The Nature of Evil

Summary

Summary of "The Nature of Evil" Episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz
Hosted by Michael Knowles and Ted Cruz | Release Date: June 2, 2022

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1. Gun Control and the NRA Convention ([06:33] - [12:18])

The episode opens with Ted Cruz addressing the recent NRA convention, highlighting the controversial discussions surrounding gun control in the wake of the tragic shooting in Uvalde. He notes the significant dropout of prominent Republican figures, including Governor Abbott, Senator Cornyn, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, and others, contrasting their absence with Cruz's own attendance and robust defense of the Second Amendment.

"You gave what I thought was a really, really powerful and important speech." ([07:21])

Michael Knowles echoes Cruz's sentiments, expressing disappointment over the politicization of tragic events by the media and Democrats. He emphasizes that the focus should extend beyond gun control to deeper cultural issues contributing to such acts of evil.

2. The Cultural Roots of Evil and Mass Violence ([07:21] - [12:18])

Michael delves into the underlying cultural factors that foster evil acts, such as despair, isolation, violent hatred, broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media bullying, and substance abuse. He argues that these societal issues are more significant contributors to mass violence than gun ownership alone.

"Why is that the part that we're not allowed to address? It seems to me that that's far more the common thread here even than the guns." ([08:40])

3. Corruption and Discrepancies in the Criminal Justice System ([15:04] - [22:40])

The discussion shifts to the Michael Sussman case, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton accused of lying to the FBI about the Russia investigation. Cruz and Knowles critique the judicial outcome, suggesting political bias within the legal system. They express concerns about a potential two-tiered justice system where political affiliations influence legal consequences.

"It just makes people think that there are two separate justice systems." ([19:25])

Knowles further criticizes the prosecution's limitations imposed by the judge and questions the impartiality of a jury allegedly biased against Trump.

4. Hollywood Censorship and National Security ([22:40] - [26:36])

Michael discusses the editing of national flags from the back of Maverick's jacket in the Top Gun sequel, attributing it to Chinese censorship concerns. He introduces his proposed "Script Act," which would prevent filmmakers from using federal assets if they permit Chinese interference or censorship in their movies. This legislation aims to protect American cultural and national interests against foreign influence.

"I introduced legislation to address Chinese censorship of American movies. And it's legislation that's called the Script Act." ([25:27])

5. Media Criticism and Responses ([26:36] - [29:23])

The hosts address backlash from media outlets like The View regarding Michael's comments on beauty standards. Michael recounts being criticized for praising attractive women, to which he defends his remarks by distinguishing between objective beauty standards and misogyny.

"Beautiful women are awesome." ([27:20])

They discuss the challenges of navigating societal expectations and media sensitivities around discussions of beauty and attraction.

6. Listener Questions and Discussions ([30:30] - [34:13])

Ted introduces listener-submitted questions, beginning with inquiries about the Supreme Court's stance on firearm magazine capacity bans. Michael provides an analysis of ongoing litigation and the potential for the Supreme Court to address these issues, especially if a circuit split arises.

Subsequently, a question about implementing Hungary-style family incentive programs prompts a discussion on federal policies to support strong family units. Michael advocates for reducing disincentives to marriage and suggests alternatives like child tax credits and universal savings accounts for newborns, while cautioning against government overreach in personal family matters.

"I think we ought to be doing more to encourage strong families in churches and communities in the private sector." ([36:29])

7. Humorous Interlude ([36:29] - [37:18])

In a lighter moment, Ted presents a playful listener question referencing the classic "Monty Python" sketch about the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, eliciting humor from both hosts.

8. Promotion of Upcoming Content ([37:18] - [38:52])

The episode concludes with promotions for related content, including an upcoming discussion on the "public duty doctrine" and endorsements for subscribing to the podcast and related platforms.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Why is that the part that we're not allowed to address? It seems to me that that's far more the common thread here even than the guns."
  — Michael Knowles ([08:40])

• "It just makes people think that there are two separate justice systems."
  — Ted Cruz ([19:25])

• "Beautiful women are awesome."
  — Michael Knowles ([27:20])

• "I think we ought to be doing more to encourage strong families in churches and communities in the private sector."
  — Michael Knowles ([36:29])

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Conclusion:

In this episode titled "The Nature of Evil," Verdict with Ted Cruz engages in a multifaceted discussion addressing gun control, the cultural underpinnings of mass violence, perceived biases within the criminal justice system, and the influence of foreign entities on American media. The hosts advocate for a broader examination of societal issues beyond surface-level legislative debates, emphasizing the need for strong family structures and cultural integrity. Through a blend of serious analysis and light-hearted exchanges, the episode offers listeners a comprehensive exploration of the factors contributing to evil acts in contemporary America.

Transcript

[Ted Cruz]

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[Michael Knowles]

To slander one's political adversaries and to demand that responsible citizens forfeit their constitutional rights than it is to examine the cultural sickness giving birth to unspeakable acts of evil. It's far less comfortable to ask why despair and isolation and violent hatred is so prevalent in America. It requires a sick soul to drive a truck into a crowded sidewalk, to plan a bomb at a marathon, or to fly a plane into a building. It requires a sick soul to open fire in a movie theater, or in a church or in a school. A speeding automobile in the hands of a madman is deadly, as is a jet airplane. Tragedies like the events of this week are a mirror, forcing us to ask hard questions demanding that we see where our culture is failing. Looking at broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendance, social media bullying, violent online content, desensitizing the act of murder in video games, chronic isolation, prescription drug and opioid abuse, and their collective effects on the psyche of of young Americans.

[Ted Cruz]

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[Michael Knowles]

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[Ted Cruz]

Welcome to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. We've just had the NRA convention. This was obviously very controversial. Major calls from the left to regulate guns and ban all sorts of guns. This after the shooting in Uvalde, I have to point out a lot of people dropped out of the NRA convention. Governor Abbott dropped out. Senator Cornyn dropped out. Congressman Dan Crenshaw dropped out. Dan Patrick, I think dropped out. The lieutenant governor of Texas, a lot of people dropped out. Senator, you did not. You showed up. You gave a robust defense of the Second Amendment. I'm not saying it to flatter you and you know that I hate to compliment you. You gave what I thought was a really, really powerful and important speech.

[Michael Knowles]

I thought it was important to be there. I was disappointed to see so many others make the decision not to be there, in part because the media narrative that comes out of horrific crimes, horrific mass murders within seconds, the media immediately wants to politicize them and use them to advance their long standing political agenda that they had moments before the murder occurred. And in this instance, the media and the Democrats, they want to label anyone who believes in the Second Amendment, anyone who defends the Second Amendment as responsible for this horrific crime. And the NRA in particular is probably their favorite boogeyman. Donald Trump spoke as well. He and I spoke back to back and I chatted with Trump right before he went on stage and thanked him for coming. And I said, look, it was important that you came. It was important that you didn't back out. Thank you for being here. And he, of course, agreed. And he had, let me just say some choice words for some of the folks who chose not to be there. They were, with classic Trump understatement, he expressed his views on that topic.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, there's an irony here, which is why I really appreciated your speech. I've got to cut it out with the compliments for you. This is the last episode, and we'll get back to criticism next time. But I really appreciated it because whenever anyone brings up cultural factors, something other than guns, in any of these tragedies, what the left says is, well, you're just evading the question. You're just trying to distract from the real issue, which is guns. We've gone through all of these statistics. I don't see any reason to rehash them now. So, all right, we've addressed the gun part. Why are you not allowing us to address the fatherlessness part? Why are you not allowing us to address the social isolation? Why are you not allowing us to address the decline in religion and faith and going to church? Why is that the part that we're not allowed to address? It seems to me that that's far more the common thread here even than the guns.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, I will say the speech that I gave was very different from the speech I'd planned to give. I've spoken at a lot of NRA conventions. I know how to give a barn burner of a speech. And so I decided instead to give what I hope was a thoughtful, serious speech on the nature of evil. That was the entire topic of my speech, both the nature of evil, why it is that we have mass murderers. We have people who commit horrific crimes, whether it's shooting a school or shooting a church or shooting a movie theater. Or you have people that commit crimes driving a truck into a Christmas parade, murdering six people, or setting off a bomb at the Boston Marathon, I mean, we are seeing sick, homicidal people. Many of the times. They are young, disaffected men who are alienated, who are isolated, who are angry. The per capita rate of gun ownership in 1972 was 43% in America. The per capita rate of gun ownership in 2021, 49 years later, is 42%. It's identical. The same percentage of Americans own firearms today as did 50 years ago. So that hasn't changed. It's not like in 1970, people didn't have firearms, you had the exact same percentage of Americans owning firearms. What's changed is the culture, the loss of faith, the loss of family, and by the way, the left, when I talked about homes without fathers in them. And so many of these mass murders are raised with absent fathers, often criminal fathers or abusive fathers, but absent fathers.

[Ted Cruz]

Virtually all of them. Virtually every single one of these shootings involves a father outside the home.

[Michael Knowles]

You know, it was interesting seeing some of the reactions of the left because it's almost pathological where they come back and attack me and said, well, Cruz is attacking single moms. No, I'm not. I'm saying that kids do better with dads. Look, I've got a family that has a lot of single moms in them. Single moms are heroic and extraordinary people. I just wish there didn't have to be so many single moms. I wish moms had the help of a father who was a husband and a loving helpmate in raising children that are loved and appreciated and valued and not psychopathic monsters.

[Ted Cruz]

I always thought the gun control arguments were incoherent from the same people who tell us that the cops are racist and they go around plucking off people, innocent people, because of their skin color. The cops are racist, the cops are terrible. That's why they should have all the guns. That never made a lot of sense. But now in the wake of the shooting in Texas, you're hearing many people say that the police response was incompetent, that the police response was cowardly. Again, I'm sure there'll be an investigation to go through what actually happened there. But if that is the case, you're telling me that we can't rely on the cops to protect ourselves. So isn't that an even more robust defense of self defense of the second amendment, of our right to keep and bear arms in America? I'm just really glad that you stood up and you didn't let them bully you and you didn't cancel the speech. Cuz I think it's a message that people really needed to hear.

[Michael Knowles]

Michael, the point you're making there also is an important one, which is if you look, in the last couple of years we've seen gun ownership going up. And one of the major causes of that was in 2020, the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots all across the country where you had Democratic politicians that refused to enforce the law, that ordered the police to stand down, that wouldn't protect people's homes, that wouldn't protect people's businesses, that wouldn't stop looters that wouldn't stop firebombs from being thrown that allowed lawless rioters to declare so called autonomous zones, the Chaz and the Chad for weeks on end. When you have Democrat politicians who say we won't let the police protect you, it's not surprising that people make the decision, well heck, I'm gonna protect myself if there's gonna be a mob in the street with violence as their objective, especially if the cops aren't there to protect me. That's when I definitely need to keep my family safe. And all the more irony that these same politicians who were singing the praises of violent rioters and people committing assaults and firebombings and even murders, you know, these Democrat politicians, Kamala Harris, raised money to bail these violent rioters out of jail and now they're suddenly saying how morally righteous they are cuz they're opposed to crime. Well, you don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to celebrate violent criminals and then say, oh by the way, you guys can't defend yourself when those violent criminals commit horrific acts that unfortunately their relentless anti police rhetoric helped fuel and cause.

[Ted Cruz]

Speaking of corruption in the criminal justice system, I do have to get your take on something on a completely separate topic that came out today though, which is the case of Michael Sussman, this Clinton lawyer who lied to the FBI who planted the whole Russia hoax, apparently at the direction of Hillary Clinton. We saw the evidence, we saw the correspondence, and yet today the judge let the guy off the hook. I should clarify too. It wasn't just the judge that let him off the hook, it was the jury apparently too. So it's not all the judge's fault.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, and it's the facts of it. This lawyer worked for Hillary Clinton's campaigns law firm and he reached out to the FBI and said, hey, I've got information that Trump is involved with the Alpha bank in Russia and the Trump campaign is colluding with Russia. And he goes out of his way to say, I'm not doing this on behalf of any client. I'm not working for anyone. I'm just being a good citizen. I'm just a good Samaritan. I love America. Rah, rah, rah. So he reaches out to the top brass at the FBI under Obama and meets with them and affirmatively represents them. Now what he told them was nonsense and it was the beginning of the whole Russia hoax and all of that nonsense. But his statement, I'm not doing it on behalf of any client was A flat out lie. He was doing it on behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign and the dnc. And of course being a lawyer, he built for it. So he literally sent the Hillary Clinton campaign a bill charging his time for the time meeting with the FBI to tell them about the Russia hoax. When he told the FBI he wasn't doing it on behalf of a client, somehow the client, he certainly was gonna get paid for it. Cuz he is a lawyer after all.

[Ted Cruz]

If you're gonna be implicated in a, in a crime, don't you think it's worth taking that, you know, 18 minutes on the arm? Do you really need to charge in the six minute increments for when you're committing a crime?

[Michael Knowles]

So I will confess, Michael. When I was practicing law and one of the things I do not miss about private practice is having to think of my day in six minute increments. I would literally take a legal brief or a case with me when I went to the restroom. Cause I'd stand at the urinal and be reading because I wanted a bill for the time. And it is, I understand that sentiment. And by the way, there'd be three other lawyers standing there holding a brief reading at the urinal too because none of us wanted to miss billing the time. Two things on the Sussman case. Number one, the judge severely limited what the prosecutors could introduce into evidence. So they severely limited the broader context of what the Clinton campaign was doing pushing the Russia hoax and everything they were doing in the press. That this was part of a long concerted scheme. The judge kept almost all of that out. And it was a very circumscribed, narrow, factual. You said X was X true is how the prosecutor had to present it to the jury. I think there are real questions that should be asked why the judge was keeping all that context out. What it did is it protected Hillary Clinton like crazy. Like all of the judge's orders basically kept the Hillary campaign directly from being implicated and just had one rogue lawyer. Well, you're gonna in trouble. But then the jury, look, the jury is from the District of Columbia, District of Columbia votes, you know, 90% plus Democrat. I have not studied all of the factual evidence introduced in trial, but it certainly raises an eyebrow that this is a jury that in all likelihood voted for Hillary Clinton and hates Donald Trump. And we have seen in cases that are brought in dc, we've seen them be political the other way, that they're quite happy to throw the book at someone if they disagree with the politics of it. It certainly raises A real question in this case whether at least some members of the jury didn't happen to just like the politics of the guy who was violating the law.

[Ted Cruz]

It just makes people think that there are two separate justice systems. You know, we hear ad nauseam about a guy who cracks a Coors Light in the Capitol rotunda. He's the worst terrorist insurrectionist in the history of our country. Throw him in an isolated cell and throw away the key. Meanwhile, you've got a guy who, at the direction of the Democrat presidential nominee, is lying to the FBI about a matter of what could potentially be national security and then undermining. Trying to rig a president election, undermining the actual presidency. And the guy gets off the hook, and the campaign gets off the hook. And you think, where's the justice?

[Michael Knowles]

Well, and I'll tell you what is really worrisome is I'm concerned that Merrick Garland, the attorney General, is gonna use this verdict as an excuse to fire John Durham. Like, they want to end this investigation. It's the one sort of lingering. They want to sweep under the rug what is coming. You know, my next book that's coming out in September is called justice how the Left Politicized Our Legal System. And then it talks at great length about how Barack Obama and now Joe Biden are using the legal system to target their political enemies. It talks about what you just said, the differential treatment used to January 6th defendants compared to the violent rioters in Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots. And I've been pressing this Justice Department for over a year on that, and they just stonewall. They refuse to answer questions. They refuse even the barest oversight. And you're right, it does suggest that there is a disparate, partisan, uneven enforcement of justice, number one. But number two, I'm very concerned that Garland will use this as an excuse to say, okay, Durham's done. And that would be terrible if that happens. But I think that is a very real possibility because there is no doubt the Biden White House wants the Durham investigation over yesterday.

[Ted Cruz]

I suppose my fear then, though, is let's say Durham gets to keep pursuing the investigation. Do we have any hope for justice? I mean, we thought Durham had this guy. We thought Durham had the Clinton campaign. And so if he couldn't get Sussman, is there any hope that we're ever gonna see any justice even if Durham does get to keep his job?

[Michael Knowles]

Well, I don't know. I think there is power to sunlight and transparency in exposing the crimes. If you think about Crossfire, Hurricane and The absolute illegal abuses of power carried out by the Obama Justice Department. They never thought they'd get caught. They thought Hillary would win, in which case it would all be buried and nothing would come to light. It's only the accident from their perspective, that their candidate, who they were trying to do everything they could to ensure she won, lost. That you suddenly had the mechanism in place to provide at least some modicum of sunlight.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, there, shockingly, is a little bit of justice coming out of a liberal institution in America. I wanted to get your thoughts on it. Have you seen Top Gun yet?

[Michael Knowles]

I have. I saw it yesterday. It is awesome. It is spectacular.

[Ted Cruz]

Did you see the back of the jacket? They put Taiwan back.

[Michael Knowles]

They put Taiwan back. They put Japan back. And this is fantastic. All right, so folks who don't know the backstory of this, when the Top Gun sequel was being made, they edited the back of Maverick's jacket, and the back of Maverick's jacket had the Taiwanese flag and the Japanese flag, and they erased it. They took them out. And so in the trailer that came out, I don't know, a year ago, the two flags were gone. And it was obvious why they did so, which is that they were worried about the Chinese censors. And the Chinese censors don't refuse to acknowledge that Taiwan exists. And so Hollywood was trying to sell the movie in China. It's a big movie market. I actually introduced legislation to address Chinese censorship of American movies. And it's legislation that's called the Script Act. And what the Script act says is that. So a lot of movies, and Top Gun's a great example, a lot of movies use US government assets. So Top Gun used F18s. It used aircraft carriers. It used, you know, billions of dollars of federal government assets to make the movie. And that happens a lot. Anytime you're using military equipment, anytime you're at the Border Patrol, there are lots of times where you're using government assets to make a movie. And what the Script act says is that no movie maker could use federal government assets if they allow the Chinese Communist government to censor their movie. So it doesn't try to prevent. If you want to let the Chinese censor you, you can. But the federal government is not going to subsidize your efforts to produce Chinese censored movies by allowing you access to federal government assets. I stood on the Senate floor and I lit into Hollywood over exactly this issue. Top Gun censoring the jacket on the back of Maverick's jacket. I said, look, you know, now Maverick is afraid of the Chinese Communists. What the hell have we come to? And I gotta say, it was beautiful yesterday watching the movie. He pulls on the jacket and there they were, the Taiwanese flag and the Japanese flag. I don't ever say this, but Paramount Pictures did the right thing. I don't ever praise Hollywood, but they grew a backbone and they stood up to the Chinese Communist and amen. Hallelujah. Top Gun. Kill the bad guys. Awesome movie.

[Ted Cruz]

Well, it might have been a little bit of stick as well as a little bit of carrot. You know, if you're proposing legislation that says we're going to make it much harder for you to make these movies if you throw us and our allies under the bus. I don't want to sound cynical here or jaded. Maybe that had something to do with the decision.

[Michael Knowles]

By the way, do you know how they do the aerial scenes in Top Gun? So I watched a couple of days ago a thing on YouTube where they were describing it. So they're in actual F18s. And essentially when they're in the aerial seats, the actors are in the second seat. So the front, you know, there are two seats in an F18. The front seat is the pilot and is the actual, presumably Navy pilot who's flying the jet and doing all the maneuvers. And in the second seat is the actor who's meant to be the pilot. But all of the, like, face being smushed back. Those are real G forces. I mean, they're like they're going through all of that. And what's fake is when they're moving the stick up and down in the controls, they don't actually have the controls. It's the real pilot doing it. But it is real that they're in the F18 and the footage is actual fighter jets flying through the air. It's really cool.

[Ted Cruz]

I don't doubt anything that Tom Cruise does in movies. I'm expecting him to walk on Mars in the next Top Gun. So that'll be something to look forward to. Senator, before I let you go, I do have to get to speaking of Hollywood, some criticism that has come out from you. Verdict has been in the news everywhere. I get alerts for this show. The alerts have been blowing up. You got in big, big trouble, sir, because you made the audacious claim that you like hot women. You made the claim some women are beautiful. You didn't understand how the guy from SNL could pick up the hot chicks. So amid all of the barrage of criticism from the liberal media here, do you still stand by that outrageous statement?

[Michael Knowles]

Beautiful women are awesome. I will say I was amused to see Verdict became the subject of the View. They sat there and were blasting us for that segment. And in particular, so I talked about how did Pete Davidson get Kate Beckesdale? I guess it's beccasale. There's no D in it. So I mispronounced her name. And they went on and you know, the women on the View were attacking me. I think they said I was creepy and gross or I don't know, it was some sort of insults which I couldn't help but respond. Well, you know, from such noted experts on sex appeal as Whoopi Goldberg and Anna Navarro. I'm really glad to get their views. All right, so this weekend we had my family in town because we were celebrating. Caroline, my eighth grader graduated eighth grade going into ninth grade. And so we were celebrating that. But my dad was very unhappy about that segment. So my dad was in town this weekend, he was very unhappy and he was like, you really shouldn't be talking about those things. You were talking about hot vampire women. I don't think my dad's seen Underworld. And he was like, why are you talking about hot vampire women? And you know my father in a Cuban accent and he's a preacher, but he was dismayed. And I'm like, have you not watched Underworld? Because like that's objective. Truth is a defense.

[Ted Cruz]

I actually don't even really get the views criticism because you know, of course if you had said that the women were not beautiful, they'd call you a misogynist and a terrible. They'd find some way to hit you. Kind of damned if you do and damned if you don't. But are we at the point of society right now where we're not even allowed to embrace objective standards? We're not even allowed to say that beautiful women are beautiful. What have we succumbed to?

[Michael Knowles]

And by the way, my point was just there's a mismatch that Pete Davidson seems to be batting out of his league. Look, if Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise dates hot women, of course, I mean, the guy's Tom friggin Cruise. Like that, you know, Brad Pitt, you know, you understand. Michael, I will tell you my favorite toast. God bless near sighted women.

[Ted Cruz]

Maybe that explains it. That might actually, maybe Kim Kardashian and all the rest of them. Maybe they just need glasses. Before we go, I also have to get to some mailbag senator because we've got very, very questions as we always do from our verdict listeners. If you haven't subscribed yet, subscribe what are you waiting for? Go head on over to Apple, Podcast, Spotify, stitcher, Google Play, YouTube. You can join the verdict community. Just click subscribe. Leave a 75 star review this question does relate to gun control. This is from Long Ethernet. Will the Supreme Court strike down standard capacity firearm magazine bans so greater than 10 rounds, say from California and Washington?

[Michael Knowles]

I think there's certainly a possibility. There's ongoing litigation on that. The test that comes from the Heller case, which was the case Heller vs District of Columbia that first clearly established and upheld the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, laid out a test about whether a weapon and the same would apply to ammunition is in common usage for self defense by American citizens. In that instance, what the court struck down in D.C. was a ban on handguns and on functioning long guns on rifles and shotguns, both of which were required to be disassembled or have trigger locks on them at all times. The argument with regard to ammunition would be the same thing, that it is in common usage by individuals to defend their homes and defend their families that's being litigated. My recollection is I think the California ban had been struck down in federal court, although I'm not following the litigation closely. So that's a fuzzy recollection that may or may not be right whether the court takes it. Typically, the court will wait for what's called a circuit split to take a case. So the Supreme Court's general view on its docket is that it doesn't engage in error correction. So even if there's a decision of the court below that it thinks is wrong, its job is not to correct wrong decisions. Its job instead is to ensure uniformity of federal law, that the answer to a question of law, a federal law, be the same in one part of the country as it is elsewhere, that there not be a patchwork quilt of different legal standards. So for the court to grant a case, there's got to be in almost all circumstances what they call a circuit split, which is multiple courts of appeals addressing the same legal question and coming to different outcomes. And if there's a circuit split, if it's significant and consequential, and if the case provides a good vehicle to address it, then in those instances the court is likely to take it. Right now there's a pending Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court out of New York dealing with New York's restrictions on carrying guns. And it's an argument about the right to keep and bear arms, and in particular the right to bear arms not just to have them in your home, but to actually to carry them for self defense. That's gonna be expected to be one of the big blockbuster decisions in the next month on the extended magazine size. I don't know if there's a circuit split right now. If there isn't, my guess is the court would wait until a circuit split developed.

[Ted Cruz]

That makes sense. You had mentioned earlier in the conversation about why these shootings appear to be more prominent now, more prevalent. There's issues beyond the guns, one of which is family breakdown. So we have a question from Ben, who asks, would you support a Hungary style family incentive program? So throughout the west, the birth rates have plummeted, we're below replacement now, families are falling apart. And Hungary has implemented programs to incentivize people to get married, to have families, to create kids. These are tax incentives, various government subsidies, and it appears to have worked at least modestly. Although I know a lot of conservatives recoil at the idea of government basically paying you to have kids. What's your take?

[Michael Knowles]

Look, I think the objective is a good objective. I would be skeptical of that particular means for implementing it. I think when it comes to federal policy, we should work to limit the harmful consequences. So there have long been disincentives for marriages, what's called the marriage penalty. And I think our tax laws should not disincentivize marriage. There are also work disincentives. So you look at how some of the welfare programs work where people at certain income thresholds, if they go get a job, they end up functionally paying over 100% in taxes because they lose more government benefits than they earn in their job. Those negative tax implications are really, really problematic. So I think we should not be disincentivizing strong family units. Look, at some level we do things like we have child tax credits which are designed to make it easier for families to raise kids. I think those make sense and are an important part of the tax code. You know, I have also seen different proposals for things like a universal savings account for each newborn child that potentially the government would populate. You have a baby and there's a savings account that is populated with a couple thousand dollars that grows and gains in value during the child's life. Some of those ideas I think are interesting. I don't know that they're fully baked yet, but I think they're interesting ideas to think about. I think I would be hesitant to engage in the sort of micro social engineering. I don't know a lot of details about the Hungary program, but just as you described it. I think there'd be a danger of screwing things up. I think we ought to be doing more to encourage strong families in churches and communities in the private sector. I don't know that we should be entrusting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with that.

[Ted Cruz]

Right. There is also a middle ground where one could trust the laboratories of democracy. And you see, if some sort of program like this works in a state, if it does great, you consider it at the federal level. And if it doesn't, well, too bad for you. Colorado or whatever state. Probably not. Colorado would try it out. But yeah, it's very. That's a very measured take on things. Finally, Senator, very important question from Chris. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, blue or black? There's no way that I can really even clarify this question without falling into all sorts of political incorrectness from Monty Python. So I suppose we should probably just leave it there. There is, of course, more to discuss for the Verdict listeners, and that is on the Cloakroom with Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you be talking about?

[Michael Knowles]

Hi, Michael. Hi, Senator. We're gonna build this week on last week's episode of Plug Room, where we talked about the police response, or lack thereof, in Uvalde at the shooting at the elementary school. This week we're gonna talk about a legal principle underpinning the law enforcement response. It's called public duty doctrine. And it's been held by the Supreme Court that police officers, law enforcement officers, actually have no legal duty to respond or to be dispatched or to aid in any situation, any circumstance that they can't be held liable for that. And we're gonna talk a little bit about this legal principle because it's kind of shocking, right? It sounds very shocking that police who we count on to respond in emergencies, actually have no duty to respond. We're talking about how that applies here and how that can be addressed legally to prevent anything like this from happening again in the future. You can join us for the cloakroom on verdict plus go to vedictwithtedcruise.com verdict plus you can use my promo code cloakroom to get one month free on your annual subscription. That's verdict with tedcruise.com plus promo code cloakroom.

[Ted Cruz]

Excellent. There are so many opportunities to subscribe if you haven't done it already. I implore you, I beseech you. Go to Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube, Google Play, MySpace, AOL Instant Messenger, I don't know anywhere. Subscribe to Verdict. Senator thank you as always. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

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 Republican Party across the nation.

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