← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Iran's Problem w Trump as POTUS, Harris PAID Celebrities to Like Her & Details of Picking a Sen. Majority Leader Week In Review
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- [00:00]
Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz and the Week in Review. Ben Ferguson with you. And these are the major stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, Donald Trump now responding to an Iranian plot to take his own life. And why do we only find out about this after Election Day? We'll dive into that in just a moment. Also, Kamala Harris blew through a billion dollars with her campaign, and she made a lot of people rich in the process. So why is it that so many celebrities took major paychecks from donors instead of, quote, doing the right thing to support Kamala? We'll break down the money and who got rich. Also, the purpose of secret ballot for selecting the Senate majority leader. Well, what actually happened behind the scenes? Senator Cruz and I break down exactly how that vote took place. It's the Weekend Review and it starts right now. You hear this plot and you sit there and you go, how on earth has the Biden Harris administration allowed Iran to get to this point where they can just easily go out into the United States of America, knock on people's doors in America, get away with this and not hold them accountable for any of this, while they're also attacking Israel? And the question is, number one, let's start with the real political aspect of this. What does a Trump administration response need to be with this? I'm not saying because they were targeting Trump. I'm saying the president of the United States of America, regardless of who that person is, should never allow Iran to feel this comfortable on American soil to do this, much less plan to take out our president or a former president of the United States of America.
- [01:44]
Ben Ferguson
Well, Election Day was a fantastic day for America. It was fantastic day for everyone who wants to see jobs, who wants to see border security, who wants to see national security enhanced. But it was a terrible, terrible day for the ayatollah and the Iranian mullahs for four years. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with the support of every Democrat in Congress, they have funneled over $100 billion to Iran. It's not just that Biden Harris allowed Iran to do this. They paid for it. $100 billion is a lot of money. I'm here to tell you that is going to end in January of next year. The Trump administration is going to cut off the money. That's going to be the beginning. And I expect serious consequences for Iran repeatedly trying to murder President Trump. I don't know what those consequences will be, but I guarantee you the ayatollahs are the ayatollah and the mullahs are deeply, deeply worried and scared. And the brazenness of this. And, look, understand, the Justice Department knew about this. They deliberately did not make it public until after Election Day. I think they had a judgment. Well, gosh, if people know that Iran is, like, actively trying to murder Trump, if they know the details of this, that's gonna end up benefiting Trump. So let's just keep it quiet. And, well, Trump won.
- [03:06]
Ted Cruz
So then it was cover your aws. Is that a fair way of describing this?
- [03:09]
Ben Ferguson
You know, yes and no. I mean, look, they had to file the complaint at some point, so they're prosecuting these folks. So it was. It was inevitable that it would be filed, because you can't prosecute them without filing the indictment and bringing charges. The timing, the fact that they did not say anything public. Look, DOJ has longstanding rules that you're not supposed to do anything to interfere in an election. I would say that foiling an assassination attempt by a foreign government is not DOJ doing something to interfere with an election. It is instead DOJ doing its job. And I think the public has a right to know that. But. And so I think their decision to bury it and listen under Joe Biden, this Biden Department of Justice, if there's one thing they know how to do, it is leak. Merrick Garland and his team, they leak like crazy. When the story. When the story suits them politically, they give it to all their buddies in the press. This thing stayed absolutely silent until after Election Day. They also kept silent the murder attempt of the US Citizen by Iran because it also shows the incredible weakness of this administration just how much they've emboldened Iran that they feel that they could carry out attempted murder plots on US Soil. It is a real demonstration of the basic principle that weakness invites hostility. In this case, Iran was only emboldened by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's weakness.
- [04:37]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. And Fox News when they reported on this, it was very interesting to see how they report it. And I want to play this, people, and I want you to think about why you didn't know this before election day. Listen.
- [04:48]
Neil Cavuto
The Justice Department unsealing criminal charges in a thwarted Iranian plot to kill President elect Donald Trump in the lead up to this week's election. Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto. There's still a lot we don't know about this, but David. Spunt piecing together what we do. David.
- [05:06]
David Spunt
Neil, we know it's just another threat coming from Iran directed at President Elect Donald Trump, the man that authorities are looking for is a 51 year old who is allegedly working with the Iranian regime on a plan to kill Trump. His name is Farhad Shaqiri. Authorities believe he's in Iran right now as I speak to you. According to a criminal complaint on Seal today, Shaqiri demanded large sums of money for working on this plot to kill Trump over the past few months. As stated in a complaint, Shaqiri indicated to an Iranian government official that this would cost a huge amount of money. In response, the Iranian official said, we have already spent a lot of money, so the money's not an issue. In a statement from FBI Director Christopher Wray, he says the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated foreign terrorist organization, has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil. And that simply won't be tolerated. Thanks to, to the hard work of the FBI, their deadly schemes were disrupted.
- [06:06]
Ted Cruz
By the way, they said, and this is the part I want to ask you, they said it was won't be tolerated. I'm not sure I believe that. Based on what we know now, it seems like we've been tolerating Iran basically doing whatever the hell they want to do for quite some time in the world.
- [06:24]
Ben Ferguson
Well, that's right. And look, it's important to understand a lot of the press, when they talk about Donald Trump's foreign policy, they mischaracterize it. There are a lot of folks that characterize Trump as an isolationist. That's not remotely the case. I mean, part of the reason Iran is so angry is because, remember, Trump took out, he killed General Soleimani. General Soleimani was responsible for orchestrating the murder of over 600American servicemen and women. He was one of the leading terrorists in the world and Iran's the leading state sponsor of terrorism. And Donald Trump took him out. Donald Trump also enforced the oil sanctions, pulled out of the Iran deal, brought the Iranian economy to its knees, cut off their money, had the regime ready to topple. That is strength. What Trump rightly did. And by the way, on all of those steps, I was urging Trump to proceed to vigorously defend us against Iran. What Trump also did, though, is he did not get us in foreign wars. It is amazing how the weakness and appeasement of the left gets it exactly backwards. They are eager to get us enmeshed in foreign wars all over the world, but they're not willing to be strong against people who actually are trying to kill us. And in this instance, there are going to be very, very real consequences for Iran. The first will be economic. Their money is going to disappear, but there's going to be consequences that are a lot more real world than just just dollars and cents.
- [07:46]
Ted Cruz
Finally, Senator, some breaking news. I just want to get your quick thoughts on this because it's an interesting story and it's really just a sad story. I think it's such a sad story for the people that are hurting who were needing the help of their government. It has come out now that a FEMA official ordered relief workers to deliberately and purposely skip the houses of people that have been affected by the hurricane that had Trump signs up. A whistleblower came forward, said, it's almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that's okay. I'm actually, by the way, not surprised, unfortunately, that there are people in this Biden Harris government that would say screw those that are Trump supporters and don't give them government aid even after a hurricane. Yet this did happen.
- [08:40]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, this story, it's a story of an incredible abuse of power and just a brazen partisanship that sadly, it typifies what has happened throughout the Biden Harris administration. I want to give credit to the Daily Wire. The Daily Wire broke this story. It also illustrates how so called mainstream media, the corporate media, does not actually report on real news. It took the Daily Wire to make this public. It was also the Daily Wire that broke the stories in Loudoun County a couple of years ago about the teenage girl who was sexually assaulted in the bathroom by the boy wearing the skirt because again, the corporate media wouldn't report on it. Well, in this instance, the Daily Wire reported that instructions were given to FEMA workers that said, and they actually have screenshots of the instructions that say, quote, quote, implement best practices. No one goes anywhere alone. Avoid homes advertising Trump. Practice de escalation and preventative measures. Communicate with and follow the rules. Bring a towel with yourself in the field, frequent breaks and drink water. Avoid high salt diets and coffee. Coconut water is a fast way to replenish your electrolytes quickly. So this is written instructions for emergency, emergency workers who are dealing with the aftermath of a hurricane, a natural disaster, and they are told in writing, avoid homes advertising Trump. Now look, this only happens when you absolutely normalize the weaponization of government against the enemies of your regime. This is, this particular individual was caught and this person's been fired. Now, of course she's been fired. She should have been fired. But the broader question was what kind of culture was there that made you think you should explicitly say, hey and I mean, these are. This is providing.
- [10:35]
Ted Cruz
Put it in writing, by the way.
- [10:36]
Ben Ferguson
Put it in writing.
- [10:37]
Ted Cruz
Comfortable enough to put it in writing.
- [10:39]
Ben Ferguson
Yep.
- [10:40]
Ted Cruz
You wonder what else is in writing.
- [10:43]
Ben Ferguson
That is exactly right. And, you know, one of the employees who was one of the whistleblowers said, quote, I know they're short staff. I thought we could go help and make a difference. When we got there, we were told to discriminate against people. It's almost unbelievable to think that somebody in the federal government would think that's okay. The employee said that it felt wrong to discriminate against Trump supporters when they were at their most vulnerable. Quote, I volunteered to help disaster victims, not discriminate against them. It didn't matter if people were black, white, Hispanic for Trump, for Harris. Everyone deserves the same amount of help. That would be actually the government doing its job. But. But sadly, too many in the Biden Harris administration, too many on the left, that they have convinced themselves Trump is Hitler. Anyone who supports him is garbage, and therefore you can do anything possible to go after them. It's a really sad example of just, just how weaponized this administration's gotten.
- [11:40]
Ted Cruz
I hope this inspires others. If there are other stories out there, other, you know, emails and things in writing like this that will be brought forward, I am glad, by the way, that the woman's been fired. But the question that I have to ask after that is, well, were there any laws broken? And I hope they look at that as well.
- [11:56]
Ben Ferguson
And, Ben, let me say, if you go into the story, there are photos from the systems that federal relief workers use to track the homes they visited. And it showed that they followed the written guidance. Several addresses were marked as, quote, not able to access property with listed explanations such as, quote, trump sign, no entry per leadership. Quote, per leadership. No stop Trump flag, quote, Trump sign. And quote, trump sign, no contact per leadership. This was. This was a. Yes, it was carried out by supervision. That the name of the individual is someone. Marnie Washington is the one who issued this order. Marty Washington has been fired. But. But this was an organization where, where this order was, was par for the course.
- [12:51]
Ted Cruz
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now on to story number two. Senator, one other story is Donald Trump is getting his cabinet together and making appointments that is not gotten a lot of attention. Is, uh, the take out the trash everybody throwing everybody under the bus. In the Biden camp, the Harris camp, we find out she blew through a billion dollars. She's upside down in debt. They're begging for money with text messages to liberals saying, we need your help with the counting of the votes and give money. Now, I wish I was joking, but I'm not. And they're, I don't know, someone said 18, 20 million upside down. And then we found out where a lot of the donations actually went. The donations were going to celebrities. Oprah's had to come out after there was a million dollar check given to her, quote, production company for production of a one day sit down interview that we, many people saw on TV with Oprah. It doesn't cost a million dollars to produce that, but that was the price tag. And then we found out that there were a lot of celebrities that were being paid to act like they loved Kamala Har. And there are some Democratic donors that are livid right now over the price tag on this.
- [14:15]
Ben Ferguson
You know, there's a terrific article in the Spectator world entitled Kamala Harris ran the Fry Festival of Campaigns. And it points out that Trump's campaign spent roughly $488 million and Kamala spent more than a billion. So she outspent Trump more than 2 to 1, and Kamala's campaign ended up $20 million in debt. Well, it turns out. Where did that money go? Well, one of the things it went to is they paid many of the quote, unquote celebrities who supported her were getting paid and getting paid significant sums. So, for example, remember the Call Me Daddy podcast?
- [14:58]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [14:59]
Ben Ferguson
Well, apparently the campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom set for appearance on the podcast. And the podcast netted only 800,000 downloads. Less than a million downloads. Look, Ben, you and I, we have roughly a million unique listeners. If she wanted 800,000 downloads, I'll tell you, Kamala, right now, even though you've lost, Ben and I will invite you on Verdict right now. We will welcome you. We will not charge you to build a set so you can save all your money. And you paid Oprah a million dollars for production costs. We will charge you for production costs on, on Verdict. What do you think, 50 bucks?
- [15:39]
Ted Cruz
Sure. Well, I, I think that's a fair price.
- [15:42]
Ben Ferguson
50 bucks. 50 bucks. We'll get you a very nice coffee cup with some Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. That'll, that's what we'll spend the 50 bucks on. And, and, and you can reach the same number of people. All right. By the way, she also turned down Joe Rogan, so Call Me Daddy got 800,000 downloads. How many, how many do you think Joe Rogan's interview of Donald Trump got.
- [16:04]
Ted Cruz
A lot more than that.
- [16:06]
Ben Ferguson
47 million.
- [16:07]
Ted Cruz
Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot.
- [16:11]
Ben Ferguson
So there were also seven swing state concerts with expensive performers. And it turns out every one of them, they got a price. It is the world's oldest profession and they are charging for it. So who are the performers that got paid millions of dollars? Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Jon Bon Jovi, Ricky Martin.
- [16:34]
Ted Cruz
Hold on, you're telling me none of these people were like doing it for free? Because they were all in for comma, they wanted to get paid.
- [16:40]
Ben Ferguson
They show me the money. They ended up spending more than $20 million on event production alone. Oprah, as you noted, charged a million dollars. Um, and, and they went so far into debt that the campaign allegedly had to scrap Alanis Morissette. They were planning to do Alanis Morissette and they said no, okay, we can't afford her anymore. Nevermind. I mean, it is truly stunning. And you've gotta wonder, like, I, I gotta say, I don't get paying millions of dollars for celebrities to fake endorse someone. She spent paid money to what? Beyonce?
- [17:21]
Ted Cruz
Well, let's go over the big ones. This is coming from Fox. I'm going to play this. This audio, take a listen. This is again from Fox. As they were going through, how much cash was spent.
- [17:34]
Ben Ferguson
I can't get over these numbers. $10 million for Beyonce to step up and back Kamala Harris publicly. 5 million for Megan the Stallion, 3 million for Lizzo. 1.8 million for Eminem. I mean, is that.
- [17:50]
Ted Cruz
Those numbers are unbelievable. If you just look at them. And I, I was like, hold on a second. And I went back and watched that clip a couple of different times because you look at them. 10 million for Beyonce. If you're a donor and you wrote a big check. Megan the Stallion, 5 million. Lizzo 3 million. Eminem, 1.8 million. You're like, hold on, I just raised all this money for you and this is how you spent it?
- [18:14]
Ben Ferguson
Look, I gotta say, I've run a bunch of campaigns. I ran my first campaign for Senate in 2012. I ran my next campaign for president in 2016. We won 12 states all over the country. I ran my next campaign for Senate again in 2018. And I just finished running my most recent campaign for Senate reelect a third term in 2024. I can tell you in the whole time, I've never paid anyone a million dollars for anything. I don't think we paid any entertainers. I don't know of any entertainers. We Paid. Maybe at some point we paid five or ten grand for someone performing at some party. I'm not aware of it, but I can tell you this. Look, our stars. Now, to be clear, the stars we have at our events are our international supermodel, global talents like Ben Ferguson. And I gotta tell you, I just.
- [19:09]
Ted Cruz
Want that 10 million dollar payday once in my career. Like, oh yeah, Beyonce, Y. I'm all in for the cause, but I just need 10 million to make it happen.
- [19:17]
Ben Ferguson
Okay, Ben, to be clear, we don't pay you $10.
- [19:20]
Ted Cruz
No, that's.
- [19:22]
Ben Ferguson
Look, I'm a fiscal conservative, damn it. If you want to be there and you believe in saving the country, stand up and save the country. And if not, get the hell out. Like, what is it with these lefties who ironically, they want to put socialists in office who make it impossible for people to earn a living, and yet they're such capitalists that they're like, show me the money to do it. I mean, there is an intense hypocrisy on this.
- [19:48]
Ted Cruz
I believe this. And I'm not just saying this because this moment in this headline, but I'm being dead serious. This could be a huge problem for Democratic candidates moving forward. Because when you see this type of abuse of campaign finance money from donors, those same donors, somebody's going to be asking them for money in four years or less than four years from now. And I'm by the way, the next.
- [20:11]
Ben Ferguson
Time Beto O'Rourke, or call it Allred, jumps on a stage with Willie Nelson, everyone's going to ask, how much you pay him?
- [20:20]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, how much of my money that I gave you? Did you just give him for that? 13 minutes of him singing and it's a fair question.
- [20:29]
Ben Ferguson
And it undermines the entire credibility that I'm here because I love America so much. And you've got to vote for this candidate. Look, I'll give you an example in the presidential race. So one of the cooler people that I got to meet and spend time with was Phil Robertson, you know, from Duck Dynasty.
- [20:46]
Ted Cruz
Oh, yeah. And he was, I mean, massive back in the day, like, unbelievable star.
- [20:51]
Ben Ferguson
Huge star. And so he invited me to Monroe, Louisiana to come stay at his place. And I went out duck hunting with Phil, which by the way, ranks among the coolest things I've ever gotten to do. And we went to the duck blind. We're there at 4 in the morning. Um, look, I like to hunt in Texas. I gotta be careful about what I say because there's so many really serious hunters that, that I Can't overstate. I go hunting a couple times a year. I enjoy it, but I'm not someone who, like, lives and breathes it. Phil, in that duck blind, I have never seen a person who is a better shot with a shotgun. He would drop birds at a distance that I wouldn't pick up my gun. They were too far away. I'm like, yeah, if the duck flies over here, I'll shoot it, but I can't shoot it way over there. And he would just boom. And then the dogs would swim out and grab the duck and bring it back and. And Phil, I'll tell you. So. So I went there and spent the day, went hunting with him. He recorded an ad for. For our campaign that we put out. It remains one of my favorite ads we've ever done. I'm all, like, wearing camo grease paint, and I'm in the duck blind with Phil. It was really cool. But Phil. It was during the Iowa caucuses, and we asked, Phil, will you come to Iowa and campaign with me? And Phil, for something like 40 years, had not missed a single day of duck season. He'd been out there every single day for four decades, and we'd invited him to come. And that morning, he went to the blind at 4 in the morning, and he's sitting there in the blind, And I guess, you know, it. It weighed on his heart. I can't do this today. I need to go fight to save America. And Phil left the blind, and he went and hopped on a plane, and he flew to Iowa, and he did a big rally with me in Iowa, And I told him. Then I'm like, phil, I am beyond humbled that you missed the first day of duck season in 40 years to be here and campaign alongside me. Now, I didn't write him a damn check to do that.
- [22:52]
Ted Cruz
I just said, if you gave him Beyonce money, you know, you're like, oh, and by the way, here's $10 million.
- [22:57]
Ben Ferguson
No, no, no. I just said, come help save America. And it. It meant a lot, like, for him to miss it. And that day, we were literally touch and go. We didn't know if he was going to come, but it meant a big deal when he came. If you're paying Beyonce $10 million, I mean, my good. I mean, goodness, who would she not endorse for $10 million?
- [23:20]
Ted Cruz
As before? If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story Number three of the week, you may have missed. So what is that? What is the, the purpose of the secret ballot Is that just so people can vote their conscience and there's not so much, you know, hoopla, or is it to keep it more efficient? What's the, What's. Or is it just tradition? What's behind that?
- [23:47]
Ben Ferguson
Look, some of it is because you've got to work with these people. Remember, the Senate's a small place, there are 53 of us. And so if you're voting against the person who's your leader, that is a small and awkward dynamic. So I would have liked the ballot to be public. I would have absolutely supported making it public. It's why I announced that I was voting for Rick Scott, because I wanted to tell the voters, but most of the senators don't. So I don't know. I know some of the senators, some of the senators chose to say who they were voting for, but I'd say at least half the senators, I have no idea how they voted. They didn't say. They haven't publicly said. And there is a dynamic when you're dealing with a small enough group of people that you've gotta. After the election, you gotta turn around and work not just with whoever won, but whoever lost. So I think that's some of the history. It's always, to the best of my knowledge, it has always been a secret ballot. And because of that dynamic and the other Senate leadership votes are secret ballot as well. And look, two years ago in 2022, we had the first contested leadership ballot in 16 years. And two years ago, Rick Scott challenged Mitch McConnell, and I was the point of the spear. So the beginning of that battle two years ago, the very first thing that happened is I stood up and I made a motion to delay the election for a month. So we were voting two years.
- [25:24]
Ted Cruz
We did a great show on this. It's all coming back to me now that you can go back and listen to, because I think, if I'm not mistaken, we did it, like, at 2 in the morning after the voting had taken place, and you'd come out and told this story. I would encourage everybody, if you wanna go back and listen to this, the episode, like you said, it's like two years ago, and it was a. It was a big fight then. And like you said, you were the one leading that. The tip of the spear on it.
- [25:48]
Ben Ferguson
Yep. And it was two years ago. It is always the week after the election now, by the way, Republican leadership does that because the people who vote are the senators who will be the senators for the next two years. So the brand new baby senators who were just elected, they vote. The senators who are retiring or leaving the Senate, they don't vote. And part of the reason they do that is because they want the brand new baby senators not to know what they're doing, to be just in their basement office, not to know where the men's room is. And they don't want newly elected senators to rock the boat. It's designed, it's actually a pretty cynical thing. It's designed not to challenge the status quo. So two years ago I made a motion, look, 2022 should have been a fantastic election for Republicans. We should have won the Senate, we should have grown our majority in the House. It should have been a fantastic election and it was a lousy election. And I stood up and said, listen, we ought to delay this vote by a month and we ought to spend the month, next month talking about why we got our asses kicked. Like what's going wrong? And I turned to Mitch McConnell, I said, Listen, for the last two years we had a handful of Republicans team up with the Democrats to pass the Democrats priorities. Now maybe that's a good idea. Someone here can make the argument why that's a good idea. I think it's dumb as hell, but if you want to make the argument it's a good idea, we ought to talk about it. What I could tell you that is objectively true is the Democrats never do that. Like when we had Trump was president, we had a Republican Senate, Republican House. There was not a single bill we passed that consisted of all the Republicans and a handful of Democrats joining us. They opposed everything. And by the way, for the next two years, I think they will as well. So I said, look, we ought to debate. Whatever we did didn't work. We ought to debate it. And so I laid out, I gave a 45 minute speech, I looked at Mitch McConnell, I said, Tell me over the next two years, what are you willing to fight over? I said, listen, you and I may disagree, there are a lot of things I think we should fight over. They're not for you, but is there any, anything, is there one thing you're willing to fight on over the next two years, by the way, Mitch refused to answer that question. We ended up, after I made the motion to delay the vote, I ended up getting 16 votes for that motion. I needed 25, so we had 49 Republicans, so I needed 25 for a majority. So I fell nine votes short. Those 16 votes were the first votes ever cast against Mitch McConnell. And that was very consequential after that, Rick Scott. Because I failed to delay the election. Rick Scott ran against Mitch. I voted for Rick. I was quite vocal about it. And Rick got 10 votes. And so that's what happened. I was one of those 10, by the way. After the votes, Mitch McConnell exacted retribution on the senators who opposed him. So, for example, the Commerce Committee, both Rick Scott and Mike Lee used to be on the Commerce committee. And Mitch McConnell uses authority as the GOP leader to throw them both off the Commerce Committee. Eric Schmidt from Missouri, who also voted against Mitch. Eric Schmidt wanted to be unjudiciary, and Mitch used his authority to orchestrate blocking him from being unjudiciary. So there were real punitive measures that were implemented, attacking the people that dared stand up to McConnell. So this time around, Rick Scott did better than he did two years ago. Two years ago he got 10 votes. This time he got 13 votes. So we picked up three more votes. I don't know who those three, three more votes were. I was one of those 13 as I'd been one of those 10. But Rick did not prevail. And then, then ultimately Thune prevailed on the second ballot. And so Thune will be the majority leader going forward.
- [29:48]
Ted Cruz
So let's talk about Thune for just a second. What do people need to know about him that maybe they don't know?
- [29:54]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, listen, I like Jonathan. I've worked with him. I've worked with Thune, I've worked with corn, and I've worked with Rick Scott. I mean, the Senate is a small place. It's a collegial place. If you want to actually accomplish anything, you've got to deal with and work cooperatively with your colleagues. John Thune is from South Dakota. Um, you know, he's a tall, good looking college athlete. He was a college basketball player. You know, Thune and I, you know, used to. He works out every morning in the gym and he's, he's very fit. I would work out at the same time he was, and it was kind of embarrassing because he would lift a lot more weight than I could lift. And he would, he would be like pumping iron. And it's sort of humbling to watch Thune because he's just, you know, he's a, he's a man in his early 60s who's in really good shape. Look, Thune, I was not surprised. Thune won because he's very well liked by his colleagues. Thune is affable. He's A good guy. He's just. He's not a jerk. He's not. He's. Everyone likes him. It's just I mentioned before, the Senate is a little bit like a junior high. You know, Thune would win the class president election. And a lot of it is the kind of small, little personal dynamics that play out on that. But as I said, I was not surprised Thune won. I will say, a lot of the Trump world was freaking out saying, oh, Thune hates Donald Trump and he's gonna oppose everything Trump wants to do. I think those concerns were overstated. Listen, John Thune is majority leader, and every senator is excited that we have a Republican White House, Republican Senate, Republican House. And we are really focused on delivering results and delivering on our promises to the voters. And so I think Thune, as leader, is gonna focus on working very closely with President Trump to confirm his cabinet appointments to move forward. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Senate is going to be a Rubber stamp for 100% of everything that comes from the White House. And it's not the Senate's job to be a rubber stamp for everything that comes from the White House. Under the Constitution, the Senate is supposed to have a role, a role on nominations, advice and consent, a role of check and balance. But I can tell you the sort of folks, and I had multiple calls from Trump's team, very worried, okay, is Thune gonna fight us in everything we're doing? And I was like, okay, no. So today I had an hour long meeting with Thune as the new majority leader, and with all the committee chairs, and the entire meeting was talking about, okay, how are we gonna move forward? With. With. With tax reform, with extending the Trump tax cuts, with. With. With regulatory reform, with unleashing energy, with securing the border, how are we gonna move the legislative agenda so we can deliver big, big wins in the next year? And that was the focus from Thune and every committee chairman. So I think I understand. Look, I voted for Rick Scott because I think Rick was offering the greatest change. But at the end of the day, to prevail, you've got to be able to get a majority of the Republican senators, and Rick did not.
- [33:25]
Ted Cruz
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to again, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning.