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Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
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What color was the hamster's cape and what did he pack for lunch?
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Senator Ted Cruz
No drama. But wait, there's more.
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Ben Ferguson
It is vertic with center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And I hope your Thanksgiving week has been incredible with your family. Safe travels out there, Senator. We've got actually a lot to talk about. Usually it's a slow week during the holidays, not so much this week at all.
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, there's a lot going on, but I want to start by just saying this week of Thanksgiving, I hope you took a minute to just hug your family, hug your wife, hug your husband, hug your kids. Let your kids know why you love them, what they mean to you. If your mom and dad are still with you, tell them. My parents, you know, my mom is turning, just turned 91. My dad is 86. Like the moments with family, these holidays are so important. Love them and give thanks. Like, we have so much to give thanks for. We have so much to give thanks for being Americans. For those of us who are blessed to be Texans, we have even more to give thanks for. We have thanks for our liberty. We have thanks for American free enterprise. We have thanks for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, our fundamental liberties. And so I hope in this time, look, it's so easy. Life goes so fast. It goes so crazy. You're going a million miles an hour and everything distracts you. I hope during this week you take a minute to sit down and play a game with your kids. You take a minute. You know, my, my daughters have started liking to play poker. I love to play poker. And just sitting down, like playing poker, playing monopoly, playing backgammon, playing chess, playing uno, playing charades. Like, like those moments are priceless. And so, yes, there's a lot going on and we're going to talk about all of that. But, but I really do. God has blessed this nation incredibly. And, and if you are fortunate enough to be healthy, if you are fortunate enough to, like, you and I are Ben to be dads.
Ben Ferguson
Amen to that.
Senator Ted Cruz
Being a dad, what an incredible privilege. What an incredible, like watching your kids grow up, watching your kids express strong, passionate views. Just, just take this week. This week and Christmas week are I think, the two most important weeks to just love on your kids. And so that's something I just want to encourage you. You're listening to a podcast that, that's great that that's be engaged but. But don't take the time away from your family and your kids, especially this week.
Ben Ferguson
Amen to that. It couldn't agree with you more as we. And by the way, with poker, who's better? I gotta ask, is it you or are they taking your money yet? I just, I gotta know that.
Senator Ted Cruz
So I gotta say Caroline, my oldest daughter, has become a pretty good little poker player and she's got her boyfriend Bruce that they like playing poker with me. We were this summer we went to Lake Powell in Nevada and Utah and Lake Powell is gorgeous. It's basically, it's basically the Grand Canyon filled up halfway with water. And my father in law has a houseboat, he's had a houseboat for 30 years. And you get out on the houseboat and you tow a water ski boat, you tow a jet ski and you just get out there and spend a week. And there's no phone, there's no Internet, it's disconnected from the world. And you know, you get out there, you water ski, you jet ski, you swim, you jump off the top of the house. But by the way, my brother in law, you want to talk about a badass trick? My brother in law has a trick where he stands on the top of the houseboat, he holds the rope from the water ski and his wife gets in the water ski boat and she punches it. He jumps off the second story of the houseboat, he lands on his rear end, he goes underwater, goes about 6, 8ft underwater and he pops up in barefoots. It is a crazy ass trick.
Ben Ferguson
That's so cool.
Senator Ted Cruz
And I gotta say, like, like we did that this summer. Spent, spent a week and, and that, that's where, where Caroline and Bruce said, hey dad, you really like to play poker, can you teach us to play? And so we sat there, we had a bunch of like bottle caps and used bottle caps as chips. Yeah, we didn't play for money, but we played every night. And it was every night from like 10pm to 1 in the morning, we played poker. And that, that was, you know, when I was a kid, when I was a little kid, my grandmother, when I was 6, 7, 8 years old, she taught me to play poker. And she was a, she was an incredible card player. She played bridge every week for. She lived into her 80s, she probably played 70 years worth of bridge. But she taught me to play poker. She had a tin of buttons and we would use the buttons as chips and you know, she had some like Costume jewelry that were, like fake diamonds. So I would, you know, 8 years old, I'd say $1 million, and I'd throw out, like, a diamond chip. And for, like two years, I won every time. She'd babysit me when my parents went out, and, like, if they wanted to have a date night or something, they dropped me off at granny's house and we'd sit there and play poker. And after a couple of years of doing it and I'd won over and over again, I came to her, I said, granny, let's play for real money. And I had $5. And Ben, at the time, my allowance was 50 cents a week. So $5 was 10 weeks allowance. It was a ton of money. And she said, sure, absolutely. Happy to. So we sat down, played poker. She cleaned me out.
Ben Ferguson
Yep.
Senator Ted Cruz
Everything.
Ben Ferguson
An important lesson. Life is not winning money, but losing money, because it keeps you in check, I think forever.
Senator Ted Cruz
Oh. When my parents picked me up, I was there crying, and my Irish grandmother was laughing as she, like, sent me home and said, well, Sonny, you want to play for money? Let me know next time you want to do it.
Ben Ferguson
That's such a. And she didn't give it back, which is, like, the reason why you learned your lesson.
Senator Ted Cruz
Oh, no, no, no. I never got that five bucks back.
Ben Ferguson
That's so good. I love it. So, you know, for my. I got twin boys. Georgie is my game player. He's obsessed. All Thanksgiving break, we've been playing poker. He loves it. And he grins because we have poker chips. We don't play for money. Just hold him.
Senator Ted Cruz
Or. What are you playing?
Ben Ferguson
We're playing. Thanks. Hold him. Yeah. And he loves it. He's six years old, but he's really good with numbers. He loves playing blackjack. Same thing. We'll use chips. And, you know, whoever wins just has the, you know, the bragging rights. The table, we all start with the same amount. But at 6 years old, he started whooping. My dad and my sister's boyfriend lost to him this morning, which really made me laugh because he's so proud of himself. At 6, like, I get this game. Like, this is so fun. Like you said, spend time with the fam over the holidays, playing card games, uno, whatever it is, do it with your kids, because those are. That's. Those are memories you remember for us, your life.
Senator Ted Cruz
And by the way, I gotta say, Cubans, what we do on holidays is we play dominoes and Cubans. Playing dominoes, number one. So we don't play double six dominoes. Double six dominoes are Common in Mexico, much of the Caribbean. But Cubans play double nine dominoes. And double nine dominoes is a lot more complicated because you got a lot more numbers to think through. And my grandfather, oh, my abuelo, he could play dominoes. In fact, we still have these, like, wooden domino trays that he made in this wood shop that. That we play with to this day. And he was. He was such a good domino player that after, like, four rounds, he could tell you what dominoes every person around the table had. Like, it was freakish.
Ben Ferguson
See, I don't have that. Do you have that type of memory? I just don't.
Senator Ted Cruz
I have some of it, but not at the. So when it comes to poker, one of my best friends in the world is actually an amateur professional poker player. So. So he has played multiple World Series of Poker, and I played with him a ton. And it's interesting, when he and I play, he gets pissed because he's very, very good at the math. He knows the math of every hand. Here, the outs, here's the percentages. I'm okay at the math. I. I'm. I don't have the percentages down. Like, it's 37%, but I have. This percentage is notionally right. I have a general. I have a pretty good sense of the math, but it's not exactly what I play is. I read the other players. So this buddy of mine who was a groomsman, my wedding, one of my closest friends will play, and we probably played 100 poker games together. And my guess is I won about half and he's won about half. And it drives him crazy because I'll make plays, and he's like, what the hell are you doing? You can't do that. The math didn't make sense. And I'll look at him and say, adam, I did it because you didn't want me to. Because when I'm playing poker, the biggest thing I'm doing is I'm looking in the eyes of the other people. I'm trying to figure out, what do you want? And I'm going to do the opposite of what you want. And so it's a. Look, what's fun about poker is you have the math and skill of it, but you also have the people reading, and that's a blast. And I got to say, I'm really proud because my daughter Caroline, she's good at both of that. I mean, she's still a new poker player, but she's good at reading people. That's awesome.
Ben Ferguson
Donald Trump has begun the process. Senator of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. This is something that you've been advocating for, talking about, we've talked about on the show for quite some time. They've also been doing this in Texas, and now we're seeing it become part two nationwide. Your reaction?
Senator Ted Cruz
So, look, this is massively important. President Trump announced this week that he's going to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. I have literally been fighting for this to happen for 10 years. It has been five different Congresses that I've introduced legislation directing the federal government to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. We came really, really close in the first Trump administration. I was pushing this. I had legislation, I was fighting for it. And the reason we fell just short and the reason we fell just short is the deep state in the State Department. They did not want to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. And the old version of the legislation I filed was a top down. So what it did is it directed the State Department and the administration to designate the global Muslim Brotherhood, the umbrella organization, as a terrorist organization. And what happened was the deep state bureaucrats, they argued, well, it is not definitively proven that every single Muslim Brotherhood affiliate across the globe is a terrorist organization. Some of them clearly are, but it's not proven that all of them are. And that argument, at the end of the day, stopped Trump won from doing this. So Trump, two starts. And I leaned in again and I said, all right, we're going to get this done. And I redrafted the legislation to pick a totally different approach. Instead of being top down, I went bottom up. And I said, look, the State Department is directed to designate the individual Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that are terrorist organizations, designate them as such. So, for example, Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine. There is zero dispute that Hamas is a terrorist organization. And so my legislation said, designate the individual affiliates, whichever ones, that there's clear and definitive proof they're terrorist organizations, and then designate the global Muslim Brotherhood for material support for those terrorist organizations because the global organization funds every one of their affiliates. And so it was a fundamental shift. And at the end of the day, I think it's unlikely Congress will pass my legislation, because to pass it, I need 60 Democrats, I need 60 senators, I need at least seven Democrats. And I think it's unlikely we'll get seven Democrats. I've got one. So the legislation in the Senate is Cruz Fetterman. So John Fetterman has joined me. But to get to seven is not easy. But I've been fighting this fight because I want to build the momentum for the president to do what he did this week. And what he did this week is exactly what my legislation says, which is he directed the State Department to designate the individual affiliates, the lower organizations that are clearly terrorist organizations. And I'll tell you, Seb Gorka is the head of counterterrorism, the National Security Council. Seb is an old friend. I have met with Seb and talked at length about making this happen. And then just three weeks ago, I was at the White House. I was with President Trump. It was right after he had designated Nigeria as a country of particular concern because Boko Haram and radical Islamic terrorists were murdering Christians. More than 50,000 Christians had been murdered in Nigeria. And I've been fighting to designate Nigeria for a long time. And so I told the president right after he did that, I said. I said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for designating Nigeria. Really big deal. Enormously important. And he responded to me. He said, great, Ted. Happy to do it. He said, is there anyone else we should designate? What else should we do? And I said, the Muslim Brotherhood. We should designate the Muslim Brotherhood. And he said to me three weeks ago, I'm happy to do it. We'll get it done. This week. He got it done. It is a big, big, big deal. This is literally 10 years of hard work, and it will make America safer because the Muslim Brotherhood is funding terrorists that want to murder you and want to murder me.
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. It is not just, as you mentioned, a big deal. It's a national security issue. And there's also been a very weird quietness online on this. There are some members of the Democratic Party that are acting as if the Muslim Brotherhood really shouldn't be designated as a terrorist organization. It might be one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on social media happen. And yet here we are witnessing it in real time as they're like, well, hold on a second. Why would we really need to do this? I'm like, what world are you living in? Are you kidding me?
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, and many of our allies in the Middle east already understand the threat. So, for example, the global Muslim Brotherhood is outlawed as a terrorist group by Bahrain, by Egypt, by Jordan, by Saudi Arabia, and by the uae. I spoke with the governments of those countries. They really want the United States to do what President Trump did this week, which is designate the Muslim Brotherhood. Austria has also banned the group. Germany is considering legislation to do the same. French intelligence has described the Muslim Brotherhood as, quote, a threat to national cohesion. And the British officials say the Muslim Brotherhood is subject to surveillance under Britain's anti extremism laws. So there is a growing movement to recognize that the Muslim Brotherhood is funding, is promoting terrorism, terrorism that is trying to kill Americans, terrorism that's trying to kill Europeans, terrorism that is trying to kill Israelis. And designating a group as a terrorist organization unleashes a host of tools including sanctions and direct military action that we can take against them. And this is, as I said, it has been 10 years I've been fighting for this to happen. I want to credit President Trump. Here's what the Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about it. Wall Street Journal editorial board said, quote, nearly a quarter century after 9 11, the US has taken aim at a leading incubator of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood. Previous attempts to prescribe the group, including by the first Trump administration, were stymied by the Brotherhood's loose structure. On Monday, President Trump signed an executive order to begin the process of designating the Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations. Branches in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon are singled out for a 30 day review, though the order isn't limited to them. This is a big deal. America is safer. Thank you, President Trump.
Child Voice/Storyteller
Then the space hamster flew his hot air balloon all the way to the bottom of the ocean.
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Child Voice/Storyteller
What color was the hamster's cape? And what did he pack for lunch?
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Ben Ferguson
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Ben Ferguson
U n D All right, so there's another thing this week center and it really rarely do headlines like actually genuinely tick me off. Well, I'm a cynical guy, but there was one this week with the New York Times and it I'm going to.
Senator Ted Cruz
Call BS on that. I'm going to call BS on that.
Ben Ferguson
You think the New York Times didn't irritate me this week?
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, I know you too well. Has there been a day in the past year when there was not a headline that pissed you off? Yes.
Ben Ferguson
Easter, Christmas, Thanksgiving, probably because I'm not reading the news then.
Senator Ted Cruz
So the days you don't read the headlines, I'm just saying they piss you off every day. But I will admit this was Particularly infuriating.
Ben Ferguson
Okay, back on my team on this one. I like this. So there's this. You're always on my team. You're a constructive criticism teammate. That's how I would describe you. So the New York Times comes out with this headline, this story that's actually supposed to make you, as an American citizen, feel sorry for an undocumented worker. They call it that. I call it an illegal immigrant that stole an American's identity. And they say, well, there's two men that paid a price. And they also referred to the identity as a individual. Like one. Like two become one. Like they're married. It is the most insane propaganda, even for the New York Times Standard.
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, all across the country, there are thousands of people who've had their identity stolen by illegal immigrants, and it is causing real pain. It's causing real chaos. Ironically, the New York Times, in the midst of their propaganda piece, accidentally reported the news and talked about the devastating consequences. Now, of course, what they said is, if an illegal immigrant steals your identity, the illegal alien is a victim and not just you. So let's just read the beginning of this article because it's one that will make your head explode. The title, two men, one Identity. They both paid the price. Thousands of undocumented workers rely on fraudulent Social Security numbers. One of them belonged to Dan Kluver. Dan Kluver saw the police lights flashing in his rearview mirror late last year and eased his car onto the shoulder, thinking there had been some kind of mistake. He had spent four decades in rural Minnesota without ever getting into trouble. He prided himself on a life built around dependability and routine, working at the same factory where his father once did and spending his weekends coaching baseball and teaching Sunday school. He had never fired a gun or smoked a cigarette or missed a payment or had been arrested, by the way, I'm not sure I believe that he's never fired a gun. The guy's in rural Minnesota. That sounds like a New York Times BS statement, but leave that as its side quote. License and registration, please, the officer said. Kluver, 42, handed them over and waited while the officer went back to his patrol car. He listened to the church bells that rang every hour and watched the sunlight reflect off the grain silos in downtown Olivia, where he knew Most of the 2,400 residents, including the officers walking back to his car. Is everything all right? Kluver asked. It's strange, but it looks like your license has been suspended. You've got another driver's license with some issues down in Missouri. What? Kloever said. I've barely ever been to Missouri. How is that possible? The officer had no answers, but Kluver feared he might know what was happening. Over the years there had been signs that something wasn't right, stray letters about wages earned in unfamiliar towns and collection notices for debt that wasn't his. Kluver had tried to untangle the mess several times by hiring tax specialists and driving to government offices across the state, only to run into the same bureaucratic dead ends. But now the problem was bigger than unpaid taxes. Somebody was impersonating him, moving through the world as Dan Kluver, building a life in his name with a government issued id. His problem was one version of a problem that's been spreading across the country for years. The government estimates that as many as 1 million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers. Let me repeat that. The government estimates that as many as 1 million undocumented workers are using fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers. A survival tactic, of course. A survivor tactic. They're just stealing because they want to survive. Used to pass background checks and get jobs. The numbers are skimmed from data breaches, sold in the black market online for as little as $150, or handed out in border towns by human smugglers. Many numbers connect back to US Citizen children, dead people, or Puerto Ricans whose numbers circulate easily across the mainland. But thousands of others belong to people like Clover Americans whose names and identities are no longer theirs alone. The police officer sent Klover home with a warning, and he sifted through file cabinets with his wife, Christy, searching for clues about the other Dan Kluver. His Social Security card was safely locked away alongside birth certificates for their three children. He'd never been robbed or even lost his wallet, but there was his number, printed on a W2 from a leather factory in a town he never visited. He traced 15 years of records and found more tax documents listing unfamiliar jobs at a cement plant in Kansas, a paper mill in Tennessee, a construction company in Ohio, a cereal factory in Nebraska, and a dog food plant in Missouri. How do you think you've been getting between all these places? Christie asked. It's eerie. It's like I've lost all control over who I am, klouver said. Some years, the other Dan Kluver had earned more than his own salary at a local sugar beet factory, which pushed the total income under a Social Security number into a higher tax bracket as the debt started to mount. Twice he'd contacted law enforcement and filed an identity theft report with the federal government. He waited for relief while the IRS docked his annual tax returns and garnished a few of his paychecks, costing him thousands. Finally, a few months before their wedding in 2012, Christie decided to pay off the balance, emptying her savings and sending a check for $6,000. Their relief lasted until the next tax season, when a new bill arrived, this one for $22,000. They spent the next decade living with the consequences annual tax audits, budgets that never aged up, whispered arguments. After the kids went to bed, Kluver kept calling government numbers and waiting on hold until he eventually resigned himself to a payment plan. He agreed to send the IRS $150 each month, which he'd done more than 35 times. I can't keep obsessing over this and getting nowhere, he told Christie. I need to think about something else that is going on. And yet the New York Times at the same time described the person who'd stole his identity. He had lived under enough names and numbers in the United States that they started to blur together. Vincent Trujillo, Reynaldo Guerra, and then, for more than a decade, Daniel Kluver, the name he'd used until he could barely remember what it felt like to exist as himself. Romeo Perez Bravo, 42, a Guatemalan immigrant who has spent most of his adult life working under borrowed identities, borrowed being the fake name for stolen. By the start of 2025, he was preparing for another graveyard shift in St. Joseph, Missouri, lacing his work boots in the darkness and his drafty rental while his wife and five children slept. He packed their school lunches the next day, drove to the dog food factory, and gathered with his co workers to say their nightly prayer. Then he swiped his badge to begin another 12 hour shift as Daniel Kluver, sinking deeper into an identity that wasn't really his own. Daniel, his boss always shouted, taking attendance before they went to their lines. Here, he said. Perez Bravo had come to the United States for the first time at 16, to help earn money for his family. Traveling alone to join his father in Marshall, Minnesota, he hiked out of the Guatemalan highlands, rode atop a freight train for three weeks across Mexico, nearly drowned in the Rio Grande, and took a Greyhound to middle America, where life somehow felt harder. He slept on a couch at his father's apartment and enrolled in high school despite speaking almost no English. Then he began to look for a job, but no one would hire an underage worker without papers. The entire story goes on to say, this guy who has stolen the identity of a Poor working man in Minnesota. He's the victim. Despite the fact that Daniel Klufthe real Daniel Kluver is paying IRS debts, his credit has been ruined. It has been a nightmare for him. And yet for the New York Times, they say it's one identity. The poor guy that stole his identity is really the victim. It is an infuriating example of propaganda. And let me go back to the stat that I read. More than 1 million illegal immigrants have stolen identities of Americans and Americans are hurting all over the country. And the New York Times is saying you too should have your identity stolen. You too should pay the price. You too should pay IRS bills that you don't owe because an illegal immigrant stole stole your identity. And by the way, that illegal immigrant's the victim, not you.
Ben Ferguson
Senator, finally on the show, let's deal with a major problem. It's huge. A university is now warning of a quote unquote whiteness pandemic. Not a problem, but a pandemic. A whiteness pandemic. This coming from the University of Minnesota. I'll let you take it from there.
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah. I gotta say this is gonna piss you off. Are you white then apparently you are an evil, noxious scourge on America. You are a pandemic. You are a virus, you are a disease. And woke leftists are going to re educate the whiteness right out of you. Like I wish I were making this up. Like when I say these words, you sound like a lunatic. You sound like you're wearing like a tinfoil hat and you believe in conspiracy theories. But I want to read to you from a website from the University of Minnesota. By the way, this is a state website. This is. All right, here's what the website says. Quote, what is the whiteness pandemic? Racism is an epidemic that can also be considered a pandemic given its large cross national proportion and spread. However, there is another pandemic lurking behind and driving the racist the whiteness pandemic. Whiteness refers to culture, not biology. The centuries old culture of whiteness features colorblindness. In other words, not being a racist. That is the whiteness pandemic. Passivity and white fragility were all covert expressions of racism common in the United States. Naming the whiteness pandemic shifts our gaze from the victims and effects of racism onto the systems that perpetrate and perpetuate racism. Starting with the family system. In other words, families are racist. If you believe in families. If you believe in a mom and dad raising kids, loving kids, they that is the family system is part of the whiteness pandemic. At birth, young children growing up in white families begin to be socialized into the culture of whiteness, making the family system one of the most powerful systems involved in systemic racism. This is open. We hate families is what the University of Minnesota is saying. And okay, what's the next section? How do we halt and reverse the whiteness pandemic? If you were born and raised in the United States, you have grown up in the whiteness pandemic, and you can play a role in halting or reversing this pandemic, especially if you are white because of the power and privilege you hold in this racialized society. If you were socialized into the culture of whiteness during your childhood, it is not your fault. But as an adult, it is now your responsibility to self reflect, to re educate yourself and act if you are a white adult. Anti racist action involves an ongoing process of self reflection in order to develop a healthy, positive white identity while encouraging courageous, anti racist parenting caregiving. What utter and complete garbage. What racist, leftist, communist dreck. And this is the University of Minnesota, by the way. Look, there are like great people in Minnesota. They're great people in every state. And yet these people are racist radicals. And this is what they're indoctrinating our children with.
Ben Ferguson
Not only the indoctrinated children, but this is where a lot of our dollars, our tax dollars go. Which is the other frustrating part that they. This is what they're indoctrinating them with, undoubtedly.
Senator Ted Cruz
And by the way, our podcast on Monday. So we do this podcast three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Our podcast on Monday talked about what is the number one funder of Al Shabaab, the radical Islamic terrorist group. And the answer, terrifyingly enough, is the taxpayers of the state of Minnesota. So Minnesota has a huge Somali community. Somalis have invaded the state of Minnesota. It's how you elect Ilhan Omar, who actively is anti American, racist, radical, embraces and supports radical Islamic terrorists. And the Somali community sends billions every year back to Somalia and millions of that money sent back ends up directly in the pockets in the coffers of Al Shabaab. And it is the Minnesota state taxpayers. So we detailed this on Monday how welfare fraud, fraudulent collection of welfare payments, an entire welfare system set up seemingly on the face of it to encourage fraud, to facilitate fraud, is resulting in Minnesota taxpayers sending millions of dollars to radical Islamic terrorists. This is the same ideology. Like, what do you do if you happen to be a white kid at the University of Minnesota? You show up and be told, by the way, you're just, you know, you're 17, 18 year old kid, you show up as a freshman and if you're white, you're told you're a pandemic, you're a virus, virus. And the only answer is re educate yourself. Because who you are, who America is and understand this screed against, quote, anti whiteness is also a screed against America. That these Marxists hate the United States of America. They hate the Constitution, they hate our freedoms. And this garbage that is anti racism, this garbage that is dei. This garbage that says we must institutionalize. By the way, the fix for the whiteness pandemic is to discriminate against anyone who is white is to institutionalize racism. And that is grotesque. It is wrong. It is contrary to the 14th amendment of the Constitution which protects provides the equal protection of the law to all people regardless of race. It is contrary to the founding notions of this country. The declaration said we hold these truths to be self evident. That all men are created equal. Not some, not just white people, not just black people, not anyone. All men and all women are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. That among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's what this country was built on. And these Marxists who have taken over our institutions hate that notion. And this kind of garbage is being spewed to our children and being used to brainwash our children at a massive rate.
Ben Ferguson
I tell this all the time to parents when they ask be careful where you send your kids to college because they could be indoctrinated to literally hate this country. This is another example.
Senator Ted Cruz
And to hate you, to hate their mom and dad. But by the way, what I just read, the family system, they are attacking families. They're telling your kids family is evil. That's what Marxists believe.
Ben Ferguson
Yeah. Amen. Don't forget we do this show as a podcast Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So make sure you hit that subscribe or that auto download button wherever you get your podcast. If you like to watch the show, you can do that on YouTube as well as most of the episodes we do is a video podcast as well so on YouTube you can grab it there and also you can catch the show on the radio station you're listening to right now each and every weekend. You so make sure you download Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts. Ben Ferguson, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Be safe out there on the roads with this Thanksgiving holiday weekend and we'll see you back here real soon.
Senator Ted Cruz
Shh.
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Episode Title: Huge Victory — Trump Designates Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization, plus NYT says Illegal Aliens Stealing Identities of U.S. Citizens are the Real Victims
Hosts: Senator Ted Cruz & Ben Ferguson
Date: November 26, 2025
In this Thanksgiving week episode, Senator Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson break down three major topics dominating the news: President Trump’s executive order designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, the New York Times’ controversial portrayal of identity theft by illegal immigrants, and a University of Minnesota initiative denouncing “whiteness” as a pandemic. The episode is framed with reflections on family and gratitude but quickly moves into heated commentary on national security, media bias, and the culture wars shaping America.
Timestamps: 03:08–12:03
Notable Quote:
“Life goes so fast… I hope during this week you take a minute to sit down and play a game with your kids.” — Senator Ted Cruz (03:23)
Timestamps: 12:03–18:58
Notable Quote:
“This is literally 10 years of hard work, and it will make America safer because the Muslim Brotherhood is funding terrorists that want to murder you and want to murder me.” — Senator Ted Cruz (16:24)
Notable Quote (from Wall Street Journal Editorial):
“Nearly a quarter century after 9/11, the U.S. has taken aim at a leading incubator of Islamic terrorism, the Muslim Brotherhood.” (Cited by Ted Cruz, 18:21)
Timestamps: 22:28–32:16
Notable Quotes:
“The entire story goes on to say, this guy who has stolen the identity of a poor working man in Minnesota... he’s the victim.” — Senator Ted Cruz (29:51)
“More than 1 million illegal immigrants have stolen identities of Americans and Americans are hurting all over the country. And the New York Times is saying you too should have your identity stolen.” — Senator Ted Cruz (31:49)
Timestamps: 32:16–39:12
Notable Quotes:
“Are you white? Then apparently you are an evil, noxious scourge on America. You are a pandemic. You are a virus.” — Senator Ted Cruz (32:41)
“This is open ‘we hate families’ is what the University of Minnesota is saying.” — Senator Ted Cruz (34:37)
Notable Quote:
“The only answer is re-educate yourself. Because who you are, who America is—and understand this screed against, quote, anti-whiteness is also a screed against America.” — Senator Ted Cruz (37:12)
“She cleaned me out. Everything.” — Ted Cruz, on losing poker to his grandmother (08:32)
“I have literally been fighting for this to happen for 10 years.” — Senator Ted Cruz, re: Muslim Brotherhood designation (12:26)
“His credit has been ruined. It has been a nightmare for him. And yet the New York Times… say it’s one identity. The poor guy that stole his identity is really the victim.” — Ted Cruz (29:51)
“That is the family system is part of the whiteness pandemic… This is open, ‘we hate families’ is what the University of Minnesota is saying.” — Ted Cruz (34:37)
The tone is direct, personal, and combative, mixing personal anecdotes with passionate policy arguments and sharp cultural criticism. The hosts use humor, sarcasm, and strong language to underscore their points, especially when critiquing the media and academic institutions.
This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz intertwines personal gratitude and family stories with unfiltered commentary on current events shaping conservative discourse. Senator Cruz celebrates a decade-long policy win, lambasts what he describes as harmful media narratives and academic indoctrination, and urges listeners to stay vigilant both in politics and in their families—ending on a warning about the ideological direction of American education and media.
Listeners come away with: