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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
It is the official two year anniversary of Verdict with Ted Cruz. We've just gotten a major win in the Supreme Court. We've gotten a major win in the United States Senate. There's a new, very important First Amendment case going to the Supreme Court that Senator Ted Cruz is actually bringing himself and we are in the mood to celebrate. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [00:33]
Liz Wheeler
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- [03:18]
Michael Knowles
Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. Senator, nothing's ever perfect in politics. There are some losses, there are some dangers, there are some threats. This has been a good week.
- [03:30]
Ted Cruz
It has been a damn good week.
- [03:33]
Michael Knowles
The biggest win. Before we get into the case that you are actually bringing to the Supreme Court, before we get into that, before we get into the filibuster which lives, lives to see another day. The OSHA mandate. Yeah, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was demanding that 84 million Americans take the Fauci Ouchie, as some of us call it, the COVID vaccine. Employers were enforcing it. Some people brought a lawsuit. One of the groups was the Daily Wire. We bring a lawsuit and the Supreme Court strikes, effectively strikes down the mandate.
- [04:06]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. No, it was a huge victory for the rule of law. It was a very important case. When the OSHA mandate came out, we talked about it a lot on this podcast. Your employer, the Daily Wire, filed a lawsuit, was a party in the suit. So we're actually sitting here. Both of us parties are parties in Supreme Court cases. This past week, the OSHA case was huge. And when it came out, we had a podcast at the time where we walked through the legal standards for osha, promulgated a rule like that. And you'll recall we said on the pod, we said, number one, we said, the Supreme Court's gonna strike it down. And in fact, when you and I talked about it when the case was being argued, I said, I think the decision will be six, three, I think there will be six votes to strike it down as beyond OSHA's statutory authority. Beyond the authority of the federal government. And we also talked about Ron Klain, who was the White House. Is the White House chief of staff who stupidly sent a tweet right when the OSHA mandate issued where he retweeted that this was a workaround to get around the law. And you'll recall I talked about. I tweeted at the time and said this was really dumb. And I promise you, number one, this edict is gonna be challenged. Number two, I believe it's gonna be struck down in court. And number three, this idiotic tweet from Ron Klain is gonna be exhibit A in the lawsuit and the Supreme Court's decision six, three, striking it down. What did they cite? Among other things, Ron Klain's tweet.
- [05:36]
Michael Knowles
This seems to be a workaround, and that's not legit. So I read the opinion of the court. I read the concurring opinion of the court's conservatives, the three, Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch, and I read the liberal dissent. This is obviously all great news, but it was a little confusing. I'm not a lawyer. I have no. So they were. They stayed the mandate, and then they sent the mandate back to the lower. But, okay, so what does that.
- [06:05]
Ted Cruz
So what they did is they upheld the injunction. So the mandate is enjoined. An injunction is an order from a court either to do something or not to do something. So the injunction means the mandate has no legal force.
- [06:16]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [06:17]
Ted Cruz
But they remanded it to the lower court to have a trial to consider the claims challenging the mandate. But the reason why this is strong. Really good. One of the grounds for upholding the injunction is likelihood of success on the merits. So six justices have said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed. They haven't conclusively said their claims are valid, but they've said they're likely to succeed on the merits. The OSHA mandate, for all intents and purposes, is dead. Unfortunately, there was a second decision that came out the same day, and that second decision was 5, 4, upholding a different vaccine mandate. The vaccine mandate that the Biden administration put on healthcare workers, and it put on healthcare workers in facilities that are receiving federal funds either through Medicare or Medicaid. And that was five. Four. It consisted of the three liberals, plus Chief Justice Roberts plus Brett Kavanaugh were the five. And, you know, we talked about before the Supreme Court's decision coming out of New York with healthcare workers, where they had refused to stay the decision out of New York. I think that was a mistake. I think this was a mistake. But look, the Three Libs, they like all these mandates. Apparently Biden can mandate us to do whatever we want. To dance on one leg in a pink tutu while singing Yankee Doodle Doodle Dandy.
- [07:48]
Michael Knowles
The libs more or less say that in the dissent. They say there's basically no limit to what the government can do in this regard.
- [07:55]
Ted Cruz
Roberts and Kavanaugh on healthcare workers, they're pretty comfortable with the federal government or the state government. The New York case was a state government issue. Here it's the federal government, but they're pretty comfortable with the federal government forcing state workers, state healthcare workers, or just healthcare workers generally who are receiving government money to have. To have to get vaccinated. I think that was a serious mistake. I think they're undervaluing the liberty interest of these health care workers.
- [08:26]
Michael Knowles
Because I had this question when I saw Kavanaugh squish and flip to the other side. I thought, well, do healthcare workers not have the same rights as every other employee?
- [08:35]
Ted Cruz
So you remember we talked about that. There are four different mandates that came out. There's a mandate for, for military servicemen and women. There's a mandate for civilian employees. There's a mandate for federal contractors. There's a mandate for private employers with 100 or more employees under OSHA. And I said, they're all in descending likelihood of surviving. So the OSHA order was always the most vulnerable legally because the OSHA statute doesn't allow this. This is really a far stretch from what Congress intended on in osha, which is why Ron Klain called it a workaround. To be fair, the healthcare workers, there's a stronger statutory argument there. The statutory language is different, and so there is a stronger argument. I still think that mandate should have been struck down as well. But there is a meaningful difference in terms of. With osha, they had zero legs to stand on. With the healthcare workers, they didn't even have a leg. But maybe they had a toe.
- [09:38]
Michael Knowles
Fair enough. Fair enough. And still basically a win. Even if it was unfortunate that the court wouldn't go all the way on this second case. Still a major win. 84 million Americans don't need to be vaccinated against their will.
- [09:52]
Ted Cruz
Well, and I gotta say, I take particular pride because not only did we predict at every stage what would happen in this case on the podcast, but the lawyer argued the case was my former chief counsel. So it's a fellow named Scott Keller is a great guy. Scott was actually a student of mine. So I met Scott when I was teaching at University of Texas Law School. And he Was a law student there. I taught a seminar on U.S. supreme Court litigation, and he took the class. He was excellent in the class, did extraordinary. I gave him an A plus, and I didn't give very many A pluses. He graduated number one in his class at University of Texas Law School. He went and clerked on the Court of Appeals. He clerked for Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, and I recommended him for that. And then several years later, when I was elected to the Senate, I hired Scott as my first chief counsel. So when I showed up a decade ago in the Senate, Scott, we were down in the basement. I just got in here. When you first get here, you don't even have a real office. You're sort of in temporary space, and you're just trying to figure out everything. So Scott spent a couple of years with me as my chief counsel, and then actually came and quit. And here's why. He quit because he'd been appointed to be the Solicitor General of Texas.
- [11:12]
Michael Knowles
Not a bad gig.
- [11:13]
Ted Cruz
And it's my old job. It's a job I loved. I did five and a half years. And when Scott gave his notice, I was really sad. Like, I didn't want to lose him because he's a really talented lawyer. But I couldn't complain because SG of Texas is an amazing job.
- [11:29]
Michael Knowles
And you get to argue cases.
- [11:31]
Ted Cruz
You get to argue cases. So Scott has now argued more cases than I did. I argued nine cases. When he argued his 10th case, I called him that morning and said, all right, screw you. I just had to say that as former boss, I had to, like, throw that marker down.
- [11:45]
Michael Knowles
So now I have to ask you, Obviously you're not gonna be arguing a case before the Supreme Court right now, but are you bringing this case before the Supreme Court just to beat your old general counsel?
- [11:56]
Ted Cruz
Well, no, but there was a separate case. So we're sitting here. We're recording this on Wednesday. This morning, the Supreme Court heard an oral argument. The very first case was Federal Election Commission versus Ted Cruz, and I am the plaintiff. I have sued the Federal Election Commission seeking to strike down a provision of McCain Feingold, the big campaign finance legislation. It's a terrible piece of legislation, has all sorts of problems, but at the heart of it, McCain Feingold was all about incumbent politicians wanting to make it harder for anyone to run against them and challenge them. It was about the one thing Republicans and Democrats could agree on is nobody should beat us in an election. So McCain Feingold is throwing barriers in the way of challenge.
- [12:42]
Michael Knowles
This doesn't make sense, though. Because I was reading a lot of left wing news sources today that was telling me, they were all telling me about the case and they say that Ted Cruz is bringing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to make it easier to bribe and corrupt politicians and to make this swampland even swampier. Are you telling me that the left wing media got it wrong?
- [13:01]
Ted Cruz
You're right. That's every headline is Cruz wants more bribery. And even for the media, that's a little dishonest. So there were two provisions of McCain Feingold that were called the Billionaires Amendment. So incumbent politicians hate anyone that can challenge them. They particularly hate people who have money. So if you get a really rich person that runs against you, that's really problematic. Cuz then they can run ads and communicate and you got a problem. So the Millionaires Amendment, half of it said that if someone self finances and puts a whole bunch of money into his own campaign, that the federal limits for the other guy are tripled. So instead of 2,900 a person, it's nearly nine grand a person. And that's entirely designed to benefit incumbents and to discourage rich people from running against them. Well, the Supreme Court a few years ago struck that half of the Millionaires Amendment down, said, look, if someone decides to run for office, if they want to invest their own resources and speak, you have a right to speech. And that means spending your own money to speak. If you want to put a billboard on the freeway, if you want to run a radio ad or a TV ad, all of that is political speech. So that was half of the Millionaires Amendment that was struck down several years ago. The other half of the Millionaires Amendment is what this case is all about. And it's a provision that limits the ability of a candidate who's running for office to loan money to his own campaign. So the way it works, let's say Michael Knowles wakes up and says, I'm going to run for Congress.
- [14:29]
Michael Knowles
And you'd say, get this man to a psychiatrist, he's lost his mind.
- [14:33]
Ted Cruz
But you're incurable and you say I'm gonna run, I'm taking on aoc, I'm moving to New York, my old district. We're going and I'm gonna win. Now if you're starting, you know, you may not have a lot of supporters, you're not an incumbent politician, you don't have lobbyists probably supporting you. You don't have the infrastructure that an incumbent has. So what a lot of people do if they launch a campaign is they loan themselves some money. So they have some money, some savings, and they put some money in to start the campaign. What McCain Feingold said is if you loan your own money to your campaign after the election, you can only pay yourself back up to 250,000 of it. Okay? Anything above 250,000 with money that is raised after the campaign, you can't pay back, and you're just stuck.
- [15:24]
Michael Knowles
And by the way, when you talk especially about competitive districts, these campaigns can cost millions and millions of dollars. So 250,000 is not as much as it sounds like.
- [15:35]
Ted Cruz
So. And what this is designed to do is it's designed to disincentive challengers. So, look, if you're a gazillionaire, and by the way, we're seeing more and more billionaires running for office. If you're a billionaire, you don't care. You can put 5, 10, $20 million into your campaign. You don't matter. You're so rich, it doesn't make a difference.
- [15:51]
Michael Knowles
You never need it back.
- [15:52]
Ted Cruz
So this is not a disincentive to the super rich. And we're actually seeing more and more billionaires who are running for office because they have the massive money. What this is an incentive to is the small business owner. What this is an incentive to is the doctor.
- [16:08]
Michael Knowles
This is the somewhat rich. It's not the super rich.
- [16:10]
Ted Cruz
It's the somewhat who has enough money that you could invest a substantial amount of money. You could invest 500,000. You can invest a million dollars you've saved. You put your money in the bank you've saved, and you can invest the money in a congressional race. If you could put 500,000 or a million, that gives you a real shot at communicating. This is designed to punish that guy and say, well, you know what? Let's. Let's say you've worked hard, you're a physician, you've got a million dollars in the bank. You loan it to the campaign. You spend every penny of it on the campaign, you can pay back 250,000 and 750,000 of it. Tough luck, Michael. You have given it to the United States of America. You don't get it back. And so that's what the existing law is. And so what I did in 2018 is I loaned my campaign $260,000.
- [16:59]
Michael Knowles
Now, that's a very specific number, Senator.
- [17:02]
Ted Cruz
It is. It's 10,000 more than the limit. So I loaned my campaign 260,000 right before the election, and then 20 days after the election, a little bit later than that, I repaid myself 250,000, which what you're allowed to do. So there's 10,000 that under the law, it's illegal for me to pay myself back. And I did that in order to.
- [17:23]
Michael Knowles
File this lawsuit, because as I was just reading it, obviously you can tell it better, because you were there. The lawyer for the government is saying that this case should be dismissed, it should be thrown out, because you obviously were doing something that you knew was against the law. You were just trying to trigger this court case.
- [17:40]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, that was an argument that the Biden Justice Department made. That's a really weak argument. So if you look at. There are lots of cases that are test cases that if there's any legal or unconstitutional law, you're allowed to challenge it, and you're allowed to violate that law to challenge it. You're allowed to create the facts. And there are literally hundreds of test cases where people. If the government makes it illegal for Michael Knowles to defend the right to life, you know, the government said, well, you chose to say it. You chose to violate it. You could have just obeyed.
- [18:22]
Michael Knowles
Why didn't you? Yeah. So dismiss the case.
- [18:24]
Ted Cruz
Right.
- [18:24]
Michael Knowles
That's out of here.
- [18:25]
Ted Cruz
And so that argument is not gonna go anywhere. I'll say the argument, I think, went well. I hope so. The lawyer who argued it is a guy named Chuck Cooper, who is a very close friend of mine. He was my first boss when I came out of my clerkship. And so I clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. I came out of the clerkship in 1997, and I joined Chuck at what was then a tiny little law firm that was called Cooper and Carvin. And it was Chuck Cooper's Mike Carvin law firm had six lawyers in it. It was all of nine months old. And Chuck had been also a clerk for Rehnquist. So he was a former Rehnquist clerk. He's one of the top Supreme Court litigators in the country. And he was my first boss. And so I went to work for him to learn how to be a lawyer. He really taught me how to be a lawyer. And so he's representing me in this case, and he's a dear, dear friend. He did a terrific job. And I will say, look, it's never absolutely clear how a case is gonna come out. I think on the merits. There are clearly a majority of justices who agree that this provision's unconstitutional.
- [19:35]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [19:37]
Ted Cruz
The Department of Justice is trying to raise lots of procedural issues that basically are saying, don't get to the merits. Don't address whether the law is constitutional. And so they're throwing a lot of muck in the air trying to say, avoid the actual question of the lawsuit. I hope the court doesn't do that. I hope they actually answer the question because this provision really is designed. And by the way, if you look at the proponents of it, if you look at Harry Reid, you look actually at Kay Bailey Hutchinson, my predecessor in the Senate, they got up and said, this is to make it harder for people to challenge us. This is all about protecting incumbents and protecting the super wealthy, the billionaires. And it's about hurting the small business owner, the doctor, the entrepreneur, the person who wants to run for Congress. Cause they wanna be Mr. Smith going to Washington. They wanna challenge the swamp. So what's the swamp wanna do? Make it a lot harder to challenge the swamp.
- [20:31]
Michael Knowles
Now, speaking of incumbent senators who are desperately trying to hold onto power, there has been a major push from, from the Biden administration and the Democrat senators and Chuck Schumer to get rid of the filibuster before they lose their elections, which increasingly it looks like is gonna happen in November. They are trying to get through any legislation and they can't do that right now'cause they don't have enough votes to get through the 60 vote threshold. And I think you know it more closely than I do. I think that the attempt to kill the filibuster is just as dead as the OSHA mandate. Am I right?
- [21:09]
Ted Cruz
Hopefully, yes. And I think you are. Okay, so you and I were recording this Wednesday, late afternoon. As soon as we finish recording this, I'm going to get up, literally in a half hour I'm gonna be on the Senate floor and we're having the filibuster fight tonight. So I have not yet had that battle, but in about half hour we will. What is going to happen is that Chuck Schumer is going to file cloture on their federal election takeover legislation. Cloture takes 60 votes. It's going to fail. He will probably get all the Democrats. It'll probably be 50. 50, but it will fail because 50 is not 60. They then, I think will yabber a while because they wanna make us listen to them yabber. And then what he's going to do likely is file a motion to reconsider and he will challenge the. He will inquire of the chair whether it takes 50 or 60 votes to proceed to cloture. The chair will reject his claim. We'll say it takes 60. Assuming the chair follows the law.
- [22:17]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [22:18]
Ted Cruz
In which case Schumer will move to appeal. He will appeal the ruling of the chair. That's what's called the nuclear option. So the rules of the Senate, they're written down. They're in a book. We all have that book in our desks. You have the rules of the Senate. The rules of the Senate say cloture takes 60 votes. That's literally black and white typed in the rules. Now, you can change the rules of the Senate. To change the rules of The Senate takes 67 senators. So it's a higher threshold. 67 senators can agree to change the rules of the Senate. They don't have 67 senators. There is one other way to do it, and it's what's called the nuclear option. So Schumer will appeal the ruling of the chair. Any ruling of the chair can be appealed to. Overturn the ruling of the chair just takes 50 votes, takes a majority, doesn't take 60. And then the Senate is weird. If the ruling of the chair is overturned, that becomes a precedent. And they actually keep a book of all the precedents of the Senate. And that precedent has the same force as the rules written on paper. So in other words, if Schumer succeeds, he will break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate.
- [23:32]
Michael Knowles
So now you'll have these two rules written down on the paper. And the new one beats the old one. Right.
- [23:36]
Ted Cruz
And the new one is just a precedent. It's just a majority of the Senate voted that this is now the rules. So the old ones written on the paper don't matter anymore. Right now the good news is, I think the odds are extremely likely, hopefully certain, that Schumer's gonna fail. And the reason for that is that there are two senators, two Democrats, who have been explicit saying they're not gonna participate in nuking the filibuster. Joe Manchin. Kyrsten Sinema. Kyrsten Sinema last week gave a speech on the Senate floor. I was sitting on the floor, I heard her speech where she drew a line and said, I will not do this. This will destroy the Senate. It will destroy bipartisanship, Mind you, one of the illustrations of just how nasty and partisan ending the filibuster would make the Senate. That same week, Joe Biden was down in Georgia giving this racist, nasty, divisive speech, partisan speech. He called half the country Bull Connor racist. He called every Republican in America a Bull Connor racist. He called Joe Manchester, by the way.
- [24:44]
Michael Knowles
He literally said, you are like Bull Connor. You are like George Wa.
- [24:49]
Ted Cruz
Hateful. Now, set aside the irony that Bull Connor and George Wallace were Democrats. Set aside the irony that Joe Biden literally gave a eulogy at Robert Byrd's funeral, an exalted Cyclops of the Ku Klux Klan. So if anyone has no standing to be on his high horse on racial grounds, it's Joseph Biden. But that kind of speech is just. Not only do they not want any Republican, Susan Collins is too conservative or the Mitt Romney is too conservative for them now they don't even want Democrats Manchin and Sinema. Today you've got Bernie Sanders talking about he's going to support primary challengers to Manchin and Cinema. And Chuck Schumer said he didn't know if he would support his own caucus. It is ugly. Assuming Cinema and Mansion don't blink. And I don't think they will at this point. If it was just one of them, the risks, I would be more nervous. Right with the two of them, I'm hoping each bucks the other up.
- [25:53]
Michael Knowles
And just as a matter of practical politics, person to person politics, the Democrats seem to be doing everything they can to irritate Manchin and Cinema. Chasing them into bathrooms and filming them and running them.
- [26:07]
Ted Cruz
I gotta say, with Manchin, you know, come on in, the water's warm. As I told Joe several weeks ago, you know, one of the two parties actually likes you. Right? Right now you want to. So. But the odds are very, very high that tonight Schumer will fail. To be honest, this is performance theater for Schumer's primary in New York that he doesn't want AOC to primary him. So he's trying to appease the radical left by failing tonight. So he's setting it up to fail tonight. It'll be interesting to see if Kamala Harris is in the seat as the presiding officer. My bet is she will be because you know, if you're gonna have a big failure, you do need Kamala to preside over it. And that literally fitting. It's the way they think that it is all about appease the crazy left. This is gonna fail tonight. But do you wanna hear something really ironic? Okay. So we were supposed to be on recess this week. Schumer is a terrible majority leader. He doesn't actually know how to run the Senate. And so he had to like cancel the recess and come back to do this Performance theater and failed night.
- [27:10]
Michael Knowles
I actually on my flight out here today, Rand Paul was, was on the flight because he was called back and had to vote on this.
- [27:16]
Ted Cruz
And we're all here. Every Republican has to be here. You Know, if they could knock one of us off, they could win this filibuster fight. So. So we're like, you know, you know, we've got tasters.
- [27:27]
Michael Knowles
Look over your shoulder, right.
- [27:30]
Ted Cruz
It. For two weeks, they've given speeches about how the filibuster is a Jim Crow relic from racist times. The filibuster is evil. Do you know what the very last thing the Democrats did was for today?
- [27:55]
Michael Knowles
No, no, I have no idea. Senator, let me.
- [27:59]
Ted Cruz
The last thing the Democrats did last week was filibuster my bill. Sanctioning Russia, sanctioning Nord Stream 2. Now, we've talked a lot about Nord Stream 2.
- [28:13]
Michael Knowles
You know, if they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all.
- [28:19]
Ted Cruz
Literally, as they're giving speeches, the filibuster is racist. Let's filibuster this, like, simultaneously. And I gotta say, it was amazing. So this vote, the vote we had last week was a big, big deal on Nord Stream 2.
- [28:33]
Michael Knowles
So this is about this pipeline and it's really about the future of Ukraine vis a vis Russia and vis a vis the West.
- [28:39]
Ted Cruz
Yeah. So the history of it. We've talked a lot about Ukraine on this show. We started off two years ago with impeachment and Ukraine and Burisma. And we talked about how Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union. Right. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation. Ukrainians don't like the Russians. The Russians want to control and dominate Ukraine and many of their neighbors. Most of their neighbors. And Putin. Look, Putin is a KGB thug. He has said one of the most candid things he's ever said is he said that he thinks the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And so Putin longs to reassemble the Soviet Union, have Russia. He wants Soviet greatness again. And if you're reassembling the Soviet Union, there's nothing you want more than Ukraine. Ukraine is the breadbasket. Now, Putin has invaded Ukraine before. He did it in 2014. You remember Crimea? That's part of Ukraine. Putin marched in and invaded it and took it over and kept it and kept it. But he stopped. He didn't continue invading Ukraine. He stopped short. Why did he stop short? Well, the reason is that right now, Russia's major export is natural gas and oil. Putin is basically a petro tyrant. And to get his natural gas to Europe, who is the major consumer of goes through pipelines that go right through Ukraine. So Putin's sitting there going, well, if I march into Ukraine, they could damage or destroy those pipelines. And if they damage or destroy those pipelines, suddenly Russia can't get the gas to Europe and we're screwed. So Putin was mad. Cause he's like, I want to invade them, but they've got a stranglehold on our ability to get gas to Europe. So suddenly I can't invade them. So what did he do? The next year, Putin launched a project called Nord Stream 2. And it was, let's build an undersea pipeline that skips Ukraine altogether, goes under the ocean, and goes straight from Russia to Germany. And that pipeline, once it's complete, we don't have to worry about Ukraine and the energy infrastructure. We can march in and take it over because we can get our gas to Europe. Well, two years ago, I introduced bipartisan legislation to stop it, passed it through Congress. Trump signed it to law, and we stopped the pipeline. We won. The pipeline was dead, buried, stopped, kaput for over a year. Then Joe Biden came into office, and Biden surrendered. He capitulated to Putin. Putin began rebuilding the pipeline, literally, on January 24, 2021.
- [31:23]
Michael Knowles
I'm glad he took a nice long weekend, a few days, and then starts.
- [31:26]
Ted Cruz
Up again four days after Biden sworn in. So the pipeline right now is completed. So Putin has finished it because Biden formally waived the sanctions. But it's still awaiting certification in Europe, so they can't turn it on till the regulatory agents have certified it. And so I introduced legislation to reimpose the sanctions to overturn Biden's surrender to Putin. Now, twice I've introduced legislation like this before, and twice it's passed essentially unanimously. Every Democrat has supported it. Twice we had a big battle in December. I was holding dozens of State Department nominees. We're there till one in the morning. I'm negotiating with Chuck Schumer. I said, all right, I'm gonna lift 32 holds, let these nominees go through in exchange for scheduling the vote on Nord Stream 2 that we had just last week. Schumer gave in, scheduled the vote. They did not want that vote. The Biden White House was lobbying against it like crazy.
- [32:27]
Michael Knowles
Because even if the Democrats win the vote, then they're all on the record of saying, ukraine, see you later.
- [32:34]
Ted Cruz
That's exactly right. And they, for two years, had been squarely against Nord Stream 2. This is a vote. When Trump was president, every Democrat was for these sanctions. The only thing that. There's two things that are different. Number one, instead of a Republican with an R behind his name or a president with an R Behind his name, there's a president with a D behind his name. Now that it's a Democrat, suddenly the Democrats support Russia. And number two, there are over 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. Any day now, we could see the Ukrainian invasion by Russia. And they have to do it in about the next month or so, because as we get into the spring, the land starts to thaw and the Russian tanks get stuck in the mud. So their window to invade is narrow. But we voted on it. It was amazing. We ended up. So I won the vote, won a substantial bipartisan majority of the Senate. The vote was 55 to 44. So every Republican voted yes, except Rand Paul. And Rand Paul pretty much opposes all sanctions. So I got all Republicans but Rand. And on the Democratic side, six Democrats voted with. So it was 55 to 44, a big bipartisan majority.
- [33:57]
Michael Knowles
We're not living in a particularly bipartisan era, so that's impressive.
- [34:01]
Ted Cruz
Now, 55 is not 60. And so the Democrats filibustered and said, you don't have 60. You don't get to pass it. Now, here's another interesting thing. There are a number of Democrats who are in vulnerable elections who are on the ballot in November. Every single Democrat in a vulnerable election in November voted with me. So Mark Kelly in Arizona voted for my sanctions on Russia. Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada voted for my sanctions in Nevada on Russia. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire voted for my sanctions against Russia. Even Raphael Warnock, one of the most liberal senators in the Senate, voted for my sanctions against Russia because he didn't want to tell the voters of Georgia in November. Yeah, I voted to support Putin because I'm a Democrat.
- [34:55]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [34:57]
Ted Cruz
We got six Democrats. You know who we didn't get? Manchin or Sinema.
- [35:03]
Michael Knowles
They're doing enough.
- [35:05]
Ted Cruz
So what was amazing, the day of the vote, Biden came to the Capitol. He had lunch with all the Democratic senators the day of the vote. And Joe Biden was personally lobbying the Democratic senators to vote against Cruz's sanctions on Russia. Wow. And so it's actually. I mean, you said it tongue in cheek, but it's actually true. I just think Manchin and Sinema felt they couldn't stand up to the White House at anything else. They were getting so pounded on everything else.
- [35:34]
Michael Knowles
We've killed your legislative agenda. So. So we'll let you.
- [35:38]
Ted Cruz
And look, I didn't like that they voted no, but I'll give them a mulligan because they are saving the republic on other sides. But the Democrats are literally. This is not hyperbole. They are literally acquiescing in Russia, wiping Ukraine off the map.
- [35:56]
Michael Knowles
So you might say they are thumbing their nose at Ukraine. Which raises one. I know we have to let you get to the Senate to go vote, but it does raise one very important story that involves a victory and a loss. You won a basketball game. You lost the use of your thumb.
- [36:16]
Ted Cruz
True enough. And by the way, that's quite the segue. Let me just say, if the president of Yale ever sees that segue, they will revoke your degree.
- [36:27]
Michael Knowles
They've been trying for years.
- [36:29]
Ted Cruz
Well, that's true that they would revoke your degree for many other reasons before then. So that's probably the least of your sins on that front. So. Yeah, so I broke my thumb.
- [36:39]
Michael Knowles
You don't have a cast on, so I don't.
- [36:41]
Ted Cruz
I've got a splint, but you can take it off.
- [36:43]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [36:43]
Ted Cruz
So I was playing Friday. I play basketball about twice a week. And so Friday, because Schumer doesn't know how to run the Senate, we were still around. And so I was playing Friday morning. And I play a lot of times. Other senators play, but I play every week with my staff. We got some good ballplayers. We got a couple of guys who played college basketball, a couple of guys who played college football. So we're playing.
- [37:07]
Michael Knowles
And you actually have invited me to this game. I did make sure I was busy that day so that I did not humiliate myself on the court.
- [37:15]
Ted Cruz
So I have joked that our game is more violent than skillful. And it is. I mean, we play no blood, no foul. And there are regularly foul. So there is regularly blood. And so in this instance, I was going up for a rebound, and the culprit is a guy who's a law clerk in our office. You'll appreciate this as a New Yorker. His name is Tony. He's from New York. I imagine he is a great guy, hardworking, conservative law student, but he's from Brooklyn, and he played street ball in Brooklyn. And Tony from Brooklyn in every respect. So I went up for a rebound, and he came down like a ton of bricks on my thumb and broke it right across there. So I had an X ray today, and they're like, actually, yesterday had an X ray. They're like, yep, that's. That's a fracture.
- [38:09]
Michael Knowles
So you. You lost a little bit of the use of your thumb, but you did win the game.
- [38:15]
Ted Cruz
I did. And we actually finished the game, terrifyingly enough, with the broken thumb. I tried to shoot and I couldn't I mean, it really hurt.
- [38:26]
Michael Knowles
This is not quite at the level of Teddy Roosevelt getting shot and finishing his speech, but same principle.
- [38:31]
Ted Cruz
But I will say this. I did score a layup with a broken thumb because I could use my four fingers. I just stuck my thumb off to the side and did a little scoop layup. So I even even scored, scored a bucket with a broken thumb.
- [38:42]
Michael Knowles
It's a physical lesson. It's a political lesson. No pain, no gains. Sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for the wins. I hope you get a win tonight. Before we go, you might Remember on the 100th episode of Verdict that we announced a contest, actually a series of contests. Free merch for people who commented. An opportunity maybe to come out and see some other wonderful prizes as well. Well now, because this is the two year anniversary of Verdict with Ted Cruz, we have the winners because we all want to celebrate. Here to introduce those winners, our very own Liz Wheeler.
- [39:19]
Liz Wheeler
Thank you for having me. I don't like to think of this as giving away free stuff, though. This is earned merchandise.
- [39:24]
Michael Knowles
Yes.
- [39:26]
Liz Wheeler
Our community here earned this by being part of what we do. Oh, yeah, we hit these benchmarks, by the way, most of them. And we're going to do the fun stuff anyway. We hit these benchmarks, which is awesome. On YouTube, we said 10 people commenting on episode 100 would get a free box of merch. You know, the sweet cactus hat, the laptop stickers, the T shirts. 1500 people commented, wow, that's pretty good. That's pretty good, right? I think that's incredible. So here are the winners. Ken Melber Jr. You won. Meta Veria, you won. Stefan Diaz, you won. Shelly Carter, you won. Philip Paxton, Driving Fritz. I assume that's a username, right? Thomas Lusty, Dr. Rigg, Mark Erdman, Safespot, Andrew Clark, Megadeth till death. Another username still counts. Todd Cole, Mary Fleshman, and Cosmic Caricella, these are the winners.
- [40:12]
Ted Cruz
By the way, if some parents actually name their child Little Megadeth, yeah, he or she may be very upset right now.
- [40:18]
Michael Knowles
I think that's Slavic.
- [40:21]
Liz Wheeler
So we will reach out to each and every one of you to give you your merch here. And I want to see pictures. I want to see pictures of everybody wearing this. Merchant. So that's on YouTube then on Verdict. This was maybe the most fun one. We said that a member of Verdict plus the Verdict plus community will win an all access trip to come and see us on the road on college campuses. Well, we have a winner here. This is an Italian name. Michael, you can tell me If I'm butchering this, Puzzoli, let me see it.
- [40:49]
Michael Knowles
I would say, aloy, your pronunciation was beautiful.
- [40:52]
Liz Wheeler
He's gonna tell me I'm wrong.
- [40:53]
Michael Knowles
I would say you need a little more. You know, you get the face down. Puzzuoli.
- [40:57]
Liz Wheeler
Puzzoli.
- [40:58]
Michael Knowles
Puzzuoli.
- [41:00]
Liz Wheeler
Well, mister, you have won a trip to see Verdict live. That's pretty awesome. We will reach out to you. And then this is my favorite one and I am going to bias this poll. We are going to post this on the Verdict community. That's Verdict with TedCruz.com because everyone needs to vote in this. For this upcoming year, there's going to be a community based competition or shenanigans, if you will, and this is what you're going to vote on. I'm not taking part in this. I'm just gonna enjoy it. You guys will have to do this. Should for an episode of Verdict, the senator wear a Braves jersey. It's option number one. Option number two, should there be an arm wrestling match between Michael and the senator? I think we all know how that would end. Should the real truth cactus be a special guest on the show? I think that's a good option. Or should there be a throw down episode trash talking Yale versus Princeton?
- [41:50]
Michael Knowles
That could go on for hours.
- [41:52]
Liz Wheeler
That could go on for hours. So this poll will be posted on again, verdict with Ted Cruz.com/plus. Can I tell you which one I want to see which one I. Well, I'm gonna vote for the arm wrestling.
- [42:00]
Michael Knowles
You're gonna vote for the arm. And who do you think is gonna win?
- [42:03]
Liz Wheeler
Michael, don't ask questions. You don't want to know the answer.
- [42:05]
Michael Knowles
To really polite things.
- [42:07]
Liz Wheeler
You can vote in it.
- [42:08]
Ted Cruz
Now, look, Michael may now be engaged. Now that I have a broken thumb, he may suddenly feel he's seized an advantage.
- [42:15]
Michael Knowles
Providence has smiled upon me. Thank you very much. Congratulations to all of the winners. Thank you to everyone who has tuned in for two years. Two years of Verdict. It's wonderful. We look forward to a whole lot more episodes with you. And we look forward to arm wrestling. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [42:43]
Ted Cruz
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.