← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
How Can We STOP School Shootings - and, Maddeningly, Why Democrats Keep Blocking Real School Safety Legislation
00:45:43
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- [00:02]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as always. And if you're a regular, you know, we put out our podcast Monday, Wednesday and Fridays. This is Thursday. And why are we going a day early? Because there's some legislation that's going to be introduced by the senator that's extremely important and it deals with school safety and the shooting issue that just happened in Nashville. Senator, this is something that is heartbreaking for me and I know for you, because what you're working on in the legislation is exactly the same thing that could have been done in September of 2022. Here we are again after another school shooting where there are not guards there to protect these kids. It was a gun free zone without a resource officer and we had the same outcome, unfortunately. And now you're going to continue to fight to protect our kids in their schools with resource officers and with everything that you could possibly need to do everything you can to keep kids saf.
- [01:04]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, let me say first of all what happened at Covenant School in Nashville, it's just horrific. It is every parent's nightmare. A deranged lunatic murdered three nine year old children, murdered three adults. I gotta say, I cannot imagine the quantity of evil that leads someone to murder children. I think it is the worst crime there is. There is a level of lunacy. And by the way, when I say someone, one thing to be clear, I will not say the someone's name. And this is actually a policy that I strictly enforce on myself. I don't repeat the names of these mass murderers. They want to be remembered. They want to be go down in history and infamy. I think they deserve to be forgotten, gotten as the deranged lunatics they are. And I wish everyone in politics, I wish everyone in the media would follow the same rule. And I'll refer to the shooter, I'm happy to repeat a victim's name. But these monsters do not deserve to have their names repeated. What happened at that school is grotesquely evil. I think of the pastor of that Christian school whose little girl was murdered that day. The agony of the parents, the agony of the children. It is horrific. And you know, we've seen with this terrible crime, we've seen all the pathologies of our political system. We've seen the instant the news broke, the Democrats leaping immediately to their political objective of gun control. They seem never as filled with joy as in the wake of a horrific mass murder because it lets them advance their political position. We saw the media eagerly participating at that at the outset. And then we Saw a remarkable about face because when the news came that the shooter was an individual who's transgender who appears to have been targeting the school because it's a Christian school, suddenly the media didn't know what to do because that was not their preferred narrative. And so the media has been in a bit of crisis. They haven't been sure whether to just ignore it altogether or try to spin it. Some of the most absurd spins that the media has tried is this mass murder is your fault. If, if you believe that that 5 year old shouldn't go to explicit drag shows, if you believe that, that children shouldn't be mutilated to, to try to change their biological gender because they lack the maturity to make that decision, then it's your fault this lunatic murdered those children. All of that is infuriating. But I got to tell you, Ben, there's something more infuriating than that, which is I believe this could have been prevented. Look, I've been the US Senator from Texas for 11 years now. One of the worst and hardest aspects of this job is that I've been on the ground at mass shooting, after mass shooting, after mass shooting. I was there at Santa Fe High School. Santa Fe High school. It's about 45 minutes from my house. I was home that morning when the shooting happened. I got the call within minutes of the shooting. I jumped in a truck and headed down there. I was there little more than an hour after the shooting occurred. I was there with the students, with the families. I saw the horrors of that lunatic that murdered those children. I was there in Sutherland Springs, the site of the worst church shooting in the history of our country. A deranged lunatic who came in and murdered innocent people, including shooting point blank an 18 month old infant. I stood in that sanctuary the day after the shooting. When I was there, there was still blood everywhere across the sanctuary. There was shattered glass. There were pews that had been strewn about as people, terrified, tried to flee for their lives. I remember seeing a shattered cell phone covered with blood. That mass shooting was stopped only because a heroic neighbor, a plumber named Steven Williford, heard the shooting, went and grabbed his AR15, ran down and engaged with the shooter, shot the shooter and took him out. I was there on the ground in El Paso after that mass shooting. I was in Midland, Odessa, after that mass shooting. I was in Dallas, Texas, after a crazed Black Lives Matter radical murdered five police officers. I've been to too damn many of these. And let me start by saying, Ben, when you and I were kids, this wasn't a thing.
- [06:18]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, it didn't happen.
- [06:20]
Senator Ted Cruz
Like, look, when you went to school, maybe you worried about getting in a fight in the playground, maybe you might get a bloody nose. But I don't remember once in school worrying that some psychopath was going to come shoot us.
- [06:35]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. I asked my dad, I said, dad, did you ever worry about us in school and even in church? And he said he was in law enforcement. He said, no, never. And never once did I ever think, I need to teach you how to hide under a desk or hide from a shooter or what to do if you hear gunshots in the hallway of a school. This is a new thing.
- [06:54]
Senator Ted Cruz
Look, you're a parent, Ben. It scares the hell out of you.
- [06:59]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, it's. Well, my wife and I had the conversation. What do we say to our kids now? And how do we talk to them, My oldest is 6. About if this happens, what is he to do? Do we have that conversation? How do you have that conversation? This is something that no parent wants to even have to talk about with their kids. But the reality is now we are forced to.
- [07:23]
Senator Ted Cruz
We are forced to. Every parent is scared for their kids, and every rational person wants to prevent this. And listen, I've spent 11 years in the Senate, number one, fighting to stop the Democrats efforts at gun control, which are unconstitutional, and they don't work. They don't stop mass murders. And the Democrats, that's not their priority. But I've also been fighting to stop these crimes. I don't want to see another parent who's lost their kids. I've seen too many of them. And if you want to stop violent crimes, there's a way to do it, which is you target the bad guys. You target the felons, the fugitives, those with serious mental illness. You go after them, you prosecute them, you put them in jail. When they try to illegally buy guns, you. You lock them up. You protect people. You also secure our schools. If you look at ever since Columbine, these deranged people think, okay, I can be famous, and they go target children. And so if you want to protect our kids, the steps that are most important are making our schools safer, enhancing physical security. And the single biggest step that matters is having armed police officers on campus at the front door so they can stop a lunatic before he or she gets into the campus and is able to kill kids. That's how you stop a bad guy. And so, look, in the wake of Uvalde, and I was there at Uvalde, right after the tragedy, it was horrific. It happened in Texas. The evil is indescribable. After Uvalde, I filed legislation that would provide very substantial funds to enhance the physical security of schools. That would double the number of police officers in schools, and by the way, public schools, private schools, parochial schools. It would, it would give the funds $15 billion to put armed police officers on campus. So if any lunatic comes after your kids, there'd be an officer there or multiple officers there to stop them before they got in. And it also provided $10 billion in funding for mental health counselors. So many of these crimes are committed by deeply disturbed young people. And having the counseling there to stop these troubled teenagers before they commit a horrific crime of violence is incredibly important. And here's the thing that's so frustrating. I tried to pass this legislation and the Democrats blocked it. I forced a vote on it. The bill was called Cruz Barraso. So I wrote it along with John Barrasso from Wyoming. Every single Democrat voted no. They wanted to pass a gun control bill instead. So protecting the schools was not their priority. They wanted to take away the firearms of law abiding citizens. After that, after every Democrat had voted no, I went to the Senate floor and I tried to pass the bill by unanimous consent. Now, the way unanimous consent works is you stand up, you ask to pass it by unanimous consent, and if one senator stands up and objects, it gets killed. In this instance, the person who objected was Chris Murphy, who was the Democrat from Connecticut. He's the leading advocate of gun control in the Senate. And he stood up and with no justification whatsoever, objected and killed the legislation that could have prevented this murder at the Covenant School, that could have funded having a police officer at the front door to shoot this lunatic before the shooter killed even a single child. I cannot tell you how angry I am about that, that we could have stopped this. But the Senate Democrats weren't willing to do what it takes to stop this.
- [11:46]
Ben Ferguson
And you mentioned it. It was because they didn't want to arm and protect the kids. They wanted the solution to the problem to only be one option, which was to take away our Second Amendment rights. You could even see this after the shooting that happened in Nashville. Immediately, they said that it was the gun's fault. It was an AR15. We found out it was an AR15 that she was using in the videos. It was a car beam that uses the same ammunition that handguns use. It was not an AR15. And then, in fact, if you really want to get into it, the only AR15 that was used in that confrontation between the shooter and the police was the police officer who used an AR15 to take her down and the media lied about all of it?
- [12:36]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yep. And I will say, Ben, I know you've watched, as I have, the body cam footage of those officers. Let me commend those officers, those Nashville police officers who went in right after the shooting had began. And the body cam footage. Look, they're coming onto the campus. They don't know where the shooter is. They don't know what's happening. They're scared. Anyone would be scared in that instance. But they're searching, they're trying to save the kids. They're running up the stairs, they hear the gunshots and they don't run away, they don't hide. They run towards the gunshots, they run towards the gunshots. They engage with the shooter and they take the shooter down. And I gotta say, watching that body cam footage, those officers are heroes. And the fact that they engaged and took that shooter out saved many lives that day. That shooter would have kept killing children, would have kept killing adults. And the only thing that stopped the shooter was the officer's heroism. Now imagine the same thing with one detail changed. Instead of the officers coming in 15 minutes after the shooting began, because that's when they got to the school. Imagine the officers are there at the front door to begin with. The shooter came in and shot through the front door, shot through the glass and entered through the glass. If the shooter had tried that and there had been an officer or multiple officers there, they would have shot the shooter dead on the steps and those precious children would be alive. That's why it matters to have police officers there to protect our kids. It's why it's so infuriating that Democrats are adamantly opposed to doing what would actually work to stop these kind of horrific crimes.
- [14:19]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, every time we see one of these school shootings or like you mentioned, the church shooting, it always takes a good guy with a gun to come and stop a bad guy with a gun. I want to go back to what you said in September, September 14th of 2022, when you originally talked about this legislation, because it's important that we look at what we could have done and learn from these mistakes. And it seems unfortunately, like Democrats are still dug in now saying, okay, even though this has happened, even though we could have had security, even though this bill was put out there, we're still going to refuse, we're still going to go after the guns. And I want to play that. But first I want to remind you about Our friends at Gust of Precious Metals. You've been seeing what's been going on with the economy. You've seen what's happened with interest rates. You know what's happening on Wall Street. And if you are concerned and exhausted from the stress of worrying about your retirement account, you might want to talk to Augusta Precious Metals. Why? Because they can help protect your hard earned dollars. Augusta Precious Metals is all about protecting IRAs and 401ks in this crazy economy. They do this because they know it's so important close to retirement because there's no time to make up losses. Now if you've saved a hundred thousand dollars or more, you should call and get their free guide or sign up for their web conference. Now I use Augusta Precious Metals. I have sat down with them. I have done the web conference and my number one objective was protecting what I had saved and having a diversified portfolio. Call against the precious metals, get that guide and sit down with them for free. 8774 Gold IRA is the number. 877 the number 4 Gold IRA. Or visit Augusta Precious Metals.com say I sent you Ben and they'll pay your fees for up to 10 years. That's Augusta precious metals.com 8774 Gold Ira Center I want to play for everybody this clip of you. It's a longer clip. It's an important clip. It's a clip from September 2022 where you were advocating then for exactly what you're saying we need now and after Nashville. There's just more proof. This is what needs to happen in legislative session.
- [16:39]
C
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S4845, which is at the desk. Further, that the bill be considered, read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered, made.
- [16:56]
Senator Ted Cruz
And laid upon the table. Is there objection?
- [16:59]
Ben Ferguson
Madam President, Senator from Connecticut. Madam President, I object.
- [17:04]
Senator Ted Cruz
Objection is heard.
- [17:06]
C
Madam President, what we just saw on this floor was stunning.
- [17:12]
Senator Ted Cruz
I am genuinely at a loss for words.
- [17:16]
C
This bill is common sense. There is not a constituent in Texas or Nevada or Connecticut. If you asked would it be a good thing to have more police officers keeping our kids safe? Wouldn't say of course it would. There's not a constituents of ours who, if you asked would it be a good thing to have more mental health counselors on campus to stop people from committing crimes, would say of course it would. I was informed a few days ago that when I was going to seek unanimous consent, the Senator from Connecticut was going to object. Now The Senator from Connecticut styles himself the leading advocate of gun control in the U.S. senate.
- [17:58]
Senator Ted Cruz
I was asked by reporters, why are.
- [18:00]
C
The Democrats objecting to this? And I'll tell you what I told reporters.
- [18:04]
Senator Ted Cruz
I have no idea.
- [18:06]
C
They haven't said, they haven't told me why they object to it.
- [18:11]
Senator Ted Cruz
And so I was genuinely looking forward.
- [18:14]
C
To seeing the Senator from Connecticut's remarks. I was sitting here waiting to see, why do you oppose more police officers? To keep our kids safe? Why do you oppose mental health counselors in schools? I've been in the Senate 10 years. The senator from Connecticut and I were elected at the same time. I've engaged in many debates on this floor, including with the Senator from Connecticut. The fact that that he chose not to say a word about why he objects is stunning. I find myself genuinely flabbergasted. I will say one of the reasons I think the Senator from Connecticut feels content not only not to argue, but now to walk off the floor and not even listen to the debate he's ostensibly participating in. One of the reasons he feels free to do so is if you look up the Senate gallery, I can count them. There are precisely zero reporters in this gallery. Not a single one of the corporate media will report on this. And I think the senator from Connecticut feels absolutely certain when he walks out, he will have reporters that will say, tell me how terrible Donald Trump is. And he'll lean in and say, oh, Donald Trump is really terrible. But not a. One of the reporters will ask, hey, wait a second, why don't you want police officers keeping our kids safe? None of them will. The Democrats are protected by a dishonest army of propagandists in the corporate media. CNN will not have a panel sitting around discussing why is it that the Democrats simply do not care to defend their positions. Let me tell you, when there's a mass murdering and the Democrats stand up and give speeches and they point at Republicans and say, blood is on your hands. It's great political rhetoric. It's dishonest, but boy, it gins up their donors. It gets people to go and write checks to Democrats and fund their campaigns. What we just saw reveals the Democrats have one objective when a mass murder happens, and that is to take away the second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens. That is always, always, always their solution. Never mind that it doesn't work. Never mind that it doesn't stop violent crime. Never mind that if you look at the jurisdictions across the country with the strictest gun control laws, almost every single one of them consistently has among the highest crime rates and murder rates. Earlier this year, the senator from Connecticut authored his big gun control package, rammed it through this body. A package which will do nothing to zero to stop mass murders. We will see another mass murder. I pray that we don't. But evil exists in the world. And if another lunatic attacks the school and there's not a police officer at the front door to stop him, remember, right now, remember this moment when the Democrats said, no, we will not protect our kids. There are lots of arguments Senator from Connecticut could have made.
- [21:49]
Senator Ted Cruz
He chose to make none of them, Senator.
- [21:52]
Ben Ferguson
It's amazing. He chose to make none of them. And what you're talking about there clearly shows the agenda of the Democratic Party, which is not to protect kids, even when there are clear vulnerabilities that we keep witnessing. Every time there's one of these mass shootings and there's no one there to be a first responder and we have to wait on police. And even when it's done perfectly, like it was done in Nashville, it was still, what, 14 minutes in.
- [22:18]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, I will say, listening to that again, it infuriates me once again because we could do much, much more to keep our kids safe. And the Democrats who claim to care so desperately much, they're the ones who block it. Now, I will say one of the standard Democrat talking points now is following Uvalde. Anytime you say, if you want to protect our kids, we need more police officers, they point out the police officers didn't do what they needed to do in Uvalde. And I got to say that's right. The officers in Uvalde screwed up badly. They sat there forever while the shooting was ongoing. The timeline now shows that it was an hour and 14 minutes from when the first police officer arrived on campus to when the officers stormed into the classroom and killed the shooter. During that hour and 14 minutes, gunshots were going off one after the other after the other. During that hour and 14 minutes, children were calling into 911 in panic, terror. And tragically, because the officers didn't go in earlier, we ended up having 19 fourth graders and two teachers murdered that day. And that makes me angry, too. I was there right after that shooting. I met with the leadership of the police officers who lied to us, who lied to me, who. Who lied to John Corden, the other senator, who lied to Greg Abbott, the governor, and almost everything they described about what had happened in Uvalde was wrong, as we found out the several days that followed. But the lesson that Democrat and lefty activists have taken from that is because the police officers there did not act swiftly to take out the shooter. Therefore, they've concluded police officers can never stop a shooter. And that is wrong. Look, I wish those officers had gone in and Uvalde within minutes of getting there and had taken out that shooter. And there would be a lot more children alive today if they'd done that. They didn't. And that is a absolute tragedy. But I gotta say one of the things that Nashville shows is their talking points. That cops don't stop mass shootings is a total lie. In Nashville, the officers did what should have been done in Uvalde, which is the instant they found out about it, they went in, they had bulletproof vests, they went in and they shot the shooter and they took him out. That's what they should have done. But I gotta say, it's also what is so frustrating. The only thing Democrats want to do is they say, you know, if we take Ben Ferguson's guns, that'll be great. You know, Ben, you're not going to be a mass murderer. I have zero concerns about that. The Democrats, to be honest, the Democrats don't have concerns either. They don't think law abiding citizens are going to become commit crimes. But ideologically they have set their priorities. We want the guns. We want the guns from law abiding citizens. We want to take away your right to protect your home and your family. And look, I have led the fight against their unconstitutional gun control proposals from day one in the Senate. But what I genuinely don't understand is why they parrot with an absolute refusal to go after gun criminals. What is weird is if you're a law abiding citizen who poses no threat, they want to disarm you. If you're a gang banger who's shooting people, they want to let you free from jail. They don't want to lock up the criminals who commit crimes with guns. They just want the people who don't commit crimes to lose their guns.
- [26:33]
Ben Ferguson
I was having this debate earlier today. You and I were talking about this before where I was debating the issue of guns with Geraldo Rivera and Piers Morgan and I, I went back and I try to simplify it.
- [26:44]
Senator Ted Cruz
Boy, what a true there, Ben.
- [26:45]
Ben Ferguson
I know, right? That's when you're. That's. Yeah, but, but I look at them and they're the, they're the mouthpiece of being anti gun. They're the mouthpiece of obsession, of taking away guns. And I asked them the question because I try to bring it down To a basic level, when I'm trying to change someone's mind, I'm like, this is what I don't understand. Why is it that we protect our money in our banks with more security than we protect our children in our schools? Why is it that we defend and protect our president with guns, but we won't protect our kids in our schools with guns? Why is it that we defend and protect our celebrities with guns, but we don't do it with our children? We, we do it at our courts, we do it with our valuables. We do it at places like jewelry stores. We do it even at sporting events. We want to protect people at sporting events, but we don't want to protect our kids in our schools. We do this at any major event, music festival. The list goes on and on. And the only thing that we seem to keep having to, quote, protect our kids is this is a gun free zone, and this is a place where you're not allowed to bring a gun. Well, every single time someone tests that right, and says, okay, I'm not going to abide by that rule, what happens? We usually have massive loss and carnage. And I think it's very clear now that we should protect our children with more ferocious passion and defense than we do money in our banks. We. We shouldn't value our dollars more than our children, but we do. Every bank I've ever been to has an armed guard, and they have really good doors to protect the valuables. We're going to learn a lot from Nashville, Senator. And you and I both know that. We're gonna. We saw the video of our shooting through those glass doors. There are going to have to be things that change. There are already. It was the first question I asked my kids, school, hey, we've got some of those glass doors now. Knowing that even when they're locked, that's how easy you can get through them. And they already said, we're on it. That's what I was told immediately, we're on that. We're looking at this. We're going to learn from this. But when I went and enrolled my kid, my wife and I had very different conversations. We were looking at schools for my youngest and my. She was talking about academics, she was talking about faith. She was talking about, you know, religious teaching at the school. These things matter. The number one thing I asked about was, I want to know about safety here. I want to know that there are men and women, I don't care who they are, that are able to protect my child. If there is some Sort of circumstance, that was my number one priority. Now, granted, I have a different perspective. I used a gun to protect my life, to save my life. I didn't have a gun with me. I wouldn't be here doing the show with you today. So I call it ptsd from that moment in my life where I had to pull the trigger to save my life. But I realize that if you don't have a good guy there with a gun, you are waiting on the good guy to get there. Whether it's 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 8 minutes, or 10 minutes, or 14 minutes, even if you get it perfect like they did Nashville, this is very personal because I know that that moment when I needed a gun, if I didn't have it at that moment, to respond at that moment, I was a dead person. I was a dead man. And if we care about all these other things so much, Senator, does it worry you that the Democrats are this obsessed with gun control? They can't understand that we are valuing all these other things above the lives of children? That's what I just can't understand.
- [30:05]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, look, it is very much like yesterday's podcast. We talked about Alejandro Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the cross examination that I gave to him. You know, in respect to our southern border, the Democrats have a political objective. Maximize the number of illegal aliens because they think they will vote Democrat and keep them in power. And they're willing to ignore suffering. They're willing to ignore children being physically abused, sexually abused. They're willing to ignore dead bodies piling up, the Biden body bags piling up. They're willing to ignore 100,000 overdoses last year, the highest in history, because all they care about is their political objective. The exact same thing is true when it comes to guns. They have a political objective, disarm law abiding citizens. And it excites all of their activists who give monies and fund their campaigns. They're willing to oppose the common sense steps that would actually stop these crimes, because the only thing that matters to them is their political objective. And let me be clear. You were talking about the importance of the right to keep and bear arms, which, as you know, I believe in passionately, and the right to protect yourself and your family. And look, in schools, there are vigorous debates about, for example, should teachers allow to be armed? I think the answer should be yes, absolutely. I pointed out in schools there are a lot of teachers, you know, sometimes gym teachers or others who are former law enforcement who are former military who are trained to know how to handle a firearm. I think a school would be safer if teachers were allowed to be armed. Now the left comes back with these sort of crazy hypotheticals of imagining this 90 year old librarian that you're suddenly thrusting a.44 Magnum in her hands as she's teetering on her walker. And nobody is talking about forcing teachers to be armed. To be clear, it is about allowing teachers who have the training and experience and know how to use a firearm to be in a position to use it. But here's my point on this. You and I both agree that makes sense. But. But let's say someone doesn't. I think that's actually an issue on which reasonable minds can disagree. Here's my point. What I was proposing wasn't allowing teachers to be armed. It was having police officers present on campus. And to be clear, every damn Democrat politician who voted against it, which would be every single Democrat senator in the Senate, all of them are protected by the Capitol police every single day. I don't understand. It's why. By the way, the reason I said in that floor speech, I said you couldn't find a constituent in Texas or Connecticut or Nevada, the presiding officer that day was Jackie Rosen from Nevada and the Democrat, a Democrat, and the Democrat who objected was Connecticut. I could go to Connecticut and I don't think you could find a parent who would say, gosh, I wouldn't like to have a police officer present at my school. And yet all of the Democrats voted against it and they objected and blocked it. And it's worth underscoring what I said that day. I said, look, tragically there's going to be another lunatic who comes to a school to murder kids. I wish there wasn't. But there is evil in this world. And if there is not a police officer at the front door, remember this day. Well, you know what? That happened in Nashville, Tennessee at the Covenant School. Another lunatic came to a school and there wasn't a police officer there. And if the Democrats hadn't shut this down, the legislation I proposed could have put a police officer there and could have saved the lives of everyone murdered that day.
- [34:08]
Ben Ferguson
I want to talk about funding because one of the things that Democrats say is we can't afford this. And they're going to say back in September when you did this in 2022, well, this was a pie in the sky idea that we couldn't afford. Let's talk about the financial side of this. It's got to be paid for before we do That I want to tell you about our friends at Patriot Mobile. If you have a cell phone, and 99% of you do, most of you are probably listening this podcast on your cell phone right now or through your cell phone, on your speakers in your car. There is a company that you can switch to and it's seamless. You're going to use the same towers you're on right now. You're going to get the same coverage you have right now. The difference is you may save yourself a lot of money by switching to Patriot Mobile. And then you're going to be making a difference. You're going to be standing with a company that actually stands up for what you believe in. If you're tired of giving your money to companies that actually fight against your values, switch to Patriot Mobile. They actually reinvest, they take a portion of your bill at no extra cost to you, and they give it back to conservative causes and organizations to protect our first and our second amendment rights, protect the lives, the unborn, and even help now with adoptions after Roe v. Wade has been overturned. If you want to know that your money is going to a company that values what you believe in, switch to Patriot Mobile. 878 Patriot. Use the promo code. Verdict. You'll get the best deals of the day. You can keep your same cell phone number. Like I just said, 878 Patriot. That's 878 Patriot. Or online@patriot mobile.com verdict. That's patriot mobile.com verdict. Senator, I want to talk about the funding side of this because there are going to be so many different people that say, well, we just can't afford this. All right? The question is, can we? And you had a plan for that last year. There was money sitting there that could have been used for this. I want to play that from your force speech. Then.
- [36:02]
Senator Ted Cruz
I'm now going to propound a second unanimous consent bill.
- [36:06]
C
There are right now $135 billion in unspent Covid relief funds to schools. Under the rules the Democrats have put in place, those funds cannot be spent on school security. The second bill that I'm going to ask this body to pass is a bill that is very simple.
- [36:29]
Senator Ted Cruz
It's one page.
- [36:31]
C
It says schools can spend some of that 135 billion on school security. They can decide what to spend it on. But if they decide they want to hire an additional police officer, they can.
- [36:46]
Senator Ted Cruz
Spend the money on that.
- [36:47]
C
If they decide they want to enhance the physical security of their campus to make their students safer, they can Spend it on that they can invest in school security. Right now, the Democrats have blocked them from doing this. These are funds Congress has already appropriated that haven't been spent. And this bill is unbelievably simple.
- [37:07]
Senator Ted Cruz
It says the schools can choose to.
- [37:11]
C
Invest in school security. Therefore, Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the committee on Health, Education, labor and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of s. 4586 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration further, that the bill be considered, read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered, made and laid upon the table.
- [37:40]
Ben Ferguson
Pretty straightforward, right? You would think that they would say, oh, we have funds. Let's do this. Let's give it a shot. And yet they still said no.
- [37:49]
Senator Ted Cruz
Chris Murphy had a very eloquent speech in response. He said, quote, I object. The Democrats, they literally don't give a damn. Now, mind you, you know, you said a moment ago, said, well, some people will say, how can we afford this? To be honest, no Democrat would say this. They don't care how you can afford. Afford something. They will spend trillions that we don't have. They spend like drunken sailors. And that's not fair to the sailors because the sailors are spending their own money. So no Democrat, in fact asks the question, how do we pay for this? Because that could not conceivably matter to them. They simply objected. And I want you to look what I said on the Senate floor, there was $135 billion Congress had already appropriated for schools that had not been spent. And all I was saying is, look, if a school wants to, it's got all this cash raining down from Washington. It ought to be able to use some of it to make the school safer. I, I genuinely. Look, I think I'm a fairly bright guy. I don't know how to articulate the argument against it. Like if, if you test me. I don't, I don't know, maybe the, the chat gps, the AI program is better than I did. If you task that, you could come up with, give a speech against allowing schools to spend some of the COVID relief money on school security. Maybe it could come up with a speech. I don't know what I would say. I was a college debater. I'm pretty good at debating a lot of propositions. I genuinely, Ben, do not know what arguments you would give. And you know what? Neither do the Democrats because they know the media is utterly corrupt. Look, this week, as I've had reporters stop me and ask about the shooting. And all they say is, well, is it time to pass gun control? And I say, no, it's time to pass the bill I introduced over a year ago that could have stopped this mass murder by putting police officers on the ground, by allowing schools to invest in school safety that the Democrats blocked. And I've asked probably a dozen reporters this week, I've said, has any one of you asked even a single Democrat, why did you vote against increasing the number of cops in schools? Why did you vote against allowing schools to invest in school safety? To the best of my knowledge, no reporter has asked any of those Democrats. Certainly no reporter has asked Joe Biden. He doesn't get questions like that. Now, he rarely answers questions harder than what, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? But the two exchanges you played in this podcast, I will wager $1,000 that nobody listening to this podcast has heard those exchanges before. Unless you sit there watching C Span and it's kind of like 12 little old ladies that watch C Span all day long and the rest of America is busy living their lives. You haven't heard that. And as I mentioned in the first floor speech, the Senate gallery was empty. The reporters refused to cover it. And then they come back and say, well, the Republicans have no answer. So one of the classic back and forths when this horrific crime happened, I sent out a tweet and I said, heidi and I are praying for the families who lost their loved ones. We're praying for the community at Covenant School. You know, may God's peace and grace be upon them. And listen, I'm a Christian. As a believer, when people are hurting, when people are suffering, I will lift them up in prayer. I believe in the power of prayer. I don't know that there's anything that triggers the left more than that. And they start screaming, thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers. And they hate thoughts and prayers. And one of the things that I've said this week is so their standard talking point is thoughts and prayers aren't enough. Now, here's the amazing thing. I think prayer is incredible and powerful and important. But I actually agree with the statement, thoughts and prayers aren't enough. We ought to have thoughts and prayers. We also ought to have armed police officers on campus to stop the next lunatic, because I don't want another little kid killed. And yet the Democrat and media lie is, well, the only solution to this is gun control. Republicans have no answer to these crimes other than thoughts and prayers. Well, I have a very detailed answer, and it is the Democrats who are blocking it from happening?
- [42:32]
Ben Ferguson
How will this go down? I know you're going to look at this legislation. That's why we're doing this show a day early. Instead of putting it out on Friday, we're doing on Thursday. What can people be watching for and how will this work and who do they need to be calling? Because I think a lot of people say, tell me what to do, give me guidance. Is it call your senators tomorrow and say, hey, support this.
- [42:52]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, the plan is this afternoon I'm going to go back to the Senate floor and I'm going to try to pass these again by unanimous consent. So it's going to be the same proceeding you just played. I'm going to do it again this afternoon. As I sit here right now, I don't know for a fact that the Democrats will object, but I'll be astonished if they don't. I don't know if it'll be Chris Murphy or objects or if they send someone else to do it. But my plan is to go to try to pass this tomorrow and my assumption, and we'll talk about this in the next podcast on Monday. But my assumption is the Democrats will object and I think they will do the exact same thing. They will refuse to engage in a substantive debate. They won't defend their positions. They'll just send someone up there to say I object and then run off the floor. By the way I talked about while I'm giving the floor speech, Chris Murphy literally walked off the floor. He did not care what I had to say. He doesn't care about the substance of how to stop these crimes. He's got a political agenda. And so my assumption is the Democrats will do it again later this afternoon and we'll know for sure. So you can watch it on C Span and you ought to highlight join the 10 people, the 10 little old ladies watching C Span this afternoon and watch the exchange. See what happens.
- [44:06]
Ben Ferguson
Watch the exchange. And also you can watch how the media doesn't cover this for a second time in another year. This is such an important moment in our history and that's where we do have to make sure that we stay active. We focus. Wherever you're listening, call your senator and ask them to support this, obviously, because it is important. Let me tell you about Chaka. If you haven't heard about chalk, you need to check him out. If you're a guy and you're dealing with that issue of feeling like you're getting a little bit older, losing that edge, then chalk can help you gain what you've lost back. They help men maximize their masculinity by boosting testosterone levels up to 20% over 90 days. Now I've been taking the chalk male vitality stack and I can tell you it works. You can maximize your masculinity up your testosterone levels by up to 20% over 90 days. Go online to chalk choq.com they are here to help real American men get back what you've lost. Ch. Com use promo code BEN for 35% off any chalk subscription for life. You can cancel anytime. Chalk choq.com use the code BEN for 35% off. Senator, always a pleasure to chat with you about this. Good luck on the four of the Senate with this later today. And everybody that's listening right now, please make sure you share this podcast with your family and your friends. Hit that subscribe or auto download button. We'll see you back here on Monday morning as well.