Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ben Fergus (D-New Jersey) break down the closing argument from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidates, as they attack Donald Trump and his supporters in the final days of the campaign.
00:00:05.300Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.700And Senator, every time I think the Democrats can't get any worse at their closing argument for the American people after, you know, calling all this garbage,0.55
00:00:18.480they then figure out a way to insult even more people, this time women that are supporting Donald Trump.0.98
00:13:41.200But, but also the fact that he was, was relaxed, that he was cutting jokes and, and that he was making fun of himself.
00:13:49.420That is not something, uh, usually in, in Trump's repertoire, to put it mildly.
00:13:55.200You remember the Al Smith's, uh, dinner that he did, which, which, you know, was the humorous dinner, uh, hosted to support Catholic charities.
00:14:02.000Now, of course, Kamala Harris skipped the thing.0.98
00:14:34.500That's the sort of joke that, that, that, that it's real, it's funny, it's, it's approachable.
00:14:41.620And the contrast to the angry hatred, uh, coming from the other side is really striking.
00:14:50.080It's why I said in, in, in, in the beginning of the, the pod that joy is, is coming to, you combine this and McDonald's, and this is a joyful campaign in the final four days.
00:15:04.500And, and Donald Trump in New Mexico was, was really selling this point to the crowd when, when he reminded them of what this election is about.
00:15:13.880Kamala and Joe call them, all of them also, they're in your group now.0.99
00:15:21.100She calls them garbage and he calls them garbage.0.99
00:15:24.360Oh, you can imagine their conversations, but I call you the heart and soul of America.0.99
00:15:29.980I call you the people that built our country.
00:15:33.180You're the people that built our country.
00:15:35.600I mean, that is, that is bringing home and reminding people, this is the election.
00:15:53.960And, and, and there's also a double message in this.
00:15:56.800Look, it's the, the socioeconomic inversion that we have seen in the last decade remains the single most important shift in politics for decades.
00:16:07.500The conventional wisdom was Republicans are the party of the rich and Democrats are the party of the
00:17:13.680It's the union guys who are the ones that are actually doing the hard work.
00:17:17.820And the Democrats look down on them as the dirty, unwashed masses.1.00
00:17:22.700They think you stupid people vote for us, but keep your mouth shut and follow our orders because we know better.1.00
00:17:29.100And that contrast, I think, is night and day and really powerful.1.00
00:17:34.000Well, and J.D. Vance even hitting home on what you just said, and it went viral.
00:17:38.220He said a mother mourning her son who died of a fentanyl overdose is not garbage.0.91
00:17:43.020A truck driver who can't afford rising diesel prices is not garbage.0.95
00:17:46.300A father who wants to afford groceries is not garbage.0.94
00:17:50.620Kamala Harris and Joe Biden ought to be ashamed of themselves.
00:17:53.740He took that more serious reminding role there.
00:17:56.360And look, Kamala Harris, she had to dodge questions when she was asked about this.
00:18:02.220As she was getting on the airplane, she was asked about the comments by Joe Biden, and she didn't clean it up very well at all.0.90
00:18:08.960Do you sympathize with any voters who do feel offended by or insulted by the garbage comments?0.93
00:18:17.140I am running for president of the United States.0.66
00:18:19.300I will be traveling to three states today to do what I have been doing throughout, which is talking with the American people about the fact that, first of all, I get it in terms of the concerns they have about challenges like the price of groceries.
00:18:34.160Second, my highest priority is to address that and to lift them up around their ambitions, their aspirations and their dreams, which is why I have a very specific and detailed plan about strengthening our economy.
00:18:48.500Many leading economists have reviewed my plan and indicated it will strengthen the economy and that Donald Trump's plan will weaken the economy.
00:18:56.780So I'm going to be spending full time as I've been talking with the American people, whoever they voted for last time.
00:19:02.740And as I have said and will repeat over and over again, I am sincere in what I mean.
00:19:08.700When elected president of the United States, I will represent all Americans, including those who don't vote for me and address their needs and their desires.
00:19:19.920And then she does what she did so well.
00:19:23.760That was a bad response in a moment where people were looking and even the mainstream media there, they were looking for a real response from her.
00:19:31.300Like, hey, are you going to put this to bed?
00:19:33.040Are you going to say something to let people know that you don't actually hate half of America or agree with Joe Biden?
00:20:42.960He's like their front guy carrying the message.0.98
00:20:45.140And so today, Kamala Harris's top surrogate decided it's not enough to insult half of America and call him garbage.1.00
00:20:51.900Let's go out of the way to really insult women.1.00
00:20:54.180Let's go after women and say that that if you're a woman and you're backing Donald Trump, that then you are stupid and you're weak.1.00
00:21:02.820I mean, it really is, again, it's the same strategy of attack the voters that is spectacularly foolish.1.00
00:21:10.160But give a listen, and I want you to listen to Kayleigh McEnany reacting to it, because her reaction was really just, I think, exactly spot on.
00:21:21.660Before I play that for you, I want to say thank you to so many of you that have been standing with the people in Israel with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
00:21:30.260Last Saturday, Israel launched a targeted attack on Iran in retaliation for their massive ballistic missile strike on Israel and their support of Hezbollah terrorists in Iran as well.
00:21:42.060This is why it's so important that you stand with the people in Israel, because day after day, they are under attack now from all sides.
00:21:50.960And the people on the ground are desperate for basic needs and necessities.
00:21:58.840And IFCJ is providing flak jackets, temporary bomb shelters, food and water for those bomb shelters.
00:22:06.300And they are also giving armored vehicles, including armored ambulances, to help those that are in need and those that are wounded in these attacks.
00:22:17.240And that is why it is so important that you stand with the people of Israel right now.
00:22:22.760Standing with Israel and the Jewish people has never meant so much.
00:22:25.820And that's why I'm asking you to stand with them and support them, just like I'm doing, by going to supportifcj.org.
00:23:23.440And Kayleigh McEnany, one of these smart women that worked with Donald Trump, explaining and reminding America just how many brilliant women are actually in the conservative movement.1.00
00:23:33.640Donald Trump, you never see him around strong, intelligent women.0.98
00:30:43.000And yet we've already tabulated his vote.
00:30:45.100That's what the Michigan officials are saying.
00:30:46.640And I'll tell you, I'll bet you a large sum of money, Ben, that the candidate he voted for rhymes with Hamila Karras.
00:30:55.600And yet, magically, that's going to be included in the vote tallies for Michigan, one of the key swing states.
00:31:03.420And that's sadly an outcome I think the Democrats want.
00:31:08.460Well, let's go back to the SAVE Act for a moment.
00:31:12.040And this, I've heard and had more people come up to me, and I'm assuming you have as well, but I'm interested to see where people say, man, I feel like we're going to win this one.
00:31:24.780Unless they cheat, unless something happens where they cheat, you get a story like this, and you see that the person was caught voting illegally.
00:31:35.880Everybody knows it's illegal, and they're like, sorry, it already went through the tabulator.
00:31:38.600We can't take it out now, so it's going to count.
00:31:41.400This is why so many Americans, I think now, have no confidence in our election system.
00:31:47.680And again, this goes back to what you guys try to do in Congress with the SAVE Act.
00:31:53.480Remind people of how simple that would have been for us to be able to protect the votes of American citizens.
00:32:02.420It was a simple requirement that you have to demonstrate American citizenship to register to vote.
00:32:07.860And that's basic common sense, which is why the Democrats as a party are against it.
00:32:12.640If they don't want non-citizens to vote, why are they opposed to demonstrating you're a citizen before you register to vote?
00:32:22.160The answer is obvious, but look, here's the good news.
00:32:25.480The good news is historically voter fraud has only mattered at the margins.
00:32:29.460It's only mattered when it was close, which means in states across this country, particularly swing states, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,
00:32:37.740we got to win by a big enough margin, they can't steal it.
00:32:40.540Will you see unscrupulous Democrats trying to steal votes?
00:32:57.260The real answer now is that we need to turn voters out in every state in the country and win by such a big margin that nobody can steal the result.
00:33:06.220As Trump puts it, make it too big to rig.
00:33:09.080That's got to be, at this point, that has got to be the number one approach.
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00:35:23.680Senator, final question for you, and this is an election question.
00:35:28.560There is massive early voting numbers that are coming in around the country.
00:35:35.080There are two thoughts on this, and we see that women in swing states are outpacing men by about 10% when it comes to the votes that are coming in early voting.
00:35:50.160It means that women are showing up, and they're voting on the issue of abortion, which means they're going to vote for Kamala Harris and other Democrats.
00:35:56.500And then there's others that say, hold on a second, not so fast.
00:36:00.240Conservatives are voting earlier now, and a lot of single mothers may be voting early, and a lot of mothers are struggling with the economy.
00:36:09.200Because I don't think it's a bunch of people showing up on the abortion issue.
00:36:14.360Well, look, I think it probably varies state by state.
00:36:17.900And so I don't know the data in the swing states.
00:36:22.700I will say right now there is a real and meaningful gender gap in terms of the votes.0.88
00:36:28.320That if you look at it, Republicans right now are winning married men, Republicans are winning single men, and Republicans are winning married women.
00:36:37.900However, Republicans are badly losing single women.
00:36:45.580So one of the questions that I would have, and this is where it's hard to generalize from data without knowing specifics,
00:36:52.340but I would be very interested in the states where you're seeing a significantly larger number of women than men showing up early.0.97
00:36:58.840I would be very interested in the breakdown between married women and single women because there's a significant difference in their voting pattern.0.95
00:37:06.940I can tell you also, at least in the state of Texas where early voting is happening, we're not seeing a significant differential between women and men.
00:37:15.040We're seeing about equal numbers of both voting in the state of Texas.
00:37:19.900I haven't studied the numbers there, but it is difficult to generalize.
00:37:24.720Look, it's possible if you get a bunch of single women who are voting Democrats showing up in large numbers, that is a good data point for Kamala Harris.1.00
00:37:33.560I don't know if that's the case or not.
00:37:35.340It may be that you have a bunch of conservative women.1.00
00:37:37.800You have a bunch of married women who are coming out to vote for Donald Trump.0.98
00:37:40.900You are right that Republicans are voting early in significantly greater frequency than they did previously.
00:37:48.060And I think one of the big reasons for that is that Trump asked them to.
00:37:51.880And the Republican Party is making a very concerted effort to encourage people to vote early.
00:37:56.520So that one data point on its own, it's hard to generalize about.
00:38:01.100You really need to drill down more deeply into the data.
00:38:25.560If you missed anything that happened this week, we'll have the Week in Review on Saturday as well.
00:38:29.940And make sure you hit that subscribe, auto-download button, and share this podcast on X, on Facebook, on Instagram, wherever you are on social media.
00:38:39.940And The Center and I will see you with our final show before Election Day on Monday.