← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
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- [00:02]
A
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, let's just start with congratulations. Your new book is out, how to defeat Cultural Marxism in America. And I have to say, if. When you get the book, if you haven't gotten the book, the best page, just skip right ahead to page number 40. It's the best page in the book. So congrats on that. Most Importantly, Senator, page 40. Phenomenal. You should definitely just go right there, read that, and then start the very beginning.
- [00:34]
B
Ben, what the hell is on page 40? I don't know what's on page 40.
- [00:37]
A
Page 40, it says, and I will quote here, every podcast is done alongside my co host. Today, that's Ben Ferguson. The nationally syndicated radio host has become a very dear friend. I got a shout out. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that.
- [00:51]
B
So I actually think maybe the best page in the book is the very first page of the book of your copy. Because I gave you a copy. I gave you a signed copy.
- [01:01]
A
You did.
- [01:02]
B
And if you recall the inscription that I wrote on the front, I said, ben, you are one of the three best hosts in history of the Verdict podcast.
- [01:17]
A
Don't leave out the word undoubtedly. You use that word undoubtedly. There we go. I want to make sure that I get that in the history books.
- [01:24]
B
Now, never mind that there have only been three hosts of Verdict, and that would be you, me, and Michael Knowles. But you are undoubtedly one of the three best.
- [01:31]
A
Yes. And that's on the shelf right now.
- [01:35]
B
And the second sentence I actually liked even better than the first. And I said, of all of the men to play college tennis, you're one of them.
- [01:45]
A
There we go. You were one of them. So this is the best part. When you sign this. I didn't want to travel with it. And you and I have been on the road. We were on the road last week, and I didn't want to travel with the book because I was like, all right, this is one I want to genuinely save forever. So I got home for the trip and I didn't want to, you know, knock the book around. So I was reading all day yesterday and all day today to make sure that we could have a stellar interview on your own show about your book. So let's start with the title. Why did you pick the title Unwoke? And also for people that don't understand what the definition of cultural Marxism is. What is that mean?
- [02:27]
B
Look, I wrote this book because the world has gone insane. And my reaction is the same as millions of people, as the listeners of this podcast, our Reaction is, what the hell happened? How did things get so crazy so fast? This book is my best effort to explain it. And in particular it's explaining how the radical left has seized every major institution in America. And so the book starts, chapter one is the universities. And I call the universities the Wuhan lab of the Woke virus. The universities are where the virus was created. It's where it mutated and it's where it spread. Each chapter of the book focuses on a different institution the radical left has seized. So chapter two focuses on K through 12 education and all the radical garbage being put on our kids, whether it's critical race theory or radical transgenderism. Chapter three focuses on journalism and how journalism has changed from covering the news to propaganda. From there I go to big business and how big business Today, the Fortune 100 are the economic enforcers of the radical left. From there I go to big tech and how big tech is pervasively censoring speech. From there I go to entertainment. And by the way, if I could have just one back, I would have entertainment back. Entertainment, I think, is the most consequential of all of these. And in entertainment we talk about Hollywood and movies and television and sports and music. We break it all down. From there we go to science and I talk about how science has been corrupted and politicized. And the final chapter in the book is on China and explains how China is a nexus that links them all. And the book was really designed to do two things. Number one, explain how and why specifically the radical left took over every one of those institutions. And they did it from the inside. But secondly, to lay out a clear battle plan. How we take them back, how we fight back. I believe we will take this country back. And this book is laying out how we recapture the institutions of America.
- [04:50]
A
You know, in this book. And I encourage people to get it because there is just incredible history in the very beginning as well about your family. I know your father and have gotten to spend some time with him. He's an awesome just individual to be around. He's jovial, he can be funny, he loves this country. But there is some incredible history, not only about your family, but also how your father was involved in Cuba in the students at a young age and what was happening really with the revolution down there and how he was, I guess you could say, brought in to this revolution with Castro not realizing what Castro is doing. And it started at a young age where they were targeting children. And it was an incredible part of the story, not just because of what happened, but Also how he was beaten and how his life was threatened and how he was a marked man who had to get out and come to America. Talk a little bit about that story of that being your history of your family. And also it's a warning to what's happening in this country right now. It's the beginning of the book, and it's just. It takes your breath away when you realize how close your father was to death in Cuba.
- [06:17]
B
Well, my family story is a huge part of why this matters so much to me. It's personal and it's real. And what I want to do is just read you the first page of the book. His white linen suit was stained red with blood. Blood that had been beaten out of him with a club regularly, each hour, breaking his nose, shattering his teeth. Scarlet red blood, as if his suit were emblazoned with the color of the Marxist revolution of which he was a part. As my father lay on that prison floor, crumpled and broken, not a spot of white was visible on the now torn and tattered suit he had been given for his 17th birthday. Instead, mud and dirt and grime and blood. To this day, my dad remembers what he was thinking in that dark hole. Nobody depends on me. I have no wife, no children. It doesn't matter if I live I die. Three years earlier, when he was just 14, my father had made the fateful decision to join up with the revolution in his homeland, Cuba, to follow Fidel Castro. My dad was young and ignorant and naive. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz did not know that Castro was a communist. He didn't know the horrors that would befall the Cuban people at the hands of his new comrades. He just knew that the then dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, was corrupt and cruel and oppressive. As Francis Ford Coppola immortally chronicled in the Godfather saga. Batista was in bed with the American Mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased with the blood beaten out of the Cuban people. Look, that's my family story. My dad, at 17, was tortured. He was in prison. He fled Cuba, came to America. My aunt, my Thea Sonia, whom I adore, who we actually had on. On verdict as a guest talking about Cuba. She fought in the counter revolution. After Castro succeeded, she was in prison. She was tortured by Castro's goons. I tell her story in this book too. I also tell the story of my grandmother, my abuela. My Abuela was a 6th grade teacher and she told me she loved teaching. She loved teaching, teaching her students. And she had a pure photographic memory, man. It was incredible. She l Everything she read, she remembered word for word. She told me about when Castro took over, that they almost immediately targeted the children. And one thing to understand Marxist, always begin with the kids. Always, always, always. My father told me the revolution like he was, were a bunch of 14 and 15 year old boys who didn't know any better. Teenagers. And you look at every communist revolution in the world, whether you're talking about Russia or China or North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela, it is always the young teenagers who are idealistic, who believe and who are naive, who don't have the world experience to understand they're being lied to. But communists start not just with teenagers. They go younger. And what my grandmother told me is, she said almost immediately after the revolution, they sent the army into the elementary schools and soldiers would go into kindergartens and first grade and they would tell all of the little kids, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to God for candy. And the kids all did so. And then they'd open their eyes and there'd be no candy. And then the soldiers would tell them, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel Castro for candy. The kids did so. And while their eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly slip a piece of candy on each child's desk. That's not an aberration. Che Guevara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer, he was Fidel Castro's right hand. Che Guevara described children as malleable clay that you can take the defects out of them. You want to know why the cultural Marxists in America started in the universities? You want to know why they've gone into K through 12 to elementary schools and junior highs and high schools? Because if you take the children, you take the nation. And this book is designed to lay out how they did it and how we take them back.
- [10:55]
A
You know, when I was reading this book, Senator, I go back to. There's certain pivotal moments in I think everyone's life that you look back on. You go, wow, if that would have gone differently, my whole life would have gone differently or may not even exist in the first place. I was hit by a drunk driver when I was a young kid. We were in a car wreck. He died, we lived. And I go back to that moment in my life many times I was in a, as you know, a shooting where I was a target of a gang initiation. I wonder if I would have been hit that night and my life would have, you know, I wouldn't have my kids. There's that moment in this book where you wrote, my father joined up and began doing acts of sabotage, burning government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever he could to undermine the oppressive regime. That's what had landed him in prison at 17. Baptist police had caught him, and they were. They were extracting their brutal revenge. The next day, he was dragging the office of a colonel who told him, I'm letting you go, but if another bomb goes off, if another fire starts, I'm blaming you. How can I be responsible for every bad thing that happens in the city? My father asked. I don't care, replied the commander. I'm holding you responsible. Your father returned home. My abuela wept. Her eldest child had walked in the door, beaten, covered in his own blood. As she told me when I was a child, that. Imagine that from that day was scared into her mind forever. Forever. My beau told him, get up out of the country. And that was the turning point for your entire family history, because not only did he get out, but he applied to colleges in America, to the University of Miami, to lsu, the University of Texas. Texas was the first one that let him in. And that's how he came to America. That's how you became a Texan, and that's how your family history started anew, with a clean slate in America. When you were writing that, I'm assuming you've heard the story many times, but when you put it on paper, it took my breath away.
- [12:59]
B
Look, the book is actually dedicated. I don't think they know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father, my Theasonia, and my abuela in my family, the original freedom fighters. I don't think my abuela is dead, but I don't think either my dad or Theasonia have seen that yet. Now, my dad listens to verdict, so he. He may find it out right now on listening to the podcast. But it was. I mean, when I. It's actually the very last thing I type on the book is the dedication. And that was, look, it's why I am who I am. I grew up as a kid sitting at the feet of my father and my theasonia and hearing about freedom fighters. And it is an unbelievable blessing when you were the child of someone who fled oppression and came to America seeking freedom. Our freedom is not a joke. It's not something. Oh, that's kind of interesting. It is incredibly serious. We defend our freedom here or we lose America. I hate communists. I hate them with a passion from the pit of my gut. They are evil. Communism has been responsible for more death, more misery. More destruction, more poverty, more suffering than any force in the history of humanity. And this book is all about how the same philosophy that has produced such misery is taking over and has taken over the major institutions of America. And look, you've heard me say this before, but as a child, my father probably a thousand times said to me, when we lost our freedom in Cuba, I had a place to flee to. If we lose our freedom here in America, where do we go? That's what the stakes are right now.
- [14:47]
A
There was also a point in there that. That hit me. And you said that your dad did something that I think we've lost in this country. And that's admitting sometimes that maybe we get things wrong. Maybe this, this WOKE agenda is a failure. Maybe green alternative energy is in this, green religion is a failure. We've tried this. And you know, you know, the government taking over our kids, it's a failure. And your dad was an advocate for Castro early on, and he was ashamed by it. He advocated for him even in America. And he sat down. I'm reading from the book. He sat down and he made a list of every place he'd spoken in Austin, Texas, in support of Castro. He then went back to each and every one of them and stood before the same people to make amends. He said, quote, I am here to apologize. He told them, I misled you. I didn't do so knowingly, but I did so nonetheless. I urge you to support an evil man and an evil Marxist regime. And for that I am truly sorry. For me, that's not just a point of incredible character, but why don't we have that with politicians today where they can admit, hey, I may have gotten something wrong, and I'm sorry that I got it wrong. We tried this and it didn't work because we are now. We have so many elected officials that refuse to ever admit they ever make a mistake. And as humans, we make mistakes.
- [16:14]
B
Look, that's exactly right. And that story, likewise, my father told me thousands of times. I was probably, I don't know, two or three years old the first time I heard that. And I've admired it every time I've heard it because to have the courage. He had gone and spoken at Rotary Clubs and Kiwanis clubs in Austin supporting Castro. When he got here. He got here was 1957. He was still a young revolutionary. He didn't know that Castro was a communist and he hated Batista. And then when Castro took over and declared he was a communist, and my dad saw the evil and oppression and theft and murder and cruelty. And that as bad as Batista was, Fidel Castro was a thousand times worse. He had the character to admit he's wrong. You know, I'm reminded of the clip recently where Barack Obama played that. He said, you know, we are all complicit in the Middle east because he says, well, what Hamas did was terrible. But he said, what's happening to the Palestinians? The occupation is unbearable. And I got to admit, of all the clips of Obama, that might be the one that pisses me off the most. I actually did. Did yesterday, Megyn Kelly's show, her podcast in New York, and was talking about the book. And she played that clip for me. And I try to try to speak reasonably and respectably, and I try to limit my cursing, but she played it to me, and I just said, what utter bull. And by the way, anytime I say something like that, my father will call or text me and say, would you please watch your language? That's. That's not really a good thing to do. And my dad's right on that. But. But it just. It's infuriating. And it's like, look, Obama, you sent over $100 million to the Ayatollah to Iran. You funded these Hamas terrorists. You set flooded money into the Gaza Strip. You put money directly in the hands of these death squads, and you say, we're all complicit. And by the way, you're repeating the bigoted racist lie that there's an occupation. The Gaza Strip is not occupied. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. Israel left the Gaza Strip. It's entirely the Palestinian. There is no occupation, zero in Gaza. And yet, you know, is Barack Obama capable of saying it was a mistake to send $100 billion to the Ayatollah who chanced death to America, death to Israel? No. Is Joe Biden capable of saying it was a mistake for him to send nearly $100 million to Iran subsequently, when that money was used to fund the worst terror attack on Israel in over 50 years? No, they're not capable of admitting that. And I do think admitting when something is failed is critically, critically, critically important.
- [18:58]
A
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- [22:03]
B
Look, that's exactly right. And the problem is this indoctrination is happening in every school in America. It's happening to every child in America and What I described part of the way this book is all about how we fight back. But, you know, as she was saying that Columbus was evil and racist and genocidal and terrible, and she hated Christopher Columbus. You know, I just sat down in her bedroom and I tried to have a conversation with her. And I said, look, I'm not deeply vested in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some incredible hero. But I said, you know what? We do have a federal holiday named after him. Do we typically name federal holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs? Like, might there be another side to the story? Is there anything admirable about him? And she was not really able to see much that was admirable. I said, well, what do you think about getting in three rookety, rickety wooden ships and leaving Europe and heading west when you think you're falling off the edge of the world to explore and discover? I mean, is that spirit, that intrepid spirit, is that anything to be admired? And I said, secondly, look, it is true that Columbus and the man who traveled with him, that they carried some germs that were. That were new to the Western hemisphere, that when they got here, some of the Native Americans died from those germs. Now, it's also true it was the 15th century. They didn't know what a germ was, so they didn't know they were carrying it. And when you accuse him of mass murder, does culpability matter? Does the fact that they didn't know what a germ was, they had no idea they were doing it, Is that at all relevant? If you're going to call him this evil, terrible murder? And what I talk about in the book is not long thereafter, which is Thanksgiving of that year, we were talking about Thanksgiving, and she and a friend of hers from school, and this is when they were in grade school, said likewise, oh, Thanksgiving is terrible. It's when the Pilgrims were oppressing the Native Americans. And, you know, again, I made the argument, I think, even more vigorously this time. And I said, listen, it is certainly right that the settlers that came to America, that they settled America and they ultimately conquered America, and they committed some terrible acts to Native Americans. But if you look at the history of humanity in every continent, every nation was acquired by conquest. And every time there's conquest, you have one group of people who are conquering another group of people. By the way, in the United States, before we were the United States, the Native Americans, one tribe conquered another, conquered another, conquered another. And you look at Europe, Europe, you look at Asia. That's the history of humanity, one group of people conquering another. And anytime you have conquest, there are horrible things that happen. They're terrible things that are done. But I said, look, in any war, there were atrocities on both sides. And, you know, I asked, I asked my daughter, I said, you know, from whence do you think the verb to scalp was derived? The Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers who came here also. And the connection that I made for her and that I make in the book is those two discussions are interlinked and intertwined, which is for all of the teachers and all of the professors and all of the people advocating that Columbus was evil and advocating that Thanksgiving is evil because the Pilgrims were stealing from the Native Americans. It comes down to one antecedent question. Was the settlement of the New World a good thing or a bad thing? Was the formation of the United States of America good or bad? And I'm not neutral or ambivalent on that question. I think the United States of America has been the greatest force for good of any nation in the history of the world. That we have produced more prosperity, more abundance. We have liberated more prisoners and captives. We have shed our blood and treasure and tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the history of the world. Do we have our flaws? Yes, of course. Do we have our problems? Yes, of course. But America, I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining city on a hill. And I want to make a special request of our Verdict listeners. You guys are incredible. You guys are patriots. You guys give me hope and optimism in America. I want to ask every one of you, please, today, when you finish listening to this podcast, most of you are listening on your cell phones. Click over to Amazon, type in unwoke, and buy the book. Right now, we have nearly a million unique listeners who listen to Verdict. If every one of you goes online and buys the book, it would soar to the very tops of the New York Times bestseller list.
- [27:11]
A
Amen.
- [27:11]
B
That would drive them nuts, by the way. And. And. And I wrote this book for the same reason, Ben, that you and I do this podcast. It is right now, 11:03pm on Tuesday night. The podcast will come out early Wednesday morning. Why am I sitting here at 1103? Why are you sitting here at 1103? Because we care about this. We want. We want our incredible listeners to be armed with information and know how to fight to save this country. And this book is exactly in the same spirit. The book is, I think, interesting and fun. It's not some abstract academic treatise, but it's designed. When you read it, you'll enjoy it. And by the way, I'd encourage you. Look, if I can be immodest for a second, don't buy just one. Christmas is coming up very soon. Buy a copy for your mom. Buy a copy for your brother. Buy a copy for your next door neighbor, your best friend. Because the reason that I spend the time to write these books, the reason that you and I do this podcast, is we either persuade and win hearts and minds or we lose America. That's what the stakes are, and that's what this book is about. It's the exact same thing the podcast is about.
- [28:25]
C
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- [28:51]
B
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- [28:54]
A
You mentioned what we're up against, and one of your chapters is about the newsroom revolution. And you start with a great story of a former colleague of mine that is hard to deal with. Jake Tapper in a fight is 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 the Palestinian people that were backing Hamas, many of them that were, were and saying, okay, all right, you had a few days now to go after these terrorists. Now you got to stop it now. Now it's your, your, your obligation to, to stop trying to protect yourself. And this is our media now. And it goes back to this, this idea that they have that just 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, they don't like and indoctrinate a nation to believe in socialism and communism and Marxism.
- [30:24]
B
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'd play gotcha questions, 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 it basically cut out every good argument I made and just put 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 Nidal 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 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 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 set, 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 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.
- [38:02]
A
Senator, there's another part of your book that I want to mention real quick and it's a trend. Whether it's you talking about big tech or the schools or Marxism in Washington, the list goes on and on. Especially you have a lot to talk talking here about science and Covid. That chapter is probably my favorite. As I was reading it today, I was marking it up. But there's a trend in this book and I love this, this may be my favorite part, is you at each, in each chapter, in essence ask how do you fight back, how to reclaim control, how do we win? It's not just a book of you ranting about issues, but you actually lay out how we can succeed and win on our side of the argument. And that's what empowers the reader to not just read a book, but to take something from it. And I love that.
- [38:57]
B
Well, it is critically important and there are all sorts of elements of how we fight back and win. One of it is transparency and sunshine. The views of the radical left are wildly unpopular. Look, no rational person supports abolishing the police. That's a nutty position. No rational person supports open borders and the chaos at our southern border. No rational person supports medically and surgically sterilizing and castrating 8 year old children. No rational person is befuddled by the question what is a woman? All of those are 9010 issues. And the radical left is on the extreme minority position on every one of them. It's why they rely on force rather than persuasion. Because their positions are out there and so often shining a light is really, really potent. And I'm going to give an example. I'm going to give an example from Verdict. So we had a podcast several weeks ago that was entitled Black Lives Matter is Hamas and we walk through how Black Lives Matter as a statement is a truism. It's absolutely true. Yes, period. The end. However, Black Lives Matter, the organization Black Lives Matter Inc. Is a very different thing. It is found founded by avowed Marxist who are trained Marxists. They're trained in fomenting communist revolutions. That's their own self description, not our language, their language. They are vicious racists and they are deeply, deeply anti Semitic. They hate Israel Indeed, one of the co founders of Black Lives Matter has called since 1995 for the destruction of the state of Israel. And on our podcast, we laid out all of that evidence. And then we, then we named names of all of the. Or a number of the giant corporations who had given names, millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter. And that included Amazon and Apple and Coca Cola. And we said, listen, do these companies, do you support vicious racism? Do you support vicious antisemitism? Do you support demanding the destruction of the State of Israel? Do you support these avowed Marxists because you gave money to them? That podcast came out, I believe, October 18th. The next day, Coca Cola went online and they scrubbed their website to remove every reference to the $500,000 that they had given to Black Lives Matter. And it was a direct result of this verdict podcast. We put the podcast out and almost immediately they erased it. Now they thought they could do it quietly. They could just hide and evade responsibility. I'm calling them out. I'm calling them out and I'm shining a light and I'm saying, look, have you apologized to the American people for why you were funding a viciously racist and anti Semitic organization? And it wasn't a secret. They were open about it then. You just didn't care because your woke politics mattered more to you than doing the right thing. And that's one of the strategies that is inherent in this book, is shining the light and calling them out. And that's how you win victories. In chapter after chapter, I talk about winning victories. Whether it's winning school board seats back or flipping Virginia red as parents got furious, or whether it's Elon Musk buying Twitter. All of these are strategies where we take these institutions back.
- [42:32]
A
It's an incredible book, Senator, and congratulations on it. It's one that I hope everybody listening will go grab. You can go to Amazon right now. You can order it. It's a fabulous Christmas gift. It is 300 pages from beginning to end. One of the chapters that you've got to read, if you get it, make sure you read the big tech chapter and also science. The science chapter to me, was one that, as I was reading it, Senator, I know you well enough to know when you really get passionate about something, you were really, really passionate when writing that chapter on science and what has happened and how science has just been totally corrupted, whether it's by Fauci or others that are pushing agendas through science. And those are two chapters I just want to mark for people. Make sure you take a look at those as well. Grab the book how to Defeat a Cultural Marxism in America you can get on Amazon. Order it now. Wherever you get your books, don't forget, hit that Follow, subscribe or auto download button wherever you're listening to this podcast. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. We also have a recap pod on Saturday mornings that is some of the things deeper in each podcast maybe you missed because of time restraint, so make sure you check that out as well. And on those in between days, I'd love for you to join me as I'll keep you updated on breaking news on my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast as well on those in between days. So make sure you download that as well. And the center and I will see you back here in a couple of days.