Verdict with Ted Cruz - 5 Troubling Facts About Special Counsel Jack Smith, Plus Dems Pushing Spending & Gun Control!

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.560 There's a special prosecutor that's been announced.

00:00:07.300 So who is this prosecutor and where did he come from?

00:00:10.120 We're going to give you the details on that.

00:00:11.620 Also, a major spending bill working its way through Congress.

00:00:15.460 What does it actually mean and why is no one talking about it?

00:00:18.760 Plus, Democrats had some interesting things to say about your guns over the holidays

00:00:23.200 and some dark messages about Thanksgiving.

00:00:26.860 This is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.

00:00:29.180 Senator, good to be back with you after Thanksgiving.

00:00:31.700 I hope you had a great time with your family.

00:00:33.480 I know you played some basketball and beat up on some younger family members,

00:00:37.340 so we should have that moment to gloat for you.

00:00:40.060 Well, my nephew Diego, who's now 23, I've been playing basketball with him since he was about three.

00:00:46.480 I will say he was captain of his high school team, and he's a very good ball player,

00:00:50.040 and so we went out Friday, played about three hours.

00:00:53.380 So there's good news and bad news.

00:00:54.880 We went to his old high school gym.

00:00:57.540 I teamed up with a coach there.

00:00:59.100 We played old guys against young guys.

00:01:00.860 Old guys won.

00:01:01.660 In fact, we won repeatedly.

00:01:02.940 I think one game we won 15-4.

00:01:05.240 Not that you're keeping count at all, right?

00:01:07.800 Well, of course I was.

00:01:09.040 But the depressing thing is, then at the end of the day, after about two hours of hoops,

00:01:13.480 I then played Diego one-on-one for about an hour, and unfortunately he beat me now.

00:01:17.980 Now, it was pretty even.

00:01:19.580 For a kid who's 23 and is a heck of a ball player, the last game he beat me 16-14.

00:01:24.760 We played a 15-win by two.

00:01:26.180 So I was pretty happy with that.

00:01:27.980 If I hadn't screwed up and missed a layup, I would have beaten him,

00:01:30.280 but I screwed up and missed a layup.

00:01:31.580 See, I know that this will be admitted from the podcast probably about 10 years from now,

00:01:35.200 right, when the scores change, so we enjoy the moment while you've got it.

00:01:38.360 Absolutely.

00:01:39.020 All right.

00:01:39.380 So a lot of people over the holidays took a break,

00:01:41.760 and there was some news that broke right before Thanksgiving,

00:01:44.480 and it was news about the special prosecutor looking at Donald Trump.

00:01:49.400 And then we got the name of the guy who's going to be the special prosecutor.

00:01:52.980 And the question is, obviously, who is this guy?

00:01:56.440 We now know something about him.

00:01:58.040 We know that he's, one, not an unbiased guy,

00:02:00.860 which is exactly what they tried to claim when they announced the special prosecutor.

00:02:04.200 And, two, he's a guy that also had deep connections to the Lois Lerner and the IRS

00:02:08.860 when they were targeting conservative and Tea Party groups.

00:02:11.980 Now, if that's your resume, it's not exactly a guy that's unbiased.

00:02:15.360 It sounds like they brought in a killer to take down Donald Trump

00:02:18.280 using the government and everything that he could have at his disposal with a special prosecutor.

00:02:23.400 Well, I think there are five things to know about Jack Smith,

00:02:27.080 and they're all relevant, they're all important,

00:02:29.380 and they're all being underreported by the corporate media.

00:02:33.100 Number one, remember, this guy was hand-selected by Merrick Garland.

00:02:36.940 Merrick Garland could have appointed any special prosecutor he wanted.

00:02:39.660 He picked Jack Smith.

00:02:41.420 Merrick Garland knows exactly what he's doing.

00:02:43.080 The hard partisans at DOJ know exactly what they're doing.

00:02:47.760 They appointed Jack Smith to indict Donald Trump.

00:02:50.540 That's why he's in there, is to bring the indictment and to prosecute him.

00:02:54.760 It was the deliberate choice of partisans at DOJ.

00:02:58.560 Now, how do we know that their choice was actually a good one

00:03:01.820 from the perspective of a left-wing partisan?

00:03:03.820 Well, four other facts.

00:03:05.820 When Smith was head of the Public Integrity Unit,

00:03:08.840 this is actually not the first presidential candidate

00:03:11.720 or potential presidential candidate Smith has prosecuted.

00:03:14.720 Smith, his office led the prosecution of Bob McDonnell.

00:03:20.040 Bob McDonnell was the governor of Virginia.

00:03:21.980 Yeah.

00:03:22.240 At the time he was governor of Virginia,

00:03:23.720 he was viewed as a credible and even a serious potential Republican presidential candidate.

00:03:29.220 And then Jack Smith's office prosecuted him.

00:03:31.700 They prosecuted him for essentially bribery.

00:03:34.240 And there was a big donor in Virginia that had given a series of gifts to McDonnell and his wife

00:03:41.660 that certainly looked improper and raised significant questions about at least appearances.

00:03:49.160 But Smith got a conviction, convicted him of multiple federal counts.

00:03:55.660 That case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:03:57.860 Do you know what the U.S. Supreme Court did with it?

00:03:59.260 I'm guessing it was probably one of those moments where they said no.

00:04:02.820 So they reversed the conviction.

00:04:04.520 What do you think the vote was in the Supreme Court to reverse the conviction?

00:04:07.760 Only because I feel like I have insider information here.

00:04:10.640 It was not good if you were on the team of the prosecution trying to go after him.

00:04:15.100 Well, the vote was unanimous.

00:04:16.320 It was 9-0.

00:04:17.260 That means every single justice, all of them, including the left-wing justices,

00:04:22.600 voted to vacate the conviction.

00:04:25.220 Now, let me tell you why.

00:04:26.700 What happened, you had this donor that gave gifts to the governor and his wife,

00:04:31.900 but in order to convict him, you had to show that the governor did an official act,

00:04:36.820 essentially that it was bribery in exchange for an official act,

00:04:39.600 like signing a bill or vetoing a bill or issuing an order.

00:04:42.760 Well, he didn't do any of that.

00:04:44.420 What he did is he set up a couple of meetings and he hosted a party.

00:04:47.960 And the theory of Jack Smith's office was that was enough to be bribery.

00:04:52.980 And here's what the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion.

00:04:56.820 It's a unanimous opinion.

00:04:58.280 I'm just going to read it.

00:05:00.160 Setting up a meeting, hosting an event, or calling an official or agreeing to do so,

00:05:03.460 merely to talk about a research study or gather additional information,

00:05:07.520 however, does not qualify as a decision or action on the pending question

00:05:10.780 of whether to initiate the study.

00:05:12.960 Simply expressing support for the research study at a meeting, event, or call,

00:05:17.120 or sending a subordinate to such a meeting, event, or call,

00:05:20.080 similarly does not qualify as a decision or action.

00:05:23.560 Skipping forward.

00:05:25.160 Otherwise, if every action somehow related to the research study were, quote,

00:05:28.780 an official act, the requirement that a public official make a decision or take an action

00:05:33.360 on that study or agree to do so would be meaningless.

00:05:37.120 Now, let me tell you a little bit more about what the unanimous Supreme Court said.

00:05:41.500 Conscientious public officials arrange meetings for constituents,

00:05:44.320 contact other officials on their behalf,

00:05:46.080 and include them in events all the time.

00:05:49.260 The basic compact underlying representative government assumes that public officials

00:05:53.940 will hear from their constituents and act appropriately on their concerns,

00:05:57.800 whether it is the union official worried about a plant closing

00:06:00.540 or the homeowners who wonder why it took five days to restore power to their neighborhood after a storm.

00:06:05.720 The government's position would cast a pall of potential prosecution over these relationships

00:06:11.700 if the union had given a campaign contribution in the past

00:06:14.600 or the homeowners invited the official to join them in the annual outing at the ballgame.

00:06:19.840 Officials might wonder whether they could respond to even the most commonplace requests for assistance

00:06:25.300 and citizens with legitimate concerns might shrink from participating in democratic discourse.

00:06:31.940 Now, who all agreed with this?

00:06:33.780 Let me turn to the next paragraph of the Supreme Court opinion.

00:06:37.400 This concern is substantial.

00:06:39.100 White House counsel, who worked in every administration from that of President Reagan

00:06:45.920 to President Obama, warned that the government's, quote,

00:06:51.820 breathtaking expansion of public corruption law

00:06:55.200 would likely chill federal officials' interactions with people they serve

00:07:01.220 and thus damage their ability to effectively perform their duties.

00:07:06.300 Six former Virginia attorneys general, four Democrat and two Republicans,

00:07:11.620 also filed an amicus brief in this course echoing those concerns,

00:07:16.540 as did 77 former state attorneys general from states other than Virginia,

00:07:23.100 41 Democrats, 35 Republicans, and one independent.

00:07:26.420 Now, I want you to realize that means the guy who's been appointed to head this

00:07:31.440 led a prosecution against someone who was a sitting governor,

00:07:37.400 against someone who was a serious presidential candidate.

00:07:40.500 It ended his presidential candidacy.

00:07:42.660 Ended his career, in essence.

00:07:43.680 Ended his career.

00:07:45.160 And he got the entire thing thrown out unanimously by the Supreme Court

00:07:48.940 as a breathtaking expansion of federal authority.

00:07:52.640 That's who Merrick Garland is appointed.

00:07:54.140 Almost no one has reported on this fact.

00:07:56.920 That's a pretty bad initial characteristic.

00:08:00.400 But there's more.

00:08:01.720 You mentioned Lois Lerner.

00:08:02.920 Yeah.

00:08:03.960 Let's talk about Lois Lerner.

00:08:05.960 Senator, I want to go into the media and how they're covering this.

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00:09:39.980 All right, now, well, let's go back and remind people

00:09:42.560 because they may have forgotten who Lois Lerner was,

00:09:46.340 what was going on at the time,

00:09:48.560 what administration was in charge when you used the IRS

00:09:52.360 to go after and attack conservative and Tea Party groups

00:09:57.000 and Christian groups, groups of faith,

00:09:59.780 just because you wanted to silence them,

00:10:01.720 and the federal government was used to do this.

00:10:03.700 Well, that's right.

00:10:04.620 So this is during the Obama administration,

00:10:06.460 and what happened during the Obama administration,

00:10:08.780 Lois Lerner headed a section of the IRS,

00:10:11.360 that the Treasury Inspector General called out for improperly targeting

00:10:19.820 Tea Party groups, conservative groups, pro-life groups, pro-Israel groups,

00:10:26.200 and for persecuting them.

00:10:28.720 And it's worth noting, so my new book that just came out,

00:10:33.140 Justice Corrupted, How the Left Has Weaponized the Legal System,

00:10:36.160 there's an entire chapter called The IRS Comes Knocking

00:10:38.880 that details and lays this out.

00:10:41.660 So I would encourage folks, go buy the book, Justice Corrupted.

00:10:44.080 You can read all about this.

00:10:45.200 But, you know, today's sort of fevered partisan pitch,

00:10:49.780 Democrats might say, oh, there was no IRS scandal.

00:10:53.060 Well, you know who disagrees with that?

00:10:54.980 Barack Obama.

00:10:55.940 Barack Obama.

00:10:56.840 Here's what Barack Obama said publicly.

00:10:58.620 By the way, I'm reading from the New York Times.

00:11:00.680 Quote, Americans have a right to be angry about it,

00:11:05.240 and I'm angry about it.

00:11:07.240 This is a quote from Obama.

00:11:08.720 It should not matter what political stripe you're from.

00:11:12.040 The fact of the matter is the IRS has to operate with absolute integrity.

00:11:18.560 So that's what Obama said the day after the Treasury Inspector General report came out.

00:11:23.200 So he was embarrassed.

00:11:24.840 They were caught weaponizing the IRS and targeting their opponents.

00:11:30.320 Now, what happened subsequently?

00:11:31.780 And by the way, it was a brilliant point in his career.

00:11:34.080 When he had that press conference, he played it perfectly politically

00:11:37.980 because he came out and looked like he was angry.

00:11:40.640 How dare the government do this?

00:11:42.300 How dare the IRS do this?

00:11:43.500 I'm angry.

00:11:44.140 This is wrong.

00:11:44.920 I'm on your side, America.

00:11:46.620 Even though he was the guy that was in charge of them actually doing this.

00:11:50.880 And you've got to understand the timing also.

00:11:52.760 The Tea Party rose up in 2009 and 2010 in response to Obama's excesses.

00:11:58.580 In 2010, we had a tidal wave election, retook the House with a massive majority.

00:12:03.520 That was fueled by the Tea Party.

00:12:05.360 Yeah.

00:12:05.460 Obama was going into his reelect in 2012, and he was worried about the Tea Party.

00:12:09.620 He was worried about millions of Americans he had angered.

00:12:12.240 Look, I got elected in 2012.

00:12:13.820 I was elected by the Tea Party.

00:12:15.720 Those activists, I wouldn't be in the Senate without the Tea Party.

00:12:19.500 And so the IRS targeting the Tea Party, it was a very real political threat that the White House was concerned about

00:12:25.380 that they sicked the government on to try to stop.

00:12:28.460 And it had a real effect.

00:12:29.840 These activists began getting subpoenas, began getting investigations, began spending thousands and tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer fees.

00:12:39.100 I detail in the book Justice Corrupted how Tea Party activists, it wasn't just the IRS, OSHA, all sorts of federal agencies would descend upon them

00:12:48.460 as they used the muscle, the machinery of the federal government to target their enemies.

00:12:53.460 Well, what's Jack Smith's involvement in this?

00:12:55.460 Well, he is at the time the head of the Public Integrity Unit at the Department of Justice.

00:13:02.860 Can you explain what that unit's supposed to do in general?

00:13:05.680 Because it sounds like it's a do-gooder position.

00:13:08.200 It sounds like this is above reproach kind of position.

00:13:10.760 Why would we even bring that up that that's where he was?

00:13:13.300 So it's an important role, but it's a role that prosecutes public officials.

00:13:17.500 So whether Democrats or Republicans, when there's official corruption, when there's bribery, the job of it is,

00:13:22.720 look, if you have a crook in office who's on the take, they ought to be prosecuted and sent to jail.

00:13:27.580 So that's an important office.

00:13:29.480 The question is, what kind of job did Jack Smith do when he ran it?

00:13:33.680 And we know, number one, he went after Bob McDonnell, and the unanimous Supreme Court slapped him down for a breathtakingly overbroad reading of the law.

00:13:41.000 Well, that does not – that's not a point in his column unless you want a partisan to go after Donald Trump,

00:13:47.980 in which case it's a great point in his column if you're looking at it from a left-wing partisan lens.

00:13:53.560 But how about Lois Lerner?

00:13:55.300 So in 2010, the New York Times wrote an article entitled, Donor Names Remain Secret as Rules Shift, which opened with an anecdote about a conservative group.

00:14:08.620 And that was much of the basis for what Lois Lerner did subsequently targeting the IRS.

00:14:15.120 What did Jack Smith do?

00:14:16.980 After reading it, Smith wrote to DOJ colleagues, and let me quote,

00:14:20.360 Check out the article on the front page of the New York Times regarding misuse of nonprofits for indirectly funding campaigns.

00:14:28.220 This seems egregious to me.

00:14:30.880 Could we ever charge 18 U.S.C. Section 371 conspiracy to violate laws of the USA for misuse of such nonprofits to get around existing campaign finance laws and limits?

00:14:44.820 IRS Commissioner Sarah Ingram oversees these groups.

00:14:47.380 Let's discuss tomorrow, but maybe we should try to set up a meeting.

00:14:51.520 So he saw this and said, hey, let's go after these Tea Party groups.

00:14:54.580 Let's set up a meeting.

00:14:55.460 Let's go after them.

00:14:57.040 It was an opportunity, he saw, to basically abuse the office which he was supposed to be in that was supposed to be looking at corruption of officials.

00:15:04.520 And by the way, the IRS in turn sent 21 disks containing 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax return information, including confidential taxpayer information, to the FBI in advance of this meeting with Lois Lerner.

00:15:25.500 The documents were sent to then FBI Supervisory Special Agent Bryant Fitzpatrick.

00:15:30.300 Look, the fact that Jack Smith's reaction to this is let's get another overbroad interpretation of the law to go persecute.

00:15:38.780 And notice, he's not concerned about people on the left.

00:15:41.780 He's not concerned about Democrat dark money.

00:15:43.740 He's concerned about the same conservatives that Lois Lerner was targeting, the same political enemies of the Obama White House.

00:15:51.120 And by the way, here's what the Treasury Inspector General concluded in 2013, quote, the IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations.

00:16:02.660 And when the IRS settled the case, ultimately, the IRS explicitly admitted that his actions, quote, were wrong and, quote, for such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.

00:16:17.780 You know what didn't happen?

00:16:19.720 Lois Lerner was never prosecuted.

00:16:21.560 Which, if you go back to, there were Republicans that were calling for a special prosecutor back then to look at all this.

00:16:27.200 You're talking to one of them who loudly called for a special prosecutor.

00:16:30.660 And that's the first time you probably heard this guy's name because they kept using his own words as part of the reason why they said we need a special prosecutor for the way that he was acting.

00:16:41.340 Well, and it's even more than that.

00:16:43.200 So the Inspector General report comes out.

00:16:46.960 The President of the United States says he's angry and the American people have a right to be angry.

00:16:50.300 Eric Holder is the Attorney General, incredibly, at the time, the most partisan Attorney General we'd ever had until Lorena Lynch and now until Merrick Garland.

00:16:58.380 They keep ratcheting it up and getting more and more partisan.

00:17:02.020 Eric Holder, when this happened, appointed not a special prosecutor but just appointed a prosecutor within DOJ to examine it.

00:17:09.600 That prosecutor happened to be a major donor to Democrats, a woman, I think her name was Barbara Bosserman, if I remember correctly, who had given over $6,000 to Obama and to the DNC.

00:17:23.060 I stood on the Senate floor and publicly called on Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor who was not, in fact, a major donor to Democrats.

00:17:34.240 DOJ ignored it.

00:17:35.160 Not only that, when Lois Lerner was subpoenaed and came before the House of Representatives, she pled the fifth.

00:17:40.500 She refused to testify.

00:17:42.480 The House of Representatives voted to hold her in contempt of Congress.

00:17:46.360 You know what never happened?

00:17:47.800 She had never prosecuted for contempt of Congress.

00:17:49.920 You know why?

00:17:51.020 Because the only person that can prosecute is the Attorney General, is the Department of Justice.

00:17:55.640 And Eric Holder refused to prosecute.

00:17:57.580 And by the way, Eric Holder was held in contempt of Congress.

00:18:00.420 And never prosecuted.

00:18:01.200 And never prosecuted.

00:18:02.300 Amazingly enough, he chose not to prosecute himself.

00:18:04.280 I mean, the corruption is deep, but it's not just that.

00:18:10.040 So you have, number one, Jack Smith is handpicked by Merrick Garland.

00:18:13.680 You have, number two, the debacle of the failed prosecution of Bob McDonnell unanimously reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:18:20.920 You have, number three, Smith's involvement and significant involvement in the cover-up of Lois Lerner and the IRS targeting of conservatives and the refusal to prosecute it.

00:18:32.560 But you have something else also.

00:18:35.100 You have his wife.

00:18:37.020 Now, who is his wife?

00:18:38.020 Look, normally someone's spouse shouldn't be central to it.

00:18:41.440 But his wife, you know what his wife reminds me of?

00:18:44.380 His wife reminds me of the prosecutor that Eric Holder chose.

00:18:50.320 His wife, it turns out, like that prosecutor, is a donor.

00:18:53.400 A donor to whom?

00:18:54.260 To Joe Biden.

00:18:55.080 What year?

00:18:55.840 2020.

00:18:56.980 His wife gave $1,000 to Joe Biden.

00:19:00.160 Okay, so she's a Democrat.

00:19:01.900 She supported Joe Biden.

00:19:02.940 She's opposed Trump.

00:19:04.480 All right.

00:19:05.040 A lot of people fall into that category.

00:19:07.180 There are a whole bunch of people that gave money to Joe Biden.

00:19:09.660 That's not necessarily disqualifying.

00:19:12.600 What else did she do?

00:19:14.400 She was a producer of a documentary on Michelle Obama entitled Becoming.

00:19:21.200 Now you start getting out there.

00:19:22.600 Wait a second.

00:19:23.160 She's a donor to Biden.

00:19:24.680 She's a producer of a documentary.

00:19:26.900 I would ask even, look, ask yourself, how many partisan Democrats do you know?

00:19:31.040 Yeah.

00:19:31.360 Did any of them produce a movie?

00:19:33.220 About Michelle Obama.

00:19:34.020 That is a puff piece on Obama.

00:19:37.240 No.

00:19:37.420 And by the way, that's not the only movie she produced.

00:19:39.680 She also produced a movie called Dark Money, which is an attack on Citizens United, an attack

00:19:45.340 on free speech.

00:19:46.820 So his wife, as a movie maker, has been an activist, but a left-wing activist that is

00:19:53.360 both pumping up Democratic politicians and also leading the propaganda effort to tear down

00:20:01.680 the ability of individuals to speak in the political world.

00:20:04.760 And those individuals are almost always on the right that the left opposes.

00:20:08.420 Sure.

00:20:09.080 Suddenly you read his comments a little bit differently, that when Jack Smith is reading

00:20:13.260 the New York Times, he says, hey, can we creatively prosecute them and go after them?

00:20:18.240 This is a prosecutor who Merrick Garland put in there for one purpose and one purpose only,

00:20:24.180 and that is to indict and to prosecute Donald Trump.

00:20:27.320 And it is the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

00:20:30.520 And I think it's disgraceful.

00:20:31.680 Let's go back to the prosecution of Bob that you mentioned a moment ago and how important

00:20:36.340 that is, because people need to understand the definition of success here is just getting

00:20:41.140 an indictment.

00:20:41.880 Even if you get him an indictment and you prosecute and you find him guilty, right?

00:20:46.380 That would be a dream.

00:20:47.720 But if it gets overthrown down the road, does it really matter?

00:20:50.160 Because as you mentioned, Bob's career was over the moment he got indicted.

00:20:54.900 Really, the moment they started the investigation.

00:20:56.920 You don't come back from that.

00:20:58.840 And so my point is, it's not necessarily putting Donald Trump in jail.

00:21:03.880 They just, as you said, just want to indict him.

00:21:06.060 They want to do it in a place that's going to be easy.

00:21:07.920 We mentioned that on the last podcast when we talked about this.

00:21:10.940 And then it's just saying, OK, we'll keep you out of the White House.

00:21:13.760 That is success.

00:21:14.920 They hate Donald Trump, but they also have a self-righteous certitude that they believe

00:21:23.240 what they are doing is just and good, and therefore everything in the furtherance of

00:21:28.960 it is just and good as well.

00:21:30.480 Anything that hurts Donald Trump, or for that matter, hurts Republicans.

00:21:33.980 Remember, this is the same Merrick Garland that has signed off as authored a memo to the

00:21:38.800 FBI telling him to target parents as domestic terrorists if they speak up at school boards.

00:21:42.920 This is the same Merrick Garland that has authorized FBI agents to storm the homes of pro-life activists

00:21:50.020 with machine guns drawn at the crack of dawn while their children scream in the background.

00:21:55.300 The left, and part of the reason they do this, is because the corporate media doesn't report on it.

00:22:01.440 So the facts I'm talking about...

00:22:03.060 No one's talked about it.

00:22:03.920 Have you seen, you can read it in something like the Washington Examiner, you can read it

00:22:08.520 on right-wing media, but where's ABC, CBS, NBC?

00:22:11.660 How come they haven't talked about the failed Bob McDonnell prosecution, and why did Biden

00:22:16.320 put the guy in charge of that?

00:22:18.360 By the way...

00:22:18.760 Well, why not go interview the guy and go, what did this do to your career?

00:22:21.080 What did this do to your life?

00:22:22.000 What did this do to your family?

00:22:22.900 How much did it cost you financially?

00:22:25.020 Where's that profile piece that should have immediately come out?

00:22:28.260 Hey, you were prosecuted by this individual.

00:22:31.020 This is what they did to you.

00:22:33.080 It all got overturned.

00:22:34.500 Did you ever get your life back?

00:22:35.920 And the answer I think we all know would be, no, I didn't get my life back.

00:22:38.740 Now, look, I will say, so Trump put out a statement blasting Smith, and in particular,

00:22:43.400 focusing on his wife.

00:22:45.020 And immediately the left has risen up.

00:22:47.340 How dare you attack his wife?

00:22:49.180 And listen, if that were the only criticism, it would raise questions, but it might not

00:22:53.860 alone be disqualifying.

00:22:56.000 When you put his wife being a Democrat donor, his wife producing a movie on Barack Obama,

00:23:01.200 his wife producing a propaganda film on so-called dark money, on top of leading the failed

00:23:09.940 McDonnell prosecution unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court, and Smith's deep involvement

00:23:15.300 in the Lois Lerner scandal, you know, it's like, actually, I don't even have to say what

00:23:21.700 it is like.

00:23:22.180 It is almost exactly like what Merrick Garland did, which is taking the person in charge of

00:23:28.040 the Detroit field office of the FBI, who had the absolute disgrace of a sham going after

00:23:35.760 the people that allegedly targeted Governor Gretchen Whitmer to kidnap and murder.

00:23:41.480 And when that story broke, we were horrified, said, OK, if they want to kidnap and murder

00:23:44.900 someone, they should go to jail for a long, long time.

00:23:47.900 Well, DOJ brought the prosecution and ended up everyone they prosecuted, not a single one

00:23:52.540 they took to trial was convicted on any count.

00:23:56.320 And the reason, the basis for their getting off was entrapment, that the FBI had essentially

00:24:01.100 suggested the idea and was pushing the idea.

00:24:04.940 The special agent in charge of that office that, I mean, you want to talk about one of the

00:24:09.100 ugliest black eyes on the FBI, that and again, I discussed this at length in Justice Corrupted.

00:24:16.060 What did Merrick Garland do?

00:24:17.980 That special agent was moved to D.C. and put in charge of the January 6th prosecutions,

00:24:24.160 again, going after the political enemies of the Biden White House.

00:24:28.020 You do your political work well.

00:24:29.520 No matter what the outcome is, we give you a promotion.

00:24:31.920 But even worse, you do your political work horribly.

00:24:34.820 Yeah.

00:24:34.980 You demonstrate you're a partisan, even though you're an incompetent partisan, and you lose

00:24:39.360 either having the jury throw out your case or having the Supreme Court unanimously throw

00:24:43.440 out your case.

00:24:44.380 That's fine.

00:24:46.020 Your job is to be a pit bull and bite.

00:24:49.120 What happens next is not your concern.

00:24:51.340 That's how this Biden DOJ approaches it.

00:24:53.200 Do that well and we'll give you your next big job.

00:24:54.760 Keep biting.

00:24:55.420 That's the job they expect, is attack, attack, attack.

00:24:59.820 Facts be damned.

00:25:00.900 Law be damned.

00:25:01.860 And that is incredibly dangerous.

00:25:03.400 Last question on this before we move on to the spending bill.

00:25:06.440 It's important, but I think people want to know, how does this move forward now?

00:25:10.660 Is it going to be quick?

00:25:11.880 What's the timetable here?

00:25:13.200 Or do they drag it out and try to hold over Trump's head since he's decided he's going

00:25:16.960 to run for president?

00:25:17.600 Or do they try to get him indicted quickly and then try to actually go to a trial?

00:25:21.380 I mean, give us your guess on the playbook here of what they're looking at.

00:25:26.340 I think they want to move quickly.

00:25:28.840 When Merrick Garland appointed Smith, he said that the appointment is not going to slow down.

00:25:32.980 The timetable at all.

00:25:35.080 I think that was one of the conditions of it.

00:25:37.000 Smith has a reputation for being a very aggressive prosecutor, for moving quickly.

00:25:41.640 He is an attack dog.

00:25:42.900 That's why they brought him in.

00:25:44.360 Attack.

00:25:45.740 I believe we will see Trump indicted within a year.

00:25:51.420 And I think in all likelihood within the next six months.

00:25:54.080 I think by June of 2023, this DOJ will have indicted Donald Trump.

00:25:59.980 And that's all for political calendar reasons.

00:26:02.720 Yes, exactly that.

00:26:04.920 They want to go after him.

00:26:07.140 They hate him.

00:26:09.340 It is not driven.

00:26:12.900 It's not driven by facts or law that they view it.

00:26:16.260 Look, if you were a vampire hunter in the 15th century, facts or law didn't matter.

00:26:22.300 If you encountered a vampire, you wanted to drive a stake into him.

00:26:25.560 That's how they view Donald Trump.

00:26:27.300 And it is with the same self-righteous indignation that they're going after him.

00:26:34.240 And that this is an indictment.

00:26:35.920 They started with a conclusion.

00:26:38.260 We're going to indict Trump.

00:26:39.460 Now they're trying to figure out on what.

00:26:41.080 Let's go figure out some basis.

00:26:42.720 Who knows?

00:26:43.580 They're going to figure out whatever has.

00:26:45.140 Figure out something because they don't even care if it sticks down the road.

00:26:47.500 They want to nail him to the wall and they'll figure out a basis.

00:26:51.520 Look, these are the same.

00:26:52.920 This is the same political team that impeached Trump not once but twice and is now suddenly

00:26:58.480 discovering that the shoe is on the other foot.

00:27:01.060 Canadian women are looking for more.

00:27:03.260 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:27:07.420 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:27:11.160 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:27:12.300 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:27:13.300 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,

00:27:18.680 athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

00:27:23.060 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:27:26.300 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:27:31.740 Senator, I want to move to the spending bill that looks like Democrats are going to try

00:27:35.980 to ram through some serious spending measures before Republicans gain control of the House.

00:27:41.820 This is something you're going to try to do right before the holidays.

00:27:45.040 I'm referring to Christmas, obviously.

00:27:47.380 What's going on with this bill real quick?

00:27:49.300 Because people need to understand they're about to spend a lot of our money.

00:27:52.640 So, yeah.

00:27:53.020 So there are two ways that the federal government is funded.

00:27:57.220 One is through appropriations bills.

00:27:59.300 And in an ordinary cycle, you have 13 appropriation bills that cover each of the different cabinet

00:28:04.420 agencies and that are passed through the ordinary regular course.

00:28:08.900 Congress almost never does that anymore.

00:28:10.520 There's so much dysfunction in Congress that regular appropriation bills don't move anymore.

00:28:15.940 Congress doesn't do its job.

00:28:18.600 That means that instead, government is funded either with what's called an omnibus, which

00:28:25.880 is grabbing a bunch of those appropriation bills, lumping them all together in one gigantic

00:28:30.920 trillion-dollar-plus bill.

00:28:33.120 What does omnibus mean?

00:28:34.360 So many people hear this.

00:28:35.780 It's a big Washington word.

00:28:37.200 What does it actually mean for people?

00:28:39.160 Because I get asked it all the time on my show.

00:28:41.480 I don't know.

00:28:42.060 Lots of buses.

00:28:43.400 Omnibus.

00:28:44.000 I was wondering if there was some way to that, where that even came from.

00:28:48.520 I am sure there's someone that knows the etymology of it.

00:28:51.620 It means a whole lot of crap crammed into one.

00:28:54.680 It costs us a lot of money.

00:28:56.080 And by the way, they contrast that to sometimes they refer to a minibus.

00:29:00.060 And a minibus is basically a smaller omnibus, and mini is modifying omnibus.

00:29:06.640 But omnibus is grabbing the appropriation bills and all ramming them into one giant bill

00:29:11.980 that you then pass up or down, usually with no amendments whatsoever.

00:29:16.620 The other way government is funded is through what's called a continuing resolution.

00:29:21.820 Yep.

00:29:22.300 Now, a continuing resolution is much shorter, and it usually just continues government spending

00:29:27.520 at the level it is at currently for a fixed period of time.

00:29:32.000 Sometimes you have a continuing resolution.

00:29:34.060 It's usually referred to as a CR.

00:29:35.560 CR, yeah.

00:29:36.560 Sometimes you have it for a day or a week.

00:29:40.000 Sometimes you have it for a few months.

00:29:41.200 And that's usually what happens when there's a threat of a government shutdown, right?

00:29:43.840 We see it midnight on a Saturday evening, a CR that's going to last for a week or six days

00:29:49.860 or three days, whatever, so the government keeps functioning.

00:29:52.500 So we are right now in a CR.

00:29:54.060 The CR expires the second week of December.

00:29:56.600 Now, there's a reason that Democrats wanted it the second week of December.

00:30:02.580 They wanted it, number one, after the election, when they knew what would happen.

00:30:06.800 Yep.

00:30:07.060 But number two, they want it right before Christmas because lawmakers get really fidgety before

00:30:11.740 Christmas.

00:30:12.260 They want to go home.

00:30:13.000 They want to be on vacation.

00:30:14.440 And historically, they're willing to pass all sorts of bad crap.

00:30:19.300 Just to get home.

00:30:19.820 To get out of town and go home for Christmas.

00:30:21.780 And so there is right now a pending and important debate in the United States Senate.

00:30:27.760 Should we pass an omnibus in December?

00:30:31.580 Or should we wait until next year to take up appropriation bills?

00:30:35.180 Now, I view the answer as a no-brainer.

00:30:37.520 Hell no, we should not pass a Democrat omnibus in a lame duck session.

00:30:44.120 And here's why.

00:30:45.480 Why would we want to pass into law funding for the government through September 30th of

00:30:50.700 next year, through the end of the fiscal year, with all the Democrat priorities that

00:30:55.160 Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have signed off on, when a month from now we're going to

00:31:00.120 have a Republican House of Representatives, where we will have far greater leverage to

00:31:04.580 pass appropriations that reflect Republican priorities rather than Democrat priorities.

00:31:10.080 So that means you'd be in favor of basically a CR.

00:31:12.860 Yes.

00:31:13.360 Until the new Congress gets in that everybody just voted for, which obviously makes sense.

00:31:17.980 If you care about the voters, you care about what they said and the will of the people,

00:31:21.560 you would wait until then to do it.

00:31:22.880 So, and I helped lead a group of conservative senators and a handful of us publicly urged our

00:31:27.740 colleagues, let's pass a CR until January or February of next year, wait till the new

00:31:33.920 Congress gets in, and then we'll pass an appropriations bill, either appropriation bills or an omnibus

00:31:39.320 with a new Republican House of Representatives.

00:31:42.860 There's a big battle playing out.

00:31:45.300 What is happening is Republican leadership, and in particular, Mitch McConnell, and also the

00:31:53.660 outgoing ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby, who's retiring,

00:32:00.160 and also the incoming ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Susan Collins, all of

00:32:07.820 them want to pass this omnibus bill in the lame duck.

00:32:11.840 They're perfectly fine with the priorities of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.

00:32:18.000 And it is an open question whether all it will take is 10 Republicans rolling over and

00:32:24.840 agreeing with the Democrats, and they'll pass this omnibus.

00:32:27.720 And a bunch of those Republicans who are likely to roll over are retiring Republicans who are

00:32:33.020 getting ready to be fat cat lobbyists.

00:32:35.200 And they want all the things in there, the pork barrel spending, that helps them with the

00:32:38.180 lobbyists.

00:32:38.540 And an omnibus is filled with pork barrel spending.

00:32:41.580 It's filled with, I mean, it can be a couple thousand pages.

00:32:45.320 Nobody has read the thing.

00:32:47.220 It is put together.

00:32:48.460 You just throw it in there, your line of what you want, and to get your vote.

00:32:51.740 Now, let me give you a historical context, because you might say, okay, well, what typically

00:32:56.100 does one do?

00:32:57.520 In modern times, when there has been a change of control of Congress, no Congress in modern

00:33:04.380 times has passed an omnibus.

00:33:07.280 And let me focus on it.

00:33:09.520 Since 1994, control of the House has changed hands in four midterm election cycles.

00:33:15.520 1994, 2006, 2010, and 2018.

00:33:22.720 Never before has the outgoing House majority passed an omnibus appropriations bill during

00:33:29.680 the lame duck session following the election.

00:33:31.740 Let me give you those four.

00:33:32.580 Let's break it down a little bit to give some substance.

00:33:34.440 In 1994, historic, massive Republican victory.

00:33:39.580 Republicans won a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

00:33:44.100 But the 103rd Congress, the Congress there had already done its job.

00:33:47.120 It had already passed the 13 appropriations bills before the lame duck session.

00:33:51.760 So there were no appropriations bills before it.

00:33:53.840 It didn't pass any.

00:33:54.800 So 94, it didn't happen.

00:33:55.960 All right.

00:33:57.260 How about 2006?

00:33:59.120 2006, you had a Republican president, George W. Bush, and Democrats took both chambers,

00:34:05.740 the House and Senate.

00:34:06.700 Yeah.

00:34:07.280 The outgoing Congress proposed 11 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2007.

00:34:15.200 Just two had been passed before the lame duck session.

00:34:21.420 During that session, what did Congress do?

00:34:25.080 Passed two short-term continuing resolutions extending the date of appropriations through

00:34:30.200 February.

00:34:31.360 So that's what happened when Republicans were losing control to the Democrats.

00:34:34.900 They said, OK, we can't pass our appropriations.

00:34:37.040 We'd like to, but we can't.

00:34:39.240 And by the way, they had a Republican president.

00:34:40.980 So you want to talk about a very comparable situation, and they said, let's do a CR and

00:34:45.900 let the new Congress figure it out.

00:34:47.120 How about 2010?

00:34:48.300 Another big Republican takeover.

00:34:51.420 Republicans retake the House in 2010.

00:34:54.300 The 111th Congress failed to pass even a single regular appropriations bill.

00:35:01.960 So instead, three continuing resolutions were passed to extend government funding.

00:35:07.200 And then finally, 2018, not that long ago.

00:35:09.860 Democrats took control of the House.

00:35:13.480 Prior to the 2018 lame duck session, Congress passed two minibus appropriations bills.

00:35:20.560 So not all of them crammed together.

00:35:22.560 They contained five smaller spending bills and a continuing resolution.

00:35:26.480 That was before the lame duck.

00:35:28.260 During the lame duck, lawmakers passed a continuing resolution to provide funding through December

00:35:33.700 21st.

00:35:34.460 Congress then failed to agree on another short-term continuing resolution, resulting in a funding

00:35:40.280 lapse, a government shutdown.

00:35:42.360 Government shutdown, yeah.

00:35:43.260 Until the next Congress convened.

00:35:44.860 And by the way, that was driven by the Democrats.

00:35:47.480 That was the Chuck Schumer shutdown, which, of course, the press didn't cover because it was

00:35:50.900 a Democrat shutdown.

00:35:51.860 And so that doesn't count.

00:35:52.980 So literally, since 1994, this has never happened.

00:35:57.800 And it comes down to the exact same question.

00:36:00.660 Listen, this podcast is coming out Monday morning.

00:36:05.500 Monday at 5.30 p.m., we're going to have the cloture vote on the marriage bill.

00:36:10.440 And we're going to find out today at 5.30 p.m. whether three of the 12 Republicans who decided

00:36:18.440 to embrace gay marriage are going to stand up for religious liberty or not.

00:36:22.180 And it will come down to if three of those 12 say, I will vote no on cloture unless Mike

00:36:30.000 Lee's religious liberty amendment is added to the bill, not given a fake up-down vote that

00:36:35.520 it will lose.

00:36:35.860 It's going to be one and the same.

00:36:37.120 Written into the bill, we'll find out at 5.30 today whether three of those 12 have the courage

00:36:44.660 to do that.

00:36:46.080 The question on this omnibus is the same thing.

00:36:49.020 Are there 41 Republicans in the United States Senate who say, hell no, we are not passing a

00:36:58.000 Schumer-Pelosi year-long appropriations bill in the lame duck session when we're getting ready

00:37:04.380 to have a Republican House of Representatives.

00:37:06.820 It ought to be that Republican House who negotiates with, sadly, the Democrat Senate and adopts

00:37:12.920 appropriation bills in January or February.

00:37:16.420 That's a critical issue.

00:37:17.840 I can tell you our leadership in the Senate wants to pass the Schumer-Pelosi bill.

00:37:22.680 Which is just shocking.

00:37:24.320 I say shocking, it's not shocking if you know the players, but it is shocking when you just

00:37:29.540 run back the house that you're even in this situation.

00:37:32.140 I also want to ask you about this, you know, is there a possibility if this gets into a fight

00:37:36.360 because this is the new threat?

00:37:37.520 You and I are both fans of the West Wing.

00:37:39.680 There's a great episode in the West Wing about why you don't shut down the government when

00:37:43.800 they were going through a government shutdown.

00:37:45.880 I remember watching one of the characters, Josh Lyman, he's like, you don't shut down the government

00:37:49.620 and here's why they blame you.

00:37:50.720 They'll fine every person to claim they're having the worst day of their lives.

00:37:53.160 Because they'll put it on TV and this is why you don't do it.

00:37:55.440 And now we see that be the threat.

00:37:56.740 Anytime someone's like, well, if you don't do a CR or you don't do what we tell you we're

00:38:00.640 going to do and you shut down the government, right, all hell's going to break loose.

00:38:05.040 Is that now basically used every single time you guys get to this point where it's a moment

00:38:09.580 where you must stand up and they're like, well, we'll blame you for shutting down the government.

00:38:12.620 So it is.

00:38:15.300 And we will have subsequent podcasts that go into depth on government shutdowns.

00:38:23.160 On the history of it, what they mean.

00:38:25.000 Because we're getting ready to move into a new era.

00:38:28.220 Where that could happen a lot.

00:38:29.020 With a Republican House and a Democrat president where we could face shutdowns in the next two

00:38:34.480 years.

00:38:35.440 And, you know, I've talked on this pod about how I helped lead the leadership fight against

00:38:40.560 Mitch McConnell.

00:38:41.180 And one of the central questions I said is, are we willing to use the lever of government

00:38:45.600 funding to fight for anything?

00:38:47.700 And leadership was unwilling to commit to fighting literally for anything for the next

00:38:51.760 two years, which is a big part of why people are so frustrated.

00:38:55.940 What I will say on this fight right now, will the media characterize it as Republicans want

00:39:02.060 to shut down the government?

00:39:03.000 Yes, because the media is the left wing of the Democrat Party.

00:39:06.540 They are dishonest and propagandist.

00:39:08.040 So they've always characterized it as that.

00:39:09.980 The irony of Josh Lyman in the TV show The West Wing is he was suggesting the media would

00:39:15.180 blame the Democrats for shutdown and the corrupt corporate media never does that.

00:39:18.680 It's always the Republican fault, no matter whether it's the Democrats or not who do it.

00:39:24.180 But here it's a simpler question because we can easily pass a CR.

00:39:29.600 Yeah.

00:39:29.820 We can pass a CR and extend funding through January or February, which means the government

00:39:35.660 doesn't shut down.

00:39:36.680 The only reason we wouldn't pass a CR is if Democrats refuse to do so.

00:39:40.480 If they say, nope, give us the Pelosi-Schumer funding bill or we'll shut down the government.

00:39:44.680 Now, will the Biden White House and the corrupt corporate media even then say it's Republicans

00:39:50.140 shutting down the government?

00:39:51.340 Yes.

00:39:52.380 Will Republican leadership say the same thing?

00:39:55.100 Maybe.

00:39:55.600 One of the great ironies of these battles is Republican leadership is often on the side

00:40:00.240 of a Democrat White House.

00:40:01.960 But here the question ought to be real simple.

00:40:04.600 Let's kick the can down the road a couple of months and let the new Congress elected by

00:40:10.360 the American people that have given Republicans the majority, let the new Congress decide.

00:40:14.820 Do the spending bill for the new Congress, in essence.

00:40:17.100 But by the way, what the Democrats are going to want to do is they're going to want to roll

00:40:20.560 everything they can into the lame duck.

00:40:23.220 So they're going to want to roll not just an omnibus spending bill.

00:40:25.720 They're going to want to roll the debt ceiling into this also.

00:40:28.020 Because those are the only two levers the new Congress has.

00:40:31.980 If you want to change any policies, you either have spending or the debt ceiling, the two

00:40:36.660 and only two.

00:40:38.060 So what are Schumer and Pelosi going to do?

00:40:40.000 Let's take both of those levers away and let's kick it down as far as we can so that

00:40:44.900 we render the new incoming Republican House toothless.

00:40:49.600 I get why Pelosi wants to do that.

00:40:52.060 I get why Schumer wants to do that.

00:40:54.140 I get why Biden wants to do that.

00:40:56.520 But why in the hell would the Republicans do it?

00:40:59.880 Would the Republicans do it?

00:41:01.260 And so I can tell you, we've already had some really vigorous arguments in the Senate

00:41:06.940 Republican conference room, and we're going to have really vigorous arguments over the

00:41:10.400 next couple of weeks.

00:41:12.180 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their

00:41:16.480 elected leaders and the world around them.

00:41:18.540 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:41:22.360 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:41:23.440 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:41:24.660 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,

00:41:29.520 athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

00:41:34.200 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:41:37.400 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:41:41.460 Over Thanksgiving, there was something else that happened that I think was shocking.

00:41:45.800 My phone blew up.

00:41:46.920 Full disclosure, my family and law enforcement, I own a gun store, and I started getting text

00:41:52.380 messages because Joe Biden came out and said something about this basically lame duck session

00:41:57.340 that you're about to come back to.

00:41:58.840 Coming after people's guns, but not just guns that they've been talking about for years,

00:42:03.040 all now semi-automatic weapons.

00:42:05.820 And I want you to see the clip from Biden and tell the American people, is this something

00:42:10.380 to worry about or not?

00:42:11.360 Take a look.

00:42:12.360 The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick.

00:42:18.740 It's just sick.

00:42:19.980 It has no, no social redeeming value.

00:42:23.140 Zero.

00:42:23.740 None.

00:42:24.880 Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit through the gun manifest.

00:42:28.800 Can you do anything about gun laws during the lame duck session?

00:42:31.280 I'm going to try.

00:42:32.540 What will you try and do?

00:42:33.480 I'm going to try to get rid of assault weapons.

00:42:35.460 I'm going to try.

00:42:36.560 That came out of nowhere.

00:42:38.120 Obviously, never let a crisis go to waste.

00:42:40.140 Democratic motto here.

00:42:41.540 They see an opportunity because of the shooting that happened, and they said, okay, let's go

00:42:45.700 after guns again.

00:42:46.820 Now it's all semi-automatic weapons.

00:42:49.260 They even put out a press statement from the White House.

00:42:51.940 Could this go somewhere in the lame duck?

00:42:54.300 So I don't believe it will.

00:42:56.180 One of the things to understand watching that clip, Joe Biden has no idea what he's talking

00:43:00.700 about.

00:43:01.280 Like when he says there's no socially redeeming purpose behind semi-automatic weapons, if

00:43:06.560 you asked him what's a semi-automatic weapon, he doesn't know.

00:43:10.280 Yeah.

00:43:11.180 I know it's hard.

00:43:12.540 He probably doesn't even realize he's been hunting with semi-automatic shotguns, which

00:43:15.920 is a semi-automatic weapon.

00:43:17.060 That he now says no one should own, even though he probably has used one in his life.

00:43:20.820 In fact, based on the paperwork, the gun that Hunter Biden's ex-lover threw away, his

00:43:27.000 ex-sister-in-law, was a semi-automatic weapon as well.

00:43:30.100 So, and look, folks that listen to Verdict are smart, are educated, and informed.

00:43:36.920 You know what terms mean.

00:43:38.700 But many of the Democrat advocates of gun control have no idea what terms mean.

00:43:45.460 Many of the reporters and editors in the corrupt corporate media have no idea what terms mean.

00:43:51.840 So they use the word assault weapon, which is a made-up term that essentially means scary-looking

00:43:58.400 weapons.

00:43:58.940 It's weapons that look like machine guns.

00:44:00.940 But let's take the word semi-automatic.

00:44:03.180 For someone that doesn't know anything about guns, they hear the word automatic, and they're

00:44:07.820 like, well, okay, that's got to be a machine gun, right?

00:44:11.460 And it's worth just explaining to listeners, and you guys know this, but maybe not everyone

00:44:16.100 knows this.

00:44:17.960 An automatic weapon, a fully automatic weapon, is a machine gun.

00:44:22.200 And you hold the trigger down, and multiple bullets come out.

00:44:26.140 Think Rambo spraying a machine gun, the military uses M-16s, they're fully automatic machine

00:44:31.520 guns.

00:44:32.140 Those are weapons of war.

00:44:33.360 That's a phrase the Democrats like to use.

00:44:35.080 Machine guns are weapons of war.

00:44:37.300 They have also been functionally illegal in the United States for over 80 years.

00:44:42.480 That means if you and I, actually, you can buy one because you have a gun store, you can

00:44:46.140 have a very specialized permit to get a fully automatic machine gun.

00:44:49.500 And it's very hard to do, by the way.

00:44:50.760 Even with our permits, even in the store, the amount of government paperwork, and I'm

00:44:55.040 not necessarily complaining, I'm just saying, it is still not easy.

00:44:58.240 As a practical matter, it is functionally illegal for an ordinary citizen to own a fully automatic

00:45:06.420 machine gun.

00:45:07.400 So what does semi-automatic mean?

00:45:09.720 Semi-automatic means, and you know this well, you pull the trigger once, a single bullet

00:45:14.660 comes out.

00:45:15.640 You pull the trigger a second time, a second bullet comes out.

00:45:18.760 So for each trigger pull, another bullet is fired.

00:45:22.080 Now, you can contrast that to, say, a revolver.

00:45:25.400 A revolver where you have to cock the hammer and then pull the trigger, and then you cock

00:45:30.060 the hammer and pull the trigger.

00:45:31.300 That's not semi-automatic.

00:45:32.960 There is an additional action, or say a bolt-action rifle, where you have to cock the bolt and

00:45:38.500 then fire.

00:45:39.960 An enormous percentage of firearms in the United States are semi-automatic.

00:45:45.260 A great, a great many pistols, shotguns, rifles are semi-automatic.

00:45:54.260 That is, when Joe Biden says there's no reason to sell a semi-automatic weapon, he's talking

00:46:01.740 about banning a vast swath of firearms in America.

00:46:07.240 The majority of them that are bought and sold every day are semi-automatic in this country.

00:46:10.400 And the one that saved my life in a shooting was semi-automatic.

00:46:13.140 The one that was given to my grandfather, to my dad, to me, is semi-automatic.

00:46:17.700 The shotgun that I use hunting that was given down for my family was semi-automatic.

00:46:22.060 This is not some new scary weapon of war thing that they're trying to obviously put out there.

00:46:27.280 But it worries me because even...

00:46:28.860 But see, the Dems are taking advantage of people who don't know what the word semi-automatic

00:46:32.800 means, and when they hear him talking about, they're picturing Rambo with a machine gun.

00:46:38.260 That's what they see in their, the camera in their mind because they're ignorant.

00:46:44.280 And I don't know if Biden ever knew what a semi-automatic weapon is, but today with his

00:46:49.680 diminished mental capacity, I'm confident watching that clip, he has zero idea what he's saying.

00:46:54.140 Is there anything that listeners need to do?

00:46:56.380 Do they need to call about this?

00:46:57.960 Or do you think this was him just shooting off the cuff?

00:47:00.440 Or is this genuinely something Democrats would try to sneak in there last minute?

00:47:03.820 So I think it's him shooting off the cuff, pun intended.

00:47:07.760 I think the chances of it passing into law are 0.00%.

00:47:12.120 Might the House take it up and pass it?

00:47:14.540 Sure.

00:47:15.060 I mean, look, I don't know what the House will do on the way out, and the Democrats might

00:47:18.340 decide they want a virtue signal.

00:47:20.660 But to have it pass in the Senate would take 60 votes.

00:47:24.560 And even as bad as the Republican conference is, there are not going to be 60 votes for any sort

00:47:30.020 of firearms ban.

00:47:31.180 We had the battle over the gun control bill earlier this year that some Republicans signed

00:47:35.620 up on.

00:47:36.500 It didn't come remotely close to what Biden is talking about.

00:47:40.500 And I will say, let's pause for a second and reflect on the predicate.

00:47:44.920 Why is Biden talking about this now?

00:47:47.140 And the reason is, of course, because you had this horrific shooting at the Gay Nightclub

00:47:52.100 in Colorado.

00:47:53.560 Now, look, I hate murderers.

00:47:57.040 I think we need to be incredibly vigorous going after violent criminals.

00:48:01.260 I think we need to.

00:48:02.480 I've been leading the fight for over a decade to devote more law enforcement resources to

00:48:06.900 getting violent criminals off the street before they commit crimes.

00:48:09.620 It is an amazing, you know, this shooting, the incident broke.

00:48:13.420 And of course, that it was targeting gay and lesbian individuals at a gay nightclub.

00:48:19.780 Corporate media was in paroxysms of joy.

00:48:23.580 The incident broke because it fit their narrative perfectly of targeting the LGBT community with

00:48:31.060 a mass shooting.

00:48:31.820 Therefore, we should confiscate everyone's guns.

00:48:33.760 And then suddenly the narrative took a horrible wrong turn from their perspective.

00:48:38.720 Number one, we found out initially that the mass murderer had previously threatened to

00:48:45.660 blow people up, including his own family with a bomb, and hadn't been prosecuted.

00:48:49.960 That was kind of a wrinkle because it raised obvious questions.

00:48:53.100 Why didn't they lock the guy up the last time he threatened a crime before he committed this?

00:48:56.940 And killing his own family, threatening with a bomb, blowing up his own mother.

00:49:00.140 But then the narrative came to a screeching halt when he filed a pleading in court that

00:49:08.220 indicated that he identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns they and them.

00:49:14.800 And suddenly you could hear the corporate media doing a collected, huh, what's it?

00:49:20.020 Yeah.

00:49:20.760 And magically.

00:49:22.100 The story disappeared.

00:49:23.560 Gone.

00:49:24.080 Just totally gone instantly.

00:49:25.500 And it is reminiscent of the horrific Christmas parade murder in Waukesha, where, again, you

00:49:33.260 had a black left-wing racist who a George Soros DA had repeatedly let out of jail with a slap

00:49:40.700 on the wrist, who drove his red SUV into a Christmas parade, murdering innocent people,

00:49:46.900 running over the dancing grannies, murdering children.

00:49:49.520 And that story was in the news for about four seconds because – now, look, I will say

00:49:55.700 this.

00:49:56.880 I think the Colorado shooter ought to be prosecuted and put to death.

00:50:03.120 I believe in capital punishment.

00:50:05.880 If you commit murder, especially mass murder, you deserve to die.

00:50:10.060 See how many Democrats will say that.

00:50:11.780 But I'll say this also, which is if this guy had been a right-wing Trump supporter wearing

00:50:23.480 a MAGA hat, it would still be leading the news tonight.

00:50:28.500 The press would spend two months putting this guy front and center.

00:50:33.560 If he'd been the guy who allegedly attacked Jussie Smollett until we discovered it was made

00:50:38.460 up, then the press would have gone crazy.

00:50:42.600 But suddenly, because the mass murderer identifies as non-binary, never mind.

00:50:48.740 We move on.

00:50:49.500 Because the narrative matters more than anything.

00:50:52.120 And so they'll find another instance to blow it up, to advance their political agenda, because

00:50:58.660 it's not about journalism, it's not about facts, and it's not about stopping crime.

00:51:02.740 No.

00:51:03.520 It is about their political agenda.

00:51:05.960 Well, and you'd think you'd learn from the situation.

00:51:07.920 If the guy threatened to blow up his own family, maybe we should prosecute that.

00:51:11.940 Maybe we should put him in prison.

00:51:13.680 Maybe we should give him mental help.

00:51:15.000 Whatever it may be, they will completely overlook all the warning signs that come.

00:51:19.700 We start seeing this happen more and more.

00:51:21.180 You see where there's multiple shooters now.

00:51:23.640 There was warning signs before.

00:51:24.980 There's mugshots before.

00:51:26.020 There's police interaction before.

00:51:27.680 There's serious mental issues before.

00:51:29.540 And immediately, every time in many of these cities, the liberal prosecutors do not go after

00:51:34.240 these people.

00:51:34.720 And they never go back and look at that first part of the story there, which I think is the

00:51:38.140 most frustrating for so many Americans and the victims who are hurt in these situations.

00:51:42.340 Well, and look, again, in my last book, Justice Corrupted, I have an entire chapter that walks

00:51:47.420 through the George Soros prosecutors in case after case after case where they let violent

00:51:51.560 criminals go and they turn around and commit more violent crimes.

00:51:54.520 We're in the city of Houston, where tragically we've seen left-wing judges and a left-wing

00:52:01.200 county judge in particular who've advanced cashless bail policies that have resulted in

00:52:07.500 murderers being released.

00:52:08.940 And an amazing thing, when you release murderers, they turn around and commit more murders.

00:52:14.280 And that, if you want to stop murders, mass murders, or even single murders, I'm against

00:52:19.460 all murders.

00:52:20.040 If you want to stop them, the answer is not to disarm law-abiding citizens, it's to go

00:52:24.800 after the criminals.

00:52:26.180 Lastly, Senator, Thanksgiving was very weird if you're watching the TV.

00:52:30.660 It was almost like Democrats really didn't want you to enjoy Thanksgiving with your family.

00:52:35.120 Joy Reid came out with this diatribe on basically why you shouldn't be enjoying Thanksgiving.

00:52:40.080 And before you play it, which we're going to do in a second, let me just point out on

00:52:44.460 Thanksgiving, I wasn't watching Joy Reid.

00:52:47.280 I was watching football.

00:52:48.900 And let me just say, you've been in this business too damn long.

00:52:52.960 If you turn Joy Reid on, you're doing something wrong, man.

00:52:55.780 I got it sent to me and I was like, wow, that's interesting.

00:52:59.620 This is how much these people can't enjoy even a holiday.

00:53:02.720 Take a look at this.

00:53:03.820 Thanksgiving, the day we gather with friends and family to enjoy turkey, stuffing, mashed

00:53:08.640 potatoes, and pumpkin pie.

00:53:10.240 We throw on the game, catch up on our lives, and then discuss, or quite possibly argue, about

00:53:15.680 religion and politics.

00:53:17.260 For millions of Americans, it's a day of cherished traditions.

00:53:19.960 And as Americans, we certainly value those traditions.

00:53:22.860 But it's also important to unpack the myth of Thanksgiving.

00:53:26.920 It is a holiday riddled with historical inaccuracies.

00:53:29.640 Built on this myth that the indigenous welcomed their colonizers with open arms and ears of

00:53:34.920 corn, a simplistic fairytale interpretation of a 1621 encounter between indigenous tribes

00:53:41.580 and English settlers that erases the genocide that followed.

00:53:45.840 It's the truth Republicans want banned from our textbooks.

00:53:49.600 Because here's the secret they want so desperately to keep.

00:53:53.560 We are a country founded on violence.

00:53:56.700 Our birth was violent.

00:53:58.080 In 1619, a ship with more than 20 enslaved Africans landed in Virginia, ushering in two

00:54:04.640 centuries of American slavery that left millions in chains or dead.

00:54:09.660 And when those humans in bondage were finally free, a terrorist organization that was a card-carrying

00:54:15.140 member of polite society, the Ku Klux Klan, picked up where the Civil War ended, using violence

00:54:21.020 to maintain white supremacy.

00:54:22.800 The Klan and its ilk are still active.

00:54:26.080 And as Americans, we continue to choose violence.

00:54:29.360 Where do you want to begin on that clip?

00:54:31.760 Look, that clip is the modern American left.

00:54:36.500 They hate America.

00:54:37.900 And they are devoted to lying about America.

00:54:41.300 They're also hopelessly naive.

00:54:43.100 So her comment that America was founded on violence.

00:54:48.020 All right, I got news for you.

00:54:50.700 Every country in the history of civilization was founded on violence.

00:54:54.760 Right.

00:54:54.840 The history of mankind is, tragically or not tragically, a history of violence.

00:55:00.340 By the way, the Native American tribes who were here were conquering each other and going

00:55:04.580 to war with each other.

00:55:06.240 And throughout history, whether it is Europe, whether it is Africa, whether it is Asia, you

00:55:10.720 have millennia of one nation conquering another, one tribe conquering another.

00:55:16.360 That has been, as Thomas Hobbes, the great philosopher, said, the state of nature is nasty, brutish,

00:55:22.940 and short.

00:55:24.140 Yeah.

00:55:24.980 So one of the things the left tries to do is to suggest that aspects of human nature that

00:55:30.720 are true about America are uniquely evil about America.

00:55:34.260 So we were founded on violence, unlike...

00:55:37.020 No one else was, just us.

00:55:38.240 The utopian souls that have lived everywhere else.

00:55:42.160 Secondly, so she immediately goes to 1619.

00:55:46.220 This is the 1619 Project, the incredibly revisionist history, false portrayal of America

00:55:52.920 history that was written by the New York Times.

00:55:55.840 Now, the 1619 Project postulates that America's history didn't begin in 1776 with the Declaration

00:56:02.260 of Independence.

00:56:03.100 It didn't begin with the signing of the Constitution.

00:56:05.380 It began in 1619 when the first ship carrying slaves arrived on America's soil.

00:56:10.120 It also postulates that America's history is irredeemably racist and that today we are

00:56:16.060 irredeemably racist.

00:56:17.520 It also claims the American Revolution was fought in order to preserve slavery.

00:56:24.140 That latter claim is so absurd that multiple very well-respected historians like James McPherson,

00:56:31.400 like Gordon Wood, have denounced it as ridiculous as false.

00:56:34.800 It was so bad the New York Times was forced to issue a correction because it was indefensibly

00:56:40.060 false.

00:56:40.540 What the left doesn't tell you, listen, was slavery horrific?

00:56:47.040 Yes.

00:56:48.140 Slavery is the original sin of the United States of America.

00:56:51.180 Did indescribable murders and tortures occur under slavery?

00:56:54.800 Yes.

00:56:55.920 What the left doesn't tell you is America is not unique in slavery.

00:56:58.760 In fact, most societies throughout history, slavery has been a significant component of

00:57:04.440 it, whether in Europe, whether in Africa, whether in Asia, slavery has been consistent

00:57:09.900 for millennia.

00:57:11.460 What is unique about America is not slavery.

00:57:14.080 Tragically, that's been much of human existence.

00:57:17.080 What's unique about America is emancipations.

00:57:20.200 What's unique about America is that we wrote into our founding documents, the Declaration of

00:57:24.620 Independence says, we hold these truths to be self-evidence that all men are created equal.

00:57:30.240 That was, you want to talk about a radical, a revolutionary statement, all men, not just

00:57:35.280 some, not just based on race, those documents, that in turn, those principles, and of course

00:57:43.800 the Declaration goes on to say that are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights

00:57:47.740 that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:57:50.420 Those principles became the basis for the abolitionists, became the basis for incredible

00:57:58.940 patriots like Frederick Douglass, who argued slavery was fundamentally incompatible with

00:58:03.940 American values, and became the basis later for the civil rights movement.

00:58:08.580 What she also doesn't say, she talks about the Ku Klux Klan.

00:58:11.920 You know what she doesn't mention?

00:58:13.140 There was the Democratic Party that was the party of the Ku Klux Klan.

00:58:16.040 The Klan was founded by Democrats, populated by Democrats.

00:58:19.760 Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Klan, was a delegate to the 1860 National

00:58:26.540 Democrat Convention.

00:58:28.760 If you look at Klansmen, by the way, fast forward to Jim Crow laws.

00:58:32.480 Jim Crow laws, almost every single one of them was written by a Democrat politician in

00:58:38.540 order to prevent the voters from voting Democrat politicians out of power.

00:58:41.940 And by the way, Joy Reid would say, well, that was long ago, not today.

00:58:45.900 Well, let's go today.

00:58:48.460 The governor of Virginia just over a year ago, a guy named Ralph Northam, chose to have a

00:58:54.060 picture in his yearbook of a man dressed as a Klansman and a man in blackface.

00:58:58.180 And he said he could have been one of those two, meaning he could have been the Klansman.

00:59:02.220 That was the Democrat governor of Virginia just over a year ago.

00:59:06.200 How about today?

00:59:08.100 The sitting president of the United States, Joe Biden, the guy who doesn't know what day

00:59:11.740 it is.

00:59:12.380 Yep.

00:59:13.240 Joe Biden, just over a decade ago, gave the eulogy of Robert Byrd, a grand cyclops of the

00:59:19.520 Ku Klux Klan, had been the Senate Democratic leader in the Senate.

00:59:24.240 He described him as a great friend and mentor.

00:59:27.600 And even implied that America might be a little different if he would have become president.

00:59:30.920 Joe Biden, look, I got to say, if you can't stand up and say, I've never given a eulogy

00:59:37.980 at the funeral of a Klansman.

00:59:39.780 Yeah.

00:59:40.740 Maybe you ought to be a little more cautious about giving hectoring race lectures.

00:59:44.780 But Joy Reid doesn't tell any of that.

00:59:46.720 Instead, she wants to advance the false and pernicious lie attacking America.

00:59:52.040 And to be clear, look, were atrocities committed against Native Americans?

00:59:56.660 Yes.

00:59:57.820 That is part of our history.

00:59:59.280 She claims Republicans want to erase that history.

01:00:01.580 No.

01:00:01.900 Yeah.

01:00:02.420 Not true.

01:00:03.300 We tell the full history, just not the partisan slant that says America is evil and uniquely

01:00:09.240 evil.

01:00:09.940 And the answer is to become a communist society, which is what these advocates of the 1619

01:00:15.940 Project, what these advocates of critical race theory, they are Marxists.

01:00:19.440 They advocate communism.

01:00:21.020 That is their solution to this.

01:00:23.140 And so the reason Joy Reid and other leftists hates Thanksgiving is the same reason that they

01:00:31.760 hate Columbus Day.

01:00:33.220 It's because they hate America and they believe fundamentally the founding of the United States

01:00:38.100 of America was an evil act and we are an evil country.

01:00:41.400 I think that is perniciously false.

01:00:44.200 And I believe the United States of America has done more good than any nation in the history

01:00:48.460 of the world.

01:00:49.180 And we have that glorious history to be proud of.

01:00:51.980 And I will point out the party that you and I are members of, the Republican Party, was

01:00:55.700 founded to end slavery.

01:00:58.700 We were founded in opposition of slavery.

01:01:00.680 The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, was elected and signed the Emancipation

01:01:05.940 Proclamation.

01:01:07.140 And so it is a dishonest history if you only paint America as bad, but that's what leftists

01:01:14.260 do.

01:01:14.580 The other part that was hilarious is I was looking at the White House and their Twitter

01:01:18.460 feed and I'm like, well, maybe Joy Reid took over the Twitter feed as part of her Thanksgiving

01:01:22.460 to the White House.

01:01:23.380 I don't know.

01:01:23.760 But if you look at this tweet, and I love it because you can see right at the bottom,

01:01:27.300 it was obviously scheduled, 9 a.m.

01:01:29.360 Perfectly.

01:01:30.540 Native American roots are deeply embedded in this land, the Native American Heritage Day.

01:01:34.860 We honor the enduring cultures and contributions of all Native Americans and recommit ourselves

01:01:40.460 to fulfilling our nation's promise of equal dignity and respect for all.

01:01:44.220 I'm fine with that, but it's like, can we just have a normal Thanksgiving and just enjoy

01:01:48.580 our time with our family?

01:01:49.620 Or do you have to like somehow, in essence, remind everybody how bad America is?

01:01:55.480 That's what they're trying to do here.

01:01:57.000 Well, it is.

01:01:57.760 And it's interesting.

01:01:59.360 So apparently, all right, so leftists have renamed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day.

01:02:03.900 Yes.

01:02:03.980 Because the heroism of Christopher Columbus in discovering the new world cannot be celebrated

01:02:09.280 in their world.

01:02:10.320 Now, apparently, this is new to me that they're not allowed to call it Thanksgiving, that they've

01:02:15.520 renamed Thanksgiving Native American Heritage Day.

01:02:18.040 And look, I think...

01:02:18.560 It's got the White House seal right there, so it's not a joke.

01:02:20.740 Look, I think Native American heritage is wonderful, should be studied, should be celebrated.

01:02:24.520 It's part of the history of this country, a very important part of the history of this

01:02:27.340 country.

01:02:29.120 But so is Thanksgiving, damn it.

01:02:30.800 Yeah.

01:02:30.980 Like, the effort at renaming is because they're embarrassed.

01:02:34.760 And I want to give a contrast.

01:02:36.800 When our nation started, George Washington, on October 3rd, 1789, issued a proclamation.

01:02:46.320 And if you will indulge me, it's not very long.

01:02:49.120 I want to read Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation.

01:02:51.880 New York, 3 October 1789.

01:02:56.860 By the President of the United States of America, a proclamation.

01:03:01.960 Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and to humbly implore his protection and favor.

01:03:13.920 And whereas both houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

01:03:40.720 Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November, next to be devoted by the people of these states to the service of that great and glorious being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.

01:04:01.780 That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation.

01:04:13.980 For the single and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war.

01:04:26.180 For the great degree of tranquility, union and plenty, which we have since enjoyed.

01:04:32.340 For the peaceable and rational manner in which we have enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted.

01:04:49.300 For the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge, and in general, for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

01:05:06.920 And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and ruler of nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions.

01:05:21.540 To enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all people by constantly being a government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed.

01:05:47.740 To protect and guide all sovereigns and nations, especially such as have shown kindness unto us, and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord.

01:05:59.140 To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us, and generally to grant unto mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone.

01:06:17.740 Knows to be best, known knows to be best, given under my hand at the city of New York, the third day of October, in the year of our Lord, 1789, George Washington.

01:06:31.460 History matters. History matters.

01:06:33.520 Can you imagine one sentence of this being uttered by the current president of the United States?

01:06:41.600 No.

01:06:41.780 So, this is a nation worth defending.

01:06:45.440 And you know what?

01:06:47.060 It's not just Washington who knew that.

01:06:50.100 It's not just listeners to this podcast.

01:06:55.100 It's millions of Americans across this country.

01:06:57.420 And I got to say, there was a video you sent me on Thanksgiving.

01:07:01.460 You texted it to me, and it warmed my heart.

01:07:03.920 I turned around, and I texted it to my entire family.

01:07:08.400 And I said, watch this.

01:07:10.140 It is beautiful.

01:07:10.860 And ultimately, I tweeted it out to the world.

01:07:12.560 But I want to close this post-Thanksgiving verdict with just watching a video of one American who still knows what is beautiful about this nation and still loves it.

01:07:27.540 Can we play this video?

01:07:28.660 Can we play this video?

01:07:29.700 You're recording, right?

01:07:30.520 Yeah.

01:07:30.840 Grab me.

01:07:31.440 Grab me.

01:07:32.320 Don't forget that.

01:07:32.920 Grab me.

01:07:34.340 Oh, my God.

01:07:36.640 Meisita.

01:07:37.580 El Cheque American.

01:07:39.760 How much did I win here?

01:07:42.080 Yes!

01:07:46.180 Look at the taxes.

01:07:49.540 I prefer this than not Fidel Castro.

01:07:51.220 In Castro, it was more.

01:07:52.900 In communism, it was more.

01:07:54.940 You know what?

01:07:55.660 I tell you what, when I sent that to you, it was one of the coolest videos.

01:08:21.400 I rarely get choked up, but I watched that, and to see that man talk about Cuba, talk about communism, talk about Fidel Castro, and talk about this, the first paycheck, as he put it, where every hour counted, it makes you not take this country for granted.

01:08:36.200 And I love that moment, because it reminded me of how thankful I need to be to live in the greatest country in the world.

01:08:43.760 It is utterly beautiful.

01:08:45.820 It brought tears to my eyes on Thanksgiving.

01:08:48.500 It brings tears to my eyes now.

01:08:50.360 And I just want to say to everyone, God bless America.

01:08:53.040 I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

01:08:55.420 And Merry Christmas to all.

01:08:57.640 This is Verdict.

01:08:58.320 This is an iHeart Podcast.

01:09:01.960 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 28, 2022

5 Troubling Facts About Special Counsel Jack Smith, Plus Dems Pushing Spending & Gun Control!

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