← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Explosive Emails Show DOJ Wanted to Bring ZERO Charges Against Hunter, plus Joe Biden Caught Using Burner Phones & Fake E-Mails
00:44:16
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- [00:01]
Senator Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you on this Monday. It's really nice to have you with us. Senator, you and I had a very fun weekend, which we're going to talk about a little bit later, hopefully this week and get people behind the curtains on that. That's the tease for everybody. So you're going to want to stick around for later this week. But we've got some breaking news that deals with two different articles that have come out, one of them in Politico and the other with the New York Times that have come out to talk about Hunter Biden's legal team and the handling of not only their emails, but also the handling by the doj, basically saying, we don't want to touch this, we don't want to prosecute, and only because whistleblowers have come out as their narrative change. Break all this down for people because it's shocking.
- [00:50]
Ben Ferguson
Well, these two news stories are both astonishing, and they're based on the leak of 200 pages of emails and communications between the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden's legal team. And it turns out that the sweetheart deal we all know about, where DOJ went in and tried to give Hunter Biden a slap on the wrist, where he pleads guilty to two misdemeanors and gets no jail time and magically gets off with everything, that wasn't actually where DOJ started. And I don't know who leaked these correspondences. And they leaked them. One story is in Politico, the other is in New York Times, and they're both based on the same set of correspondence. DOJ initially planned to charge Hunter Biden with nothing, not bring a single charge, not a tax charge, not a gun charge. By the way, it was Hunter Biden was unquestionably guilty. Nobody disputed it was he was guilty that he hadn't paid millions of dollars in taxes. There was no dispute about that. That he owned a gun illegally. It is illegal for a crack user to own a gun. There was no dispute about that. That he lied on the form and he said he didn't do illegal drugs when in fact he was regularly smoking crack cocaine. There's no dispute about that. So it was. He was indisputably guilty. And yet DOJ's initial position was we're going to charge you with nothing. Instead, what they were going to bring was a deferred prosecution agreement where Hunter Biden would plead guilty to nothing. He would not have to plead guilty to any criminal offense whatsoever. But DOJ would file a document with the court that granted him essentially immunity, granted him a promise that the federal government would not prosecute him for the tax claims, for the gun crimes, for his illegal dealings and his shady dealings with Ukraine, with China. That would essentially give him a get out of jail free card on all of his criminal conduct. That's stunning. And, and what happened? So we also have now a 100 page PowerPoint that Hunter Biden's lawyer, guy named Chris Clark, had taken to the Department of Justice where they argued that if DOJ prosecuted Hunter, it would be seen as political because Donald Trump called for Hunter to be prosecuted. Hunter's lawyers said, you can't prosecute him. If you do what Trump wants, then you're just being political. That argument is astonishing. And in fact, they ratchet it up even more. Hunter Biden's lawyer said, if you indict Hunter Biden, we will put Joe Biden, the President of the United States, on the stand to testify as a fact witness. In fact, let me read from a 32 page letter that, that, that Clark wrote to the Department of Justice, quote, president Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial. And all of these threats worked. DOJ was fine with not even a slap on the wrist. Ju. Just, just a magic wand. All the criminal charges go away because daddy says so. And then what happened is two IRS whistleblowers came forward and they blew the whistle.
- [04:31]
Senator Ted Cruz
And how brave are they now at this point? I mean, Senator, I think we need to just take a moment to say thank you and to say God bless these patriots for coming forward and just telling the truth. They're not pushing a political agenda. They're just telling the truth about what they saw and how corrupt it was and how they were not allowed to do their jobs.
- [04:51]
Ben Ferguson
Well, no, that's exactly right. And the instant they came forward and blew the whistle, what did the Biden administration do? Pulled him off the investigation, retaliated instantaneously. It is illegal to retaliate against a whistleblower. But Merrick Garland, this administration doesn't seem to care about the law. And if those IRS whistleblowers had not come forward, what these internal communications show is the Biden DOJ was perfectly prepared to let Hunter Biden off scot free. And then suddenly you had the IRS whistleblowers testifying before Congress. And, and presumably DOJ said, oh crap, we, we can't. Like, this is too ridiculous even for us to say. And so then they revised the deal and they said, okay, we have a revised deal. Hunter has to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. Now he still gets zero jail time. Not at. Not a. Not a year, not a month, not a week, not a day, not an hour in jail. Zero jail time. And he still gets the magic immunity from everything. But we at least have a guilty plea, two guilty pleas to the misdemeanor tax charges, and I guess they felt that would give them the political cover to say, look how tough we are. If it weren't for the whistleblowers, even that sweetheart deal, it wouldn't have been that tough. This exchange is astonishing. But then what happened? As you'll recall, when they went into court and they assumed that the federal judge would just. Just rubber stamp the deal, the judge asked a few simple questions about its details. And in particular, is the investigation ongoing? And the Department of Justice, no doubt embarrassed by the mountain of evidence that had come up that DOJ had engaged in obstruction of justice, had blocked the investigation. It tipped off Hunter Biden's lawyers before they were going to interview Hunter Biden, had blocked searching the warehouse where Hunter's records were kept, had blocked any investigation into Joe Biden, had blocked any questions into the big guy, had blocked any effort to get the GPS location of Joe Biden in terms of whether he was actually sitting next to Hunter Biden. When Hunter Biden text texted a senior Chinese Communist official that he was sitting next to his father, the investigators wanted to use GPS data to confirm that. And DOJ blocked it, said, nope, nope, we don't want to know. We don't want to know. We don't want to know. All of that had come out. And so doj, presumably was feeling a tiny, tiny bit embarrassed. And so what did they do when that. When the judge asked, is the investigation ongoing? Well, if they'd said no, they would have looked like complete clowns, given the massive evidence that came out. So they said, oh, yes, yes, the investigation's ongoing. At which point Hunter Biden's lawyers began jumping up and down because they believed that they had a magic get out of jail free card.
- [08:02]
Senator Ted Cruz
A magic get out of jail free card that no one else in this country, I think, would be able to get, especially now, knowing what they were doing. This is the other part that I think Americans are so concerned about, is the lawlessness now. Every time you think it's the worst it could be with the Biden crime family, we get more emails, we get more evidence, we get new leaks, we get new whistleblowers. And yet still you know, David Weiss is in charge, the guy who set up all the deals, who let the statute of limitations run out. And so they say, okay, yes, it's new, but is this really going to have an impact? Now I'm going to ask you, does this really change anything? Can it change the dynamic that this is now the guy who's supposed to be investigating and you can clearly point to you guys were screwing over American justice system the entire time?
- [08:59]
Ben Ferguson
Look, the idea that David Weiss is now the special prosecutor is utterly absurd. David Weiss, when he was leading this investigation, was prepared to sign off on zero charges whatsoever for criminal conduct that, that Hunter Biden unquestionably had committed. David Weiss was perfectly prepared to give not just the, the sweetheart deal, but the super, super sweetheart deal. The, the sweetheart deal where Hunter Biden pleads guilty to nothing. That's what Weiss was prepared to do. And it was under Weiss's leadership that the obstruction of justice occurred that, that, that they gave repeatedly heads up to Hunter Biden to enable him to frustrate the investigation. It, it was under, under David Weiss that, that DOJ officials inserted themselves into the investigation to make sure that zero questions were asked about Joe Biden. That's the most important thing to understand. The objective of the Department of Justice from day one was protect President Joe Biden. It was a political objective. And by the way, that political objective is precisely the reason the special counsel law exists. Because when you have a political Attorney General like Merrick Garland, they have political incentives. And so you're supposed to appoint a special counsel when there's a conflict of interest like that from outside the Department of Justice. As we discussed in last week's pod, appointing David. David Weiss is, on its face, objectively illegal because he is a sitting U.S. attorney. So he doesn't meet the DOJ guidelines of being from outside DOJ. But Merrick Garland wants him. He knows he has his patsy here. He knows he has a guy that will protect Joe Biden no matter what. And sadly. And by the way, uh, if you look at the, the, the draft wording of the agreement. Let, Let. Let me read you some of it. The Department of Justice agrees not to criminally prosecute Robert Hunter Biden and the affiliated businesses, namely a Wasco PC, a Wasco llc, and Skinny Talies LLC for any federal crimes arising from the conduct generally described in the attached statement of facts or for any other federal crimes relating to matters investigated by the United States. So understand this immunity that they were negotiating was. It was designed. And what these emails going back and forth reveal is that Hunter's lawyers were terrified that in a couple of years there would be a Republican president and you would have an attorney general who was not a Democrat partisan in a hack and that Hunter would actually be prosecuted for what now was indisputably a repeat pattern of felonies. And so their objective was give us an agreement that we can use in two years to prevent a subsequent attorney general from prosecuting us. And Merrick Garland and David Weiss were more than happy to go along with that.
- [12:24]
Senator Ted Cruz
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- [14:32]
Ben Ferguson
Well, it is absolutely a sham. The person put in charge of investigating it is the person who is alleged to have been engaged in obstruction of justice. Justice. And look at the timeline. So May 24, Gary Shapley, who was the IRS investigator supervising the Biden probe, he went public in an interview with CBS News and said that the Justice Department had slow walked the investigation. Just days later, the DOJ lawyers changed the deal and they said the deal would have to change and Biden would now need to plead guilty to tax charges. It was obvious the only reason they were doing it is Shapley had now blown the whistle on that. Uh, and Biden's team agreed. But, but let, let me read from the Politico art article because the timeline is really stunning. So it was May 24 that Shapley goes public on CBS on the evening of June 2nd. So just a few days later, Clark, who's Hunter's lawyer, emailed Wolf. Leslie Wolf was the senior lawyer working for David Weiss, who was also a Democrat, who was also the one that was actively tipping off Hunter Biden's team, allegedly, according to the IRS whistleblowers. As to the investigation that was happening, who was also the one who directly blocked investigating Joe Biden. It was Leslie Wolf was, was really the, the point of the spear on the obstruction that is alleged by the IRS whistleblowers. But here's what Politico says. On the evening of June 2, Clark emailed Wolf to tell her protection from prosecution was vital to the deal. He sent along sample language saying the United States would not prosecute Biden for, quote, any federal crimes arising from the conduct generally described in two documents that we part of the final deal. Quote, this language or its functional equivalent is very critical to us. Clark added. Politico continues. Left unstated was a key implication of a broad immunity provision. It would give Hunter Biden a level of protection, a layer of protection, if Trump or another Republican won the 2024 election and ordered a wide ranging criminal investigation into the Biden family, something Trump has repeatedly promised to do. Over the course of a few more emails, lawyers on both sides kept line editing the deal. And on June 7th, Wolf, this is the DOJ lawyer who blocks investigations into Joe Biden. Wolf sent Clark a version that included the final language shielding Biden from future charges. That that language, that agreement, is fundamentally corrupt. It there is no innocuous explanation for why before the whistleblowers come public, they're happy to bring no charges at all. And have no guilty pleas. After the whistleblowers become public, they realize, oh crap, that makes us look like complete partisan hacks. So let's come up with a way to, to even have the slap on the wrist they initially wanted. No slap on the wrist at all. They just wanted a kiss on the forehead. And now the people Merrick Garland has put in charge of this are the people who were the ones blocking the investigation in the first place.
- [17:56]
Senator Ted Cruz
You combine this sender with some new intel that's coming out apparently this week. It was teased by your good friend, someone we had on the show for a two part series. If you missed it, go back and listen to it with Representative James Comer. But he came out and talked about the Vice President. Joe Biden in essence had not just a burner phone that we learned about recently and a journalist that called that phone and the President actually picked up, but there's also these apparently burner email addresses. And a burner account for people that may not understand that analogy, is a phone that you don't want anybody else to know that you have that would be somewhat untraceable. Burner email accounts are email accounts that you set up specifically so they will not be connected to you to send or receive messages to those aliases to those email accounts that are not officially connected. So no one even know to look there if they ever found them. Now how do we know about these? Well, we know about them now from Hunter Biden's laptop. And we know some of these aliases were that the President, the Vice President went by was Robin Ware, Robert L. Peters and J.R.B. ware. Now the, the point that matters is these email addresses weren't just set up, but they were used to keep his son, Hunter Biden, informed on his communications as the official Vice President and the point man on Ukraine to keep his son informed in the communications that he as the Vice President, which would be official government relations representing the United States of America with Ukraine. Your initial reaction to that bombshell as well?
- [19:35]
Ben Ferguson
Look, it's stunning. I've never seen anything remotely like that. The President of the United States having a burner phone so that he can hide and communicate. What that suggests is that he knows he's committing criminal conduct. The President of United States having burner emails, False emails, fake emails. Holy cow. Have you ever heard anything remotely like that? And to be clear, these fake emails are not to sign up for magazine subscriptions. These fake emails were used to email Hunter Biden about Ukraine. And by the way, it was the same Ukraine where Barisma was paying Hunter $83,000 a month in order to get favors from Joe Biden. And so look, when someone attempts to hide their conduct, when someone creates a fake name, when someone uses a burner phone, particularly in a high government office, that is indicative of an awareness that what you're doing is, at a minimum, shady as hell and in all likelihood illegal and criminal. It is. I am not aware of any precedent for any president doing what we now know Joe Biden has done in order to communicate with Hunter Biden about Ukraine. It also demonstrates that Joe Biden's repeated statements that he never talked about Hunter's business in Ukraine is just a flat out lie. I mean, there's now not even the tiniest fig leaf to pretend to defend those false statements Joe Biden made over and over and over again to the American people.
- [21:19]
Senator Ted Cruz
I want to play part of what James Comer had to say when he was talking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox this morning. And also telegraphing that there is more money and more bank account information that they're going to be releasing soon. But first, listen to that part about the emails.
- [21:34]
James Comer
I want to get the state of affairs of your investigation given we have a new special counsel now in the Hunter Biden investigation. But first, let's discuss these pseudonyms or alias names. What exactly have you learned?
- [21:48]
Maria Bartiromo
Well, we've learned that Joe Biden used at least three pseudonyms or fake names in emails that he was receiving from people within the federal government, people that worked for him. And even more troubling than that, Maria, we learned that when he was receiving emails pertaining to Ukraine, his son Hunter was copied on them, which we've always heard that the White House has said that Hunter Biden wasn't an employee of the government, he wasn't any part of the government. They couldn't understand why House Republicans on the Oversight Committee were investigating Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, because Hunter wasn't a part of the government. Well, if that were true, then why was he receiving emails from the government?
- [22:30]
James Comer
Well, this also pertains to the firing of the special prosecutor in Ukraine, Victor Shokin. Was that what these emails were about? Because you have told us in the past that that was one decision you were looking at. As far as a decision that Joe Biden may have been paid for to get involved in getting that prosecutor off the back of Burisma.
- [22:54]
Maria Bartiromo
I think the evidence is mounting every day to prove that Joe Biden went to Ukraine for the sole purpose of firing Shokin, who was the Ukrainian Prosecutor who was investigating his son for corruption. What we heard in the transcribed interview with Devin Archer was that he said that the owners of Burisma were squeezing Hunter, saying, we need help in Washington. You need to call Washington for help. Of course, the Democrats tried to say that. Well, that could have been anybody in Washington. Well, what we've now learned is Joe Biden was using a fake email name to receive correspondence from his staff that he was copying Hunter Biden on. And I believe, Maria, that Hunter had to prove value to the Burisma owners that they were working on this. So he was forwarding those to the owners of Burisma. Look, this is obvious that Joe Biden abused his power as vice president for the sole purpose to protect his son, who was receiving millions and millions of dollars from this corrupt Ukrainian energy company. And this email ties Joe Biden and Hunter Biden into this corruption scheme without a shadow of a doubt.
- [24:01]
James Comer
Well, it also is quite interesting that Hunter Biden is even cc'd on any of these emails. This was government business, right?
- [24:10]
Maria Bartiromo
This was 100% government business. Again, the Democrats in the White House have claimed that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden had a wall, a firewall between their business affairs. And again, Maria, as you know, there are no legitimate businesses here. The Biden family were receiving payments from bad people in bad countries around the world. And what we've been trying to do is figure out why. Why in the world would the Biden family receive over $20 million from foreign nationals around the world? And this is evidence to show that Joe Biden was communicating with his son. He was making sure that his son knew he was on his way to Ukraine. Remember, the timeline of these emails show that Joe Biden was en route from Washington to Ukraine for the sole purpose of withholding foreign aid to Ukraine in exchange for firing the prosecutor. And we know that happened, and we know Joe Biden accepted credit for it. He did an interview where he said, well, son of a bee, they fired the prosecutor before I got on the plane and left Ukraine. Joe Biden, in his own words, said that. So now we have evidence that Joe Biden and his administration was communicating with Hunter Biden. They knew Hunter Biden was affiliated with Ukraine. That's another lie, Maria. Joe Biden said he didn't even know Hunter was on the Burisma board for a long time. This is another lie. They were copying Hunter. And the only emails we've seen where they were copying Hunter were pertaining to Ukraine at a critical time when Joe Biden was going there to Fire the prosecutor in exchange for foreign aid. That's called a quid pro quo.
- [25:44]
Senator Ted Cruz
That's called a quid pro quo. That's something we've said a lot, but this is, is in a. On a different level, is it not illegal if you're sharing information that is going to profit your family member or even a friend? If you are in, in charge of a foreign policy and sitting in the, in the, in the Oval Office on a daily basis as the Vice president and you're CCing your son from a burner email account, hey, here's where we are. Let your buddies know at Burisma, hey, here's where we are with the firing at the prosecutor. Let your employer know it Burisma. And don't forget, get them to send me the money. I'm the big guy.
- [26:20]
Ben Ferguson
It is absolutely illegal to personally profit to sell favors when you are in office and the evidence is mounting every day that that's what Joe Biden was in the business of doing. There is no legitimate explanation for why government employees would be ccing Hunter Biden and emailing Hunter Biden about Ukraine. And so over and over and over again, Hunter Biden did not have a legitimate government reason to be looped in on the Ukrainian discussions. But you know what he did have? He did have a business reason because Burisma was paying him for that kind of access. And you know, when daddy's vice president, you can get looped in on exactly what the administration plans to do. And it is astonishing. There is no innocent explanation for why Joe Biden was using fake email names on these emails. If this were above board, presumably Joe Biden's actual name would be on there. This is the government. I've never heard of within the government government emails going to an office holder and using a fake alias. The lies that keep going out are over and over and over again. I'll give you another one. March 2022, David Weiss took the case to the U.S. attorney for D.C. matt Graves. Now, Matt Graves was and is a Biden appointee. He had been a political donor to Joe Biden. So he was a partisan Democrat. And Matt Graves, the U.S. attorney said, no, we will not bring a case in D.C. which is where you could have gotten stricter punishment because the more serious criminal tax offenses occurred in D.C. matt Graves said, no. The very same day that Hunter's team of lawyers was meeting with the prosecutors, and this was April 26, 2022, Merrick Garland was testifying before a Senate appropriation subcommittee that, quote, there will not be Interference of any political or improper kind. That's a flat out lie. It was a political appointee, Matt Graves, a donor to Joe Biden, who, who blocked charges against Hunter in D.C. it was another political appointee, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, who blocked charges there. And that U.S. attorney had been a donor to Kamala Harris. And so what Merrick Garland said, that there was no political interference is objectively false. And yet this administration doesn't acknowledge the lies they keep getting caught in. They just keep making them over and over and over again.
- [29:20]
Senator Ted Cruz
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- [31:37]
Ben Ferguson
Well, it does say something that both the New York Times and Politico were willing to report on this, that they're finally acknowledging that this evidence stinks. And look, just like there's no legitimate reason for Joe Biden to have a burner phone, there's no legitimate reason for him to have fake emails. There's no legitimate reason for government employees to be emailing Hunter Biden about Ukraine, about confidential discussions about Ukraine. There's no legitimate reason for Joe Biden to use his fake emails on those emails to Hunter about Ukraine. There's also no legitimate reason for them to have over 20 shell companies, companies that don't make anything, companies that don't have employees, companies that are not real companies. They're simply, they're simply vehicles for, for money laundering. And it's worth noting that the defense that the Bidens are making. So one of the things the IRS whistleblower said is that Chris Clark, Hunter Biden's defense lawyer, told the DOJ lawyers, quote, that if they charge Hunter Biden, they would be committing, quote, career suicide. That's not subtle, that is very explicit. We have political power and that political power is going to protect Joe Biden. It doesn't matter if he's taken bribes. It doesn't matter if he solicited bribes. It doesn't matter if he and his son are engaged in illegal money laundering. It doesn't matter if they are selling favors from the Vice President of the United States and perhaps now the President of the United States. That is utterly transparent. But you know what? It isn't. It isn't justice. It isn't law enforcement. It isn't faithfully applying the law. It is instead corruption.
- [33:37]
Senator Ted Cruz
It's corruption at a level that I'm not sure we've ever seen. I was flying today and I was watching this new show that's out about Watergate and it was very interesting to watch. And they were depicting how Watergate kind of went down and behind the scenes in the White House and G. Gordon Liddy, etc, and how they, you know, we're trying to pull it off and then what happened, obviously, when they got caught and the COVID up with it. And if you compare Watergate and I was watching this HBO show Go check it out. It's very entertaining. If you compare what they were doing and Watergate and you put it next to on a spreadsheet, what we're talking about right now, I think it's fair to say there's absolutely no comparison between the two. Like what? What we're talking about now is nothing compared to Watergate. And Watergate was the worst political scandal, quote, in American political modern history. And the whole world stopped to watch it, and people went to jail. Meanwhile, you look at what we have right now, no one's going to jail. And the people that are supposed to be the protectors of this country are protecting the Bidens instead of this country. Does that shock you in a way that we've gone so far from one way to the other?
- [34:54]
Ben Ferguson
Well, we've seen too many of our institutions become fundamentally corrupt. With Watergate, there was criminality. There was criminality that extended all the way up to the Attorney General of the United States, to the President of the United States, the chief Assistant staff of the United States, to senior White House officials. But the system worked. And you had, number one Congress that began investigations. And critically, the reason the system worked is because there were Republicans who turned on Richard Nixon, who looked at his criminal conduct and said, this is too much. We can't support this. There has not been a single Democrat member of Congress express even the tiniest bit of interest in knowing whether or not the President of the United States has solicited and received millions of dollars of bribes from foreign nationals in exchange for official government favors. In other words, is the President such a crook that he's getting bribes and bribes from corrupt foreign oligarchs? I mean, those are incredibly serious allegations. And to be clear, these allegations are made with significant evidence. A confidential human source who called the FBI and who is the source for the FT 1023? Unlike Watergate, no one of the President's own party cares to even know the answer. Also in Watergate, you had journalists who actually would do their jobs. Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post, they pursued this like a dogged bone. Today, the Washington Post, the New York Times, their investigative journalists, by and large, ignore all of this. Now they just were handed 200 pages of confidential emails. And given that, given that leak, they finally decided to write a story in the New York Times and Politico. But that exception proves the rule. And let's be clear. In Watergate, the Attorney General, John Mitchell, was sentenced to and served 22 months in jail. I think Merrick Garland has real criminal exposure. I believe There should be a special counsel investigating Merrick Garland. And I believe the House should be pursuing impeachment of Merrick Garland. But right now the media has been corrupted and the Democrat Party, there is not even a single Democrat who has shown the integrity to care whether the president is soliciting or has solicited and received millions of dollars of bribes.
- [37:28]
Senator Ted Cruz
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- [39:45]
Ben Ferguson
Well, debates are frequently pivotal moments in presidential campaigns. And one of the reasons they are is they're one of the very few events that you get so many eyeballs watching that you have the ability, a candidate has the ability to communicate with the voters, going over the heads of the media gatekeepers. When you're running for president as a Republican, it is incredibly frustrating that you'll go and give a speech on the stump and the news stations won't cover it, the newspapers won't write about it. If you roll out a policy proposals over and over again, they'll ignore it. And the advantage of a debate is you have a chance to talk directly to the voters. Look, you and I and many of the listeners of Verdict are following what's happening in the presidential campaign. We know who the candidates are. Most Americans don't. Most Americans are not following this day to day closely. And so this debate will be the first opportunity for millions of Americans and millions of Republican primary voters to see these candidates, to hear them and to hear how they exchange. Now, every candidate's going to go in with a different objective. You're right. Ron DeSantis has a target on him. He is universally seen as the number two candidate as Trump's strongest opposition, which means everyone else on that stage, if they want to have a chance at winning, they got to take out DeSantis. I expect a lot of shots directed at DeSantis. We'll see how Ron does defending himself from, defending himself from, from those shots. It will be very interesting to see how each of the candidates responds to Donald Trump. Some of them, I expect to defend Trump vigorously. All of them are, virtually all of them are going to say that the investigations from the Biden DOJ represent a double standard of justice and a politicization of justice. You will see some like Chris Christie, who I expect will blast Trump full throatedly. And each candidate, they're looking for a moment. Debates, often it's a small thing that people remember. It's a comment, you know, Ronald Reagan, you know, there you go again. It's, there are small moments in debates that are zingers. You know, if you look at the debate, the vice presidential debate between Lloyd Benson and Dan Quayle, oh yeah, you know, Dan Quayle was comparing himself to John F. Kennedy and saying he was the same age as John F. Kennedy and Lloyd Benson turned to him and said, dan, I knew John Kennedy. John Kennedy was my friend. And Dan, you know, John Kennedy, that was devastating. Moments like that. Each of the candidates presumably is working with a debate prep team. Different candidates do it different ways. Most of them do some form of a mock, where they get people to pretend to be the other candidates and they go through and practice it. But we will see. I think there will be opportunities. One of the big questions is going to be, how does DeSantis do? Because he is the number two right now. And so if he does really well, he could get stronger. If he stumbles, that presents an opening for other candidates. A second question a lot of people are going to be looking to is, who shines? Who has a moment that sparkles? You know, Tim Scott can be a wonderful orator. He may have a moment that catches some sizzle. Vivek Ramaswamy is very smart, has been having some strong moments out on the stump. I could easily see Vivek having a moment in the debate that goes viral. And so all of them are going to be looking for those moments.
- [43:54]
Senator Ted Cruz
It's going to be very interesting. We're going to have one hell of a week here on Verdict. And we're working on something also very special this week. So you don't want to miss any of the episodes. Make sure you hit that follow button if you're listening. On Apple. You'll get every episode. Hit that subscribe or Download button wherever you're listening so you don't miss an episode. We will see you back here in just a couple of days.