← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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- [00:00]
Liz Wheeler
Hey, Verdict fans, I want to give you a sneak peek of my new series with Senator Ted Cruz. It's called the Cloak Room on Verdict. The only place you're going to be able to find these episodes is on Verdict. So what are you waiting for? Go to verdict with TedCruz.com and I have a promo code for you. If you use promo code Cloakroom, you get one month free on an annual subscription. That is Verdict with TedCruz.com plus use my promo code Cloakroom to get one month free on an annual subscription. Without further ado, here is the Cloakroom. Hello and welcome. I am so excited to introduce today the Cloakroom on Verdict. This is only for Verdict subscribers. If you are a member, go ahead and become a subscriber so you can see all the cool stuff that we're gonna be talking about over here. This is a brand new series with Senator Ted Cruz. It's co hosted by me, Liz Wheeler. Basically, what's going to happen is I'm going to pick his brain like I would in a strategy session. It is a behind the scenes peek into details of what goes on in D.C. just like the cloakroom of the actual Senate. Today we're going to talk about how to apply a constructed foreign policy to a situation, a real life situation, like Ukraine. We're also gonna talk about Whoopi Goldberg and we're gonna talk about Tom Brady. Again, if you are a member of the Verdict plus community already, then become a subscriber so that you can join us. If you're not, then obviously go to verdict with TedCruz.com/plus to join us. Use promo code Cloakroom for a one month free trial on your annual subscription. Senator, I'm pretty excited about this.
- [01:25]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, I think this is gonna be awesome. And in fact, it may be a good thing to start. Do you know what the actual Senate cloak room is?
- [01:33]
Liz Wheeler
I do, but I have to tell you, I don't know a lot of details except it has this sort of cloak and dagger connotation. It's a back room, right, where you guys go to have your off the floor, off the record conversations.
- [01:46]
Ted Cruz
So if you turn on C Span, you see the floor of the Senate and so that's where there are 100 desks and that's where we go to vote. And that's where when we're speaking on the Senate, we debate. And that's all on C Span. And if you look at someone who's speaking and you're kind of in the middle of the floor of the Senate behind You are a couple of doors, and there are two cloakrooms, actually. So there's a Republican cloakroom and a Democratic cloakroom. And the Republican cloakroom, to the surprise of nobody, is behind where all the Republicans sit, and the Democrats are behind where all the Democrats sit. So you go through those doors, and basically the cloak room is a room in the back there. There are a bunch of couches. There are leather chairs like this. There's still a bunch of ashtrays. I don't think anyone has actually smoked in the cloakroom for decades, but there's still ashtrays from back in the days when they did. And then you go around the corner and there are a bunch of phone booths. And the phone booths are where you can go and you can get on your cell phone, call someone. You can call your staff. You can call whoever you want if you wanna have a private conversation. And so people gather and talk in the cloakroom. Their TV's up there. There's cloakroom staff that is sort of paying attention to what's happening on the floor. But it's basically the room in the back of the Senate floor where you gather when you're not on the floor, but you're not back in your office, which is far away.
- [03:01]
Liz Wheeler
So let me ask you this. Is this like a normal staffing room, or is this where you go when you really want to be off the record and you want to wheel and deal, if you will? Is this where shady deals are made?
- [03:12]
Ted Cruz
You know, I wouldn't say shady deals, but it's just kind of like if you're having a whole series of votes, it's where you'll go hang out. There's usually a little bit of food in there, like they're peanuts. And it actually goes back and forth. Like in the Republican cloakroom, the Georgia senators would want Georgia peanuts. There, there'd be North Carolina peanuts, there'd be a little back and forth. There's some candy in there that you kind of grab. But it's mostly. It's also where they put things like condolence books. Like, we just had a few weeks back, Johnny Isakson, who had been the Republican senator from Georgia, he passed away. So we had a condolence book where we all went in and each of us signs something to Johnny's family and just thanks him for his service. So the cloakroom is a place you'll find something like that, but it's kind of where you sit around and hang out. People will tell jokes, people will talk about sports. I mean, it's where you get senators hanging out in a more relaxed context.
- [04:12]
Liz Wheeler
So it's really behind the scenes. Which means that this, this series on Verdict plus is very aptly named because that's exactly what it is behind the scenes. So one of the things that is going to be unique to this series is I want to talk about the philosophy of the political philosophy and sometimes the moral philosophy of some of the things that are happening in our nation. So not just the practicalities, which are also important, and we discuss those all the time in a public area, but the philosophy. And so what I mean by this is Whoopi Goldberg on the View this week said that the Holocaust was not about race. And she faced an immediate backlash for this, as she should. And she ended up apologizing for this. And she just said, I apologize. I was wrong about this. I stand corrected. I think were her words. So my question to you is obviously not, was she wrong? Of course she was wrong. Obviously the Holocaust was about race. Obviously the Democratic Party is a little bit too cozy to anti Semites, and so they tend to play footsie a little bit with. With these folks. My question to you is, given the cancel culture that's become pervasive in our nation, when should we accept the apologies of people in the public eye who make really nasty comments like this, like the claim that the Holocaust is not about race?
- [05:24]
Ted Cruz
Oh, look, I think when it comes to public comments on left or right, we should be pretty forgiving, particularly when someone says, I misspoke. I'll tell you one reality of living a life where you have a TV camera pointed at you all day long, which you do, and I do, is if you say enough millions of words, some of them are gonna come out wrong. And so, you know, look, is the left. Are there too many anti Semites among the hard left, people like the squad who hate Israel? Yes, I have no indications that that describes Whoopi Goldberg. I certainly don't know anything. Yes, it was a dumb thing to say, but she said it was a dumb thing to say. So I'm gonna give credit for sort of backing. I mean, you know, the Holocaust is one of the most grotesque evils in the history of humanity, and it is driven by the explicitly racist ideology of Hitler and the Nazis that viewed Jews and viewed others, but Jews in particular as an inferior race and as subhuman. And in fact, we've talked about on Verdict how that justification of this group of people does not qualify as people in the history of mankind has almost always been a predicate for horrific evil, whether it is the Holocaust and the Nazis believing that Jews did not qualify as human beings. Whether it was the justifications of slavery and believing that African Americans were not people, but we're property, or whether it is the justifications behind Roe that unborn children are not children, that anytime you take a human being and say they're not a human being, that history is shown is usually the predicate to terrible evil. And so, you know, I'm glad that Whoopi apologized for that. But as a general matter, I don't think we ought to be silencing people for stumbling over what they say or saying something stupid.
- [07:32]
Liz Wheeler
No. And that's why I think this is a good discussion actually, because, I mean, like you said, we both work in the public eye here. Every one of us has said something that came out wrong for whatever reason or misspoke or made an error. And correcting that or apologizing for that is fine. But there's also the matter of someone betraying their true colors, I guess, or betraying a poisonous ideology, one that is as poisonous as you just described. And perhaps that's good for people to know. But like I said, the philosophy of cancel culture is sometimes interesting to discuss, as I think it is here. I wanna move along these topics kind of quickly though, because this one. Are you ready? I mean, when I warned you that we were going to nerd out on this series, this is exactly what I meant. So you gave a speech in the spring of 2019 about foreign policy. Now this wasn't about a particular real life event that was happening around the world. This was a presentation of foreign policy philosophy. And this is something that I think is a lost art in the Senate. It used to be that all senators had a constructed foreign policy. Now most politicians, even in the highest offices in our land, don't have a constructed foreign policy. And I think that's why we're seeing, when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, why we're seeing this differing of opinion, this spectrum among conservatives. Some people are very interventionist, some people are very isolationist. And there's this disagreement on how to handle what's happening in the world right now, because people don't have a pre constructed philosophy on foreign policy. And you do, yours is. And you say it's not actually a middle ground between isolationism and interventionism. You say it's actually like a triangle. It's a third point. So first of all, can we talk just for a minute about what your philosophy, all world real life events aside, what your philosophy on foreign policy is?
- [09:20]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, I'm happy to. And you know, the conventional wisdom looking at Republican foreign policy is that it's binary, that they're one of two approaches, that you're either what's typically called an interventionist or a neocon, which is your approach is we gotta go defend democracy, we gotta go use our military, we gotta invade countries, we gotta get engaged in nation building. There've been a lot of Republicans who have embraced that, that had its ascent under the presidency of George W. Bush, but there have been people from John McCain and Lindsey Graham to Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton that are explicitly interventionist. On the other side are the isolationists. And the most notable proponents of that are Ron Paul and Rand Paul, both of whom. But there are others, particularly in the House, there are several other people who I think would fall into the more isolationist camp. And it used to be that if you're a Republican, you had to be one of the two. I think both of those are wrong. I disagree strongly with both of those. And as you noted, I've described my views as a third point on the triangle. I describe myself as a non interventionist hawk. Now, what does that mean? It means that the central touchstone for all US Military involvement and for foreign policy should be protecting the vital national security interest of the United States. What does that mean? As a practical matter, it means we should be very, very reluctant to engage in military conflict, but we should also be focused on the purpose and the objective. So let's make it specific because that's very abstract. So let's make it. Let's bring it to concrete matters and let's take a couple of foreign policy disputes in the past, and then I'll actually do one that is going on right now in a discussion we had today that illustrates this point.
- [11:18]
Liz Wheeler
Yeah. Apply it to Ukraine.
- [11:20]
Ted Cruz
So let me first start with history and then go to Ukraine. When Barack Obama was president, he wanted to attack Syria. When Bashar Assad crossed Obama's red line and used chemical weapons, Obama drew a red line, said, if you use chemical weapons, we're going to attack you. Assad did. And Obama says, let's go attack. I was in the Senate at the time, and my view was, okay, I'm gonna keep an open mind. I wanna hear how the commander in chief justifies this. Explain to me the vital US national security interest in attacking. And I pressed the Obama administration both publicly and in classified settings. I said, okay. At the time, there were nine major rebel groups. Bashar Assad is a monster. He killed 400,000 of his own citizens. He's a bad, bad guy. But I said, all right, if we attack him and you topple him, he has a big chemical weapon stash and they fall into the hands of the rebels. There were, at the time nine major rebel groups. Seven of them were affiliated with radical Islamic terrorists. They were people like Al Qaeda, Al Nusra. And I said, well, if chemical weapons fall into the hands of people like Al Qaeda and ISIS who want to kill us, that's worse for America. I don't want people who want to kill us to have weapons to kill us. The Obama administration could not give a coherent answer in terms of how they prevent that from happening. So I opposed military intervention in Syria because I said, it's not protecting America. It's not protecting our lives. Rand Paul and I agreed on that. We were both on the same page on that. Now, Rand and I were for very different reasons. Rand, just from the beginning, said, nope, nope, absolutely not. I could have imagined a military mission that I would have supported if Obama had said, look, there's a chemical weapons cache here. It's big. It's significant. We're going to come in and either destroy it or seize it and take it away so they can't be used against us or our allies. I could have seen a mission focused on protecting America that might have made sense. That was not what Obama did. On the other hand, Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei getting a nuclear weapon, I think is an existential threat to the United States. I think the risks are too high that the Ayatollah who chants death to America and death to Israel would use a nuclear weapon. And that's why I'm the leading opponent of the Iran nuclear deal. It's why I've said, if need be, if Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, we should do whatever it takes to stop it, including military force. Now, to be clear, when I say military force, I don't mean go invade Iran and spend 20 years there trying to turn it into a liberal democracy. I mean, bomb living crap out of it and level what they're doing and leave. Like, the focus should be protecting America. And another way of phrasing it, Liz, is peace through strength, which is what Reagan's philosophy was, that if you're strong enough, you don't have to use military force. Biggest country Ronald Reagan ever invaded was Grenada. Because he was so strong, our enemies didn't want to mess with us. And by the way, Trump's foreign policy was very much with Me, on that third point in the triangle where you think about it, he wanted to withdraw from foreign conflicts. He didn't want to leave our soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines in foreign theaters getting shot at. But at the same time he was strong and took out, for example, General Soleimani, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in Iran. And so that's peace through strength or being a non interventionist talk.
- [14:59]
Liz Wheeler
Yeah. And President Trump called it America first. You call it national interest. It's essentially as you say, the same thing. Yes, here's where it becomes a little more nuanced. So here's my question here. As it applies to Russia building up or amassing troops on the border of Ukraine, how do you determine, under your foreign policy philosophy, how do you determine what the national interests of the United States are in either aiding Ukraine or becoming militarily involved in Ukraine? Because there certainly are arguments to be made that the United States has an interest in helping enforce international law or defending a country's right to self determination. On the other hand, there are also arguments that that's not a vital national security interest to the United States to do that. So what are the elements that you use to determine that? How do you apply it to Ukraine?
- [15:45]
Ted Cruz
So in Ukraine, I think under no circumstances should we send the US Military to fight Russia and Ukraine. I don't think that's our job to go fight Russia. I don't want to send the military. If Biden or anyone else supports it, I will oppose it. I'm not willing to risk our sons and daughters in that military conflict. Now, given that, that doesn't mean though that I'm willing to walk away from Ukraine and abandon it. There are all sorts of tools that America has. Short of sending in the Marines. What I can't stand about the neocons is their solution to everything is invade. We've talked a lot on verdict about Nord Stream 2 and the sanctions that I drafted that were targeted sanctions that shut down that pipeline. Using our economic might to target the bad guys is a great and powerful tool. I think we also ought to be providing lethal weaponry to the Ukrainians. Look, the Ukrainians want to defend themselves, I'm happy to help arm them. So if the Ukrainians want to fight the Russians, have at it. I'm just not willing to risk Americans in that fight. And you know, I mentioned there's sort of a real time application of it. So today we were having lunch. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, all the Republican senators have lunch. And we spent a lot of the time talking about Ukraine. And one of the Republican senators asked several other senators said, how would you justify in 30 seconds or less how it's in our interest to defend Ukraine? And I gotta say, one of my colleagues, who will remain nameless, but he is someone who is a prominent neocon, gave this talk about, well, we have these norms now that we don't allow countries to invade other countries. And if they do, we've got to protect those norms and protect the international order and prevent the ability of one country to invade the other country. And I'm sitting there at lunch going, what a load of shit. Like I disagreed with every word he said and like I literally had to stake. I didn't argue with him at the moment. I just sort of clenched my fists and let him talk. But about 15 minutes later I got up and I went back to the question that one of my colleagues had asked and I said, listen, I don't agree with any of what so and so said about the justification. You want to know why we have an interest in Ukraine? Because Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union was a formidable and terrifying enemy of America. It is in our interest not to have the Soviet Union rebuilt because I don't want Putin and Russia stronger because they hate America and want to defeat us. I want to keep Putin and Russia weaker. And so allowing Putin to reassemble the Soviet Union is really bad because it threatens the safety and security of the United States. So we ought to use what tools we can to prevent Putin from getting stronger. By the way, we ought to prevent the Chinese Communists from getting stronger. We ought to prevent North Korea from getting stronger. We ought to prevent Cuba from getting stronger. We ought to prevent Iran from getting stronger because our enemies getting stronger threatens us. But I'm not interested in sending the Marines to any of those places to fight the bad guys. I want to use other tools to weaken our enemies and strengthen our friends because that protects American lives.
- [19:03]
Liz Wheeler
Well, this is one of the interesting things I think about having a pre constructed meaning, a well considered foreign policy philosophy, because you can take the tenets of that philosophy and you can apply it to real life circumstances instead of letting the emotions of whatever conflict is happening on that day and that time sway whether you think that you should send in the United States military to crush whoever it is. And the other thing I think worth noting here is that the same thing happened in Afghanistan, actually where we got to this point where the choices almost seemed like a lose lose either. In Ukraine, for example, it's a lose if we send in our troops and it's a lose, if we allow Putin to take over Ukraine, to try to rebuild the Soviet Union. And it is worth noting too that it doesn't have to be that lose, lose. It doesn't have to be that binary decision. But we're at this place where we're at this binary lose, lose, because elections have consequences. Because Biden also doesn't have a well constructed foreign policy philosophy and he's allowed it to get to this point.
- [19:59]
Ted Cruz
Well, it's even worse than that because Biden's foreign policy is weakness. If you look at what he's doing, every enemy to America, he's showing weakness to, he believes in appeasement. I mean it is the left wing Democratic Party believes the enemies of America, they think everyone wants to get along, they're all nice and if you just give in to Russia, to China, to North Korea, to Iran, they're all right. It's why Biden is perfectly fine with Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Because they're like, oh, they'll be fine with a nuclear weapon. Understand evil. And so you look at Russia, one of Biden's first acts was surrendering on Nord Stream 2 and waiving the sanctions that had worked, that had stopped Putin. I wrote them, I authored them, Trump signed them in the law. They worked. Biden came in and just gave them away, just gave Putin this gift. And I gotta tell you, right now the Biden administration is so panicked about the Ukraine invasion, which they've caused, that they are in full on appeasement mode. So they are in the process, I fear, of dismantling NATO where they're offering to Putin, you want us to pull our troops out of Europe, you want us to abandon the Baltics, you want us to abandon Poland, you want us to abandon Romania, you want us to abandon Estonia and Lithuania and Latvia, we'll pull out, we'll pull missiles out, we'll pull troops out, we'll stop exercises, we will abandon Europe if you just promise to be nice to us, Mr. Putin. And weakness invites conflict. It's the left believes if you're weak, you don't have military conflict. I actually think weakness makes military conflict more likely. Why do you think our enemies didn't attack us when Donald Trump was president? Cuz they thought he was bat crap crazy and he'd like blow him off the face of the planet and he was strong enough that enemies of America didn't wanna mess with us. Why is it that we're facing a Russian invasion of Ukraine? Why is it that China is preparing to invade Taiwan because they think Biden's so weak that they run all over him. And so I think the leftist weakness creates more military conflict.
- [22:10]
Liz Wheeler
It does. Weakness emboldens authoritarians and dictators. We can see that with what's happening with the behavior of Vladimir Putin and the Chinese, honestly, and the North Koreans. Okay, that's our nerdy, deep dive into foreign policy. And now we're gonna do a hard pivot into Tom Brady. Quarterback Tom Brady announced his retirement this. This week. And I gotta tell you, I'm not a huge football fan myself, but my husband is a die hard, lifelong Patriots slash Tom Brady fan to the point that I had to ask him, when Tom Brady left the Patriots and went to the Bucks, whether he was going to root for the Patriots or whether he was going to root for Tom Brady at the Bucks. And, you know, I have to say his answer was Tom Brady here. However, the controversy here is that Tom Brady, when he announced his retirement, he thanked the Bucs organization and all the Bucs fans and his teammates, and he didn't thank Patriot Nation. He didn't thank his old teammates. He didn't thank his old coach. He didn't thank his fans. He later did on Twitter, but only after backlash. What do you make of that? Was that a deliberate diss, you think?
- [23:07]
Ted Cruz
I don't know that. It was a diss to the fans. And in fact, I doubt that it was. I mean, Tom Brady is so beloved in New England that I can't believe he was dissing his fans up there. Was it a diss to his old team? Was it a diss to Bill Belichick? I'm sure it was. That was quite, quite deliberate. And look, there was always. I always liked Brady. I always thought he was a heck of a quarterback. You know, there's a constant debate in sports over the goat, the greatest of all time. In basketball, the debate is between Michael Jordan and LeBron James. I am emphatically on Team Jordan in that, although some of that's generational. I'm 51. I grew up watching Jordan dominate, and I'm not a big LeBron fan, although he's ridiculously talented. I will concede his talent, but I think Jordan had more heart and was more of a champion in football. The goat, you could argue different players. Some might say Joe Montana. He was certainly someone that had a strong claim to it. Brady was unbelievably winning with the Patriots. I mean, he would win over and over and over again, but you could give all these Sorts of excuses. He had an amazing supporting cast around, and Bill Belichick's a great coach. He had great receivers. I mean, he just had an amazing team around him. So some credited Brady's success to, well, look at everyone he's playing with. And Brady did something that's phenomenal, which is he left the Patriots and he went and joined Tampa Bay, and he basically said, to hell with you guys. I'm out of here. The Patriots said, you're too damn old. You can't win. And he went and joined Tampa Bay and won the super bowl with him. Like, it was one of the biggest hoss moves I've ever seen to, like, leave. You got all your stars. I'm going to Tampa Bay. Watch me do it again. Gronk came out of retirement to play with him, which was awesome, and it was spectacular. I tweeted at the time. I just tweeted a emoji of a goat, like, you go and win with another team and do it again and not in. Like, when LeBron James left Cleveland to go to Miami, it was a temper tantrum of a spoiled star. You know, he did this whole show of who gets LeBron? Like, oh, piss off. Like, you know, you're not all that. Brady was very different. He went and just won. And. And so I'm a huge Brady fan. I'm sure that the diss was meant to Belichick and the Patriots themselves, but I would be astonished if Brady had anything but respect and adoration for the fans who loved him and who continue to love him.
- [25:51]
Liz Wheeler
And I will say, based on the experience of my own household, at least you are correct about one thing. The fans do not take it personally. They forgive him for tweeting about it after and consider it just a diss to the team and not to them. All right, Senator, we have one mailbag question from one of our Verdict plus subscribers. This is from the Steve 42. Steve asked, what are Senator Cruz's thoughts on conservatives and the Republicans finding a way to unify for the 2022 and 2024 elections? Republicans have an amazing ability, he says, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. With these golden opportunities on the horizon, how do they not just eff it up?
- [26:26]
Ted Cruz
Look, it's a very good question. And there's an old cartoon. Back before you and I were born, Pogo had a line. This cartoon from the 50s. We had met the enemy and they is us. There's a lot of truth to that. We managed to shoot each other. Listen, 22, I think we're gonna be fine. I think we're gonna win. I think Republicans are gonna retake the House with a big margin. I think it's gonna be like a tidal wave year. And I'm getting more and more confident we're gonna retake the Senate also. The one danger that could screw it up is a civil war between Trump and Senate Republicans. I don't wan. I hope that doesn't happen, because that's. If we're just. And that means we need some restraint on both sides. We need. There are some Senate Republicans that desperately want Donald Trump to go away. He's not going away. That is delusional. And the Senate Republicans who want it need to shut up and stop provoking him. And then I hope that President Trump exercises some restraint and doesn't unload on the Senate Republicans he's irritated with. If we avoid going to war with each other, we'll win in 22. After we win in 22, then we need to actually do something. If we have majorities, we've got to actually deliver on our promises and fight. Are we going to be able to pass great new legislation? No, because Biden will veto it. But we need to have some backbone to fight against Biden. And will there be Republicans wanting to roll over and surrender? Yes. Do I expect that I'm gonna be fighting tooth and nail against them? Yes. There is a difference of philosophy. Republican leadership in Congress often believes the way you win is don't rock the boat, don't make an issue. Don't cause too much fuss. Look, on the Biden Supreme Court nomination, I've had several of my Republican colleagues say it'd be good if this just went through quickly and we just let it happen and didn't make a mess. And I'm like, are you out of your mind? He's gonna nominate a leftist who wants to destroy the Constitution. And we need to fight like hell. Now, we may not be able to beat it, beat the nominee, we may not be able to beat the nomination, but just stand up and fight for what you believe in so that even now is a fight. Once we have majorities, it'll be a bigger fight. But I think the way we win in 24 is fighting for something that matters and that, you know, if Donald Trump doesn't run for president, we'll have a big, crowded primary in 24. Look, I think primaries are good and healthy. We'll have a discussion about what's the right direction to go. The advice I give candidates, the advice I give both House members and senators is real simple. Do what you said you would do. Just follow through on your promises. Whatever you told the voters you do, do it. Too often politicians don't do that, particularly Republicans. And if we do what we said we would do, I think that's a path to winning.
- [29:33]
Liz Wheeler
Yeah. And like you said, I agree 100%. Force that veto. Show the American people not only what that you're doing what you had promised and that Biden is vetoing it, but it also puts on record all of these squishy Republicans who won't vote for a conservative agenda and the Democrats who are voting against what people want. It's a very powerful tool. Senator Cruz, this was a really fun inaugural discussion for this series. Thank you for sitting down. We're going to do this again. This is the cloakroom on Verdict.