← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
MAGA Republicans Targeted by the FBI, Crime In America Effecting Democrats, plus Questions on the Minds of Young Voters the Week In Review
00:37:03
Loading summary
Transcript56 lines
- [00:00]
Ben Ferguson
Taxes was taxing. Now taxes is relaxing. When you file for free, I can.
- [00:05]
Karine Jean-Pierre
File for free TurboTax Free Edition. Roughly 37% of filers qualify. Simple Form 1040 returns only. See if you qualify@turbotax.com free. Hmm, I can file for free.
- [00:19]
Ben Ferguson
Now this is Taxes File for free with TurboTax Free Edition and get your maximum refund. No schedules except for earned income tax credit, child tax credit and student loan interest. See if you qualify@turbotax.com free.
- [00:31]
Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is the Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review, Ben Ferguson with you. And these are the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week. Number one, the big story of the week, Donald Trump voters and those that consider themselves MAGA supporters are now going to be targeted by the FBI in a shocking new minimo. The federal government believes that the threat of violence and major civil disturbances from MAGA supporters is so great that they have created a new category of extremists that it seeks to, quote, track and counter. Who are they tracking? You. And Donald Trump's army of MAGA followers. Number two, crime in America out of control. But this time it's affecting Democrats, including white, one congressman that was carjacked. And finally, we had a very interesting Q and A with Senator Ted Cruz at the Texas Youth Summit. I want you to hear some of the brilliant questions that were asked of the senator. It is the week in review with Ted Cruz and it starts right now. There is now intel that shows that MAGA Republicans, Donald Trump supporters will be targeted by the FBI as the 2024 election nears. Newsweek is now reporting on this. And Biden, to go back, tweeted in September of last year, quote, donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are a threat to the very soul of this country. The very soul of this country. Chris. FBI Director Christopher Wray in sworn testimony said it's not just Trump supporters. Early this year, he said House Republicans say the FBI document that they've obtained prove that several field offices contributed to a memo that targeted traditional Catholics. We talked about this extensively on this show as potential terrorists and tried to turn parishioners on their fellow churchgoers. So, so if you just look at the last year, parents who show up at school board meetings are to be labeled domestic terrorists. The FBI was spending time recruiting people in the Catholic Church to spy on their friends and family. And now we are being told that heading into the 2024 election that if you are a Donald Trump follower supporter that you may be now monitored or targeted by the FBI.
- [03:06]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Well, that's exactly right. And part of the challenge here, like, for example, you focused on the FBI's targeting of traditional Catholics, which they rightly got enormous grief because they were talking about infiltrating Catholic churches and trying to get priests to spy on their parishioners and become FBI informants to inform on the members of their church. So initially, the FBI said, oh, that was a rogue office down in Richmond, Virginia. It's not a broader problem. Now they've admitted that it was multiple offices that participated in that. This was a much broader effort to target traditional Catholics. And the same is true with the targeting of Donald Trump supporters. You know, even this language. So you can tell someone did a focus group on the Democrat side, and they discovered the phrase MAGA Republican. They're gonna brand that like mag. By the way, MAGA Republican. In their definition, they mean everybody. They literally mean every Republican is a MAGA Republican. And then they just think the word MAGA is really scary. And they claim that if you are.
- [04:18]
A MAGA Republican is defined as a.
- [04:20]
Republican who voted for Donald Trump. So, you know, 75 to 80 million Americans are defined, according to this White House, as potential terrorists, as threats to democracy. And this is how Democrats have become radicalized. They now say, if you dare vote against Democrats, you are a threat to democracy. Just understand, every time Democrats use the word democracy, what they mean is me, I'm a Democrat. I want to get elected. And anything that stands in my way is a, quote, threat to democracy. They don't actually want. They don't actually want real democracy if it elects Republicans. What they want is Democrats to be in power forever. And by the way, this is intimately connected to their lawlessness on the southern border, because the reason they've allowed 7.6 million illegal immigrants into the country is because they want to subvert democracy by getting them to vote for Democrats and keep Democrats in power.
- [05:28]
Ted Cruz
Senator, I also think we should bring up in the Newsweek article. It says that if you voted for Donald Trump, the government will track you.
- [05:37]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Well, that's right. And in June of this year, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security filed a joint report with Congress. And what they say in that joint report is, they say, quote, threats from domestic violent extremists have increased in the last two years, and any further increases in threats likely will correspond to to potential flashpoints, such as high profile elections and campaigns or contentious current events. So they're saying terrorists are associated with high profile elections. And just to make sure there's no ambiguity that they're not talking About Antifa, they're not talking about left wing terrorists. They are focused on Republicans. Here's what the report concludes. Quote, socio political developments such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, conditions related to the COVID 19 pandemic and conspiracy theories promoting violence will almost certainly spur some domestic terrorists to try to engage in violence. Now everything they list there they associate with Republicans. And notice they say Covid. So, so, so if you don't like lockdowns, you're a terrorist. If you don't, if you don't like forced maskings, you're a terrorist. If you don't like vaccine mandates, you're a terrorist. If you're concerned about the potential health negative effects of forced vaccines of the COVID vaccines, you're a terrorist. That is the narrative. Anyone that disagrees with the regime they now define as a violent extremist. And amazingly enough, left wing violence in their narrative doesn't exist.
- [07:31]
So black lives matter.
- [07:33]
Not a word about that. Antifa, not a word about that. The efforts targeting, look, we've got now violent riots that are playing out right now in cities like Philadelphia where they're ransacking and looting stores, where they're attacking police officers. That is not violent extremism. If you're a leftist, that's okay, that's wonderful. That is beautiful social protest to burn American cities. But yet if you don't want to see America locked down again on Covid, clearly you're a terrorist.
- [08:11]
Ted Cruz
Final question to you. I think we should give it a quick update on the speakership and the House vote kind of risen to the top at this point. He said he's willing to be the Speaker. That would be, and if you missed our interview with him, a two part series on the, on the Hunter Biden investigation. Go back and listen to it. He's phenomenal on this issue. Talk about the timeline now of when we expect the House side to take this up, of deciding again who's gonna be the Speaker.
- [08:40]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Well, my understanding is the House is going to vote on speaker next week and I expect it to be a roller coaster ride. I mean, you remember back in January we had a roller coaster ride of over a dozen different ballots before Kevin McCarthy was elected speaker and it was very narrow. It may well be a similar battle at this point. There are several contenders that are talking about running. Two have announced publicly. One is Steve Scalise. Steve Scalise is the majority leader, was Kevin McCarthy's number two. Steve is generally perceived to be more conservative than McCarthy. And so Steve is running as the candidate that can unify both the moderates in the Republican Conference and also some of the conservatives. A second candidate who's running, as you noted, is Jim Jordan. Jim Jordan was one of the original founders of the Freedom Caucus. He is a prominent and well known conservative. The media is deeply skeptical of Jim Jordan and they say he's too conservative to get elected and the moderates will never support him. I don't know if that's true or not. There is also discussion that Kevin Hearn, who is a Republican from Oklahoma, that he may run. Kevin is a good man. It's not clear if he will, although there have been reports that he's telling other Republicans he's looking at the race seriously. And then there's been some chatter that Chip Roy might run. I don't know if Chip will run or not. At this point, neither Kevin nor Chip are in the race, but next week they might both be in the race. And, and I don't know if yet another Republican might jump in. So I think it will be vigorously contested. I'm sure there is a lot of horse trading going on right now. There's a lot of negotiations going on right now. What's striking is that each of the potential candidates went and met with the Texas delegation. The reason they met with the Texas delegation is Texas is the largest contingent of House Republicans. And so you've got the biggest bloc of votes. Particularly if the Texas delegation votes together. It's not clear that they will, but they might. And so at this point, I don't know what will happen. My intention is to stay out of it and to leave leadership elections to House Republicans. But the answer as to who comes out of it is going to matter quite a bit. And so we will certainly watch with, with interest and continue to provide the best analysis we can.
- [11:17]
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. I want to move to something else that obviously got pushed back in the headlines, but it still is important. The crime wave that we're seeing is not just sweeping the nation, but now it's affecting Democratic leaders and leaders in the liberal movement like we haven't seen before. And it's happening way more often. I'll give you an example. You have a Democratic representative, Henry Queller, who was carjacked at gunpoint in D.C. this comes as in just the past. What was in a 24 hour period you had a liberal gay reporter that was shot and killed in his home in Philly. You had a far left activist that was stabbed to death by a deranged stranger in Brooklyn in front of his girlfriend. You had this Democratic congressman who was carjacked at gunpoint in D.C. by far for African American men. And yet we have Democrats who have a soft on crime policies that aren't just hurting their neighborhoods that I mentioned these different spots, but it's hurting people in Texas as well. And almost every House Democrat voted against the Republican efforts to stop the DC week on crime bill, which specifically would have reduced carjacking penalties. This is something that the Democrats, I mean they voted for us. Aldred for example, voted with the Dems on this one. It's shocking to me.
- [12:48]
Ben Ferguson
Well, listen, crime is out of control in this country and it's an issue that has people understandably very concerned. I watched tonight the video of the liberal activist in New York at four in the morning being stabbed to death on the streets of New York by a guy that certainly appeared years deranged. It was horrific to watch.
- [13:08]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
You're right.
- [13:09]
Ben Ferguson
The news of the left wing journalist in Philadelphia who was shot I think seven times in his own home and killed in the past few days. And Henry Cuellar. Look, Henry Cuellar is a Democrat congressman from Texas. I know Henry well. Henry represents Laredo up to San Antonio. Henry is, is the most conservative of the Texas Democrats. I worked hand in hand with Henry, for example, on the Texas bridges. We've talked on this podcast before about four bridges from Texas to Mexico that Henry and I teamed up in and won big legislative victories to build new bridges to Mexico for legal commerce, to expand bridges. Henry, as I said, is by far the most conservative of the Texas Democrats. Well, in the last couple of days, Henry was coming to his apartment in D.C. it was 9:30 at night and he was getting out of his car and he was carjacked. He, he was carjacked by four individuals. They put a gun in his face, they stole the car, they stole his luggage presumably. I haven't spoken to Henry since it happened. But you have to assume that with a gun in his face he was afraid for his life. I mean that is frightening. My understanding is Henry lives at an apartment building where there are multiple members of Congress who live there. There are apparently multiple members of congressional leadership who live there, which means there are a lot of Capitol Police around there. And at 9:30 at night he was carjacked on the streets of D.C. and then that reflects the crime wave that is sweeping this country. Now. The D.C. city Council which is populated by left wing Democrats. They voted to lower the penalties for violent crimes, including carjackings. In particular, they voted to lower the sentence from 21 years to 7 years. And they voted to lower the sentence from 40 years if armed to 15 years. And under the revised code, carjacking is now divided into three gradations dependent on severity, with the lowest penalties for an unarmed offense ranging from four to 18 years, and the highest penalties from an armed offense ranging from 12 to 24 years. Now in the Congress, thankfully, the Congress has the ability to rescind any legislation in the District of Columbia. And the reason for that is the Constitution gives Congress total authority over D.C. unlike a state, we can't rescind laws in Texas or any other state, but D.C. is a federal district and Congress has plenary authority over it. And so in Congress, we voted to rescind these soft and crime laws that lessen the penalties for violent crimes. And the results are horrific as we're seeing carjacking, murders, crime rates skyrocketing in D.C. and all across the country.
- [15:56]
Ted Cruz
You also have the White House, who was asked about part of this. And I want to play that for everybody. Take a listen.
- [16:03]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
If a member of Congress is not safe on the streets of the nation's capital, who is?
- [16:10]
Karine Jean-Pierre
Look, we're grateful and relieved that the Congressman is unharmed. We understand what communities are going through across the country, not just in D.C. that's why the President took action very early on in his administration to get the American rescue plan done without the help of Republicans. That's why every time he puts forward his budget, he makes sure there are billions of dollars to deal with crime. That's just a fact. All you got to look is what the President has been able to do this past two years. There's always going to be work, more work to be done. But the fact is the President has taken action.
- [16:44]
Ted Cruz
He hasn't taken action. He's done the opposite of that.
- [16:47]
Ben Ferguson
She didn't have an answer to that. Holy crap. If a Democrat congressman is getting carjacked on the streets of D.C. at 9:30pm what the heck is the answer? And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to answer that. And what was her answer? Well, you know, Joe Biden, spending a ton of money, mind you, not actually putting criminals in jail, not supporting police, not doing anything to stop crime. But he's shoveling a whole lot of cash at Democrat special interest groups. He's shoveling a whole lot of cash at deficit spending. That's Causing rampant inflation. That is her answer. It's an utter non sequitur. And by the way, it's not just Henry Cuellar. Angie Craig, who is a Democrat member of Congress from Minnesota was was assaulted in the apartment of her D.C. her D.C. apartment in February of this year. And this is a pattern that is happening over and over and over again. Let me give you some stats. Carjackings in D.C. are up 109%. Robberies are up 68%. Theft is up 22%. Homicides are up 38%. And the city is on pace for the deadliest year in two decades. Not only that, nine of the top 10 cities with the highest homicide rates are run by Democrats. 27 of the top 30 cities with the highest murder rates are run by Democrats. This is a pattern. And you're saying Karine Jean Pierre and the Biden White House utterly dodging responsibilities for their soft on crime policies that are endangering people all across the country.
- [18:29]
Ted Cruz
One last question for you. Will Democrats move on this? Because even the White House presbytery was asked a question of follow up where she could have kind of gotten a redo. I got to play it. It's too good not to.
- [18:40]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
President Biden's policies are helping bring crime down. Would he be comfortable with somebody borrowing his Corvette and parking it on the street overnight in Southeast D.C. i'm not.
- [18:50]
Karine Jean-Pierre
Going to get into hypotheticals. I'm just going to get into the facts about what this president has done in this president.
- [18:55]
Ted Cruz
I mean she still screwed it up.
- [18:58]
Ben Ferguson
Look, of course not. Nobody would you park your Corvette on the street. It's going to get robbed. It's going to get broken into, it's going to get keyed, it's going to get vandalized. She can't answer that question. And so you know what she's counting on? Look, that was a question from Fox News. So Fox will cover it. Ben, you worked for years at cnn. Did CNN cover that exchange?
- [19:20]
Ted Cruz
Hell no.
- [19:21]
Ben Ferguson
Msnbc?
- [19:23]
Ted Cruz
No.
- [19:24]
Ben Ferguson
Abc, NBC, cbs?
- [19:26]
Ted Cruz
Nope.
- [19:27]
Ben Ferguson
They know that the corporate media, they are the puppets for the administration. They are the propagandists for the administration. They will repeat the regime line. And so look, any sane person would say no to the question. Would you be happy with your, your, your classic Corvette parked on the streets of D.C. of course not. Because crime is out of control. And the problem is, look, let me underscore that again. When the D.C. city Council looked at skyrocketing crime rates and said, you know what the answer here is? Let's lower the penalties on Violent crime. That's the best solution. We got too many murderers, too many, too many murders, too many carjackings. Let's send people to jail for shorter times for murder and carjacking. That's a great idea in Congress, thankfully, we overturned that in the House. Every single House Democrat, except two, Vicente Gonzalez, a Texan, and Henry Cuellar, a Texan who was just carjacked in the last 48 hours, are the only two who voted no. That means every other House Democrat, if you can think of a House Democrat, they voted in favor of lessening the penalties on carjackers and on murderers. Why do you think crime is out of control?
- [20:48]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, this is the Democratic Party, and this is certainly going to be an issue with the presidential election. Don't forget.
- [20:53]
Ben Ferguson
Ben, Ben, Ben, hold on. Before we wrap up, I want to ask you a final question.
- [20:56]
Ted Cruz
I'm ready.
- [20:57]
Ben Ferguson
If you're standing by a doorway and you see a little red box that is 3 inches by 4 inches and it says the word fire on it and it says, pull this for the fire alarm, my question to you is, is that a doorknob?
- [21:12]
Ted Cruz
That is not a doorknob. And that is not a way to exit the building.
- [21:16]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
But how do you know?
- [21:17]
Ben Ferguson
How do you know, Ben? Seriously? I mean, look, it's not like that.
- [21:21]
Ted Cruz
Insurrectionism 101, right? Like, don't you immediately lock that person up forever.
- [21:26]
Ben Ferguson
Well, let me ask you this. It's not like you were a high school principal. It's not like you were a high school principal in a high school that had fire alarms. It's not like you were a high school principal in a high school that had fire alarms, that had a policy that said, if you. A student pulls the fire alarm, you will be expelled. Jamal Bowman, the Democrat congressman, was a principal at a high school that had a policy that if you, Ben Ferguson, a student in his. In his high school, pulled the fire alarm, you would be expelled. And yet what did Jamal Bowman do? Oh, I'm going to pull the fire alarm because I want to stop the Republican vote. And why is it his claim if you believe him? His defense is, I'm dumber than a box of rocks, and I think a fire alarm is a doorknob. That is his defense. And that's the best interpretation he can hope for.
- [22:14]
Ted Cruz
By the way, I have to ask now, because you brought it up, if a Republican would have done that, how fast would they have been kicked out of Congress and would they have a mug shot at this point?
- [22:25]
Ben Ferguson
To be honest, I don't think they'd be kicked out of Congress. But I think they might have a mug shot. And my guess is, look, kicking people out of Congress is pretty severe. My guess is the votes won't be there for that. My prediction is they will censure him. I think the votes will be there for censuring him. But it is a criminal offense in the District of Columbia to pull a fire alarm fraudulently, and he is on video doing that. But he is counting on the corporate media to ignore the fact that, that he was willing to pull a fire alarm to try to stop the Congress from voting on a provision that he didn't like, which, mind you, was a provision to fund the government and he wanted to force a government shutdown. So he pulled a fire alarm to cause it to happen. But again, he knew the corporate media would cover for him and they're doing.
- [23:12]
Ted Cruz
It right now 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. Senator, you're going to love this. The T shirts of the Texas Youth Summit are Don't Tread on Me, which is awesome. And our next question is coming from someone that has that T shirt on. I love it. Well done.
- [23:39]
Karine Jean-Pierre
Hello, Senator Cruz, My name is Jenna. I go to U of H here and I work at a tax firm as a tax consultant. And the tax deadline is coming up October 18th. And I was wondering how the government shutdown is going to affect the IRS and the accounting industry regarding that deadline that's coming up and if you could explain kind of what's going to happen.
- [24:01]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Yeah, look, that's, that's a very good question. And I expect that if the shutdown goes long and it could easily go a month, the Last one was 35 days in 2019, the Schumer shutdown. It could easily go a month. What it would mean as a practical matter is that much of the manpower at the IRS that would be available to assist you, that would be available to process returns, that would be available to answer questions, much of that manpower is not going to be there. They will keep essential workers and it's up to each agency to decide who is essential. But things like customer service almost always get deemed non essential and you end up with a significantly reduced workforce. And so you're working at a private firm, that's going to mean that your clients are going to need your advice more significantly because The IRS is going to be less available to be responsive, even less than they normally are.
- [25:00]
Ted Cruz
Let's take a question from over here.
- [25:02]
Karine Jean-Pierre
Hi, Senator Cruz, My name is Helen and I'm from the Woodlands. My question to you is, are, are you in favor of the age and term limits to be elected for Senate and Congress?
- [25:13]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Thank you, Helen. Thank you for that question. So let me break them down one at a time. You asked about age limits and term limits on age limits. The only age limit we have for the Senate is the Constitution. So the Constitution provides that you have to be 25 years old to be elected to the House of Representatives, you have to be 30 years old to be elected to the Senate, and you have to be 35 years old to be elected president. Other than that, there are currently no limits when it comes to serving in federal elected office. And it's one of the reasons why you see so many people in the senate who are 142 years old. I have joked, if you ever want to feel young, come work in the US Senate, because the median age is such that I have colleagues reminiscing about Eisenhower. I mean, it's, you know, I feel like a sprightly young lad in the body in which I serve. Term limits is something that I emphatically support. And so I have repeatedly introduced in the Senate a constitutional amendment to mandate term limits to limit senators, each senator to two terms, to limit each House member to three terms. You know, it's interesting. Term limits was something I supported before I got to the Senate. But having seen this place firsthand, now I support it a thousand times more. Because this place is the swamp. It is corrupt. And the people who are here a long time are the worst. You get drawn in and corrupted by the swamp. And it's both parties. Look, the Democrats are bad, but for much of this spending that is bankrupting the country, we have a uni party. We have Republican career politicians who jump in bed with the Democrats and eagerly spend trillions of dollars. And so term limits would be a major step to reducing that power and reducing that corruption. And it's an amazing thing if you look at term limits. Nationally, over 70% of Americans support term limits. That's true among Republicans, among Democrats, Democrats, and among Independents, you see massive majorities supporting term limits. The one group that doesn't is career politicians in Washington. In the Senate, I have zero Democrats who support my term limits amendment. Every one of the Democrats is opposed to it. And I've chaired, I used to be chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Committee. I chaired a hearing on term limits, brought in witnesses, is to talk about term limits. And the reality is, in the Senate, the young guys support my term limits amendments, and none of the longtime career politicians do. And that's why neither Chuck Schumer nor Mitch McConnell wants term limits to get a vote on the Senate floor, because they oppose it that much. So I've been fighting, but I have not been able to get it on the floor because Schumer and McConnell control what gets on the floor.
- [28:11]
Ted Cruz
Let's get a question on this side over here.
- [28:14]
Karine Jean-Pierre
Howdy. My name is Chad. I'm a sophomore in Houston, and I wanted to ask how Congress can give back some 10th Amendment rights to the state and people after events like nine, eleven, and Covid have taken it away and given it to the federal government.
- [28:28]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Look, that. That is a fantastic question. If you look at the Bill of Rights and you asked about the 10th Amendment, when I was in college, I wrote my senior thesis on the ninth and tenth Amendments to the Constitution. And I'll tell you a little bit of the history of why they're written. And, and, and then I will get straight to your question. But originally the Constitution was written. There was no Bill of Rights. It was just the Constitution itself. And then there was a debate over whether to ratify the Constitution. And the two groups there were the Federalists and the Anti Federalists. And the Federalists were advocating the Constitution's a good idea. We should ratify it. We should have it be the organic document for forming our government. The Anti Federalists were arguing against it. And one of the big arguments the Anti Federalists had is they said, well, there's no Bill of Rights. This is a flawed document because there's no, no provision in it protecting our fundamental liberties. Now, the Federalists came back and they said, no, no, we don't need a Bill of Rights. And the reason the Federalists gave is they said, this is a government of enumerated powers. If you look at Article 1 7, Section 8 of the Constitution, Article 1 establishes the Congress, the legislative function. And Article 1, Section 8 specifies it enumerates 18 specific powers that Congress has. And the argument the Federalist said is, look, we don't need to say that, that the federal government cannot violate your free speech, cannot violate your religious liberty, cannot violate your right to keep and bear arms, because there's nothing in the enumerated powers that gives the federal government the power to violate those rights. And so we've already done that by limiting the federal government's authority initially now the Anti Federalists came back and they had lots of arguments, one of which was, well, there's nothing to stop them from violating those rights within the enumerated power. So for example, one of the enumerated powers is the power to create and maintain post offices under the original Constitution. Without a Bill of Rights, a government could say, the Biden administration will say, we will only transport letters from Democrats, all Republicans. We've decided we don't want Republicans speaking anymore. So we won't transfer their. We won't transport their letters. Now if the government tried to do that today, that would obviously be unconstitutional. Constitutional violation of free speech. Without a Bill of Rights, it would be permissible. I think the Anti Federalist won that debate. So we now have a Bill of rights. The first 10amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights and the first eight are protecting specific rights. And then amendments nine and ten both say, Amendment nine says the enumeration of certain rights in the Bill of Rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people. The 10th Amendment says the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people. Basically, the 9th and 10th Amendments restate that the Constitution is a Constitution of enumerated power powers. In other words, they say, even though we just listed these eight Bill of Rights, we agree that the federal government probably couldn't have done any of this anyway, but we want belt and suspenders. And so the question. I think the 10th Amendment solves an enormous number of problems in our country. I think federalism, having states decide. And I would actually advise you to take a look at a center at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. It's called the center for 10th Amendment Studies. I started it. I was the first director, the first leader of the center for 10th Amendment Studies at TPPF. And it's continued. It is ongoing. I agree that a vast. We should put as much decision making, as much authority as possible at the state level or even better at the local level because it's more likely to meet the needs of the people that are being affected. And it's also more accountable. You, the citizen, are much more able to express your views and hold accountable local officials and state officials than some bureaucrat in a windowless office in Washington.
- [32:47]
Ted Cruz
D.C. let's get a couple more questions in here on this side. Go ahead.
- [32:53]
Unnamed Republican Commentator
Hello, Senator Cruz. My name is Mary melaveed. I am 18 and from Magnolia, Texas. It appears that Democrats have control of the elections illegally through mules and in counting Ballots. How is our vote even going to matter? Is there a plate, a plan in place for actually having our votes count? Well, Mary, thank you for that question. It's a hugely important question. You were right that voter fraud is a real problem. It is a persistent problem. It's a problem that has been around since the dawn of time, since the very first elections. I'm convinced that when the cavemen sat, got together to vote on who was going to be grand poobah, somebody stuffed the ballot box. That's just human nature that we have crooks and crooks try to steal things. So we need to fight against voter fraud. We need to fight to preserve voter integrity. Now, the good news is we're in Texas. And Texas, the Texas legislature has passed legislation, strong legislation, designed to prevent voter fraud. It's not perfect. It still exists, but we have tools in place to prevent voter fraud. There are things like requiring photo id, which we do in Texas, that reduces fraud. There are things like prohibiting ballot harvesting, prohibiting paid political operatives from handling someone else's ballot, that reduces voter fraud significantly. Ballot harvesting invites voter fraud. Things like limiting mail in ballots. In Texas, we do so only in limited circumstances, typically seniors or people with significant disabilities. But for the vast majority of Texans, the way you vote is you go vote in person, person. We have a two week period of early voting, so it's actually pretty easy to vote. But you vote in person, in person. Voting reduces the chances of voter fraud. I think we need to be vigilant fighting against voter fraud. I've spent 20 plus years fighting against voter fraud. At the same time, if you look nationally, they're blue states, they're purple states that they're not going to pass legislation to protect election integrity because the Democrats have decided they support voter fraud. It helps them, and it's the way the world's changed. Ten years ago, there were Democrats who would work with you on something like photo id. There are none today because they've decided voter fraud is good for them. In blue states and purple states, they're not going to change their laws to stop voter fraud. Here's the good news. Historically, voter fraud typically only matters at the margin. It matters in a close election. So the answer is, in those blue states and purple states, we got to win by a big enough margin. They can't steal the race from us. Now, that's not fair. It's frustrating, but the alternative is give up on our country. And I got to tell you, there are a lot of Democrats and a lot of people in the corporate media that want all of us to give up on our country. They want conservatives to say, well, voter fraud is still there, so I'm not going to vote, to hell with it. And I'll tell you what, if we do that, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Then our country truly is lost. And I'll point as a moment of encouragement, look no further than the state of Virginia. Virginia went for Joe Biden by 10 points. Virginia has been blue for the past decade. Biden won Virginia by 10 points. One year later in 2021, Glenn Youngkin, who's a good friend of mine, I campaigned with Glenn Youngkin all over Virginia, spent two days barnstorming the state of Virginia with Glenn. One year after Biden was elected, Glenn Youngkin was elected as a Republican in Virginia. Now, Virginia had not changed a single voter integrity law. They had the same lousy election laws they had the the year before. But a whole bunch of moms, moms who had voted for Joe Biden got ticked off at what the schools were doing to our kids and they flipped over and voted Republican. That gives us a roadmap to what we can and I think what we have to do in this next election.
- [37:13]
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.