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It's OVER...Trump WON! - The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson | Wave AI Podcast Notes

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It's OVER...Trump WON!

The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson

Wed Jan 24 2024

Summary

The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson: "It's OVER...Trump WON!"

Release Date: January 24, 2024

Hosts: Ben Ferguson & Senator Ted Cruz

1. Donald Trump Clinches the Republican Nomination

In the opening segment, Ben Ferguson and Senator Ted Cruz delve into the unfolding Republican primary race, highlighting Donald Trump's decisive lead. At [00:23], Cruz underscores Trump's dominance:

"Donald Trump has an 11.5-point lead in New Hampshire. The race has been called for Trump. He's going to win New Hampshire."

Cruz presents the latest figures, noting that with 77% of New Hampshire votes counted, Trump leads Haley by a significant margin. He emphasizes that securing victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire virtually guarantees Trump the Republican nomination, declaring:

"The simple reality is this thing is over. Trump has won the Republican nomination."

2. The Declining Prospects of Nikki Haley

A substantial portion of the discussion focuses on Nikki Haley's campaign trajectory. Despite her assertions of perseverance, Cruz remains skeptical about her viability. He analyzes her performance in recent primaries and predicts her eventual exit:

"The path for Nikki Haley to win the primary is 0.001%."

Cruz attributes Haley's continued presence in the race to her substantial financial backing, particularly from the "billionaire donor class." He criticizes these donors for their consistent yet misguided support of establishment candidates who fail to resonate broadly:

"The billionaire donor class...they are myopic. Their worldview is essentially, well, all the people in the country club agree with me, so that's what I'm gonna do."

Cruz suggests that Haley's stance as an "unapologetic establishment moderate" appeals to a narrow 30% of the primary vote, which is insufficient against Trump's overwhelming support. He warns that prolonged participation in the race could damage her standing, especially if she receives a significant loss in her home state of South Carolina.

3. Insights into the Podcast's Evolution

Transitioning from campaign analysis, Ferguson and Cruz reflect on the development of their podcast. Cruz shares anecdotes about the podcast's format, likening it to a candid dinner conversation where genuine dialogue and differing viewpoints enrich the discussion. At [11:18], he explains the decision to release multiple episodes in a single week to capture the most engaging content:

"Because you and I don't know what the hell we're going to say. We're doing a podcast right now... it's meant to be real time."

This approach aims to provide listeners with in-depth insights and personal perspectives that aren't typically available through mainstream media outlets.

4. Nikki Haley's Age as a Campaign Issue

The conversation shifts to Nikki Haley's strategy of highlighting age differences between herself and Donald Trump. Drawing parallels to Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign, Cruz critiques Haley's tactic, suggesting it may backfire. He references Reagan's successful dismissal of age concerns posed by Walter Mondale:

"Reagan basically told him, I got this. And he did it crushed the issue."

Cruz contends that while Haley is significantly younger than Trump, leveraging age as a primary campaign issue may not resonate effectively with voters and could undermine her campaign's credibility.

5. Supreme Court Ruling on Texas Border Security

A critical segment of the discussion addresses a recent Supreme Court decision affecting Texas's border security measures. Cruz vehemently criticizes the ruling, which allows the Biden administration to remove razor wire erected by Texas along the border near Eagle Pass. At [33:19], he articulates his frustration:

"This is a horrible decision. I'm angry about it. It is deeply disturbing..."

Cruz asserts that the decision exacerbates the ongoing border crisis, facilitating increased illegal immigration. He decries the role of justices John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett, labeling their support for the administration's actions as out of touch with the realities on the ground:

"If this were just a regular time and a state were trying to block what the federal government was doing, the Supreme Court would fairly routinely rule with the feds."

Cruz emphasizes the urgent need for robust border security and criticizes the Biden administration for what he perceives as deliberate attempts to undermine state sovereignty and national security.

6. Impact on the Republican Party and Future Elections

In examining the broader implications of the border security issue, Cruz connects it to the Republican Party's challenges in unifying the conservative base. He warns that prolonged internal conflicts and unsuccessful primary campaigns, like Haley's, could weaken the party's position heading into future elections, particularly the 2028 presidential race.

Conclusion

Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson provide a comprehensive analysis of the current Republican primary landscape, emphasizing Trump's strong position and the diminishing prospects for contenders like Nikki Haley. They offer critical insights into campaign strategies, internal party dynamics, and pivotal policy issues such as border security. The episode underscores the complexities facing the Republican Party as it navigates internal divisions and external challenges in the lead-up to the 2024 elections.

Notable Quotes:

[00:23] Cruz on Trump's lead:

"Donald Trump has an 11.5-point lead in New Hampshire. The race has been called for Trump."
[04:10] Cruz criticizing billionaire donors:

"The billionaire donor class...they are myopic. Their worldview is essentially, well, all the people in the country club agree with me, so that's what I'm gonna do."
[18:57] Discussion on campaign age issues:

"Reagan basically told him, I got this. And he did it crushed the issue."
[33:19] Cruz on Supreme Court ruling:

"This is a horrible decision. I'm angry about it. It is deeply disturbing..."
[38:19] Cruz on Biden's border strategy:

"Biden doesn't want to secure the border. He wants this crisis."

This summary provides an in-depth overview of the podcast episode, capturing the essential discussions and perspectives shared by Ben Ferguson and Senator Ted Cruz. For listeners seeking detailed political analysis and insider viewpoints, this episode offers valuable insights into the current state of the Republican primary and key national issues.

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Transcript

Ben Ferguson (0:01)

Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, it is a big win for Donald Trump. This is as some have described it, two in a row and two last places in a row for Nikki Haley. She says she's not dropping out, she's just begun. And this thing's gonna go on for quite a few more states in her words. Give me your reaction to that.

Senator Ted Cruz (0:23)

Well, the simple reality is this thing is over. Trump has won the Republican nomination. You and I are sitting here. It is 11:11pm on Tuesday night. So the votes are not fully counted. But as we sit here right now, 77% of the votes are counted in New Hampshire. Donald Trump has 139,001, which is 55%. And Nikki Haley has 109,639, which is 43.4%. So as we sit here right now, Donald Trump has an 11.5-point lead in New Hampshire. The race has been called for Trump. He's going to win New Hampshire. And so where do we stand? Where we stand is Trump won Iowa by 30 points and Trump has won New Hampshire and it's very likely he will have one New Hampshire by double digits. The exact margin won't be known until late in the night, but it is very likely to be double digits. Right now it's 11.5 points. If any candidate wins Iowa and New Hampshire, the fat lady singing Katie, bar the door, it is over. The big question right now is what is Nikki Haley do? And I don't know. I think it is 70, 30 that Nikki Haley stays in. Now frankly, the rational thing for Nikki Haley to do is drop out now. And the reason is simple. She's headed to South Carolina. That is her home state. She was the governor there. She is going to get clobbered in South Carolina. It's going to be double digits. It could be as big as Iowa. It could be 30 points. And I will say when you lose your home state by that kind of crushing double digit margin, it leaves a mark. Now I mentioned I think the odds are 70, 30 that Nikki Haley does not drop out. She said that tonight. Her speech tonight was defiant. I'm staying in. I'm going the distance. I get that. And the reason I think the odds are 70, 30 she stays in is because she has a crap ton of money. The billionaire donor class is all behind her now, I gotta say. The billionaire donor class, look, I know a lot of the Republican billionaires, they are astonishingly, consistently wrong when it comes to politics. They keep supporting candidates who lose and what's weird, look, these billionaires have been incredibly successful business leaders. They know how to run companies. They know how to sell goods to customers. They know how to respond to data. And yet, when it comes to politics, they are myopic. Their worldview is essentially, well, all the people in the country club agree with me, so that's what I'm gonna do. And they don't notice that they keep losing and losing and losing and losing. And they don't have the rational response, when your approach to politics is, this isn't working, is to say, what am I doing wrong? Like, apparently, I'm misunderstanding. Oddly enough, the entire country is not like the country club in the Hamptons. Like, there are people in flyover country who have a different view. The simple reality, Nikki Haley has run as an unapologetic establishment moderate.

Senator Ted Cruz (9:07)

When I did sort of a deep dive into the history of Iowa, the history of New Hampshire, the history of South Carolina. And I thought it was interesting. I like, like, look, this is. This is what has determined the leader of the free world for the last 50 years. That's interesting stuff to me. But then after like 30, 40 minutes, we started getting into. You asked, well, what does it mean to drop out? Ron DeSantis just dropped out. What's that like? And listen, there are not many people on planet Earth that have gone through like a winning presidential campaign that you almost win and then you don't, and then you drop out and sort of the trauma and the personal relationships and the grassroots and all of the dynamics. And so I tried to talk about all that. And that was sort of the second half of the pod we recorded. And then afterwards, Ben said to me, hey, I love this pod, but we got a problem. The second half is like a thousand times better than the first half. Like, the first half is kind of interesting and academic and theoretical, but the second half is. And Ben, what you said is. What you just said a minute ago, like, is why I listen to the podcast, because it's stuff you can't hear anywhere other than verdict it's like insight from someone who's run for president, come in second, and almost won. And so you and I made a weird decision. We said, okay, we have an hour and 10 minute podcast we've recorded. Let's take the second half, cut it off and make it Monday's podcast. Because you said, and I didn't disagree, that's the most interesting and stimulating part. So let's give people what. What they'll like the best. But then I said, look, I thought the stuff about the history of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for me was interesting. Maybe I'm enough of a political geek that I'm interested in stuff that is not as sort of scintillating, but I thought it was really good stuff. And so we came up with initially, I said, well, what if we put it out on Wednesday? And Ben said, all right, you moron, you can't put it out on Wednesday. Cuz Tuesday night we'll have the New Hampshire results. So if we put out an academic discussion of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina on Wednesday, right after what happened in New Hampshire, people would be like, what the hell's wrong with you idiots?

Ben Ferguson (16:27)

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Senator Ted Cruz (21:32)

I love Hoosiers. So we did this great rally in the Hoosiers gym. And, and it's the, it's the one where they filmed it in the movie. So it's the, the one in the little town. And so there's a great scene in the movie Hoosiers where this, this little, little team makes it to the big state championship, the big state championship in Indianapolis. And this tiny country team is scared because, like the team from Indianapolis, it's a big public school. They're guys that are big, they're tall, they're, they're like slam dunking, like, they're, they're a hardcore inner city team. And these like little country hicks are like, okay, how do we compete against these guys? And there's a great scene where Gene Hackman, they're in the gym in Indianapolis, the big city. And he goes and sends someone on the team, he says, go, go run a tape measure from the hoop down to the floor. And he said, measure the height of it. And he measures it and it's 10ft. And Gene Hackman, the coach, goes 10ft, exact same distance as our gym back home. And it's a way of making the point that, like, look, we're playing the same game. It may feel scary in the big city, but this is the same game. Now, I was making the point because we just had the New York primary where Trump had won. And I was making the point. Look, this is the same, but we can win here. So I had my body guy, Bruce, whom I love. He was the field go kicker for Oklahoma State. We traveled all over the country together. I had him. I said in the middle of the speech in the Hoosiers gym, I said, bruce, measure a tape measure from the rim to the floor. And I said, 10ft, 10ft, the same as it is in Indianapolis. And I was quoting the movie. And I left the speech, and I felt pretty good. I'm like, hey, I give a pretty good humdinger of a speech. And I walked off the stage, and my team was ashen. They were like, oh, my God. Oh, my God. They were horrified. I'm like, what? What? Like, what did I do wrong? And apparently, instead of saying measure to the rim, I said, measure to the ring. And I didn't hear it. Like, if you talk a million words. Look, you're a talk radio host. How many things have you said in the microphone? And if you talk a million words, I didn't hear it. I said, ring. And I just. My brain, like, it was a brain fart.

Senator Ted Cruz (24:48)

So. So when I walked off stage, my team was horrified. I'm like, what? I thought I did a good job. Like, what? I was really confused. So to call the rim a ring, Every late night host just had a field day with it. They're like, oh, the basketball ring. And playing basket, playing baseball with a sticky stick. And football, you throw the leather volleyball. Like it was. Look, the jokes are not hard, and they were funny. I actually watched them and laughed. I'm like, yeah, that really sounds funny like that. What an idiot. And the thing, as you noted, that was, like, so painful. Listen, there are a crap ton of things in which I'm really ignorant, but I love hoops. So today I play two and a half hours of hoops. I play twice a week. I typically play Tuesday afternoons and Sunday night. I play probably five to six hours of hoops a week. I. In high school, I was a mediocre to poor high school basketball player. I'd say I'm still a kind of mediocre to poor high school basketball player. I've about maintained my skills 35 years later. But the crushing. I love hoops. I DVR every single Rockets game, and I watch most of them like it's basketball. If there's a sport I know and care about and love, yeah, it's basketball. And everyone mocked the hell out of me for calling the rim the ring. And I know what the hell the ring is. Look, I just did that there. I know what the hell the rim is. That's a good illustration. So all of the media is in a tizzy that Trump had a comment where he confused Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. And I get it. It's easy and it's frankly valuable. If you have a political agenda, reelect Joe Biden, and the American voters are really concerned about the intellectual diminution of Joe Biden. One of the best strategies to counter it and say, yeah, but Trump is totally old and feeble, too. Now. I think it's crap. And I'll tell you what, I'm gonna make a challenge to the press and the Biden White House now. Let's have the November election decided right now. Give us Donald Trump and give us Joe Biden for an hour on a cognitive test. And the winner is the president. I'll take that, because Trump will kick Biden's ass on that. And by the way, no one will take us up on that.

Ben Ferguson (30:45)

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Senator Ted Cruz (33:19)

Look, this, this is a horrible decision. I'm angry about it. It is deeply disturbing fact. Number one, we are seeing an invasion at our southern border. 9.6 million illegal immigrants have crossed in under Joe Biden. It is deliberate. He wants this to happen. It is the worst illegal immigration in our nation's history. Number two, it's deliberate. Biden wants this to happen. The Democrats want this to happen. They are facilitating it. They are accelerating it. That they are actively wanting more and more and more of it. So Texas understandably is responding to defend ourselves. I commend our governor. I commend our state legislature for acting to protect the sovereignty of Texas and for investing billions of dollars in border security and law enforcement and putting personnel and putting up barriers to try to stop this invasion of our state. Now, what happened on this case? It arose to the Supreme Court on an emergency appeal on an injunction. There was an injunction against the federal government to stop the federal government from cutting down the razor wire, the Constantino wire that Texas had erected. And the Fifth Circuit, the federal court of appeals, had upheld the injunction. What happened today, Tuesday, is the Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, vacated that injunction. What that means is right now the federal government has the legal ability to cut down that razor wire to allow illegal immigrants to continue invading the state. Now the good news, the merits of the appeal is still pending. And so the 5th Circuit can still rule on the merits of the appeal as to whether Texas has the authority. And by the way, the Supreme Court could still rule on the appeal. So it is possible that Texas prevails, that the results of an emergency appeal on an injunction are not always the same as the merits results on the substantive issue. So that's true. But at the end of the day, you had the three liberals plus John Roberts, plus Amy Coney Barrett ruling for the Biden administration saying you can cut down this razor wire. Now, on one level, I understand it that there is a heavy presumption in Washington in federal courts, which is that the federal government gets to trump the states and that is part of the Constitution is the supremacy clause that says the Constitution and federal law is the supreme law of the land. I think it is a real problem that John Roberts is a creature of Washington. I don't think he understands what is happening at the southern border. I think Amy Coney Barrett is a law professor from Indiana. I don't think she has any understanding of what's happening at the southern border in ordinary times. If this were just a regular time and a state were trying to block what the federal government was doing, the Supreme Court would fairly routinely rule with the feds. What I don't think these justices have a real appreciation for is how horrifically bad it is, how lawless it is, what the Biden administration is doing. There's never been a president who refuses to follow the law like Joe Biden did. So here's the statement that the Border Patrol union put out today. Quote, the Supreme Court's decision today is going to undoubtedly encourage more illegal immigration. Unfortunately, this means Border Patrol agents are going to be tied up dealing with give ups, rather than going after the criminal elements that constantly cross our border illegally. The administration no doubt will say this is a win for border security. But if they sought rank and file input, they would be told this will do the exact opposite. Agents support what Texas was trying to accomplish in the absence of true border security policies from this administration. I agree with the Border Patrol union. And so I am angry, I'm frustrated. I think the court is out of touch. I think they're just reflexively agreeing with the federal government against the states. And I think it is a profound mistake that continues the invasion that's happening in our southern border.