Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 16, 2026


AOC causes Founding Father Grave Roll Overs, 'WE didnt get our Way' so BYE VA SCOTUS & Trump takes China Week In Review

Topics
detention camps
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Jake Radio Jimmy Lai Mark Suedan Verdict Thomas Jefferson Ben Ferguson Donald Trump Dick Durbin Xi Jinping Joe Biden Gao Quanfu Gulshan Abbas Steve Cohen Jin Mingri Tim Scott Jim Crow Spriteberry Bliss Creamy Strawberry Coke Martin Luther King Charlotte Bergman and 16 more
Defending Police Heroes, Passing Trey’s Law & Fighting for Imprisoned Christians in China, plus Israel Sues the NYT Dems Gone Wild—Kamala, Newsom & Spanberger in Full Panic about Losing Power

Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

158.27

Word count

5,471

Sentence count

246

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

15

sentences flagged

Hate speech

26

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz responds to AOC's comments about the founding fathers and the Virginia gerrymandering reversal, and President Trump heads to China and could we see the release of political prisoners from the U.S. It's the Week in Review and it starts right now.

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 This is an iHeart Podcast.
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00:00:51 Welcome.
00:00:52 It is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:54 We can review Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:56 and here are the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week.
00:00:59 First up, AOC doesn't understand how America was started,
00:01:03 but she put words in the mouths of our founding fathers.
00:01:07 The only problem is there's receipts of what they actually believed. 0.69
00:01:11 And we fact check her on exactly how ridiculous some of her comments were.
00:01:15 Up next, the Virginia SCOTUS gerrymandering reversal that has rocked the entire country.
00:01:22 So what does it actually mean and how is this going to affect the midterm elections?
00:01:27 And finally, President Trump heads to China.
00:01:30 What is coming out of that meeting in Beijing and could we see the releasing of political prisoners from the U.S.?
00:01:37 It's the Week in Review and it starts right now.
00:01:40 The Declaration of Independence that was the birthday of our nation.
00:01:45 And it was Thomas Jefferson who penned the immortal words,
00:01:48 we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed
00:01:54 by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit
00:01:58 of happiness that declaration by the way declaring our independence not from billionaires but from
00:02:05 oppressive government from king george that was the beginning of our nation and then some 20 years
00:02:13 later the united states constitution which created our democracy i mean if you want to look at the
00:02:18 the moment that our democracy was created. It was the delegates in Constitution Hall in Philadelphia
00:02:23 who drafted the Constitution, who set up our system of government, and then the states that
00:02:28 had to ratify it. And once it was ratified, it went into effect. That is what has created our
00:02:35 democracy. Now, if she were speaking precisely, what she could have said is when our democracy
00:02:42 was created it was imperfect and we had to travel a journey to move towards greater equality that 0.76
00:02:50 statement is unequivocally right it is true yeah accurate when our nation was created african 1.00
00:02:56 americans in half the country were slaves they had no right to vote women had no right to vote 0.85
00:03:02 on the question of slavery i've said many times slavery is the original sin of america it was a
00:03:09 grotesque evil. I will point out, though, that how did we abolish slavery? Look, we abolished
00:03:16 slavery. Number one, the person who did it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican
00:03:20 president. Our party was created in order to defeat slavery. That was the purpose. That's the
00:03:26 origin of the Republican Party. The Democrat Party, by the way, virtually its entire tenure
00:03:31 defended slavery and fought ferociously in favor of slavery. But the way the abolitionists in the
00:03:39 Republican Party successfully abolished slavery was not by attacking our founding principles,
00:03:46 not by attacking the Constitution, not by attacking the Declaration, but rather by appealing
00:03:51 to those principles, by saying, we are not living up. When Jefferson wrote the words,
00:03:58 all men are created equal. That statement is on its face, completely incompatible with slavery.
00:04:05 Jefferson knew that yeah he was brilliant yeah and he was putting into place I believe with I
00:04:12 agree with Dr. Martin Luther King who said the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice
00:04:19 but AOC and this is true with with the squad and with all of the communists on the left 0.91
00:04:25 they're so ignorant that everything I just said there they don't know they're told that the 0.92
00:04:31 American revolution was a communist revolution against the billionaires, that the answer is 0.99
00:04:36 more government power. And they repeat things like black Americans gave us democracy, which is just 0.99
00:04:43 simply not accurate. The civil rights movement was one of the greatest democratic movements in 0.55
00:04:48 our nation's history. By the way, she points to the Civil Rights Act. Look, Civil Rights Act,
00:04:53 far more Republicans, a much greater percentage of Republicans in Congress voted for the Civil
00:04:58 Rights Act than Democrats. Her party opposed the Civil Rights Act, the majority of them. And so
00:05:03 yes, we're on a journey, but the left, their ignorance, it is a close battle
00:05:11 which predominates ideology or ignorance, but they're both intertwined and they're both
00:05:18 fundamentally wrong. And by the way, AOC was not done there. She also had another pretty
00:05:24 interesting line she made it very clear uh that she wanted to say something about illegal immigrants
00:05:29 and saying through fear-mongering that once they're all deported they're going to come after
00:05:33 other groups referring to republicans take a listen to this all of a sudden we now have
00:05:39 a paramilitary force we don't have a court system right they don't need they don't think they need
00:05:47 judicial warrants so you don't get due process so you start creating this black box system that's 0.58
00:05:53 point a finger whether it's like again like we saw in Jim Crow whether you just point a finger
00:06:02 and a hundred years ago accuse a little black boy of something you can point a finger right and 0.82
00:06:08 accuse someone of that today if you think when once you build that machine that it's only going
00:06:15 to be reserved to that. That's right. This eats profit. These things, ICE, it's not just ICE.
00:06:25 It's CoreCivic. It's GeoGroup. Those are corporations that run ICE detention centers.
00:06:32 They are for profit. They are traded on Wall Street. And what happens is that those companies
00:06:42 and this system is that it does not accept anything but growth it's not even good enough
00:06:52 to be profitable it's not even good enough to be profitable you have to be more profitable
00:06:57 and more profitable and more profitable it's not enough to be a profitable business you have to
00:07:03 keep growing those profits and so once they've rounded up every person in this country who do
00:07:07 think is next? You know, look, that is both the classic ignorance and misinformation of the left.
00:07:14 So they understand AOC supports a open border. So she wants to abolish the police. She wants to
00:07:21 abolish ICE. She opposes all law enforcement that actually secures our border against foreign 0.99
00:07:26 invaders, against illegal immigrants, against violent murderers, rapists, child molesters and
00:07:32 gangbangers. And her position has consistently been let all of them out of jail. But at the 0.93
00:07:37 same time, she wants to tell her very ill-informed supporters, if there are detention centers that
00:07:46 are used for illegal immigrants, that are used for violent criminals, those will be used by
00:07:51 government against you. And part of what is really astonishing is if you look throughout history, 0.98
00:07:59 in almost every instance where there have been mass detention centers, it's been the left that
00:08:04 has put them in place. You look at whether it is the Soviet gulags, where communists imprisoned
00:08:12 millions. You look at Joseph Stalin. You read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago and talks about
00:08:19 the incredible miseries of communism imprisoning millions in prisons. You look at my father's home
00:08:27 country of Cuba and the prisons that are there right now. You look at North Korea. Cuba is
00:08:32 communist. Soviet Union was communist. North Korea is communist. You have gulags there.
00:08:38 You look at China. China today has over a million Uyghurs who are religious minorities who are in
00:08:45 concentration camps. It's the largest instance of human slavery on the face of the planet. That is
00:08:50 communist China. And by the way, you look at World War II, the Nazis. So leftists like to 0.75
00:08:57 paint the nazis as right but let's be clear nazis were national socialists that was their policy
00:09:03 that's what nazi stands for is national socialists the economic policy of the left is what the nazis
00:09:11 believed in government control and and i do want to be clear it's not just historical leftists who
00:09:18 have imposed concentration camps let me be very clear i think slavery is wrong concentration camps
00:09:25 are wrong, detention camps. By the way, in the United States, which president created detention
00:09:31 camps and detained American citizens? I'm going to go with it was a Democrat, as I just want to 0.65
00:09:36 be clear about this. It is a Democrat. It was FDR who set up internment camps for Japanese Americans
00:09:42 who were American citizens and interned thousands of them, forcibly detained them during World War
00:09:48 II. That was a Democrat. By the way, she talks about Jim Crow. She probably doesn't know this, 0.77
00:09:53 but do you know who wrote the jim crow laws that would be democrats here was that do you know who
00:09:57 funded who funded and founded the kkk that would be democrats and and yep and i want to read to
00:10:05 give you something recent in 2020 there was an iowa-based field organizer for bernie sanders's
00:10:14 campaign who was caught on tape discussing the need for quote re-education camps for people who
00:10:23 did not support bernie sanders particularly for trump supporters so aoc it is her side
00:10:30 that has advocated we're going to put the people we disagree with in camps
00:10:35 in some level that's not shocking because the left has always been willing if you support
00:10:42 government power you are willing to use that government power to lock up everyone who disagrees
00:10:48 with you and there's something fundamentally different between locking up a violent criminal
00:10:53 locking up someone who has violated the law that is protecting the community that's protecting our
00:10:58 citizens that is upholding the rule of law there's something fundamentally different between that
00:11:03 and rounding up and locking up lawful citizens and in history virtually the only people to have done 0.53
00:11:12 so, have been leftists, have been communists like AOC. And yet, look, I do think she studied 0.64
00:11:19 Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals. She starts and throughout accuses her opponents of doing
00:11:25 that which she would do. And look, these interviews, truth matters. And let me say this
00:11:34 as a final point. This is a big part of the reason we do these podcasts, is to actually engage and
00:11:41 give you the substance, because if someone is a young person and they're listening to AOC and
00:11:46 they're like, oh, oh, yeah, the American Revolution fought to overcome the billionaires. We got to
00:11:52 stop those billionaires. This podcast is here to give you the facts and information to push back
00:11:58 on on that dishonest and ignorant indoctrination. Now, if you want to hear the rest of this 0.90
00:12:04 conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:12:09 say hello to your new favorite drinks introducing new mccafe refreshers icy cool undeniably
00:12:16 refreshing and available in three flavors strawberry watermelon mango pineapple and
00:12:21 blackberry passion fruit only at mcdonald's turn someday into right now with body by jake radio
00:12:28 non-stop workout music and expert tips 24 7 hey head over to iheart.com search body by jake radio
00:12:34 and stream it for free right now awesome health and wellness tips 24 hours a day seven days a
00:12:40 week remember stick to the fight when your heart is hit it's when things seem worse that you must
00:12:44 not quit don't quit body by jake radio where hope meets momentum search body by jake radio
00:12:50 and stream it for free have a great day now on to story number two let's move on to virginia
00:13:00 real quick and this one is uh also a very interesting story democrats when they tell
00:13:06 you they're crazy and they hate this country and they hate our laws and our rules like believe
00:13:10 them democrats now are threatening to boot the entire virginia supreme court uh and and let's 0.96
00:13:17 explain how we got to this point center because it's this is a warning of us coming with our u.s
00:13:22 supreme court they want to get rid of it they want to pack it every time they get a ruling they don't
00:13:26 like it doesn't matter there is no law and order anymore in the democratic party they don't get
00:13:31 their way we just just just dismantle the supreme court dismantle the constitution get rid of
00:13:36 everybody in our way well look the virginia state legislature sadly is democrat the the governor
00:13:43 abigail spanberger ran as a moderate she actually ran saying gerrymandering is wrong we should
00:13:49 oppose gerrymandering yeah she got elected and by the way abigail spanberger is a object lesson
00:13:56 for elections across the country.
00:13:59 The Democrats who run as moderates are lying to you.
00:14:02 Every word she said on the campaign trail was a lie.
00:14:06 She got in as this hard left zealot.
00:14:09 She immediately stopped cooperating with federal law enforcement, 0.99
00:14:12 started releasing illegal immigrants, violent criminals into Virginia.
00:14:17 She began proposing new taxes on just about everything you can imagine.
00:14:21 and when it came to redistricting the current map in virginia there are 11 house members in
00:14:28 virginia six of them are democrats five of them are republicans that's about right uh virginia
00:14:34 is a purple state glenn youngkin a republican was the previous governor uh in the 2024 election
00:14:42 kamala harris won virginia but but by just a few points so six five was about right in terms of
00:14:47 where the state was divided but the democrats for them power is the number one objective 0.91
00:14:54 and so they rammed through an emergency redistricting plan that took the map from
00:15:00 six five democrat to ten one democrat and they told the roughly 45 percent of virginians who
00:15:09 vote republican you no longer get representation we're going to disenfranchise you because all we
00:15:15 care about is power and basically they drew these horrible maps where much of virginia the rural
00:15:22 parts are bright red and you've got northern virginia which are basically dc suburbs which
00:15:27 are a bunch of government employees many of whom are very liberal and so they drew these maps where
00:15:32 most of the districts reached into northern virginia grabbed a bunch of government bureaucrats
00:15:37 and used them as left-wing voters to turn the rest of the district blue
00:15:41 Well, the problem is they got challenged in court. And initially, a trial judge ruled that the redistricting was illegal under the Virginia state constitution. That got appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court. Now, the Virginia Supreme Court, the justices are Democrats. They were put on there by Democrats. They were confirmed by Democrat legislatures.
00:16:05 The Virginia Supreme Court last week, shockingly, most observers were astonished,
00:16:10 looked at the Virginia state constitution and said, hey, what the legislature did here was illegal,
00:16:16 and they struck it down. By the way, the previous attorney general of Virginia, Republican Jason
00:16:21 Meares, had written an opinion saying under the Virginia constitution, you can't do this. This
00:16:26 is contrary to law. Now, when that happened, Democrats in Washington, their heads exploded
00:16:32 because this was critical to their seizing power.
00:16:37 Since then, they have called for, number one,
00:16:40 they've called for putting a mandatory retirement age in Virginia on the Supreme Court of 54.
00:16:47 Their entire purpose is to throw every justice on the Supreme Court off
00:16:52 so they could pack them with left-wing activists who will uphold the redistricting.
00:16:57 um they have also talked about just fundamentally overturning so mark elias who who is the
00:17:07 hardcore left-wing democrat uh lawyer who brings all of these incredibly partisan decisions anytime
00:17:17 a republican is elected in close election mark elias files a lawsuit seeking to overturn the
00:17:22 voters will. He is one of the most rabid partisans in the country. He tweeted out a quote from the
00:17:28 Virginia Constitution, quote, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary
00:17:34 to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible
00:17:41 right to reform, alter, or abolish it in such a manner as shall be judged most conducive to the
00:17:49 public wheel and to be clear what he is saying is i don't like what the virginia supreme court
00:17:57 concluded even though they're democrats so abolish the government of the state of virginia that's how
00:18:03 radical these zealots are and by the way you combine that with the recent decision of the
00:18:10 u.s supreme court that concluded that racial gerrymandering is unconstitutional that drawing
00:18:17 lines, drawing congressional lines, discriminating, saying we're going to put people of one race in
00:18:22 the district, take people of another race out of the district, that that's unconstitutional.
00:18:26 It had been an open question whether complying with the Voting Rights Act was essentially an
00:18:34 exception to the constitutional prohibition on racial gerrymandering. And the Supreme Court
00:18:38 concluded 6-3, no it is not, that the Constitution, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment prohibits
00:18:45 discrimination based on race, prohibit voting discrimination based on race. I think that is
00:18:51 the right reading of the Constitution. And the Democrats have lost their ever-loving mind.
00:18:57 Because understand, look, all right, all of New England, you take the states in New England and
00:19:03 the Northeast, which vote anywhere from 60-40 Democrat to 65-35 Democrat, depending on the
00:19:10 state how many republicans do you think are elected in all of new england i'm gonna go with
00:19:16 zero zero would be right in state after state massachusetts zero maine zero vermont zero new
00:19:24 hampshire zero rhode island zero connecticut zero that is they just gerrymandered the heck out of it
00:19:31 and they have a hundred percent of the representation democrat in the south democrats have used the
00:19:38 Voting Rights Act to insist if you can draw a district that elects an African-American
00:19:47 Democrat, you must elect that Democrat. Now, the bizarre thing is we've seen Democrats who
00:19:52 also insist, and one of the more absurd things, they've said, well, in light of the Supreme Court
00:19:59 decision that discriminating based on race is unconstitutional, you've seen Democrats saying
00:20:04 South Carolina will never, ever elect an African-American to Congress.
00:20:11 Now, I have to admit, when that happened, I pulled out Twitter. 1.00
00:20:15 I like when you get your little snarky tweets out there.
00:20:18 I knew as soon as I said I was waiting for a countdown clock until you did what you did.
00:20:22 I could have predicted that tweet in a moment's notice.
00:20:26 As soon as I saw, I was like, I can't wait.
00:20:28 And then you did it.
00:20:29 So keep going.
00:20:30 Yeah, I said, hey, Grock, who is Tim Scott?
00:20:33 Yeah.
00:20:33 And why did Democrats believe he's not black?
00:20:37 Because he's a Republican.
00:20:38 Yeah.
00:20:39 Tim Scott is my colleague in the Senate.
00:20:41 He's African-American.
00:20:43 He was elected to Congress to a House district in South Carolina.
00:20:47 Then he became a senator.
00:20:49 He's been reelected over and over and over again in South Carolina.
00:20:52 And yet, to the Democrats, he does not count as black. 0.68
00:20:57 Because if you're a Republican, suddenly you're white. 0.73
00:21:00 It doesn't matter. 0.64
00:21:01 And mind you, and their view, and by the way, Tennessee, 0.83
00:21:03 your home state oh dude this is the best one steve cohen who's like the whitest guy you'll ever see
00:21:09 he doesn't like me by the way he was my my congressman for many years he i they were losing 0.63
00:21:14 on tv the other day and i got to smack some of them around because they were saying you're taking
00:21:18 away this seat that african-americans are being disfringed i'm like hold on a second steve cohen 0.89
00:21:22 is like the whitest old cranky white guy you've ever met but he's a liberal democrat so he's a 0.86
00:21:27 black democrat but here's what's interesting charlotte bergman who is an african-american 0.98
00:21:31 single mother is probably 1.00
00:21:34 going to win the seat now. 1.00
00:21:36 So wait a second. You're saying as
00:21:37 a result of the Supreme Court 0.99
00:21:39 decision, a white
00:21:41 guy, a Democrat's going to lose 1.00
00:21:43 likely to a black woman. 1.00
00:21:46 To a black single mother
00:21:47 who lost a family
00:21:49 member to violent crime in Memphis.
00:21:52 And the Democrats' position
00:21:53 is defeating a
00:21:56 white Democrat guy
00:21:57 to elect a black Republican 1.00
00:21:59 woman is racist against black 1.00
00:22:01 people like yes like how do you say no no this white liberal is blacker than this actual african 1.00
00:22:09 american woman that that is their view and understand all of their hysterics come down to 1.00
00:22:15 power like if you're saying abolish the virginia supreme court because i don't like what they rule 1.00
00:22:21 and by the way we appointed them but we still don't like how they rule so if you don't rule
00:22:26 in a way that keeps us in power we will burn down the foundations of our government
00:22:31 that is that's just sad as before if you want to hear the rest of this conversation
00:22:39 on this topic you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire
00:22:44 thing our new mick cafe crafted sodas just drinks or something more like spriteberry bliss creamy
00:22:51 strawberry coke and orange dream all swirled with fizzy flavor and topped with silky cold foam
00:22:56 only at mcdonald's at participating mcdonald's restaurants in canada turn someday into right now
00:23:02 with body by jake radio non-stop workout music and expert tips 24 7 hey head over to iheart.com
00:23:09 search body by jake radio and stream it for free right now awesome health and wellness tips 24
00:23:14 hours a day seven days a week remember stick to the fight when your heart is hit it's when things
00:23:18 seem worse that you must not quit don't quit body by jake radio where hope meets momentum search
00:23:25 body by jake radio and stream it for free have a great day i want to get back to the big story
00:23:34 number three of the week you may have missed all right senator i want to talk about the president's
00:23:39 big trip to china and specifically you add some notes some requests some advocacy for some
00:23:47 Americans that are being held, and this was a really big moment that people should be talking
00:23:52 about. Yeah, so this was a meaningful legislative week. We've already talked about the two victories
00:23:58 we had in the Senate Judiciary Committee passing two bills I authored. We had a third victory on
00:24:03 the Senate floor, which is the entire Senate passed a resolution that I authored along with
00:24:09 Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, concerning the president's China trip, and in particular
00:24:15 urging the president to prioritize the release of political prisoners,
00:24:20 the release of people who are wrongfully imprisoned in China,
00:24:23 including Jimmy Lai, who's the great democracy activist in Hong Kong.
00:24:28 I met Jimmy Lai when I traveled to Hong Kong.
00:24:31 I met with him.
00:24:32 His health is failing. 0.93
00:24:33 He is being imprisoned because the Chinese communist government
00:24:37 views him as a threat to their communist oppression.
00:24:40 And then also focusing on the Christian pastors,
00:24:43 including Pastor Ezra Zinn, who have been targeted, who have been arrested.
00:24:49 China has been cracking down on Christian pastors.
00:24:52 And so Dick Durbin and I together introduced this resolution.
00:24:55 We took it to the Senate floor, and this week it passed 100 to nothing.
00:24:59 So the entire Senate, with a bipartisan voice, urged the president,
00:25:05 prioritize the releasing of these political prisoners.
00:25:08 It matters.
00:25:08 How much political, I think, pressure in a positive way does that create for the conversation that happened?
00:25:17 Because when you meet with an adversary like China, and if you've ever been around these meetings, 0.60
00:25:22 I was around a couple of them in the Bush second term.
00:25:26 A lot of it is very much scripted.
00:25:28 You have State Department that gets with their equivalent, the State Department,
00:25:31 they decide what will and will not be talked about at the table in these meetings.
00:25:34 But when you have a 100-0 vote, you have Dick Durbin, you have you,
00:25:38 And is that giving the ammo extra to the president saying, hey, you've got all of the United States Congress behind you.
00:25:45 It gives you a reason, even if you need to, in essence, to break protocol on what's been agreed to in the meetings and say, hey, this just happened and we got to talk about it.
00:25:54 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
00:25:56 And this is something when I put this resolution on the floor, I'm working in coordination with the White House, with the administration.
00:26:03 And the president had already indicated an openness to raising these political prisoners.
00:26:10 And what this does is give him additional ammunition.
00:26:13 It lets him say to Xi, look, the Senate, 100 to nothing.
00:26:19 We may have political disagreements in our country and other topics, but not on this.
00:26:23 Every single senator, from the most conservative to the most liberal, they're all on the same page.
00:26:28 And I'll use an example that's actually a very similar circumstance, which is Mark Swidand.
00:26:33 So Mark Suedan is a Texan who was wrongfully imprisoned in China for over 10 years.
00:26:40 He was thrown in prison.
00:26:42 His health failed badly.
00:26:45 And I led the fight in the Senate for years to free Mark Suedan, including sitting down with a Chinese ambassador in a one-on-one, leaning in very hard, urging China to release him, that civilized countries don't keep political prisoners.
00:27:02 Joe Biden was president during much of this time.
00:27:05 And so I repeatedly pressured President Biden and and and the State Department to raise Mark Swidane.
00:27:14 Mark Swidane's mom is it lives in Texas.
00:27:16 I talked to her multiple times and I did the same thing.
00:27:20 I introduced a resolution calling for the release of Mark Swidane.
00:27:24 And it passed the Senate just like this one did 100 to nothing.
00:27:27 That gives real force. And it ended up Joe Biden followed through and pressed it.
00:27:34 The State Department followed through. And finally, the pressure was enough that China released Mark Swidand.
00:27:39 So he is no longer in a Chinese prison. He has been released. He came back.
00:27:43 In fact, he came to my office. I had the opportunity to meet him and embrace him.
00:27:48 And this is someone who for years I was speaking his name and demanding his release.
00:27:53 And it's, you know, often when you're dealing with with with a government like like the Chinese communist government, it's a question of ratcheting up pressure.
00:28:03 And and any one step typically is not enough.
00:28:08 But the more pressure you put on, the more leverage you put on, the more likely they are to to to comply.
00:28:15 So, you know, here's what the resolution said, expressing the sense of the Senate that the president should prioritize securing the release of Pastor James.
00:28:23 Jin Mingri, Pastor Guao Guanfu, and his wife Pangju, Jimmy Lai, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, and Ek Parasat
00:28:33 detained by the People's Republic of China during future engagements with Chinese President Xi
00:28:38 Jinping. Whereas, the government of the People's Republic of China has arrested Chinese, American,
00:28:45 and British citizens for the peaceful expression of free speech or religion, or such acts by family
00:28:51 members. Whereas such arrests have been widely condemned by the international community and
00:28:56 human rights organizations with repeated calls for the release of the detainees. Whereas on May
00:29:03 17th, 2025, Pastor Gao Guanfu of the Light of Zion Church in Xi'an City was detained and is
00:29:12 being held on charges of, quote, using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of law.
00:29:20 In other words, being a Christian is what they're holding him for, and also, quote, fraud.
00:29:26 Whereas Pastor Gao's wife, Pang Yu, who was subsequently detained on June 7, 2025, remains held despite holding no official position in the church and has been denied access to critical prescription medication. 0.72
00:29:41 Whereas on or about October 10th, 2025, authorities of the People's Republic of Tynan detained Pastor Jen Mingrey, founder of Zion Church, along with other church leaders, on equally dubious charges of, quote, illegal uses of information networks.
00:30:01 Whereas Pastor Jin continues to be detained without access to critical medications to treat diabetes
00:30:06 or contact with family members in the People's Republic of China and the United States.
00:30:12 Whereas on November 7th, 2025, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 463,
00:30:20 calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all detained members of Zion Church, including Pastor Jin.
00:30:26 and by the way, that was my resolution as well that I introduced and passed last year,
00:30:31 and for the government of the People's Republic of China to end harassment and intimidations
00:30:36 of the relatives of Zion church members and their relatives.
00:30:41 Whereas, in 1995, Jimmy Lai founded the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong
00:30:48 and subsequently faced repeated harassment and arrest,
00:30:51 including a 69-month sentence in 2022 on dubious fraud charges
00:30:55 that were later overturned and a subsequent 20-year sentence in February 2026 on dubious
00:31:02 national security charges. Whereas in December 2025, President Donald Trump said he had asked
00:31:09 Chinese President Xi Jinping to consider releasing Jimmy Lai. Whereas on December 4th, 2025,
00:31:16 House Resolution 930 was introduced commemorating Jimmy Lai and calling on authorities of the
00:31:21 People's Republic of China, to immediately and unconditionally release Jimmy Lai and all other
00:31:26 Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates in prisons. And it goes on, there are a whole series more of
00:31:32 whereas provisions, but then it says, resolved, that the Senate calls upon the President to
00:31:38 prioritize securing the humanitarian release of Pastor Jin Mingri, Pastor Gao Quanfu, and his
00:31:46 wife Pangu, Jimmy Lai, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, and Ek Parasat, and other wrongfully detained
00:31:53 individuals on the agenda for engagements with President Xi Jinping, including the anticipated
00:31:59 May 2026 summit, and urges the President to seek verifiable proof of life and access to
00:32:07 independent legal counsel, family communication, and medical care for such detainees, and reaffirms
00:32:14 the commitment of the united states to defend political and religious freedoms worldwide
00:32:19 incredible it really is and look this is a administration as you know that has really
00:32:26 been about getting back americans all over the world they've made it a priority with great
00:32:30 success president trump is very effective at this and and that's the reason why i think it's
00:32:35 going to be very interesting to see what comes out of this quickly your what is your definition
00:32:39 of success of overall this big meeting with China? Look, it depends. There are a number of
00:32:45 things that President Trump is trying to accomplish. One of the things he's trying to do is to get
00:32:50 China to assist with Iran. And China is the main purchaser of Iranian oil. And so China could
00:32:57 exert a lot of leverage over Iran. And the president is urging Xi to lean on Iran in
00:33:05 particular to to hand over their enriched uranium to stop enriching to stop funding terrorism and
00:33:11 to open the Strait of Hormuz secondly I think the president is also working to open the Chinese
00:33:17 market so for example it's been reported now that China agreed to buy 200 Boeing planes that's a big
00:33:24 deal the president is fighting for farmers and ranchers to get our crops and our livestock in
00:33:29 into China and he's fighting for U.S. manufacturers and so he's fighting for American jobs in China
00:33:35 He's fighting for American national security in China.
00:33:38 And he's also fighting for China to do the right thing and release these wrongfully detained political prisoners.
00:33:44 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:33:50 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:33:53 You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:33:57 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:34:00 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
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