00:03:38.380It may be that the polling numbers are understating where Brown is.
00:03:42.220But 8.8% is, there's some distance to be closed on the average polling there.
00:03:49.020All right, let me ask you this real quick before you move forward, because it's a question I know everybody's asking in their head.
00:03:53.300All right, you just mentioned this state, and then you mentioned Arizona earlier, where Trump is leading, but Carly Lake is not there.
00:03:59.440How often do you see a presidential election cycle, historically, where the Republican wins in the state, but the person next down the ballot in the Senate race loses,
00:04:14.200where people walk in and go, yes for Trump and no for the Senate candidate.
00:04:19.260Yeah, that happens with some regularity, and Trump in most states is going to get more votes than the down-ballot Republicans.
00:04:28.680For one thing, there are people that come in that just vote president and leave.
00:04:32.760And then there are also, there will be some voters in every one of these states who votes for Trump at the top of the ticket, and then for a Democrat Senate candidate.
00:04:42.240I wish they didn't. It is frustrating as all get-out, but there exists.
00:04:48.380Because there's a weird way you're, like, voting against your own interests of what you're saying you want for the country with the president.
00:04:53.020Well, he needs the votes in the House and Senate to get that agenda done.
00:04:56.360Yeah, and there tend to be more crossover voters who do Trump in a Democrat Senate candidate than there are crossover voters who vote Kamala Harris in a Republican Senate candidate.
00:05:05.740It just, at the end of the day, it has tended to be a one-way ratchet.
00:05:13.660Ohio is the next closest after Montana, and the two candidates are Sherrod Brown, the Democrat who's the incumbent, Bernie Moreno, the Republican.
00:05:23.600The RealClearPolitics average is the Democrat up by 3.6%.
00:05:27.840So the last three polls were plus two, plus five, plus four.
00:05:35.640Trump is extremely likely to win Ohio.
00:05:37.660He could win Ohio by double digits, but right now, Brown is polling substantially ahead of where Kamala Harris is in Ohio.
00:05:46.240And so Ohio is a state where there are a number of voters right now who say they're voting for Donald Trump and yet a Democrat senator who will fight to undermine everything Trump does every single day in the Senate, which is why I wish voters wouldn't do that.
00:06:00.000I don't think that makes sense, and I think it ends up working against yourself, but nonetheless, there are some voters that do.
00:06:21.380Dave McCormick, the Republican, a very good friend of mine who I've endorsed and campaigned with multiple times across Pennsylvania.
00:06:28.480The RealClearPolitics average is 4.9%.
00:06:32.940And so starting from, so back in August, there was a tie, then Casey plus 1, then Casey plus 7, then Casey plus 8, then Casey plus 4, then Casey plus 9, then Casey plus 5, then Casey plus 5, then Casey plus 9.
00:06:49.300And then the Washington Post, the most recent poll, showed it as a tie.
00:06:53.660So look, there's some variability on that.
00:06:57.080So the last two polls were Casey plus 9 and a tie.
00:07:01.200I mean, that's a big delta between those two.
00:07:42.140Larry Hogan, the former governor there, is a Republican, very popular governor, running against a Democrat, also Brooks.
00:07:49.440The RealClearPolitics average is 6.8%.
00:07:52.880But again, there's been a lot of variability on this.
00:07:56.560So back in August, there was a poll that was a tie, and then Democrat plus 5, Democrat plus 7, and then there was one just recently, Democrat plus 15.
00:08:07.740So Maryland is a race that is winnable, but to do that, Hogan is going to have to outperform Trump by 20 points or more.
00:08:25.180And he's the only Republican who has a prayer to win in Maryland, but Maryland is not an easy state for a Republican to win.
00:08:34.880And the final battleground is Wisconsin.
00:08:38.640Wisconsin is Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who's the incumbent.
00:08:42.960Eric Hovde is the Republican running against her.
00:08:46.280The RealClearPolitics average is Democrat 4.6%.
00:08:51.040So again, close, winnable, but right now the Democrats have the advantage.
00:08:55.720Although it's interesting, if you look at the polls going back to August, it was Democrat plus 6, Democrat plus 5, Democrat plus 8.
00:09:04.380But then the last four polls have been Democrat plus 3, Democrat plus 3, Democrat plus 4, Democrat plus 3.
00:09:12.000So the race has tightened in the last couple of weeks, and it's about a three and a half point differential in the last four polls, which means Wisconsin is very winnable.
00:09:23.760And look, every one of these states that I mentioned is winnable by the Republicans.
00:09:27.520But for us to win, the numbers need to shift four or five points, and to do that, we've got to focus on the issues, and the issues are the same issues as the presidential.
00:09:40.260The economy, inflation, illegal immigration, and crime, and if we focus on those, I think we've got a real shot at winning every one of those.
00:09:48.760Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:09:55.220Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:10:02.260And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:10:29.740I want to move on also to something else that you mentioned earlier, and it's happened today.
00:10:35.200Set the stage for everybody in Congress and explain exactly what was going on, and it dealt with presidential immunity.
00:10:43.560Well, Senate Democrats for two years have been engaged in a relentless assault on the Supreme Court and trying to undermine the Supreme Court.
00:10:53.580And so today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Supreme Court's decision on presidential immunity.
00:10:59.460And the whole purpose of the hearing was to say that the Supreme Court's decision is ridiculous, that it's out of bounds, that it basically said Trump is a king, that he's unaccountable, that it's some bizarre decision.
00:11:12.980And they're trying both to attack Trump and to delegitimize the Supreme Court.
00:11:19.900And so among the witnesses testifying was Michael Mukasey, who was the former attorney general of the United States under George W. Bush, and he was a federal judge for nearly 20 years before that, and he was one of the witnesses.
00:11:33.560And so I took the opportunity to actually question the former attorney general and to lay out the utterly false narrative the Democrats were putting forward.
00:11:45.920Give a listen to my questioning of Attorney General Mukasey.
00:12:27.080Now, many presidents of both parties have engaged in controversial actions, and yet none of them have been indicted.
00:12:36.660Let me ask you, General Mukasey, if a private citizen were to erect an internment camp and to forcibly kidnap American citizens,
00:12:47.240to single them out because of race, and to imprison them based on their race, would that private citizen be subject to criminal prosecution?
00:13:49.920Was President Barack Obama criminally prosecuted when he killed United States citizens using drones without notice and without due process?
00:14:00.280He was not, although as far as due process is concerned, I believe the comment of my successor to that question was that Anwar al-Awlaki got, quote,
00:14:44.620Now, the distinction between official acts and personal acts is not a terribly shocking distinction.
00:14:51.380Under the decision of Trump versus United States, if any president walks onto the sidewalk and just shoots a citizen, is that president liable to be prosecuted?
00:15:25.460So, that distinction, again, is not a shocking distinction.
00:15:32.620The founding fathers vested the executive power in a single president of the United States.
00:15:39.740What we have seen in the last two years is we have seen Democrats deliberately weaponizing the Department of Justice and our legal system to target their political opposition.
00:15:54.080It is not an accident that every indictment against President Trump was brought by a Democrat and was brought after he announced his campaign for president of the United States.
00:16:07.220Understand, the target of those indictments was not ultimately President Trump.
00:16:13.460It was prosecutors who were terrified that the voters would choose to re-elect President Trump.
00:16:20.180One of the great things about the United States is we're not a banana republic.
00:16:24.220Since 2000, the nation of Pakistan has had six former prime ministers prosecuted and convicted.
00:16:31.220Brazil has had three former presidents arrested and imprisoned.
00:16:34.440Last year, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega arrested, charged, and imprisoned 40 political opponents.
00:16:42.360General Mukasey, you were Attorney General of the United States.
00:16:44.840Is it the proper role of the Department of Justice to prosecute and target the political opponents of whoever happens to be president of the United States?
00:22:25.240I didn't list massively confiscatory death taxes.
00:22:30.080I didn't list wealth taxes that tax you on unrealized capital gains.
00:22:38.040I didn't list banning fracking and shutting down oil and gas exploration in the United States.
00:22:44.240I didn't list nationalization of mineral rights.
00:22:48.660Look, to be honest, the economic stuff, the socialism, that follows like night follows day.
00:22:55.000Because the Democrats' top priority, the four things I listed, are all about seizing control and making it permanent.
00:23:02.420Making it impossible that Democrats ever lose.
00:23:07.140And, you know, there's something deeply Freudian about how Democrats behave.
00:23:11.980Because they talk incessantly about saving democracy.
00:23:15.780And yet, today's Democrats are profoundly anti-democratic.
00:23:20.120Their number one priority is making it so the voters can never, ever, ever, ever, ever vote them out of power.
00:23:26.460And once they're in power, look, on the economic stuff, the only constraints are just how crazy are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren willing to go.
00:23:37.360But it is, look at countries like Venezuela.
00:23:40.960Once you get one party locked in power with no ability to constrain them, the country goes downhill incredibly quickly.
00:23:51.780And I think terrible policies, look, policies, I didn't mention gun confiscation, going after the Second Amendment, going after religious liberty, going after the First Amendment.
00:27:52.140Senator, let me ask two questions to wrap this up.
00:27:57.060There may be people that say, look, if there is a, let's say they get it and they get rid of the filibuster,
00:28:03.820it'll come back in a couple years, maybe there's like a little bit of an overreaction here.
00:28:09.440I go back in history, and I'm a student of history, you are, and you love history as well.
00:28:14.700When consequential things usually happen within our government, a great example is Obamacare.
00:28:20.380Once it's done, it is extremely hard to undo it.
00:28:23.940And so if people think, well, maybe they do it and we'll get it back.
00:28:26.700Maybe they throw four more people on the Supreme Court, but we could get it back to nine if we really wanted to.
00:28:30.940How impossible would it be to undo some of the things you talked about if it actually went into effect because the Democrats win in November?
00:28:40.400Well, understand that the four things I listed are all structural.
00:28:44.880So once they happen, you can't undo them.
00:28:48.320If you have 20 million illegal immigrants voting, Democrats win.
00:28:52.540Texas isn't the only state that turns blue.
00:29:00.460I mean, you have suddenly swing states that are not swing states anymore.
00:29:05.320This is why the Democrats, they're just focused on power.
00:29:09.560You look at, if it's right, D.C. will elect Democrats for all eternity if it becomes a state.
00:29:15.520Puerto Rico, I don't think it's 100% correct that Puerto Rico would only elect Democrats.
00:29:21.100We have seen Republicans elected in Puerto Rico, although partisan politics doesn't line up in Puerto Rico exactly like it does in the mainland.
00:29:28.520But if the Democrats are correct that that's four new Democrats in the Senate, it is very difficult to see a map that ever again elects a Republican majority in the Senate.
00:29:39.760So there will never be an opportunity to reverse it.
00:29:44.080And by the way, you can look to what happened with the Supreme Court.
00:29:48.860So if you look at Supreme Court nominations, Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option, the same method for ending the filibuster for legislation.
00:30:01.680Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option to end the filibuster for judicial nominations.
00:30:07.380And he did so, when he did so, I remember I was on the Senate floor, and he did exactly what I said.
00:30:16.340He appealed the ruling of the chair, and all the Democrats voted with him, and they overturned it.
00:30:21.320And so to confirm a judge, you only need now 50 votes plus the vice president.
00:30:28.060And I remember being on the Senate floor, I turned to Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, and all the Democrats were voting like lemmings to end the filibuster.
00:30:38.240And I told her then, I said, you realize the consequence of this.
00:30:43.220We are going to get more justices like Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
00:30:52.160And in fact, if you want to know why Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch were confirmed, it is because the Democrats ended the filibuster for judicial nominations.
00:31:03.980If they hadn't, there is no chance on earth Kavanaugh or Amy Coney Barrett gets confirmed because it would have taken 60 votes.
00:31:11.120And there weren't going to be 60 votes for any nominee that had a proven record of being conservative.
00:31:16.620So it changed markedly the kinds of judges that Trump could nominate.
00:31:24.560Once the change is made procedurally, it never, ever, ever goes back.
00:31:30.220Final question for you, and that is, you look at what you just said in this show, and it changes my perspective.
00:31:40.480And I do this with you three days a week and talk politics every day because the easy issue, right, is the economy stupid.
00:31:49.700And that's the number one issue most voters say.
00:32:23.240How many Texans do you know that realize that we could be three months away from Texas becoming California, becoming a bright blue state?
00:32:34.180By the way, if that happens, I'll make a crazy prediction that I hope and pray never comes true.
00:32:39.220If the Democrats end the filibuster, if they grant voting rights to every illegal alien in America, every illegal alien in Texas, Beto O'Rourke would be the next governor of the state of Texas.
00:32:52.300I think that is actually quite likely.
00:32:54.620As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:32:59.460Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day if you're not listening to Verdict, or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:33:06.500I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:33:10.220And we will see you back here on Monday morning.