← Verdict with Ted Cruz
Verdict with Ted Cruz
Easter Miracle—Heroic Rescue in Iran plus Trump Threatens Massive Retaliation if Strait of Hormuz isn't Opened
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Ben Ferguson
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- [02:48]
Ben Ferguson
GetSunday.com welcome in as verdict with center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. Hope you had a fabulous Easter weekend with your family. It was a Easter miracle, Senator, as we have now gotten back that second pilot that was missing 48 hours in hell and Iran behind enemy lines. I hope they make a movie out of this one, sir.
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Senator Ted Cruz
Well, I'm confident they will. And let me first of all say he is risen. He has risen indeed. I, I hope you and everyone listening had a wonderful good Friday, a wonderful Easter. I hope you spent some time with your family that you gave, gave your, your wife or your husband a hug. You gave your kids a hug. And I hope you just spent, you know, we had the whole day together, just went to church and hung out with the kids and had a great day. And actually I took my mom, my 91 year old mom on Easter afternoon out to see a new movie, a Great Awakening. Have you seen that movie?
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Ben Ferguson
I've seen it, but I've heard. So was it. Give me a review.
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Senator Ted Cruz
I really enjoyed it. It's all about the great awakening in the United States and the wave of Christianity that swept in the early 1700s that helped the predicate for, for the American Revolution. And it's about Ben Franklin is, is a major protagonist and it was, it was a fabulous movie.
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Ben Ferguson
That's awesome. So she said you went to the movies, you had a good time. People that don't know you don't realize you love going to movies. Like that's like your kryptonite. Like if you, if you want to spend time just asking the movie, he'll 99% of the time say yes.
- [04:25]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah. And I got to say so my mom said she heard the movie was really good, she wanted to go see it. And then, and then I said, hey, Heidi, you want to go to a movie? She goes, no. I asked Caroline, you want to go to a movie? No. Catherine, you want to go to a movie? No, I said, mom, you and me, we're going. It was awesome. We had a, a mom dad date night and it was really cool. And she loves movies as much as I do. So we had a great afternoon.
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Ben Ferguson
That's awesome.
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Senator Ted Cruz
And then had family dinner after that. And so we actually. All right. Did you do this with your kids. We hid Easter eggs in our backyard. Did y' all do that?
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Ben Ferguson
Yeah, the Easter bunny did. Yes, they did.
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Senator Ted Cruz
Okay, we have teenagers, so there's no longer any mystery. We hide.
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Ben Ferguson
So this is what I got at 5am Wake up, wake up. We gotta go hide eggs. Wake up. And I was like, okay, I'm awake and it's like dark outside. And I'm like dumping them outside out of the basket. She's like, you're supposed to place them. Like they pick them up the same way. I just dumped like a trail of tea or something. Can I get back in bed now? So, yes, we did that.
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Senator Ted Cruz
So I will tell you, it shifts. So these were no longer eggs filled with candy in this instance. They were plastic eggs filled with postage.
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Ben Ferguson
Oh, I was gonna say no, not money. Okay. I thought, I was thinking pure hard cand host its.
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Senator Ted Cruz
So there was like a manicure, there was a pedicure, there was something from Sephora, something from Brandy Melville. A house. I don't know. It was. Look, I've got a 15 and about to be an 18 year old daughter and I will admit Heidi was in charge of picking what was on the post its. But, but they were pretty excited to get them. And there were other ones that just had squishy little rubber duckies.
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Ben Ferguson
Yeah, yeah.
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Senator Ted Cruz
So. So it was fun. We had, we had a great Easter. We did not have as amazing an Easter as an airman who was shot down over Iran. And I gotta say, look, this is. You're right, this will be a movie. Unless Hollywood. Well, I mean, Hollywood does suck, but hopefully they don't suck this bad because this is a movie. Screaming to be written. He was shot down over Iran. He hid in the mountains. The Iranians were hunting for him. The CIA put out misinformation. We went in under hostile fire, did a rescue, blew up a couple of our planes and helicopters on the way out so the Iranians wouldn't get the technology. It was an amazing story. We're going to do a deep dive on that in today's podcast.
- [06:48]
Ben Ferguson
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- [09:38]
Senator Ted Cruz
Undoubtedly. Here, let's take a minute and go through the TikTok that the Wall Street Journal put out Sunday evening. For nearly two days, injured and alone, a US aviator hid in a remote mountain crevice as Iranian forces and militias closed in on him with helicopters and drones. God is good, the Air Force colonel had radioed once he reached an elevated ridge, a message that was initially met with suspicion in Washington as a possible Iranian trap. As officials scrambled to verify he was still alive early Sunday, he heard the heavier roar of US aircraft and a barrage of fire as US commandos reached him 200 miles deep inside Iran. As they whisked him to safety, they blew up aircraft stranded on the ground rather than risk sophisticated military equipment falling into Iranian hands, leaving behind a final explosion and a plume of smoke. The rescue mission that US Officials said unfolded in the craggy gorges of southwestern Iran was the kind of operation that military commanders both plan for and dread. A downed American airman in enemy territory, hostile forces converging and early attempts faltering under fire. The aviator, who hasn't yet been identified, had been one of two crew flying in an F15E Strike Eagle with the aircraft call sign Dude44. Dude44 is great. Dude44 is a badass. I'm sure we're going to learn more about him.
- [11:13]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
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Senator Ted Cruz
When it was shot down by Iranian forces on Friday, shortly after the plane crashed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and general Dan Kane, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed President Trump about the situation, according to U.S. officials. They told him the Pentagon had long planned for this scenario and could rescue the airman once the Pentagon confirmed the aviator's identity. Heg Seth rushed into the Oval Office to tell him and to seek a final order, official said. Trump immediately gave his approval. We have to get him, trump said, according to the White House press secretary Caroline Levitt. The effort to recover the officer set off a sprawling, high risk rescue mission involving some 100 special operation forces, dozens of US warplanes and helicopters, and a last minute Central Intelligence Agency deception campaign to buy more time, the official said. Quote, when airmen go down, you can't get them in very tough countries like in Vietnam, trump told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday morning. He was able to climb, climb up. As wounded as he was, he was able to climb into a crevice, the president continued, saying the airmen could hear the US Forces looking for him. A lot of great things happened. Troops led by Central Command brought a devastating array of firepower to keep its enemy at bay. Four B1 bombers, part of a larger air armada, dropped nearly 102,000 pound satellite guided bombs, according to two US officials. MQ9 Reaper drones also struck suspected fighters as they approached within kilometers of the aviators hiding site. The search for an American airman stranded behind enemy lines jolted the US making what had been an abstract air war feel visceral. Beyond the Grady footage of explosions released by the White House, in triumphant interviews and posts, Trump and some of his allies have been calling the successful operation an Easter miracle. I hate when reporters are snarky. Trump and his allies are calling it an Easter miracle. We go in and rescue an airman behind enemy lines. We can celebrate that. That is extraordinary. And now the Journal does note the most famous rescue operation that the US has previously attempted in Iran, aimed at freeing 53 US embassy staff hostages nearly 46 years ago, had failed dramatically after a series of mishaps punctuated by a fiery crash at a desert staging area. What a contrast. Go back to Jimmy Carter. Yeah, we've got our hostages. That the beginning of this, this Islamic revolution is taking. Take an American hostage in the embassy. Jimmy Carter sends in a rescue mission and it crashes. No opposing fire crashes in the desert. And that that was one of the pivotal acts that ended the Jimmy Carter presidency. Yeah, this is night and day. And I gotta say, our military, the capacity of the American military is second to none. And every enemy of America is watching this and every ally of America is watching this. And they're all shaking their heads and marvel.
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Ben Ferguson
By the way, it's so interesting to see what the President did. As I was talking to a buddy of mine in the military early this morning, he said to me, he's like, Ben, he's like, you need to understand what President Trump did that other presidents have not done. He basically said, do whatever it takes. Use whatever military might you need to use however many people you need to send to go and find our boy, because we don't leave someone behind. He said, we're talking Seal Team 6, hundreds of special operations personnel. I wrote this down. Armed drones flying constantly overwatch over his location. Strike aircraft engaging intelligence assets, tracking every movement on the ground. This wasn't just a rescue he described. It is a controlled battlefield inside Iran that the US Set up with, with, with no notice for a scenario that they knew could happen. But he said this was, this was a controlled, again his words, a controlled battlefield inside of Iran. And then he said, not only that, the U. S. Intelligence went to work immediately. He said the CIA, spreading false information suggesting the pilot had already been recovered, saved his life, he believes. And he said, not only that, the Iranian forces, we know it worked. It wasn't like they tried and didn't work. Because they said the IR forces reacted to the misinformation and they moved literally in the wrong direction. That is what happens when you have a true leader in the White House who says, hey, we will do whatever it takes to get back our boy. I think that's part of the story that people need to understand is when you have a leader like Donald Trump that says to the military leadership, do your job and do it well. Do whatever it takes. You just describe those bombers overhead. You got the CIA misinformation working. You see the soldiers going the wrong direction. That is buying time for not only them to do the rest of planning, but to save his life.
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Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, look, that's exactly right. And I want to make another point on this, which is a strategic point about one of the things that makes the US Military so extraordinary and so unusual. Like a lot of folks, I was following the breaking news from Iran and of this rescue on X, which is the fastest way to get it. And one European commentator sent around a picture of the F15 and 2C130s and tweeted, said, lose all of this to rescue one pilot and call it your greatest military success of all time. And you know, I looked at that tweet that annoyed me. But then a fellow, and I don't know who this person is, Craig Fuller, freight attorney, is what his hashtag is, he sent a response that struck me as really insightful and in fact, so listen to his comment. In response to the European puzzled why we would give up three aircraft to save one airman during World War II, Hitler was convinced that the Americans lacked the will to fight and that any who did would be quickly overwhelmed. When early reports arrived from the battles in North Africa, German observers noted that Americans fought differently from the Europeans. Rather than charging aggressively and risking heavy infantry casualties, US Forces relied on overwhelming firepower, staying at a distance, and expending vast quantities of artillery with little hesitation. Thanks to unmatched industrial production and logistics, fresh supplies were always available. This approach allowed the relatively smaller American units to wear down much larger and well entrenched enemy forces. In contrast, German and other European doctrines often emphasized aggressive maneuver and were sometimes more willing to accept high casualties to achieve objectives or to preserve key equipment. This material, heavy American style, surprised many Germans, including Hitler, who had long dismissed US Soldiers as soft and lacking in fighting spirit. He believed soldiers were cheap and expendable. He discovered too late that Americans fought to conserve lives by expending machines and ammunition instead. It was one of the many reasons for Germany's defeat. Perhaps the Hardest for some foreigners to fully understand. Americans place a high value on the lives of our soldiers. Equipment and shells can always be replaced. I thought that was a very insightful observation. Absolutely. It was an incredibly successful mission. We saved the airmen and we can always build more equipment. We could build more planes. And that spirit is critical to why the American military is second to none
- [19:49]
Ben Ferguson
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- [21:49]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, yeah.
- [21:50]
Ben Ferguson
And that was what they were all concerned with. They also said to me in text messages on Easter Sunday, I want you to understand, they said, the morale booster of seeing that you have a commander in chief who says I do not care what it costs.
- [22:06]
Senator Ted Cruz
I do care. Go now.
- [22:08]
Ben Ferguson
Get him.
- [22:08]
Senator Ted Cruz
Go get him.
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Ben Ferguson
Go get him and, and use everything Stop everything and use everything to go get one man. And then we'll go back to what we're doing. But whatever it takes, there is nothing I'm going to say no to. And they said, they said to me, they said, ben, it's been a long time since men and women in uniform have felt that they have a commander in chief who truly has their back in this way. One of the things they said that was, I also thought was very interesting, and I'm going to look it up now. So you looked up something earlier. But, but it was a quote. And I want to quote this because it was so. It was so important what, what this individual said that serving his country said, you know, go look at the comparison to Bill Clinton and what he did with American troops in Somalia. He said, look at Barack Obama and what he did with Americans in Libya. Look at Joe Biden, who abandoned 13 US soldiers in Afghanistan. Trump moved mountains to rescue one American in Iran. One American. And if you're an American soldier right now, how fired up are you to serve Donald Trump knowing he's genuinely got your back?
- [23:11]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, let me be clear. You're serving the United States, you're not serving Donald Trump, but your commander in chief has your back. And that's a powerful thing. And by the way, it's not just you and me saying that. It's also Barack Obama's former Secretary of Homeland Security. Listen to Jeh Johnson talking about this incredible rescue.
- [23:33]
Ben Ferguson
This, this operation for the first pilot
- [23:36]
Senator Ted Cruz
and the second pilot, remarkable exercise, demonstration of US Military courage, technology, power.
- [23:46]
Ben Ferguson
I would encourage the President and the
- [23:47]
Senator Ted Cruz
Secretary of Defense, consistent with operational security, share as much of that with the American public so that the American public
- [23:54]
Ben Ferguson
can appreciate what goes into this kind
- [23:57]
Senator Ted Cruz
of operation is more complicated than the
- [23:59]
Ben Ferguson
Bin Laden operation, for example.
- [24:01]
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- [24:02]
Ben Ferguson
I'm not sure any of that. That's coming from Jeh Johnson. That's pretty incredible.
- [24:07]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, it is. And I want to drill down a little bit more on what this does for the fighting spirit and the morale of the entire military. And actually a different tweet, but I thought very profound as well, from a fellow named John Conrad on X. Here's what he said. This is why Americans are the deadliest fighters on earth. I met a priest yesterday who just got accepted to chaplain school in Newport. I asked him the obvious question, Marines or Navy? Navy, he said. His face fell a little. He told me he could never be a Marine because every Marine is a rifleman. And as a priest, he can't carry a weapon. He's hoping to get assigned to a Marine unit. Anyway, all chaplains are Navy officers, so that's the only door in. I laughed. I felt a little bad about that. Then I explained to him what devil doc means. The Marine Corps doesn't have medics. They use Navy corpsmen. I told him, when you get out to the fleet, find a Marine sergeant with a couple of Purple Hearts and tell him devil docs aren't real Marines. Be prepared to duck. Marines are violently particular about who gets to wear their uniform. Navy corpsmen and Navy chaplains who have eaten dirt alongside them in combat qualify. Full stop. My dad was Air Force, not even Navy. I remember going to VFW halls with him as a kid. Someone would ask him what service. He'd say air Force. And the room would chuckle a little. And then they'd find out he was a medicine. And the air in the room changed something close to reverence. Dad hated being honored. He had one line he used to deflect it. I didn't do much. Save your praise for my cousin, the PJ that always broke the ice. PJs are the air Force special operators who go into hell to pull downed pilots out. They will take casualties and are prepared to die to rescue a single pilot or crewman. The math doesn't math out. Why would any combat force take multiple casualties to rescue one Air Force jet jockey? What the padre is about to learn is that the military has a hierarchy that has nothing to do with rank and nothing to do with the service stitched on your chest. Have you deployed? Have you seen combat? In every firefight, there are men who move towards the guns and men who hang back. And when the guy at the tip of the spear is pinned down, bleeding with rounds cracking past his head, there is exactly one word he screams into the radio. Medic. Yep, here's the catch. And it is the whole reason America fights the way America fights. That Marine is willing to push forward into fire because he knows the corpsman is coming. He knows the medevac birds will land in the hot lz. He knows the devil doc will drag him out by his plate carrier if it comes to that. And if the medic can't help, he has what dad called injuries incompatible with life. He knows that chaplain will crawl on his belly to administer last rites and deliver him to heaven. The F15 pilot punching out over enemy territory knows the same thing. He knows the PJs will move heaven and earth to reach him and turn whatever is shooting at him into a smoking crater of hell on earth. On the way in. This is the quiet math underneath American violence. Our warriors are the fiercest on earth, not because they're the more aggressive, not because they're better trained or better equipped. Although they are all of those things. They are the fiercest because they know in their bones that when they key the mic and call for help, help is coming in hot. Take that away and you don't have the US military anymore. You have a security force. I thought that those two posts I thought were very insightful and they sum up a truly extraordinary and unique aspect of the American military.
- [28:23]
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- [31:49]
Ben Ferguson
Getsunday.com and this brings us to the second part of the conversation that is important and that is a new warning, Senator, coming from President Trump. If there's anything that I've learned from President Trump in his second term, there's two aspects of his foreign policy. One is FAFO and two is if you're an ally of the United States of America and you don't stand with us, then his second foreign policy is, well, good luck to you because we're not gonna, we're not gonna keep funding and doing things like NATO or UN or whatever it may be. If you're taking advantage of us, he's calling that out as well. And, and, and the President has made it clear when he tells you there's a deadline for something, he means it. There's a new deadline with, with Iran and Tehran and the leadership there. And let's talk about what his new threat is by Tuesday.
- [32:39]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, on Sunday, he sent out a truth social that reads, Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open. Open the effin straight, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah. President Donald J. Trump. Now, I will say he did not abbreviate effing. But, but, but this is a PG rated podcast. So I did. I will say also that after he sent that Truth social, the Wall Street Journal article that I quoted at the beginning of this show quotes it. And for the first time I've ever seen the F bomb in the Wall Street Journal, they did it quoting the President of the United States. I'm not aware of any precedent of a president dropping the F bomb, but then again, I'm not aware of any president dropping the level of bombs that he is dropping in a concentrated focus that is having this kind of effect. And look, I think Tuesday night is a very serious deadline. The President wants the Strait of Hormuz open. And if you're an Iranian leader as bat crap crazy as those guys are, I don't think they think this is a bluff.
- [34:04]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, I would think not. Now they crazy enough just to say go ahead and do it. And that may be how much they're holding on for dear life just to try to save control. But I agree with you. I don't think they think he's bluffing at all.
- [34:17]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, and that's the challenge is that the mullahs, I don't think, care at all about their people. We talked before about comparing, say, the Nazi army to the Allies during World War II, that Hitler was willing to send German soldiers in to die and just have them mowed over. I think the same is true with the mullahs. They're happy to have. Not happy, but they're willing to have as many Iranians die as need be. They believe they're on a mission from God. This is. It is theocratic. And if thousands. Look, they murdered. The Ayatollah just murdered about 40,000 Iranians who were rising up in protest. So thousands of Iranians dying doesn't bother them at all. Tens of thousands doesn't bother them at all. It may prove to be the case that hundreds of thousands or even millions of Iranians dying doesn't bother them. And so the question is, look, if the US Military takes out the power plants and takes out the bridges, that kind of hard infrastructure that doesn't get rebuilt overnight, that has real and long lasting damage to the economy in Iran. It imposes enormous consequences on Iran. What I don't know is does a theocratic mullah who's chanting death to America care about inflicting massive misery on the Iranian people and devastating the Iranian economy? I guess we'll find out by Tuesday. I don't know the answer.
- [35:53]
Ben Ferguson
You know what's interesting is I was asked this question over the weekend, and it's one I want to ask you, Senator. It was. Someone said, all right, well, look, let's say we do this and we knock out their power plant. What good does that do us? Because then we're just going to have to help them rebuild it one day. My response was, what you don't understand is that may be what it is it takes for the people to really overthrow their government. It'll also have a devastating impact on their military in general. And it's another way to fast track them losing control of their country. That's the reason why I think the President's saying, all right, fine, you guys aren't budging. Well, then we're gonna go to the next step here, because I'm not backing down.
- [36:30]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah. And look, the President in his nationwide address said he was gonna bomb them back into the stone age. What's one of the aspects of the stone Ages? Not having electricity, not having power. Going back to lighting fires for light. You take out all their power plants and they have no electricity, which is amazing for an oil rich country like Iran. But you want to talk about grinding the economy to a halt immediately, grinding the military to a halt. Everything runs on electricity. And so shutting down power. And by the way, you take out the bridges, that means, you know, it's one of the things that I've learned. I didn't realize when I was a kid how much of military effectiveness is logistics. One of the incredible things our military is really good at is moving people and materiel, getting it in there, getting ammunition in there, getting food in there, getting fuel in there, moving it around, all of that. Logistically, we are extraordinarily we. The military. That. Not you and me. You know, I'm a lawyer and you're even worse, you're a podcaster. So. So. So we are not extraordinary logistically. But. But the military is. Notice how I'm not a podcaster. Apparently you do this just.
- [37:43]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say you just. You just threw me under the bus without. I'm pretty sure the name of the show is behind me there, but we'll just keep going. There we go.
- [37:50]
Senator Ted Cruz
You Know, pot, pot, meat, kettle. But look, you take out the bridges and the ability to move, the military to move, but anyone else to move, you basically shut down commerce in the country. That puts enormous economic pressure on the country. Look, my hope is that the end game on this is the people rise up and say, enough with these crazy mullahs, we want you out. And my objective has always been the president laid out his objective, which is to eliminate the Iranian military's ability to strike out and kill Americans or kill our allies. That's a very important objective. I think the objective should be to, to. To collapse this regime, to have Iran led by a government that is not a crazy Islamist who wants to murder Americans. I don't care who it is, as long as they're not actively murdering Americans. If they're not murdering Americans, if they're not trying to murder Americans, I'm good with it. Now, the next step, if we've leveled all the power plants, you get a new government in. The new government is going to have to rebuild the power plants. Now, I will note that there is one advantage for rebuilding, which is Iran has a crap ton of oil.
- [39:04]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah.
- [39:05]
Senator Ted Cruz
Very quickly, financially, there's a revenue stream. So you said, like people said to you, well, gosh, we're going to have to rebuild it. I promise you, if Trump bombs it, the American taxpayers are not rebuilding it. There is no scenario in which the end game is Trump writing a check now. Now, there may be a scenario depending on what happens, where when you have a new government, if they're friend and ally with America, you could see assistance on the construction that is paid for by Iranian oil revenues. It's possible that we help them build it back where they're paying for it. But I don't envision any universe in which America is paying for this. And I think anyone who knows Donald Trump knows that's right.
- [39:47]
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. No, no doubt about it. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens on Tuesday. We are going to cover it, that I can promise you. Don't forget, we do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so hit that subscriber auto download button. Also, you can watch this episode on YouTube as well. So make sure if you're a YouTube watcher that you put in Verdict with Ted Cruz and you can watch this show there and the center. I will see you back here on Wednesday morning. Can you buy real bitcoin in your retirement account? If not, it's time to upgrade to bitcoin. Ira, you can buy and sell bitcoin with major tax advantages. Visit bitcoin ira.comBen to learn more right
- [40:22]
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