Verdict with Ted Cruz - 99 Chinese Balloons plus NYC Invades Canada, Hunter Risks Contempt & Cuba Libre Street Signs

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.280 Senator, apparently there's a lot of balloons just kind of flying all over the place in this country, now in Canada.

00:00:09.880 And as you and I sat down to film this, I'll read the headline.

00:00:13.440 U.S. military shoots down another high-altitude object over Lake Huron.

00:00:19.620 This is happening after we shot another one down over Alaska.

00:00:23.120 I think we're up to, what, four or five now?

00:00:25.580 Every American's going to be asking the same question I'm going to ask you.

00:00:29.060 Is this something new, or is this something that's happening all the time and we just didn't know about it?

00:00:36.420 Well, let me say, I feel like I'm at the circus.

00:00:39.220 I'm just looking up in the sky and seeing balloon after balloon after balloon.

00:00:44.160 And I don't know about you.

00:00:45.040 You and I are filming this Sunday afternoon.

00:00:47.120 Tonight's the Super Bowl.

00:00:48.260 I may, during the Super Bowl, just sit in my backyard with a rifle and see if I can spot any balloons in the air.

00:00:53.520 Any balloons coming over your house, right?

00:00:55.380 You know, holy cow, we're up to four now.

00:00:57.680 Well, so we had, starting two weeks ago, the Chinese spy balloon number one.

00:01:03.040 That we know about.

00:01:04.500 Well, the number one that we know about because people in Montana looked in the sky and said,

00:01:10.280 what in the hell is that?

00:01:12.340 Yeah.

00:01:12.780 And then suddenly it got on Twitter and got on NBC News, and then the Biden administration was like,

00:01:17.440 oh yeah, that would be the Chinese spy balloon that we were ignoring.

00:01:20.380 So that was number one.

00:01:22.820 That one they shot down over the Atlantic, off the coast of South Carolina,

00:01:27.660 after it traversed the entire continental United States, conducting espionage most of the way.

00:01:33.920 The second one was one that we shot down over Alaska a few days ago.

00:01:38.460 The third one was one we just shot down over Canada a couple days ago.

00:01:43.940 And the most recent one that you just cited broke within the last hour or so over Lake Huron.

00:01:52.060 I don't know where precisely because they haven't given the details yet.

00:01:55.900 But again, coming from the north in the Great Lakes.

00:02:01.360 What's going on here?

00:02:03.120 I would say several things are going on here.

00:02:05.260 Number one, you asked, has this been happening for a while?

00:02:10.080 Yes.

00:02:10.980 Interesting.

00:02:12.140 As I mentioned to you last week, I had a two-hour classified briefing, went into great detail.

00:02:22.120 Much of that detail I can't get into.

00:02:25.480 What I can discuss is what is already publicly available, publicly known.

00:02:29.740 And the Chinese spy balloon that we shot down a week ago was not the first.

00:02:40.240 Why are we seeing so many of them now?

00:02:42.120 I mean, that's the natural question.

00:02:43.600 What the heck has happened?

00:02:45.060 And I think it's a combination of several things.

00:02:47.020 One of it is, frankly, we're looking for.

00:02:49.380 So we didn't used to have our assets, our radar.

00:02:53.600 We weren't looking for really high balloons coming from the north.

00:03:00.200 That was not our focus.

00:03:01.920 We're looking for things like ICBMs.

00:03:03.540 We're looking for things like, you know, jet fighters.

00:03:06.760 But we didn't necessarily have the radar arrays pointed in a direction to figure out what was happening.

00:03:14.120 And so I think it is entirely possible that we missed a bunch of these.

00:03:18.280 Wow.

00:03:18.460 And these obviously are doing something for them.

00:03:23.880 Otherwise, they wouldn't be spending so much money and time and effort into putting them up in the air and steering them over the U.S.

00:03:30.180 So let's be clear.

00:03:32.500 The one we shot down we know was a Chinese balloon.

00:03:36.880 It was a large balloon.

00:03:38.800 It had a payload that was quite large.

00:03:41.380 That was the size of several school buses.

00:03:43.560 It was big.

00:03:44.780 Explain payload.

00:03:45.500 You've been – and a lot of people, I think, are confused on what that means.

00:03:49.260 Some people hear payload and they immediately think that's weaponry.

00:03:53.020 What does that include?

00:03:54.660 Payload does not mean, in this case, bombs or missiles that you might think on a jet, the payload being that.

00:04:02.680 This is a balloon.

00:04:03.700 Think a hot air balloon where you've got the balloon up top and you've got the basket down below.

00:04:07.060 When I use the word payload, what I mean is the thing the balloon is dragging.

00:04:11.140 Got it.

00:04:11.400 And in this case, the thing the balloon was dragging was a big hunk of metal the size of several school buses.

00:04:18.260 So it was large.

00:04:19.000 This is the first Chinese balloon.

00:04:20.280 And when it was discovered, our military engaged in – went up and looked at it.

00:04:28.380 I mean, took a close look at it.

00:04:30.980 They're saying, first of all, they wanted to make sure that it didn't pose an immediate danger.

00:04:36.220 So they wanted to look at it to say, all right, are there bombs and missiles on it?

00:04:39.300 You could have a balloon with bombs and missiles that are prepared to destroy homes, kill people.

00:04:45.420 And the military says they looked at it and it didn't appear to be that.

00:04:51.300 That's good.

00:04:52.460 That's a much more – you know, we've seen in prior wars, balloons used to drop off dangerous weapons.

00:04:59.000 Actually, in the Middle East, in Israel, we see the Palestinians. 1.00

00:05:01.980 It's a major issue there right now with Hamas Hezbollah. 0.59

00:05:03.860 And they use balloons and they'll drop often gasoline and firebombs and it's a – it's a – in sometimes a cheaper way than a missile of –

00:05:15.620 Causing harm.

00:05:16.660 Causing harm.

00:05:17.740 So by payload, I mean a bunch of stuff to conduct espionage.

00:05:22.360 Now, what the stuff is, we don't really know yet.

00:05:25.040 We don't know exactly what was there.

00:05:27.140 We can make reasonable inferences.

00:05:28.540 We can reasonably assume they're cameras, high-powered cameras that are designed to look down on the ground.

00:05:37.120 The first balloon was at about 60,000 feet.

00:05:41.000 That's a lot lower than satellites.

00:05:42.980 Look, the Chinese have satellites, so they're taking pictures. 0.98

00:05:46.060 And that was the argument the White House made very clear.

00:05:48.680 And they were trying to say, hey, this is a balloon that is not – that is doing basically the same thing as their spy program, their satellite, their space program.

00:05:57.200 They were trying to say this is a redundant thing.

00:06:00.580 I think clearly now that we're shooting these things over Alaska, shooting this next one that we just learned about, that was a lie or misleading the American people.

00:06:07.620 It was complete nonsense.

00:06:08.940 And I mentioned in the last pod we did that when they said it at the briefing, I think I and several of us basically laughed at him.

00:06:15.400 It was so obviously political spin of, well, not that big a deal.

00:06:18.660 Look, satellites are much higher, so typically the resolution you can get presumably is not as strong.

00:06:25.480 If you're at a 60,000-foot altitude or a 40,000-foot altitude, you're a lot closer.

00:06:31.000 A satellite is also continuously moving, which means you have a window that you can examine and then you move elsewhere.

00:06:38.100 Sure.

00:06:38.320 One of the things about a balloon, you can hover over a military base.

00:06:42.600 You can hover over where we have stealth jets.

00:06:45.620 You can hover over nuclear missile silos.

00:06:49.420 And you can hover for some real time and take extended pictures, extended video.

00:06:54.720 And that's what people didn't understand, and I think everybody's trying to get caught up to speed here, is a lot of people thought they launch a balloon and it just flies to the wind, right?

00:07:02.460 You launch it.

00:07:03.160 You know where the jet stream is.

00:07:04.580 You know which way it's generic.

00:07:05.640 This was a balloon that had steering where you could basically hit the pause button over an area you wanted it to be, and then once you got whatever it is you wanted, you could then redirect it to the next place you wanted it to stop and take pictures or do whatever it was doing.

00:07:22.740 And its path demonstrated it was clearly maneuverable.

00:07:25.840 It wasn't just wandering over some cornfields.

00:07:27.960 It wasn't like, send it and you hope it gets you close to where you wanted it to go.

00:07:31.680 Yeah, it wasn't just sitting over a scarecrow in the middle of a cornfield.

00:07:34.120 It was just miraculously going from one military base to the next military base to the next military base, and there were obvious national security concerns all along the way.

00:07:45.200 The path it traveled was not accidental.

00:07:49.160 So you have the capacity to be a lot closer than you are with a satellite.

00:07:52.800 You have the capacity to be stationary and stationary for an extended period of time.

00:07:57.500 So you can take pictures, presumably, possibly you can take video.

00:08:01.620 I'm speculating.

00:08:02.440 They didn't tell us in the briefing.

00:08:03.480 This is me speculating.

00:08:06.200 You also presumably have the capacity to try to engage in interception, to intercept phone calls, to intercept Wi-Fi, to intercept radio.

00:08:15.500 Countless things you need to grab.

00:08:16.660 Whatever communications are happening beneath you, you've got to assume in the big spy package they've got there, they've got gadgets that are designed to try to intercept whatever's going on.

00:08:28.560 Trudeau got involved with this with NORAD, and before I put up his tweet, I want to remind people about one of our sponsors.

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00:09:51.320 Senator, there's also something that was interesting in Trudeau, and I want you to look at this tweet that he put out.

00:09:56.040 And it says there, I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.

00:10:02.180 NORAD command shot down the object over the Yukon.

00:10:05.900 The Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the objects.

00:10:11.720 He said they didn't spoke with President Biden in the afternoon.

00:10:14.460 He said Canadian forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of this object.

00:10:18.720 Thank you to NORAD for keeping watch over North America.

00:10:21.520 All right, let's do a dive real quick into NORAD. 0.70

00:10:24.200 How does this agreement work?

00:10:26.040 It's weird to see Canada order the shooting down of an object, and then America do it on their behalf.

00:10:31.640 Do they pay that bill?

00:10:33.100 Do we pay that bill?

00:10:34.580 And he says now NORAD is going to be looking over all this.

00:10:37.600 Are they basically now our brothers in this fight against these unidentified objects?

00:10:42.480 So the way the military is structured, you've got NORTHCOM, which is the northern command that is protecting North America.

00:10:49.060 And then you've got NORAD that is engaged in watching what's happened in the skies, whether from planes or missiles or other aerial attacks that could be coming in to North America.

00:11:02.220 In both instances, NORTHCOM and NORAD, we work very closely, we work seamlessly with the Canadians.

00:11:09.520 We are blessed to have a very strong ally to our north.

00:11:15.100 We don't always agree on economic or cultural matters, but on defending North America, we are lockstep.

00:11:21.340 Lockstep.

00:11:21.820 That is a great blessing to the United States.

00:11:25.440 Why?

00:11:26.300 If, God forbid, we ever come to World War III, if, God forbid, we come to a nuclear weapon, the most likely paths for missiles to travel that are going to hit the United States are going up over the North Pole and down over Canada.

00:11:40.220 And so Canada has a huge chunk of the airspace right above us, which in the event of a serious war, that's where the paths get in it.

00:11:49.920 And it's because the earth is curved.

00:11:52.100 It's actually shorter to go from China or Russia over the North Pole and down to us than it would be to go around.

00:11:59.680 That if you're looking at a flat map, that doesn't make any sense.

00:12:02.560 But when you think of the curvature of a ball, it's a shorter path.

00:12:06.000 And so it is very much in the United States' interest to be closely intertwined with Canada.

00:12:12.060 And it's also in Canada's interest.

00:12:13.400 Obviously, we're the much bigger country with a much stronger military.

00:12:17.300 And so they are quite glad to have the U.S. military protecting them.

00:12:22.260 Now, why did Justin Trudeau give the order?

00:12:24.260 Because it was over Canadian airspace.

00:12:25.960 And so we don't—

00:12:26.600 It's almost giving a blessing.

00:12:27.560 Hey, whoever gets there first, if in America you can get there first, knock this thing out of the sky. 0.61

00:12:31.340 So we don't make it a practice of shooting down anything over someone else's airspace.

00:12:35.820 That every country has a right to their own airspace.

00:12:39.560 You think of the first Chinese balloon that we had when Biden should have shot it down was when it entered U.S. airspace. 0.92

00:12:46.240 We don't have to ask anyone's permission. 0.99

00:12:47.820 If it enters U.S. airspace, we can shoot the damn thing down. 0.98

00:12:51.680 Over Canada—and remember, that first Chinese spy balloon entered Alaskan airspace, was there a couple of days, and then it went into Canada. 0.99

00:12:59.640 And it was there a couple of days, and then it came down into the United States over Idaho, Montana, and it kept working south and east across the United States.

00:13:07.480 So for the first balloon, we asked the administration multiple times, why didn't you shoot it down over Alaska?

00:13:14.460 They gave lots of spins about, well, this and that and this and the other.

00:13:18.140 One of the things they finally admitted is, yeah, Joe Biden didn't even know about it.

00:13:21.340 Like, the whole time it was in Alaska, we didn't bother to tell the commander-in-chief.

00:13:24.260 He had no idea that we were just sitting there with a Chinese balloon surveilling us.

00:13:29.680 So Biden finds out after it's left Alaska airspace.

00:13:33.700 That's what they—

00:13:34.340 And that's taking politics out of it.

00:13:36.200 That's good to know because it's important, the fact they didn't even tell the president.

00:13:40.200 Is that normal?

00:13:41.220 Was that normal how this would work under Trump when he was in office?

00:13:44.580 Well, we didn't have this happen under Trump.

00:13:46.560 So one of the things—and we talked about this in a prior podcast.

00:13:49.460 Let me be clear.

00:13:51.180 What we didn't have happen is a Chinese surveillance balloon that we knew about and that the senior officials were informed about.

00:14:00.680 So you'll recall, we talked about this in the last pod, when the first Chinese balloon incident happened a couple of weeks ago.

00:14:06.740 The Biden administration went out and tried to spin reporters and said, well, this happened three times under Trump,

00:14:12.680 while deliberately not telling the reporters, yeah, but none of the senior officials knew about it.

00:14:17.700 Trump didn't know about it.

00:14:18.540 Secretary of Defense didn't know about it.

00:14:19.580 Secretary of State didn't know about it.

00:14:21.020 It was almost after the fact they went back and looked at data and said, oh, wait, that's what that was.

00:14:25.840 So it's very different.

00:14:27.360 And in this instance, the Biden administration knew the incident happened.

00:14:32.200 In fact, they knew before it was happening.

00:14:33.640 They were tracking it even before it crossed into U.S. airspace.

00:14:37.080 They just didn't bother to inform the commander-in-chief.

00:14:40.100 They informed the commander-in-chief, and this is all based on what they publicly disclosed.

00:14:44.680 After it had left Alaskan airspace, we asked, why didn't you shoot it down over Canada?

00:14:49.300 And they said, well, gosh, you know, shoot it down over Canada.

00:14:51.400 You know, it might hit population, very dangerous, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:14:54.360 Finally, they let it complete all of its espionage all over the United States until it exited to the Atlantic.

00:15:00.560 They shot it down over the Atlantic.

00:15:02.160 What's changed?

00:15:03.500 Well, we've seen now three shot down in a row.

00:15:06.260 The biggest thing that's changed is I think they had so much egg on their face for sitting there for over a week and doing nothing that they finally grew a pair.

00:15:16.780 And said, we have to do this.

00:15:17.780 And said, we're going to shoot them down. 0.96

00:15:19.020 And let me say this. 0.92

00:15:20.060 Well, even look at the president.

00:15:22.240 The president of the United States of America is now rewriting history, flexing his muscles.

00:15:26.680 He was asked at the White House about shooting this last one.

00:15:29.420 And it's like, oh, this is just what I do.

00:15:32.400 Look at this.

00:15:33.060 Anything to say about the object shot down over Alaska, Mr. President?

00:15:38.200 Success.

00:15:40.680 Well, let me do something I don't do very often on this podcast, which is praise Joe Biden.

00:15:47.120 The reaction to the first balloon was incredibly weak and ineffective.

00:15:51.100 But the second, third and fourth one, thank God.

00:15:53.380 Like, this is exactly what you should be doing. 0.86

00:15:55.820 If you're flying over our airspace, we're going to shoot you down. 0.89

00:15:59.600 I'm glad of that.

00:16:00.600 It took a while.

00:16:02.060 They had to get embarrassed and shamed into it.

00:16:04.000 But they got to the right outcome.

00:16:06.480 And so that's good.

00:16:07.920 I am glad of that.

00:16:10.040 This is a deterrent.

00:16:11.240 Now, as we're sitting here today, it's Sunday afternoon.

00:16:13.420 We don't know if the three subsequent ones, we don't know if they were Chinese.

00:16:19.660 We don't know if they were spy satellites, if they were spy.

00:16:22.380 They weren't satellites.

00:16:23.040 They were too low to be satellites.

00:16:24.040 We don't know if they were balloons.

00:16:25.780 I assume next week we will have another classified briefing.

00:16:28.920 If we're not, I'm going to press very hard for one.

00:16:30.760 So the last classified briefing I had, we only had the first one.

00:16:35.200 There have been three more since then.

00:16:36.720 So I have not received a classified briefing.

00:16:40.540 Yeah, at this point, surely they'd say we need to give you an update.

00:16:43.760 I certainly, I expect that they will.

00:16:46.080 I mean, we, a week ago when we were doing the podcast, I said, listen, I think it's very likely we'll have a classified briefing.

00:16:52.360 Everyone's going to want to know.

00:16:53.900 I think it's likely next week we'll have another one.

00:16:56.800 Obvious question on these three that have been shot down in the past few days.

00:17:00.480 Were they Chinese?

00:17:01.480 Were they balloons?

00:17:02.400 Were they, were they, did they have a similar payload of spy equipment?

00:17:06.700 I don't know the answer to any of that because what I know on those three is what you can read in the newspapers.

00:17:12.320 What they are saying is the three that were shot down were at 40,000 feet instead of 60,000 feet.

00:17:18.240 And here's why that's relevant.

00:17:19.820 The Biden administration had a couple of spins on why it didn't shoot down balloon number one. 0.52

00:17:24.460 One of the spins was, well, it was up at 60,000 feet, which means it's not a risked commercial air traffic.

00:17:31.700 And, and in fact, as a sort of throwaway that line, they said, if it were 40,000 feet where there's commercial air traffic, we would have shot it down.

00:17:39.080 That gives them a fig leaf to say these were down at 40,000 feet.

00:17:43.140 And so they shot them down.

00:17:44.180 We had no choice because it was where commercial airlines fly.

00:17:47.260 Even the White House tried to act like, and you can see, they're still trying to figure out how to backpedal on the embarrassment of the last one.

00:17:53.040 They had this White House briefing.

00:17:54.700 The media is clearly not buying their, their BS on this.

00:17:58.260 And they said, well, these balloons are different.

00:18:00.180 One's the size of a car.

00:18:01.520 One's the size of a bus.

00:18:02.660 Take a look at this.

00:18:03.540 I'm not going to speak for the Pentagon.

00:18:04.660 I can tell you that the president doesn't regret the, the way that we handled the first balloon.

00:18:09.580 And that time we, first of all, apples and oranges here in terms of size.

00:18:15.040 As I said, this was the size of a small car.

00:18:17.900 And it was over a very sparsely populated area, but also more critically over, it was over water, water space when we ordered this down as we did, as we did the last one.

00:18:29.700 But a completely different size and the debris field for this, we expect to be much, much smaller than would have been for the other one.

00:18:40.500 That's difference one.

00:18:41.820 Difference two, we knew for a fact that the PRC balloon that we shot down last week was, in fact, a surveillance asset.

00:18:49.900 So size matters, the White House is telling you now.

00:18:52.180 That's what they're saying.

00:18:53.300 If it's small, well, we might shoot it down.

00:18:55.420 If it's big, it may be different.

00:18:56.900 And if it's over a water area, this is a very weird way of putting this.

00:19:01.020 Look, I'm going to leave that alone.

00:19:03.260 But what I will say, so Kirby starts off there with a statement that is demonstrably false and laughable, which is, oh, Biden doesn't regret not shooting the first one down as he sat there over a week looking weak and impotent while it engaged in espionage all over the United States.

00:19:19.840 Obviously, they regret it.

00:19:20.980 They realize.

00:19:22.000 Now, he didn't know about it because no one told him about it.

00:19:24.460 Sure.

00:19:24.860 But it was a screw up.

00:19:26.660 It was a screw up.

00:19:27.140 And even when he did find out, he had an opportunity to shoot down earlier and he didn't.

00:19:29.980 But to their credit, they learned the lesson.

00:19:32.840 And remember, one of their defenses as to why they didn't shoot it down before is, well, it was over land, very sparsely populated land, but over land.

00:19:39.120 Well, these were too.

00:19:40.320 And there were periods where it was over water where they could have shot it down as well.

00:19:43.820 Look, they learned the lesson.

00:19:44.960 I'll give them credit for that.

00:19:46.640 I don't know.

00:19:47.580 Well, listen, a payload the size of several school buses is pretty different from the payload of the size of a small car.

00:19:53.920 I don't know what these were.

00:19:55.160 I assume they were spies, like spy equipment, but I don't know that.

00:20:00.000 Presumably, so with all of these, we've got salvage teams that are going to go try to find, okay, what was this thing we just shot down?

00:20:07.680 And we'll figure out what it is.

00:20:10.660 A question I don't know sitting here right now.

00:20:14.340 I mean, we've seen four in just a few days.

00:20:18.540 Were there always this many of them?

00:20:21.320 That's, yes.

00:20:22.340 That's what I want to know.

00:20:23.660 Or number two, did the Biden weakness on balloon number one cause China or someone else to say, let's go with a bunch.

00:20:33.600 Let's put a bunch up there and see what happens.

00:20:35.880 I don't know.

00:20:36.900 I have to admit, hypotheses number two, I'm a little bit skeptical of just because I'd be surprised if they could execute it that quickly.

00:20:45.900 If we saw a bunch come in a month, I would see it as a more likely hypothesis that the weakness was provocative and caused this.

00:20:56.260 But I don't know.

00:20:57.280 I don't have the technical knowledge to know whether these could be put in the airspace in 24 hours.

00:21:05.220 It's a very short time frame.

00:21:07.560 So if and when we have the classified briefing, I expect to ask these questions because I think they're good questions.

00:21:12.580 And sitting here right now, I don't know the answers to them.

00:21:14.800 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

00:21:17.720 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:21:21.840 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:21:25.560 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:21:26.760 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:21:28.000 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:21:31.760 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

00:21:37.180 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:21:40.740 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:21:44.800 We've heard China, last question on this, but it's one I think people want to know.

00:21:50.660 And we hear this, and it's China, China, China.

00:21:53.640 Is there a real possibility that there are other bad actors in the world that have the same capabilities that could have been pulling this off?

00:22:01.600 And I go back to what we learned after 9-11.

00:22:03.800 We had a lot of vulnerabilities that we didn't even see.

00:22:07.560 Is this one of those kind of new vulnerabilities that maybe we didn't even know we had until recently when a guy in Montana saw it in the sky?

00:22:15.500 Is it possible that this big of a vulnerability could happen with all the money we spend on surveillance and everything else?

00:22:22.320 So now it's just like, oh, we're waking up to this.

00:22:25.640 So I think that's possible.

00:22:28.460 You know, our military, part of the reason they say people spotted it over Montana is that we knew it was there and we were engaging with it.

00:22:35.660 And so they did, among other things, they halted airspace over Montana, and that got a lot of attention.

00:22:41.060 And so that's part of their argument.

00:22:43.120 Now, as we pointed out in this podcast before, look, I don't think Biden would have acted if it hadn't gone public, if it hadn't gotten on Twitter, if it hadn't gotten on NBC News.

00:22:54.800 I think they would have let this balloon go all over the United States and never said a word, never told anybody about it, and kept it a secret.

00:23:00.700 So it is only because people noticed it that they got guilted and shamed into acting.

00:23:06.500 In terms of could it be other actors, my guess is it's likely China.

00:23:12.420 If you look at the combination of military technology, economic resources, and hostile intent, all three of those are most heavily concentrated.

00:23:26.580 In China, look, could it conceivably be Russia?

00:23:29.640 Possibly.

00:23:30.180 Are there other bad actors, a North Korea, an Iran, that would want to do this? 1.00

00:23:37.400 Yes.

00:23:38.420 I'm less confident they have the capability.

00:23:40.840 North Korea might. 0.53

00:23:41.480 I'm pulling it off.

00:23:41.940 North Korea has put satellites, and they put satellites that have crossed the United States multiple times.

00:23:47.960 So I don't know if it's impossible that North Korea is trying this also.

00:23:53.660 It does seem like such a simplistic way.

00:23:58.320 But I'm purely speculating here, so I want to put that marker down that I know nothing on that question other than what I've read in the paper and then just speculating.

00:24:07.440 Canada had a very interesting week.

00:24:09.540 They're heavily involved in this story.

00:24:11.620 Then another story pops up.

00:24:13.460 It's going to be, I think, now clearly a rift between Canada and the U.S.

00:24:17.420 You have illegal immigrants that are now getting one-way tickets to wherever they want to go. 1.00

00:24:22.840 That's how they're spinning it in New York City.

00:24:25.460 For all the illegals, there have been many of them bussed there, and others have just shown up.

00:24:29.660 And a lot of them have been going to Canada.

00:24:31.740 Now Canada doesn't like it.

00:24:33.780 They don't like this idea that all these illegal immigrants are coming into their country. 1.00

00:24:37.960 The mayor of New York City is like, we're tired of dealing with them, right?

00:24:40.820 They're a sanctuary city.

00:24:42.280 Look at what he had to say on TV.

00:24:44.120 Those who are seeking to go somewhere else, not we're pushing or forcing.

00:24:48.580 If they're seeking to go somewhere else, we are helping in the reticketing process.

00:24:54.220 What we found, that people had other destinations, but they were being compelled only to come to New York City.

00:25:00.400 And we are assisting and interviewing those who seek to go somewhere else.

00:25:03.980 Some want to go to Canada.

00:25:05.500 Some want to go to warmer states.

00:25:07.960 And we are there for them as they continue to move on with their pursuit of this dream.

00:25:12.580 I wish reticketing center was this easy when I'm doing it with the airlines when I get a flight that's canceled.

00:25:18.380 I love how it's like they're a travel agency in New York now.

00:25:22.160 So I want you to be clear.

00:25:23.460 That is a liberal Democrat who proudly proclaims New York City a sanctuary city.

00:25:29.240 A loving, welcoming sanctuary city. 0.99

00:25:31.400 Who says that all the Republicans concerned about illegal immigration are mean, evil, racist bigots. 0.99

00:25:36.860 That it's terrible. 0.99

00:25:37.860 It's heartless.

00:25:38.580 And then when Texas began sending illegal aliens to New York City, suddenly he lost his lunch.

00:25:47.860 He has been freaking out.

00:25:49.860 Demanding federal dollars.

00:25:51.080 Demanding federal dollars.

00:25:52.260 Declaring it's a crisis.

00:25:54.160 We've had 5.5 million people cross illegally since Joe Biden became president.

00:25:58.460 Most of them in the state of Texas.

00:26:00.760 A few thousand go to New York City and he's practically reduced to a puddle of tears.

00:26:06.820 Martha's Vineyard.

00:26:07.560 Don't forget that.

00:26:08.380 They brought in 50 and they actually called up more National Guardsmen to come deal with 50 than the number of illegal immigrants that were shipped there.

00:26:16.300 So now the liberal Democrat mayor of New York City is buying bus tickets and plane tickets to send illegal immigrants in New York to Canada and send them by the hundreds.

00:26:32.120 And by the way, he's paying New York City tax dollars to transport them out to say, get them the heck out of our city. 0.58

00:26:40.740 It's cheaper than the hotels they've been putting them in.

00:26:42.700 And it is fairly amazing.

00:26:45.680 You know, Mayor Adams, I think, has presidential aspirations.

00:26:48.480 He's not in the top tier of Democrats.

00:26:50.660 But he's looking at it.

00:26:51.800 He's looking at it.

00:26:52.780 He's ambitious.

00:26:53.360 So you can see as he's talking there to the reporters, he's trying to walk the sort of fine line of, oh, we want them all here.

00:27:00.900 But here's a ticket.

00:27:01.460 Please leave.

00:27:01.820 Please leave.

00:27:02.160 And what's funny is, like, he's, you know, some of the people they're sending are people, like, from Venezuela.

00:27:07.920 I got to say, sending someone from Venezuela to Canada, the first winner they hit, holy cow. 1.00

00:27:14.120 That's a wake up.

00:27:15.540 And I will, you know, as you know, I was born in Canada, in Calgary.

00:27:19.920 And my parents were in the oil and gas business.

00:27:22.140 And I came down to Texas when I was four.

00:27:24.160 My mom was American.

00:27:25.200 My dad was Cuban.

00:27:27.120 I was an American citizen by birth.

00:27:28.860 But I came to America when I was four.

00:27:30.360 And there are a lot of liberals who are still pissed at Canada and are porous border for letting me in.

00:27:38.000 And so maybe this is the revenge.

00:27:40.980 As the mayor of New York City.

00:27:42.640 Full circle, right?

00:27:43.260 You know, you didn't keep crews in Canada.

00:27:45.380 So we want to send all of our illegal aliens to Canada. 0.99

00:27:49.000 And what is interesting is, listen, Justin Trudeau and the Canadians have all of this rhetoric about how we love illegal immigrants, too.

00:27:57.420 And their view is changing.

00:27:59.020 They're signaling that they're going to change the way they do immigration with the United States of America and how they're going to secure their border.

00:28:06.040 If they do that, is that at the height of hypocrisy?

00:28:09.320 There's an old line that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged.

00:28:15.660 And what is fascinating is all of these lefties love illegal immigration until it shows up on the door of their country club.

00:28:22.480 And then they lose their minds.

00:28:26.000 Governor Abbott, I know you've known him for years.

00:28:28.260 You guys have worked together.

00:28:29.440 He's a close friend.

00:28:30.000 He took a lot of heat when he started busing illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C., when they went to New York City, to Martha's Vineyard.

00:28:39.480 And they said it was a stunt.

00:28:41.780 And it was mean-spirited.

00:28:42.800 And I said it's not a stunt.

00:28:44.020 It's brilliant to let the left understand what we're dealing with on a very, very small scale.

00:28:50.960 Like you said, five million-plus crossings in Texas.

00:28:53.880 You look at the numbers under this administration.

00:28:57.160 They've hit every record basically you can hit on the number of illegals coming across, the number of illegals caught, the number of illegals that are apprehended, the number of illegals that have criminal records that are caught.

00:29:07.220 They've blown every record out of the water.

00:29:09.820 Is there a tide, do you think, turning in this country in general on this issue finally?

00:29:14.620 Oh, look, I think it's an issue.

00:29:16.880 The American people are overwhelmingly unhappy with the chaos at the southern border.

00:29:22.220 South Texas, they're incredibly unhappy.

00:29:24.840 It's an issue that if you look to the substance, the Democrats can't defend.

00:29:29.240 Their only defense is hoping the media ignores it.

00:29:32.000 And I do think there are some Democrats who realize that it's dangerous for them politically.

00:29:37.660 But I think the reality is they've handed their agenda over to the extremes.

00:29:41.900 And the extremes on this issue want open borders.

00:29:45.300 They look at every one of those people coming in as a Democrat voter, and they want them all in.

00:29:51.460 And so I wish I were optimistic that things are going to get better in the next two years, and I'm not.

00:29:57.780 I think this administration is going to continue to do everything they can, not just to fail to secure the border, but to speed up illegal immigration, to facilitate it, to act as the last mile.

00:30:13.540 Look, Joe Biden is the biggest human trafficker in the world.

00:30:17.280 And I said that a couple of weeks ago on a TV show, and it made a bunch of press statements.

00:30:21.620 But listen, that's not political rhetoric.

00:30:24.920 That is an objective fact.

00:30:26.460 There is no human being on planet Earth who has trafficked more people, more children, more women, more people who are vulnerable than Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.

00:30:39.620 And the cartels who are making billions, they bring people across the Rio Grande, they drop them off to the Biden administration, and the Biden administration is the last mile of their trafficking.

00:30:49.740 And now, apparently, they get to New York City, and the last, last mile is the Democrat mayor sending them to Canada.

00:30:56.380 So it really has gone the full loop of absurdity.

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00:32:18.760 You look at this president, and I want to go back to another big story, and that's Hunter Biden.

00:32:24.500 Hunter Biden has gone on offense.

00:32:26.700 We talked about that in one of our earlier podcasts.

00:32:29.700 He's sending out these letters saying, I might be suing you, and you might want to keep all your records to all these Republicans acting like he's going on offense here.

00:32:39.260 The media obviously lapped that up.

00:32:41.500 Then you have people asking the question now about this administration, how compromised are they by China because of the family's business deals?

00:32:50.640 There's a new polling out that says 64% of Americans believe that Joe Biden's involved with his son's business dealings, and it could put them in a negative, basically, place when it comes to doing his job as the president now. 0.98

00:33:01.640 You look at all that, and we still haven't had a president walkout, telling or demanding or calling out China directly, you better stop seeing these damn balloons. 0.93

00:33:11.140 So you now have the House looking into all this. 0.97

00:33:15.680 When you see all these different areas coming together, how big of a deal do you think this story can become?

00:33:21.660 Well, look, if 64% of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his son's business dealings, then 36% of Americans either aren't paying attention or are such partisans that they refuse to acknowledge facts because it is screamingly obvious that Joe Biden was involved and quite possibly deeply involved in Hunter's business dealings.

00:33:45.440 Hunter's business, I believe, was selling access to his dad, and it was a very lucrative business.

00:33:50.920 Now, I will say the whole investigation into Hunter Biden has taken an interesting turn because we talked about the last podcast how Hunter's lawyer is getting very aggressive, is going after Republicans, going after everyone he perceives as his opponents.

00:34:06.820 They also took an odd stance.

00:34:08.720 So the House Oversight Committee, James Comer is the chairman of it, sent a request to documents to Hunter Biden for a whole series of documents that they're examining.

00:34:17.520 And Hunter's lawyer wrote back and essentially said, go jump in a lake. 0.97

00:34:23.240 Screw you. 0.52

00:34:24.400 We're not doing it. 1.00

00:34:25.260 You don't get no frigging documents for me. 0.68

00:34:27.460 And it's across the board. 0.98

00:34:28.520 It's just hell no. 1.00

00:34:30.420 I think that was a really stupid move for Hunter Biden's legal team. 1.00

00:34:35.500 It's stupid politically and it's stupid legally. 1.00

00:34:37.440 Why? 1.00

00:34:38.040 What's going to happen next?

00:34:39.340 What's going to happen next, and I think this will be in a matter of days, if not weeks, is you're going to see the House Oversight Committee subpoena those documents.

00:34:47.420 And if and when Hunter Biden defies the subpoena, which is what he said he's going to do, I think you will see the House of Representatives hold Hunter Biden in contempt.

00:34:57.840 And the reason that is, I think, such a massive strategic mistake on their part is during the prior administration, when the House subpoenaed Steve Bannon and Steve Bannon refused to comply and the House held him in contempt, what happened?

00:35:17.280 The Department of Justice prosecuted Steve Bannon for that contempt.

00:35:22.300 Arrested him.

00:35:23.000 Arrested him, prosecuted him, brought criminal charges.

00:35:27.060 What Hunter Biden's legal team is setting up for is the same thing to happen to Hunter Biden.

00:35:31.400 And if you're Merrick Garland, how the hell do you explain, well, when Steve Bannon defies a congressional subpoena, it's a criminal offense that I'm trying to put him in jail for.

00:35:41.120 But when Hunter Biden does it, never mind, nothing to see here.

00:35:44.340 Even as political, even as double standard as the Biden DOJ has been, that's an impossible position.

00:35:51.180 And so I think Hunter's team would have been better to say, we're happy to cooperate and with reasonable requests we'll comply.

00:35:59.860 And we may have some disagreements over scope and we may go back and forth.

00:36:04.000 Like that's huge.

00:36:04.740 Here's 15 documents.

00:36:06.220 You may not get 1,500, right?

00:36:07.880 But at least look like you're trying to comply to spend.

00:36:10.420 Yeah. 0.99

00:36:11.120 If your opening bid is screw you. 0.99

00:36:15.280 Yeah. 0.96

00:36:16.480 That tends to escalate pretty quickly. 0.98

00:36:18.460 So I think they made a stupid decision, both legally and politically, because it is going to continue to put not only the Biden family, but the Biden DOJ in an impossible double standard conundrum. 0.98

00:36:32.480 We're going to tell that story in a moment. 0.99

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00:37:45.860 Lastly, there's a story that a lot of people may not know about.

00:37:48.500 We should bring light to it.

00:37:50.040 It's one that I think is really interesting.

00:37:52.420 It goes back over years.

00:37:54.340 It deals with a country you have ties to your father leaving Cuba and an individual out of Cuba.

00:38:01.620 And the possible renaming of a street after his name in Washington, D.C.

00:38:07.840 This is pretty interesting.

00:38:09.540 No one's talking about the media.

00:38:10.700 So let's talk about why this matters and why you're working on this.

00:38:14.760 So Oswaldo Payá was a democracy activist in Cuba.

00:38:18.840 He is a hero.

00:38:20.680 He was someone who stood up against the Castro regime.

00:38:23.640 He had incredible courage.

00:38:24.860 He spoke up for human rights.

00:38:26.560 He spoke up for free speech.

00:38:27.880 He spoke up for democracy.

00:38:29.680 And he was murdered.

00:38:31.380 He was murdered by the Castro communist government.

00:38:35.680 July 22nd, 2012, there was a very suspicious car crash where outside observers, it seems clear,

00:38:43.420 the Cuban police basically drove his car off the off the road and killed him.

00:38:48.100 Wow.

00:38:48.220 So I've met multiple times with his daughter, Rosa Maria.

00:38:55.360 And one of the things that I've done is I filed legislation to rename the street in Washington, D.C.,

00:39:04.700 in front of the Cuban embassy, Oswaldo Payá Way.

00:39:08.580 Now, a couple of things are interesting on this.

00:39:13.580 One, oddly enough, in the last 10 years, I've actually had a strange body of work, legislative work and legislative success, on street namings.

00:39:26.360 Now, how is that?

00:39:27.320 Let me go back to the first one.

00:39:28.580 The first one that happened was, oh.

00:39:30.780 By the way, when you ran for Senate, I'm sure you never thought that was going to be something, one, you would work on and, two, be very successful on.

00:39:37.540 Well, so the first one that happened, you're right, I would not have thought that, was back about eight years ago.

00:39:43.360 I think it was 2014.

00:39:45.180 And I was dealing with China. 0.57

00:39:48.000 And I introduced legislation to rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy, Lu Xiaobo Plaza.

00:39:54.420 Lu Xiaobo was a Nobel Peace laureate, was a democracy activist in China.

00:39:59.620 He was wrongfully imprisoned in China.

00:40:02.260 And my legislation was to rename the street in front of me.

00:40:04.840 I actually got the idea.

00:40:07.120 This was not, maybe it was a harebrained idea, but if it was harebrained, it was not my harebrained idea.

00:40:12.520 It was actually Ronald Reagan's harebrained idea.

00:40:14.820 So during the Cold War, Reagan renamed the street in front of the Soviet embassy, Sakharov Plaza, after the famed human rights and dissident Sakharov in the Soviet Union.

00:40:27.120 And it was part of a broader strategy of winning the Cold War, of calling out the evil empire.

00:40:35.180 My strategy was the same on China.

00:40:38.540 And look, on some level, you might think, all right, a street name, it's not that big a deal.

00:40:42.400 But then pause and think about it.

00:40:44.560 If you change the street name, it means anyone who wants to write to the Chinese embassy.

00:40:48.740 Has to write to that address.

00:40:49.740 Has to write Lu Xiaobo Plaza.

00:40:51.080 So you have to acknowledge that Lu Xiaobo exists, that this dissident, this Nobel laureate who's been wrongfully imprisoned, that he is real.

00:41:00.900 You know, you've got someone who wants to go find the embassy.

00:41:03.880 You've got to go on Google or MapQuest and look for it.

00:41:07.540 You get the address.

00:41:08.780 Or if you have a meeting there. 0.95

00:41:10.080 You know, the website, the Chinese website, if they want to put their damn address, they have to acknowledge the name of the dissident. 0.90

00:41:18.580 And it's why, it's why Reagan did it. 0.95

00:41:20.840 It's powerful.

00:41:22.100 So what happened with Lu Xiaobo Plaza is I introduced legislation.

00:41:26.740 I went to the Senate floor and sought to pass it by unanimous consent.

00:41:31.820 Dianne Feinstein stood up and objected.

00:41:34.180 And we had a debate on the Senate floor.

00:41:36.760 And, and DiFi, and by the way, everyone calls her DiFi.

00:41:38.800 That's the, that's the nickname she has. 1.00

00:41:40.920 DiFi stood up.

00:41:41.680 She said, you don't understand this, this, this will make the Chinese government angry.

00:41:46.180 And I laughed.

00:41:47.840 I said, no, no, I actually, I do understand.

00:41:50.460 That's a feature, not a bug.

00:41:51.940 That is the objective.

00:41:53.160 Yeah.

00:41:53.580 Is to force them to confront their horrific evil.

00:41:58.620 Well, she objected.

00:42:00.040 I tried it again.

00:42:02.140 Tried to pass it by unanimous consent.

00:42:03.940 She objected again.

00:42:04.860 And so what I did, and this is now 2015, is I put a hold on every State Department nominee.

00:42:13.620 Stopped them all.

00:42:14.980 The Obama administration was freaking out because they wanted their State Department nominees to move forward.

00:42:19.400 I had holds on all of them.

00:42:20.800 They came to me.

00:42:21.540 They said, how can we get you to lift the holds?

00:42:23.340 I said, very easy.

00:42:24.960 Get DiFi to lift her hold.

00:42:27.100 Pass my bill.

00:42:27.880 They said, no, no, no, no, no.

00:42:28.720 We don't want to do that.

00:42:29.700 I said, okay.

00:42:31.040 They said, how about we just pass a resolution that's non-binding?

00:42:33.600 I said, no, pass my bill.

00:42:36.940 Finally, they blinked.

00:42:37.920 The Obama White House went to Dianne Feinstein, leaned on her, got her to withdraw her objection.

00:42:44.680 So my legislation passes the Senate 100 to nothing.

00:42:50.600 Unanimously passes.

00:42:51.800 I was going to say, I didn't think anyone would be on the wrong side of that.

00:42:54.620 So, two epilogues to that story.

00:42:59.440 Epilogue number one, did it pass into law?

00:43:02.800 No.

00:43:03.180 Why?

00:43:03.420 Maddeningly, because the Republican House of Representatives wouldn't take it up and pass it.

00:43:09.820 Wow.

00:43:11.020 We passed it through a Democrat Senate, but the Republican House wouldn't take it up.

00:43:18.180 It was infuriating.

00:43:22.480 So it didn't pass.

00:43:23.700 And I will say I had some harsh words for the Republicans involved in not taking it up at the House at the time that I expressed very directly to them.

00:43:36.100 But the second epilogue, and this is very interesting, beginning of the Trump administration, 2017, I'm having breakfast with Rex Tillerson, the new secretary of state.

00:43:46.100 I'm at Foggy Bottom in the State Department.

00:43:48.720 And we're talking about a whole host of issues, and we're talking about China.

00:43:51.780 And he said that he had just had a meeting with his counterpart, the foreign minister in China.

00:43:57.300 And he said they came, and they said they had three top priorities at the time, foreign policy priorities. 0.93

00:44:04.740 And he said, Ted, it is the damnedest thing.

00:44:06.820 One of their top three priorities is to stop you from passing your legislation to rename the street in front of their embassy. 0.99

00:44:13.940 He's like, I think it's idiotic, but that's what they list. 0.99

00:44:18.320 And I laughed. 0.99

00:44:19.200 I thought it actually speaks volumes about the weakness of a tyrannical regime, just how vulnerable they are to sunshine, to being called out.

00:44:27.100 But what I told Rex at the time, I said, I'll tell you what.

00:44:29.380 So at the time, Lu Xiaobo had passed away.

00:44:31.040 He was no longer alive.

00:44:33.520 But his widow, Lu Xia, was still in China.

00:44:37.480 They wouldn't let her go.

00:44:38.640 And actually, Lu Xiaobo was entitled to, I think it was like $1.4 million for winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

00:44:45.280 It was a cash prize that comes with it.

00:44:47.200 They'd never gotten it because they wouldn't let him out of China.

00:44:50.240 Wow.

00:44:50.640 So I told Rex, I said, I'll tell you what.

00:44:54.980 You tell China, if they release Lu Xia, if they let her leave, I'll stop pushing this.

00:45:03.940 And I said, make me the bad guy.

00:45:05.900 But you tell them if they don't, I'm going to keep pushing it.

00:45:10.340 I'm going to pass it and get it done.

00:45:13.180 And I said, listen, I've already passed the Senate 100 and nothing once.

00:45:17.240 And so you can let them know I'll get it done this time.

00:45:19.500 And they're going to see this law passed into law.

00:45:22.580 And the sign changed.

00:45:23.800 A couple of weeks later, they released Lu Xia.

00:45:26.720 So the street sign literally resulted in freeing a prominent democracy dissident.

00:45:33.720 Pro-democracy, yeah.

00:45:35.060 So that's street sign legislative portfolio number one.

00:45:39.600 Here's legislative portfolio number two.

00:45:43.000 Did you ever see the movie Hidden Figures?

00:45:45.620 Oh, yeah.

00:45:46.260 Awesome.

00:45:46.820 Fabulous movie.

00:45:48.700 Hidden Figures is about the African-American women who worked at NASA.

00:45:53.600 If you've never seen the movie, everybody should go watch it.

00:45:56.680 It's unbelievable.

00:45:57.920 True story.

00:45:58.620 It's a true story.

00:45:59.520 They're mathematicians who help NASA go to the moon.

00:46:06.040 And so I took Heidi to see it.

00:46:08.820 I took both our daughters to see it.

00:46:10.260 And I took my mother to see it.

00:46:11.540 So all of them, we went in Houston together to the theater to see it.

00:46:15.460 And afterwards, I was talking with my girls.

00:46:17.400 And it was an interesting time.

00:46:18.980 Number one, it was the first time they'd seen a movie that showed segregation.

00:46:23.000 Like there's a great scene where, you know, they had tragically segregated bathrooms and Kevin Costner gets a sledgehammer and slams down and knocks down the sign that says colored restrooms, knocks it down.

00:46:36.660 And I remember my girls were like so puzzled.

00:46:39.660 Why would we do that?

00:46:41.180 And we had a very good, long conversation about the tragic history of segregation, but they'd never seen it depicted in a movie.

00:46:49.620 But we were also talking about, so my mother, she came out of Rice in 1956 and she went to work at Shell as a computer programmer.

00:47:01.660 She was a mathematician, a computer programmer.

00:47:03.300 But then she went to work at the Smithsonian and the opening scene of the movie, Hidden Figures, they're computing the trajectory of Sputnik, the Russian satellite launched that started the whole space race.

00:47:19.480 When my mother was at the Smithsonian, one of her job responsibilities was writing the computer program or helping write the computer program to track the orbit of Sputnik.

00:47:30.080 Wow.

00:47:30.520 And so I told our girls, I said, Mimi, they call my mom Mimi.

00:47:34.100 I said, Mimi was one of those pioneering mathematicians and computer programmers. 0.97

00:47:39.920 And she was actually doing it 10 years earlier.

00:47:43.120 She was doing it in the 50s, whereas the movie is set in the 60s, so it's 10 years later.

00:47:47.080 And I asked my mom, I said, OK, how realistic was the movie?

00:47:49.880 Like, like, and she thought it was very realistic, just sort of the challenges women faced in that era in science and computers and math.

00:47:58.580 And I told her, I said, you know, mom, one of the things that I thought sounded weird just to the modern ear was they referred to these women as as computers.

00:48:09.100 Yeah.

00:48:09.580 And we think of a computer as a hunk of metal.

00:48:12.020 They were actually the women. 1.00

00:48:13.140 It was a job profession, a computing of the numbers.

00:48:16.260 And my mother laughed.

00:48:18.520 Her very first job title at Shell was computer.

00:48:22.320 And she had a business card that said Eleanor Dara computer.

00:48:25.320 And so it's for years, I was the chairman of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee.

00:48:36.340 And so I'm very active in space.

00:48:38.140 I passed a lot of space legislation.

00:48:40.520 So I introduced legislation to rename the street in front of NASA headquarters Hidden Figures Way.

00:48:49.180 That's awesome.

00:48:50.200 Now, it gets even more interesting.

00:48:51.780 I introduced the legislation, and oddly enough, a Democrat member of the D.C. City Council sees my legislation and thinks, this is a really good idea.

00:49:05.140 So he introduces it in the D.C. City Council.

00:49:07.540 The D.C. City Council passes it.

00:49:08.940 And so if you go today to the NASA headquarters, it is on one Hidden Figures Way.

00:49:16.780 And I have in my office the street sign, the actual street sign, a replica copy of it.

00:49:22.440 But I went to the dedication, and I spoke at the dedication.

00:49:25.160 The dedication, the D.C. City Council members, the Democrats, spoke.

00:49:29.480 And I spoke.

00:49:30.060 I talked about my mom.

00:49:31.500 And I said, look, on one level, you might think, okay, a street sign, not that big a deal.

00:49:38.860 But on another level, 50 years from now, 100 years from now, some little girl, some little boy is going to come to D.C.

00:49:46.140 is going to want to see the NASA headquarters.

00:49:48.200 And they're going to look up and see the sign.

00:49:50.300 And they're going to say, what is that?

00:49:51.260 What is Hidden Figures?

00:49:52.180 What is that?

00:49:52.480 And they're going to hear the story of these heroes, these African-American women who never got recognized in history, who did something historic.

00:50:00.380 So that is done and accomplished, which leads us back to where we started this whole thing, which is Oswaldo Payawe.

00:50:08.060 So I introduced that legislation last Congress.

00:50:11.660 And much like Lou Gebao, it passed the Senate 100 to nothing.

00:50:15.520 So it's bipartisan legislation.

00:50:18.020 Bob Menendez, Democrat from New Jersey, Cuban-American.

00:50:21.720 He's joined with me.

00:50:22.720 So it's the Cruz Menendez legislation.

00:50:25.060 It passed the Senate 100 to nothing.

00:50:27.500 In the last Congress, it was a Democrat Congress.

00:50:30.020 We couldn't get the House to pass it.

00:50:32.780 I've got real optimism, number one.

00:50:34.940 Bob and I are going to pass it again in the Senate, I believe.

00:50:37.080 We did it last Congress, so I think it's quite likely.

00:50:40.660 And I think there's a very good chance the House will pass it this time, too.

00:50:44.420 I hope to, just like I was at NASA for the dedication, I hope to be at the Cuban embassy, which I've never been to in D.C. 0.88

00:50:51.660 I'm not a fan of the Cuban government, but I will happily attend the dedication of the street sign so that every day those communist bastards go into work can look at Oswaldo Paya and have to confront the courage of standing up for freedom. 0.63

00:51:07.880 It's such a cool story. 0.95

00:51:09.780 Keep us updated on it.

00:51:10.820 I love the history aspect of that.

00:51:13.020 Don't forget, we do the show three days a week.

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00:51:23.120 So make sure you hit that subscribe or auto-download button.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 13, 2023

99 Chinese Balloons plus NYC Invades Canada, Hunter Risks Contempt & Cuba Libre Street Signs

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