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- [00:00]
A
Nowtaxes is 100% free when you file in the TurboTax app. If you didn't file with us last year. Oh, yeah, yeah. Just do your own taxes in the app by 218. What if I have lots of forms. All good. All 100% free. What if I had three jobs still 100% free. What if I once saw Bigfoot? That has nothing to do with taxes. So still 100% free.
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B
Now that's what I'm talking about.
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A
Now this is taxes. See if you qualify in the TurboTax app excludes TurboTax Live must start and file an app by 2:18. We have some shocking news about the origins of the coronavirus. All while 22 million Americans are thrown out of work. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. Senator, just in our prep call, I feel like there's so much information that there is no way we're going to be able to get to everything. The topic on everybody's mind is restarting the economy from Michigan to North Carolina, all around the country the president's talked about it. Even the liberal governors have talked about it. I know that you are on the Restart the Economy task force. I know you spoke to the president yesterday. What did you talk about and what is the plan?
- [01:16]
B
Look, we gotta get Americans back to work. Americans are ready to go back to work. Texans are ready to get back to work. Yesterday I spent over an hour on the phone with the President as part of the Restarting the Economy task force talking about two things really that I emphasized to the president. Number one, testing. We need to continue to lean in and do even more on testing. The Abbott Labs quick test, you know, when I went up to meet with the President a couple of weeks ago and the energy CEOs on energy they required, actually that was the first day they required everyone going in to meet with the president had to be tested for coronavirus. And I got they had just gotten one of those Abbott quick test situations, you know, and it's interesting that the I know a number of people had been tested on the old test. And the old test, they'd stick it up your nose and like way, way, way up your nose. They said, I mean it was like going to the back of your brain. It really hurt and was unpleasant.
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A
Did not sound pleasant.
- [02:15]
B
No. Thankfully with the Abbott thing, which is what they had just gotten, just put a little swab in each nostril, ran it through a machine and 10 minutes later you get a result. So you don't have to wait four, five, six days. They're producing about 50,000 of those a day. I've spoken this week with Texas hospitals, Texas communities. We're starting to get the Abbott Lab, quick labs. We need to get even more and more of them, and we need to get even more of the antibody test. One of the things the vice president said in the call yesterday with the task force is by the end of the month, they're expecting to be producing 20 million antibody tests a month. So that'll start getting out in real numbers. And so what I emphasized to the president was two things. Lean in even harder on testing, getting it out more widely available. But also, we have got to get people back to work. It's got to vary geographically. Obviously, New York City has been hammered. It's been horrific. It's been heartbreaking. What's happened in New York. No one in their right mind would suggest New Yorkers should go back to work tomorrow.
- [03:16]
A
Right?
- [03:16]
B
But for much of the rest of the country, the virus numbers are not nearly as bad. We have flattened the curve. We've seen the numbers moving in the right direction, and we need to segment the population. For those who are really vulnerable, the very elderly, those with serious health issues, they ought to remain quarantined. They ought to remain protected, because those are the communities that are really vulnerable to this virus. But for everyone else, for young, healthy people, we need to get back to work using ppe, where. Where appropriate, using mask, using gloves, practicing social distancing. So, for example, restaurants, they may need to conf. Reconfigure their dining rooms to spread the tables out a bit so that you can socially distance between tables. But we're imposing massive harms on the economy. 22 million people out of work, mass. Millions of small businesses on the verge of bankruptcy. And. And. And Michael, this is something I emphasized to the president yesterday. If we keep on this path, there is a real public health consequence to. To killing the economy. We're going to see mental health issues. We're gonna see depression. We're gonna see increased rates of suicide. We're gonna see increased rates of substance abuse and alcohol abuse. And. And lives will be lost. And we got to protect lives. The objective should be protect as many lives as possible and on both sides of the ledger. So be smart, follow medical science and stop the pandemic. But also don't kill the economy and destroy people's livelihoods and cause suffering and death on the economic side either.
- [04:52]
A
Well, we've already seen some of the consequences of this you know, for some reason, one of the responses to coronavirus in various states was, was to let criminals out of jail. I guess it was so that the virus wouldn't spread in the jails. Guess what happens, A criminal gets released the very next day, he committed murder and then he's rearrested. And we've seen stories like this around the country. It's very hard to quantify that. You know, we can quantify the deaths from coronavirus. Is there any way we're gonna be able to measure the fallout and even up to the deaths caused by an overreaction?
- [05:25]
B
Well, we certainly need to go back and assess that. And you're right, we're seeing that all over the country. In Travis County, Austin, in Texas, they're releasing violent criminals, people charged with violent crimes, with assault, with sex trafficking, and they're releasing them. That's really dangerous when you release violent criminals. You're going to get more violent crime. That's the wrong response. And you know, there's a weird backwards approach that violent criminals are being released from jail, but at the same time they're arresting people for driving in their car. They tried to arrest a guy in Colorado for playing catch with his six year old daughter playing softball. Look, Katherine, my nine year old as a softball player, as a softball dad, I'm offended that you'd go after a dad for simply playing catch with his daughter. He wasn't endangering anyone. He wasn't near anyone. That's just stupid. And you know, crises bring out people's character. And I got to say, there are some authoritarians, almost all, it seems, on the Democratic side of the ledger that are just abusing power. You know, Tennessee and Mississippi, both places you saw people being ticketed for going to church, even though they stayed in their cars and they were parked there listening to the sermon on the radio. Look, in your car, you're not endangering anyone. That's just stupid. And to all of these little petty tyrants, stop it. The governor of New Jersey was doing an interview. He was asked, well, does your order comply with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution? He said, well, that's above my pay grade. That is your job. No, it's actually not. And in fact, I couldn't help but jump on Twitter and tweet out the actual goat oath that every governor of New Jersey takes. And he takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And we need to focus on defending people's liberties, letting them go back to work and earn a living. And Provide for their family. And we can do all of that while being smart and mitigating the spread of this virus.
- [07:34]
A
Of course. And I've noticed this not even just from conservatives, not even just from people in certain cities, but all around the country, even liberal governors. It seems like over the past few days, we've reached a turning point. We're now at the pivotal moment where all of the energy is not just on shutdown, shutdown, stay in place. But now it seems that there's a growing consensus that we have got to restart things even as certain experts are telling us we can't leave our homes for two years. Do you think that moment has happened? We're now on the other side of this. We're at this turning point.
- [08:06]
B
So I do. Now, listen, I think it varies geographically. It needs to be based on the medical science and where the virus is. And if you've got an active outbreak that is so spreading, you need to be more aggressive in your efforts to contain it. But where we are containing it. Look, I'll give you another example. We have a lot of places that have shut down elective surgeries and elective medical procedures that's having a devastating impact on hospitals. I've been talking to physicians, hospital CEOs, who are seeing their revenue cut, you know, 80% and they're going broke. They're laying people off. And explain to me the reasoning of we're going into a pandemic where we desperately need our hospitals and doctors, so let's slam them and stop them from performing the procedures that generate all their revenue. And by the way, that too, will have a public health harm. Like even though something's elective, there are a lot of elective medical procedures that are nonetheless beneficial. And if we keep delaying them and delaying them and delaying them, people don't go into the doctor for other health issues, a heart issue, what have you. We're gonna have more and more deaths the more we freeze and shut down our economy. And we've gotta weigh life on both sides of the ledger. Maximize the protection of life.
- [09:23]
A
Yeah. On the medical science front, I wanna turn for a moment from the economy into the virus itself. And I wanna take just a slight victory lap. Because I remember on this very Show, Senator, on March 10, over a month ago, you suggested that there was very likely a link between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and this virus that just so coincidentally happened to occur within a couple miles of that institute during that time. The mainstream media said this was crazy, this was a conspiracy theory. There was no evidence of it. Now we are getting multiple reports all saying that the virus came from, from the lab. My question here is not. My point is not just to take a victory lap. My question is, did the US Government know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting this sort of dangerous research? And if we did know, why didn't we stop it?
- [10:19]
B
Absolutely, yes, the U.S. government knew. And in fact, when you and I brought this up on March 10th over a month ago, you're right, it was treated as tinted tinfoil hat, conspiracy theory, nut jobbery. Well, it turns out there wasn't just one. There were two labs within miles of where this outbreak occurred that were studying coronaviruses from bats and that there were internal State Department wires before this pandemic, raising concerns about the security in those labs and that an accidental virus could escape and cause a global pandemic. But I'll tell you it's worse than that. And let me give you some, some breaking news right now, which is the US Government was funding the Chinese research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars. And let me give you specifics that we just got today. Today, an inquiry of the National Institutes of Health. Did any of your money go to the Wuhan Institute of Virology? The answer is yes. And here's what, here's what they told us in writing today. They said in fiscal year 2019, the funding for the Wuhan Institute for Virology was $76,000. And the $301. $76,301. Now, what did it go to? And I'm repeating what NIH has told me in writing. It went to. It was part of an overall $3.7 million funding program that went to six years in sites in China, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Myanmar. And here's what they were studying. These are NIH's words. The project included studying viral diversity in animal parentheses, bats, reservoirs, surveying people that live in high risk communities for evidence of bat coronavirus infection, and conducting laboratory experiments to analyze and predict which newly discovered viruses pose the greatest threats to human health. That's what the NIH funding was going to. And we followed up and said, okay, that's what you described as the project in all of these countries. How about at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? What specifically did US Taxpayer dollars go to at the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Here's what the NIH said in writing. Said the project supported the following activities at the Wuhan Institute of coronavirus screening and serology of non human samples. Viral pathogenesis, serological testing, host receptor binding spike, S protein sequencing and in vitro and in viva virus characterization. And it goes on to say that they had not supported the creation of recombinant viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
- [13:33]
A
I just want to make sure that's.
- [13:34]
B
What your tax dollars and my tax dollars went to.
- [13:37]
A
I want to make sure that I have got this right. Because obviously if there were State Department memos about this, a lot of people knew about this from the very beginning of this pandemic. And what you're saying right now, according to the nih, is for the past month and a half, two months, even more. We've been told the Wuhan Institute of Virology had nothing to do with this coronavirus. It's just a coincidence. Get your tinfoil hat off. No way that that happened. Not only do we now hear serious reports that it came from the lab, now we are learning. Whoopsie daisy, I guess we forgot. Actually US Taxpayer money was being used to fund that very viral research at the laboratory.
- [14:21]
B
Well, and let me make clear, we don't have confirmed evidence that it did come from the lab. We still don't know that.
- [14:28]
A
Just reports.
- [14:28]
B
What we know is that US taxpayer dollars were going to the Chinese government to fund this research on bat coronaviruses, on how they could be infectious to humans, how they could be transmitted to humans, how they could be dangerous to humans, at the same time that the State Department was raising real concerns about the safety and security protocols at the lab that we're partially funding. And that, I gotta say, that is nuts. And given that they were studying these bat coronaviruses, the Chinese government needs to answer the question right now. Were they studying the novel coronavirus, this virus, the virus that has killed over 140,000 people worldwide? Was that a virus that was studied at one or both of the Chinese government labs in Wuhan? They won't answer that question. They need to answer that question. And over 100,000 lives have been lost while they refuse to answer that question.
- [15:29]
A
You know, I wish the media would ask them that question. I think if the mainstream media would tune in and watch our show, they might be able to get a little ahead of the curve here on these news stories. I can't expect an honest answer.
- [15:39]
B
Well, you know, it is beneficial. You and I have an advantage that the mainstream media doesn't have, which is that our revenue stream doesn't depend on access to the Chinese market. It helps that we don't have a revenue stream. So that makes it even simpler. But everyone, abc, cbs, NBC, cnn, they make millions of dollars every single year from access to China. They're terrified. They're terrified of ticking off the Chinese. Look, they edit out. You know, I was reading something recently. You remember the movie Bohemian Rhapsody?
- [16:15]
A
Yeah, yeah.
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B
Wonderful, wonderful movie about Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, Lead Actor 1 Best Actor Oscars. Fantastic movie. Do you know, in China when they aired that they edited out the fact that Freddie Mercury was gay?
- [16:29]
A
That's just that minor detail.
- [16:31]
B
How do you watch a movie about Freddie Mercury and edit out that he's gay? I mean, it's kind of a pretty central element of the guy's life. And the Chinese censors demanded it be edited out. And you know what our free speech defending Hollywood said? Okay, thank you. They just happily edited it out. There was an article this week that I tweeted out about Bloomberg Media silencing a story about Chinese corruption. Why? Because they didn't want to piss off the Chinese government. Our media needs to stop being. This week CNN wrote a story. You actually can't make this up, Michael. They took the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda website that said the Chinese military is doing better than the American military in fighting coronavirus. It's literally the propaganda website from the Communist Party. CNN writes a story, Chinese military doing much better than American military. Thus saith Chinese propaganda. They don't even say propaganda. They treat it as news. These guys are behaving like money grubbing purveyors of lies. And anyone in the media who gives a damn about integrity, who gives a damn about truth, ought to be investigating these labs and ought to be speaking the truth. I'm sorry I'm getting pissed off, but. But the media's complicity in this and China's responsibility in this is massive.
- [18:01]
A
I think really CNN should just give the Chinese Communist Party the login credentials to the website. They can just write their own stories. You'll be able to cut out all of the middlemen. Obviously, we can't expect honesty.
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B
Yeah, I actually think the Chinese would make them a little more balanced. They'd feel they needed some credibility. They wouldn't just shamelessly reproduce the Chinese website.
- [18:20]
A
Right? Right. At least sometimes the Chinese Communist Party is competent. We can't expect honesty out of them, is the trouble. They've just revised up their death numbers. We know that China was lying about the death numbers from coronavirus. They've now gotten a little bit more honest. But we. We obviously still don't have the whole story. Unfortunately, we can expect that from the Chinese Communist Party. Even worse, the World Health Organization, which we should be able to trust, has been parroting that very same propaganda. The president announced just this week that that he is going to defund the who. What do you make of that decision?
- [18:57]
B
I think it makes an awful lot of sense. The WHO sadly operated throughout this coronavirus epidemic as really a parrot, a shill for the Chinese Communist Party. In January, the WHO sent out a tweet saying no evidence of human to human transmission and China's doing a lip skippity good job. Lip skippity may not have been in there, but it was implied.
- [19:18]
A
This is the translation.
- [19:19]
B
Look, you remember Baghdad Bob?
- [19:25]
A
Yeah, that's right. I don't know how many people do remember him, though.
- [19:29]
B
So Baghdad Bob was the press secretary for Saddam Hussein or Saddam Hussein, as 41 fabulously did as psyops who just spread their prop would repeat their propaganda. We're winning, right as they were losing. The WHO is like that. There's no human to human transmission. I got to tell you, one of the things we're going to do in the next podcast.
- [19:50]
A
Yeah.
- [19:51]
B
We're going to walk through a timeline of what happened in China. And Jim Garrity, a National Review did a fabulous timeline that we're going to spend some time walking through carefully. By the way, National Review, not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, so they actually can cover news. Where's the New York Times? Where's the Washington Post? Where actual people who pride themselves of who, by the way, give each other prizes for journalistic courage because they stand up and scream Orange man bad. You're so courageous. You're so courageous. You don't like Trump. I don't like Trump. We all don't like Trump. Yay. How about show some real courage and stand up to the lying communists who have direct responsibilities for covering up this pandemic and endangering the lives of of millions across this planet. That would be journalistic courage, even if it costs your employers a few bucks and market access.
- [20:44]
A
You know, Senator, I was sort of thinking that now that you're outside of Washington for a few weeks, you might be able to take some downtime. But unfortunately now you've got to work to restart the economy. You've got to work to get real information out of China, which is basically an impossible task. There's so much to do. Have you had any downtime whatsoever?
- [21:05]
B
You know, I'm having every day I have lunch and dinner with the girls. Two days ago was Caroline's 12th birthday. So April 14, she turned 12, which is a bit. A little traumatizing. I'm not sure how she got to be 12 so quickly, but we had planned a whole party. We were going to go to a roller rink. All the kids were going to go skating. Well, obviously, you can't go to a roller rink right now. So what do you do with a sixth grader where you have a birthday party? And she's like, all right, dad, this sucks. So what we ended up doing is we did this thing where we invited all the girls who were coming to drive by the house and to wave. And they hung signs out the car windows that are with their parents, and they would wave and they yelled, happy Birthday. And we put up three poster boards, and the kids came and all wrote little sign. We put them on our driveway, and the kids came and wrote, happy Birthday. We love you, Caroline. And it was fun. Like, Caroline stood at the front door and waved and was like, hi and jumped up and down. So, I mean, it was a nice thing to do to have a birthday celebration. Look, it's in the age of social distancing. But it. But it. But it was still. It was a nice and fun birthday.
- [22:12]
A
I hope the kids dropped off the presents, too. You know, I know the economy has taken a big hit, but they better not have taken those presents away from your daughter.
- [22:22]
B
They did drop off the presents, including Heidi. And I got Caroline an electric scooter, which both girls have been enjoying, by the way. I will confess, although we're a capitalist household, we have a little bit of socialist policies with the girls, in that we told Caroline she has to share the scooter with her younger sister, which she thinks is an outrage because it was her birthday present. But both girls, they ride like crazy on that electric scooter, and they're having fun with it.
- [22:50]
A
Well, I fear that, you know, if we don't get this economy restarted soon, we're all gonna be socialists. Obviously, the Democrats in the House are trying to push to extend, you know, the relief coverage to now be $2,000 every single month until we've got full, you know, employment again. A lot of fears coming out of that. So how long do you think I wanna get to Mailbag? But just briefly, how long do you think we have before we will have to restart the economy again or else face really dangerous political consequences?
- [23:22]
B
Look, we have got to get people back to work. You know, the last two weeks, I've done a teletour all around Texas, so I've had video conferences with people in East Texas, people in West Texas, people down in the Rio Grande Valley, people all over the state. It's interesting. City and government, city and county leaders, they're all going broke. Their tax revenue is plummeting. And a number of them are saying, well, could the Fed send us more money? And my response, and that by the way, is what the Democrats keep saying is let's send more money to state and local governments. I'll tell you what I keep telling them. You know what? The Feds are broke too. We just spent $2.2 trillion. It's not like there's some safe. We pulled it out of, we just borrowed it all. We're borrowing it from our kids and grandkids. And by the way, your city and county tax revenues are plummeting. Guess what? Federal tax revenues are plummeting. And they're going to plummet even more because tax revenues are a function of the economy. And right now, government policies are killing the economy. You want your tax revenues to come back? Let the economy come back. Let people go back to work. Let them drive economic growth. And small businesses are chomping at the bit, you know, we've seen in the time of this crisis, hundreds of federal regulations, state regulations, local regulations suspended. Every regulation that was suspended during the crisis should continue suspended during the recovery. It's a great example of, you know, look, for example, in D.C. when I was up in D.C. when the Senate was in session, you could order Mexican food and get a margarita. That used to be illegal. You weren't allowed to order a margarita. And suddenly the idiotic law that prevented you from ordering a margarita, now you could have fajitas and a margarita. Why did we need that stupid rule in the first place? All the rules against telemedicine. Telemedicine is great. Get a world class physician to go into rural areas, underserved areas. All of these barriers that hurt small businesses and economic growth, we need to get them out of the way. But all of the politicians that want more tax revenues, I got an easy way for you to get more tax revenues. Stop killing the economy. Let people get back to work. Liberate America. Liberate small businesses. Liberate American workers. Do it in a way that is smart and keeps us safe. And that's how the economy turns around and that's how the country turns around, right?
- [25:52]
A
I mean, there's a meme that's been going around the Internet and it's of somebody at the Federal Reserve churning a machine and it Says money printer go brrr. You know, this idea that you can print money forever. Now, the states, they don't have their own money printers. Federal government, I suppose, does. But the money printer can't go brrr forever. Eventually you're gonna have to pay a price.
- [26:12]
B
And the Democrats view, they just think it's, it's, it's, it's sort of magic money tree. Just keep spending. Let's just give away trillions forever and ever and ever. Look, it comes from small businesses and jobs. If you want this to turn around, people wanna work. People wanna get back to work. They're frustrated. Let them go back to work. Let people drive. The miracle of the American economy.
- [26:39]
A
That's right. You know, we reacted very seriously.
- [26:42]
B
Of course.
- [26:43]
A
We've been through the first phase of this coronavirus. Now we have to get back to work very quickly. Before we go, we're typically tight on time, but we gotta get to a little bit in the mailbag. From Catherine. Actually, speaking of staying home with your children, from Catherine. Will I be able to enjoy my empty nest this fall? Will my freshman daughter be able to go off to college?
- [27:06]
B
I have no idea. I hope so. Right now, colleges and universities, pretty much all of them or most of them, have said that they're out through this semester, so we'll get through the summer. I think most colleges are planning to be back in the fall. The big question is a, do we defeat this virus? And it may be. We see a lot of viruses that are seasonal, that as things get hot, that may help kill it off. But if it is seasonal, that raises the real prospect that we'll see a resurgence in the fall, that come September, October, we may see the numbers go back up again. If there's a big resurgence, I think there becomes a likelihood that colleges and universities shut down again. I hope not. I mean, I feel really bad for these college kids that are not able to be at school and they're going through something that I hope is limited in time and isolated. But it's gonna depend on the medical facts and what happens, right?
- [28:01]
A
And as Dr. Fauci just said, the viruses don't just go away. You know, we can start to deal with them. We can develop drugs. There are new drugs on the horizon that show promise. We can develop vaccines, but they don't just disappear forever. And so we're gonna be dealing with the fallout for this for years to come. And I guess next time we will get into exactly the timeline here, because if we want to figure out how to deal with this and prevent it in the future. We've got to find out how it all began. And there's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation around on that.
- [28:31]
B
I did retweet someone who had a custom face mask that had the don't tread on me flag, except it said, don't sneeze on me.
- [28:42]
A
You know, I guess that's really what.
- [28:43]
B
We'Re going to call it. I got a good chuckle from that.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah, we've got a balance in our response here. The don't tread on me and the don't sneeze on me. We will get into so much more of that next time.
- [28:51]
B
And by the way, did you see the video in Philadelphia of this guy being dragged off the bus by several officers because he wasn't wearing a mask and they're like, physically manhandling him? And I said a tweet, I said, well, wouldn't it have been easier just to give him a mask? Like, at some point, just don't be stupid. Don't behave like jackbooted thug. And it's kind of funny. All these Twitter lefties are going, I agree with Cruz. It's like, well, good, then stop elected politicians from behaving like petty tyrants.
- [29:24]
A
That's right. You've seen these overreaches everywhere. I mean, it's not just in Philly. It's all over the country. People seem to enjoy flexing their muscles in these power grabs. And, you know, that's gone on long enough. Now it would appear that it's time to turn it around. Retake our economy, retake our society, and retake our rights. Senator, all of that for next time. In the meantime, we have run out of time on this episode. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
- [30:02]
B
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In 2022, Jobs, Freedom and Security PAC plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the.