Michael Knowles (6:37)

Senator, do you think, though, that Republicans are gonna face any backlash knowing that the Democrats control the media? Do you think they're gonna face backlash for not voting for a Covid relief bill? You know, they're letting people hang out to dry amid this unprecedented crisis. I mean, will the Democrats succeed way at manipulating Republican voters? Even if, you know, 90% or 90% plus of this bill is just pork for Democrats? Do you think that message will be effective at all?

Ted Cruz (7:10)

We'll see. There's no doubt the media will relentlessly shill for the Democrats because that's what they do now. They don't pretend otherwise. I do think you will see Republicans voting for significant Covid relief tomorrow in the form of. This is being brought up through the process called budget reconciliation, which we've talked about before. It's the main exception to the filibuster rule. It's the main way you can pass legislation where you don't need 60 votes in the Senate. You can just do it with 50. One aspect of budget reconciliation is votorama. We talked in an earlier verdict about voterama unlimited amendments. That's by statute. And so normally the majority leader can shut down amendments. And we've seen, sadly, majority leaders in both parties do that. If you're using budget reconciliation, you can't shut down amendments. I expect a lot of amendments tomorrow night. I think it is likely we will go all night. I think we may go into the morning, we may even go further than that into Friday. I think there is a real anger among Republicans in the Senate at this bill, at. You know, Joe Biden gave an inauguration speech talking about unity and bipartisanship, and he starts his administration by saying to half the country, go jump in a lake. Today he called the 29 million people in Texas he called us Neanderthals. He's mad that Texas is open. And so, you know, he just. Apparently we're cavemen. We're like in the Geico commercial and we're just cavemen. You know, that's, you know, great job. They're unifying, you know, I mean, it's reminiscent of Hillary calling, calling half the country deplorables. It is a level of condescension. And if you look at this bill. All right, so the bill that passed the House had Chuck Schumer's bridge to Canada because apparently that somehow will help us defeat Covid. The bill in the House had Nancy Pelosi's tunnel of love, a tunnel in Silicon Valley.

Michael Knowles (9:14)

Do I want to know what that is? I don't.

Ted Cruz (9:16)

This doesn't sound, it's not X rated. It's just, it's just a boondoggle port project that Pelosi wanted to bring back to Silicon Valley. Has zero to do with COVID Nothing at all. And actually, even with the media shilling for him, it was interesting. Pelosi blinked last night and pulled it out. So it's interesting with just the tiniest bit of attention. You know, there's a provision in this bill that forgives loans to farmers from historically disadvantaged races. Now it is explicitly race tied and it has no income test. So if you are a rich farmer who happens to be African American, happens to be Hispanic, happens to be Asian, your loans will be forgiven. If you are a poor white farmer, no soup for you, of course, you're too privileged. But it's worse than that. It is explicitly race based. Not only are they forgiving it the loans, do you know what rate they're forgiving the loans at? 120%. That's literally written into the bill. 120%. If you are from an historically disadvantaged race or ethnicity. Look, we were talking about this at lunch and I turned to Ron Johnson, I said, I gotta get me a farm, you know, I'm Hispanic. Hell, if they're gonna like 120% like, I mean it is laughable and indefensible and the bill is filled with garbage like that.

Michael Knowles (10:54)

I wanna get to just on this point, Senator, something you mentioned. Cuz I hadn't heard it put this way before, but I think it sums it up. Boring but radical. And it seems that the way that Joe Biden has gotten away with this kind of stuff is he doesn't really hold press conferences. He was asked today about the briefing he had on the border and all these migrants who were coming over. They said, were you BR on the border? He said, yes. They said, what did you learn? He said, a lot. And then he just kept walking and wouldn't answer. So it's very effective if you can have cover by the media and you can just sort of push these things through, people aren't gonna look at it, and you'll be able to get your agenda. But there have been times, as you note, where the minute that a little light is shed on this, in the case of Pelosi's pork spending, or in the case of the nomination of Neera Tanden, a particularly radical nominee, Joe Biden's nominee for the Office of Management and Budget, the minute a little bit of light is shined on, all of a sudden, Joe Biden has a much harder time pushing this agenda through.

Ted Cruz (11:50)

Well, so I actually take a different lesson from Neera Tanden. So Neera Tanden was nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget. It's a Cabinet position, very important Cabinet position. And I don't know Neera, but apparently she was an activist and outspoken and led this political think tank shop. And she had this habit of tweeting hard partisan attacks at senators. And it seemed that she had criticized just about every senator. One of the senators she criticized all the time was Bernie Sanders, because she was a hardcore Hillary supporter. So she blasted Bernie constantly. She blasted Republicans. Mitch McConnell, I think she called Mitch Voldemort, which was pretty funny. She blasted Susan Collins. I mean, she said, Susan Collins is the worst. And apparently she has nine pages of tweets about me.

Michael Knowles (12:52)

I knew she was not a fan of your senator, but I didn't know it was quite that extensive, her commentary.

Ted Cruz (12:57)

So my first reaction is she's really not very good at Twitter, because I don't think I've ever read a tweet she sent about me. And I'm on Twitter a lot, so it says something like, the only one I know the content of, which Rob Portman, Senator Republican from Ohio, read at her hearing, where she tweeted that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz. And so I hadn't seen it when she said it, but when Rob read it at the hearing, I laughed out loud and I jumped on Twitter and said, you know, why is she being so mean to vampires?

Michael Knowles (13:28)

Yeah, that's outrageous.

Ted Cruz (13:30)

But what's interesting, what she went down for was not being radical. What she went down for. She'd criticized a bunch of senators, right? She'd sent some mean tweets. And it was interesting last week I did Hugh Hewitt's radio show. And you know Hugh, he's a good guy. He's a friend. And interestingly, it surprised me. Hugh pushed me on this and pressed me really hard to vote for Neera Tanden. And I was like, really? Why? Like what? And he's like, well, the standard can't be that mean. Tweets makes you unconfirmable. And I actually had a bit of a constitutional debate with you where I said, you know, you're a constitutional scholar, Hugh. The constitutional system provides for executive nominations to be made by the President, confirmed by the Senate. And it has been true since the very first Congress that if you attack and blast a bunch of senators, you ain't getting confirmed. Like, it's real simple. This is not actually a Twitter phenomenon. I promise you, in the George Washington administration, if you wanted to get nominated to the cabinet and you attacked a bunch of senators, they're gonna vote against you. Hugh pressed me on. He said, well, she's not the worst of Biden's nominees. And I actually agree in terms of substance, Mayorkas, the DHS Secretary was much worse. He's been a radical. He's pushing for open borders. And I think the most indefensible nominee is Javier Becerra, who's been nominated to lead HHS Health and Human Services. And Hugh agreed with me on that. And he said, well, maybe you should go to Manchin, because the reason she went down is Joe Manchin said he wouldn't vote for Neera Tanden. And Hugh said, well, go to Manchin and you and Joe together announce you're gonna support Neera Tanden and he'll save her nomination and convince him to vote instead against Becerra. I said, I tell you what, Hugh, if you can get Manchin to vote no on Becerra, sure, I'll vote for Neritandan. And here's why. Let's stop for a second on Becerra, because I think it's likely to be a party line vote right now. I think it appears every Democrat will vote for him and every Republican will vote. Now, Becerra is the Attorney General, California. He's a longtime congressman. He's been nominated to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. He's not a doctor. He has no scientific background. He has no medical background. He has no background in health care administration. He has no background in virology and vaccines. He has no background even in logistics. HHS is right now in the middle of the largest vaccine distribution effort our country has ever seen. Joe Biden has nominated a trial lawyer who's a radical leftist. As far as I can tell, his only experience with healthcare is suing the little sisters of the poor, which he denies. You're right.

Michael Knowles (16:19)

During his testimony, he said, I never sued the nuns.

Ted Cruz (16:23)

If you're having to explain why you didn't technically sue nuns, that's a problem.

Michael Knowles (16:28)

You're not in a good position.

Ted Cruz (16:29)

Right, but just on the merits of it, pause and think about what the reaction would be if a Republican president nominated as secretary of HHS someone with zero medical experience, zero health experience, zero experience with anything related to hhs. In the midst of a global pandemic, when HHS is incredibly important, this guy is wildly unqualified. But why did he get the nomination? Number one, the Democrats, it's a box checking exercise, and so he's Hispanic. That fits their desire to check that box. But number two, he's been a radical and so they want him for his political positions. I think we actually ought to have someone running HHS who, I don't know, knows something about viruses. I mean, I mean, is that asking too much? And Biden claims, claims his priorities defeating Covid, and yet he nominates someone with no medical experience and mind you, at the same time saying follow the science. Except the person he's putting there doesn't know anything about science.

Michael Knowles (17:34)

Well, of course. And the Becerra nomination, especially as someone who fled the Republic of California, Mussolini's dictatorship of California, as some of us call it. I remember Becerra, he's a very radical guy. But to your point earlier of boring but radical, you know, I expect radicalism from someone like Becerra. I expect radicalism from someone like Neera Tandon. But you made the point, I believe this week that even the so called moderate nominees, people like Merrick Garland, who's nominated for Attorney General, he's supposed to be the moderate guy. He's supposed to be maybe the most moderate person that Biden puts up. He would appear to be just as radical as everybody else. From his testimony, maybe.

Ted Cruz (18:18)

So when Biden nominated Merrick Garland, my initial reaction, I was relieved because there are a lot of radical partisan lawyers that could have been nominated as ag. For that matter. Javier Becerra is actually qualified to be ag. He's not qualified for hhs, but he is in fact an Attorney General. Becerra is a rabid partisan. So he would have been a much worse Attorney General on the face of it than Merrick Garland. Merrick Garland spent 23 years as a court of appeals judge. He's a Democrat. He was in the Clinton administration, but he hasn't built a reputation as a hard partisan. His reputation as a judge has been one of integrity, and he hasn't been seen as overly partisan. I was gratified. My reaction was, you know what? This may be about the best we can hope for from the Biden administration. I think there were a number of Republicans on Senate Judiciary that were initially inclined to vote for Merrick Garland. At his confirmation hearing, it was remarkable because he refused to answer essentially anything he was asked question after question after question, and he just refused to answer them. So a lot of the questions concern John Durham. Now, John Durham is the special counsel that was appointed to investigate the abuse of power Operation Crossfire Hurricane and the extent to which the Obama Biden administration broke the law in targeting Donald Trump. Very important investigation. Merrick Garland was asked by me and others, are you gonna fire him? That is a really important question if you're gonna have any semblance of integrity and rule of law at the Department of Justice. Now, when Bill Barr was nominated Bag, he was asked the same thing about Bob Mueller. Are you gonna fire him? And Barr said. He said he would only fire him for good cause. And so that was during his confirmation hearing. Barr said, absent good cause, no, he wouldn't fire him. And he didn't. He let Mueller complete his investigation, submit his report. Barr kept his word on that. Garland refused to make that commitment. We said, how about you hold to the same standard Bill Barr did? Will you agree only to fire him for good cause? Nope, can't do that. I don't know anything about it. Just don't know anything about it. And I'm not gonna make the commitment. And he did that over and over and over again. And then I actually submitted a lot of senators, submitted questions for the record, in writing. And he would see in writing. He refused to take a position. He was asked, Will DoJ prosecute people across the border illegally? He said, I don't know. I can't tell you. That shouldn't be complicated. The Constitution obliges the President to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He said, I can't tell you if we'll prosecute people who cross the border illegally. I asked him if the Department of Justice would urge the courts to overturn the Heller decision, which upheld the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. He wouldn't tell us that. One after the other after the other, where he refused to answer even the barest minimum of questions. And I gotta say, it was Sad. After all of that, after essentially telling the senators, go jump in a lake. I'm not gonna answer any of your questions. All the Democrats voted for him and a bunch of the Republicans voted for him.

Michael Knowles (21:33)

Yeah.

Ted Cruz (21:33)

And you kind of throw your hands up in the air. I still don't know if he will be a hard partisan as Attorney General. He is very likely to be confirmed, but I have no reason to think that he will have any willingness to stand up to the hard partisans that will surround him based on his performance at his confirmation hearing. It was the Sergeant Schultz dissents. I see nothing. I know nothing. I mean, that is essentially what he was telling us.

Michael Knowles (22:02)

Cuz what you would hope from the so called moderate nominee. I shared your relief actually, when, when it was reported that Garland was gonna get the nomination over some of the radical people. But you would expect from the so called moderate nominee to give you some answer, to give you some reason to have confidence in their moderation. We didn't get that. But you're seeing this as part of a broader strategy from the White House. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was asked, will Joe Biden force doctors to violate their conscience and performed abortions? She couldn't give an answer on that. Jen Psaki was asked about a possible world in which Mexico sends 600,000 to 800,000 migrants to the United States to work. She was asked for a comment on that. She said, well, she couldn't possibly comment on that. This just quiet dismissal of questions and the kind of boring radicalism that we're getting is pretty worrisome. And I have to bring it up because you're probably the most famous reader of Dr. Seuss in the entire country outside of politics, outside of the government. You're seeing private companies canceling Dr. Seuss, taking the spuds off of Mr. Potato Head, and now taking very ordinary mainstream scholarly books off of Amazon, largest bookseller in the world because they contradict left wing orthodoxies. It feels as though the liberal establishment is colluding and closing in on us.

Ted Cruz (23:32)

It is the Death Star and they're trying to eliminate all their enemies. Look, Hasbro, you mentioned Mr. Potato Head. They dropped the mister. It's now just Potato Head. It's not Mr. Potato Head. It's not Mrs. Potato Head. It's just Potato Head.

Michael Knowles (23:46)

So much for preferred pronouns.

Ted Cruz (23:48)

And by the way, among the attachments on the Potato Head, I don't recall many that actually distinguished male and female. I'm glad for that. We didn't need to get that quite anatomically specific.

Michael Knowles (23:59)

True, true.

Ted Cruz (24:00)

You know, the Dr. Seuss thing is just moronic. And the president removed Dr. Seuss from. I don't know, what is it, National Reading Week or something. I don't even remember exactly what it is. Some celebration of reading that Dr. Seuss has usually been a part of that Biden pulled it out of. You know what's amazing? I looked today on Amazon, I was actually checking my own book, One Vote Away and, you know, periodically seeing where I'm. By the way, if you haven't gone and bought One Vote Away, go on Amazon. You should buy it. It's a great book.

Michael Knowles (24:31)

Now's the time to do it too, before it gets canceled.

Ted Cruz (24:33)

Well, there is that, and I was checking it. And do you know the author of the top eight bestselling books on Amazon today? Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

Michael Knowles (24:46)

I'm gonna guess Dr. Seuss.

Ted Cruz (24:48)

And actually of the top hundred, more than half of the top hundred were Dr. Seuss. It's really funny. I have never seen on Amazon anything like this as people are going on. So I jumped on Twitter, I tweeted out a screenshot of that and said, you know, who knew Joe Biden was such a great bookseller? I asked him if he could try to ban my book. I mean, let's go back to number one on Amazon. We'll take it. But it is. And actually, the even more. The Dr. Seuss thing is idiotic. It's asinine. The even more dangerous thing is Amazon now taking down books it disagrees with.

Michael Knowles (25:24)

Right.

Ted Cruz (25:25)

Because Amazon has a near monopoly on book sales.

Michael Knowles (25:28)

Well, I do wanna pause you there, Senator, because this is an argument I hear from left wingers a lot when we decry Cancel Culture and Amazon taking down a very humorously titled but actually scholarly book from Ryan T. Anderson, which is called When Harry Became Sally. That's sort of the book at issue here. They say, michael, this isn't Cancel Culture. This is a private company that wants to take. Take out a product that they don't agree with. That's absolutely within their rights. Stop complaining. This is just the free market at work.

Ted Cruz (25:57)

Well, and that's the argument they use on social media and Big tech generally. They just say, go build your own. By the way, Parler did build their own, and Big Tech colluded to take them down and destroy them. And so they want no competition. It has long been US Laws that monopolies cannot abuse monopoly power. Amazon and Google are the two most powerful companies on the face of planet Earth. And when it Comes to books. Actually, your and my mutual friend Ben Shapiro has been really good on this topic and I've been retweeting him a lot this week. Because you think about Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic dystopian novel, 451 being the temperature at which paper burns. That's all about censorship and book burning. And today with Amazon, you don't actually have to burn the books anymore. Because if everything is becoming digital, you can burn books just by hitting delete. If Jeff Bezos gets to decide what books exist and what books don't. And you know, sure, it's a defense. Well, maybe there's some bookstore in Peoria that has the book, but everyone gets their books from Amazon. That is suddenly giving a tech overlord the power to say, here are the books that are now you are prohibited from reading functionally because our monopoly will not allow anyone to get them.

Michael Knowles (27:25)

Because big tech is already controlling the flow of news throughout the Internet. I mean, they're controlling the new public square. But this takes that even further. Now, as you say, I think it's such an astute point. When all the books are digital, they can go back and control the flow of classical information. They can go in. And if some big tech oligarch wanted to delete that book from your E reader, it's one reason that I find myself now buying physical media. Much more so because it is a threat. And I think to throw our hands in the air and say, oh, there's nothing we can do. It's a private company. I think it totally disregards the enormity of the problem. This has been, I'm sorry to say, a little bit of a downer of an episode and a downer of a first 42 days of an administration. So I do want to end on a high note with a mailbag question, and this is a genuine high note. This question from NBA Bubble Question for ted. How do you feel about Texas being reopened?

Ted Cruz (28:22)

Fantastic. It needed to happen. It is great. Look, Texans want to go back to work. We want to go back to school. And by the way, schools. We need to be talking more about schools. I'll give you a stat that is really stunning. 40% of school kids in America are back in in person school five days a week. 40%, less than half. That's staggering. And Democratic politicians do not give a damn because these kids, by the way, that are not going to school. It's now been a year. It's been a year with no school. And these Kids are falling behind. The data are showing they're falling behind six months, falling behind a year, and you never get that back. That's just lost. And we're getting a whole generation. And it's not uniformly distributed. So rich families are finding a way to educate their kids, whether it's going to a private school, whether it is doing homeschooling, whether it's hiring tutors. If you've got money, you're gonna make sure your kids are being educated. But low income kids, single moms, they don't have those choices, they don't have those abilities. And so if the local school isn't open, and in particular, if a single mom's working a couple of jobs and being pulled nine different directions, that just means those kids are getting left behind. They're not learning to read, they're not learning to write, they're not learning the skills they need for life. It disproportionately harms African American kids and Hispanic kids. And the Democratic Party doesn't care at all. They say, follow the science. The head of the CDC said kids need to be back in school. And they immediately said, oh, no, nevermind, never mind. Not that science.

Michael Knowles (30:06)

Yeah, don't.

Ted Cruz (30:08)

Why? Because the teachers union bosses don't want the schools open. And. And it's. This goes back to boring. But radical Joe Biden made the determination. He cares more about the money and the campaign donations from the teachers union bosses than he cares about 50 million school kids in this country. And the proof is in the pudding because they're willing to. So Gavin Newsom, the governor of your former state, was blasting Texas as it's utterly reckless because you're opening businesses and opening schools. I say God bless freedom. By the way, the press went a little bit crazy because I did William Wallace's cry of freedom at cpac. And I think a bunch of reporters started having fits and tremors of rage that I would do such a thing.

Michael Knowles (31:00)

Oh, it was so awful, they couldn't bear the word.

Ted Cruz (31:02)

But you know what? Californians are coming to Texas. It's almost like vampires and sunlight, to use an Ira Tanden reference. But look, there's a reason why thousands and thousands and thousands of Californians are fleeing California and coming to Texas because you can actually go to work, you can actually have a job, you can actually open your small business, you can actually have your kids in school. You can actually enjoy some freedom that we're not run by a bunch of nutbags. And by the way, Newsom, what does it say that Newsom is so crazy that he's getting recalled in bright blue California that even the left wing voters there like, whoa, dude, you've shut the whole state down for a year. This is a problem. And that's what Biden wants to do to the country.

Michael Knowles (31:47)

I know this is the glimmer of hope that I have to hold onto at least. And I think, obviously we're gonna see how this plays out. You're gonna be up all night at the Senate and voting on these sorts of things. If we can shed a little bit of light, then perhaps we can call people's attention to this boring yet radical agenda. And perhaps when you call enough people's attention to it, perhaps we'll be able to stop it and fight for freedom. We'll have to leave it there, but there will be much more to talk about next time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

Ted Cruz (32:28)

This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, jobs, freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.