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- [00:00]
Michael Knowles
Nowtaxes is 100% free when you file in the TurboTax app. If you didn't file with us last year. Oh yeah, yeah. Just do your own taxes in the app by 218.
- [00:09]
Ted Cruz
What if I have lots of forms?
- [00:11]
Michael Knowles
All good, all 100% free. What if I had three jobs still 100% free. What if I once saw Bigfoot? That has nothing to do with taxes. So still 100% free.
- [00:21]
Ted Cruz
Now that's what I'm talking about.
- [00:23]
Michael Knowles
Now this is taxes. See if you qualify in the TurboTax app excludes TurboTax Live must start and file an app by 2:18. The stock market is tanking, businesses are closing and whole cities are locked down. Even though we are socially distanced by about 3,000 miles. The senator is here to help us break down the coronavirus chaos. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. Senator, I'm sorry that we are still so socially distanced, but thank you so much for taking time to break this down. I have about a million questions for you and we only have about 25 minutes, so let's get right into it. The whole country basically has come to a standstill. People are being locked down and laid off and nobody has any idea what is coming out of Washington. You've been there for about two days. What's happening?
- [01:22]
Ted Cruz
Well, you and I are certainly socially distanced. We're about 3,000 miles apart. You're enjoying sunny California, which is right in the heart of the challenges we're seeing from the coronavirus. I would note, by the way, that even though you are in California, will you promise everyone that you're not gonna burst into your rendition of Imagine and start singing? No.
- [01:48]
Michael Knowles
Luckily I'm apparently not enough of a celebrity to have made it to that compilation. That frankly was more sickening than the virus. As far as I can tell. Senator, I think people are familiar with what's going on at the and local level. My own city of LA is basically locked down. San Francisco is literally locked down now. But I think what people are more confused about is what's happening at the federal level. I've heard that there is a three part plan that's gonna be coming out of Washington. You're going to be voting on it. So can you give us some of the specifics?
- [02:19]
Ted Cruz
Well, that's right. This has been voted on and it will be voted on in three parts and maybe more. The first piece was over two weeks ago. Congress passed $8.3 billion in emergency appropriation focused on really health resources and getting the health resources to combat this pandemic. The next element was something we voted out just recently. And it was focused on paid sick leave. It was focused on replenishing unemployment compensation, and it was also focused on coronavirus testing and providing people with free testing. And so that, that just voted out. Both of those passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Both of those I supported. Although, although I will say on the sick leave one, I had real concerns with the bill we passed because it puts a mandate on small businesses to provide paid sick leave. And then it sets up a fairly complicated tax credit system to reimburse the small businesses. I am very concerned that's gonna result in putting additional regulatory burden on small businesses that could drive, drive some of them out of business, that could lead small businesses to lay people off. It's why I and most of the Republicans supported an amendment that would have changed it and would have instead relied on the unemployment compensation system. But the Democrats voted party line against that to kill that. And so I ended up supporting it along with 89 other senators because it made a significant and material improvement.
- [03:54]
Michael Knowles
So is this social distancing? I mean, even the fact that the senators aren't buddy buddy right now and they're not glad handing, is that making the negotiations more difficult?
- [04:04]
Ted Cruz
You know, it's hard to say because on the third tranche, and so we passed one and two. Part three is really focused on the economy.
- [04:12]
Michael Knowles
Okay.
- [04:13]
Ted Cruz
And part three, by all expectations is gonna be massive. I mean, we're hearing numbers of a trillion dollars. We're hearing 1.2, 1.3 trillion. Wouldn't surprise me if it was bigger than that. Wow. The way it's proceeded. So Mitch McConnell this afternoon filed a bill that's sort of the beginning template for it. And up to this point there's been very little negotiation with Democrats on it. So what all is in it? We had lunch today. The Senate Republicans, we had like a three hour lunch talking about this. By the way, we've shifted where we have lunch. We had lunch in a really big room where senators could sit further away from each other, spread out. I mean, that's one of the dynamics we've done. Instead of we normally have lunch in the Capitol, we moved one of the Senate office buildings where it's a bigger room so we could be spread out further apart. If you look at the elements of the bill that Mitch McConnell filed, there are several different elements, the individual elements. So this is just American citizens. It's designed to send Every American adult $1,200 a check for $1,200 if you earn $75,000 or less as an individual or $150,000 or less as a couple. And it actually, it phases to zero at 95,000. So an individual that earns 100,000 under what was filed today gets nothing. If you make 95,000 or less, you would get a check and you'd also get $500 per child. That's one component. And that's a big component. It's an expensive component.
- [05:53]
Michael Knowles
That sounds like the Andrew Yang component, maybe. I mean, we had that one Democratic candidate talking about sending checks to Americans. Are the Republicans adopting this sort of idea now?
- [06:03]
Ted Cruz
So they're not, but there is a difference in that this is in response to a disaster and an emergency. So no one on the Republican side, what Andrew Yang was talking about doing is sending $1,000 check every month to everybody, just over and over and over again. That's a very different world than responding to a disaster. I mean, we've seen in the past in terms of responding to disaster, giving people individual relief. Now look, we had a pretty vigorous debate about is the right solution sending people checks is that, you know, you know, it's designed right now to be means tested. So Democrats who might want to demagogue it, I've heard some saying, well, you're sending money to millionaires. Well, that's not, that's not true. Under this bill, nobody who earns more than 95, who earned more than 95,000 in 2019. So the way it works, it uses 2019 income because the IRS has those data. Okay, so if you earn more than 95,000 as an individual or more than 190,000 as a couple, then you're phased out and you don't get anything. You know, that's not, that's certainly not a perfect system. It means it misses some people. If someone, let's say someone last year earned 300,000 and they've been laid off in the last couple of weeks, under this existing system, they wouldn't get anything. On the individual side, on the other hand, someone who is doing well, I can tell you I got an email yesterday from A woman who's 85 years old, is a two time cancer survivor. She sent me an email saying, gosh, this idea of sending checks to everyone doesn't make any sense. She's on Social Security. She says, I don't need a check. This should be targeted at people who are in greater need than I am. And it was signed Eleanor Dara and by the way, that's my mom. She sent me what she called a constituent email, which I kind of laughed at. The email, you better respond to that. She was quite serious. That's one big component of it. Okay. Another big component of it is focused on businesses. So if you look at the economic effect, the economic effect of this is devastating.
- [08:20]
Michael Knowles
Right.
- [08:21]
Ted Cruz
And I am very worried. You know, Michael, I would not be surprised next week or the week after to see job numbers, to see over a million jobs lost.
- [08:32]
Michael Knowles
Wow.
- [08:32]
Ted Cruz
I can tell you, the last several days, I have been on the phone with CEOs over and over and over again. I probably talked to six, seven CEOs in the last 24 hours. Every CEO I talk to is making layoffs and making big layoffs.
- [08:46]
Michael Knowles
I mean, I know.
- [08:47]
Ted Cruz
I know these numbers.
- [08:48]
Michael Knowles
I've just talked to people personally who have lost their jobs even in the last week. And I'm not a US Senator, you know, I'm just talking to people on the street. So it seems like it's going to be a massive effect. Unemployment figures.
- [09:01]
Ted Cruz
It is undoubtedly going to be. There's some sectors. You look at, the travel sectors. Airlines. Airlines are being devastated. I've spoken with pretty much every CEO from the major airlines in the last two weeks. They're losing billions every month. Their planes are sitting on the runways. When I Flew up to D.C. wednesday morning, yesterday morning, plane was empty. I think there may be 15 people on my plane. I mean, I sat where I was sitting, there was nobody next to me. There was nobody in the row in front of me. There was nobody in the row behind me. I was sort of chuckling, going, well, social distancing isn't hard if there's nobody on the plane, right?
- [09:41]
Michael Knowles
Yeah. It sounds sort of nice in isolation. Probably not good if the whole industry.
- [09:45]
Ted Cruz
Tanks, you know, hotel CEOs, I've talked to hotel CEOs, multiple hotel CEOs, who are telling me they're seeing in various properties, things like 6% occupancy rates. Wow. That's massive. If you look at energy and listen for Texas in particular, we have this. Combined with the Saudis coming after us and flooding the global market with oil, which is driving the price of oil way, way down. So the energy sector, energy producers are getting devastated. I talk with two different energy CEOs, both of whom told me, one told me he had taken 11 rigs offline. Another told me he'd taken 10 rigs offline. Both of these CEOs said they'd laid off over 5,000 people in the last week.
- [10:31]
Michael Knowles
So it sounds as though we're gonna get some sort of bailout, both for individuals and for companies. I don't see any world in which we don't. How should conservatives feel about this? You know, I remember the bailout from the financial crisis under Barack Obama. None of us were happy about that. Is this different? How should we be looking at it?
- [10:50]
Ted Cruz
Look, that is a hard question, and it's a question conservatives are thinking about and debating. But let me say there are important differences between this and tarp. The biggest one, and I oppose tarp. I think it was a mistake. I think we should not have the federal government in the business of bailing out corporations. But in that instance, the financial meltdown was caused in significant part by. By the conduct of the financial sector. And so I think a lot of people rightly felt, wait a second, these guys are going to a casino. They're gambling with the house's money. If they win, they get rich and fly in a private jet. And if they lose, the taxpayer comes and bails them out. I mean, it was and felt like a rigged system. It's worth pointing out this is very different. I mean, you know, if you're. If you own a hotel, it's not your fault there's a global pandemic. You didn't do anything, you know, to cause this. It's not through the deliberate steps of any of these business owners. And there's a second distinction, which is a great many of these harms are caused by government orders. So let's take an airline. If you're an airline, CEO, if you're, you know, my cousin is married to a pilot for Delta, one of the bigger airlines. Look, if you're a pilot, you're a flight attendant, you work for an airline. The government has ordered a bunch of your planes grounded. You can't fly to Asia anymore. You can't fly to Europe anymore. Those are very real consequences of government orders. We're seeing cities all over the place shutting down restaurants, shutting down bars. Look, if you own a small business, you own a restaurant, and suddenly the city government has said your customers can't come in. That's not your fault. Maybe you're running a great restaurant, and suddenly the government is effectively shutting you down. Hopefully, you can do takeout, but it's the effect of all of that. There is an analogy. Look, as a conservative is thinking through this, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, has what's called the takings clause. The takings clause provides that private property shall not be Taken for public use without just compensation. The classic example is if the city or state comes and takes your house and knocks your house down to build a freeway, you know what? They can do that. They have eminent domain. That is a power. It's not gonna constitutional your home for you. But if they do it, they gotta pay you. They don't have the right to take your home, build a freeway through it, and not pay you anything. There is a reasonable analogy. It's not exactly the same, but from the perspective of a bar owner, a restaurant owner, from the perspective of an airline or a hotel, or all of the folks that are feeling the consequence now, why is government doing this? It's doing it for a public purpose. It's doing it for public health. It's doing it to keep people safe. But I do think there is a conservative justification for compensating businesses, for compensating job creators, for the harms that are caused by. By the government in response to a disaster.
- [14:06]
Michael Knowles
That's a great point. And I think the next thing that will pop into a lot of people's minds. It certainly popped into my mind is I don't wanna have to be responsible for paying for that. When this problem was caused by the Chinese government. Is there any way now when we're looking at who's responsible? I mean, there was a statistic I saw today that if it was a study out of the University of Southampton, if China had acted one week earlier, not covering it up, but actually to stop it, they could have reduced the spread by 66. Two weeks, they could have reduced it by 86%. Three weeks, they could have reduced the spread by 95%. It seems to me China has to pay. Is there any way that there will be consequences for that Chinese government?
- [14:50]
Ted Cruz
You know, I hope so. I think the point you're making is exactly right, that the Chinese Communist government bears a lot of fault for suppressing information. If you look at the doctor, the first doctor, who was the whistleblower, who was reprimanded for shining a light on what was happening, now he has tragically died from the coronavirus that he was trying to draw attention to. And the Chinese Communist government did everything they could to keep this a secret, to suppress information about it. And I'll tell you, their conduct has gotten even worse because Chinese government officials are now actively going out trying to promote the notion that this came from the United States.
- [15:33]
Michael Knowles
I saw that.
- [15:34]
Ted Cruz
What utter and complete garbage. But they're engaged in a propaganda war. And I gotta say, listen, there will be a Time for assigning blame and for accountability. Our first priority needs to be the crisis, both the global health pandemic and the economic crisis. But after this is all said and done, there needs to be some real accountability. There needs to be some real examination of the behavior of the Chinese government that contributed. That contributed to thousands of deaths worldwide. That contributed to thousands of deaths in China. And I gotta say, you know who's not gonna engage in that examination? The American press.
- [16:18]
Michael Knowles
This is the problem.
- [16:19]
Ted Cruz
They're inheriting the propaganda. The American press on this has been. Too many of them are acting like employees of the Communist government of China that they're engaged in active propaganda. Look, you watch these White House news conferences where we're facing a global pandemic, we're facing the threat of potentially millions of jobs lost. And you see these reporters, like, flailing their arms in the air and saying, My God, Mr. President, you said, china virus.
- [16:49]
Michael Knowles
How terrible.
- [16:50]
Ted Cruz
Who the hell cares? Can you focus on. You know, just once, I want someone to, like, slap one of these reporters and say, jim Acosta, people are dying. Stop whining. Imagine, like, focus on the facts and substance. But listen, the amount of money that the media has vested in China is massive. They wanna sell their products, they wanna sell their ads. They want access to China. Ironically, look, China this week threw out of China American journalists throughout the New York Times, throughout the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. They said, journalists, get out of China. I went on Twitter and defended the New York Times. When's the last time you ever seen me do that? That's truly not a proposition for me. But it's worth pausing and asking, why do you think the Chinese government is throwing the New York Times out of China?
- [17:47]
Michael Knowles
They're obviously.
- [17:48]
Ted Cruz
Even though their reporters behave like shills, like they're on the payroll of the Chinese government trying to. I mean, they're just freaking out now, by the way, all the press called it the Wuhan virus for two months and then suddenly repeating the words Wuhan virus. Now, I don't particularly care. I'll call it the coronavirus. I'll call it whatever. I'm interested in stopping it. Yeah. But I do think that there will come a stage where there needs to be accountability and we need to ask about what are the governmental policies that contributed to the deaths and to what will end up being trillions of dollars of economic cost in the United States and worldwide. And I certainly would like to see some real accountability, but I think it needs to be after the crisis has passed.
- [18:36]
Michael Knowles
That's a Good point. And we need to ask because the press certainly will not. You know, I wonder what those press people, those journalists would have said during the Spanish flu. They might have said that was racist. I see what you're saying. When they throw the media out of China, obviously there would seem to be some more to the COVID up even than we've already seen. And I really like this point. I've wondered, is the press just covering up for China because they're fellow travelers or is it because there's also a financial incentive there as well? Really excellent point.
- [19:10]
Ted Cruz
I think it is almost entirely about money. Do you remember last fall when the Houston Rockets general manager tweeted out this innocuous tweet about Hong Kong and the NBA went into conniption fits, falling on their faces and apologizing to Chairman Mao and Mother China. I mean, it was ridiculous.
- [19:30]
Michael Knowles
Wow.
- [19:31]
Ted Cruz
I remember. And it ain't complicated. The NBA makes millions of dollars and so they were groveling cuz China freaked out. I mean, look, they are so sensitive to public opinion. Yeah, that by the way, China made Darrell Morey famous. I'm a die hard Rockets fan, so I knew Darrell Morey. But you didn't. I'll bet you I did not. 20 bucks you'd never heard of Darryl Morey until he sent that tweet. And China freaked out.
- [19:57]
Michael Knowles
That's right. That's right.
- [19:59]
Ted Cruz
It shows the weakness of the regime. I mean, think about it. They literally have government officials on their official Twitter accounts saying the US army brought this virus into China. I mean, there's a reason they're pushing this propaganda.
- [20:18]
Michael Knowles
And I wish they had put those resources that they're spending now on the propaganda. I wish they had put it into stopping the virus we've got.
- [20:27]
Ted Cruz
And let me make another point, Michael. So it is undoubtedly true that the communist government of China had direct responsibility for. For suppressing information, for keeping it secret, for delaying the world knowing about it. And by the way, the World Health Organization, which in many ways acts as an apologist for the Chinese government, the communist government in China repeated their misinformation as late as January. The World Health Organization was saying that this coronavirus can't be transmitted by human to human contact.
- [21:00]
Michael Knowles
Really?
- [21:02]
Ted Cruz
I didn't know that they were repeating Chinese propaganda in January. So there needs to be real inquiry into that. Look, there also has to be a serious inquiry into the question, is there any connection between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and this virus? So the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of 32 Level 4 research labs that is researching highly contagious diseases. There are 32 on the face of the planet. There has not been any evidence publicly of connection between that institution and this virus. But what we do know is There are only 32 level 4 labs on planet Earth. There are over 4,000 cities on planet Earth that have 100,000, 100,000 or more people living in them. Of all the cities on planet Earth, it certainly raises some questions why the outbreak occurs where there is a government lab controlled by the government of China that is doing research, and not just doing research into infectious diseases, it's doing research into coronaviruses that have been transmitted through bats. Now, I wanna be clear. So here's where the media has been super defensive is when anyone asks this question. The media, like the Washington Post, did this big hit piece saying this is a crazy conspiracy theory.
- [22:34]
Michael Knowles
Conspiracy theory.
- [22:35]
Ted Cruz
Because they say, and I've been told by multiple scientists this, there's no evidence that this virus was constructed in a lab. Listen, I have no reason to doubt that. That's what the scientists have told me. And I don't know about DNA sequencing. I'm not a scientist. So I'll take their word for it that on the face of it, the characteristics of this virus appear to have occurred naturally. The question that needs to be asked on the back end is if this is a naturally occurring virus, was this naturally occurring virus being stored at the government, the Chinese government's research lab in Wuhan, and was it somehow accidentally transmitted? That is a natural question to ask. And you know who's not gonna be forthcoming with the answers to that?
- [23:20]
Michael Knowles
The Chinese communist government.
- [23:23]
Ted Cruz
Of course, it is gonna take real scrutiny to ask those questions, and those are reasonable questions. But you know what? Devoting too much energy to those questions today is not productive for dealing with the crisis we have today, which is stopping the pandemic, and then dealing with the economic chaos and suffering that's occurring as a result.
- [23:44]
Michael Knowles
Well, because the way the media has framed it, the media has said, either you accept the story that it was just an accident, the virus came from a bad batch of bat soup, or you're a wacky conspiracy theorist who's saying that this was a bioweapon. Nobody's asking the secondary question that you are. You know, I'm no probability expert, but the coincidence that this happened in Wuhan is pretty jarring. And is there a chance that this virus was being stored at that lab? How did it get out?
- [24:13]
Ted Cruz
So let me give a comparable example. If there was some outbreak of some exceptionally rare disease outside the CDC labs in Atlanta, don't you think people would ask, well, was that exceptionally rare disease being studied there and did something happened? Was there some sort of mistake or accidental transmission? Now maybe not, but it's a natural question to ask. And the Chinese government's cover up makes it all the more important to ask that question. Right?
- [24:43]
Michael Knowles
Senator, we have about 30 seconds left, but I have to get to this question we got from Classical Conservative on Twitter. Question is, when can people start getting back to work? Do we know?
- [24:53]
Ted Cruz
You know, we don't know. And that's a very frustrating thing. I've asked CDC that over and over again. I've asked scientists that and doctors that over and over again. And they don't know about the spread of this disease. And there are a couple of problems. Number one, we know how many confirmed cases there are, but we don't know if it is much more widespread. I guarantee you we're going to see in the next week the numbers skyrocket in the US because we're testing many more people. So there are people who we know who are infected right now that just we haven't found out yet. And what I've been focused on in terms of addressing this pandemic is four priorities. Number one, testing, making testing more readily available and making it more accurate. And I've laid out a whole series of specific concrete steps the administration can take to do that. Number two is protective gear. And if you protective gear, whether masks or gloves or disinfectant, that especially our first responders, our healthcare professionals that are interacting with people who are sick, we need to make sure we have enough protective gear. And I've laid out again a whole series of steps we can do that. Number three is health capacity and equipment that we need to make sure our hospitals can handle a surge. If we do see the number of people infected with this virus surge dramatically and that we have critical equipment, things like ventilators and you look at what's happening in Italy, Italy has socialized medicine and Italy's healthcare system has been overwhelmed. And you read some of the accounts that they're making triage decisions that are horrifying triage decisions where they have multiple patients in very acute respiratory failure and they don't have enough ventilators and they're making the decision of essentially we're gonna provide life saving care to you, but we don't have the equipment to save your life. Nobody wants to see America in that situation where there are people being denied life saving equipment. Now as I've talked to physicians. We're in a much better position than Italy is in terms of how many ventilators we have. But we need to do much more to make sure we have the equipment in place to make sure anyone that is really sick gets the care they need. And then the fourth critical priority area is focusing on cures. And I've introduced legislation to streamline the FDA approval process so that we can move more quickly through it with vaccines, with treatments, and ultimately a cure for COVID 19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. I think in terms of the pandemic, those should be our priorities.
- [27:29]
Michael Knowles
Great priorities. And it is actually a bit of a relief to hear that Italy is not just a crystal ball into America's future, because I think there have been some reports that that's exactly where we're headed. It's good to know that that very likely is not the case, though. There's obviously still a lot of uncertainty. One certainty, though, is that we are out of time now and we will certainly be back to keep covering more as the situation is changing all of the time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [28:03]
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.