Verdict with Ted Cruz - Chipping Away at Democracy, LIVE at Yale University

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.480 Guaranteed human.

00:00:12.720 Thank you so much.

00:00:14.760 This is great.

00:00:16.120 This is so great.

00:00:17.280 Because a week ago, there was a campaign from a liberal student in the Yale Daily News.

00:00:25.140 Maybe you saw it.

00:00:26.500 I don't know.

00:00:26.900 There was a campaign to convince people in the Yale community not to come to this event.

00:00:33.360 Because you see, to come to this event tonight would legitimize Cruz and Knowles.

00:00:39.600 It would pose a threat to American democracy.

00:00:45.240 And Senator, here we are in a room full of at least 500 people, completely packed, live from Yale University.

00:00:52.160 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:56.900 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is brought to you by American Hartford Gold.

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00:03:29.540 I love Yale.

00:03:31.100 This is my alma mater.

00:03:33.180 I love Yale.

00:03:34.080 I don't know if my alma mater loves me quite so much, but I love it.

00:03:38.340 And I'm so dismayed when I see Yale at the forefront of shutting down speech.

00:03:44.420 Just last week, Kristen Wagoner, a conservative lawyer, was shouted down at Yale Law School.

00:03:50.020 This is supposed to be the number one law school in America.

00:03:53.460 Someone actually said in the room, a Yale law student, I'll fight you, B-I-T-C-H.

00:03:59.180 That's the kind of discourse we're seeing here.

00:04:01.420 I remember some years ago there was a gal, we called her Shrieking Girl, an undergraduate screaming at her professor saying,

00:04:08.420 this is not an intellectual space, this is supposed to be a place of comfort and home for me.

00:04:13.900 Senator, what's going on in the Ivy League?

00:04:17.180 Well, Michael, I'm very glad to see that they're teaching spelling at Yale.

00:04:20.140 And I will say, you know, it's, you have been longing to come back here for the two and a half years we've been doing this podcast.

00:04:30.000 We went on the road, we did a campus tour last year, and I have to say, I still remember we were at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

00:04:36.800 And afterwards, a student comes up and asks you, Michael, to cite, and to recite, rather, Dante's Inferno in the original Italian.

00:04:48.920 This is true.

00:04:50.160 The two of you proceeded to do so almost in three-part harmony.

00:04:55.300 And so my question is, number one, can you do it again?

00:04:58.460 And number two, what are the students at Yale going to ask you today?

00:05:00.980 Senator, when I, when I was an undergraduate here and I was a single man, I, I had to learn.

00:05:07.280 That's hard to believe.

00:05:08.240 No, I, I, I had to learn some Italian poetry because, look, I wasn't on the football team, okay?

00:05:15.140 I didn't have my, it was the best I could do.

00:05:17.260 Wait, Yale has a football team?

00:05:20.580 There's a rumor, right?

00:05:22.200 All right, I had to get something in.

00:05:25.200 The football team, guys, they're the only conservatives at the whole school.

00:05:28.240 So, all right, fair enough.

00:05:30.980 But I, the question is a really good one, Senator, which is, okay, if you're a Catholic, you, they have you recite Dante.

00:05:38.100 What do they have you recite at Yale?

00:05:39.500 And I fear the answer is, I don't know, Foucault, Ibram Kendi these days.

00:05:44.840 I don't know, Robin DiAngelo.

00:05:47.080 It's the, the state of American higher education, though we're all having fun here together tonight.

00:05:52.920 No one has busted down the door yet and yelled any four- and five-letter words at us.

00:05:57.640 The state of American higher education, okay?

00:05:59.520 It's, it's only here that profanities are five-letter words.

00:06:03.640 Well, no, the one that yelled at Christian Wagner.

00:06:06.060 Is it like ours goes to 11?

00:06:07.020 Is it that we just put extra ones?

00:06:09.240 Some in French, you know.

00:06:10.220 But the state of American higher education, it is in a sorry state.

00:06:15.280 So what happened?

00:06:16.180 We're supposed to be with the elites.

00:06:18.340 We're supposed to be with the future leaders.

00:06:20.500 Everyone who is, matriculates at Yale is told you're going to be president for three terms.

00:06:24.680 You're the greatest person in the world.

00:06:26.220 And yet, why are our elites doing such a poor job of things?

00:06:30.100 Look, higher education has embraced the idea that the school is about not challenging you.

00:06:37.240 It's about making you comfortable.

00:06:39.640 The whole point of a university is to make you uncomfortable.

00:06:42.500 The whole point of a university is to challenge you with ideas, posit as a crazy idea, that when

00:06:50.180 you enter college at 18, every idea you believe maybe is not fully formed and you don't entirely

00:06:57.840 understand the entirety of the universe.

00:07:01.260 If that's true, the most important value of college is encountering others who challenge

00:07:08.220 your ideas, who challenge your assumptions, who make you think.

00:07:12.200 And look, I mean, when I went to school, I had a lot of professors who I disagreed with profoundly.

00:07:16.840 I thought it was very useful to hear their worldview, hear what they're saying, because

00:07:21.520 at the end of the day, most of the stuff you learn in college, you're not going to do for

00:07:26.660 your career.

00:07:27.480 I mean, most of the, you know, you know, think how many classes you had in college that are

00:07:31.600 useful to being a world-class podcaster.

00:07:34.820 Stop it.

00:07:35.260 Get out of here.

00:07:35.780 You're going to make me blush.

00:07:36.900 You know, I did take bartending at Princeton.

00:07:39.040 That has been useful.

00:07:40.380 That's a hard skill.

00:07:41.120 But look, at the end of the day, what you're learning is how to think.

00:07:46.840 And if you're only encountering ideas you agree with, then by definition, you're not

00:07:53.320 learning how to think.

00:07:54.800 That's the most pernicious part of it at all, is that training people in groupthink, training

00:08:01.320 people you cannot think differently.

00:08:05.880 You know, Galileo was told the same thing.

00:08:10.360 And it didn't work out well.

00:08:15.340 Science, philosophy, literature, they're all about challenging assumptions, challenging

00:08:24.000 what you think.

00:08:25.720 And the very dynamic that you have, and look, what happened to Yale Law School, what's sad

00:08:31.060 about that is it's not unusual.

00:08:32.560 You see it happening at universities all over the country where speakers come in.

00:08:37.980 I mean, in that instance, Kristen Wagner, who was there, is a Supreme Court advocate who

00:08:43.980 had just won a case by a vote of 7 to 2 at the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:08:50.300 Now, I get it.

00:08:51.040 The students at Yale Law School, they didn't like that case.

00:08:54.500 They didn't like that case.

00:08:56.180 They were upset about it.

00:08:57.460 So instead of coming in and saying, well, you know what, I think the justice has got

00:09:01.080 it wrong.

00:09:01.520 You know what, I think the Constitution says something different.

00:09:04.600 Instead of doing what one would imagine Yale lawyers would be capable of doing, which is

00:09:09.940 presenting arguments and reasoning, they instead try to exercise the heckler's veto and just

00:09:17.520 scream down anyone who disagrees.

00:09:20.980 That's not just harmful on the particular issue that they're not hearing the other side.

00:09:25.740 It's harmful for thinking in life.

00:09:27.640 And I've got to tell you, when you come out of school, most places you work are not safe

00:09:33.000 spaces.

00:09:34.600 Most bosses are not going to be overly worried about injuring your fragile feelings.

00:09:42.020 And so I think the point of education is to prepare you for life.

00:09:46.080 And that means encountering things that make you uncomfortable, that make you doubt, that

00:09:51.040 make you question.

00:09:52.520 That's really what an education is all about.

00:09:54.440 I joked when your former, not classmate, but fellow Harvard Law graduate, Judge Ketanji

00:10:02.900 Jackson, when she failed to answer the question, what is a woman?

00:10:08.280 When she laughed, she said, can I answer?

00:10:10.460 Of course I can't answer that question.

00:10:12.580 I'm not a biologist.

00:10:14.080 When she did that, my first thought was, only someone with two degrees from Harvard could be

00:10:20.380 so stupid as to not know what a woman is.

00:10:23.760 And so I don't know, I mean, as you say, there are these problems at all of the universities.

00:10:33.280 But to me, it seems more, it actually seems more pronounced in the Ivy League, these supposedly

00:10:38.940 prestigious institutions, where it seems that whatever you see about free speech on other

00:10:44.920 campuses, Yale Law School is supposed to be the top law school in the country, screaming

00:10:49.600 profanities at a lawyer for having an open discussion.

00:10:52.700 How do you, how do you fix that?

00:10:54.380 I don't want to sound like the old man back in my day, things were better, but things really

00:10:57.760 do seem to have gotten worse.

00:10:59.760 Michael, one of the things I love about you is I'm confident since you were five years

00:11:03.660 old, you've been the old man yelling, get off my lawn.

00:11:07.100 I came out of the womb with a cigar in my teeth, you know, hair parted.

00:11:11.300 Your mother's still ticked off about that.

00:11:13.340 It hurts, it hurts, yeah.

00:11:17.200 Look, we need to be, particularly in the so-called elite institutions, willing to think for ourselves.

00:11:33.440 You're right, schools like Yale, the students are told all the time, you are the leaders

00:11:39.400 of the world, you are the future Bill Clintons of the world.

00:11:42.920 The kid who wrote that op-ed calling for people to boycott us, he said there is a great power

00:11:49.080 and responsibility that comes with being a Yaley.

00:11:52.720 The kid is 18 years old.

00:11:54.400 This is what these students are told.

00:11:56.380 Look, and I think it's part of why, if anything, the censorship is greater because the fear

00:12:05.040 is greater.

00:12:06.240 At an institution like this, every student here worked your tail off since you were in kindergarten.

00:12:13.580 You were struggling with the perfect attendance.

00:12:16.100 You were struggling to put the apple on the teacher's desk.

00:12:18.660 You were struggling to be in student council and drama and debate and football and underwater

00:12:26.840 basket.

00:12:27.500 I don't even know what, but it was, you know, look, you recall the speech that it seems

00:12:32.980 deans give about their gazillion valedictorians in the world.

00:12:37.360 We turn half of them down.

00:12:38.840 And that, when you get into a place like Yale, now I wouldn't know, but I would imagine that

00:12:50.020 A, there's a sense of relief of, okay, all right, I've made it, but there's also a sense

00:13:00.060 of terror of, oh crap, like what if I lose it?

00:13:04.220 What, what if I anger the gods of Yale?

00:13:08.240 Yeah.

00:13:08.860 Although I don't, I'm not sure God or man are allowed at Yale.

00:13:11.520 No, no more.

00:13:12.580 Mostly, mostly demons and people of unspecified gender.

00:13:16.720 Yeah.

00:13:17.000 But, but, but, but, but, but look, it is when you've worked very hard for something, you're

00:13:27.680 often afraid to lose it.

00:13:29.560 And if you're afraid to lose it, you don't want to take risks.

00:13:34.220 Um, all right.

00:13:35.240 I remember coming out of, coming out of law school, coming out of a clerkship.

00:13:39.220 So I clerked for a judge in the court of appeals, clerked on the Supreme court.

00:13:42.900 I'm clerking for chief justice Rehnquist, which was an amazing friend, an amazing boss.

00:13:47.260 And I remember coming out, you got 36 Supreme court law clerks coming out and almost all of

00:13:53.460 them were unbelievably risk averse.

00:13:56.700 They were going to big, fancy law firms because that's the next blue chip thing to do.

00:14:02.420 Unless you go become law professors and then train other people to continue to perpetuate

00:14:06.300 the cycle.

00:14:07.360 I remember when I came out, I went to a little bitty law firm.

00:14:10.220 It had six lawyers.

00:14:11.620 It was nine months old.

00:14:13.720 And I thought it was fascinating listening to a lot of my co-clerks.

00:14:17.020 They were like, well, wait, that's really risky.

00:14:19.940 Why would you do that?

00:14:21.100 You don't know if this firm is going to survive.

00:14:23.080 You don't know if it'll go under.

00:14:24.280 And listen, when I was looking for a law firm, I was looking for lawyers.

00:14:28.600 I wanted to work for lawyers that I wanted to come carry their briefcase and just, you

00:14:32.940 know, the way Abraham Lincoln learned to be a lawyer was literally carrying a briefcase

00:14:37.020 and studying and apprenticing under someone.

00:14:39.940 That's still the best way to become a lawyer.

00:14:42.000 And I remember the other clerk said, well, what if it goes bankrupt or, or like the, the

00:14:45.960 lead lawyer at the firm is a guy named Chuck Cooper, one of the top Supreme court lawyers

00:14:50.620 in the country, a very dear friend, and they said, well, you know, Chuck Cooper could become

00:14:56.420 the U S solicitor general in, in, in another Republican administration.

00:14:59.860 He could become the top lawyer for the government, for the United States in front of the Supreme

00:15:04.520 court.

00:15:04.820 I remember thinking a, okay, why is it a bad thing if your boss, when you're brand new and

00:15:12.020 starting your career goes on to become the top lawyer for the United States of America

00:15:16.300 in the Supreme court?

00:15:17.100 And why would you want to work for someone who wouldn't be considered for that job?

00:15:23.980 Right.

00:15:24.920 And fine.

00:15:25.920 If it's a little bitty law firm and it's nine months old, if they go bankrupt in a year,

00:15:31.460 you know what?

00:15:33.620 I felt confident I could get another job.

00:15:36.280 Yeah.

00:15:36.740 Like, like if there's any value to working your tail off and, and, and, and trying to build

00:15:41.660 some academic credentials and a history, it was like, look, I don't think I'm unemployable.

00:15:46.560 It took politics to make me unemployed, but, but that, I remember being fascinated at the

00:15:54.200 mindset of the clerks that they had worked so hard that risk terrified them.

00:16:02.900 And I think you see that manifested at universities across the country, but I think the Ivy league,

00:16:08.180 it is more intense because there's more fear of the risk and the uncertainty.

00:16:14.040 I've seen exactly that.

00:16:15.600 I remember it when I was in college, not, not, I guess it was a 10 years ago now, but

00:16:20.020 I, as far as I can tell, visiting campuses, things remain the same.

00:16:23.620 The students at these name brand schools, you know, 10 years ago, Joe Biden was vice president.

00:16:29.660 That's true.

00:16:31.140 According to Obama, it still is.

00:16:32.660 That's a good point.

00:16:36.640 So gosh, you're now you're bringing me back to the worst memory I have in college.

00:16:40.000 I just got there freshman year.

00:16:41.660 I'm so excited.

00:16:42.320 We don't need you to share all that.

00:16:43.360 No, no.

00:16:43.760 It's not that one.

00:16:44.500 It's not that one.

00:16:45.180 Don't worry.

00:16:45.760 No, I had just gotten here and it was the 2008 election.

00:16:48.820 And I thought, oh, this is going to be great.

00:16:50.320 I'm going to have such a great time on campus.

00:16:51.680 And then, then Obama wins and 3000 people, I don't know that thousands of people come

00:16:58.140 out there celebrating.

00:16:59.460 You see wafts of marijuana clouds coming up from the green.

00:17:03.560 You see people drinking and in a dorm on old campus, one of the freshman dorms is me and

00:17:12.300 about six other Republicans just drinking vodka out of the handle.

00:17:17.180 So, oh no, things, everything's going downhill.

00:17:19.200 But I did notice this with the conservatives on campus.

00:17:22.020 It's actually very similar to your preparation routine for the podcast.

00:17:24.940 It's true.

00:17:26.300 If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

00:17:27.980 You know, it's obviously worked a long time.

00:17:29.900 I noticed this with the campus conservatives.

00:17:33.180 They're, they're willing to wear the bow tie.

00:17:35.660 Generally, they're willing to go and advocate for lower taxes and deregulation, maybe even

00:17:40.640 smaller government.

00:17:42.000 But on a lot of say cultural issues, the issues that the ruling elite really don't want you

00:17:47.260 to touch, they won't touch them either.

00:17:49.480 They'll sometimes say things like, I'm a conservative, but I'm not that kind of a conservative.

00:17:53.980 No, no, I'm still a fashionable one.

00:17:55.920 And I think it's to protect the job at Goldman Sachs.

00:17:58.720 I think it is that same risk aversion that you're describing.

00:18:01.820 Look, I think you're right.

00:18:05.140 And I think you see in the conservative world generally, people being cautious and risk averse.

00:18:13.280 And part of it is, look, everyone likes to be liked, particularly young people.

00:18:21.320 I mean, there's a reason peer pressure is a thing.

00:18:23.800 Right.

00:18:23.900 Um, you know, you're at college, you want to go out, you want to have a good time, you

00:18:30.000 know, ideally you'd like to find someone you think is attractive and, you know, see what

00:18:33.900 happens.

00:18:35.160 Although I remember when I, I showed up as a college freshman, there was, there was a t-shirt

00:18:39.040 that was popular.

00:18:40.540 Uh, it, it said on the front sex kills and on the back, it said, come to Princeton, live

00:18:46.080 forever.

00:18:47.900 There's a lot of truth to that.

00:18:49.480 But, uh, look, people are, there is no doubt the positive peer pressure.

00:19:02.180 When I was in school, when you were in school, but even more so today, that, that, that if

00:19:08.120 you take an unpopular position, you risk being denigrated, you risked being ostracized.

00:19:16.160 And so people opt at a minimum to, to just shut up about it, to just say, you know what,

00:19:21.760 I'm going to keep my views quiet.

00:19:25.060 Um, how you come through that, uh, I think is one of the real testing aspects of education.

00:19:36.080 Right, right.

00:19:37.000 Can you, can you withstand that?

00:19:39.400 Or like the vast majority, do you just kind of go along, go with the flow, go along with

00:19:43.400 the crowd and lose whatever principle you might've had.

00:19:46.580 This does bring us to your colleagues, Senator.

00:19:50.080 In the United States Senate, your Republican colleagues, we have just confirmed a woman

00:19:55.720 that you say is the most radical Supreme Court justice in the history of this country.

00:19:59.180 I agree.

00:20:00.020 The woman can't, well, sorry, uh, the person cannot tell you what a woman is.

00:20:04.520 And she is supportive of critical race theory, talks about the founders of that movement by

00:20:09.080 name.

00:20:09.660 She has lauded the 1619 project, which says America's evil from the very beginning.

00:20:13.340 It's based on a false thesis about slavery.

00:20:15.840 So this woman is very far to the left.

00:20:18.100 And yet when I looked at the Senate confirmation hearings over, over who was grilling Ketanji

00:20:24.380 Jackson, it was you and Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton a little bit.

00:20:29.340 And that was pretty much it.

00:20:30.860 And all of the other Republican senators were sitting there twiddling their thumbs and in

00:20:35.500 some cases, actually encouraging this woman who's now the furthest left judge we've ever

00:20:39.560 had on the court.

00:20:40.540 What gives?

00:20:41.540 Well, look, risk aversion doesn't end when you're 21.

00:20:47.560 Uh, it doesn't end when you're in college.

00:20:49.180 It doesn't end when you're in grad school.

00:20:50.620 It doesn't end when you start your first job.

00:20:53.600 And in the world of politics, if you dare to take on, uh, the orthodoxy, you get demonized.

00:21:07.080 Um, I promise you in the, what, 20 minutes we've been sitting here, there've been a thousand

00:21:13.160 tweets telling me to go do things that are anatomically impossible.

00:21:19.060 Um, good night, everybody.

00:21:23.340 Look, it is.

00:21:24.960 And if you're a Republican Senator, it is not complicated that this nomination was an

00:21:32.160 historic first.

00:21:33.780 Anytime a Republican opposes a democratic Supreme court nomination, you are certain to be vilified

00:21:41.020 by the media.

00:21:42.380 All the more so if that nominee happens to be the first African American woman nominated

00:21:47.900 to the court.

00:21:48.960 It means going into it, you know, to a certainty, if you say anything, if you say good morning,

00:21:54.960 you'll be called a racist, you'll be called a sexist, you'll be demonized.

00:21:59.740 And, and look, today's Democrats, that's their opening line to begin with, no matter what

00:22:04.180 you say.

00:22:04.840 But in this context, I can tell you among the Republican senators, most of them went into

00:22:10.180 this nomination scared of their own shadow.

00:22:12.980 They didn't want to be held up as the modern day Klansmen, which if you said any critical

00:22:19.400 question, that was the attack that was coming.

00:22:21.560 On top of that, look, why is it we care about who's on the Supreme court?

00:22:31.940 This is something I care deeply about.

00:22:34.560 I think a lot of Americans care deeply about it.

00:22:36.940 The reason I believe we care about it is the Supreme court has been the institution throughout

00:22:42.200 history that has played the most pivotal role for protecting our fundamental rights, for protecting

00:22:48.300 free speech, for protecting religious liberty, for protecting the right to keep and bear arms,

00:22:52.980 for protecting our safety and security of our families from, by ensuring the criminal

00:22:59.720 laws are enforced.

00:23:02.340 You know, this nomination was one that, that, that I'll confess.

00:23:06.860 I felt conflicted about it.

00:23:08.420 I've known Ketanji for 30 years.

00:23:10.320 We were in law school together.

00:23:11.240 Uh, we were one year apart in law school.

00:23:13.760 We were on the law review together.

00:23:15.340 She is someone that on a personal level, she's very smart.

00:23:20.640 She's charming.

00:23:21.760 She has an easy smile.

00:23:24.220 Everybody who knows her likes her.

00:23:27.380 But at the end of the day, a Supreme court nomination is not about whether someone is smart

00:23:32.000 or talented or whether you like them.

00:23:33.640 It is about what their record are, what their record is, and what kind of job they will do

00:23:39.900 in the position.

00:23:40.780 And, and, and as I examined her record, I came to the conclusion that her record demonstrated

00:23:46.240 that she will be the furthest left of any of the justices that have ever served on the court.

00:23:54.700 Now, there's some people that want, actually, that to me is comforting.

00:23:59.320 It's comforting that there are that many people applauding because that suggests that there's

00:24:03.680 a wide difference of opinion in this room.

00:24:07.140 I think that's fantastic.

00:24:08.400 I'm actually glad for everyone who applauded there because if you're left of center, thank

00:24:15.860 you for coming out.

00:24:16.660 Thank you for being part of a conversation.

00:24:18.620 If you're starting from a perspective that you don't agree with me, if you're starting from

00:24:22.660 a perspective that you don't agree with Michael, then it is wonderfully and refreshing

00:24:29.320 open-minded that you're here and willing to have this conversation, that, that, that,

00:24:34.840 that you don't start, uh, from the perspective of, I, I can't hear you.

00:24:42.100 That's very positive.

00:24:43.540 But I do think in the confirmation now, Justice Jackson, her record was, was far out of the

00:24:52.160 mainstream.

00:24:52.680 And it's worth pointing out too, because now president Biden is trying to suggest that

00:24:57.680 this was the most vicious attack on any Supreme court nominee in history.

00:25:01.960 When Brett Kavanaugh was up, they called him a gang rapist without any evidence whatsoever.

00:25:07.200 And because of the testimony of a woman who contradicted herself many times and whose testimony

00:25:11.920 was contradicted by everyone who was even supposedly around her at the time by another woman who certainly

00:25:17.780 never met Brett Kavanaugh ever and by a felon lawyer who's currently doing time for wire

00:25:21.760 fraud.

00:25:22.260 So CNN said he could be the democratic presidential nominee, a felon lawyer who may still become

00:25:28.180 the Democrat nominee someday.

00:25:29.680 And so you had that with the Katanji Jackson confirmation process, you Senator, and a couple

00:25:36.280 of your colleagues just quoted her court opinion.

00:25:39.500 Yeah.

00:25:39.660 You know, it reminds me of one of my favorite podcasts you and I did was, uh, Oh, over a year

00:25:44.680 ago with a fellow named Eric Weinstein, who's a very bright man, brilliant man, uh, but he's

00:25:50.140 politically left of center.

00:25:51.180 And we had a long pod with a pretty vigorous discussion on lots of issues.

00:25:56.820 But I remember the topic of Supreme court nominations came up and, and, and he made a point.

00:26:01.200 He said, well, they're nasty, but everybody does both sides do it.

00:26:06.680 You know, it's just the nature of politics.

00:26:09.420 And, and as you'll recall, and by the way, I'd encourage you, that's, that's a fun podcast

00:26:13.420 to go back and listen to because we had some very, I think, substantive discussions and

00:26:18.640 disagreements, respectful and civil.

00:26:20.420 But the point I made to him, as I said, look, that's not true.

00:26:24.640 If you look at the really nasty confirmations, the confirmations that got personal and ugly,

00:26:31.700 it's only one party that does this, whether it was Robert Bork, whether it was Clarence Thomas,

00:26:38.880 or whether it was Brett Kavanaugh, it has been the Democrats that go into the gutter with the

00:26:46.240 kind of personal attacks that those confirmation hearings featured.

00:26:51.040 And, and Republicans have not, and, and I don't believe will engaged in that.

00:26:55.880 Before we get to the wonderful leftists in the room who will get a chance to ask questions

00:27:00.100 and perhaps try to refute things that we've said, we, we always have this rule.

00:27:03.740 If you disagree with us, you get to cut to the front of the line.

00:27:06.420 And this really doesn't jive with my authoritarian tendencies, but we deal with it.

00:27:10.400 We let it happen.

00:27:11.180 It's fine.

00:27:11.740 It's fine.

00:27:12.240 So we will get to that.

00:27:13.280 Before that, though, I do want to close out this, this issue of the confirmation.

00:27:18.780 Where was the conservative movement?

00:27:21.780 So look, it's a very good question.

00:27:23.960 This past week, I sat down with a number of leaders of the conservative movement, and I got

00:27:28.720 to say the movement, most of the, the, the organization's right of center were largely absent

00:27:35.120 from the fight over, over, over Ketanji Brown Jackson.

00:27:38.480 And I think the reasons were a couple of fold.

00:27:42.260 Um, one, I think conservative groups and organizations, just like a lot of Republican senators, were terrified

00:27:49.760 of being vilified, uh, for daring to oppose the first African-American woman nominated to

00:27:56.480 the court.

00:27:56.900 So they were, they didn't want to have the fight.

00:27:58.540 Secondly, there is a reasoning that many people found persuasive, which is that Justice Jackson

00:28:05.600 was nominated to replace Stephen Breyer.

00:28:07.720 Stephen Breyer is a left of center justice.

00:28:11.440 And so the argument went, you're replacing one left of center justice for another.

00:28:15.820 It doesn't change the underlying balance of power on the court.

00:28:19.380 So it's not worth the fight.

00:28:21.560 Now, I'm not convinced that's right.

00:28:24.220 I will say of the left-leaning justices on the court, uh, Breyer has been the most conservative

00:28:33.060 of the liberals, which is not to say remotely conservative, but to give an example, you know,

00:28:38.020 one of the cases that, that I litigated when I was solicitor general at Texas was a case

00:28:43.320 called Van Orden versus, versus Texas, uh, Van Orden versus Perry rather.

00:28:47.520 And Van Orden versus Perry was challenging the display of the 10 commandments monument on

00:28:53.940 the state Capitol grounds.

00:28:56.000 And that case went all the way to the Supreme court.

00:28:58.360 At the end of the day, the Supreme court upheld Texas's monument by a vote of five to four.

00:29:04.140 Now, what's interesting in that case is I had spent thousands of hours getting ready for

00:29:08.380 that case.

00:29:08.900 And we'd written our brief trying to really just mind meld with Sandra Day O'Connor, who

00:29:14.040 Justice O'Connor at the time was the swing vote on the court.

00:29:17.640 And so I tried to put every argument.

00:29:20.120 In fact, you know, I, one of the lawyers in my office asked, they said, Ted, is it possible

00:29:25.640 to be too obsequious to Justice O'Connor?

00:29:29.220 And I said, no, no, it is not.

00:29:30.940 I want the most common words in this brief to be O'Connor comma J.

00:29:36.980 I want the more common than and, or the, and if we can put an oil portrait of Justice

00:29:44.380 O'Connor on the cover of our brief, I think that would be tasteful and appropriate.

00:29:49.260 Well, I tried to pitch those, all of those arguments.

00:29:53.040 Every argument I aimed at Justice O'Connor missed and she voted to strike down the monument.

00:29:59.120 And yet amazingly, the arguments that I aimed at Justice O'Connor found fertile ground

00:30:04.980 was Stephen Breyer and Justice Breyer was our necessary fifth vote.

00:30:08.520 We won 5-4 because Steve Breyer voted to uphold the Texas Ten Commandments monument.

00:30:15.220 Now, I will say we were replacing who was the most conservative of the left-leaning justices

00:30:22.600 with a justice who I believe, and to be honest, you can only assess these things after a decade

00:30:28.800 or two, so we'll know sometime in the future whether this prediction is right, but based

00:30:34.820 on her record, I think she will prove to be the furthest left of those justices.

00:30:39.300 That's a meaningful shift, but I've got to tell you, it was amazing.

00:30:45.640 So we're engaged in this confirmation hearing, and normally in a judicial confirmation hearing,

00:30:50.900 particularly a Supreme Court fight.

00:30:52.080 There's an ecosystem on right and left that rise up.

00:30:55.980 So, when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated, there's all these left-leaning groups that are funded

00:31:02.180 with millions of dollars, that are attacking him, that are funding attacks, by the way,

00:31:07.420 that are sending protesters to Washington to show up in the hearing and scream and yell

00:31:12.340 and yell at senators in elevators.

00:31:15.180 There's an elevator we call the Jeff Flake Memorial Elevator because it's where these protesters

00:31:20.160 who were on the payroll of a leftist organization screamed at him.

00:31:28.540 I'm glad that you didn't see conservatives hiring people just to scream and yell and throw a fit,

00:31:34.020 but they also engage in research, and what was fascinating,

00:31:38.100 so when the issue about her lenient sentences came up,

00:31:41.560 the first response that Democrats had was, well, a lot of federal judges

00:31:49.060 sentence defendants, particularly defendants in child pornography cases,

00:31:53.720 to below the federal sentencing guidelines.

00:31:56.680 And that argument is actually a reasonable argument.

00:31:59.440 If you look just at the first iteration of the back and forth,

00:32:02.740 they had a reasonable point with some real basis for it.

00:32:06.460 The next iteration of the argument, however, was she was not just sentencing below

00:32:11.100 the guideline.

00:32:13.200 She was sentencing far, far, far below what the prosecutor was asking for in each case.

00:32:20.820 Every case where she had discretion, she went way below the prosecutor.

00:32:26.080 And then, as we're talking about it amidst Republican senators,

00:32:30.680 several Republican senators asked the question,

00:32:34.320 well, how does her sentencing compare to other federal judges across the country?

00:32:40.260 It's a good question. It was a reasonable question.

00:32:42.960 I asked my team initially, I said, look, surely someone is doing comprehensive research on a record.

00:32:49.400 This ought to be available.

00:32:51.020 So my team reached out to the likely organizations that would be doing this research.

00:32:58.080 Nobody had done any research.

00:32:59.360 You know that had the situation been reversed, the left would have a dossier five inches thick.

00:33:04.880 And they did.

00:33:05.880 They did for Neil Gorsuch.

00:33:07.280 They did for Amy Coney Barrett.

00:33:08.980 They did for Brett Kavanaugh.

00:33:10.020 For all three, massive amounts of money were spent.

00:33:13.280 The failure of the conservative movement.

00:33:14.580 The movement did nothing to inform anyone of the facts of this very disturbing case.

00:33:19.440 The movement should have come up with all the fodder for the tough questions.

00:33:23.040 Now, speaking of tough questions,

00:33:25.340 I want to get some tough questions from the audience.

00:33:27.220 Shall we bring out our friend Liz Wheeler to field the questions?

00:33:30.340 Absolutely.

00:33:31.100 Let's do it.

00:33:43.000 Welcome back.

00:33:44.000 Thank you.

00:33:44.540 Thank you.

00:33:45.200 I just want to say I noticed that when you were throwing the merch out at the beginning,

00:33:48.680 the hats and the shirts, that you didn't have enough for the whole audience.

00:33:50.860 So I just want to let everyone know if you use my promo code live,

00:33:55.140 you can get 10% off on the verdict with Ted Cruz dot com slash shop on the merch store.

00:34:01.980 This is what we call a shameless plug.

00:34:04.760 By the way, Liz, I got to say one of the coolest things that's set up here

00:34:08.320 that I just saw shortly before we started filming

00:34:10.660 is somehow we've gotten to be able to project the cactus on the wall,

00:34:15.660 which I just think is really cool.

00:34:17.540 Well, we've never done that before, so whoever came up with that, that was very clever.

00:34:21.260 They're going to paint it afterward as a monument to this show.

00:34:24.380 I think that's right, and then we'll all be prosecuted for vandalism.

00:34:27.440 I think it's very complimentary to the chandelier look.

00:34:30.460 So are we ready for some questions?

00:34:32.420 Yes.

00:34:32.940 And the rule really does stand.

00:34:34.960 I know I joked sincerely about how much I hate the rule,

00:34:38.320 but if you disagree with us, you really are allowed to cut to the front of the line.

00:34:42.200 So just indicate that up there, and we look forward to hearing from you.

00:34:44.760 William F. Buckley Jr. used to say,

00:34:48.740 a conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling stop.

00:34:55.120 Does this definition still apply to today's political climate?

00:34:59.700 Ooh, good question.

00:35:00.800 Something that is misunderstood about that statement

00:35:03.140 is he was speaking about history with a capital H.

00:35:06.640 He was speaking about the Marxist conception of history as a science

00:35:10.720 that can be known with certainty,

00:35:12.420 and it comes from a popular line from the left,

00:35:15.140 which is, I have seen the future and it works.

00:35:18.300 And so Buckley is responding to that and saying,

00:35:20.520 no, whatever you think the future is,

00:35:22.560 we are going to stand to thwart that yelling stop.

00:35:25.120 And so the statement is perfectly right,

00:35:27.600 in as much as Buckley is saying in the 1950s,

00:35:30.540 the conservative is one who is stopping communism.

00:35:33.060 And he brought together a coalition of three disparate groups,

00:35:36.360 the traditionalists who hated the iconoclasm and atheism of the Soviet Union,

00:35:40.160 the libertarians who hated the collectivism,

00:35:42.680 and the war hawk Democrats, for lack of a better word,

00:35:46.420 the people who hated the USSR's imperial ambitions.

00:35:49.720 And those three groups didn't have a whole lot in common,

00:35:51.820 but they had a common enemy.

00:35:53.260 And so they fought the Soviet Union, and they won.

00:35:55.840 I mean, for all that we knock that coalition today,

00:35:57.940 it was successful, and it did win the Cold War.

00:36:00.580 So I think he was perfectly right at the time to say that.

00:36:04.040 The Berlin Wall fell 30 years ago,

00:36:05.880 and conservatives who were just playing reruns of the 1980s on YouTube.

00:36:10.300 Frankly, I myself sometimes do it as comfort food.

00:36:14.080 You know, I go in on a cozy night and play old Reagan clips,

00:36:17.580 but that isn't going to cut it.

00:36:19.140 I'm confident with your wife.

00:36:20.600 That's very romantic.

00:36:21.520 It's so romantic.

00:36:22.480 Say, honey, just one more, please.

00:36:24.760 You know, Ronald Reagan and Bill Buckley fought their battles,

00:36:28.360 and now they're resting.

00:36:29.800 Let them rest.

00:36:30.820 Don't dig up their bodies and try to revivify them.

00:36:33.720 Learn from them.

00:36:34.480 I mean, that's something that we're trying to do here at the Buckley program, right?

00:36:38.140 The William F. Buckley, Jr. program at Yale

00:36:39.700 isn't about playing the hits from the 80s or the 70s or the 60s.

00:36:42.860 It's about applying timeless principles

00:36:45.300 and an understanding of the conservative tradition

00:36:47.560 to the real circumstances today.

00:36:50.580 So, Michael, I have to say I'm deeply disappointed

00:36:53.860 that we are in New Haven, Connecticut.

00:36:57.760 We're at your alma mater.

00:37:00.400 You just got asked a question about William Buckley.

00:37:04.480 And you sat up straight...

00:37:06.760 Yep, no, you're right.

00:37:07.540 ...and argued in plain, clearly enunciated English.

00:37:11.660 Could you try it again and answer it appropriately?

00:37:14.860 Well, I'll be joined for the full hour today

00:37:17.180 by Senator Ted Cruz.

00:37:20.540 If I do not do my William F. Buckley, Jr. impression,

00:37:24.080 he will smash me in my damn face.

00:37:26.440 I will stay plastered to...

00:37:28.860 Does that do it?

00:37:29.380 Very nice.

00:37:29.800 Thank you very much.

00:37:30.680 Thank you.

00:37:31.720 Thank you.

00:37:32.520 Appreciate it.

00:37:35.020 And this is demonstration...

00:37:37.020 Before he became a podcaster,

00:37:39.060 Michael was a frustrated actor.

00:37:40.760 Mm-hmm.

00:37:41.380 And before that, half a wasp.

00:37:43.400 So I've been trying my blue blood accent for a while.

00:37:46.320 Yep.

00:37:47.640 All right, our next question is actually going to be

00:37:49.640 from Verdict Plus.

00:37:50.640 If you are a subscriber on Verdict Plus, this community,

00:37:52.840 you get exclusive access to ask the senator questions,

00:37:56.400 not just at live events, but on a regular basis.

00:37:59.600 That's where we also host the Cloak Room.

00:38:01.060 So this next question is from username GodzillaRules.

00:38:05.200 This is the question, Senator.

00:38:06.900 I picked it because of the question, I promise,

00:38:08.940 not because of the username.

00:38:09.920 That was just part of it.

00:38:11.080 Senator, if Republicans take the House,

00:38:13.280 who would be the speaker?

00:38:16.200 It's a good question.

00:38:17.480 I think the answer probably will be Kevin McCarthy.

00:38:19.940 I will say this.

00:38:23.480 I stay out of speaker elections.

00:38:25.860 I've got enough battles on the Senate side of things.

00:38:29.140 You know, back when I arrived in the Senate,

00:38:32.660 John Boehner was the speaker.

00:38:34.660 Boehner and I...

00:38:36.720 Good friends.

00:38:37.180 Yeah.

00:38:37.760 Yeah.

00:38:38.540 Let me just say we had pretty significant differences

00:38:42.120 of opinion, to put it mildly.

00:38:47.220 I think it is likely that McCarthy

00:38:49.360 if there's a majority will be speaker.

00:38:52.220 Now, it's not clear he will stay speaker.

00:38:54.320 The job of speaker of the House is a very difficult job.

00:38:57.520 It is like herding cats.

00:38:59.400 There is a wide disagreement among Republicans.

00:39:02.380 And I think if there is discontent in the ranks,

00:39:06.540 he could be replaced.

00:39:07.880 But I think given that he's been Republican leader

00:39:10.600 in the minority,

00:39:11.460 given that he's working very hard to take the majority,

00:39:13.800 I would be surprised if House Republicans

00:39:16.600 didn't at least give him the first crack at leading.

00:39:19.680 And if he does a good job,

00:39:20.960 then presumably he'll stay speaker.

00:39:23.040 Well, conservative critics would say

00:39:25.460 that he leans to establishment

00:39:27.900 and that he's not based enough.

00:39:30.460 What say you to...

00:39:31.460 I love, Liz, how you phrase that.

00:39:34.900 You know, some conservative critics might say...

00:39:37.660 You know, conservative critics

00:39:39.620 whose name rhyme with Wiz Leela.

00:39:42.620 Perhaps.

00:39:43.920 That's the fun part of moderating the questions

00:39:45.680 is I get to throw my own in.

00:39:46.980 So look, I have been through now

00:39:49.720 multiple Republican leaders in the House.

00:39:52.200 When I arrived, it was John Boehner.

00:39:55.760 Boehner loathed conservatives.

00:39:57.400 There are conservatives in the House.

00:40:00.840 And it was interesting

00:40:01.420 because he had started out

00:40:02.860 as a relatively conservative House member

00:40:05.940 before he began climbing the rungs of leadership.

00:40:09.020 But by the time he was speaker,

00:40:10.780 I would encounter House Republicans

00:40:12.840 who would just tell me about...

00:40:14.200 He'd walk up to them on the floor

00:40:16.360 and just say, F you.

00:40:18.100 Like, to their faith.

00:40:21.520 And Boehner's kind of an interesting fellow

00:40:24.820 in that he's had all sorts of interesting things

00:40:27.820 to say about me.

00:40:28.740 He's described me as Lucifer in the flesh.

00:40:32.320 He's described me as the most miserable son of a bitch

00:40:34.920 he's ever worked with.

00:40:36.940 And the irony is I've never worked with him.

00:40:40.260 So I don't know John Boehner.

00:40:41.740 My whole life I have not spoken 50 words to Boehner.

00:40:45.140 So it's kind of a curious thing.

00:40:47.320 And so he came out with a book recently

00:40:49.380 that I think nobody read.

00:40:51.200 Although when he was recording his video for it,

00:40:56.460 he did a video of the audio book

00:40:58.220 and he's drinking copious amounts of red wine

00:41:01.460 and chain smoking.

00:41:02.660 And in the middle of the video,

00:41:04.040 he's reading a segment of the book

00:41:05.720 completely unrelated.

00:41:06.880 And he looks in the camera and says,

00:41:08.820 F you, Ted Cruz.

00:41:10.180 Like in the middle of the video.

00:41:12.840 And so a friend of mine gave me this book.

00:41:16.520 It may have been the one copy purchased.

00:41:18.400 And so I did what's called the Washington read.

00:41:23.560 So the Washington read is you take a book,

00:41:25.440 you go look in the index to see what they say about you

00:41:27.960 and you go skim through to figure out what it is.

00:41:30.100 So I did that.

00:41:31.060 I said, all right, let's see what he has to say.

00:41:33.260 And what was fascinating,

00:41:34.940 he actually describes why he loathes me so much.

00:41:37.860 And he said, look,

00:41:38.540 when Cruz arrived in,

00:41:41.340 in January of 2013,

00:41:43.020 he said the crazies among the house Republicans,

00:41:47.300 by which he means the conservatives,

00:41:48.960 they had been largely beaten down.

00:41:53.600 And Cruz got there and he convinced them.

00:41:57.720 Suddenly they believed they could fight for something.

00:42:01.300 Suddenly they believed they could do something.

00:42:04.260 And he said, and that made my life miserable.

00:42:08.860 So that was Boehner when it started.

00:42:11.800 Ultimately, I think he was so antagonistic to conservatives,

00:42:16.900 it cost him the speakership.

00:42:18.480 He was toppled ultimately.

00:42:20.520 The next speaker was Paul Ryan.

00:42:23.400 Paul Ryan was substantially less antagonistic to conservatives than Boehner.

00:42:28.280 Now, Paul had been in Washington a long time.

00:42:31.740 Paul had been, when he arrived,

00:42:35.260 he was a young Turk charging the castle.

00:42:39.240 And I think after 20 years,

00:42:40.740 the Paul Ryan 20 years into it was very different from the Paul Ryan

00:42:44.440 who had at first arrived in Washington.

00:42:47.200 But Paul had a better relationship with conservatives in the house.

00:42:52.360 He was no longer one of them,

00:42:54.320 but it was less actively antagonistic than Boehner had been.

00:43:00.980 You now have McCarthy.

00:43:02.340 And McCarthy, it's interesting.

00:43:03.560 I think ideologically, Kevin is the most moderate of the three.

00:43:07.660 If you actually look at where Kevin's personal views are,

00:43:11.920 he's the least conservative of the three.

00:43:14.060 But he also is the least antagonistic to house conservatives.

00:43:19.160 And right now, I would say house conservatives get along with him pretty well.

00:43:23.640 Now, in some ways, it's easier to get along with the leader of House Republicans

00:43:28.360 when you're in the minority.

00:43:30.040 When you're in the minority and everyone's voting no,

00:43:32.640 there are fewer fracture lines for disagreement.

00:43:36.640 I think we're more likely to find disagreement next year

00:43:41.860 if we see Republican majorities in both houses.

00:43:44.660 Look, the singular cause of the disagreements I've had with Mitch McConnell,

00:43:50.260 and Mitch and I have battled like crazy in the Senate.

00:43:54.100 The major cause of those has been on the question of how much can we stand up

00:44:00.620 and fight the agenda, whether a Barack Obama or Joe Biden.

00:44:05.400 And so with McCarthy, I think time will tell how he navigates those waters.

00:44:12.700 I'm less concerned about where he personally is ideologically,

00:44:17.800 and I'm more concerned if and when he becomes speaker with how he leads.

00:44:24.220 And whether I'm a big believer when you got the majority,

00:44:26.960 you got to do something with it.

00:44:28.380 It doesn't mean you fight everything.

00:44:30.180 If you fight everything, you're fighting nothing.

00:44:32.760 But it does mean that you pick some issues that matter,

00:44:36.460 that you care about, and you stand up and fight and make a difference.

00:44:39.440 And I think if Kevin does that, he'll be more likely to keep the job.

00:44:43.800 And if he doesn't, he may not.

00:44:46.060 Right.

00:44:46.600 My name is Maya Cook.

00:44:48.540 Good evening, Senator Cruz.

00:44:50.100 Thank you so much for coming to Yale this evening.

00:44:52.500 And I think in the spirit of the Buckley Program's celebration of intellectual diversity,

00:44:56.960 I wanted to take a moment to celebrate our newest addition to the Supreme Court of the U.S.,

00:45:01.000 who I know we've already talked about, Justice Jackson.

00:45:04.060 Since you're here tonight, though, in the name of fostering intellectual diversity

00:45:07.360 and academic spaces, it would appear to me that you already recognize the importance

00:45:10.780 of new perspectives.

00:45:11.980 And as a young woman, seeing Justice Jackson on the Supreme Court is invigorating, truly.

00:45:17.560 And on Tuesday, it baffled me that you would ask such flagrantly racist questions

00:45:22.320 to this exceedingly well-qualified candidate.

00:45:25.660 Your colleagues in the GOP promised a respectful and dignified hearing for Justice Jackson,

00:45:31.880 and to me, you did not uphold this.

00:45:33.240 So today, I wanted to create a space where you might be able to challenge your own thinking,

00:45:38.500 as prudent scholars often do.

00:45:41.120 So I'm here to ask you, what are two nice comments you can give about recent nominee

00:45:46.520 Justice Jackson's judicial experience, besides from she has an easy smile?

00:45:51.600 Yeah, you racist.

00:45:52.680 What's the comment?

00:45:53.260 Well, let me start by thanking you for being here, and thank you for asking a substantive,

00:46:07.880 important question.

00:46:09.740 Thank you for engaging in a conversation.

00:46:11.740 I think we all would be better off if we engage in substantive conversations.

00:46:17.080 There's a lot to praise about Judge Jackson.

00:46:20.160 She is very, very bright.

00:46:23.780 She is very, very accomplished.

00:46:25.920 She is very talented.

00:46:29.540 She has an impressive and inspiring personal story.

00:46:33.300 I will say, sitting, listening to her opening remarks, where she described her personal story,

00:46:39.180 she described her parents' journey, you had to be dead not to be inspired by that journey.

00:46:46.100 And listen, I will say more broadly, if you look at the history of our country,

00:46:51.320 if you look at the history of our country on race,

00:46:55.040 it is absolutely inspiring to see an African-American woman serving on the Supreme Court.

00:47:01.440 I will also point out that when it comes to issues of race,

00:47:08.380 I think both the press and the modern left are hypocritical on this question.

00:47:15.600 That they only define someone as black, or they only define someone as Hispanic,

00:47:21.960 if they agree with them ideologically.

00:47:24.820 So, Clarence Thomas has been on the court for decades.

00:47:28.860 Clarence Thomas is a black man.

00:47:30.160 The left hates him.

00:47:33.380 They despise Clarence Thomas.

00:47:35.420 And I will tell you, by the way, the treatment of Clarence Thomas on the left is markedly different

00:47:40.080 than, say, Antonin Scalia.

00:47:43.040 Antonin Scalia was brilliant.

00:47:45.560 He and Justice Thomas were every bit as conservative.

00:47:49.340 And yet, the vitriol that was heaped on Clarence Thomas,

00:47:54.520 nasty, racist language from the left,

00:47:59.060 there was one magazine cover that showed Clarence Thomas as an Uncle Tom sitting at Scalia's feet.

00:48:08.780 I think it was racist and disgusting.

00:48:11.160 And listen, I will say this as an Hispanic man.

00:48:13.480 As an Hispanic man,

00:48:15.000 Jorge Ramos went on television in Spanish and described me as a traitor to my race

00:48:19.820 for daring.

00:48:23.660 Okay, look, that says something about the view of the left,

00:48:27.160 that they're telling you,

00:48:29.300 you have one way to view things and one way only.

00:48:32.380 And if you don't, we'll demonize and attack you.

00:48:35.880 So, look, and by the way, in terms of having the first African-American woman on the Supreme Court,

00:48:45.800 there was an opportunity for this to happen 20 years ago.

00:48:49.620 There's a judge named Janice Rogers Brown.

00:48:51.900 Janice Rogers Brown was a Supreme Court justice on the California Supreme Court.

00:48:56.120 George W. Bush nominated Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit.

00:49:01.120 At the beginning of his presidency, he nominated Judge Brown to the D.C. Circuit.

00:49:06.860 The Democrats filibustered Judge Brown.

00:49:10.480 That filibuster was led by a guy named Joe Biden.

00:49:14.140 It also included people like Chuck Schumer.

00:49:16.800 It included Pat Leahy.

00:49:18.140 It included Dianne Feinstein.

00:49:19.600 The reason they filibustered Judge Janice Rogers Brown

00:49:25.840 is because she was a black woman,

00:49:28.760 but she was also conservative.

00:49:31.520 And they did not want her to go to the Supreme Court.

00:49:34.900 And they succeeded in filibusting her.

00:49:36.740 They delayed her nomination for a couple of years

00:49:39.480 until it finally went through.

00:49:40.840 She finally went to the D.C. Circuit.

00:49:43.120 Now, everyone who was harrumphing in the media

00:49:47.160 that if you oppose an African-American woman

00:49:51.480 who's a qualified judge, you're a racist,

00:49:54.740 precisely zero of them thought it was racist

00:49:58.640 for Democrats, including Joe Biden,

00:50:02.880 to filibuster Janice Rogers Brown.

00:50:05.420 By the way, there was another nominee that Bush put forward,

00:50:07.780 a guy named Miguel Estrada.

00:50:10.040 Miguel is an incredibly qualified Supreme Court advocate.

00:50:14.160 He was nominated to the D.C. Circuit as well.

00:50:17.580 The Democrats filibustered him.

00:50:20.160 If you read the memos that were leaked

00:50:22.940 from Ted Kennedy's lawyers,

00:50:25.460 here's what Ted Kennedy's lawyers said about Miguel Estrada.

00:50:28.320 They said, we must stop him, quote,

00:50:33.160 because he is Hispanic.

00:50:37.520 That's what Ted Kennedy's lawyers said in writing.

00:50:40.040 Now, I'm going to suggest to you,

00:50:41.580 if you oppose somebody because of their race,

00:50:47.280 that is the definition of racist.

00:50:50.660 And look, I'll point out in your question,

00:50:53.400 you said that my questioning of Judge Jackson

00:50:57.740 was you used the term racist.

00:51:00.280 Listen, racism is a horrific evil in this country.

00:51:04.940 It is also an insult that the left tosses around casually.

00:51:09.540 I would welcome, if you look at the questions I asked Judge Jackson,

00:51:15.640 every single question I asked her concerned her record.

00:51:20.420 Either her record as a judge sentencing defendants before her,

00:51:26.540 or her record writing academic materials and law reviews,

00:51:32.460 or her record giving speeches to law schools.

00:51:35.120 All of that is the job of the Senate in the advice and consent process.

00:51:42.760 And so, respectfully,

00:51:44.720 I could not disagree more deeply when you say it is racist

00:51:50.200 to examine a judge based on their record.

00:51:53.820 If the Democrats wanted to oppose Janice Rogers Brown

00:51:57.440 because they oppose conservatives,

00:52:01.580 you know, do you think the Democrats were all sexist

00:52:04.520 when they voted party line against Amy Coney Barrett?

00:52:07.320 I'm willing to bet you don't

00:52:08.720 because she's not a liberal woman.

00:52:12.320 So, you can't have it both ways,

00:52:15.660 which is that when a Democratic nominee

00:52:17.720 has a certain characteristic,

00:52:20.300 anyone who opposes them is racist or sexist or what have you,

00:52:23.160 but when a Republican nominee has those characteristics,

00:52:27.080 it's open season and you can go after them full force

00:52:30.100 and the left is righteous in doing so.

00:52:33.320 The standard should be the same,

00:52:36.780 and I'm going to suggest what the standard should be,

00:52:39.820 is we should examine people based on their actual record

00:52:42.780 and whether and to what extent that record demonstrates

00:52:46.540 they will defend the constitutional rights of all Americans.

00:52:50.340 I think that's what people care about.

00:52:53.160 Mika, Mika, I do want to add one thing.

00:53:04.380 As a young professional woman similar to you,

00:53:06.840 I do want to speak to...

00:53:08.520 I wouldn't get called a young professional.

00:53:11.000 However you identify.

00:53:13.300 I do think it's important to look at exactly what happened

00:53:16.780 with Ketanji Brown Jackson

00:53:18.000 as it relates to the progress that women have made in our country,

00:53:21.300 and by that I mean how Joe Biden has taken us backwards

00:53:25.160 in the progress that we have made moving away from sexism

00:53:28.740 because when conservatives say that Ketanji Brown Jackson

00:53:32.000 was nominated by Joe Biden because of her race

00:53:34.640 and because of her gender, we're not inferring that.

00:53:37.300 Joe Biden said that himself.

00:53:38.920 He said he was going to nominate someone

00:53:41.000 because she was a woman and because she was a black woman.

00:53:43.840 And as women, ourselves, as minorities,

00:53:48.320 this should be extremely insulting to us.

00:53:50.380 It reduces us to tokens.

00:53:52.800 It is tokenism.

00:53:54.200 It's racial tokenism, and it's sexism.

00:53:57.520 And this is the fundamental problem with the idea of equity, right?

00:54:02.080 It leaves women wondering,

00:54:03.860 did I get the job based on my qualifications and my resume,

00:54:07.020 or did I get the job because I am part of a gender quota,

00:54:10.140 because I have been reduced to my genitalia?

00:54:12.180 And so I would challenge young women

00:54:14.500 to reject what Joe Biden has done.

00:54:17.820 I would challenge young women to acknowledge

00:54:19.860 that this is actually racial discrimination

00:54:22.740 and gender discrimination,

00:54:24.440 and the people who lose the most are women

00:54:27.560 who not only are they left to wonder about themselves,

00:54:30.400 their coworkers and their colleagues are also left to wonder,

00:54:33.540 did this woman, did this black woman,

00:54:36.700 achieve what she achieved based on her merits

00:54:39.180 or because of the color of her skin or her gender?

00:54:42.180 Hello, my name is Evan.

00:54:49.720 Assuming that would end global hunger,

00:54:52.260 would you fillet another man?

00:54:57.620 Dare I ask him to repay?

00:55:00.860 Well, actually, I do have an answer to this.

00:55:03.380 All right, I actually think it is better

00:55:05.400 that the Yaley answer this.

00:55:06.740 You know, there's a line in American Psycho

00:55:10.700 about that Yale thing.

00:55:11.880 I think that's what our questioner is alluding to.

00:55:15.280 Like a typical left-wing undergraduate,

00:55:18.380 you are engaging in consequentialist ethics.

00:55:21.400 You are attempting to justify flagrantly immoral behavior

00:55:26.560 to achieve a good end.

00:55:27.740 And I tell you, my friend,

00:55:29.960 the ends do not justify the means.

00:55:32.000 Absolutely.

00:55:33.420 Absolutely not.

00:55:34.220 I am curious with that young fellow,

00:55:40.680 if it would solve world hunger,

00:55:42.880 would you vote for Donald Trump?

00:55:44.040 All right.

00:55:51.960 Hello, Senator Cruz.

00:55:53.320 My name is Priya,

00:55:54.240 and I'm a community college transfer student

00:55:55.960 and current undergrad junior at Yale.

00:55:58.280 Are you aware of the radical left protests

00:56:00.400 occurring on the popular mobile game Among Us?

00:56:02.980 What are you doing to protect our youth

00:56:04.820 from this and other online indoctrination?

00:56:09.440 So I'll confess I'm not.

00:56:12.580 You don't say.

00:56:15.060 All right.

00:56:15.780 So Among Us,

00:56:16.620 I've played it a couple of times with my daughters.

00:56:20.480 And it's sort of fun,

00:56:22.820 but if there's a radical protest on it,

00:56:25.380 I don't know about it.

00:56:27.320 You always surprise me.

00:56:28.940 I haven't even heard of this,

00:56:30.140 and you're totally hip to the jive of this game.

00:56:32.580 Well, you know,

00:56:33.500 when you have a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old,

00:56:38.200 and look,

00:56:38.900 I grew up driving from LaGuardia to Yale.

00:56:43.540 I played video games the whole way here.

00:56:45.820 But I did not play Among Us,

00:56:48.300 so if there is a protest,

00:56:50.500 I don't know about it.

00:56:53.500 All right.

00:56:54.040 Our next question,

00:56:54.680 and I could pretend is from Verdict Plus,

00:56:56.260 but it's actually my question.

00:56:57.660 I want to hear your discussion of this topic.

00:57:00.600 There was a piece that was published today

00:57:02.160 by David French

00:57:03.080 regarding the anti-groomer bill,

00:57:06.060 the parental rights and education bill in Florida.

00:57:08.080 The left calls it the don't say gay bill.

00:57:09.920 He accuses conservatives of being anti-free speech.

00:57:12.840 In fact,

00:57:13.320 he calls conservatives hypocrites

00:57:15.300 for trying to control

00:57:16.580 what teachers are instructing children in the classroom,

00:57:20.260 given that conservatives

00:57:21.220 generally support free speech.

00:57:23.760 So my question to both of you is,

00:57:25.980 are conservatives hypocrites

00:57:27.200 when it comes to these parental rights and education bills?

00:57:29.500 Are we hypocrites

00:57:31.080 because we don't want the kindergarten teachers

00:57:33.800 to trans the kids?

00:57:35.220 That's the question.

00:57:36.060 Yes.

00:57:36.300 Okay.

00:57:37.720 I don't think so.

00:57:39.360 I don't think it's in the free speech tradition of America

00:57:42.720 to preach transgenderism to five-year-olds.

00:57:45.600 I have a test.

00:57:46.560 It's the what would Washington do test.

00:57:49.020 If you talk to the founding fathers,

00:57:51.080 you said,

00:57:51.540 do you believe that you founded this country

00:57:54.240 to protect the sacred right of weirdos

00:57:56.800 to indoctrinate five-year-olds

00:57:58.560 into transgenderism and other assorted ideologies?

00:58:01.360 I don't think they would have said,

00:58:02.760 yes, by golly,

00:58:03.580 that's why we fought the revolution.

00:58:05.520 What about slavery?

00:58:06.580 What about slavery?

00:58:08.040 I don't think they're teaching a lot about slavery in kindergarten,

00:58:10.580 which is probably a good thing.

00:58:12.500 What would the founding fathers have to say about slavery?

00:58:14.580 What would the founding fathers...

00:58:15.800 That's a good question, actually.

00:58:17.160 That's a very good question.

00:58:18.080 What would the founding fathers say about slavery?

00:58:19.600 Well, you want to repeat it

00:58:20.360 just because it wasn't in the microphone

00:58:21.520 so folks at home can hear it.

00:58:22.560 The question was,

00:58:23.000 what would the founding fathers say about slavery?

00:58:25.180 And frankly, the answer is we'd be here all night

00:58:27.420 because a lot of them vigorously oppose slavery.

00:58:29.920 Some of them own slaves.

00:58:31.140 Some of the ones who own slaves

00:58:32.360 recognized the moral problem of slavery

00:58:34.500 and wanted to end it,

00:58:35.400 and they set up ways for it to end

00:58:36.580 through the Constitution,

00:58:38.220 and there were vigorous debates.

00:58:39.900 The country almost fell apart.

00:58:41.100 We almost didn't get a Constitution

00:58:42.240 because of that issue.

00:58:43.840 So the answer is it's complicated

00:58:45.220 and would be interesting.

00:58:46.140 But that wasn't the question I was asked.

00:58:48.360 The question on David French

00:58:50.340 saying that conservatives are hypocrites

00:58:51.980 regarding free speech

00:58:53.360 because we don't want kindergartners

00:58:54.980 learning about transgenderism

00:58:56.320 is silly to me

00:58:57.640 because, one,

00:58:58.920 kindergarten classrooms

00:58:59.900 are not exactly a rollicking

00:59:01.460 free marketplace of ideas

00:59:02.880 where we're discovering

00:59:03.800 new scientific technologies

00:59:05.980 and things like that.

00:59:06.860 No, you're learning your ABCs.

00:59:09.160 But furthermore,

00:59:09.980 even on this issue of academic freedom,

00:59:12.460 there is no right of a teacher

00:59:15.180 to teach whatever that teacher wants

00:59:17.080 in a classroom,

00:59:18.220 specifically to kindergartners.

00:59:20.840 It's funny to hear

00:59:22.080 that kind of a question here

00:59:23.380 at the William F. Buckley Jr. program.

00:59:25.660 The conservative movement

00:59:26.600 was founded with a book

00:59:28.260 called God and Man at Yale.

00:59:29.920 Everyone remembers the title.

00:59:31.560 Few people remember the subtitle,

00:59:33.300 which is the superstitions

00:59:34.660 of academic freedom,

00:59:36.180 which he put in scare quotes.

00:59:37.640 He said that academic freedom

00:59:39.000 is a hoax,

00:59:40.260 that it's a superstition

00:59:41.480 that was merely instrumental

00:59:42.960 for the left to get rid

00:59:44.360 of all of the old norms.

00:59:45.700 He quotes the former Yale president,

00:59:47.260 Charles Seymour,

00:59:48.280 who says that skepticism

00:59:49.920 has utility

00:59:50.980 only when it leads to conviction.

00:59:52.940 Later on, Bill Buckley

00:59:53.740 was having a debate

00:59:54.600 with Leo Chern on Firing Line.

00:59:57.180 Buckley said,

00:59:57.960 I do not want a more open society.

00:59:59.940 I want the society

01:00:00.760 to be considerably more closed.

01:00:02.840 He used the phrase

01:00:03.900 epistemological optimism,

01:00:06.540 by which he meant

01:00:07.580 that we can know certain things,

01:00:09.200 we can settle certain things.

01:00:10.640 And Buckley said

01:00:12.700 he had felt no desire

01:00:13.520 to protect the rights

01:00:14.420 of a Nazi or of a communist.

01:00:17.240 David French infamously

01:00:18.720 defended Drag Queen Story Hour

01:00:20.740 on the suggestion

01:00:22.400 that if we don't protect

01:00:23.720 the right of drag queens

01:00:24.780 to jiggle around for little kids,

01:00:26.700 then by golly,

01:00:27.500 they might not let us

01:00:28.300 go to church on Sundays.

01:00:29.980 And well, first of all,

01:00:31.180 the left has prevented us

01:00:32.300 from going to church on Sundays

01:00:33.640 for about the past two years

01:00:35.700 with the COVID lockdowns.

01:00:37.500 But even beyond that,

01:00:38.620 if we can't tell the difference

01:00:41.000 between twerking for little kids

01:00:42.820 in skimpy outfits at the library

01:00:44.480 and a pastor preaching

01:00:45.980 the gospel on Sunday,

01:00:47.260 then we do not possess

01:00:48.420 the rational faculties

01:00:49.720 and the moral conscience

01:00:50.960 to govern ourselves.

01:01:00.240 So I've got a different take

01:01:01.740 on the matter.

01:01:02.200 And one of the reasons

01:01:04.220 this podcast

01:01:05.240 can be interesting and fun

01:01:08.500 is that Michael and I

01:01:09.980 have fairly different worldviews.

01:01:14.100 Michael is very Burkean.

01:01:16.940 He is very comfortable

01:01:18.540 with tradition.

01:01:20.200 He is very comfortable

01:01:21.300 with lack of change.

01:01:24.660 I was amazed to see you disagree

01:01:27.360 in any way with Buckley

01:01:29.680 standing athwart.

01:01:31.600 And by the way,

01:01:32.220 athwart's a word used

01:01:33.140 far too rarely in life.

01:01:35.540 Athwart history yelling stop.

01:01:40.060 I'm far more libertarian.

01:01:42.420 I am far more live and let live.

01:01:46.240 When it comes to free speech,

01:01:48.720 I embrace free speech.

01:01:50.420 And I embrace free speech

01:01:52.120 not just for people I agree with,

01:01:54.560 but for people I disagree with.

01:01:56.640 I embrace free speech,

01:01:58.660 you know,

01:01:58.940 you mentioned for Nazis

01:01:59.980 and communists.

01:02:00.720 I think Nazis and communists

01:02:01.860 have free speech rights.

01:02:03.880 Now,

01:02:05.080 reasonable people

01:02:06.200 ought to disagree

01:02:07.220 with Nazis and communists.

01:02:08.680 We ought to battle them

01:02:09.940 with more free speech.

01:02:11.980 But I very much agree

01:02:13.200 with John Stuart Mill

01:02:14.640 that the best cure

01:02:15.520 for bad speech

01:02:16.380 is more speech.

01:02:18.020 and so I think academic freedom

01:02:25.040 actually matters

01:02:25.980 and even academic freedom

01:02:27.500 for people who are nutty.

01:02:29.960 That being said, though,

01:02:31.400 I think the Florida law

01:02:32.500 and the other states

01:02:33.160 that are considering laws

01:02:34.240 is markedly different,

01:02:35.960 which is that if a state

01:02:38.040 is going to have

01:02:38.600 a public school system,

01:02:40.020 it's going to set curriculum

01:02:41.920 that is inherent in the process

01:02:44.000 of having a school system.

01:02:45.440 And if you're setting curriculum,

01:02:47.720 you're making a choice

01:02:48.680 of what is included

01:02:49.960 in the curriculum

01:02:50.540 and what is excluded

01:02:51.680 in the curriculum.

01:02:53.340 And making that choice

01:02:55.420 is not in and of itself

01:02:57.220 a violation of free speech.

01:02:58.900 You're necessarily sorting

01:03:01.180 what do we think

01:03:02.620 it is imperative

01:03:03.480 that our kids learn.

01:03:05.500 And the Florida bill,

01:03:07.160 you know,

01:03:07.420 it was interesting,

01:03:08.460 the opponents of the bill,

01:03:09.680 they dubbed it

01:03:10.320 the Don't Say Gay bill.

01:03:11.540 And yet the bill provided

01:03:14.200 that for kids

01:03:15.400 that were pre-kindergarten

01:03:16.940 through third grade,

01:03:18.800 that you should not discuss

01:03:20.420 questions of sexuality.

01:03:22.000 Look, pre-kindergarten kids

01:03:23.360 are three and four years old.

01:03:26.320 And I think it is perfectly reasonable

01:03:28.840 for a state to say,

01:03:30.620 we want kids in pre-K and K

01:03:32.660 to be learning reading

01:03:35.220 and writing and arithmetic.

01:03:37.240 And they shouldn't be

01:03:38.220 talking about sex.

01:03:39.180 And by the way,

01:03:39.680 I don't want straight teachers

01:03:40.920 talking about straight sex

01:03:42.560 to four-year-olds.

01:03:43.940 No sex in kindergarten.

01:03:46.100 Like, you know,

01:03:47.820 kids go to kindergarten

01:03:51.220 to learn to play blocks,

01:03:52.880 to learn to get

01:03:53.540 some basic education.

01:03:54.800 And by the way,

01:03:55.760 the Florida law

01:03:56.860 ended at third grade.

01:03:59.560 At fourth grade,

01:04:00.380 it was, hey, Katie,

01:04:01.200 bar the door, you know,

01:04:02.200 bring out the S&M,

01:04:03.680 let's get explicit.

01:04:05.140 So apparently at age nine,

01:04:07.060 all was good.

01:04:07.800 But prior to age nine,

01:04:10.480 and what's fascinating,

01:04:13.280 I think the cultural left

01:04:14.900 jumped the shark on this.

01:04:16.920 Because you saw

01:04:18.360 many political Democrats,

01:04:20.420 you saw the corporate media

01:04:21.540 all excited,

01:04:22.440 don't say gay.

01:04:23.220 You saw Hollywood

01:04:24.320 all chanting,

01:04:26.240 gay, gay, gay,

01:04:27.120 which I got to say,

01:04:28.520 is not an act of bravery

01:04:29.960 to chant gay in Hollywood.

01:04:32.580 Mandatory, actually.

01:04:33.500 But what's interesting

01:04:38.900 is if you look at the polling

01:04:40.300 of parents of Floridians

01:04:42.560 who read the terms

01:04:43.960 of this law,

01:04:44.700 which is let's not teach

01:04:45.920 little bitty kids about sex,

01:04:48.980 the overwhelming majority

01:04:50.520 of Floridians agreed with it,

01:04:52.100 including the majority

01:04:53.000 of Democrats in Florida.

01:04:54.500 So it's the cultural elites

01:04:57.420 who are like,

01:04:58.280 how dare you silence

01:05:00.060 these brave truth tellers?

01:05:02.100 You can do all the brave

01:05:02.980 truth telling you want

01:05:04.700 outside of the

01:05:06.120 kindergarten classroom.

01:05:07.960 Now, as usual,

01:05:09.680 we're running extremely late.

01:05:11.600 This is every episode

01:05:12.880 of the show.

01:05:13.460 But before we go,

01:05:14.320 I do want to get

01:05:14.900 to one more question.

01:05:15.520 Yeah, let's do two more questions.

01:05:16.340 Two more questions.

01:05:17.000 This gentleman

01:05:17.340 and whoever's next in line.

01:05:19.240 Go ahead, sir.

01:05:20.140 Thank you.

01:05:20.640 Hello, Senator Cruz.

01:05:21.740 Thanks for coming out.

01:05:22.500 I really appreciate you

01:05:23.400 being here,

01:05:23.840 making the trip.

01:05:24.920 My name is Jamaric Simon

01:05:26.100 and my question for you,

01:05:27.840 Senator Cruz,

01:05:28.560 is so according

01:05:29.580 to the Texas Tribune,

01:05:31.040 you refuse to certify

01:05:32.000 the Arizona

01:05:32.640 presidential election results,

01:05:35.060 but most Republicans

01:05:36.340 like Mitch McConnell

01:05:37.220 have admitted

01:05:38.240 that Joe Biden won.

01:05:39.600 Do you think Joe Biden

01:05:40.560 legitimately won

01:05:41.400 the 2020 election?

01:05:42.740 Why or why not?

01:05:44.460 Okay, great question.

01:05:46.200 Look.

01:05:46.420 I don't know.

01:05:52.500 Joe Biden is indisputably

01:05:56.280 the president

01:05:56.780 of the United States today.

01:05:58.980 Now, there are those

01:06:00.740 in the media world

01:06:01.640 that love to go around

01:06:04.440 to Republicans

01:06:05.760 and ask variants

01:06:07.340 of the following question.

01:06:09.280 Do you agree

01:06:10.000 the 2020 election

01:06:11.260 was fair and straight

01:06:13.200 and everything

01:06:13.720 was above board?

01:06:14.680 And the answer

01:06:17.080 to that is no.

01:06:18.520 In the 2020 election,

01:06:20.220 there were widespread

01:06:21.320 allegations of voter fraud.

01:06:23.920 If you looked

01:06:24.800 at polling at the time,

01:06:26.640 39% of Americans,

01:06:29.480 nearly half,

01:06:31.460 believed the election

01:06:32.560 had been stolen.

01:06:34.320 That is very disturbing

01:06:36.480 for anyone

01:06:37.180 that wants to see

01:06:38.560 the American people

01:06:40.080 have faith

01:06:40.720 in our democratic system.

01:06:41.820 as we were going

01:06:45.180 to January 6th

01:06:46.540 under legislation

01:06:47.980 called the

01:06:48.600 Electoral Count Act,

01:06:50.320 if a House member

01:06:51.880 and a senator

01:06:52.480 objects to the counting

01:06:54.940 of electoral votes,

01:06:56.080 the two chambers

01:06:56.920 split up into separate chambers.

01:06:58.580 We have two hours

01:06:59.260 of debate

01:06:59.740 and we vote on it.

01:07:03.120 And I spent days

01:07:04.860 and weeks struggling

01:07:06.340 about how to vote.

01:07:08.140 And here was my thinking

01:07:09.260 as I struggled with it.

01:07:10.320 If I vote no,

01:07:12.540 if I vote against

01:07:13.680 an objection,

01:07:15.140 that will be heard

01:07:16.880 and that will be understood

01:07:17.940 by tens of millions

01:07:19.420 of Americans

01:07:20.080 as my saying

01:07:22.440 voter fraud isn't real,

01:07:24.080 it doesn't exist,

01:07:25.020 it's not a real problem.

01:07:26.820 And that is not

01:07:27.860 what I believe,

01:07:28.800 that is emphatically

01:07:29.700 the opposite

01:07:30.300 of what I believe.

01:07:31.460 So I didn't like

01:07:32.060 that option.

01:07:33.800 On the other hand,

01:07:35.740 to simply object

01:07:36.980 to the certification

01:07:37.740 of the election

01:07:38.700 because your guy

01:07:39.500 didn't win

01:07:40.040 because the candidate

01:07:40.720 you're supporting

01:07:41.480 didn't win,

01:07:42.840 I think that's

01:07:43.420 completely unprincipled

01:07:44.840 and indefensible.

01:07:46.420 So I didn't like

01:07:46.960 that option.

01:07:48.580 And so I'm looking

01:07:49.300 at these two options

01:07:50.300 going both of these

01:07:51.240 options suck.

01:07:53.460 So I did what lawyers

01:07:54.880 often do,

01:07:55.660 which is try to study

01:07:56.720 history to see

01:07:57.920 if there are any

01:07:58.920 precedents

01:08:00.080 from which we can

01:08:01.580 draw insight.

01:08:02.680 And as I studied

01:08:04.500 history,

01:08:05.620 I focused in particular

01:08:07.300 on the presidential

01:08:08.040 election of 1876.

01:08:10.540 That was an election

01:08:11.640 between Rutherford B. Hayes

01:08:13.100 and Samuel Tilden.

01:08:15.180 Now in that election,

01:08:16.380 it was a very close

01:08:17.140 election,

01:08:17.640 it was a nasty,

01:08:19.100 divisive election.

01:08:20.760 In that election,

01:08:22.300 there were serious

01:08:23.260 allegations of voter fraud

01:08:25.080 in three different states.

01:08:27.220 And what did Congress

01:08:28.580 do facing those

01:08:30.180 allegations of voter fraud?

01:08:31.540 Congress didn't

01:08:32.360 throw their hands

01:08:33.380 in the air and say,

01:08:34.320 okay,

01:08:34.900 there's nothing we can do,

01:08:36.420 this is terrible,

01:08:37.280 but we're powerless.

01:08:38.580 Oh well.

01:08:39.560 That's not what Congress

01:08:40.440 did.

01:08:41.440 What Congress did

01:08:42.960 is they appointed

01:08:43.780 what they called

01:08:44.600 an electoral commission.

01:08:46.900 It consisted of

01:08:48.240 five House members,

01:08:49.920 five senators,

01:08:51.400 and five Supreme

01:08:52.340 Court justices.

01:08:53.760 And that electoral

01:08:55.120 commission conducted

01:08:56.240 an audit of the

01:08:57.360 election results

01:08:58.220 in the three

01:08:58.660 challenged states

01:08:59.480 and examined

01:09:01.140 the actual evidence

01:09:02.480 and made determinations

01:09:04.000 about the allegations

01:09:05.420 of voter fraud.

01:09:07.120 The more I looked at it,

01:09:08.680 the better that

01:09:09.540 precedent seemed to me.

01:09:10.880 And so,

01:09:11.820 as we were heading

01:09:13.280 into January 1st,

01:09:14.540 I was headed back to D.C.

01:09:15.720 Initially,

01:09:16.260 I was just going to announce,

01:09:17.820 this is what I think

01:09:18.880 we should do.

01:09:19.860 And I'd actually typed up

01:09:21.160 a two-page statement.

01:09:22.860 I was on Southwest Airlines

01:09:24.260 flying from Houston

01:09:25.080 back to D.C.

01:09:25.900 and with my laptop

01:09:26.820 typed up a two-page

01:09:28.100 statement.

01:09:29.520 But then as I thought

01:09:30.720 about it,

01:09:31.180 I decided,

01:09:32.320 you know,

01:09:32.540 it would be better

01:09:33.440 not to do this alone,

01:09:35.540 but to try to assemble

01:09:36.840 a coalition

01:09:37.600 together.

01:09:40.280 And so I began

01:09:41.440 visiting with other

01:09:42.400 senators,

01:09:42.780 and in the next 24 hours,

01:09:44.960 a total of 11 senators

01:09:46.540 joined together.

01:09:47.260 And we put out

01:09:47.740 a joint statement

01:09:48.560 in which we said

01:09:50.700 we were going to object

01:09:51.640 to the results

01:09:52.300 to the results

01:09:52.320 of the election

01:09:53.060 in order to call

01:09:55.420 for the appointment

01:09:56.340 of an election commission

01:09:57.760 to conduct

01:09:58.640 an emergency

01:09:59.540 10-day audit.

01:10:01.060 Now,

01:10:01.220 if that happens

01:10:01.720 on January 6th,

01:10:03.220 it means the audit

01:10:04.220 could be completed

01:10:04.980 before January 20th,

01:10:06.520 so it wouldn't delay

01:10:07.260 the inauguration,

01:10:08.640 and have a determination

01:10:10.460 on the allegations

01:10:11.820 of voter fraud.

01:10:13.520 I continue to believe

01:10:15.080 if Congress

01:10:15.680 had done this,

01:10:17.300 you would have

01:10:18.220 much greater confidence

01:10:19.420 in the election.

01:10:20.400 And as I stood

01:10:20.980 on the Senate floor,

01:10:22.060 and you can watch,

01:10:23.000 I gave a five-minute speech

01:10:24.040 on the Senate floor

01:10:24.820 advocating for this,

01:10:26.420 I turned to the Democrats

01:10:27.320 and I said,

01:10:27.920 look,

01:10:28.680 all of you insist

01:10:29.820 on TV,

01:10:30.860 there is no voter fraud,

01:10:32.040 it doesn't exist.

01:10:33.620 Well,

01:10:33.820 if you're right,

01:10:35.480 you should welcome

01:10:36.620 the election commission

01:10:37.840 because presumably

01:10:39.320 if the evidence

01:10:40.100 doesn't back up

01:10:40.900 the claims,

01:10:41.560 that's what the commission

01:10:42.580 will determine.

01:10:43.920 And you know,

01:10:44.620 Senator,

01:10:45.140 there is actually

01:10:45.760 one other historical

01:10:46.880 tidbit here.

01:10:47.920 I know you mentioned

01:10:49.020 the first caveman election

01:10:50.540 where they elected

01:10:51.080 the Grand Poobah.

01:10:52.500 Joe Biden was actually

01:10:53.520 at that election.

01:10:54.400 Did you know that?

01:10:55.460 He was in the caveman Senate.

01:10:57.500 And this seems like

01:10:58.900 a reasonable proposal

01:11:00.960 that you're describing.

01:11:02.700 And it continues to be

01:11:04.240 trotted out in the media

01:11:06.400 as evidence

01:11:07.220 that Republicans

01:11:08.080 don't accept election results.

01:11:09.540 There is another irony to that,

01:11:11.460 which is a poll

01:11:11.960 some months ago showed

01:11:12.920 that a higher percentage

01:11:14.320 of Democrats

01:11:14.980 don't believe the results

01:11:15.960 of the 2016 election

01:11:17.160 than Republicans disbelieve

01:11:18.900 the results

01:11:19.280 of the 2020 election.

01:11:20.520 It is true.

01:11:21.080 Hillary Clinton

01:11:21.580 went all over the country

01:11:22.480 saying the election

01:11:23.160 was stolen,

01:11:23.760 the election was stolen.

01:11:25.040 Stacey Abrams still says

01:11:26.580 she is the sitting

01:11:27.500 governor of Georgia

01:11:28.460 and president of Earth,

01:11:30.000 too, according to Star Trek.

01:11:30.940 Okay, that's true.

01:11:32.020 All right,

01:11:32.200 that was just annoying.

01:11:34.120 All right,

01:11:34.460 let's do one final question.

01:11:36.580 Thank you, sir.

01:11:38.880 Senator Cruz,

01:11:40.000 thank you for coming.

01:11:41.280 My name is Nicola Ryan Schreiber.

01:11:43.120 And in the year 1971,

01:11:44.620 the U.S. moved off

01:11:45.760 the gold standard.

01:11:46.580 And ever since,

01:11:47.960 the centralization of power

01:11:49.340 around the ability

01:11:51.040 to print money

01:11:51.780 has been the greatest power

01:11:53.540 essentially on Earth.

01:11:55.040 And power corrupts

01:11:55.740 and absolute power corrupts

01:11:56.700 absolutely.

01:11:57.620 And what I have been dismayed to see

01:11:59.500 is that most conservatives,

01:12:02.560 they claim to say

01:12:04.040 that they want smaller government,

01:12:05.640 but the moment that they have

01:12:06.640 their hand on the money printer,

01:12:08.820 they let money printer go burr.

01:12:10.420 And this is consistent

01:12:12.960 in the last 50 years.

01:12:14.740 And so I'm curious now,

01:12:16.460 with the creation

01:12:17.160 of the hardest money

01:12:18.160 that has ever been created,

01:12:19.640 Bitcoin,

01:12:20.300 how would you feel

01:12:21.160 about moving

01:12:21.760 to a Bitcoin standard?

01:12:24.680 So look,

01:12:25.640 that is a great question,

01:12:27.020 and thank you for that question.

01:12:28.480 Let me take a couple

01:12:29.560 of pieces of it.

01:12:30.300 There's no doubt

01:12:31.160 that when the United States

01:12:32.380 moved off the gold standard,

01:12:33.820 it facilitated

01:12:36.100 a massive inflation

01:12:38.360 of our currency.

01:12:39.880 It made it easier

01:12:41.180 for government

01:12:41.780 to print money.

01:12:43.520 And for politicians,

01:12:44.800 look,

01:12:45.420 it's actually easy

01:12:46.540 to reach a bipartisan deal

01:12:48.020 in Washington.

01:12:49.380 The way you do it

01:12:50.620 is you sit down

01:12:51.280 with everyone in the room

01:12:52.180 and we say,

01:12:52.820 we'll spend a billion for you,

01:12:53.860 billion for you,

01:12:54.440 billion for you,

01:12:55.040 billion for you,

01:12:55.660 you get to a trillion

01:12:56.400 and you're done.

01:12:58.400 And on that deal,

01:12:59.860 you get all the Democrats

01:13:00.860 and you get half to two-thirds

01:13:02.420 of the Republicans.

01:13:03.820 And in the Senate,

01:13:05.500 there are consistently

01:13:06.460 about 20 of us

01:13:07.940 who object

01:13:09.560 to excessive spending,

01:13:12.480 who try to fight

01:13:13.600 for spending restraint,

01:13:14.980 but sadly,

01:13:16.200 you often see

01:13:17.540 the vote about 80 to 20.

01:13:22.380 The massive spending

01:13:23.960 in Washington

01:13:24.640 is what is fueling

01:13:25.980 the inflation

01:13:27.180 that is hurting

01:13:27.880 the American people

01:13:28.720 so profoundly right now.

01:13:31.000 And it is one of the things

01:13:32.560 that is fueling

01:13:33.400 the move to Bitcoin.

01:13:34.680 And as you may know,

01:13:35.620 I am a huge proponent

01:13:36.680 of Bitcoin.

01:13:37.500 I'm a huge proponent

01:13:38.480 of cryptocurrency.

01:13:40.260 I think it is

01:13:40.880 an incredibly important innovation.

01:13:43.640 I think one of the reasons,

01:13:44.800 I personally am an investor

01:13:45.920 in Bitcoin.

01:13:47.460 One of the reasons

01:13:48.620 that you are seeing

01:13:49.800 people move to Bitcoin

01:13:50.940 is exactly what you said

01:13:52.520 as a hedge to inflation.

01:13:55.780 That Bitcoin,

01:13:58.200 by design,

01:13:59.180 cannot go over 21 million Bitcoin.

01:14:01.800 It's a finite sum.

01:14:03.400 And at the end of the day,

01:14:04.400 a currency

01:14:05.100 is a means of exchange

01:14:07.320 and a way of setting value

01:14:08.620 of one item

01:14:09.380 vis-a-vis another item.

01:14:11.820 And, you know,

01:14:13.180 one of the ways

01:14:13.740 to understand inflation

01:14:14.920 is if an apple is a dollar

01:14:17.520 and a banana is two dollars,

01:14:20.460 and you double the number

01:14:22.040 of dollars on planet Earth,

01:14:24.200 then roughly speaking,

01:14:25.520 you would expect

01:14:26.460 the apple to be two dollars

01:14:27.600 and the banana to be four dollars.

01:14:28.880 Now, the math doesn't work out

01:14:29.960 exactly the same,

01:14:32.080 but that's the principle,

01:14:33.360 is that currency

01:14:34.200 gives the relative values

01:14:35.980 of one good or service

01:14:37.480 vis-a-vis another.

01:14:38.780 When you have politicians

01:14:40.260 devaluing everyone's goods

01:14:41.960 and services,

01:14:43.260 they look for other ways

01:14:44.960 to store value.

01:14:45.980 It's why people

01:14:46.600 in times of inflation

01:14:47.580 are drawn to gold

01:14:48.920 or drawn to silver

01:14:49.800 or drawn to real estate

01:14:51.000 or commodities,

01:14:52.140 other hard assets,

01:14:54.240 as it hedges to inflation.

01:14:56.060 So I am a big proponent

01:14:57.800 of Bitcoin.

01:14:59.720 I think the single greatest threat

01:15:01.860 to Bitcoin and crypto

01:15:03.420 is Washington politicians

01:15:06.300 screwing it up.

01:15:07.980 And it is a very real threat.

01:15:10.180 You asked if I would support

01:15:12.000 our going to it

01:15:13.100 as legal tender.

01:15:14.760 Look, I'm not looking

01:15:16.600 for the government

01:15:17.480 to make the choice

01:15:18.720 to supplant the dollar.

01:15:20.340 I know there are a lot

01:15:21.560 in the Bitcoin community

01:15:22.540 that believe

01:15:23.180 it will inevitably go that way.

01:15:24.820 And if it does,

01:15:25.620 I'm fine with that too.

01:15:28.000 But I don't think

01:15:29.440 you should have

01:15:30.040 a government mandate

01:15:31.200 to make it so.

01:15:34.200 But I think it is important.

01:15:36.540 I think the Bitcoin community

01:15:38.240 and the crypto community

01:15:39.300 writ large

01:15:40.160 is an incredibly

01:15:42.500 blossoming industry.

01:15:44.200 China just shut it down.

01:15:46.180 Texas is becoming

01:15:47.140 ground zero

01:15:48.120 for Bitcoin and crypto.

01:15:49.360 I want to welcome

01:15:50.520 everyone to Texas.

01:15:52.420 And I think

01:15:53.660 I actually think

01:15:55.620 the Bitcoin world

01:15:56.680 is at a fork in the road

01:15:58.960 an awful lot

01:15:59.980 like big tech was

01:16:01.760 about 15 years ago.

01:16:03.780 Where big tech

01:16:04.980 in Silicon Valley

01:16:05.940 it could have gone

01:16:06.560 one road

01:16:07.360 to being a libertarian

01:16:09.460 utopia

01:16:10.140 leave me alone

01:16:11.300 let us be free

01:16:12.860 and innovate

01:16:13.340 or it could have gone

01:16:14.440 the road it chose

01:16:15.480 which is a woke

01:16:17.400 scolding

01:16:18.460 censoring

01:16:19.480 socialist mob.

01:16:22.180 And unfortunately

01:16:23.120 it chose the latter.

01:16:24.460 My hope

01:16:25.200 is that Bitcoin

01:16:26.760 and crypto

01:16:27.340 chooses the former.

01:16:29.760 And so I think

01:16:30.460 we ought to be

01:16:31.040 looking for ways

01:16:32.360 to encourage

01:16:34.420 innovation

01:16:35.280 and development

01:16:36.020 in Bitcoin

01:16:36.840 and crypto

01:16:37.340 more broadly.

01:16:38.220 Now

01:16:38.780 I want to thank you

01:16:40.220 that was an excellent question

01:16:41.200 I want to thank

01:16:42.120 everyone out there

01:16:43.000 who had questions

01:16:43.680 I want to thank

01:16:44.620 our Verdict Plus community

01:16:45.780 I want to thank

01:16:46.700 Carol Brown

01:16:47.960 and the Irving Brown

01:16:48.720 Lecture Series

01:16:49.220 I want to thank

01:16:50.020 the William F. Buckley

01:16:51.060 Jr. program at Yale

01:16:51.980 I want to thank

01:16:53.040 Young America's Foundation

01:16:54.100 I want to thank

01:16:54.880 our friend Liz Wheeler

01:16:55.740 host of the Liz Wheeler Show

01:16:57.120 and cloakroom

01:16:57.980 over at Verdict Plus

01:16:58.740 Senator

01:16:59.240 I always want to thank you

01:17:00.480 and I want to thank

01:17:01.180 everyone who is tuned in

01:17:02.380 here in the room

01:17:03.640 I want to thank everyone

01:17:04.540 who's tuned in on YouTube

01:17:05.660 This has been a wonderful time

01:17:07.920 with all of you at Yale

01:17:08.780 Thank you so much

01:17:09.620 I'm Michael Knowles

01:17:10.340 This is Verdict

01:17:11.300 with Ted Cruz

01:17:12.000 This episode of Verdict

01:17:23.000 with Ted Cruz

01:17:23.840 is being brought to you

01:17:24.940 by Jobs Freedom

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01:17:27.120 a political action committee

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 15, 2022

Chipping Away at Democracy, LIVE at Yale University

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