Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump on Friday, a move that shocked many Republicans but few political insiders. Is it a good or bad political move? And what will it mean for Cruz s chances of winning the nomination at the 2020 Republican National Convention? Alex Blumberg and Ben Shapiro break down why Cruz's decision to endorse Trump is a bad one, and what it means for the rest of the presidential race. They also explain why Cruz s decision to go all in on Trump is bad for him, and how it hurts his chances of defeating Hillary Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. And, of course, they discuss why Cruz should veered away from Trump before, and why he shouldn t ve veered back away from him after the first debate. And they explain why it s a risky move, not just for Trump s sake, but also for his own chances at the nomination if he loses to Hillary Clinton in the primary. All that and much more on today s episode of The Weekly Standard's new podcast, "The Weekly Standard" with Ben Shapiro. Subscribe and comment to stay up to date with the latest political news and discuss the latest in politics and pop culture! Subscribe to our newest episodes of "Politics and Culture" wherever you get your favorite shows and listen to the latest from CNN and other major news outlets! other major podcast outlets. Check out our new podcast on the social medias Subscribe, comment and subscribe to our new independent podcast, CRITICISM! Subscribe on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe on iTunes Learn more about your ad choices. Become a supporter of the podcast and become a Friend of The FiveThirtyEight's newest podcast, Six Sigma Connect with us on social media? Learn about our newest sponsor, Rate and review our latest podcast, Become a Friend on iTunes Connected to our social media platform, The Five ThirtyEight s newest podcast? Subscribe & review our newest episode and more! Learn more at FiveThirtyeight s newest episode on the FourThirtyEight s latest podcast We post a review of the latest podcast on all of our newest podcast recommendations, The Six Sides Podcasts Get exclusive discount code: Join us on FourScovers Subscribe for exclusive VIP access and more than $50/monthly discount offer Become an ad-free version of our new ad-less version of FourSoloism FREE FASTEST WEEKEND
00:00:00.000In a move that surprised many Republicans but few political insiders, Senator Ted Cruz was expected to announce on Friday, and did, that he would support Donald Trump's bid for the presidency against Hillary Clinton.
00:00:10.000For weeks, members of the Cruz team had been hinting at such an announcement.
00:00:13.000Cruz himself had quietly hinted he was reconsidering his publicly non-committal stance on the candidate who labeled him, Lyin' Ted, suggested he was a serial adulterer, called his wife ugly, and said his father was a conspirator in the murder of JFK,
00:00:27.000A man Cruz himself had called a pathological liar and a non-conservative charlatan.
00:00:31.000But on Friday, two days before the first debate, Politico broke the news that Cruz would endorse Trump.
00:00:36.000It's a bad if understandable political move.
00:00:46.000Cruz has been hammered by former allies in the media and the Republican Party for not openly embracing Trump and bowing before his great god king.
00:00:53.000That criticism existed before the RNC.
00:00:55.000It escalated dramatically in the days afterward.
00:01:36.000That doesn't appear to be what Cruz is doing.
00:01:39.000Cruz is now announcing he's been surprised by Trump's new message discipline.
00:01:43.000Even as Trump embraces Vladimir Putin, government-sponsored maternity leave, a plan to cram down tuition price controls, and an expansion of Medicaid.
00:01:49.000This puts him less in the hold-your-nose-and-vote-Trump category than the Trump-trained category.
00:02:25.000It seems even more manipulative given Cruz's early warmth towards Trump, when he thought he could ride Trump's coattails in the nomination, and then he broke with Trump, which seemed more principled, and now he re-embraces Trump just in time for the election.
00:02:36.000It's worth noting here that Cruz is taking a real risk by endorsing Trump.
00:02:40.000Cruz's Trump endorsement is risky not just because he risks fracturing his base, hoping presumably they'll forget about his endorsement if Trump loses, and acknowledging his correctness if Trump wins, but because Trump could actually destroy him.
00:03:19.000It's worth noting that on Friday it's possible that Trump could have done the same thing to Cruz again.
00:03:24.000Cruz could have been putting his head on the chopping block, Ned Stark style, only for Trump to go full Joffrey and behead him.
00:03:31.000Trump said after the RNC he wouldn't accept Cruz's endorsement, but it appears that Kellyanne Conway was successful in prying Trump's phone from his fingers in the moments after Cruz submitted, and now he says he's glad to have
00:03:44.000Well, Cruz isn't going to move a lot of voters over to Trump.
00:03:46.000Most Cruz voters who haven't moved over to Trump supported Cruz out of principle, not out of personal loyalty to him, and they're not going to be persuaded to move to Trump now.
00:03:54.000This morning, Glenn Beck just crushed Cruz on the air.
00:03:56.000They'll feel their guy capitulated because the establishment forced him to kneel before Zod.
00:04:01.000Cruz will have undercut his own image, and Trump probably won't be able to help a gloating in the days to come.
00:04:12.000But because of how Cruz played his hand here, he's going to be seen less as a reluctant man pushing Trump to victory than a guy who chose expedience over principle.
00:04:20.000Which is actually kind of tragic, since Cruz probably is a man of principle, victimized by both a system that crushes principle and a belief he can still manipulate that system to his own ends.
00:04:57.000You know, it sort of hit, there's some truths in life that sort of hit you randomly.
00:05:02.000Like, I've heard from people when they lose a close relative that they'll be okay for a while, and then they'll just think about the relative, and they'll think, that's really awful.
00:05:09.000Well, every so often in this election cycle, you just look around and you go, okay, tonight, the debate is going to be between the Wicked Witch of the West and Biff Tannen.
00:05:18.000Like, it's actually going to be between—it's going to be between Lenny from Of Mice and Men and the most corrupt woman in the history of American politics.
00:05:27.000And you think to yourself, oh God, one of these people is going to be leader of the free world.
00:05:43.000Watching her weep tears of salty, salty anguish over losing to Donald Trump would be just the most fitting capstone to her ridiculous political career.
00:05:52.000And the media, weeping into their beer, would also be particularly rich.
00:05:55.000That would be enjoyable, watching all these people crying.
00:05:57.000But then, Trump would also be president, and that's not going to be awesome, just saying.
00:06:03.000OK, so, first, I want to say hello to our advertiser, Birch Gold.
00:06:06.000So, if you are looking at the world right now and you're thinking to yourself, well, we're all screwed, now's the time to think about maybe investing in some precious metals as a hedge against inflation and against government incompetence and against the fact that the world seems to be going to hell
00:07:03.000I don't know who's making their mind up based on this debate.
00:07:06.000I mean, honestly, I made a couple of miscalculations in this election cycle, I'll just be honest with you.
00:07:11.000My predictions in this election cycle have not been up to their normal par, but partially that's because I thought that Americans wanted a president who wasn't a complete moron, and partially I thought that's because Americans didn't want a president who was a complete corrupt handbag of lunacy.
00:07:29.000My opinion of American voters was apparently too high, and so we end up with a debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton for the leadership of the free world, which is It's America, the reality show, 2016.
00:07:41.000Harambee, where are you when we needed you?
00:07:46.000But Trump has all the advantages going into this debate.
00:07:48.000So I'm going to put aside my own personal rage over this election cycle and put aside the fact that I think everyone is stupid and everything is stupid.
00:07:56.000I'm going to drink heavily during this debate.
00:07:57.000I have to be at an event in Simi Valley later today covering this thing.
00:08:02.000I'll be covering it on Twitter, so make sure that you pay attention there.
00:08:06.000Um, but we'll get back to my issues of rage in just a minute.
00:08:09.000The fact that the lesser of two evils has led us to a place where everything stinks, where the debate tonight is going to go something like this.
00:08:50.000Trump should win the debate if he can hold himself in check.
00:08:53.000Right now, Hillary's entire campaign, her entire campaign,
00:08:57.000Is it possible, is it possible that she can win just by convincing the American public that Trump is a nut?
00:09:04.000Trump's entire campaign is, don't look like a nut.
00:09:06.000So, it's easier for a nut to look not like a nut for 90 minutes.
00:09:10.000If you've ever met somebody who's completely insane in your life, they actually play normal people pretty well most of the time.
00:09:15.000It's only every so often you realize they think that the curtains are talking to them.
00:09:19.000But, most of the time, crazy people act kind of not crazy, which is why it's sort of hard to deal with people who legitimately have a screw loose.
00:09:26.000Assuming Trump is crazy, he may not be, he may just be stupid, but assuming Trump is crazy, he can play not crazy for 90 minutes, which is more of an advantage.
00:09:33.000Hillary's main fault here in the polls is people think she's dishonest.
00:09:37.000If you're a liar, if you're a dishonest person, if people think you're dishonest, then five seconds of you is enough to convince them that you're just as dishonest as everyone ever thought you were.
00:09:48.000If, however, you're crazy, it's actually not that hard to make it seem as though you're not.
00:09:57.000And that is less a testament to Trump being great at this, and more a testament to the fact that Hillary is the worst political candidate in the history of humankind.
00:10:04.000I mean, like, there are cave dwellers, Neanderthal cave dwellers, back before the rise of human language, who are worse politicians than Hillary—that she's worse than.
00:10:17.000She could have lost to, like, Og, the caveman, in an election.
00:10:21.000Like, now, today, if you brought Og the caveman, who can't speak English, and just grunts at people, Og the caveman could probably beat Hillary in a national election because she's just this bad at this.
00:10:30.000You know, last week we played that tape of her screaming, why aren't I up by 50 points?
00:12:30.000I mean, I think everyone, it's panic time for either of these two candidates winning, but left, people who are Hillary allies, panic, panic, panic galore.
00:12:48.000And the reason for that, the reason for that is that Hillary is legitimately awful at this in every way.
00:12:55.000So Robby Mook is her campaign spokesperson.
00:12:58.000An IT contractor managing Hillary Clinton's private email server made reference to the, quote, Hillary cover-up operation in a work ticket.
00:13:26.000He used those words after a senior cliquenade asked him to automatically delete emails after 60 days.
00:13:32.000This IT worker certainly sounded like he thought he was covering something up, no?
00:13:37.000Look, Jake, first of all, I'm actually glad you asked this question, because a lot of this stuff is swirling around there in the ether.
00:13:44.000It's important to pull back and look at the facts here.
00:13:46.000The FBI did a comprehensive and deep investigation into this, and at the conclusion of that, FBI Director Comey came out and said to the world that there was no case here, that they did not have evidence of wrongdoing on Hillary's part.
00:14:03.000So what's the Hillary cover-up operation?
00:14:04.000So, and Tapper asks, what's Hillary's cover-up operation?
00:14:07.000And Mook has no answer for that because Hillary's cover-up operation can be translated in English as Hillary's cover-up operation because she's covering things up.
00:14:16.000I mean, Mook is also asked, he specifically asked about Hillary's staffers.
00:14:22.000And he says, don't worry, we're brutally honest to her.
00:14:25.000Does Secretary Clinton have anyone in her orbit
00:14:29.000Who can be brutally honest and frank with her?
00:14:32.000I ask that because it seems like, based on a lot of the information we've gotten about her emails and the like, that she might not have people like that.
00:14:41.000And in debate prep, it would be very important for somebody to really be able to go after her, to prepare her for a debate.
00:14:48.000And I don't know that she has anybody like that in her orbit.
00:14:55.000Anybody who's worked for Secretary Clinton, first of all, knows that she surrounds herself with experts on every matter that she looks into.
00:15:03.000She just did a call earlier this week.
00:16:05.000If you want somebody who's safe, if you want somebody who's secure, if you want a ride that's going to be nicer than the average for some of the other services, Lyft is the place to go.
00:16:15.000Right now, Lyft offers our listeners a special deal.
00:16:17.000You get three free rides up to 10 bucks each, 30 bucks, when you enter promo code Shapiro.
00:18:24.000So, as I suffer from the black lung, we continue, and let's talk a little bit about the continued rollout of Hillary's failure.
00:18:32.000So, Hillary's campaign is—as they continue to be a disaster, even her erstwhile allies, people who don't like Trump, realize that Hillary has no big answers here.
00:19:54.000I think what the focus has got to be on now is understanding that this moment in history for a presidential election is not the time for a protest vote.
00:20:04.000It is a time to look at which candidate is going to work best for the middle class and working families.
00:20:11.000Okay, so he's trying to convince them not to vote third party.
00:20:14.000That's because the polls show that all of Gary Johnson's support, or a large measure of it, is coming not from Trump, but from Hillary.
00:20:20.000In all of these polls, third party candidates are drawing 10-12% of the vote.
00:20:25.000Probably 7-8% of that goes to Hillary.
00:20:28.000So now they're trying to cut down on that third party vote.
00:20:31.000They're dragging out Elizabeth Warren now.
00:20:32.000Elizabeth Warren is going out there saying that we need to vote for Hillary Clinton.
00:20:37.000There are a lot of progressives out there who are very suspicious
00:20:41.000Of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who think that the Bill Clinton years were bad for the middle class, who think that the trade deals were bad for them.
00:20:49.000These are people who supported Bernie Sanders, who support you.
00:20:54.000Why should they support Hillary Clinton, who's been part of the system, and you've criticized her for a bankruptcy bill and for other things.
00:21:02.000Why should they support her over somebody who they think might shake up the system like a
00:21:09.000Look, Hillary Clinton has laid out a progressive agenda.
00:21:18.000She laid it out during the primaries and she has stuck with it in the general.
00:21:22.000She has said this is what I'm running on.
00:21:25.000The way I see it, it is the job of progressives
00:21:29.000To help her get elected on a progressive agenda, and then work our rear ends off to help get that progressive agenda enacted.
00:21:41.000So they're all dragging out, you know, you've got Warren, you've got Sanders, they're trying desperately, get out for Hillary, get out for Hillary, because the enthusiasm level for Hillary is so unbelievably low.
00:24:00.000Then all you have to do to throw Trump off his game, she thinks, is talk about his wealth.
00:24:05.000So she's bringing Mark Cuban to the debate, this billionaire.
00:24:07.000She's going to put him in the front row, and then she's going to say probably something like, you're not turning over your IRS records because, as Mark Cuban has said, you're not worth $10 billion.
00:24:16.000You're lying to the American people, and you could turn it over, but you're lying, and you're not worth that much money, and she's going to hope he loses his mind, and that's why she's bringing Cuban.
00:24:25.000Trump fires back over the weekend, puts up a tweet, and he says, maybe I'll bring Jennifer Flowers.
00:24:29.000Right, the woman that Bill Clinton had an affair with back in, and was reported back in 1992.
00:24:32.000I don't know why not Juanita Broderick, but okay, Jennifer Flowers.
00:24:39.000Instead of covering the Mark Cuban thing like Hillary wanted, now they're covering the Jennifer Flowers thing because it's so outrageous.
00:24:45.000So here's Mike Pence, now on national TV, talking about Jennifer Flowers.
00:24:49.000I don't wanna ask you, will Jennifer Flowers be there?
00:24:53.000Jennifer Plowers will not be attending the debate tomorrow night.
00:24:57.000Donald Trump was using the tweet yesterday really to mock an effort by Hillary Clinton and her campaign to really distract attention from where the American people are going to be focused tomorrow night, which is on the issues, on the choice that we face.
00:25:14.000So he's saying, you know, it was just all Trump trolling.
00:25:19.000This means that the standards for Trump are so low now that all he has to do is say things that are headline worthy, and he gets the media coverage.
00:25:26.000And he does get away with a lot more than Hillary gets away with, in one sense.
00:25:29.000I mean, Hillary gets away with everything because she's a Democrat, but she's not getting away with Americans feeling like she's honest.
00:25:36.000Trump says things just casually that are not true, and then people just sort of write them off because it's just Trump shooting from the hip.
00:25:42.000Hey, he's a guy who shoots from the hip.
00:25:43.000For example, Donald Trump last week said Lester Holt of NBC is a Democrat.
00:25:48.000Lester Holt is a registered Republican.
00:25:49.000Kellyanne Conway, his campaign manager, is asked about it, and here's what she says.
00:26:57.000And it just shows the bigger issue is that there's media bias.
00:27:00.000Are you denying there's bigger media bias, right?
00:27:02.000So he doesn't have to be exact in his details, but we all get the broader point.
00:27:06.000This is why people write off Trump's casual dishonesty, because they think that his larger honesties are more important than those casual dishonesties.
00:27:18.000I want to hit on a couple of personal controversies for you.
00:27:24.000New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who's already suing you over Trump University, which he's called a bait-and-switch fraud, now says he's opened an inquiry into the Trump Foundation.
00:27:33.000Are you confident that the Trump Foundation has followed all charitable rules and laws?
00:29:10.000She comes out and she says, I don't think it's a good idea for moderators to fact-check candidates.
00:29:14.000So, the Democrats have been very forthright on the notion they want a fact-check.
00:29:19.000They want Hillary Clinton to have the moderators fact-checking Donald Trump, so that if Trump says something that's not true, the moderator immediately jumps in and says, Donald, that's not true.
00:29:29.000Now, I don't believe that's something the moderator should be doing.
00:29:31.000Candy Crowley did it last time and she got it wrong and she screwed up the entire campaign because of it.
00:29:55.000I think Trump's tactic will be if she does that and he doesn't know the answers, he'll misdirect to something else, but do so in a calm way.
00:30:00.000That would be the smart way to handle that.
00:30:01.000But the debate commissioners, they say, we don't know how to handle Trump.
00:30:10.000Commission asks independent smart journalists to be the moderators and we let them decide how they're going to do this.
00:30:17.000But I have to say, in our history, the moderators have found it appropriate to let the candidates be the ones that talk about the accuracy or the fairness of what the other candidate or candidates might have said.
00:30:32.000I think personally, if you start getting into fact-checking, I'm not sure what is a big fact, what's a little fact, and if you and I have different sources of information, does your source about the unemployment rate agree with my source?
00:30:46.000I don't think it's a good idea to get the moderator into essentially serving as the Encyclopedia Britannica, and I think it's better for that person to facilitate and to depend on the candidates to basically correct
00:31:01.000Well, I mean, if Hillary doesn't have the moderator helping her out, she's got a problem there, too.
00:31:04.000And if the moderator intervenes, then everybody understands that the media is being biased, and that helps Trump, too.
00:31:09.000So Trump has an advantage with the numbers.
00:31:11.000He has an advantage with the standards.
00:31:13.000He has an advantage with the media, because he's better at the media game than she is, which is why she's been so awful at it all the way through.
00:31:18.000And he has one final advantage, and that is the news cycle.
00:31:21.000The news cycle for Hillary is just brutal.
00:32:35.000Remember when he went to Wisconsin and gave that speech after the riots in Milwaukee?
00:32:40.000He gave a very temperament statement after the Charlotte riots saying that he's gonna make America safe for African Americans and we all have to come together.
00:32:49.000If he takes that approach tomorrow night and looks presidential, with all the dynamics happening in the country right now, I think he's got a good chance of winning.
00:33:15.000Hillary sides with the bad guys anyway.
00:33:18.000You know, President Obama's out there ripping into white officers.
00:33:23.000This news cycle is terrible for Hillary.
00:33:24.000Here's President Obama ripping into white police officers.
00:33:28.000Perhaps it can help a white visitor understand the pain and anger of demonstrators in places like Ferguson and Charlotte.
00:33:40.000But it can also help black visitors appreciate
00:33:47.000The fact that not only is this younger generation carrying on traditions of the past, but within the white communities across the nation, we see the sincerity of law enforcement officers and officials who, in fits and starts, are struggling to understand and are trying to do the right thing.
00:34:15.000Okay, and this is—this is not going to help Hillary in any way.
00:34:19.000Nobody's worried about the white officers, okay?
00:34:20.000People are breaking and looting things.
00:34:43.000He doesn't know what he's talking about.
00:34:44.000But, his not knowing what he's talking about is a lot less of a problem when he does know the central principle of there are race riots going on, side with the cops, there are terrorist attacks, don't let more terrorists in.
00:34:55.000He doesn't have to know that much to out-debate Hillary.
00:35:27.000And that I do find amusing, because, I mean, she deserves every bit of the trouble she's created for herself.
00:35:31.000I'm sad for the country that one of these two people will be president.
00:35:34.000I think it's a tragic, tragic occurrence.
00:35:37.000I think that we're watching the devolution of America into a backlash society instead of a society that actually cares about constitutional principles.
00:35:45.000But all that I've been lamenting for months.
00:35:48.000The only thing that matters is the spectacle of it, and I think, honestly, that's what these debates are.
00:35:52.000If anybody's watching tonight, because they're looking for real nuanced policy discussion between Donald Trump, who couldn't give nuanced policy discussion about healthcare, let alone Taco Bowls, and if they're looking for Hillary to suddenly be honest about her emails, like, it's just not going to happen.
00:36:08.000This is spectacle, which is why it's going to get 100 million people watching it.
00:36:11.000And this is why, next time we have these debates, I would really prefer that they take place on the Wipeout set.
00:36:17.000And then we can actually watch these two people get punched by giant boxing gloves into bodies of water and such.
00:36:49.000Interesting, it's a great portrait of the economic discontent and downtrodden poor white areas.
00:36:55.000And if you wonder where a lot of the rage is coming from that's backing the Trump vote, Trump is up 59 points among non-college educated white males.
00:38:21.000He's actually a good actor, which is shocking, because usually when these guys are good-looking, like Chris Evans, the Captain America guy, they're usually wooden and awful.
00:38:28.000And Chris Evans is a terrible actor, as well as a bad political commentator, but check my pinned tweet if you don't understand what I'm referring to there.
00:38:37.000But Chris Pine's actually a really good actor.
00:38:40.000Jeff Bridges is good in this movie, although he does his rooster-cog routine again, where he just acts like people from Texas, for some odd reason, have a speech impediment.
00:38:51.000Okay, so, the movie Hell or High Water, really good film.
00:40:46.000People die, but the real subject is Barack Obama.
00:40:49.000Like, during the Super Bowl, he tweets out a picture of himself throwing a football, because all of life revolves around Barack Obama.
00:40:56.000All of humanity revolves around the genius of Barack Obama.
00:41:00.000So Arnold Palmer dies, and it's all about Obama, because it's always been all about Obama, which is just why Obama's so interminably awful.
00:41:17.000The biggest problem with the Libertarians is not Libertarian philosophy.
00:41:22.000It's that Libertarian philosophy sounds well and good until you actually meet Libertarians.
00:41:25.000Most Libertarians are not like Gary Johnson, but they decide that it's important to nominate people like Gary Johnson.
00:41:30.000Now, Gary Johnson over the weekend, he did an interview where he was talking about Medicaid, and for some odd reason, he decided that he would do the interview with his tongue out of his mouth.
00:41:39.000Really, we'll grab that tape for tomorrow.
00:41:41.000But he starts doing the entire interview like that, with his tongue out of his mouth.
00:43:14.000Honestly, it's like we, it's like we went to an asylum and we opened four cells and just took the four people who walked out and said, one of these people will be president.
00:43:38.000She asked for a cake with the American flag in black and white with a blue stripe added in.
00:43:43.000This is a routine that they do where they say thin blue lines separating America from chaos, right?
00:43:48.000And so the Walmart said they would not do it.
00:43:51.000They told the woman the design could be perceived as racist and nobody feels comfortable decorating the cake.
00:43:57.000When she asked for a simpler cake with just one blue line on a chocolate background, the employee said she still didn't feel comfortable with that design.
00:44:04.000She said, is there something wrong with cops?
00:44:05.000The employee refused to make the cake.
00:44:07.000Taylor Wilkes, a Georgia police officer, originally posted about the cake, criticized the store for their appalling behavior, and now Walmart has apologized, and they met with the daughter to apologize.
00:44:17.000So I do love the fact, I do love the fact that the left thinks that a religious baker should be forced to participate in a same-sex wedding by baking all the baked goods, but they're all happy-dappy-do when it comes to a police officer saying, I would just like a cake that honors police officers.
00:44:32.000Yeah, clearly these are people who are tolerant, and all they're really looking for is tolerance.
00:44:35.000They just think you should have to make whatever cake is brought before you.
00:44:38.000It just shows the double standard of the left.
00:46:08.000But it is amazing how these people are insistent that the more they coddle students, the better off the students are, as though the rest of the world is going to coddle them the minute that they exit.