Michael Knowles (4:04)

Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz, the show that the White House just cannot stop talking about. I am Michael Knowles, and if you want to bring this show, by the way, to a campus near you, time is running out to apply. We will be going on tour with Young America's Foundation. You can apply. We've just got left@yaf.org verdict and maybe the White House press secretary will talk about you and your fellow students because they sure seem to be tuning in here. Senator, I think we're the first, second, third, and now fourth podcast that the White House has referenced from the press briefing.

Michael Knowles (4:46)

You know, it really is quite striking. And maybe when we're doing our college tour, we ought to film Verdict down on the border and invite Karine to come down to Verdict and be on the podcast. And she can lie directly on the podcast rather than doing it from the White House. Look, I gotta say it, it is stunning. Look, no one is surprised to see a press flack flacking. That's what they do. She's supposed to spin. Whether you're a Democrat or Republican, White House press secretary spins. What is wild about this is she is brazenly, openly, shamelessly lying. And at this point, she knows she is. And everyone in the room knows she is. This all started when she said at a previous briefing that people are not walking across the border. It's just not happening. That is not happening now. That's not kind of sort of right. That's not a little bit wrong. It is precisely exactly opposite. And the invitation that I issued to her is I said, come down to the border and spend one hour with me. Go out on patrol with the Border Patrol Union, 60 Minutes. You pick the time, doesn't matter. Pick any hour of the day. We'll go out for 60 minutes and I guarantee you we will encounter not one, but multiple groups of illegal immigrants because they are coming 24 hours a day. Every time I've gone out there, it doesn't take 60 minutes. It takes about five minutes before you encounter the first group. And it is a steady stream of humanity. And I suggested to her also, I said, okay, you said, as we just played in that clip, that you don't need to be lectured by Republican senators. I said, I'll tell you what, bring the entire Washington press corps, bring them all down to the Valley with us. You and I can go out for an hour and we'll hold a press conference. And one of two things will happen if we don't encounter anyone. I'll stand up and say I was wrong. But when we encounter multiple groups, women, children, one after the other after the other, you'll stand up and you'll admit you were lying. And not just lying, you were lying from the White House deliberately and repeatedly. And to be clear, it's not just her lying. Joe Biden's responsible. He's paying for her to lie. And all of the corporate media that sat there silently, that haven't run fact checks, we haven't seen pants on fire, because none of the corporate media. This is an objective, factual statement and it is objectively and completely false. All of the corporate media is complicit in the lies. And actually this week she, she escalated it even more where she said, absurdly, Joe Biden has done more to secure the border than Donald Trump. Like, like that is. I actually wonder if the reporters in the press briefing move back a few feet because they're afraid lightning is going to strike her as she stands there. Like, I cannot think of a White House press secretary who repeatedly, brazenly lied to the American people the way she is doing. Even Jen Psaki, who would spin like crazy, but I can't think of flat out objective lies of the kind that Karine is now making a weekly, if not daily occurrence.

Michael Knowles (8:15)

So the lie is pretty shocking. I don't think anybody buys it. You just look at the numbers. You're gonna get 2 million plus illegal aliens this year. Way more than you got under Trump, Way more than we've ever gotten. But I guess what is confusing to me is one, does she really believe that anybody in America, Republican, Independent or Democrat, believes that Joe Biden is tougher on illegal immigration than Donald Trump? No, not a single person believes that. But furthermore, Biden and the Democrats ran on opening up the border. They said Trump's restrictive border policies are bad and immoral and un American and diversity is our strength. And no person is illegal and come across the border. I mean, they explicitly said that. So is this new line coming out of the White House, beyond it being dishonest, is it a reflection that, wait a second, voters actually don't like the policies that we ran for president on and so now we're just gonna pretend that those were never our policies in the first place?

Michael Knowles (9:16)

So I think it is. And it's a combination of, number one, speaking to the hard left partisans who are with them no matter what, and number two, they're counting on the media to assist in the COVID up. Look. It's reminiscent. She's also said in recent weeks about school shutdowns when the NAEP scores came back. So we had. NAEP is the National Assessment of fourth graders. It's considered the gold standard for testing educational progress. And the national standards show that fourth graders have had a dramatic drop in both math scores and reading scores, the biggest drop since the NAEP test has begun being implemented. It is massive. It is obvious because of the school shutdowns. And not only that, the racial gap has widened to the widest level ever. Because the people who got hurt the most by the school shutdowns were low income kids, many of which are African American and Hispanic. And so the racial gap under Joe Biden, congratulations. Dams have gotten much broader. So what does Karine do? She stands up and says, well, Joe Biden work to reopen schools. And it was Republicans who blocked us. And it is a level of okay, that's not just spin, it's inversion. That is flat out mendacity. It was Republican, certainly on this podcast and from the Senate floor. I was screaming early, early on, open up the schools, send the kids back to schools. Let them go. Republicans across the country were, and by the way, people like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis were opening up schools. Amazingly enough, in, in the Biden White House's world, these dastardly Republicans managed to Shut down schools only in bright blue jurisdictions controlled by Democrats. Now, that's some nefarious power. I'm going to shut down the schools in New York City, but not in any place where there's actually Republican leadership. It is asinine. But she tells that lie because the Washington Post won't call her on it, because CNN won't call her on it, because the New York Times won't call her on it. And so it's gaslighting taken to just a. The word Orwellian is used too often, but it is truly Orwellian. Two plus two is five, but it's not even that. It's two plus two is umbrella. I mean, that's what they're doing now.

Michael Knowles (11:48)

Senator, I can't help but notice you just mentioned Governor DeSantis. And while I'm very pleased that people in the White House are listening to this show, I have to wonder if some people down in Florida are listening to this show as well, because there's a great headline that just came out about something DeSantis and the Florida Republicans are doing. They've just sent airplanes full of illegal aliens to Martha's Vineyard. And I cheered when I saw the headline. And then I had to think, you know, there's a certain podcast hosted by a certain senator from Texas that has been calling exactly for that for many weeks now. And I just can't help but wonder if that may have had some effect on this policy going into effect.

Michael Knowles (12:33)

I was thrilled when the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, took me up on the idea and began sending illegal immigrants first to D.C. then to New York, then to Chicago. It's had a fantastic event as these, these Democratic mayors have lost their minds and declared national emergencies. The, the mayor of D.C. declared a national emergency or a city emergency because 6,000 illegal immigrants were sent to D.C. of course, we've had since Joe Biden became president, we have had 4.2 million illegal immigrants cross illegally with Biden as president. It is horrific.

Michael Knowles (13:09)

That's a crazy number. 4.2 million. That is a crazy number.

Michael Knowles (13:14)

It is larger than many of the states of our union. I mean, 4.2 million since Joe Biden put his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office. That's what's coming. It continues to get worse. And what is amazing about when red state governors, first Texas, now Florida, are shipping to blue strongholds is the Democrats who talk a good game, immediately flip tail. And so I want to give you a quote from Martha's Vineyard. When I introduced the legislation, you had Democrats. Democrats in the House of Representatives slam me. But I want to read from the County Commissioner of Martha's Vineyard, Keith Chattanoover, and here's the quote he said about my legislation. I would love to see Martha's Vineyard become a haven for new immigrants in the country. But Senator Cruz has no idea what he's talking about regarding a border crisis. He went on to say, immigrants make our country stronger, as evidenced by immigration from Brazil and other countries to the Vineyard. And he is trying to whip up racial anxieties for political gain, which is essentially the entire GOP platform. Anyhow. Now, that's before they arrived. I want to see if after 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 100 plane loads or bus loads, if the county commissioner has the same view. And I'm going to predict he's going to do exactly the same as the mayor from D.C. and the mayor from New York and the mayor from Chicago, which is run screaming, oh, crap. This is a real problem.

Michael Knowles (14:52)

All those mayors, by the way, they're doing that after 5,000, maybe 10, 11,000 illegal aliens arrive in their cities. Not a drop in the bucket. A fraction of an iota of a drop in the bucket when you're talking about 4.2 million foreign nationals coming into the country. I'm so pleased. Big kudos to Governor Abbott for following up on this. Big Kudos to Governor DeSantis for following up on this. And all I can say is there are a lot of other red state governors and there is a major illegal immigration problem in this country. And there are a whole lot of other liberal cities that you mentioned there. I wanna see more airplanes. I wanna see more buses. Dole out those tickets. Give these blue state and blue city mayors some of a taste of their own medicine and put them on the record.

Michael Knowles (15:42)

Look, I think that's exactly right. And it makes it impossible for the Biden White House to defend their lies when you have blue Democrat mayors suddenly realizing, oh, wow, this is an enormous burden on us. And to put it in perspective, so DC Is a big city. The mayor declared an emergency when 6,500 illegal immigrants had been sent to D.C. let's take Del Rio, Texas. Del Rio, Texas, is a border city. It's on the Rio Grande River. Del Rio, Texas. Its population is about 30,000 people. I was down there. Where? When? Under the bridge that crosses the Rio Grande. That's right there in Del Rio. There were at one time 15,000 illegal immigrants, almost all of whom were from Haiti. And they had. Were crossing in. And you want to talk about people freaking out. This is one small town that had 50%, 50-percent of the population of the town crossing in a single day. That's what Texas is facing. And, and, and so, look, sending them to blue jurisdictions has a purpose, which is to cause these hypocrites to be forced to acknowledge their hypocrisy and admit that it's a crisis. They're right that it's a crisis, but it's an even bigger crisis for Texas and for other states along the border.

Michael Knowles (17:11)

Now, speaking of legislation that you filed turning away from this absolutely marvelous new approach on immigration, which I again encourage other GOP governors to follow, going back to the Senate, there were some fireworks that took place. And all I'm getting is we actually haven't really talked about this yet. So I'm really gonna be hearing it mostly for the first time now on air. But I've read the headlines. There was a school safety bill that you pushed in the Senate that looked like it could pass by unanimous consent. And then one Democrat senator shot the thing down. And I saw the main points of the bill. They didn't seem particularly right wing or extreme or Republican. They seemed perfectly common sense. What happened?

Michael Knowles (17:56)

Well, it's September. School is starting. And so school kids across the country are going back to school, including kids in Uvalde, where, where we had just a few months ago. The, the worst school shooting in Texas history was horrific. And I think we need to do much, much more to keep our kids safe. And so I have legislation. When the Senate took up its gun control bill, I authored the lead alternative to the Democrats gun control bill. And it was legislation that was called Criminal Cruz Barraso. And it had all sorts of elements to go after violent criminals, to lock them up, to get them off the streets, to protect our kids. The Democrats party line vote voted against it. So what I did today is I took just the school safety components of Cruz Barosso, so not the whole thing, but, but what was focused directly at enhancing school safety. And in particular, it was $30 billion, and that's with a B of funding. $30 billion of funding to enhance school safety. And it has a number of elements. One element is doubling the number of police officers in schools so that we have twice as many police officers on campus there physically to protect our kids, to stop crazed mad men from, from getting into classrooms and, and, and trying to murder our children. Number two, it has $10 billion to hire 15,000 new mental health professionals to, to help spot these deranged young men before they commit these kind of crimes to help intervene early, to stop this before it happens. And in addition to that, it has funding for school safety improvements throughout the campus, things to make the campus more physically secure. So what I did today is I stood up on the Senate floor and I asked unanimous consent for the Senate to pass it. Now, the procedures in the Senate, if you ask, it's called asking for a UC unanimous consent. The presiding officer then says is their objection. And if nobody objects, it passes it, it passes the Senate and it is, it is treated as having passed one 100 to nothing. So there's a process for a UC, which is before you seek a UC, you tell the other side you're going to do it so they can determine if they're going to object. So I told the Democrats last week I was going to seek UC to pass this. And we heard from the Democrats they're going to object. And in particular we heard Chris Murphy, who is the Democrat from Connecticut, was going to object. And I did a media interview a few days ago where a reporter asked me, said, well, well, what is his objection going to be? And I told the report, I said, actually, I don't know. I, I have no idea because they, they haven't articulated any substantive reasons why the bill is a bad idea. They haven't indicated anything they, they oppose. So I said, I, I guess I'm looking forward to hear what he has to say. So I stand up, I give a speech in, in favor of it, saying we need to do more, we need to keep our kids safe. This is a common sense bill. This ought to be a bill that passes 100 to nothing. Presiding officer turns and says, is there any objection? And Chris Murphy stands up and he says, and I'm going to read you the entirety of his speech. Madam President, I object.

Michael Knowles (21:17)

Paraclean. Wow. Soaring oratory.

Michael Knowles (21:21)

And I have to admit I stood up at that point and I was flabbergasted. I've been in the Senate 10 years. I've never seen that happen on a debate on the Senate floor. He provided not one word of argument, not one reason why it was a bad idea, not one harm. He has no basis to object. He simply says, I object and kills it. And, and I said, look, at a time when, I mean, our kids, there is a real problem of mass murderers, of lunatics who are targeting schools, who are targeting churches, who are, who are targeting malls. I mean, it is. Crime is a serious problem, which has gotten worse under Democrats. And this is, this legislation would be the most comprehensive, the most Far reaching. The most serious school safety legislation ever enacted by the federal government. And the Democrats are killing it. Chris Murphy's killing it without even bothering to explain why. And I further said on the Senate floor, I said, you know, there's a reason he feels he can do that. And I pointed up to the Senate gallery where the reporters normally sit. And I said, if you look at the gallery, the number of reporters presently here is 0.00. Not a single reporter bothered to show up. Why is it that the senator from Connecticut feels he can just kill this bill and provide zero reasoning as to why? Because he knows the docile corporate media won't report on it, won't tell anyone it happened and will never ask him. He knows he will not get a question. Why did you single handedly prevent us from doubling the number of police officers on school campuses? Why did you kill 15,000 new mental health counselors on school campuses? Because the media are propagandists. And by the way, I then asked for a second uc. I said, look, I had assumed he would present some argument as to why he thought this was a bad idea. I don't know what it is because he chose not to. So I said, and maybe he disliked how we were spending it. Maybe he says we should spend more on counselors than on cops. I don't, I don't know. I don't. I mean, he didn't say anything. So my second amendment was there are, right now there's $130 billion in unspent Covid relief funds designated for schools. So Congress has appropriated it. It's sitting there. It hasn't been spent. The way my bill was paid for is it was using that unspent Covid fund. So it did not cost any additional money because that's money that, that has already been allocated to schools. But I said, all right, if he doesn't like how, how my bill is spending it, I had a very simple one page bill that simply says schools, if they wish to, can spend some of that Covid relief money on enhancing school security so they can spend some of it on hiring police officers or spend some of it on enhancing the physical security on campus. Right now the Democrats have put in place rules that stop them from doing that. So the very simple rule, let the schools decide if they want to spend it on school safety. What did Murphy do? Stood up and objected and gave a very short speech this time, maybe a minute or two where he says, I'm not arguing because this isn't real. He says, this is clickbait to which I responded, okay, it is very real. And in order for both of these bills, or either of these bills to pass, the Senator for Connecticut had to do one thing. Just shut up. If he simply had closed his mouth, these bills would have passed unanimously. But he's unwilling to do it. And it's because the Democrats, when it comes to crime and mass shootings, they have one political objective and that's taking away the second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens. When it comes to actually stopping these crimes, not only are they not interested in doing it, they actively and affirmatively oppose serious steps to enhance the security of schools. And we saw it tragically today.

Michael Knowles (25:45)

It's also just such weak sauce to say I object and I won't participate because this politics involves a certain aspect of rhetoric and theater to it. Yes, of course, that's what politics is. It involves talking and making speeches and persuading your fellow members. Yeah, duh, of course, that's politics. And so that to me is such a weak sauce. But it's also not really a plausible objection because he's saying, this is clickbait. This is clickbait. But to your point, the media didn't show up. The press weren't even there. And this actually brings me to my mind an even more amazing moment, which is, as far as I can tell, Senator, and please fill in the details here. The Democrats had a pro media cartel bill that they've been working on for a very long time to give our corporate left wing propagandist media even more power and specifically to try to get some more money out of Big Tech, but maybe to wield some more power than they already do over all the rest of us and over free speech in the country. And as far as I can tell, you single handedly derailed it somehow. Even though the Democrats still run the Senate. How did that happen?

Michael Knowles (27:00)

So we had a markup last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bill that is called the Journalism Competition Protection Act. And it actually, I would characterize the bill differently than you did in that I think there are some good aspects of the bill and I was genuinely mixed on whether the bill was a good idea or not. What the bill purports to do is to help smaller journalistic outlets and in particular local media. So local broadcasters, local newspapers. Right now, if you're a local newspaper and you write a story, Big Tech can take your story and put it online and run ads, like get ad revenue from putting your story, your content that you produced online. Big Tech can And does makes billions of dollars distributing the content you provided. You know, look, if you were a musician, a radio station wouldn't have the ability to take your music and play it against your wishes and make money off of it without paying you. Right. So the argument from local media is, well, we have either written these stories or put together these news stories in the case of broadcast tv. And Big Tech just monetizes it for themselves and doesn't pay us anything. So what this bill does is it allows smaller journalistic outlets, and it defines smaller journalistic outlets as those with 1500 employers, employees or fewer. So it excludes the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, for example, because they all have more than 1500 employees. But smaller outlets can band together and can form a joint group to negotiate with Big Tech in order to get paid for their content.

Michael Knowles (28:57)

What you're describing, Senator, actually seems fine. And so then my question would be, why derail it?

Michael Knowles (29:05)

Yeah. So. And it's modeled after what happened in Australia where they did something very similar to it and Facebook said, we're not going to comply. And then like two days later, they said, oh, crap, we need all this content. So now they're paying the local media. So it, it, it was in significant respect, successful in Australia. That was the model for this. So this was a bill that was authored by Amy Klobuchar, the Democrat from Minnesota, and John Kennedy, the Republican from, from Louisiana, who's a good friend of mine and a really good guy. And I said, at the markup. So I was being lobbied by both sides on this. Big Tech hates this bill. So that's, that's a plus. Anything Big Tech hates. I have a natural inclination to, to like, here's what I said at the markup. I said, when I look at Big Tech and journalism, the single greatest threat to free speech we have today is Big Tech censorship. And I don't want anything we do to increase Big Tech censorship. Moreover, I want anything we do to decrease Big Tech censorship. And what this bill did was create an exemption from the antitrust laws. So ordinarily a bunch of competitors, you can't get all the newspapers in a state to come together and negotiate as one that violates the antitrust laws. So this bill creates an exemption from the antitrust laws to let them come together to negotiate with Big Tech. And so I introduced an amendment. I said, the immunity from antitrust under this bill does not apply to any negotiations or agreements concerning content moderation, concerning censorship. In other words, you can get together and Negotiate on price. You can say, you got to pay me for my. For what we're producing. Yeah, but what you can't get together is you can't get a media cartel together with a big tech cartel and say, hey, let's all agree that we will censor any story about Donald J. Trump. And this bill would give that immunity from antitrust laws for them to get together as a cartel and collude to censor more effectively. And so it says, hey, if this is about price, they let them negotiate on price. But censorship should not be a topic that is covered by this bill. And so we vote on it, and all the Republicans vote for me, including John Kennedy. And what John Kennedy says at the markup, he says, listen, I want to help the local newspapers and local stations, but I'm not interested in censorship. And what Cruz is saying seems very reasonable that when they're bargaining, they shouldn't be bargaining about censorship. They should be bargaining about price. So Amy Klobuchar got very angry, begins screaming at John Kennedy in the markup. She's like, we had a deal, and you're not. You're not following our deal. He's like, we didn't have a deal to allow censorship. That wasn't our deal. So they're going back and forth, and we have a committee vote. Now, here's what's very interesting. One of the Democrats, John Ossoff from Georgia, was not there. He actually had Covid and was in India, so he was out of the country. Normally, if you are absent, if a senator is absent from a markup, your staff can have a proxy to vote for you. So even if you're not physically there, your staff can cast a proxy vote that. That counts. Well, Ossoff was not physically there, and he had not given his staff the proxy to vote. They didn't have a vote from him one way or the other. So we voted on my amendment. Judiciary Committee has 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans. We voted on it, and the vote was 11 to 10. 11 Rs voting yes and only 10 Ds voting no because Osof wasn't there. Dick Durbin, the chairman of the committee, his head explodes like. Like, there it is. Worth watching how these Dems are just fulminating and spewing and they're losing their minds. And then Michael, what happened next was truly hysterical. Amy Klobuchar says, so my amendment's been adopted. It's now part of her bill. And she says, well, if this is in the bill, I can't support my bill.

Michael Knowles (33:27)

There you go.

Michael Knowles (33:28)

I no longer.

Michael Knowles (33:28)

There it is.

Michael Knowles (33:29)

I no longer support my own bill. And she said, and we're gonna pull it down. I made clear, if you adopt my amendment, I'll vote for your bill. And once the amendment was adopted, I would have voted for it, but it was amazing because the Democrats made clear in that markup that they value censorship over anything else.

Michael Knowles (33:51)

It's total vindication of the Republican skepticism. Right. Because the Democrats come out and they say, this is just a bill about helping small newspapers. Which I'm totally for. You're totally for. I think most people are totally for. Okay, great. Okay. But you're not gonna censor, right? No, no, we're not gonna censor. Okay, great. Well, I'm just gonna put in this little amendment that says you can't use this as a way to censor everybody. Then the amendment passes, and then they say, yeah, never mind. It just tells you what they were after the whole time.

Michael Knowles (34:18)

It was truly brazen, and I think it was revealing. It showed censorship. And silencing of the political opposition has become a core value of today's Democrat Party. They support it, and apparently they're now willing to vote against their own bills if there's anything in them that might actually stop Big Tech from censoring Michael Knowles.

Michael Knowles (34:50)

That's amazing. That's amazing. I love it. I even. I just love the whole kind of nitty, gritty, technical way, because Ossoff was out and you saw your light and you take. I love the whole thing. Speaking of close votes, though, I've got to ask you about a vote that's coming up that is causing me to lose my hair. I count on my hair for a. Count on it for three inches of height, and it's causing me to pull my hair out. There is going to be this gay marriage vote. Now the Supreme Court in Obergefell redefines marriage, and that's that. I guess now the Democrats want to enshrine this in law, so actually pass a law and say, now this is the definition of marriage. And some Republicans seem to be wanting to go along with this. Some, possibly some Republican senators, some Republican candidates. I don't see any reason to do this. The Supreme Court has already spoken. It's just a. I mean, this is to the left of Barack Obama circa 2011. I just. None of this is making sense to me. And I was looking at the numbers. Is this thing going to pass?

Michael Knowles (35:54)

So I don't know. And. And it is even worse than you described. So what we're hearing is that this is likely to be what's called the comeback vote next Monday. So Monday, typically when everyone flies back to D.C. for session, the first vote of the day is at 5:30pm on a Monday. And that's late enough that even from the west coast you can fly in and get there in time to vote. That's called the comeback vote and it's what brings everyone back to D.C. we are hearing this week that the comeback vote on Monday is going to be the vote on, on this bill. And there are a couple of components of this bill. Number one, it is responding to a, a made up threat because, and we've talked about this at length, the Supreme Court majority in Dobbs explicitly said not once, not twice, but three, three times that the Court was not going to revisit. Oberg fell, it was not going to revisit its decision on gay marriage. You have Clarence Thomas who wrote one concurrence suggesting that, but the other five justices explicitly said no, we're not going to. The third time Justice Alito writing for the majority says, I don't know how to say this any more clearly. No, no, no. So as much as the Democrats and, and the media want to suggest that the Court is suddenly on the verge of overturning that decision, the Court's majority said unequivocally it was not. So it's not trying to do address an affirmative threat to gay marriage which, which people could be concerned about. It's engaged in politics. But you know, look, if it were empty politics, that would be problematic but not necessarily the end of the world. But it's worse than that because if this bill passes, it repeals the federal Defense of Marriage act which Bill Clinton signed into law. It used to be Democrats would agree with defending marriage, but it also amends federal law defining marriage, marriage to encompass whatever any state says marriage is, that any state that is, that makes anything called a marriage legal is automatically legal for federal law. And by the way, that's not even limited to two people. That means if a state made polygamy legal, federal law would immediately recognize polygamy as federal law. I mean, I mean it is broad reaching. It's, it's even worse than that because you know, there was an oral argument that Don Verrilli, who had been the Solicitor General under Barack Obama, was presenting before the Supreme Court where, where Justice Alito asked, well, isn't the next step for the IRS to go after the 501c3 status of any institution that does not agree with gay marriage? And Verrilli admits. Oh, yes, yes. That that is the next step. And if this bill passes, the effect will be. And I'll make a prediction right now. If this bill passes and Joe Biden signs it into law, the Biden IRS will use this bill to target schools, K through 12 schools, to target universities, to target charities, and to target churches that maintain a traditional definition of marriage, whether that is a biblical definition of marriage or whether that is a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque or any religion that teaches that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The Biden irs, if this bill passes, will be empowered to go after them, to go to your church and say, unless you accept gay marriage, we are stripping you of your 501 tax status, which you want to talk about, opening up a massive new front in the assault on religious liberty. This bill is about empowering the Biden IRS to target every church and school and university and charity in America that refuses to knuckle under to their view of gay marriage. I think it's incredibly dangerous. And yet, Michael, you asked me, is it going to pass? I don't know. Every Democrat's going to vote for it, and there have been multiple Republican senators who've said they will too. I don't know if they get to 60 or not, but given the threat to religious liberty, I think it would be profoundly dangerous if this passed.

Michael Knowles (40:42)

It's just unconscionable to me that a Republican senator would even consider voting for this. Because to your point, even if you support gay marriage, even if you support Obergefell whatever, to say that you want to empower the federal government, Joe Biden's irs, we know that Biden is pretty loose and capricious when it comes to wielding the executive agencies to crush his political opponents. That you would empower them to go after schools and churches and charities and all these organizations because they have the temerity to continue to hold the view of marriage that everyone, throughout all of history, all around the world, held until about. About seven years ago. It's just I have such low expectations for people in the political establishment that I thought nothing could shock me anymore. But it's the most outrageous thing I've heard in politics in years, I think.

Michael Knowles (41:37)

Yeah. And look, this is a very real threat to show. This is not hypothetical. The city of Philadelphia denied Catholic charity participation in adoption services because Catholic Charities did not embrace gay marriage as they believed it was contrary to their faith. And that case went all the way to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court struck it down and said you can't exclude them. The difference is, once this bill passes, they'll go back and they'll try to exclude Catholic Charities. They'll go back and they'll target any charity, any church, any school, any university that dares disagree. And it is a. A green light for religious persecution from the zealots in the Biden irs.

Michael Knowles (42:23)

Well, we were mentioning. It's not just the Republican senators who are talking about this. A lot of candidates are being asked about this now. And I know that you've been hitting the campaign trail like crazy for some of these Republican candidates. You were just up in New Hampshire, I believe, with. Is it Caroline Levitt? Who is. She was behind and then. And she was being outspent. Then she jumps ahead. So you're very much, you know, you're going to all of these places, you see what's happening. One, I want to ask you about that race. But two, where do we stand? I'm getting such conflicting information right now from pretty much every news source. Are we gonna take the House? Do we have a shot at the Senate? What's the state of the race?

Michael Knowles (43:03)

All right, well, let me start with your first question. So we had a great victory this week. There is. New Hampshire, had their primaries on Tuesday, and for one of the two congressional seats in New Hampshire, it's a very close seat. A Democrat holds it now, but it's. It's a seat that could go either way. It could go Democrat or Republican. And there was a contested primary. The top two candidates in the primary were, number one, a woman who I supported named Caroline levitt. Caroline is 25 years old. She is young. She is attractive, articulate, dynamic. She worked in the Trump White House. She worked on the press team in the Trump White House. She is a New Hampshire native, grew up there, went to college there, played softball at St. Anselm's College. She. She is a really dynamic candidate. And. And she's a conservative. If elected, she will be the youngest woman ever to serve in the House of Representatives. She's, you know, Gen Z. She's not even, you know, she's not Gen X or even Y. She's Gen Z. Her principal opponent was a much more moderate candidate who had been Chris Christie's executive director in New Hampshire. So he was a New Jersey Republican who moved to New Hampshire to run Chris Christie's campaign and was not remotely as conservative as Carolina. However, the D.C. party bosses, if given a primary between a conservative and a moderate, reliably almost inevitably back the mod and put big money behind the Mod. Because they want conservatives to lose. We've seen the DC Party bosses attacking conservatives in primaries all over the country this year. It's been really a problem. I've been fighting them in many of those races. Well, in this race, the DC party bosses and lobbyists spent $5 million attacking Caroline Levitt. $5 million flooded the airwaves with attack ads. And by the way, In New Hampshire, $5 million buys a lot of TV ads, right?

Michael Knowles (45:18)

Right. I mean, that's a lot of money for any congressional race. But especially. Wow, that's crazy.

Michael Knowles (45:22)

Well, and ironically, that's $5 million that was given by Republican donors to retake the House, not to try to defeat conservatives in primaries. Wow. But the party bosses here, they want House members who will not rock the boat, who will obey them, who will just salute and take orders. $5 million. I saw what was happening. I endorsed Caroline early on. I'm raising money for her, raising hard money for her. And then last week, last Thursday, I got on a plane and I flew to New Hampshire and did a big rally for. It was awesome. It was at a vfw. VFW hall that I hung out and drank beer, and there were hundreds of people there, and there was energy, and there was a grassroots enthusiasm, and she was losing. She was behind in the polls. But the rally. The rally dominated the news up there. We had a lot of enthusiasm. Actually, right after the rally, she went on. Tucker Carlson had a fantastic interview with Tucker that we watched from the VFW hall. She was filming it outside. And so we're all sitting there having a beer, watching it, and everyone's cheering her. And then she came in and got a hearty round of applause. Well, the election Tuesday night, she won. Despite $5 million being spent by DC party bosses, she won anyway, and she's now the candidate for the general election. And I think she's got a very good chance of winning, of defeating an incumbent Democrat, and of being a really strong leader in Washington.

Michael Knowles (46:54)

Senator, there's so much more to talk about, but not with me. What is left to talk about is going to be on the Cloakroom with our friend Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you be discussing?

Ted Cruz (47:03)

Hi, Michael. Hi, Senator. We're gonna put on our legal hats for the Cloakroom and discuss a very controversial ruling from the Supreme Supreme Court in which the court is essentially forcing a Jewish university to officially give recognition to an LGBTQ club, which is in violation of that university's Orthodox Jewish belief. So we're gonna discuss the nitty gritty of what this ruling is and the sort of political aspect of it too, because Roberts and Kavanaugh sided with the leftist justices. You can join us for that discussion. Go to verdict with TedCruz.com if you use my promo code, which is Cloakroom, you can watch for free for the first month of your annual subscription. That is verdictwithtedcruise.com Plus I very much.

Michael Knowles (47:49)

Look forward to that discussion. I very much look forward to all of you out there subscribing to the show. Wherever you get your podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Apple, podcast, all over the place. Until next time, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Foreign.

Michael Knowles (48:11)

This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, a political 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.

Ted Cruz (48:34)

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