Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 17, 2021


Biden’s Bullsh*t


Episode Stats


Length

51 minutes

Words per minute

174.79668

Word count

9,048

Sentence count

757

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

19

sentences flagged

Hate speech

20

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz is joined by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to discuss the Biden administration s disastrous handling of the crisis in Afghanistan, and why it s time to go back to basics and fix things the way they were before.

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 .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast, guaranteed human.
00:00:04.040 President Biden and the Biden administration have presided over the worst foreign policy
00:00:10.160 catastrophe in a generation. Americans across the nation are horrified. Our servicemen and
00:00:17.200 women, our active duty military are angry, they're disillusioned, and they're frustrated. 1.00
00:00:22.600 Our enemies across the globe are emboldened, which makes the world more dangerous today
00:00:30.640 for America, and our allies are dispirited. Ever since the disaster began unfolding in
00:00:37.080 Afghanistan, we've seen the Biden administration making political excuses. We've seen Democrats
00:00:44.660 on this committee explaining at great length how everything that happened in Afghanistan
00:00:49.980 is Trump's fault. It's all Trump's fault. Mr. Secretary, Joe Biden is the President of
00:00:58.040 the United States. Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States. You are the
00:01:02.280 United States Secretary of State. Just like Jimmy Carter owns the disaster of the Iran hostage
00:01:11.420 crisis. You own this.
00:01:19.860 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowles, joined by Senator Cruz. Senator,
00:01:26.780 I am really glad that I am not on the losing end of a hearing from you. I almost felt bad for Secretary
00:01:34.820 of State Antony Blinken, except listening to what you said to him. It just seems that they totally
00:01:41.180 blew it. Well, they did. And unfortunately, they're not doing any better. It's one thing to screw it up
00:01:47.660 and then say, okay, let's go fix our mistakes. But they're not changing what they're doing. I mean,
00:01:52.940 right now, the Biden administration's focus is all political. They're just trying to spin it. So their
00:01:58.460 talking point, and you saw Democratic senators echoing that in that hearing, is that it's all
00:02:04.480 Trump's fault. It's all Trump's fault. It's all Trump's fault. Don't blame Biden. At one point,
00:02:08.840 Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, suggested we hold hearings on George W. Bush.
00:02:15.380 So it wasn't even just Trump's fault. It's Bush's fault. 0.57
00:02:17.980 It's not Obama's fault. It goes all the way back.
00:02:19.780 It skipped Obama just altogether. It went back. It is
00:02:23.260 really screwed up when the only thing they're focused on is politics. And I will say later in
00:02:30.960 that cross-examination that there were two things Blinken admitted to that were really important.
00:02:37.900 Number one, there had been media reports that the Biden administration had given the Taliban a list
00:02:43.720 of Americans and list of Afghans that they wanted to let out. The Biden administration had never
00:02:51.120 confirmed that. And so I asked Blinken flat out, did you give them a list? And he hemmed and hawed.
00:02:57.120 He didn't want to answer that. But finally, and it took two or three times going back at it,
00:03:01.160 he finally said, yes, we gave them a list. I asked him how many. He didn't know how many he gave them.
00:03:07.880 I said thousands. He said, no, not thousands. I said hundreds. Well, maybe hundreds. So we don't know.
00:03:13.340 So the obvious follow-up question now is, okay, you gave the Taliban a list of Americans and a list
00:03:21.080 of Afghanis that you wanted out. What's happened to them? How many of them escaped? How many of them
00:03:27.800 have been hunted down for torture or murder? That is a serious follow-up that needs to happen.
00:03:33.720 Because the argument for the list, for giving the Taliban the list was, here are the people that the
00:03:38.980 Taliban, you have to let out of the country. And you better fulfill your promises, just like you 1.00
00:03:43.280 always do. And you better play nice. The way that normal people, I think, are interpreting this is
00:03:47.940 you gave them a kill list. You gave them a list of people to target. So what's going on with them?
00:03:54.740 And the thing to understand is this entire Biden circle, it's like a university faculty lounge.
00:04:00.740 They're so fundamentally naive. They think the Taliban want to be welcomed at a Georgetown cocktail 1.00
00:04:09.820 party. They think they care what the United Nations thinks about them. And they fundamentally,
00:04:15.480 it's an ideological extremism, but also this deep naivete. That and incompetence is what led to the
00:04:22.700 disaster in Afghanistan. But a second thing Blinken confirmed, it's the first time the administration
00:04:28.280 has done this, is that, so they screwed up the evacuation on multiple fronts. They gave away
00:04:35.600 Bagram. And by the way, giving away the Bagram airfield will be taught a hundred years from now
00:04:40.580 in war college as among the great strategic blunders, second only to starting a land war in Asia. No,
00:04:47.000 wait, they did that too. Sorry, I can't resist the princess. At least they haven't gone up against
00:04:52.740 a Sicilian when death is on the line yet. Although I think you have some Sicilian blood, don't you? 1.00
00:04:56.920 Uh, only Italian, not Sicilian. Okay, fair enough. The boot and not off the tip of the boot.
00:05:02.140 Do you have Sicilian any? I do, in fact. I, this is my, I don't, I don't like to admit this on air,
00:05:07.640 you know, but, but, you know, we're joking about the Princess Bride. They have made every classic
00:05:14.160 blunder. It's massive. And the second big admission Blinken had was they brought tens of thousands of
00:05:25.540 Afghanis here. They did terrible vetting. They don't know the background of who it is. So they 1.00
00:05:30.020 didn't get the right people out. They didn't actually evacuate the Americans and there are 0.64
00:05:33.620 hundreds of Americans still there. But at the same time, they scooped up tens of thousands of Afghanis
00:05:39.020 without vetting them. And among them are, are some significant number of adult men with children,
00:05:45.660 with little girls that they claimed were their wives that were child brides.
00:05:49.260 Now this, this seems like, and I say, this is a conservative talk radio host. This seems like
00:05:54.480 the sort of sensationalist story that, that seems like a fake news on the internet, but we're now
00:06:01.100 getting confirmation that this has actually happened. Well, and, and the clearest confirmation
00:06:05.600 is the secretary of state under oath told the Senate foreign relations committee, yes, we have had
00:06:11.580 adult Afghani men come with little girls and say they were their wives. And what he also testified to,
00:06:17.680 so he confirmed that. And he also confirmed that in some instances they've had to separate them. In
00:06:23.420 other words, you had little girls being sexually assaulted by grown men and the Biden administration,
00:06:29.400 after trafficking those children in, separated them. I asked him how many? He didn't know. He said
00:06:35.760 only a handful. How many is a handful? The state department had formally requested, and they used this
00:06:41.900 word, urgent guidance about what to do with these grown men with little girls who are saying
00:06:47.580 their, their, their wives, uh, the department of Homeland security, again, the Biden administration
00:06:52.420 said that it was a product of desperation. And, and what's terrifying is, is their Afghani moms 1.00
00:07:00.080 who presumably have a little girl who, I don't know what age we're talking, whether it's 14 or 12 or 10
00:07:07.460 that are so desperate to get their daughter out of the country that, that, that they may well have just
00:07:13.320 been handing their daughters over to grown men. And, and one of the disturbing things is, is the
00:07:20.140 percentages in Afghanistan of child brides. A massive number of children are married in Afghanistan and
00:07:27.000 domestic violence. World Health Organization puts the rate of domestic violence in Afghanistan at
00:07:32.540 90%, 90%, 9-0. It is an accepted norm. And by bringing tens of thousands of evacuees into the
00:07:41.940 United States with no vetting, we're bringing that child abuse and that domestic violence, that crisis,
00:07:51.120 the Biden administration is importing while at the same time, abandoning Americans behind it.
00:07:55.540 Because what we were told is the Afghans were coming here. They're, they're all the good guys. And the
00:07:59.720 ones we're leaving there, those are all the bad guys. Now you're seeing among the so-called good
00:08:03.460 guys who we were told were going to be vetted, they weren't vetted. Some people have come here,
00:08:07.500 actually have already been convicted of crimes in the United States before they even came here
00:08:11.560 because they were deported. Now they've come back. We were told they wouldn't leave any Americans
00:08:14.920 behind. They did leave Americans behind. It's, and we're only talking about this one area of policy.
00:08:21.300 It's a complete blunder. So my question beyond all of the, this dark comedy of errors is who takes
00:08:28.940 responsibility. Blinken would not take responsibility. Biden doesn't seem to be
00:08:33.100 taking responsibility. Most people don't think Biden's even calling the shots because they
00:08:36.160 don't think he knows what end is up. Pardon my disrespect. So who's running the show over there?
00:08:40.940 The white house is running the show and, and the political operatives there are running the show.
00:08:45.520 What, what really drove, you know, I've had a lot of people ask, well, why would they, 0.98
00:08:49.960 why would they suck so bad? I mean, I mean, at the end of the day, 0.96
00:08:52.900 why would this be such a disaster? And, and if you look at the evacuation,
00:08:59.200 to use a math concept, you know, um, wait a second, I was told there'd be no matter.
00:09:02.960 I know I'm a little, a little nervous here, but yeah. Their evacuation was both under-inclusive
00:09:08.580 and over-inclusive. It was under-inclusive that they didn't prioritize getting the Americans out
00:09:15.060 and they didn't keep Bagram, a secure airfield that would have kept our servicemen and women
00:09:19.920 safe and allowed us to get the Americans out. They also left thousands of legal permanent residents, 0.98
00:09:26.800 green card holders are still stuck behind enemy, enemy lines, and also probably tens of thousands
00:09:32.460 of Afghanis who assisted us. So they were under-inclusive because when they just took off 0.91
00:09:40.240 and left and everything went to hell, they had no plan for getting the people out, but they were
00:09:46.760 also over-inclusive because instead of prioritizing the Americans, they just started grabbing people,
00:09:54.040 tens of thousands, bringing them here. And so a couple of weeks ago, I was at Fort Bliss. Fort
00:09:59.980 Bliss is, is right outside El Paso. It's El Paso, New Mexico on the, on the Western tip of Texas.
00:10:05.740 And Fort Bliss is where, one of the places where they're housing a number of these evacuees.
00:10:10.860 And, and I did a helicopter tour of Fort Bliss, went up with a commanding general and, and it,
00:10:16.980 they're putting them in what were troop barracks. And so they're barracks that they use to train
00:10:20.880 troops before deployment. And they were erecting these massive tent buildings, these giant white
00:10:27.000 tents that held up to a hundred people each. And they were just erecting them to build the capacity
00:10:33.040 to hold up to 10,000 evacuees. And so I'm in the helicopter and we're circling around. I asked the
00:10:39.460 commanding general, I say, well, what kind of vetting are you doing of, of the folks here?
00:10:45.040 And he says, I don't know. We're not doing any vetting. No, no, no. They're doing the vetting
00:10:49.060 in country. So, so he's counting on in, in Afghanistan, in Afghanistan. And, and mind you,
00:10:54.720 this is while planes are taking off from Kabul and, and Afghanis are hanging to the wheels and falling 0.94
00:11:00.880 potentially to their death. So the vetting is half-assed. And I said, well, what security is
00:11:08.200 there? And the general looks at me and says, there's no security. There's no perimeter. There's
00:11:14.620 no fence. And he said, this is not a detention facility. He said, we have no authority to detain
00:11:20.320 anybody. They could just walk out. Once they get here, he said, any one of them can leave anytime they
00:11:25.760 want. At the time, it was only a few days in, into, to the evacuees coming. They were having
00:11:31.980 planes land every couple of hours. He said at the time, he said about 35, 36 of them had left already.
00:11:38.460 One had literally called an Uber and had taken an Uber from the camp to downtown El Paso. They had
00:11:46.520 no idea where he was. And Michael, nobody knows this. So everyone assumes the camps where the evacuees
00:11:52.240 are taken are secure facilities. Processed. They're wide open and they are free to go
00:11:58.240 anywhere they want. And the Biden administration apparently doesn't care if these are adult men
00:12:05.300 with little girls who they are sexually assaulting. The vetting is so half-assed that there is a very
00:12:10.580 real risk that, that if even one or two jihadis are in the mix, that we could see a suicide bomb
00:12:17.060 like we saw in Afghanistan, but, but in an American mall or restaurant, if they're, if they're letting
00:12:24.240 people hop on these planes who have been convicted of crimes in the United States, it's, surely the
00:12:29.620 vetting is not top-notch. And it's not as though they're only going to Fort Bliss. They're going all
00:12:34.860 around the country. I mean, what, what sort of numbers are we talking about? It's Fort McCoy, which is in
00:12:38.760 Wisconsin, is where they've had, where the State Department asked for, quote, urgent guidance on what to do
00:12:44.580 with the adult men with little girls who they said, oh, this is my wife. And the State Department folks
00:12:50.500 were deeply concerned. You know, I was dismayed. Blinken seemed to know next to nothing about it.
00:12:55.180 He acknowledged it was, it existed. Yeah. But he had no sense of urgency that, wait, why are we
00:13:01.520 participating in exploiting little girls? And, and you asked who the decision-making is. The weird thing
00:13:07.600 about this process, I don't think state was the decision-maker. I don't think defense was the
00:13:13.600 decision-maker. I think it was the political operatives at the White House. And I think two
00:13:18.700 things drove it. Number one, Joe Biden and his political team wanted him to give a speech on
00:13:23.660 September 11th. On the 20th anniversary. A triumphant speech. Nobody else could end the war.
00:13:29.800 I ended the war. I am the great liberal hope. And that political mandate trumped everything else.
00:13:38.480 So when things started to go to crap, they didn't alter it because they had a political mandate. So
00:13:44.300 we had, over the last month, we had multiple conference calls with the Secretary of State
00:13:50.300 and the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And at one point, it was with all
00:13:55.100 the senators. And, and at one point, a number of us were asking, but we're asking, for example,
00:14:01.400 Secretary Austin, the Secretary of Defense, General Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
00:14:05.240 said, look, who advised abandoning Americans behind enemy lines? Right. And the answer was,
00:14:13.200 well, we didn't know who the Americans were. We didn't know where they were. So we didn't know
00:14:18.000 how to get the ballot. So there was no plan to do that. Not a great excuse. And when, when they were
00:14:24.180 asked, well, why did you abandon Bagram? The answer was the order came from the White House
00:14:29.740 to lower the troop count, to drop it below 2,500. And what Milley said is, he said, look, we had a
00:14:36.780 choice. We didn't have enough soldiers to maintain Bagram and keep security at the embassy. And since
00:14:45.380 we had to keep the embassy, we had no choice but abandon Bagram because we'd been ordered lower,
00:14:50.160 lower the troop count below the numbers necessary to maintain it. So that's what drove
00:14:55.240 they're leaving. It was an arbitrary political mandate. Look, the Biden White House.
00:15:03.120 They're so astonished that they're being held to account for this. They're used to the press.
00:15:09.780 Look, Joe Biden is used to questions like, what's your favorite kind of ice cream?
00:15:13.220 Chocolate or chip?
00:15:14.380 Is that I didn't even know the answer to it. I was so pissed at the question. I didn't really care what
00:15:19.560 the answer is. But these guys, I will say it's oddly enough an advantage being a Republican
00:15:26.220 in that you're used to everything you do being attacked from every direction from the press,
00:15:33.360 that before you do something, you try to think through it and...
00:15:36.600 How am I going to get hit for this? How is this going to play?
00:15:38.860 I think these guys are so complacent that whatever crap they're shoveling, the press will happily shovel 0.99
00:15:45.520 it. They just didn't have anything resembling any competence. They had a political objective. Move 0.99
00:15:50.700 on. I could not figure out, I could not for the life of me figure out why they abandoned Bagram.
00:15:56.460 I thought, I understand why they're still going through with this. I understand why they make
00:15:59.460 the deal with the Taliban. I understand why they're not even reacting to the terror attack. But I said, 0.78
00:16:03.700 why do you leave Bagram before the evacuation? But it of course makes sense. If the top line order
00:16:11.600 is you need to reduce the number of troops and then you say on the ground, well, okay, but with
00:16:15.700 this, we already only have 2,500 troops. If you reduce it anymore, we have to make a decision. Do we
00:16:20.280 hold the embassy? Do we hold the airfield? And they give up the airfield. And the pitiful thing is it
00:16:24.560 appears nobody in our military pushed back and said, what the hell are you doing abandoning a secure
00:16:30.800 airfield before the evacuation? I mean, it is on the merits truly indefensible. Bagram doesn't just
00:16:38.340 have one airstrip. It has two. Two world-class runways. It has a secure perimeter. And think
00:16:44.060 about, you know, we had horrific suicide bombing, murdered 13 servicemen and women. Yesterday, I gave
00:16:52.040 tribute to Lance Corporal David Espinosa, Texan from Laredo, Texas, who was one of the 13 killed.
00:17:00.120 He was 20 years old. He was just barely out of his teenage years. He didn't have to die. Those 13
00:17:07.800 servicemen and women, they didn't have to die. And if the evacuation had been at Bagram,
00:17:13.840 the odds are really significant that they wouldn't have died because it was built to withstand terrorist
00:17:20.280 attack. Unlike the Kabul airport. Right. The Kabul airport's a commercial airport in the middle of a
00:17:24.760 dense urban environment. It tragically invited the kind of terrorist attack that took their lives. And
00:17:31.300 and this was a political mandate from the White House combined with the military wouldn't press
00:17:38.860 back at all. It appears that the Joint Chiefs didn't press back. The Secretary of Defense didn't
00:17:43.680 press back. And one of the interesting things, the Biden guys are spending a lot of time floating.
00:17:49.340 Well, the screw ups are all Austin's fault and Millie's fault. It's pretty clear this is before the
00:17:56.600 Millie bombshell of this week. But it seems clear to me that they're trying to set up for the defense
00:18:02.660 secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to to quit or be fired as the scapegoats. Because I think
00:18:09.460 the Biden administration, their priority is protect Blinken. And more importantly, protect Biden,
00:18:16.500 protect Kamala and protect the political operatives in the White House, who are, of course, the decision
00:18:20.960 makers doing all. So I want to get into the top operative at the White House right now, Ron Klain,
00:18:25.740 the chief of staff, because shifting gears from the foreign side of things onto the domestic.
00:18:31.820 The White House has also just pushed this massive vaccine mandate, something they said they weren't
00:18:36.920 going to do. Biden said he wouldn't do it. Kamala said Dr. Fauci said they wouldn't do it. Now now
00:18:41.600 they're pushing it. The chief of staff, Ron Klain, seems to have made an admission about the way this
00:18:49.600 mandate that is rolling out that could compromise the legality of what they're trying to do.
00:18:55.220 Well, that's exactly right. And it's it's the dangers of Twitter. So we've all fallen prey
00:19:01.180 at times. There's some tweets I've sent that my team has yelled at me, normally a smart aleck comment
00:19:06.460 or something that that seemed to make sense of the means. But but but never an admission that you're
00:19:12.140 breaking the law or potentially violating the Constitution. Well, and and let's step back for
00:19:17.020 a second and give a little context. Number one, the reason I think they rolled out the vaccine mandate
00:19:22.040 was to change the subject on Afghanistan. I agree. I agree. They were getting killed in Afghanistan. 0.99
00:19:27.180 It was the first issue where Democrats were attacking them. And even more so, the press was.
00:19:31.780 I mean, when their most passionate groupies and by that, I mean, CNN and MSNBC and all the networks
00:19:39.220 were going after them in Afghanistan. That was a real problem. By rolling out the vaccine mandate,
00:19:46.820 all of the press fell back in line. They all came to their standard talking points. Hooray, hooray,
00:19:52.060 mandate vaccines. And it drove drove Afghanistan off of the front page. I think that was the political
00:19:59.180 desire. What Biden did is is, I believe, blatantly unlawful. So there's several things. There's one
00:20:06.420 an executive order for federal employees and for federal contractors that has arguable legality.
00:20:14.380 You've got more authority over federal employees. So so he's got more of a hook to claim the power
00:20:19.480 to do it. He shouldn't have done it. It was abuse of power. But there's at least an arguable legal
00:20:24.080 hook for that. But he also rolled out an order for every company in America with 100 or more employees.
00:20:30.960 And he did it through OSHA. Can I ask a stupid question? What is OSHA? It is the Occupational Safety 1.00
00:20:37.940 Hazard Administration. And so it it makes workplace rules and regulations for injuries at work.
00:20:46.540 And they rolled it out under under a standard that that is called an emergency temporary standard.
00:20:52.760 I'll give you a little bit of the kind of legal background on it. So the test for an emergency
00:21:00.220 temporary standard is called an ETS is that employees are exposed to, quote, grave danger
00:21:07.340 from exposure to substance substances or agents. So it's supposed to be like asbestos, those kinds of
00:21:14.740 things determined to be toxic or physically harmful or from new hazards. And that the emergency standard
00:21:24.200 is necessary to protect employees from such danger. So that's what they have to prove.
00:21:29.720 OK, it's a high standard. It also could only be in effect for six months. After six months,
00:21:36.260 they have to have a formal rule that goes through notice and rulemaking and all of the requirements
00:21:42.660 for formal rules. Now, by the way, OSHA, the average time for a formal rule, how long do you
00:21:48.240 think it takes? I don't know. I really have I have no frame of reference. Ninety three months. Oh,
00:21:54.780 my God. I was going to say 93 days. Ninety three months, nearly eight years is their average time
00:22:02.140 for a formal rule. So the ETS, the emergency temporary standard is a six month window. It can be
00:22:08.740 challenged once it goes into effect. Anyone affected by it can challenge it and you challenge
00:22:16.220 it immediately in the court of appeals. So you skip the district court. It's a weird because it's an
00:22:20.820 emergency standard. You go straight to the court of appeals. So anyone across the country affected
00:22:26.160 by this can file a challenge in the court of appeals. The court of appeals can stay it, which means
00:22:32.660 order that the rule not go into effect. If there are multiple courts of appeals, which there almost
00:22:38.000 certainly will, then it goes into a multi jurisdictional panel that decides which court
00:22:47.760 of appeals will hear the case. Okay. And do you know how they figure it out? At this point, I think
00:22:54.080 they're going to cast lots or something. That's exactly what they draw it out of a drum. Stop it. So
00:22:59.600 the statute says you put a piece of paper, you put something inside of a drum and then you reach in
00:23:05.680 and pull out. Okay. You're in the fourth circuit. Congratulations. When do they burn the tea
00:23:09.600 leaves? It's a weird, and the statute specifies all this. Wow. I want to assure the audience that
00:23:17.580 was not a setup. I actually did not know. So they, they're basically literally casting lots to figure
00:23:22.660 out which court it then goes to. And then it can go up to the Supreme court. Okay. So OSHA very
00:23:29.960 rarely uses this ETS authority. They have issued an ETS nine times. Okay. Of the nine, five of them
00:23:41.660 were either fully vacated or stayed or, or partially vacated or stayed. Four of them were fully vacated
00:23:49.800 or stayed. One was partially vacated or stayed. Okay. So more than half of them. So they don't have a
00:23:53.820 great record here on these things being upheld. And the ones that were upheld, and by the way,
00:23:58.220 a couple of them weren't, weren't challenged. So of the nine, the one, the ones that survived,
00:24:02.580 they weren't always challenged. Right. Right. But of the nine, the ones that survived all happened
00:24:07.740 before 1980. And in 1980, the legal standards changed and it became much tougher to promulgate
00:24:15.720 an ETS. So what I'm gathering here is that this mandate in the way that it was rolled out
00:24:22.600 is completely bogus. That that's a technical legal term. Um, and, and I don't appreciate
00:24:28.660 you whipping out the jargon. It's bullshit. Yeah. Another, another technical legal term on its face. 0.99
00:24:37.500 It is. Yeah. But it's the, the really cynical part. Number one, they did it to change the subject.
00:24:44.140 But number two, they know there's no legal basis for this. They know they're going to lose. It's
00:24:50.040 like the eviction moratorium. Remember the eviction moratorium, you know, the CDC decided no landlord
00:24:55.700 in America can evict anyone. What the heck does that have to do with the CDC? I mean, it's, and this
00:25:00.500 was, that was during the Trump administration, right? So just to show you how the power in this
00:25:05.840 country works, even under the Republican administration, this random administrative agency
00:25:10.000 that has nothing to do with rentals and property, unelected bureaucrats. Wow. Um, and it, when it
00:25:17.480 went to the Supreme court, the Supreme court, six, three said, no, you can't do an eviction moratorium.
00:25:22.280 There's no legal authority for that. You're the center for disease control. Right. Um, same thing's
00:25:28.240 true here. So the Biden guys know that this is not going to survive. The, the OSHA rule is not going
00:25:34.320 to survive, but here's the really cynical part. They don't care because they're gambling that it'll
00:25:39.860 take months or even years for the litigation to resolve itself. And in the meantime, 90% or more
00:25:45.980 of people will comply. Right. And in particular, the big company. So this really is the fortune 500
00:25:51.700 getting in bed and spooning with Joe Biden. So you're saying the big companies like the man,
00:25:58.220 they love it. And, and, and look, if you're a big company that you want to force your employees to be
00:26:03.740 vaccinated, but you don't want to get the blame because they're going to be pissed off. Right.
00:26:08.300 This is perfect. You can say, gosh, you know, the government's making us do it. What choice do we
00:26:14.180 have? My hands are tied. And so there are a lot of big companies that are eager for this political
00:26:19.960 cover and it's cynical. It's going to force. There are people, um, who are quitting their jobs.
00:26:27.080 There are people who are going to be fired because they choose not to get a vaccine. And you and I have
00:26:31.620 talked about, I'm, I'm someone who believes in vaccines. I've been vaccinated. My family's been
00:26:35.520 vaccinated, but the government has no damn business ordering you or me to take this vaccine,
00:26:43.160 particularly an experimental vaccine. We don't know the side effects of that. It ought to be a
00:26:48.280 personal healthcare decision that you make with, with your, with your doctor. These guys, they don't
00:26:56.280 care. This is about power. Yeah. And they're doing something they know is lawless. I guess my question
00:27:06.420 about it is, I entirely agree with that read on it, especially now knowing how this actually works
00:27:12.840 out in the history, you know, with, with these challenges, but it seems unpopular to me. The
00:27:17.960 vaccine mandate seems politically unpopular. Am I just in a bubble with all these right-wing
00:27:23.260 conservatives? Yes. I am. I suppose that's it. Um, look, yes and no. I mean, I mean, we just had
00:27:30.020 the, um, California recall. Tragically, Newsom is still there. Now, now there was a brief shining
00:27:36.080 moment, uh, where it looked like he might be knocked out. And, and listen, there are conservatives,
00:27:43.560 particularly conservatives in California who are demoralized right now. I get that, but it's worth
00:27:48.340 pausing and reflecting a year ago. Newsom and Andrew Cuomo were on top of the world. The golden boys
00:27:57.280 of American statecraft. The word Cuomo sexual had been coined. Sends a shiver up my spine. You know,
00:28:06.460 Cuomo had just gotten a four and a half million dollar book deal. Now you and I have both written
00:28:12.120 books. Yeah. Never quite that sort of advance. I think the numbers worked out to $53 a book.
00:28:18.100 At that point, it ought to just be cash in a brown paper bag passed to him, uh, under the table.
00:28:26.440 Yeah. Um, but they were, look, people were talking about let's replace Biden with Cuomo.
00:28:33.060 They were bestriding the world like Colossus. Now Cuomo's gone and Newsom just had the scare of his
00:28:40.380 life. And frankly, if you look at the polling numbers in California, Newsom, the question of whether
00:28:47.440 he was going to get recalled or not was very, very close when it was a referendum on Newsom.
00:28:53.520 The reason he ended up winning and winning by a big margin is once Larry Elder became the primary
00:29:02.920 opposition choice, what the Democrats did well is they attacked Elder and they made it,
00:29:08.500 they made Elder Trump Jr. Right. They made him explicitly. They said this guy is,
00:29:14.080 this guy's worse than Trump actually. They explained that as an African American,
00:29:17.640 he's the face of white supremacy. Black face of white supremacy. But, but, but they believe this 0.99
00:29:23.060 nonsense. And so once it was, they shifted it and made a referendum on Trump. Yeah. Not a referendum
00:29:30.460 on Newsom. And Newsom ran on vaccine mandates. He did. And, and what brought that up is you asked
00:29:37.120 about it. I saw some exit polling today that showed in California, a plurality of California voters
00:29:43.760 thought Newsom's rules on, on vaccines and COVID were about right. And a big chunk of them thought
00:29:49.940 they weren't strict enough. Wow. Your, your old state is, is nuts. Yeah. That's why I fled to a land
00:29:56.720 of freedom. All my exes live in Texas, which is why I now hang my hat in Tennessee. I, I, yeah, you,
00:30:01.600 I played that for you on this show. The very, the very day we moved. That's right. So look, I, I think
00:30:07.420 vaccine mandates are actually quite unpopular in most of America. I mean, the idea that the government
00:30:13.440 will force you to, to inject something in your body. I mean, that's a really extraordinary
00:30:19.920 threshold. And look, one of the damn talking points is, ah, well, what about measles in school? 0.98
00:30:24.600 Well, measles has been around a long time. We've had vaccines a long time. Uh, the risks in terms 0.99
00:30:30.840 of kids getting vaccinated for those sorts of diseases are very different than a new and
00:30:38.920 experimental vaccine that I'm glad it was developed, but it was developed incredibly quickly.
00:30:43.620 There's obviously no long-term data. It just hasn't been around long.
00:30:46.400 It's so we're going to learn the pros and cons. Listen, I got the thing. So when I assess the pros and
00:30:51.680 cons, I decided the pros outweighed the cons and, and, you know, Michael, you know, my parents,
00:30:58.060 my mom got it immediately. She's 86. Your father, my dad argued. So, so my dad is 82. I love him. He
00:31:07.280 is bullheaded for a month. We argued and he did not want to get this vaccine. And, and we went back and
00:31:16.880 forth and I'm like, dad, you're 82. Like, like you're in the risk group. I mean, if there is a
00:31:21.040 risk group and he was staying home because of COVID, I'm like, don't you want to get out? And
00:31:25.220 he's a preacher. Don't you want to preach? Don't you want to see people? He finally agreed to take
00:31:29.340 it, but he got the Johnson and Johnson one because it's a more traditional vaccine. Right. And, and that
00:31:34.680 was fine. You know, that's actually, he talked to his doctor. He decided, okay, he thought the risk
00:31:40.500 was fine. If he's freaked out about that prudential judgment and he's right. That's actually what a
00:31:46.160 mature adult like tries to learn as much as you can and make a reasonable decision. And that's,
00:31:52.260 that's how it should happen. But the Democrats, and by the way, as far as I know, as far as,
00:31:58.060 as best I can tell, every Senate Democrat is just fine with Biden mandating the vaccine.
00:32:04.460 Of course, of course, because it, it takes the, just like it takes the pressure off of the
00:32:08.280 corporations, takes the pressure off of all of these Democrat politicians. Now we've gone through
00:32:13.400 a series of pretty difficult losses here. Obviously loss of American credibility overseas,
00:32:19.660 obviously the horrific loss, just the literal loss involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan,
00:32:26.000 the loss on these vaccine mandates, at least in the short term, we do have to mention a victory.
00:32:31.940 And this question came in, I'd say a question that I would have, I would have brought up even if it
00:32:38.660 hadn't. It comes in from Jonathan who says, dear Senator Cruz and Mr. Knowles, the Britney Spears
00:32:46.820 conservatorship appears to be coming to an end. Are you responsible for freeing Britney?
00:32:52.940 Uh, well, we'll celebrate when it happens. Yeah. Uh, but listen, I mean, you know,
00:32:58.360 straightforward cause and effect. We devoted a verdict podcast to Britney Spears and to the
00:33:03.320 conservatorship, which was abusive and wrong. And we stood up and said, free Britney. And,
00:33:08.100 and what do you know? It's, it seems to be happening. I'm not saying that correlation is causation.
00:33:12.700 Yeah, you are. But some people, some people certainly are. Okay. Yes. Uh, yes, that is,
00:33:16.640 that is a bit of a victory lap and that's the right thing to happen. That is the right,
00:33:20.040 that is the right thing to happen. Jokes aside, that is the right thing. You know, look,
00:33:23.080 and her father, as I understand it, is asking not to be the conservator anymore. That is a very good
00:33:27.940 step. And he's asking the conservatorship be dissolved. And it, that should have happened a
00:33:32.040 long time ago. I hope the court follows through with it. Look, frankly, it's another example of
00:33:38.100 arbitrary power. In that instance, the California state courts, again, Democrats abusing arbitrary
00:33:44.780 power and the principle of individual liberty. It ought to be something that people, whether it's,
00:33:52.420 whether or not you put a shot in your arm or not, uh, what decisions you make in your life,
00:33:58.680 whether someone can make decisions for you, you're almost never wrong starting with a base of
00:34:02.860 individual liberty. Now, speaking of young women and erratic public, public behavior, 1.00
00:34:08.480 AOC just showed up to the Met Gala. AOC, the young self-styled socialist congresswoman from
00:34:14.380 New York wearing a very nice dress. Elegant, at least it was elegant from the front. Uh, this is a
00:34:19.860 35 or so thousand dollar per ticket event filled with the richest, most famous, most hoity-toity
00:34:26.200 ruling class people in the world. And on the back of her dress, it said, tax the rich. Are we on the
00:34:34.280 brink of the revolution, Senator? Are we finally going to tax those rich people? You know, hypocrisy is a
00:34:41.400 beautiful thing. I actually would have respected it more if it said, eat the rich. Yeah. Go all the 0.87
00:34:47.100 way. Come on. You know, go, go full Jonathan Swift. Yeah. Like, um, it, it, it'd be a modest
00:34:54.260 proposal. Yes. It made clear what utter crap it is that the left is selling. Yeah. It's a $30,000
00:35:04.080 a plate dinner. I've never been to a $30,000. I keep waiting for my invitation. That just ain't my
00:35:09.940 circle. So she's surrounded by gazillionaires, masters of the universe, by the way, who are all
00:35:15.320 lefty Democrats, every one of them. So she's surrounded by rich Democrats. None of whom are
00:35:19.500 wearing masks, I should note. Well, the servants are. The servant, the help to protect the good,
00:35:25.240 rich people from their filthy germs. And that really is the view of the left. They make the
00:35:30.000 servants wear masks and they, it's like Barack Obama at his birthday party, dancing away on the
00:35:35.700 disco floor. Yeah. Of course, none of them have masks. Listen, in the Senate, all of these guys
00:35:41.320 know this is crap. Right. Behind closed doors, Democratic senators don't wear masks. They pal 1.00
00:35:45.940 around. And then when TV cameras come by, they put on masks. I mean, look at AOC's though, the arrogance.
00:35:52.880 She was on a live TV camera and was laughing away with no mask while perfectly happy mandating you wear
00:35:59.400 a mask. You know, I'm actually pleased to hear, Senator, that your Democrat colleagues know that this is
00:36:03.800 all bunk behind closed doors because it bothers me that they're liars and hypocrites, but I'm glad 1.00
00:36:08.980 at least they're not complete lunatics. When I was watching the AOC- I didn't say they're not 1.00
00:36:14.360 lunatics. They may also be, which is not in that particular issue. When I was watching AOC show up
00:36:19.740 there with Tax the Rich pretending to be this radical revolutionary, I had a similar reaction. I said,
00:36:24.540 just say, eat the rich, go all the way. What was so offensive to me was not even, not even the
00:36:30.000 hypocrisy, but the frivolity of it, that this woman who is basically a tool of these plutocrats of 1.00
00:36:38.200 this ruling class, she pretends to be the opposition. Well, and what people don't understand 1.00
00:36:44.660 is rich people love socialists. Yes. Yes. That's what they fundamentally don't get.
00:36:51.400 The Democratic Party is the party of the Met. Yeah. Of rich, trivial, frivolous, glamorous Hollywood
00:37:01.940 elites. And when you have socialism, it never, ever, ever takes money out of the hands of the real
00:37:10.060 rich, of the generational rich. John Kerry will keep flying his private jet to go give lectures on
00:37:17.060 climate change. Of course. But what it does, when they say tax the rich, what they really mean is
00:37:21.620 tax someone who's making their money for the first time, tax the small business, tax the employers,
00:37:27.080 tax the middle class. And it's what every socialist country they have, go to Europe, the Rothschilds live 0.94
00:37:33.340 a pretty good life. Socialist countries have rich people. They don't have new rich people. Yeah. So all
00:37:41.180 the folks there say, we got ours. Yeah. So let's tax the hell out of the next guys that are coming
00:37:46.640 after us. I will say, though, that I was particularly glad that her dress, they used the exact font
00:37:52.700 from the Chick-fil-A bags. Like, I'm wondering if that's actually like Times New Robe and Calibra
00:37:58.960 Chick-fil-A. Tax the rich and eat more chicken. Yes. And I really was tempted. So there is a meme that
00:38:06.340 has her in her dress and it's a Chick-fil-A bag. And I was tempted just to tweet out that picture 0.99
00:38:12.000 along with two words, spicy chicken. And I just thought they would, the left would, those are one
00:38:21.360 of those tweets that my staff would immediately call and start yelling at me. Say, Senator, you're
00:38:26.600 going to take that down. But it does show you where the real revolutionaries are, where the real
00:38:32.940 subversion is. If you and I had been invited to that Met Gala and we put on a very pretty dress,
00:38:39.300 maybe a suit or something. And on the back we said, save the babies. On the back we said, salute the
00:38:46.060 flag. We would be escorted off the premises so fast. No one would take our picture. Certainly no one
00:38:53.540 would applaud us. The woman is being presented as the great thumb in the eye of the establishment. 0.99
00:39:00.060 They gave her magazine photos and rounds of applause. It's such a farce. 0.77
00:39:06.500 You know, the media did go a little crazy because at Joe Biden's inauguration, I wore my mask with
00:39:10.820 come and take it. And so that was in a small. And they didn't like it. I didn't have it printed
00:39:15.920 on my ass. But, you know, it was in a smaller way. I felt more tasteful. You know, a little more 0.99
00:39:22.700 understated. I agree. Yes. By the way, can I tell you an upside of the mask idiocy?
00:39:28.280 Please, please do. So on Capitol Hill, as you're walking down the hallways, 0.98
00:39:34.720 every Democratic staffer wears a mask. Every Democratic member wears a mask. No Republican
00:39:40.600 staffer wears a mask. No Republican member. So they're self-identifying. You can walk along and
00:39:45.840 you'd be like, there's a little dem, there's a little dem. And it's like they're wearing burkas. 0.82
00:39:49.860 They're all like the secular keffiyeh is what I think of it. Yeah. And, you know, my standard 0.51
00:39:55.420 response is they messed up because their masks aren't tight enough. We can still hear them.
00:40:00.620 That's right. Maybe add two or three or four. It is amazing. I mean, symbols play an important
00:40:06.540 role in politics. And the mask has long since stopped being a medical instrument. At this point,
00:40:11.140 it really is just a political symbol. And you can look around. And the press. It's the dems and the
00:40:15.520 press. But you repeat yourself. Indeed. Now, I think this perspective is very important, especially
00:40:22.480 how is it that we're still talking about Afghanistan, you know, in 2021? It seems kind of crazy. And we
00:40:28.900 would be remiss if we ended the show without pointing out we've just had the 20th anniversary
00:40:33.880 of the September 11th terror attacks. I remember it vividly. I was 11 years old. I was in the third
00:40:38.940 grade. I'm sorry, not third grade. I was in the sixth grade. But it was in my third period math
00:40:43.600 class. I remember exactly where I was when I got the news. My mother was in the city. She was in
00:40:47.760 Midtown. So she wasn't really at risk. So they sent you home from school or what? They kept us at
00:40:51.780 school. They didn't know what to do. A lot of kids had parents not only who worked in the city, but who
00:40:55.460 worked at Wall Street or in the Trade Center. Some of those parents didn't come home. My mother got off the
00:41:00.580 train at 125th Street at Harlem. And because they'd heard that there was this problem and maybe the
00:41:06.680 trains were going to shut down. And she just sat there looking at it smoking. And then, you know,
00:41:11.480 you could see all the way down Manhattan Island. She saw the building just collapse, just a little
00:41:16.900 tiny, just a little blip. And so and she got on one of the last trains out of the city, came back up
00:41:23.480 and people were covered in soot. I mean, it's really, you know, so I was 11 years old. I still have all
00:41:28.460 these graphic images from that day. You were a little older than 11 years old. So I was I was I
00:41:33.980 was in D.C. and I was working with George W. Bush administration. So I was working at the Federal
00:41:39.860 Trade Commission and and Heidi was working at the White House. And I remember it was a September
00:41:45.540 morning and I just just gotten dressed and was getting ready to walk out of the apartment.
00:41:51.280 And Heidi called me and said, turn on the TV. And so she was already at work. And so I turned on
00:41:57.880 the TV and I saw the plane had just just hit the first tower. And I thought, like everyone did,
00:42:05.340 this is some terrible accident. You know, what happened? Some pilots screwed up. You know,
00:42:09.940 at first we didn't know it was a big jumbo jet. We thought it was just, you know, if it was a Cessna
00:42:13.680 or something, it looked like a tragic accident, but we didn't appreciate what it was. And so I'm
00:42:21.960 standing in our living room and I'm just looking at the TV with the tower smoking and watching it
00:42:26.960 and people trying to figure out what it is. And then the second plane hit the second tower and
00:42:32.560 that we all saw. And we saw it was a commercial jet. And when it plowed into that tower, that instant,
00:42:40.040 everybody knew what this was. Yeah. You know, my wonderful priest in New York, Father George
00:42:45.320 Rutler, he was in Midtown when the first plane hit. People are running up, people in smoke. And then
00:42:51.080 when the second plane hit, I think it was at that moment, he runs, he may have run down after the
00:42:56.700 first plane, but he runs down after the second plane, goes into St. Peter's. It's the first
00:43:00.980 Catholic parish in New York. It's right downtown to get oils, to give wartime absolution because he 0.98
00:43:07.680 knew, and a number of people knew at the time, this was an act of war. And the firefighters who were going
00:43:11.540 in there, they were going into a battlefield. So he gave general absolution. And at that moment,
00:43:16.140 they carried in Father Michael Judge, who was the first confirmed casualty of 9-11. They laid him
00:43:21.200 on the steps at St. Peter on the altar, like a pieta. He had been crushed. And so the spiritual
00:43:29.380 import, the wartime import of that day was clear the moment that second plane hit.
00:43:36.580 Yeah. So Heidi was, she was at the U.S. Trade Representative's office, which is part of the White 0.90
00:43:42.560 House Complex. And when the first plane hit, the Secret Service came through and they said,
00:43:47.860 stay where you are. There's something's happened, but just stay where you are. And so she was watching
00:43:52.600 it and it called me. And so I was watching it at home. And then when the second plane hit the second
00:43:57.940 tower, the Secret Service was running down the halls and they said, get out now. They said, run,
00:44:05.300 run, don't walk, run. And so Heidi sprinted out of the office. Her car was parked in an underground
00:44:13.280 parking lot, so she couldn't get her car. They wouldn't let her get her car. So she proceeded. 0.77
00:44:17.620 We were living in Virginia, Northern Virginia, Pentagon City. And so she took off her high heels 0.99
00:44:24.700 and walked barefoot across Memorial Bridge and to Virginia. And we lived less than a mile from the
00:44:33.520 Pentagon. And so when the Pentagon plane, when the plane hit the Pentagon, from our apartment,
00:44:39.660 you could smell the smoke. You could see the soot in the air because it was, we were just south of
00:44:44.580 the Pentagon. And, uh, and the cell phone coverage was not very good. So when Heidi left, I knew she was
00:44:53.100 evacuated, but I couldn't get her on her phone. Yeah. And one of the networks, I think it was ABC,
00:45:00.000 when the Pentagon plane hit, you know, there was the fog of war where people are confused about
00:45:04.080 what's going on. And so one of the networks reported the White House has been hit. So I'm
00:45:10.320 sitting there like, holy crap, I just got off with Heidi a second ago. Is the White House on fire? 0.98
00:45:15.740 And there were a couple of minutes where it wasn't clear. Like there was an angle, there was a camera
00:45:20.360 angle where the smoke from the Pentagon looked like it was from the White House. And I guess there's a
00:45:26.140 lot of speculation that, that flight 93 that went down in Pennsylvania was either targeting the
00:45:32.680 White House or the Capitol. Right. And so there was a period of time where I didn't know where Heidi
00:45:36.780 was because we couldn't get through on the phone. And then she walked home and, and the plane
00:45:43.340 that hit the Pentagon, we, we had a good friend of ours that was on that plane.
00:45:48.440 Uh, that was Barbara Olson. So, and you know, Barbara, um, had been married to Ted Olson. Ted,
00:45:56.720 Ted was the U S solicitor general. I've known Ted for 25 years. Um, Barbara was down, down in Florida
00:46:06.240 in Tallahassee with me for Bush versus Gore. And in fact, Barbara and I flew together on a plane.
00:46:14.280 They sent me up to Philadelphia to get Arlen Specter. Arlen Specter was the Senator from
00:46:19.840 Pennsylvania. He was coming down to be a surrogate for George W. Bush. And I was the
00:46:23.400 young staffer that they stuck on a plane and flew up there to brief Specter so that he could talk to
00:46:29.440 the press when he got down there. And so Barbara flew up with me and she spent the entire three
00:46:34.100 hours of the flight, just giving me grief that I needed to man up and ask Heidi to marry me.
00:46:40.640 And she's like, are you a chicken? Are you a coward? And I had actually already asked her 1.00
00:46:47.300 dad for permission to marry her. I'd planned to do it. And Bush versus Gore delayed the whole thing.
00:46:52.380 And so I couldn't tell Barbara. So I just, I just took the grief for three hours. She was like,
00:46:57.380 you need to ask her to marry you. You're an idiot. Don Corleone, you can act like a man. 1.00
00:47:01.240 Yeah. I mean, that's exactly, it was, so the whole, and she was a fireball. And you know,
00:47:08.360 the story, Barbara called Ted from her cell phone on the plane. And Ted, who's at DOJ,
00:47:16.720 and DOJ is the number three official at DOJ, he answered the phone.
00:47:20.780 Thank God he answered the phone.
00:47:21.880 If you, if you could imagine that hell, he knew Barbara was on the flight. It was the day after
00:47:26.660 her birthday. And he knew what had happened to the planes in the Twin Towers. So it was not,
00:47:37.040 he knew they weren't seeking to take the plane to Cuba and let everyone off. It was, he knew the
00:47:42.180 likely ending of this. And they were low enough that the phone worked so she could get him.
00:47:50.100 And, and the last thing she said to Ted, she said, okay, what do we do? And she was,
00:47:54.440 she was a fighter and I think was given a minute or two would have organized the same sort of thing 1.00
00:48:00.560 that happened with flight 93. I mean, she was like ready to battle the bad guys and they,
00:48:06.100 they crashed into the, into the Pentagon. And, and so it was a moment,
00:48:12.180 you know, we were all stunned. The next day, Heidi and I invited several friends over to our
00:48:23.760 apartment, including Eugene Volokh, who was a, you know, law professor at UCLA, brilliant guy.
00:48:30.640 Eugene came, Eugene is Jewish and we did a prayer service. We did a, we had Christians and Jews and
00:48:38.420 we just spent the evening reflecting, sharing, and praying for our country. And, and it was,
00:48:45.140 um, even though it was 20 years ago,
00:48:49.220 the image that, that for me is seared in of that day
00:48:56.240 is the people leaping to their death from the top of the towers and they don't air it anymore on TV.
00:49:03.460 But, you know, the people who are in the upper floors as the fire was coming. And if you could
00:49:08.640 imagine the, you're standing there at the window and you have a choice between being burned to death,
00:49:14.240 what a horrible way to die, or jumping to your death. And we were watching on live news as people
00:49:20.880 were leaping to their death and falling. Um, and it was a moment of unity and national resolve,
00:49:27.600 um, that was extraordinary. And it's, um, it's a real contrast to what we have today.
00:49:35.980 It is because you, you do, 20 years on, you remember, it is amazing. Even being 11 years old,
00:49:41.560 you remember it so vividly. And then, and it has become cliche almost to say there was September 12th
00:49:48.160 and 13th and 14th. And there was this real, uh, national unity.
00:49:51.560 When Bush stood on the rubble with the bullhorn, uh, and, and said, we can hear you.
00:50:02.200 So soon the whole world will hear you.
00:50:04.140 It's the highlight of his presidency. That and throwing the strike at Yankee stadium afterwards.
00:50:07.540 I, both of those were, were extraordinary and powerful moments.
00:50:13.980 Yeah. Well, it does, it does remind you, even thinking back on these horrific events,
00:50:16.980 hope is, uh, it's not just a feeling. It's not just a sentiment. It's a, it's a virtue. It's a
00:50:21.540 fact. It's a theological fact. Yeah. And I still believe in that unity and greatness in this country.
00:50:29.200 Yeah. We're, we're at a chapter where we're angry and bitter and at each other's throats.
00:50:34.940 But, but I believe that same power of resolve that brought us together after 9-11,
00:50:41.660 I still think we have that and I think we can get back to it. It's not easy. Yeah. Um,
00:50:46.200 and we've got to stop screaming at each other. Uh, but I, I, I believe we can.
00:50:51.520 I think you're right. Optimism and pessimism, I think are two sides of the same coin. Actually,
00:50:55.620 this is quoting my priest friend who ran down at 9-11. Optimism and pessimism are two sides of
00:51:00.200 the same coin, but hope is a fact. And, uh, that's something we can rely on and, uh, we can, uh,
00:51:05.700 pray and hope for better days. Amen. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. We'll see you next time.
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