Verdict with Ted Cruz - March 04, 2021


Don't Be Fooled

Topics
Nir Tanden nomination debate big tech control of books schools reopening
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Joe Biden Hugh Hewitt Dr. Seuss Merrick Garland Xavier Becerra Potato Head Bill Barr Bernie Sanders Susan Collins Donald Trump Neera Tanden Gavin Newsom John Durham Bob Mueller Jen Psaki Hillary Harry Became Sally Ryan Anderson George Washington Mitch McConnell and 17 more
The Prosecution Rests The Long Game ft. Governor Scott Walker

Episode Stats


Length

32 minutes

Words per minute

169.66

Word count

5,594

Sentence count

480

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Toxicity

16

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz delivers a verdict on the first 100 days of the Biden administration, and why we should all be worried about what we ve seen so far. Ted Cruz and Michael Knowles discuss immigration, abortion, and the border crisis.

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.400 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.520 President Biden promised us unity and healing.
00:00:08.880 A lot of people expected moderation, circumspection from good old Sleepy Joe.
00:00:15.380 Instead, what we have gotten is the most radical agenda of any presidential administration,
00:00:21.800 by my lights, in American history.
00:00:24.120 And we are not even halfway through the first hundred days.
00:00:27.600 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:37.240 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:00:38.180 Thank you all for being with us.
00:00:39.860 It is good to be with you again.
00:00:41.380 Thanks to everybody who has subscribed on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on YouTube.
00:00:46.720 If you haven't already, we would very much appreciate your doing that.
00:00:50.800 As everybody is getting canceled these days, up to and including Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head.
00:00:57.480 We fear that big tech could clamp down.
00:00:59.540 So it'd be great to be with you and have you subscribe as well.
00:01:02.440 Senator, I have to tell you, I wish I had a happy outlook on the first hundred days of
00:01:08.760 this administration.
00:01:09.940 It kills me to say this.
00:01:12.040 I think we were right when we discussed on this show why people ought to fear the worst
00:01:16.640 from President Biden.
00:01:17.420 Yeah, these have been dangerous times.
00:01:19.720 But let me first of all say, welcome back.
00:01:22.300 It's been too long since we've done a verdict.
00:01:24.580 It's been too long since I've seen you.
00:01:26.800 We had intended to do one last week.
00:01:29.640 But unfortunately, we discovered there are no TV studios in Cancun.
00:01:33.260 You know, Senator, I wasn't going to bring it up because some people have said that you
00:01:40.080 ought to apologize.
00:01:41.080 And I do think that you ought to apologize to me for not inviting me to Cancun.
00:01:45.900 I'm very upset, but I'm sure that we'll be able to move on from this.
00:01:49.500 Well, and as you know, in Cancun, smoking Cuban cigars is legal.
00:01:53.140 So I owe you a double apology for leaving you where the products from from my family's
00:02:00.500 homeland are prohibited.
00:02:02.420 Yes, but I'm glad we could clear the air here because it is it is very good to be back with
00:02:08.480 you, even amid all this crazy turmoil here in the United States.
00:02:13.360 They're they're actually I don't want to just be too doom and gloom here because there actually
00:02:19.600 has been some good news in some ways.
00:02:21.260 I know that you and your colleagues have been stymieing some of the worst impulses of the
00:02:26.280 Biden administration, particularly on the nominations.
00:02:29.180 But I want to get the bad news out of the way first.
00:02:32.520 Just even one single piece of legislation that's made its way through the House, the Equality
00:02:37.480 Act, seems to me that maybe the single most radical piece of legislation ever in American
00:02:43.440 history.
00:02:43.960 Am I wrong?
00:02:44.660 Am I overreacting here?
00:02:46.780 Well, give them time that they will pass even more radical stuff.
00:02:50.400 And, you know, if I were to sum up the first 50 ish days of the Biden administration with
00:02:59.140 three words, those words would be boring, but radical.
00:03:04.620 So so I think what Joe Biden is doing that's smart is not making news.
00:03:10.840 He's dull.
00:03:12.240 He doesn't say much of anything.
00:03:13.840 Um, and listen, after four years of of every day, Donald Trump driving the news 24 seven,
00:03:21.580 the latest tweet, the latest reporters breathlessly grasping their pearls.
00:03:27.980 You know, I do think people kind of breathe a sigh of relief that that you don't wake up
00:03:33.540 and wonder, what did the president say today?
00:03:35.140 And and and I think Joe Biden is leaning into say as little as possible, be as boring as
00:03:41.540 possible.
00:03:42.460 But but that is very much a mask.
00:03:45.360 It's a mask that is designed to hide the really radical agenda they're moving forward.
00:03:51.560 If you look at the nominees they're putting forward, you look at the Secretary of Homeland
00:03:56.780 Security, Mayorkas, who said just a couple of days ago, said there is no crisis at the
00:04:02.780 border, none whatsoever.
00:04:06.040 Right in the midst of they're projecting over 100,000 unaccompanied children being detained
00:04:11.240 at the border.
00:04:11.920 And there is no crisis, no crisis because they've gone back to catch and release.
00:04:15.620 And their view is, what's the crisis?
00:04:17.060 We're letting everyone in.
00:04:18.360 We're just not enforcing our laws.
00:04:19.800 We're seeing that pattern replicated over and over and over again.
00:04:23.520 The Equality Act would be profoundly damaging, damaging to Christian schools, damaging to
00:04:30.020 churches, the government forcing anyone, regardless of faith, regardless of belief, to to embrace
00:04:41.040 the left's definition of gender or rather lack thereof.
00:04:45.880 And to do otherwise is to face serious and crushing legal penalties.
00:04:51.840 That is, that would be a profound transformation and a harmful transformation of our country.
00:05:00.560 And yet it's all silently moving forward.
00:05:04.140 You know, we're sitting here, it's Wednesday night when you and I are recording this.
00:05:08.400 And tomorrow we're going to be taking up the so-called stimulus bill.
00:05:14.360 Now, the stimulus bill actually has nothing to do with stimulus.
00:05:19.060 It's a title that might as well have been picked out of the air.
00:05:21.520 It's $1.9 trillion, 9% of which has to do with COVID.
00:05:28.060 9%.
00:05:28.500 91% is not health spending concerning COVID.
00:05:32.080 And, you know, you think about last year.
00:05:34.780 Last year we passed five different COVID relief bills.
00:05:39.320 Every one of them was bipartisan.
00:05:41.420 Every one of them, Republicans, worked with Democrats, rolled up our sleeves, said,
00:05:45.780 all right, let's work together on assistance for health care workers.
00:05:50.760 Let's work together on assistance for small businesses.
00:05:53.140 Let's work together on vaccinations.
00:05:57.820 Republicans are eager to do that again.
00:05:59.600 Look, this COVID crisis is real.
00:06:01.900 You could easily achieve a bipartisan bill if the Democrats wanted to.
00:06:06.520 But it says something about Joe Biden.
00:06:08.460 Zero interest in anything bipartisan.
00:06:11.120 I think what we're going to see tomorrow is their intention is to ram this through with 50 Democrats and Kamala Harris breaking the tie.
00:06:18.640 They don't want a single Republican vote.
00:06:20.660 They probably won't get a single Republican vote because the bill is just a whole series of liberal wish lists that have nothing to do with COVID.
00:06:28.940 It's just pent-up desire and, in particular, desire to take care of their political allies.
00:06:38.020 And I think that's a cynical way to approach it.
00:06:41.540 Senator, do you think, though, that Republicans are going to face any backlash knowing that the Democrats control the media?
00:06:50.040 Do you think they're going to face backlash for not voting for a COVID relief bill?
00:06:55.280 You know, they're letting people hang out to dry amid this unprecedented crisis.
00:07:00.320 I mean, will the Democrats succeed in any way at manipulating Republican voters, even if, you know, 90 percent or 90 percent plus of this bill is just pork for Democrats?
00:07:11.280 Do you think that message will be effective at all?
00:07:14.660 We'll see.
00:07:15.440 There's no doubt the media will relentlessly shield for the Democrats because that's what they do now.
00:07:19.360 They don't pretend otherwise.
00:07:20.800 You know, I do think you will see Republicans voting for significant COVID relief tomorrow in the form of – this is being brought up through the process called budget reconciliation, which we've talked about before.
00:07:35.120 It's the main exception to the filibuster rule.
00:07:39.420 It's the main way you can pass legislation where you don't need 60 votes in the Senate.
00:07:44.640 You can just do it with 50.
00:07:46.080 One aspect of budget reconciliation is Voterama.
00:07:51.080 We talked in an earlier verdict about Voterama, unlimited amendments.
00:07:56.080 That's by statute.
00:07:57.340 And so normally the majority leader can shut down amendments, and we've seen, sadly, majority leaders in both parties do that.
00:08:03.840 If you're using budget reconciliation, you can't shut down amendments.
00:08:06.940 I expect a lot of amendments tomorrow night.
00:08:10.140 I think it is likely we will go all night.
00:08:12.820 I think we may go into the morning.
00:08:14.260 We may even go further than that into Friday.
00:08:17.240 I think there is a real anger among Republicans in the Senate at this bill at – you know, Joe Biden gave an inauguration speech talking about unity and bipartisanship, and he starts his administration by saying to half the country, go jump in a lake.
00:08:33.320 Today he called the 29 million people in Texas, he called us Neanderthals.
00:08:37.340 He's mad that Texas is open.
00:08:40.880 And so, you know, he just apparently – we're cavemen.
00:08:43.240 We're like in the Geico commercial, and we're just cavemen.
00:08:46.380 You know, that's – you know, great job there unifying.
00:08:49.940 You know, I mean, it's reminiscent of Hillary calling half the country deplorables. 0.98
00:08:54.440 It's – it's – it is a level of condescension.
00:08:59.560 And if you look at this bill – all right, so the bill that passed the House had Chuck Schumer's bridge to Canada because apparently that somehow will help us defeat COVID.
00:09:12.100 The bill in the House had Nancy Pelosi's tunnel of love, a tunnel in Silicon Valley.
00:09:18.920 Do I want to know what that is?
00:09:20.260 I don't – this doesn't sound –
00:09:21.220 It's not X-rated.
00:09:24.700 It's just – it's just a boondoggle port project that Pelosi wanted to bring back to Silicon Valley.
00:09:32.100 It has zero to do with COVID, nothing at all.
00:09:34.060 And actually, even with the media shilling for him, it was interesting.
00:09:38.640 Pelosi blinked last night and pulled it out.
00:09:41.320 So it's interesting with just the tiniest bit of attention.
00:09:46.440 You know, there's a provision in this bill that forgives loans to farmers from historically disadvantaged races.
00:09:56.920 Now, it is explicitly race-tied and it has no income test.
00:10:02.940 So if you are a rich farmer who happens to be African-American, happens to be Hispanic, happens to be Asian, your loans will be forgiven. 0.68
00:10:12.760 But if you are a poor white farmer, no soup for you. 0.99
00:10:18.780 Of course, you're too privileged. 0.93
00:10:20.240 But it's worse than that.
00:10:21.920 It is explicitly race-based.
00:10:24.740 Not only are they forgiving it, the loans.
00:10:26.780 Do you know what rate they're forgiving the loans at?
00:10:29.120 120 percent.
00:10:30.140 That's literally written into the bill, 120 percent, if you are from a historically disadvantaged race or ethnicity.
00:10:41.200 Look, we were talking about this at lunch and I turned to Ron Johnson.
00:10:44.700 I said, I got to get me a farm.
00:10:46.880 You know, I'm Hispanic. 0.63
00:10:47.840 Hell, if they're going to like 120 percent, like, I mean, it is laughable and indefensible. 1.00
00:10:54.940 And the bill is filled with garbage like that. 0.90
00:10:58.180 And I want to get to just on this point, Senator, something you mentioned, because I hadn't heard it put this way before, but I think it sums it up. 0.97
00:11:05.260 Boring but radical.
00:11:07.280 And it seems that the way that Joe Biden has gotten away with this kind of stuff is he doesn't really hold press conferences.
00:11:12.900 He was asked today about the briefing he had on the border and all these migrants who were coming over.
00:11:17.280 They said, were you briefed on the border?
00:11:18.560 He said, yes.
00:11:19.340 They said, what did you learn?
00:11:20.280 He said, a lot.
00:11:21.020 And then he just kept walking and wouldn't answer.
00:11:22.660 So it's very effective if you can have cover by the media and you can just sort of push these things through.
00:11:30.680 People aren't going to look at it and you'll be able to get your agenda.
00:11:33.940 But there have been times, as you note, where the minute that a little light is shed on this in the case of Pelosi's pork spending or in the case of the nomination of Neera Tanden,
00:11:42.860 a particularly radical nominee, Joe Biden's nominee for the Office of Management and Budget, the minute a little bit of light is shined on, all of a sudden, Joe Biden has a much harder time pushing this agenda through.
00:11:55.180 Well, so I actually take a different lesson from Neera Tanden.
00:11:58.280 So Neera Tanden was nominated to be the head of the Office of Management and Budget.
00:12:03.380 It's a cabinet position, a very important cabinet position.
00:12:06.720 And I don't know, Neera, but apparently she was an activist and outspoken and led this political think tank shop. 0.99
00:12:16.180 And she had this habit of tweeting hard partisan attacks at senators. 1.00
00:12:22.240 And it seemed that she had criticized just about every senator.
00:12:24.960 One of the senators she criticized all the time was Bernie Sanders because she was a hardcore Hillary supporter. 0.98
00:12:31.280 So she blasted Bernie constantly.
00:12:32.980 She blasted Republicans, Mitch McConnell. 1.00
00:12:38.440 I think she called Mitch Voldemort, which is pretty funny.
00:12:42.660 She blasted Susan Collins. 1.00
00:12:44.880 I mean, she said Susan Collins is the worst.
00:12:48.620 And apparently she has nine pages of tweets about me.
00:12:55.760 Oh, no.
00:12:56.960 I knew she was not a fan of you as senator, but I didn't know it was quite that extensive, her commentary.
00:13:01.620 So my first reaction is she's really not very good at Twitter because I don't think I've ever read a tweet she sent about me.
00:13:08.640 And I'm on Twitter a lot.
00:13:10.620 So it says something like the only one I know, the content of which Rob Portman, senator, Republican from Ohio, read at her hearing where she tweeted that vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz.
00:13:22.720 And so I hadn't seen it when she said it.
00:13:25.520 But when Rob read it at the hearing, I laughed out loud.
00:13:28.240 And I jumped on Twitter and said, you know, why is she being so mean to vampires? 1.00
00:13:32.780 Yeah, that's outrageous.
00:13:34.420 But what's interesting, what she went down for was not being radical.
00:13:40.360 What she went down for, she'd criticized a bunch of senators. 1.00
00:13:43.240 Right.
00:13:43.360 And she'd sent some mean tweets.
00:13:45.140 And it was interesting.
00:13:46.540 Last week, I did Hugh Hewitt's radio show.
00:13:49.060 And you know Hugh.
00:13:49.760 He's a good guy.
00:13:50.420 He's a friend.
00:13:51.940 And interestingly, it surprised me.
00:13:53.880 Hugh pushed me on this and pressed me really hard to vote for Neera Tanden.
00:13:59.200 And I was like, really?
00:14:00.300 Why?
00:14:00.980 Like what?
00:14:01.600 And he was and he's like, well, the standard can't be that mean tweets makes you unconfirmable.
00:14:07.020 And I actually had a bit of a constitutional debate with Hugh where I said, you know, you're a constitutional scholar, Hugh.
00:14:13.660 The constitutional system provides for executive nominations to be made by the president, confirmed by the Senate.
00:14:21.060 And it has been true since the very first Congress that if you attack and blast a bunch of senators, you ain't getting confirmed.
00:14:29.760 Like it's real simple.
00:14:30.860 This is not actually a Twitter phenomenon.
00:14:32.680 I promise you in the George Washington administration, if you wanted to get nominated to the cabinet and you attacked a bunch of senators, they're going to vote against you.
00:14:41.360 That that Hugh pressed me on.
00:14:43.460 He said, well, she's not the worst of Biden's nominees.
00:14:46.220 And I actually agree in terms of substance.
00:14:50.320 Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, was much worse.
00:14:52.940 He's been a radical.
00:14:53.840 He's pushing for open borders.
00:14:55.080 And I think the most indefensible nominee is Javier Becerra, who's been nominated to lead HHS, Health and Human Services.
00:15:04.940 And Hugh agreed with me on that.
00:15:06.580 And he said, well, maybe you should go to Manchin because the reason she went down is Joe Manchin said he wouldn't vote for Nir Tanden.
00:15:13.120 And Hugh said, well, go to Manchin.
00:15:14.760 And you and Joe together announce you're going to support Nir Tanden.
00:15:17.860 And he'll save her nomination and convince him to vote instead against Becerra.
00:15:22.960 I said, I tell you what, Hugh, if you can get Manchin to vote no on Becerra, sure, I'll vote for Nir Tanden.
00:15:28.140 And here's why.
00:15:29.300 Let's stop for a second on Becerra because I think it's likely to be a party line vote right now.
00:15:35.620 I think it appears every Democrat will vote for him and every Republican will vote no.
00:15:41.740 Becerra is the attorney general of California.
00:15:44.920 He's a longtime congressman.
00:15:46.220 He's been nominated to be the secretary of health and human services.
00:15:50.620 He's not a doctor.
00:15:52.340 He has no scientific background.
00:15:54.520 He has no medical background.
00:15:56.280 He has no background in health care administration.
00:15:59.060 He has no background in virology and vaccines.
00:16:01.920 He has no background even in logistics.
00:16:04.720 HHS is right now in the middle of the largest vaccine distribution effort our country has ever seen.
00:16:10.760 Joe Biden has nominated a trial lawyer who's a radical leftist.
00:16:15.060 As far as I can tell, his only experience with health care is suing the Little Sisters of the Poor.
00:16:22.320 Which he denies.
00:16:23.340 You're right.
00:16:23.880 During his testimony, he said, I never sued the nuns.
00:16:27.300 If you're having to explain why you didn't technically sue nuns, that's a problem.
00:16:32.180 You're not in a good position.
00:16:34.240 Right.
00:16:34.440 But, you know, just on the merits of it, pause and think about what the reaction would be if a Republican president nominated as secretary of HHS someone with zero medical experience, zero health experience, zero experience with anything related to HHS in the midst of a global pandemic.
00:16:54.960 When HHS is incredibly important, this guy is wildly unqualified.
00:16:59.780 But why did he get the nomination?
00:17:02.320 Number one, the Democrats, it's a box checking exercise.
00:17:05.300 And so he's Hispanic.
00:17:07.260 That fits their desire to check that box.
00:17:09.760 But number two, he's been a radical.
00:17:12.480 And so they want him for his political positions.
00:17:17.060 I think we actually ought to have someone running HHS who, I don't know, knows something about viruses.
00:17:22.620 I mean, is that asking too much?
00:17:25.760 And Biden claims his priority is defeating COVID, and yet he nominates someone with no medical experience.
00:17:32.680 And mind you, at the same time saying follow the science, except the person he's putting there doesn't know anything about science.
00:17:38.060 Well, of course, and the Becerra nomination, especially as someone who fled the Republic of California,
00:17:45.780 Mussolini's dictatorship of California, as some of us call it.
00:17:49.120 I remember Becerra.
00:17:50.220 He's a very radical guy.
00:17:52.140 But to your point earlier of boring but radical, you know, I expect radicalism from someone like Becerra.
00:17:59.460 I expect radicalism from someone like Neera Tanden. 0.75
00:18:01.600 But you made the point, I believe, this week that even the so-called moderate nominees, people like Merrick Garland, who's nominated for attorney general,
00:18:11.080 he's supposed to be the moderate guy.
00:18:12.880 He's supposed to be maybe the most moderate person that Biden puts up.
00:18:15.480 He would appear to be just as radical as everybody else from his testimony.
00:18:20.380 Maybe.
00:18:20.660 So when Biden nominated Merrick Garland, my initial reaction, I was relieved because there are a lot of radical partisan lawyers that could have been nominated as AG.
00:18:33.740 For that matter, Javier Becerra is actually qualified to be AG.
00:18:37.300 He's not qualified for HHS, but he is, in fact, an attorney general.
00:18:41.660 Becerra is a rabid partisan, so he would have been a much worse attorney general on the face of it than Merrick Garland.
00:18:47.140 Merrick Garland spent 23 years as a court of appeals judge.
00:18:50.720 He's a Democrat.
00:18:51.580 He was in the Clinton administration.
00:18:53.540 But he hasn't built a reputation as a hard partisan.
00:18:57.380 His reputation as a judge has been one of integrity, and he hasn't been seen as overly partisan.
00:19:06.400 I was gratified.
00:19:07.560 My reaction was, you know what, this may be about the best we can hope for from the Biden administration.
00:19:12.360 I think there were a number of Republicans on Senate Judiciary that were initially inclined to vote for Merrick Garland.
00:19:20.540 At his confirmation hearing, it was remarkable because he refused to answer essentially anything.
00:19:26.360 He was asked question after question after question, and he just refused to answer them.
00:19:31.380 So a lot of the questions concerned John Durham.
00:19:34.160 Now, John Durham is the special counsel that was appointed to investigate the abuse of power at Operation Crossfire Hurricane
00:19:43.040 and the extent to which the Obama-Biden administration broke the law in targeting Donald Trump.
00:19:51.060 Very important investigation.
00:19:53.760 Merrick Garland was asked by me and others, are you going to fire him?
00:19:57.620 That is a really important question if you're going to have any semblance of integrity and rule of law at the Department of Justice.
00:20:04.160 Now, when Bill Barr was nominated to be AG, he was asked the same thing about Bob Mueller.
00:20:08.280 Are you going to fire him?
00:20:09.940 And Barr said, he said he would only fire him for good cause.
00:20:14.760 And so that was during his confirmation hearing, Barr said, absent good cause, no, he wouldn't fire him, and he didn't.
00:20:20.180 He let Mueller complete his investigation, submit his report.
00:20:23.740 Barr kept his word on that.
00:20:26.560 Garland refused to make that commitment.
00:20:28.180 We said, how about you hold to the same standard Bill Barr did?
00:20:30.360 Would you agree only to fire him for good cause?
00:20:33.240 Nope, can't do that.
00:20:34.060 I don't know anything about it.
00:20:35.100 Just don't know anything about it.
00:20:37.120 And I'm not going to make the commitment.
00:20:38.740 And he did that over and over and over again.
00:20:42.840 And then I actually submitted, a lot of senators submitted questions for the record in writing.
00:20:47.140 And he would see, in writing, he refused to take a position.
00:20:50.820 He was asked, will DOJ prosecute people across the border illegally?
00:20:56.920 He said, I don't know.
00:20:58.120 I can't tell you.
00:20:59.120 But that shouldn't be complicated.
00:21:00.580 The Constitution obliges the president to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
00:21:05.260 He said, I can't tell you if we'll prosecute people who cross the border illegally.
00:21:09.940 I asked him if the Department of Justice would urge the courts to overturn the Heller decision, which upheld the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
00:21:20.080 He wouldn't tell us that.
00:21:21.720 It was one after the other after the other where he refused to answer even the barest minimum of questions.
00:21:27.240 And I got to say, it was sad.
00:21:29.500 After all of that, after essentially telling the senators, go jump in a lake, I'm not going to answer any of your questions.
00:21:34.820 All the Democrats voted for him and a bunch of the Republicans voted for him.
00:21:38.100 Yeah.
00:21:38.280 And you kind of throw your hands up in the air.
00:21:40.500 I still don't know if he will be a hard partisan as attorney general.
00:21:44.740 He is very likely to be confirmed, but I have no reason to think that he will have any willingness to stand up to the hard partisans that will surround him.
00:21:55.480 Based on his performance at his confirmation hearing, it was the Sergeant Schultz dissents.
00:22:02.340 I see nothing.
00:22:03.100 I know nothing.
00:22:03.840 I mean, that is essentially what he was telling us.
00:22:06.340 Because what you would hope from the so-called moderate nominee, I shared your relief, actually, when it was reported that Garland was going to get the nomination over some of the radical people.
00:22:17.220 But you would expect from the so-called moderate nominee to give you some answer, to give you some reason to have confidence in their moderation.
00:22:25.640 We didn't get that.
00:22:26.300 But you're seeing this as part of a broader strategy from the White House.
00:22:29.140 Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, was asked, will Joe Biden force doctors to violate their conscience and perform abortions?
00:22:37.660 She couldn't give an answer on that.
00:22:39.400 Jen Psaki was asked about a possible world in which Mexico sends 600,000 to 800,000 migrants to the United States to work.
00:22:48.500 She was asked for a comment on that.
00:22:49.760 She said she couldn't possibly comment on that.
00:22:51.680 This just quiet dismissal of questions and the kind of boring radicalism that we're getting is pretty worrisome.
00:23:02.360 And, you know, I have to bring it up because you're probably the most famous reader of Dr. Seuss in the entire country.
00:23:10.820 Outside of politics, outside of the government, you're seeing private companies canceling Dr. Seuss, taking the spuds off of Mr. Potato Head.
00:23:18.760 And now taking very ordinary mainstream scholarly books off of Amazon, largest bookseller in the world, because they contradict left-wing orthodoxies.
00:23:30.420 It feels as though the liberal establishment is colluding and closing in on us.
00:23:37.120 It is the Death Star, and they're trying to eliminate all their enemies.
00:23:42.380 Look, Hasbro, you mentioned Mr. Potato Head.
00:23:45.200 They dropped the Mr.
00:23:46.240 It's now just Potato Head.
00:23:47.360 It's not Mr.
00:23:47.920 Potato Head.
00:23:48.360 It's not Mrs.
00:23:48.960 Potato Head.
00:23:49.680 It's just Potato Head.
00:23:51.180 So much for preferred pronouns.
00:23:53.000 And by the way, among the attachments on the Potato Head, I don't recall many that actually distinguished male and female.
00:23:59.420 I'm glad for that.
00:24:00.200 We didn't need to get that quite anatomically specific.
00:24:03.740 True. 0.98
00:24:04.800 You know, the Dr. Seuss thing is just moronic. 0.86
00:24:09.140 And the president removed Dr. Seuss from, I don't know, what is it, National Reading Week or something. 0.90
00:24:14.620 I don't even remember exactly what it is.
00:24:16.020 Some celebration of reading that Dr. Seuss has usually been a part of that Biden pulled it out of.
00:24:22.240 So, you know, it's amazing.
00:24:24.140 I looked today on Amazon.
00:24:26.740 I was actually checking my own book, One Vote Away, and, you know, periodically seeing where I'm.
00:24:30.960 By the way, if you haven't gone and bought One Vote Away, go on Amazon.
00:24:34.400 You should buy it.
00:24:34.940 It's a great book.
00:24:35.920 Now's the time to do it, too, before it gets canceled.
00:24:38.360 Well, there is that.
00:24:39.560 And I was checking it.
00:24:41.940 And do you know the author of the top eight best-selling books on Amazon today, number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8?
00:24:50.600 I'm going to guess Dr. Seuss.
00:24:52.480 And actually, of the top hundred, more than half of the top hundred were Dr. Seuss.
00:24:56.380 It's really funny.
00:24:57.340 I have never seen on Amazon anything like this as people are going on.
00:25:01.520 So I jumped on Twitter.
00:25:02.540 I tweeted out a screenshot of that and said, you know, who knew Joe Biden was such a great bookseller?
00:25:07.620 You know, I asked him if he could try to ban my book.
00:25:10.280 I mean, you know, let's go back to number one on Amazon.
00:25:12.340 We'll take it.
00:25:14.060 But it is. 1.00
00:25:15.480 And actually, the even more, the Dr. Seuss thing is idiotic. 1.00
00:25:20.660 It's asinine. 1.00
00:25:21.740 The even more dangerous thing is Amazon now taking down books it disagrees with. 0.98
00:25:29.160 Right.
00:25:29.420 Because Amazon has a near monopoly on book sales.
00:25:32.960 Well, I do want to pause you there, Senator, because this is an argument I hear from left-wingers a lot when we decry cancel culture and Amazon taking down a very humorously titled but actually scholarly book from Ryan T. Anderson, which is called When Harry Became Sally.
00:25:47.000 That's sort of the book at issue here.
00:25:48.560 They say, Michael, this isn't cancel culture.
00:25:51.540 This is a private company that wants to take out a product that they don't agree with.
00:25:56.540 That's absolutely within their rights.
00:25:58.700 Stop complaining.
00:25:59.940 This is just the free market at work.
00:26:02.300 Well, and that's the argument they use on social media and big tech generally.
00:26:05.640 They just say, go build your own.
00:26:06.940 By the way, Parler did build their own, and big tech colluded to take them down and destroy them.
00:26:10.940 And so they want no competition.
00:26:13.740 It has long been U.S. laws that monopolies cannot abuse monopoly power.
00:26:18.640 Amazon and Google are the two most powerful companies on the face of planet Earth.
00:26:23.860 And when it comes to books, actually, you're and my mutual friend, Ben Shapiro, has been really good on this topic.
00:26:33.120 And I've been retweeting him a lot this week.
00:26:35.760 Because, you know, you think about Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury's classic dystopian novel, 451 being the temperature at which paper burns.
00:26:46.320 That's all about censorship and book burning.
00:26:48.860 And today, with Amazon, you don't actually have to burn the books anymore.
00:26:54.180 Because if everything is becoming digital, you can burn books just by hitting delete.
00:27:00.920 If Jeff Bezos gets to decide what books exist and what books don't, and, you know, sure, it's a defense.
00:27:07.960 Well, maybe there's some bookstore in Peoria that has the book.
00:27:11.860 But everyone gets their books from Amazon, that is suddenly giving a tech overlord the power to say, here are the books that are now, you are prohibited from reading functionally because our monopoly will not allow anyone to get them.
00:27:29.680 Because big tech is already controlling the flow of news throughout the internet.
00:27:34.060 I mean, they're controlling the new public square.
00:27:36.960 But this takes that even further.
00:27:38.760 Now, as you say, I think it's such an astute point when all the books are digital, they can go back and control the flow of classical information.
00:27:47.500 They can go in and, if some big tech oligarch wanted to, delete that book from your e-reader.
00:27:52.940 It's one reason that I find myself now buying physical media much more so.
00:27:57.160 Because it is a threat, I think, to throw our hands in the air and say, oh, there's nothing we can do.
00:28:01.500 It's a private company.
00:28:02.520 I think it totally disregards the enormity of the problem.
00:28:06.200 This has been, I'm sorry to say, a little bit of a downer of an episode and a downer of a first 42 days of an administration.
00:28:13.320 So I do want to end on a high note with a mailbag question.
00:28:16.880 And this is a genuine high note.
00:28:18.460 This question from NBA Bubble.
00:28:21.540 Question for Ted.
00:28:23.380 How do you feel about Texas being reopened?
00:28:26.640 Fantastic.
00:28:27.780 It needed to happen.
00:28:29.120 It is great.
00:28:30.840 Look, Texans want to go back to work. 0.76
00:28:32.540 We want to go back to school.
00:28:33.600 And, by the way, schools, we need to be talking more about schools.
00:28:36.900 I'll give you a stat that is really stunning.
00:28:40.060 Forty percent of school kids in America are back in in-person school five days a week.
00:28:46.800 Forty percent.
00:28:48.560 Less than half.
00:28:51.100 That's staggering. 0.96
00:28:53.180 And Democratic politicians do not give a damn. 0.99
00:28:58.400 Because these kids, by the way, that are not going to school, it's now been a year.
00:29:04.980 It's been a year with no school.
00:29:06.800 And these kids are falling behind.
00:29:08.540 The data are showing they're falling behind six months, falling behind a year.
00:29:11.900 And you never get that back.
00:29:13.080 That's just lost.
00:29:14.400 Yeah.
00:29:14.560 And we're getting a whole generation, and it's not uniformly distributed.
00:29:19.780 So rich families are finding a way to educate their kids, whether it's going to a private school, whether it is doing homeschooling, whether it's hiring tutors.
00:29:30.300 If you've got money, you're going to make sure your kids are being educated.
00:29:34.460 But low-income kids, single moms, they don't have those choices. 1.00
00:29:41.780 They don't have those abilities.
00:29:42.860 And so if the local school isn't open, and in particular if the single mom's working a couple of jobs and being pulled nine different directions, that just means those kids are getting left behind. 0.71
00:29:52.860 They're not learning to read.
00:29:53.820 They're not learning to write.
00:29:54.780 They're not learning the skills they need for life.
00:29:57.400 It disproportionately harms African-American kids and Hispanic kids, and the Democratic Party doesn't care at all.
00:30:03.220 They say follow the science.
00:30:04.620 The head of the CDC said, kids need to be back in school.
00:30:08.420 And they immediately said, oh, no, never mind, never mind, not that science.
00:30:11.440 Yeah.
00:30:12.460 Don't.
00:30:12.880 Why?
00:30:13.960 Because the teachers' union bosses don't want the schools open.
00:30:18.320 And this goes back to boring but radical.
00:30:21.780 Joe Biden made the determination he cares more about the money and the campaign donations from the teachers' union bosses than he cares about 50 million school kids in this country.
00:30:32.000 And the proof is in the pudding because they're willing to – so Gavin Newsom, the governor of your former state, was blasting Texas.
00:30:42.500 It's utterly reckless because you're opening businesses and opening schools.
00:30:45.520 I say God bless freedom.
00:30:51.200 By the way, the press went a little bit crazy because I did William Wallace's cry of freedom at CPAC, and I think a bunch of reporters started having fits and tremors of rage that I would do such a thing.
00:31:04.520 Oh, it was so awful.
00:31:05.520 They couldn't bear the word.
00:31:06.960 But you know what?
00:31:07.800 Californians are coming to Texas. 0.97
00:31:08.960 It's almost like vampires and sunlight, to use a Neera Tanden reference.
00:31:15.560 But look, there's a reason why thousands and thousands and thousands of Californians are fleeing California and coming to Texas.
00:31:22.160 Because you can actually go to work.
00:31:23.700 You can actually have a job.
00:31:24.940 You can actually open your small business.
00:31:27.200 You can actually have your kids in school.
00:31:29.200 You can actually enjoy some freedom, that we're not run by a bunch of nutbags. 0.65
00:31:34.800 And by the way, Newsom, what does it say that Newsom is so crazy that he's getting recalled in bright blue California? 0.95
00:31:42.260 Right.
00:31:42.840 That even the left-wing voters there are like, whoa, dude, you've shut the whole state down for a year.
00:31:48.500 This is a problem.
00:31:49.480 And that's what Biden wants to do to the country.
00:31:51.680 I know.
00:31:52.140 This is the glimmer of hope that I have to hold on to at least.
00:31:55.800 And I think obviously we're going to see how this plays out.
00:31:58.280 You're going to be up all night at the Senate and voting on these sorts of things.
00:32:02.580 If we can shed a little bit of light, then perhaps we can call people's attention to this boring yet radical agenda.
00:32:11.520 And perhaps when you call enough people's attention to it, perhaps we'll be able to stop it and fight for freedom.
00:32:18.040 We'll have to leave it there.
00:32:19.300 But there will be much more to talk about next time.
00:32:21.640 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:32:22.600 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:32:28.280 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security Pack,
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