Verdict with Ted Cruz - June 07, 2020


America On Fire

Topics
riots burning protests violence
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Joe Biden Donald Trump Barack Obama David Dorn Rod Rosenstein Michael Flynn George Floyd Carter Page Chris Cuomo Tom Cotton Antifa David Underwood Keith Ellison James Comey Susan Rice Justin Timberlake Hillary Clinton Andrew McCabe Shane Smoking Nancy Pelosi and 4 more
Social Media Censorship Don’t Defund The Police

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

160.34

Word count

5,194

Sentence count

427

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

22

sentences flagged

Hate speech

17

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joins CNN's Jake Tapper to discuss the aftermath of the shooting of a police officer in Minneapolis, and the response to the riots that have erupted across the country since. Senator Cruz explains the difference between peaceful protest and violent rioting, and why the First Amendment protects the right to assemble.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.500 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.160 The news cycle always makes it feel like the world is on fire.
00:00:08.560 But sometimes the world is actually on fire,
00:00:11.460 and we have seen riots break out across this country,
00:00:14.900 coast to coast, arson, buildings burning down,
00:00:18.720 all stemming from the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
00:00:22.760 This is now spread out into a much larger movement,
00:00:25.860 much larger action to the point that National Guardsmen,
00:00:28.460 and troops have been called in to help maintain the peace.
00:00:32.340 Very, very overwhelming for a lot of us.
00:00:35.320 Luckily, we will break down the whole story and what it means.
00:00:39.260 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:48.100 Senator, a lot has happened since last Friday,
00:00:51.600 since the last time we spoke.
00:00:52.820 I can't even believe, I mean,
00:00:55.380 it seems like just a completely different political situation now.
00:00:58.820 And you see it everywhere, not just on the news.
00:01:00.880 You see it on social media.
00:01:02.540 People, you know, posting various hashtags.
00:01:05.580 And if you don't post a certain hashtag,
00:01:07.420 you're smeared as a bigot and a racist. 0.79
00:01:09.560 We're at each other's throats. 0.98
00:01:11.240 I mean, literal buildings are on fire.
00:01:13.840 I know you spoke on the Senate floor about this this week.
00:01:18.200 What's your take?
00:01:20.040 Well, listen, this has been a tough week in our nation's history.
00:01:23.120 What we've seen all across the country has been really, really hard.
00:01:28.900 How do you think through this?
00:01:30.360 Well, I mean, let's start with some first principles.
00:01:34.220 Don't murder people.
00:01:36.380 Don't hurt people.
00:01:37.720 Yeah.
00:01:37.840 Don't steal from people.
00:01:41.580 You know, when it comes to the Constitution,
00:01:44.020 every one of us has a right to free speech.
00:01:46.900 Every one of us has a right to protest, to speak.
00:01:50.140 But what you don't have a right to do is commit acts of violence.
00:01:53.720 What you don't have a right to do is shatter store windows.
00:01:59.180 What you don't have a right to do is burn police cars.
00:02:01.460 What you don't have a right to do is murder police officers.
00:02:05.560 And so we're seeing all of these come crashing in.
00:02:09.240 It started with something truly horrific.
00:02:12.060 What happened to George Floyd?
00:02:13.900 It was wrong.
00:02:15.520 It was evil.
00:02:17.040 It was grotesque.
00:02:19.240 At this point, all of us have seen those eight minutes of video.
00:02:22.680 What happened to George Floyd was wrong.
00:02:25.520 And the criminal justice system needs to hold those who violated that,
00:02:30.700 which in that instance was four Minneapolis police officers,
00:02:35.000 one who put his knee on his neck and took Mr. Floyd's life grotesquely,
00:02:39.940 and three others who stood around and didn't stop him.
00:02:43.360 But then we saw the anger, the paroxysms that came out of that,
00:02:49.780 initially manifest in protest.
00:02:52.560 Now, look, protests are perfectly legitimate.
00:02:55.880 They are quintessentially American.
00:02:58.680 We have the right under the First Amendment to speak out and to speak out for racial equality,
00:03:05.480 to speak out for equal justice under law.
00:03:07.660 The law should apply to everyone fairly, regardless of your skin color.
00:03:12.160 And the protests calling for standing for racial equality were in the best tradition of America.
00:03:24.680 But then we saw violent criminals.
00:03:29.240 Then we saw terrorists.
00:03:31.400 Then we saw looters and thieves infiltrate these protests
00:03:37.060 and begin wreaking mayhem, begin destroying communities,
00:03:43.180 begin committing acts of violence.
00:03:45.840 And I got to say, to every one of those violent criminals
00:03:51.300 who slipped into the otherwise peaceful protests
00:03:55.720 and began rioting and committing acts of terror,
00:03:59.320 what they did was not only wrong and criminal, it was bigoted.
00:04:03.540 Because what they did is they tried to corrupt
00:04:06.700 a legitimate expression of free speech
00:04:10.600 and a laudable goal, a goal this nation was built on.
00:04:15.880 The proposition that all of us are created equal,
00:04:18.580 they tried to corrupt it and it was wrong.
00:04:21.820 And I got to say, watching our country burn this past week,
00:04:29.460 it's been horrifying.
00:04:32.460 It has been, and it's got to stop.
00:04:34.320 Senator, I'm actually struck by the simplicity of your observation
00:04:40.120 because it's something that we actually haven't gotten
00:04:42.800 from the mainstream media.
00:04:44.180 We haven't gotten from a lot of politicians,
00:04:46.160 which is, let's go back to first principles.
00:04:50.180 It's wrong to murder.
00:04:51.140 It's wrong to steal.
00:04:52.640 It's wrong to commit violence against innocent people.
00:04:55.280 It's good to voice your own expressions of anger at injustice.
00:04:59.800 It's good for justice to be served.
00:05:01.820 Still wrong to steal, still wrong to murder.
00:05:04.040 I was watching CNN.
00:05:05.620 That's a statement that I rarely utter,
00:05:07.660 but I was watching CNN and Chris Cuomo,
00:05:10.860 the brother of the Democratic governor of New York,
00:05:13.400 Chris Cuomo came out and explicitly defended violent protest,
00:05:19.360 which also known as riots, also known as domestic terrorism.
00:05:22.980 I mean, he said, actually, show me where it says that protests have to be polite and peaceful.
00:05:29.420 Could you show him where it says that, Senator?
00:05:30.780 Well, there is this little thing called the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
00:05:37.120 The First Amendment protects the right of the people to peaceably assemble.
00:05:43.260 It's right there.
00:05:44.140 Actually, peaceably to assemble.
00:05:45.360 Peaceably is right in there.
00:05:47.140 So there's a difference.
00:05:48.200 You can stand up and protest.
00:05:50.300 And by the way, some of the most effective protests in the world
00:05:53.740 have been peaceable, nonviolent protests.
00:05:57.560 I want to touch on Antifa.
00:05:59.540 And I think you've actually honed in here on what lies at the heart of this.
00:06:03.840 It's not just Chris Cuomo going out and saying protests should be violent.
00:06:08.660 It's that Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota,
00:06:12.000 held up a photo smiling with a book called The Antifa Handbook,
00:06:16.400 smiling in photos with people in Antifa.
00:06:19.080 Antifa stands for anti-fascist.
00:06:21.600 They don't behave like anti-fascists.
00:06:23.240 I mean, they do in the sense that they behave like radical communists and anarchists.
00:06:27.220 When you march in and violently assault people, you are being fa.
00:06:32.000 You're not anti-fa.
00:06:33.560 You're fa.
00:06:34.260 You've gone full fa here.
00:06:35.940 And, you know, I think the president this week said that he wants to classify them
00:06:40.320 as a terrorist organization.
00:06:42.200 And a very basic definition of terrorism,
00:06:44.220 they're using violence against civilians to achieve political ends.
00:06:47.980 It's as simple as it gets.
00:06:49.000 It seems pretty clear.
00:06:50.520 What is the role of Antifa here?
00:06:52.500 And what does it say about the state of our country that you've got elected officials
00:06:56.220 voicing support for them?
00:06:58.620 Well, listen, for two years, I've been calling on the Trump administration to designate Antifa
00:07:03.400 as a domestic terrorist organization.
00:07:05.300 I introduced a resolution last year in the Senate calling on Antifa to be designated because they
00:07:10.860 go in and they commit violent assaults.
00:07:13.640 They commit violent attacks.
00:07:15.200 And these typically are young anarchists.
00:07:20.020 They're often rich white college kids who wear masks.
00:07:26.960 And look, you know, they're sitting there with their thousand dollar iPhones saying capitalism
00:07:34.820 is evil. 0.50
00:07:35.760 Let's burn it all to the ground. 0.98
00:07:37.020 And interestingly enough, they're not burning their dorm room to the ground. 0.57
00:07:40.480 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that, that, that, that would be too much.
00:07:43.420 They're going into the inner city and they're burning to the ground.
00:07:46.800 The communities that, that, that people have to live in it.
00:07:50.320 And it is, it's grotesque.
00:07:52.420 It's wrong.
00:07:54.020 And look, Keith Ellison's son is a city council member in Minneapolis.
00:08:00.440 He tweeted out that he stands with Antifa.
00:08:03.120 They're Antifa.
00:08:03.760 They're literally burning his city to the ground.
00:08:06.400 And these democratic politicians, and I'll tell you, if anyone behave worse than that,
00:08:14.520 it's Hollywood celebrities.
00:08:16.560 So, so Hollywood celebrities are all engaged in this virtue signaling where they're giving
00:08:22.380 money to bail the rioters out of jail.
00:08:25.860 And, and, and this is literally the, so, you know, I, I engaged with some of these celebrities
00:08:33.500 and asked, Hey, Hey, wait a second.
00:08:35.520 Uh, you know, Justin Timberlake was like, Oh, give money to this fund to bail the rioters
00:08:39.280 out of jail.
00:08:39.940 How about you give money to a fund to rebuild the African-American and Hispanic owned small 0.99
00:08:46.200 businesses that have been burned to the ground by these violent criminals instead of bailing
00:08:51.140 the criminal out of jail, right, help the innocent victims.
00:08:56.940 And, and let's take another component of it.
00:09:00.860 The words black lives matter.
00:09:02.900 Yeah.
00:09:03.140 This has been a contentious point.
00:09:05.180 Yeah.
00:09:07.080 It shouldn't be do black lives matter. 1.00
00:09:10.540 Absolutely.
00:09:11.260 Yes.
00:09:12.020 Unequivocally period black lives matter. 1.00
00:09:14.940 But here's the part that's deemed, Oh, you can't say this.
00:09:17.100 You can't say black lives matter, Hispanic lives matter, Asian lives matter, white lives 0.69
00:09:21.120 matter, human life matters.
00:09:23.480 Right.
00:09:23.700 And, and, okay.
00:09:25.200 So, so why is that a political statement?
00:09:27.320 This is, so I actually had this conversation with, with my daughters today where they were
00:09:31.440 talking about some YouTuber that raised a bunch of money for BLM.
00:09:35.640 Of course, my daughters already know the acronym BLM.
00:09:37.940 I'm like, so tell me what does, what does BLM stand for?
00:09:40.640 And, and, you know, my daughter said, well, you know, equality, equality is good.
00:09:44.180 And I was like, yeah, that's, that's certainly true.
00:09:47.260 I love equality.
00:09:47.680 But if you look at the radicals who are co-opting the message, black lives matter, what they're
00:09:58.740 advocating is number one, an absolute assault on police.
00:10:04.300 And I'll tell you who it hurts.
00:10:05.660 It hurts African-Americans. 0.88
00:10:06.960 It hurts Hispanics because you know why? 1.00
00:10:09.000 Because when this happens, if you look at what happened in Ferguson, you look at what
00:10:12.080 happened in Baltimore.
00:10:13.360 There's something called the Ferguson effect, which is essentially that when cops feel like,
00:10:17.800 okay, if, if I get in an interaction, maybe with a criminal and, and, and somehow it gets
00:10:23.680 violent, my whole life can be destroyed.
00:10:26.480 My career can be destroyed.
00:10:27.560 My family can be destroyed.
00:10:28.880 And the perfectly rational thing to do is, Hey, I'm going to step back.
00:10:31.800 I'm not going to engage.
00:10:32.980 Of course.
00:10:33.480 And what you see happen over and over again is the murder rates skyrocket.
00:10:37.000 Right.
00:10:37.400 We saw that happen in Ferguson.
00:10:39.220 We saw that happen in Baltimore.
00:10:40.740 And you end up with, if you are committed to the proposition, black lives matter, demonizing
00:10:47.080 the cops will end up with more black lives being lost more because by the way, the people
00:10:52.380 being murdered most frequently, right.
00:10:55.260 By violent criminals, by gangs are people in low income neighborhoods and often they're 0.97
00:11:02.660 African-Americans or Hispanics.
00:11:04.460 Well, this, this is, I think the key point here, because, you know, people see that phrase
00:11:08.940 black lives matter.
00:11:09.720 And they say, if you don't support this organization and the most radical leaders of this organization,
00:11:15.560 then somehow you don't care about black lives.
00:11:17.640 And the fact is virtually, statistically, nobody in this country thinks black lives don't matter.
00:11:24.540 Ever anybody with any political influence, it believes black lives matter. 1.00
00:11:28.420 Anybody with any media influence believes black lives matter. 1.00
00:11:30.840 Anybody with any business influence, right.
00:11:32.580 Major corporations donating millions and millions of dollars to black lives matter.
00:11:36.000 Anybody with an Instagram account or a Twitter account or a Facebook believes black lives 1.00
00:11:39.620 matter.
00:11:40.000 Every, everybody agrees on this point, but some radicals, some people pushing things that
00:11:45.100 are not so great, that are not so popular are co-opting that very basic message that everybody
00:11:49.740 agrees with and using it to put, push radical leftist ideas that the vast, vast majority of
00:11:56.080 Americans don't want. 0.99
00:11:57.120 And it's so cynical and it's so bullying and it's so, so intimidating that I think a lot
00:12:02.240 of people are just lost on what to do.
00:12:05.080 So, so Michael, I'll give an example.
00:12:07.380 One of the agenda items of, of, of the radicals that are leading this movement, uh, is to use
00:12:14.120 their phrase, defund the police.
00:12:16.240 Uh, this past week that was tweeted by Hillary Clinton's former press secretary, defund the
00:12:21.860 police.
00:12:22.760 Let me ask you for a second.
00:12:24.380 How good do you think it would be for African American communities if there were no police 1.00
00:12:29.500 officers?
00:12:30.040 Yeah, not quite.
00:12:30.980 If just the drug dealers could run free, if the street gangs could run free, it's already
00:12:34.820 the murder rates are, are, are horrific.
00:12:37.140 How good would it be for, for your family or mine?
00:12:39.860 How many Americans this week, as you watch the rioting thought about the right to keep and
00:12:45.060 bear arms?
00:12:46.780 I'm sure the lines are around the block.
00:12:48.420 How many, how many, how many thought about what happens if that mob comes to my house?
00:12:54.600 Right.
00:12:55.080 And, and that, that is an, an extreme agenda and it's not right.
00:13:05.360 Yeah.
00:13:06.580 You know what?
00:13:08.480 Here's the name the, the media doesn't want to talk about.
00:13:12.520 David Dorn.
00:13:15.060 David Dorn was a retired police officer in St. Louis, Missouri.
00:13:20.580 David Dorn was shot by rioters.
00:13:23.760 He was protecting the pawn shop.
00:13:25.800 He's a small businessman.
00:13:26.760 He was shot and murdered.
00:13:28.840 David Dorn spent four decades serving honorably as a police officer.
00:13:33.360 And David Dorn was murdered by this rioting.
00:13:36.980 And yet the media doesn't want to talk about him.
00:13:40.280 Yeah.
00:13:41.140 If you believe in black lives matters, David Dorn's life matters. 1.00
00:13:45.580 Right.
00:13:45.880 I'll give you another name, David Underwood, who was another law enforcement officer who
00:13:50.080 was murdered.
00:13:51.800 Las Vegas, you had another law who was also, David Underwood was African-American as well.
00:13:55.740 We had two African-American police officers murdered by this rioting.
00:14:01.160 And yet the woke virtue signalers in Hollywood, on CNN, on Twitter, those lives don't matter
00:14:10.580 to them at all.
00:14:11.400 Right.
00:14:11.720 And it's wrong.
00:14:12.740 Look, we should protect everybody's life and we should have a passion.
00:14:17.200 In this whole racial issue, in this whole issue of the protests and the riots.
00:14:20.600 I mean, in the fact of the riots and the protests, probably the most outrageous cynicism
00:14:26.400 is that just a week ago we were told, if you go outside to do anything, you're killing
00:14:31.720 grandma, you're endangering people because of the coronavirus. 0.98
00:14:34.560 If you go, God forbid, to protest any of the lockdown orders, you are a terrible, no good, 0.99
00:14:40.780 awful person.
00:14:42.100 And then this week we're told by the very same public health experts, by the very same
00:14:45.880 politicians, everybody should go out by the hundred thousand to protest in this left-wing
00:14:52.420 narrative.
00:14:52.980 I mean, people look at that and I think our capacity for outrage just goes out the window.
00:14:57.000 Right. 0.99
00:14:57.900 Well, look, one of the more ridiculous hypocrites on this has been Bill de Blasio in New York, 0.99
00:15:02.480 who de Blasio was asked this last week, so if you can come and protest and get much, much 0.99
00:15:08.520 closer than six feet apart, can we go to church?
00:15:12.020 Can we go to synagogue?
00:15:13.040 And de Blasio said, no, no, no, no, no, no, because there's a history of racial discrimination
00:15:18.280 in America, but there's no history of religious discrimination. 0.99
00:15:22.120 What utter crap, by the way. 0.99
00:15:24.100 Right, it's not true. 0.99
00:15:25.000 I mean, you want to talk about millennia of racial discrimination, yes, but of religious
00:15:32.300 persecution.
00:15:33.460 I mean, we're in a country that was literally founded by people fleeing religious persecution.
00:15:39.300 You look at the pilgrims who arrived here, they arrived to come to a land where they could
00:15:44.000 practice their faith.
00:15:44.900 And by the way, you want to talk about people persecuted for faith.
00:15:48.280 You look at the Jewish community in New York City, who de Blasio has singled out for persecution
00:15:53.760 over and over and over again.
00:15:56.540 You know, Jews in World War II, six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust to say there's
00:16:05.320 no history of religious discrimination.
00:16:07.680 It's absurd. 0.53
00:16:08.560 This is a political leftist, anti-American narrative that is nonsense. 0.98
00:16:17.240 And the hypocrisy of it is really coming out.
00:16:20.440 Amid all this chaos, 2.5 million jobs added in May.
00:16:27.220 The economy is now, I mean, the stock market surged when we got this news.
00:16:31.920 Is there a chance that we could see something like a V-shaped recovery?
00:16:35.120 Is there a chance that we could come out of this thing pretty strong?
00:16:38.840 Look, I hope so.
00:16:40.120 The job numbers are fantastic.
00:16:42.260 We're seeing states all across the country reopening.
00:16:45.080 Texas is reopening.
00:16:46.580 And let me say, this is a powerful sign.
00:16:49.640 Open up the economy now.
00:16:52.320 Let people go back to work.
00:16:54.160 Now, that doesn't mean ignore all of the efforts we're doing.
00:16:57.860 We can engage in social distancing.
00:17:00.100 We can continue to be prudent, but open it up.
00:17:03.620 Let people go back to work.
00:17:04.960 Two and a half million new jobs.
00:17:06.520 Now, we've had 40 million people lose their jobs.
00:17:09.420 So, two and a half million.
00:17:10.700 But you know what?
00:17:11.520 It's the first time in a long time we haven't seen job numbers that were several million going down.
00:17:16.020 So, instead of going down, they're going back up sharply.
00:17:18.980 And I hope we keep seeing it go back up.
00:17:21.680 The 40 million jobs that went away were self-inflicted.
00:17:24.820 We did this to stop the pandemic.
00:17:27.920 Now, let's let people open up.
00:17:29.700 Let's let them get back to work and get the economy moving again. 1.00
00:17:34.440 These job numbers are really encouraging.
00:17:37.460 And we need to keep moving in that direction.
00:17:40.200 That's great news.
00:17:41.100 And before we get to mailbag, because I do want to hit the mailbag, there is one more story on the subject of destruction that I've got to get back to.
00:17:49.120 Obviously, destruction has been in the news a lot.
00:17:51.780 But it's important, I think, to talk about your absolute destruction of Rod Rosenstein's testimony before the Senate when you were discussing the gross mishandling of things over the past several years at the DOJ.
00:18:08.080 Could you just tell us a little bit about this?
00:18:10.440 Because I think for those of us who have been gaslit for years and years on this subject of how the DOJ was going after Trump, I think it was just so refreshing to see you shed light on what was really happening.
00:18:23.000 What we now know, as more and more information has gotten public, is that the Obama-Biden administration politicized the FBI, politicized the Department of Justice, politicized the intelligence community, and targeted them at the Trump campaign, targeted them at Donald Trump directly.
00:18:42.480 They targeted them with wiretaps directed at Carter Page, a senior advisor to the Trump campaign.
00:18:49.900 They targeted it with spies sent in wearing wires, confidential informants to the Trump campaign, their opposing campaign.
00:18:57.080 And they went after, in particular, General Michael Flynn, a three-star general who'd spent his entire life fighting for this country.
00:19:04.380 And they directly targeted.
00:19:06.780 We now know that the decision to target them went all the way to the top.
00:19:11.460 On January 5th, 2017, there was a meeting in the White House, in the Oval Office.
00:19:16.160 Barack Obama was there.
00:19:17.300 Joe Biden was there.
00:19:19.140 James Comey was there, the head of the FBI.
00:19:21.300 And he reported to the president and to the vice president about their targeting of Michael Flynn, the incoming national security advisor.
00:19:27.900 Sally Yates, who was the acting attorney general, said she didn't know anything about it.
00:19:31.460 So she learned that the FBI was targeting the incoming national security advisor from Barack Obama because the FBI was briefing the president directly.
00:19:43.020 That is such an abuse of power.
00:19:47.400 Right.
00:19:47.500 And if you look at everything that has come out, the inspector general report at the Department of Justice showed that the FBI was totally politicized.
00:19:56.920 It showed 17 material misstatements that were made to the FISA court.
00:20:03.100 It also showed that a senior FBI lawyer fraudulently altered evidence.
00:20:08.300 And so and here's what he did, because it's worth remembering.
00:20:12.460 I mean, it really is.
00:20:14.020 It's like out of a bad spy movie.
00:20:16.480 So they're trying to get a warrant to to to wiretap Carter Page.
00:20:22.420 They're trying to renew the warrant.
00:20:23.740 And Carter Page is talking to a bunch of Russians.
00:20:26.440 And so, look, if you're talking to a bunch of Russians, that's ordinarily kind of suspicious. 1.00
00:20:30.340 Why are you talking to a bunch of Russians? 0.90
00:20:32.100 Now, he is a Russia expert.
00:20:34.180 So so but even so, there's a little bit of suspicion there.
00:20:37.400 So the FBI sent an email to the CIA said, hey, is this guy working for you?
00:20:43.020 Because if you're working for the CIA on going after the Russians, then you probably ought to be talking to the Russians if you're working for the CIA.
00:20:50.840 CIA sends an email back.
00:20:52.380 Yep.
00:20:52.600 He's working for us.
00:20:53.820 So CIA says in writing, Carter Page is working for the United States government when he's talking to the Russians.
00:20:59.900 The FBI lawyer takes that email and alters it and literally changes it 180 degrees the opposite.
00:21:07.260 Instead of, yes, he's working for us.
00:21:10.220 He alters it and creates a fraudulent document.
00:21:13.340 No, he's not working for us.
00:21:15.060 And that gets submitted to the court.
00:21:16.940 If you or I did that in any court in a traffic ticket.
00:21:19.900 Right.
00:21:20.840 If you created a fraudulent document and submitted it, you would go to jail.
00:21:24.860 I would go to jail.
00:21:26.220 That and wow.
00:21:27.220 And so Rod Rosenstein was testifying.
00:21:29.440 And by the way, Rosenstein signed one of those applications.
00:21:34.500 And.
00:21:38.580 I laid out that history that I just walked through and I said, listen, you were coming into a deeply politicized, corrupted law enforcement environment.
00:21:48.880 There are two and only two possibilities.
00:21:51.080 One, you were complicit in the weaponization of law enforcement against one political party.
00:22:00.100 Or you were grossly negligent.
00:22:03.260 Those are the only two choices.
00:22:05.560 And what we walked through, I said, look, did you know about the Steele dossier that was the basis of this whole application?
00:22:13.880 The principal witness behind it said, oh, it's not reliable.
00:22:16.340 It was all just a bunch of guys talking to the bar.
00:22:18.160 It's not reliable.
00:22:18.880 Did you know that?
00:22:19.900 No.
00:22:20.940 Did you know that there was a bunch of exculpatory information?
00:22:23.820 No.
00:22:24.940 Did you know that this lawyer had fraudulently created this document?
00:22:28.820 No.
00:22:29.380 Did you know that the guy was working for the CIA at the time?
00:22:32.060 No.
00:22:33.100 Did you know that the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, had paid for this oppo research pile of lies?
00:22:40.960 No.
00:22:42.240 And Rosenstein just didn't ask any of it.
00:22:44.200 He was just a rubber stamp.
00:22:45.940 He just said, well, the FBI told me that, so I just listened to them.
00:22:49.580 And what it raised, now it's interesting, Rosenstein testified.
00:22:52.800 He said if he knew what he knew now, he never would have signed it.
00:22:55.180 He would not have approved the wiretap.
00:22:58.380 That now means the next step is to go ask people like James Comey, go ask people like Andrew McCabe, the deputy at the FBI,
00:23:05.620 because there were people lying and complicit, and the responsibility, I believe, goes all the way to the top.
00:23:16.880 And I got to say in this hearing, one of the most interesting things, Michael,
00:23:21.240 Senate Democrats so desperately wanted to change the topic.
00:23:25.260 I bet they did.
00:23:26.460 I mean, you could see the panic.
00:23:28.340 No, no, no, no, no.
00:23:29.060 Don't ask.
00:23:29.540 And they just didn't care about law enforcement being abused.
00:23:33.380 And look, I understand why.
00:23:34.940 Joe Biden is their nominee.
00:23:36.980 They don't want anything that touches Joe Biden.
00:23:39.600 They want zero fault.
00:23:41.020 And they've elevated Obama to sainthood.
00:23:42.920 So in their narrative, Obama could never do anything wrong.
00:23:47.120 And Biden is their only hope.
00:23:51.020 But I got to say, so I asked this week, yesterday, actually, at a Senate hearing, I said, look,
00:23:57.940 what would you guys think if Donald Trump did exactly what Obama and Biden did?
00:24:05.980 What would you think if Donald Trump today sent the FBI to wiretap the Joe Biden presidential campaign?
00:24:12.260 Right.
00:24:12.940 What would you think today if Donald Trump sent in FBI spies wearing wires to the Joe Biden presidential campaign?
00:24:19.920 What would you think today if Donald Trump directed the FBI to submit fraudulent evidence to a federal court to target the Biden campaign?
00:24:32.300 And by the way, we also know that General Michael Flynn, that his identity was unmasked, was revealed by Joe Biden himself personally and directly Joe Biden did that.
00:24:42.800 But that's stunning.
00:24:45.840 And I got to say also, so one of the things that became public in recent weeks, there's an email from Susan Rice.
00:24:55.100 It's dated January 20th, 2017.
00:24:57.620 Now, Michael, you and I both know what that date is.
00:25:00.320 That is the date Donald Trump was being sworn in.
00:25:03.740 So Susan Rice is national security advisor.
00:25:05.620 She's on her way out.
00:25:06.920 Now, think about it.
00:25:07.740 Usually your last day in the office, what are you doing?
00:25:10.300 You're packing up your desk.
00:25:11.860 To take the photos down.
00:25:13.220 You're picking up the plant.
00:25:14.280 Right.
00:25:14.560 Take the photos down.
00:25:17.100 She sends an email to herself.
00:25:21.080 Just pause to think for a second.
00:25:22.580 Your last day in the office, what do you want to do?
00:25:24.320 You send an email to yourself.
00:25:26.280 It's one of the funniest CYA emails you've ever read.
00:25:30.800 She says three times that President Obama has directed this investigation into Flynn.
00:25:37.000 And she says three times it's by the book.
00:25:39.480 By the book, by the book, by the book.
00:25:41.860 The only reason you send that is you're sitting there going, oh, crap, the new guys are going
00:25:47.440 to come in and they're going to find out about all this.
00:25:49.500 Let me write an email to say we're doing everything by the book.
00:25:54.160 It.
00:25:54.560 The only reason you write that email is indicative of a deeply guilty conscience.
00:26:02.600 I think I think we need to know who abused the political process.
00:26:07.300 There needs to be accountability.
00:26:08.620 And those who broke the law need to be prosecuted.
00:26:10.780 That's right.
00:26:11.280 It's evidence of a guilty conscience and the cleverness to realize this isn't going to be
00:26:15.060 looking very good when the new guys get into power.
00:26:18.200 Before we go, I've just got to get to a few mailbag questions here.
00:26:21.260 First one from Margo, why are you two still socially distancing?
00:26:26.340 Go get a cigar together.
00:26:27.860 Senator, your thoughts. 0.99
00:26:30.360 Damn straight. 0.98
00:26:31.300 Come to D.C. next week. 0.94
00:26:32.420 We'll film.
00:26:32.840 That works for me.
00:26:33.520 All right.
00:26:35.200 John asks, what are the effects this will have on the 2020 election?
00:26:39.240 Do you think this hurts Trump more or Biden?
00:26:41.320 I don't know.
00:26:45.960 I think 2020 is incredibly volatile.
00:26:49.440 Yeah.
00:26:49.800 I think it depends, number one, on what happens with coronavirus.
00:26:53.060 If the numbers suddenly start skyrocketing, that is really bad for America.
00:26:58.920 But that's also probably bad for Trump as well.
00:27:03.000 Number two, what happens with the economy?
00:27:04.440 If we see massive job losses between now and election day, that's really bad for Trump.
00:27:12.200 If we see the sort of thing we just saw in these job numbers, the economy coming back, that's really good.
00:27:17.780 And this racial division and rioting, look, rioting, I think, scares people.
00:27:27.540 I think it also shows just how radical and extreme the Democrats are.
00:27:35.180 It's really unmasked them.
00:27:39.120 That I don't think has helped Joe Biden.
00:27:43.360 If a Democratic presidency means the radicals who want to burn our cities to the ground or put in charge, that ain't good.
00:27:52.140 So how all of this plays out, I look at this election and I think there's a huge delta.
00:27:59.260 What I hope we will see is I hope we will see the economy coming back, optimism coming back, hope and the promise of America.
00:28:09.440 And if that's the case, we could see a really good election.
00:28:11.800 We could see the president reelected by a big margin.
00:28:14.320 We could see the Republican majority in the Senate grow.
00:28:17.960 And we could see Republicans taking the House.
00:28:20.000 That's what I hope will happen, that people will look at this craziness of Nancy Pelosi and the extreme radicalized left and say, we don't want any of that.
00:28:31.560 But this is uncharted territory.
00:28:35.300 And so if things go really badly, we could end up with a terrible election.
00:28:41.300 Right, uncharted territory in many ways.
00:28:43.780 Daryl asks, what's your take on the use of military personnel to help quell the riots?
00:28:47.720 I know your Senate colleague, Tom Cotton, got the New York Times in a lot of trouble because he weighed in on this and some of the younger Times staffers were very upset by it.
00:28:58.540 Well, OK, so let me take two different issues there because they're both worth addressing.
00:29:03.880 The New York Times, you literally can't write satire about them anymore. 0.97
00:29:08.860 They're so ridiculous and extreme. 0.85
00:29:11.240 So Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed in the Times that said, send the troops in, advocated for sending in the military to bring peace to the cities. 0.98
00:29:20.240 And the New York Times began to have an epileptic fit.
00:29:26.460 Like their reporters began trembling.
00:29:30.700 And one after the other, they were triggered.
00:29:32.760 And they were mad.
00:29:34.160 How dare you publish this view?
00:29:36.800 This view is violence to me.
00:29:39.160 And you've got reporters.
00:29:40.640 You know, you remember the old archetype of the tough, grizzled reporter?
00:29:45.800 Shane Smoking was going to speak truth to power, was going to uncover whatever's going on.
00:29:51.040 You've now got these pansies who are reporters that are just like, mommy, scary words, scary words. 1.00
00:29:58.060 Hide me from the scary words.
00:29:59.580 Like, okay, if you disagree with Tom Cotton, all right, buckaroo, here's a crazy idea.
00:30:07.540 Man up and argue why you think he's wrong.
00:30:09.800 That's okay.
00:30:10.240 Write your own op-ed.
00:30:11.320 That's called free speech.
00:30:13.180 And by the way, listen, I actually think Tom, I don't agree with everything Tom said.
00:30:17.820 I mean, you actually look at the substance of it.
00:30:20.280 How do you keep cities safe in terms of how it operates under the law?
00:30:24.740 The first line of defense are our police officers.
00:30:28.180 It's why I'm so vigorous in saying don't undermine our cops.
00:30:31.360 Let law enforcement do its job.
00:30:33.360 We've seen a lot of Democratic politicians basically tying police officers' hands behind their back,
00:30:38.600 preventing them from keeping cities safe.
00:30:41.020 And so the first line of defense are the police.
00:30:45.520 The second line of defense is the National Guard.
00:30:47.960 And so if the police are overwhelmed, you can call up the National Guard.
00:30:51.260 That provides an additional wave of strength.
00:30:53.980 And the military is available.
00:30:55.120 Look, there is a long tradition of the military in a case of violent insurrection, in a case of rioting coming in.
00:31:02.720 But the military is the third and final step.
00:31:05.620 And so I think there's some Republican politicians that are showing how tough they are by saying send in the Marines on day one.
00:31:13.980 Well, look, look, if we need to, yes, we need to do whatever is needed to keep people safe.
00:31:19.580 But but let's start with not handcuffing the police officers and let them actually protect our communities.
00:31:26.580 And the military should only be a last resort, I believe.
00:31:30.680 Right. Fair point.
00:31:32.260 Much more.
00:31:32.960 We'll have to leave it there.
00:31:33.960 We'll have to wait until the next episode.
00:31:35.580 But, Senator, if that stogie invitation is real, I will call the airline right now. 0.97
00:31:39.760 I will book a ticket and I will see you in D.C.
00:31:41.860 Together, you and I are going to light some fires.
00:31:45.260 That works for me.
00:31:46.940 See you on the East Coast, Senator.
00:31:48.800 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:31:49.580 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:31:50.980 This is an iHeartRadio.com.
00:32:20.980 Guaranteed Human.