Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 03, 2022


Crapping In America's Coffee


Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

160.84589

Word count

6,133

Sentence count

404

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

49

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is joined by Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) to discuss the rise of the far-right wing of the Republican Party and the dangers of demonizing the Trump administration.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.440 Guaranteed human.
00:00:03.880 I was very clear when laying out and defining what, you know, MAGA Republicans have done.
00:00:12.340 And you look at the definition of fascism and you think about what they're doing in attacking our democracy,
00:00:19.840 what they're doing in taking away our freedoms, taking away, wanting to take away our rights, our voting rights.
00:00:26.940 I mean, that is what that is.
00:00:29.400 It is very clear the MAGA Republicans are the most energized part of the Republican Party.
00:00:36.160 That extreme, this is an extreme threat to our democracy, to our freedom, to our rights.
00:00:41.880 They just don't respect the rule of law.
00:00:50.880 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is sponsored by American Hartford Gold.
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00:02:20.580 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:02:23.340 Such a pleasure to be joined by all of you semi-fascists, you extreme threats to democracy. 0.99
00:02:31.060 Thank you so much, all of you, for subscribing to Verdict on YouTube and Spotify and Apple podcasts and, of course, on locals at the Verdict Plus community.
00:02:44.560 Please do that before you destroy the democracy.
00:02:48.860 Senator, were you aware?
00:02:50.260 I was not aware.
00:02:51.020 Were you aware that we're all a bunch of fascists before the White House told us so?
00:02:55.700 You know, for a long time, communists have been calling their enemies fascists.
00:03:00.400 That has been a talking point from the radical left.
00:03:04.180 That being said, you know, I think we're seeing a new development that is really troubling, which it is one thing for people in politics to demonize their political opponents.
00:03:15.220 It is an entirely new threshold to start demonizing the voters.
00:03:21.220 We should not be surprised to see Biden's White House press secretary saying nasty things about Donald Trump.
00:03:27.700 We understand she doesn't like Donald Trump.
00:03:29.500 Biden doesn't like Donald Trump.
00:03:31.280 We shouldn't be surprised to see her saying nasty things about me or other elected Republicans. 0.99
00:03:36.400 This is a very different thing, though.
00:03:38.220 She is blasting half the country.
00:03:40.240 I mean, this is reminiscent of Hillary Clinton's deplorables line. 0.99
00:03:43.860 Like, if you dare to vote against our regime, you're a fascist, you're a deplorable. 0.72
00:03:51.980 And, you know, part of the problem with that is is it sets the predicate then for people to be silenced, for people to be canceled. 1.00
00:04:00.200 It sets the predicate, you know, to use the idiotic language of the left. 0.99
00:04:04.600 In some ways, it's it's an invitation to attack and even an invitation to violence. 1.00
00:04:09.600 It is, again, to use the left's language.
00:04:12.040 It is othering.
00:04:14.380 And and I think it is it is harmful to our country.
00:04:17.960 And the problem is Joe Biden is doing it deliberately.
00:04:21.940 The White House press secretary is doing it deliberately.
00:04:24.820 These politicians and their henchmen have decided to try to demonize half the country.
00:04:32.540 And it's really, really dangerous.
00:04:35.480 It's dishonest and it's wrong.
00:04:37.800 Well, the half the country part, I think, is the important one because the statement is simply incoherent.
00:04:43.660 If you say that half the country is a threat to government of the people, by the people and for the people, that the only way that we can have government of the people, by the people and for the people is by getting rid of
00:04:54.760 half the people, that, of course, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
00:04:58.400 Do you think that the White House will pay for this comment in the way that Hillary Clinton did?
00:05:03.500 Because it seems like it's even much further than Hillary went to call someone deplorable. 0.97
00:05:08.400 That's one thing to say, hey, you're basically a black shirt or a Nazi. 0.95
00:05:12.480 That's that's quite another. 0.65
00:05:14.200 I mean, that's that's much more intense even than what Hillary Clinton did.
00:05:17.740 Will it matter in November?
00:05:19.260 Well, look, I think for the people spewing this, they're spewing it from ignorance.
00:05:25.120 They don't actually know what fascists are.
00:05:28.240 But but for them, you know, it's ironic that that she says the very definition of fascist, what she means by fascist is something I don't like. 0.98
00:05:36.760 You bad person, that fascist.
00:05:39.380 But like she has no sense of it whatsoever. 0.96
00:05:42.960 And it is deeply disturbing to see the White House used as a vehicle for active disinformation.
00:05:51.960 You know, we also saw in the past week her stand up and answer a question about immigration and people walking across the border.
00:06:02.440 And she says, well, that's not what's happening.
00:06:03.860 That's just not what what's happening. 0.95
00:06:05.460 And holy crap, like like there are lies. 0.96
00:06:09.180 And I actually wonder if the reporters in the briefing room moved back a few feet, afraid lightning was going to strike her at the podium. 0.98
00:06:15.620 There were two and only two possibilities, Michael. 0.99
00:06:19.700 Either she is deliberately ignorant. 0.95
00:06:22.060 She has no idea what's happening at the border or she's deliberately lying. 0.99
00:06:26.500 There's not a third possibility.
00:06:28.040 It is one or the other.
00:06:29.020 So I'm going to make an invitation right now to Corrine Jean-Pierre.
00:06:33.020 If you believe it's not happening that people are walking across the border, Corrine, I invite you come to Texas, come to the Rio Grande Valley, spend one hour on the border.
00:06:45.540 And I promise you, you and I will see dozens, if not hundreds of people walking across the border.
00:06:52.780 You know what? 0.98
00:06:53.500 You can pick any damn hour of the day you want. 0.98
00:06:55.880 You can come at two in the morning, you can come at noon, you will see them coming because they are coming every single hour. 0.97
00:07:03.120 And then let me say also to the corrupt corporate media, every single person that holds themselves out as a fact checker, PolitiFact, The Washington Post, all of these bogus yellow journalists. 1.00
00:07:16.500 If all of them have not immediately called this an 11 alarm pants on fire, then they are every bit as complicit in the mendacity as is the White House that pays her to misinform the American people.
00:07:31.160 This, I suppose, was what was most shocking.
00:07:34.220 Yes.
00:07:34.580 When the White House attacks Donald Trump, OK, you expect that.
00:07:38.160 When the White House attacks Republican voters, that's – you don't necessarily expect that.
00:07:44.240 But OK, this is politics.
00:07:45.960 It's within the realm of plausibility.
00:07:48.420 But then when Corrine Jean-Pierre comes out and says, no, people aren't crossing the border.
00:07:52.720 When we're looking at 2 million or really more than 2 million illegal border crossings to happen this year, that's so strange.
00:07:59.520 When Corrine Jean-Pierre apparently doesn't know what the administration, her own administration, has done about Title 42 and as that pertains to illegal border crossings, that to me, I just don't understand it.
00:08:14.540 And if it were willful ignorance, I don't understand why this woman would want to hang herself out to dry like this and make her look so extremely uninformed, if not unintelligent, when talking to reporters. 0.99
00:08:26.460 Well, the corporate media is in part to blame because she recognizes she's not going to be held to account.
00:08:32.340 She knows the Washington Post will happily carry her water.
00:08:35.500 She knows PolitiFact won't check it.
00:08:37.420 She knows everyone will ignore it.
00:08:39.740 It's the reason why – you know, we've had lots of discussion about why does Joe Biden not go down to the border.
00:08:44.500 It's not that he doesn't want to see it.
00:08:47.260 It's that if he comes, the cameras will follow.
00:08:51.020 And their only strategy is ignore the chaos.
00:08:54.700 You know, the last time I took seven senators down to the border a couple of months ago, we went out on midnight patrol, and within minutes, we encountered the first group that had just crossed the border.
00:09:04.620 A few minutes later, we encountered the second group, and it was one after the other after the other.
00:09:08.940 You don't have to hunt for them.
00:09:09.900 You don't have to look for them.
00:09:11.540 It is a constant stream of humanity.
00:09:14.200 And I've got to say, by the way, kudos to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, my friend.
00:09:19.540 He's added now.
00:09:20.800 He was sending illegal immigrants to Washington, D.C. and New York. 1.00
00:09:23.840 Those hypocritical Democratic mayors are throwing hissy fits. 0.99
00:09:27.820 And he just announced, guess what? 0.99
00:09:29.640 Chicago is next.
00:09:30.860 I think that is fabulous.
00:09:32.860 Lori Lightfoot said, we would love lots of illegal immigrants in Chicago. 0.99
00:09:37.300 Literally, she did.
00:09:38.000 She said, we would welcome them.
00:09:39.720 I'm very curious in start the stopwatch.
00:09:42.420 I'm predicting six days, 13 hours and 12 minutes before she freaks out and calls Greg Abbott, Sauron, the embodiment of evil, destroying humanity because she gets, you know, four or five thousand illegal immigrants. 1.00
00:09:58.440 Texas has had three and a half million.
00:10:00.120 Right. So, so far, it's been a lot of NIMBY-ism, you know, not in my backyard from the blue state Democrats and the blue city Democrats, though I have to wonder when we're talking about sending these people to Chicago, a lot of people leave their Latin American countries because the conditions are not great.
00:10:19.060 There aren't there's not a lot of economic prosperity.
00:10:21.000 And it's actually just downright dangerous there.
00:10:24.020 If you're going to Chicago, frankly, I suspect it's going to be more dangerous there than it is in a lot of the places that these people are fleeing from.
00:10:31.180 And, Senator, I've got to bring this up because, as usual, the last week's episode of Verdict drops.
00:10:38.480 And then I just wait.
00:10:39.700 I wait to see what the left-wing media are going to attack us for this time.
00:10:44.680 They did not disappoint.
00:10:45.860 They're very upset with you because you pointed out that some people who take out a ton of student loans, who study useless things like gender studies or some other kind of nonsense, then end up working all sorts of jobs they don't want to be working, including as baristas.
00:11:03.240 Senator, you ended up in a Bernie Sanders campaign video.
00:11:08.200 Yeah, it really was quite amazing.
00:11:10.540 Bernie put out an official video responding to Verdict.
00:11:13.420 I love when this podcast drives the political news.
00:11:18.340 I will say also that that that and all of the Bernie bros, their heads exploded.
00:11:23.580 I got to say, by the way, you knew that was going to happen because when we were doing the last episode and I I talked about the slackers who had wasted six years with getting a useless degree working as baristas might come out and vote if they can get off their bong long enough to do so. 0.99
00:11:38.740 I saw in the register, I saw in the register, I saw in the register, your eyes grow wide as you're like, oh, crap. 0.95
00:11:43.740 But I also I want to I want to tap into your Yale education because there is a logical fallacy that these lefties are engaged in. 0.98
00:11:51.600 When I said that some slackers are baristas.
00:11:56.340 They translated that into all baristas are slackers are slackers, which is just not, you know, maybe you could help me out with with deductive logic.
00:12:10.360 But I'm pretty sure that second statement doesn't flow from the first.
00:12:13.620 Are there people who wasted years studying utterly useless things who couldn't get a job afterwards and who are now working as a barista and are slackers?
00:12:24.760 Yes, those people do exist.
00:12:26.960 Is every barista slacker?
00:12:28.560 Of course not. 0.77
00:12:29.200 They're wonderful, great people who are baristas who, by the way, many of whom don't have student loans and are getting screwed by the Democrats because they're saying the guy that studied queer pet literature.
00:12:42.080 And has one hundred thousand dollars in debt because oddly enough, you know, to to reference another podcast, you know, Mickey and Pluto going at it other than getting a job at Disney.
00:12:53.260 There's not a lot of job market for queer pet literature.
00:12:58.480 You know, it did occur to me.
00:13:01.060 It did occur to me that being a barista, that's an honest job.
00:13:06.000 Yes.
00:13:06.340 You wouldn't attack you wouldn't attack a barista. 0.99
00:13:09.020 I love my barista, right, but there are plenty of very, very useless jobs and useless workers in America. 0.99
00:13:17.040 And then what a coincidence on this story. 0.98
00:13:19.820 One of the most absolutely useless counterproductive people in the United States would be Randy Weingarten, the head of the teacher union.
00:13:28.880 And Randy Weingarten also jumped on the campaign after Bernie dinged you for it. 0.94
00:13:33.720 And Randy Weingarten led a sort of barista themed video to attack you as being, you know, I don't know, anti worker or something like that.
00:13:43.900 Yeah. So two points on this.
00:13:47.340 One, there's a reason why the lefty Twitter mafia leapt on this so aggressively, which is today's Democratic Party hates working class people.
00:13:59.160 They're hammering working class people. 1.00
00:14:01.480 They work for the billionaires on the coast.
00:14:03.840 They do things that are massive wealth transfers from working class people to privileged elites.
00:14:09.780 This student loan forgiveness is an example of that.
00:14:12.680 But their policies killing American energy, driving inflation.
00:14:15.820 I mean, everything they're doing right now is responding to California environmentalist billionaires rather than blue collar steelworkers.
00:14:23.680 So they leapt on the barista comment dishonestly because they wanted to claim to be a champion of the working man.
00:14:31.980 But it is it only works if they're doing what Corrine Jean-Pierre did, which is being deliberately dishonest.
00:14:40.020 Look, as you know, my dad washed dishes.
00:14:43.500 The baristas who are full of ambition and want to work hard and climb the ladder to the American dream, that's a fantastic thing. 1.00
00:14:51.860 But under Joe Biden, the Democrats, it's harder and harder for them to do that.
00:14:57.180 And, you know, you talk about Randy Weingarten.
00:14:59.920 I guess.
00:15:02.100 It is difficult to think of a person in the last three years who has done more damage to the United States of America than Randy Weingarten.
00:15:11.700 She has that there's no person more responsible for the school lockdowns.
00:15:16.360 We had schools all across America shut down and many blue states shut down for weeks and then months and then over a year.
00:15:25.040 And, you know, just this week, the test story scores came out.
00:15:29.460 And I want to read what what they were because it really is stunning.
00:15:33.200 So the average scores for nine-year-old students in 2022 declined five points in reading and seven points in mathematics compared to 2020.
00:15:46.800 Five points and seven points.
00:15:48.780 And then it's even worse.
00:15:50.840 The learning loss was experienced by kids across race and income levels.
00:15:55.220 But it was particularly severe among low-performing and minority students.
00:16:01.320 Black students lost 13 points in math.
00:16:06.040 And the white-black score gap went from 25 points in 2020 all the way up to 33 points in 2022.
00:16:15.740 So congratulations, Democrats.
00:16:17.540 Congratulations, Randy Weingarten. 0.96
00:16:19.580 You screwed millions of kids in America. 0.86
00:16:23.160 They're doing worse in reading. 0.82
00:16:24.960 They're doing worse in math.
00:16:26.240 That will stay with them in all likelihood the rest of their lives. 0.99
00:16:29.260 And in particular, you screwed African-American and Hispanic kids. 1.00
00:16:35.560 And the gap is wider than it's been in a long, long time because of Randy Weingarten and Joe Biden and every Senate Democrat who happily voted along with them in favor of the school lockdowns. 0.66
00:16:47.380 Yeah, truly a more odious figure in American public life than Randy Weingarten and the, you know, public school unions, it would be hard to point to.
00:16:59.200 I mean, the effects of that are just so awful.
00:17:02.120 As you say, it's not as though you can just fix that overnight, wave a magic wand, and okay, the scores are better now.
00:17:07.420 This is going to track a very long time.
00:17:09.680 So it's really, really rich to hear lectures on labor from that woman.
00:17:14.680 Speaking of being really tough on the kids and putting kids in horrible situations, there is a story that, well, one cries out to God for vengeance,
00:17:25.260 but also cries out to Washington, D.C. and state legislatures for justice, which is that in California now, there is a doctor who was just caught on video admitting that he performs transgender surgeries on minors and not just minors on 13-year-old girls and not just on 13-year-old girls.
00:17:47.580 He says, I would perform it on 12-year-olds.
00:17:49.780 They just haven't approached me yet.
00:17:51.000 He says, there is no lower limit to the age of children on whom I would perform these surgeries.
00:17:58.740 It's obviously ghastly, the idea of a hysterectomy in a 12- or 13-year-old.
00:18:04.140 My question is, what can we do about this heinous child abuse?
00:18:10.980 Look, it's not just the doctor that's carrying out these horrific acts of child abuse.
00:18:16.000 It's the entire dishonest political system and media system.
00:18:21.780 It is our Democratic politicians who refuse to acknowledge this is happening.
00:18:26.520 It is the corrupt corporate media who refuses to acknowledge that it's happening.
00:18:30.600 It's big tech that silence anyone who points out it's happening.
00:18:34.180 Look, as we sit here today, Libs of TikTok, a fabulous account run by an Orthodox Jewish woman, is still banned from TikTok.
00:18:42.280 Why? For reporting the truth, which is the Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, was performing mutilations, life-altering surgeries on minors.
00:18:56.660 And actually, Libs of TikTok, a sometimes humorous but incredibly valuable Twitter account, not just documented it on the website of the hospital, which advertised that they did it for minors.
00:19:10.040 But she recorded two different employees at the hospital on tape saying, oh, yes, 16-year-old, no problem.
00:19:17.580 We can do that.
00:19:19.080 And I got to say, the corporate media, so big tech banned her because she dared speak the truth.
00:19:24.640 And then the corporate media, the Washington Post, wrote this absurd story where they said, well, yes, it's true the website said they were performing these surgeries on minors.
00:19:34.080 And it's true that two different employees at the hospital said on tape they were performing these surgeries on minors.
00:19:42.080 But it is nonetheless false.
00:19:44.240 We assert with no evidence whatsoever because these aren't the droids you're looking for.
00:19:49.120 You're not allowed to be aware of this.
00:19:50.740 It is this is insane. 0.81
00:19:53.800 And look, number one, these surgeries, if you're a guy chopping it off and then trying to build female genitalia, or if you're a girl ripping chunks of flesh off the arm and leg and trying to construct something that they think resembles male genitalia. 0.79
00:20:16.080 And good God, number one, I mean, this is stuff out of a house of horrors.
00:20:22.360 But number two, if you read the medical studies of the consequences of those surgeries, an enormous percentage of those surgeries require a second, a third, fourth, fifth surgery to correct it because you have all sorts of complications.
00:20:39.520 You have infections, you have infections, you have perforations.
00:20:45.040 Look, it's hard to discuss without getting really graphic, but you read stories of people who have this surgery have to use a colonoscopy bag and crap in a bag for the rest of their lives.
00:20:58.880 For any person to have this surgery, I think there are a great many of them who regret it almost instantly because it is the rest of their lives are devastated.
00:21:13.940 And then to amplify it and to say a child, a child who is not yet mature, not yet able to ration rationally reason through the consequences, that if a 12 year old believes at that moment that he or she is not a he or she,
00:21:29.620 that you should permanently chop it off or permanently sterilize and remove the uterus of that young child, that's utterly indefensible.
00:21:45.100 It's one thing if an adult wants to make that decision.
00:21:47.460 You've got a right to do that if you're an adult.
00:21:49.580 But the idea that 12 and 13 year olds should be doing it or minors at all, I think is completely indefensible.
00:21:57.940 We have age of consent laws which state that a 16 or a 17 year old can't have a one night stand with, I don't know, a 19 or a 20 or 21 year old because their brains are just not formed enough.
00:22:13.080 They're not in control of their rational faculties yet.
00:22:15.960 And so they can't consent to make those decisions.
00:22:18.660 So on the one hand, you have that enshrined in law.
00:22:21.740 On the other hand, forget a 16 year old, a six year old can consent not to a one time kind of sexual escapade, but a lifelong sexual decision that will have that will have consequences well beyond even the question of sex and gender.
00:22:39.680 But could can give you osteoporosis, can give you bone damage, can give you infections, can can put you on a lifelong regimen of expensive, very powerful drugs.
00:22:51.100 I just to me, this is so absurd.
00:22:54.560 I don't see why why lawmakers can't just ban this sort of thing outright.
00:22:59.960 Right. And since you're a lawmaker, can can at least at the state level, can can can we get rid of this?
00:23:05.520 Can we ban this?
00:23:06.220 Well, look, Texas has moved to do that.
00:23:08.300 But in places like California, they want to celebrate it.
00:23:11.260 And it is and the media won't report on.
00:23:18.820 On the downsides of this.
00:23:22.600 That they want to silence it.
00:23:24.380 And by the way, big tech is happy to silence it.
00:23:28.740 Libs of tick tock was banned for telling the truth.
00:23:32.460 Because truth.
00:23:35.140 Let's go back to to Kareem Jean-Pierre. 0.95
00:23:38.460 Look, fascists. 0.81
00:23:40.720 Silence their critics. 0.90
00:23:43.500 That's what this White House does. 1.00
00:23:45.100 And by the way, we we have Mark Zuckerberg who told Joe Rogan.
00:23:50.080 Yeah, the FBI called and asked us not to not not to allow people to talk about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:23:56.120 I mean, you literally have the government engaging in silencing discussion that is contrary to their political narrative and their political partisan interests.
00:24:08.320 Speaking of the wokeness in our various branches of government, I simply could not believe this story that I just read, which is that a division of the U.S. Pacific Air Forces,
00:24:22.040 which is the branch tasked with confronting China, has ordered its senior leaders, as according to Washington Free Beacon and commanders, to stop using gender pronouns in written formats,
00:24:33.380 saying the shift to more neutral language will help improve the fighting forces' lethality.
00:24:39.640 And they say in accordance with the diverse PACAF priority, we must embrace, promote and unleash the unleash the potential of diversity and inclusion.
00:24:50.420 So you've got to you've got to stop using the correct pronouns and call people Z and Zim and Zer and there.
00:24:57.340 And that's going to make our fighting forces more lethal.
00:25:01.080 Am I reading the Babylon Bee, Senator?
00:25:02.700 Is this our United States military?
00:25:05.180 Look, Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing everything they can to damage and destroy the military.
00:25:09.880 They've done it through things like vaccine mandates, trying to chase out.
00:25:13.400 And then they fired vast numbers of soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines.
00:25:17.280 And this is truly nutty.
00:25:20.320 When it comes to lethality, this is lethality right here.
00:25:23.860 This is killing our military.
00:25:26.400 And listen, the Chinese are training to defeat us. 1.00
00:25:29.740 And these weak, appeasing numbskulls are trying to demonstrate how woke they are. 1.00
00:25:38.320 And by the way, the definition of wokeness keeps changing.
00:25:40.560 So last I checked, like 12 minutes ago, the most woke people had their genders in their Twitter profile.
00:25:48.180 I'm he, him, she, her, Z's, er, whatever.
00:25:52.600 Now, the even more woke is no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:25:55.900 Don't have pronouns.
00:25:57.480 Even if you say you're he, him, we will not say it.
00:26:01.600 We will just refer to you as podcaster.
00:26:04.240 That is all you are.
00:26:06.500 You may not be he podcaster or she podcaster.
00:26:10.460 Like, it is, you're right.
00:26:14.620 It could be Babylon Bee. 1.00
00:26:15.780 I don't even know how you saturday, saturday this crap anymore because it is so ridiculous. 1.00
00:26:21.720 And I got to tell you, I hear from active duty military all the time who are beyond frustrated by this garbage. 1.00
00:26:29.460 And the problem is it now extends up the chain of command because the way you get promoted in Joe Biden's Department of Defense is you embrace this idiocy and and apparently no longer even know what a pronoun is. 0.98
00:26:45.360 So is is the only way that we solve this just winning in 2024? 0.78
00:26:48.640 I remember when I saw that woke army ad whenever it was about a year ago where it was an army recruitment ad and the ad, it looked like it could have been, I don't know, a Procter and Gamble commercial from Pride Month.
00:27:00.060 It was a cartoon about this girl and how her lesbian mothers at pride parades really taught her how to fight America's enemies or something like that.
00:27:07.880 I mean, it was, again, sort of beyond satire.
00:27:10.840 And I thought, by golly, it's the this is the army.
00:27:14.680 You know, this was one of the few institutions that conservative people hadn't totally lost to the left.
00:27:20.440 So, OK, it's lost right now.
00:27:22.020 The only way to fix it is just we've got to get a Republican president in there to fire the top brass and bring some normal people back into military leadership. 1.00
00:27:30.560 Yes.
00:27:31.820 Look, the left has always hated the military.
00:27:34.100 You have people like Bernie Sanders who always want to slash the budget for the military and render us vulnerable.
00:27:38.860 You have the Biden White House that believes every enemy on Earth, the way to deal with them is surrender to them, show weakness, show appeasement.
00:27:47.520 You know, Biden is right in the middle of trying to sign a ridiculous deal with Iran to give them billions of dollars that they will use to kill Americans and develop nuclear weapons, which could be used to kill millions of Americans.
00:27:57.700 One of the ways they express their hatred for the military is by undermining it from within, by making it a political entity.
00:28:08.880 And that is profoundly harmful to the military.
00:28:11.740 Listen, I don't want the military to be a Republican entity.
00:28:15.080 I want the job of the military to be to defend this nation and be prepared to kill the enemy.
00:28:21.360 That's their job.
00:28:22.360 It's not to be on on the vanguard of some political agenda on either side.
00:28:27.120 Before we go, we do have to get to some mailbag because of our wonderful Verdict Plus subscribers.
00:28:34.340 Here's a question.
00:28:35.780 It pertains to November, and it's a little nitty gritty on the politics.
00:28:40.360 Baltimore Bill writes, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, NRSC, canceled millions worth of ads across numerous battleground states, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Nevada.
00:28:52.360 There are winnable races here, which would tilt the balance of power back to the Republicans.
00:28:57.780 Would Mitch McConnell really prefer Fetterman and Kelly, the Democrats, in the Senate?
00:29:05.040 So I certainly hope not.
00:29:07.220 I think we have an excellent chance to take the House, and I still think we have a very good chance to take the Senate.
00:29:13.180 I put it at 60 percent or better to take the Senate.
00:29:17.640 In terms of where we are, I do think the political environment is a little bit worse today than it was six weeks ago.
00:29:25.100 Now, the narrative everywhere in the media is, oh, the tides have turned, and now the Democrats are not going to get obliterated.
00:29:32.280 And the corporate media is desperately trying to push that narrative.
00:29:36.360 I think that is vastly overstated.
00:29:38.520 I think we're headed to a very good election still.
00:29:41.380 And I think we will see going into September and October additional momentum.
00:29:47.980 Between now and Election Day, I am going to be on the road nonstop campaigning for Senate candidates across the country and for House candidates across the country, because I think it's going to be a big victory in November.
00:30:00.860 I certainly hope it is.
00:30:02.560 It's also worth pointing out as we're being told that the tides are turning and the Democrats are going to do just fine.
00:30:10.160 Yes, the Republicans had, what, a 10-point lead on the generic ballot in July that narrowed to a five-point lead.
00:30:16.320 We're still pretty much exactly where the Democrats were in 2018, and it narrowed for the Democrats between August and November of 2018, and they still did great in those elections, in those midterm elections.
00:30:27.760 So I just, listen, you know it on the ground a lot better than I did, but I read the reports in the media, and then I look at the actual numbers, and I think these things don't match up.
00:30:37.540 Yeah.
00:30:38.020 Well, the media wants Republicans, conservatives, people who are not insane, because in many ways this is not even a left-right battle.
00:30:46.680 This is a sane, insane battle.
00:30:48.900 They want those who believe in common sense and reason and individual liberty to be demoralized, to say we can't win, to stay home.
00:30:59.360 That's how the Marxists prevail, is they discourage people of good sense from, that they engage in voter suppression.
00:31:09.580 And every story you read about how the Democrats are doing well is a deliberate, calculated effort at voter suppression from the corporate media.
00:31:19.640 One last question before we get out of here.
00:31:21.840 No, that's not true.
00:31:22.760 Two last questions, but they're both from the same guy, so it's a two-parter.
00:31:25.880 One, what does America first mean to you?
00:31:30.480 And two, hard to choose, but what is the number one issue Ted Cruz is focusing on leading up to November?
00:31:37.300 Both questions from Furtick Plus subscriber, Steel Dino.
00:31:42.140 So those are great questions.
00:31:44.040 America first means a lot of things, but I think it means standing with the working men and women and defending the interest of the United States, protecting America in foreign policy.
00:31:55.220 I gave a long speech.
00:31:57.180 It's about 45 minutes long at the America First Policy Institute, entirely devoted to what does America first mean in foreign policy?
00:32:05.660 I don't think it means what some people are trying to claim that it means, which is isolationism and withdrawing from the world.
00:32:13.680 I think that is twisting what America first is about.
00:32:17.400 It's certainly not what we did when Donald Trump was president.
00:32:19.840 I think it means, in the foreign policy context, putting the national security interest of the United States first and foremost, being willing to defeat our enemies, but not sending our sons and daughters into harm's way for amorphous global norms or to protect democracy or such other gobbledygook.
00:32:40.740 But the job of the military is to protect Americans and keep us safe.
00:32:46.440 On economic and domestic policy, I think it means standing with blue collar workers, standing with working men and women.
00:32:54.560 That means things like securing the border and stopping unlimited illegal immigration.
00:32:59.500 That means defending small businesses so there are lots of jobs that are plentiful. 0.94
00:33:05.520 That, to me, is America first as well, which is the steelworkers and truck drivers and cops and firefighters and waiters and waitresses and baristas, who we stand for and the Democrats crap in the coffee cup of baristas.
00:33:21.060 That is America first to me on that vivid note on that vivid note.
00:33:28.060 There was a second question.
00:33:30.700 Oh, thank goodness, because I don't really want to end on on that image that, albeit accurate, is quite is quite disgusting.
00:33:39.320 What do you think the the top issue has to be that Republicans focus on going into the midterms?
00:33:45.440 So on polling, the top three issues in the country are inflation with gas prices being the most salient piece of that, then crime and then the chaos on our southern border.
00:33:58.660 Those are consistently the top three issues.
00:34:01.340 I think we should focus on them front and center.
00:34:05.320 In terms of my passions, I would say two things.
00:34:09.220 Number one, sanity versus insanity.
00:34:12.200 Like the Marxist left is destroying America, destroying our values, tearing down our founders, tearing down our Constitution, tearing down our Bill of Rights.
00:34:22.200 And so defending who we are as America, I think, is foundational.
00:34:28.040 And in terms of a policy issue, I think there's no domestic policy issue that matters more than school choice.
00:34:34.360 And so I am deeply engaged in campaigning for candidates who support school choice, raising money for candidates who support school choice.
00:34:43.100 It's campaigning to defeat candidates who oppose school choice, doing everything we can to stop the Randy Weingartens of the world who are responsible for for inflicting enormous harm on children.
00:34:56.060 And she cackles away with Joe Biden and the Democrats at the White House while the kids get left behind.
00:35:02.140 Sounds just like a fascist, giving people more choices over their future and the future of their family. 0.80
00:35:09.880 We got a regular Mussolini over here, at least as as it goes into Joe Biden's sort of warped brain.
00:35:19.100 There's obviously much more to talk about.
00:35:21.000 You will be talking about much more on The Cloak Room with our friend Liz Wheeler.
00:35:25.780 Liz, what will you be talking about?
00:35:26.880 Hi, Michael. Yes. And Senator, great answer. And Verdict Plus, thank you for your great questions.
00:35:32.960 I don't know if you guys realize, but I'm sitting here thinking, how on earth do I segue from poo-poo in a cup into what we're talking about on Cloak Room?
00:35:39.980 This is what you give me every week, except for Verdict Plus fans who give questions that give me a little easier time.
00:35:46.440 So this is what's called a hard segue.
00:35:48.700 Over on The Cloak Room today, we're going to talk about what happened in Alaska.
00:35:51.860 Republicans lost a seat in the House of Representatives because of rank choice voting in the Alaska special election,
00:35:59.160 which means the Democrat actually only won 40 percent of the vote.
00:36:02.820 The Republicans won 60 percent of the vote.
00:36:05.180 Yet somehow the Democrat is the one that's going to Washington, D.C. to represent the people of Alaska.
00:36:09.920 We're going to talk about how that happened and just the structure of the whole rank choice voting and why it's a bad thing.
00:36:15.640 You can join us on The Cloak Room.
00:36:16.920 It's verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus, verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus.
00:36:23.880 If you use my promo code, Cloak Room, then you can watch for free for the first month of your annual subscription.
00:36:28.900 That's verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus.
00:36:31.960 I really, really want to listen to that discussion because the idea that a Democrat is going to go represent Alaska is really upsetting.
00:36:40.260 Usually when Alaska sends Democrats to Congress, they at least pretend to be Republicans.
00:36:45.620 So that'll be a great discussion.
00:36:48.080 If you want to hear some of these discussions, not just through your phone or your computer, if you want to hear them live, well, you got to go check out Verdict Live.
00:36:58.040 We are beginning another campus tour.
00:37:01.040 We could be coming to a campus near you.
00:37:03.680 How do you make that happen?
00:37:05.020 Well, you submit your school for consideration at yaf.org slash verdict.
00:37:11.160 We've been to some super lib schools.
00:37:13.820 We've been to some very conservative schools.
00:37:16.840 We've been in the north and in the south and everywhere in between.
00:37:19.500 We look forward to coming to a school near use.
00:37:21.640 Make sure you submit your campus ASAP.
00:37:24.720 Time is running out.
00:37:26.120 yaf.org slash verdict.
00:37:30.000 Until then, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:37:31.860 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:37:33.260 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country.
00:37:54.300 In 2022, Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.
00:38:04.080 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:38:06.700 Guaranteed Human.