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- [00:01]
Michael Knowles
You've probably heard a lot by now about Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Some of it true, most of it probably false. How do you separate fact from fiction? Well, luckily, we're about to speak with someone who just sat down with Judge Barrett about an hour ago. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. Senator, one thing I love so much about this show is that I get the inside scoop from you. I have been absolutely flooded with a ton of information about Amy Coney Barrett by the press. I assume most of it is complete nonsense. You just sat down with the Supreme Court nominee. What can you tell us?
- [00:49]
Ted Cruz
Well, she's very impressive. So I had a meeting this afternoon at 2:00 at the Capitol. Normally, what happens with Supreme Court nominees is they come around office to office and they come to each senator's office. This time, because of COVID they did it a little bit differently. So they did it in a big room in the Capitol called the Mansfield Room that they set up with the chairs separated so we could socially distance. And so I went by and visited with her, went in initially, said hello, did the elbow bump thing with masks, and then sat down in the chairs, invited the reporters in. And I shared a few thoughts in front of a bunch of reporters who, as is their want, are screaming out questions. And then we threw the reporters out of the room and she and I visited and we talked probably 45 minutes. Wow. And it's an impressive, you know, I mean, most of us by now have heard the facts and she's very impressive in terms of her record. Number one in the class at Notre Dame Law School, law clerk for Larry silberman on the D.C. circuit and then law clerk for Scalia on the Supreme Court, law professor at Notre Dame for 20 years, federal judge. Actually, you know where I started talking with her, A lot of what I asked about is how her family was doing that this has been, you know, she's got seven kids, including a number of kids who are young kids, and this process is brutal. And, you know, I shared with her, being a dad, I'd been through some pretty tough battles with little kids. Our girls are nine and 12, and they've seen all the nasty things said and it's hard on them. So, I mean, I just tried to visit with her a little bit about the family aspect of it and talk with her. So she clerked at the Supreme Court the year after I did, and she's very good friends with some very close friends of mine who are both professors at Notre Dame Law School. So we visited about some of the challenges of this process. And I asked her some questions in terms of her approach, how she approaches cases, how she approaches being a judge. But I also try to just share with her my thoughts and advice in terms of approaching this hearing. It's a pretty daunting thing to be facing a hearing where, you know, I think Senate Democrats are going to come after her really hard.
- [03:24]
Michael Knowles
They've more or less promised it already. I mean, we saw what happened to Brett Kavanaugh. They're basically promising more than that. So I think it's almost a guarantee that it's going to be brutal. What advice did you give Judge Barrett?
- [03:36]
Ted Cruz
Well, my advice to her is actually the advice I've given a lot of nominees who are coming before hearings, which is be boring. You don't want to make news. You don't want to. You want to calmly answer the senator's questions. Right now, the Senate Democrats haven't really found any attacks that are sticking. And so part of their strategy is going to be to try to provoke her to say something foolish. I don't think she's going to. This is a very poised, very mature, experienced judge, an experienced professor. One of the things I told her is, I said, listen, to be honest, none of the Senate Democrats are nearly as intimidating as Scalia was. And she worked for Scalia, knew him well. We talked a bit about Scalia. I asked her her thoughts on Scalia, what he did right, what he did wrong. You know, I talked about her approach to questions. I tried to walk through some of the natural pitfalls. So the reporters are all asking, for example, they asked me, is she gonna recuse herself if there are any election related disputes?
- [04:45]
Michael Knowles
Why would she even recuse herself because she's a Trump nominee. Shouldn't Kavanaugh recuse himself then?
- [04:51]
Ted Cruz
Because it's the Democratic talking point. So all the reporters are repeating it. And I said, no, of course she wouldn't. I said she wouldn't recuse herself any more than Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor would. They were both appointed by during the Obama Biden administration. Does the fact that Biden was vice president mean they should recuse themselves? Of course not. I actually afterwards explained to reporters, I said, look, all nine justices were appointed by presidents. All or virtually all of them have had to adjudicate cases in which the president or the administration that appointed them was a party before them may have had one particular side or another. And that's just part of Being a judge, I mean, there's a standard, a legal standard for recusal. But the fact that the president or the Senate that appointed or confirmed you is a party is not a recognized standard for recusal. So that question they asked me, I answered it. She'll have to address that at the hearing, and I'm confident she'll be able to. One thing I talked with her about also, there's a question for every judicial nominee about, what do you say about precedent? So, for example, a question that gets asked of every judicial nominee, was Brown vs Board of Education correctly decided. Brown is the seminal case that overruled Plessy against Ferguson and that ruled that schools had to be desegregated, that we had to have integrated public schools. Plessy was an abomination. It had ruled that separate but equal was acceptable under the equal protection clause to the Constitution. And it's interesting, if you look at particular Trump nominees, that question gets asked, if not to every nominee, just about every nominee. And some of them answer it, some of them don't, those who answer it. So there are downsides to both if you don't answer it. I've seen some judicial nominees say, well, I'm not going to share my thoughts on any pending case or any case that might come before the court. The problem is, if you don't answer it, it lets the Democrats demagogue you. You don't even believe in Brown. What kind of crazy radical are you?
- [07:05]
Michael Knowles
And you can't say that you don't want to comment on an issue that will come before the court, because Brown versus Board of Education obviously already came before the court.
- [07:13]
Ted Cruz
Well, and the Brown question is really all a setup to get at. If you answer it and say you agree with Brown, the next question, where this is headed is, all right, what about Roe v. Wade? What about Heller versus District of Columbia? What about Citizens United? And it's the slippery slope that if you're willing to answer a question about one case, as I said, judicial nominees have taken it both ways. They've refused to answer any, or some have said, yes, Brown was rightly decided. Personally, my view on it is the right way to answer, to say, of course Brown was rightly decided. Nobody disputes that. There's no likelihood of litigation on it. There is no active side before the court challenging that. And that is quite different from the other examples I gave where there is litigation every term that potentially touches on those issues. And so the reporters afterwards all rushed up to me and they said, okay, did she make any commitments to you on how she would rule on anything. And I was like, well, no, of course not. That would be inappropriate for me to ask. And it would be even more inappropriate for her to answer me. I wouldn't want a judge who'd make a commitment, I'm going to rule X way or Y way.
- [08:34]
Michael Knowles
Please give me your vote and I promise you I'll rule this way. That's not how this is supposed to go.
- [08:39]
Ted Cruz
But you know what? That's how Democrats approach it. I mean, they treat the court as an arm of politics. I'm looking for a justice who will follow the law and the Constitution. And I think what I was most impressed with sitting down with her was her calmness and demeanor. I mean, it's been, you know, she had a pretty quiet life as a law professor and appellate judge, and suddenly she's in the middle of this maelstrom where this political attack machine, I actually advised her, I said, look, they're trying to dig up everything they can to attack you. They're looking right now for someone who went to third grade with you that doesn't like you. And so just be aware and be ready and just be calm and deal with whatever. Unfortunately, you know, I don't know if you remember, there was a guy, Anthony Lake, who was nominated to a position under Bill Clinton, not a judicial position, but a position in the executive. And he went through a really brutal confirmation. And he described the confirmation process afterwards. He said, it is nasty and brutish without being short, which is, of course, you will appreciate it as a classically educated man. That's a reference to Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, who described. Hobbes described the state of nature as nasty, brutish and short without government stepping in to protect people's rights. And so he was making a pun on that.
- [10:09]
Michael Knowles
Well, Senator, I feel think that's excellent advice for the judge. I'm glad that you got to spend that much time with her. But you mentioned that there's something strange about this particular confirmation process because of COVID Something else is strange, too, which is that typically the judges meet with a whole lot of senators, ideally all of the senators, before they go and testify. This time, there are a number of Senate Democrats who are refusing to meet with Judge Barrett because they're saying that she's an illegitimate nominee.
- [10:41]
Ted Cruz
Well, and it's really bizarre. I don't know of any precedent that that's happened. Quite a few Democrats have said they're not going to talk to her, they're not going to meet her there have been a handful who are willing to meet with her. So I credit them with not making the entire process a farce. But it shows. Look, the Democratic base, a week ago, even before this vacancy, they were enraged that they were furious. They hate Trump. When this vacancy happens, it's like to quote the movie Spinal Tap, suddenly it goes to 11. I mean, they're out of their minds. And so I think Democrats are in a hard position because they don't really have any criticisms that are sticking. They tried to paint her as sort of a kooky religious person. I mean, there were these stories saying that, like, she's the inspiration for the Handmaid's Tale.
- [11:36]
Michael Knowles
I don't know if you saw, Senator, the article that came out that said the group that Amy Barrett is a member of is the inspiration for the Handmaid's Tale. And then you look at the bottom of the article and there's a correction and it says, oh, actually it was a different group. But the rest of the article is true. You say, well, that's the whole article.
- [11:54]
Ted Cruz
It's kind of a bizarre. Last I checked, having a mom of seven who is a renowned law professor and federal judge and about to be supreme justice is not exactly a model for female subjugation. It's a bizarre narrative of, okay, I haven't seen the show, but that sure doesn't seem to be what it's about. From what little I've seen, although judges do wear robes, so in that respect, it's entirely accurate.
- [12:25]
Michael Knowles
That's what they were talking about. There was another attack lobbed against her by some other prominent leftists on Twitter and in other places, saying that there's no way that she could have been an attentive mother because she's had this wonderful career. And you say, gosh, I can't believe feminists are now telling women they can't have it all, they can't work. Those attacks seem to have been really ill advised. The attacks on her family, the attacks on her religion. I know that Dick Durbin, who is the second most powerful Democrat in the Senate, Senate minority whip, he went on George Stephanopoulos show just a few days ago and he said that the Senate Democrats can slow down the process, but they cannot stop the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett. Why is he coming out now and just more or less admitting defeat? I don't remember the Democrats doing that during the Kavanaugh hearings.
- [13:14]
Ted Cruz
Well, I think he sees a mismatch between what their base is demanding and what they can do. I believe we've got the votes, barring some shocking revelation that no one's anticipating, I think we will have the votes to confirm Judge Barrett, and I think it'll happen by the end of the month. It'll happen before Election Day, which I think is really important. Durbin can count noses. He can see that they don't have the votes. I think he's probably politically worried that if their base gets totally ginned up and demands, you must stop this. If we hold onto the votes, there's not anything they can do to stop it. And so I think he's trying to calibrate expectations. Now, that being said, I fully expect them to try and engage in a fishing expedition, and I think we'll see some procedural tools to try to delay it, to force unnecessary votes, but procedurally, and I'm spending a lot of time Talking with Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, with the Senate lawyers, with my lawyers to think through all the procedural tools they can try to do to delay this. But the long and short of it is if the majority stays solid and committed to moving forward on this nomination, we'll get it done, and I think we will.
- [14:33]
Michael Knowles
Well, Senator, I think one of the reasons that Dick Durbin and the Democrats basically are throwing in the towel here and they want the confirmation process to be shorter is because the longer it drags on, the more copies of your new book that you're going to sell one vote away. Obviously, we currently have eight justices on the Supreme Court. We have that one vacancy. So that one seat, that ninth seat, could be the swing vote that could determine how cases go. And just coincidentally or providentially, you've got a book that has just come out on this topic.
- [15:01]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, well, that's right. So this is Thursday, Tuesday afternoon that we're recording this. The debate's gonna be tonight. So we're not gonna talk about the debate on this podcast. It'll come out tomorrow, but we'll do a POD on the debate. So I imagine there'll be some fireworks this evening at the debate, but today, Tuesday, the book came out, and here it is right now. It's actually. We've been talking about it for a while, but it's. It' we accelerated. It was actually due to come out next week. And given the nomination, given that this fight is front and center, we accelerated it to move it earlier. Now, as you know, I wrote this book this spring and summer during the COVID lockdown. I was working from home, and so I in my living room and sat down at the computer and wrote it. And it's designed to do, really, a deep dive into the Supreme Court, into what's going on. Every chapter's on a different constitutional right, and to tell the inside story of what's happening at the court. And look, obviously, I didn't know we'd be in the middle of this fight right now. I anticipated the book coming out in the fall, going into the presidential election, because a huge issue in the election is the Supreme Court and what kind of nominees we're gonna have.
- [16:14]
Michael Knowles
Well, this is actually the point, Senator, that I wanna hit on, because it's the thing that was most striking to me about the books release. You know, publishers always want to release books when they're gonna sell the most copies. That's obvious. And it's so interesting to me that during a presidential election, they slated a book about the court. And this has been cropping up in every presidential election in my lifetime. But it seems increasingly so that the court seems to become the central issue almost, and often it is, of the campaign. Obviously, that's true this time, but it was true in 2016 as well.
- [16:51]
Ted Cruz
It was. So it ended up being the single biggest reason that I voted for Donald Trump. And one of the things I talk about in the introductions, the first chapter of the book goes back through some of the details of 2016. And we had a roller coaster presidential campaign, to put it mildly. And, you know, Trump and I had a good relationship, and then we beat the living daylights out of each other. And my campaign won a bunch of states, but we didn't prevail. Trump prevailed. And I, for the first time, really tell the story about the convention in Cleveland, which, you'll recall, the speech I gave there prompted booing and angry reactions because I didn't endorse Trump at the time. I actually, the language I used in that speech was almost word for word the language Ronald Reagan used about Gerald Ford when Ford had just beaten him in the primary. And it was almost word for word the language that Ted Kennedy used about Jimmy Carter when Jimmy Carter had just beaten him in the primary. Neither one of them endorsed the person who had prevailed. Rather, they laid out a vision they wanted the candidate to follow. And I was really trying to lay out a vision for Trump at the time. It was not clear to me and clear to many others whether Trump would govern as a conservative, whether he would continue to campaign as a conservative. And so what I tried to do in the speech was to say we should vote for candidates we can trust to defend freedom and defend the Constitution. And when I describe in the first chapter of the book is much to my pleasant surprise. Trump continued campaigning as a conservative after he won the nomination. Many Republicans moved to the middle or the left after they win the nomination. Trump did not do that. And when I decided to endorse him, which was In September of 2016, the Supreme Court was front and center in terms of why. And so I negotiated with the Trump campaign, and there was an explicit quid pro quo. There was an explicit exchange we had that there were two conditions that I wanted. Number one, you remember, Trump had put out a list of 11 potential judges in the heat of the campaign, but the list was not exclusive. So he said at the time, these 11 are the kinds of judges I will appoint or anybody else on planet Earth.
- [19:26]
Michael Knowles
Right? I'll endorse someone like so and so, but it could be anybody else.
- [19:30]
Ted Cruz
And so I was very concerned about that. I wanted greater certainty. The Scalia vacancy was front and center. And so the conditions that I negotiated with the Trump team, that he put out an explicit list and bind himself to it, explicitly commit these names, and only these names will be the pool that we will use. And also that he add Senator Mike Lee to the list. I still think Mike Lee would be the best nominee. Had I won, Mike Lee is who I would have nominated. And the Trump campaign agreed to both. So they put out a new list. It's when it went from 11 to 21, they added 10 names. Mike Lee was one of them. And they put out in writing, these 21 are the only people from whom Scalia's choice will come. They put it out, and within minutes, I endorse. So we coordinated those two announcements simultaneously.
- [20:21]
Michael Knowles
I think there was a lot of information and misinformation going around at the time you were criticized because you did not come out and explicitly endorse at the convention. And we were told you didn't endorse at the convention, like Ronald Reagan endorsed Gerald Ford. And I guess in the popular imagination, I thought, so I thought Reagan had endorsed Ford. Then you look through the speech and you say, he didn't do it. And so at that time, it was being covered as though this was a huge insult to Trump and it was totally breaking with precedent. But then what you're saying is, behind the scenes, you're talking to the campaign and you're saying, look, I'm willing to endorse as long as you agree to certain political promises here, but political meaning you're gonna govern as a conservative. And all of it. I mean, this is probably the most interesting thing. Of all, all of it's about the court.
- [21:09]
Ted Cruz
The book begins the day Scalia died, which happened to be the day of the South Carolina presidential debate in 2016. So I was actually huddled in a conference room prepping for the debate, and my body guy comes in and interrupts us and says, hey, hey, you heard about the thing? And we're like, what thing? And he goes, the Scalia thing? We're like, what Scalia thing?
- [21:34]
Michael Knowles
Oh, no.
- [21:35]
Ted Cruz
He goes, oh, he died. And we're just like, what? And what had happened? So Scalia was a hunting lodge in West Texas, and the sheriff's office found him dead in his bed. And so the West Texas sheriff had called me and had called John Cornyn. So the two Texas senators, we both got calls from the sheriff saying we just found Justice Scalia dead. So when I found out about it, it was a couple of hours before the news broke. And so that totally our debate preparation all shifted over to what to do about the Scalia vacancy. And I wrote a statement calling on the Senate to keep this seat open, not to consider a nominee and let the voters decide. And the instant the news broke publicly, I didn't want to break the news, but once it was public, I put the statement out instantaneously. And you may remember, shortly thereafter, a number of other Republicans followed suit. Mitch McConnell, Chuck Grassley. And one of the things I describe in the book is that Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff later told a New York Times reporter that one of the reasons Mitch jumped out early and said we're not going to take up this nominee is he knew at the debate that evening I would call for keeping the seat open. And he didn't want to be seen as following my lead. So he. So my view is, look, I don't care why you did it, if you did the right thing, great, Hallelujah. I will cheer you on and sing your praises, of course. But it's remarkable. We held the conference together in 16. And filling that Scalia vacancy then became for me the number one reason I voted for Trump over Hillary. And I think it's the reason he got elected. I think there are many, many more Americans like me that that was the biggest single reason to vote for him.
- [23:18]
Michael Knowles
It was an earth shattering moment when Justice Scalia died. I remember, I think it was on Valentine's Day or it was near Valentine's Day and I was February, it was in February. So sometime around there, I just remember I was going to go out to a romantic dinner with my wife. And right before we went out, I got the news, and it really put the kibosh on the romantic flavor of the evening because it occurred to me this was the most significant thing that could happen in that presidential race. And I also had absolutely no faith that the Senate was going to be able to hold that seat open. Very interesting to hear behind the scenes what was going on. And it's almost eerie that a similar situation, obviously, with a justice from the other side of the political spectrum, but that a totally analogous situation is happening again this time around.
- [24:10]
Ted Cruz
It's really the stakes of the election. And I will say on this book, you know, I put a lot of time into this book, and it really tries to tell what's going on. You don't have to be a lawyer to enjoy this book. I wrote it actually in the same spirit as we do the Verdict podcast, trying to assess complicated issues, issues that matter, but trying to explain them, giving the inside insight. And so let me just say to everyone who has so regularly listened to this podcast, downloaded this podcast, I want to ask you to please go to Amazon, go to Barnes and Noble, go anywhere you get books. But. But buy a copy of this book. It's significant. The information in this book, I think, will be really helpful to you as you're talking to your friends right now about this nomination, about the fight over Judge Barrett, about the fight at the Supreme Court, about the election in 2020. I think the book will arm you with. With information that most people don't know. Most people don't realize just how broad the implications are for the Supreme Court in the presidential election. And so I think this book will be a really helpful tool and it'll be really beneficial.
- [25:31]
Michael Knowles
Well, Senator, I intend no flattery here. This is totally unprompted, but I am reading the book right now and I'm really enjoying it. I recommend people buy it mostly because it's a real book. It's an actual book that gives you information. And I hate to criticize, you know, some of your colleagues and other politicians, but usually politician books are something to the effect of the courage to be American, the dreams and hopes of saluting American and America. And it's just like they're not that great. And this one is really great because you're focusing on pivotal cases that really change the course of history and. And coincidentally, they're cases that you have a personal insight into. So just totally unsolicited plug. I'm really enjoying it.
- [26:15]
Ted Cruz
And by the way, if you get a chance to go on Amazon and put a positive review We've got some lefties going on right now that are blasting it, which is what they do. But it would be nice to read the book first and then put a positive review. But that would be helpful if you like it.
- [26:30]
Michael Knowles
That's right. I swiped a copy, obviously, from the verdict studio. I swiped the single copy, but now that I'm reading it and I know it's a good book, I would pay for it. You know, I'm a fiscal conservative, so I'd swipe it, but I would pay for it. And I encourage all the other people who are listening right now, I encourage you to read it as well. We've got to get to a little bit of mailbags. Speaking of those people who are listening right now, we have some excellent questions this week. First one is from John. Do you think the Supreme Court hearings will help Trump's electoral chances like the Kavanaugh hearings did, or do you think it could backfire and help the Democrats?
- [27:05]
Ted Cruz
I think it will help Trump significantly. I think it will energize both sides bases. So the left is even more ticked off than they were before. But to be honest, they were already so mad that the left is showing up. They hate Trump, they're going to show up even angrier. But I don't think it moves the needle substantially on the left because they were already maxed out on the right. I think it energizes just like the Kavanaugh hearings did. I think it energizes conservatives. It energizes people who care about the Constitution. I also think the Democrats are going to overplay their hands. I think they're going to be jerks. I think they're going to unfortunately mistreat Judge Barrett. And I think that has a real risk of backfiring to them. I think their base is demanding of the Democrats that they behave in a way that frankly is not a great way to behave just days or weeks before an election.
- [27:56]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, I think that's right. I think the smarter Democrats, the ones with the cooler heads are saying, guys, cut it out with the attacks on the religion and the family. But unfortunately for them, I guess fortunately for Republicans, they haven't been resisting it very much. Next question. I kid you not. This is the Twitter username comes from Verdict sirnolscbe. I guess that's Commander of the British Empire. Not my account. That's not my Pierre Delecto account. But it is someone who I imagine listens to the show, asks hypothetically what would happen if we inaugurated the winner of the election and Then we found mail in ballots that would have made the other person win instead. This person's probably alluding to recently there have been stories of boxes of ballots being found in ditches or mislabeled in other rooms. What happens if we, a few months after the election, find out that the wrong guy won?
- [28:49]
Ted Cruz
So at some point the election is final and you can't undo it. And once the electors have cast their ballots, if there's uncertainty under the Constitution, it goes to the House and Senate, and the House selects the president, the Senate selects the vice president. Once you have inauguration, once you have the president sworn in and the vice president sworn in, we've never seen the election challenged after the fact. So we would truly be in uncharted territory. We've seen disputed elections that have gone up to Inauguration Day, but not afterwards. Look, the remedy at that point could conceivably be impeachment, although even impeachment doesn't allow a mechanism for putting the other party in. And so at some point there is finality in a decision, even if after the fact, someone raises another charge. That being said, we could get into some of this chaos this election. I'm really worried we will have an extended period of litigation and uncertainty after election Day.
- [29:55]
Michael Knowles
Next question. On that happy note, the constitutional crisis we're moving into. This is from sl. This is totally off topic from what we've been talking about, but I think a lot of people are curious about it. Can someone please explain the New York Times Trump tax piece to an elementary school age child? Because apparently it's too complicated for seemingly educated adults to understand. Do you have a sort of top level take on this, of what it's all supposed to mean or if we're all supposed to care?
- [30:24]
Ted Cruz
So it's actually hard to know the facts because of what the New York Times has done. They allege they have his tax returns, but they haven't actually released the underlying documents. So we don't know what the tax returns say. All we have is what the New York Times characterizes them as saying. I don't think it's crazy to say that the Times is not an impartial arbiter. Diplomatically put, they're not neutral on what they think about Trump. We do know that whoever gave them to the Times likely committed a crime, likely committed a federal crime of giving without authorization someone else's tax returns. But so the sort of headline news of Trump only paid $750 taxes in, I guess, 2016 or 17, it's difficult to tell without Knowing the rest of the tax returns. I mean, you often have big sophisticated business people that if you have losses, you can carry losses over to another year. If you're in the real estate business, you're taking depreciation. Amazon has years when it didn't pay any taxes at all that are multibillion dollar corporations. You know, I actually went yesterday on the View and the View, by the way, pretty surreal place to find a conservative Republican. But they were truly foaming at the mouth over the tax issue. And I said, listen, it's actually unfortunately a feature of our tax code that people who are very, very wealthy sometimes manage to pay very little in taxes through using legal mechanisms to reduce their tax exposure. And it's why I'm such a big proponent of a flat tax. A simple flat tax where everyone pays 10%, doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, who you are, it's even and fair and simple. And so I sort of laughed and said, I guess suddenly the New York Times is in favor of a flat tax. So that's great progress because you know, there are a whole lot of rich people that pay a much lower percentage taxes than you or I do.
- [32:30]
Michael Knowles
You know, Senator, in a year of wonders and all the craziness and the lockdowns, I think the New York Times endorsing the flat tax, I think that's the, the biggest. One final question before I let you go from Sandman. Why is the senate waiting until October 12th to bring about the ACB hearings? Why not just do it this week when you know the Democrats will stop at nothing to delay, delay, delay?
- [32:53]
Ted Cruz
You know, that's a fair question. And that was ultimately a decision for Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the committee. And the reasoning that he laid out to us is that historically hearings have commenced typically 10 days to two weeks after the announcement, sometimes later. But what he wanted to do is as much as possible follow the precedent so that the Democrats are going to scream everything's unfair anyway. But I think what he was trying to do is follow the historical precedent so that it could be rightly said that a full and fair process has been given here, a thorough examination is occurring. And I think that's reasonable. We talked about it. We had the Senate Judiciary Committee members meet privately, I guess last week, talking about the expected timing and the concern I raised, I raised one concern. I said, listen, I'm fine with it if we start on the 12th, if, if, if we are absolutely certain we can get the nomination completed before election Day. Because the Democrats whole strategy is delay it after Election Day and then have the chaos end up killing the nomination. And so I press the lawyers pretty hard. For example, one of the things that Pelosi and the Democrats are talking about doing is impeaching the president again. And it would be a total abuse of power, as you know as verdict started by discussing at great length the test for impeachment. The standard for impeachment is high crimes or misdemeanors. Well, it ain't complicated that nominating a Supreme Court justice is not a high crime or misdemeanor. But it's possible that we'll see congressional Democrats try to use impeachment as a tool for delay. If they do that, the advice we've gotten from the Senate parliamentary experts is that the majority, that we can set that aside, that it won't delay the confirmation, that if they want to, they can force us to sit on the floor and cast a number of votes. I mean, so they can waste a little bit of time, but they don't have the ability. And so given that, that we can get it done before Election Day, I think it was reasonable to say we'll follow a comparable period of time as has been done before.
- [35:13]
Michael Knowles
Of course, it doesn't matter if the confirmation is on November 2nd. For that matter, it could be on the morning of November 3rd, as long as it just happens. But before the election, that has me feeling pretty good. I have to tell you. Usually we end these shows on kind of a down note. Things haven't been going that great necessarily in the country, but there is a little ray of hope. And of course, we'll have the debate tonight, so we'll have lots more to talk about tomorrow. And until then, Senator, I will be reading more of your book, One Vote Away. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [35:51]
Ted Cruz
Foreign this episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, 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.