Come and Vax It ft. Liz Wheeler, LIVE at Texas A&M University

Summary

Episode Summary: "Come and Vax It ft. Liz Wheeler, LIVE at Texas A&M University"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
• Host/Author: Premiere Networks
• Episode: Come and Vax It ft. Liz Wheeler, LIVE at Texas A&M University
• Release Date: October 18, 2021
• Description: Hosted by Ben Ferguson, the podcast delves into the latest news and political headlines, emphasizing the President's administration, policies, and agenda. This episode features Senator Ted Cruz, Michael Knowles, and Liz Wheeler, discussing media biases, conservative principles, and current cultural battles.

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1. Opening Segment: Sports as a Cultural Battleground

Timestamp: [00:12] – [05:34]

The episode begins with light-hearted banter between Senator Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles, referencing a recent football game between Texas A&M and Alabama. Cruz highlights the unexpected dominance of the Aggies, setting the stage for a discussion on how sports reflect broader cultural and political tensions.

Notable Quote:

Ted Cruz [04:54]: "But one thing they did is they stood around the goal post. There were six or seven guys that looked like the offensive line of the Texans. And they're like, whatever you do, you ain't pulling the goal post down."

2. Media Criticism and the Kyrie Irving Controversy

Timestamp: [05:22] – [16:41]

Cruz and Knowles transition into a critique of mainstream media, focusing on the portrayal of Kyrie Irving's opposition to vaccination mandates. Cruz argues that the media unfairly demonizes Irving, contrasting his treatment with that of Colin Kaepernick.

Notable Quotes:

Senator Ted Cruz [08:57]: "Look, I gotta say right now that Kyrie Irving may be one of the most important people on the face of the planet right now."

Michael Knowles [09:06]: "When you present conservative arguments, they almost always win."

3. The Role of Alternative Media and Media Manipulation

Timestamp: [16:42] – [21:35]

The conversation shifts to the power of alternative media outlets like Verdict and the Daily Wire in countering mainstream media narratives. They discuss how traditional media often overlooks or misrepresents conservative viewpoints, emphasizing the necessity of platforms that allow unfiltered conservative discourse.

Notable Quote:

Michael Knowles [19:12]: "Journalism dies in darkness. And we're testing that because the journalists have plunged us into darkness."

4. Guest Segment: Liz Wheeler on Loudoun County Sexual Assault Case

Timestamp: [21:35] – [29:53]

Liz Wheeler joins the discussion to shed light on a significant incident in Loudoun County, where a female student was sexually assaulted in a gender-neutral bathroom. Wheeler criticizes transgender bathroom policies, arguing they compromise the safety of biological women. She accuses the school district of covering up the incident and silencing concerned parents.

Notable Quotes:

Liz Wheeler [23:26]: "What happened in Loudoun county is they instituted a transgender bathroom policy, and a 9th grade girl was raped by a man allegedly wearing a skirt in a gender-neutral bathroom."

Ted Cruz [25:52]: "When you present a violent sexual assault on campus, that's news. That's real news."

5. Discussion on Historical Narratives: Christopher Columbus and Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Timestamp: [37:05] – [48:00]

The hosts engage in a deep dive into how historical figures like Christopher Columbus and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are portrayed in contemporary media and education. They argue that media narratives often vilify these figures without acknowledging their complexities or contributions.

Notable Quotes:

Michael Knowles [39:04]: "Colonist viewed as a hero turned into one of the worst villains in history by the media."

Senator Ted Cruz [42:43]: "Do we typically name federal holidays after genocidal maniacs? Do we have a Pol Pot Day?"

6. Supreme Court and Legal Precedents

Timestamp: [56:19] – [63:48]

Senator Cruz discusses pivotal Supreme Court cases that have shaped constitutional law, particularly focusing on Chief Justice John Roberts' decisions. He critiques Roberts' handling of the Obamacare case, labeling it one of the most political decisions in U.S. history.

Notable Quotes:

Senator Ted Cruz [60:18]: "John Roberts... made a very cynical decision to make a political decision."

Michael Knowles [62:32]: "When you start giving up your principles a little bit, it's a very quick slippery slope."

7. Audience Q&A: Engaging with Conservative Perspectives

Timestamp: [57:59] – [85:05]

The episode features a robust Q&A session where audience members pose questions on various topics, including:

• Legal Cases: Importance and impact of Supreme Court decisions like Medellin v. Texas.

  Notable Quote:

  Senator Ted Cruz [85:30]: "In those five and a half years, we were fighting for conservative principles over and over and over again."

• Education and School Policies: Addressing concerns about educational content and institutional biases against conservative viewpoints.

  Notable Quote:

  Michael Knowles [66:21]: "We have primaries for a reason... we're fighting."

• Political Engagement: Encouraging active participation in school boards and community involvement to counteract perceived liberal indoctrination.

  Notable Quote:

  Liz Wheeler [66:21]: "Read as many books as you can, educate yourself on all the issues."

8. Closing Remarks: The Importance of Conservative Media and Unity

Timestamp: [85:05] – [93:48]

The hosts conclude by reaffirming the significance of alternative conservative media in shaping public discourse. They emphasize the need for unity among conservatives to challenge mainstream media narratives and advocate for their principles effectively.

Notable Quotes:

Michael Knowles [93:16]: "Thank you so much for having us. You guys are embodying that spirit of making your voices heard."

Senator Ted Cruz [93:48]: "Gigam. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much."

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Key Themes and Insights:

1. Media Bias and Alternative Platforms: The episode underscores a profound distrust in mainstream media, advocating for alternative conservative platforms to disseminate unfiltered viewpoints.

2. Conservative Principles vs. Progressive Policies: Central discussions revolve around defending traditional conservative values, including skepticism towards transgender policies in schools and promoting limited government intervention.

3. Historical Reinterpretation: There's a critical examination of how historical figures are reassessed in modern times, suggesting that such reinterpretations are often skewed to fit current political narratives.

4. Legal and Constitutional Integrity: Senator Cruz emphasizes the pivotal role of the Supreme Court in shaping American law and criticizes perceived political motivations behind key decisions.

5. Engagement and Activism: The hosts encourage active participation in political processes, such as school boards and community organizing, to counteract what they perceive as progressive indoctrination.

6. Unity and Mutual Support: Highlighting the importance of solidarity among conservatives, the episode calls for cohesive efforts to challenge dominant liberal ideologies.

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Conclusion:

"Come and Vax It ft. Liz Wheeler, LIVE at Texas A&M University" serves as a comprehensive exploration of contemporary conservative thought, media distrust, and the cultural battles shaping American society. Through incisive discussions and audience interactions, the episode aims to empower listeners with knowledge and strategies to advocate for their beliefs effectively.

Transcript

[Ted Cruz]

Wow. Howdy.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, there is something about this school that it can make even me good at football.

[Ted Cruz]

That's amazing. I can't get over that. Wow.

[Michael Knowles]

Wow. Incredible.

[Ted Cruz]

Now, Michael, you're not from Alabama, are you?

[Michael Knowles]

I. No, I am not. I can tell you 100% I am not. What, did something happen?

[Ted Cruz]

The earth shook.

[Liz Wheeler]

Wow.

[Ted Cruz]

And, Michael, welcome to College Station.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, Senator, we were obviously, we were in Madison, Wisconsin, last night. It was a little chilly there. Okay, not just the weather, the politics, a little bit chilly. But here, the sweet air of freedom in Texas and Mensheviks, they were. It is good to be here in this great free state at this fabulous university with all these wonderful conservative students. Thank you so much for having us. Should we do a podcast?

[Ted Cruz]

Michael, this is the freest place in America.

[Michael Knowles]

I believe it. I believe it. Well, I'm glad that we can do that because there is a lot to talk about and the left and the media and big tech and Dr. Fauci to shut us up and muzzle us and not let us talk. But I think we can do it here tonight. Should we do a podcast? All right, let's do it.

[Ted Cruz]

All right. All right. Let's go, Brandon.

[Michael Knowles]

Who's this Brandon guy? Is that a football thing? No, I don't think it's a football thing. Is it? I keep hearing, though, everybody loves this guy.

[Ted Cruz]

Brandon is clearly winning the Heisman Trophy. 529 years ago, Christopher Columbus discovered America. Just this week, Katie Couric admitted she covered up the truth about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And this past weekend, Texas A and M kicked Alabama's ass. This is Verdict with Michael Knowles.

[Michael Knowles]

Hey. All right. Welcome back to Verdict. To everyone out there in the online audience, there are a lot, a lot of people in this room here at Texas A and M, and there are many, many more of you out there in the online audience. I think, actually, Senator, because of this magnificent athletic victory by Texas A and M that just happened, we ought to focus a little bit about sports because some of the biggest cultural battles right now in the entire political scene actually revolve around sports.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, most importantly, let me ask you.

[Michael Knowles]

Where were you Saturday night on the historic night? I. You know, I was. If I want to have a cool answer, I was at home. I was just at home. Where were you, Senator?

[Ted Cruz]

I was here watching a spectacular football game. And look, it's easy in hindsight to claim it, but I can tell you, I told several buddies going in, I said, look, I think that the Aggies have a real Chance. It had been a tough couple of weeks, tough couple of losses for A and M. Alabama was on top of the world. They're like a pro team. Everyone thought they were going to win. They were overconfident, and they were playing here at home in Kyle Field. It was dangerous. And from the opening kickoff, the Aggies were dominant. And it was spectacular. And watching everyone storm the field at the end. All right, how many people here storm the field, by the way? I saw the officers. At first, they were trying to stop people. They pushed people back, and then they just said, ah, screw it, we can't.

[Michael Knowles]

It's a lost cause.

[Ted Cruz]

But the one thing they did is they stood around the goal post. There were six or seven guys that looked like the offensive line of the Texans. And they're like, whatever you do, you ain't pulling the goal post down. So. So that they succeeded in holding off. But it. But it was spectacular. And I was with some friends who looked down and said something colorful that I'm going to edit and make. Pg.

[Michael Knowles]

Okay, but.

[Ted Cruz]

But the comment as we looked at tens of thousands of students on the field was, nine months from now, there may be a whole lot of babies born.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, winning is a great aphrodisiac. I've heard that.

[Ted Cruz]

I have. I suspect it was a good Saturday.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, I'm hoping, Senator, I'm hoping that there's a political lesson here, that sometimes you're up against daunting odds. It seems like there is this dominant, Call it a ruling class. And you, from the great land of freedom, you have no way to fight back. And then sometimes you score a big victory. And I think that's what we all hope will happen for conservatives who have suffered a string of devastating losses. But we still hold out a lot of hope. And you're seeing, actually that spirit of freedom right now being kept alive by some professional athletes in the face of these radical Joe Biden mandates.

[Ted Cruz]

Look, I gotta say right now that Kyrie Irving may be one of the most important people on the face of the planet right now. If you think about what he's doing, he's taking a stand against force vaccination mandates, and he's doing it at real cost. I mean, we're talking $100 million or more that he's putting at risk. Look, you and I aren't gambling $100 million. I don't know that there's anyone here that has been willing to say I care about principle enough that I'll give away $100 million and not play and has there ever been a more profoundly hypocritical and revealing reaction than the media's reaction? As Kyrie Irving is taking this stand, the entire corporate media is treating him like he is Darth Vader. They are attacking him. They are demonizing him. And it's night and day. It's the exact opposite. Colin Kaepernick, right, when he dropped to a knee during the national anthem, he was. He. He was a saint. He was a hero. He was Martin Luther King. And. And by the way, he made, what, tens of millions of dollars for doing so and got hosannas everywhere. And it was very profitable. And at that point, he couldn't throw a football to save his life. Kyrie Irving, that man can play ball. Well, you know, he can dribble. Okay, I'm one of the, like, six people on planet Earth that saw the movie Uncle Drew. Did any of y'all see Uncle Drew? I mean, that guy can. Is. I told you, there's six. There are five of them. That Shaq, isn't it. Chris Weber is in it, but. But Kyrie can dribble like crazy. He's a hell of a ball player. And by the way, he's on the nets with KD and Harden. And by the way, that as a Rockets fan, that is very painful that Harden is up there with him, but he's putting it all on the line. And what does it say? ESPN is a giant corporation that is a leftist advocacy organization for the hard left of the Democratic Party, and they are flooding the zone. Every show on ESPN is what a villain Kyrie Irvin is because he's willing to sacrifice himself because he says it's not right that people are fired because they don't want to get vaccines. You and I, when we flew down from Wisconsin here today, when I was on the plane, I was on United, a flight attendant pulled me aside. She said, you know what? I'm one of the United employees who's not going to get vaccinated. She said, I've been at United 29 years.

[Michael Knowles]

Wow.

[Ted Cruz]

I'm getting ready to get fired. Kyrie Irving is fighting for her. That is courage. And the media is despicable with how they're true.

[Michael Knowles]

There's two really, really important points. One is, when you are speaking truth to power, very often power doesn't like it. The power doesn't like it. And so when everyone was saying that Colin Kaepernick, he's this great lone voice speaking truth to every single ruling power, was applauding him and encouraging him and Giving him more fame and more money because he wasn't speaking truth to power. He was a tool of the dominant ruling class line. Kyrie Irving is genuinely speaking truth to power. And the second point, and this I think is a keen observation, everyone is looking at this story about Kyrie Irving as if it's about public health or it's just about mandates or it's just about government power. It's a story, as you say, about the media and the media's dishonesty. And frankly, the way the media have lied about this guy and about this issue, it shows you what an important stand he's making.

[Ted Cruz]

Look, it is when you tell the powerful what they want to hear, it makes them happy. It's also not courage. It's when you tell them what they don't want to hear. That's when they censor you. That's when they shut you down and that's when they demonize you. The degree to which, and one of the things that I never understood about the media, I used to think five, six years ago that you turn on the tv, you watch some host and there's some lefty host and they're saying ridiculous things and you're like, oh, what a jerk. What I didn't understand, I don't blame the talent anymore. Our media companies are controlled by the corner office. It is the network executives that make a decision. Jeff Zucker at CNN makes a decision. Flood the zone. This is the message. And every host echoes that message. And I guarantee you that is happening at espn. The word has gone out pound Kyrie Irving because he's dared disagree with the corporate orthodoxy.

[Michael Knowles]

Right, of course. And you're seeing this increasingly. We've always known, as you say, that these news networks, sometimes they seem like jerks, sometimes they get the story wrong. Maybe you chalk it up to just.

[Ted Cruz]

An accident, but they'd never knowingly lie.

[Michael Knowles]

No, never. They would never do that. And then, and then what happened this week, and this was amazing. It's not just left on right dishonesty. It's not just the left wing media lying about conservatives. The left wing media even lie about their left wing icons when the left wing icons disagree with the agenda. And you saw it this week with Katie Couric and an interview that she had with rbg, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the fetid, iconic, notorious rbg. Katie Couric said, yeah, RBG said something I didn't like. So she's an old batty loon. And I took it out. I'm only slightly paraphrasing that's basically what it is.

[Ted Cruz]

But it's even worse than that. So 2016, Katie Couric is interviewing Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she asked. It's when Colin Kaepernick is doing his. His kneel down. And she asked Ruth Bader Ginsburg, what do you think about it? And she said, I think it shows contempt for the government that has given him all of the freedoms we have in this country. And that was news. This was a big deal. We were having a national argument. This is a sainted lion of the left. And Katie Couric realized, oh, crap, this is not the narrative that. That. That my propagandists want me to push. And so what did she do? She just edited it out. And she didn't edit it out because it wasn't news. She edited it out because it was news.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ted Cruz]

And she said, I want to protect Ruth Bader Ginsburg. That's what she used.

[Michael Knowles]

Protector from herself.

[Ted Cruz]

From herself from not being woke enough. Because Katie Couric and the media will say, this doesn't matter how lefty you are, if you're not woke enough for the immediate minute, yeah, they will erase you. And by the way, it broke today. David Brooks, another opinion columnist at the.

[Michael Knowles]

New York Times, a supposedly sort of conservative New York Times columnist.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, all right. So Katie Couric called David Brooks and said, hey, what should I do? Ruth Bader Ginsburg just said that kneeling during the national anthem shows contempt for the country. And David Brooks said, oh, you need to edit that out. No, no, no, no. That's not the message the old gray lady is trying to push. This is. They're not journalists. They are professional liars. And by the way, lie is not too hard a term, because another story that just broke this week is Joe Rogan had a heck of an interview on a podcast. Joe Rogan, tell us about what happened.

[Michael Knowles]

So this was the most magnificent interview I've seen in quite some time.

[Ted Cruz]

In fact, Michael said he was so impressed, he's gonna shave his head like Rogan.

[Michael Knowles]

I was thinking about it. I'm gonna take up mma, and I don't know, he smokes things that I don't know if I. I stick to cigars. Okay. I try not to go far past that. But. But here's the story that you heard. Cause we're talking about the difference between the gray lady, all the news that's fit to print, and all the news that fits the narrative, which is what the left really pushes. So here's the story you saw in the mainstream media, crazy kooky right wing radical Joe Rogan is so paranoid about coronavirus that he ate horse dewormer to protect himself against the woo flu. Okay?

[Ted Cruz]

And by the way, you're at A and M, they got a lot of folks that know about ag, know about horses and cattle.

[Michael Knowles]

We're all going to be really safe from. So now the only problem with this story is that it was completely 100% false. The idea that ivermectin is horse dewor. It's like calling aspirin horse medicine. They make aspirin for horses. That's not what I take when I have a headache. They make it for humans. Ivermectin has been used to treat many, many humans for quite a long time. Actually, the man who discovered it won a Nobel prize. So it's a well established drug.

[Ted Cruz]

Hold on, repeat that because that's a fascinating fact. The media had a week long orgy of disinformation.

[Michael Knowles]

Kind of like on that football field with the game. I don't know.

[Ted Cruz]

On the field. This isn't Berkeley. I mean, but. But for a week, the, the network bigwigs, the corner offices said the message of the day is ivermectin is bad. And any yokel who is taking it is taking horse dewormer. And every station pounded it over and over and over again. And Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan's got $100 million. I mean, the interview is spectacular because he's got, you know, CNN's top doctor on Sanjay Gupta. Yeah. And he's like, why did you guys say this? This is crap. It is. It is literally been given to over 1 billion people worldwide.

[Liz Wheeler]

B.

[Ted Cruz]

1 billion people worldwide. The discover, the inventor won the Nobel prize for discovering it. He held up his prescription. He said, look, a doctor prescribed this.

[Michael Knowles]

Not a veterinarian, a human doctor prescribed this for me.

[Ted Cruz]

And it was really striking. It's worth watching this interview because Sanjay Gupta is like, oh, well, let's change the subject over here. Oh look, shiny object. Oh look, squirrel.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah. And Rogan wouldn't let him get away with it. And I think there's really an important lesson for all of us here on this because Rogan said, does it bother you that your network lied about this and said I took a horse dewormer when I obviously didn't? And he says, oh, well, maybe he shouldn't. Okay, let's try to move on. He says, no. Does that make you feel a little concerned that your network lied? He said, well, I didn't see that. He goes, you're the top medical doctor. What do you mean you didn't see that?

[Ted Cruz]

And he didn't lie just once. Lied repeatedly. Jim Acosta was the first. And they said it over and over and over again. And I'll tell an interesting story. So the New York Times a few months ago was doing this kind of big feature piece on Texas and how Texas has changed. And the reporter is a Capitol Hill reporter. He came up and talked to me and he said, you know, hey, talk to me about Texas. And I gave him a quote. I said, texas is no longer just home to oil and gas wildcatters. We're now also home to, to Tesla and Joe Rogan. So the New York Times reporter used the quote, but only the first half of it. So it's actually, it's the final quote in his story, which is, Cruz, Texas is no longer just home to oil and gas wildcatters, period. And he just ends the quote. And so I saw the reporter, Jonathan Martin is his name. Everyone calls him J. Martin. And I saw, I said, j Mart, what the hell are you doing? I mean, that was a money quote.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

And here was his comment. It was fascinating. He said, New York Times readers don't know who Joe Rogan is.

[Michael Knowles]

Really.

[Ted Cruz]

And I gotta say what it sounded to me like he didn't say it, but it sounded to me like he included the full quote in the story and his editor edit out the second part.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ted Cruz]

Because they didn't like that message. And it's an example, whether it's the New York Times or cnn. Listen, CNN top brass ought to be answering questions. They claim to be journalists. Why did they repeatedly and deliberately lie over and over and over again? Same thing Katie Couric did. The press lies and, and post Donald Trump. They hate Trump so much that they justify the lie.

[Michael Knowles]

Right. The Republic, our democracy is at stake. So we get to lie.

[Ted Cruz]

Democracy, we will lie.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ted Cruz]

Journalism, you know, journalism dies in darkness. And we're testing that because the journalists have plunged us into darkness.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah. You know, one problem that conservatives have had is this problem that you're describing, which is investigative journalism is expensive. It loses money all the time and it is subsidized by left wingers who are pushing their stories. So very often the conservative news outlets are actually using left wing reporting because there are good reporters at the New York Times. There are actually good reporters at the Washington Post. There aren't so many good editors. There aren't so many good executives. I mean, those are the guys who are really deciding what stories go in, what stories stay out, and how to twist the stories and mess up your quotes. But some of the reporters can be pretty good. Recently, we are beginning to fight back against this. There was a story that just broke and I want to bring out a special guest to discuss this. There was a story that. It's actually. I hate to toot our own horn, but, you know, I guess I'll. I suppose I'll do it.

[Ted Cruz]

No, you don't.

[Michael Knowles]

No party love you.

[Ted Cruz]

Hates horn chewing.

[Michael Knowles]

That's going in my bio now, I think. So the Daily Wire just broke a major, major news story, which is that in Loudoun county, there is. Oh, you've seen the story. I see in Loudoun County, a girl, a young girl suffered a vicious, horrible sexual attack in a girl's bathroom from a guy who is apparently gender bending and will sometimes wear a skirt. And the story is pretty clear. There are dangers to letting boys in the girls room. And this is something that anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows, but the media and the ruling class won't let anybody say it. They're actually censoring people now. They're censoring our friend Steven Crowder because he just read the story.

[Ted Cruz]

Why don't we bring it, bring out our guest and we'll talk about this.

[Michael Knowles]

All right, we've got a special guest. You may have heard of her. She is the host of the Liz Wheeler Show. She is the wonderful new partner of Young America's Foundation. Has her own YAF tour coming. I guess I kind of gave away the answer, didn't I? Our friend, Liz Wheeler.

[Liz Wheeler]

Conservative. This is your wake up call. Fight back against this destructive Marxist ideology. Big Tech is essentially using left leaning organizations who claim to fact chat to silence anybody who disagrees with their radical leftist ideology. They tell us that if we don't do something, if we don't pass the Green New Deal, that our earth is going to die. In 12 years, they said the Arctic would no longer enjoy ice. If they've gotten every single thing wrong in the past, why would we believe them? This is our time. This is our opportunity. Why would we let that go? If you let these hypocritical, tyrannical politicians take an inch, even with the excuse of an emergency, they will take a mile. So let them take nothing from you, Period.

[Michael Knowles]

Oh, hello.

[Liz Wheeler]

Thank you so much for having me. What a great crowd. What a great show so far.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, thank you. It's great to have you here. You've got a lot going on. So I'm glad you could make time for us. You've got the new show. You've got the new partnership with Yaff. You've got the new baby. I guess that's a pretty big one. And now you're joining us. This is great.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yes, she deserves the applause. Yeah, I'm super excited to be here. We're thick into launching the new show. We launched it this May, the Liz Wheeler show. We're about 60 episodes in and, you know, torching the mainstream media, owning the libs, dropping the facts.

[Michael Knowles]

These are my favorite ideas. Oh, my gosh. So, Liz, we really wanted to bring you out because you followed this story pretty closely. There have been a lot of problems in Loudoun county even beyond this, but I think this story really highlights the problem. And actually, just today, the Washington Post, the mainstream media had been silent about it. The Washington Post was forced to publish a story about this reporting which originally was from a conservative group. So what happened in Loudoun County?

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, what happened in Loudoun county is unfortunately, what's been happening across the country, and that is those who claim to care about women are ignoring the safety and security of biological women when it comes to the issue of transgender bathrooms or gender neutral bathrooms. Obviously, those on the left are worried about being called transphobic. And so they don't point up the fact that, you know, women are women, meaning biological women are women. And we want privacy in locker rooms, we want privacy in the bathrooms. And when you open it up to these gender neutral policies, then what happens is some terrible creeps, some perverts, some predators take advantage of that. And that's what happened in Loudoun County. What happened in Loudoun county is they instituted a transgender bathroom policy, and a 9th grade girl was raped by a man allegedly wearing a skirt in a gender neutral bathroom. And because this was a very hot button topic, the transgender bathrooms at this, in this particular school district, of course, because we all have our eyes on Loudoun county, the school essentially tried to cover it up. They denied that it happened, even though the suspect is going to plead guilty to assorted sexual assault charges. They tried to cover it up completely. They tried to silence the parent who was exposing this. It's really, truly terrible. All because they didn't want to stand up for women because it contradicts their transgender narrative.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, Liz, when you say they tried to silence the parent, I mean, it's not like they arrested him or anything.

[Liz Wheeler]

They did arrest him.

[Michael Knowles]

Oh, wait a second.

[Ted Cruz]

Wait, no, come on. Why would anyone arrest a parent? That doesn't make any sense.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah. And this is maybe one of the most interesting parts of this story, one of the most corrupt parts of this story, because the father, and you all might be familiar with the father involved in this story. Do you remember the video that went around from Loudoun county of the father? He's a bald guy. He was very irate.

[Ted Cruz]

He was the arrested Joe Rogan. Now, this is new.

[Michael Knowles]

Soon enough. Soon enough they will.

[Liz Wheeler]

But not yet, thankfully, they arrested him and dragged him out of the school board meeting. And he became, you know, labeled by the left, the poster child of what the left wants to say, or angry Republican parents who are opposing critical race theory or transgender policy in school. They arrested him and the prosecutor's actually trying to throw him in jail, even though at most this would be a misdemeanor. I mean, you're the prosecutor here. It probably shouldn't be anything. Meanwhile, the suspect who allegedly raped this girl went back to school and committed another offense, another sexual assault. And the school tried to deny the whole thing to parents.

[Ted Cruz]

So I want to unpack this because I think this, this is shocking and shameful, and it captures an awful lot of what is happening. Number one, you have a predator who allegedly raped a teenage girl in a bathroom, a biological man who went in wearing a skirt and raped this little girl. The father was understandably. The father of the girl was understandably really pissed off because the school didn't report it. The school covered it up. The school was not acknowledging it. So the father went to a school board meeting. And, and, and I want you to think for a second, if you're the father of a girl who's been raped at school, you would be horrified. You would be pissed. And if the school was covering it up, you'd be saying, what the hell's wrong with you people?

[Michael Knowles]

You'd be. You'd be turning over tables. And what we're seeing here are two scandals. Obviously the main scandal, the crime that allegedly took place. But then, as you mentioned, this extra scandal of the school board covering it up, because that sort of an incident doesn't fit the narrative. What we are told by the ruling class is that men going into the girls room never poses any threat whatsoever. And reality just happens to contradict that.

[Ted Cruz]

But it's even worse because then the corruption folds in upon itself, itself, because when this happened, and the father is outraged and expresses his outrage, he gets arrested and he then gets held up as the poster child and gets accused of being a domestic terrorist. And incidents like this, the Attorney General of the United States under Joe Biden, Merrick Garland points to him and other parents who are unhappy about what's being taught to our kids, about the nonsense in our schools. And Joe Biden's attorney general calls that dad. And other parents who are pissed off calls them domestic terrorists. So you get the government going after parents trying to protect their kids, and you get the media obscuring it all in blackness. And I want to pause and say something that you said to begin with. Look, the facts of a violent sexual assault on campus, that's news. That's real news. It wasn't the Washington Post that broke it. It wasn't the New York Times that broke it. It wasn't CNN or ABC or cbs. It was the Daily Wire.

[Michael Knowles]

Because it raises this question, you know, from all of the stories we've been discussing, they've got this common thread. They've got this thread of the media lying, covering things up, distorting things. And so very few right wing organizations do any kind of investigative work because of structural challenges. So if just this one organization with just this one reporter uncovered just this one major, major news story, what else is out there that is not being reported on, that is being actively suppressed? What else do we as conservatives have to uncover?

[Ted Cruz]

And I gotta say, it is a pun powerful thing. Look, I love everyone at the Daily Wire and, and I've spent a lot of time with you guys.

[Liz Wheeler]

He's about to tell us who he likes best.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, I don't know why Ben Shapiro slanders you so much. You know, in an arm wrestling match, you'd take Ben two out of three times.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you very much. Finally. Finally, someone gives me the quitt.

[Ted Cruz]

But look, you know the Daily Wire's headquarters in la? I want you to understand, this is not some media conglomerate with a skyscraper. This is basically six guys in a van. It used to be in a parking lot in la.

[Michael Knowles]

It started in a pool house. It actually started in a pool house.

[Ted Cruz]

And then. So it started in a bathhouse. Okay, wait, that's a different story.

[Michael Knowles]

The New York Times is already writing down.

[Ted Cruz]

They're writing it down. You guys are now in Nashville. So you fled Looneytown and you came to America. We wanted them to come to Texas. We actually made a hard pitch for Texas. But. But you know why?

[Michael Knowles]

You know why I didn't come? Because all my exes live in Texas, which is why I carry my hat. I'll excuse myself now.

[Ted Cruz]

Good night. So, true story. Michael had never heard that song. And so when. When he moved to Nashville on the podcast on Verdict. I pulled out my phone and played All My Exes Live in Texas.

[Michael Knowles]

What is he doing?

[Ted Cruz]

And he was fascinated. And he's like, that's why I hang my hat in Tennessee. He's like, oh, okay. Yes.

[Michael Knowles]

And that is, I think what's got to be the focus here. What conservatives have noticed in recent years, I mean, they've kind of always known it, but they've really seen it, is that the media are not just skewed, they are the opposition parties. They are the apparatus of the left and they are the group that needs to be undermined. They don't have credibility, they don't have authority. And we need to build those institutions and do it ourselves. Which I guess is the purpose of this podcast. It's the purpose of the Liz Wheeler Show. It's the purpose of coming to campuses all around the country. And it's why we get to speak directly to people who are being lied to.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, it is an interesting comment, though. One of the reasons why you're seeing the rise of alternative means of communication is because the media is so corrupt. You know, CNN's ratings have dropped. They're getting about 800,000 viewers a show. I mean, it's pitiful. And to give a sense, look, this podcast, we started this podcast last year. Within weeks, Verdict became the number one ranked podcast in the world, actually beating Joe Rogan.

[Michael Knowles]

I hate to take a shot, you know, but he got us again in the end.

[Ted Cruz]

But. And we've had over 30 million downloads since we started doing this. This is a powerful tool we get for a given episode. Yesterday we had 100,000 people live streaming. When we did, when we were up at University of Wisconsin, Madison, we'll get on an episode anywhere from 250,000 to 5, 600,000 people downloading a particular episode. This podcast is nearly up to CNN's ratings. That's a little ridiculous given that it's us, our chairs, our shag carpet and our friend the cactus.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes, yes.

[Liz Wheeler]

And don't you think one of the reasons for that too is that it used to be that conservative media was somewhat of a niche, right? That people who really wanted good reporting, people who wanted good analysis, good commentary, would go to more right leaning websites. But then the last four or five years, we've seen the media organizations that used to claim to be nonpartisan, they used to claim to be straight news. They don't even, they don't even try to pretend that they're not biased anymore. I mean, we saw that during the election. We saw it with The Hunter Biden laptop story, we saw it. With the Russia collusion story we saw.

[Ted Cruz]

Hunter Biden didn't have a laptop.

[Liz Wheeler]

No, no, he had four. Right? No, no, he had four that the Russians have now.

[Ted Cruz]

It was a Russian laptop. Right. Well, I mean, it had to be bad because Silicon Valley prevented anyone from even tweeting it and shut down the New York Post for two weeks over it. So clearly it was fake. Right.

[Liz Wheeler]

It must have said fake on the sticker on the back.

[Michael Knowles]

In Hunter Biden's defense, he doesn't have the laptop anymore. Okay. He did. He did lose the thing a few times actually. But yes, I think this point is really important and actually getting to these other people we've been talking about. I mean, we mentioned Rogan, but Kyrie Irving and increasingly a lot of other people. I don't think that Kyrie Irving is some rock ribbed conservative. Joe Rogan was a Bernie bro. But there are a lot of people who maybe they don't check every single box.

[Ted Cruz]

Repeat that. So Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders for.

[Michael Knowles]

President because you and Bernie have so much in common.

[Ted Cruz]

He's not woke enough. They'll still slander him as taking horse dewormer.

[Michael Knowles]

They'll still go after Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she goes off the script. And so I do think, you know, to your point, Liz, and to your point, Senator, when you're getting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, a million people perhaps on episodes of so called alternative media, why is that? It's because it's not just the handful of rock rib conservatives. It's because a lot of people with common sense and common decency who have maybe a little bit heterodox views and dissent from the left wing establishment. They just want the truth.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, I don't know if you saw a couple of weeks ago it was one of the left leaning organizations. I can't remember if it was Planned Parenthood or Emily's List or one of these things. They tweeted out a quote from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a quote about women and they edited out the word women. Yeah, they like removed women from Ruth Bader Ginsburg's quote and made it persons. Because apparently you're not allowed to say women. Like this is. And by the way, this is. Look, they made votive candles out of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and they are editing her statements for being insufficiently woke postmortem.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, you know what they said. So what they did. The line that Ruth Bader Ginsburg said was a reproductive choice is essential to a woman's right and health and safety, and they changed the woman's right to people's rights. So you've got all of those other birthing people who aren't women. I guess so.

[Ted Cruz]

I gotta tell you, two weeks ago at a Senate Judiciary Committee committee hearing, Cory Booker, and Cory's a friend, he's actually, he's a good guy. He was talking and he's talking. This is on C Span. It's a live public hearing. And he makes a reference to. I think he makes a reference to mothers. And then he stops and corrects himself and says, oh, I mean, birthing people. And I like, I went up to him afterwards on the Senate floor. I'm like, dude, really? Like, really? Are your people that nuts that saying mothers is like, unacceptable? And I won't say what he said because I'll keep his comments private.

[Liz Wheeler]

But, well, I have something to say to him. I gave birth eight months ago, and I can assure you I'm not a birthing person. I'm a woman. It is fascinating though, to see this. I mean, first we had radical feminism, right? And which was kind of the man hating strain. And now we have this new strain of wokeism that's actually trying to erase the very essence of womanhood. I mean, it ties into the Loudoun county story how, you know, they're saying, well, biological women don't really count. Anybody who identifies as a woman, maybe wears a skirt, counts as a real woman. And they're doing the same thing with those of us who give birth women. I mean, what could be more fundamental to being a woman than your ability to create new life and give birth to that life? And now apparently that's not good enough for the woke folks.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, I was there when Heidi gave birth to both our daughters. And I gotta say, I don't think there's a man on the planet that.

[Michael Knowles]

Could go through that.

[Liz Wheeler]

I said to my husband, when my daughter was maybe five or six weeks old, it was right at the. That there was that hospital in the UK that was telling nurses to call it chest feeding and human milk. And I suggested to him about 3 or 4am that maybe he'd try out the chest feeding. And turns out that's just not possible.

[Ted Cruz]

Are you in the Robert De Niro movie where he's the CIA agent and he's in, he's, you know, anyway, he says, anything with nipples, you can milk. And he says, I have nipples. Can you milk me?

[Michael Knowles]

Forget a De Niro movie. It's Monty Python. I mean, there's actually. This is a Monty Python sketch. I remember when. When my baby was born, almost at the same time.

[Liz Wheeler]

Two days apart.

[Michael Knowles]

Two days apart. I wanted to be really old school. I didn't even want to be in the room. I wanted to be downstairs in the lobby smoking cigarettes like a guy from the 50s, you know?

[Ted Cruz]

Tell me, tell me you were in the room.

[Michael Knowles]

I was guilted into being in the room. It was very painful for me.

[Ted Cruz]

It is.

[Michael Knowles]

It's very painful to hear that.

[Ted Cruz]

It is an incredible spectacular, like, holy crap moment, like giving birth. Like, I wanted to go home and just tell my mom, thank you.

[Liz Wheeler]

Like, I did actually do that afterward. I was like, how did you do that five times?

[Michael Knowles]

Now, actually, this is a little bit of a hard segue, but I don't want to miss the opportunity here because, you know, my baby being my child, he is a little bit of the Italian persuasion. And you referenced a.

[Ted Cruz]

Not just persuaded, downright convinced.

[Michael Knowles]

He's downright convinced. I can't help but notice you mentioned a certain famous Italian, you might even call him an Italian American. At the top of the show. A man that we were all supposed to celebrate this week. A man who I was told when I was a little boy, discovered America and a man whose name we are no longer allowed even to mention, Mr. Christopher Columbus. You remember him?

[Liz Wheeler]

The round of applause is for your segue. That was something.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you so much.

[Ted Cruz]

I gotta say, number one, that was a very natural segue. As our wives birthed children, so Columbus birthed the New World.

[Michael Knowles]

That's why he's the senator and I'm the podcast host. But this, I actually do think this. It ties in with the education issues, it ties in with the lies from the media, because Christopher Columbus, who, when I was a kid, we celebrated Columbus Day, he was a great American hero. He discovered America. Now he is considered one of the worst villains in the history of the world, whose statues have to be torn down and whose memory has to be erased. How did that happen?

[Liz Wheeler]

This is not a segue. But did you see what Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Columbus Day?

[Michael Knowles]

Don't tell me.

[Liz Wheeler]

Happy indigenous people. Pocahontas herself, ladies and gentlemen, she is one.

[Ted Cruz]

She is 1, 1,000th and 32nd correct.

[Michael Knowles]

Mm, very fair minded of you, Senator. Credit where credit is due. It also, you know, frankly, this ties in even too the idea that Elizabeth Warren, she lies for her whole career. She pretends to be an Indian. She goes about her liawatha, you know, prancing around, and then she gets called out for it and then just poof, as though nothing happened.

[Ted Cruz]

She's nothing to say here.

[Michael Knowles]

She has the audacity to say, happy Indigenous People's Day. This woman who's made a career about being an Indian, she's the whitest woman ever walked the face of the earth. But it doesn't matter because the ruling.

[Ted Cruz]

Class, she saw an episode of the Lone Ranger. Clearly that qualifies.

[Michael Knowles]

She did, that's true. That's what began her love affair with masks. You know, her supportive masking was from the Lone Ranger.

[Ted Cruz]

So you're saying she just puts it in the wrong spot.

[Michael Knowles]

She put it in the wrong spot.

[Ted Cruz]

That's the answer. I will tell you as just a quick aside that's relevant to nothing. You know, Nancy Pelosi has a mask mandate in the House. And you know Dan Crenshaw, the congressman from Texas. I told Dan he should tell Nancy he's already wearing a mask over his eye.

[Michael Knowles]

And he earned that mask. I mean, he really earned that one. That mask stands for something real, not the filthy Fauci cloth.

[Liz Wheeler]

Of course, it's actual virtue.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes, it does. But I think, you know, that this, what it all comes down to with the Columbus issue is kind of being seen throughout all these other stories. Columbus, at least in my understanding, stands for America. He is an embodiment of Western civilization, in a way. Devoutly religious, intrepid, self made, doggedly determined, willing to explore unchartered territory, bring the gospel, bring civilization to a new land. He is America. And so the left hates his guts.

[Ted Cruz]

All right, so we've got a couple experts here. And listen, one of the reasons why I think people like Verdict, why they subscribe to Verdict, why they listen to Verdict, is they learn things. They learn things that are helpful when they're talking to friends, when they're talking to family, when they're engaged in the back and forth of life. So, so help me on this. I want to ask both of you if I hear, as my girls hear at school every year, that Christopher Columbus was a murdering, genocidal, evil psychopath who slaughtered the Native Americans, spread deadly disease, and should be viewed with shame and horror, what facts is that narrative leaving out?

[Michael Knowles]

Ladies first.

[Liz Wheeler]

Oh, thank you. I don't mind if I do. Okay, the genocide trope here, this is factually incorrect. So There were about 20 million Native Americans living in North America in 1492 when Columbus, you know, discovered our wonderful nation. And tragically, about 95% of them did die in the centuries following Columbus landing in the United States. But they did not die.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, I want to give him credit, he, he landed in the Caribbean. He found it actually much nicer land, you know, but then obviously a lot of other explorers came to these lands and yes, obviously disease spread. That's what happened.

[Liz Wheeler]

Just so you guys know, Michael and I have a friendly competition about who knows the most Christopher Columbus facts. This is a years long friendly feud, just so you're aware of what's going on here.

[Michael Knowles]

But disease, yes. And to your point, what sort of a genocide are we talking about when there are still indigenous peoples? I mean, there are still descendants. There was a lot of intermarriage between the Spaniards and the native peoples. So were there atrocities committed? Of course, there's no question about that.

[Ted Cruz]

But let's start with the simple fact that if you're measuring whether someone is good or evil, culpability matters. If you deliberately murder someone, that is far more culpable than if you have a car accident and accidentally take a life. In the case of Christopher Columbus and the explorers, is it true that they had germs and diseases that were not present in North America? Yes. Did they know what a germ was?

[Michael Knowles]

No.

[Ted Cruz]

It was 1492. They had no idea what a germ is. And if you're measuring culpability, to be carrying invisible things that you don't know exist that unbeknownst to you, cause disease, is a tragic outcome, but not one for which you can reasonably blame him as having made any decision to cause that.

[Liz Wheeler]

It also happened literally years and years and years after he was here. That wasn't even something that, you know, he brought. This was, you know, like I said, it's tragic for sure. It's an act of God, if you will. It's nature, it's, you know, health, it's germs. But it's not true that he committed genocide and the accusations against his character. I actually find this, you know, quite amusing. It's a little bit of reflective of our current times, I think there was a thesis, if you will, written about Christopher Columbus that maligned his character. And it was written by a man named Francisco di Babadia. Am I butchering the Italian here?

[Michael Knowles]

A little bit, but that's my Spanish. But it's okay, it's Spanish. Who cares? You can butcher their names as long as it's nice.

[Liz Wheeler]

This man was Columbus's chief political rival. So the equivalent now would be like if Hillary Clinton wrote the history about Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

[Ted Cruz]

It would be fair. It would be clearly fair, absolutely unrelated.

[Liz Wheeler]

Clearly accurate and that's where we get this idea, or that's what's taught in schools right now, that Christopher Columbus had this terrible character based on what was written by his chief political rival. That's not exactly an accurate view of.

[Michael Knowles]

History, by the way. There are other accounts from the times, and it's not as though they're just hagiographies. They paint the realities of what happened. But one, for instance, by Bartolome de las Casas, the first resident bishop of the Americas, considered one of the greatest defenders in history of the Native Americans.

[Ted Cruz]

That's why I asked them.

[Michael Knowles]

But de las Casas remained an admirer of Columbus for his entire life. And Carol Delaney, who's a Columbus historian from Stanford, she points out that much of what Columbus is accused of doing. There were murders, there was enslavement, there was were crimes committed by other people and in fact, by politicians who outfoxed Columbus. And in many cases, Columbus was the one arguing for leniency and trying to have a more humane policy.

[Ted Cruz]

So I will tell you guys, you're both new parents when your kids get older. Our girls are 10 and 13, and they start going to schools. And even in Houston, Texas, they engage in this propaganda. And listen, when I sit down with my girls, I still remember fourth grade. My eldest daughter came home with her friend and said, oh, Christopher Columbus is evil and genocidal. I was like, oh, genocidal. That's a big word. Fourth grade, wow. But. And I sat down and I said, look, I'm not vested in convincing you Christopher Columbus is the greatest man to ever live. I don't have a particular dog in that fight. But I did ask her, I said, you know, we do have a federal holiday named Columbus Day. Do we typically name federal holidays after genocidal maniacs? Do we have a Pol Pot Day?

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, Milosevic Day. You remember? I always. That's my favorite piece of.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, do we have a Stalin Day? I mean, that ought to pause for a second and make you think, well, okay, presumably someone saw something of value to make it a federal holiday. And what is depressing about in K through 12 education, in colleges and universities, in media, in journalism, is they are telling a narrative. And your first reaction on this, Michael, I think was really important because you said, Christopher Columbus, whether you hate Columbus is a proxy for whether you hate America.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

And when this was really struck me was last year at Thanksgiving when my girls came with their friends and they were saying, thanksgiving is another holiday that celebrates the Pilgrims oppressing the Indians. I'm like, what okay, what Thanksgiving is that like? No, it's not. And let me be clear. Look, when I was in school, did they teach a little bit of a sanitized history? Probably. Were there atrocities and murders and horrible mistreatment of native Americans? Undoubtedly, but it wasn't one sided. There were also, you know, I love asking lefties a simple question. You know, tell me from whence derives the verb to scalp?

[Michael Knowles]

Right?

[Ted Cruz]

Like we know what this word means and it was warfare and conquest. And so people on both sides did things that were not great. If you want to teach history with warts and all, that's great. But the thing to understand about those that want to teach Columbus was evil and those who want to teach Thanksgiving was evil. What they're really vested in teaching is that the western settlement of the New World, the founding of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, all of those were bad. All of those were a force for evil. This was a nation that began with evil and has perpetrated evil ever since. And I don't know that there is a proposition on the face of the planet. I disagree with more. America has been the greatest force for good in the history of the world.

[Michael Knowles]

This is such a good point because you hit on something here when you mentioned that the Indians, they could fight pretty hard too. I think it diminishes the native, the indigenous peoples when we pretend that they're just passive creatures and they are noble savage.

[Ted Cruz]

I mean, you know, it's patronizing. The left views them in this patronizing view instead of like they were human beings. There were good people and bad people and people kind of in between, you.

[Michael Knowles]

Know, when Columbus arrived at San Salvador, very religious man, named the island he land at San Salvador he encountered the Taino people who were by all accounts very amiable, lovely people. And they invented cigars. So I have a particular soft spot for them. So he encounters the Taino people. Some of the Taino had scars on their bodies. They had scars on their bodies because of another indigenous people's, the Carib people, from whom we get the word cannibal. They were cannibals. They bred babies to be eaten. And it's well attested to historically. There was ritual cannibalism in North America with the Iroquois. The Aztec civilization slaughtered 80,000 people in four days by ripping their beating hearts out of their chests to their gods that they were worshiping. Now I'm not saying, just as you point out that all of these people were awful and terrible and did terrible things. And I'm also not saying like the left does, that they were all the most wonderful, innocent people in the world, merely passive victims of the West. I think it's much more respectful to say they're people. There were people and they lived in cultures. And some of those cultures had bad ideas and some had good ideas. And we who are here today, regardless of the morality of any of these men, we owe our civilization to them. We owe our country to them. Do you like America? Do you like being here in this free land that we're all in? Well, then maybe have a little gratitude to your forefathers. But instead we stand on their shoulders and we think that we're flying. I want to talk about Columbus all night. I want to defend this guy and defend America. But we should get to some questions.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah.

[Liz Wheeler]

Do you guys want to do a question and answer now? Oh, yeah. You do? All right, so the rules of the game, you guys are familiar with this. Nobody crowd in the aisle. Everyone's question has to be a one part question, not a two part question, not a three part question. It has to be in question form. You can start lining up behind the microphone to do that.

[Ted Cruz]

So I have a question on the in question form. Can someone stand up and say, you're a miserable sob, aren't you? Does that count?

[Liz Wheeler]

Yes, but you will have to answer if they ask that question.

[Ted Cruz]

Just checking.

[Liz Wheeler]

Okay. And we're going to do something fun while you guys line up. Also, if there's anybody who disagrees with what we say, we'll have a producer bring you to the front of the room.

[Ted Cruz]

So where are the mics going to be? Who's going to have the mic?

[Liz Wheeler]

The mics are right here. Yep, right here in the front. You guys can line up and.

[Michael Knowles]

All right.

[Liz Wheeler]

While the students are lining up, while you're lining up to ask questions, we're going to do something kind of fun, kind of new. This is something you guys haven't done before. It comes from Verdict plus, which is your new all access portal if you want to see behind the scenes. You and I actually just did a little fun behind the scenes sneak peek before we came out here. But everybody who is part of that all access community submitted some questions for a lightning round.

[Ted Cruz]

All right, Fire away.

[Liz Wheeler]

Well, I have to say first, this is like a one word, two word, maximum three word. We're talking.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Are you suggesting sometimes we go on a little bit long on the answer?

[Liz Wheeler]

No, I'm suggesting that giving a lightning round to the two of you may be the hardest job that I've ever gotten. Okay, you guys ready? Yes, obviously. Senator goes first. Favorite ice cream flavor?

[Ted Cruz]

Coconut.

[Liz Wheeler]

Interesting.

[Ted Cruz]

I like coconut.

[Liz Wheeler]

You get two people applauding for that answer.

[Ted Cruz]

If you go down to the Caribbean and get fresh coconut, it's awesome.

[Liz Wheeler]

Okay, I'll take your word for it.

[Michael Knowles]

Chocolate chocolate chip. No, I'm joking. Coffee ice cream.

[Liz Wheeler]

Coffee. In which subject were you worst at school?

[Ted Cruz]

Handwriting.

[Liz Wheeler]

Oh, interesting.

[Ted Cruz]

And to this day, I still print all caps. My cursive is miserable.

[Liz Wheeler]

We can attest to that. We've seen his notes. Okay, favorite superhero.

[Michael Knowles]

Wait, I don't answer my worst subject.

[Liz Wheeler]

In which subject were you worst at school?

[Ted Cruz]

Michael.

[Liz Wheeler]

He was the kid who always raised his hand and asked the teacher, hold on. Shouldn't you be teaching?

[Ted Cruz]

I'm sorry. He doesn't understand the question. What do you mean by being bad in the subject?

[Liz Wheeler]

Answer the question.

[Michael Knowles]

My worst subject was gym class until tonight. With those footballs, baby. Now we're coming back. That's right.

[Liz Wheeler]

All right, you get this one. Favorite superhero?

[Michael Knowles]

Batman.

[Liz Wheeler]

Favorite superhero?

[Ted Cruz]

Spider Man.

[Liz Wheeler]

Oh, I think he got you on that one.

[Michael Knowles]

Spider Man.

[Ted Cruz]

Correct.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, he got you on that one. Cats or dogs?

[Ted Cruz]

Dogs.

[Michael Knowles]

Cats or dogs?

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah.

[Liz Wheeler]

Cats or dogs.

[Michael Knowles]

I'm a people person.

[Liz Wheeler]

I have a baby and a pet fish. Favorite saint.

[Michael Knowles]

Oh, where do I begin?

[Liz Wheeler]

One word answer.

[Michael Knowles]

Does Mary count?

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah.

[Ted Cruz]

Does she count?

[Michael Knowles]

It's kind of cheating. It's kind of cheating.

[Liz Wheeler]

But I guess two Catholics on this stage are counts.

[Michael Knowles]

Our wonderful mother, our Lady.

[Liz Wheeler]

Favorite saint?

[Ted Cruz]

I'm Southern Baptist.

[Michael Knowles]

The New Orleans Saints. Right.

[Ted Cruz]

Is that your favorite?

[Liz Wheeler]

The Saints still pray for you.

[Ted Cruz]

So actually, quick, quick aside. Yesterday after the show in Madison, he got a question about something about the Saints. I didn't understand the question. And I said to him, you know, where do the saints come from? Something like that. He gave this very learned answer about Catholic theology. And my answer was, well, I thought the Saints were good once they got Drew Brees, but that he cuts right.

[Michael Knowles]

To the chase, you know, gets to the heart of the question.

[Liz Wheeler]

All right, this is a really serious one. I think it's really going to dig deep. Tell us something about both of your character. Have you ever worn socks with sandals?

[Ted Cruz]

No, I'm not a socks with sandals guy.

[Liz Wheeler]

I'm worried. Worried about what Michael's answer is going to be.

[Michael Knowles]

Not only would I not wear socks with sandals, I would not wear socks with loafers. I'm very anti sock. It's not very. I'm a Northeasterner. No socks.

[Liz Wheeler]

That's a weird take.

[Ted Cruz]

You are literally wearing plaid socks right.

[Michael Knowles]

Now with Oxford Shoes.

[Ted Cruz]

Of course. Okay.

[Liz Wheeler]

All right, last lightning round question, then we're going to get to the controversial stuff. All right. What's your favorite book?

[Ted Cruz]

Look, it's trite to say the Bible, but you'd have to start with that. Atlas Shrugged is amazing. All right, so I'll go the Bible and then Atlas Shrugged.

[Liz Wheeler]

Okay, you can have more than one word for that answer because that's a good answer. All right, Michael.

[Michael Knowles]

Okay, we're saying the Bible is. That's sad.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, that's. We're talking about Second book. Second favorite.

[Michael Knowles]

I'll give you one novel and one nonfiction.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Michael Knowles]

Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky. And then I'm gonna give you a really esoteric answer. Poetic Diction by Owen Barfield. If you haven't read it, which I suspect not a single person in this room has, not a lot of people have found it. It's a great book. You should go read it.

[Liz Wheeler]

I'm gonna lose $5. Cause I thought he was gonna say his own book. Lost that bet. Speechless, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, before we get to the question and answer, a big round of applause, please, for the Young America's foundation, for putting on this amazing event and for sponsoring this event. The Logan family brought this event to life. Thank you to the Logan family.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you, as always, to the Logan family. Supported these tours throughout the years. Wonderful. Wonderful.

[Ted Cruz]

And I gotta say, Michael, you know, Liz is already more professional than you and I like. We're doing this thing, and we didn't even get around to thanking our hosts and our sponsors, like, you know, thank you for classing up the joint. She.

[Michael Knowles]

She does.

[Liz Wheeler]

My pleasure. My pleasure. It's my honor to be here. All right, are we ready for questions? So step right up here. First, introduce yourself. And if you want to address your question specifically to the senator, to Michael, or to me, go ahead and address it directly. What's your name?

[Michael Knowles]

Howdy. I'm Ben Kriyakat from College Station, Texas. And my question is for the senator. Senator Cruz, your training is in the law. And so my question is, what is.

[Ted Cruz]

The most important case, in your opinion, of the first half of the 20th century? First half of the 20th century. All right. That's a tough. So you've just excluded Brown versus Board of Education, which was 1954. I don't have a good answer for first half of the 20th century. And I'll tell you a strange thing about how my brain, how I remember things. I don't remember dates. Dates. I'm terrible at dates. It was when I was clerking for Chief Justice Rehnquist, it was interesting. His brain, like, everything was filed chronologically in a way that if you mentioned, you know, 1977, he had this perfect recall of what happened in 77, every case that occurred, what was happening, where, and it was. It was a remarkable thing. And what was cool about it? So when I clerked for him, he'd been on the the court for 25 years, and he would think of a case for those of y'all. Some may be in law school, some may be thinking of law school. You have a case that's a name, you know, Smith versus Jones. And you think of it as a case that stands for some legal proposition for the chief. It was a memory. And he would be like, oh, yes, Smith versus Jones. That was the case where Thurgood wanted to do such and such, but we didn't agree with him on that. And he was literally remembering the conference where they discussed the case. And so that. But for whatever reason, my brain is terrible at tagging things based on dates. So that's a lousy answer to a great question.

[Liz Wheeler]

Let me do a quick follow up to that, because I know you'll have a great answer for this. If we're talking 21st century and what do you think is the most important case that has shaped ongoing legal precedent from the constitutional perspective that we've seen in the past 20 years?

[Ted Cruz]

The past 20 years, I would say there are a couple of cases that were really pivotal. Number one is the Obamacare case, where Chief Justice Roberts really flipped on everything that he believes and knows. And John Roberts is someone I've known 25 years. He was also a Rehnquist clerk. He's an amazingly talented litigator. He was the best Supreme Court litigator of his generation. And when the first Obamacare decision came down, John made, I think, a very cynical decision to make a political decision. And so I remember reading the opinion, and it was a remarkable opinion where the first 80% of the opinion is fantastic. It's a challenge to Obamacare and all of the jurisprudential rulings on the Commerce clause, where he concludes that Congress doesn't have the authority under the Commerce clause to force people to purchase health insurance on the spending clause. All of his rulings are really strong, solid, principled. And then at the very end, he has a sleight of hand where he defines a tax, a penalty, rather as a tax. And he says what Obamacare described as a penalty. He says, well, if we just call it a tax, Then it's okay. And the law said repeatedly, it's not a tax. Obama said repeatedly, it's not a tax. The Congress said repeatedly, it's not a tax. And all Roberts had to do was this little sleight of hand and magically he upheld it. And what's been widely reported is that, that he initially voted with what was then the majority of the court to strike down the law. And then he changed his vote and flipped. And I got to say, I think that started John Roberts down a path. He knew what he was doing. He's too good a lawyer. This was not that he screwed up. This was. And look, to give them the benefit of the doubt, I think he thought he was preserving the Court from a political battle. But it will go down as one of the most political decisions in the history of the country.

[Michael Knowles]

But isn't that the irony that in trying to keep the Court above politics, he thrust the Court more into politics than it had been in decades, if ever.

[Ted Cruz]

And since then, he's done it repeatedly. It was, when you start giving up your principles a little bit, it's a very quick slippery slope. And he has now been doing it over and over and over again, you know, since Michael got a book plug. I'd be an idiot if I didn't get a book plug. Last book I wrote is a book called One Vote How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History. And the book goes through critical constitutional rights. Each chapter tells war stories about the Court. And so I talk about John Roberts quite a bit. I talk about the Obamacare case. I talk about other decisions. And I take people inside those conference rooms that Rehnquist would talk about, about how the major decisions, protecting free speech, protecting religious liberty, protecting the Second Amendment, almost all of those decisions are 5 to 4, that we're one vote away from either losing our liberties or preserving them.

[Liz Wheeler]

Right. Because to be. To choose to be apolitical is still a political decision, just like to choose to be an atheist is still a religious decision. And John Roberts should know better. He should know that. He should understand it.

[Ted Cruz]

And he does know better. That's the thing that makes it harder.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, I think so. Okay, we got to get to the next question or else we're going to be debating the Supreme Court until dawn. Please step up and introduce yourself. Hi.

[Ted Cruz]

Great shirt.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you.

[Ted Cruz]

By the way, would you briefly model the shirt for the crowd?

[Michael Knowles]

That's a great looking.

[Ted Cruz]

All right, so I'm Jackson, and my question was kind of about the Loudoun county thing because, like, you know, not just like that situation, but we also have a lot of crazy stuff going in public schools, like pornographic books in the library and stuff like that. And I was just wondering, like, since, like, we're most of us here, I think, are students that go to these schools, like, what can we do? Like, can we do something about that? Cause like, those are our schools. Michael, you want to take the first crack at this?

[Michael Knowles]

Sure. I think there actually is quite a lot that you can do. I don't think that you're going to solve this problem by snapping your fingers. And frankly, I don't think you're even going to solve this problem. Is it over yet? Did we do it? Please. I hope it works. Now it's like we're in like a beat poetry cafe or something, which is what a lot of public schools seem like these days. I don't think. And I also don't think that it's going to be one. By pretending that a third grade classroom is some free marketplace of ideas, that has never been the case. William F. Buckley, Jr. Launched the modern conservative movement, making fun of that radical view of academic freedom that pretends that teachers have the right to teach any manner of pornography or obscene craziness that they want to. They obviously don't have that right. I think the way that we begin to fix this is one students can speak up, and students should also speak to their parents, and parents should go speak to the school boards. And you're seeing it notably in Loudoun county right now, but you're seeing it at school boards around the country. And it's ordinary Americans of all stripes, of all shapes, of all persuasions. They are showing up and saying, we do not want this stuff in our schools. Our schools are going to educate students. They're going to teach them that some things are true and some things are false and some are good and some are bad. And we have a right to have a say over how our children are raised, especially when what the schools are teaching is so often false and evil and ugly and wrong and destructive for the individual and destructive for the country. And so they need to assert that political right and learn this magical word that conservatives haven't known very much recently, which is, no, no, enough, enough of this. We're not going to have it anymore in our schools.

[Liz Wheeler]

And if I may jump in too, I think before, before you get to the age that you're a parent and you're going to these school board meetings or you're running for school board, or you're challenging what you're seeing in your children's classroom. If you're a college student, the best thing that I think that you can do is get involved and get educated yourself on a personal level so that you are equipped to do this battle, to be part of this culture war. So read as many books as you can, educate yourself on all the issues, learn the arguments of the other side so that you can debunk them, delve into your faith, find communities of like minded people. Make sure that you are preparing yourself to be a contributing member of society, of the community. Get married, have children, raise them to be good Christian children who are patriots, who love America.

[Michael Knowles]

Out breeding them is always a fun strategy. It's a good, it's an effective strategy.

[Ted Cruz]

And hence the A and M victory over Alabama.

[Liz Wheeler]

And I mean that's pretty much the conglomerate. That's a lot of advice.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, and I'll say on this, look, I think it varies depending on age. And so what's appropriate in elementary school is very different from what's appropriate in high school. You know, as kids get older, as kids get into high school, I'm actually a believer that more is better. So I don't want folks going through the libraries and pulling out. You see people pulling out like Huckleberry Finn because it contains language that they deem offensive. I'd rather kids read a variety of stuff that good, bad, and more information. And certainly as you get to college, part of it is our school shouldn't be indoctrinating children. Education is about teaching, not ensuring that you subscribe to a political view. And when it comes to schools that are putting, you know, sexually graphic pornography in the curriculum in the libraries, look, the last I checked, high school kids don't need the schools to be like telling them sex exists. Like they, it's out there.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, they've seen it. They've seen it.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, when I was in college, I went to Princeton. Actually dated a girl from A and M. They're very different campuses. But there was a popular shirt at Princeton that said sex kills. And on the back it said come to Princeton, Live forever.

[Liz Wheeler]

On that note, before we get to your question, you guys may have noticed that there's a hat hanging on the cactus right here behind the senator. I don't know what it's doing there, but if you guys are interested in verdict merch, we have new verdict merch. You can go to verdict with TedCruz.com shop and if you use the promo code live, you probably all have a little card on your seat, right? That you got. If you use the promo code live, you get 10% off of our new merch store. And it's all kinds of, what, like, cactus paraphernalia?

[Michael Knowles]

Mostly cactus paraphernalia. A little bit with me and the senator, but mostly it's the star of the show, really.

[Liz Wheeler]

Their faces aren't on the merch. The cactus is upstaging them. So. So I don't know what to tell you. It's pretty cool.

[Ted Cruz]

It's a little depressing. We've been doing this for two years. We've been trying to, like, have some interesting content and be worth listening to, and we've gotten completely upstaged by a succulent.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes.

[Liz Wheeler]

But just FYI, in case anybody missed that at the beginning of the show, who is your question directed to? What is your name?

[Michael Knowles]

My name is Dalton Flatt.

[Ted Cruz]

I'm from southeast Kansas. I'm a senior agricultural economics student here at A and M. And my question is directed towards all three of y'all. What was the defining moment that made you decide that this is something that.

[Michael Knowles]

You wanted to do for the rest of your lives? Politics, you mean?

[Ted Cruz]

Yes, sir.

[Michael Knowles]

So this sounds like a Kamala Harris bogus answer, but it's actually real, you know, fwiedom. It wasn't that, but it was similar.

[Liz Wheeler]

I had momentarily forgotten about that.

[Michael Knowles]

It's similar when I.

[Ted Cruz]

When I. Wait, can we pause and reflect that she hired child actors to come in. Like. Like, who the hell does that? Like, that's weird. I'm sorry. Your answer on your formative moments.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, actually, Senator, when she put out that video, that was the moment I decided to get out of politics.

[Ted Cruz]

I said, I've had enough of this.

[Michael Knowles]

When I. When I was a little kid, I was like 2 or 3 years old, my grandfather taught me a phrase. I'm not joking or embellishing. He taught me this phrase, read my lips. No new taxes from George Bush. And I would recite it. It was one of the first sentences I was reciting. And he taught me, it's a grand old flag. And when I was six years old, I'm dating myself. Bob Dole was running for president. And I don't know where I got this from, but I freaking loved Bob Dole. I was the most enthusiastic Dole supporter, and I campaigned for him around my first grade classroom. I got my mother to go. She was going to vote for Clinton. I got her to vote for Dole and let me pull the lever. I was committing election fraud when I was six years old. These days, it's perfectly fine.

[Ted Cruz]

How are you not a Democrat, by the way? I will tell you. So I don't know Dole personally, but I'll tell you my favorite Bob Dole story, which was during the Iraq War. So 91 Dole's in the Senate, and I guess some. I don't know if it's the Iraqi foreign minister or some. Some highfalutin person from the Iraqi government had come by his office to meet with him. And we're in the middle of the Gulf War, and Dole apparently walks out into the hallway in the Senate. There's people crowding around. He goes, there Any military men here? And two young men step forward. They go, yes, sir, we're both United States Marines. He goes, good, there's an Iraqi in my office. Go kick his ass.

[Michael Knowles]

True story. Love him. Oh, that's. That's great.

[Ted Cruz]

Bob Dole would say that. Bob Dole would not.

[Michael Knowles]

So those were my moments, Senator.

[Ted Cruz]

So, look, mine were at the same age. It was two and three. And it was listening to my dad talking about being a freedom fighter in Cuba. And it was. I grew up with hearing stories of him being in prison, him being tortured, him coming to America seeking freedom. And it inspired me. I mean, I. From when I was this tall, all I ever wanted to do was fight for freedom.

[Michael Knowles]

Pretty good a good thing to fight for.

[Liz Wheeler]

Sometimes when, you know. You know, when you're called, you're just called. I mean, I was a little kid that carried around one of those. Remember those multicolored cassette, like, children's cassette recorders? I carried it around interviewing people when I was, like, 4 or 5. I made my sisters answer my questions and like, hounded them if they didn't answer things about the house. So that might be where some of my questioning came from. The conservative part, I think, as I think it is for a lot of people, is from my personal experience. I mean, I'm very Catholic. I'm very pro life. And so when you compare the two parties, when you compare the stances of the two parties, it's a pretty obvious choice which party respects the dignity of human life from conception to natural death, and which party seeks to destroy it. So that's an easy thing when it comes to the more, I guess, almost intellectual side, the economic side. I mean, in high school, I was diagnosed with a pretty serious health problem. It's similar to an autoimmune disease, and there's no known treatment, so I had to turn to, you know, alternative lifestyle stuff. Not that you guys want to know My life story. But that costs a lot of money. Anybody who, you know, has dealt with that nose, it's not covered by insurance. And I just realized that, thank God, that my father, a small business owner, had been responsible with his money and that he had saved. Instead of the government telling him what to do with his money, he was able to make that decision for himself. That really saved my life, enabled me to have the life that I have right now. And in a nation that didn't have free market or capitalism, that wouldn't be the case. I wouldn't be here right now. So how could I be anything other than conservative?

[Ted Cruz]

Awesome.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yes. My name is Bailey Cole. I'm from San Antonio, Texas. In a very weird what if scenario.

[Michael Knowles]

If Texas were to secede or any.

[Liz Wheeler]

Other state for that matter.

[Ted Cruz]

What do.

[Michael Knowles]

You think would be the best course of action? Or how do you think the federal government would respond? I think I know which side he's on. I don't know.

[Ted Cruz]

So, look, I gotta say, and it was kind of interesting. I was talking with Michael and Liz before the show, and they were asking, so, is the question of Texas secession going to come up? And I said, yeah, probably. And listen, I understand the sentiment behind the question. I'm not there yet. And we actually had a debate over drinks last night after the show. Listen, I think Texas has a responsibility to the country, and I'm not ready to give up on America. I love this country. And I think without Texas, look, Texas, we're brash, we're not shy, we're sometimes larger than life. But Texas is right now an amazing force keeping America from going off the cliff, keeping America grounded on the values that built this country, on the values of freedom, I think we have a responsibility. Now, listen, if the Democrats end the filibuster, if they fundamentally destroy the country, if they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections and massively expand voter fraud, there may come a point where it's hopeless. We're not there yet. And if there comes a point where it's hopeless, then I think we take NASA, we take the military, we take the oil. Take me.

[Michael Knowles]

Please take me.

[Ted Cruz]

I don't want to be trapped.

[Liz Wheeler]

What about Joe Rogan? Are you going to take him?

[Ted Cruz]

Joe Rogan? He might be the president of Texas.

[Liz Wheeler]

All right, let's get to the next question.

[Ted Cruz]

By the way, an interesting aside. So Heidi and I, the church we go to in Houston is First Baptist Church in Houston.

[Michael Knowles]

And there are like four Baptists in the audience.

[Ted Cruz]

There are four Baptists. This is for. But so I discovered something. Our church was founded by American missionaries coming to a foreign country. And so Texas was our own Nation from 1836 to 1845. We were the Republic of Texas. And during those nine years, at some point during it, missionaries came from the United States to this foreign nation, the Republic of Texas. And they founded the First Baptist Church. It was a missionary church. Wow.

[Michael Knowles]

Senator Cruz, my name is Rich Richeski. I'm a father of five. And I guess my question, I guess it's for all three. But I think conservative ideas have a lot to offer this country. When I was growing up, you probably remember the McLaughlin Group.

[Ted Cruz]

Oh, yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Favorite show of mine. I'm just curious, what is it in American culture, political commentary in the media that prevents a show from that coming up again where we can really see direct engagement of conservative ideas with liberal ideas? I do have an answer to it, and it's a very direct one. Jon Stewart prevented that. And the way Jon Stewart prevented that was he went on Crossfire, the CNN show. Actually, Tucker Carlson was the conservative host of that at the time. And he so viciously made fun of them, specifically Tucker, that they canceled the show. And that was the last one of those shows where you had a really open dialogue and debate between someone on the left and someone on the right. Now, maybe the culture was already trending in that way, but that was kind of the kill shot. You really haven't seen anything like it since. And the kind of snark. And a lot of that came from Stewart because he's a pretty talented television comedian.

[Ted Cruz]

He's a funny guy.

[Michael Knowles]

And he's a funny guy. And so because he wanted to be such a political player, I think he, through his talent and through his relative success, really transformed that. And I hope something. I agree with you entirely. I hope something like that comes back. But I put out feelers. I invite left wingers on my show all the time and very rarely do they agree to do it.

[Ted Cruz]

So 25 years ago, there was a show that was actually the first TV show I ever went on. It was a show called Debates Debates. And it was on PBS and it was hundreds of stations across the country. And it would have three people on one side debating three people on the other. And so the first time I had a chance to do it, I was a brand new baby lawyer. I was practicing law in D.C. and they asked me, the first topic was should we grant amnesty to America's political prisoners? By which they went, met people like Mumia Abu Jabal and people who murdered police officers that they call political prisoners. And someone called me and said, okay, are you willing to defend the conservative principle side of this? And I remember talking to the producer and saying, okay, so let me get this straight. You want me to defend the proposition that violent criminals should be punished?

[Michael Knowles]

Controversial?

[Ted Cruz]

Yes. Yes, I am comfortable with that position. And I did, I don't know, like, 15 or 20 of these shows. And it was, you know, it was really low budget. It made Verdict look totally Hollywood. And the guy who produced it was a guy named Warren Stibel, who was also the producer of Firing Line. And, you know, William F. Buckley would droop in the chair and have his, you know, voice of. He'd use these polysyllabic words that you'd have to go look up to be like, I don't know what that means, but, man, that sounds smart. And by the way, to be honest, Michael Knowles is the reincarnation of William F. Buck.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you very much, Senator. I've been trying for it my whole life. And, Senator, if you had not compared me to William F. Buckley, Jr. I would have smashed you in your face. You would have stayed. No, I would not have. I would never. But Buckley would do this. You know, he had this very urbane show. He would only occasionally threaten to punch somebody in the face.

[Ted Cruz]

Like Gore Vidal.

[Michael Knowles]

Like Gore Vidal. And frankly, you know, he might have deserved it, but you don't really see that anymore.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, and then there was. If you remember, there was a show called Hannity and Colt, and you had Sean Hannity and poor Alan Combs, who was the liberal. And. And it was like the Harlem Globetrotters, Like. Like Alan Combs was there to get his ass kicked every night. It was sort of like Alabama on Saturday. I'm going to keep going there. I'm just gonna keep going there. But. And it. Ultimately, it wasn't great TV because Sean just mopped the floor with him. So then they just made it Hannity. I wish there was more discussion. There ought to be more balanced discussion. You know, we try to do some of that on this show. So. So one of the people that listens to Verdict is. Is Heidi, my wife, which is amazing that she does it. And she, like, will run on the treadmill and listen to it because she says, hey, I learned stuff. But sometimes she will say. And she'll call Michael and she'll yell.

[Michael Knowles]

At number, come up. I say, that wasn't a good episode.

[Ted Cruz]

I guess she will be unvarnished. And she'll be like, all right, that One sucked. And it's inevitably she's like, when you get too dogmatic, when you and Michael are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, just like, you know, start pounding the table, like she said. What's much more interesting is, explain something to me. Let's go through an issue, understand what the other side is, understand why someone would believe that. And this is something the left never does. And so I do think it's something conservatives need to do more, is explaining and helping people think through and decide for themselves. And hopefully this podcast plays a role in that.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah, I think so. And I think maybe this is a little bit cynical. I hope not. But when you're analyzing why it's so difficult for conservatives and liberals to get together and debate, it's because a lot of liberals refuse to debate. And the reason that they refuse to debate is because when you present conservative arguments, they almost always win. Right. Conservative principles of limited government, of individual rights make people more prosperous and happy and freer, and they're better for the community and the family and the country. And leftists know this because their goal is not really to better our nation. Their goal is to accumulate more power. And so they don't want to debate us anymore because we've learned their tactics, we've learned what to do. But we do invite them, and we are respectful when we trounce them. We're very respectful. We're very nice to them. But they have a fundamentally different vision of our country, and they don't always want that exposed because most people, most voters on the right and the left don't agree with the radical leftist politicians in Washington, D.C. and that's the left, what they want kept secret. They don't want their voters to know that they actually, the politicians don't represent the voters.

[Ted Cruz]

And we ought to be able to discuss issues and disagree without getting personal and nasty, without calling someone an SOB to just say, well, that doesn't make any sense. And I think if we had more discussion based on actual facts and substance, I think it'd be better for everyone. Yeah.

[Liz Wheeler]

Yeah. And that's what we do. That's why we always invite students to disagree, too. So this will be the very last question. Hopefully, we've saved the best for last. What is your name and to whom is your question directed?

[Ted Cruz]

Good evening. My name is Elkanangela, and my question is directed towards the senator. You have endorsed Governor Abbott in the 2022 gubernatorial election. Out of the four candidates running, who do you think is most closely aligned with your beliefs? Governor Abbott has been governor for eight years. And he has been a major disappointment for most conservatives, shying away from many important issues.

[Michael Knowles]

I understand that you have a debt.

[Ted Cruz]

Of gratitude for him for your Solicitor General appointment, but do you feel that your friendship is more important than the future of the state of Texas?

[Michael Knowles]

Well, look, that's a spicy question for the last.

[Liz Wheeler]

I love that question.

[Ted Cruz]

All right, so let me say thank you for asking that question. It is a good question. Let me start by saying I think primaries are a good thing. I think elections are a good thing. I think candidates having to justify their record, having to justify what they believe to the voters is right at the heart of democracy. As you noted, I've endorsed Greg Abbott. And I went to a large Tea Party gathering that was in East Texas of a lot of the folks who worked very, very hard to elect me, who I know very well. And I will say that was a gathering about this size, about 800 people, and that particular room was overwhelmingly not supporting Abbott, which I knew they were vocally and aggressively supporting other candidates in the race. And I know the other candidates. They're good people. They're friends. I like and respect them. And I stood up and I explained to them why I was supporting Abbott. And I said, look, let me tell you my personal history with Abbott, which is in. In 2002. I first met Greg Abbott in November of 2002. So he. He had just been elected attorney general. And. And I was. At the time, I. I was a young lawyer. I was serving the George W. Bush administration in D.C. and I got a call from a friend of mine, and. And the friend said, hey, Abbott just got elected A.G. i said, yeah, I knew that I wasn't brain dead. And he said, well, he's looking for a solicitor general. Are you willing to have your name considered? And so I kind of thought about it for a minute. I said, well, let me talk to Heidi. Let me give us a day to think about it. I talked to Heidi. She said, sure, go for it. And so I said, sure. And so I sent in. Sent in a resume, and I got a call a week or two later, come down, fly down to Austin, interview. I'd never met him before. We did an interview. Frankly, I didn't think there was any chance I'd get the job. I was. At the time. I was 31 years old. I was just a few years out of law school. I'd only argued two cases in my life, one in the district court, one in a court of appeals, never argued in the Supreme Court. And I assumed Abbott would Hire someone who he'd known 20 years and that would be okay. That's the way of the world. I wouldn't, you know, I mean, I would understand that, but I assumed I'd have no prayer. A couple of weeks later, I get a call. He offers me the job. And no one was more astonished than Heidi. Heidi literally admitted to me that she encouraged me to apply because she said, there's no way on earth you will possibly get this job. So, sure, sweetheart, you should do this. So I came down and I worked with Greg Abbott. It's not just a debt of gratitude. Understand, this is not just personal friendship. I worked side by side with him for five and a half years, from the beginning of 03 to the middle of 08. And in those five and a half years, so when I started, I'm brand new in the job. Here are the marching orders he gave me. He said, look across the country, if we can defend conservative principles, if we can make a difference and go fight to defend conservative principles, go do it. And for. At the time, I just had turned 32. I was like, holy cow, what a job mandate. So for five and a half years, we were fighting for conservative principles over and over and over again. I'll tell you, during those times, I went into Abbott Heller versus District of Columbia, one of the big landmark cases before the Supreme Court. We defended the Second Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms. I went into Abbott, I said, look, let's go into the Court of Appeals. Let's fight for this. He said, absolutely. He had my back. We went to the supreme court, won a 5, 4 landmark case defending the Ten Commandments monument on the State Capitol grounds.

[Michael Knowles]

Really, really important case, a huge case.

[Ted Cruz]

We won a landmark 5, 4 case, Medellin versus Texas, which is probably the biggest case I argued at the Supreme Court. That was a case where the World Court and the United nations issued an order to the United States to reopen the convictions of 51 murderers across the country. And it was the first time a foreign court had ever tried to bind the US justice system. And the case took a weird turn because the President of the United States, George W. Bush, issued an order for the state courts to obey the World Court. And I went to Abbott and I said, look, we're standing up against George W. Bush, who is a Texan, who is a Republican, who is the President of the United States. And I'll tell you, Abbott didn't waver. And he said, go and fight and do the right thing. And we stood up to the world Court in the United nations and the President of the United States. And we won a 6, 3 decision striking down the world Court's order and striking down the president's order. Throughout all of that, I saw Abbott stand for conservative principles over and over again in big fights that other politicians.

[Michael Knowles]

Would shy away from, other conservative politicians would shy away from.

[Ted Cruz]

What I said and what I explained to this Tea Party group is number one. And by the way, then when I turn around and ran for office, Abbott has been a mentor, mentor to me for 20 years, has supported me, has campaigned for me, has been with me. As I, as I said to this group, I said, look, I would be an ungrateful jackass if I didn't support Greg Abbott. But I also, he is a good man, he is a decent man and he has fought for conservative principles for decades. Now, listen, as governor, do I agree with every decision he's made? No. And I think during COVID in particular, these have been challenging times for governors. I don't agree with everything he's made. And that's why we have elections, that's why we have debates to discuss what decisions made sense and what decisions didn't. But I'm supporting Greg Abbott because I've got two decades of history by his side and I've seen him fight for Texas and fight for conservative principles over and over and over again.

[Michael Knowles]

That's a good answer.

[Liz Wheeler]

That's an answer right there. That's a comprehensive answer of somebody who's thought through their position.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, I would have just said the Ten Commandments case was enough for me, but the Medellin case, I mean, that's really important stuff. And I think your point, Senator, is so important. We have primaries for a reason. Reason. We have elections for a reason. We at least used to have election integrity measures, but we get it. We're getting them back in place. We're fighting.

[Ted Cruz]

We're fighting.

[Michael Knowles]

They want more questions. I wish we could stay here.

[Liz Wheeler]

Can I actually break in for a second? If you want to ask more questions, you can go to verdict with TedCruz.com plus it's the all access portal. And we will, Senator Cruz and I will be taking live questions there on a fairly regular basis. And pro questions, con questions, anything. So we don't have all the time in the world. You can actually get a free one month trial again on your little card there's a promo code live. So if you use that promo code, you can, you don't even have to pay for the first month. You get that for free. And we'll be taking questions. So we want to take all the questions that we possibly can. So, please, we invite you to join us there.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

And I want to thank everyone who came out tonight, because I think you are embodying that spirit of. Of making your voices heard, of making our democracy, which we hear much about, of making it actually work, of fighting for a better country. I, of course, want to thank our friend Liz Wheeler for coming out here.

[Liz Wheeler]

It's my honor. My honor, my privilege.

[Ted Cruz]

And, Michael, let me say there's only one way to wrap up a verdict at Texas A and M, and that is quite simply gigam.

[Michael Knowles]

Gigam. Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much.