← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Silent Majority Wins the Day, Biden Grins in the WH Rose Garden & Elon Musk's Influence in Trump Campaign Week In Review
00:28:35
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- [00:00]
Ted Cruz
What an amazing week. A massive red wave. Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, the Weekend Review, Ben Ferguson with you. And. Well, you know what the big story is. Donald Trump is the 47th president, United States of America. So let's start with this. The silent majority made the difference in this election. The silent majority woke up and said, we are sick of the radical extremist policies of Harris and Joe Biden. That was the difference. We'll break it down for you. Plus, could the happiest man in America actually be Joe Biden? Well, he was all smiles when he had his first press conference talking and promising a smooth transition of power to Donald Trump after they forced him out of the White House. And finally Elon Musk all up in a Trump campaign. And now he could be bringing some of his magic to the White House. It's the Weekend Review and it starts right now. Senator, let's also just talk about, I think the silent majority was sick and tired of being dictated to and yelled at and called Hitler and called garbage. I think that played into this race. For the first time a Republican has won the popular vote in two decades, 20 plus years. If that doesn't feel like vindication, I don't know what is. But this was a moment where Americans stood up to the media. They stood up to the Taylor Swifts and the Beyonce's and the, and the George Clooneys of the world and all these radicals in the media and said, no, no, I'm not going to be quiet. I'm not going to be told I'm a racist or a bigot because I stand up for my traditional values and you're not going to bully me anymore. This is massive.
- [01:48]
Ben Ferguson
I think you're exactly right. It turns out it is a bad electoral strategy to insult and condescend and treat the voters like crap. And that's what the Democrats look, in the last two weeks, you had Kamala Harris launch their strategy of calling Donald Trump Hitler. You then had Joe Biden calling half of America pieces of garbage. And you then had Mark Cuban on behalf of Kamala Harris, her top surrogate, go out and insult women and say there are no smart and strong women voting for Donald Trump. That combination. Look, I gotta tell you, I've run in a lot of elections. I've never found that insulting the voters is a smart electoral strategy. And it was a little bizarre to see the Democrats go all in on that.
- [02:35]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, it didn't work and it was a failure there. Let's talk about what happens in the Senate because I think this goes back to how important it was with your race and the fact that you were able to win by such a large margin over already. There was an incredible amount of money. We didn't get to talk about this on Verdict, as we mentioned earlier, but there was incredible amount of money. And Chuck Schumer, you were his number one target. They came after you. They basically kind of pulled away from this race a little bit financially after you just wiped him during the debate. Congratulations on that. Something we didn't get to talk about on the show. But if people are bored and they're junkies like I am and you want to watch one hell of a debate, go watch Senator Cruz. And they all read debate. It was unbelievable. And that shifted the race financially. But the amount of money that came in from outside to try to turn Texas into a liberal state. But at the end of the day, Republicans are closer to flipping New York than, than, than Texas. And that is a data point as well that I think you got to look at.
- [03:35]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, no, no, that's exactly right. I will say the debate, the debate was ridiculous fun. I loved that debate. I had a lot of fun doing it and I think it went well. I will look this race, Chuck Schumer was explicit that I was his number one target in the country. And they flooded cash into the state of Texas. This race was the single most expensive Senate race in the entire country. It will end up being nearly a quarter billion dollars. Nearly $250 million will have been spent on both sides in this race. That ain't cheap. Schumer poured well over 100 million into the race. And I got to say, one of my more fun things that I enjoyed doing last night at the election night speech is I took the opportunity to thank Schumer. I said, thanks, Chuck. We may have won a couple more Senate seats tonight because you wasted so much money in the state of Texas. So I appreciate that. And it, I gotta say, I guarantee you there's some Democrats who are second guessing that, who are questioning, did that make any sense just to pour the money into Texas and lose the states they lost?
- [04:52]
Ted Cruz
You talk about the Senate agenda moving forward, obviously the border's gonna be something very quick. But there are some new ideas that have come out of this Trump campaign that connected with voters. A great examp example is Elon Musk and Trump talking about, hey, retired people should be completely tax exempt. They've already paid their taxes. We need to stop taxing Social Security benefits. Some of these common sense things. What are the chances that some of these ideas that connected with the American people. No taxes on tips is another example. Will turn into a reality if we have the House and Senate. Or is that still going to be a really tough thing to get done?
- [05:29]
Ben Ferguson
Look, if we have the House, I think we'll get it done. No taxes on tips. I'm the author of that legislation in the Senate. When I introduced it, it was interesting. It's bipartisan legislation. Both of the Democrat senators from Nevada joined almost immediately. They told me 25% of the workers in Nevada are tipped workers. And so they jumped on immediately. If we have the House, I think it will be part of the tax cuts. No taxes on tips. I also think we'll get it done. No taxes on Social Security. That is a little bit harder to do because in terms of the budgetary cost, it's not cheap. And so the negotiations back and forth, there'll be some bumps on that. But the president is pushing for it. I'm strongly in favor of it. I think we'll get it done as part of the tax cuts. Both of those are big, big important policy ideas. And listen, in terms of the Senate, let's break down where we stand on the Senate right now. So we went into last night with the Democrats having a 51, 49 majority. As of right now, Republicans have 52. So we have three pickups that are clear. One of them is West Virginia. We KNEW that was 100%. And so Jim justice, the governor is going to now be the senator. He's going to replace Joe Manchin. The Democrats basically conceded West Virginia once. Joe Manchin wasn't running. There wasn't a Democrat alive who could win West Virginia. They conceded that the two others that we have won are Montana and Ohio. Montana was John Tester. Montana's a bright red state and Tim Sheehy just beat Tester. That's a victory we thought was quite likely and it happened. Montana is too red a state to be represented by a Democrat. Ohio, likewise, Sherrod Brown was beaten by Bernie Moreno last night. That's a great victory. That was a hard fought victory. I'll tell you. Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are two of the very best politicians in the country. You don't get elected counter to the way your state generally votes unless you're really, really talented. And you know Jon Tester with a flat top haircut. Nate figures he seemed like a big old fat Montana rancher that just was a regular guy and it got him elected. Even when Trump was carrying the state and Republicans were carrying the state in past years. Same is true in Ohio, where Sherrod Brown seemed like just a regular guy at the union hall. And there were voters in Ohio that were voting Donald Trump, Sherrod Brown. Now, both Brown and Tester vote like communists. They vote like Chuck Schumer. But they're very good character actors. And when they're back at home, they pretended not to. Those two victories ensure that we have the majority in the Senate. And then on top of that, right now, we have four other possibilities. We had one hard loss. We did not win Wisconsin. We were leading a good chunk of the night. Eric Hovde was narrowly leading Tammy Baldwin. Wisconsin's now been called for the Democrats. So assuming those numbers are right, it looks like we did not win Wisconsin in the Senate, although Trump won Wisconsin in the presidential. Right now, we have a shot at winning Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, and Arizona. All of those are uncalled right now. And here are the numbers. Pennsylvania, right now, Dave McCormick, the Republican, is leading 48.9% to 48.5%. So it's really, really close. Michigan. Michigan. Right now, the Democrat is leading 48.6% to 48.3%. So we are down by 0.3%. Both Pennsylvania and Michigan, 97% of the vote is in Nevada. Nevada, right now, the Republican, Sam Brown is leading 47.5% to 47%. That would be a flip if we won Nevada. 88% of the vote is in there. And then Arizona. Arizona. Right now, this is probably the. It's the furthest distance we have to have to climb. The Democrat is leading 50.4% to 47.7%. So it's. So it's three points that we need to pick up. Almost three points. Now, only 63% of the vote is in. In Arizona. And it's Maricopa County. It's the suburbs of, of Phoenix that are still counting. So look, it is certainly possible that we win Arizona. Trump has won Arizona. But three points is a bigger margin to close than the other states. And so all four of those, we're gonna wait and see.
- [10:15]
Ted Cruz
Let, let's talk finally about the takeaways from the media. And I'll go back to what I said earlier. Donald Trump trumped them all. He trumped the Democrats. He trumped the globalists. He trumped the deep state. He trumped the news media. They're still having meltdowns. This morning, The View, the girls on the View, the ladies on the View came out wearing black like it was a funeral. Mental health crisis. MSNBC's O'Donnell trashes the founding Fathers called the Electoral College voter suppression. This morning, Joy Reid at MSNBC said, for an extreme right wing fascist state. Now officially, um, Van Jones came out and started playing the race card and the gender card. Uh, Jon Stewart had a total meltdown on his show. And, and, and this is just what we're seeing in the moments after a Trump victory. It's like they didn't learn their lesson. They, I mean, you would think they would take away and go, okay, what did we do wrong? They're not stopping.
- [11:19]
Ben Ferguson
You know, look, we'll, we'll see what happens. I think there, right now, there's a lot of blaming of Kamala for being a terror, terrible candidate. There's a lot of blaming of Joe Biden for having been essentially unconscious for several years. I don't see the Democrats right now taking responsibility for, gosh, we advocated an agenda that was horrible for America. You know, there used to be Senate moderates among the Democrats. I don't know of any Senate moderates left. The only two arguable ones were Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. They're both gone. And so that, that dynamic, you know, you, you look at, I would love to see some Democrats recalibrate and say, let's move to the middle. But, but I think right now they're just emoting. They're just engaged in, in, in a combination of rage and shock and disbelief. Look, you know, you and I talked about Mark Halperin. He used to be the head of political news at abc, did an interview with Tucker Carlson where Halperin said that he thought there would be real mental health crises and violence from the left if Trump won, that he was laying out the case that those of us not afflicted with Trump derangement syndrome do not understand just how much of a meltdown this will be. I, look, I hope we don't go there, but I do think I don't see many Democrats willing to repent and change their ways.
- [13:03]
Ted Cruz
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now, on to story number two. You know, one of the things that's also interesting about this conversation is the fact that Democrats who said, well, you know, we were trying to save democracy, we're screwed now, we got a dictator tyrant coming in are actually the ones acting like that. Governor Newsom has already come out saying, I'm calling a special session to prep the battle against incoming Trump administration. Calling It a special legislative session focused on potential state litigation against the Trump administration over issues that could impact his state.
- [13:50]
Ben Ferguson
Look, they're going to resist on every front. They're going to fight because why? Because they hate democracy. That's the irony. They talk about democracy constantly. But what they mean of democracy is we will force you to obey us whether or not the voters want it. They don't actually want democracy. If they wanted democracy, they wouldn't have prosecuted Trump four different times because they would have trusted the voters. They like power and they mask their lust for power and calling it democracy. But I gotta say, there's at least one Democrat right now who is celebrating, who is smiling ear to ear, who may well be the happiest man in the world, and that would be Joseph Robinette Biden. He is joyful. And I'm gonna wager you 20 bucks that Joe Biden and Jill Biden, they both pulled the lever for Donald Trump when they voted on Tuesday.
- [14:40]
Ted Cruz
I, I, it wouldn't surprise me because if you go back to this coup and to quickly remind people it was the, it was the Democratic Mafia and the fam, the fan, the five families, it was the Schumer, Pelosi, Obama, Clintons that were in this. And Harris, those five families had a coup. I think they probably threatened him with the 25th amendment. If you don't step aside, we're going to do this to you because we don't want to lose and we think we can win with Harris and Joe Biden. I have not seen him have a bigger grin on his face when he did this Rose Garden conversation, whatever you want to call it.
- [15:20]
Ben Ferguson
Look, the whole thing started, I mean, I think Biden found out about it when he woke up with, with his dog Majors head in his bed. And he was just screaming and screaming and screaming. And for those of you all too young to get the reference, that's a reference to the Godfather where, where the movie producer who refuses to cast a young Frank Sinatra has this, this prize racehorse that, that, that the Godfather decapitates and puts the horse's head in the bed. And, and it really was, it was the five families. They met and they said, Mr. Biden, your services are no longer needed. And, and you know what? I think Joe Biden is pissed. I don't think it's an accident that Joe Biden put on a MAGA hat in the middle of the election. And I do not think it is an accident that Jill Biden, when she went to vote dressed in all red. I think that was was quite deliberate. But. But listen to Joe Biden. Listen to the. The joy that he is emanating today.
- [16:20]
Ted Cruz
Now take a listen to Joe Biden and I. I'll say it again. When he came out, he was grinning from ear to ear in the Rose Garden.
- [16:28]
Joe Biden
Yeah, it's good to see you all. Particularly good to see my granddaughter sitting in the front row here. Hi, Finn. How are you, honey? For over 200 years, America has carried on the greatest experiment in self government in the history of the world. That's not hyperbole, that's a fact. We're the people. The people vote and choose their own leaders, and they do it peacefully. And we're in a democracy. The will of the people always prevails. Yesterday I spoke with President Elect Trump to congratulate him on his victory. And I assured him that I'd direct my entire administration to work with his team to ensure a peaceful and orderly transition. That's what the American people deserve. Yesterday I also spoke with Vice President Harris. She's been a partner and a public servant. She ran an inspiring campaign. And everyone got to see something that I learned early on to respect so much. Her character. She has a backbone like a ramrod. She has great character, true character. She gave her whole heart and effort. And she and her entire team should be proud of the campaign they ran. You know, the struggle for the soul of America since our very founding has always been an ongoing debate and still vital today. I know for some people it's a time for victory to state the obvious. For others, it's a time of loss. Campaigns are contest of competing visions. A country chooses one or the other. We accept the choice the country made. I've said many times, you can't love your country only when you win. You can't love your neighbor only when you agree. Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature. I also hope we can lay to rest the question about the integrity of the American electoral system. It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent. And it can be trusted, win or lose. I also hope we can restore the respect for all our election workers who busted their necks and took risks at the outset. We should thank them. Thank them for staffing voting sites, counting the votes, protecting the very integrity of the election. Many of them are volunteers who do it simply out of love for their country. And as they did, as they did their duty as citizens, I will do my duty as president. I'll Fulfill my oath, and I will honor the Constitution. On January 20th, we'll have a peaceful transfer of power here in America. To all our incredible staff, supporters, cabinet members, all the people who are hanging out with me for the last 40 years. God love you. As my mother would say, thank you so much. You put so much into the past four years. I know it's a difficult time.
- [19:55]
Ted Cruz
I mean, this was a different Joe Biden. You could even say a joyous Joe Biden. He was not what you would normally think. And you got to look at it and go, man, he was living it up on election night. Like, you guys threw me out. And guess what? You didn't get the prize after all.
- [20:10]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. And look, I am certain that Joe Biden looked at his family, looked at his top staff, and said, if it had been me, I'd have won. He believes it. He believes it through and through. And I don't think he will ever forgive Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer for throwing him overboard, doing it unceremoniously, and saying, we want Kamala instead. And look, we'll never know what that alternative reality would be. I mean, Biden's first debate was a disaster. That's undoubtedly true. But I will tell you, on election night, Biden did better everywhere than Kamala did. Like Kamala, or let me frame it in the obverse, Kamala did worse than Biden did everywhere. And Joe Biden, I think, is. Is. Is celebrating and. And not even that quietly. And you know what? I'm celebrating, too, because it means the country. It's morning in America again, and we're turning the country around as before.
- [21:15]
Ted Cruz
If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed. All right, let me ask you this question. You've actually met and chatted with Elon Musk. There is something different that's happening right now, and that's the people around Trump. There's a very good chance that Elon Musk could be involved in the. In the Trump administration. On a real level, we see him bring in people like RFK Jr. We see him bringing in different minds that traditional, you know, politicians have not done. How significant could it be to have a guy like Elon Musk coming in and looking at, like, you know, accountability and efficiency with our United States government, which is clearly bloated. And this is something he's really good at.
- [22:06]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, look, Elon is extraordinary. I know him well. He's become a friend. I've spent a lot of time with Elon. I'll tell you that. There are smart people you encounter in life. Elon is next level. I mean, there's just. The guy is frigging brilliant and he knows how to run a company. Like, you look at the incredible success he has, whether it's Tesla, whether it's SpaceX, whether it's the boring company, whether it is X. Like he has an ability to run a. And by the way, many of those companies are like really precise manufacturers. You look at SpaceX where they're manufacturing rocket ships with precision within like, like a tenth of an inch or less. I mean, it is. And I've been down to their, like their factory in Boca Chica, down and down by Brownsville in the southern tip of Texas. I mean, it is remarkable. They're churning out a rocket ship a month and they just built it out of nothing. I mean, it is, it's incredible. And Elon is all in. We saw him pour himself into this election at the end, I think it made a difference. I think he made a difference in Pennsylvania where he really devoted a lot of time and energy and money and personal credibility. And I think it will be significant his impact on the federal government. Now there are structural impediments to having efficiency in government. And so I don't think people should think we're suddenly gonna be in nirvana and everything will be solved. Because in a company, Elon can walk in and fire anyone he wants. And by the way, when he bought Twitter, he fired a whole bunch of the folks there and all the woke radicals. He basically said, bye, bye, you're out of here. The federal government, that is much, much harder to do. You've got civil service protections that enables career bureaucrats to burrow in. I think we will see the Trump administration take on the career bureaucracy in a way that has never ever happened before. That's a big deal. I expect Elon to play an important role in that. But I don't want to understate the legal barriers, the bureaucratic barriers. That it is not like just coming into a company where you have the ability to give anyone a pink slip. The bureaucracy will fight back. And by the way, in the first Trump term, we saw the deep state wage war on Donald Trump. I very much hope the team coming in understands much, much better just how dangerous the foe is. They're facing of the radical leftist who burrowed into the federal government and that they're better, better prepared and ready to take them on.
- [24:49]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, no doubt about it. And by the way, saving free speech by buying X just so people know how biased I would say the media is. And I'm talking about the media. You have control over Facebook. We were comparing last night, many conservative influencers and Senator, you're going to find this interesting. From October 9th through November 5th, the reach that I had on Facebook was down 83.6% as a conservative on Facebook in the month leading up to election day. And there were quite a few other conservatives. I was talking earlier with Meghan McCain about this and we opened up our analytics, our insights on our public pages and again, I'm looking at it right now. 83.6%. That's how much they turned off the faucet to free speech of conservative influencers on Facebook, on Meta, on Instagram in the last 30 days before the election. So the liberals had free flow of intel and information and their side and conservatives were throttled almost 85%. I just think that's interesting to see what Elon Musk did to save freedom of speech on X. He didn't do that there. He let everybody talk. God bless America when it comes to that. Your final thoughts to all the listeners of Verdict, all those that came out and voted for you. I know you want to say something to them as well.
- [26:23]
Ben Ferguson
Look to the listeners of Verdict. You guys are amazing. You're the most informed, you're the most engaged. You care about our nation. You're fighting to save our nation and everyone in Texas who worked so unbelievably hard. Look, this was a battle, I believe, about keeping Texas. Texas, my race, the money, the media, everything that came in against us. If you live in Texas, by the way, thank God the ads are over. I mean, you couldn't turn on your TV without every second or third ad being an attack ad. Just hammering the living daylights out of me and the people of Texas. I'll tell you, it was inspirational. You came out on the road with me. We did a 53 stop bus tour all across the state of Texas, over 9,000 miles. We covered, we did rallies everywhere. And it was incredible. The people. And you're just ordinary people. Students, senior citizens, single moms, Hispanics, African Americans, just Texans standing up and saying, we want to keep Texas. Texas. We want low taxes, low and reasonable regulations, lots of jobs. We want security. We want the border secure. We want to support law enforcement. We want criminals in jail. We want to defend our freedom. We want free speech, religious liberty, the second Amendment, all of that was on the ballot last night. And I want to say it is breathtaking. The Texans that came out for me and nationally, the people who supported the campaign, who contributed to the campaign, thank you, thank you, thank you. And the people who supported Donald Trump, who supported Senate candidates and House candidates across the country, you helped change America and I believe pull it back from the brink of destruction. And I just wanna say thank you to the incredible patriots who together saved America last night.
- [28:15]
Ted Cruz
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my PODC and you can listen to my podcast every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson Podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning.