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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
Riots have overtaken the country. Lawlessness abounds. And the genius Democrat policy proposal for dealing with all of it is to defund the police. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. We are in Washington, D.C. senator, you invited me here. On our last episode, you said we could have a stogie together if I just made it out to the East Coast. So I fly out and to basically the rubble of Washington D.C. i actually couldn't even get to my hotel room last night in my car because the National Guard was stationed all around it. What has happened to this place since the last time I was here?
- [00:46]
Ted Cruz
Well, it's gone nuts. And on top of that, in D.C. they don't even let you smoke a cigar.
- [00:51]
Michael Knowles
That's the worst part of all.
- [00:52]
Ted Cruz
Look, the crazy Democrats have banned cigars, but here's the good news. If you did actually light one up, I'm not sure they have the police officers to come arrest you.
- [01:01]
Michael Knowles
They don't. And it seems if the Democrats get their way, then we're gonna have even fewer police officers after that. You know, you have spent a good bit of your career in law enforcement. What's your take on this? Because it's at the most local level. The Minneapolis City Council voted overwhelmingly, veto proof majority, to abolish and dismantle their police department. And you're seeing Democrats at the federal level taking up anti police legislation as well.
- [01:26]
Ted Cruz
So let me try to understate this. This is stark raving nuts. This is insane. Did you see the Minneapolis mayor, the poor lefty guy who's trying to like, okay, what do you want me to say? I'll say whatever you want. They're like, okay, well, you abolish the whole police department. He said, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. They really have lost their mind now. Mind you, comrade de Blasio, like, goodbye me. We're cutting the cops. Like, your city is literally on fire, right? And their solution is abolish the police departments. By the way, these are the same morons that want to abolish ice. You know, they're just like, okay, let's get rid of everybody charged with protecting us. That is asinine. And it would end up killing a whole lot of people. If you think black lives matter. And let me be clear, black lives absolutely matter. Your dumb ass idea to abolish police departments will kill a lot of black lives, will kill a lot of Hispanic lives, will kill a lot of white lives, will kill a lot of people. And it's Dumb.
- [02:34]
Michael Knowles
Well, this I think is the point here because it's all the people who are saying black lives matter. And the people who are pushing these things are the ones who are pushing a policy that will have a very negative effect on black people. Because we spoke about this a little bit on the last show. I think there was study out that the number of unarmed black men who are killed by the police every year is. It's not a four digit number, it's not a three digit number, it's not a two digit number. Obviously every death is a tragedy and that's what they're focusing on. But the number of unarmed black men who are killed by criminals is very high. And when the criminals are in the neighborhood, who's gonna take care of it? The police? What is the effect of this gonna be in troubled areas around the country?
- [03:14]
Ted Cruz
It would be terrible if it happens. The victims of violent crime are disproportionately low income. Yeah. They're disproportionately minority African Americans and Hispanics. And we've seen in the past, we've seen what was called the Ferguson effect. You recall in Ferguson when you had riots against the police officers and what happened was police officers naturally, look, if you're a cop, you're out doing your job and you realize suddenly, okay, if I have a citizen encounter and it goes wrong, my whole life is over, my family's over, my career is over, everything could come crashing down. What cops naturally do is they pull back. They say, you know what, maybe I'll just not engage. We saw in Baltimore, after the riots in Baltimore, we saw the murder rates spike. Chicago, you look at the murder rates in Chicago year after year after year. And so if you end up pulling back the police and not letting them do their job, that means the criminals, the gang members, the violent murderers, the rapists, the robbers have no check on them. And the people who will pay the price, they're not gonna be, by the way, Hollywood celebrities in Beverly Hills, they're gonna be perfectly fine and protected. It's going to be the people who are vulnerable that need the police to keep them safe. Yes, we want the police to protect everyone's rights. But. But if you make the police go away, those who are in closest proximity to violent criminals, and that is heavily in low income areas, they're the ones that are gonna pay the biggest price.
- [04:57]
Michael Knowles
There's a lot of hypocrisy here. You see this kind of radicalism being pushed by people who will always enjoy the safety and security not only of the police, but of good neighborhoods. So there's a lot of hypocrisy.
- [05:06]
Ted Cruz
Michael, I got a question. Has Nancy Pelosi fired her police detail?
- [05:11]
Michael Knowles
You know, I.
- [05:12]
Ted Cruz
Has Chuck Schumer.
- [05:13]
Michael Knowles
No, I haven't gotten word about that.
- [05:15]
Ted Cruz
Has Bill de Blasio?
- [05:16]
Michael Knowles
No, no, certainly not. He's got his body.
- [05:18]
Ted Cruz
Well, why not? And by the way, let me be clear. I'm not calling on them to. I don't want them to be killed. Right, but why are they trying to cancel the police protection for their low income residents?
- [05:27]
Michael Knowles
It's police protection for me, but not for the. I think that's what we're hearing from a lot of Democrats.
- [05:32]
Ted Cruz
Remember de Blasio said that about the gym. You remember that during the coronavirus lockdown he shut down all the gyms and then he opened it up specially so he could go work out because he, you know, it's important that I be healthy, unlike the rest of you little people. The little people? He didn't quite say. It was just implied.
- [05:48]
Michael Knowles
This was. The mayor of Chicago said, no one can go get a haircut. Do not get a haircut, except for me. I need a haircut because I care about my appearance. And this hypocrisy actually on that point in particular ties in with the coronavirus because a lot of what we've been hearing, remember we did not do any shows in person. We social distanced for months because that's what the public health officials told us to do. Then all of a sudden, hundreds of thousands of people pour out into the streets in very close proximity in these protests. And the same public health officials who excoriated conservatives for demonstrating in any way peaceably against some of the lockdown overreaches, those same public health officials encouraged the protests and the riots and the arson that have accompanied them. Now, now all of a sudden we see a pivot back to backing away again. How are we to understand this if not as rank politicization of the public health sector?
- [06:43]
Ted Cruz
Well, no, no, there's actually science behind it. You see, the virus is woke. And this woke virus, if you are protesting with antifa, if you're arguing for abolishing the police, you can get thousands of you together. You can embrace, you can, you can kiss each other all over the place. You don't need masks. And the virus is actually marching alongside. That's great. You just, you need a microscope to see it. But it's sitting there like anyone saying, regardless of your politics, you turn on the tv, you see thousands and thousands of people smashed in very, very closely. And you're sitting there going, wait a second. Everyone said I had to stay home. Everyone said it was the end of the world if, like my kid went to school. Everyone said it was the end of the world if I went to my grandmother's funeral, that I would apparently kill the community, right? And then you turn on the TV and the same public health officials are saying, oh, no, no, this is perfectly fine, right?
- [07:49]
Michael Knowles
I mean, we were told first, do not wear masks, do not buy masks. Masks are not effective, they're actually harmful. Then we were told we all have to buy masks. We were told that the virus spreads very easily on surfaces. Part of the reason why we need to wear the mask. Then we were told it does not spread very easily on surfaces. We were told initially that asymptomatic people are the ones spreading coronavirus. The World Health Organization just came out this week and said that asymptomatic spread is very rare. So for those of us who are not scientific experts with lots of degrees, how are we supposed to think about this virus after the chaos of the past couple weeks?
- [08:27]
Ted Cruz
Well, look, let me take both sides of that. On one level, this virus has been hard to figure out. And the experts have genuinely struggled. And so they haven't necessarily understood how it operated. They didn't know what was gonna happen. They didn't know how easily it would be transmitted, how it would be transmitted. And I'm look, with a new virus, I'm understanding that the science takes some time to get out, figure it out. And you saw many leaders trying to protect people and keep people safe. It then became this woke virtue signaling where ostentatiously wearing a mask and shutting everything down became. It actually had nothing to do with the science. Like the whole flattening the curve. When's the last time someone actually said the phrase flattening the curve? Because we did. We did flatten the curve. And then they said, no, no, no, no, no. Everything must stay shut down until a cure is discovered and the virus is eradicated from planet Earth. You're like, wait, that wasn't the explanation you gave before. And then suddenly we didn't know it was. Or until we wanna have giant riots and burn the cities to the ground. So that's. Now it is the political hypocrisy. And also it's elected officials not giving a damn about people's livelihoods, not caring. And by the way, with both COVID 19 and the riots, we're seeing the same thing, which is small businesses being destroyed by the Shutdown. Democrats don't care. Small businesses being burned to the ground. Democrats don't care. And not only Democrats don't care. Did you see this editorial writer with the New York Times who said, property crime. So burning someone's business to the ground is not violence.
- [10:16]
Michael Knowles
It's not violence. How is that. See, I always thought that when you have Molotov cocktails and pitchforks and hammers, when you use that, that's violence. But listen, I'm not a genius like the people at the New York Times.
- [10:28]
Ted Cruz
It is. Well, look, I'll give you another example. Did you see the ostentatiously named president of the Minneapolis City Council? I love that the City Council has a president, but she was on TV saying, if someone breaks into your garage, if someone is coming and breaking into your home and you call the cops, that's your privilege. You're exercising privilege by calling the cops. Okay, I want everyone to get this straight because this is the problem. The lunatic have taken over. They're now saying you don't have a right. You should have no expectation that the police should protect your home from a burglar because of their crazy politics. That's nuts.
- [11:14]
Michael Knowles
Well, I want to get your thoughts on this, speaking of the New York Times, because I think there are two schools of thought on this. One school says the left has gone so insane encouraging political violence, completely losing all credibility on the coronavirus. They've gone so crazy that we're now at a tipping point where we're gonna swing back in a more conservative direction. I think the other school of thought is we're on the brink of revolution and people are as on edge as they've been since 1968. The New York Times published an op ed by your Senate colleague Tom Cotton, and it was an op ed about whether or not to call in troops to deal with the riots. The editor who took that op ed has now resigned from the New York Times. It got such blowback that the New York Times says we cannot publish any opinions that contradict leftist orthodoxy. That man's name, James Bennett, I believe that's right.
- [12:05]
Ted Cruz
And in our last podcast, you and I talked about this and you know, look, smacking the New York Times is, you know, it's kind of low hanging fruit.
- [12:15]
Michael Knowles
It is.
- [12:16]
Ted Cruz
And they're so bad that it's easy to point out how idiotic they. Yeah, and then they got worse. They literally fired their editor. Why? Because he dared publish from someone else? Not from the New York Times, from someone else. And by the way, his name was on it that the lefties in the newsroom disagreed with and it was the reporters. These reporters are little crybaby woke. We are suddenly we're back in like some leftist classroom where the reporters, if they hear news they don't like, they start hissing and suddenly what does the New York Times do? You're fired. Let me ask you something. When is the next time the New York Times or any other of these big papers are gonna publish any view other than absolute lefty orthodoxy?
- [13:14]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [13:16]
Ted Cruz
They are Pravda.
- [13:17]
Michael Knowles
This is a weird inversion here because typically what you might expect is, you know, at every news organization there's opinion and there's reporting and the reporters deal with the facts, right? Just the facts. And opinion interprets the facts and gives their point of view. You might expect the opinion people to complain about the reporters. That's a kind of natural view of things. But at the New York Times, it's the allegedly straight objective reporters who are throwing the hissy fit about an opinion column. This is completely flipped.
- [13:44]
Ted Cruz
The reporters are opinion journalists, but they all have one opinion. They're not allowed to disagree. You can't have any other view. And it's the rigidity of it. This is, it is very much. It's something of which communist China would be proud. Except making that point that New York Times wouldn't make because that would imply criticism for communist China. And I mean it is ridiculous and sad. And I've often said, look, if there's somebody listening who has some money, sometimes people ask me, all right, what do you read to learn news. And to be honest, I don't trust any place. Every place is biased and ridiculous point of view. So what I try to do is I try to read things on both sides to even it up. I actually the New York Times is unreadable. I will read the Washington Post, which they're hard lefty, but they're trying, they're trying a little bit to be objective. Then I'll read things like National Review and try to balance it out. But look, I think somebody with resources ought to buy one of these legacy masthead things like Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post. And you know what I'd do? I'd do an editorial page. I'd have a conservative and a liberal editor. And I have em both empowered to run stories. And so instead of. And to have debate, to trust the dialectic process. And I'll tell you what I'd do also is I'd have a conservative and a liberal news editor. Because so much of the bias in journalism Comes from picking which stories to run and which stories not to.
- [15:20]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [15:20]
Ted Cruz
So I'd have a real rock rib conservative and a real flaming lunatic liberal and say, both of you, you can have. And so people reading it through the synthesis can actually learn what's going on. None of the supposed mainstream media places are even trying to do.
- [15:37]
Michael Knowles
Of course not. But, you know, as the leftist media outlets run, the people who are not far, far radical leftists out. I don't know, maybe we should hire them to be producers here. I don't know. Maybe they can come on over. We certainly, I think, give a more balanced perspective than some of those outlets. But on this point of the left going too far.
- [15:53]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [15:54]
Michael Knowles
I know that you don't spend much of your day thinking about Harry Potter, but Harry Potter actually does play into this a little bit. The author of Harry Potter, J.K. rowling, is a left winger, a left wing activist, a feminist, but she thinks that the left has gone too far. She came out, she had a whole long tweet thread, and she signaled this point of view before where she said, look, I support people who are transgender. I support my transgender friends. I want them to be happy, I want them to feel comfortable. But it is simply the case that a woman is a woman, and there's something about being a woman that a man can't be. And she's trying to sort of like the Minneapolis mayor trying to come to this accommodation with the hard left. They are furious at her. Has it gone too far?
- [16:36]
Ted Cruz
There will be no moderation with the left. Right. They are. It's like Robespierre. It is the French Revolution and the Guillotines are coming. The guillotines already came for James Bennett, the editor of the New York Times, and others as well. Their. You can't get extreme enough because right now they're out extreme. Listen, a week ago, if I would have said, these idiots are gonna call for abolishing the police department. Oh, come on.
- [17:07]
Michael Knowles
It's not possible. It's ridiculous.
- [17:10]
Ted Cruz
We're at the point. And it will keep going and they will keep consuming themselves. Part of it is you don't give a damn if they come after you. They do, but it doesn't. You know, it helps that you don't wake up at night going, oh, no.
- [17:24]
Michael Knowles
What are they saying about me?
- [17:26]
Ted Cruz
Gosh, there is something liberating about this. Of course, these folks and look, you live in la.
- [17:36]
Michael Knowles
Don't remind me. Senator, please.
- [17:39]
Ted Cruz
You and I first got to know each other, among other things, through friends of abe. Yeah. Group of conservatives underground, in Hollywood, in entertainment. And I gotta tell you, first time I spoke to friends of Abe, I think it was 2013 or 2014. So six, seven years ago, about 400 people came out in LA. And what was striking, and there were some big famous people, There were people like Jon Voight was there actually Bruce Jenner before he was Caitlyn Jenner. Bruce was there.
- [18:11]
Michael Knowles
Pretty conservative.
- [18:15]
Ted Cruz
But you also had lots of lower level folks, people who were writers, people who were gaffers, people who were makeup artists, just kind of all working in Hollywood. And the degree of terror.
- [18:28]
Michael Knowles
Yes. Yeah.
- [18:29]
Ted Cruz
It's the only gathering I've ever been in. The rule is no photographs at all. No one with your phone. Everywhere else, you're always snapping. Because you know what, if you're someone working in Hollywood and they got a picture of you right of center, this was seven years ago, you could lose your job, you could destroy your career.
- [18:43]
Michael Knowles
Yep.
- [18:44]
Ted Cruz
That's now journalism as well. That's the New York Times. If you dare disagree with their propaganda, if you're not woke enough, if you just want to fight against police brutality, but you don't actually want to abolish the police department, well then off with your head.
- [19:03]
Michael Knowles
This is a great analogy. This hadn't occurred to me, but you expect this from Hollywood. We've heard about this for years. But it used to be the case that if you were a serious journalist, you could be photographed with a Democratic senator or a Republican senator. What the past few weeks have shown is you can't. You couldn't take a photo with Tom Cotton or you couldn't run his op ed. You really. The lines have been drawn. People are digging in their heels. You mentioned Robespierre and the French Revolution. I did have thoughts of this the other day because Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman, said that we're gonna abolish the police and we're gonna have a new imaginative approach to public safety. And you know, the committee that chopped off everybody's head in the French Revolution was the Committee of Public Safety.
- [19:45]
Ted Cruz
Well, and there is a consistency. The hard left has always been very comfortable with totalitarianism. Yeah, anytime they're talking about abolishing the police, it's not like force is going to disappear. It's just they want the monopoly on who exercises the force. And that is, you know, look, you look at communist dictatorships, whether Cuba, whether the Soviet Union, whether China, whether, whether Vietnam, I mean, vicious murder, torture, oppression, Nicaragua, Bernie Sanders, friends down in Nicaragua, this is consistent. And it's because they're Collectivists, and they're so damn self righteous that they're like, the Borg has ordered it. And if you dare disagree or question it. Right. You must be assimilated or destroyed. Yeah, listen, on the right, one of the beauties of liberty, there are all sorts of people I disagree with. Great.
- [20:45]
Michael Knowles
All right.
- [20:46]
Ted Cruz
More like a. I don't really want to hang out with people that just agree with me. I mean, that's utterly boring. But not on the left. On the left, it's like, you know what? We're living in the left. It's Handmaid's Tale.
- [21:00]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [21:01]
Ted Cruz
Right down to the mask.
- [21:02]
Michael Knowles
They're not even aware of it.
- [21:04]
Ted Cruz
They put everyone in masks and they must all say the same thing. And that is statists gonna status. That's what they do.
- [21:13]
Michael Knowles
And you are seeing some cracks. I mean, the fact that this New York Times editor, I think he's waking up to this J.K. rowling, a hardened leftist, I think she's waking up and saying, gosh, this is not the left that I thought I was a part of. This has gone too far. Either that could be a healthy thing for the country, we could swing back a little bit, or it's all broken and we're just living in the rubble.
- [21:33]
Ted Cruz
It wasn't too long ago when the left believed in free speech. As you know, I've got a book that's coming out later this year, and it's a book on the Supreme Court. It's called One Vote Away. It's talking about how all of our rights are hanging literally just one vote away. There's a whole chapter on free speech where it talks about a very famous Supreme Court case where a guy wore a jacket that said f the draft, although he didn't abbreviate it. And the Supreme Court quite rightly said that he had a First Amendment right to express that view, even if that view was profane, even if it might be distasteful. That used to be a mainstream liberal view. Yeah.
- [22:19]
Michael Knowles
No longer.
- [22:20]
Ted Cruz
No longer. Now the left not only is willing to silence anyone who disagrees, they demand that anyone who disagrees be silenced. That's terrifying.
- [22:31]
Michael Knowles
That's right. In the last moment or two that we have left, we've got to get through some very important mailbag questions. The most important one I saw is from GT at the top. Senator Cruz, thank you for your service in the Senate. What is your cigar of choice?
- [22:44]
Ted Cruz
Monte Cristo number one.
- [22:45]
Michael Knowles
Monte Cristo number one. It's a great cigar from Captain of the Silent Majority. That's A Twitter account. Do you support the use of force to protect historical sites and property being destroyed by rioters? I guess that means do you support the police basically going in and stopping the rioters?
- [23:02]
Ted Cruz
I support law enforcement stopping violence.
- [23:05]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [23:06]
Ted Cruz
Like, why is that controversial? If you try to hurt somebody, yeah, law enforcement should stop you. If you try to destroy somebody else's property, law enforcement should stop you. Look, we saw the idiocy reach its peak when in the past few days, a statue of Churchill was defaced. By the way, the original anti fascist, I mean, he literally. I couldn't help but send out a tweet and say, okay, look, he only defeated Hitler, defeated the Nazis, saved the free world.
- [23:43]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [23:44]
Ted Cruz
But you know, you're young and angry and you've got a can of spray paint. So your contributions to humanity and to equality. And by the way, Mr. Social Justice Warrior, in terms of equality, stopping the frigging Nazis from murdering people. Frank's pretty high up there.
- [24:01]
Michael Knowles
It's impressive.
- [24:02]
Ted Cruz
And yet they still wanted to face it.
- [24:04]
Michael Knowles
Right? Right. These things used to be uncontroversial, but I guess we're living in very strange times. From Mac.
- [24:11]
Ted Cruz
And apologies to Churchill for going with the Monte Cristo number one.
- [24:16]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, it's true. You know, he did have some other choices. We can explore those later though.
- [24:20]
Ted Cruz
I mean, he has a whole size of cigar named after him. The Churchill. Will we ever have the Knowles? And what will the Knolls be?
- [24:28]
Michael Knowles
You know, it's funny, people ask michael, what do you want to do? What's your ambit? Just that if I could get a cigar named after me, that's it. But I don't know if I'm gonna be able to save the western world.
- [24:37]
Ted Cruz
You know, well, you know, lofty gold. Look, look, the day is young.
- [24:40]
Michael Knowles
The day is young. That's true from Matt. Senator, any intelligent, honest and well reasoned liberals I should follow. I want a more balanced feed. My answer precisely.
- [24:59]
Ted Cruz
Look, Andrew Sullivan. Smart.
- [25:02]
Michael Knowles
Yep.
- [25:03]
Ted Cruz
Willing to question someone who used to fit into that was Michael Kelly, who wrote in The Washington Post 20 years ago, sadly, he was killed on the Iraq war. He wrote some of the best op EDS ever. He wrote, I believe, which if you go back 20 years, laid out the cognitive dissonance that Clinton defenders had to put out. The problem is smart liberals that are actually principled. So many of them have been silent that there used to be quite a.
- [25:47]
Michael Knowles
Few, or they're no longer really considered liberal. Like I would Professor Dershowitz.
- [25:52]
Ted Cruz
Alan Dershowitz. That would be an example. Dershowitz Dershowitz. My criminal law professor, first year of law school. So I arrived there, it was pretty wild. I'm a 1L in law school. Dersh is defending Mike Tyson. It was when Mike Tyson's rape trial was going on. And I'm like, holy cow. My professor is defending Mike Tyson. He assigned to us as part of our reading Penthouse magazine because he had written, I think it was the COVID story in Penthouse. It may be the first time Penthouse had ever not had a woman on the COVID It had Mike Tyson and Dersh had written this long cover story about him. And what he explained he did. What he assigned to us did not have pictures. It was just the text.
- [26:35]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, you only read it for the articles.
- [26:36]
Ted Cruz
So I can legitimately say we only read it for the articles. Cuz we just had the Xerox pages. So we were only given the text. There were no pictures of what we were given. But I remember he told the criminal class, he said, look, I could write an op ed in the New York Times and you know, a handful of people would read it. But you know, I think at the time he said Penthouse had a readership of like 5 million people. And he said, I'm trying to talk to jurors. Jurors are reading. So it was an interesting. He was a fabulous professor. And I remember, first year of law school, he said, listen, by any measure, this is Dersh speaking. I am in the most liberal 1% of Americans in this country. But he would do things like defend free speech and argue for, look, he used to muse, look, Dershowitz is Jewish, he's deeply pro Israel. He used to talk about how he would think about if he was hired as a criminal defense lawyer to defend Adolf Hitler. And he would kind of agonize about that. Look, I'm glad when I was practicing law, I didn't defend. I would not have defended Adolf Hitler because everyone deserves a lawyer. But I ain't working for him. But it's interesting. He believed in protecting the rights of the accused. He believed in stopping censorship. He believed in civil liberties in a way that there aren't many liberals left that do.
- [28:05]
Michael Knowles
There aren't. And that wasn't so long ago. And now it seems that the world has gone upside down. We'll have to dig into more of that upside downness. I've got to make it back to my hotel to see if I can get past the National Guard because of how crazy things have gotten. But we'll be back here again soon.
- [28:20]
Ted Cruz
So my advice is simply protest on the way, and they'll let you right through. That's true.
- [28:24]
Michael Knowles
I'll have to find a sign somewhere. I am Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. We'll be back soon.
- [28:39]
Ted Cruz
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security Package, 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.