00:02:57.020So, for example, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed with Republicans plus Joe Manchin.
00:03:03.040So he was willing to be a Democratic vote along with the Republicans.
00:03:06.640But in the nine years I served with Joe prior to this year, I'd never seen him once stand up to Chuck Schumer on any issue that mattered or he was the deciding vote.
00:03:18.800And so we've talked about on this podcast throughout the year that I've always been skeptical that Manchin would hold the line and say no to Schumer.
00:03:26.680Well, as we're closing in on the end of 2021, number one, he's held the line on the filibuster, which is enormously consequential to really the worst legislative kind of game changing policies that the Dems want to push through.
00:03:41.600All take ending the filibuster and Manchin hasn't wavered on that.
00:03:46.380And then number two, on the Build Back Broke bill.
00:03:49.440And by the way, I refuse to call it Build Back Better because there's nothing better about trillions and spending and debt and taxes and Bernie Sanders socialist fever dreams, which is what the bill is.
00:04:02.080But on Build Back Broke, Manchin has consistently tapped the brakes.
00:04:08.540He's consistently said it's too much money.
00:04:11.560It was initially scored at $3.5 trillion.
00:04:16.240That was always a bogus score because it assumed a bunch of the programs in it expired after four, five, six years.
00:04:25.740Everyone knows that the closest thing to eternal life on planet Earth is a government program.
00:04:31.360And if you scored the original Build Back Broke bill under just a 10-year window, which is normally how government legislation is scored, it was about a $5 trillion proposal.
00:04:43.740Manchin had been saying over and over again, this is too much.
00:04:48.720He'd then been amplifying it by saying that he was worried about inflation, that the Democrats have already spent over $3 trillion this year in new spending, totally aside from Build Back Broke.
00:05:00.420We're seeing inflation across the country.
00:05:02.780And Manchin had been saying, well, I'm worried about inflation.
00:05:57.680And then on Sunday, after the Senate ended its business for the year and everyone went back home, on Sunday, Manchin went on Fox News Sunday and he said categorically, I'm a no on Build Back Broke.
00:07:55.820One senator doesn't have a right to do this.
00:07:58.800You know, he wrote an op ed in the biggest paper in West Virginia blasting Manchin for opposing his bill.
00:08:05.400And I got to tell you, in senatorial world, to write an op ed in another senator's state in their paper blasting them.
00:08:12.620I've never seen it done. I mean, I mean, it is it's it's kicking a senator in the nuts.
00:08:18.540And wow, you know, I got to say, I don't think Manchin took well to it.
00:08:23.840I don't think. And to be honest, in some ways, Manchin pissing off Bernie Sanders is about as good a politics as he could hope for in West Virginia.
00:08:34.160I'll tell you a vignette a few weeks ago. I was standing with Manchin and it's probably, I don't know, four or five or six Republican senators.
00:08:43.720And we were talking and one of them there was Dan Sullivan from Alaska.
00:08:47.260Dan's a good friend. And Dan said, Joe, we need to do what Cruz has suggested.
00:08:52.420This is an idea I'd floated to Dan. He said, we need to make you, Joe, the chairman of the committee on everything.
00:08:59.140And Joe laughed at that. And I followed up. I said, Joe, look, one of the two parties actually likes you.
00:12:03.960You know, I mentioned said earlier this week, he said, you know, he was asked about still being a Democrat.
00:12:09.540And he said, yes, if they will have me.
00:12:11.560And it was an interesting qualifier where it could be that the left, you know, Jen Psaki, you know, I'm very impressed that she thinks so highly of herself, that that is a press flack for for the White House.
00:12:27.900She feels perfectly fine dressing down, not just a Democratic senator, but the pivotal 50th vote they need to accomplish anything.
00:12:35.980I got to tell you, at any functioning White House, if a press secretary did that, the chief of staff of the president would drag them in on the carpet and say, what the hell are you doing?
00:12:49.220And I'll point out, look, you know, if you remember back when when George W. Bush was president, you had Jim Jeffords, who was a very, very moderate to liberal Republican.
00:13:04.440And when Jeffords did that, it switched control of the Senate from Republican to Democrat.
00:13:10.140And part of why Jeffords flipped is is I think he felt mistreated by the Bush White House, that they had been pretty bare knuckled and mean to him and he got mad.
00:13:21.900I think the Biden guys risk that and particularly the, you know, Bernie stand, the Bernie brothers are so passionate and nasty.
00:13:35.000That I think there's a chance they chase Manchin out, that they make it so inhospitable that he says enough is enough.
00:13:53.320Don't forget, there's a sale at the merch store if you want that sweet cat set.
00:13:56.760We have T-shirts, we have stickers, we have all kinds of awesome Verdict merch.
00:14:00.520That's over at VerdictWithTedCruise.com slash shop.
00:14:04.320You can get 20% off until January 15th.
00:14:06.580And if you want to submit a question for Senator Cruz, Michael Knowles, or me to answer on air, go over to VerdictWithTedCruise.com slash plus.
00:14:14.540Verdict Plus subscribers get exclusive access to ask all the questions on the episodes and we're going to get to that shortly.
00:14:21.980Senator, this all happened in the wee small hours of the morning on Friday night, and Joe Manchin was the no, and it went dead, and then Schumer sent everybody home.
00:14:30.960There was something else consequential that happened in the wee small hours.
00:14:34.460You got a major win off of Chuck Schumer, and it's not really making too much news.
00:14:38.960We got an enormous victory at about 1 in the morning, Friday night, early Saturday morning, and it was concerning Nord Stream 2.
00:14:47.320And we've talked a lot about Nord Stream 2 on this podcast, the pipeline that Vladimir Putin is building from Russia to Germany.
00:14:55.520And I've been leading the fight against it, authored and passed twice bipartisan legislation stopping Nord Stream 2, defeating Russia.
00:15:05.160All of our victories, national security victories on Russia on Nord Stream 2 were given away by Biden, who waived the sanctions and basically gave a multibillion-dollar gift to Putin.
00:15:15.340That, in turn, set the stage for the hundreds of thousands of Russian troops on the border of Ukraine right now, as we talked about just a couple of podcasts ago.
00:15:25.580Well, in response to Biden waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2, I placed a hold on every State Department nominee in the Biden administration, every single State Department nominee and also a handful of Treasury nominees as well, and have been trying to use those holds as leverage to force Biden to actually have the stones to stand up to Russia.
00:15:49.820For those of us who are not super familiar with Roberts' rules of order and the way the Senate works, what does it mean to put a hold on a nominee?
00:16:01.760So I don't have the ability as an individual senator to prevent anyone from being confirmed.
00:16:06.800But what a hold does is slows down a nomination considerably because many of these nominees, particularly ambassadors, routine ambassadors, career ambassadors, move forward by what's called unanimous consent.
00:16:20.680And unanimous consent is what it sounds like.
00:16:56.480And so for the past several months, we've had multiple Democrats going to the floor, giving speeches about how how I'm a terrorist, how it's terrible that I'm stopping these nominations.
00:17:06.720But what I was doing with these holds is using leverage to cause movement.
00:17:12.000So throughout the course of it, I've been transparent, incremental.
00:17:15.720So, for example, early on, I negotiated with Tony Blinken, the secretary of state, and I said and Blinken offered to put out a really strong statement threatening sanctions on Nord Stream 2.
00:17:27.640I said, all right, I'll lift three holds in exchange for that.
00:17:31.520And I actually my office, we edited the statement before they put it out.
00:17:35.240The instant they put it out, I lifted the holds.
00:17:37.640And so kind of all throughout, I've tried to use these holds as leverage to make progress on stopping Nord Stream 2 and stopping Russia.
00:17:47.040Well, three or four weeks ago, I had an agreement with Chuck Schumer to have a vote on sanctions on Nord Stream 2 in exchange for I was going to lift seven holds.
00:17:57.920And we were going to do that as part of the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:18:03.560And there were about 20 amendments coming up, one of which was my sanctions amendment on Nord Stream 2.
00:18:10.440Then, unfortunately, all the amendments got torn down on the NDAA.
00:18:14.400It was a fight over an unrelated matter.
00:19:28.020He's been nominated to be ambassador to Japan.
00:19:30.920But Rahm was lighting me up and Rahm was getting all sorts of people, all sorts of people who are friends and supporters of mine to call me and say, hey, you really need to clear Rahm and let him move forward.
00:19:41.260And so I decided, all right, I'm going to throw Rahm into this package.
00:19:45.900And I called Rahm and I said, all right, Rahm, I'm adding you to the group that I'm offering to Schumer to lift the holds on.
00:19:52.740And you have proven to be a formidable lobbyist.
00:19:56.800You have been lighting me up from every direction.
00:19:58.780So, Rahm, I'm doing this for one reason and one reason only.
00:20:01.980I want you to direct that relentless lobby at Chuck Schumer and get him to take my damn deal because I've now teed it up.
00:20:09.840And all you got to do is get your own party to say yes.
00:20:12.680And so Rahm was lighting the Democrats up.
00:21:52.100It's not like I'm vested in having a bunch of rich Democrats move into mansions and European capitals and start throwing parties with expensive wine.
00:22:57.780I mean, to have the vote and then like not have your own guys there is a real problem.
00:23:01.840But he agreed in exchange for my lifting the holds on 32 different nominees.
00:23:08.680And so those 32 went through and they got confirmed.
00:23:12.180And most of those were fairly non-controversial.
00:23:14.560The whole point of the holds was leverage to make progress.
00:23:18.740But, you know, let me get a little bit into the weeds because it's we were having a fight.
00:23:26.540Schumer wanted to vote on what's called a side by side, which is my sanctions amendment alongside a Bob Menendez sanctions bill that would sanction Russia if they invade Ukraine.
00:23:39.660So after the fact, after an invasion, the reason Schumer wants a side by side is it's easier for Democrats to vote against my bill because the Menendez bill gives them political cover.
00:23:50.680So what I told Schumer is I said, look, I'll accept it one of two ways.
00:23:56.400Either you can tee up Menendez's bill and have my sanctions as an amendment to his bill.
00:24:02.200But if you do that, my sanctions have to be at a 50 vote threshold, which means if we hold the Republicans and get one Democrat, we win.
00:24:10.240And I knew for a fact we'd win at a 50 vote threshold because a number of Democrats told me they were voting for my bill.
00:24:16.320I said, alternatively, you can tee up my bill as a standalone vote at a 60 vote threshold.
00:24:24.220Well, Schumer didn't want either one because he's afraid that the White House will lose it either way.
00:24:28.700And so it was all about leverage to get a good vote.
00:24:32.780It was one in the morning where he blinked and said, fine, we'll give you a standalone vote at 60.
00:24:38.620And so that's what we did. And we're going to come back in in January.
00:24:43.440And one of two things will happen in January.
00:24:46.940Either we will narrowly lose the vote.
00:24:49.560It may be that the White House puts so much pressure on Democrats that they vote to surrender to Russia and basically throw Ukraine overboard and set up a Russian invasion of Ukraine, which is a really tough vote for Democrats.
00:25:02.760They don't want to do that, but they might.
00:25:04.980Partisan pressure might get them to do that.
00:25:06.920Or if it looks like we're getting north of 60, it wouldn't surprise me if we suddenly if they give the green light and all or virtually all Democrats vote and my thing passes by a big margin.
00:25:18.560So either way, we've got a major vote scheduled in January that that I got to tell you, at one in the morning, Schumer was so pissed.
00:25:28.000He wouldn't look at me. He was scowling.
00:25:31.340It didn't help that a bunch of senators were like high fiving me when when he conceded that that that was a little bit spiking the football.
00:25:52.080My other gig outside of our work here at Verdict with our good friend Cactus and and Liz and the whole audience is that I'm at the Daily Wire.
00:26:00.500Daily Wire sues the Biden administration over the private vaccine mandate.
00:26:05.480So we go we get some good indications out of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
00:26:09.820Then the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is where we're bringing our lawsuit.
00:26:12.440And then right in the night on this past Friday, the Sixth Circuit reverses its stay of the vaccine mandate, meaning that they put a hold on the vaccine mandate.
00:26:22.600You don't need to go get the Fauci ouchie.
00:26:25.620A lot of companies are following suit this around the same time.
00:26:29.540You are grilling the CEO of United Airlines because United Airlines is imposing a vaccine mandate on their employees, regardless of what the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals says.
00:26:38.520So on this vaccine issue. Great. We won Build Back Broke. Great. We won or we might win Nord Stream 2.
00:26:44.540Are we going to lose on the vaccines? So I hope not. But but it was a very disappointing development.
00:26:48.680So so. So as you noted, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is the federal court of appeals that covers Texas, had issued a stay, had stayed Biden's vaccine mandate for private employers.
00:27:01.740And as we've talked about before on this this pod, there are four different Biden mandates, one for active duty military, one for federal civilian employees, one for federal contractors, and then one for private employers with 100 or more employees.
00:27:18.380And we've talked about I think all of them are legally suspect. But I think the most problematic is is the mandate for private employee, employers, employees.
00:27:28.400That's the OSHA mandate. The Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals had issued a stay, had ordered that that the OSHA mandate would not go into effect.
00:27:37.580Now, here's what happened. There were a bunch of lawsuits filed over the OSHA mandate.
00:27:43.380And there's a provision in the federal rules that when you have a bunch of lawsuits over the same topic, they can be consolidated in one court of appeals so that you don't have multiple court of appeals all resolving the same or similar issues.
00:27:56.300And so what happened is by lottery, the circuit that got it was the Sixth Circuit.
00:28:01.700So that was just just happenstance that that suddenly the cases all went to the Sixth Circuit and the Sixth Circuit on Friday night reversed course and it vacated the stay that the Fifth Circuit had entered in.
00:28:15.780And and the Sixth Circuit, it's a divided opinion. So it's a two one opinion.
00:28:20.720The majority opinion is written by a appellate judge nominated by Barack Obama.
00:28:26.480It's joined by a George W. Bush appellate judge.
00:28:29.560The dissent is is by Joan Larson, who was a Trump appointed court of appeals judge.
00:28:38.420She was on his Supreme Court list. She was a former clerk to Justice Scalia, very smart, very capable judge.
00:28:45.360And it was a straight out dispute over the legality of the mandate.
00:28:49.600And so the majority opinion of the Sixth Circuit said the Fifth Circuit was wrong and the plaintiffs are likely to lose and that OSHA has the authority to issue this ruling.
00:28:59.260It was a bad ruling. It was a bad ruling on the merits. Judge Larson's dissent is a very effective dissent.
00:29:06.640It goes through and slices the majority's reasoning to bits where we stand today is is that the plaintiffs have appealed to the Supreme Court and asked for emergency relief.
00:29:17.340We'll see if we'll see if we'll see if they get it. What has also happened is OSHA has stayed its own mandate until January 10th.
00:29:27.200So nothing will happen until January 10th. We've at least got a little bit more of a window.
00:29:33.280But if the ruling stays where it is, that's not good.
00:29:37.720So, you know, the players involved, I guess we were one vote away on the Sixth Circuit decision as well.
00:29:43.520One vote away in the Senate on Build Back Broke. So what's going to happen up at the Supreme Court?
00:29:47.640Are the originalists and the conservatives going to go squishy or or are they going to say, no, you don't have the right, President Biden, to force this mandate on private employers?
00:29:56.740You know, I hope that the court follows the law. I got to say, when it comes to covid, it's a bit a little bit all over the map.
00:30:06.080And in my view, it's a pretty straightforward statutory question that that OSHA lacks the authority that this is a vast, vastly exceeds OSHA statutory authority.
00:30:16.940Fifth Circuit agreed and said it was a brazen, brazenly in excess of its authority.
00:30:22.360You know, the U.S. Supreme Court, they've been a little bit nervous.
00:30:26.700We talked in a recent pod about the religious liberty fights coming out of New York where the justices were reluctant to step in on covid.
00:30:40.660And so where it comes out, if this were a, you know, sort of non covid type issue, it'd be easy that the court would rule.
00:30:51.680No, you don't have the authority to do this. If you took the covid, the covid out of it, it's it's I think there are some justices that that are nervous about covid.
00:31:01.220As we talked about last podcast, you know, Justice Gorsuch's dissent, analogizing it to wartime rulings that in wartime, people get really nervous and sometimes justify bad policies because they're scared of their enemies.
00:31:16.180And I think Gorsuch made a good analogy that when it comes to covid and pandemics, we're seeing bad policies justified because they're scared of the pandemic.
00:31:25.000You know, I will say you mentioned the airlines.
00:31:29.760So last week in the Senate Commerce Committee, we had the CEOs of the major airlines testify.
00:31:35.680And and for several years, I've been either the chairman of the ranking member of the Aviation Subcommittee of Commerce.
00:31:42.860So the lead Republican on all airline related issues during the pandemic, when we were passing the CARES Act and there was billions of dollars of relief for airlines to make sure that we had pilots in an aviation industry when when they were allowed to fly again.
00:31:58.840And I was the lead Republican making all that happen. And so we had the CEOs.
00:32:03.660I know the CEOs all well. I pointed out, I said, look.
00:32:09.060Two of the companies, both based in Texas, Southwest and American Airlines have been really good on vaccine mandates, in particular, the CEOs of both have said to me directly,
00:32:20.900but also publicly that no employee will be fired because they declined to comply with a vaccine mandate, that they will be generous in granting exemptions and they will not fire anyone.
00:32:32.120That's the right thing to do. I commend both of them for doing that.
00:32:36.580Delta, the CEO, has likewise said they will not fire anyone for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate.
00:32:43.040The one big outlier is United and United. Look, United is an airline I know well because I live in Houston and United there.
00:32:52.120You know, one of their big hubs is in Houston. So if you live in Houston, you've got to fly United.
00:32:56.000You basically fly mostly United and Southwest if you're a Houstonian.
00:33:00.920And so, I mean, I fly United all the time. United is based in Chicago.
00:33:06.240And I don't know if they have decided they're a Democrat airline, that they're an adjunct to the Biden White House, but their CEO has been draconian on this.
00:33:17.380He said, if you don't get the vaccine, you're fired. And they fired pilots. They fired flight attendants.
00:33:23.260I talked to, you know, and I went through in the hearing, I questioned Scott Kirby and I said, look, why aren't you doing what your peers are doing?
00:33:30.800Why don't you give a damn about the rights of your pilots and flight attendants and employees?
00:33:37.320There are about 2,000 United employees who are standing up and fighting against United, about 14,000 United employees in Texas.
00:33:45.660And I got to say he was just defiant. He's like, well, this is safety and we're going to mandate it for safety.
00:33:51.940And it was what United is doing is wrong. And one of the things I pointed out to him, I said, look, I fly United pretty much every week, almost without exception on every single flight I get on.
00:34:09.980Either a United pilot or a flight attendant or sometimes multiple pilots or multiple flight attendants come up to me and they just say, thank you.
00:34:18.980Thank you for fighting for us. And I said, you know, Mr. Kirby, what the hell is wrong with you that your employees are thanking me?
00:34:26.180You're the CEO. Why aren't you fighting for your employees? And he had no good answer to that.
00:34:31.940Right, right. And you hope that enough pressure will bring him into line with the other airlines, but a lot of uncertainty on the vaccine.
00:34:40.560So before we keep dreading what awaits for us in 2022, perhaps let's bring Liz back in for a little end of the year cheer so we can hear from all of our wonderful members in Verdict Plus.
00:34:51.880Thank you, Michael. Yes, there are so many good questions for the episode tonight.
00:34:55.440As always, if you want to submit a question for Senator Cruz, for Michael, or for me to answer live on air during these episodes, you can go to verdictwithtedcruz.com slash plus.
00:35:04.320We do have, we've extended our sale through January 15th, so you can become an annual subscriber for just $56 a year.
00:35:10.260That is, by the way, the cheapest price that you're ever going to get on that.
00:35:12.940So now's the time. Time is, as they say, go ahead on over to verdictwithtedcruz.com slash plus.
00:35:19.220Senator, the first question isn't so much political as personal. We are about to enter into 2022 after a tough year politically.
00:35:29.200Do you have any New Year's resolutions that you make?
00:35:33.460You know, I don't have any formal New Year's resolutions.
00:35:36.780Look, I would like to do what I suspect a lot of folks would like to do, which is lose some weight.
00:35:41.520You know, I turn 51 tomorrow, and, you know, when I was a kid, when I was in high school and college, I was skinny as a rail.
00:35:51.680When I graduated from college, I was 5'11 and about $1.35, $1.40, and was skinny for a long time.
00:36:01.200But as I've gotten older, I've put on a few extra pounds, and, you know, I'm working out and trying to watch what I eat.
00:36:07.520But is it a firm resolution? I wish it were firmer than that, but lifting weights a couple times a week and playing basketball a couple times a week
00:36:19.120and trying to cut down the carbs, and we'll see if that makes any progress.
00:36:25.880We'll be able to tell. We'll be able to hold you accountable because we'll see who wins the arm wrestling contest between you and Michael.
00:36:31.720Well, that depends on how people vote.
00:36:33.820That is. That is. My New Year's resolution is a recurring one. I always try to read 50 books a year.
00:36:40.660I actually, this year, I have to admit, I did not come anywhere close. I think I'm only about 30 books.
00:36:44.540But I did give birth at the beginning of the year, so I think that gets me out of it this year.
00:38:49.340And as you rightly noted, Dr. Fauci, listen, he's been wrong on a host of things about COVID from the beginning.
00:38:59.140But in terms of criminal conduct, criminal conduct is not whether you agree or disagree with someone.
00:39:04.740It's not even whether you like the edicts that he's issued.
00:39:08.520Criminal conduct is if you violated the criminal laws.
00:39:11.440And and what that question asked, put put the finger on the clearest violation of criminal laws,
00:39:17.180which is that Fauci has testified in front of Congress multiple times that the NIH has never funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:39:29.100Gain of function research is where you're modifying a virus to make it more infectious, to make it more deadly, to make it more dangerous.
00:39:36.420And he has said unequivocally, repeatedly in congressional testimony, no, no, no, no, we have not done that.
00:39:44.960A couple of months ago, the NIH in writing confirmed that, yes, the NIH has, in fact, funded gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
00:39:57.140Those two statements are directly contradictory.
00:40:11.340And the reason it's it's prosecution is 18 U.S.C.
00:40:16.280Section Section 1001 makes it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to lie to Congress.
00:40:26.820And so on the face of it, it certainly appears that Fauci lied to Congress and committed a criminal act.
00:40:32.380And so I asked Garland, will you investigate and prosecute?
00:40:36.300And if you won't, will you appoint a special counsel?
00:40:39.480If you're too politically compromised, if your partisan loyalties to to Biden are too great, will you appoint a special counsel?
00:40:46.960And Garland, following the lawless pattern we've seen from this attorney general in this Justice Department, said, I won't comment on investigations, but he just refused to answer.
00:40:58.860I'm going to continue shining a light on it.
00:41:00.960I'm going to continue calling for accountability.
00:41:02.920But I have no confidence that this administration is willing to enforce the law if it's politically inconvenient for them to do so.
00:41:12.240Right. Well, I think that they've proved that.
00:41:13.840I mean, the fact that Attorney General Garland refused to comment on it, I mean, pretty much says all all that we need to know, although we appreciate you pushing this.
00:41:21.200So T.M. Erickson has a very similar question, saying Congressman McCarthy has openly declared his desire to investigate Mr. Biden if the GOP retakes the House in 2022.
00:41:39.780I put the odds of Republicans winning the House at about 90-10, and it may even be higher than that.
00:41:46.840What's interesting is in Washington, everybody assumes Republicans are going to win.
00:41:51.400I think all the Democrats assume we're going to take the House.
00:41:54.440It's almost baked into the cake of how everyone handles decision making and the assumptions.
00:42:00.240I put the odds of our taking the Senate at about 50-50.
00:42:04.380I think it's going to be a really good year, but it's a bad map.
00:42:09.040We have more vulnerable Republican seats up in 2022 in the Senate than we have vulnerable Democrat seats.
00:42:16.140So we've got to have a few things bounce right.
00:42:18.780But if we take the House, which, as I said, I think is overwhelmingly likely, then I think we will see serious investigations of the Biden administration.
00:42:28.860We will see oversight, which is Congress's responsibility.
00:42:32.920But with Democrats in control, they have no interest in actually engaging in real oversight.
00:42:37.300And if we take the Senate, I hope we see the Senate engaging similarly in real oversight with teeth.
00:42:43.640And, Michael, this is a pretty interesting question.
00:42:45.880So as we close out this year of verdict, it's worth noting that every year of verdict so far, Trump has been impeached.
00:42:52.140There hasn't yet been a year of verdict without a Trump impeachment.
00:42:55.620Do you expect to see that in the upcoming year?
00:42:58.900Yes, I do expect them to impeach Trump again.
00:43:01.100I'm not sure how they're going to do it, but I think they'll probably find a way, even though he's out of office.
00:43:05.800The guy could probably be dead for about 50 years and they'll still be impeaching him.
00:43:09.540Senator, since you're the only one of us who holds a federal office, I'll flip it around to Joe Biden.
00:43:14.660Do you think there's any chance that a Republican House would impeach President Biden?
00:43:18.720Yeah, I do think there's a chance of that.
00:43:20.820And whether it's justified or not, as we talked about when verdict launched, the Democrats weaponized impeachment.
00:43:29.820They used it for partisan purposes to go after Trump because they disagreed with him.
00:43:34.000And one of the real disadvantages of doing that, and this is something you and I talked about at great length,
00:43:39.420is the more you weaponize it and turn it into a partisan cudgel, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
00:43:47.080I said at the time, when we have a Democratic president and a Republican House, you can expect an impeachment proceeding.
00:43:53.300That's not how impeachment is meant to work, but I think the Democrats cross that line.
00:43:59.300I think there'll be enormous pressure on a Republican House to begin impeachment proceedings.
00:44:06.060I think there are potentially multiple grounds to consider for impeachment.
00:44:11.080Probably the most compelling is the utter lawlessness of of President Biden's refusal to enforce the border.
00:44:19.360His his decision to just defy federal immigration laws and allow two million people to come here unimpeded in direct contravention of his obligation under Article two of the Constitution to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
00:44:34.920That's probably the strongest grounds right now for impeachment, but there may be others.
00:44:39.340And and because the Democrats decided this is just another tool in the partisan war chest, I think there's a real risk that that that that turnabout will be fair play.
00:44:51.840And that's going to be interesting to watch. So as we close out 2021, I mean, we're closing out with Senator Manchin saying no to build back broke, as you say.
00:45:00.140Looking ahead to 2022, do you have any predictions politically of what we can expect, even even before the midterm elections actually happen, just political policy, anything from Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court?