← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Explosive Conclusion to the Speaker Fight - What It All Means
00:30:07
Loading summary
Transcript31 lines
- [00:00]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is the Verdict. With Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. It is a moment that finally happened. Many of you were asleep, but we have a new speaker of the house, Kevin McCarthy, and here's what it sounded like.
- [00:13]
Kevin McCarthy
Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same that you take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you're about to enter, so help you God?
- [00:43]
Ted Cruz
Yes, I do.
- [00:44]
Kevin McCarthy
Congratulations and Godspeed.
- [00:47]
Ben Ferguson
That was. It happened late in that. Well, I should say technically early in the morning. Senator, your prediction on this podcast was spot on. You said you thought they would get a deal done Friday night. It happened Friday night into Saturday morning. Pretty spot on. Congratulations for that prediction.
- [01:08]
Ted Cruz
Well, I will say when we talked about this on, on Wednesday morning's pod, what, what you and I predicted together, I said that I thought the most likely outcome was that Kevin McCarthy would cut a deal with the holdouts, and in particular that he would cut a deal with Chip Roy. That Chip Roy really was the leader of the 20. And the reason I thought that is because Chip was focused, I think quite rightly on changes to the rules, changes to how the House conducts business. On substance, some of the people involved in this leadership battle, I think, had real personal animosity to Kevin McCarthy. I think Chip, to his credit, was not motivated by that. He was motivated by changing the broken way that Washington operates. And what you and I talked about Wednesday morning on this podcast is I thought the most likely outcome was Kevin and Chip would reach a deal. He would make some significant concessions and those concessions would be enough, and McCarthy would be elected. Ultimately, at about 1 in the morning late last night, that's exactly what happened. It took. It took a few more hours than we had predicted, but not much. It was about the same time period. And I will say what Chip and the other dissenters accomplished was a really big deal. There was a lot of drama because there was a vote at 11pm where I think McCarthy and leadership thought they had the votes, and they ended up falling just short because many of the dissenters dropped off. But there remained a handful who didn't. And it led to. It led to some interesting drama. It led to, and in particular you also had during the day, two votes that were missing. One Wesley Hunt, new Congressman from Houston, actually my congressman, who had to fly back to Houston because his wife had Just delivered a baby, his son, who was born prematurely and they were having to care for his son. He flew back to Houston to be with them and then turned around and was there for the late night vote. His vote was needed at the end and he was there for the late night vote. But it got a little wild and wooly, including at one point, Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama had to be physically restrained from taking a swing. And coming after Matt Gaetz, that was. I'm not sure I've seen the beginnings of an actual bar fight on the floor of the House, but it came pretty close.
- [03:53]
Ben Ferguson
I was wondering if that was a new Covid certified mask for Congress. Right. The hand over the face and restraining. I'm like, maybe that'll count as a new Covid mask.
- [04:02]
Ted Cruz
But at the end of the day, all of the histrionics about, oh, this is terrible, this is the end of the Republic. Now. The Democrats were, of course, crowing. You would expect them to crow. That's what they're going to do regardless. The media went on and on, but. But I've got to say, the agreements that they ended up getting were significant. And let me throw a caveat that the rules package has not yet been voted on. That the plan is to vote on that on Monday. And so the devil is always in the details. And it could, you know, this is, at this point, what's been publicly reported. But among other things that have publicly been reported, here are elements of the deal that. That have been reported in the press. Number one, that the rules package ends proxy voting, which means members of the House actually have to show up and do their damn jobs. One of the bizarre things Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats did in the name of COVID is allowed House members to be sitting on the beach thousands of miles away and cast votes by proxy. That was always nuts. I believe it's unconstitutional. I can tell you. The Senate never did it. Schumer and the Senate never did it. If you're not in the Senate, you don't vote. You have to be on the floor of the Senate. In fact, the way the Senate votes is so old school. You literally are standing on the floor of the Senate and the clerk calls out your name, Mr. Ferguson, and you say aye or nay. And they write it down with a pencil on a little. On a long skinny card that has the names of all 100 senators on it.
- [05:35]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. Voting that way, I think, is just. There's so much history in it. I was at one time, when I was 13 years old, Newt Gingrich allowed me to go down the floor of the House with Bob Dornan. And Bob let me hit after he put his key, you know, his card in, hit the green button on a vote with him when I was 13. I'll never forget for the rest of my life. I love the old school side of that and having people be present. I also think it builds camaraderie and conversation over legislation. And let's go through some of what's in play here. But before we get to that, I want to tell you about our incredible 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 tax. 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. Patriot mobile.com that's patriotmobile.com verdict. Use the promo code verdict. You can also call them 972-patriot. That's 972-patriot or patriot mobile.com verdict. Now there's this.
- [07:39]
Ted Cruz
Go ahead. Proxy voting ended. Also remote committee hearings ended. So if you want to have a hearing, get your butt to the hearing. That, that, that was important. But. But there are also a whole series of additional agreements that are apparently in, in the rules package. Although as I said, the devil's in the detail. One is the single purpose rule the House for a long time. One real source of mischief is cramming a gazillion things into a rule into a rule rather than just have it focus on a single purpose. That, that's a good thing. Related to that is the germaneness protocol, which is again, a requirement that if things are added to a bill that they be germane. Essentially they'd be relevant to the bill. That you can't just add completely unrelated matters to a Pending bill. There's another element that is apparently part of it and it's a return of what's called the Holman Rule, which allows reducing spending at agencies and reorganizing agencies. It's an appropriation rule the House has had that enables them to get into the budget of executive agencies. That's significant. Another element is the 72 hour rule that delays anything from moving forward 72 hours so that you have time to actually read the damn bill before you vote on it. That's significant. There is an agreement to have a church style committee to investigate weaponization of organizations like the FBI and the doj. And Ben, you and I have been calling for that for a long time. As you know, my last book, Justice Corrupted how the Left Has Weaponized Our Legal System is entirely about the abuse of power at the DOJ and the FBI and the CIA. I think we very much need a serious church style committee investigating it. And that's part of the agreement. And then the two that were the biggest deals, that were the biggest, the most hotly contested were having a motion to vacate the chair that one member could bring. And that means any individual member at any time can go down and move to vacate the chair. And you have to have 218 people vote for McCarthy to stay speaker. That apparently is in there. And then the final one that is apparently in there is seats for conservatives on the Rules Committee on another committees. And that's, that's in order to give real fiscal conservatives leverage to fight against another bad omnibus bill, another $1.7 trillion monstrosity that just got rammed through putting people in positions on committees that they can prevent that from happening. All of those are a huge, huge deal. At the outset, the naysayers said conservatives couldn't get any of these. And I gotta say, look, it's a testament to my friendship, Roy. It's a testament to the other conservatives who are standing up and behaving in a principled manner. And at the end of the day, it's a Testament to Kevin McCarthy for reaching an agreement that I think is a reasonable, a positive agreement, agreement that's good for the House and is going to give more power to Republicans, more power to conservatives, more leverage to the House to stand up to Chuck Schumer and to stand up to Joe Biden.
- [10:55]
Ben Ferguson
There was a question that was asked of me and it was one that I wanted to ask to you. Somebody said, was this worth it? And I said yes. And they said, why? And I said, just the transparency will save the American taxpayers, countless dollars. How much money do you think the American people are we in the billions of dollars that can be saved just because of the way these rules changes and the transparency of not being able to cram so much into a bill with all of this different pork?
- [11:23]
Ted Cruz
You know, I'm sorry to tell you, you're off by an order of magnitude. We're in the billions of dollars. Before Monday morning, we are likely in the trillions of dollars.
- [11:35]
Ben Ferguson
Wow.
- [11:37]
Ted Cruz
This is a big deal. If conservatives have more leverage to force real fiscal restraint to stop the out of control spending that is bankrupting the country, that is driving record inflation, that is putting crushing debt to China on this country, that's a big deal. And, and in the last couple of years, the federal government has spent more time in than in the entire history of the universe. And the only way it's going to stop is if Republicans have a backbone to stand and fight to make it stop. This battle this week significantly enhanced the tools for fiscal conservatives to be able to stop the radical abuses of the last two years.
- [12:29]
Ben Ferguson
Talk about tribalism for a moment. The House has a lot more members than the Senate does. In the Senate, I think you guys get to know each other a lot faster. You get to work with each other across party lines. In the House, it's so much bigger. And there's different fractions within the Democratic Party. The squad, for example, AOC and kind of her group. You had the Freedom Caucus and you've had the Tea Party groups and you've had so many different fractions. I actually think one of the biggest blessings in disguise that's going to come out of this week and these 15 votes is there were a lot of walls and maybe misconceptions about individuals who had conversations they would have never had, interactions they would have never had. And now moving forward, there may be a much better line of communication between people because we, I mean, you were watching it like I was. It was really interesting to see people that you would assume would never be speaking each other, that were talking to each other intently, vote after vote after vote. That may be a big blessing.
- [13:34]
Ted Cruz
Well, I think it is. And I think it's also a blessing to have leadership that is responsive to the members. Now listen, Kevin McCarthy's never been speaker, so we'll see what kind of tenure he has as speaker. You know, I've told you before, I like Kevin personally. He and I have a good relationship. But there certainly had been speakers in the past who were autocratic, who were dictators, who just laid out this is what we're gonna do. Shut up and obey. Nancy Pelosi does that. John Boehner did that. It was one of the things that caused him to be driven from the speakership is his members got tired of being mistreated and him. Him viewing it as essentially his reign rather than reflecting the views of the conference. I think this process is likely to have made Speaker McCarthy significantly more responsive to the views and concerns of the conference. And I think that's healthy. I think that's what leadership should do. You're right. The House and Senate are very different. Look, The House has 435 members right now. It has 434 because one. One member just recently passed away, a Democrat from Virginia. You know, you have about 200 in each party. You compare that to the Senate. In the Senate, we've got 49 Republicans. 49 is not that much. I mean, we have lunch together. The 49 of us have lunch together every Tuesday, every Wednesday, every Thursday. We know each other really well. I mean, you 49 people, you build relationships. And Senators stay there sometimes longer than, you know, granite monuments in Washington. So when you've been working with people for years and then for decades, and it's a small group, those interpersonal relationships can be one of the real keys to getting things accomplished. One of the. One of the reasons why I win a lot of the battles that I'm fighting in the Senate is at this point, my colleagues know that I don't bluff, that. That I don't engage in fights based on personalities. I don't make it personal, but I focus on substance. I say, if you want my vote, I need X. If I don't get X, my vote is no. If I get X, my vote is. Is Y. One of the reasons I'm really proud of the job Chip did is that's exactly how he handled negotiating it. He didn't get emotional. He didn't get angry. He said, if you want my vote, here's what I need. And at the outset, people said, oh, that's ridiculous. You'll never get concessions like that. And at the end of the day, math is math. And it turned out they needed his vote. And getting Chip's vote was the critical piece to bringing the rest of the group on board and getting McCarthy the votes. That responsiveness is important. And you're right. The relationships between the members, you know, you gotta remember there's also always a lot of turnover in the House. The House today is a very different House than it was five years ago. It's a very different House than it was 10 years ago. They're just. It's a body that has significantly more churn. So some of these folks are brand new. You, you had three representative elects who'd never been congressmen who were literally just elected and they finally got sworn in last night who were part of the rebels forcing the rule change that will impact the job they do going forward if you're part of that at the outset. But. But the relationships between and across different factions hopefully will be positive. Now, there may be some hurt feelings. People were really ratcheted up and pissed off. And so I'm not being Pollyannish and suggesting it'll all be loves and kisses, but I do think this process, it was transparent, it was Democratic, and at the end of the day, it substantially increased the tools to stop the reckless spending that has fueled the record inflation and that has has bankrupted the country. I think that is a really good thing.
- [17:43]
Ben Ferguson
Grabbing agenda items that can bring the Republican Party together early on I think is going to be key to Kevin McCarthy's success. He announced last night at 1:20am Eastern that the first piece of business the House is going to bring up is going to be something that's very important. I know to you. You helped expose this. You talked about how big of a threat this was to the American people. It deals with the IRS agents. 87,000. And here's what the speaker elect said last night. 1:20am I know the night is late.
- [18:16]
Ted Cruz
But when we come back, our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 U.
- [18:29]
Ben Ferguson
I mean center if you want to get everybody to get together real quick. This was a pretty brilliant move by him to say that, saying, I know it's late, I know you're tired, but when we come back Monday, get ready. And that was a standing ovation.
- [18:41]
Ted Cruz
You just heard, yeah, no, that was exactly the right thing to do. It was very smart. It was very savvy. As you know. It's something that I've been calling on on the House to do as their first bill. I said it on the trail campaigning for a lot of these guys standing next to you in a number of instances saying, when we win a majority in the House, the very first bill the House should take up is repealing the funding for the 87,000 new IRS agents. I'm glad Kevin agreed with what I and others had called for. That's a strong unifying message. It draws a clear contrast with the Democrats. I think that's good. I will point out. So you And I both stayed up till the whole thing was over. We were watching it live. We watched the votes, the final votes, everyone coming in, all the drama, everyone holding their breath, everyone knowing how are the last few holdouts going to vote? Are they going to vote for McCarthy? Are they going to vote present? Are they going to vote for someone else? And at the end of the day, there were no votes for someone else. In the last ballot. There were a handful that voted present but allowed McCarthy to get in. After that, you had speeches, you had a pause and then you had speeches and you had a speech from Akeem Jeffries and then a speech from Kevin McCarthy. And I. And I will say, for people that didn't watch Hakeem Jeffries speech last night, it was consequential. I don't know Hakeem Jeffries. I have not dealt with him. I haven't really seen him give a speech until last night. Watching it. His tone, his rhythm, his speaking pattern, his way of communicating is eerily reminiscent of Barack Obama.
- [20:34]
Ben Ferguson
It is. I was thinking the same thing as I was watching him going, wow, this is Barack Obama 2.0.
- [20:40]
Ted Cruz
You know, somewhat on Twitter, tweeted out, if Barack Obama and Martin Luther King had a son, he'd be Akeem Jeffries. Now, that. That may be a bit much. I actually put Dr. King in a whole different class. But Barack Obama is a very talented communicator. And it led to eight years in the White House as a result of it. There were more than a few Democrats. There are more than a few Democrats in the Democratic presidential field who watched that speech last night and said, oh, crap. That was. That speech last night reminded me of Obama's speech at the Democratic National Committee where he talked about that there are not red states and blue states. We are the United States of America. The messages and themes that he was echoing were really powerful. And he also. He gave a long speech. He gave a speech to Democrats that was, look at all the great things we did destroying our country the last two years. And if you're a radical social issue, would have been cheering like crazy. But he gave a speech saying, we're great and the guys that are taking over, they suck. I mean, it was. It was. It was not gracious, given that he was literally introducing Kevin McCarthy and handing the gavel to him. There was no graciousness whatsoever. It was a partisan speech. But what made it dangerous is it was a partisan speech that was very eloquent and.
- [22:23]
Ben Ferguson
Clearly pre planned. I mean, they planned that.
- [22:26]
Ted Cruz
Oh, yeah, no, no, that was A written speech. He was not talking off the cuff. And basically he hijacked the night. It was impressive. You know, McCarthy wasn't happy, but there's not really much you can do. You can't walk up and shut him up. But Jeffries basically hijacked the night. Now, it was late enough at night. I don't know how many people listened to it, but there were millions of people across the country that looked at this guy and said, this guy is a force to be reckoned with.
- [22:56]
Ben Ferguson
When you look at moving forward now, next week, what advice do you have for these new members as they try to, you know, get their rhythm, get their feet under them? I mean, the way that they got baptism by fire in this last week, yeah, they're going to take a lot from that. But now we're going to the regular order and. And kind of a normal cycle and. And feel here. What advice do you have to new members of Congress? What do you wish somebody would have said to you when you were first elected if you could go back and do it all over again?
- [23:31]
Ted Cruz
Well, the advice that I consistently give to new members, either in the House or the Senate, is really simple. Do what you said you would. Do whatever you promise the voters on the trail to do. Follow through on that commitment. And a component of that is don't just listen blindly to leadership. You don't work in the house for Kevin McCarthy. I don't work in the Senate for Mitch McConnell. Your boss is the men and women who elected you. My boss are the 30 million Texans, Ben. You're my boss. You're a Texan. I work for you. And so new members sometimes can get confused and think leadership. Oh, I'm supposed to follow orders from leadership. No, follow orders from the men and women who elected you. And do in January what you said you would do in October. And any member that does that, it's a radical thing that doesn't happen very often. I do think this fight this week helped. I'll be talking with a lot of these House members. I very deliberately did not talk to the House members when this was happening. I consciously. Many of the people engaged in this fight are close friends of mine. I decided, okay, I'm going to stay out of this. I'm going to let them work out their own leadership battles. These are big boys and girls. They can figure it out themselves. But I will talk to all of them in the coming days. And, you know, I think the focus needs to be very much on results, on substance. How can we deliver for the American People, how can we fight to change the corrupt culture of Washington? These rules changes are a big step in that direction. By the way, there was one other concession that I didn't mention, but it was publicly reported, which is McCarthy saying that he's going to stay out of Republican primaries and stop spending money trying to defeat conservatives in Republican primaries. If McCarthy's super PAC follows through on that, that's a big deal, too. All of those concessions were real and significant changes in how the House conducts itself.
- [25:45]
Ben Ferguson
How significant is that when you look at the amount of money that McCarthy super PAC could come in and spend in a primary?
- [25:53]
Ted Cruz
In multiple primaries, McCarthy super PAC spent millions of dollars supporting one Republican attacking another Republican. In almost every circumstance, when given a choice between a Moderate and conservative, McCarthy super PAC would put the money behind the moderate and would attack the conservative. And that was nationally, tens of millions of dollars were spent doing that, at least publicly. They've made a commitment they're not going to do that again. That that will matter for this next cycle because we'll have contested primaries. And if McCarthy's pack is not trying to put a thumb on the scale, that means conservatives are going to be have a better chance of prevailing on the merits in the primaries.
- [26:36]
Ben Ferguson
When you look at this overall fight, what is your biggest takeaway as we move forward into this new Congress? From this, when you say, all right, this is the best thing, this may be the worst thing, and this is my biggest, you know, throw it up in the air and I'm not sure what's going to happen moment.
- [27:02]
Ted Cruz
My biggest thing is smart, principled fights matter, that you should engage in real, serious, meaningful fights. Not show fights, but fights where you have a plan, where you have a strategy, and where you have a real outcome that can be delivered. So I'll tell you. Last night at 11:23pm That's Texas time, so it's 12:23pm DC time. It was when the final vote was ongoing, was the first time I reached out to Chip as the final vote was happening. I'll tell you what I texted Chip last night. I texted Chip, chip, what you've accomplished this week is a big damn deal. You handled yourself with grace, skill, calm, resolve, savvy, and principle. I'm proud of you, my friend, as is the state of Texas, Ted. That's a message that was very heartfelt, but as I said, I didn't want to convey anything like that until everything was said and done and it was over. And now I hope for, for a world of success for the House Republican majority. They're the one lever point we have. I hope Kevin McCarthy's speakership is the most successful speakership in history and that these rule changes firm up his resolve to fight smart, principled, consequential battles. If we do that in the House, we'll be doing our job. And that, by the way, not only help save the Republic right now, but fighting smart, principled, consequential battles will also help Republicans dramatically to win in 2024, to have a much bigger majority in the House, to win the Senate, and to win the White House. If we stand and fight and deliver, the voters reward that by showing up and voting. And so I, I think this week was a big step in the right direction.
- [29:16]
Ben Ferguson
It's going to be a lot of fun to watch what this House is able to do now and how much money that we're going to save the American people just by these rules changes that were worth fighting over. You were right when you said it. This was going to get figured out. This is worth it. This battle was going to be worth it and it was going to be figured out. I think there's a lot of good that's going to come from this. New relationships built in the House and there's a lot of other big fights that are going to be happening. Immigration is going to be one of those, border security, the President getting involved on this issue. We're going to talk about that Monday, his trip to the border. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, the auto download button. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, make sure you write us a five star review center. It was fun to watch and it's going to be really fun to see what Republicans get moving forward. And we'll see every one of you back here on Monday morning.