← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Take It Down Passed to STOP Deepfake & Revenge Porn plus Maryland Man AUDIO Shows Wife Beating & Human Trafficking
00:27:59
Loading summary
Transcript75 lines
- [00:00]
Senator Ted Cruz
We're shipping Mother's Day gifts with a rapid fire round of questions. Ready? Yes.
- [00:04]
Ben Ferguson
My gift. Can you pack it?
- [00:06]
Unknown
Yep.
- [00:06]
Senator Ted Cruz
Ship it? Yes.
- [00:07]
Ben Ferguson
Guarantee it?
- [00:08]
Senator Ted Cruz
Of course.
- [00:09]
Ben Ferguson
Oh, send gift baskets for sure. Protect electronics. Dog proof it. Return it if they hate it.
- [00:14]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yes, no and yeah.
- [00:16]
Ben Ferguson
Are you the UPS store?
- [00:18]
Senator Ted Cruz
Hey, we have a winner.
- [00:20]
Ben Ferguson
Visit theupsstore.com guaranty for full details. Most locations are independently owned. Products, services, prices and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. The UPS Store. Visit US store today.
- [00:31]
Unknown
Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you on this Friday morning. It's so nice to have you with us. And Senator, we have got some very big legislation that you've been fighting hard on. The White House got on board and worked with you, and I can't believe it, but this is something that's actually bipartisan happening in Washington, D.C. well, the.
- [00:51]
Senator Ted Cruz
Take It down act has now passed the United States Senate. It's passed the House, and it is headed to President Trump's desk to be signed into law. This is legislation that protects kids, protects women online from revenge porn, from deep fakes that are targeting more and more kids. We're going to break all that down, explain how that came to pass. We also have yet more facts about the Maryland man. The Maryland man that the Democrats have decided is their poster child. It is who they stand for. It is the illegal alien MS.13 member who now we have growing evidence was also active in human trafficking. We're going to break that evidence down as well. And finally, Doge Elon Musk is laying out yet more shocking revelations Doge is uncovering. We're gonna, we're gonna go through all those as well.
- [01:37]
Unknown
Now, Senator, this is something you've been working on for quite some time. The President got involved with this, the first lady got involved with this. And this is bipartisan in nature, which is great to actually see Congress do something on a bipartisan level. And this is gonna protect people, a lot of young women and girls especially, who have been in essence, blackmailed by exes that want to put out things that should never be on the Internet with them in it.
- [02:04]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, this is unfortunately a growing problem. It is a massive problem and there are two big manifestations of it. Number one are real images, non consensual, intimate images where say you have a boyfriend and girlfriend and they take explicit pictures of each other that take explicit videos of each other and then they have an ugly breakup and one or the other is pissed off and they say, all right, I'm going To stick it to you. I'm going to put these pictures, I'm going to put these videos out online and the whole world is going to see you. And I got to say, that is wrong. It is a grotesque violation of your rights, of your privacy. And it's a problem we're seeing growing more and more. There's a new iteration of it that is a product of technology which is now with artificial intelligence, you can create deep fakes where you can create images or videos of real people that appear to be real and they're entirely fake. And we are seeing the prevalence of deep fake non consensual intimate images. It has grown 3,000% last year. Over 90% of the victims are either women or teenage girls. And I'll tell you how this issue first came to my attention. It came from a Texas girl who was targeted by this, a girl named Elliston Berry, who last year, she's 15 now. Last year she was 14, she was in 9th grade and she woke up one Monday morning and her phone started blowing up. And all of her friends let her know that a classmate of hers, a boy in her class, had taken what was a perfectly innocent picture of her on social media and used an AI app online to create deep fakes. And he created what appeared to be naked pictures of her. Now they weren't, but you couldn't tell from looking at them. And then he sent them to every one of her classmates. So this poor girl, look, it's hard to be a teenager. It's hard to be a teenage girl. But if you could imagine the nightmare of every one of your classmates thinking they're looking at naked pictures of you. She woke up, she was in tears. It was horrifying. And what happened? She's a Texan. So she and her mother, Anna, called my office and complained to me. They said, look, can you help us? You're our senator, can you help us? And I gotta say, my team did a great job. They elevated it to me and put this in front of me and said, look, isn't this horrible what happened to this girl? And we actually drafted legislation to address this problem because as we looked at it, it was becoming more and more common. And the Take it Down act that I wrote, it does two things. Number one, it makes it a crime, a federal felony to post non consensual intimate images, either real images or deep fakes that made through AI.
- [04:53]
Unknown
And to be clear, that's. That's where the. This has real teeth. You just said it is a felony.
- [04:58]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yes, a felony. With jail time. And a number of states, including Texas, have criminalized revenge porn. But a lot of those states, they don't address deepfakes because deep fakes are new. And so it's a hole in the law. So part of what Elliston discovered in Texas is there was nothing she could do about it. This kid could send out these pictures, and there was no consequence at all. So, number one, it makes it a crime. But number two, there is a persistent problem that the tech platforms won't take this garbage down. And in fact, when I introduced the legislation, Ellison and her mom came to D.C. i sat down with them in my office, and when they sat down with me, I asked them, I said, okay, what happened to the pictures? And this was nine months after the incident had happened. And they expressed enormous frustration. They said Snapchat would not take them down. Ellison's mom had called them and emailed them and repeatedly tried to get them taken down. Nothing. Complete Heisman stiff arm. I gotta tell you, Ben, I turned to my team and I said, I want you to get the CEO of Snapchat on the phone today. I want those pictures down today. Within two hours, Ben, they pulled them down. Now. You know what? It should not take a sitting US Senator making a phone call to get pictures like that taken down. And so what we did, we wrote into the law a legal obligation on the tech platforms part, that once the victim notifies them, they have to take the pictures or the videos down immediately. I did this legislation with Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat in the Senate. We passed it through the Senate 100 to nothing. We did it in the last Congress, but unfortunately, the House didn't get it passed. So this Congress, we passed it again. And then one thing that was really terrific, the first lady, Melania Trump, got actively involved. She came to Capitol Hill, she pushed for the bill. She sat down at a roundtable with Elliston with other victims of this growing problem. And the first lady leaned in and said to the House, take this up and get it done. And this past week, the House did. They passed it. Passed it overwhelmingly. And so now it is headed to the President's desk. President Trump talked about this bill in the State of the Union. He told the House, get it done. I want to sign it. It's now going to be signed into law, and it's going to protect women, teenage girls, teenage boys all across the country from this kind of victimization.
- [07:33]
Unknown
And this is where everyone should be proud, because not only, as you mentioned, mandatory takedown, you got a 48 hours of notification by the victim or their representatives. But the penalty violators face up to two years in prison for offenses involving adults, up to three years if a victim is a minor. And this is going to send a very clear message, you cannot do this anymore. And if you do, you're real consequences.
- [07:58]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, there are real consequences. And I will tell you the take it down aspect. What we did is we borrowed from, from, from another piece of legislation that's already federal law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. So if you tweet out, let's say a song from the Lion King, it'll get pulled down within hours because you can't tweet out copyrighted material. So, so we use that same mechanism, the notice and takedown mechanism and we applied it to these non consensual intimate images. So every tech platform has an office that knows how to respond to this. This protects every victim. And I'll tell you at our round table, one of the victims was a South Carolina state legislator. His son was targeted and it was a sextortion scam. And they threatened to release the pictures. And I gotta say, his son took his own life. Sometimes the consequences are incredibly trag. And so this bill protects every potential victim center.
- [08:54]
Unknown
We've got some breaking news and I hope everyone listening is taking notes on what we're about to tell you and what you're going to hear. This is yet again another bombshell blowing up in the face of Democrats who tried to turn a terrorist, an MS.13 gang member, into just a Maryland man, a Maryland father. And they're demanding he come back to America. They've flown down using taxpayers money to head down to meet with him since he's been deported and they're demanding he come back. Now we have audio that's saying who he really is.
- [09:29]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, the Democrats have made a really astonishing choice to go all in in support of letting more illegal immigrants into this country, back into this country. And in particular defending Ms. 13 gang members and wife beaters, people who commit domestic violence. It really is an astonishing decision. The Democrats, obviously you have Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland who flew down to El Salvador and basically played footsie with this guy. You have House Democrats going down there. You have Cory Booker doing a sit in on the steps of the Capitol, all in defense of what they say is this poorly targeted, poor, defenseless Maryland man. Well, facts are stubborn things. I want you to listen to this audio. This is the quote, maryland man's wife testifying in 2020 in court seeking a protective order and Listen to what she says about this individual who the Democrats are now trying to turn into Mother Teresa. Give a listen.
- [10:40]
Unknown
I came to fill out a protective order. I think it was in December. But I didn't show up to the court because his family, like, washed my brain, telling me that his dad was sick and not to do it. So I didn't do anything. But after that, it was like I would call the police. I have a lot of police reports. And I kept trying to get to the door basement to try to open the door. And then, like, he pushed me. So then when I was able to go outside to get a phone, I called 911 from a disconnected phone. Now, they took a long time to get to the house. It was probably like 20, 30 minutes. So I saw a neighbor walking his dog and I opened the door and I was like, help. And then when he heard me, like, he grabbed me from my hair and then he slapped me. And then the neighbor, like, he didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to react. I have pictures of the evidence, like, all the bruises, because even on Wednesday, he hit me, like, around like, three in the morning. He would just wake up and, like, hit me. And then last Saturday, for my daughter's birthday party, before I went to my daughter's birthday party, he slapped me three times. And then last week, I did call the police. My sister called the police because he hit me in front of my sister.
- [11:54]
I listened to that Senator, and it makes me angry. It makes me so sad for not only her, but also for the kids involved. Because if you've ever known someone that's gone through abuse like this, you never forget what their stories sound like. And the part there that she said, I quote, have a lot of police reports.
- [12:15]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, yeah, this was a repeated problem. According to his wife's testimony in court, he repeatedly engaged in violence. He punched her, he slapped her. He did so in front of their kids. He did so in front of her sister. That's what her testimony was. And understand, this is who the Democrats are elevating and saying it is a travesty of justice that this violent wife beater is no longer in this country. Now, mind you, despite his beating up his wife, despite his being illegally in this country, despite his being allegedly. And two courts concluded an Ms. 13 gang member, the Democrats are all in and defending him. And there's another piece of audio I want you to listen to. And this is a piece of audio from 2022. So just a couple of years ago. And there was a traffic stop, and he was stopped driving a vehicle with eight people in the back. And I want you to listen to the police officers in the traffic stop and what their assessment was, what was going on. Give a listen to this.
- [13:23]
Unknown
Yeah, you're gonna hear some road noise of cars passing by, just so you know what that is. And you will hear these police officers on body camera. Listen carefully.
- [13:36]
You know what you got, right?
- [13:37]
Senator Ted Cruz
Huh?
- [13:38]
Unknown
You know what you got here, right? No, he's. He's hauling these people for money is what he's doing. But sometimes they kill, mingle, dope and hurt.
- [13:48]
Senator Ted Cruz
No, but.
- [13:51]
Unknown
There'S eight people in there.
- [13:52]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, I know.
- [13:53]
Unknown
I didn't know that.
- [13:54]
Senator Ted Cruz
He put an extra roll of seats in there.
- [13:56]
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. So he's getting paid in all these people, probably to Maryland, I would say, if I had my guess.
- [14:01]
Well, matches up with the Maryland dad thing, right? The Maryland man. They're like, oh, by the way, this car has been retrofitted to add an entire nother row of seats. They've never seen a car this model with this many seats in it. There's another example of the human smuggling.
- [14:19]
Senator Ted Cruz
Look, look, this is Maryland, man. He's hauling them to Maryland. The police officers, immediate reaction. You know what this guy's doing? He's hauling these people for money. Eight people. They added an extra row of seats. So you've got an illegal alien wife beater who's an MS.13 gang member and who is actively engaged in human trafficking. This is the poster child for the Democrats. This is who they've decided to go all in on, saying, we want this person back in America and we want more people like him. And I gotta say, we've also seen a fairly amazing thing with the Democrats and the media going crazy about an interview that President Trump did in the Oval Office with ABC News. And in particular, President Trump asserted that he had MS.13 tattooed on his knuckles. And the media has been having a field day saying, no, no, no, that's a lie. It's photoshopped. It's not true. So you can go and look at the pictures. Go look online what he has tattooed on his knuckles. He's got tattoos on each of the four knuckles of his fingers he has. The first tattoo is a marijuana leaf. Now, marijuana leaf stands for M. The second tattoo is of a smiley face. The smiley face stands for S. The third tattoo on his middle finger is of a cross. And the cross, the up and down stands for one. And the fourth tattoo on his index finger is of a skull, which is the same shape as the number three. Now, what he actually has is those four tattoos. And what the White House tweeted out was a picture of those four tattoos. And then it wrote above them, above the marijuana leaf, it wrote an M, because that's what the marijuana leaf stands for. Above the smiley face, it wrote an S, because that's what the smiley face stands for. Above the cross, it wrote A1, because that's what the cross stands for. And above the skull, it wrote a three, because that's what the skull stands for. So the four symbols are of Ms. 13. Now, the Democrats and the corporate media are clutching their pearls going, it didn't actually have the Ms. 13. That. That was a Photoshop. Well, yes, but what it did have is clearly symbolizing Ms. 13. And they don't want people to know that, because it is fairly amazing that Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat leader in the House, Chuck Schumer, Chris Van Hollen, the Democrats in both the Senate and house have decided Ms. 13 gang members, that's who we defend. That's who we're backing up.
- [16:58]
Unknown
You also look at this individual, and the new DEA nominee said that this guy's tattoos consist with NMS 13 membership. Again, blowing the narrative out of the water from the left that these tattoos are meaningless. They have nothing to do with Ms. 13. The guy who does this for a living is like, yes, we see this all the time. Yes, this is what it looks like when you have these tattoos on your knuckle. Yes, this is what these gang members do. And then you go back to what we're now finding out in this recording and the traffic stop here. And also from new reporting from. From basically, in essence, a whistleblower that is saying that not only was this guy attacking his wife and running human trafficking, but we also know from these court filings that have come out that his wife has said that she was afraid because he said he was going to kill her. So this is a guy that is threatening to kill his wife based on what we're seeing from the court documents. And he's an individual that is out there that should never have been in this country, and he should be gone. And so when you look at this, I truly am amazed that the Democratic Party is saying, we don't care about American citizens. We don't come to your aid. We don't come to your comfort when these people commit crimes against you. No, no, we want to go find the ones that have been deported and bring them back to America. How in the hell do they Think the American people are going to stand with them on this issue, Senator?
- [18:32]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, it's where they are. And I gotta say, this week I got in a Twitter battle with Hakeem Jeffries, the head of the Democrats in the House. I tweeted out, I said, hakeem, allowing your members to fly to El Salvador on the taxpayers dime to play footsie with violent gang members was obviously astonishingly bad politics. Please keep it up. And I gotta say, Akeem Jeffries, he got really angry and he's like. And he tweeted back, this is from someone who abandoned his state during the historic winter storm to vacation in Cancun. No one takes you seriously at this point. And that's Leader Jeffries to you, Edward. Well, sorry, Hakeem. Leader Jeffries is not what I call you. But it's okay. I just tweeted back at him. It's okay, Hakeem, I'm very sorry I beat your friend's ass. And I sent out a picture because Colin all read. The Democrat who ran against me last time was buddies with Keem Jeffries, and he lost by nine points in a million votes. And look it, it shows who the Democrats are right now. They support illegal immigrants and wife beaters and gang members.
- [19:38]
Unknown
Senator, I got to talk about what we just found out with Doge. And I think it's an important point to reset because we saw a lot of press about Doge early on. We've now moved on to other topics, or I should say, the media has moved on to other topics. It does not mean that Elon Musk and the Doge staff have stopped doing their job. In fact, they are still finding incredible amounts of waste, fraud and abuse. And they sat down with Jesse Waters at Fox to kind of give an update of like, hey, here we are. It was also a very cool interview because what we're witnessing is Elon Musk showing these do gooders that he has brought in. They could be making a lot more money in the private sector. There are a lot of young, brilliant minds that are finding all of this information and digging and digging in our government. And he's letting them tell the stories of what they're finding. I love this management style from him.
- [20:34]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, I got to say, every week there are new bombshells that are coming out from Doge of just astonishing. Waste, fraud, and abuse. And so this latest interview that Elon did with Jesse Watters, he laid out, for example, that. That. That the Institute of peace had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. Now, just let that sink in for a minute. 130 grand to a former member of the Taliban. And that is from the, quote, institute of Peace. Nothing like paying a terrorist if you're the Institute of Peace. And by the way, that same Institute of Peace deleted one terabyte of accounting records when DOGE entered their headquarters. So they came in. I gotta tell you, if you're prosecuting criminal conduct in a court of law and a defendant destroys evidence, deletes data on their computer, burns papers, burns receipts, burns photographs, that can be taken as evidence of guilt, the fact that you are deleting evidence. But. But here, give a listen to the description of what they found about from the Institute of Peace.
- [21:51]
Unknown
Yeah. So it was the by far the least peaceful agency that we've worked with, ironically, of course. Additionally, we found that they were spending money on things like private jets, and they even had a $130,000 contract with a former member of the Taliban. This is real. We don't encounter that at most agencies.
- [22:07]
Yeah.
- [22:08]
What was the money going to the Taliban for?
- [22:12]
So it was a contractor. They received $130,000 for generic services. And to Elon's point, there was not actually a clear description of what the contractor services were for.
- [22:20]
Senator Ted Cruz
Was it for opium?
- [22:23]
Unknown
Unclear.
- [22:25]
Or weapons?
- [22:27]
Or nothing.
- [22:28]
Or nothing.
- [22:29]
Senator Ted Cruz
Or abroad or.
- [22:30]
Unknown
Yeah, nothing.
- [22:31]
And you naturally have to ask the question, how did we get here? Like, when the country was founded, There were only four agencies. Today, there are over 400. So there's been a 100x increase in the number of agencies since the founding of the nation. And thanks to President Trump, he's now signed two executive orders to start to reduce the number of agencies in the government. And the Institute of Peace was one of them, which is why our team went in to try and understand what was going on. And that's when we found all of the craziness. Like the weapons in their armory. We found the payments to the Taliban.
- [22:59]
Oh, yeah. Hide the evidence.
- [23:02]
Right. So just a few hours after we got into their headquarters, we found that their chief accountant had actually deleted over a terabyte of accounting records from. From several years. So you'd have to ask the question, well, why would somebody do that? The Doge team, fortunately, was able to recover that data with the help of a few great employees at the Institute of Peace. And I think the most troubling thing was they received $55 million a year from Congress. And any money that went unspent, instead of returning that to Congress, they would sweep it into a Private bank account which had no congressional oversight. And that's what they would use to fund things like events at their headquarters and the private jets. And so I think it's a great example because most, most Americans don't know what's going on at a lot of these smaller agencies. And this is, I think, the most extreme case of some of the wasteful spend that we're finding.
- [23:45]
So the agencies are hiding money from you. They're sending it to the Taliban. They have loaded weapons in the department buildings.
- [23:54]
At the Institute of Peace.
- [23:55]
At the Institute of Peace.
- [23:57]
Yeah, that's right.
- [23:58]
So this is a cover up when you guys roll in this one.
- [24:02]
Yes, a cover up. They did delete a vast amount of financial information. That's really a definition of a cover up.
- [24:10]
Isn't that illegal to delete evidence?
- [24:12]
Yes.
- [24:13]
Shred documents it is.
- [24:15]
It's certainly illegal to delete accounting records that Congress would certainly want to know where the congressionally appropriated funds are going.
- [24:21]
From taxpayers when you catch them going Hillary style on their computers. Do you refer this to the Department.
- [24:29]
Of Justice in this case? We did refer the evidence in the accounting example to the FBI and doj. We were proud to do that. So, yes, we did. Resistance has shown.
- [24:41]
I mean, let's just go back to what you said, Senator, a moment ago and dive into this a little bit more. If this is that type of activity in this type of COVID up and referring this to doj, what would the next step be on that? And then also what can Congress do if anything, knowing now what they've just told you?
- [25:02]
Senator Ted Cruz
Look, I gotta say, almost every word of that is shocking. That they gave 130 grand to a former member of the Taliban. That's astonishing. That they spent taxpayer money on private jets. That's astonishing. That the Institute of Peace had an armory with a whole bunch of weapons. Now, let me repeat that the Institute of Peace apparently felt the need to be packing and when Doe showed up, they started deleting their accounting records. Which screams guilt, by the way. When President Trump did the interview with ABC News in the Oval, one of the things ABC News says is, well, there have been no referrals to the Department of Justice. And President Trump quite rightly says, how do you know that? Well, this is one. And it turns out there have been multiple referrals to the Department of Justice for fraud. It's just ABC News doesn't want people to know that. Here I want you to listen to another clip. This is another clip where, where the Department of education had a $4 billion Covid fund that let government employees draw down. They used it for things like parties and to rent out venues like Caesar's Palace. Give a listen.
- [26:12]
Unknown
Yeah, there was a $4 billion Covid fund in the Department of Education, and there was no receipts required, so people could just draw down on it. And when people looked into it, this wasn't us. This was before us. They found that money was being used to ren Caesar's palace for parties, rent out stadiums, et cetera. And so the one change that Doge made with farmer education is we had the simple requirement that if you draw down money, you must first upload a receipt. That was the only change that was made. You must upload your receipt. And upon doing so, nobody drew down any money anymore.
- [26:45]
Yes, but we didn't say that we'd check the receipt. You could send a fake receipt, you could send a picture of your dog. Anything, anything, anything. But as soon as we asked for anything at all, suddenly the requests were like, oh, we don't need it anymore. Huh, that's interesting.
- [27:04]
They were renting Caesar's Palace.
- [27:06]
Yes, they were, like, basically partying on the taxpayer money.
- [27:10]
Basically partying on the taxpayer's money. This sounds criminal.
- [27:15]
Senator Ted Cruz
Let me just ask, like, the man on the street. Did you think the Department of Education was spending your money, your taxpayer money, to rent out Caesar's Palace? That is the very definition of waste, fraud, and abuse. $4 billion in a Covid slush fund with zero receipts required. Let me just say, thank God for President Trump and Elon Musk and Doge uncovering this, revealing it, because it is completely indefensible. And by the way, the Democrats, just like they've decided they're in for illegal immigrants and gang members and violent criminals and wipe beaters, they're also all in for this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse, including renting out Caesar's palace with your taxpayer money.
- [28:02]
Unknown
It's truly an incredible story, and this is where we hope you take the show. You share it on social media, hit that share button, forward it, you can send a text message to a friend so they can hear exactly what we just played for you. And don't forget, hit that subscriber auto download button. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, you never miss an episode. And the center and I will see you back here tomorrow for our weekend review. Don't miss that as well. We'll see you here tomorrow.