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Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz, Weekend Review. Ben Ferguson with you. And these are the stories you may have missed that we talked about this week. First up, Senator Cruz's new book is out, Unwoke how to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. And there's a very interesting conversation in this book about how Donald Trump broke the media up. Second, school choice, a major issue. And how big of an issue should it be in this presidential election? Senator Cruz and I break that down and why Republicans should double down on the issue of school choice. And finally, the southern border. It is a question of national security. Now we bring in Rick Grenell, who is in the job of dealing with national security under the Trump administration. So just how bad and how dangerous is our broken border?
Ted Cruz
We deal with that as well.
Ben Ferguson
It's the Week in Review, and it starts right now. You mentioned what we're up against, and one of your chapters is about the newsroom revolution. And you start with a great of a former colleague of mine that is hard to deal with, Jake Tapper in a fight, as he's in essence calling you a liar. And this is the new thing that the media has done. They become so sanctimonious that they are always looking for a moment to tell you why you're wrong and why they're brilliant. We've seen this in the last several days as they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists in Gaza who the Israelis are trying to eradicate from the face of this earth with good reason after what they did just one month ago. And we talked about this on Verdict. Israel, we knew was on a, on an artificial clock the day the terrorist attack happened, before the media, before the left started going to the aid of Hamas and, and the Palestinian people that were backing Hamas, many of them that were, and saying, okay, all right, you had a few days now to go after these terrorists. Now you got to stop it. Now it's your obligation to stop trying to protect yourself. And this is our media now. And it goes back to this idea that they have that they're better than everyone else. They're not here to report news anymore. They're here to go after people like you and others they don't like and indoctrinate a nation to believe in socialism and communism and Marxism.
Ted Cruz
Look, that is exactly right. And the media has fundamentally changed. And so the chapter on journalism, I talk about how when I was first elected to the Senate 11 years ago, and I actually focus on CNN as really a case lesson. Eleven years ago, cnn, they aspired to be journalists. If you asked them, they'd say, we want to be journalists. We want to present both sides. We want to be fair and objective and balanced, and we want to focus on facts and not our opinion. Now, they were terrible at it. They leaned hard left and they couldn't help themselves. But that was the objective. Number one, they would articulate to you they were trying to achieve. But number two, I think they believed in their heart they were trying to do that. And so when I was first elected to the Senate, you may find this hard to believe, but I went on CNN just about every week. I went on there over and over and over again. And they would give you a chance to lay out a conservative argument and they'd attack you from the left and they'd be unfair and they play gotcha questions.
But, but they would give you a.
Chance to present the other side. And what happened is when Donald Trump became president, I think it fundamentally broke the media. Their brains shattered. They hated him so much that today the media no longer views its vision as being journalists, as being fair and impartial and presenting both sides. Instead, they have embraced a vision that they are advocates, they are defenders of democracy. And what they mean by democracy is left wing, radical policies. And, you know, so the story I tell in the very beginning of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race, I was out on the campaign trail. I was actually in our campaign bus and I was doing an interview with Jake Tapper. And look, I'll confess, I like Jake. I've known Jake for over 20 years. I've known Jake since he was a cub reporter on the George W. Bush 2000 campaign. And I was a baby staffer on it. And so I've known him a long time. And he was interviewing me for his Sunday show and we did an interview and it was, I don't remember, probably 10 minutes or so. And I had learned a lesson. And it's something that I do with every Sunday show, which is that I insist that the Sunday show either be live or it be live to tape. And the reason I learned that is I had done just a few weeks earlier, an interview with Bob Schieffer at cbs. And Bob Schieffer, I hadn't insisted on that. And he'd done the interview, and then afterwards, his show had edited it and basically cut out every good argument I made and just, just put this, this slash job where he decimated me because he excluded all my good answers and just, just edited it in a way that was really deceptive. And I Said, okay, never again.
If we do one of these, they.
Must air what I actually say. And I said, look, if you want to give me five minutes or six or eight or 10 or 12 or whatever, you can pick the time.
But when we film it, you air.
Exactly what happens during that time. So we had agreed with that with cnn, and in the course of the interview, we were talking about the shooting at Fort Hood, and Nadal Hassan, who was the radical Islamist who had walked through and murdered 14 innocent souls, yelling aluha Akbar. And I mentioned that the Obama administration knew that Hasan was a radical jihadist. They knew that he had been in email communication with Anwar Al Awlaki, who was the Islamist cleric, the radical, that he'd asked Al Awlaki about the permissibility of waging jihad on his fellow soldiers. And yet the Obama administration did nothing until he committed that act of mass murder. And when I said all of that, Jake immediately interrupted and he said, that's not true. No, that's not. That's not right. And he said, what you're saying is fundamentally false. That's a lie. It's not true. And, you know, I just kind of smiled and I said, well, you know, Jake, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things. And what I'm saying is entirely accurate. And, you know, when you research the issue, that's exactly what you're going to find out. So we do the interview. Jake and his production team leaves the bus, and I don't know, five, ten minutes later, there's a knock on the door of the bus, and we open it. It's Jake, and he's very sheepish. And he says, hey, can you come in and talk for a second? I said, yeah, sure. Come on in. And he said, look, after we did the interview, he said, I went and got on the Internet and I researched it. And actually, you were right. He said, I didn't know that I had missed. I just had not seen the revelation that the Obama administration knew it. I couldn't believe it. But turns out you were right, I was wrong. And Jake said, listen, I'll give you a choice. We can do it one of two ways. He said, I agreed we would do this live to tape, and so if you want, I will air it exactly as it happened. And then after I air it, I will come on live and I'll say, after the interview, I researched it, and it turns out I was wrong and Cruz was right. What he said was exactly right, and I was in error when I said he was not telling the truth. He said, that's option number one. He said, option number two, which he said I'd really much prefer is that we just edit out that segment, we just remove it from, from the interview and we air everything else and just not include that segment. And I describe in the book that, you know, I thought about it. It was obviously in my self interest to pick option number one. That like having CNN having Tapper admit.
He was full of crap and I.
Was right, that was a big, big political victory. But I also expected that I would be doing a whole lot more interviews with Tapper and with cnn. And I frankly respected how he approached it, that he came to me and he admitted he was wrong. And he gave me that option I thought was an honorable way to handle it. And so I made what I would say is a long term play rather than a short term play. And I said, okay, you can go ahead and cut the segment out.
And so they did.
So the story I recount in the book, that segment never aired because CNN cut the segment out. I focus on Tapper in particular because I think he's a smart guy and I think he wants to be a journalist. And I think in his heart right now he knows that he's not, that Trump broke Tapper, that now CNN will have a panel of five experts there to discuss true or not, Donald Trump is the devil.
And all five of them agree. Of course he's the devil. No, he's worse than the devil.
That's the whole debate. And you know, look, CNN used to be a place if you go back to 2017. In 2017, I did three town hall debates on CNN with Bernie Sanders. We did one on healthcare and two on tax policy. And, and, and they were great debates. I think they were among, if not the highest rated shows on CNN that whole year. They were 90 minutes. Bernie is an unapologetic defender of socialism. I'm an unapologetic defender of capitalism. And we had a real and substantive debate that CNN doesn't exist anymore and it's bad for America, it's bad for the world that we don't have functioning journalism. And I describe all of this in the book. But I also describe how because journalism, corporate media is broken, it's part of what makes the radical Democrats so extreme, why they vote for such ridiculous policy positions that are so out of the mainstream because they know they will never, ever, ever get asked about it by reporters back home. They will never have to defend it. And so it's radicalized the Democrat Party in Washington.
Ben Ferguson
Last question. For you, a little comedy. And congratulations, Jimmy Kimmel is promoting your book. Senator, I'm very excited about this. I also am waiting for the restraining.
Ted Cruz
Order because he's absolutely obsessed with you.
Ben Ferguson
Your new book that is out, Unwoke, how to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. He gave it a prime time promotion on his show last night. Here's what it sounded like.
Jimmy Kimmel
Ted Cruz has a new book. It's called Unwoke. It's. He's, you know what, he's so cool. He's. You can tell it's Ted's book because the dust jacket doesn't quite fit. It won't, won't button in the front. But this is Cruise's fifth book. The last one was called Ted Cruz A Time for Truth. See him there without the beard. He also wrote Ted Cruz Head Ooze. He wrote Glued Pubes, the guy for.
Ted Cruz
Guys who Can't Grow a beard.
Jimmy Kimmel
Of course, the New York Times bestseller A Partially Digested Rat and Other Things I Found in My Chin Pouch. There are many interesting musings and revelations in the books. He says the Princess Bride is his favorite movie and he's seen it hundreds of times, which is definitely not true. No one's seen anything hundreds of times. And apparently he's not a big fan of late night television. This is an excerpt, real excerpt. He wrote a late night TV is virtually unwatchable. I love comedy, but watching angry leftists scream about how much they hate Donald Trump isn't remotely funny. It's pitiful. Well, all I'll say is it's an honor to be called pitiful by a man who abandoned his dog in an ice storm to go to Mexico. But congrats, Ted. And seriously, I do want to say, you know, writing, writing a book like this is a huge accomplishment, especially for him. You know, it's very difficult to type with hooves.
Ben Ferguson
I mean, Senator, it doesn't it prove your point that you just wrote in your book? That was the part that made me laugh is as he's forcing this comedy on the audience and there's some awkward laughter. It's like, yeah, thanks for proving the point of whether you just wrote about in your book.
Ted Cruz
Sure. Look, I mean, it was when he did that last night. I actually tweeted his monologue out this morning and I said, hey, thanks. Thanks for pitching my book. You forgot the link to where you can buy it. And I sent the link and I did something that is fairly obligatory also, which is Kimmel regularly blasts me in his late night monologues. And every time he does, I respond and I point out that ever since I whipped Jimmy Kimmel's ass in one on one hoops, it seems that I'm living rent free in his head. And so I sent a video of me scoring on him and blocking him just to remind him of that moment that I think he probably still wakes up in tremors about. But I thought it was hysterical what he read. There was an actual excerpt from the book and he put up the book cover and I think that's fabulous. But I do wish the substantive point.
That late night humor I wish was actually funny.
I love comedy. I grew up watching snl. I like real comedians who are funny.
And they used to be funny and.
Now it's one of the many examples and I discuss it at length in the book Unwoke How Trump Broke the Media, Trump broke the Democrat Party and Trump broke late night comedy because they just it's a partisan primal scream instead of good comedy. Makes fun of both sides. I'm perfectly fine with making fun of me, but they never ever make fun of the Democrats. It's purely a I am leftist. Hear me roar.
Ben Ferguson
Now if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast.
Ted Cruz
From earlier this week.
Ben Ferguson
Now on to story number two.
Unknown
Before we get into Q and A, I want to ask you one other thing.
Ben Ferguson
And it's, it's the issue.
Unknown
And I have a feeling a lot.
Ted Cruz
Of people are going to like this idea here.
Unknown
School choice. I am a huge proponent of school choice. It's been something that you have been a champion of for years, but it's also become, in many circles, they say, a third rail. Don't touch it, don't talk about it, don't deal with it in politics. Do you believe in this next election cycle that conservatives can win on the issue of school choice? And how would they best do that nationwide?
Ted Cruz
Look, I think absolutely, yes, I am. There is no domestic issue I care about more than school choice. I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. And listen, it is worth noting that school choice has been around from the dawn of time. The rich and the middle class have always had school choice. If you were a student at the Bethesda Public Schools in Maryland. Bethesda is this very wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. if that school had a 50% dropout rate, if among the students that remained there, fewer than half of them graduated reading at grade level, if drug dealers were walking in the hallways, if little girls were getting sexually assaulted in the bathrooms, the Bethesda public schools would be empty immediately because the parents there are rich. So they would do one of two things. They would either write checks and pay tuition at a private school or they would move to another neighborhood that had a better public school and they would exercise choice through choosing where to live. That's what the rich have always been able to do. That's what the upper middle class have always been able to do. It is low income Americans, it is single moms in inner cities who are trapped with failing schools. And those numbers I've described are true in school, after school, after school in this country. And it predominantly hurts low income kids, it hurts African American kids, it hurts Hispanic kids. And the Democrat party is bought and paid for by the teachers unions. If you look at African American communities or Hispanic communities communities systematically, 60, 70, as much as 80% of African American parents, as much as 60, 70, 80% of Hispanic parents support school choice. I believe every child in America deserves a right to have access to an excellent education, regardless of their race, of their ethnicity, of their wealth, of their zip code.
Unknown
So how do we win?
Ted Cruz
I gotta say, and we are sitting in actually an extraordinary place because I want to say to the men and women here, thank you for your leadership. Arizona has led the nation in providing choice to your students. It has been extraordinary, it has been inspirational, it has been powerful and the Goldwater Institute has been pivotal in making that happen. And if you look nationally, the two states at the front, front of this fight have been Arizona and Florida. And I will say something, you and I are both Texans. And look, Texans, we are known for being quiet and for our humility. Look, as Texans, I hate that there is anything Texans are not leading on. But when it comes to school choice, Texans have been lagging behind. And I can tell you there's a major battle playing out in the Texas legislature right now. We have the single best moment we have ever had in our lifetimes to pass real and meaningful school choice in Texas. The governor, Greg Abbott, has said he's going to keep calling special sessions until they pass it. And I'll tell you something that I do in Texas that is unusual.
Rick Grenell
Ben.
Ted Cruz
So virtually every US Senator stays out of state primaries in their own state. And the reason is getting involved in a primary in your own state is just stupid. It hurts you that if you make an endorsement in your own primary, in a primary in your state, the rule of thumb is you get half of their friends and you get all of their enemies. I don't do that. I regularly endorse in primaries. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know another US senator that does. To the best of my knowledge, 99 of my colleagues do not. And I endorse in lots of primaries in Texas. And here's how. I have my staff prepare an Excel spreadsheet of every vote that a state legislator has cast on school choice. And my rule is if you voted in favor of school choice and you're otherwise relatively conservative, you're quite likely to get my support. If you voted against choice, the chances of getting my support are essentially zero. And it is very likely that I will endorse your primary opponent. And when I do that, I don't do it gently. I come in and I cut radio and TV ads and I come in.
Unknown
You're accused of a lot of things. You going gently into political time is not one of them, sir.
Ted Cruz
The stakes are too high. And so we had, last election cycle, seven runoffs with the teachers unions on one side and me on the other, and we beat them in a majority of those races. And the reason I do that and listen, it hurts me politically to do that. I am losing votes when I do that.
Rick Grenell
But the reason I'm doing that is.
Ted Cruz
That I want for the state legislators, when they're thinking about what do I do on this for it to be a carrot and stick that if there is a Republican House member that's on the fence, do I support it?
Do I not?
I want them to say, you know, I really don't want Cruz to screw around in my primary, so maybe I'll just do the right thing. And I'll tell you something, and it's something why I'm so inspired by the men and women in this room. When I was first elected to the Senate in 2012, here's what I told Heidi. I said, sweetheart, if when I die, if my tombstone says Ted played a meaningful role in bringing about school choice to every child in Texas and every child in America, I will die a.
Very, very happy man.
Ben Ferguson
As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
Ted Cruz
Want to ask you about another question that deals with the southern border. And I want to go back to putting your, you know, taking the ambassador hat off, but going back to national intelligence. You look at our southern border right now, and it doesn't take a very bright human being to understand that an open border, the way it is now, is a national security threat. There are more and more people that are saying this. We saw the FBI director Ray saying that we're at the highest level in his opinion since 911 for the prospect of an attack in this country. We know that terrorists are coming across the border on the terrorist watch list that have been caught. These terrorists are not trying to turn themselves into border patrol agents. They're trying to become gotaways. We have no idea how many terrorists have made it into this country undetected so far. But when you look at the warnings now and you look at what just happened and you look at the warnings of possibilities of the same type of style attack that we just saw in Israel, and yet we still have an open border and we still have mayorkas before Congress.
Ben Ferguson
What was that yesterday?
Ted Cruz
Day before saying that? No, he doesn't believe we need a border wall. What is your reaction from an intelligence standpoint?
Rick Grenell
Yeah, Ben, it's a good question because, you know, I gotta believe that all of the intelligence officials who are collecting raw intelligence see it on a daily basis. They're see, I mean, how else do we know that someone from the terrorist watch list is crossing the border? It's because of raw intelligence. We're figuring it out. But I think that it's being hidden when they report it. It's not being analyzed and talked about. It's not being put into the President's daily briefing. All of that information is completely being suppressed. And once again, we should be asking these questions of Avril Haines. You know, what are you seeing at the border? What are you hearing at the border? And you know, she's just not getting pushed on it. But it's clearly extremely dangerous. Everybody knows that you're not gonna have a country if you have an open border. We all know that. But I find the most outrageous thing is that the media are complicit in this problem because Democrats would have to face the music if they were hearing from the media in their home states, if they were being pushed and held to account like they used to. When I would sit around and watch the news with my dad as a kid, the news was kind of holding both sides to account.
Well, Rick, this is a point that we've made a lot on this podcast and that I make in my brand new book Unwoke, which is that the corruption of the media and Donald Trump, I believe, broke the media.
Ted Cruz
He shattered their brains.
Rick Grenell
That has played a critical role in driving today's Democrat Party to Such extremes. They go so crazy left because they never, ever, ever get questioned on any of it. So there's no downside to giving in to the radical extreme in their party. They never fear that they will get a hard question at home. They never fear they'll get a bad story at home. And so I think the, the abandonment of any effort at journalism by the corporate media has been one of the most destructive developments in recent years.
I totally agree. Because it's unleashed, right? There's no consequences, there's no downside. So they get to do and say anything they want. As I watch Avril Haines and you know, she got into office and immediately in order to please Iran, one of the first things she did was manipulate past intelligence to pretend like it was real. And they went after the Saudis and the Khashoggi issue all over again. They literally. There was nothing new in that report. It was repackaged to hit the Saudis hard after we had basically looked at them and tried to make some changes. And we're trying to heal that relationship.
Ted Cruz
She opened it up.
Rick Grenell
We're on the verge of signing the Abraham Accords.
Yes.
Until Biden screwed that up 100%.
True. And I look back now and it makes sense to me. The reason they did it is because they wanted to show the Iranians that somehow that they were going to play more fair and that they were going to be nicer to the Iranians by beating up on the Saudis. Right. And then why aren't we talking about the fact that they took the Houthis off the terrorist watch list and the Houthis are the ones who just shot down the drone.
Ben Ferguson
Why were they taken off that list?
Ted Cruz
I mean, explain the politics behind that.
Rick Grenell
Well, I think again, it's a gift to the Iranians. They're trying to please them because they want to get back and you know, they will spin that somehow the international sanctions were pressuring the Iranians, Iranians and therefore they were closer to a nuclear bomb because of the sanctions and the grip that we had. And again, this is the same strategy that they had with Russia. When you go and you see Democrat senators making the case for dropping the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, it is in summary, they keep saying, well, we don't want to stick it in the eye of the Russians. This pipeline and us sanctioning it, making it not come online is creating problems. So we must therefore let the pipeline flow through with gas because things are going to be better if we don't stick it in the eye of Putin. This is, this was their argument.
And appeasement always, always, always fails. It invites bullies and tyrants to be aggressive, to invade. It causes war.
Absolutely.
I mean, Joe Biden inherited peace and prosperity. We now have the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and the biggest war in the Middle east of our lifetimes. I mean, I mean that is. And you know, you're talking about the Saudis. Look, in my view, the dominant foreign policy objective of Joe Biden and his team has been to re enter an even worse Iran nuclear deal. Everything in the Middle east hinges on why do they go after the Saudis so ferociously. For the same reason that I am largely pro Saudi, which is that the Saudis are the most important regional counterweight other than Israel to Iran. Now look, the Saudis have lots of problems. So I describe the Saudis as a problematic ally. But we want them to be an ally. We want them to be strong as a counterbalance to Iran. That's precisely why the Biden administration wants the Saudis to be weak, because everything is subservient to getting in another deal with Iran, including in the middle of this Ukraine war. After Biden's weakness causes the war in Ukraine, it has now become the ultimate democrat virtue signal to wear a Ukrainian flag and commit that we must be in the war until the end of time. And even while they say that they continue to flow now roughly $100 billion into Iran, much of which goes into Iranian drones, that Iran becomes the top weapons supplier to Russia. And so Biden is funding both sides of the Ukraine war.
Well, there's no question about that. And this goes back to what my original point on Iran was. It sounds crazy, but they trust the Iranians. There's some belief, Jake Sullivan, maybe it's just a white paper intellectual exercise, that if you're nicer to them, somehow they're going to give up a nuclear weapon. And they really believe that. And the NGO community totally supports that and we call it appeasement. But they're trying, once again, engagement. And this is one of my problems with the foreign policy community is that we should be able to try engagement, try sanctions, try all sorts of things, but we should quickly evaluate whether it's working or not. We could talk all day about Venezuela because I think that's a failure of a policy.
It is. You know, it's worth also underscoring that the Biden administration's top Iran diplomat, Rob Malley, who's been fired and had his security clearance pulled and is nonetheless in a cushy job at my alma mater at Princeton, which is really disgraceful. His inner circle included three individuals who were Iranian operatives recruited by the Iranian government, reporting directly to the Iranian foreign minister and advancing Iranian policy agendas within the United States government, within the Biden administration, one of whom, as far as we know, is still a chief of staff in the Department of Defense to this day.
Yeah. And they've been caught asking the Iranian diplomats for sign off.
Yes.
For speaking engagements. It's really so outrageous, so treasonous. But once again, you don't see any of these national security reporters at the New York Times or the Washington Post or Politico or anywhere else putting pressure, asking the questions. They get away with it.
So let me ask another question. So you were the Director of National Intelligence under Trump. You were acting DNI for how long? It was a short period of time.
A short period of time. Supposed to be three months, but it was about four and a half.
So it was four and a half months. It was the most consequential tenure at DNI that I have seen. And you really shook that place up in a very short time period. And I guess what I would ask is, number one, how did you do that? How did you take on the deep state, which, which is real throughout government, but especially in the intelligence community, is a persistent problem. And, and, and lots of conservatives sometimes feel frustrated and say, well, you can't take on the deep state.
Ted Cruz
And I think you managed to do.
Rick Grenell
It remarkably during that tenure. And what I would say as a second part of the question is, what advice would you give to the next Republican Cabinet member coming into office and facing career bureaucrats that are ideologically and passionately opposed to the next Republican president and the agenda of the next White House?
Well, let me take the second part first. I think the reality is you can't hire someone whose livelihood is Washington, D.C. if you're hiring somebody who needs a job later in the Washington system, where reporters go to church with politicians and lobbyists, they live in the same communities. They're never going to make big, bold decisions because they'll have the ire of their friends and their church acquaintances. What I believe that you have to do is, is hire people also who really don't care about their New York Times profile piece, who somehow have the ability to make the right decisions. The. I've told President Trump we're going to fix the personnel problem when he's, when he's president. And the first thing is, is to look at every resume, and if the resume has a Washington, D.C. address on it, throw it away. We can hire people from outside of Washington, D.C. what, what happened with me at DNI is actually pretty simple. When I came into DNI, one of the first things they did is they gave me four reports that had been done over the last 10 years of how to fix the intelligence system. I read the reports and I thought, well, a lot of this makes sense. We, we've got duplicitous programs, We've got people who. It's supposed to be a coordinating body, and yet it's no longer a coordinating body. It's actually a competitive body. It ballooned to more than 2,000 people. It should be like 200 people. And so I just started sending people back to their home agencies. Dni, the ODNI had become the wasteland. If intelligence agency didn't like somebody, rather than fire them, they sent them over to odni. And so I just started sending people back and getting rid of every possible person that we could. Freezing hiring. I did this in Germany as well. And forcing people to rethink this. You got to be able to play the system, but you got to know the system. And I've worked at the State Department and I knew how the federal government works to where you can come in and manipulate it and start using its own rules against it. I do think, though, that in order for us to make big, bold decisions, Congress is going to have to somehow change the way the labor force is legally allowed to, you know, be cut, as you know, and I'm preaching to the choir here, but when we come up with new technologies and we decide to spend on a different program, by definition, other things should fall. People should be fired, the program should be eliminated, and that's not happening.
Ben Ferguson
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Don't forget to download my podcast. And you can listen to my podcast every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards. I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Fetch Ferguson Podcast. And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson Episode Summary: "The Newsroom Revolution & Trump Breaks the Media, plus Breaking Down School Choice, and The Border, a Question of National Security the Week In Review" Release Date: November 11, 2023
In this compelling episode of The 47 Morning Update, host Ben Ferguson engages in an in-depth conversation with Senator Ted Cruz and Rick Grenell, delving into pivotal topics shaping the American socio-political landscape. The discussion traverses media integrity, educational reform, and national security, offering listeners unfiltered insights and robust debates.
Senator Ted Cruz introduces his latest literary work, Unwoke, which critically examines the influence of "Cultural Marxism" in American society. A significant portion of the discussion centers on Cruz's assertion that former President Donald Trump fundamentally disrupted the media landscape.
Media Breakdown: Cruz shares an anecdote highlighting his strained relationship with mainstream media, particularly CNN’s Jake Tapper. He recounts how Tapper initially dismissed his claims about the Obama administration's knowledge of terrorist threats but later acknowledged Cruz's accuracy after independent verification.
Ted Cruz [03:22]: "I just kind of smiled and I said, well, you know, Jake, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things. And what I'm saying is entirely accurate."
Impact of Trump on Media: Cruz argues that Trump's presidency shattered media objectivity, transforming outlets like CNN from aspiring journalists into partisan adversaries.
Ted Cruz [08:24]: "The media no longer views its vision as being journalists, as being fair and impartial and presenting both sides. Instead, they have embraced a vision that they are advocates, they are defenders of democracy."
The conversation shifts to the critical issue of school choice, with Cruz emphasizing its significance in addressing educational disparities and its potential as a decisive factor in upcoming elections.
Educational Inequity: Cruz articulates how school choice serves as a civil rights issue, enabling low-income and minority families to access quality education.
Ted Cruz [16:12]: "Every child in America deserves a right to have access to an excellent education, regardless of their race, of their ethnicity, of their wealth, of their zip code."
Strategic Advocacy: He discusses tactical endorsements and the importance of supporting legislators who champion school choice, highlighting successes in states like Arizona and Florida.
Ted Cruz [19:20]: "The stakes are too high. And so we had, last election cycle, seven runoffs with the teachers unions on one side and me on the other, and we beat them in a majority of those races."
National security concerns related to the southern border take center stage, with Cruz and Grenell critiquing current policies and media handling of border-related intelligence.
Border as a Security Threat: They assert that an open border poses significant national security risks, including the unchecked entry of individuals on terrorist watch lists.
Ted Cruz [21:59]: "When you look at the warnings now and you look at what just happened and you look at the warnings of possibilities of the same type of style attack that we just saw in Israel, and yet we still have an open border..."
Media Complicity: The duo contends that the media's failure to hold Democratic policies accountable exacerbates security vulnerabilities.
Rick Grenell [23:29]: "The corruption of the media and Donald Trump, I believe, broke the media. He shattered their brains."
Intelligence Community Reforms: Grenell discusses his tenure as Director of National Intelligence, emphasizing efforts to purge ideological biases and enhance operational efficiency.
Rick Grenell [30:50]: "When I came into DNI... I just started sending people back to their home agencies and getting rid of every possible person that we could."
Injecting humor into the discourse, Ben Ferguson shares a segment where Jimmy Kimmel lampoons Ted Cruz's new book. The playful mockery underscores the polarized media environment Cruz critiques.
Kimmel's Satirical Promotion:
Jimmy Kimmel [10:27]: "Ted Cruz has a new book. It's called Unwoke. ... The dust jacket doesn't quite fit. It won't, won't button in the front."
Cruz's Response: Cruz humorously acknowledges the segment, highlighting the media's tendency to undermine conservative voices.
Ted Cruz [13:01]: "That late night humor I wish was actually funny."
As the episode concludes, Ferguson encourages listeners to engage further by accessing the full podcast for a more comprehensive exploration of these critical issues.
Key Takeaways:
Media Skepticism: Cruz's experiences suggest a systemic bias within mainstream media outlets, transforming them from objective observers to partisan critics.
Educational Reform: School choice emerges as a pivotal policy for bridging educational gaps, with strategic political endorsements playing a crucial role in its advancement.
National Security Imperatives: Robust border security is portrayed as essential for national safety, with current policies and media narratives falling short in addressing associated threats.
Media Influence on Public Perception: The episode underscores the profound impact media portrayal has on public opinion and policy support, advocating for vigilant media scrutiny and accountability.
For those seeking a deeper dive into these discussions, download the full episode on your preferred podcast platform.