← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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- [00:06]
Ted Cruz
So I'm very confused. Is this not a Joe Biden press conference?
- [00:10]
Michael Knowles
This is not a Joe Biden press conference. You know, something occurs to me, sitting here, seeing all these people.
- [00:16]
Ted Cruz
Well, it's not six reporters in little circles spread out alone. No, no.
- [00:20]
Michael Knowles
It's the opposite of that, actually. It's hundreds of people here. We have been told for a year you can't go outside. You can't talk to anybody. You can't see anybody. You can't have any holidays. You can't go on social media, because if you go on social media, you're obviously going to be kicked off. You can't start your own social media platforms because that's a very, very bad thing. You're going to be kicked off the Internet. But you know what? Tonight, live in Miami, we are here with everyone. We're going to be taking your questions. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Thank you very much. Thank you to all the wonderful people in this room. Also thank you to everyone who is watching live right now on YouTube. We were going to be taking questions, obviously from the people here at the Young America's Foundation Freedom Conference. We're also going to be taking questions from YouTube. If you want to ask a question, you've got to go to YouTube.com yafftv you have to subscribe, submit your questions, make sure they're really, really good questions, and then we will be answering them a little bit later. Want to thank, as always, the Logan family for sponsoring this event. Many other events for yaf, and I want to thank all of you for being here. Senator, you must be so happy to be in Miami right now. You have just left a place that there's chaos in the House, there's chaos at the Capitol. More broadly, the whole city looks like Baghdad at this point. Somehow Washington, D.C. seems even crazier and less pleasant than it usually does. And now we get to be in Miami.
- [02:02]
Ted Cruz
The lunatics are running the asylum. It is absolutely crazy. I mean, we have fences everywhere. We have soldiers wherever you look. The entire place is locked down. And AOC is spending every day saying I'm being martyred.
- [02:24]
Michael Knowles
I don't know if we're gonna break news. Did you do it? Or are you an attempted murderer?
- [02:31]
Ted Cruz
I am innocent of that particular charge.
- [02:33]
Michael Knowles
Good. There have been rumors for years and.
- [02:35]
Ted Cruz
Years about you, although I will decline to give answers about Northern California in the 19th century.
- [02:40]
Michael Knowles
That's for your own protection.
- [02:42]
Ted Cruz
That's for your own protection.
- [02:45]
Michael Knowles
There is. You know, I do feel in a way like this is deja vu. All over again. One year ago.
- [02:52]
Ted Cruz
I feel like I've heard you say that before.
- [02:55]
Michael Knowles
One year ago, we started this podcast because we were at the last impeachment trial. Now it just seems to happen every single year. We've got another impeachment trial. We've got all of these Joe Biden nominees coming up. You've got absolute madness going on in the House of Representatives. What is the insider view right now from Washington?
- [03:14]
Ted Cruz
Look, it's crazy on every front. The House of Representatives. What did they do in the House of Representatives this week? You've got Nancy Pelosi driving it, but it really is aoc and it's the squad. It's their craziness that is driving the agenda. So we spent much of this week with the House of Representatives talking about some tweets that Marjorie Taylor Greene had sent in years past, because that is the pressing objective. Next week in the Senate, we're going to spend the entire week impeaching a president who's already left the White House and is a private citizen.
- [03:49]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [03:50]
Ted Cruz
It's bonkers, right?
- [03:52]
Michael Knowles
Because I'm actually glad you brought up the Marjorie Taylor Greene of it all, because if I didn't see clips on cnn, I would have no idea who this person is. But it would seem that the Democrats are trying to contrive some kind of controversy out of old social media posts. They're now voting to strip her of her committee assignments. And I just sort of think, even beyond any question about her, why am I supposed to care? This is the people's business. Aren't they supposed to be passing laws and actually working for the good of the American people?
- [04:23]
Ted Cruz
Well, look, I have not met her yet. I imagine I will at some point. She's a newly elected member of Congress. She's been in office all of a month.
- [04:32]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [04:34]
Ted Cruz
But as I understand it, she said some pretty crazy things. And look, some of the things she said, I certainly don't agree with. I don't think you should run around saying someone should shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head. I think threatening violence is not a good thing. But this entire circus was put forward because the Democrats in the media, they like to find somebody on the Republican side of things who said something really outlandish and then put together this entire kangaroo court. And I will say what they did this week. So yesterday, the House voted and they stripped of her committee assignments. That's actually a really chilling precedent. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time in history that any political party has stripped a member of the opposing party of their committee assignments. And this will not be the last. You want to talk about a dangerous threshold to cross. I'm reminded of being on the Senate floor in 2013 when Harry Reid and the Democrats use the nuclear option to lower the threshold for confirming judges. And more than a few of us told the Democrats, you're going to regret this. Yeah. And you're going to regret this sooner. I remember telling Amy Klobuchar on the Senate floor that night, I said, because you've done this, we will end up with more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomases on the Supreme Court because of this step you've taken right now. And we saw that play forward. Listen, once this threshold has been crossed, it's not hard to imagine maybe in two years, suddenly Democrats say some freshman Democrats who say some crazy, outlandish things. I know it'd be really hard to find any.
- [06:11]
Michael Knowles
I can't imagine.
- [06:12]
Ted Cruz
No, it's a level of escalation. And make another point. Have you noticed that Democrats in the media right now, they're in high dungeon about how much they love democracy? Yes, they love democracy. Mind you, if there's one thing objectively that Democrats do not love, it is democracy. They despise democracy on every front. How do we know this? Because they don't actually want to let the people decide. So why do Democrats want judicial activists on the courts? Because on contested public policy issues, they don't actually want the voters to decide.
- [06:52]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [06:53]
Ted Cruz
You know, on a question of abortion, they don't want voters in the state to debate about what should the laws be on abortion. And they don't. They don't want to see all 50 states having different standards. They don't want to see drug laws decided by the states. They don't want to see marriage laws decided by the states. They want to decree one rule for everyone. And you look at this Marjorie Taylor Greene thing, one of the things that's striking is what they stripped her of her committee assignments for, as I understand it, are all things she said before she was elected. Right. So the voters had those in front of them. They decided to elect her. Look, if someone thinks she's nutty, there is a remedy in our system for that, which is the voters can decide, okay, we want someone else. And it is amazing that as the Democrats are acting to stifle democracy, they are at the same time piously intoning, I sure do love democracy.
- [07:45]
Michael Knowles
You know, this is such an important point, and I actually haven't heard other people mention this about the whole circus that's going on in the House of Representatives right now. There is this irony that they're talking about how much they love democracy, but then, of course, they want to stifle the will of voters. But then there's this other aspect, which is, you know, the Democrats never go after their own members, as you alluded to. They might have one or two sort of kooky members, maybe more than one or two, and maybe a little bit more than kooky, but they don't go after them. And this is something that I think a lot of us are seeing this week. Democrats have unified government. They already had the bureaucracy, they already had big tech, they already had the universities, on and on and on. Democrats in this country seem much more talented at wielding political power, at actually getting things done than Republicans, who are sort of busy infighting or losing the opportunities that have been given to them.
- [08:40]
Ted Cruz
Well, there's a reason for that, which is today's Democratic Party is a command and control party. It is a party of authoritarians. It is a party of statists. Now, that means they follow orders. They are collectivists, they are willing to subject themselves to authority. Listen, on the right, what unites people? On the right, in a room like this, you'll have some people who are conservatives, some people who are libertarians, some people who are just lonely and looking to make friends. I mean, you'll have a wide array. And by the way, those are not mutually exclusive. You can have some of all of those. But if there's one thing that unifies the center right, it is a respect for the individual. It is. It is an understanding that you can decide what you believe, you can decide how you worship, you can decide what you do with your life, you can decide what you say. All of that individual freedom, it's great. But then our problem is we can never get everyone on the same page because we're, you know, herding cats, right? Is unfair to the cats.
- [09:44]
Michael Knowles
Now, do you think that the Democrats have given conservatives an opening? Because this has always been a problem on the right. It's one of our strengths, but it's one of our problems is, you know, you put a hundred conservatives into a room together, they will find the one issue that each of them disagrees with the other on. And so it's very hard to wrangle them. How dare you say they won't? But do you think the Democrats have given us sort of an opening here? Because until the past couple of years, something like the American flag, that was a symbol, we could all Agree on. Right. You know, no person in their right mind, even if they're on the left, is going to campaign against the American flag until they start to do that, until they start to kneel in front of the flag or disrespect the flag or not stand for it. Do you think now conservatives have this opportunity to say, well, one thing that unites us is we want to conserve the place? You know, we like this place. We like our rituals, we like our local communities. Has the left gone radical enough to give us that opening?
- [10:44]
Ted Cruz
It's probably what I'm most optimistic about is the crazies are setting the agenda and their ideas don't work the next two years. Listen, they're going to be a tough two years for our country because we're going to see right now there's an anger, there's a zealotry on the left. I mean, there is a spirit where they're trying to destroy their enemies. Yeah. I mean, it's like Robespierre setting up guillotines in the street. I mean, their objective, you look at impeachment next week. Impeachment next week is because they hate Donald J. Trump and they want to destroy him. They want to salt the earth. By the way, remember we were talking a minute ago about how Democrats love democracy? What is their stated reason for impeachment? Well, if they don't impeach him and prohibit him from running again, he might run again. And you know what? Those idiot voters might vote for him. Now, you could be upset at that, I get that. But you don't get to claim you're defending democracy when the evil you're trying to prevent is the people might vote in a way you don't like.
- [11:46]
Michael Knowles
Well, and this is something ironic, also ironic with the Democrats, they accuse the right of upending precedent, constitutional norms. The country is going to hell in a handbasket. They are the ones who are, who are again and again destroying precedent. As you mentioned, taking a Republican congressman off of her committees, impeaching a former president, to my knowledge, that has never been done. I would like, if you wouldn't mind, a little insider baseball here, because, you know, Senator, you're looking pretty good. You're looking pretty sprightly.
- [12:18]
Ted Cruz
Thank you.
- [12:18]
Michael Knowles
You are. But I know somehow, you know, I'm the one who just had a kid and you are getting less sleep than I am.
- [12:26]
Ted Cruz
So actually, in terms of delivering the kid, that one wasn't you.
- [12:30]
Michael Knowles
That was not me. I felt everyone kept making about my wife. I don't know, I felt like I was doing a lot of work in that room. But you somehow are getting less sleep than I am. You basically pulled an all nighter last night in D.C. you're then preparing for the impeachment next week. What is happening? I mean, there is a lot going on that seems so opaque to a lot of us.
- [12:52]
Ted Cruz
So last night we were on the Senate floor, we were doing what's called Vote a Rama. And that went until 5:25 in the morning. So we were there all night, got home, I went to sleep at 6, got up at 9. So I had three hours sleep and flew to Miami. So if I nod off, just kind of nudge me midway through. So what is Votorama? Look, the Senate for the past 20 years or so has, has been pretty rigidly controlled by whoever the majority leader is. And as a general matter, they stop really both sides from offering amendments. And we have really a rule by majority leaders on both sides. Either Chuck Schumer or Mitch McConnell are super senators because they shut down amendments. The Democrats want to do lots of bad stuff. The principal procedural impediment they face in the Senate is the filibuster, the requirement of 60 votes to move forward on legislation. The biggest exception to the filibuster is something called budget reconciliation. Now that's a process. It comes from a statute called the Budget act of 1975, and it sets out a process for passing a budget. The budget is really the sideshow. What is important is by statute it only takes 50 votes to pass and not 60. So it's this big glaring exception to what otherwise is legislation that's got a clearer filibuster. So the Democrats just took up their first budget reconciliation. We could see three budget reconciliations this year, all as vehicles to just pass bad laws they want to pass. Yeah, this was the first one. Under that statute though, senators can offer unlimited amendments. And so the way the Majority leader stops a Senator from offering an amendment is a procedural mechanism called filling the tree, where basically they offer all the available amendments so no one else can offer one. On reconciliation, you can't stop it. And so we had yesterday, I don't know, we voted on 40 or 50amendments and we just stood there. Now what happened during most of the day is the Democrats were slow walking the votes and so they were dragging it out. It was theoretically 10 minute votes, but they'd take 30, they'd take 45. Then towards the end of it, we're all seated at our desks and we're doing faster votes and each side gets up and gets to speak for a minute.
- [15:16]
Michael Knowles
Okay?
- [15:17]
Ted Cruz
And so look, if you're in the minority, which we are, it's a 50. 50 Senate. They are. It is the most narrow majority possible. 50, 50. With the vice President breaking the tie. What you try to think of when you're in the minority is what are votes that would really suck to vote on if you're on the other side?
- [15:34]
Michael Knowles
Because you don't really have a chance of putting forth this kind of groundbreaking substantive legislation for your own side. There's no way that's going to get through.
- [15:43]
Ted Cruz
It is forcing. The majority hates it. They don't want any of these votes, but it is forcing them to take votes they don't like. So a bunch of us filed a ton of amendments and we voted on them and voted on them, and a number of the amendments passed. Now, here's a level of the kind of ridiculousness of the game. So let me tell you three amendments that passed, and I actually wrote down the details. So three passed, okay? One supports the Keystone pipeline. Said Joe Biden made a mistake shutting down the Keystone pipeline, killing 8,000 jobs. That passed on the floor of the Senate by a vote of 52 to 48. Every Republican voted for it. Joe Manchin voted for it. Democrat from West Virginia, John Tester voted for it. Democrat from Montana. A second amendment said that any stimulus checks that go out should not go to illegal immigrants. So that amendment passed 58 to 42.
- [16:39]
Michael Knowles
So I have to pause you there, Senator. 42 elected senators think that we should send our tax money to illegal aliens in the country.
- [16:49]
Ted Cruz
Look, 40 of them might think we should send them only to illegal aliens. So this Democratic Party is nuts. But Hasson, Hickenlooper, Kelly, Manchin, Peters, Sinema, Stabenow, and Tester all voted for don't send them to illegal aliens. And the third one was a vote in support of fracking that we're not going to shut down fracking. So all of these Republicans offered fracking is a good thing. That passed 5,743. So Bennett, Colorado. Casey, Pennsylvania. Heinrich, New Mexico. Hickenlooper, Colorado. Lujan, New Mexico. Mansion, West Virginia. Tester, Montana. So you might say, hey, that's great. Those are three victories.
- [17:38]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, I'm sensing a but you know.
- [17:41]
Ted Cruz
What the last thing we voted on is? It's what's called colloquially a wraparound amendment, which is Chuck Schumer stands up as the very last amendment and offers an amendment to strip out all of the amendments that were adopted during the course of the night. It is literally Erase everything we just did for the last 15 hours. Do you know what the vote was on the wraparound amendment? What, 50 to 50. And we saw on that amendment the very first vote ever cast by Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie and strip out those policies. So, by the way, and look, this is one of many reasons people despise politicians. Why do these Democrats vote this way? Because when Joe Manchin and John Tester go home, when Jon Tester goes home to Montana, he says, I voted for the Keystone pipeline. Sure, Bob, but then you voted against.
- [18:44]
Michael Knowles
You about five hours later or whatever, ten hours later.
- [18:48]
Ted Cruz
It seems to me John Kerry, like, built a whole presidential campaign on exactly that. I voted for it before I voted.
- [18:54]
Michael Knowles
Against it before I was against it.
- [18:55]
Ted Cruz
But it's the ridiculous game where all of these votes were show votes because on the vote, they cared about the party discipline vote. Every single one of them lines up and says, erase the amendments and go back to the Bernie Sanders spend a palooza.
- [19:14]
Michael Knowles
Well, you know, the fracking vote is interesting to me because you'll recall so long ago, a few months ago, on the campaign trail, Joe Biden said, come on, man, I'm not gonna ban fracking. Come on, man.
- [19:26]
Ted Cruz
That really doesn't sound like Joe.
- [19:28]
Michael Knowles
No, not at all. No, it's not Kamala Harris. Same thing. Not gonna ban fracking. And then of course they're gonna ban fracking. They're gonna ban all these sorts of things.
- [19:37]
Ted Cruz
The amazing thing is politifact would say you were lying when you said they were going to ban fracking during the campaign. And now they'll say you're lying when you say they said they weren't going to ban fracking.
- [19:49]
Michael Knowles
I know they're going to say I'm lying when I just read the PolitiFact from three months ago. They're going to fact check me on that as well.
- [19:57]
Ted Cruz
Do you know my favorite Politifact? So 2018, I'm running for reelection for Senate and fellow ran against me, guy named Beto.
- [20:10]
Michael Knowles
Is he. He's that skateboarder Dylan. I think I saw him somewhere on the Internet. Is he.
- [20:15]
Ted Cruz
He jumps on tables.
- [20:16]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [20:19]
Ted Cruz
So when he entered the race, we decided, all right, we want to welcome him to the race with a kind, loving, gentle embrace. Uhhuh. So we put out a parody song, and the song was based on, if you're going to play in Texas, you got to have a fiddle in the band. Except the one we put out. We said, if you're going to run in Texas, you Can't be a liberal man. And so we hired musicians who were really quite good and had the whole thing. And it. And you know, it begins by by saying, beto wants those open borders and he wants to take our guns. We put this ad out. PolitiFact fact checks it.
- [21:11]
Michael Knowles
You fact checked your song?
- [21:12]
Ted Cruz
My parody song. Do you know Puff the Magic Dragon actually didn't live in a land called Hanalei?
- [21:21]
Michael Knowles
No.
- [21:22]
Ted Cruz
It's an amazing thing.
- [21:24]
Michael Knowles
Wow.
- [21:24]
Ted Cruz
Pants on fire.
- [21:25]
Michael Knowles
You know, But.
- [21:26]
Ted Cruz
But they fact check it and they say it is literally pants on fire. False that Beto wants to take our guns. So fast forward to Senate race. We win, he loses.
- [21:43]
Michael Knowles
It's a minor detail.
- [21:48]
Ted Cruz
He goes to New Mexico and eats dirt. Don't ask me. That's what he did. And then he runs for president as a Democrat. And the poor guy was so startled because his base, by which I mean the reporters, cnn, who. Look, when he was running against me, they were like groupies at a Rolling Stone concert throwing their underwear at him. Literally.
- [22:18]
Michael Knowles
Right?
- [22:20]
Ted Cruz
If they wore underwear, yes. Too edgy. It's a podcast.
- [22:28]
Michael Knowles
You can say whatever you want.
- [22:30]
Ted Cruz
The instant he was running against Bernie and Kamala and the heroes of the left, the press turned on him. And the poor guy was, what the hell just happened? Utterly startled. But you remember at one of the Democratic debates, he said, damn right, I'm going to take your AR15. Yep. And then his campaign website began selling T shirts that said on the front of them, damn right, I'm going to take your AR15. At which point I couldn't resist jumping on Twitter and saying, hey, PolitiFact, when you fact checked my statement that Beto wants to take our guns and you said that was false. Are you gonna buy one of his T shirts?
- [23:18]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. Do you. Can I send you a link to his Shopify account? Because, you know, they did this to us today, actually. Politifi. No, I'm sorry. It was Snopes, Daily Wire, and my show at the Daily Wire, we ran this headline. It said, there's a report out that AOC was not in the Capitol building during the riot on January 6th. And that was the whole headline. And we got a fact check. Mostly false. Mostly. Okay, so when it's mostly false, they say what's true and they say what's false. So I said, well, let's just see what's true about this headline was report. AOC was not in the Capitol building during the riot. What's true? AOC was not in the Capitol building during the riot. But what's false is she was in another building that was down the street and you know that's in D.C. and you guys are mean, so therefore mostly false.
- [24:12]
Ted Cruz
You know, Michael, I just don't know why you will not honor her individual truth. Look, I recognize she was in her office when a police officer knocked on the door and asked her to evacuate. But if she lived that experience as a band of marauders sent by me came with murderous intentions, that is her truth. And by the way, you know what she said, what you and I just did? She said anyone that doubts her shared truth is guilty of sexual assault.
- [24:51]
Michael Knowles
Yes, she did. She did say that she did. She said it's being like an abuser. If you were to question that. You know, this actually raises one of the central questions we're talking about here at yaff, which is for a long time, I think every conservative of every generation in this room has known about the threats from big government. But there are other threats to our freedom from other big sorts of entities. Big tech, which would be politifact, big corporations which are signing up with all of these radical left wing groups and, and advancing them. Big, big, big, big, big is big bureaucracy, all of these sorts of things. Looking forward, I mean the conservative movement has come so far. Just think about yaf. Think about the growth of the Young Americas Foundation. I mean it's just unbelievable. Think about all the people in this room, all the campuses that YAF is on. The growth of so many conservative organizations. But now moving forward, it seems like the challenges are different. We're going to have to start changing maybe some of our language. Looking at these other threats, where do we go from here? I know so many people, we're all pretty happy to be together tonight, but we're a little bit down after the election, after the inauguration. Where do we go from here?
- [26:06]
Ted Cruz
We go towards truth and light and freedom. Look, the great thing about eternal truths, they're always true. Our ideas work. Freedom works. Free markets work. The Constitution and Bill of Rights, free speech, religious liberty, the fundamental liberties of humanity. It is right and true. And just the next two years we're going to see wild eyed socialists trying to do enormous damage to this country. Their policies aren't going to work. They don't work. That is going to become evident. You know, I'll make a reference. This reminds me an awful lot of the late 70s. You know, Scott Walker and I are both almost exactly the same age. We were both kids in the late 70s when Ronald Reagan was elected. I was 10 when Reagan left the White House. I was 18. It took Jimmy Carter to give us Reagan. It took the absolute catastrophe, the disaster of the Carter years. It took Jimmy Carter giving away the Panama Canal.
- [27:26]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, it's funny, you know, that's an issue that people don't even really think about anymore. But what a key. So much was happening during those years to set up the conservative.
- [27:35]
Ted Cruz
It took stagflation, enormous economic harm, misery, gas lines. It took the military being downgraded to a level that our hostages in Iran get. Get taken in captivity for 444 days. And Carter sends out a military team to try to rescue them and it crashes in the desert with no opposing fire. The absolute calamity. It took Jimmy Carter putting on a sweater and saying, you know, we live in a world of scarcity. We don't have the money to heat your homes anymore, so just put on a sweater and just accept malaise.
- [28:18]
Michael Knowles
Malaise, the new normal, you might say.
- [28:21]
Ted Cruz
And all of that train wreck is what prepared people for a sunny, optimistic governor from California who understood the power of freedom. We're in a moment, just like that. We're in a moment where we will go through some darkness. But the answer to darkness is always light.
- [28:54]
Michael Knowles
I have to tell you, Senator, when I.
- [28:56]
Ted Cruz
When I ask, and right on cue, they turn on the light.
- [28:59]
Michael Knowles
The light is here. When I asked you, where do we go from here? And you said, well, Michael, it's kind of like the 70s. I was feeling a little depressed. That did not sound great. But you're right, you get the 70s, then you get the 80s.
- [29:09]
Ted Cruz
I really hope bell bottoms don't come back. Although to be honest, the 80s, and depressingly enough, Michael, you're young enough not to remember the 80s.
- [29:20]
Michael Knowles
I was a glint in my father's eye.
- [29:23]
Ted Cruz
I owned parachute pants. Yeah, no, it really was horrible. It was these like plasticy. Scott, did you have parachute pants? Ok, these plasticky pants with zippers all over them and I do not know why. And my father, who, you know, Cuban American pastor, I would be leaving in high school and he'd be like, do you want to look like a bum? I'd be like, yeah, because I was a teenager and that's what you say to your dad. And thankfully we grow out of that.
- [29:53]
Michael Knowles
You know, Senator, sometimes conservatives, I think we go into nostalgia, you know, history. After a few drinks, when we think about how great the 80s were, you've reminded me it wasn't all great, you know, there were some issues there as well. I do also want to remind everyone who is watching right now on YouTube. Head on over to YouTube.com yafftv we will answer your questions, but only if they're good questions. If they're bad questions, we're absolutely going to ignore them. Subscribe, send them in YouTube.com yafftv I also, you know, we flew down here not just to talk amongst ourselves as we often do. We want to talk to everyone who is out here at YAF Freedom Conference. So let's do it. Let's take some questions. Our first question for the live Verdict.
- [30:40]
Ted Cruz
Program tonight comes from Yaff TV, YouTube subscriber Real Truth Cactus, who asks.
- [30:47]
Michael Knowles
The fact that any private person can.
- [30:49]
Ted Cruz
Have their lives destroyed because of their.
- [30:51]
Michael Knowles
Social media lives is terrible, terrifying.
- [30:53]
Ted Cruz
What can private citizens do to protect themselves? You can take that one.
- [30:58]
Michael Knowles
All right. As the private citizen in this duo here, it's very tricky. It reminds me of a question I get. Maybe we'll get it tonight. And I'm happy to get back into it. But I often get this sort of a question from students, which is, hey, Michael, how can I totally embrace my political views and be very honest about what I think and not kowtow to the liberal mob and tell my professor exactly what I think about his absolutely ridiculous anti American lessons and still get an A? I say, ah, you are asking for something that was never possible and never will be possible, my friend. You want to have it all and everything, everything in life has consequences. It's why we remember that we have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Right? This is, this is a very tricky situation that we're living in and I can't just give you some kind of platitude and say, you know, speak your mind and be true to yourself and you will face no consequences whatsoever. The one thing I can say, though, having never learned the lesson to keep my mouth shut is, you know, I certainly have spoken my mind and I've gotten some lower grades because of it and don't get invited to some fun parties because of it, too. But I will say, from the times I have been honest about my beliefs, you don't need to be flamboyant about them. You don't need to be parading them around all the time. But when you're asked, you give an honest answer. I sleep like a baby. It is not worth your integrity to.
- [32:26]
Ted Cruz
Keep your mouth shut as he defecates the bed.
- [32:29]
Michael Knowles
I do, I do scream.
- [32:31]
Ted Cruz
Sleep like a baby is a very odd phrase. You're the father of a newborn. Is sleep like a baby a piece peaceful Image.
- [32:38]
Michael Knowles
Oh, it's wonderful. My wife feeds me multiple times in the middle of the night pizza. It's absolutely fabulous. And that's really why my answer is just get married and you'll have a much better life. But I do think it really is important in this way to have the integrity. You will take a hit and you just have to deal with that. And being a conservative requires that you recognize reality and accept the permanent things about life. But it is worth it, because in the end, all the cheap little thrills that you'll get by lying to yourself and to others, I just don't think are worth it.
- [33:15]
Ted Cruz
Well, and let me add something to that on a different. Because I think you're right in school, and it is a challenge in school. You have liberal professors. How you handle that? Both Michael and I experienced getting your grades clipped substantially with professors from the left that didn't like what we were saying. And that's a hard challenge to deal with. Let me give a different aspect to that question, though, which is the social media component of it. We're at a different environment where everyone here is online, everyone here is connected, and what you say is recorded for all perpetuity.
- [33:54]
Michael Knowles
Once it's on the Internet, it's forever.
- [33:56]
Ted Cruz
It never goes away. And I gotta say, look, our daughters are 10 and 12. It scares the living daylights out of me that as they start to get an engagement, I think of the dumbass things that I thought and said when I was 15 and 17 and 19, and I am so glad that they are not preserved for all eternity. They faded, they were dumb and they were forgotten.
- [34:23]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Ted Cruz
Y'all are living in an environment where you don't get a second chance on that. And so I'd say be careful on that.
- [34:30]
Michael Knowles
Yeah.
- [34:31]
Ted Cruz
Because it is a smart alec tweet. A smart alec post. In five years at a job interview, you could find them pulling it out and reading it to you. Yeah. And I try to explain that to, you know, you want to make a joke. Just humor. Be fun and have a sense of humor. But. But ask yourself, do I want to see this five years from now?
- [34:57]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [34:58]
Ted Cruz
And if you don't, maybe don't send it out into the world to be there forever.
- [35:02]
Michael Knowles
Because this is the other side of the integrity aspect, which is you don't want to hide your views and pretend to be somebody who you are not. But you also don't want to do something that you will be embarrassed about. You don't want to be doing something that you'll be ashamed of. Five or ten years later, when you look back on it and when your prospective employers look back on it, too. Hi, my name's Tripp Graby. I'm a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. First of all, thank you both for being here. My question is, as you alluded to earlier, the GOP seems to be more divided than it's ever been before. And it seems as though since the election and since the riots at the Capitol, there's been a certain effort to purge Trump's skeptical Republicans from the party. Ben Sasse is expecting a censure from the Nebraska GOP. Cindy McCain, Jeff Flake, Doug Ducey were censored by the Arizona GOP. And Liz Cheney was almost ousted from House leadership recently. So my question to you is, do you think that there's a path forward for Trump skeptic conservatives?
- [36:01]
Ted Cruz
Of course there is. I think there's a path forward for everyone who agrees on a shared set of principles and values. You know, Reagan, Reagan said, what do you call someone who agrees with you 80% of the time? A friend. So, look, we're at a weird, divided time. Donald J. Trump is a unique individual, and he inspires unique sentiments from virtually everybody. I do think some people have lost their minds over how much they dislike him. He says and does things I disagree with, but he also has done a lot of things I agree with that I think were good for the country. And I try to approach it as a reasonable person to say, okay, when he's working for good policy that's good for the country, I'll work with him. When he's saying things that are not good, I'm not going to support that. There are efforts of purging on both sides, and we're seeing it right now. And look, anytime you lose an election, there's a period of chaos, there's a period of reckoning that's fairly natural. And so you're right, there are those who are very strong Trump supporters that are saying, get rid of anyone who isn't. There are also those who were not fans of Trump that are trying to say, get rid of everyone who was. I mean, we're seeing the purging on both ends. You know, I have this crazy view that I'd like us to win elections, and you win elections by getting 50 plus one. So I'm not really interested in taking any significant chunk of the party and purging it. I am interested in finding shared values that bring us together. And right now, these emotions are raw. These emotions are people are worked up and they're passionate and that'll fade as time goes on. Those divisions, there have always been divisions in the party. There have always been. You know, it's interesting. I wrote a book last year called One Vote away about the U.S. supreme Court. And one of the chapters in the book traces the history of the court. It goes back to nominees that were put on the court, and it goes back to the 1952 GOP convention and the 1948 GOP convention and the battles that were in the party, actually in 1948, the battles that were in the party where you had, you had Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was the choice of the New England moderates, and you had Robert Taft, that was the choice of the conservatives and they were at each other's throats. And you read it and you just stop and laugh. I look, most of us weren't alive then and the same battles that we see playing out, some were, okay, I got a, I got a few mean looks, but the same battles and tensions that were playing out now were playing out then. And they're going to be disagreements. And you know, some of it comes down to the difference between a parliamentary system and a two party presidential system. Parliamentary system. We could have a dozen different parties and everyone could pick a party of just people exactly like them who are left handed and ride unicorns, unicycles, and you can all be, hopefully not unicorns, but unicycles. In a presidential system for two parties, you've got to stitch together a coalition that's sometimes uneasy, that's sometimes difficult. So yes, these tensions are real. And I think having debates about who we are and what we stand for should be good. But I also don't think we win elections by purging major parts of our party. I think we win elections by growing our party and convincing the American people that our ideas are right.
- [40:13]
Michael Knowles
I love that point, Senator. It's a really, really great point because this is an issue that has come up in the last couple of weeks. Should there be a third party for people who are, I don't know, one type of conservative over the other. And of course, if there were a different party that would immediately give Democrats every single office in the land more or less. We saw this happen with Teddy Roosevelt, gave us Woodrow Wilson and more or less destroyed the country. So you don't want that sort of thing to happen. When Bill Buckley, in conjunction with this very organization, sort of cobbled together the post war conservative movement, he brought together libertarians, traditionalists in the religious right, and war hawk Democrats and those three groups did not have a ton in common. They all hated the Soviet Union, libertarians because of the collectivism, the traditionalists because of the atheism, and, and the war hawks because of the imperial ambitions. And they worked together and had an incredibly successful governing coalition. And now we're going to be debating a lot of these questions. Where do we stand on migration? What do we think that means in our national history? Where do we stand on corporate America, where we stand, all these sorts of issues. I think it's easier to debate those things when it's not just a personality contest and a contest of who was right five years ago when you're actually talking about those issues. And, and there's another issue on top of that, which is do we have the courage to do the things that the people give us power to do? Will we actually do it? Or are we just going to promise something on the campaign trail and then do something else behind closed doors? Those debates, as you say, Senator, those are all happening right now. That is perfectly normal. And you want to make sure you keep enough people together that you can still win elections. Our next live Verdict Mailbag question comes from Yaff TV YouTube subscriber Derek Schumacher.
- [42:01]
Ted Cruz
Who, who asks, should Texas secede? You know, it's interesting that question is getting asked more and more. It is literally being debated in the Texas legislature. I have a friend of mine from New England who actually flew down to Texas right before the 2016 election. He was convinced Hillary was going to win and the world was going to hell in a handbasket. And he said, Texas needs to secede. It's the only hope to save the union. And he was deadly serious. And I'll tell you what I told him then, and it's the same thing I'd say in the answer to that. My answer is no. I don't believe Texas should secede because I think we have a responsibility to the country because I love America and I'm not willing to give up on America. I understand the sentiments behind it. I understand the frustrations as you look at lunatics running our national parties, running our institutions of government. It's frightening. And I will say, look, we're at a strange time in our country because our country is coming apart. We're living in two universes, the left and right. And this is where technology, I think, has had a really significant impact because with social media, with the Internet, the left listens to left wing news, the right listens to right wing news. If someone disagrees, you unfriend them. And we don't have shared facts. We don't have the homogenizing institutions. You know, it used to be that you would go, you'd be a Democrat or Republican, but you'd go to church with your neighbors and there'd be some of both. You'd go to the Rotary Club and you would know people who were Democrats, you'd know people who were Republicans, and you'd discover that they didn't have horns and they weren't monsters. I worry about our country that the reality of someone in Texas is very different maybe than the reality of someone in Seattle where everything they're hearing, all of the reinforcements, all of the facts are skewed to one side. I think the answer, it's incumbent on us. Listen, the media has given up on its task. Walter Cronkite played a role of bringing people together and he leaned left, but he wasn't a naked partisan the way today's journalists are. To be honest, if we're going to wait for CNN or MSNBC or the New York Times to fix itself, the country will be lost. The only way to fix it is to do what we're doing right now. It's one of the reasons I love podcast is because we could sit down and do a podcast any damn time we want and put it out there and communicate directly. And by the way, every one of you can too. You know, it's easy when you're young to think, well, gosh, you know, when I'm older, when I'm 30, when I'm 40, when I'm established, then I'll have a voice, then I'll be able to do something. Every one of you has a voice right now. And not only that, you're conservatives on college campuses. I mean, you are thick headed and stubborn as hell. That's great. You got them to applaud by calling.
- [45:44]
Michael Knowles
Them thick headed and stubborn as hell. That's very impressive. That's very impressive. You know, on this question of texit, I will defer to the Senator from Texas if you want to ask me about tennessexit or something, which sounds very, very tawdry, but if you want to ask me about that, I'm happy to answer. But I agree. That's a good point.
- [46:03]
Ted Cruz
Howdy, gentlemen. My name is Reed Olson. I am a senior at Texas University. As a lifelong Texan, I too am a survivor of the 2018 hellscape known as Beto Mania. So my question to you is, seeing.
- [46:19]
Michael Knowles
As this is a current trend with.
- [46:20]
Ted Cruz
You know, AOC becoming a basically New celebrity. How do we fight the power of.
- [46:26]
Michael Knowles
Celebrity in future elections?
- [46:30]
Ted Cruz
It's a huge problem. It is a problem that stems back, I think you can go back really to the 1960s. The left systematically took over the organs of the transmission of ideas. They systematically took over education K through 12. Education is almost uniformly left. They took over colleges and universities. They took over journalism and they took over entertainment. They took over Hollywood, by the way, of all of them. If I could get one back, I'd get entertainment back. If you look at the influence of movies and TVs, and by the way, sports and video games, all of them are dominated by the left. And so what they do is they make their folks celebrities and they treat them AOC and Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are all the same thing. And the press and big tech. Oh, be still my heart. She played a video game. Well, hot diggity Dan. You know, I was in the airport in D.C. getting ready to fly down to Miami today, and I stopped to get a. I wanted a diet Dr. Pepper, but they didn't have one, so I got a Diet Coke. And I was just looking at all the magazine covers, and every magazine cover had Joe Biden smiling ear to ear. Had him happy Jill Biden there. Well, except for the Kamala ones where I actually think she was glowing. I think they actually require, like, choir music to be played.
- [48:25]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, there's a loom on it. It's radioactive.
- [48:27]
Ted Cruz
Just so she can glow. You know the Renaissance paintings where they put halos around. I mean, it is. It's hagiography and it is designed to be. And, you know, you get questions. What's your favorite ice cream flavor? Scott, did anyone ever ask you your favorite ice cream? I. It is. And the entertainment world. All right, so this week I. I got in a Twitter beef with Cary Elwes.
- [49:04]
Michael Knowles
Who?
- [49:04]
Ted Cruz
Dread Pirate Roberts and the Princess Bride, which is my favorite movie. And mind you. Okay, so this, it was actually caused by verdict. So I didn't pick this one. I picked a lot of them, but I did not pick this one. I was innocently minding my own business. Last verdict we did, I talked about. I went on a digression and I said, you ever noticed how many movie villains are rabid environmentalists? And I talked about Thanos and Avengers Endgame, who says there are too many people, they're consuming the resources. So I'm going to snap my finger and half the people are going to disappear. And I've said that point several times before, but for whatever reason, some lefty Saw it and lost his mind and tweeted it out, and the thing went viral like crazy. And I actually took Media Matters, the lefty group, and I retweeted them. I said, like, yep, that's what I'm saying. Listen to what the guy's saying. He's an environmentalist, so he wants to kill half of every person that lives. So Kerry Elwis got mad at that. Oh, there is a very cute thing on Twitter someone pointed out. Apparently I pronounced his name wrong because I say Thanos and I.
- [50:13]
Michael Knowles
How is it pronounced?
- [50:14]
Ted Cruz
It's Thanos.
- [50:15]
Michael Knowles
Thanos.
- [50:16]
Ted Cruz
And they actually did a clip of like, 20 characters from the movie going, thanos, Thanos, Thanos, Thanos. Okay, Guy with really fat fingers who can kill half the people on the universe. So Kerry, out of nowhere, blasts me and says, I don't know, puts that clip and says, you're a moron. And by the way, everyone who made the Princess Bride, we all hate you.
- [50:38]
Michael Knowles
Hate you. We all hate you.
- [50:39]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. Now, this is my favorite movie. I've seen this a lot of times. And as it so happens, in my Senate office is a framed picture of Cary Elwes dressed as the Dread Pirate Roberts, signed by Cary Elwes to Senator Cruz, best wishes.
- [51:04]
Michael Knowles
All my best wishes.
- [51:05]
Ted Cruz
I'm sitting there, I'm like, really, dude? Like, really? Yes. You're a lefty actor. You're all lefty actors. And by the way, just because you're all lefty actors doesn't mean we don't get to enjoy movies if we only listen to conservatives, okay? No movies, no sports, no tv. To hell with you. You don't own your art. I love your movie, even if you're a numbskull. But I did take a picture of the signed, signed picture that he had signed to me and apparently forgot about, and I just sent the picture back and said, does this mean you want your picture back? And so he blocked me.
- [51:46]
Michael Knowles
He Nazi president. Never go against Ted Cruz when tweets are on the line and never do it. Our final question comes from the Live Verdict Mailbag. Blake, who is a subscriber on Yaff tv, asks. Biden said he was going to follow.
- [52:11]
Ted Cruz
The science, but what about his refusal to follow the science that says open the schools?
- [52:16]
Michael Knowles
Are he and Cuomo just on a rampage to hold onto the power they gained under Covid?
- [52:22]
Ted Cruz
Yes.
- [52:24]
Michael Knowles
Thanks, everybody.
- [52:32]
Ted Cruz
The left is really good at weaponizing language. They do it really well, by the way. We're not nearly as good at it. Science is one of their favorite words, by the way. What they mean by science are the socialist policies they want to implement. The actual substance of the science doesn't matter.
- [52:57]
Michael Knowles
It's actually worth pointing out too, they have been using science in this way for over 100 years. They actually, radical left wing activists following in the Marxist tradition actually would refer to the science of history, the science of politics. That is why actually when Bill Buckley started National Review, he said, we stand athwart history yelling stop. Because they knew the science of history. They knew where it was going, to their terrible socialist utopia. So they've been doing this for a.
- [53:25]
Ted Cruz
Long time, but they also don't care about science.
- [53:28]
Michael Knowles
Exactly.
- [53:30]
Ted Cruz
Science is a club to beat the masses into submission and obedience. So, and let me be clear, I am the son of two mathematicians and scientists. I believe in science. Science actually matters. Now, how many of y'all remember the scientific method where you start with a hypothesis, you then test it with evidence and you seek to disprove it. So one of the things, let's take a couple of issues on science. Climate change, the holy grail now of government control of every aspect of your life. A little bit of history. 1960s, 1970s, left wing politicians were saying, we are entering a massive period of global cooling, a new ice age. The only solution is for the government to control the economy, the energy sector, and every aspect of your life follows naturally. Then there was a problem. The Earth wasn't in fact cooling. Like, it was an interesting theory, but it just was wrong. So then Fast forward another 10, 20 years and you have scientists, many of them the same scientists who come up with global warming.
- [54:52]
Michael Knowles
That sounds different. Sounds kind of like the opposite of.
- [54:54]
Ted Cruz
The first one they had, but interesting. And by the way, you get the next wave of politicians and global warming. The solution is total government control of the economy, the energy sector, and every aspect of your life.
- [55:07]
Michael Knowles
Hold on here.
- [55:09]
Ted Cruz
But then they had another problem, which is that the Earth isn't warming.
- [55:14]
Michael Knowles
I mean, these guys can't win for losing. They just keep blowing it.
- [55:17]
Ted Cruz
So we have satellites that are orbiting the Earth that are measuring the temperature, and for 18 years they have measured zero statistically significant warming. So they had a problem. They have these computer models that show it should be warming like crazy. And the satellites actually measuring the temperature say, well, it's not warming like crazy. They actually call this the pause. If you want to enjoy a bit of humor, you can Google me and Sierra Club. The head of the Sierra Club was testifying in the Senate and I asked him about the pause and I said, do you know what the Pause is. He said yes. I asked him what it was and he refused to say. He simply refused to say. He refused to answer. And it's because. And then. Did you notice? Think about it for a second. No one uses the term global warming anymore. It magically changed. And if you care about science, I want you to pause and think about climate change. It is the perfect pseudo scientific theory. Why? Let's go back to the scientific method. This is a theory that can never, ever, ever be disproven if you're mapping out the sets in which it is true. It is true in 100% of the circumstances. If the climate gets hotter, the theory is correct. If the climate gets cooler, the theory is correct. If the climate gets wetter, the theory is correct. If the climate gets drier, the theory is correct. There are no data, there is no evidence that can ever disprove a theory. That stuff's changing because, well, yeah, the climate's been changing since the dawn of time. If something is not susceptible to the scientific method, if it's not testable by data and evidence, its purpose is not science. And by the way, the solution to fix it.
- [57:21]
Michael Knowles
Hold on. I am going to try to guess. Give me a second. Tell me.
- [57:24]
Ted Cruz
Total government control of the economy, the energy sector, and every aspect of your lives. Okay. John Kerry flies on private jets to get environmental awards because he believes in this nonsense. No, he doesn't. He believes in government power and it has nothing to do with science. By the way, you'll also be told the polar ice caps are melting. Here's a problem. There's more ice in the polar ice caps today than there was 10 years ago. Group of lefty scientists went down with a ship to Antarctica to measure the ice. They were told they needed icebreakers. They said, no, no, no, it's all melting. They got stuck in the ice. When you bring this up, the supposed avatars of science scream Denier. Let me tell you right now, Denier is not the language of science. If you actually care about science, you don't speak. That's the language of religion. Heretic, the witch. Throw him in the water. If he floats, he's a witch.
- [58:36]
Michael Knowles
That's for science.
- [58:37]
Ted Cruz
It's science. By the way, for any of your lefty classmates, if they want to pontificate on science, here's one question you can ask them just very innocuously. Tell me, what is a Y chromosome?
- [58:56]
Michael Knowles
How dare you. There's no hate speech on this podcast, Senator. You cannot ask that.
- [59:02]
Ted Cruz
You believe in science. Just tell me, what is that? Thing I learned, you know, we've had.
- [59:08]
Michael Knowles
A year of good podcasts, and now you're gonna get us deplatformed because you're bringing up hate speech like our chromosomes. You know, you even see it in the White House press briefings. We heard this just over the past few days, actually, getting back to the specifics of that question, circling back, if you will. If you will indulge me, I would like to circle back. We have been told the Biden administration, in 42 executive orders since he's been inaugurated, three of them explicitly mention how important science is, and we need to follow the science. Biden campaigned on this, so he's going to more or less outsources his policies to these technocrats, these lab coat exalted dictators who know how to run our lives better than we all do. Right. Unless it's politically inconvenient. Because just a couple days ago, the CDC director said no reason to keep the schools closed. We've got a lot of great data coming out shows that the virus is not spreading in any particular way in schools. You don't need to wait for teachers to get vaccinated. Send those kids back, educate them.
- [60:19]
Ted Cruz
Now, did you see the correction?
- [60:22]
Michael Knowles
Was there a correction?
- [60:23]
Ted Cruz
There was a correction.
- [60:24]
Michael Knowles
There was a fact check.
- [60:25]
Ted Cruz
Well, no, it's worse than that. The White House said she was speaking in her personal capacity, so apparently she wasn't a scientist. I guess now she's standing at the frigging White House with a podium that says the frigging White House on it, and she's discussing a global pandemic and what the science says. But here's the problem. She doesn't lead a union that spends hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Democrats.
- [61:00]
Michael Knowles
That is very interesting.
- [61:01]
Ted Cruz
And so suddenly what she said became an inconvenient truth. It's a good book title, by the way.
- [61:11]
Michael Knowles
Someone should make a movie out of that. Because of course, these bureaucrats, these technocrats, yeah, they might be in the constituency here that the Democrats want to appeal to, but they want to appeal to those teacher unions more. And the teacher unions say, science be damned, we're not going back to work. And that's going to be the line from the White House.
- [61:30]
Ted Cruz
Look, science is a wonderful thing. And by the way, we should embrace science as a wonderful tool for human learning. But part of science is looking to facts and data and evidence and what works and what doesn't. Their policies don't work. They don't want to talk about whether their policies work. They instead want to behave it has become religion. Climate change is their justification for a total government control, but it's about socialism. It's about the state having control of your lives. And they are statists in their core. And I think we should respond as happy warriors.
- [62:09]
Michael Knowles
You don't think we should just be furious and rip our hair out? Because that's sort of what I'm tempted to do is, is that, no, no, we've got to take a better attitude.
- [62:17]
Ted Cruz
Than that, and things can change very quickly. You know, one of my favorite clips is a great clip of Reagan at the White House, and he's doing a White House press briefing. And Sam Donaldson, who was an ABC News reporter, was pretty obnoxious, and he was pounding Reagan and he said, Mr. President, you blamed the speaker of the House, you blamed Congress, you blamed Democrats, you blamed everybody else. Mr. President, we have a lot of problems in this country. Don't you bear any of the responsibility for the problems we have in this country? And Reagan leans forward with a twinkle in his eye, and he says, well, Sam, yes, yes, I do. I bear considerable responsibility because for many years I was a Democrat. And if you Google the clip, it ends with Sam Donaldson cracking up, laughing.
- [63:45]
Michael Knowles
A little humor goes a long way, even in an empire of lies, to borrow our friend Andrew Clavin's phrase. Even living in this empire of lies, big government, big tech, big business, big everything colluding against us. A conservative consolation is that reality will reassert itself a little bit in the end. We can count on truth. We do need to have courage, though. That's the prerequisite for all of the other virtues. Seeing a lot of young, courageous conservatives in this room, seeing the strength of yaf. So happy to see Governor Scott Walker now officially President of yaf. I think there's been such a wonderful, a wonderful decade upon decade upon decade here at yaf. And I think we only have so much more to look forward to. Thank you all so very much. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [64:54]
Ted Cruz
Foreign this episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by.
- [65:03]
Michael Knowles
Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political.
- [65:05]
Ted Cruz
Action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, Jobs, Freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.