00:00:04.140I never thought that I would care about who ascended to the number three party leadership position in the House.
00:00:13.360But believe it or not, the House conference chair race seems to signal a whole lot about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
00:00:48.380But this race, this – in an ordinary year, this would be sort of a nothing story, has come to dominate the news cycle.
00:00:55.040And the left is making a lot of hay out of it because there's infighting in the GOP, so they like that.
00:00:59.360But Republicans are paying a lot of attention too, I think, because there's a big split here for the future of the party.
00:01:05.580You had Liz Cheney was in the position, and she spent a lot of her time bashing conservatives in the Washington Post and other left-wing outlets.
00:01:12.640Then you had Elise Stefanik, who has a more liberal voting record actually than Cheney, but she, I guess, was more loyal to Donald Trump, and she was nicer to the conservative base.
00:01:23.200You then had Chip Roy, who I seem to recall you know quite well.
00:01:38.640I actually don't think it's that big a deal going forward.
00:01:41.620I think the press wants to turn it into World War III because their favorite topic is Republicans infighting.
00:01:48.360And it's also the only way Democrats can keep the House in 2022 is if we have a civil war on the Republican side.
00:01:56.660If we don't have a civil war, I think we are very likely to take the House in 2022, and I think we've got a decent shot at taking the Senate.
00:02:04.140Look, what the House Republican conference did, it had to do.
00:02:08.860Liz Cheney could no longer be in a leadership role because she had – she'd lost it.
00:03:26.820Look, if someone who is supposed to be your leader is attacking every other member of the party every day, at some point it's like, all right, enough already.
00:04:28.360And so the comment that I came up with, as I said, you know, I think I'll just say, well, you know, I think she has a very promising future as an MSNBC contributor.
00:04:39.560Beyond this intra-political House race or the meta-political, I guess, the politics of politics, I'm interested in some of these other races around the country because a lot of us are looking at 2022 and then ultimately at 2024.
00:04:55.520There have been races that have taken place.
00:04:58.300Where does the party stand when we're actually facing the voters?
00:05:02.720Look, I think we're in a very good position.
00:05:04.980I told you I believe 2022 is going to be a very good election.
00:05:07.960There's actually an earlier moment than that, which is you've got a couple of states that have off-cycle elections.
00:05:13.820And so Virginia, for example, Virginia is electing a new governor in 2021.
00:05:17.980And if you look historically, the last time you had a Democratic White House, a Democratic House of Representatives, and a Democratic Senate was 2008.
00:05:31.760Barack Obama was elected with Democrat majorities in both houses.
00:05:35.360They passed a radical left-wing agenda.
00:05:38.5602009, the next year, Virginia elected a Republican as governor, Bob McDonald.
00:05:43.160And Virginia is often a canary in a coal mine because it's the first chance voters get to express their views on where things are going in Washington.
00:05:53.240I think Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi are going radically left.
00:05:57.600And I think Virginia, we've got a very good shot at electing a governor.
00:06:01.960So the Republican nominee is a guy named Glenn Youngkin.
00:06:34.380So it wasn't a primary, but it wasn't like an in-person convention.
00:06:39.660So it was a strange election to campaign because you basically got 50,000 people who were eligible to vote, who are the people who have registered to be delegates.
00:06:50.240And in the rallies, I mean, we had the two days of rallies, we had several thousand people come out.
00:06:57.060And I think we ended up seeing in person in those two days probably about 10 percent of the delegates who ended up voting.
00:07:05.460Some people are saying, I sound like President Trump now, a lot of people are saying everybody's talking.
00:07:09.860Some people are saying that your endorsement was decisive.
00:07:13.540Certainly for the people that came to the rallies, I think to many of them that was persuasive.
00:07:19.820And I do think my going and barnstorming with him also helped him bring out a lot more people to the rally.
00:07:25.040So there's sort of a double, you can drive a narrative, you can communicate.
00:07:29.100There's a vouching process of, okay, look, I as a voter may not know so-and-so, but if I trust you and you know so-and-so, that means something.
00:07:40.080And then I do think that particularly in this sort of weird distributed convention, getting the people to come out to the rallies, I think there were some people that came to the rallies, that were coming because they were supporters of mine.
00:07:55.140But they saw Glenn, and he's impressive.
00:07:57.980Like when you see him in person, he's an impressive guy, he's a likable guy, and I suspect there's some people who came to the rally not knowing if they were going to back him or not,
00:08:08.800who I think when they left decided they were going to back him.
00:08:12.000Now, Senator, I want to talk for a second about two weeks to slow the spread turned into about 14 months, but now it seems we're on the other side.
00:08:19.480There's been insanity the entire journey, and the entire journey has also been marred by a consistent refusal to listen to science, masked in a facade of science.
00:08:32.700And our guest today, Steve Dace, who is a dear friend, who is a brilliant thinker, a brilliant writer, a fearless conservative, has written a book.
00:08:44.260And so, Steve, tell us about your book.
00:08:48.340There are two things that are really hallmarks, pillars of our healthcare system, that the average American, if they were faced with a serious healthcare decision in their own lives, would be granted automatically,
00:09:01.880and they have been denied via public policy collectively for the last year.
00:09:16.960In fact, in the last few days, ironically, a lot of the data that people like me were called crackpots for disseminating for the past year about masks and lockdowns and shutdowns and social distancing numbers
00:09:29.480and where the six feet originated from a student's term paper and all these other things, it's funny.
00:09:35.120Just in the last couple of weeks now, suddenly they want to confirm all these things because apparently somebody's internal polling is really, really bad.
00:09:42.660The only science that evolves that fast, guys, is political science, if you know what I'm saying, okay?
00:09:47.640So that's the first thing, is informed consent.
00:09:52.120The second is the right to a second opinion.
00:09:54.040I mean, somebody comes to you and says, well, you've got a really terrible mass on an appendage, and I've got to remove that appendage so it doesn't spread to the rest of the body.
00:10:03.840Before you give up an appendage, you're probably going to go get a second opinion because you kind of like your appendages.
00:10:08.680And there have been experts from the very beginning at some of the most renowned centers of academia in the world, Oxford, number one rated university in the earth,
00:10:18.980Stanford, Harvard, Yale, some of the top rated universities in America that have had varying opinions and contrarian opinions from a public policy standpoint on how to deal with this pandemic.
00:10:30.240And they have been almost exclusively ignored.
00:10:33.660In fact, recently, Governor DeSantis in Florida hosted a panel with them, and that panel got banned on YouTube because apparently some skinny jean wearing avocado toast obsessed engineer at Facebook
00:10:45.620knows more about COVID-19 than Dr. Martin Kulldorff at Harvard, who designed the VAERS incident website for the CDC.
00:10:53.100That is the world in which we live, and it's why we've kind of had this hammer meets nail, ham-fisted, one-size-fits-all authoritarian solution over the last year
00:11:03.840instead of solutions that might have actually solved some things.
00:11:07.300So let's talk about lockdowns, which was a draconian step that was imposed across the country.
00:11:14.000What was the scientific basis for lockdowns?
00:11:18.700Does it make any sense that we saw the entire country voluntarily shut down and destroy trillions of dollars of value, destroy people's lives?
00:11:44.640This was an experiment that came from a student term paper that somehow made its way into some halls of science late in the Bush administration.
00:11:52.720George W. Bush, they looked at it and thought, wow, that's stupid.
00:12:13.040I didn't stay at a holiday in an express last night, but I kind of think that when your model on transmission of a virus admits it doesn't know how a virus is transmitted,
00:12:23.520OK, but it said if we didn't do these social distancing issues, if we did not do these things where we put people away for a period of a few months and then let them come back out.
00:12:34.340And then if they did, the virus would return.
00:12:35.840So we'd have to do waves and waves of these lockdowns and reopenings over the course of several years that that's because millions and millions of people would die if we didn't do it.
00:12:46.540Here's the problem with why this all didn't work, because it all began from a flawed assumption.
00:12:52.020Well, really, a couple of flawed assumptions.
00:12:53.740Number one, that the Chinese were telling the truth.
00:12:58.020These were I'm really shocked that the nation that was faced with its first open trade war from the United States in decades and was on the heels of unprecedented civil unrest in its chief financial district of Hong Kong when a virus broke out, thought the best thing for the rest of the world to do was to economically shut down.
00:13:37.520We heard about droplets and fomites for months and months and months when in reality it is an airborne contagion.
00:13:43.940Steve, I want to talk for a second about the subtitle of the book.
00:13:47.900The title is the Fauci and bargain, but the subtitle refers to the most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history.
00:13:57.080We're sitting here with a United States senator, with a legislator.
00:14:01.080I thought that the way laws were made in this country, correct me if I'm wrong, was that the legislators legislate and the executive who is also elected enforces the law.
00:14:10.180But somehow we've gotten into this position where these technocrats, these eggheads, are governing the country and have much more power than our elected officials.
00:14:19.440You apparently watched the same Schoolhouse Rock, Michael, that I did growing up.
00:14:23.620I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill, right?
00:14:26.140But, you know, it's funny as Congressman Thomas Massey was tweeting yesterday that he was on a domestic flight and the flight attendant came on and said,
00:14:32.500And under federal law, you must wear your mask at all times, and Massey's like, wait a minute, I'm the guy, I'm the only guy on this plane that makes laws.
00:14:39.700I don't ever remember voting on any such law, all right?
00:14:42.600But that's one of the main points we raise at the very beginning of the book, Michael, is in the introduction.
00:14:48.180That even though there's a singular figure here in Anthony Fauci, he has been the point person on this all along.
00:14:56.260If he had retired at 75, 70, like a lot of other Americans do, particularly ones looking at the pension that he's got staring him in the face, it would have just been somebody else.
00:15:05.720That another creature would have emerged in the Black Lagoon.
00:15:08.980He is, pardon the theological pun here, legion.
00:15:12.380That this is what the technocratic administrative state produces.
00:15:15.620It might have been Debbie Bedazzle, your face shield, Burks instead, or Francis Collins, who went from mapping the human genome to being fully vaccinated and wearing masks outside.
00:15:26.240Who knows who else it would have been?
00:15:28.440Some other nameless, faceless bureaucrat no one else had ever heard of until now.
00:15:32.460But this is the way that the system works.
00:16:16.280There's two things I would have done if I were the oracle at Delphi and consulted in the matter.
00:16:23.300The first is, to me, I don't believe the 15 days to flatten the curve.
00:16:28.280I think it was, I wouldn't have made that decision, but I think it's an understandable decision.
00:16:32.600I think it's like in a basketball game when the other team's on a scoring run and your coach calls a timeout to thwart their momentum.
00:16:39.320And so I think, hey, we're getting all this unprecedented heat pressure.
00:16:42.560Don't know if we can trust what China's telling us.
00:16:44.700Let's just get a TO, baby, and let's just sit this one out for a couple of weeks and see what we're dealing with.
00:16:49.040The 30 days to slow the spread, I believe, was the absolute worst decision in the history of the U.S. presidency, because the entire narrative was lost from there.
00:16:59.220During the 15 days, that's when President Trump and his advisors should have brought in John Ioannidis from Stanford, Scott Atlas from Stanford, Jay, I can never pronounce his last name correctly, from Stanford.
00:17:11.040Sanitra Gupta from Oxford, members of the Center for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford, scientists from Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Katz from Yale, Dr. Risch from Yale, Dr. Kolder from Harvard.
00:17:28.480Put him in a room with Debbie Burks, put him in a room with Francis Collins at NIH and Anthony Fauci, put all those people in a room, put them on camera.
00:17:47.580We never consulted a second opinion and essentially allowed Anthony Fauci to use the Trump White House as his ascendancy to potentate status, unassailable status.
00:17:59.480Well, and Steve, you'll recall how a number of weeks ago I had reporters in Washington freaking out because I wasn't wearing a mask while doing a press conference and talking to a TV camera.
00:18:11.840And this one reporter in particular threw a fit.
00:18:16.660And I observed, look, everyone here has been vaccinated.
00:18:19.040What, why, you know, I watched the CDC's announcement last week, and in particular their explanation on Sunday that the science has evolved.
00:18:34.100Is it new science that vaccines work or was this always?
00:18:40.280Look, I haven't been wearing a mask for a lot of weeks on the Senate floor ever since I got vaccinated.
00:18:46.780I'm like, OK, look, I believe in science.
00:19:27.500And I just stood there and basked in the freedom.
00:19:32.320You know, we had Joe Biden's, you know, pseudo State of the Union address where everyone wore a mask in a chamber where everyone there had been vaccinated.
00:19:42.200Is this a new evolution of science that vaccines work?
00:19:46.580Or was the CDC full of crap when they said people who are vaccinated should wear 19 masks and be in an isolation chamber?
00:20:00.560But what changed were the statements from these bureaucrats, these very powerful bureaucrats.
00:20:05.160And then everybody, including Chuck Schumer, fall in line.
00:20:09.280I suppose we can be happy in the short run that we get to take the mask off.
00:20:13.240We get to breathe the sweet air of freedom, at least to some degree.
00:20:16.140But to your point, Senator, and Steve, to your book, we may well see a sequel of this soon.
00:20:21.040So can we can we hold on to our freedom?
00:20:23.560And I will note there are at least some of my Democratic colleagues who I think should keep wearing the mask.
00:20:29.000And if only they could tighten it a little bit because some of their words are still getting out.
00:20:33.900And if we could just tighten those masks, that really would be a public service.
00:20:37.000You know, on that very important medical advice, I believe we need to leave it there, gentlemen.
00:20:40.940But I strongly recommend that everybody go out and get the Fauci and bargain, not only because you will learn a lot, not only because it's very important as a political matter, but also because it's a very funny title.
00:20:53.880Steve, thank you so much for being here.
00:20:55.500Senator, we've only got a minute or two left, but I cannot let you go without bringing up this mailbag question.
00:23:28.260I guess there actually is a bit of a through line when we're talking about the House race or other races around the country or even Prince Harry, which is there's something very unseemly about this ingratitude, you know, to your to your family, to your adoptive country, to this great political system that's given you a lot of rights to your constituents.
00:23:45.940That to yours, your words, that condescension, that arrogance, that elitism is really whatever the future is for the conservative movement, for the Republican Party, for our politics.
00:24:01.080But of course, we're going to see how that future is going to break, not just in the Republican leadership, but in these races, 2021, 2022, and ultimately 2024.
00:24:11.540But we'll have to, I suppose, hold it there for now.
00:24:25.800This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country.
00:24:38.400In 2022, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.