Fueling Russia's Aggression
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Summary
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joins me to talk about Nord Stream 2, a new natural gas pipeline being built between Russia and Germany, and why it s a big deal and why nobody is talking about it.
Transcript
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As tensions ratchet up between Moscow, Russia, and the West,
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Germany is inviting Putin right into the heart of Europe.
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And the worst part of all is very few people even know that it's happening.
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Well, we know one person who knows it's happening,
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who's been very involved in this now for years.
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I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by Senator Ted Cruz.
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Senator, this is a subject which I will just put it out on the table.
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That's all I know, but it's apparently a very big deal
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Well, I hope somebody knows something or else this is going to be a very short podcast.
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that is being constructed from Russia to Germany.
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And in fact, I remember John McCain used to refer to Russia.
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He used to say Russia is a gas station with a country attached.
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Russia fuels its aggression through the export of oil and gas.
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And Nord Stream 2, right now, Europe relies on Russia for energy resources.
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But much of that right now comes through Ukraine.
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You recall we talked a lot about Ukraine and how Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union,
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And Russia and Germany reached an agreement to build a new pipeline,
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and that carries the natural gas straight to Germany.
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And the problem is building this pipeline would do several things.
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It would put billions of additional dollars in Putin's coffers,
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to be aggressive, to pressure, to invade his neighbors, to wreak havoc.
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because it makes Europe more dependent on Russia.
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And so I began over a year ago, last year in 2019,
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trying to stop Nord Stream 2 from being constructed.
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but I guess you saw it happening at a time where
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the relationship we have to China is all kind of in flux.
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And so I'm wondering now, without having had my head in it,
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how should the United States even look at Vladimir Putin,
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We should be trying to minimize his ability to do damage to America
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And you may recall when President Trump went and spoke to NATO,
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he leaned in hard and he took on Angela Merkel,
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for why are you doing this Nord Stream 2 thing?
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And I said, all right, let's do something about it.
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And so I teamed up with a Democrat, with Gene Shaheen,
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And we introduced legislation that was tough sanctions focused on any company
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that was helping build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
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There were only five companies in the world that had the technology to be able to build
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And so we were targeting those fives to try to cut them off.
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Well, when I introduced the legislation, it was very interesting.
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Russia has been aggressive in their counter propaganda.
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They were putting out this legislation has no chance of passage.
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I remember Rick Perry was energy secretary talking to Rick at the time,
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who was who was in Europe and was saying, look, you need to understand
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And the Russian disinformation was fighting with Rick Perry.
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Well, Senate Foreign Relations, we take up my bill
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and it passes the committee by a vote of 20 to 2.
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I then sought to take it up and pass it on the floor of the Senate and to use a mechanism
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called unanimous consent, which is the way a lot of things get passed.
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But unanimous consent, as the name suggests, it's got to be unanimous, which means any senator
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In this instance, Rand Paul voted against it in committee and he'd objected to taking it
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And one senator can kill unanimous consent or you see is what everyone calls it.
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Could I just ask, not asking for you to tell any tales out of school here, but what was
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the objection to, I mean, this seems like a sort of common sense piece of legislation.
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He often opposes efforts to use sanctions against foreign countries, including sometimes our enemies.
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I actually think sanctions are a very effective tool and they're a tool far, far short of warfare.
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Look, Rand and I agree at times and that we're both, as does the president, that we should
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be very hesitant to use military power and only use it when critically necessary to defend
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But I think sanctions are an effective tool of power short of military force.
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So when Rand objected, I had to find another way to pass this.
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And in 2019, the National Defense Authorization Act, which is the big bill that passes every
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year authorizing our military defense, that was moving forward.
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And I've been an active part of passing the NDAA year after year after year.
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And so we decided, all right, let's try to attach this bill to the NDAA.
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Now, to do that, we had to get a lot of sign off to do that.
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I had to get, number one, the chairman, a Republican and the ranking member, a Democrat
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of the Senate Armed Services Committee to sign off because the Armed Services Committee passes
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I had to get the chairman and the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
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to sign off because since that's the committee that had jurisdiction over my bill, foreign
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relations could have vetoed it and said, no, we're not going to allow it to go onto the
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So I was able to do that, got both the chairman and ranking.
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And then I had to do the same thing on Senate Banking, the Senate Banking Committee, because
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And so I had to get the chairman and ranking member of Senate Banking to sign off on.
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And then I also had to get Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer to sign off on, the majority
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It got attached to the NDAA and it passed through the Senate.
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Then I had to do the exact same thing in the House.
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So get the chairman and the ranking on armed services, on foreign relations, on banking and
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So we're talking phone call after phone call after phone call as I'm talking to multiple
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In the House, we almost had it derailed from a completely unrelated education provision.
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I don't remember what it was, but it was threatening to derail at the House.
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So I had to be on the phone to Kevin McCarthy trying to like navigate through that and stop
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So once we get it passed, then the question is, well, is the pipeline going to stop?
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Because they were building the pipeline and the pipeline was 90 to 95 percent complete.
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Because I mean, I think it's easy as we as we think about this legislation going through
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the Senate and then the House, we as Americans like to think that whatever we say goes, but
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But obviously, Germany can do whatever it likes.
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So the question is, are these sanctions going to work?
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And let me pause for a second and point out what was truly miraculous.
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Can you think of anything else that was going on then?
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You know, I seem to recall it was a busy political time.
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The House was literally impeaching the president and impeaching the president over Ukraine.
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Now, mind you, stopping Nord Stream 2 benefits Ukraine.
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It is a frigging miracle is a Christmas miracle on 34th Street that we got this done.
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And we passed bipartisan legislation through both houses of Congress that concern Ukraine.
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Every time I talk to people, I said Germany, Russia, Ukraine, never heard of it.
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Like in the midst of that partisan mess to get this national security win was miraculous.
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But then once it happened, there was a company, a Swiss company called Allseas that was actually
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And so they're rushing to just finish the pipeline.
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So what I did then is drafted a letter to the CEO of Allseas.
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And it is a letter that says this is to put you on formal notice that your company is in
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direct jeopardy of facing crushing economic sanctions on your shareholders and your senior
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employees that will effectively put your company out of business.
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And there were a couple of questions that could arguably be ambiguous.
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Number one, the way the statute was written, the State Department had to do a report.
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And so you could say, oh, well, we got 60 days to get this done.
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And number two, the statute allowed what was called a wind down period.
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So you didn't just stop immediately and cause environmental damage.
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Our letter explained, although the report is due 60 days later, under the terms of the
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letter, your liability attaches instantaneously.
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The executive has no discretion over whether to impose them.
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And so what I wrote in the letter to the CEO, I said, you need to be aware the instant
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Your company faces exposure and your only reasonable option is halt construction
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So suddenly there's word that at the NSC, there may be an effort to try to undercut these
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So I pick up the phone and I call Robert O'Brien, the national security advisor, who's a close
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And I talked to him about it and said, this would be, don't listen to this podcast.
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This is a huge national security win for the country.
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Thankfully, NSC, Robert's a great guy and NSC didn't bite.
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We then had a fight, an interagency fight between the State Department, the Treasury Department
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So I'm on the phone with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
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I'm on the phone with Energy Secretary Dan Briette.
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I forget where he was, but I'm texting Mike on my phone.
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All three of them, state and energy were in the right place, which is wanting these sanctions
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Treasury, unfortunately, was pushing on the other side.
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At the end of the day, state and energy and National Security Council won that interagency
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I believe it was a Thursday at 7 p.m., if I'm remembering the time correctly.
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About 15 minutes earlier, Thursday, 645 p.m., All Seas puts out a press release.
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We are lifting anchor and leaving, and we have immediately halted all construction of
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I mean, so after there's a sort of Herculean effort, it finally gets through all the chambers
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of the Congress and then gets through the departments and it goes into effect.
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So for several months, it just left it stopped.
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But remember, a pipeline that is 95 percent built is zero percent built.
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The pipeline doesn't work until you connect both ends.
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So right now, it's a hunk of metal on the bottom of the ocean, like it's not doing nothing.
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So Russia was then scrambling, all right, how do we build it?
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They're trying to do it using a Russian ship called the Akademik Chersky.
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Now, to do that, they had to get a new environmental permit from Denmark.
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So I was on the phone to the Danish ambassador, pressing on the Danish ambassador, saying, don't
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Unfortunately, Merkel and Germany are on the phone with Denmark, leaning on them hard.
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By the way, there are serious environmental risks to how Russia wants to do it.
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Among other things, one of the ways they're looking at doing it is dragging an anchor on
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And there are actually unexploded chemical munitions on the seafloor from World War II
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that if you hit them, you could have an environmental complete mess.
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And it's not like the Russians are very good at this.
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They don't know how to do this, which is why they had to hire a Swiss company to build
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Well, Senator, you mentioned the world wars here, and maybe this is a stupid question,
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but just knowing the little little idea of history, the Germans and the Russians have
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And I'm just wondering, why is Germany so hell bent on getting this pipeline in this
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You know, Michael, I don't have a great answer.
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I think it is not in the German people's best interest.
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The European Union actually voted, I think it was about a year ago, to condemn Nord Stream
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I mean, it was an overwhelmingly lopsided vote condemning Nord Stream 2.
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And so the Russians have been scrambling to move forward.
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And by the way, all of the naysayers who were trying to stop our legislation, what they kept
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Now, the Russians are trying to retrofit their ship to be able to finish it.
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And so what I've done, I've been working very closely with state and energy still and
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But I introduced a second set of sanctions that is even it's a tougher set of secondary
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sanctions that basically says anyone else who's affiliated with it, you're getting
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sanctioned to like if you if you touch this project, you're screwed.
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And and we passed passed it through the Senate attached to the next NDAA.
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And I'll tell you, I recently joined with a couple of other senators and sent a letter
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to the German port where Russia is retrofitting the academic Chersky and trying to to to lead
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It's a German name, a long German name that I can't remember.
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But it it it had a whole lot of consonants and they usually do.
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So I sent them a letter pointing out, look, under the terms of these sanctions, you are
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facing serious sanctions under what Congress has passed.
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I got to say, Germany is is the German government is flipping out, is losing their minds.
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Now, other players in Europe, like I spoke two weeks ago to the Polish ambassador, Poland
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thinks, you know, Europe has seen the danger of Russian aggression.
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You know, for Poland, Soviet tanks in the streets are real memories.
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And and part of the reason you don't want Europe totally dependent on Russia for energy
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is because Putin's demonstrated he'll shut off the energy in the middle of a brutal winter
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in order to extract concessions from people he wants to get concessions from.
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You know, it's a little bit like saying, you know, I'm going to I'm going to make myself
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You know, you know, you know, Vito Corleone, I'm going to put him in charge of of of air and
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That's a really bad idea because Vito will come to you sometime and ask for a favor.
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I don't believe this pipeline will ever get constructed, but we are literally fighting
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both Merkel and Putin right now, who billions of dollars are at stake to complete this pipeline.
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We have managed to keep a bipartisan coalition throughout the government in Congress and the
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executive branch, Republicans, Democrats, all the other issues we're fighting about.
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We've managed to keep this coalition together on national security.
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And if we continue to stop the pipeline, which we've done so far, it hurts Putin taking billions
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It helps Europe by making it less dependent on Russia.
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And it helps America because if Europe because Europe, it would be much better for Europe for
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them to be importing energy from America, creating jobs in the United States of America rather
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And it's an active diplomatic battle that that it is ongoing right now.
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First, first of all, it serves American interests.
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And third of all, this harkens back to something that we talked about very early in the podcast
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during impeachment, which is I think a lot of our focus now is on China.
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Obviously, we're living in this pandemic and these lockdowns that were caused by China.
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And so people are saying, OK, China is the real threat.
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You know, Russia was the threat during the Cold War, but now China is the real threat.
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It's not the case that just because China is now threatening us in a way that we hadn't
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seen before, that all of a sudden Vladimir Putin is our best friend.
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Surely he does not have our interests at heart.
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Listen, in terms of magnitude of threats, China is the far bigger geopolitical threat.
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I think it's the biggest threat we have over the next century.
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But Putin and Russia remain dangerous and we need to be vigorous against them.
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And for that matter, a nuclear Iran would be profoundly dangerous.
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So there are lots of dangerous places on Earth.
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China, strategically, their economic might makes them, I think, a different level of magnitude
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But but Russia is dangerous and and putting billions of dollars in Putin's pockets to
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Well, moving from the realm of foreign policy to touch on domestic affairs here in our last
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Rob asks, he says, I would like Ted's thoughts on the recent comments by Dems that a Trump landslide
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on election night could be a mirage that basically you could get Trump winning on election night.
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But then some mail in ballots come in weeks later and all of a sudden the election goes
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Well, look, I think it is a moment where the Democrats actually said out loud the things
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that they meant to keep quiet, which which which is they're admitting from a Democratic
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Either they win in November or they're going to scream the election is illegitimate.
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They're going to file litigation in every state and jurisdiction they can.
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And they're going to do everything they can to steal the election that they the outcome
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of Trump winning that they there's so much rage at Adam that I and you can see them setting
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You can see them already setting the stage to challenge the legitimacy of the election.
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And and you know, it's interesting there have been prominent Democrats, Hillary Clinton
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asking, you know, would Trump accept it if he lost?
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And there's an odd thing that that a lot of Democrats do.
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I mean, it's a Freudian projection, which is they accuse the other side of doing what
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Look, it's the Democrats that still haven't accepted they lost in 2016.
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You know, it's Stacey Abrams who still thinks she's governor of Georgia.
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And I am very concerned that that they are unless they win, in which case it will be Hosanna,
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But but if they if there's any outcome other than they're winning on election night.
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Hold on tight, because they're going to do everything they can to dispute the outcome.
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It's very funny, because Hillary Clinton said in 2016 that Donald Trump is threatening
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She then went on to dispute the election for four years.
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And now she's saying Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances.
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You know, if there were self-awareness on that side of the aisle, I'm I'm sure we could
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So, Michael, let me jump in actually on a mailbag topic.
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And this is actually a correction from prior mailbag.
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I'm edified, but shocked that you would correct something on the air, because if this were
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the New York Times and you had said something wrong, you would bury the correction in page
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three thousand and fifty of some supplemental book that no one would read.
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But you are going to make a correction right here on the show.
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And I'm going to shine a light on it, which is which is several episodes ago.
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We were doing a mailbag and and and we had a question from from from one listener whose
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handle on on Twitter, you and I both referred to as Bay Lamb's donkey.
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Well, you know, and we were sort of we made some jokes.
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A dear, dear friend of mine, a guy named Willie Langston is one of my closest friends on
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earth and and Willie is is a a deep, devout Christian, a godly man and and a he knows
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And I got to say, Willie had a little bit of fun making fun of you and me.
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I know where this is going for our lack of biblical literacy, because what it actually was referring
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And I had to be reminded I didn't remember this.
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So if you look in the book of Numbers, you know, chapter 22, so Balaam, he wasn't an Israelite.
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He was with the Mennonites and the Moabites, but but he was someone to whom God spoke.
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And the story in Numbers 22, and I actually want to read the story because I remembered
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it, but I didn't remember it when we were talking about it.
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But God was angry because Balaam was going, and the angel of the Lord took his stand in
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Now, he was riding on his donkey, and his two servants were with him.
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When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his drawn sword in
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his hand, the donkey turned off the other way and went into the field.
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But Balaam struck the donkey to turn her back into the way.
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Then the angel of the Lord stood in the narrow path of the vineyards with a well on the side
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When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she pressed herself into the wall and pressed
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The angel of the Lord went further and stood in a narrow place where there was no place
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When the donkey saw the angel of the Lord, she laid down under Balaam.
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So Balaam was angry and struck the donkey with his stick.
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And she said to Balaam, what have I done to you that you have struck me these three times?
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Then Balaam said to the donkey, because you have made a mockery of me.
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If I'd had a sword in my hand, I would have killed you by now.
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The donkey said to Balaam, am I not your donkey on which you have ridden all your life to this
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Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the
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And the angel of the Lord said to him, why have you struck your donkey three times?
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Behold, I have come out as an adversary because your way was contrary to me.
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But the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these three times.
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If she had not turned aside from me, I would surely have killed you just now and let her,
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And so our listener, Balaam's donkey, was a wonderful biblical reference that as a graduate
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of Second Baptist High School, I am embarrassed that I did not recognize immediately.
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But Willie, I'm fessing up and fessing up for all to hear.
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You know, it's so funny you mentioned it, Senator.
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And after the episode, I thought, oh, my gosh, I actually did read numbers probably two years
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And, you know, it's not it's a little bit dry as far as books of the Bible go.
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And I unlike Balaam's donkey, I deserve to be struck three times.
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We've not only gone to modern day Russia, we've gone to the ancient Mideast.
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We've covered everything in between all the way from heaven to earth.
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We'll have to stop it there and we will see one another next time.
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And I'm going to catch up on my Bible in the meantime.
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This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security
00:28:38.920
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