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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
Last week, in the immediate aftermath of the FBI's raid on Mar A Lago, we discussed on this show the potential corruption, the potential abuses that could have taken place at the DOJ and the FBI and the White House and all over the political culture that called this raid. Now, with the hindsight of one week, we can say with certainty that the corruption and abuse was much, much worse. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [00:37]
Ted Cruz
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- [02:13]
Michael Knowles
Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. So grateful to all of you who have subscribed to this podcast and I'm absolutely furious at those of you. So come on, let's rectify things right now. You can subscribe Apple, Podcast, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, and of course, over at Verdict plus on Locals. Senator, last week we were shooting from the hip. The information was constantly changing about the Mar? A Lago raid. We were told initially it was over classified Documents. Then we were told it might be over nuclear secrets. Then that kind of seemed to fall apart, given the timing of the warrants and the raid and the fact that we're already 18, 19 months into the Biden administration. Now we've got the hindsight of one week. Is there any justification for the raid?
- [03:03]
Ted Cruz
No. Good one. What is really distressing, looking now at the warrant and what they were searching for, this was a fishing expedition. It was an old fashioned fishing expedition. I actually think it had little to nothing to do with classified documents. What this was about was January 6th. What this was about was the FBI and DOJ wanting to send in a team to say, let's grab every piece of paper we can find and maybe we'll get something incriminating. And look, that's not a new thing for law enforcement to do. Sometimes, you know, if you're going after Al Capone, you try to go after him on income tax evasion. It's not new for law enforcement to try to find a hook. And so the classified documents, the presidential records, they had a hook to say, well, he may have brought a piece of paper or maybe multiple pieces of paper that we've asked for back. And so we've got a claim to send in the troops. I gotta say though, look, we have a long tradition in this country of a peaceful transfer of power. By the way, we said that in the last pod and it was very funny. Lefties on Twitter lost their mind. No, no, no, you're not allowed to say that. No, no, we say peaceful transfer of power. Don't you say that? No, no, no, no, no. Let me explain. In banana republics, tin pot dictators send their troops in to the home of the prior guy, or as they like to call Trump, the former guy.
- [04:28]
Michael Knowles
Yep.
- [04:29]
Ted Cruz
When you send your troops in to raid the home of your predecessor looking for evidence because your plan is to try to lock him up, what I can tell you is in 200 plus years of our nation's history, no president has ever done that to his predecessor. Not once. None of them. Look, each of our presidents, when the party shifted, they didn't necessarily love their predecessors. Jefferson and Adams despised each other. But it's not like Jefferson said, all right, let's bust down the door of Adams's house and see what we can find. That doesn't happen. Listen, it is certainly true that the laws apply to everyone, including former presidents. And if they violate criminal laws, they should be held accountable. That being said, when there's a specter of using the law enforcement machinery to target your enemies. The threshold should be much, much higher. It shouldn't be a ticky tack crime. It shouldn't be a little threshold. It should be something that is exercised only when there is no alternative. Crossfire, Hurricane. They sent in the wiretaps, they sent in the investig investigations on the flimsiest predicate, and then they created fraudulent documents to back up that predicate. And all of it, of course, was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign, which multiple members of DOJ and FBI knew and didn't care about. Fast forward to now what happened here. I think they're frustrated because their January 6th investigation's not getting anywhere. And so they said, well, look, we got an excuse to go raid Trump. Let's go do it, and maybe we'll find some documents, maybe we'll go on a fishing exercise. That is an absolute abuse of power.
- [06:18]
Michael Knowles
If they're going to say that Trump is Hitler, as they've been saying for years now, then they have to do absolutely anything they can to stop Hitler. He's Hitler, after all. And if that involves breaking some laws or if that involves abusing government power, well, who cares? That's a small price to pay. I think, as they see it, the.
- [06:35]
Ted Cruz
FBI does an enormous amount of good work. The FBI catches targets, terrorists, radical Islamic terrorists trying to murder people. It catches bank robbers, it catches people who engage in child kidnapping. It catches Mafia bosses. Like, the FBI is a hugely important law enforcement agency. And I gotta tell you, within the FBI, there are thousands and thousands of good and honorable law enforcement officers. People who signed up to be cops, people who signed up to catch bad guys because they wanted to protect America and keep us safe. And what is so infuriating is those FBI agents, their entire career and life is being cheapened, is being undermined by these political hacks who are leading the Department of Justice and who are at the senior levels of the FBI. I cannot think of anybody in modern times who's done more to damage the credibility of the FBI and the Department of Justice than Merrick Garland. Because when he turns them into a nakedly political group of stormtroopers, it's not the agent's fault, it's the politicized leadership's fault. And he is hurting the FBI and hurting the Department of Justice, and it ought to scare the hell out of him. Instead of lecturing people, how dare you say abolish the FBI? Look, they're saying it because you are a partisan hack.
- [08:10]
Michael Knowles
Why are they saying it, of course, is the question. And as you mentioned, they went in there with the charge to take pretty much everything they could. They're searching Melania Trump's wardrobe. They went in, they took Donald Trump's passports, for goodness sakes, two expired passports and his current diplomatic passport. And then, of course, immediately, CBS News denies this, says that Trump, Trump is lying about his passports. And then five minutes later, the DOJ was caught with egg on its face. They had to admit they did, in fact take Trump's passports and then they returned them to him. So now, of course, the line is, the doj, the FBI, never took Trump's passports. And don't worry, they gave them back. All of this really, really reducing the credibility of the FBI and the doj. And as you suggest, this isn't about classified documents. This isn't about the Presidential Records Act. This isn't about the nuclear codes. This is about January 6th and the failure of the January 6th committee. The Republican face, the nominally Republican face of the January 6th Committee, Liz Cheney is almost certainly gonna go down in flames tonight. We're recording this on Tuesday night. All of the polls say she's going to be ousted from office. So that's just not working. There was also, Senator, I don't know if you saw a really interesting article in Revolver News about the pipe bombs on January 6th. We've heard so much about the grannies that into the Capitol. We've heard so much about the horn hat guy. We've heard so much from the J6 committee. We haven't heard a whole lot about those pipe bombs. And we don't really know who planted the pipe bombs. And it seems like that would be pretty important when we're talking about that day. This would be the nearest that you got to serious political violence on January 6th. And yet we've heard nothing. So there's a Revolver News report out that suggests that there are really more questions than answers when it comes to these pipe bombs, why they were allegedly planted when they were, why the FBI isn't releasing footage of the people planting it to try to figure out who actually did it. Just a whole, I'll just leave it at that. A whole lot of really strange aspects to this story. And then the strangest one of all, you called out when you were grilling the FBI director, Christopher Wray, which is that the former head of the Detroit office for the FBI, this guy, Stephen Dun, I've got Dantuono is his name. He was in charge of the operation to entrap people into trying to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat governor of Michigan. And this was a complete cluster. Didn't work. The trial's going on right now. It's just a complete mess for the FBI. Shortly after that all fell apart, Steven Dantuono got a promotion. He was brought over, this would be in the months before January 6th, to head up the Washington field office for the FBI. This is one of the most prestigious posts you can have in the bureau. And so therefore he's the guy that's overseeing the investigation into January 6th. All of this has me scratching my head, Senator. I know it had you scratching yours, which is why you grilled Christopher Wray.
- [11:13]
Ted Cruz
Well, Michael, that's exactly right. And you got a lot of substance in that question. So let me try to take it one piece at a time. And let me say at the outset, it is interesting. Literally every single topic we are discussing in this podcast, every single topic that is leading the news right now, is in my new book, Justice Corrupted, which you can pre order right now on Amazon. It's coming out in just a few weeks. Injustice Corrupted. I go into depth about Crossfire Hurricane and the partisan animus that led to that bogus investigation. I go into depth into January 6th and the pipe bomber and the investigation and the politicization of the investigation. I go into depth on the Gretchen Whitmer absolute debacle and explain how all of this is interconnected. Let's start with a pipe bomb. Look, the FBI and the Department of Justice should be focused on criminals. It should be focused on people who commit crimes of violence. We saw all during Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots where the federal government essentially turned a blind eye because many of the hyper partisan senior leaders at the Department of Justice and the FBI, even under Donald Trump, the burrowed in career leaders who remained hard leftists, agreed with the politics of the rioters and the violent criminals and so gave them slaps on the wrist over and over again as they engaged in violent acts of terror. Firebombing police cars, looting stores, murdering officers. Because of the politics, they disregarded violence on January 6th. Merrick Garland has claimed it is the largest and most significant investigation in the history of the FBI. Like, holy crap. Like really like in the history of the FBI. So more than nine, 11, like, like planes flying into the World Trade center, flying into the Pentagon, 3,000 people murdered. This was more serious. And the reason it's more serious is because for them, it's all about politics. Who are they targeting? They're targeting the little old ladies who were on the Mall waving American flags, singing God Bless America. They're targeting Ultimately, every American who voted for Donald Trump, who spoke out in favor of Donald Trump. This is a political persecution. The White House sees it that way. Just like the raid. The raid was a political persecution. It's not about violence. Now you look at January 6th, one action that on the face of it certainly appears to be a crime of violence and was an attempt at a serious terrorist attack. Are the two pipe bombs. If pipe bombs had detonated on Capitol Hill, potentially killing dozens or more, that would have been a horrific act of violence. Now, thankfully, neither pipe bomb detonated. If you look at everything that transpired that day, you would think a multiple attempted bombing in the nation's capital would be really high on the priority list of let's get someone that's trying to blow people up and murder people like that. You know, between blow people up and murder people, a little old lady waving a flag maybe. Blow people up and murder people would be a higher priority in any sane world. We're now, you know, almost two years after the fact and we know nothing about the pipe bomber. Apparently there's video of it. Apparently the pipe bomber dropped the bombs off at 8pm the night before. They have video of it. If they've ever caught the guy. They've never told anyone. There's no case, there's no prosecution. Apparently the guy with the horns is a massive threat to the cosmos. But a ostensibly homicidal bomber, no concern, Nothing to see here. It is weird when the DOJ or the FBI is before the Judiciary Committee. I asked them about it and they consistently refused to answer. Nothing to see here. Nope. Nevermind the bomber. We don't care. Not our focus. Nope, not their attitude is we don't have to answer your questions. And it's not just we don't answer to Congress, is we don't answer the American people. We decide what we want to do and no one dares question us. And look, this Revolver article, I don't know how accurate or not it is, it raises questions. The implication is that the pipe bombs were not actually planted by real criminals, but were part of a fraud, some sort of entrapment or hoax, I don't know. I want to be cautious about suggesting that. But I will say this. When law enforcement, A, doesn't make it a priority to target actual violent criminals and B, answers no questions, has no transparency and behaves as if they have no accountability, they shouldn't be surprised when they have no credibility and people don't trust them.
- [16:05]
Michael Knowles
Well, and especially on this issue, Senator of Stephen Dantuono, I mean to Me, that's the craziest part of all. Forget the fact that the, the timers on the bombs apparently were not functioning. The timing wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense. Forget any of the questions that were raised by that. The very fact that a guy who we know led an entrapment campaign, a poorly orchestrated entrapment campaign, by the way, in Michigan, then becomes the head of the Washington field office. I think we have the clip of your grilling, Ray, because initially Wray tries to deny it and then you've laid out the facts and he can't help but admit that you're right.
- [16:43]
Ted Cruz
There was the case against individuals charged with kidnapping and murdering Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan. Well, the special agent in charge of that case has now been sent to DC to the Washington DC office and now leads the investigation regarding January 6th. Is that correct?
- [17:04]
Chris Wray
That doesn't sound right to me.
- [17:05]
Ted Cruz
That does not sound right. The name of the individual is Stephen D'Antuno.
- [17:10]
He was.
- [17:10]
He was run out of the FBI Detroit field office. And by the way, I will point out that the lead investigator, special agent track. Are you aware that he was apparently fired for allegedly beating his wife after coming home from a swingers party and he'd made multiple derogatory political posts about President Trump showing political bias. Are you aware of that?
- [17:31]
Chris Wray
I am aware of, I think, the incident you're describing and action that was taken about it. To clarify on the first part of your question, Mr. Dantuano was the special agent in charge of the office, the Detroit field office, and is now the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office. I thought you were asking about the agent who was responsible for the.
- [17:51]
Ted Cruz
So the guy in charge got promoted and is now in charge of the January 6 investigation.
- [17:55]
Chris Wray
The guy in charge of the whole Detroit field office is now in charge of the whole Washington field office.
- [18:00]
Ted Cruz
That is astonishing.
- [18:03]
Michael Knowles
He tries to get out of it. Senator, he says, I don't know, I'm not really familiar. What are you talking. I'm talking about this guy. I'm naming this name, this date, this office. Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess he got the promotion.
- [18:14]
Ted Cruz
And it's worth unpacking that for a little bit. And let's start out with what happened in Michigan. So if you remember, in the fall of 2020, right before a big election, the FBI breathlessly announces that they've uncovered a plot to kidnap and murder the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer. Now that's a big deal. You're like, holy cow. All right, if you've got a plot to do that. Like, go prosecute those guys, throw them in jail a long time. Thank you, FBI, for, like, stopping criminals. That's your job. Now, I'll point out at the same time that, that prosecution happened to perfectly align with the political narrative of Joe Biden and the Democrats because these, these alleged criminals were doing it because they were mad about Gretchen Whitmer's COVID lockdown policies. And, and because Trump had criticized Whitmer, the whole narrative was, you know what? It's Trump's fault. See, any Trump supporter is a violent criminal. Look, those guys are literally trying to kidnap and murder a Democratic governor. So it fit the political narrative beautifully, which, by the way, the corrupt corporate media got ran with, danced, celebrated, said, see, unless you are a violent murderer too, you better vote for Joe Biden. That was what it was all about. All right, fast forward to the actual trial. Four guys go on trial. They're charged with various crimes, all related to an alleged plot to kidnap and murder Gretchen Whitmer. The end of the trial in federal court, the four dependent defendants are convicted of zero counts, nothing. Two of them are acquitted across the board. The jury comes back and says, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Two of them have hung juries. So the juries can't agree, and so they have mistrials declared. So in the course of the, of the trial, the prosecution gets zero convictions on anything. Now, in any prosecution, that's a big deal. That's a big, serious problem. Prosecution wins almost every case they bring. Typically, the prosecutors don't bring a case unless they can get you and they got the evidence. So it's unusual for the prosecution to lose, but it's even worse than that. Why did they lose? Well, the principal defense from the defendants was entrapment. It was that the FBI informants, people who are on the payroll of the FBI, who are working for the federal government, that they were the ones that suggested the thing. They were the ones that kept urging him to do that. In fact, the defendants pressed back, said, hey, let's not do this. This is a bad idea. Let's. Let's not kidnap and murder the governor. Gosh, your idea is interesting, but no, thank you. And the FBI agents or the undercover informants kept saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, we gotta do this. Really important, really important, we kidnap her. Really important, we murder. And that was the defendant defense's arguments, and apparently the jury agreed that was the principal defense put forward. Now, for any law enforcement, look, there's a general line what are the rules governing undercover officers? Law enforcement all the time has undercover officers. You go in, you go into the mob, you go into a drug cartel, you have someone undercover who pretends to be part of it. And you can gather evidence and that can be used in a prosecution that's legitimate. What is not legitimate? The line is you can't engage in entrapment. You can't be the one who is the source, the genesis of the illegal conduct, that it is an abuse of government power. When they send an agent to you and say, hey, Michael, don't you really wanna steal that fancy watch from behind? Like they can't go suggest to citizens they break the law. The guy in charge. So this was all run out of the Detroit field office. The guy in charge of it, Steven Dantuano. This is one of the biggest scandals in the history of the FBI to lose a marquee, front page, top of the fold, banner headline case because of misconduct by your office. In any sane and ordinary and responsible law enforcement office, everyone involved would have been fired. That's just like the level of scandal. You didn't just screw it up, it was your misconduct that messed it all up. The fact that in this FBI, the guy, A, doesn't get fired, B, gets promoted, but C, gets put in charge of the January 6 prosecution. Are you frigging kidding me? I mean, that is, as I said at the end of that cross examination, it is astonishing. And what it is, Michael, is it's a manifestation of that hubris. He's like, well, it was the line agents that did that. You know, whatever happened to Harry S. Truman, the buck stops here. Apparently no one has accountability for anything. No one's fired, no one's reprimanded, nothing happens. Well, I guess the line agent, the guy in charge, who allegedly beat his wife and was running around at swingers convention, so, you know, really speaks to the caliber of folks. You know, he lost his job, but his boss got promoted. That there is unfortunately a culture. And I trace it back to the Obama years, where the Obama years, they viewed DOJ and the FBI as their political storm troopers. And what they did, they promoted from within hard partisans into senior positions and they burrowed in. And unfortunately, there are far too many of them. They're still there.
- [24:06]
Michael Knowles
And it raises a whole lot of red flags. I mean, if you get a guy who was in charge of an operation that involved entrapment and hoaxes and misconduct and then he gets the promotion, he goes to Washington D.C. already there are a lot of questions about that. Day one of the chief instigators among the people to say, go in. We have to go into the Capitol. We've got to storm the Capitol. When he did that in the streets of Washington, the people around him said, fed, Fed, Fed. He's a Fed. All the strange questions about the pipe bombs, it's just not a good look, okay? And you add on top of that, the fact that there has been such misconduct, such abuse of power, such corruption at the FBI and the doj, going back to Crossfire Hurricane and the subsequent events when people don't have faith in federal law enforcement and the political leadership of federal law enforcement, that's not our fault, okay? That's the fault of the people who squandered that credibility.
- [25:00]
Ted Cruz
And you know, Michael, what's amazing is the Democrats who have majorities in Congress, have zero interest in discovering what happened. So it's been a year and a half. We've had no hearings on the Gretchen Whitmer case, on the entrapment, on the disastrous debacle of that case, because the Democrats are not interested in knowing what happens. They're quite happy. Look, the cross examination I had of Chris Wray. No Democrat had any interest in following up on that. They're like, oh, good, the guy involved in entrapment is now in charge of January 6th. Hey, work for us. Awesome. It is amazing. And I will say one of the things that underscores the stakes of this election in November, if Republicans take a majority in both houses, we need to have hearings on these topics. We need to have hearings on every one of these topics. We need to examine. We need to use subpoenas. We need to drag Merrick Garland and Chris Wray down there and keep them there and make them answer questions, not let them get away with this. Blithe, I am the king. I answer to nobody, which is the attitude they have. And I very much hope, A, that we win in November, but B, that we see that accountability.
- [26:14]
Michael Knowles
Of course, it's urgent, too, because they're busting into the doors at Mar A Lago today. But it really could be anyone who's considered a political enemy of our ruling class. Now, it's not only the Democrats who don't want you talking about this sort of stuff, Senator. It is even the fake Republicans. I saw this headline. I have got to get your reaction to it. This is from Michael Steele. Michael Steele was the head of the Republican National Committee. Now he's a talking head on msnbc. And he only ever goes on the liberal shows and attacks Republicans he said, this is directed at you, Senator, just sit the hell down. Please. Stop it. This, in response to your speech at cpac, says it is more fascism than farce. It is more concern than conservatism. And it really is about how we as a citizen respond to this, how we push back against it, blah, blah, blah. Cruz is the worst. Any response?
- [27:12]
Ted Cruz
I will say that's a badge of honor. I'm glad to hear it. Look, I'd say it's three things simultaneously. One, there's a whole cadre of squishy, moderate establishment Republicans who barely believed anything to begin with. And they were a real problem in our party for a long time. They gave rise to my election. They gave rise to the rise of Donald Trump. It was a reaction to these folks who didn't believe anything. Secondly, many of those same folks are now fully consumed by tds, by Trump derangement syndrome. They just hate Donald Trump so much that they're consumed by it. You mentioned Liz Cheney. Liz Cheney is unrecognizable from who she was five, six years ago. Bill Kristol. Bill Kristol used to be Dan Quayle's chief of staff. He ran the Weekly Standard, which was a conservative publication. He now is indistinguishable from a raving left wing Democrat.
- [28:14]
Michael Knowles
It's also worth remembering. Bill Kristol discovered Sarah Palin. I know that now. Bill and other people on the kind of squishy side or just outright now have switched to the left. They try to say Palin's the problem. Cruz, Trump, all these right wingers in the conservative movement. Bill Kristol discovered that lady and made her a national thing.
- [28:34]
Ted Cruz
Well, and what's funny, it's not just the folks that are destroyed by tds. It's not just that they don't like what Trump says or does. It's not just that they say, well, we need to speak with greater decorum. You can make that case. They become left wingers on everything. They look at, build back broke and say, woo hoo, raise taxes, spend money, more debt. I mean, I mean, their rhetoric is indistinguishable from Chuck Schumer's. I mean, they literally have just flipped over. And then the third dynamic is Steele, who I don't know the guy, but, you know, apparently makes a living now going on msnbc. And there's a whole little cottage industry of, quote, former Republicans who get paid to go on tv. And their job description is simple. You have to do two things. Number one, you have to at some time have Called yourself a Republican. And he helps cuz he was actually head of the rnc. So he's got a good, good sort of fake costume there. Yeah, but then two, you have to be willing to piss on Republicans all day long like they have no interest in reasoned analysis. They have no interest in your actually considering substance. Your job is. I am former Republican who says Republicans all suck. That's what I get paid to do on msnbc and it's how I get my measy little paycheck to pay the second mortgage on my condo in Old Town Virginia. That is a phenomenon and it's an unfortunate silly one. And by the way, what he was reacting to was my speech at cpac, the central thesis of which is revival is coming. That this administration has gone so extreme people's eyes are opening up and they wanna take the country back in the direction of free enterprise and freedom and defending the Constitution and Bill of Rights. And what is his response to that? Sit the hell down and shut up. Okay, Boomer, thanks for your input. You screwed it up. Now's time for actually people who believe something to lead.
- [30:30]
Michael Knowles
Well that is the key. You'll sometimes hear this, I always hear this with ex Catholics or I don't even know if you'd say ex Catholic. But you'll sometimes hear people say whenever pontificating on some matter of the church, they'll say listen, I went to Catholic school and let me tell you. And you can be certain every time someone says that they don't know anything about the Catholic Church and I think it's almost the perfect analogy for it, they'll say listen, as a former Republican and then they go on and they misrepresent Republicans views. They frequently can't articulate them at all because I think in 99 times out of 100 they never really believed that stuff to begin with. They never really knew what they were supposed to believe to begin with. And so it was a natural evolution for them to move over to the other side. I see that with virtually all of these so called former Republicans. They're just kind of squishes who opportunistically were in the GOP while it served them. But because they didn't really believe very much on life, on liberty, on the American way of life, that they just switched when the going got tough. And so when they leave the party I say good sayonara. Glad don't let the door hit you on the way out.
- [31:37]
Ted Cruz
By the way, did you see there was a really weird article in the last week from Some, I think CBS or, I don't know, some media outlets about praying the rosary as a tool of extremist hate.
- [31:49]
Michael Knowles
That was in the Atlantic.
- [31:50]
Ted Cruz
It was like the most. Okay, it was so bizarre, I actually assumed it was Babylon Bee. Like, it was like, okay, this is actually pretty good satire. Like, I get this is really making fun of crazy lefties, except they write it anyway. Like, they're just. It is making comedy harder because they will say any asinine thing. But what was your reaction to. All right, I'm gonna play the straight man here. Michael, is praying the rosary a tool of extremist hate?
- [32:22]
Michael Knowles
Well, I actually have a high capacity rosary, so my rosary has 50 Hail Marys on it. But not just that. We've got some Our Fathers, we got some glory Bs. Now, the rosary has been around for what, roughly a thousand years, and really even earlier than that, because there were earlier forms of what became the rosary Christian prayer, going back to the very earliest days of the church and the Atlantic. Whoever wrote this column obviously doesn't know anything about that. In the subheader, they actually referred to the rosary as a sacrament. And again, you don't need to be a doctor of the church to know that the rosary is not a sacrament. Seven sacraments of the church. Rosary beads are not one of them. And so they broadcast their ignorance, basically from the headline of the piece, but then they spout off on it anyway, because the authority, just like so many liberals, is frequently wrong but never in doubt. And what is this about? I mean, I think they actually have a really clear political motivation here. They want to cast anything that is Christian as extreme or terrorism. And so when you see, as frequently occurs, little old nuns praying outside of a Planned Parenthood, praying their rosaries, why, that's a symbol of terrorism. That's a great threat to the country. We better call law enforcement out on them. We've got to suppress these symbols of hate. So I'm holding onto my beads. They are not registered. And Moulin Lave. That's what I say about my rosary. Come and take it.
- [33:53]
Ted Cruz
Well, and to be fair, though, I guess the Atlantic does have a point. If I remember correctly, one of the Godfather movies, one of the assassins was dressed as a priest and carrying the rosary and committed murder. So there we go. Qed, They've proven their case.
- [34:10]
Michael Knowles
It's so preposterous. The only thing that one can do is sort of laugh at it and pray, I guess, is the other thing that we can do. But they're revealing such a degree of ignorance and such a degree of hypocrisy. Frequently. There's one story I have to get to before I let you go, which combines all of these things. In New York, my home state, in Washington, D.C. a place where you spend a lot of time, where I spend a lot of time, too, these are sanctuary cities. These are places that say we are open to immigrants, specifically illegal immigrants. No borders, no people are illeg. Come here. And so then the governor of your state, senator, decided to take them up on their offer. And he said, okay, we've got historic numbers of illegal aliens pouring across the border, probably going to be more than 2 million this year. And so that's fine if you want to take them New York, you want to take them DC Put them on a bus for free, the governor's paying for it and ships them up to New York. The mayors of New York and D.C. are absolutely losing their minds over it. They're saying this is terrible. They're saying this puts a strain on the resources of these cities. It's a horrific thing to do. And I thought, hold on, wait a minute. I was previously told by these very same mayors and politicians that illegal immigration is a net contributor to our economy. And it's really great and it's really wonderful, and it doesn't put a stress on any of our resources, and it doesn't bring crime or anything else. But now they're saying, not in my backyard, that illegal immigration is really great in the Republican states. It's not good in the blue cities that encourage it.
- [35:42]
Ted Cruz
You know, I gotta say, this story reveals, as you said, the fear and ignorance and the absolute hypocrisy of the left. So the mayors of both D.C. and New York have been holding press conferences, hysterical press conferences. The mayor of D.C. muriel Browser, has said that the 6,000 illegal immigrants that Texas has put on buses and sent up to D.C. has created a crisis and it is unacceptable and it has to stop now. That's just 6,000. Since Joe Biden has become president, three and a half million illegal immigrants have crossed the border. We have towns in South Texas that have seen massive hundreds of thousands, millions of people coming through. She says 6,000 is a crisis. I publicly urge the governor, if she thinks 6,000 is a crisis, we ought to send 600,000. 600,000 would be roughly one sixth of the number of illegal immigrants who have come in under Joe Biden. By the way, if she doesn't like it, she is a member of a party, the Democrat Party. The person responsible for these three and A half million dollars lives in her city in Washington, D.C. i can give her his address at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. His name is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. He made a political decision to let three and a half million illegal immigrants, in his view, was Texas. If it destroys communities in red states, that's great. Eventually these folks will vote Democrat. He believes so. Let there be lots of suffering and misery and poverty. Let there be children sexually assaulted. Let there be women trapped in sex slavery. Let there be horrific abuse and disease and crime. All of that because politics is worth it. If she wants to fix it, the leader of her party can fix it anytime he damn well wants by simply choosing to follow the law. Now, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, in some ways is even funnier. He's done these hysterical press conferences, losing his mind, saying, please stop sending illegal immigrants to New York. And he's threatened. He said, I'm gonna send busloads of New Yorkers to go to Texas to campaign against Greg Abbott for governor. Now, I have to admit, I did have some great joy responding and said, well, actually, to be fair, there are already thousands of busloads of New Yorkers fleeing New York and coming to Texas, and Eric Adams is driving them away. Now, they're coming to Texas because we're an oasis of freedom and New York is run by left wing numbnuts who are trying to recreate the hellscape of the 70s. You know, it's like Escape from New York. Snake Plissken is gonna have to sneak in and break people out of New York to go to paradises like Texas or Florida. But secondly, you gotta say Eric Adams, I think he might be slightly off in his assessment of the politics of Texas because he thinks a bunch of left wing New York Democrats coming down to Texas saying, hi, we're New Yorkers, please vote against your Republican governor. That. That is somehow gonna cause Texans to go, oh, okay, we want our state to suck as much as you've screwed your city up, so let's do that. But it is absurd. And here's a final point. I'm very glad Greg Abbott is doing it. It's the right thing to do. He ought to accelerate it massively. As you know, Abbott and I are good friends. I worked for him five and a half years. I had urged him to do this, and in fact, I filed legislation that said we shouldn't just ship them to New York and D.C. we ought to ship illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard. We ought to ship.
- [39:28]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [39:28]
Ted Cruz
We ought to ship them to Southampton we ought to ship them to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where Biden vacations. We ought to ship them to Cupertino, California. Every place that rich liberals sit and swirl Chardonnay. They ought to sit there and watch busload after busload after busload of illegal immigrants unloading. And by the way, the Martha's Vineyard mayor, like, publicly engaged me and said, oh, we would love that. We would welcome it. Really.
- [40:00]
Michael Knowles
Call my vet. Don't play chicken, man.
- [40:02]
Ted Cruz
6,000. Let's just start with the 6,000 that went to Washington, D.C. it reveals the utter hypocrisy of the left. They're willing to cause human suffering as long as it doesn't impinge on the view from their golf course.
- [40:20]
Michael Knowles
I'm just picturing, when it comes to the busloads of New Yorkers campaigning against the Republicans, I'm picturing my cousin Vinnie knock, knock on the door, hey, you hear about all these utes they're shipping up, all these Utes, you know, they're shipping them up. It's not going to be very persuasive. And the thing you're bringing up, by the way, Senator, was just described by Mike Anton over at the Claremont Institute, I thought, in a really good way. He describes it as the celebration parallax. A parallax being the position of an object seen from different vantage points. And he says that what the liberals are doing now is they're saying something. And then when the conservatives simply restate what the liberals have said, the liberals deny that the liberals get to celebrate it. The conservatives, when they say it, are punished for it. And you see it in this case. The liberals are saying illegal immigration is putting a massive strain on the resources of our cities when it shows up here. And so we really just want to limit illegal immigration to the red states. And this is a cause for celebration. The conservatives go out and they say, hey, illegal immigration is putting a huge strain on our resources, and you just want to limit it to our states. And they say, how dare you? That's evil. That's a lie. That's fake news. That's inhumane. They're saying exactly the same thing. The question is just who is allowed to say it.
- [41:40]
Ted Cruz
It's an awfully good question. But I will say it is a question that is causing people's eyes to open up. It is causing them to see the hypocrisy that is leading to a revival in November, and that is causing folks like our friend Michael Steele to lose their mind. Yeah.
- [41:56]
Michael Knowles
Now, one question before I let you go. This is from our mailbag. I don't want to let our wonderful verdict plus subscribers down. This question is from Adam Bomb, 1750. Love a great pun. This question very, very important, especially compared to all the stuff we've been talking about today. What's your favorite band?
- [42:17]
Ted Cruz
What's my favorite band? So I'm not terribly musically literate, so it's actually a complicated question. I grew up as a kid listening to classic rock, so I listened to groups like the who, Genesis, the Kinks. I saw Pink Floyd in concert, and now I listen more to country music. In fact, I was supposed to. All right. I was so bummed. I was supposed to go last weekend to Garth Brooks, and it was awesome. I got invited to go backstage and meet Garth Brooks. I never met Garth Brooks. I'm not someone who generally hangs out with famous musicians, but it was cool. I got an invitation. Hey, you want to come back and meet Garth Brooks? I was like, holy cow. I would love to. The concert was in Houston Saturday night. We were in DC all night voting on Votorama Saturday night. So not only did I see the Democrats bankrupt America, jack up taxes, pass a bill that will increase gas prices, increase inflation, but I missed the frigging Garth Brooks concert. So it completely bummed me out. And the fellow who had invited me to go, he sent me pictures from the concert, which was a little bit like sort of rubbing salt in the wounds. I'm like, yeah, that concert looks pretty amazing. And I'm down in the basement of the Capitol right now, and, wow, that's not where I am.
- [43:39]
Michael Knowles
If it makes you feel any better, Senator, I'm not convinced that you have not met Garth Brooks, because I have never seen Garth Brooks and Glenn Beck in the same room at the same time. So I'm not making any accusations here. It's just, to me, a little bit suspect. Those two guys. I don't know. It's kind of Clark Casey, I will.
- [43:59]
Ted Cruz
Say, by the way, this year, earlier this year, I was supposed to take the family to George Strait in concert at the Houston Rodeo, and we were coming back from spring break. We had been skiing, and we ended up missing our plane. And so this has been a bad year for concerts because I've had two concerts I was completely psyched to go to George Strait and Garth Brooks, and I missed them both, which really sucked. But I did get to see the Eagles in concert this year, which was an amazing concert, so I enjoyed that. But I would say I don't know that I necessarily have one favorite band. But I'd say it used to be classic rock. Now it has shifted more countries and.
- [44:39]
Michael Knowles
Probably Smokey Mike and the God King I assume is a favorite of yours. I mean, we can get more into it, you know, at a later date. We will be getting into a lot more at a later date because we are now accepting applications for the YAF campus tour. If you want to submit your school as a possible venue for the YAF Campus Tour, you go to yaf.org verdict we had lots of fun last time. We went down to Texas A and M. We went to Yale. We've been all over the place. So go submit your schools. We're gonna be doing three campuses. Apply today yaf.org verdict but before we go on the road, there is so much more to discuss and that will be on the Cloakroom with our friend Liz Wheeler. Liz, what are you gonna be talking about?
- [45:25]
Ted Cruz
So what we're gonna talk about on Cloakroom today is actually a continuation of what you talked about on Verdict Today. And it's this distrust that the American people feel in our government institutions and what the recourse for this is because there is this feeling in our country of hopelessness. What do we do to counter, you know, the FBI's abuse of power when they raided Mar A Lago? And in the wake actually of the Inflation Reduction act, or so called Inflation Reduction act, people are also talking about this as it relates to fiscal responsibility in our country. There's a movement called Convention of States that's proposing an idea, but this isn't widely accepted in the conservative movement or the Republican Party. So we are going to break down what this is, what the pros and the cons of this are, and if it would be workable and if it's workable, how would we prepare for this? So it's going to be very in depth, very nitty gritty, and exactly what conversation our country needs to have on how to solve these issues. You can join us at verdict with TedCruz.com/ my promo code, as always, is Cloakroom. You can watch for free for a month on your annual subscription verdict with TedCruise.com/ and we'll see if we get.
- [46:32]
Michael Knowles
A new constitution or some changes to our constitution. I look forward to it, but that's all from me. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [46:48]
Ted Cruz
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country in 2022 jobs, freedom, freedom and security. PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.