← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Democrats Were Getting Excited Until 'You Know What' Hit The Fan
00:37:34
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- [00:00]
Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is Verdict with sinner Ted Cruz. Before we even get started, today's show is going to have a lot of big information in it. Grab a piece of paper, grab a pencil and make sure you hit that subscribe or auto download button because with all this special prosecutor we may be doing breaking news shows. You don't want to miss those. So if you hit subscribe or auto download, you'll know every time we do a podcast. With that being said, Senator, it has been one hell of a week for Democrats. They thought they were coming out of this, this midterm election with some momentum. They were excited about gas prices coming down a little bit. They were excited about the approval rating numbers coming up a little bit for Joe Biden. David Gergen put it this way, saying he was very excited until all the, you know, what hit the fan with these documents about the political fallout, which.
- [00:55]
David Gergen
Could be considerable and unwelcome to the administration. Certainly coming, as Phil Mattingly mentioned, with inflation cooling, g prices dropping and the president's approval numbers growing in the polls, at least before this. Joining us is CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, White House insider for Democrats and Republicans alike dating back to the Nixon years. Also CNN political commentator and former Pennsylvania Republican congressman Charlie Dent and CNN political analyst Jackie Kucinich. She's Washington bureau chief for the Boston Globe. David Gergen, let's start with you. How big a mess is this for the Biden administration?
- [01:24]
Charlie Dent
It's very, very big. Not legally, but politically, it's a very, very big deal. You know, this is a president who was marching upward for the first time in his presidency. He's got his numbers up. People are feeling better about the economy. There are all sorts of reasons to believe that he can now present himself. The fears that people like me have about how old is he and can he govern? Well, those fears would be dissipated if he were able to stay on that track. But now along comes this gigantic story which was totally unexpected and it's knocked out, knocked for six, the original plan now. But I do think that they, that the Biden people, they may be making a big mistake. Anderson, I may be wrong about this. I think they've done a wonderful job being cooperative with the government and they've done a quote by the book as they were saying. But I don't think sitting there hunkering down now, they're just acting like it's not out there is a good strategy. They're just going to have kind of get cream doing.
- [02:21]
David Gergen
There's also been the drip, drip, drip of information. Some.
- [02:24]
Ted Cruz
I mean, let's just stop there, Senator. They want an honorable mention, it sounds like, for being, quote, transparent. Yet this story keeps drip, drip, dripping. And even those the media like Gergen are saying, well, I don't believe he's in trouble legally, he's just in trouble politically. Do you buy that?
- [02:44]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, I'll say a number of things listening to that excerpt. Number one, CNN continues to self satirize as you look at their panel discussing President Biden's political fortunes and you have four liberals discussing it. You've got Jake Tapper, who's gone dramatically to the left. You have David Gergen, who was, of course, a senior White House official to Bill Clinton, always worked with Republicans as well, but he's always been left of center. You've got Kucinich, who's far left of center. And then you've got Charlie Dent, who's probably the most liberal Republican to serve in the House in a long time. So that's their panel. Normally you and I would be upset. And by the way, you know, you've logged a lot of miles, Ben, on cnn. So you're familiar with stacked panels of the left hand and the far left hand sitting down.
- [03:28]
Ted Cruz
Seven years in hell, as we describe it, the seven years of in hell is what I did. I did my tour of duty.
- [03:34]
Jackie Kucinich
So it's just amusing listening to Tapper go through the panel. But then you have Gergen. Even a panel of people on the left are sitting there going, holy crap, as Gergen put it, Biden's getting creamed. This last week was one of the worst weeks, if not politically the worst week of the Biden administration. You'd have to go back to the absolute disaster in Afghanistan, to 13American servicemen and women being murdered, to find a week that politically caused as much consternation in the Oval Office as this week did. And it was. It's a mess and it keeps getting worse.
- [04:14]
Ted Cruz
All right, I want to get your take on this, Senator, but before we get to that, I want to tell you about our good friends over at Patriot Mobile. If you've got a cell phone, you need to check out Patriot Mobile, because every time you use your phone, every time you send a text, and every time you pay your bill, you will be supporting conservative causes that we believe in. We're talking about defending the first and Second Amendment rights, the rights of the unborn, helping with adoptions, funding of those adoptions. That's why we love Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile is a conservative Christian cell phone company, the only one. And instead of giving your money to big mobile, where they're fighting against your traditional family values. Patriot Mobile was started so that you could work with a company that actually made a difference with every phone call you make. Patriot Mobile also gives you nationwide coverage. They give you unlimited talk and text. They give you the exact same coverage you have right now because you'll be using the exact same cell phone towers, except when you pay your bill, you'll be standing up for the values you believe in. So check them out. Patriotmobile.com verdict. That's patriot mobile.com verdict. Use the promo code. Verdict. You can also call them 972-patriot. That's 972patriot or patriotmobile.com verdict well, you look at the White House press secretary. I, John Pierre, this is just my personal opinion, may be one of the worst White House press secretaries that I've ever seen when it comes to adapting and having to deal with things that are, quote, as I would describe it, outside of the talking point, she's great at walking up there, sticking to a script. Perfect example of that is on Thursday, the White House said six different times that the search for classified documents was, quote, complete. That's talking points. In reality, we found out that more classified documents were discovered after she said this. And here's the montage.
- [06:23]
Jackie Kucinich
The search is clearly complete. They completed the search. The search is complete. He is confident in this process. You should assume that it's been completed. Yes, after the search concluded last night. That search was completed last night.
- [06:37]
Ted Cruz
I mean, either she's an idiot or she's willfully lying to the American people. And that, I think, goes back to what David Gergen was saying.
- [06:45]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, to be fair, as a matter of logic, those two are not mutually exclusive. Yeah, she can be both. And I will say that she's an exceptionally poor liar. I mean, it really is amazing. The Biden White House hires her to stand up and say things that are demonstrably false, and she says them over and over and over again. We've talked a lot on this pod about how she claims nobody's crossing the border illegally. Like, Never mind the 5.3 million. They don't exist. These aren't the droids you're looking for. She just stands up there and gaslights. She stands up and says, you know, it was the Republicans who wanted to shut schools down. She is willing to lie, which is not a good characteristic for a press secretary. But then she's bad at it. You know, the best press secretary we may have seen in modern Times was Mike McCurry. For Bill Clinton. And when Bill Clinton had all the scandals, had Monica Lewinsky, McCurry could stand up there and he just had an aw shucks way of, yeah, okay, my, my boss is an inveterate liar, but he was charming about it. She's not. And, and, and if you look at what she says, part of the problem with her lying is she lies in ways that are easy to get caught. So she said over and over again as you just played that the search was complete. The search was complete. The search was complete. There was just one problem. Those facts were inoperative. And so you mentioned at the start of the pod, to write things down, let's go through the timeline. So on Monday of this past week, the Biden White House revealed to the world what it claimed the facts were. And here's what it claimed. It claimed that on November 2, the President's personal lawyers just happened to be packing up his old office at the Penn Biden center. And they discovered documents that were classified as they were going through. Now as, as we've talked about earlier, it's a little bit odd. Those are high priced movers if you're hiring lawyers to pack up and move. But that's, that's the story they're claiming. So that was November 2nd. The White House claims they immediately contacted the archives and on November 4, the National Archives informed DOJ. Now you'll recall when the stormtroopers came into Mar A Lago, how they leaked over and over and over again. You know what didn't happen on November 4th when the Department of Justice was informed was they didn't leak anything. They didn't leak anything. They didn't tell the American people anything. By the way, there was an election coming up November 8th and boy, the secrecy was tight. Never mind that this happened. Never mind that this happened. So that that occurred. And then in December, Biden's personal attorney informed the prosecutor was investigating this, that a second set of documents had been found, this time in the garage of Biden's house right next to that now infamous Corvette and also some more in another adjoining room. I still don't think we know whether it's a bathroom, whether it's the washing machine room, you know, whether it's his massage room. I don't know if he has a massage room, whatever the room is next to the garage that they don't want to tell us. Then on Wednesday of last week, the Biden attorneys found another classified document at yet another location at the, at his Wilmington residence. And, and that's when Karine Jean Pierre said the search is complete. The search is complete. The search is complete, except that they found five more on Thursday. And so, you know, as we sit here, the question is, what's coming next? And the drip, drip, drip. It is amazing as a competence matter that apparently they're not able to figure out where else. I mean, I mean, what. What was this guy doing just sticking classified documents everywhere? I mean, that. That's just a little weird at this point. And they can't even figure out, like, if you sit down and you're like, oh, crap, this is bad. What can we do? What can we do? All right, number one step, number one in the crisis, let's get ahead of it. Let's figure out what the facts are. Let's actually do the damn search. Apparently, they can't do that because I fully expect this week we're going to discover, you know, in his. In his gym bag, packed under his Speedos or the nuclear codes, I mean, has gotten so bad that it's a punchline, and that is not a good thing. And they're screwing it up by making it even worse.
- [11:12]
Ted Cruz
You look at the special prosecutor who is named for this case, and you want to talk about. You look at, for example, I'll compare this for a moment to Mar A Lago. We knew, and they knew where these documents were at Mar A Lago. They even had come in and looked at these documents and knew they were a, quote, you know, an area that they agreed upon that was more secure or a secure room. I mean, there was a lot of conversations. From what we understand, the difference with this one is these documents we know, had to have been moved multiple times just based on the timeline, just based on when the pen center even opened and he had access to it. We don't know if these documents were at one point altogether. And now they've. They've shown up in three different locations. We have no idea who had access to these documents or who were around them. And I've noticed this other theme center, which is, well, this is a political problem. David Gergen said that, but not a legal one for him. How can they say that when we don't even know what the documents are yet? And we know they're classified. We also, there's a bunch of other documents around these documents that were. That dealt with foreign countries that apparently were not classified. I mean, what if a lot of this information deals with their business and financial dealings and info that would give them a leg up on China and Ukraine with Burisma and other things like that. How can you just walk out there and say, well, we're not worried about this anything legally where this is more optics politically.
- [12:43]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, you're right that right now we don't know what's in the documents. What has been reported and or leaked is that at least one of the documents was SCI code word clearance, which is the highest level of clearance. So it's not the bottom level is secret. Then there's top secret. But SCI code word is for very sensitive materials. And at least one of the documents apparently was classified at that highest level. We have also heard reports and leaks that they concerned foreign countries, concerned the United Kingdom and China and Iran, we don't know in what respect. And Ukraine, as we talked about on the last pod, if these documents involved Biden's personal financial dealings with these countries, either Joe Biden's or Hunter Biden's or Joe Biden's brothers, that takes this to a qualitatively different place. At this point, we have no indication that that's the fact, but that would be a massive escalation. Why is it the Democrats are convinced there's no legal liability? I think the answer is they have confidence in Merrick Garland. And you know, you and I recently did a pod right after Robert Hur, the special counsel, was named. And we were one of the very first analyses out there looking into her's background. And at the time, I pointed out that he had been principal associate Deputy Attorney General under Rod Rosenstein. And I said that did not give comfort. What we've seen since then is not only was he a protege of Rod Rosenstein, he was also a protege of Chris Wray, the director of the FBI, who sadly, Chris, I think has presided over an FBI that has continued to be deeply partisan, that has continued to be political players. Now, it is not as egregious as it was under his predecessor under James Comey, where Comey was actively part of the problem. But, but, but Chris Wray has been unwilling to clean house, unwilling to get rid of the hard partisan career officials at the FBI. And so when it comes to if you're a Democratic partisan and you realize, well, wait a second. Every decision here is going to be made by, number one, a guy that's Chris Wray and Rod Rosenstein's protege, but number two, ultimately by Merrick Garland, who has already proven to be the most political attorney general ever, I think you have a level of comfort that this is a messaging problem and not a legal problem, that they're going to justify well, everything was done right here, no matter what was done, because in their view, there is such a qualitative difference between Biden and Trump that whatever the facts, it can be swept under the rug. What becomes hard and the reason they view this as a political problem is they have one target, and that is Donald John Trump. That is their target. And politically, this now makes it messy for Democrats to get up and say having classified documents in places other than secured lockdown skiffs is disastrous. That's very difficult. When Joe Biden seems to leave them everywhere he goes, that's what they're wrestling with politically. But I think they have confidence that the guys investigating it, there's not going to be legal peril for Biden or the people surrounding it.
- [16:18]
Ted Cruz
Representative James Comer, he said one of his big problems with this on say the union Sunday morning was that the special counsel has been called for Biden, yet his attorneys were still rummaging what he described as the crime scene individuals that do not, in fact, have top secret clearance. Take a listen. James comer of Kentucky.
- [16:38]
Jackie Kucinich
Mr. Chairman, thanks for joining us.
- [16:40]
Ted Cruz
Let's start on the news yesterday that.
- [16:42]
Jackie Kucinich
Five additional pages of classified documents were.
- [16:45]
David Gergen
Found at President Biden's residence in that.
- [16:47]
Jackie Kucinich
Wilmington suburb in a room adjacent to the garage. What's your reaction to this latest development?
- [16:55]
David Gergen
Well, my concern is that special counsel was called for, but yet hours after that we still had the president's personal attorneys who have no security clearance, still rummaging around the president's residence looking for things. I mean, that would essentially be a crime scene, so to speak, after the appointment of a special counsel. So, you know, we have a lot of questions for the National Archives. We have a lot of questions for the Department of Justice, and hopefully we'll be getting some answers very soon.
- [17:24]
Ted Cruz
I mean, it's an active crime scene is the way he described it. And they're just rummaging through, I guess they're just going through everything trying to find papers. What does the law say about this? I mean, if they know that there's classified documents, can they just send staffers and random lawyers who do not have top secret clearance to like, hey, you know, go through everything in this room and this room and this room and then let us know what you find?
- [17:48]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, look, what this illustrates is the rampant double standard. Now. Now, to be clear, and we talked about this early on when, when the issue of the Mar A Lago raid occurred, that, that presidents of both parties for a long time have had disputes over documents. And presidents keep documents to prepare Memoirs and presidents complete keep documents to to prepare for their presidential libraries. Now, Biden's a little bit different in that it appears all of these documents were from his time as vice president or not and not president. I say all of them. I'm not actually, the ones at the pen center were from the vice presidential time. I don't know that they publicly said whether the Corvette documents or the latest documents in his Wilmington home were from his time as president or vice president. If they have said it, I haven't seen that reported. And Merrick Garland is not giving any details. But look, there is some element of presidents have some ability to work with investigations and to endeavor to comply and to turn over materials. What is striking is that's not the leniency they gave Donald Trump. They sent in FBI agents to raid. And so when I think the third or fourth tranche of documents were discovered with Biden, I jumped on Twitter and said, you know, so when's the FBI raid happening? And that's just, I think the FBI raid of Mar A Lago was wrong. And so I'm not actually calling for an FBI raid of Biden's residence. But it's very difficult for a Democrat to explain, well, why do we only raid Trump and not our guy? Now they'll say their talking point in response is, well, our guy's complying. Well, he's not complying very well. And he keeps finding more and more and more. And you're right that who knows who the heck they're sending in there, looking around and what documents they are. What has been demonstrated is they don't know what's there. So it's very hard for them to claim that they are complying with a classified document security protocol, given that from all appearances, they have no idea what documents exist, where, and yet they're sending in who knows whom to go look for.
- [20:01]
Ted Cruz
I said this the other day when this first broke and you and I were chatting about it. I said, I wonder if this is not a great opportunity for Democrats to say, all right, we get rid of our problem, and that's Joe Biden. We got through the midterms. Now maybe this is our off ramp. We can bring in our new person. Adam Schiff was on ABC this week and, I mean, shocked the hell out of me when he had this to say.
- [20:26]
David Gergen
The outgoing chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Schiff, you were on this show just after Attorney General Garland appointed a special counsel in the case of the Trump documents. You said it was the right move. Do you feel the same way about this special counsel. I do think it's the right move. The Attorney General has to make sure that not only is justice evenly applied, but the appearances of justice are also satisfactory to the public. And here I don't think he had any choice but to appoint a special counsel. And I think that special counsel will do the proper assessment. I still would like to see Congress do its own assessment of and receive an assessment from the intelligence community of whether there was an exposure to others of these documents, whether it was harm to national security in the case of either set of documents with either president. But, yes, I think the special counsel was appropriately appointed. Jonathan, if I could.
- [21:24]
Ted Cruz
I mean, you hear him say that there, Senator, and that's not what I was expecting from Adam Schiff at all.
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Jackie Kucinich
Well, it is surprising, and I do think Democrats are reeling and trying to figure out how to respond to this. It's premature to say that the analysis of it is what you suggested, that this is Democrats trying to throw Joe Biden to the curb. What I would say is that today's congressional Democrats hate Donald Trump much more than they love Joe Biden. So they're frustrated because they recognize this mess is a real political problem for their effort to go after Trump. And so they're reacting with that frustration of, wait a second, we must go after Beelzebub. And you are making it difficult for us to go after Beelzebub. Actually, I say that the odds that they would know who Beelzebub is are actually quite low because that would suggest some familiarity with. With. Well, I'm. I'm gonna. I'm gonna be nice. I'm. I'm gonna go the high road and not. Not finish that thought. With respect to Joe Biden, I think Democrats are divided right now on Joe Biden. Just about everyone recognizes that he's too damn old and that his age is a real issue and that competence has been a real issue. At the same time, Democrats are pretty good at message discipline. And so they have uniformly circled the wagons around him and said, he's our guy. We're going to defend him no matter what. Now, there are a ton of ambitious Democrats circling the carcass of the White House who want to run. And we've talked about all the Democrats, whether it's Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom or Elizabeth Warren. I think there are a lot of them that are eager to run. And I've said multiple times, I do not believe Joe Biden will be the Democrat Nominee in 24 I don't think he'll run. He's of course saying he's going to run. So I think within the Democratic circles there's a divide. Are there people that would like to push Biden out? Yes, but they're not sure who they want to replace him. And I think what we're seeing now is more frustration that this makes it harder to go after Trump than necessarily an effort to jettison Biden, although it could develop in time into the latter.
- [23:56]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, it's, it's going to be very different. Interesting to see how this plays out, but it seems like it, this story, ha. We haven't even gotten the end of the storyline here because they keep screwing this up and the White House keeps lying and saying this is it. I wouldn't be surprised if we they find more documents today, tomorrow, the next day at this point, because it seems like they're all over the place and that there was no one who was actually looking out for these classified documents. If that is the case, is there possibility of a, of a real criminal esque probe into this special counsel?
- [24:30]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, and in fact, I'm going to go one further. So this podcast is coming out Monday morning. I'm going to wager you a beer that by a week from today, by next Monday, they will have found more classified documents. So if I win, you're buying me a beer and if you win, you're buying me a beer. Either way, we get beer. So it's actually a win. Win.
- [24:51]
Ted Cruz
I was going to say we both win this one.
- [24:52]
Jackie Kucinich
I like it, but I think they're going to find more. I think they're. You know, I had an old boss, one of my first bosses when I came out of law school used to say to me, ted, never blame on malice. What can be explained with incompetence. There's a lot of truth to that at this point. I think the White House guys desperately wish they knew about what classified documents were where. And I don't think they do yet. I think they're still going through a sock drawer. I think they're still trying to figure out, okay, what else. What else is where. And it's amazing to me just how poorly they've executed it. I think there's more to come. The next. If there's not, the next big shoe to drop is going to be, what are these documents? You know, it's one thing, I've read a lot of classified documents in the last decade. There's some classified documents that frankly, damned if I know why they're classified. They, you know, say things like, you know, Russia is big and cold. Okay, that's classified. I'm, you know, because some, some person put a classified label like they say things that everyone knows and, and don't really say anything. And I actually think there's a problem in government of over classification. We've seen this administration, we saw the, the Biden, the Obama administration classify things that were just politically embarrassing. That, that's another category where it doesn't impact national security. It just is embarrassing to the party in power. I think a lot of the stuff about Afghanistan and the disaster of Biden's horrible withdrawal there falls into that category of, well, we certainly don't want anyone to know what happened. So it's all classified, depending on what it is. If the materials are classified, but on a reasonable assessment did not pose an acute danger to national security, that's one thing. If the materials, on the other hand are, and as I said, we know of at least one document that is SCI code word classified. If they are materials that could endanger sources and methods that at the most extreme could uncover an undercover operative and risk his or her life, that takes it to a very different level. We don't know yet. I think there is.
- [27:12]
Ted Cruz
You mentioned it twice now. Sci co word, one of these documents. Can you explain who is even able to see that level of classification, how that works? Because you mentioned it now twice. And for a lot of people listening, they're going to say, okay, why is that one so much more of a big deal? And what type of things would be under that type of clearance compared to other things that say top secret?
- [27:37]
Jackie Kucinich
So, so there's a hierarchy from secret to top secret to sci code word. And even sci code word, you're not read into everything. They're, they're kept in separate silos and on some level it's fair up, fairly intuitive. The higher level of classification is information that is more risky to national security, more important, so it could reveal things. I mean, the catch word that is most typically used is sources and methods. Now what does that mean? That could mean that we have a wire tap, we have some bad guy's phone tap, we have some satellite interception going on. And so we don't want the bad guy to know his phone is tapped. And so that's one reason why, you know, if it's, you know, we heard Ben Ferguson calling and, and you know, doing something nefarious on his phone, well, we don't want Ben to know we got him tapped. So that's going to be at a higher level classification. There's another component of it. Maybe the guy mowing Ben's lawn is a CIA agent undercover and he's wearing a wire trying to catch Ben doing nefarious things. By the end of this, Ben, you're going to be really nervous.
- [28:45]
Ted Cruz
I would say I'm going to be in serious trouble by the end of this.
- [28:50]
Jackie Kucinich
But if we have an undercover operative that's placed either a CIA agent or more often an asset, somebody who's working for an enemy of America or even sometimes just another country, another player who's been turned, who, who, who our intelligence officers have convinced, cooperate and provide information to us. You don't want that falling in enemy hands in worse circumstances. And we've seen, particularly at the height of the Cold War, but we've also seen it with China where they find spies and they kill them.
- [29:21]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [29:21]
Jackie Kucinich
Like it, it can endanger it. It can result in our agents being murdered if information that reveals their identity is made public. That's a spectrum. But then there's an entire other matrix here that you've referenced a couple of times. But it both legally and politically is qualitatively different. If this involves the Biden's family's pecuniary gain, if this involves documents where Joe Biden and his family were making a buck, we know that they made a buck with a bunch of shady characters in Ukraine and communist China, we know that they've done that. I actually don't think these documents are about that because that just would be so monumentally stupid that it boggles the mind. I suspect they're not about that. But if suddenly it were something intertwined with the significant evidence of personal corruption, that's when you start to take it to very serious legal jeopardy. We have no evidence to suggest that's the case. But if it were the case, it would be a massive escalation.
- [30:36]
Ted Cruz
Two more things I want to ask you, and one, I love looking at what the headlines are trying to sell you from the media when there's a big story. One of the headlines, Washington Post, big headline. Right. While all this is going on that we've been talking about for the last 20 something minutes, their headline read, House Republicans Prepare emergency plan for breaching the debt limit. They said they're preparing for a plan telling the Treasury Department what could do if Congress and the White House don't agree to lift the nation's debt limit later this year, underscoring the brinksmanship newly empowered conservatives will bring to the high stakes negotiations over Averting a US Default. According to six people aware of the internal discussions. This is months away and they happen to write this story on the first big Saturday of a special counsel of the President, United States of America, acting like the Republicans are about to default on debt. Is this a big distraction or just something that should be on people's radar screens?
- [31:38]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, this is going to be a big fight. And we've talked about on this podcast how this was what the leadership battle was all about. It was whether the Republican majority in the House and for that matter the Republicans in the Senate are going to use the legal power we have, use the levers of power that we have to force meaningful reforms in fiscal and spending policy. And right at the heart of the battle over the speaker was trying to force the new leadership in the House to be willing to use those levers. I believe we're going to see a huge fight in Washington over the debt ceiling and we're also going to see a huge fight in Washington over funding of the government. Why is that? Because those historically have been the two most effective and in many times the only effective levers to force an opposing party to give in and pass meaningful spending or fiscal reform. Now the media plays their role as Democratic mouthpieces and immediately demonizes any effort to use those levers. Uh, and let me be clear. When it comes to the debt ceiling, my view is not that we should default on the debt. We should never, ever, ever default on the debt. It is that we should use it as a lever to force significant spending and fiscal concession from the administration. And it has proven to be a very effective lever going back decades. This is the press trying to set the stage for that battle. And, and, and spoiler alert, the press is going to say the Republicans are crazy lunatics and the answer is just to give trillions of dollars to Joe Biden and the Democrats to keep bankrupting America. That's going to be their position. This article is trying to say that that fight is coming, but it's not a fight playing out today. It'll play out sometime in the future.
- [33:28]
Ted Cruz
Lastly, this is a story that for everybody that listens, it just made me laugh. I didn't think it was real and then I found out it was real. There is a new government funded senator and that means our tax dollars food pyramid that was unveiled at the White House. Now this happens a couple months ago back in September, the White House hosted a conference apparently that focused on nutrition, health and hunger in America. And one of the main organizers of the event and Currently the dean of the Tufts School of Nutrition presented a newly designed food pyramid that only cost three years of time and millions of taxpayers dollars. Now this wisdom in the new pyramid has on there when it comes to nutritional value that in fact Lucky Charms the cereal is almost 2x, more 2x healthier than steak. Now at the top of the list there's stuff that you and I would probably say, okay, makes sense. Watermelon was 100, kale was 100. Frosted mini wheats were an 87. Unsweetened almond milk in 86 non fat frozen yogurt and 80 chocolate covered almonds. A 78. Honey Nut Cheerios a 76. Dates were tied with that. But then you go down and you start looking at this and they actually say that for example, almond M&Ms. Better double the nutritional value they claim of ground beef. Cheddar is second from the bottom, egg fried and butter is at the bottom. It's like it's a war on traditional palates. And they're saying that Lucky charms have a 60 on their scale. Beef is a 26. Your reaction or taxpayer dollars saying to a pyramid scheme, I would say it's perfect to say it that way, that Lucky Charms are better for you than steak.
- [35:26]
Jackie Kucinich
Well, it's stunning. It's propaganda. It reminds me of an old line, you know, if you don't drink, you don't smoke and you don't eat red meat, you may not live to a hundred, but it'll feel like it. Look, this, this is a bunch of lefties who hate meat, who want us all to be, you know, vegans feeding on grass and sprouts and, you know, kale's a hundred. I wouldn't know. I, it can be a thousand for all I care. I'm not in the kale business. I will say though, I am envious. Apparently these guys hired some government employee whose job it was to eat Lucky Charms and steak. Yeah, that'd be a good job. I like Lucky Charms, by the way. Very soon the nihilists in the Democratic Party are going to say, you can't say Lucky Charms. You know, the Fighting Irish, we've already gotten rid of the Redskins. The Fighting Irish are coming next. And it's not, you know, a leprechaun is, is, is, you know, insensitive to the wee people.
- [36:28]
Ted Cruz
I just can't wait for someone to start giving me health advice. I'm just that I was unsolicited and I'm just going to give him a box of Lucky Charms. But hey, that's what the government said you should be eating. So there you go.
- [36:39]
Jackie Kucinich
And I do hope that that you know every Democrat who wishes you and me ill, and there are a lot of them, maybe they could just buy us a steak. That'd be okay, you know.
- [36:48]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. They can get rid of it faster, right? Kill me by filet. I'm fine with that. I'll take that every day. You can't make it up. That's your tax dollars at work. Center. Always a pleasure. As I said, don't forget, forget to hit that subscriber auto download button. If there is big breaking news that happens with this investigation, we, we will more than likely put out a, a a quick podcast. So if you hit that subscriber auto download button, you'll have that automatically on your phone or wherever you listen and you'll know when we go with those quick ones that are obviously outside of the Monday, Wednesday, Fridays that we normally put out these podcasts. So make sure you do that center. Have a great rest of your day. We'll see all you guys back here on Wednesday.