Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 16, 2020


Civil Liberties Under Attack


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

168.87985

Word Count

5,422

Sentence Count

380

Misogynist Sentences

8

Hate Speech Sentences

6


Summary

Ted Cruz is back with a new episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz on the Michael Flynn exoneration and the ongoing investigation into the former National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn. Ted explains how the FBI set him up, and how the Obama administration conspired with the DOJ to get him exonerated.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.540 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.500 Remember civil liberties?
00:00:06.480 With all the Obamagate spying and due process under attack and the endless lockdowns,
00:00:12.100 they might seem like a distant memory.
00:00:14.640 We will get into all of it.
00:00:16.200 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:23.780 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:25.680 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:00:26.620 Senator, the last time that we spoke, the biggest story of the day was the exoneration
00:00:31.500 of Michael Flynn, President Trump's first national security advisor.
00:00:36.280 The DOJ dropped the case into him.
00:00:38.740 The FBI set him up.
00:00:40.500 This was a huge miscarriage of justice.
00:00:42.500 But thankfully, the case was being dismissed until I just read a headline that the judge
00:00:49.160 is not letting go of the case, even though the prosecution said that they were pulling
00:00:54.160 out of it.
00:00:54.520 Can you explain to me how that's even possible?
00:00:57.020 What's going on?
00:00:57.860 It is ridiculous.
00:00:59.860 This federal judge, we've seen too many judges on the bench behaving like they're members
00:01:05.120 of the resistance and signing up to really the partisan objective of attacking the president
00:01:14.580 and this administration.
00:01:16.560 Listen, everything about this Michael Flynn investigation and prosecution stinks from the
00:01:22.620 get-go.
00:01:23.060 And what has come public in the last couple of weeks is stunning.
00:01:29.080 What we now know is, number one, Attorney General Bill Barr, when he came in, assigned a U.S.
00:01:35.640 attorney who is a longtime experienced veteran with the FBI and the Department of Justice to
00:01:42.640 go and invest, go look at this case and make sure nothing untoward happened.
00:01:47.380 And he went and investigated, and they were horrified by what they found.
00:01:51.540 They found that the FBI agents going after Michael Flynn, number one, the FBI was going
00:01:55.720 to dismiss the case because they didn't have any evidence.
00:01:57.880 And then Peter Strzok, who we've seen is a rabidly partisan Trump hater, stopped it from
00:02:04.600 being closed and said how lucky they were that their incompetence, that's his word, was such
00:02:09.520 that it saved them from closing the case.
00:02:11.620 And they decided, all right, let's go interview him and see if we can somehow entrap him in
00:02:19.440 a lie in order to, and this is the FBI's own notes, get him fired.
00:02:24.460 Get him to lie so we can get him fired.
00:02:27.060 That's not the FBI's job.
00:02:28.960 Why are they trying to get the national security advisor for the newly elected president fired?
00:02:34.780 So that came out initially, but it gets worse.
00:02:37.560 And by the way, James Comey bragged, the old FBI director bragged in an interview how essentially
00:02:44.420 he suckered General Flynn, who's a decorated three-star general, by the way, who spent his
00:02:50.540 whole life fighting to defend this country.
00:02:52.980 They suckered General Flynn into this interview where they said, oh, you don't need a lawyer.
00:02:59.300 No, no, no.
00:02:59.580 You don't need to tell the White House counsel about it.
00:03:01.500 We're just coming to chat.
00:03:02.980 Just to chit-chat.
00:03:03.820 And actually, Comey said something to the effect of, you know, a White House that knew
00:03:10.780 what they were doing would never have fallen for this.
00:03:12.780 Of course, they did this right after Trump was elected, right when they're getting started,
00:03:16.540 when they're getting their team in place.
00:03:18.480 But it's worse than that.
00:03:20.620 What's come out in this last week are two things that are beyond stunning.
00:03:25.200 One, we know that there was a January 5th meeting in the White House with President Obama,
00:03:32.100 that President Obama was directly part of the meeting where it was discussed with senior
00:03:37.160 law enforcement and intelligence.
00:03:38.620 They were targeting the national security advisor for the incoming president.
00:03:43.140 Not only that, we know that Joe Biden was at that meeting and stunningly that Joe Biden
00:03:50.360 personally directed the unmasking of General Flynn.
00:03:54.140 Again, let's unmask his name.
00:03:56.300 Normally, the intelligence reports, the intercepts come around with names blocked out.
00:04:00.300 Joe Biden personally said, unmask him.
00:04:03.060 Let's see his name.
00:04:05.060 And then on top of that, in the last week of the Obama administration, Susan Rice, the national
00:04:12.820 security advisor, sent an email to herself and to the intelligence community saying, under
00:04:19.440 the directions of President Obama, and she made this clear, this was coming from Barack Obama
00:04:23.460 himself, you may not be able to share certain aspects of national security information concerning
00:04:31.280 Russia with the incoming president.
00:04:35.020 What in the hell?
00:04:36.280 Like, this has never happened in the history of our country.
00:04:39.400 An outgoing administration launching a political investigation, a political persecution, and telling
00:04:47.180 all of the deep state bureaucrats, when the new president comes in, he's not your president.
00:04:53.300 You don't have to tell him what's going on.
00:04:55.300 Just go after him, target him, and trap him, set him up.
00:04:59.400 I mean, it was stunning.
00:05:01.980 And in more than two centuries of our nation's history, I am not aware of any outgoing administration
00:05:08.500 that ever so much has tried to do this to the new administration.
00:05:12.560 It is wrong.
00:05:13.880 It is offensive.
00:05:14.900 It is grotesque.
00:05:15.920 And so the Department of Justice came in and said, we shouldn't have brought this case.
00:05:21.000 We don't have the evidence.
00:05:22.320 Let's dismiss it.
00:05:23.060 Now, here's what happens when the prosecutor does that.
00:05:26.120 The judge says, case dismissed.
00:05:28.220 Right.
00:05:28.580 Prosecutor's not going to prosecute you.
00:05:30.320 The case is dismissed.
00:05:31.240 But this judge apparently has strapped on his little pink hat, and he's decided he's part
00:05:37.540 of the resistance.
00:05:38.220 So number one, he issued this call to Amiki, to friends of the court.
00:05:43.080 You guys tell me if this prosecution should continue, even though the prosecutors aren't
00:05:49.220 prosecuting it.
00:05:50.500 And then he appointed another judge, who happens to be a Democratic appointee as well.
00:05:54.920 Coincidence.
00:05:55.580 To go assess whether he should charge Michael Flynn with perjury.
00:06:02.040 All right, well, let me give you a clue, judge.
00:06:06.400 You or your buddy who you've appointed, don't charge anybody with anybody.
00:06:11.660 Go read that document that you may have put away a long time ago.
00:06:14.600 It's called the Constitution.
00:06:15.820 There are three articles, Article 1, Article 2, and Article 3 that set up our Constitution.
00:06:19.660 There are seven altogether.
00:06:20.700 But three that set up our government.
00:06:22.880 You're in Article 3.
00:06:23.940 You're the judiciary.
00:06:24.700 It is the executive that charges.
00:06:27.420 It is the judiciary that tries the case.
00:06:29.800 And so this is grotesque.
00:06:33.120 It is a violation of civil liberties.
00:06:35.440 And of course, all the left-wing partisans don't care because they hate Trump.
00:06:40.680 It is offensive.
00:06:42.060 This is a very bizarre case.
00:06:44.600 I'm glad you could lay that out because I've had trouble trying to relate.
00:06:47.820 You have the Michael Flynn part of it relates to this January 5th meeting, how it relates
00:06:52.920 to Susan Rice and Barack Obama, and now Joe Biden, we've learned.
00:06:56.580 This is being called Obamagate.
00:06:58.780 The mainstream media are denying that Obamagate exists, just like they denied all the rest of
00:07:04.060 Barack Obama's presidential scandals.
00:07:06.340 You're saying this is possibly unprecedented.
00:07:10.040 This is historic.
00:07:11.340 This is an egregious abuse of power.
00:07:13.820 I don't know of any history.
00:07:15.860 There have been administrations that didn't like each other before, that shifted from
00:07:19.700 one to the other.
00:07:20.940 But one of the hallmarks of our democratic system, of our constitutional republic, is
00:07:26.680 the peaceful transition of power from one party to another.
00:07:30.440 We're not a banana republic.
00:07:31.900 We don't go try to prosecute those we disagree with because of political disagreements.
00:07:38.300 We enforce the law regardless of party.
00:07:40.420 That's what our tradition is.
00:07:41.620 You know, the closest I can think of is when the Clinton administration was leaving and
00:07:48.920 the George W. Bush administration came in.
00:07:51.880 Well, we knew that the Clintons did steal the silverware from the White House residents.
00:07:57.300 Some of the furniture.
00:07:58.420 That was uniquely characteristic of them.
00:08:01.220 But the outgoing Clinton White House staff, they did on a number of the keyboards in the
00:08:08.280 White House, they pulled the letter W off of.
00:08:10.940 And, you know, it was George W. Bush.
00:08:12.320 And that was sort of a juvenile prank.
00:08:15.560 But they didn't unleash the Department of Justice and the FBI and the intelligence community
00:08:21.640 to set up, to entrap, to prosecute, to target the incoming administration, the national security
00:08:28.720 advisor, to unleash wiretaps on the incoming administration's campaign, to base it on a
00:08:38.020 bogus dossier compiled by the opposing, by, I guess, the outgoing administration's own
00:08:45.360 party, paid for by the DNC, paid for by Hillary Clinton.
00:08:50.220 What a grotesque abuse of power.
00:08:53.120 And let me tell you something.
00:08:55.800 The Senate needs to do something about it.
00:08:58.560 The Senate needs to have every one of these clowns that abused their power brought in front
00:09:04.260 of us and testify under oath.
00:09:06.020 The entire array of them, the ones that were sitting in that White House, I'm talking James
00:09:11.400 Comey, I'm talking Yates, I'm talking Susan Rice, I'm talking Joe Biden, I'm talking Barack
00:09:16.580 Obama, every one of them should testify about their weaponizing and politicizing law enforcement
00:09:23.960 and the intelligence community to prosecute, target, and wrongfully go after the next, the
00:09:32.720 incoming president of the United States.
00:09:34.060 That's right, and it's so corrupt, and even if you're a Trump hater out there, even if
00:09:38.540 you're glad, you know, that the outgoing administration was going after the incoming administration,
00:09:44.100 all of that, it does come down also to a question of civil liberties, and it's not just being
00:09:49.280 attacked by government thugs who are spying on people, we're also seeing this in other
00:09:54.700 places.
00:09:55.220 You had a great tweet earlier today.
00:09:57.500 This was in regard to Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, who said that Betsy DeVos has now
00:10:04.460 issued these policies that will protect the accused on college campuses, but the ACLU is
00:10:10.300 now going after Betsy DeVos for protecting civil liberties, even though the ACLU is supposed
00:10:15.560 to be the American Civil Liberties Union.
00:10:17.300 So you tweeted out, ACLU moves to delete the C and the L from their name.
00:10:22.280 Hereafter, it shall be the ADPU, the American Democratic Party Union.
00:10:27.400 They are for all criminal defendants, unless they're Republicans, and they are for all sexual
00:10:32.300 assault victims, unless they are accusing Democrats.
00:10:36.080 Can you just tell us a little bit about the Betsy DeVos decision, what that means on campus,
00:10:41.140 and how on earth the ACLU now opposes civil liberties?
00:10:46.260 Look, it is crazy.
00:10:48.780 Let's start with Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education.
00:10:51.100 The Obama administration, when it came to college campuses, they really got radicalized, and
00:10:58.160 sexual assault is a horrific evil.
00:11:00.560 I've spent a lot of my life in law enforcement prosecuting those who commit sexual assault.
00:11:07.080 It has been a lifelong passion of mine.
00:11:09.120 And it is a grotesque evil that should be punished.
00:11:12.940 But criminal defendants have rights.
00:11:14.620 We have due process.
00:11:15.720 We have a Bill of Rights.
00:11:16.760 We have where people, an accused is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
00:11:22.000 What the Obama Department of Education did is they used the federal education dollars
00:11:26.400 to try to coerce, frankly, a bunch of radicals on campuses who were happy to do this anyway,
00:11:31.860 into creating these star chambers where if there's an accusation of sexual assault,
00:11:37.400 the accused is presumed guilty, and has little or no rights, can't confront their accuser,
00:11:43.780 can't even know what the charge is in some cases.
00:11:45.920 I mean, it really is, it's Kafkaesque, where you have been charged, we will not inform you
00:11:51.820 what the charge is.
00:11:52.680 We will not inform you who's raising the allegations.
00:11:55.000 You can't call witnesses in your defense because you don't know what you're charged with,
00:11:58.220 but here are the consequences.
00:11:59.600 Okay, that's not fair.
00:12:01.140 That's not right.
00:12:01.780 That's not just, but in the radical leftist world, it was politically expedient.
00:12:10.040 The Department of Education said, no, we're going to follow federal law, and that means
00:12:16.840 we're not going to force colleges just to immediately, summarily execute anyone who's
00:12:24.280 facing an accusation.
00:12:25.560 Instead, there should be a fair fact-fighting proceeding that respects due process.
00:12:31.080 Now, in any ordinary circumstance, you take the ACLU.
00:12:34.860 ACLU, I disagree with a lot of the things they do, but they were formed to protect civil
00:12:40.100 liberties, and in fact, to protect civil liberties of those who have been charged with
00:12:44.560 something, those who have been accused with something.
00:12:46.940 Many times they're guilty, and if they're guilty, they should be punished, but you're entitled
00:12:51.280 to have due process protections.
00:12:54.700 Here's the problem.
00:12:55.520 The ACLU, like most of the left, Donald Trump has driven them nuts.
00:12:59.520 I mean, they're just, they're in straitjackets babbling like Bugs Bunny.
00:13:05.180 I mean, they just, they don't make any sense anymore.
00:13:08.120 And so, ACLU is to support all criminal defendants.
00:13:11.920 Okay, I understand that.
00:13:12.900 Sometimes I don't like it.
00:13:13.800 If it's mass murders, they've taken it too far.
00:13:16.060 But okay, that's at least a coherent position is I'm going to support criminal defendants against
00:13:20.980 government prosecution, defend their rights.
00:13:23.420 ACLU isn't doing that anymore.
00:13:24.700 Where is the ACLU and Michael Flynn?
00:13:26.400 Show me the ACLU coming in and saying, judge, if the prosecution is dismissing the case,
00:13:33.020 you can't become judge, prosecutor, and presumably executioner.
00:13:36.740 I don't know if the judge is going to lock him in his own jail cell too.
00:13:40.000 Any reasonably coherent ACLU would be standing alongside Michael Flynn.
00:13:44.620 But God forbid he's a Republican and worked for Trump.
00:13:48.220 Oh, no, no, no, no.
00:13:49.100 ACLU has got nothing to do with it.
00:13:50.480 On the flip side, you know, they want a virtue signal on sexual assault.
00:13:57.560 Where's the ACLU on the allegations against Joe Biden?
00:14:00.700 I don't recall the ACLU.
00:14:02.520 And by the way, you remember the sitting lieutenant governor of Virginia?
00:14:06.780 That's right.
00:14:07.580 Who had pretty serious allegations of rape against him.
00:14:10.360 But he's a Democrat.
00:14:11.440 Of course you've forgotten him.
00:14:12.420 Has any media outlet covered that?
00:14:15.060 For six months it's disappeared.
00:14:16.820 Why?
00:14:17.160 Because he's a Democrat.
00:14:18.740 Where's the ACLU on that?
00:14:20.220 And so it is at this point so shamelessly partisan that it ought to be possible to defend principles,
00:14:33.180 defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights with coherency and fairness.
00:14:41.320 Look, when there's a sexual assault allegation, I believe the alleged victim should be treated
00:14:46.960 with respect, should be listened to, should the allegations should be treated seriously.
00:14:51.300 But it still depends on the evidence.
00:14:53.320 The accused deserves a presumption of innocence and you should look to the facts.
00:14:57.800 That's actually a fair and neutral way to apply it.
00:15:01.040 It's not the way these hardcore lefty partisans are treating it.
00:15:04.620 That's right.
00:15:05.080 We have kangaroo courts on college campuses that are trampling over the due process rights
00:15:10.080 of the accused and that for some reason these panels of professors are dealing with one
00:15:15.180 of the most serious crimes you can commit.
00:15:16.920 Not our criminal justice system, but for some reason these random professors and deans.
00:15:21.100 You've got the kangaroo courts there.
00:15:22.280 You've got the kangaroo courts at the federal level now trying to continue the persecution
00:15:25.860 of Michael Flynn.
00:15:27.140 We're looking around.
00:15:28.020 We're saying, what happened to our civil liberties?
00:15:29.600 And I think for most Americans, the way it really affects our lives is we were told 15 days
00:15:36.160 to slow the spread.
00:15:37.200 We're going to give up some of our civil liberties because obviously there's this epidemic going
00:15:41.200 around and we want to keep everybody safe.
00:15:43.560 Now, you know, I think a lot of states are being very reasonable about this, reacting to
00:15:47.840 evidence.
00:15:48.720 Some states, some cities are becoming downright arbitrary in their power grabs.
00:15:54.020 They're saying that these power grabs are going to go on indefinitely.
00:15:57.420 Or have those places just simply lost our civil liberties?
00:16:03.960 Well, let me make two points.
00:16:06.680 One on sexual assault and then one more generally on individual liberty and civil liberties.
00:16:11.520 Yeah.
00:16:12.040 On sexual assault, look, I have argued and won numerous cases dealing with prosecuting and
00:16:23.420 in some cases seeking the death penalty for child rapists and those who committed sexual
00:16:27.620 assault.
00:16:28.040 I think it needs to be punished very seriously.
00:16:31.420 I've also been leading the fight along with New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand to change
00:16:37.320 the way sexual assault is prosecuted in the military.
00:16:39.980 The military, unfortunately, has been a long problem where the decisions, charging decisions
00:16:44.640 right now are made by the commanding officer.
00:16:46.600 And the problem is you get conflicts of interest and victims of sexual assault in the military
00:16:52.480 don't feel confident to come forward with those allegations.
00:16:55.860 So I've long been an advocate of changing the charging decisions from the commanding officer
00:17:01.660 to a military career prosecutor.
00:17:05.140 So keeping it within the military, but not in the immediate change of command so the prosecutor
00:17:10.400 can fairly evaluate the evidence, be credible, and decide whether or not there's sufficient
00:17:16.060 evidence to charge sexual assault.
00:17:18.500 The reason I bring that up is all of the virtue signaling lefties.
00:17:23.100 For eight years, Barack Obama was president.
00:17:25.240 He could have changed it any day.
00:17:27.260 He could have changed how sexual assault in the military is prosecuted, and Barack Obama
00:17:31.440 for eight years refused to do it.
00:17:34.400 That actually would make a difference, and it needs to be done.
00:17:37.420 So your second point about individual liberties, we're seeing in any crisis, you remember the
00:17:46.000 movie Wall Street?
00:17:46.920 Yes.
00:17:48.240 There's a great scene where Lou, the old broker, says to Charlie Sheen, I'm going to paraphrase
00:17:58.220 this and mess this up, but something to the effect of there comes a time in a crisis when
00:18:02.880 a man stares into the abyss, and in the abyss is where he finds his character.
00:18:07.420 And that is what saves him from the abyss.
00:18:10.120 That's close to it.
00:18:11.660 That's a good rendition.
00:18:12.660 Look, in a time of crisis, you see someone's character.
00:18:19.620 Yeah.
00:18:20.000 And we are seeing the character of these petty authoritarian tyrants who are running around
00:18:26.440 stripping away civil liberties.
00:18:28.780 You know, just earlier today, I saw a video of a woman in New York, an African-American mom,
00:18:34.260 who was walking with her son.
00:18:37.080 He's, I don't know, maybe three, four years old, young child, walking through the subway,
00:18:41.440 and she committed apparently the cardinal sin of she wasn't wearing a mask.
00:18:46.080 And she was surrounded by police officers who threw her to the ground, wrestled her to the
00:18:51.340 ground, pushed her into, number one, the nasty, dirty subway station floor, which I can't imagine
00:18:57.640 anyone laying down, and handcuffed her, and her little son is sitting there watching this.
00:19:03.320 By the way, where's the ACLU?
00:19:05.300 You want to talk about, like, okay, and I'm not saying, it's so easy for people to embrace extremes.
00:19:13.320 I'm not saying never wear a mask ever.
00:19:16.140 I wear a mask when I'm on an airplane.
00:19:17.780 I wear a mask when I go to the grocery store.
00:19:19.820 I'm wearing a mask.
00:19:20.660 I want to be, respect public safety, but it could have been really different if they
00:19:25.280 had given her a mask, if they hadn't, like, you shouldn't be throwing young moms to the
00:19:33.580 ground in front of their little kids and handcuffing them for not wearing a mask.
00:19:37.820 That's just stupid.
00:19:38.900 But these authoritarian tyrants, they believe in government power.
00:19:43.380 They hate liberty.
00:19:44.280 It's the same numbskulls, different numbskulls, but the same type of numbskulls, who sent in
00:19:51.520 bulldozers in California to fill a skate park with sand.
00:19:58.120 Like, what, I mean, that video, if you haven't seen it, you ought to watch it.
00:20:02.780 And by the way, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for the local officials to have a
00:20:08.160 police officer there and say, kids, you guys need to socially distance.
00:20:11.360 Don't all gather together, spread apart, and be safe.
00:20:14.720 But, you know, look, if a kid wants to go skateboarding, like, it's only malicious tyranny
00:20:22.100 that fills a skate park with sand.
00:20:24.700 That's just dumb.
00:20:26.200 And it's the same malicious tyranny that throws a mom on the floor and handcuffs her in front
00:20:31.320 of her little kid.
00:20:32.080 And of course, the people who filled that skate park should have known that teenage skateboard
00:20:36.040 punks are not exactly known for following the rules.
00:20:38.640 So they were obviously going to dig the sand out and go right back to skateboarding.
00:20:42.420 More power to them.
00:20:43.380 I really enjoyed it.
00:20:44.280 And lest I checked it, skateboarders are loners.
00:20:48.440 Certainly all the skateboarders I've known.
00:20:50.300 And by the way, for anyone who's sort of young and hip and rebellious, remember it is the lefty
00:20:59.920 Dems that are trying to strip away your freedom.
00:21:03.080 Remember who's doing it.
00:21:04.380 Remember the tyrants.
00:21:05.100 And by the way, you know, you're in California right now.
00:21:08.960 I don't see actually the monitors watching you, although I kind of expect a Skynet drone
00:21:15.680 to come in any moment now and like find you.
00:21:19.260 But I got to say, there are a lot of Californians looking to flee, including some pretty prominent
00:21:25.680 players.
00:21:26.800 I, you know, I noticed Elon Musk, was it, is, I mean, he's one of the wealthiest guys,
00:21:32.240 one of the most successful guys in California.
00:21:33.580 I think he's put his houses on the market.
00:21:35.940 He said he's going to move to either Nevada or Texas.
00:21:38.340 You're seeing a number of other people.
00:21:40.140 Senator, is this an invitation?
00:21:41.360 Are we, should we all just go down to Texas now?
00:21:45.180 Yes, with a caveat.
00:21:46.540 So, so you're all invited, but there needs to be an entrance exam.
00:21:50.440 If you're going to vote for the sort of lefty commies that screwed up California, please
00:21:54.380 stay where you are and enjoy what you voted for.
00:21:56.620 If you're willing to come for freedom, we would welcome you.
00:22:00.480 So Elon Musk, look, his Tesla factory, he wants to open, his workers want to open.
00:22:05.860 And the petty tyrant said, no, you can't work.
00:22:08.620 And by the way, there was a Democratic state legislator who sent out a tweet that was, F-U,
00:22:15.760 Elon Musk.
00:22:17.480 What on earth is going on that elected officials are tweeting expletives at their constituents?
00:22:24.640 These are the same clowns who last week we talked about the elected Democratic judge in
00:22:30.220 Dallas that demanded of, of Shelley Luther, the hairdresser, apologize to your elected
00:22:34.620 officials.
00:22:35.540 You guys are not frigging overlords.
00:22:37.800 Get off your power trip and, and don't curse at your constituents.
00:22:42.060 And so I, I sent out a tweet to, to Elon Musk saying, come to Texas.
00:22:46.400 We welcome you.
00:22:47.300 We love jobs.
00:22:48.360 We like making cars and trucks down here.
00:22:50.340 We'd love to have Tesla.
00:22:51.560 Tesla, um, by the way, I got to say Tesla's, I don't have a Tesla.
00:22:55.660 I have some friends who have it.
00:22:57.140 They're, they're amazing drives.
00:22:59.400 And my girls desperately want us to get a Tesla because, so the coolest thing is on the
00:23:04.900 giant TV screen in the middle, I guess there's a button that makes a fart noise from each of
00:23:09.980 the seats, which to a nine-year-old and 12-year-old and even to a 49-year-old is really damn funny.
00:23:17.340 Yeah, that is, I, I didn't know about that.
00:23:20.040 Wow.
00:23:20.500 I, how do I want.
00:23:21.180 And you know who also was talking about moving to Texas?
00:23:23.920 Yeah.
00:23:24.540 Is Joe Rogan.
00:23:25.800 That's right.
00:23:26.520 Now, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan said, all right, I can't stand it.
00:23:31.000 I may move to Texas.
00:23:32.060 I, I said, Joe, we'd welcome you here.
00:23:34.760 Now, now you and I know Joe had been the number one podcast until, till, till Joe Rogan
00:23:39.580 was dethroned by yours truly in this podcast here.
00:23:43.400 Oh, that's right.
00:23:43.580 Yes, I do remember that.
00:23:45.260 Well, I, I hope, I hope he didn't take it so hard that he, he realized that, you know,
00:23:50.500 really that huge podcast is in Texas.
00:23:52.640 It's at the Cruz residence.
00:23:53.900 So he's got to go, go see where the magic is.
00:23:56.680 And look, Joe Rogan had his flirtation with Bernie Sanders.
00:24:00.560 And if he thinks that, that, that big government status are the way to go, then stay where you
00:24:04.820 are, Joe.
00:24:05.340 We don't want you, if you want to bring that, that, that, that, that kind of totalitarianism
00:24:09.740 to us.
00:24:10.420 But, but if, if this has made you realize, you know, people like to be free, leave me
00:24:15.940 the hell alone.
00:24:16.740 That doesn't mean anarchy.
00:24:18.420 Yeah.
00:24:18.580 It means respect civil liberties, respect freedom.
00:24:21.560 If you're willing to stand for freedom, come to Texas.
00:24:25.460 We want you.
00:24:26.260 And you know, the, the Joe Rogan move and the Elon Musk move are both interesting because
00:24:30.620 I know that Joe was a Bernie bro for a while, but he really is a sort of independent thinker.
00:24:34.720 You can't always nail them down on one political party or the other.
00:24:38.400 And the fact that the, the effect of this government overreach has been to tell people
00:24:43.220 who like Elon Musk or like Joe Rogan, who are a little more independent minded, hmm, maybe
00:24:47.660 the left is really not where the future is.
00:24:50.000 Maybe the left is not, not where your interests are.
00:24:52.460 That could have some serious effects for November.
00:24:55.060 Obviously there are a lot of, a lot of variables.
00:24:57.100 Profound.
00:24:58.160 Well, am I remembering right that, that, that Joe Rogan had an episode that he had Elon Musk
00:25:03.980 on, were they both smoke pot on the podcast?
00:25:09.160 I don't know if he inhaled, but they did both smoke pot.
00:25:12.800 So, so I don't know if, if, if maybe there's sort of a libertarian streak that's coming out.
00:25:18.200 That's okay.
00:25:18.900 You're welcome to come here too.
00:25:20.420 You and I might have an episode in, in, in which, you know, I was asking you before,
00:25:24.400 if you owned a smoking jacket, I can see you pull it out like a Sherlock Holmes pipe or
00:25:28.280 something.
00:25:28.660 That's true.
00:25:29.180 We could.
00:25:29.540 That's, I guess that's one thing I could bring from California to Texas.
00:25:32.840 Uh, well, we'll have to save that for a future episode.
00:25:36.020 Obviously before we go, we got to get to some mailbag questions.
00:25:39.060 There are a lot of people who have questions all over the place.
00:25:42.540 So let's get right into it from Nick.
00:25:44.200 Senator, what do you think?
00:25:45.600 If you think anything at all about that video that came out of Georgia, the shooting of the,
00:25:51.160 uh, man, Ahmaud Arbery by those two guys in the truck.
00:25:55.400 Do you have any take on this?
00:25:56.780 This is being on one hand, people are saying that these were crypto Klansmen and it's a modern
00:26:01.300 day lynching. On the other hand, people are saying even possibly it was justified. I think
00:26:05.960 most people are not taking, uh, either of those extreme positions. What, what is your take?
00:26:11.400 Uh, look, I, I, I saw the video, the shooting. I think, I think it's really troubling. Uh, and,
00:26:16.280 and so I, I'm glad to see that the prosecution is moving forward based on what I've seen.
00:26:21.920 And what happened seems wrong. Now, now look, this whole theme has, uh, of this show, we focused
00:26:27.940 on civil liberties. And so the defendants have a right to presumption of innocence. They have a
00:26:32.380 right to due process. And so, so, so the trial ought to go forward. They ought to look at what
00:26:37.080 the actual evidence is. We don't know all the evidence, but I got to say, you know, anytime you
00:26:42.300 have two people driving up in a truck and, and, and shooting an unarmed man, uh, that's really
00:26:48.780 problematic. And, and, and certainly with the, the, the, the tragic history of race in our country,
00:26:54.040 um, it, it, it raises, uh, it's messed up. So I'm glad that the prosecutors are moving forward
00:27:00.900 based on what I've seen. There's certainly enough evidence to move forward, but the process needs to
00:27:06.100 play out and, and we need to, to, to find out the truth. That's too reasonable, Senator that has no
00:27:10.800 place on Twitter or anywhere else on the internet. You have to have a very extreme position or else you're,
00:27:15.200 you're not allowed to voice it on the internet from Vince. Is there any
00:27:18.400 legislation planned or being proposed to curtail the suppression of content on social media platforms
00:27:24.600 or could, or should this be a private citizen endeavor to sue where needed or where possible?
00:27:30.820 All of the above. Yes. As you know, a huge focus of mine has been the power of big tech
00:27:36.680 and, and big tech is engaging in censorship. It's a handful of Silicon Valley billionaires who,
00:27:42.560 who frankly are, are, are too often petty tyrants and authoritarians themselves. And then they
00:27:48.260 feel unchecked. Uh, you know, I, I shared a hearing a number of months ago on, on censorship of big
00:27:56.140 tech, where we put up an internal PowerPoint from Google, uh, and it was entitled the good sensor.
00:28:03.420 And by the way, that's Google's own term. That's not my term. That's how they entitled it. And they
00:28:08.020 described how the internet used to be believe in laissez-faire free speech. Yeah.
00:28:13.900 But instead, big tech, they said had made a decision to move towards what they called
00:28:18.960 a European style censorship model. And they identified Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
00:28:25.540 as the kind of major players. That's exactly right. And, and, and, and I think it is a profound
00:28:31.000 threat to democracy. I'll give you a recent example, YouTube, which has been Google and YouTube have
00:28:36.780 been the worst offenders, by the way. I mean, Google, they used to have their motto be, uh, do no evil.
00:28:42.380 Now I think they've just deleted the first two words. Now their motto is just evil, like they're
00:28:47.820 just shameless. Um, you know, Google's gone after Prager university. One of the more absurd
00:28:53.260 examples, they, they restricted as adult content Prager use episode on the 10 commandments. You
00:29:00.160 really can't make this crap up. The 10 commandments because it discussed murder. I mean, I guess it
00:29:07.440 does. Really? Like, like, like, you know, you would think that, that, that, that these techie
00:29:15.980 autocrats would actually pause and say, okay, maybe we're beclowning ourselves too much here. Let's
00:29:21.120 stop. But YouTube's latest in, in the midst of the pandemic, they said they're going to block and pull
00:29:26.620 down any video that disagrees with the health recommendations from the world health organization.
00:29:31.640 Now the WHO, as you know, has really disgraced itself by its willingness to be a puppet for the
00:29:42.860 communist government in China to repeat Chinese communist lies to repeat in January, the WHO was
00:29:49.980 loudly saying that the Chinese lie, there is no human to human transmission of coronavirus. Okay. If
00:29:55.600 YouTube followed that, that, that plan, if you were one of the communists, the, the, the Chinese
00:30:01.200 physician whistleblowers who heroically stood up against it, stood up and pointed out the coronavirus.
00:30:07.500 If you made a video on YouTube, apparently under YouTube's policies, they'd pull you down
00:30:12.020 because the WHO says coronavirus cannot pass from person to person. What utter garbage.
00:30:20.120 And so we need to do much more to go after big tech. That includes potentially repealing section
00:30:29.440 230, the communications decency act, which gives them a special protection from liability that Congress
00:30:35.620 has passed. Nobody else gets. I've been leading the edge on that. Uh, it also includes looking at
00:30:41.420 antitrust, uh, litigation, uh, or, or, or a case from the department of justice. These are monopolies
00:30:49.340 that are abusing their monopoly power. I think we've got to do more. And I think it's a profound
00:30:53.600 threat to our democracy. It is. It's an urgent threat. It does happen a lot on YouTube. Maybe
00:30:57.680 they'll take this episode down. I don't know. I hope they don't. And if they do, I bet the ACLU
00:31:02.820 will be nowhere in sight to defend us. Uh, so much more. No, no, no, no, no, no. The ACLU will be with
00:31:08.920 big tech saying, yes, we're all for silencing speech because we are partisan lefties. It really,
00:31:17.160 it's sad. I, it's a sad thing to see. That's the ACLU, the ADPU, as you say, that that will be the
00:31:24.060 next one. Uh, we'll probably be even further into the upside down by then, but we'll, we'll just have
00:31:29.320 to wait until next time. That's our show. I'm Michael Knowles. This is verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:31:40.500 This episode of verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by jobs, freedom, and security pack,
00:31:46.260 a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes,
00:31:50.400 organizations, and candidates across the country. In 2022 jobs, freedom, and security pack plans to
00:31:56.760 donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican party across
00:32:01.620 the nation. This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human.