00:00:00.000Our conversation with Senator Ted Cruz into the details, what's happening in the Senate, debt limit versus infrastructure bill versus build back better.
00:00:07.000We talk about lots of different things, and I think Senator Ted Cruz is one of the best senators, if not the best senator, in Washington, D.C.
00:00:13.000He does a wonderful job, and I think very highly of him.
00:00:30.000If you want to support our show, go to charliekirk.com/slash support.
00:00:33.000If you want to get involved with Turning Point USA, where we play offense with a sense of urgency to win the American Culture War, go to tpusa.com.
00:01:03.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:03:47.000I'm having fun because we really are fighting to save the country.
00:03:50.000Like what they're doing is so nuts that I view my job as leading the fight to stop every dumbass idea coming from this administration, and there are a lot of them.
00:04:01.000So why do you think that this regime is continuing in this direction despite bad poll numbers, unpopularity?
00:04:09.000Prior administrations like the Obama administration will at least slow down a little bit.
00:04:53.000I think his capacity is severely diminished.
00:04:56.000And so I think the White House handlers are protecting him.
00:05:03.000I also think there's a phenomenon with Democrats.
00:05:06.000We're seeing it in the Senate too and in the House, where they're afraid of the far left, that they've made a judgment that the extreme left is where the anger is.
00:05:18.000It's where the pitchforks are and the torches.
00:05:21.000And they don't want to mess with them.
00:05:23.000And I think Biden made a rational decision.
00:05:28.000I'm going to give the radicals all the policy, and I get to be president.
00:05:40.000And so you're right that ordinarily a president, even if you had made that decision coming in, a president would look at plummeting poll numbers, at the disasters that are unfolding, at the bloodbath in the Virginia election.
00:05:55.000In fact, they even almost lost New Jersey.
00:05:58.000A rational president would say, okay, tap the brakes.
00:06:06.000And the kids that are the staffers, either they're too much of zealots or they're too ideological or they're too scared, but they're not changing direction.
00:06:19.000Yeah, I mean, there's only a couple explanations, and you basically hit it perfectly.
00:06:23.000The other one is that they want what's happening.
00:06:26.000They don't really care about the popularity, and it's a means to the end.
00:06:29.000You know, Biden's president as long as he is, and we'll find somebody else to run in the future.
00:06:33.000But when will we ever have three chambers to pass our build back better thing, which thanks to President Manchin, it's...
00:06:40.000Look, I mean, the Build Back Broke Bill, and that's, by the way, the only thing I'll call it, was it was Bernie Sanders' socialist budget.
00:06:52.000Bernie is an avowed and unapologetic socialist.
00:06:57.000It used to be five years ago, Democrats pretended they weren't socialists.
00:07:02.000Now Bernie's the chairman of the budget committee, and Biden's number one priority is passing the budget committee.
00:07:32.000That would break their caucus, wouldn't it?
00:07:34.000So we were, a couple of weeks ago, I was standing with Joe and five or six Republican senators, and we were on the Senate floor, and one of them, Dan Sullivan, said, Joe, why don't we do Cruz's idea?
00:07:46.000Will make you the chairman of the Committee on Everything.
00:08:06.000And I just think culturally, he's spent his entire life as a Democrat.
00:08:11.000He's the godfather of Democrats in the West Virginia.
00:08:15.000That being said, you know, you know, the one group that might make him a Republican are Bernie and AOC and Elizabeth Warren.
00:08:24.000If they're so nasty, that they drive him away.
00:08:28.000I mean, they could be vicious enough that, you know, on our end, we're just trying to be nice and welcoming and say, look, you know, on the Republican side, we got a diversity of views.
00:08:38.000There are a ton of things Manchin votes for that I would never vote for in a million years.
00:08:43.000But I don't think we would be the kind of nasty sons of bitches to him that the extreme left is right now.
00:08:52.000Yeah, and also, I mean, Manchin gets a lot of power by being the Democrat that won't go along with it.
00:08:59.000But there has to be a breaking point at some point, you would think.
00:09:05.000Look, everyone out there has been asking me, Charlie, how do I get more pillows?
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00:10:44.000You look at all their different priorities, but their number one priority, what was the first bill they introduced in the British Committee?
00:10:50.000And the first bill they introduced in the 1990s?
00:11:47.000And I've been leading the fight against the Corrupt Politicians Act, both on the Judiciary Committee and on the Rules Committee.
00:11:53.000I'm on both, and those are the two committees that have jurisdiction over this stuff.
00:11:58.000And one thing that I have pointed out many times is, you know, for Democrats to talk about Jim Crow with this bill is actually quite fitting.
00:12:07.000Because Jim Crow laws were written by Democrats for the purpose of keeping incumbent Democratic politicians in office and making it impossible for the voters to vote Democrats out of office.
00:12:20.000And today, the Corrupt Politicians Act is written by Democrats for the purpose of keeping incumbent Democrats in office and making it impossible for the voters to vote those corrupt Democrats out of office.
00:12:30.000It's the same fundamental assault on the right to vote.
00:12:34.000I mean, the irony is the Democrats' rhetoric is exactly opposite what they're doing.
00:12:38.000They're trying to make it so that we, the people, so the voters, can't throw the bums out.
00:12:45.000And their first iteration was the Corrupt Politicians Act.
00:12:48.000Their second iteration is, as you noted, the so-called John Lewis Act.
00:12:52.000Now, look, John Lewis was someone I knew, John.
00:12:54.000I respected him as a civil rights leader.
00:12:55.000And they're misusing his name, quite honestly.
00:12:58.000The bill would require every substantive change in voting laws in every state to not be able to go into effect until unelected bureaucrats of the Department of Justice signed off on them.
00:13:13.000Now, who are those unelected bureaucrats?
00:13:15.000They are radical leftists, hard radical leftists.
00:13:20.000I mean, they are Joe Biden nominated Kristen Clark to be the head of the Civil Rights Division, who she was the one who would personally have to sign off on it.
00:13:29.000Vanita Gupta, who's the Associate Attorney General.
00:13:32.000Those two are two of the leading advocates in the country of abolishing the police.
00:14:17.000And so you think the chances of that passing are.
00:14:19.000You don't think Manchin could come to some sort of I know you hated me about that, but I look, that's my fear that there's going to be like a fake consensus brokered.
00:17:13.000Schumer and the Democrats are trying to create a crafted, narrow exception for the filibuster for voting rights.
00:17:22.000I don't think they will do it, but they could easily do it.
00:17:26.000And I will say on this, Republican leadership screwed up with the debt ceiling deal we just cut, where there was an exception to the filibuster written into the bill that a bunch of Republicans voted for.
00:17:38.000And I look, I stood up at our Senate lunch and said, you know what?
00:17:41.000They're going to point to this and say this is precedent for going after the filibuster on voting rights legislation.
00:17:48.000What was the response from leadership Barasso, Thun and McConnell?
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00:19:50.000But then also in the midst of that was a debt ceiling increase.
00:19:53.000Now, McConnell authorized the debt ceiling increase, I think, like a month and a half ago, and just Ben Schumer basically mocked him on the Senate floor.
00:20:03.000And so then McConnell then said, if my memory serves me, because sometimes they don't want you to remember that we're never doing this again.
00:21:41.000So the debt ceiling is a limitation on the total amount the country can borrow.
00:21:49.000And it is my view is not that we should never raise the debt ceiling.
00:21:55.000You sometimes get politicians who say that, but frankly, they're not being serious or credible when they say that because you've got it varies at time to time, but it's roughly 40 cents of every dollar we spend is borrowed.
00:22:08.000So unless you're prepared to slash federal spending 40% overnight, you're going to continue to borrow some.
00:22:15.000And by the way, there is nobody, zero members of the Congress who advocate slashing 40% of spending overnight.
00:22:23.000So if that is the case, then you do have to continue to borrow.
00:22:28.000My view has always been we should not raise the debt ceiling without using it as leverage to pass real, meaningful structural reform that limits spending and addresses the debt, that fixes the underlying problem.
00:22:49.000You know, we don't live in, we don't have Harry Houdini who can just magically make things go away, but we should use the tools we have to address the real problem.
00:22:59.000I think that's the responsible way to do it.
00:23:05.000In this instance, for several months, the position of every Republican in the Senate was, we're not going to help with the debt ceiling because the Democrats can do it on their own.
00:23:17.000They can raise the debt ceiling under budget reconciliation.
00:23:21.000So if they're going to bankrupt the country, they ought to take responsibility for it and vote for it on their own.
00:23:27.000Mitch McConnell was very vocal and clear in making that argument repeatedly and in urging even some of the wobblier members of our conference to hold that line.
00:23:35.000So for a couple of months, all 50 Republicans posture.
00:25:13.000And certainly, once a bunch of Republicans came the first time, then the Republicans said, okay, we did it once, but we're not going to do it again.
00:25:44.000So one of the reasons why I've won a lot of legislated fights in Washington is that when I say I'm going to do something, people believe me.
00:25:52.000It's one of the reasons Trump was so effective is our enemies, you know, whether Russia or China, they're like, that dude's so crazy, we don't know what he'll do.
00:26:04.000I think Republicans really hurt themselves because the next time they say, okay, this is a line we won't cross, Schumer laughs and says, yeah, you will.
00:26:11.000We'll just give you another month and then you'll cross it.
00:26:45.000And it's typically 30, 40 minutes of the inside story on what's going on in the Senate, what's going on in the Supreme Court, all of the stuff that the news doesn't tell you.
00:26:58.000But frankly, Charlie, you do a good job in your podcast of engaging.
00:27:01.000But, you know, it's hard to learn what's really going on.
00:27:04.000And what I try to do in Verdict is pull the curtain back and bring people inside.
00:27:10.000And so, you know, everyone listening to your show, let me encourage you, come over to Verdict.