partisan decision of the Colorado Supreme Court, except for the fact that the U.S. supreme Court unanimously reversed that decision. By the way, that's another prediction I made on this podcast. When the Colorado Supreme Court came back down, I said, this will be reversed and it will be reversed unanimously. That's what the court did. They barely acknowledge the Supreme Court reversed it, but they just kind of ignore it and say, well, that's another way it was determined in a decision that has been reversed unanimously by the Supreme Court. And the third, I really laugh, is, is the, quote, bipartisan inquiry of the House select committee to investigate January 6th. Now, it's bipartisan because Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, two people fully afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome, were included. Of course, Nancy Pelosi allowed no Republicans.
- [34:11]
Ben Ferguson
On by the way voted for Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. So let's not forget that. But they're like, oh, they act like they were Republicans. No, they're not.
- [34:19]
Ted Cruz
Look, to be clear. And by the way, both of them also campaigned against me. I was really grateful for it. I think that was quite helpful. Probably drove votes my way. But to call that inquiry bipartisan when the way committees are put together on Capitol Hill is that both sides pick the Republicans pick the Republicans on the committee, the Democrats pick the Democrats on the committee. Well, for the January 6th Committee, Nancy Pelosi said, no, no, no, I'm picking the Republicans. And the only Republicans I will allow on are people who hate Donald Trump, who are foaming at the mouth, who will do everything they can to destroy Donald Trump. They're the only ones I will allow on. And so, you know, when you had other Republicans that Kevin McCarthy was trying to put on, Nancy Pelosi said, nope, they are not welcome. We only take Republicans who agree with the Democrats on everything. That ain't a bipartisan inquiry. And by the way, we're getting more and more evidence of just how skewed that was. The point is, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter what this op ed was, other than it is a window into the eyes of what the hard left is. They hate Trump so much. Sigmund Freud talked about projection and the left engages in projection all the time. Everything they accuse their enemies of doing is what they are doing. They claim to be defending democracy. This may be the most anti Democratic article I have ever read, which is saying that Congress should say, I don't care, that the voters elected Trump and by the way, they don't dispute that the voters elect Trump. They fully accept. Yes, the American people came to vote and want Donald Trump but we know better than they do and so take a stand and take a stand to block what the voters want. Why? Because we are Democrats and we hate democracy. They don't say that but that's clearly what they conclude.
- [36:16]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, so much for the party of hey, we're all for whatever the people want. No, when it comes down to it, this is what they do. Don't forget we do a show Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Hit that subscriber auto download button on those in between days. Grab my podcast podcast. The Ben Ferguson Podcast will keep you up to date on what's going on on those in between days. And we do this, like I said, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So we will see you back here in a couple of days.