← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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- [00:01]
Ted Cruz
Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. Senator. The House has adjourned until Friday. After an 11th fail vote to come up with a speaker, deals are being made. They're saying or trying to get done behind the scenes. And then there's some people that are deciding to call people in their own party terrorists. Representative Dan Crenshaw said this, get another scalp and another scalp.
- [00:26]
Ben Ferguson
Whether it's, Whether it's Boehner or Paul.
- [00:29]
Ted Cruz
Ryan or then McCarthy, Scalise would just.
- [00:32]
Ben Ferguson
Be next, and we all know it.
- [00:33]
Ted Cruz
We just can't allow that to happen.
- [00:35]
Ben Ferguson
That's why those of us are saying.
- [00:37]
Ted Cruz
Like, look, you pushed us into this corner.
- [00:38]
Ben Ferguson
So now we're, now we're saying we won't vote for anyone but McCarthy.
- [00:41]
Ted Cruz
That's why we're saying it, because we cannot let the terrorists win.
- [00:45]
Ben Ferguson
That's basically what's happening.
- [00:47]
Ted Cruz
Since you and I talked last time, Senator, I didn't think any of this could actually happen. I didn't think we'd get to vote. 11. Here we are, we're going into Friday, it could be into the weekend. There are people now claiming that this is an embarrassment. I'm still not there yet. I'd love to know what you think. I think this is just part of the great process.
- [01:10]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. Look, my view is settle down, this will work out and it'll be fine. That that kind of overheated rhetoric calling people terrorists is not terribly conducive to anything resembling Republican unity. It's not conducive to having strong leadership for the next two years in the House, engaging in vitriol and personal attacks. Listen, I think a lot of the caterwauling we're hearing is from the media and it's from the Democrats. And to be honest, the media and the Democrats are one in the same. And they have an agenda. Their agenda is to say the Republicans are a failure. The Republicans are terrible. The Republicans are disaster. That's what they're going to say. No matter what, no matter what is happening. That's going to be their talking points. And so all of the screaming of the media, I think, is. Is overwrought. This is the Democratic process. And it is true that we haven't had a contested speaker race like this in a hundred years, but it's also part of the way the process operates. We've had at this point, 11 different votes. And it's just, it's run a couple of days, the votes, there's been some movement. So for the first round, all the Democrats Voted together. First round, Hakeem Jeffries, who's, who's the new Democrat leader, got 212 votes. It takes 218 to be speaker. Hakeem Jeffries is not going to be speaker. It's going to be a Republican speaker. Kevin McCarthy got 203. And there were a collection of people, 10, 10 Republicans voted for Andy Biggs from Arizona, six for Jim Jordan, one for Jim Banks from Indiana, one for former representative Lee Zeldin, and one for Byron Donald. So there were initially 19. That was the first round. The second round, the numbers didn't change, but they shifted who they voted for. In the second round, again, McCarthy got 203. But the second round, Jim Jordan got all 19 of the defectors. And so the votes for Biggs, the votes for Banks, Zeldin's, Byron Donalds, all of them went behind Jim Jordan. He got 19. How about the third round? Well, the third round, McCarthy lost a vote. McCarthy dropped to 202 and Jim Jordan got 20 votes. And the vote that shifted was Byron Donalds, who had committed to McCarthy that he would vote for him for two rounds, but not the third. And what he publicly said is he shifted his vote because he thought Kevin was not going to get to 218. I don't know if that's right or not. The fourth round, it continues. But then we had, as just a little bit more of a complication, we had one more Republican, Victoria Spartz, who voted present. So McCarthy lost a vote. He went down from 202 to 201. And in the fourth round, also, Byron Donalds is who the dissenters voted for. So Donald's got 20. So Jim Jordan had gotten 20 votes, then Byron Donalds got 20 votes. And then you had the fifth round, the numbers are the same. Sixth round, the numbers are the same. Seventh round, the numbers are the same except for one tweak, which is that Matt Gaetz voted for Donald Trump.
- [04:38]
Ted Cruz
Can we just pause there for a second and talk about.
- [04:40]
Ben Ferguson
Sure.
- [04:41]
Ted Cruz
That was a funny moment. And I say this because Donald Trump had been tweeting out on his are true socially, on his platform, I'm supporting Kevin McCarthy. Let's move on. Let's make him the guy. And then Matt Gaetz, who it was one in the same with Donald Trump through basically the entire time he's in the White House, nominates him and he's saying, no, no, like that's, I don't want this job. Obviously, I'm telling you to go Kev McCarthy. That was one. If you just Want to sit back and pop some popcorn and eat it. That was one of those moments for me. Like, wait, what is happening right now?
- [05:16]
Ben Ferguson
Well, and to be fair, that's the same thing that happened with Jim Jordan. You know, Jim Jordan was nominated. The first time Jim Jordan was nominated was immediately after he had nominated Kevin McCarthy.
- [05:27]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [05:29]
Ben Ferguson
And so he's likewise said that he doesn't want the job, but they're nominating and voting for him anyway. Look, the speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House. So theoretically, Donald Trump could be speaker of the House. Now, that's not going to happen. Don't hold your breath. There was one vote cast for that, and that was. You're not going to see 218 votes cast for Trump as Speaker. It's going to be a House member. What played out in the night in the eighth and ninth rounds, we had Kevin Hearn from Oklahoma, who got three votes initially and then got seven votes. And then on the 11th round got seven votes. And so where we are right now is McCarthy is at 200, so he's 18 votes short. The last round of balloting, akeem Jeffries had 212. He's had it the whole time. So all the Democrats are just voting for him. McCarthy's down to 200. Byron Donalds got 12, Kevin Hearn from Oklahoma got seven. Former President Trump, the last round again got one vote. And then, and then there, there was a present vote. So that's where the votes are now. You know, my reaction to all the histrionics is, is this is going to shake out. And, and it's gonna shake out one of two ways. One, and this, this may well be the most likely outcome, which is they negotiate an agreement where McCarthy has been making concessions to the centers, making concessions based on rules, making concessions based on how the House operates, making concessions, making it easier for members to offer amendments, easier for amendment for members to fight for conservative principles. It may be that, that, that McCarthy makes enough concessions that he gets the votes he needs. He needs to pick up 18 more votes. But if he does that, then we could have an agreement. And I will say so, probably. The ringleader of the dissenters has been Chip Roy from Texas, who, by the.
- [07:43]
Ted Cruz
Way, if you're teaching a master class on speaker votes and bringing people together, or at least making people understand where you're coming from, Chip Roy, I think, has played this perfectly. And I mean that sincerely in the fact that he, he let people understand why he was not voting for McCarthy. And he also explained very clearly what it would take for him to vote for Kevin McCarthy and the rules changes that he wanted. I think there are so many Americans that go, okay, this is a guy I understand, I respect him. And if you're teaching a masterclass, if there's anything to learn from this, don't keep moving the goalposts when you're objecting to someone. And if it's as simple as I just don't like him, then stick with that, but don't keep changing it. I think he has done the best job of articulating some of the concerns and the things that he wanted to change. I would give him an A plus in class.
- [08:50]
Ben Ferguson
Well, look, there's no doubt Chip has been effective and he's been articulate and he's been focused on substance. I mean, part of, you know what, what makes this complicated is you've got 20 players, and the 20 folks who have, who have been the dissenters, many of them are operating from for different reasons. Chip at least has, has not focused his opposition on a personal animosity to Kevin McCarthy. He hasn't been focused on demonizing or attacking him personally. Rather, he's been focused on the rules, he's been focused on the procedures. He's been focused on how the House operates. One very significant concession that McCarthy made on Wednesday night is, is that Kevin made a public commitment that going forward, he would not engage in Republican primaries. There were a number of primaries this past cycle where Kevin McCarthy's PAC supported the much more moderate Republican and attacked the more conservative Republican, even in bright red seats, where whoever wins was going to be the nominee. And quite a few of the House conservatives were unhappy that Kevin was raising significant amounts of money and spending it, that money against conservatives in primaries. Well, McCarthy made a public commitment, and interestingly enough, he made a commitment in the Club for Growth, which often fights against, at least in past cycles. McCarthy in these primaries in turn expressed their willingness to support McCarthy if he would stay out of primaries. That's a big deal, that commitment.
- [10:37]
Ted Cruz
When you say that's a big deal, explain scenarios where this could have changed outcome of House races. Because I don't think people understand how much the money can really decide who's going to win these things in primaries.
- [10:51]
Ben Ferguson
Money plays a massive role in a lot of elections. It doesn't necessarily decide them. But there were multiple elections across the country where, where McCarthy's PAC got involved in the primary, not in the general, not trying to support the Republican against the Democrat. Now, they did that, to be clear, Kevin's PAC spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting Republicans in the general. So I don't want to diminish. He worked very hard trying to elect Republicans across the country. But there are a number of House conservatives who were angry that he was. He was playing in primaries. And by the way, that's reprising a battle that happened in the Senate over a decade ago. You know, if you remember back to the 2010 cycle.
- [11:39]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [11:40]
Ben Ferguson
Where Senate leadership engaged at a bunch of primaries. And so, for example, Senate leadership came in the primary against Rand Paul in Kentucky. They came in the primary against Mike Lee in Utah. They came in the primary against Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania. They came in the primary against. Against Marco Rubio in Florida. And Senate leadership just screwed it up. I mean. I mean, all four of those, they got clobbered. They got a black eye. And I will say, actually, as a bit of interesting trivia, I may have been a beneficiary because 2010 Senate leadership got such a black eye for making the wrong call in race after race after race, and losing that in 2012, which is the year I got elected to the Senate, Senate leadership stayed out of primaries. And look, I got to say in hindsight, that that probably is a good thing for me because they would not have been supporting me in that primary.
- [12:39]
Ted Cruz
No, no way at all. They would have. They would have definitely been supporting your opponent, who was the safe Republican establishment candidate that you were clearly up against. And he had tons of funding as well.
- [12:52]
Ben Ferguson
Well, and he had, as he had, A, every lobbyist in the state of Texas was with him because he was sitting Lieutenant Governor, and B, he was worth over $200 million. So he wrote a $35 million check. But the point was, Senate Republican leadership kind of stepped in it in 2010 and has been much more wary of getting in primaries since then. This last cycle, McCarthy was pretty vocal engaging in primaries, and I think that's one of the concerns that is animating these dissenters.
- [13:28]
Ted Cruz
Let me ask you this. One of the things, you look at these 20, and I think it's clear that some of the 20, it's just personal. And, and I, I know there has to be moments in your career, Senator, where there's certain people in the Senate on your side that you just don't click with you. You just don't like. Maybe they fl. They flat out lied to your face. Maybe they've lied to you about something they were going to work with you on or support or a bill. But you do have to remind yourself, I'M this isn't me personally. I'm here to represent the interests of the people of the state or the community. Right. Where you are from, if you're a congressman, for example, how much, how many blunders could be happening here because people are making this too much about them personally, not enough about maybe their constituents.
- [14:21]
Ben Ferguson
Look, emotions matter and people have personal sentiments and hurt feelings and, and I certainly don't know what, what, what went on behind closed doors, but what makes this complicated to reach a negotiated settlement is each of these 20 are operating on their own. So if, if, for example, if Chip Roy had the authority to commit for all 20 of them, if they all essentially gave, gave him their proxy and said if you cut a deal, we'll stick with you, I think the odds are pretty good that Chip and McCarthy could reach a deal because I do think Chip has done a good job of focusing on procedural issues to, to expand debate, expand the ability to offer amendments, expand leverage conservatives would have in the House. And I think they could probably get to the same page. What may make it impossible is I don't know how many of these players are just emotional and have hurt feelings. I don't know for how many of them it's personal with Kevin or not. Look, you know, when you've got, when you've got folks using rhetoric like calling them terrorists, you know, if you call someone a terrorist, that's not terribly conducive to getting them to come along and play nice.
- [15:50]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, I mean that goes back to what I was saying earlier about if you're teaching a master class here, the do's and don'ts are, don't go and make it even more personal and think, oh well, that's going to get the 20 to really come around when that type of rhetoric is being used while you desperately need their votes to give yourself and some of your guys are going out there as surrogates and saying things like that, that's not going to help you get the 20 to come over. It's not like that's going to get them to see the light of day. That's going to make them, I would assume, just by human nature, dig in.
- [16:23]
Ben Ferguson
You know, as a general matter, relying on insults to try to bludgeon your opposition is, it's a perilous path unless you have all the leverage. And at this point with just a four vote majority, I'm not sure anyone has all the leverage. That is a very perilous path. And so I think we will either see some negotiated settlement that involves procedural concessions from McCarthy or at some point, if, if the votes don't move and the votes don't move and the votes don't move, presumably there will be some other candidate who becomes a consensus candidate. Now, I don't think that would happen unless McCarthy decided, okay, the votes aren't here for me because Kevin would certainly have the votes to stop anybody else. So, so it would take, it would take Kevin making the decision. This isn't going to happen. And I think I have not spoken, I haven't spoken to any of the players actually during this. So I haven't, I haven't spoken to Kevin during this. I haven't spoken to Chip. I haven't spoken to any of the folks there. So I'm, I'm watching it on tv. I'm watching it on Twitter like everybody else, and I know most of the players quite well. I mean, the, these members of Congress, almost all of them are close friends of mine. So, I mean, I know, know who they are as people. And you know, these folks are principled and they believe in what they're trying to do. But you'll either see a negotiated settlement, I don't know what the terms are. If there are there, there is one. Or presumably at some point someone else becomes a consensus candidate. And I don't know who that would be. And I suspected an enormous amount of that would depend on Kevin McCarthy and the decision making he made.
- [18:20]
Ted Cruz
Let's talk about another aspect of this, and that is the media. Obviously, they're trying to grab on and find headlines to fear monger people. Earlier today, they had a big, long discussion. I think it was on cnn, where they were saying, well, this could become a national security issue because they can't get briefings and there's people that aren't even elected. They're going to get better briefings than the people that haven't been sworn in yet with this new Congress on the House side. And this is going to be an issue. I mean, they're trying to give us a doomsday scenario here. How long can this go? And everything really is just fine.
- [19:01]
Ben Ferguson
Oh, look, I, I think the national security argument is just gobbledygook. This is going to get resolved, and I think it'll get resolved fairly quickly. It could get resolved today, it could get resolved in a few days. I imagine there are scenarios where it could take a couple of weeks. I don't envision any world where it takes longer than that. And I don't even think it'll take a couple of weeks. I think it's going to end up one way or the other, this is going to be resolved. So the idea that it is this horrible affront to the Republic for the House to spend a couple of days debating their leadership, that's just a weird idea. As we talked about in the last podcast, there's a reason I led the fight in the Senate for us to have several weeks of debate on Senate leadership. And we had that debate, at least the beginnings of the debate, which we haven't had in a long time now, because the Senate doesn't have a procedure like this where the leader is elected on the floor. It wasn't done on C Span.
- [20:09]
Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [20:09]
Ben Ferguson
And it wasn't done in a context that holds up the House for a period of time. It was done behind closed door with the Senate. But I think in both Houses having a debate about what leadership is going to do, how they're going to approach it, what their priorities are, what fights they're willing to fight. Look, the question that I asked Mitch McConnell repeatedly, what are you willing to fight for? Give me one thing. Anything. And tragically, it appeared the only thing that so far Republican leadership was willing to fight for was the disaster of a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, the Pelosi Schumer spending bill. So the reason for the frustration that I think a lot of voters have is, is evident. But, but my overarching message also is, is, you know, folks need to relax a little bit. This will get resolved. We're going to have a House majority, we're going to have a Republican speaker, we're going to have Republican chairman in the committees, we're going to have oversight hearings, we're going to have subpoenas, we're going to have legislation moving forward. All of that is going to happen. And at the end of the day, the cosmos is not dramatically different if it happens in a week or two days ago.
- [21:33]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, well, and I laugh because Democrats, it was like they were throwing jello at the wall on tv. And the commentators, because Jeffries came out the first one they basically tried early in the day on Thursday, Senator was, oh, this could become a national security issue. By mid afternoon, they had switched from that. And Representative Jeffries, national security.
- [21:56]
Ben Ferguson
Look, we've got a Senate in the Senate, we all have, have our security clearances and the ability to be read, read into things. And you know, we also have, when it really comes to national security, what, you know, you've got a president and a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense and a chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Now, you and I aren't very happy with the job they're doing. When you actually talk about national security, I think the people in the Biden administration are affirmatively harmful for that. But the idea that it would somehow impact national security to have a few days debate over leadership is a weird argument.
- [22:37]
Ted Cruz
Well, and I laugh because they went from that early in the day, and then it was like, all right, well, we need something else to throw out there. And then Representative Jeffries comes out and he says this.
- [22:47]
Ben Ferguson
National security vulnerabilities. This is a dangerous moment for Americans and for the world. It's one of the reasons why the Congress needs to organize. There are public health vulnerabilities. It's one of the reasons why the Congress needs to organize and Republicans need to get their act together.
- [23:07]
Ted Cruz
So they threw that on there. It became. Well, now it's also. It's not just national security now, it's public health. I'm laughing because the Senate's in recess right now. If, if they had picked the speaker, wouldn't most of these people be home by now?
- [23:23]
Ben Ferguson
They'd all be home. Right. Every one of them would.
- [23:26]
Ted Cruz
Nothing would have changed. Right.
- [23:27]
Ben Ferguson
Actually, they're in D.C. now. The irony is that the reason the House is there is because of this. If they picked the speaker, they would have gone home. And look, I don't fault Hakeem Jeffries for doing what he's doing. That's what you do. Look, if you're the opposing party and the other side is having an internal food fight, you stand there and laugh and you eat popcorn and you throw rocks from the cheap seat. So of course that's what he's doing. And to be clear, if, if the shoe were on the other foot the Democrats were having, if it was AOC challenging Nancy Pelosi, you and I'd be sitting there going, man, they can't get their act together. And we would be doing exactly what Jeffries is doing. So I don't fault him for that. I'll tell you what I do fault, though, is there are some who are engaged in nasty rhetoric on the Republican side, but also on the Democrat side, Cori Bush. That's.
- [24:26]
Ted Cruz
That's what I was going to say to you, was you just said the laughing and you'd sit back. How hard is it not to screw this moment up? If you're a Democrat, you make, you laugh at some of this, you say some of this, but if there's anything that the Democratic Party should have figured out was just kind of sit back, take a moment and let. And don't steal a headline away by doing something stupid. Insert Cori Bush and where you're going with this right now. One of the biggest racist blunders that never had to even get close to where they took it. And all of a sudden the story changes. And I'm sure people on the Democrat side are like, really? You had to do this right now?
- [25:09]
Ben Ferguson
Well, look, Cori Bush is one of the most radical members of the Democrat party of the House. She is on the extreme left. She's one of the biggest advocates of abolishing the police. Ironically, she spends massive amounts on private security while arguing for abolishing the police. So it's, it's rules for thee and not for me. And, and unfortunately she's been willing to, to really engage in, in racist rhetoric. So she sent a tweet that reads, for what it's worth, Byron Donalds is not an historic candidate for speaker. He is a prop. Despite being black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress. It's pathetic. And I gotta say that is, that is nasty. That is racist. By the way, it echoes what Dick Durbin said in the Senate when Tim Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, African American, was standing up and trying to lead legislation on police and both preventing violence to those who are being arrested, but also protecting police at the same time. And Durbin ridiculed Tim Scott as a token. And it's the same leftists have. I retweeted Cori Bush and what I said is, I said open racism is normalized on the radical left. Now the Dems are calling Byron Donalds, who's a black man, who's a conservative, who's strong, articulate. They're calling him effectively a white supremacist. That's just nuts. But look, whether it's Cori Bush or Dick Durbin, when they see a black Republican, there is a level of anger, of animus, of bile. It's why they come out with things like token and prop. Same thing Clarence Thomas faces because they view them. And by the way, I'll say this as an Hispanic, there is some of that. It's not nearly as nasty being an Hispanic Republican as it, as it is how the left treats black Republicans. But, but you know, I had Jorge Ramos on, on national television called me a traitor to my race because I believe in securing the border. I mean, it's, there's a nastiness. And unfortunately, when you have someone. You know. When Byron Donalds was, was nominated and actually Chip Roy was nominating him, he pointed out Akeem Jeffries had been nominated. He said this is the first time in the history of our country that two black people, African Americans have been nominated to be speaker of the House. And there was significant applause in the House at that. I mean, that is meaningful and positive, but it drives the Democrats crazy. They cannot acknowledge to the leftists, Byron Donalds is not black. Clarence Thomas is not black. Tim Scott is not black. I'm not Hispanic. Marco Rubio is not Hispanic. You must be a leftist to count in their, in their bean counting world.
- [28:42]
Ted Cruz
How is it that not a single member of the media gets this tweet and immediately goes and demands a comment from the Democratic leadership? Because it is racist. It's very clearly racist. And they act like it doesn't even happen. I mean even. And I would say the Washington D.C. capitol Hill press corps is a little bit more formal than maybe some of the other press members outside in the world where there's a little bit more dignity in their group. And yet they just completely look the other direction when a member of Congress says something this racist in this moment about an African American man who is, who's been nominated in a historic way, in a moment that has 100 plus years of history involved in it.
- [29:31]
Ben Ferguson
Well, look, part of it is the media agrees with those same radical senses. You remember back when, when Larry Elder was running for Governor of California and the Los Angeles Times published an op ed, the title of which was Larry Elder is the Black Face of White Supremacy. I mean, this is nasty. And they do it over and over and over again. It is particularly the hard left. They, they, they not only revel in racism, they know they won't get called out on it from the press because the press agrees with them. Or too many of them do at least.
- [30:17]
Ted Cruz
Yeah, it's, it's total silence on this one. And it's one of those moments when you see the Democrats and it reminds you of what you're up against across the aisle and they allow this to fester within the Democratic Party. Anytime a minority stands up that is a conservative, they immediately lose their race and their minority status and they do whatever they can to absolutely destroy them. Senator, it's, this has been a fun moment, as I said earlier, a master class ask on all of this. There's a lot of history involved. I know people wanted to hear what you thought about this. And I think the big takeaway from you is this is okay. This is going to play out and things are going to end well for us. And don't take the bait for the media implying this is a national security risk or a health crisis risk. This is totally fine.
- [31:12]
Ben Ferguson
Look, my message is simple. Keep calm and carry on. This is debate. This is democracy. It will play out. It will resolve itself. I think it will resolve itself in a matter of days or at most weeks. And I don't know how it will resolve it. I have genuinely no idea what the resolution will be. But I do think the process of elected members debating amongst themselves their agenda, their rules, their policies, how they're going to conduct themselves, I think that debate is a healthy thing in either house of Congress.
- [31:53]
Ted Cruz
It's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun to watch. Grab some more popcorn, my friends. We will be back with you on Monday. There may be a chance if we get a speaker before then, you might get something else from us. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, auto download button. Wherever you're listening this podcast, make sure you rise to five star Review Center. It's a pleasure as always and we'll see all you guys back here on Monday.