Verdict with Ted Cruz - Don’t Defund The Police

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.880 Riots have overtaken the country, lawlessness abounds, and the genius Democrat policy proposal

00:00:11.240 for dealing with all of it is to defund the police.

00:00:15.020 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:22.920 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:25.060 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:00:26.340 We are in Washington, D.C.

00:00:27.660 Senator, you invited me here on our last episode.

00:00:30.760 You said we could have a stogie together if I just made it out to the East Coast.

00:00:34.400 So I fly out to basically the rubble of Washington, D.C.

00:00:38.440 I actually couldn't even get to my hotel room last night in my car because the National Guard

00:00:44.380 was stationed all around it.

00:00:46.780 What has happened to this place since the last time I was here?

00:00:49.860 Well, it's gone nuts.

00:00:51.380 And on top of that, in D.C., they don't even let you smoke a cigar.

00:00:55.100 That's the worst part of all. 0.98

00:00:56.060 Look, the crazy Democrats have banned cigars. 0.96

00:00:59.420 But here's the good news. 0.90

00:01:00.540 If you did actually light one up, I'm not sure they have the police officers to come arrest you.

00:01:04.980 They don't.

00:01:05.520 And it seems if the Democrats get their way, then we're going to have even fewer police officers

00:01:09.620 after that.

00:01:10.320 You know, you have spent a good bit of your career in law enforcement.

00:01:14.300 What's your take on this?

00:01:15.280 Because it's at the most local level.

00:01:17.340 The Minneapolis City Council voted overwhelmingly veto-proof majority to abolish and dismantle

00:01:23.180 their police department.

00:01:24.200 And you're seeing Democrats at the federal level taking up anti-police legislation as well.

00:01:29.700 So let me try to understate this.

00:01:31.320 This is stark, raving nuts. 0.89

00:01:35.600 This is insane. 0.95

00:01:37.160 Like, did you see the Minneapolis mayor, the poor lefty guy who's trying to like, okay,

00:01:45.340 what do you want me to say?

00:01:46.020 I'll say whatever you want.

00:01:46.880 They're like, okay, well, you abolished the whole police department.

00:01:49.420 He said, well, wait, wait, wait a second.

00:01:51.520 Like, they really have lost their mind.

00:01:54.060 Now, mind you, Comrade de Blasio is like, goodbye me.

00:01:59.040 We're cutting the cops.

00:01:59.920 Like, your city is literally on fire.

00:02:02.480 Right, right.

00:02:03.240 And their solution is abolish the police departments. 1.00

00:02:06.920 By the way, these are the same morons that want to abolish ICE. 1.00

00:02:09.540 Yeah. 1.00

00:02:10.060 You know, they're just like, okay, let's get rid of everybody charged with protecting us. 0.99

00:02:17.360 That is asinine. 0.99

00:02:19.260 And it would end up killing a whole lot of people. 1.00

00:02:22.560 If you think black lives matter, and let me be clear, black lives absolutely matter. 1.00

00:02:27.460 Your dumbass idea to abolish police departments will kill a lot of black lives, will kill a 1.00

00:02:32.680 lot of Hispanic lives, will kill a lot of white lives, will kill a lot of people. 1.00

00:02:37.500 And it's dumb. 1.00

00:02:38.400 Well, this, I think, is the point here. 0.99

00:02:40.420 Because it's all the people who are saying black lives matter, and the people who are 1.00

00:02:44.880 pushing these things are the ones who are pushing a policy that will have a very negative

00:02:49.040 effect on black people.

00:02:50.960 Because we spoke about this a little bit on the last show, I think. 0.90

00:02:54.340 There was a study out that the number of unarmed black men who are killed by the police every

00:02:58.120 year is, it's not a four-digit number.

00:03:00.820 It's not a three-digit number.

00:03:01.780 It's not a two-digit number.

00:03:03.240 Obviously, every death is a tragedy.

00:03:05.260 And that's what they're focusing on.

00:03:07.520 But the number of unarmed black men who are killed by criminals is very high.

00:03:11.380 And when the criminals are in the neighborhood, who's going to take care of it?

00:03:14.260 The police.

00:03:14.900 What is the effect of this going to be in troubled areas around the country?

00:03:18.280 It would be terrible if it happens.

00:03:21.480 The victims of violent crime are disproportionately low income.

00:03:25.200 Yeah.

00:03:25.660 They're disproportionately minority African Americans and Hispanics.

00:03:29.960 And we've seen in the past, we've seen what was called the Ferguson effect.

00:03:33.240 You recall in Ferguson when you had riots against the police officers.

00:03:36.620 And what happened was police officers naturally, look, if you're a cop, you're out doing your

00:03:43.100 job and you realize suddenly, okay, if I have a citizen encounter and it goes wrong, my whole

00:03:48.640 life is over.

00:03:49.360 My family's over.

00:03:50.180 My career is over.

00:03:51.320 Everything could come crashing down.

00:03:53.720 What cops naturally do is they pull back.

00:03:56.020 They say, you know what?

00:03:56.920 Maybe I'll just not engage.

00:03:58.780 We saw in Baltimore, after the riots in Baltimore, we saw the murder rates spike.

00:04:04.420 Chicago.

00:04:05.400 You look at the murder rates in Chicago year after year after year.

00:04:09.280 And so if you end up pulling back the police and not letting them do their job, that means

00:04:16.160 the criminals, the gangbangers, the violent murderers, the rapists, the robbers, have

00:04:26.120 no check on them.

00:04:27.700 And the people who will pay the price, they're not going to be, by the way, Hollywood celebrities

00:04:34.920 in Beverly Hills.

00:04:35.900 That they're going to be perfectly fine and protected.

00:04:39.580 It's going to be, it's going to be the people who are vulnerable that need the police to keep

00:04:44.340 them safe.

00:04:45.000 Yes, we want the police to protect everyone's rights fairly, but if you make the police go

00:04:49.260 away, those who are in closest proximity to violent criminals, and that is heavily in

00:04:57.920 low-income areas, they're the ones that are going to pay the biggest price.

00:05:01.180 There's a lot of hypocrisy here.

00:05:02.420 You see this kind of radicalism being pushed by people who will always enjoy the safety

00:05:06.800 and security, not only of the police, but of good neighborhoods.

00:05:09.540 So there's a lot of hypocrisy.

00:05:10.160 Michael, I got a question.

00:05:11.460 Has Nancy Pelosi fired her police detail? 0.99

00:05:14.720 You know, I don't think so.

00:05:16.380 Has Chuck Schumer?

00:05:17.360 No, I haven't gotten word about that.

00:05:19.060 Has Bill de Blasio?

00:05:20.180 No, no, certainly not.

00:05:21.560 He's got his security.

00:05:21.960 Why not?

00:05:22.540 And by the way, let me be clear.

00:05:23.800 I'm not calling on them to.

00:05:25.340 I don't want them to be killed.

00:05:26.860 Right.

00:05:27.060 But why are they trying to cancel the police protection for their low-income residents?

00:05:31.620 It's police protection for me, but not for thee.

00:05:34.620 I think that's what we're hearing from a lot of Democratic politicians.

00:05:36.580 Remember, de Blasio said that about the gym.

00:05:38.220 You remember that during the coronavirus lockdown?

00:05:40.300 He shut down all the gyms, and then he opened it up specially so he could go work out.

00:05:44.360 Right.

00:05:44.600 Because he said, you know, it's important that I be healthy,

00:05:47.600 unlike the rest of you little people. 0.90

00:05:49.560 The little people, he didn't quite say.

00:05:51.100 It was just implied.

00:05:51.960 This was the mayor of Chicago who said, no one can go get a haircut, do not get a haircut,

00:05:55.820 except for me.

00:05:56.680 I need a haircut because I care about my appearance.

00:05:59.380 And this hypocrisy, actually, on that point in particular, ties in with the coronavirus.

00:06:04.180 Because a lot of what we've been hearing, remember, we did not do any shows in person.

00:06:08.680 We social distanced for months because that's what the public health officials told us to do.

00:06:12.860 Then, all of a sudden, hundreds of thousands of people pour out into the streets in very

00:06:17.740 close proximity in these protests.

00:06:19.420 And the same public health officials who excoriated conservatives for demonstrating in any way,

00:06:25.680 peaceably, against some of the lockdown overreaches, those same public health officials

00:06:30.460 encouraged the protests and the riots and the arson that have accompanied them.

00:06:36.340 Now, all of a sudden, we see a pivot back to backing away again.

00:06:40.960 How are we to understand this, if not as a rank politicization of the public health sector?

00:06:47.280 There's actually science behind it.

00:06:49.060 You see, the virus is woke.

00:06:52.980 And this woke virus, if you are protesting with Antifa, if you're arguing for abolishing

00:07:01.420 the police, you can get thousands of you together.

00:07:04.680 You can embrace.

00:07:05.960 You can kiss each other all over the place.

00:07:09.900 You don't need masks.

00:07:10.780 And the virus, the virus is actually marching alongside you.

00:07:14.860 That's great.

00:07:15.620 You just, you need a microphone, a microscope to see it.

00:07:18.300 But it's sitting there like anyone saying, regardless of your politics, you turn on the

00:07:27.120 TV, you see thousands and thousands of people smashed in very, very closely.

00:07:30.740 And you're sitting there going, well, wait a second.

00:07:34.380 Everyone said I had to stay home.

00:07:36.100 Everyone said it was the end of the world if, like, my kid went to school.

00:07:40.540 Everyone said it was the end of the world if I went to my grandmother's funeral, that I 0.96

00:07:45.560 would apparently kill the community. 0.98

00:07:47.840 Right.

00:07:48.000 And then you turn on the TV and the same public health officials are saying, oh, no, no, this

00:07:52.100 is perfectly fine.

00:07:52.960 Right.

00:07:53.420 I mean, we were told first, do not wear masks.

00:07:55.940 Do not buy masks.

00:07:56.980 Masks are not effective.

00:07:57.940 They're actually harmful.

00:07:58.980 Then we were told we all have to buy masks.

00:08:01.400 We were told that the virus spreads very easily on surfaces, part of the reason why we need

00:08:06.340 to wear the mask.

00:08:07.060 Then we were told it does not spread very easily on surfaces.

00:08:09.860 We were told initially that asymptomatic people are the ones spreading coronavirus.

00:08:14.240 The World Health Organization just came out this week and said that asymptomatic spread

00:08:18.860 is very rare.

00:08:20.400 So for those of us who are not scientific experts with lots of degrees, how are we supposed to

00:08:26.500 think about this virus after the chaos of the past couple weeks?

00:08:31.260 Well, look, let me take both sides of that.

00:08:34.800 On one level, this virus has been hard to figure out and the experts have genuinely struggled.

00:08:39.580 And so they haven't necessarily understood how it operated.

00:08:43.460 They didn't know what was going to happen.

00:08:46.040 They didn't know how easily it would be transmitted, how it would be transmitted.

00:08:50.220 And I'm, look, with a new virus, I'm understanding that the science takes some time to get out

00:08:54.680 and figure it out.

00:08:56.000 And you saw many leaders trying to protect people and keep people safe.

00:09:01.640 It then became this woke virtue signal where, you know, ostentatiously wearing a mask and

00:09:11.160 shutting everything down became, it actually had nothing to do with the science.

00:09:16.100 Like the whole flattening the curve.

00:09:17.940 When's the last time someone actually said the phrase flattening the curve?

00:09:21.380 Because we did.

00:09:22.300 We did flatten the curve.

00:09:23.280 And then they said, no, no, no, no, no.

00:09:24.620 Everything must stay shut down until a cure is discovered.

00:09:29.340 Yes.

00:09:29.700 And the virus is eradicated from planet Earth.

00:09:31.700 You're like, wait, that wasn't the explanation you gave before.

00:09:34.480 And then suddenly we didn't know it was or until we want to have giant riots and burn the

00:09:39.820 cities to the ground.

00:09:40.500 Right. 0.69

00:09:40.600 So that's now, it is the political hypocrisy.

00:09:46.620 Yeah.

00:09:47.640 And also it's elected officials not giving a damn about people's livelihoods, not caring.

00:09:54.240 And by the way, with both COVID-19 and the riots, we're seeing the same thing, which is

00:09:59.120 small businesses being destroyed by the shutdown.

00:10:02.140 Yeah.

00:10:02.680 Democrats don't care. 0.99

00:10:03.900 Small businesses being burned to the ground.

00:10:06.440 Democrats don't care. 0.99

00:10:07.680 And not only Democrats don't care, did you see this editorial writer with the New York

00:10:13.540 Times who said property crime, so burning someone's business to the ground, is not violent.

00:10:20.380 It's not violence.

00:10:21.560 How is that?

00:10:22.940 See, I always thought that when you have Molotov cocktails and pitchforks and hammers, when

00:10:27.980 you use that, that's violence.

00:10:29.540 But listen, I'm not a genius like the people at the New York Times.

00:10:32.640 It is.

00:10:34.240 Well, look, I'll give you another example.

00:10:36.040 Did you see the ostentatiously named president of the Minneapolis City Council?

00:10:41.620 I love that the city council has a president.

00:10:44.540 But she was on TV saying, if someone breaks into your garage, if someone is coming and

00:10:50.580 breaking into your home and you call the cops, that's your privilege.

00:10:54.500 You're exercising privilege.

00:10:56.400 By calling the cops.

00:10:57.400 Like, okay, I want everyone to get this straight because this is the problem. 0.94

00:11:01.580 Now, the lunatic have taken over.

00:11:05.220 They're now saying, you don't have a right.

00:11:08.440 You should have no expectation that the police should protect your home from a burglar because

00:11:14.680 of their crazy politics. 0.71

00:11:17.740 That's nuts.

00:11:18.900 Well, I want to get your thoughts on this, speaking of the New York Times, because I think

00:11:21.800 there are two schools of thought on this.

00:11:22.980 One school says the left has gone so insane, encouraging political violence, completely

00:11:29.240 losing all credibility on the coronavirus.

00:11:32.000 They've gone so crazy that we're now at a tipping point where we're going to swing back

00:11:36.540 in a more conservative direction.

00:11:37.800 I think the other school of thought is we're on the brink of revolution and people are as

00:11:42.480 on edge as they've been since 1968.

00:11:44.200 The New York Times published an op-ed by your Senate colleague, Tom Cotton, and it was an

00:11:49.760 op-ed about whether or not to call in troops to deal with the riots.

00:11:53.920 The editor who took that op-ed has now resigned from the New York Times.

00:11:59.540 It got such blowback that the New York Times says we cannot publish any opinions that contradict

00:12:04.400 leftist orthodoxy.

00:12:06.180 That man's name, James Bennett, I believe.

00:12:09.040 That's right.

00:12:09.640 And in our last podcast, you and I talked about this, and you know, look, smacking the

00:12:14.500 New York Times is, you know, it's kind of low-hanging fruit.

00:12:19.500 It is. 1.00

00:12:20.080 And they're so bad that it's easy to point out how idiotic they are. 1.00

00:12:25.020 Yeah. 1.00

00:12:25.800 And then they got worse.

00:12:27.360 They literally fired their editor.

00:12:30.480 Why?

00:12:31.600 Because he dared publish an op-ed from someone else, not from the New York Times, from someone

00:12:37.820 else.

00:12:38.060 By the way, his name was on it, that the lefties in the newsroom disagreed with.

00:12:44.020 And it was the reporters. 0.67

00:12:46.180 These reporters are little crybaby woke.

00:12:50.080 We are suddenly, we're back in like some leftist classroom where the reporters, if they hear

00:12:57.800 news they don't like, they start hissing.

00:12:59.760 Yeah.

00:13:00.760 And suddenly, what's the New York Times do?

00:13:03.620 You're fired.

00:13:04.420 Let me ask you something.

00:13:05.140 When is the next time the New York Times or any other of these big papers are going to

00:13:11.440 publish any view other than absolute lefty orthodoxy?

00:13:18.460 Right.

00:13:19.920 They are Pravda.

00:13:20.820 This is a weird inversion here because typically what you might expect is, you know, at every

00:13:25.440 news organization, there's opinion and there's reporting.

00:13:28.560 And the reporters deal with the facts, right?

00:13:30.140 Just the facts.

00:13:31.060 And opinion interprets the facts and gives their point of view.

00:13:33.680 You might expect the opinion people to complain about the reporters.

00:13:38.080 That's a kind of natural view of things.

00:13:39.580 But at the New York Times, it's the allegedly straight, objective reporters who are throwing

00:13:45.060 the hissy fit about an opinion column.

00:13:47.240 This is completely flipped.

00:13:48.360 The reporters are opinion journalists, but they all have one opinion.

00:13:51.360 They're not allowed to disagree.

00:13:52.600 You can't have any other view.

00:13:54.920 Yeah.

00:13:55.100 And it's the rigidity of it.

00:13:57.120 This is, it is very much, it's something of which communist China would be proud, except 1.00

00:14:04.760 making that point that the New York Times wouldn't make because that would imply criticism

00:14:08.340 for communist China.

00:14:09.620 Right. 0.98

00:14:09.980 And I mean, it is ridiculous and sad. 0.90

00:14:14.960 And I've often said, look, if there's somebody listening who has some money. 0.64

00:14:20.300 Yeah.

00:14:21.680 Sometimes people ask me, all right, what do you read to learn news?

00:14:24.840 And to be honest, I don't trust any place. 0.98

00:14:27.960 Every place is biased and ridiculous. 0.98

00:14:30.000 And that's a point of view. 0.95

00:14:31.040 So what I try to do is I try to read things on both sides to even it up.

00:14:35.880 I actually, the New York Times is unreadable.

00:14:37.760 I will read the Washington Post, which they're hard lefty, but they're trying.

00:14:43.640 They're trying a little bit to be objective.

00:14:45.940 And I'll read things like National Review and try to balance it out.

00:14:48.560 But look, I think somebody with resources ought to buy one of these legacy masthead things

00:14:56.400 like, you know, Jeff Bezos bought the Washington, Washington Post.

00:14:59.800 And you know what I'd do?

00:15:01.020 I'd do an editorial page.

00:15:03.020 I'd have a conservative and a liberal editor.

00:15:05.440 Yeah.

00:15:05.900 And I haven't both empowered to run stories.

00:15:08.260 And so instead of, and to have debate, to trust the dialectic process.

00:15:14.100 And I'll tell you what I'd do also is I'd have a conservative and a liberal news editor.

00:15:18.080 Because so much of the bias in journalism comes from picking which stories to run and which

00:15:23.260 stories not to.

00:15:24.320 Right. 0.92

00:15:24.620 So I'd have a real rock-ribbed conservative and a real flaming lunatic liberal and say, 0.61

00:15:28.700 both of you, you can have, and so people reading it through the synthesis can actually 0.79

00:15:35.300 learn what's going on.

00:15:36.360 Well, none of the supposed mainstream media places are even trying to do it.

00:15:41.140 Of course not.

00:15:41.740 But you know, as the leftist media outlets run the people who are not far, far radical

00:15:46.780 leftists out, I don't know, maybe we should hire them to be producers here. 0.68

00:15:49.660 I don't know.

00:15:49.980 Maybe we'll, they can come on over.

00:15:51.540 We certainly, I think, give a more balanced perspective than some of those outlets.

00:15:54.740 But on this point of the left going too far.

00:15:57.320 Yeah.

00:15:58.060 I know that you don't spend much of your day thinking about Harry Potter, but Harry Potter

00:16:02.480 actually does play into this a little bit.

00:16:04.120 The author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, is a left-winger, a left-wing activist, a feminist.

00:16:11.980 But she thinks that the left has gone too far.

00:16:14.100 She came out, she had a whole long tweet thread, and she's signaled this point of view before,

00:16:17.740 where she said, look, I support people who are transgender.

00:16:21.080 I support my transgender friends.

00:16:22.540 I want them to be happy.

00:16:23.500 I want them to feel comfortable.

00:16:24.800 But it is simply the case that a woman is a woman, and there's something about being a woman that a man can't be.

00:16:31.180 And she's trying to, sort of like the Minneapolis mayor, trying to come to this accommodation with the hard left. 0.99

00:16:37.420 They are furious at her.

00:16:39.200 Has it gone too far?

00:16:40.520 There will be no moderation with the left.

00:16:42.980 Right.

00:16:43.520 They are, it's like Robespierre.

00:16:45.300 It is the French Revolution, and the guillotines are coming.

00:16:50.140 The guillotines already came for James Bennett, the editor of the New York Times, and others as well.

00:16:57.140 There, you can't get extreme enough, because right now they're out extreme. 0.99

00:17:04.320 Listen, a week ago, if I would have said, these idiots are going to call for abolishing the police department, 1.00

00:17:09.660 I would have said, oh, come on. 1.00

00:17:11.080 It's not possible. 0.99

00:17:12.220 It's ridiculous. 0.92

00:17:12.720 Like, we're at the point, and it will keep going, and they will keep consuming themselves. 0.98

00:17:19.840 Part of it is, you don't give a damn if they come after you.

00:17:23.500 They do, but it doesn't, you know, it helps that you don't wake up at night going,

00:17:28.000 oh, no, what are they saying about me now?

00:17:29.820 Oh, gosh.

00:17:30.500 Right.

00:17:30.860 There is something liberating about this.

00:17:32.600 Of course.

00:17:34.080 These folks, and look, you live in L.A.

00:17:40.040 Don't remind me.

00:17:40.980 Senator, please.

00:17:41.560 Yes.

00:17:42.720 You and I first got to know each other, among other things, through Friends of Abe.

00:17:47.520 Yeah.

00:17:48.020 Yeah.

00:17:48.540 You know, a group of conservatives underground in Hollywood, in entertainment.

00:17:55.140 And I got to tell you, first time I spoke to Friends of Abe, I think it was 2013 or 2014.

00:18:00.140 Yeah.

00:18:00.540 So six, seven years ago, about 400 people came out in L.A.

00:18:05.260 And what was striking, and there were some big famous people.

00:18:08.900 There were people like, you know, like John Voight was there.

00:18:11.960 Actually, Bruce Jenner, before he was Caitlyn Jenner, Bruce was there.

00:18:15.220 Yeah, pretty conservative.

00:18:15.920 And, but you also had lots of lower level folks, people who were writers, people who were gaffers, people who were makeup artists, just kind of all working in Hollywood.

00:18:28.140 And the degree of terror.

00:18:32.360 Yes.

00:18:33.200 Yeah.

00:18:33.360 It's the only gathering I've ever been, and the rule is no photographs at all.

00:18:36.600 Yeah.

00:18:36.760 No one with your phone.

00:18:37.540 Everywhere else, you're always snapping.

00:18:38.920 Because you know what?

00:18:39.820 If you're someone working in Hollywood, and they got a picture of you, right of center, and this was seven years ago, you could lose your job and your whole career.

00:18:47.380 You could destroy your career.

00:18:47.780 Yep.

00:18:48.860 That's now journalism as well.

00:18:51.240 That's the New York Times.

00:18:52.520 If you dare disagree with their propaganda, if you're not woke enough, if you just want to fight against police brutality, but you don't actually want to abolish the police department.

00:19:04.980 Right. 0.86

00:19:05.880 Well, then off with your head. 0.96

00:19:06.860 This is a great analogy.

00:19:08.100 This hadn't occurred to me, but you know, you expect this from Hollywood.

00:19:11.000 We've heard about this for years.

00:19:12.060 But it used to be the case that if you were a serious journalist, you could be photographed with a Democratic senator or a Republican senator.

00:19:19.660 What the past few weeks have shown is you can't.

00:19:22.580 You can't.

00:19:23.860 You couldn't take a photo with Tom Cotton, or you couldn't run his op-ed.

00:19:27.100 You really, the lines have been drawn.

00:19:29.620 People are digging in their heels.

00:19:31.200 You mentioned Robespierre and the French Revolution.

00:19:33.180 I did have thoughts of this the other day because Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman, said that we're going to abolish the police and we're going to have a new imaginative approach to public safety.

00:19:44.740 And you know, the committee that chopped off everybody's head in the French Revolution was the Committee of Public Safety.

00:19:49.180 Well, and there is a consistency.

00:19:52.000 The hard left has always been very comfortable with totalitarianism.

00:19:56.060 Yeah.

00:19:57.160 Anytime they're talking about abolishing the police, it's not like force is going to disappear.

00:20:02.440 It's just they want the monopoly on who exercises the force.

00:20:05.460 And that is, you know, look, you look at communist dictatorships, whether Cuba, whether the Soviet Union, whether China, whether Vietnam.

00:20:17.380 Right.

00:20:17.880 I mean, vicious murder, torture, oppression, Nicaragua, Bernie Sanders' friends down in Nicaragua.

00:20:24.060 Yeah.

00:20:24.200 This is consistent, and it's because they're collectivists.

00:20:31.120 Yeah. 0.95

00:20:31.720 And they're so damn self-righteous.

00:20:33.880 Yeah. 0.53

00:20:34.800 That they're like, the Borg has ordered it.

00:20:37.480 Yeah.

00:20:38.120 And if you dare disagree.

00:20:40.320 Or question it.

00:20:41.240 Right. 0.99

00:20:41.820 You must be assimilated or destroyed. 0.99

00:20:43.840 Yeah.

00:20:44.320 Listen, on the right, one of the beauties of liberty, there are all sorts of people I disagree with.

00:20:49.120 Great.

00:20:49.620 All right.

00:20:50.120 Borg.

00:20:50.400 Like, A, I don't really want to hang out with people that just agree with me.

00:20:54.160 I mean, that's utterly boring.

00:20:55.720 Yep.

00:20:56.000 But not on the left.

00:20:56.940 On the left, it's like, you know what we're living in the left?

00:21:02.780 Yeah.

00:21:02.900 It's Handmaid's Tale.

00:21:04.400 Right.

00:21:05.060 Right.

00:21:05.360 Right down to the masks.

00:21:06.580 They're not even aware of it.

00:21:07.500 Right.

00:21:07.740 They put everyone in masks, and they must all say the same thing.

00:21:12.660 Right.

00:21:12.820 And that is statists going to statists.

00:21:16.460 That's what they do.

00:21:17.200 And, you know, you are seeing some cracks.

00:21:19.020 I mean, the fact that this New York Times editor, I think he's waking up to this.

00:21:22.580 J.K. Rowling, a hardened leftist, I think she's waking up and saying, gosh, this is not the left that I thought I was a part of.

00:21:29.380 This has gone too far.

00:21:30.700 Either that could be a healthy thing for the country, we could swing back a little bit, or it's all broken and we're just living in the rubble.

00:21:37.300 It wasn't too long ago when the left believed in free speech.

00:21:42.160 Yeah.

00:21:42.940 You know, as you know, I've got a book that's coming out later this year, and it's a book on the Supreme Court.

00:21:47.600 It's called One Vote Away.

00:21:48.660 It's talking about how all of our rights are hanging literally just one vote away.

00:21:53.420 There's a whole chapter on free speech where it talks about a very famous Supreme Court case where a guy wore a jacket that said, F the draft, although he didn't abbreviate it.

00:22:05.880 And the Supreme Court quite rightly said that he had a First Amendment right to express that view, even if that view was profane, even if it might be distasteful.

00:22:18.260 Well, that used to be a mainstream liberal view.

00:22:22.520 Yeah.

00:22:23.320 No longer.

00:22:24.540 No longer.

00:22:25.360 Now the left not only is willing to silence anyone who disagrees, they demand that anyone who disagrees be silenced.

00:22:34.900 That's terrifying.

00:22:35.820 That's right.

00:22:36.420 In the last moment or two that we have left, we've got to get through some very important mailbag questions.

00:22:42.060 The most important one I saw is from GT at the top.

00:22:44.660 Senator Cruz, thank you for your service in the Senate.

00:22:47.140 What is your cigar of choice?

00:22:48.860 Monte Cristo, number one.

00:22:49.840 Monte Cristo, number one.

00:22:50.860 It's a great cigar.

00:22:52.600 From Captain of the Silent Majority, that's a Twitter account.

00:22:55.580 Do you support the use of force to protect historical sites and property being destroyed by rioters?

00:23:02.040 I guess that means do you support the police basically going in and stopping the rioters?

00:23:05.980 I support law enforcement stopping violence.

00:23:09.700 Right.

00:23:09.940 Why is that controversial?

00:23:12.600 Churchill, if you try to hurt somebody, law enforcement should stop you.

00:23:18.980 If you try to destroy somebody else's property, law enforcement should stop you. 0.98

00:23:24.560 Look, we saw the idiocy reach its peak when in the past few days a statue of Churchill was defaced. 0.97

00:23:35.600 By the way, the original anti-fashion. 0.98

00:23:38.160 I mean, he literally, I couldn't help but send out a tweet and say, okay, look, he only defeated Hitler, defeated the Nazis, saved the free world.

00:23:47.500 Right.

00:23:47.680 But, you know, you're young and angry and you've got a can of spray paint.

00:23:52.900 So your contributions to humanity and to equality. 0.96

00:23:56.400 And by the way, Mr. Social Justice Warrior, in terms of equality, stopping the frigging Nazis from murdering people.

00:24:04.280 Rank's pretty high up there. 0.87

00:24:05.760 It's impressive.

00:24:06.540 And yet they still wanted to face it.

00:24:08.280 Right.

00:24:08.880 Right.

00:24:09.220 See, these things used to be uncontroversial, but I guess we're living in very strange times.

00:24:14.360 From Matt.

00:24:15.020 And apologies to Churchill for going with the Monte Cristo number one.

00:24:19.920 Yeah, it's true.

00:24:21.220 You know, he did have some other choices.

00:24:23.060 We can explore those later, though.

00:24:24.840 I mean, he has a whole size of cigar named after him, the Churchill.

00:24:29.220 Will we ever have the Knolls and what will the Knolls be?

00:24:32.160 That is, you know, it's funny.

00:24:33.320 People ask, Michael, what do you want to do?

00:24:35.140 What's your ambition?

00:24:35.700 Just that.

00:24:36.400 If I could get a cigar named after me, that's it.

00:24:39.240 But I don't know if I'm going to be able to save the Western world.

00:24:41.300 You know, that's a lofty goal.

00:24:42.540 Look, the day is young.

00:24:44.680 The day is young.

00:24:45.360 That's true.

00:24:46.100 From Matt.

00:24:48.040 Senator, any intelligent, honest, and well-reasoned liberals I should follow, I want a more balanced

00:24:55.000 feed.

00:25:00.620 My answer, precisely.

00:25:03.280 Look, Andrew Sullivan.

00:25:05.320 Mm-hmm.

00:25:05.880 Smart.

00:25:06.540 Yep.

00:25:07.800 Willing to question.

00:25:10.280 Um...

00:25:12.540 Someone who used to fit into that was Michael Kelly, who wrote in the Washington Post 20

00:25:19.900 years ago.

00:25:20.460 Sadly, he was killed on the Iraq war.

00:25:24.000 He wrote some of the best op-eds ever.

00:25:26.140 He wrote, I Believe, which if you go back 20 years, laid out the cognitive dissonance that

00:25:31.820 Clinton defenders had to put out.

00:25:34.280 Um, the problem is smart, smart liberals that are actually principled, so many of them have

00:25:45.420 been silent.

00:25:46.420 Right.

00:25:46.940 That it, it, there used to be quite a few, but...

00:25:51.420 Or, or they're no longer really considered liberal, like I would, uh, Professor Dershowitz.

00:25:56.260 Alan Dershowitz, that, that would be an example.

00:25:58.660 You know, Dershowitz, Dershowitz, my criminal law professor, first year of law school.

00:26:02.980 So I, I arrived there.

00:26:05.140 It was, it was pretty wild.

00:26:06.220 I'm a 1L in law school.

00:26:08.060 Uh, Dershowitz defending Mike Tyson.

00:26:10.120 Yeah.

00:26:10.780 Um, you know, it was when Mike Tyson's rape trial was going on.

00:26:13.500 I'm like, holy cow, my professor is like defending Mike Tyson.

00:26:16.820 He said, he assigned to us as part of our reading, Penthouse Magazine, because he had

00:26:24.000 written, I think it was the cover story in Penthouse.

00:26:27.360 Think, it may be the first time Penthouse had ever not had a woman on the cover.

00:26:30.500 It had Mike Tyson.

00:26:32.220 And Dershowitz had written this long cover story about him and what he explained, he did,

00:26:36.520 what he assigned to us did not have pictures.

00:26:38.160 It was just the text.

00:26:39.360 Yeah.

00:26:39.540 You, you only read it for the article.

00:26:40.640 So I can legitimately say we only read it for the articles because we just had the Xerox

00:26:44.400 pages.

00:26:44.920 So we were only given the text.

00:26:46.540 There were no pictures of what we were given, but, but I remember he told the criminal law

00:26:50.440 class, he said, look, I could write an op-ed in the New York times and, you know, a handful

00:26:55.820 of people would read it.

00:26:56.980 But, you know, I think at the time he said, Penthouse had a readership of like 5 million

00:27:00.460 people.

00:27:01.120 And he said, I'm trying to talk to jurors.

00:27:03.520 Jurors are reading.

00:27:04.480 So it was an interesting, he was a fabulous professor.

00:27:08.040 And I remember first year of law school, he said, listen, by any measure, this is Dershowitz

00:27:13.440 speaking, I am in the most liberal 1% of Americans in this country.

00:27:17.840 Yeah.

00:27:18.840 But he would do things like defend free speech and argue for, look, he, he used to muse,

00:27:26.340 look, Dershowitz is, he's Jewish.

00:27:29.520 He's deeply pro-Israel.

00:27:31.520 He used to talk about, you know, how he would think about if he was hired as a criminal defense

00:27:37.660 lawyer to defend Adolf Hitler.

00:27:39.200 Right.

00:27:39.900 And, and he would kind of agonize about that.

00:27:41.920 Look, I'm glad when I was practicing law, I, I didn't defend, I, I would not have defended

00:27:46.520 Adolf Hitler because everyone deserves a lawyer, but I ain't working for him. 0.96

00:27:50.560 Right.

00:27:50.760 So, but, but it's interesting.

00:27:52.600 He believed in, in protecting the rights of the accused.

00:27:56.580 He believed in stopping censorship.

00:28:01.260 He believed in, he believed in civil liberties in a way that, that there aren't many liberals left

00:28:08.980 but do.

00:28:09.420 There aren't.

00:28:10.040 And that, that wasn't so long ago.

00:28:11.420 And now it seems that the world has gone upside down.

00:28:14.140 We'll have to dig into more of that upside downness.

00:28:16.360 I've got to make it back to my hotel to see if I can get past the national guard because

00:28:20.220 of how crazy things have gotten.

00:28:21.780 But we'll back, be back here again soon.

00:28:23.660 So my advice is, is simply protest on the way and they'll let you right through it.

00:28:27.640 That's true.

00:28:28.620 I'll have to find a sign somewhere.

00:28:30.660 Uh, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:28:32.120 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:28:34.060 We'll be back soon.

00:28:38.980 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security

00:28:48.320 Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations

00:28:53.480 and candidates across the country.

00:28:55.500 In 2022, Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - June 08, 2020

Don’t Defund The Police

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