00:01:12.440She did incredible reporting on tough issues and stories, including what's been happening with the Biden crime family.
00:01:21.160She was let go slash fired, whatever you want to call it, laid off with some other people as CBS is having financial issues and downsizing.
00:01:30.860But it was shocking that she was let go in that because she's basically one of their best and only tough investigative reporters, certainly in Washington, D.C.
00:01:40.920Now we have found out that CBS News went full communist after, quote, seizing her journalistic files.
00:01:52.540That is not what's supposed to happen in America in journalism.
00:01:56.900And yet now we're finding out not only they get rid of her, but the question is, what was she what did she have?
00:02:07.180I think we should try to get her on verdict because I would love to hear what she has to say about everything she uncovered that maybe she hasn't been able to tell us yet.
00:02:15.440So I agree with you that we should have Catherine Herridge as a guest on verdict.
00:02:19.980We're going to try to make that happen.
00:02:21.980And I will say, look, in many ways, Catherine Herridge is a unicorn because the corporate media is so utterly corrupt that they do not report on news that is inconvenient to the regime.
00:02:35.940And Catherine Herridge was a rebel in that.
00:02:38.260She actually reported on things the Biden White House didn't like.
00:03:11.020Let's lay off the person who actually is criticizing the White House.
00:03:15.860And so Catherine Herridge, they laid off.
00:03:18.380That was shocking in and of itself because she is such a unicorn.
00:03:21.980But then the news broke this week that not only did they lay her off, but CBS officials took the unusual step of seizing her files, her computers, her records, including her information on privileged sources.
00:04:06.340And that is right at the heart, the essence of journalism, of free press.
00:04:12.720Well, CBS, the corporate suits have said, we want to know who your sources are.
00:04:19.280And the problem is that nobody rational with their head not inserted in a bodily orifice believes that the corporate suits want that for any reason other than bad purposes.
00:04:35.140Look, I'm going to read from an article in The Hill.
00:04:40.960So in The Hill, this is something written by Jonathan Turley, who has been really terrific on a lot of these issues.
00:04:49.820Quote, I've spoken confidentially with current and former CBS employees who have stated that they could not recall the company ever taking such a step before.
00:05:01.360One former CBS journalist said that many employees, quote, are confused why Herridge was laid off as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.
00:05:15.820This has led to concerns about the source of the pressure.
00:05:19.260He added that there he has never seen a seizure of records from a departing journalist and that the move has sent a chilling signal to the ranks of CBS.
00:05:34.480And that is deeply, deeply disturbing.
00:05:39.260By the way, there have been reports that when Catherine Herridge published stories that were critical of the Biden White House, that CBS executives push back, including someone, CBS News President Ingrid Cyprian Matthews, who I don't know.
00:06:01.320But good God, her name sounds like something out of a science fiction movie about some overlord in the star chamber who wants to silence all dissent.
00:06:11.980Ingrid Cyprian Matthews, let's fire the reporter that dares report anything of substance because we are propagandists.
00:06:21.360Listen, I got to say, there was a time when CBS actually had a reputation as being real journalists.
00:06:58.800Give me a break because, you know, they're hacks.
00:07:01.060When you when you saw Catherine and others like there seemed to be mutual respect from both sides of the aisle because she wasn't partisan.
00:07:10.280She just was a truth teller in investigative journalism.
00:07:14.220It's something that we've lost in this country.
00:07:16.680And that's what ultimately, I think, made her lose her job at CBS.
00:07:22.880Look, sadly, what Catherine Herridge does used to be the norm in journalism.
00:07:51.780They hate him so much that they've abandoned any effort at truth telling, any effort at reporting facts, any effort at being even handed, any effort at reporting both sides.
00:08:03.500Instead, look, if you go back a decade ago, if you go back to 2014, 2015, you would have people at CBS, you'd have people at CNN, MSNBC, even MSNBC that would claim they're trying to be journalists and report both sides.
00:08:23.740What has changed is Trump convinced a lot of the so-called journalists and all of the corporate brass that reporting fairly was no longer acceptable.
00:08:40.780That Trump was the devil, their mission was no longer present both sides.
00:08:49.440Their mission, and this is the way they framed it, was to save democracy.
00:08:54.180And what they mean by save democracy is elect left-wing Democrats in every election, no matter what, which means never, ever, ever report on anything harmful to left-wing Democrats and only be propagandists for the left wing of the party.
00:09:12.000Now, listen, I don't like the New York Times.
00:09:16.220I think they're a bunch of friggin' communists.
00:09:18.840I don't particularly like the Washington Post.
00:10:44.420You remember, you were running against him.
00:10:45.980It was like CNN was giving, it was almost like the Trump News Network during the primary.
00:10:50.540And then once he got the nomination, and then once he actually looked like he might have a chance of winning, they started to turn a little bit.
00:11:02.760And I was at CNN that night, all night long on election night.
00:11:07.000And you could see the shock and the anger because everyone there from the highest up people assumed Hillary was going to win.
00:11:16.940So this was basically just great TV drama until he won.
00:11:21.460And then when he won, they basically, and once he started saying they were fake news and he was in there going after them as the president and going after them in the White House press briefing room
00:11:32.560and allowing Sarah Huckabee Sanders and others to fight back, they couldn't take it out on Trump enough.
00:11:38.640So they started taking it out on the commentators that were left.
00:11:41.900I was one of the last, I think, real conservatives left at CNN.
00:11:45.720I actually begged them to not re-sign me at the end.
00:11:48.920They had a right to sign and a right to match.
00:13:24.820That's why I said, I go down in history as the highest paid CNN contributor in history per appearance.
00:13:30.740But they benched me, and the Hollywood Reporter noticed that there was like two or three of us that were pro-Trump, and we vanished from the screen.
00:13:40.280Because a normal week when I was there in the first, you know, six years, I would probably average four to six appearances a week.
00:13:47.780Some weeks would be 11, 12, 13 during the political campaigns.
00:13:51.980I did so many appearances in my first contract.
00:13:55.420Wait, wait, I'm doing some quick math.
00:13:56.960Let's say five appearances a week, 52 weeks, that's over 250 appearances a year.
00:14:10.380And it was only, I did one appearance where they tried to, I think it was actually to try to get rid of me.
00:14:16.300They had me come on to defend Rush Limbaugh, and they tried to turn me into a racist bigot that was defending Rush Limbaugh that was anti-gay.
00:14:24.580And I didn't take the bait, and I was, you could see I was very angry when I was on TV because I knew what they were trying to do.
00:14:31.660And it didn't work, and I didn't take the bait, and I fought back, and then there was a bunch of articles from, you know, scumbags in the media that were trying to imply that I said something I didn't say.
00:14:40.480And then Hollywood Reporter noticed that the pro-Trump surrogates, in essence, these conservatives at CNN, had vanished from the air.
00:16:39.360Let's talk about what's happening also with this adversary to Vladimir Putin.
00:16:44.580And give a little context here so people understand.
00:16:48.460The Russian regime has been trying to murder Alexei for now years.
00:16:53.860You go back to Joe Biden and he even went on the record in Geneva, Switzerland, back on June the 16th of 2021, saying that there would be major consequences if he died in captivity by the Russians, by Putin.
00:17:12.720I want to play this from June 16th, 2021.
00:17:16.260Mr. President, just a quick follow on the same theme of consequences.
00:17:18.860You said just now that you spoke to him a lot about human rights.
00:17:22.060What did you say would happen if opposition later, Alexei Navalny dies?
00:17:25.000I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.
00:18:02.860And I'm going to explain in a minute that he didn't believe what he was saying then.
00:18:06.060But before I explain that, let's play what Biden is saying now, because even he is admitting today that what he said then was full of crap.
00:18:16.860Now is the time for even greater unity among our NATO allies to stand up to the threat that Putin's Russia poses.
00:18:23.460You know, I send my deepest condolences to Alexei's staff and supporters who are going to continue his work despite this loss,
00:18:30.420despite all of Putin's desperate attempts to stamp out the opposition and most of all to his family.
00:18:36.060Especially to his wife, his daughter and his son have already sacrificed so much for their family and a shared dream for a better future for Russia.
00:18:46.400Now, that was him making his first statement at the White House.
00:18:51.440But then the media asked him that question.
00:18:54.820Hey, what happened to what you said three years ago?
00:18:59.300The answer is that we don't know exactly what happened, but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.
00:19:12.800And to be clear, you warned Vladimir Putin when he were in Geneva of devastating consequences if Navalny died in Russian custody.
00:19:22.440What consequences should he and Russia face?
00:19:38.860And now because the war with Ukraine, well, they've had some somehow some consequences that have nothing to do with killing this individual.
00:19:46.920Well, he did answer the question, actually.
00:19:49.420And his answer is nothing that that he's so weak, that he's so ineffective, that he's not going to do anything.
00:19:54.660And Putin knows that everybody else knows that Navalny knew that.
00:19:58.560So last week, when when when the news of Navalny's death broke, here's the statement that I put out, quote, the Russian regime has been trying to murder Alexei Navalny for years to stop his criticism of Vladimir Putin's corruption and autocracy and to intimidate the Russian people from similar criminal criticism.
00:20:19.060Tragically, they appear to have finally succeeded in murdering him.
00:20:23.740We must ensure that they will never succeed in silencing him.
00:20:28.560The regime interprets weakness from the United States as appeasement and has only escalated its oppression in recent years.
00:20:37.540The Russian people are entitled to express their views peacefully without fear of retribution.
00:20:43.240And I will work with my colleagues to hold accountable those in the Russian regime responsible for this atrocity.
00:21:02.200Because if you go back to 2021, you go back to the beginning of the Biden administration where Vladimir Putin poisoned Alexei Navalny, actually poisoned him in August of 2020.
00:21:14.060And he was poisoned with a Novichok class nerve agent, which is the same class that was used by Russia in the 2018 assassination attempt against a former British intelligence agency.
00:21:30.580It's a strategy of murder that that the Russians are fond of poisoning.
00:21:36.560And at the time, Biden announced really mild sanctions on Russia, said, OK, we're going to slap your hand.
00:21:45.540And what I called for at the time was sanctioning and shutting down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
00:21:53.760Now, remember, Nord Stream 2 pipeline was a pipeline that Putin was building that went straight from Russia to Germany.
00:22:02.000The entire point of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline was to enable Russia to get its natural gas to Europe without needing to go through the pipelines in Ukraine.
00:22:10.920Why did Putin want the Nord Stream 2 pipeline?
00:26:49.000This legislation is the last best hope to stop Russia from invading Ukraine to avoid war.
00:26:58.100That same week, the government of Poland put out a formal statement pleading with the United States Senate to pass my sanctions legislation.
00:27:08.380Poland said, if you do not do so, Russia will invade Ukraine.
00:31:28.760These are not your typical election year headlines, but this is clearly not a typical election year matchup if it turns out to be these two presumed nominees.
00:31:38.680So the publisher of The New York Times is standing by his papers reporting on the president's, quote, unpopularity and his age, but says that the White House is not happy.
00:31:49.680In fact, he says they're extremely upset about the coverage that they're getting at The New York Times.
00:31:53.880And take a listen to this exchange just a short time ago as President Biden left for a fundraising trip to California.
00:33:01.780Listen, it was this podcast that drove news and drove news across the country when we said months ago that I believe there was a very significant chance the Democrat Party would pull the cord on Joe Biden,
00:33:14.620and yank him out, and replace him with Michelle Obama.
00:33:18.520And I think if they do that, they're likely to do it either at the Democrat Convention this summer or shortly thereafter.
00:33:24.820And we're seeing the corporate media, which is one in the same with the Democrat Party, but in many ways they're the left wing of the Democrat Party.
00:34:40.720So I don't think it's donors, and I don't think it's anyone cutting off money.
00:34:44.240And understand, the Democrats and the media would be perfectly happy if they could wave a wand and put Joe Biden there four years or more.
00:34:52.780They're not worried that he's incompetent to be president.
00:34:55.480They're not worried that the Department of Justice says he's not competent to stand trial.
00:34:59.260They're not worried that he's such a weak commander-in-chief that our enemies are attacking our allies and threatening America.
00:35:06.760They're not worried that he lacks the competence to do the job.
00:35:12.100There's only one thing they're worried about, that he would lose.
00:35:15.760If they believed he would win, they'd be perfectly fine to weaken at Bernie's him, to stand him up as a corpse and say, Joe Biden's there, and let's keep pulling the puppet strings.
00:35:29.060Their concern is they're worried he's going to lose.
00:35:32.820And that is a very real and acute concern on their part.
00:35:38.460It's also worth noting, you were talking about the press turning on him.
00:35:42.800You know, there's a real difference between Republicans and Democrats.
00:35:46.180Look, on my end, the press has always turned on me.
00:35:50.460Every question they're asking, they're looking to screw me nine ways to Sunday.
00:35:54.560That's just when you're – and by the way, and you've been in the Capitol with me, Ben.
00:35:58.820And as you know, when I walk from my office to the Senate floor, and I do so repeatedly, whether it is to vote or to go to meetings or to go to committee hearings, I'm walking back and forth through the Capitol.
00:36:08.680And there's a cluster of reporters that surround you, and they ask you hostile question after hostile question on every topic under the sun.
00:36:16.400And if you're a Republican, especially a conservative Republican, you're used to just getting constant barrages of attacks.
00:36:27.580Remember Joe Biden, in his first year in the White House, the reporters would ask him things like, Mr. President, what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?
00:37:46.020And he was completely startled because – and it's the same sentiment Biden's having – when you're used to just getting your hindquarters kissed by the media, when they start biting, you don't know how to handle it.
00:38:02.320And one of two things is going to happen when it comes to this, Senator.
00:38:05.440They're either going to get back in line after trying to step out and see, will others follow us, right, and test the waters, or they're going to keep going.
00:38:16.920Well, if he stays the nominee, they'll get back in line, and they'll immediately begin saying it's ageist and racist and horrible to even ask these questions.
00:38:26.460So this is the moment where they're trying to see if they can push him out and replace him with Michelle Obama.
00:38:32.540If they can't, if he doesn't go, if we get to September and Biden's the nominee, the media will suddenly be completely silent on this front
00:38:42.940and will attack anyone who dares raise the same questions they're raising right now.
00:38:48.160As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:38:52.980Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict, or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:39:00.020I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:39:03.740And we will see you back here on Monday morning.