DNC Pipe-bomber ARRESTED, plus Three Days at the WH-Medals of Honor, Trump Accounts & Lowering Auto Prices
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Summary
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks about a major breakthrough in the case of the suspect in the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee pipe bomb attacks in Washington, D.C. on January 5th, 2021.
Transcript
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It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
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If you're listening on a radio station around the country, welcome.
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We do this show as a reminder, as a podcast as well,
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so you can grab that podcast three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
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especially if you're listening to us on radio stations across the country.
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Senator, we have got a lot to talk about in this show,
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including a major breakthrough in the pipe bomb case in D.C.
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Well, after nearly five years, the pipe bomber, the alleged pipe bomber,
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who planted pipe bombs at the DNC and the RNC on January 5th, 2021, has been arrested.
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The Department of Justice announced they've arrested him.
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His name is Brian J. Cole, Jr., 30 years old, of Woodridge, Virginia.
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The FBI laid out considerable evidence they have.
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It raises the immediate question, why the heck did this take five years to find this guy?
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Because the evidence they had, it sounds like they've had for a long, long time,
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which obviously begs the question, what was the Biden Department of Justice doing
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We're also going to talk about three major events I had this week at the White House.
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Monday, I was at the White House, where the president signed a bill, the Metal Act, that I authored into law.
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Tuesday, I was at the White House, where the president and I both were joined with Michael Dell,
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who gave six and a quarter billion dollars to kids of America to put into Trump accounts.
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And then Wednesday, I was at the White House with the president as he was announcing that he was zeroing out CAFE standards.
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We're going to tell you about all three of those.
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The CAFE standards are going to make cars and trucks cheaper for you and also save lives and make you safer.
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Yeah, it's really incredible what the president did for Americans this week.
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It really is shocking that it took this long to find someone that planted pipe bombs in Washington, D.C.
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It is very important that people understand this did not happen because of a new tip that came in to the FBI or into law enforcement anywhere.
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This was just going back and looking at the evidence they already had and doing real police work to figure it out.
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It is shocking that the prior administration did not apparently think this was an important enough issue.
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Yeah, the DOJ announced that during 2019 and 2020, coal purchased multiple components consistent with those used to manufacture the pipe bombs at several retailers in northern Virginia.
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And at approximately 1 p.m. on January 6th, multiple law enforcement agencies received notice of the pipe bombs.
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At about 1.15 p.m., the second pipe bomb was reported, the first one at the RNC, the second one at the DNC.
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Video surveillance determined that this same individual placed the devices the evening of January 5th.
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On January 5th, about 7.10 p.m., coal's Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a license plate reader at the South Capitol Street exit from I-35 South,
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which is less than a half mile from the location where the pipe bombs were.
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Cell phone records further show that coal's cell phone communicated with cell towers in the area of the RNC and DNC between 7.39 p.m. and 8.24 p.m.
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This evidence, there's no reason to think that this evidence wasn't in the possession of the FBI four and a half years ago.
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They were chasing down every little old lady who stood on the National Mall and sang God Bless America.
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And they were persecuting them and trying to go after their political enemies instead of actually going after a violent criminal who planted pipe bombs that could have killed or injured a whole lot of people.
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You and I on this podcast repeatedly called on the Department of Justice, go and find and prosecute the pipe bomber.
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Now, look, at this point, we don't know full details about this individual, but he certainly does not appear to be a Trump supporter,
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which is, of course, what every reporter, what every media outlet blamed it on Trump supporters, these pipe bombs.
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And based on the early information, there are no indications that he was a Trump supporter.
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In fact, the early information is, and if it holds to be true, is a complete opposite of that, that this was a radical leftist.
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And so we'll find out more facts in the days going forward.
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But I want you to listen to Pam Bondi when she was announcing the arrest.
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Early this morning, Brian Cole Jr. was arrested and charged with placing the pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC on January 5th, 2021.
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He has been charged with violating 18 U.S.C. 844, which is use of an explosive device.
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As we speak, search warrants are being executed, and there could be more charges to come.
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Today's arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority.
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The total lack of movement on this case, this cold case languished for four years until Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino came to the FBI.
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The FBI, along with U.S. Attorney Pirro and all of our prosecutors, have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years.
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Let me be clear, there was no new tip, there was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work.
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You listen to Pam Bondi there, Senator, and it is clear she's angry and Americans should be angry.
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They just took what they had and did their job.
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Well, and I'll tell you, Merrick Garland needs to be held accountable and answer the question why, if they had this evidence, this individual wasn't arrested and wasn't prosecuted.
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Chris Wray, the former Director of the FBI, needs to answer that same question because it certainly appears that the Biden DOJ did not want to find this individual.
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And when they were asked about it before, they would just throw up their hands and say, we're doing the best we can.
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It turns out when you actually have an attorney general who is focused on going after the bad guys, that's exactly what you do.
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Senator, I want to also just go back to echoing the part that you mentioned there about Pam Bondi and she's angry.
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Dan Bongino came out saying very much the same thing.
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And I want to play it for everybody because when he came out, not only was he saying, hey, I want to say thank you to everybody on this team because this was teamwork, but this was also a moment where we just decided to do our jobs.
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And when you let law enforcement do their jobs, these are the types of results that you get.
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Folks, this is what it's like when you work for a president who tells you to go get the bad guys and stop focusing on other extraneous things not related to law enforcement.
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It becomes cliche, but cliches are useful for a reason because they matter.
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The director and the attorney general emphasized that it was not a new public tip this came from.
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And I want to just really express my sincere gratitude to this attorney general and this president for allowing us the latitude.
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I spoke with Ms. Bondi very early when we, maybe day two, and I said, we're going to get this guy.
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I want to also thank you, he's not here, but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who we deal with often as well, who could not have been more supportive.
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Whatever process we need, Judge Jeanine, Todd, and Attorney General Bondi, they were there.
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All you had to do, they were a phone call away.
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We actually never had to make that phone call because they were always responsive.
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Folks, you're not going to walk into our capital city, put down two explosive devices, and walk off in the sunset.
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We were going to track this person to the end of the earth.
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Well, we didn't have to track him to the end of the earth.
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Again, Attorney General Bondi, for your incredible support.
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I know they're giving me a lot of unnecessary credit, but make no mistake.
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They were intimately involved in this and were there for all of those supportive mechanisms.
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You listen there to not only the way that Pam Bondi talked about it, but also Dan Bongino.
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I think there's two points here that I want to get you to expand on.
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Number one, this is just letting law enforcement do their job and not do political operative jobs,
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which is what they clearly were being told to do after January 6th.
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Find anybody that was associated with anything in and around the Capitol.
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But also, there's a teamwork here that I have not seen in a very long time in law enforcement.
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It makes me feel as an American that they're on my side trying to keep me safe.
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Well, this is law enforcement actually doing their jobs, targeting violent criminals.
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And if you look this past year under President Trump, DOJ and the FBI, they've been going after
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They've been going after gangbangers and illegal aliens and human traffickers.
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I got to say, if you're down in Venezuela and anyone asks you to drive a speedboat with
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some drugs in the back, you know, you may just call in sick that day because it doesn't
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Don't you know you need seven engines and a whole lot of cocaine to do good fishing?
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They are systematically focused on violent criminals, including, as Dan Bongino just said, someone
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who planted two pipe bombs in the middle of Washington, D.C.
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It's not supposed to do what it did under Biden, which is be a political arm to target and prosecute
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And look, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel and Dan Bongino all came in with a mission of restoring
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integrity to the Department of Justice and the FBI.
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I think today was an important step in that journey.
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You know, there's a lot of good men and women that work at the FBI, and I think this is a
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perfect moment, Senator, where we should just highlight this.
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There are a lot of people that just want to do law enforcement.
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And what I do think you're now witnessing is the good men and women in uniform in multiple
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levels, whether it's local or state, whether it's dealing with illegal immigrants.
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But listen, there were also too many people who were politicized and who were obstructing
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There are people who were at the FBI, who were at DOJ, who knew of this evidence, and
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And I think we have every right to get answers to why didn't they act, and was there a political
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That was my question, is there's good men and women that are now clearly getting to do
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There clearly was leadership and those that didn't want this job to be done.
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That's literally the question I was about to ask you.
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What does accountability look like now for those that may still be there that obviously
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knew they had this information and they sat on it or deliberately said, don't go find
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Well, look, I'll tell you, one of the very first steps is they need to be brought in
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before Congress to answer questions under oath and answer questions under oath about
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I want to know if this was a straight up directive of, hey, leave this alone.
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And by the way, the current DOJ and FBI, if they were directed not to act and it is in
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writing, the current DOJ and FBI have that email or that memorandum.
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And I expect the DOJ and FBI to provide those to Congress, provide those to the public.
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What I've urged Pam Bondi and Cash Patel and Dan Bongino is radical transparency is the
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best cure for the politicization and the corruption we saw at DOJ and the FBI under Joe Biden.
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Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see what we get out of this.
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What I also say is this is exactly what I voted for.
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I wanted law enforcement to actually be winning again and do their job and not be politicized
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I think there's so many Americans and I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat,
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you should sleep better knowing this makes all of us safer.
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Like this was a pipe bomb at the Republican and Democratic convention, you know, buildings.
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There's people that could have been there that could have been killed of every party.
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That is the president delivering on his promises.
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So, Senator, on Monday, I just want to make this very clear.
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And then I'm like, well, surely he's saving it for Wednesday because Wednesday is going to be a better day.
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Three days I was sitting here just waiting for, hey, Ben, you should come with me over here to the White House.
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If you go five days in a row, do I get the invite?
00:16:56.000
Well, look, I'm confident you were playing golf, and that's okay.
00:17:00.280
And you only have another couple of months that you can still beat your young sons,
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and they're soon going to be able to just whip you up and down the golf course.
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I had three different events at the White House, one on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Wednesday.
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Each was a different major announcement, so it was a very productive week.
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Monday, it started out with the president signing into law the Medals Act.
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The Medals Act is a bill that I wrote that deals with Medal of Honor recipients.
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Medal of Honor recipients are those servicemen who have distinguished themselves with exceptional valor.
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There are only 61 living Medal of Honor recipients.
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The vast majority of Medal of Honor recipients, they receive the medal posthumously.
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In most of the instances, they lose their lives, demonstrating extraordinary heroism and bravery.
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Under existing law, Medal of Honor recipients receive a monthly stipend of $1,400 a month.
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What the Medals Act did is essentially triple that amount.
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So it increased it from $1,400 a month to $5,600 a month.
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And then on Monday, the president signed it into law.
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We were joined by three Medal of Honor recipients who were there.
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And I'll tell you one of the reasons it's so meaningful.
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Thank you to these incredible real-life heroes.
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But B, many of these Medal of Honor recipients take their time.
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And this stipend gives them an ability to have some basic modicum of income.
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It took about two years to get this done, to build the bipartisan support, to move it through Congress.
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And we're now giving those Medal of Honor recipients the respect that they are due.
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I got to say, when you said it was unanimous, we haven't said that word on this show in years,
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It does give me just a little bit of hope that people realize that when you sacrifice the way
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these recipients do, you deserve to be taken care of afterwards as well.
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Well, and when I passed it on the floor of the Senate, several of the Medal of Honor recipients
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had come to the Senate, and they were sitting in the gallery watching it.
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And afterwards, we were down at the bottom of the Senate steps, and a group of eighth graders,
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I think they were from Michigan, if I remember correctly.
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And they spotted me, and some of them recognized me, and so they came up and wanted to take
00:20:00.320
And I told them, look, I'm happy to chat with you, but I said, I want to introduce you to
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Because both of them earned the Medal of Honor by risking their lives, nearly dying, and saving
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the lives of their fellow servicemen and women.
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And I will tell you, Ben, the look of wonderment in these little boy and little girl's faces
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as they listen to these heroes tell their stories, it gave a great opportunity for me just to
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step back and recede and watch that moment inspiration right there at the base of the
00:20:40.120
So Tuesday, you have this big victory on Monday that's bipartisan.
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You rarely get to do that in your whole career.
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The Trump accounts is legislation that I authored.
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And I want to remind people, and I do want to brag on you for a second.
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This could have been taken out of the big, beautiful bill.
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You fought tooth and nail, and it was a hard fight.
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This was not an easy fight because you felt like this could be so transformative in one
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generation to building wealth for all Americans and giving kids an incredible opportunity to
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There's so many things that hold people back from investing.
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He said, you know, the number one reason why people don't invest when they're younger
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or when they don't feel like they make a lot of money, they're embarrassed to go in and
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He said, I'm almost at the end of my banking career.
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This could transform an entire nation and a generation into not being afraid to open
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account, but embracing it, watching it grow, having ownership of it, and seeing the power
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And I haven't seen bankers get giddy very often.
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This banker was genuinely giddy for the future kids in this country.
00:22:10.560
And I'll tell you, Ben, it's not just compound interest, it's compound growth, because these
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Every kid in America is going to become an owner of the biggest employers in America.
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That's making a whole new generation of capitalists.
00:22:28.820
You know, at the White House on Tuesday, I told President Trump, I said, although your
00:22:32.700
critics will never give you credit, there is a good argument that you have done more
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for kids in America than any president in our lifetime.
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Because he, number one, signed the school choice provision, which I had the great honor of writing
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That will unleash tens of billions of dollars in scholarships for kids in K-12 education all
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And number two, he signed into law the Trump accounts.
00:23:00.080
And that impact together, I think you could say there's never been a president that has impacted
00:23:06.860
Here's how I explained it at the press conference with the president.
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Starting on July 4th, every child in America will have a personal investment account opened
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Newborn children will have it seeded with $1,000.
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Parents and family and employers can contribute up to $5,000 a year in a tax-advantaged account.
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That money will be invested in the S&P 500 in the stock market, broad-based equity index
00:23:33.140
Now, two massive benefits that change this country.
00:23:36.760
Number one, every child in America will experience the benefits of compound growth.
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Her parents or family or an employer puts $5,000 a year each year into that account.
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If you assume the historic rate of growth of the S&P 500, which is 7% a year, by the time
00:24:02.260
that little girl is 18, she will have $170,000 in that account.
00:24:08.420
And if she keeps saving, by the time that little girl is 35, she will have $700,000 in that account.
00:24:20.060
And we're not talking the children of Michael and Susan Dell, the children of Donald Trump,
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We're talking the kids of a single mom waiting tables who could have $700,000 saved by the
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time she's 35 to get an education, to start a business, to buy a house.
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But the second benefit, and what I'm really excited about, is we are creating a new generation
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Every child in America is going to be an owner of the biggest employers in this country.
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We've all seen the sad statistics of how many kids are losing faith in capitalism.
00:24:58.440
Well, 10 years from now, a little boy is going to pull out his phone, and he's going to look
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at his app, and he's going to see his Trump account.
00:25:05.620
And instead of thinking of big, bad, scary corporations, that little boy is going to say,
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I own $50 of Apple, I own $100 of Dell, I own $75 of McDonald's, and every child is an owner
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You know, you just said something there at that speech to the White House, Senator, that I also
00:25:32.540
The private sector getting in on this and wanting to see these accounts, Michael Dell, his wife there,
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they gave an incredible amount of money because they want kids to succeed.
00:25:42.240
Well, Michael and Susan Dell made an historic announcement, and the way I wrote the legislation
00:25:47.380
creating the Trump accounts, it's designed to allow people, philanthropy, to charity, to give into
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the accounts. And what Michael and Susan Dell announced at the White House on Tuesday is they
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were personally giving, out of their own resources, $6.25 billion. And what they're doing in
00:26:07.260
particular is they're giving $250 for the 250th anniversary of America to every child in America
00:26:15.420
under age 10 who lives in a zip code where the median income is $150,000 or less. And so it is a
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massive gift. And I think Michael and Susan are just the first. I think you're going to see many
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other companies, many other individuals giving, and giving early, allowing kids to begin accumulating
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assets and get them to grow. That is powerful, and it is an accelerant. Mark my words, Ben, within a
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decade, we will have over a trillion dollars invested in these Trump accounts, and it's going to totally
00:26:48.740
transform the future of our kids. It's a big, big deal.
00:26:51.820
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Senator, on Wednesday, you were at the White House for a really cool moment, and that was
00:27:55.520
President Trump saying, I want government to get out of your way and stop making things so expensive
00:28:01.300
for you, specifically cars having a reset of CAFE standards that were out of control. That is going
00:28:07.680
to lower the cost of cars for many Americans. We're also getting rid of the obsession with a mandate
00:28:12.360
for EV vehicles, which the Democrats were hell-bent on. And this is going to, again, make cars more
00:28:19.380
affordable for Americans. Everyone should be excited about that. Well, that's exactly right.
00:28:24.360
After spending Monday at the White House with the President while he was signing my legislation,
00:28:28.360
tripling the monthly stipend for Medal of Honor recipients. After spending Tuesday at the White
00:28:33.720
House with the President and Michael and Susan Dell, giving six and a quarter billion dollars
00:28:38.020
to the kids of America for Trump accounts. On Wednesday, I joined the President again,
00:28:43.220
this time with the CEOs of the major auto companies in the United States.
00:28:46.820
As the President was implementing legislation, a provision again that I wrote, zeroing out
00:28:54.400
the CAFE standards. The CAFE standards were the federal mileage requirements that the Biden
00:29:00.220
administration used to jack them up so high that it, number one, made cars much, much more
00:29:05.840
expensive. But number two, it was part of their effort to eliminate the internal combustion engine,
00:29:11.740
to force everyone to buy an electric car, whether they want it or not. And as part of the One Big
00:29:18.180
Beautiful Bill, we zeroed that out entirely. I wrote that provision. And on Wednesday, the President was
00:29:24.540
implementing it. Here, I want you to give a listen to the President describing the historic steps he took
00:29:29.300
on Wednesday. From day one, I've been taking action to make buying a car more affordable. I signed an
00:29:34.900
executive order to end the unfair, expensive electric vehicle mandate. As you know, we had to have
00:29:41.080
an electric car within a very short period of time, even though there was no way of charging them and
00:29:46.440
lots of other things. It would have cost $5 trillion to build the charging plants. And as you know,
00:29:53.180
in certain parts of the Midwest, they spent, to build nine chargers, they spent $8 billion.
00:29:58.940
So that wasn't working out too well. That was done before me, by the way. I wouldn't have
00:30:03.820
let it go forward. We're canceling the EPA's absurd tailpipe emission standards. One of the most
00:30:10.140
important things that I've never had a group of people come to me more powerfully and really just
00:30:19.520
devastated that they had to do it. It was killing them than the automobile manufacturers, the tailpipe
00:30:25.860
emission standards. And I can tell you, your people at Ford were coming to me all the time
00:30:30.760
and they were saying, like, please, it doesn't do anything and it's killing us. And it's driving
00:30:37.740
the cost through the roof. And we revoked Biden's emissions waiver for California so that California
00:30:43.400
communists could not regulate the automobile industry and ruin the entire nation of automobiles.
00:30:49.980
And they were doing that too. But we have that now under control also with your governor who's got
00:30:57.060
much more than he can control. Now under the new rules being issued today by Secretary Duffy,
00:31:03.240
the Department of Transportation will rescind the Biden fuel economy prices. And I hate to say that
00:31:10.620
because they were really not economy. They were really, they were anti-economy. They were,
00:31:16.180
they were horrible what they were doing to the costs and actually making the car much worse.
00:31:22.120
But these policies forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs,
00:31:28.900
drove up prices and made the car much worse. The action is expected to save the typical consumer
00:31:35.080
at least $1,000 off the price of a new car. And we think substantially more than that.
00:31:41.300
Senator, you hear him talk about this. This is exactly what I think so many Americans
00:31:46.100
voted for. It's government actually not mandating things. It's government getting out of the way
00:31:52.340
of insane regulations to make your life easier. Just give me a little bit of my freedom back.
00:31:58.440
Let the private sector do what the private sector does. Stop putting all this government agenda on
00:32:03.500
top of me and let me do what I want to do. If I want to buy an EV, I'll buy an EV, but don't force
00:32:08.880
me to do something and don't make these standards so insane that you raise the cost of cars to the
00:32:13.920
point where I can't even afford a new one. It's your choice. It should be your choice. If you decide
00:32:18.980
you want to go buy a Tesla, Teslas are amazing automobiles. You can go do that. But if you decide
00:32:23.520
you want to drive your F-150, that ought to be your choice too. And this legislation and what the
00:32:29.520
president did this week benefited consumers, lowered prices, made cars and trucks a lot cheaper.
00:32:35.660
It also made them safer. It saved lives. It also helped produce jobs. Thousands and thousands of
00:32:42.380
jobs. Billions of dollars are being invested by car manufacturers in the United States. We're
00:32:47.580
bringing blue-collar jobs back to America. Ben, here's how I explained it in the Oval Office,
00:32:56.240
Anybody else want to say a few words? Oh, Ted, Ted, I can't believe it. I'm easy to miss.
00:33:03.720
It's very rare that I would miss it. Go ahead, Ted.
00:33:07.400
Well, Mr. President, I want to congratulate you on behalf of everyone here for the leadership that
00:33:11.700
you're showing. And this is a victory today for consumers. This is a victory for affordability.
00:33:17.160
Your critics like to say the word affordability under Joe Biden and the Democrats. They put mandate
00:33:21.880
after mandate after mandate on cars and trucks, and they drove the price up thousands and thousands
00:33:27.160
of dollars. And with the actions you're taking today, and you put on top of that the one big
00:33:31.660
beautiful bill, you know, most of the senators here on the Senate Commerce Committee and on the
00:33:35.780
Commerce Committee, we worked together to zero out the CAFE standards. We wrote that into law that the
00:33:41.380
CAFE standards went to zero. What does that mean? It means you can now, as a consumer, buy the car you
00:33:47.180
want. It also means people's lives will be safer, because what these regulations did is they forced
00:33:54.520
cars to be more expensive and made of plastic instead of steel, because you had to make them
00:33:59.460
lighter to comply with these standards. So you'd get in a wreck and people would die.
00:34:03.460
The result of what you're doing, you're literally saving people's lives, and you're making it where
00:34:08.300
families can afford to get a new car. These actions will drop the cost of cars and trucks thousands
00:34:14.280
of dollars. That makes a real difference. And I'll make one final point. You know, about half the
00:34:18.620
members here are car dealers. And I will say my good friend Roger Williams out in the lobby, he tried
00:34:24.040
to sell me a car, which didn't surprise me. But I just want to give props to Mike Kelly. He showed he
00:34:30.420
was savvier because he tried to sell you a car, and you can afford a bunch nicer car than I can.
00:34:34.640
So well done, Mike Roger. You just went to the wrong customer.
00:34:40.420
The thing that Ted just said, it's true. Plastic instead of steel. Think of that.
00:34:46.080
And people died because of that. The plastic was plastic in an auto accident. Then it broke
00:34:52.480
up and people were shattered because of that crazy deal. But that's a really good point.
00:34:58.760
And, Mr. President, I'll tell you, the Senate Commerce Committee on January 14th, we're going
00:35:03.260
to have a hearing with all the big three there and Tesla. And the entire hearing is going to focus on
00:35:08.860
how your leadership has reduced the burdens on car makers. That's lowering costs. That's giving
00:35:14.580
consumers more choices, and it's producing more jobs in America. And it's highlighted that's a real
00:35:21.060
Not only is it a record of success, but as you mentioned there and highlighted, and the president
00:35:25.040
agreed with you, it's an issue of safety, Senator.
00:35:27.420
Yeah. No, I mean, these CAFE standards were making cars much, much more dangerous. And we'll
00:35:35.320
never know who, but there are people who will live now because of this change, because they'll be able
00:35:42.400
to be in safer cars. Some of it is they may be able to afford a new car now, because as this drives
00:35:48.340
down the price of new cars and new trucks, they may sell their old used car and buy a new car because
00:35:55.080
it makes it more affordable. New cars typically have more safety features and enhance their safety.
00:36:00.760
But secondly, if you're not having to make these cars and remove all the steel, you're much more
00:36:05.700
likely to survive an accident if you're in a car that has some weight, has some steel, and doesn't
00:36:14.560
Yeah, it's a big victory at the White House for everybody in America three days in a row. By the way,
00:36:19.860
we do the show three days in a row. So don't forget, download Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever
00:36:25.100
you get your podcast. Do not miss a single episode. It's always free. You can always tell
00:36:30.960
Siri or Alexa, play Verdict with Ted Cruz. It will do it for you automatically. And the center and I
00:36:37.160
will see you back here on the podcast this week and all you listen on the radio. Thanks for joining us
00:36:40.880
as well. And we'll see you back here this week. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.