Ted Cruz tells the story of how he became a politician, how he got into politics, and why he thinks he's not actually the Zodiac killer. He also talks about how he was bitten by a radioactive spider as a kid and how it changed his life, and how he ended up in politics. And he explains why he doesn't think he's the "Zodiac Killer." Ben Shapiro is a regular contributor to the New York Times and hosts the podcast "The Ben Shapiro Show" and is one of the most influential people in American politics. He is also the host of the conservative podcast, "The Weekly Standard" and has been a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Armed Services for the past seven years. Make sure to use my referral code, "BenShapiro" to get 20% off your first month with discount code "SHOPBOARD" when you sign up for a free BigToktok. You can also get 10% off of your first purchase when you use the discount code, BONUS. If you like what you hear about Ben Shapiro, then you'll love the show! Subscribe to the show and become a supporter of his new show, Ben Shapiro's Sunday Special! Subscribe and Retweet Ben Shapiro on Apple Podcasts! Subscribe to his new podcast, The Weekly Standard. Learn more about your ad choices. Rate, review and subscribe to his podcast! and review his new book, The Devil Next Door out on Audible. Subscribe on iTunes and become one of his other podcasting buddies! Learn about his upcoming projects and more! Connect with him on Anchor.fm.fm/Ben Shapiro on the Ben Shapiro Podcast Subscribe & Subscribe to Ben Shapiro s Sunday Special on The Ben Shapiro and the rest of his Podcasts on The Six Sigma Podcasts on Six Sigma and Anchor and Subscribe on Podchronicity And much more! Subscribe and share the show on your favorite podcasting platform! on social media! Enjoyed this episode? to let him know what he's listening to this episode means to you'll be featured on the show next week on his next episode of the show? and more on his Sunday Special? Subscribe for a chance to get a discount code Ben Shapiro will be getting a shoutout on the next episode next week! Thanks for listening to his show and much more?
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00:01:58.000So I will tell you, on the presidential, periodically, you'd get college kids that would come up with a sign saying, are you the Zodiac?
00:02:04.000And more than once, I pulled them aside and said, son, if I were really the Zodiac, would you want to bring that sign here?
00:02:12.000So, let's start from the premise that you're not the Zodiac Killer, and let's talk about how you got into politics in the first place.
00:02:18.000So, a lot of people kind of know you from the last seven, eight years since you've been in the Senate, but not everybody knows kind of your origin story of the superhero Ted Cruz.
00:02:26.000So, Senator Cruz, where did you get started in politics?
00:02:28.000Well, look, I was a science student, and I was bitten by a radioactive spider, and you know, the rest of it is history.
00:02:37.000I grew up in Texas, and for me, politics is my family story.
00:02:41.000I mean, look, all of us are products of our family story.
00:02:44.000And my dad, as you know, my dad fought in the Cuban Revolution.
00:02:48.000I mean, when he was a kid, when he was a teenager, he was fighting alongside Fidel Castro, fighting against Batista, who was a corrupt dictator, and was thrown in prison and he was tortured.
00:02:59.000And my dad came to Texas when he was just 18.
00:03:03.000And I grew up as a kid hearing stories, hearing stories about being a freedom fighter.
00:04:03.000She ended up being imprisoned and tortured by Castro's goons.
00:04:07.000And then she, she ultimately fled Cuba too, came to Texas.
00:04:11.000And so my cousin, Bebe and I, Bebe is, is, is Sonia's daughter.
00:04:14.000The two of us as kids, we literally grew up sitting at the feet of my dad and my aunt and listening to them tell stories of, of fighting for freedom.
00:04:22.000And, and, and that's what I've wanted to do my whole life for as long as I can remember since I was a little kid is, is in our house, you know, it wasn't that politics was something you just kind of read the paper and, oh, that's interesting.
00:05:03.000And I have to admit of law practice, that's probably the piece I miss the most.
00:05:07.000The Supreme Court is, it's a unique place and, and it is, It is stunningly fast.
00:05:17.000I mean, one of the wild things about the Supreme Court, if you go and visit the courtroom, and you know how it is, you are surprisingly close to the justices.
00:05:26.000Um, if you're standing at the podium as counsel, you can almost reach out and shake hands with the chief justice.
00:05:32.000The chief justice is probably two feet further away from the council than you are right now.
00:05:38.000And you have nine of the most brilliant lawyers and judges on the planet.
00:05:43.000And, and you know, an argument at the Supreme Court, it's not you standing up there giving grand oratory.
00:05:50.000It is rather you stand up and say, Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.
00:05:54.000And almost immediately, the justices are firing in question, just coming at you from every direction.
00:06:03.000But that being said, I'm very glad to be where I am, which is in the arena of the Senate and fighting for issues and principles that matter.
00:06:11.000So how did you get into elective politics?
00:06:13.000You make the move from the legal profession.
00:06:40.000And then I was a lawyer in private practice.
00:06:42.000Uh, but, but when I started running for Senate, the prohibitive front runner was the sitting lieutenant governor of the state, uh, who was worth a couple hundred million dollars, who had universal name ID, who had, I mean, every lobbyist, every special interest, everybody was with him.
00:06:57.000Um, and, and when I started, I mean, I was literally at 2%.
00:07:00.000Uh, you know, I've joked before the margin of error was 3%, but that's actually not a joke.
00:07:07.000We did a poll at the outset of the campaign to see where things were and that was, those were the first results was 2% support below the margin of error.
00:07:16.000Um, and in that campaign we just, we ran a grassroots campaign.
00:07:21.000I mean, we just worked around the clock, traveled the state.
00:07:27.000You know, going to forums, going to Tea Party groups, going to Republican women groups, you know, and the coalition that came together, it was an incredible coalition.
00:07:44.000And it ended up being a grassroots tsunami where we went from 2% to winning the primary by 14 points, winning the general by 16 points.
00:07:53.000And it really, was a breathtaking example of what the grassroots can do when they're energized and engaged and active.
00:08:02.000You came in as kind of the leading edge of the Tea Party wave.
00:08:05.000And obviously at the time there was a lot of talk about Obamacare, a case in which you became incredibly active.
00:08:11.000What do you think has sort of happened to the Tea Party?
00:08:13.000There's been a lot of critiques of what happened to the Tea Party because obviously it was primarily driven by small government concerns.
00:08:19.000Republicans have been in charge of Congress ever since, or at least in charge of the Senate virtually ever since.
00:08:24.000and yet the government is not getting smaller, What do you think happened to the Tea Party?
00:08:30.000Well, I think the Tea Party made an enormous difference.
00:08:32.000And the Tea Party was part of movements that we've seen in this country for a long time.
00:08:36.000You know, several years ago I wrote a book called A Time for Truth.
00:08:39.000And each chapter profiles in the front of it a truth-teller, someone who stood up, often at great risk, and told the truth and made a difference.
00:08:50.000One of the truth-tellers that I highlight is Ross Perot.
00:08:53.000Who Ross Perot, when he ran against Bush 41 and Bill Clinton, I think that he ran a populist campaign.
00:09:01.000He ran a campaign that was defending working men and women.
00:09:04.000And I think actually that Ross Perot campaign where he got 19 percent of the vote nationwide was the initial embers of what became the Tea Party.
00:09:12.000And it also is the initial embers of much of what elected Donald Trump.
00:09:16.000In many ways, the biggest divide we've got in Washington, it's not even Democrat or Republican or left or right.
00:09:26.000A divide between working class men and women in this country and the elites in Washington in both parties.
00:09:34.000For a long time, there was a disconnect.
00:09:37.000The Tea Party was an expression of that, of working men and women who were fed up, fed up with economic stagnation, fed up with lack of opportunity, fed up with both parties embracing unchecked illegal immigration and looking for real opportunity.
00:09:53.000I think the Tea Party made a difference.
00:10:40.000And the reality when it comes to spending is on any big spending plan, you get all of the Democrats and about half the Republicans in favor of spending and spending and spending.
00:10:49.000And so that is going to take ultimately, I think, strong presidential leadership to change it.
00:10:56.000But I do think where we are seeing progress, even though we're not restraining spending, we are seeing progress on the economic growth side, that the tax cuts and reg reform is a big, big part of solving the problem.
00:11:08.000And then I think beyond that, we need structural solutions.
00:11:33.000But why do you think that that restriction is necessary, as opposed to simply saying to the people, you know, vote somebody out?
00:11:40.000I mean, you took out a guy who is much more favored in your Senate race.
00:11:43.000So look, I understand that sentiment and there are times even when I've been pretty amenable to it.
00:11:51.000I don't think it recognizes the reality of the political process today.
00:11:54.000Number one, there are massive advantages with incumbency.
00:11:58.000Incumbency in terms of free media, in terms of money, in terms of infrastructure, it's incredibly difficult to defeat an incumbent.
00:12:05.000But number two, You know, it's interesting, I used to be a supporter of term limits until I got in the Senate, and now I'm a thousand times more a supporter of term limits.
00:12:14.000Because what I've seen, the dominant instinct, Ben, in the Senate, and it's true in the House also, is risk aversion.
00:12:22.000You know, there's an old joke that politics is Hollywood for ugly people.
00:12:30.000You've got old, fat, bald guys who were the unpopular kids in high school who suddenly get elected to Congress and they go to a cocktail party and they're handsome and they're witty and they're wise.
00:12:46.000And what happens is incumbent members of Congress, their dominant focus is, I must get reelected no matter what.
00:12:54.000And so on any big issue, on any big choice, If there's a serious solution, the reasoning often is, you know what, if we do that, that entails risk.
00:13:03.000And if there's risk, I might not get reelected.
00:13:08.000And so one of the big virtues of term limits is that it ends the phenomenon of career politicians.
00:13:16.000I've introduced, I'm the author of a constitutional amendment in the Senate, to term limit senators, to two terms, term limit house members to three terms.
00:13:23.000And the virtue of that is, is that at least you throw the bums out and bring new people in.
00:13:28.000And, and I think you're more likely to have, I hope, a Congress that is responsive to the people because the elected officials are not just obsessed with staying there for life.
00:13:40.000So I want to go back to the Tea Party question for just one second, because the fact is that if you look at the left's perspective on the Tea Party, the way that the left describes the Tea Party is it was effectively a racist movement that disguised itself as a small government movement.
00:13:52.000And the proof of that is that once the Republicans took power, there was no move toward small government at all.
00:13:56.000There was just a move toward All the other stuff, the tax cuts and maybe some regulatory reform.
00:14:34.000If you have a, a, a gathering, a rally of, of tens of thousands of people, you know what, in any gathering of tens of thousands of people, you can find one or two with tinfoil hats who are nuts.
00:14:44.000And if you go with a TV camera and look, you're going to find someone who thinks that, and that's who the media focused on.
00:14:51.000They'd go and find one or two people who are on sort of the outer fringe and say, this is the whole tea party.
00:14:56.000Tell you who Tea Party activists were.
00:15:21.000We've moved away from some of the corruption of Washington, from some of the swamp.
00:15:25.000And I think the Trump administration has been positive in that regard.
00:15:29.000Um, it's still the case that government keeps growing and growing.
00:15:34.000But you know, look, one of the things the media never covers, we passed a major tax cut in December of 2017.
00:15:43.000Federal tax revenues since that tax cut have gone up.
00:15:47.000In other words, the federal government is taking more money in, more revenues in, with lower tax rates.
00:15:52.000Now that doesn't surprise you and it doesn't surprise me, in part because we know something about history.
00:15:58.000If you look back, JFK campaigned on cutting taxes, he cut taxes in office and federal tax revenues went up.
00:16:05.000Ronald Reagan campaigned on cutting taxes, he cut taxes in office and federal revenues went up.
00:16:11.000Now, the reason that the deficit and the debt keeps growing is that spending is growing even beyond that.
00:16:16.000But I do think the first piece of it, the economic growth, is important.
00:16:20.000And I'm going to continue fighting for both pieces of it.
00:16:23.000So in one second, I want to ask you about the possibilities of some form of entitlement reform, because Republicans talk a lot about it and then seem not to do much about it.
00:16:30.000But first, there's a widely held belief that procrastination is a bad thing.
00:18:50.000And I think what politicians in Washington are doing right now is irresponsible, both parties, because they're allowing social security to careen towards insolvency.
00:19:00.000And I think it is a critical bulwark that millions of Americans rely on.
00:19:20.000But for younger workers, people your and my age, it is hard to find someone in their 30s or 40s who believes Social Security will be there for us.
00:19:32.000That's an incredible opportunity for reform.
00:19:34.000If we've got a generation who understands this is headed towards insolvency, three critical reforms for younger workers.
00:19:42.000Number one, gradually increase the retirement age.
00:19:45.000When Social Security was enacted, life expectancy was much, much less.
00:19:50.000Gradually increase the retirement age for younger workers and give us time to plan on it and arrange our finances accordingly.
00:19:57.000Number two, change the rate of growth of Social Security benefits so that it matches inflation instead of exceeding inflation.
00:20:05.000Those two changes bring Social Security into solvency.
00:20:08.000But the third change for younger workers I think is the most important.
00:20:12.000Allow younger workers to keep a portion of our tax payments in a personal account that we own, that we control, that we can invest, and that we can use in addition to the retirement payment, and that we can pass on to our kids and grandkids.
00:20:29.000It is something I've been fighting for since I arrived in the Senate, and I intend to keep fighting for it.
00:20:32.000So I want to talk about the future of the Republican Party from two particular angles.
00:20:37.000I want to talk about it from the conservative angle, like where the attacks are coming from on the right and where the attacks are coming from on the left.
00:20:44.000It seems like, at least in 2016, there was this emerging gap between the, quote unquote, populist conservatism of President Trump and sort of the classical old school conservatism that you were representing in the 2016 race.
00:20:55.000And in the end, it seemed as though the populist conservatism was was ascended.
00:20:59.000I never really bought into the idea that populist conservatism was an ideology.
00:21:04.000It seemed like more of an affect to me.
00:21:06.000And in terms of policy, President Trump has basically governed like a conservative with the absence of any sort of spending cuts.
00:21:11.000Do you think that there is such a thing as populist conservatism and how much how much, I guess, attention should be paid to the prevarications of people who say that the future of the Republican Party lies in things like tariffs and government involvement and subsidies and all that sort of stuff?
00:21:26.000You know, look, I do think there is such a thing as populism, but I'm going to a little bit fight the hypo and reject the characterization.
00:21:34.000You know, I'm very much a Reagan conservative, but I think Reagan was a populist.
00:21:37.000If you look at free market principles, they are all about working men and women.
00:21:44.000They're all about Folks like my dad, when he came from Cuba with nothing, having an opportunity, he washed dishes making 50 cents an hour, but he was in an economic environment where you could climb that economic ladder.
00:21:56.000And so, you know, if you look at 2016, we talked a little bit earlier about the socioeconomic divide.
00:22:04.0002016 Republican field, there were 17 Republicans running.
00:22:16.000Nobody would have bet on Donald Trump.
00:22:18.000And actually, nobody would have bet on me either.
00:22:19.000We might have been 16 and 17 in the betting odds.
00:22:22.000There were a bunch of other candidates that were supposed to be the dominant juggernauts.
00:22:27.000If you fast forward to the primaries, if you look at almost every state and if you look at working class voters, Working class voters in almost every state, either Trump was one and I was two, or I was one and he was two.
00:22:40.000And it is almost perfectly correlated.
00:22:42.000The states where I was one and he was two among working class voters are the 12 states I won.
00:22:48.000The states where he was one and I was two are the states he won.
00:22:51.000And none of the other 17 candidates won more than a single state.
00:22:55.000Kasich won Ohio, Rubio won Minnesota, and Trump and I won the other 48.
00:22:59.000Now that utterly upended Washington conventional wisdom.
00:23:03.000But the reason that happened, I believe, is because Washington politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, were not responding To the Ohio steel workers, to the truck drivers, to the waitresses, to the, to the cops and firefighters, to the men and women with calluses on their hands.
00:23:21.000So when I hear populism, that's what I think about is who are you fighting for?
00:23:26.000And, and look, big government and socialism, the Democrats fight for the elites, for the special interest.
00:23:43.000I'm interested in the next generation of creative destruction and entrepreneurs.
00:23:48.000And so I think Breaking the corporatist cronyism of Washington was a very important issue in 2016.
00:23:59.000And those same working class voters, by the way, that decided the 2016 primary are also the voters who won the general election, who gave Trump the victory over Hillary Clinton.
00:24:08.000So I think in that regard, now that doesn't mean.
00:24:11.000As the media pundits want to say that you suddenly have a whole dramatically new agenda.
00:24:15.000If you look at what Trump has actually enacted, I've worked very closely with the president on this tax cuts, repealing job killing regulations, securing the border, rebuilding the military.
00:24:23.000Those are conservative values, but they respond to the working men and women in this country.
00:24:29.000So the sort of left-wing critique of republicanism is that if you look at, let's say, the 2016 primaries, where you're finishing high and Trump is finishing high, and you look at your economic theories, your economic theories are very dissimilar.
00:24:40.000You went into Iowa and what I thought was an incredibly brave move.
00:24:43.000You said no more subsidies for ethanol, which in Iowa is basically political suicide.
00:24:48.000And then you proceeded to win Iowa, whereas President Trump went in there and basically said, look at Senator Cruz.
00:24:52.000He's the one out there saying that or lying dead, as he put it.
00:24:55.000And he's the one out there saying that, you know, he's going to take away your subsidies.
00:24:58.000So, in other words, you guys were sort of at odds on economics.
00:25:00.000So putting in the same basket economically, the critique of the media and the left would say is is not supremely accurate.
00:25:06.000What they would say is that this is a culture war issue.
00:25:08.000That basically there are a lot of people in the middle of the country who are sick of being disrespected by the media elites on both coasts who had treated them as the great unwashed masses and that you were giving them respect and President Trump was giving them respect.
00:25:20.000That's the nice way of putting it from the left.
00:25:21.000The bad way of putting it from the left is obviously that all these unwashed masses are, in fact, unwashed masses and that you unified them because there was a covert racism to to your campaign or to President Trump's campaign.
00:25:33.000That gets back to what we were saying earlier.
00:25:35.000But it does raise a question, which is how can the Republican Party reach out beyond its sort of traditional constituency?
00:25:41.000I know there's a lot of talk about this leading up to 2016.
00:26:44.000You had a bunch of septuagenarians battling it out.
00:26:46.000And by the way, fast forward to today, it seems now they're, they're, you know, octogenarians.
00:26:51.000By the way, if all of these folks can run, one word I'll say to our Democratic friends, you know, Jimmy Carter is still alive and he only served one term.
00:27:00.000I mean, if they're, if they're going for yesteryear, I think they need to recruit Jimmy Carter.
00:27:05.000Look, the Democratic Party is a throwback to old and failed ideas, and they're galloping that way.
00:27:12.000Now, one of the challenges we have is we have a one of the great virtues of the age of Trump Is is fake news has been exposed.
00:27:21.000You know, you remember a few years ago, people used to argue, oh, the media isn't biased.
00:27:29.000You watch these reporters foaming at the mouth.
00:27:32.000You watch these networks that they hate Trump so much.
00:27:36.000Now, listen, you and I both had our disagreements with Donald Trump.
00:27:39.000But but you look at just the naked, irrational hatred of the media left.
00:27:46.000Directed at Trump, and that is revealing of who they are.
00:27:49.000Now the challenge is, and this is a challenge for you and for me and for everyone, is to get folks that are not living and breathing this every day, get young people and Hispanics and African-Americans and suburban moms to understand and focus on the substance and the issues.
00:28:06.000Listen, if you're a young person, it matters when you come out of school, whether you have booming economic growth and lots of job opportunities or whether you move into your parents' basement because the economy is so stagnant as it was under the Obama years that you can't get a job.
00:28:22.000We've got to get it around the media filters that don't want anyone to hear that truth.
00:28:27.000So what sort of message do you purvey there?
00:28:29.000So one of the things that's been fascinating to me, I'm from California, the Republican Party has been eviscerated among Hispanic voters in California.
00:28:36.000That is not what has happened in Texas.
00:28:37.000In Texas, what is it, a 55-45 or 60-40 split in favor of Democrats, but it's certainly competitive with Republicans.
00:28:43.000Here it's something like 80-20 in favor of Democrats, if that, it may be higher.
00:29:49.000But I'll tell you, I had the exact same message in the Rio Grande Valley and overwhelmingly Hispanic communities that I had in deep East Texas.
00:30:00.000And the message of jobs and freedom and security, that's a message that resonates.
00:30:05.000Now, listen, California is a special place.
00:30:10.000When I'm out in California, I'll get together with conservatives, with Republicans, and it's almost like conservatives in California are beaten down.
00:30:19.000I'll tell you a point, though, that a lot of people don't know.
00:30:21.000Do you know what state has the most Republicans?
00:30:35.000I'm not saying that conservatives are not outnumbered here, but a lot of the California conservatives and Republicans are just beaten down.
00:30:43.000They don't believe that they can change the state politics.
00:30:46.000But look, I think the Hispanic community.
00:30:50.000is a conservative community, but we've got to respond to the needs and interest and values in the Hispanic community.
00:30:57.000If you look right now, today we have the lowest Hispanic unemployment ever recorded.
00:31:02.000We've also got the lowest African American unemployment ever recorded.
00:31:05.000Now, the clown show that is the Democratic 2020 primary, None of them are going to admit that.
00:31:10.000They're going to go to Hispanics and African-Americans that are seeing the lowest unemployment ever recorded, and they're going to say, these policies are terrible for you.
00:31:17.000You should go back to the Obama era policies where you had much higher unemployment, much higher poverty.
00:31:35.000And look, as Republicans, we've got to be able to articulate that and explain it in a way that that's not just a number on a pie chart.
00:31:46.000Those are five million real human beings.
00:31:48.000Those are moms and dads who two and a half years ago, they were dependent on the federal government for their basic food needs, who now presumably they've gotten a job.
00:32:39.000So, you were somehow able to defeat the second coming himself, the greatest candidate in the history of American politics, Beto O'Rourke, who skateboarded in from the heavens.
00:32:46.000Well, apparently not smoking a doobie, which is shocking to me.
00:32:50.000And then you defeated him and relegated him to eating dirt.
00:34:14.000I'm an Hispanic son of an immigrant who believes in freedom and believes in conservative values.
00:34:18.000That drives the left out of their mind.
00:34:21.000And so you saw the media just rush in with this glowing adulation.
00:34:27.000You can trace the point that changed, and it was the day after the general election, when suddenly Beto is not running against me, but is running against a bunch of other leftists, is running against Bernie Sanders, is running against Kamala Harris.
00:35:24.000So they came out now, you know, the, the sort of weird fan fiction he wrote as a kid, the, the, the bizarre stuff like fantasizing running over children.
00:35:32.000All of that came from Reuters is reporting that they just sat on, they put on ice for a year and a half until after the election.
00:35:40.000Now, what do you think of the odds, Ben?
00:35:42.000If they had evidence that I'd committed multiple felonies that they'd say, gosh, we'll just sit on it for a year and a half and not publish it.
00:35:49.000This is, in fact, the best proof that you're not the Zodiac Killer, because if you were, there is no question they would have uncovered this and brought it out against you.
00:36:08.000I remember you coming from nowhere to win this victory against a very heavily favored opponent.
00:36:12.000And then you start kind of climbing the ranks in the sense that you're getting all sorts of media attention, you're giving speeches on the Senate floor, and then came the point where it seemed like the world turned against you, and that was when you decided to filibuster the Obamacare vote.
00:36:27.000Where you got up and you started talking about how the Republican majority leader had failed to stop Obamacare properly.
00:36:34.000What was your motivation for doing that?
00:36:35.000I know that the take from cynical politicos was that it wasn't going to be effective, so it was basically you just grandstanding.
00:36:41.000And then there was the take from other conservatives who were basically saying, no, somebody has to stand up and do this or it's going to get funded and it's never going to go away.
00:36:51.000Number one, Obamacare was going into effect.
00:36:54.000And once it went into effect, it was going to prove incredibly difficult to unwind.
00:36:59.000And number two, I had promised the people of Texas, I told the voters of Texas in 2012, I said, if you elect me, I will fight with every ounce of strength in my body.
00:37:09.000I will lay in front of a speeding train to stop this disaster that is Obamacare.
00:37:28.000But to be honest, I really don't give a flip.
00:37:34.000And part of it is because I try to remember who I'm working for.
00:37:38.000You know, I remember back in 2012, I remember a little old lady up in East Texas who grabbed me by the shoulder.
00:37:46.000She said, Ted, please, don't go to Washington and become one of them.
00:37:55.000You know, in many ways, being elected with a grassroots movement, it's liberating.
00:38:01.000Because when I was elected, every lobbyist in the state was against me, just about.
00:38:05.000Every major corporation was against me.
00:38:07.000Every major trade association was against me.
00:38:09.000That means I'm not beholden to any of them.
00:38:12.000What I am beholden to are the truck drivers and oil field workers and college kids and all the working men and women who knocked on doors, who worked their hearts out.
00:38:23.000And so I tried to On every decision, say, all right, how would I explain it to the men and women that I sat in town hall after town hall after town hall with?
00:38:32.000And when it came to Obamacare, what, what Republican leadership was content to do is do nothing.
00:38:40.000And I, and I'll tell you, you know, in the middle of that, that Obamacare filibuster, Where I spoke for 21 hours on the Senate floors, the phones lit up, millions of phone calls went into Congress.
00:38:51.000Republican leadership hated that because the American people said, we don't want this disaster that is Obamacare.
00:38:57.000If you remember, the Wall Street Journal did an editorial where it called me the minority maker, said Ted Cruz is going to single handedly keep Harry Reid as majority leader.
00:39:08.000Now, if in the 2014 election, Republicans had been decimated and Harry Reid had remained majority leader.
00:39:15.000How quick do you think all those media pundits, all that Republican leadership would have been to victory lap and said, aha, see, we told you this fight is destroying our majority, which they said every day.
00:39:27.000In 2014 Republicans won nine seats in the US Senate.
00:39:31.000We retired Harry Reid as majority leader and we won the biggest majority in the house since I believe 1928.
00:39:39.000And not a one of the folks in leadership thought, gosh, maybe the fact that we were standing up and fighting on Obamacare and finally doing something and finally trying to honor our promise, maybe that has something to do with people showing up.
00:39:53.000I think the way you win elections, look, the Washington conventional wisdom is you win elections by standing for nothing, by getting along and going along.
00:40:04.000I think the way you win elections by giving people a reason to vote, by standing and saying, look, we're going to follow through and do what we said we would do.
00:40:13.000That gives people a reason to go knock on doors.
00:40:15.000That gives people a reason to make phone calls.
00:40:20.000In 2016, in the presidential race, my campaign had 326,000 volunteers knocking on doors, making phone calls, sending emails.
00:40:33.000As a way of perspective, the Hillary Clinton campaign talked about their target for the general election was 10,000 volunteers.
00:41:12.000I may disagree with them on a policy issue, but if they tell the voters, here's where I stand, then, then, then if they vote that way, all right, that's democracy.
00:41:19.000What I think the voters resent is those same people that were blasting me when they're out campaigning.
00:41:28.000And then they get to Washington and say, no, no, no, let's not actually do what we said we would do.
00:41:33.000Look, when Trump astonished the media class, astonished Washington by winning, I think it was right at the heart of The American people fed up with people in Washington not doing what they said, and they believe this guy's going to blow up Washington.
00:41:51.000And I think we've seen some good results, not all good results, but a lot of good results because of it.
00:41:56.000So you run this very knock-down, drag-out race with President Trump.
00:42:00.000Honestly, you have a lot more wherewithal than I would have.
00:42:03.000I mean, he attacked you as Lyin' Ted, he attacked your father, he suggested that he was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he attacked your wife, and you kind of Look, you can't take any of this personally.
00:44:38.000I wish he would say some different things and do some different things.
00:44:41.000But I do like the policy victories that we've won for the people of Texas and the American people.
00:44:46.000And the booming economy and the improved national security that we're seeing are both direct results of that.
00:44:51.000So I don't want to turn you into a political pundit, but I would be remiss because I've been asking everybody this, and I think everybody's asking this.
00:44:57.000How do you think that the 2020 race goes?
00:44:59.000Because, you know, from my perspective, the president's got a very good record.
00:46:20.000You typically hear that from people who've ever run for office because money is the tool by which you communicate, particularly when the media is all in on the other side.
00:46:28.000Let me give you one example of how money matters in politics.
00:46:32.000My campaign in 2018 had 18 full time campaign staffers.
00:46:38.000Beto O'Rourke's campaign had 805, 18 to 805.
00:46:45.000Try any other battle with that kind of mismatch in terms of resources.
00:46:50.000And, and what ended up happening, the Democrats increased their turnout in the state of Texas more than 100%.
00:47:20.000Part of it was at the end, I did a barnstorming tour of the state.
00:47:25.000Got in a bus and we did 50 town halls and rallies in the last six weeks all over the state and, and rang the bell and said to any common sense conservatives in Texas, if you want to see low taxes, low regulations, lots of job, if you want the border secure, if you want the constitution and the bill of rights protected, show up and vote.
00:47:46.000I think that's exactly what we're going to see in 2020.
00:47:49.000Every leftist in the country is going to show up and they're going to crawl over broken glass.
00:47:52.000They hate Donald Trump with a white hot passion.
00:47:56.000You're going to see Democrats in areas you didn't know there were any Democrats.
00:47:59.000They're, they're going to crawl out of the woodworks, which means we've got to give everyone else a reason to show up and vote.
00:48:06.000And this is where the DC instincts are so dangerous.
00:48:09.000Because if the DC Republicans say, oh, it's a close election, let's stand for nothing.
00:48:15.000Let's just, just let's not do anything.
00:48:38.000Arizona, another state where we are seeing movement toward the purple.
00:48:41.000In Texas, obviously that's been at the top of Democrats' list.
00:48:43.000The reason that you were target number one is because they saw that as an indicator that they could finally turn this kind of deep red state blue.
00:48:49.000Do you think that Texas is moving in the direction of the blue?
00:48:51.000It looks right now like a lot of folks are moving into Austin, a lot of folks moving into urban areas that are much more to the left.
00:48:58.000The voting records tend to show more Democratic turnout.
00:49:06.000And you know, there are two broad, there are a lot of different movements going on, but two broad political movements that are cross-cutting.
00:49:12.000One thing we're seeing in recent years is working class voters are moving right.
00:49:16.000That's making states like Midwestern states trend more Republican.
00:49:20.000What we're also seeing, however, is suburban voters, in particular suburban women, are trending left.
00:49:27.000That means states with big suburban populations, states like Texas, states like Georgia, states like Arizona, Are trending left.
00:49:36.000You know, Texas, people think of Texas as a, as a rural state, you know, sort of the cowboy ethos, but we're one of the most urban and suburban states in the entire country.
00:49:46.000Three of the 10 biggest cities in America are in the state of Texas and four of the 11 biggest cities in Texas are in the country are in Texas.
00:49:55.000Uh, in Texas, between Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio, over two thirds of the voters in the state of Texas are in those, those four major metro areas.
00:50:08.000Basically the way the Texas voting typically works is you have the cities which have been democratic for a while, the core of the cities, and then you've had these bright red doughnuts around the cities that have been suburban Republicans.
00:50:23.000Well, what happened in twenty eighteen is those bright red doughnuts became purple as suburban voters moved heavily left.
00:50:30.000By the way, that's what decimated the congressional Republicans in California.
00:50:36.000California has a lot of suburban voters as well.
00:50:38.000Places like Orange County that used to be very Republican and they moved significantly to the left.
00:50:44.000If we're going to stay competitive, we've got to be.
00:50:49.000Reaching those suburban moms and making the case why these policies matter, why, why socialism and open borders, why that is bad for, for suburban moms, why that's bad for your kids, why that's bad for your future.
00:51:04.000The media doesn't want any of those messages to get across.
00:51:07.000And so that means it's our job and we've got to do it in ways that get around the gatekeepers because the gatekeepers They're not pretending to be Walter Cronkite anymore.
00:51:22.000They will put on their hat and they will cheer for whatever leftist wins the Democratic nomination, and they will do everything they can to collate the information and to pitch a propaganda war.
00:51:36.000For those of us who value freedom, we've got to counteract that.
00:51:38.000So if you look at the Democratic field, is there anybody in the Democratic field who you find particularly scary for the general election as opposed to the other candidates?
00:51:47.000I think the Democrats are going to nominate someone from the far left.
00:51:53.000You know, right now, Joe Biden's having a moment.
00:51:55.000I don't think Biden will be the nominee because all of the energy, all of the passion in the Democratic Party is on the extreme left.
00:52:04.000I think it's likely it's probably one of four people that it that it is.
00:52:09.000Bernie, Kamala Harris, Beto or Elizabeth Warren.
00:52:16.000And maybe I'd throw Mayor Pete into that.
00:53:50.000In this election, that's going to turn their base out.
00:53:52.000Now, the good news is if we turn just center-right voters out, people who believe in common sense, That's how we win, but we've got to turn them out.
00:54:01.000So I want to ask you about sort of the checks and balances in the system.
00:54:05.000So one of the critiques of the Republican Senate particularly, and the Republican Congress more generally than the Republicans held the House, was that they were delegating too much authority to the executive branch.
00:54:14.000I felt for a very long time that the legislature is becoming a vestigial organ of American government.
00:54:19.000Everything is being done by bureaucracies and that the Senate and the Congress are deeply unwilling to take back any of the statutorily and constitutionally granted powers they were granted.
00:54:29.000To take an example, when it comes to trade authority, the idea of delegating one-way trade authority to the executive branch and then not being able to pull it back, or when it comes to the making of war, not pulling back any of that authority.
00:54:41.000What do you think about the possibility of Congress at any point in the future starting to take back some of that power?
00:55:53.000We could have made them permanent forever.
00:55:56.000Number three, we should have passed what I call the Obamacare consensus reforms.
00:56:00.000In the Senate last year, we didn't have 50 votes for a total repeal.
00:56:03.000Tragically, I fought hard for that, but we had 50 votes for a lot of the reforms that would have increased competition, increased, uh, choices and lowered premiums for working men and women.
00:57:40.000Imagine if we had done this in October, October of last year, we're fully funding building a wall on the entire border.
00:57:49.000You've got Elizabeth Warren screaming on the Senate floor.
00:57:52.000You've got Bernie pulling his hair out.
00:57:53.000You got the media going crazy and we have the votes and get it done.
00:57:57.000Imagine how many Americans show up to say, my God, these people actually made a promise and they did what they said.
00:58:03.000We might very well, I believe, have held the house, not made Nancy Pelosi speaker, if we had taken up that fight and won that fight and gotten another victory.
00:58:14.000But unfortunately the, the leadership wasn't willing to do that.
00:58:20.000I mean, right now, there's the possibility, as you say, a 50-50 shot that President Trump loses the presidency.
00:58:25.000If that happens, then Democrats have at least a decent shot at taking the Senate.
00:58:29.000What is the proposal that you see from the Democrats that you fear the most right now that they're pushing?
00:58:33.000Look, to be honest, it's all of the above.
00:58:36.000If Democrats win the White House, there's a very good chance they win the Senate as well.
00:58:41.000Um, if that happens, if they have control over both houses of Congress and the White House, I think their objective will be to try to make structural changes to make their rule perpetual.
00:58:59.000Number one, all right, let's start economically.
00:59:02.000Tax cuts immediately repeal, but we're not going back to the status quo ante.
00:59:06.000I think they will jack up taxes dramatically.
00:59:10.000Uh, particularly if they get elected on the angry howl of socialism.
00:59:17.000Just think for a moment, you got Democrats talking about 70% tax rate or higher.
00:59:21.000I think you'll see those policies pass.
00:59:24.000By the way, I believe if Democrats take the white house and the Senate, they will end the filibuster within a month of taking office, which means the Republican minority won't be able to stop it.
00:59:34.000Just the Democrats together will be able to do it.
00:59:37.000Um, on immigration, I think you will see a massive open borders proposal, all designed to ensure democratic control.
00:59:46.000So the 12, 13, 14 million people here illegally, I think Democrats will grant every one of them amnesty and try to give them citizenship as quickly as possible because they believe that that most of those people here illegally will vote, uh, democratic.
01:00:00.000And that's designed to ensure their control and just to underscore that.
01:00:06.000You know, we're sitting here in California.
01:00:09.000California for a long time was the heart of the Republican Party.
01:00:12.000California had voted in six consecutive presidential elections, Republican.
01:00:18.000California had given us Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon.
01:00:22.000In 1987, Congress passed the last amnesty proposal.
01:00:26.000Three million people here illegally granted amnesty.
01:00:29.000The last election California ever voted Republican was 1988, the year after that amnesty proposal.
01:00:35.000It has gone Democrat every year since then.
01:00:38.000They will endeavor to do that in the whole country so that no Republican can win again.
01:00:44.000I also think there is a very good possibility.
01:00:47.000That they vote to stack the Supreme Court.
01:00:49.000So, you know, one of the areas where we're very grateful for the victories we've had has been strong constitutionalist judges on the court.
01:00:56.000You're seeing Democrats right now embracing, um, expanding the court from nine to 15.
01:01:02.000If they had six Supreme Court justices immediately, you would see a radical left wing court and, and, and all of that.
01:01:12.000Look, one of the problems, the left, They're all in.
01:01:19.000You know, Bernie and Kamala Harris were talking, what, a few weeks ago about the need to give every convicted murderer the right to vote.
01:01:30.000Now, let me ask you, Ben, who in their right mind looks at the United States of America and said, you know what our democratic process needs?
01:02:08.000And, and, and I think if they take control, particularly if they get the Senate too, it is unbelievably dangerous.
01:02:14.000In a second, I want to ask you a final question, which is I need to get your take on the Game of Thrones finale, because I know that you're watching.
01:02:18.000But if you actually want to hear Senator Cruz's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.