The Meme Gurus

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Meme Gurus

Podcast Information:

• Title: The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
• Host/Author: Premiere Networks
• Episode: The Meme Gurus
• Release Date: February 1, 2021

Note: The provided transcript appears to be from "Verdict with Ted Cruz" featuring Michael Knowles and Senator Ted Cruz. This summary is based on the supplied transcript content.

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Introduction and Overview

The episode titled "The Meme Gurus" delves into the tumultuous events surrounding the GameStop (GME) stock surge orchestrated by retail investors from Reddit's WallStreetBets community. The discussion primarily focuses on the clash between these retail investors and major hedge funds, the subsequent market volatility, and the regulatory and corporate responses, particularly highlighting the role of trading platforms like Robinhood.

Key Topics Covered:

1. GameStop Short Squeeze and Market Dynamics
2. Robinhood's Restrictive Actions and Fairness in Trading
3. Bipartisan Concerns and Political Reactions
4. Broader Implications for Big Tech and Regulatory Frameworks
5. Environmental Policies and Political Hypocrisies

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1. GameStop Short Squeeze and Market Dynamics

Ted Cruz begins by elucidating the mechanics behind the GameStop phenomenon. Hedge funds had heavily shorted GameStop stock, betting on its decline. However, the coordinated buying efforts by retail investors from the WallStreetBets subreddit aimed not only to profit from the rising stock price but also to inflict financial losses on these hedge funds.

• Market Impact: The stock price skyrocketed from approximately $4 to over $400 within a short span, causing significant losses for those holding short positions.

  "It went from like four bucks a share. I think it's been as high as $400 a share. I mean, it's massive increase." [02:30]

• Volatility Consequences: While some investors profited immensely, others faced substantial losses as the stock market experienced unprecedented volatility.

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2. Robinhood's Restrictive Actions and Fairness in Trading

The conversation shifts to Robinhood's controversial decision to restrict purchases of GameStop stock, allowing only sales. This move sparked accusations of favoritism towards large hedge funds over ordinary retail investors.

• Operational Constraints: Robinhood cited liquidity issues and regulatory requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act as reasons for its restrictions, though critics argue it protected Wall Street interests.

  "What Robin Hood did is basically implemented that rule and said, all right, we're gonna screw the little guy and only favor the big guy." [05:11]

• Public Reaction: The decision galvanized bipartisan outrage, with both left and right-wing commentators acknowledging the unfair advantage it provided to institutional players.

• Differential Treatment: The episode highlights the inconsistency in regulatory application, where large firms operate under different rules compared to individual investors.

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3. Bipartisan Concerns and Political Reactions

Michael Knowles and Ted Cruz discuss the rare bipartisan moment where both political spectrums recognized the manipulation and unfairness in the GameStop saga. However, the unity was short-lived when political rhetoric turned hostile.

• AOC's Reaction: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) initially voiced concerns but later attacked Ted Cruz, undermining the bipartisan support.

  "But because I tried to have her murdered three weeks ago, she's not willing to work with me." [06:46]

• Polarization: The episode underscores the deep political divisions that prevent collaborative efforts to address systemic issues in financial markets and corporate governance.

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4. Broader Implications for Big Tech and Regulatory Frameworks

The discussion broadens to the suppression of conservative platforms and the challenges of creating alternative social media or financial platforms in the face of big tech dominance.

• Parler Example: Parler, a conservative-friendly social media platform, was swiftly shut down by major tech companies, raising antitrust concerns.

  "Parler was kicked out of existence by essentially every gigantic tech company acting in concert... it's an exercise of brute power." [09:53]

• Possibility of Alternatives: The conversation questions how conservatives can build their own platforms akin to Twitter or brokerages like Robinhood when faced with systemic suppression.

• Dodd-Frank Act's Role: The regulatory environment, particularly the Dodd-Frank Act, is critiqued for imposing requirements that may inadvertently protect large financial institutions over individual investors.

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5. Environmental Policies and Political Hypocrisies

The latter part of the episode shifts focus to environmental policies, critiquing the Biden administration's approach and highlighting perceived hypocrisies within the Democratic Party.

• Job Losses vs. Environmental Claims: Ted Cruz argues that the administration's actions, such as halting the Keystone Pipeline, have led to significant job losses, particularly in unionized sectors, under the guise of environmental protection.

  "Joe Biden's whole political career has been marketing that he was the kid from Scranton... and now... within minutes of being sworn in, he takes out a pen and he destroys thousands upon thousands of blue collar union jobs." [19:15]

• Shift in Democratic Priorities: The episode asserts that the Democratic Party has moved away from supporting blue-collar workers to aligning with elites and big tech, undermining traditional support bases.

  "Today's Democratic Party is the party of the rich, it's the party of elites, it's the party of Wall street, it's the party of Big Tech, it's the party of Hollywood, it's the party of universities." [17:08]

• Environmental Impact: Contrary to professed environmental goals, the actions taken are argued to be detrimental, leading to increased reliance on dirtier energy sources and exacerbating environmental degradation.

  "Everything that Joe Biden is doing in the name of climate will make the climate dirtier." [27:36]

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Notable Quotes with Attribution and Timestamps

• Ted Cruz on Market Volatility:

  "That is enormous volatility that did a number of things. Number one, for everyone that bought at four bucks, if you sold at 400, you made a lot of money." [03:40]

• Ted Cruz on Robinhood's Fairness:

  "And what Robin Hood did is basically implemented that rule and said, all right, we're gonna screw the little guy and only favor the big guy." [05:11]

• Michael Knowles on Political Shifts:

  "We are seeing ID right now, leftist id, and they're expressing hate." [08:33]

• Ted Cruz on Democratic Hypocrisy:

  "The same rules ought to apply for everyone. So if it's a casino, you know what, you or I can walk into a casino in Vegas, we can put everything we got on red, spin the wheel, and if it hits, it hits." [14:07]

• Ted Cruz on Environmental Policies:

  "The United States of America. By far, it's not even close because our energy production is so much cleaner." [29:38]

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Conclusions and Insights

The episode "The Meme Gurus" serves as a critical examination of the intersection between retail investing, big financial institutions, and regulatory frameworks. It underscores the perceived imbalance in power dynamics, where large hedge funds and tech giants can manipulate markets and suppress alternative platforms, often at the expense of ordinary investors and conservative voices.

Furthermore, the discussion extends to environmental policies, highlighting a disconnect between Democratic rhetoric on climate change and their actions, which are portrayed as undermining both the environment and blue-collar jobs. This dichotomy points to broader issues of political hypocrisy and the shifting priorities within the Democratic Party towards elite and corporate interests.

Key Takeaways:

• Power Imbalance: There is a significant power disparity between retail investors and institutional players, exacerbated by tech platforms' policies.
• Political Polarization: Deep political divides hinder collaborative problem-solving and amplify personal attacks over policy discussions.
• Regulatory Challenges: Existing regulations may inadvertently favor large corporations over individual investors, necessitating policy reevaluation.
• Environmental Policy Critique: Current environmental initiatives are criticized for prioritizing political agendas over genuine ecological benefits and economic stability.

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Final Thoughts: "The Meme Gurus" encapsulates the frustrations of retail investors feeling marginalized by powerful financial entities and restrictive corporate policies. It also reflects broader concerns about the integrity of political commitments, regulatory fairness, and the true motivations behind environmental policies. The episode calls for a more equitable financial system and genuine bipartisan efforts to address systemic issues that affect both economic and environmental landscapes.

Transcript

[Michael Knowles]

Markets are going crazy as the meme gurus [e-mail] confound the entire financial and regulatory establishment. But the establishment is pushing back Big tech, big government, big corporate America, all coming back to squeeze the little guy. We'll get into what it all means. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict. I'm Michael Knowles. I am joined by by the nefarious infamous murderer himself, Ted Cruz. We have got some very, very exciting news. After so long of being locked down, of being kept apart, we're taking verdict on the road. We will be at YAF's Freedom Conference in Miami, Friday, February 5, 8pm Eastern. If you're in Miami, I hope that we'll see you there. Even if you're not in Miami, we will get to speak with you. We will be taking your questions live through the YAF YouTube channel. So if you want to submit a question and have it answered in real time, go to YouTube.com yafftv we have been talking about a whole lot of things, but there's so much more to get to. Senator, what are we going to talk about?

[Ted Cruz]

Well, the best thing about Miami is that we'll be with real live human beings out of the COVID caves to which we've all been sent. You had to flee the state of California to actually encounter other human beings. And so it'll be good to be in Florida, an actual state that is open and operating with live, liberty loving human beings. And apparently I will continue my murderous rampage down in Miami. Yet, you know, ever since Northern California in the 60s, you know, I've had a proclivity to mass murder. And so we'll see if that continues.

[Michael Knowles]

You got that? Again. This actually the most recent accusation of your murderous tendencies. It came in response to this Gamestop wild stock market question. I know some people are a little confused by what's been going on in the markets. And by some people, I especially mean me. I'm not exactly the most financially literate person here. What exactly is going on? As far as I can tell, there are these guys on Reddit who, who decided that there was a vulnerability at some big hedge fund and Wall street had taken out certain positions and so they were gonna make a bunch of money at Wall Street's expense and then everything went haywire.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, I think you actually understand it pretty well. You had a couple of big Wall street hedge funds that were short selling Gamestop. So they were making bets in the market that Gamestop was gonna go down. And if the stock price went down, they made A bunch of money. And, and over at Reddit, at this subreddit called Wall Street Bets, a bunch of folks got ticked off at that and said, I'll tell you what, let's all go buy GamesCop. And number one, we'll make money and drive the stock up. But number two, we'll put those other guys out of business. And miraculously, they got enough people to do it that the stock started going up and going up and going up. And it went from like four bucks a share. I think it's been as high as $400 a share. I mean, it's massive increase. I checked a few minutes ago, it's trading about 318 right now. That is enormous volatility that did a number of things. Number one, for everyone that bought at four bucks, if you sold at 400, you made a lot of money. Number two, the hedge funds that are betting on it going down, I mean, they got caught with their shorts down and they're really, really unhappy.

[Michael Knowles]

Because, Senator, when you take a short position, when you're short selling a stock, you're betting against it, right? And so, you know, if it goes down, you make money. But if it goes up, it's not like you get to just hold your position in midair forever. You've got to start putting cash on the table as the stock goes up.

[Ted Cruz]

So what has happened is if you're shorting it, you have sold the stock at a really low price and you've already executed that transaction, you've sold it. And so if the stock goes up, you have to fulfill on that promise, which means you gotta buy it. Let's say you sold it at three bucks, you might have to buy it at 400 to be able to deliver on the stock you sold at 3. In other words, when you're shorting a stock, you've got enormous vulnerability if there's a big delta on the upside. And so this, look, this is chaotic. This is disconcerting. But then it took a really, I gotta say, screwed up step because a number of trading platforms, most prominently Robinhood, you know, Robinhood popularized itself as democratizing stock sales that you on your phone can participate with the big boys. Well, suddenly Robinhood decided, no, no, you can't. The big boys, they can still buy and sell. But you, the ordinary schmo, they prevented you from buying Gamestop. You could still sell it, you just couldn't buy it.

[Michael Knowles]

It's unbelievable.

[Ted Cruz]

And I gotta admit, a whole lot of folks, whole lot of folks on the left, whole lot of folks on the right. I mean, we all said, all right, this is screwed up. If there's gonna be a rule, it ought to be a rule that applies to everyone. We shouldn't have one rule for rich, powerful, connected hedge funds in Manhattan and a different rule for every other American that is trading your own money. And what Robin Hood did is basically implemented that rule and said, all right, we're gonna screw the little guy and only favor the big guy. And that does seem to be getting the whole notion of Robin Hood a little bit backwards.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, steal from the poor to give to the rich. Because one thing that has been so nauseating about this entire issue is when apps like Robinhood came in and protected Wall street, basically protected these hedge funds. It was as though they were these vulnerable, innocent, poor little hedge funds, and the mean old guys on Reddit were coming in. And of course, that isn't the case when you've got a retail investor, an ordinary American coming in, trying to play with the big guys. And then the big guys seem to get this separate set of rules here. So the left and the right did kind of come together about this. They said, this seems a little bit rigged, guys. This seems unfair. Aoc, as far left a congressman as you can get. She came out and said, we've gotta look into this. You said, you know, stopped clock twice a day. I agree with this. And it could have been this moment of unity and healing and bipartisan support. And then she called you a murderer.

[Ted Cruz]

Yeah. So my tweet, I took her tweet where she said, this is messed up. This needs to be investigated. Congress needs to look into why Robinhood shut down ordinary investors. But hedge funds can continue to. To try to get out of their short position and try to cover their rear ends. I read her tweet, and I was on my phone, I read it, and I said, huh, that's right. I'll be damned. That doesn't happen very often. And so I retweeted her, and the sum total of my tweet was two words, fully agree. And then I had a finger pointing down. And by the way, no, it was not the middle finger. It was the index finger pointing down. In an ordinary world, if someone retweets you and say they fully agree with you, that does suggest, gosh, maybe there's something to this. If people all across the ideological spectrum agree this is screwed up, maybe there's something to it. Her reaction was a little different. She sent a series of really unhinged tweets screaming that she's not Willing to work with me, she'll work with other Republicans, although I'm not sure who or where, but this theoretical Republican. But because I tried to have her murdered three weeks ago, she's not willing to work with me. And it's just, look, the left right now, they're angry, they're filled with hate, and they're exercising a primal scream. I mean, we are seeing ID right now, leftist id, and they're expressing hate. And it's like, all right, look, our country is really divided right now. I'd like to see us actually interact like human beings and adults and show some decency and actually address the real problems in the country. But on the other hand, you can just scream, screw you, screw you, screw you, if that's what makes you feel good.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, this brings up a conversation that's happening right now among conservatives as all of these kind of big powers, big, big, big. Are coming in and clamping down. It's making us rethink some things, I think, because as you say, AOC says I'm happy to work with Republicans, just not Ted Cruz and just not Donald Trump and just not really any Republican who could work with her. It's just this hypothetical Republican, but basically she's delegitimizing any Republican. You've heard this from other people on the left who say 75 million Americans are Nazi, white supremacist, whatever. And we on the right used to say things like, well, Twitter is a private company. If they want to kick people off, build your own Twitter. You know, we want private people to be able to run their business however they want. But increasingly we're finding out the left won't let us build our own Twitter. We tried to do that with an app called Parlor. They kicked it out of the App Store, then they kicked it off the Internet. Same thing. Here are we. Now, if we're not allowed to invest in Robinhood, or through Robinhood rather, or really any of the other brokerage apps, are we supposed to build our own broker dealer, or are we supposed to build our own stock market? Are we supposed to build our own economy? You know, where is the end of this? And how can we tackle the problem so that we're not totally ostracized from society?

[Ted Cruz]

So there's a whole bunch of substance there to unpack? Let me take that at several levels. Number one, if you look at what happened to Parler, Parler was kicked out of existence by essentially every gigantic tech company acting in concert. So it was Apple and Amazon, and all of them just Said, we're shutting down your servers. We're kicking you off. And it was swift, it was brutal. It was obviously illegal, by the way, when giant competitors work together to eliminate another competitor that is, on its face, an antitrust violation, and they're all gonna be sued. They're all gonna pay big damages, and they don't care. They're so big, and they're now convinced the Biden administration are so in their pocket that they just don't care. It's an exercise of brute power. Secondly, you know, the AOC response is typical of how the left responds to a lot of issues, which is they don't actually want to talk substance. They don't actually want to. Want to talk about the underlying merits. They want to engage. Number one, it's all politics. You know, we talked in the last verdict about how this is the final scene from every Godfather movie that they are playing out Michael Corleone, they are settling the debts. They want you and me and all of us to sleep with officials. And so they are trying to eliminate everyone. They're trying to eliminate Donald Trump, they're trying to eliminate me. They're trying to eliminate you. They're trying to eliminate conservatives on social media. They're trying to erase the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump, and it is completely devoid of substance. Now, you talked about, how does that mean we can't. You know, the ordinary American can. Can invest, say, in GameStop through Robinhood. Look, one important caveat. GameStop is almost surely a terrible investment.

[Michael Knowles]

Right?

[Ted Cruz]

Right. And it's worth noting. I mean, there are. I mean, since there have been investments, since there's been stock markets, there have been bubbles. You know, you look at in Holland, the tulip bulbs, where they bid up tulip bulbs to insane amounts. Now, anytime you have a bubble, anytime you have prices going way, way, way, way, way up, you can make a ton of money. If you buy at 100 and sell at 200, that math works really well. So if you happen to catch something that is soaring on an artificial bubble, if you can time it right, you can make a good chunk of money. Now, people get worried about bubbles because if you buy at 1000 and it drops to 2, you can be devastated. And predictably, with giant bubbles, these, they soar high, and then they crash precipitously. So I'll be honest. I'm not buying GameStop right now.

[Michael Knowles]

Me neither.

[Ted Cruz]

I think it is fair to say GameStop is not today a $70 billion company, which is where its market cap was given that it was a tiny fraction of that a couple of weeks ago. I mean, this is a casino. So there are people rightly saying, look, a lot of people could lose their shirt and lose all their money on this. And that's right. But the same rules ought to apply for everyone. So if it's a casino, you know what, you or I can walk into a casino in Vegas, we can put everything we got on red, spin the wheel, and if it hits, it hits. And what dismayed so many people, what I think was wrong and what so many other people think was wrong about what Robinhood did, is it had differential rules. The giant hedge funds, they could keep buying and selling, but ordinary Americans couldn't. And yes, there's risk, but if you wanna do some dumb ass things, you ought to have as much right to do a dumb ass thing as the politically well connected are. And that differential is significant. And a final point that is not being discussed at all, and I'm sure AOC this has not occurred to her remotely, but there's a very real possibility that one of the major reasons that Robinhood halted the ability of consumers to buy GameStop is because of Dodd Frank, because of leftist regulation that came in. So as a broker under Dodd Frank, Robinhood has a requirement essentially to put up funding and to borrow funding to cover the differential of their risk exposure. And it's set up in such a way. And listen, I am, I'm a lawyer, I don't do math, so I'm not gonna purport to explain the mechanics of it other than I think there are good discussions to be had about how much was Robin Hood's actions driven by Dodd Frank and pressure from the regulators. Did the regulators get involved directly? Did Janet Yellen, the new treasury secretary, did she get involved directly? That's a question that needs to be asked. What did the banking regulators do? And also the fear of lawsuits. I don't doubt that. A reason, a significant reason Robinhood did this is they said, well, gosh, a whole bunch of people are gonna buy the stock really high, it's gonna plummet, they're gonna lose all their money and they're gonna turn around and sue us. And they were understandably scared about being sued. And so there is. If we're gonna let people go to a casino and bet, it does seem to me there ought to be some form of basically a liability waiver, which is, you know, you sign something saying, you know, dumb ass release. I recognize I may be being a dumb ass right now. If I am, I'm not Gonna sue you. Yeah, that could well make sense. And I suspect our Democratic friends will have no interest in that because that does not conform with their ideology.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, this is a very important point that GameStop itself, this is a brick and mortar store that sells physical video games. This is a company that's gonna go the way of Blockbuster. And these kind of Reddit boards have also targeted BlackBerry, Nokia companies also where the technology. They're not the companies they once were. That was the point. I mean, it was kind of a joke to them.

[Ted Cruz]

And.

[Michael Knowles]

And they saw this massive short position and they saw that they could basically run the price up and force these hedge funds that they don't like to buy up the stock. And it becomes a bubble. Some people are going to make a lot of money, some people are going to get hurt, and the establishment is going to expose itself to me. What's so interesting about all this volatility is a political point that you've been making now for quite some time, and we're seeing it expressed. The guys on these Reddit boards, I don't know them personally, it seems their politics are a little more on the right than they are on the left. I've been told my whole life that the Republicans are the party of Wall Street, Republicans are the party of the big hedge funds. Republicans are the party of these plutocrats in the establishment. And yet, if you look right now, who is defending this sort of unfair set of rules that's protecting Wall Street? It's the establishment Democrats. It's not the Republicans. We're the ones who are complaining about it. Is this shift we've been talking about the difference between the party of Paris and the party of Pittsburgh? Is this shift settling in and are people going to realize it?

[Ted Cruz]

Yes, it's settling in and it drives Democrats crazy. You are right. Today's Democratic Party is the party of the rich, it's the party of elites, it's the party of Wall street, it's the party of Big Tech, it's the party of Hollywood, it's the party of universities, the party. That's who Big Tech listens to. That's who rather Democrats listen to. See, I can't even tell the difference between Big Tech and Democrats anymore. It's actually one of the reasons why today's Democrats are so pro China, why they're so in bed with Communist China, because all of their patrons, all of the people writing them checks and funding what they're doing are in bed with China. Big Tech, Hollywood, they're in bed with China. Which means The Democrats are in bed with China. Who are the Democrats not supporting? Working men and women, blue collar workers, union members. You know, you think back, you know, you and I both read in history books, neither one of us are old enough to remember fdr, but, but there was a time where fdr, where union workers, a steel worker, was the prototypical Democrat voter. Yeah. And actually, you know, you look at Joe Biden, Joe Biden's whole political career has been marketing that he was the kid from Scranton, that he was the blue collar working class kid from Scranton. And what does he do? He gets elected and literally within minutes of being sworn in, he takes out a pen and he destroys thousands upon thousands of blue collar union jobs. Just the Keystone pipeline, which he eliminated with one executive order. That was 11,000 jobs. 11,000 jobs. 8,000 of those were union jobs. And with stroke of one pen, 11,000 people, their jobs just poof, go away. And you know, I've spent the last couple of weeks in confirmation hearings for Biden cabinet appointees asking them, what do you say to those 11,000 people whose jobs you just destroyed? And the answer that they've said over and over again is essentially, jump in a lake. You know, we saw this week John Kerry, I gotta say, by the way, if you were to pick the perfect spokesperson to understand the travails of the blue collar working class, it is John Kerry with tuxedo and tails riding his windsurfer. And he really does. He gave this lecture where he says, well, we're going to help them, quote, make better choices. Well, with all respect, John, screw you. You don't get to sit there with $800 million in the bank, which by the way, you didn't earn, and tell the lowly dirty people who have to work for a living, we're going to help you make better choices. They all need to make solar panels. You know, I would invite you, John, come to South Texas, to the oil patch and talk to an Hispanic guy in a Ford F150 and tell him, sorry, I don't like the choices you have. So your job has just been eliminated. Your ability to provide for your family is gone. I mean, the arrogance and condescension, Thurston Howell telling you I'm destroying your life. Sadly, that's where the Democrats are right now.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, there's something that was, I mean, the whole Kerry press conference I felt was extraordinarily condescending and typically lockjawed and disturbing. But the most disturbing aspect I felt was where he presented his political plan and the Biden Administration's political plan as inevitable. And you know, just a few months ago, Joe Biden was saying, I'm not against fracking, I'm not against coal, I'm not against oil, natural gas. And then we find out, you know, the rug is pulled out from under everybody. Yes, I am. We're going to kill the coal jobs, we're going to kill the, the energy sector jobs. But it's inevitable. It's inevitable. You have to move to solar, you have to move to wind. Go learn how to fix a wind turbine. You know, it reminds us a few years ago when liberal journalists told American manufacturing workers, learn to code. Sorry. And as if there were no choice here. But of course there is. You know, the last four years we had a different policy and we prioritized keeping energy jobs in America, bringing manufacturing jobs back. When we think about the difference between populism and elitism and all these isms that are coming up, what is the future for the Republican Party? And is there any way that we can stop this inevitable flow of progressive history?

[Ted Cruz]

So let me make three points on that. Number one, when Joe Biden was saying in the general election he wasn't going to end fracking, everyone knew he was lying. Biden knew he was lying. Trump knew he was lying. The press knew he was lying. Everyone listening knew he was lying. And what did the press do? And this is a great illustration of how we don't have journalism anymore. The press, the fact checkers, and by the way, fact checkers are among the most pernicious liars we have in our political process. The fact checkers declared it a lie. If you said Biden was in fact gonna ban fracking because he was lying to the American people and saying he wasn't and we were required to accept his lies, boom, what happens? He gets elected and now the fact checkers are saying it's a lie that he ever said he wasn't gonna ban fracking. I mean, it is. You know, I wish George Orwell or Aldous Huxley were still alive to see the absolute fluidity with which CNN and the Washington Post, they are able to tell the exact opposite lie on the flip of a switch, without even the hint of any recollection to what they were saying yesterday. Secondly, you know, when the John Kerry's of the world tell these poor dirty little working class people, learn to code, you know, one of the ironies is almost inevitably the politicians who are doing this. They don't know how to code. Yeah, John Kerry doesn't know how to code. I Guarantee you can't program his iPhone. Like. Like Joe Biden doesn't know how to code you look at it. Politicians are exercising power to destroy other people's lives. And one of the things the left loves to virtue signal. They love to show how virtuous they are by being willing to give away your job. Never their job. Never. Never a penny out of their pocket, Never anything out of their life but your job. They are so virtuous, they will obliterate your life. Look, if you actually respect people, you say you ought to be able to choose what you want to do with your right life. Listen, I'm not a steel worker. If you put me in a steel foundry, I wouldn't. What the hell did it do? I'd probably burn my fingers off. Like I. That. That being a lawyer was the right call for me. That was my skill set. But I'm not gonna presume to tell you that what you chose to do is somehow illegitimate and should be eliminated.

[Michael Knowles]

The wrong choice.

[Ted Cruz]

And a third point, you know, you talked about inevitable. And I have to say it brought to mind Endgame. And you know, Carrie doesn't quite have the massive Thanos hands and fingers, but you could see the inevitable in the finger snapping. And it actually, what is interesting and Endgame is curious. Have you noticed in how many movies how often rabid environmentalists are the bad guys? Whether it's Thanos or go to Watchmen, you know, where the. The view of the left is people are a disease. They buy into the Malthusian line that there are too many people in the world, that people are bad, and everything would be better if we had fewer people. I mean, Thanos wanted to eliminate 50% of the life forms in the universe with one finger snapping.

[Michael Knowles]

And, you know, Senator, I don't want people to think that you're being hyperbolic here or that you're. I mean, this has been the explicit view of very prominent leftists for a long time. You're talking about the sort of Malthusian theories that people are gonna destroy. The world saw this with the population bomb in the latter part of the 20th century, where we were told by the top genius scientists that if we didn't have, hopefully, voluntary suppression of the global population, but if necessary, coerced suppression of the global population, we'd inevitably have starvation, famines everywhere. We had to do this. You hear this with very prominent environmentalists up to and including Al Gore and others. It is a creepy point, and it seems so radical when you say it, but it is undeniable. That, that has been the position of prominent leftists.

[Ted Cruz]

And Michael, I got a question for you. Do you own a private jet?

[Michael Knowles]

Not yet, unfortunately.

[Ted Cruz]

Nor do I. Now listen, I would love a private jet, but I don't have one. You know who does own a private jet? John Friggin Carey.

[Michael Knowles]

Oh my goodness. You don't say so.

[Ted Cruz]

The same person. The hypocrisy on the left on this is really screwed up. And you see, you know, you see Hollywood movie stars come in, in their G5. They've got the carbon footprint of small towns and are they willing to change how they travel? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. John Kerry is going to fly in his jet. He's going to have a caravan of suburbans, carry them everywhere. He's perfectly happy to have a carbon footprint of Paul Bunyan. The rest of us, your jobs must go to go away. I'm sorry. Learned something else to do. And it's driven by, it's driven by money and it's driven by power. Listen, this is not about climate. You know, one of the weird things to understand, everything that Joe Biden is doing in the name of climate will make the climate dirtier. So as the Biden administration destroys U.S. oil and gas production, and that's what they're doing, they're trying to utterly destroy US Oil and gas production. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and magically have your car or truck in your driveway, not need gasoline. You're not going to be able to put pixie dust in your car. You're still going to go to the gas station, you're going to fill the tank. So if Biden succeeds in destroying US Energy production, what does that mean? It means America is going to buy more oil and gas from the Middle east, from Russia. That does several things. Number one, it puts billions of dollars in countries that hate us and want to kill us. That's really bad. Why are we sending money to people who want us dead? But number two, they produce energy much dirtier than we do. So literally what Biden is doing and what Kerry is doing is screwing the environment. Because they want to destroy American energy jobs. Because since they don't have a magic solution for what's going to power your car, if you get on an airplane, and you and I, we don't get on our own private jets, we get on Southwest Airlines or whatever the commercial airline is, you know, jets don't operate on wind. It's really hard. If you imagine putting say a windmill on the front of a jet, it just doesn't work.

[Michael Knowles]

No.

[Ted Cruz]

You know, I'm not a physicist, but. But they're just kind of a problem with that. We're going to continue to have energy needs, but what they're doing is hurting the environment, destroying jobs, and they're doing it for power and money. Every time you hear this, it's about power and money. The Keystone pipeline, by the way. Keystone pipeline. Biden just stopped. Keystone pipeline would bring oil from Canada down south to the US without the Keystone pipeline, you know what's happening? Well, we're still taking that. We're just driving it on trucks and trains. A dirtier way to transport it that's more expensive. So it doesn't actually. Every step they're taking hurts the environment. Here is a data point that the listeners of Verdict will know because y'all are engaged and educated, but it's worth underscoring because no Democrat will ever acknowledge it, which is what country had the single greatest reduction in carbon emissions last year in 2020?

[Michael Knowles]

I think I have an idea. Who? Yeah, please give the answer.

[Ted Cruz]

The United States of America. By far, it's not even close because our energy production is so much cleaner. And so literally what the Biden folks are doing is destroying the cleanest energy in the world to shift to dirtier energy because it makes California environmentalist billionaire donors happy. And that's. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

[Michael Knowles]

The tell on this, of course, is that the solutions that the left propose, they always remain the same. And their reasoning for why we need those solutions changes sometimes to the complete opposite. So very famously, in the 1970s, we were hearing about the threat of global cooling and a new ice age. And today's environmentalists try to write this off and say, well, that was just a sort of media phenomenon, not within the scientific community. That isn't true. You can go back and see major scientific institutions warning about global cooling. That's where the media got it from. Then it changes to global warming. Then it changes to the population bomb, as we were just discussing. Then it changes to, I don't know, climate crisis. And they come up with all these new terms. No matter what the argument, it's always the same answer. Give more power to the state. Give more power to the state's favored corporations. Take away choice from Americans, Tell them to thrive less, live less, do less. It always seems to be the same thing. And I guess this is related to the power grab that you're seeing in the Biden administration. You see the same inevitability talk with regard to China and China A major polluter, let's not forget when we're talking about climate. But you heard from Biden and the kind of establishment consensus for decades, we need to support China, a rising China. It's a good thing for the world. Sure, we might lose some manufacturing jobs, but hey, it's good. And even more than that, it's inevitable. Then we saw over the past few years, well, maybe it's not necessarily inevitable. Now we're hearing this again. I know the media are not reporting on these Biden nominees. They're not really reporting on Biden's stance toward China. You happen to be in the room. What can you tell us about that issue as it pertains to the new administration?

[Ted Cruz]

Well, let me make two points. Let me comment on what you just said there because it was very insightful. But it's even worse than that, which is the Democrats that purport to be motivated by a climate crisis by their actions have made clear they don't actually give a damn about the climate.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Ted Cruz]

Like, okay, if you're going to put forth that the criterion to judge success is are we protecting the environment, then under that criterion, the Democratic policies are a train wreck. They're a disaster. And this is where media narratives are exactly opposite. To be honest. If you look at which parties care about actually clean air and clean water, the record of success. Every major environmental law in the past 50 years has been passed with a Republican president. The EPA was created with a Republican president. If you look at states like Texas with Republican leadership that clean the air and clean the water, substantially improve. Look, all of us, we've got, we breathe, we drink water. Look, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment. I want the world to be cleaner and better after we've left it than when we came. If you look at separate the rhetoric of Democrats from their actions, the actions they're taking make the environment dirtier. If you're shifting from clean energy production in the US to dirty energy production in Russia, if your criterion that matters more than anything is cleaning the environment, that is a stupid thing to do. Paris Climate Deal and this connects to your China point. So Biden opening week rejoins the Paris Climate Deal. Paris Climate Deal is designed to destroy a whole bunch of high paying jobs in the US and it does virtually nothing on China. China is polluting like crazy. They are using dirty coal powered production. They're dumping massive plastics in the rivers. By the way, I joined with a bunch of other Republicans and passing legislation to clean up the seas and get plastics out of the seas. But an enormous percentage of that is coming from China and India that are dumping in rivers enormous quantities of plastic. The Democrats don't care about any of that. Their policies make it worse. So the Paris climate deal makes the environment dirtier. And the reason you can tell that they're not telling the truth is when you make this point, they don't care. They don't care. They don't actually even dispute it. It doesn't matter, because it's not about cleaning up the environment for them. It is about power. Their objective is to destroy those jobs because they want control and they want power. Now, you talked about China in terms of big policy shifts. I think over the next four years, we're going to see a big, big shift towards embracing Communist China. We've had multiple confirmation hearings for Biden Cabinet nominees, one after the other after the other, has been moving back towards China. So, for example, Tony Blinken is the new Secretary of State. Blinken was asked if he would commit to maintain the Entities list, the sanctioned companies in China who are participating in genocide, participating in repressing the Uyghurs, participating in Big Brother control of society. He wouldn't make that commitment. He said, no, I can't commit to that. Gina Raimondo, who's the governor of Rhode island, she was nominated to be the Commerce Secretary. I asked her at her confirmation hearing. I said, all right. Will you commit at least to Huawei? And we've talked about Huawei on verdict before. Huawei is this gigantic Chinese company. It is a global espionage company. It masquerades as a telecom company, but it is. The Chinese Communist government uses Huawei to intercept communications from other countries and to engage in espionage. Huawei is currently listed. I asked Gina Raimondo, will you commit to leaving Huawei on the list? Nope, she can't commit to that either. She'd have to review it. Alejandro Mayorkas, who Biden has nominated to be the head of dhs, Department of Homeland Security. When he was at DHS before, he personally arranged for a visa for a senior vice president at Huawei and for other big Democratic donors because Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton's brother, arranged it. And he was basically in charge of making sure there were favors for big Democratic donors, including taking care of Huawei. There is a pattern across this. And I'll tell you, this week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we had a confirmation hearing for Biden's nominee to UN Ambassador. And Linda Greenfield Thomas, she is a career foreign service officer. We've talked before on the podcast about Confucius Institutes. Confucius. Confucius Institutes are owned and controlled and paid for by the Chinese Communist government. They have been opened up at US Universities all across the country, and they serve as hubs for espionage, hubs for propaganda. There's actually been pretty wide bipartisan agreement that Confucius Institutes are really bad and really harmful. So a couple of years ago, I wrote legislation that passed, had big bipartisan support, passed into law, clamping down on Confucius Institute. The bill I wrote has ended up shutting down dozens of Confucius Institutes across the country. Well, little over a year ago, Biden's UN Ambassador nominee gave a paid speech at a Confucius Institute. She got paid $1,500 to give a speech. I questioned her at the hearing about it, and it's interesting, she backed away from it and said, oh, it was a mistake. And she was horrified, just horrified to see what the Confucius Institute was doing. To which I responded, well, did you keep the money? And she was like, well, yeah, of course I kept the money, but I was horrified. And I will also note the speech she gave. So she handed the speech over to the Foreign Relations Committee. It's handed over to Context that it's deemed confidential. So I have a copy of the speech. She doesn't say one critical word about China. So she goes to a Confucius Institute and gives this puff piece praising China, praising the Belt and Road Initiative, which is billions of dollars that China is investing in infrastructure in the developing world, trying to make developing countries captive economically to China. And not only that, her speech says America should be more like Communist China. We ought to have similar policies to what they have. This is who Joe Biden has picked to be the representative for the United States of America at the United Nations. We are in the midst of and getting ready to see a massive pivot back towards China. And that's really bad for the country in a way.

[Michael Knowles]

I'm sorry that I have to say this. It seems like a return to normal. You know, we're talking about this kind of crooked establishment. And you see it in stories as disparate as the Gamestop sort of kerfuffle. And you see it all the way in foreign policy. You're seeing a return to this old consensus. It's pretty ugly. And they are exercising political power right now. We will have to discuss how we can exercise our freedom and push back against that power. We'll be discussing it in Miami on Friday, February 5th. I've got a whole bunch of mailbag questions. Unfortunately, we're out of time now. I will bring these mailbag questions with me to Miami. We will get your questions live. If you go to YouTube.com we might see you in person there, Senator. Certainly I at least will see you in person there. Very much looking forward to it. And that's just assuming that the big establishment doesn't clamp down on us before then. But hopefully we'll at least get a week and we will see all of you in Miami. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Foreign.

[Unknown]

This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security pac, 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.