Verdict with Ted Cruz - Hegseth Shines at Hearing, a Shocking Child Rape Scandal in the UK & Biden Excuses Cuban Sponsored Terrorism

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.400 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:09.380 Senator Fireworks on Capitol Hill.

00:00:12.020 We're going to start with that because it was a very big day for Pete Hegseth.

00:00:17.500 Democrats tried to derail him. It did not work.

00:00:21.620 Well, the circus is in town.

00:00:23.080 Democrats were putting on a show today at the hearing for Pete Hegseth.

00:00:27.080 The good news is he will be confirmed.

00:00:28.880 We're going to break it down exactly what happened at his confirmation hearing yesterday.

00:00:33.340 And this is the beginning of the confirmation hearings for the Trump cabinet.

00:00:36.280 Tomorrow, we'll have confirmation hearings.

00:00:38.520 I'll participate in three.

00:00:39.720 I'll participate in the confirmation hearing for Pam Bondi as attorney general,

00:00:43.820 the confirmation hearing for Marco Rubio as secretary of state,

00:00:46.820 and I'll be chairing the confirmation hearing for Sean Duffy as secretary of transportation.

00:00:50.620 We'll tell you what to expect on that.

00:00:52.940 And then we're going to talk about one of the most shocking scandals that you've never heard of.

00:00:57.880 And it is the child rape gang scandal in the United Kingdom.

00:01:04.840 Thousands upon thousands of children were raped over decades, systematically, repeatedly.

00:01:13.980 And the British government, British prosecutors turned the other way because of political correctness and multiculturalism.

00:01:22.880 The shocks that the facts are shocking.

00:01:25.480 And the six o'clock news won't cover it.

00:01:29.220 That's why you listen to verdict to discover the real facts that you will not hear in the corporate media.

00:01:36.500 And finally, Joe Biden on his way out decided to give a gift to the communists in Cuba.

00:01:42.600 He took them off the list of state sponsors of terrorism. 0.86

00:01:45.440 It turns out if you're a leftist, you can try to kill anyone you want and the Democrats will love you.

00:01:50.420 All of that on today's verdict. 0.85

00:01:52.140 Yeah, the story on that one is truly shocking.

00:01:55.540 We'll explain why it is, yes, a big deal.

00:01:57.840 But you know what?

00:01:58.820 Donald Trump's coming.

00:01:59.780 On January the 27th, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day will be here.

00:02:05.720 And we will remember the great evil of the Holocaust when millions of Jews were slaughtered during the Nazis' reign of terror.

00:02:13.180 Today, unfortunately, the rise in global anti-Semitism and the constant attacks on Israel show us that it's more important than ever to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust and to ensure that it never happens again.

00:02:27.120 That is why I'm proud to partner with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

00:02:32.160 Because of what they do, they provide food, shelter, and safety to Jews in Israel and around the world, including those remaining Holocaust survivors.

00:02:42.420 Your donation today will help provide food, water, medicine, and other basic necessities to the Jewish communities in need.

00:02:52.100 And through your gift, not only will you be helping, but you are going to be standing with the Jewish people and against the growing anti-Semitism and hatred that we're witnessing around the world.

00:03:02.600 So if you want to stand with the people in Israel, give a gift to show your support by visiting supportifcj.org.

00:03:11.300 That's one word, supportifcj.org.

00:03:15.840 You can also call 888-488-IFCJ.

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00:03:31.660 All right, so let's start with Democrats' game plan, Senator.

00:03:36.040 It was to do everything they could to smear Pete.

00:03:38.480 It was to try to say he's unfit for office.

00:03:41.320 It was to try to say, well, he's not what we traditionally have in this role in the past, and we must keep the status quo.

00:03:49.440 And then it went to personal attacks on him as well.

00:03:52.540 None of it stuck.

00:03:54.660 Yeah, let's start with the punchline.

00:03:57.520 Pete Hegseth will be confirmed.

00:04:00.440 He is going to be confirmed as the Secretary of Defense.

00:04:03.680 I believe he will have at least 50 votes in the U.S. Senate, and today's hearing is a big part of the reason why.

00:04:10.020 Democrats tried to come after him, and frankly, in the course of the hearing, I don't think they laid a glove on him very effectively.

00:04:16.280 Now, listen, you and I had talked about this before.

00:04:18.480 We had predicted it was going to be a political circus, and there were clowns, there were dancing bears, there were ballerinas and trapeze artists.

00:04:29.660 They went after him.

00:04:31.480 But it actually speaks volumes.

00:04:33.760 What did they choose to go after him on?

00:04:35.500 They chose to go after him on political smears or personal smears to drag him through the gutter, and based on a whole series of allegations that the press has covered breathlessly over and over and over again, almost all of which are anonymous allegations.

00:04:52.000 So you don't have anyone coming forward being willing to say, I was there.

00:04:56.880 This is what happened.

00:04:57.700 They're all anonymous, given to left-wing papers. 0.93

00:04:59.680 And there's no evidence to back any of them up, and yet the Democrats, in a massive display of hypocrisy, just went after, and they were mean, they were nasty, they were personal.

00:05:18.560 You know, look, you look at Pete Hegseth's background.

00:05:22.600 First of all, he went to Princeton and Harvard, which I confess I'm kind of partial to that particular combination.

00:05:28.540 I wonder why.

00:05:29.680 By the way, I learned this today reading through his bio.

00:05:33.260 Do you know what he did at Princeton?

00:05:34.820 I do not.

00:05:35.920 He played on the basketball team.

00:05:37.980 Well, then the next question is, why have you guys not played?

00:05:40.960 I found that out today.

00:05:43.080 I'm going to invite...

00:05:43.700 I know, but that's like 12 hours ago.

00:05:45.580 Usually as fast as you are to get a game together in D.C., this would probably be done.

00:05:50.080 So I played hoops this afternoon.

00:05:52.300 We play old guys against young guys.

00:05:54.480 Pete is 44.

00:05:55.580 He's not my age, but he still qualifies as an old guy.

00:05:58.800 So I was already laughing, going, all right, I'm recruiting me a ringer. 0.99

00:06:02.400 He not only played on the Princeton basketball team, he played in March Madness.

00:06:06.180 He played in the tournament.

00:06:08.280 I had no idea.

00:06:09.440 That is a very cool piece of info there.

00:06:12.340 I learned it from Wikipedia today.

00:06:14.420 So I have not talked to him about it today because I learned it like three hours ago.

00:06:17.340 And I was like, wow, that's really cool.

00:06:19.500 But Princeton and Harvard, and then he served active duty military, deployed, deployed in combat, commanded troops in combat,

00:06:28.060 was awarded the bronze star, is a decorated combat veteran.

00:06:35.620 And then when he left active duty, he led two veterans organizations advocating on behalf of veterans, advocating on behalf of active duty troops.

00:06:47.480 Pete's someone I've known a long time.

00:06:49.400 He is a strong leader.

00:06:52.500 He is a principled leader.

00:06:54.980 And what was really striking about the hearing, all of the Democrats, they hate him like they hate Donald Trump.

00:07:04.080 And every one of the Democrats on the committee is going to vote against him.

00:07:08.040 But you could see the vitriol and hatred, the fact that they had to go to personal smears.

00:07:15.940 What I think spoke volumes is they didn't talk at all about the job that he is going to do at the Department of Defense.

00:07:24.980 And you and I talked about this on the podcast the day after Trump announced Pete Hegseth.

00:07:30.520 And we predicted on this pod, said they're going to come after him.

00:07:34.260 They're going to go crazy.

00:07:35.260 It's going to be a political circus.

00:07:38.040 But my take on him the day it was announced is the same as my take on him now, which is Pete Hegseth will be a change agent, that he was nominated and he's going to be confirmed to go to the Department of Defense and to bring DOD back to its core mission, to bring it back to supporting the warfighter, to bring it back to being ready and prepared to defeat our enemies and to kill our enemies.

00:08:07.740 And we have seen the Department of Defense and we have seen the Department of Defense under Barack Obama initially and even more so under Joe Biden get mired into the games of political correctness and woke ideology.

00:08:19.960 And they're more interested in transgender soldiers than they are actually in defeating our enemies. 0.99

00:08:27.920 And by the way, one of the consequences of it, the military is suffering a recruitment crisis because it turns out young men and women are not eager to be part of some left wing political crusade.

00:08:45.380 And they are eager to be heroes defending America.

00:08:49.440 And a prediction that I've made, I believe we will see recruiting and enlistment numbers rise significantly when Pete Hegseth is confirmed as Secretary of Defense because young men and women, many of them in the South, you get a lot of people who enlist in the military from the South, are going to say, that's what I want to be a part of.

00:09:08.460 I want to focus on defending our nation.

00:09:11.220 I thought Pete Hegseth did a terrific job today.

00:09:13.440 One of the things that he said that I thought was also really interesting is he talked about how we hold the men and women that are in combat to insanely high standards.

00:09:23.220 But he said we have too many people that are in the bloated upper echelons of the bureaucracy of the Pentagon that get, as he described it, these bigger roles even after big failures.

00:09:38.240 And he said if you lose a war, you shouldn't be able to get a better job after you lose a war.

00:09:43.700 And he said we have way too many people that are on the payroll and general roles, for example, when we don't need as many.

00:09:51.960 And when we won World War II, he compared it to how many we have today. 0.99

00:09:54.980 It is significant to see the ideas you said about being a change in it where he's like, look, we need to put the fighters first, the soldiers first, and not leadership first all the time.

00:10:05.640 Well, and he also talked a great deal about modernizing the military, developing weapon systems to fight tomorrow's war, not yesterday's war.

00:10:14.820 And in particular, that's going to involve all sorts of technology like drones and artificial intelligence and hypersonics and modernizing the military.

00:10:25.620 Look, the job he's been nominated to is an insanely difficult job.

00:10:29.280 It is there are three million people in DOD.

00:10:33.240 It's $900 billion.

00:10:35.360 Turning that battleship is not easy.

00:10:40.240 And I think Pete is up to the task.

00:10:43.380 It's not going to be an easy thing.

00:10:44.840 You know, I want to focus on to give you an example of the sorts of things the Democrats did not ask about and were not concerned about.

00:10:53.140 I want to start by his answer concerning Israel and Hamas.

00:11:00.160 And this is when Tom Cotton was questioning him.

00:11:03.040 And at the beginning of Pete Hegseth's testimony, you had a couple of protesters that stood up and screamed and disrupted.

00:11:10.140 And so Cotton gave him a chance to respond to the protesters.

00:11:14.200 Give a listen to Cotton's question and Hegseth's answer.

00:11:16.820 Big audience here.

00:11:18.420 Many of them seem to be patriotic supporters of you, Mr. Hegseth.

00:11:22.240 Some of them seem to be liberal critics of you.

00:11:24.700 I would note that it's only the liberal critics that have disrupted this hearing.

00:11:29.360 As was my custom during the Biden administration, I want to give you a chance to respond to what they said about you.

00:11:35.660 I think the first one accused you of being a Christian Zionist.

00:11:40.260 I'm not really sure why that is a bad thing.

00:11:42.920 I'm a Christian.

00:11:43.580 I'm a Zionist.

00:11:44.260 Because Zionism is that the Jewish people deserve a homeland in the ancient holy land where they've lived since the dawn of history.

00:11:53.580 Do you consider yourself a Christian Zionist?

00:11:55.720 Senator, I support.

00:11:57.080 I am a Christian.

00:11:58.060 And I robustly support the state of Israel and its existential defense.

00:12:02.320 And the way America comes alongside them is their great ally.

00:12:05.320 Thank you.

00:12:05.680 Because another one, another protester, and I think this one was a member of Code Pink, which, by the way, is a Chinese communist front group these days, said that you support Israel's war in Gaza.

00:12:17.320 I support Israel's existential war in Gaza. 0.99

00:12:20.200 I assume, like me and President Trump, you support that war as well, don't you? 0.73

00:12:24.320 Senator, I do. 0.99

00:12:25.080 I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas. 0.98

00:12:30.460 And I love that aspect of his answer. 0.99

00:12:34.420 Look, there is a clarity to it. 0.99

00:12:36.720 I support Israel destroying and killing every last member of Hamas. 1.00

00:12:43.940 That is exactly right. 0.94

00:12:45.520 And yet you cannot imagine Joe Biden or anyone in the Biden administration uttering those words.

00:12:51.340 Why?

00:12:51.820 Because they don't support that.

00:12:53.120 And in fact, at every stage on and after October 7th, the Biden administration has been urging Israel, stop killing the terrorists, stop killing the terrorists.

00:13:04.540 And there's a reason the Democrats didn't want to talk about the job he was nominated to and instead wanted to go to personal spheres.

00:13:14.260 And it is that clarity.

00:13:15.900 I also want to play another clip where he was talking about he was talking about the service members who were kicked out because of the covid vaccine.

00:13:27.940 Yeah, this was this was a big flashpoint and a big question you and I have talked about for a long time, which is should the people that were kicked out get their jobs back?

00:13:36.340 Should they get back pay?

00:13:37.360 Well, he answered that and give a listen to his answer.

00:13:40.620 We haven't even talked about covid and the tens of thousands of service members who are kicked out because of an experimental vaccine in President Trump's Defense Department.

00:13:50.280 They will be apologized to.

00:13:51.720 They will be reinstated, reinstituted with pay and rank.

00:13:55.500 Senator, this goes back to what you said a minute ago about you think that recruitment is going to go up.

00:14:00.040 Yep. Part of that recruitment is going to be, I think, a lot of men and women that were kicked out that are going to want to come back and serve under this type of leadership as well.

00:14:09.980 Yeah, look, that is absolutely right.

00:14:11.280 And look, at a time that we've got huge recruitment challenges, what did Joe Biden and the Democrats do?

00:14:15.460 They threw out tens of thousands of servicemen and women because they declined to get the covid vaccine. 0.99

00:14:21.180 It was asinine. 0.97

00:14:22.260 It was irrational. 0.99

00:14:23.180 It was arbitrary.

00:14:23.920 And I believe the reason they did so is precisely because they recognized that many of them were conservatives and it was an excuse to purge conservatives.

00:14:32.620 By the way, they did the same thing at the Department of Justice, at the FBI, at the Border Patrol.

00:14:38.060 And this is an issue, as you know, that I've been leading the fight on in the Senate for the past several years.

00:14:43.360 I led the fight successfully to end the vaccine mandate in the military.

00:14:48.400 So it's no longer a current mandate, but I've introduced legislation, the Americans Act, that would mandate that those who were thrown out of the military be allowed back in, reinstated with back pay and rank.

00:15:00.040 And the Democrats have systematically blocked it.

00:15:03.700 Pete Hegseth just promised to do that.

00:15:05.860 That is the right thing to do.

00:15:07.400 I'll tell you, I knew he was going to say that because when I sat down and met with him, I asked him that very directly.

00:15:12.520 And he made that commitment to me in our meeting, and I'm glad he now made it publicly at his confirmation hearing.

00:15:18.720 And that's the sort of clarity that, frankly, the Democrats don't want at the Department of Defense.

00:15:25.160 But that's also why he's going to be confirmed.

00:15:28.080 And that's a very good thing.

00:15:29.420 Let's finally talk about accountability.

00:15:31.500 One other thing he said that I think should make headlines.

00:15:34.600 I don't think the media is going to cover it, but it should.

00:15:37.040 Was his thoughts on the withdrawal in Afghanistan.

00:15:39.540 Here's what he said.

00:15:40.340 There's been no accountability for the disaster of the withdrawal in Afghanistan.

00:15:45.540 And that's precisely why we're here today.

00:15:47.800 Excuse me.

00:15:48.300 Is that leadership has been unwilling to take accountability.

00:15:51.620 It's the time to restore that to our most senior ranks.

00:15:54.780 I love how they were trying to cut him off when he was saying that.

00:15:57.180 Democrats did not want that out there.

00:15:59.440 Yeah, that was Jack Reed, who's the ranking member of the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

00:16:03.340 He's interrupting, excuse me, no, no, don't get into that.

00:16:06.280 And it is shocking.

00:16:08.340 The disaster of Afghanistan was the first major foreign policy screw up of the Biden administration.

00:16:14.880 And it foreshadowed all the other disasters because it told our enemies this commander in chief was weak and ineffective and it was embarrassing.

00:16:23.900 And I'll tell you, the servicemen and women I've talked to who fought in Afghanistan, they're angry.

00:16:28.800 They're angry at the disgrace and debacle of that withdrawal.

00:16:33.140 And nobody lost their job.

00:16:35.000 Not a secretary of defense didn't lose his job.

00:16:37.420 The chairman of the Joint Chiefs didn't lose his job.

00:16:40.120 To the best of my knowledge, no general lost his job.

00:16:43.280 No civilian lost his job.

00:16:44.800 Nobody did because in the Biden administration, no one gets fired ever and there are no consequences.

00:16:50.840 And that needs to be assessed.

00:16:55.500 What were the mistakes that led to one of the most humiliating and disastrous military retreats in U.S. military history that at least to date there's been zero accountability for?

00:17:09.900 So let's move to what people are going to see Wednesday, and that's going to be these three confirmation hearings that you're involved in.

00:17:19.060 Bondi, Duffy and Rubio, let's start with with Pam Bondi first. 1.00

00:17:23.420 What can people expect and what should they be looking for?

00:17:26.400 So it'll be a circus to band.

00:17:28.180 Bondi will be one of the hotter ones.

00:17:30.400 It won't be quite the circus that that Hegseth was, but it's going to be a show.

00:17:35.000 We're going to have two days of hearings for Pam Bondi. 1.00

00:17:37.620 Look, I don't think they're really going to go after her.

00:17:41.900 They don't have a lot of shots at her personally. 1.00

00:17:44.180 She's clearly qualified.

00:17:46.020 She's a veteran prosecutor.

00:17:48.460 She was the elected attorney general of Florida.

00:17:53.980 She's got a lot of experience.

00:17:55.620 So I don't think they're really going to go after her.

00:17:57.880 But what they are going to do is go after Trump.

00:17:59.580 They hate Trump.

00:18:00.980 And so their attack for the next two days is going to be, you're Trump's lackey.

00:18:05.660 And their attack is also going to be, you're going to weaponize the Department of Justice.

00:18:11.160 Now, I'm confident that she's going to respond and say, no, we're not.

00:18:14.640 We're going to follow the law and restore integrity to DOJ.

00:18:17.880 But I expect the attacks to be very much not attacking her directly, but using her to attack Trump.

00:18:28.080 And I think she'll respond very effectively.

00:18:30.580 The other two, the Rubio hearing is going to be a love fest.

00:18:34.380 Marco is going to be confirmed easily.

00:18:36.540 It would not surprise me if Marco gets 95 votes or more.

00:18:42.600 I think all the Republicans are going to vote for him.

00:18:45.280 And I think most, if not all, the Democrats are going to vote for him.

00:18:47.980 And so I think it will be...

00:18:50.020 And that's really abnormal in the political times we're in now.

00:18:52.260 It used to not be this way.

00:18:54.120 Back in the day, you could actually get a lot of people through with a significant number of votes.

00:18:58.160 So this is going to be maybe one of the abnormal ones that Trump puts up, right?

00:19:02.780 Yeah.

00:19:03.160 Look, secretaries of state, that sometimes happens.

00:19:05.700 One of the very first votes I ever cast was I was elected in 2012.

00:19:09.800 2013 was the beginning of the second Obama term.

00:19:14.640 And he nominated John Kerry to be secretary of state.

00:19:18.120 John was obviously a former senator and was known by everyone there.

00:19:22.500 And Kerry was confirmed 97 to 3.

00:19:25.000 And I was one of the three.

00:19:26.860 And I got to tell you, when I cast my vote, I was a brand new baby freshman still down in the little basement office that they stick brand new senators in.

00:19:37.420 And when I cast the vote, there was an audible gasp in the well of the Senate because freshmen weren't supposed to do such a thing.

00:19:46.020 And it was actually at the time people, it was regarded as like courageous, which I thought was bizarre.

00:19:51.180 I'm like, John Kerry has been wrong on every foreign policy issue every day of his life systematically.

00:19:58.000 What a train wreck of a nomination.

00:20:00.300 Now, he proved to be a train wreck of a secretary of state.

00:20:03.400 And yet, 97 of my colleagues happily voted for him.

00:20:06.880 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

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00:20:13.840 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

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00:20:38.440 Well, let's go backwards just for a second.

00:20:41.520 What do these confirmation hearings look like beforehand?

00:20:45.260 How does the decision be made if it's one day or two day?

00:20:50.100 Because you mentioned Bonnie's over two days.

00:20:52.000 And then let's go and explain to people how PREP works for the candidate, the nominee for this.

00:20:58.620 Because I've actually gotten to be a part of that before in the PREP.

00:21:03.200 And it's very interesting to see how you get ready for what you're about to face.

00:21:07.600 So, it varies committee by committee in that they typically follow precedent.

00:21:11.880 So, for example, at the beginning of the Hegseth hearing, there was a back-and-forth skirmish

00:21:16.300 where the Democrats wanted multiple rounds of questioning.

00:21:20.120 And Roger Wicker, who's the Republican chairman, said, no, we're going to follow the same precedent

00:21:25.220 we followed for Lloyd Austin, Biden's secretary of defense, which is one round of questioning,

00:21:31.400 seven-minute questions for each person.

00:21:33.200 And that's what the Senate Armed Services Committee had done.

00:21:36.080 It's also what they did for Jim Mattis, who was Trump's first secretary of defense.

00:21:40.800 And so that's how that committee decided it.

00:21:44.080 The attorney general and judiciary, it's not unusual for that to be a two-day hearing.

00:21:50.500 I don't know.

00:21:50.800 Some of it is lawyers are long-winded, I guess.

00:21:53.760 But that also has been the tradition of the committee, that it takes considerable time.

00:22:00.460 Each chairman decides when to notice various hearings.

00:22:03.720 So, Sean Duffy, the third one that I'm going to participate in tomorrow, is nominated to be the secretary of transportation.

00:22:09.300 He'll be confirmed, I think he'll be confirmed easily, and I think with bipartisan votes.

00:22:14.740 I also think that will be something of a love fest, because you've got a bunch of senators on the Commerce Committee,

00:22:20.860 which I chair, who are all wanting the secretary of transportation to spend highway funds and transportation funds in their states.

00:22:28.640 And so they're particularly incentivized to be nice to him.

00:22:32.820 And so I think that will be a pretty easy hearing tomorrow.

00:22:35.580 And look, one of the dynamics of being a senator, these are all going on simultaneously.

00:22:39.960 So I will start the day at 930, which is when the Pam Bondi hearing gavels in, and I'll be in my chair at 930.

00:22:47.580 And the reason is, in judiciary, if you're in your chair at gavel, then you reserve your questioning order in order of seniority.

00:22:56.160 And I'm pretty high up the list of seniority in judiciary.

00:22:59.220 So that means if I'm in the chair at gavel, I get to be one of the first Republicans to question her.

00:23:05.220 If you're not in your chair at gavel, if you're anywhere else, and sometimes you can't be, then you basically speak last.

00:23:11.940 And so I'll be in the chair at gavel.

00:23:14.180 But then, right after we gavel in, I'll leave, because at 10, I have to gavel in the confirmation hearing for Sean Duffy, and I'm chairing that one.

00:23:23.900 So I'll spend most of the day, most of the morning at least, chairing the Duffy confirmation hearing.

00:23:31.300 And at some point, I'll leave that hearing.

00:23:33.780 I'll go back to judiciary and question Pam Bondi.

00:23:36.400 At another point, I will leave the hearing and go to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where I'll question Marco Rubio.

00:23:41.640 I will not be at the chair at gavel for that, because it gavels in at 10 also, and I've got to be chairing transportation then.

00:23:49.440 So I'll drop in the Rubio hearing at some point closer to the end when I can get up.

00:23:57.240 And that's part of being a senator.

00:23:58.440 Sometimes you have multiple hearings, and you have to run from one committee room to the other.

00:24:03.220 But all of those will happen tomorrow.

00:24:05.300 And again, all of those, I believe, will get confirmed.

00:24:07.880 And my prediction is every one of the Trump cabinet members will be confirmed.

00:24:11.640 Wait, wait, wait.

00:24:12.280 Say that again. 0.71

00:24:13.180 That's the most important thing.

00:24:15.300 I believe every one of the Trump cabinet members will be confirmed.

00:24:19.940 All of them.

00:24:20.700 That is good news.

00:24:21.860 That is very, very good news.

00:24:23.600 I want to move to another story you mentioned earlier.

00:24:26.280 And this is a story that, on face value, it's something that's in the U.K., and there's some people that say, well, like, this is the U.K., why does this matter to me?

00:24:37.620 And I want to connect it to what has happened in this country because of our open borders and the number of minors that we have released in this country to non-family members through the Biden-Harris program.

00:24:52.400 And when we go back to check on them, they are nowhere to be found.

00:24:57.020 There are tens of thousands of children.

00:25:01.560 Over 300,000.

00:25:02.980 Not tens of thousands.

00:25:04.060 Over 300,000.

00:25:06.580 That's in the United States that the Biden administration has lost, that they do not know where they are, that they came as unaccompanied minors, and they were handed over to adults, and they have no idea where they are.

00:25:18.980 And many of them are no doubt being abused, and the corrupt corporate media could not care less.

00:25:25.340 The Democrats could not care less.

00:25:27.260 I don't know a Democrat senator who's ever asked about the 300,000 children that this administration lost.

00:25:33.620 They don't care about it.

00:25:34.620 But, look, I want to say what's happened in the U.K. and is happening right now is horrifying, and it's a real warning sign here.

00:25:43.320 I want to start by reading from an article in the Free Press, because it sums it up really effectively.

00:25:50.440 It's entitled, The Biggest Peacetime Crime and Cover-Up in British History.

00:25:57.760 The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. 0.87

00:26:10.820 It went on for many years, it is still going on, and there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims.

00:26:19.940 British governments, both conservative and labor, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the 2010s.

00:26:29.380 And it looked like they had succeeded, until Elon Musk read some of the court papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on X over the new year.

00:26:39.320 Britain now stands shamed before the world.

00:26:44.700 The public's suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability.

00:26:53.420 The scandal is already reshaping British politics.

00:26:56.940 It's not just about the heinous nature of the crimes.

00:26:59.500 It's that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up.

00:27:04.880 Social workers were intimidated into silence.

00:27:09.440 Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities.

00:27:18.260 Senior police and home office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called, quote,

00:27:24.600 community relations, local councillors and members of parliament, rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children.

00:27:36.180 Charities, NGOs, and labor MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia.

00:27:43.580 The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes.

00:27:50.300 Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain's media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and its self-serving priorities.

00:28:00.360 They did this to defend the failed model of multiculturalism and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilation.

00:28:12.380 They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic.

00:28:18.540 They did this because Britain's traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness.

00:28:27.560 All of which is why no one knows precisely how many thousands of young girls were raped in how many towns across Britain since the 1970s.

00:28:39.260 What we do know is that the epicenter was in the post-industrial mill towns of England's North and Midlands,

00:28:46.960 where immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh settled in the 1960s.

00:28:52.180 White locals say the grooming and rapes began soon after.

00:28:56.620 In Rotterdam, the run-down Yorkshire city where the scandal first broke,

00:29:01.500 local police and counselors were notified about systematic grooming and sex abuse by 2001.

00:29:09.640 The first convictions did not occur until 2010 when five men of Pakistani background were jailed for multiple offenses against girls as young as 12 years old.

00:29:21.700 The breadth of what occurred is staggering and the systematic willingness to look aside is truly horrific.

00:29:33.460 And let's be clear, the reason why they look the other way, you mentioned it, is really from a PR standpoint.

00:29:39.340 They wanted to have, quote, good relations and not have a stigma related to people that were coming from the Middle East that were there.

00:29:47.160 So they said, all right, we'll just look the other way and that'll make it easier.

00:29:50.280 It's actually less Middle East than primarily Pakistan, Pakistan, and it's Pakistani Muslims. 0.87

00:29:57.520 And what we've seen, so we have seen since the 1970s the grooming and serial rape of thousands of children.

00:30:06.880 And the issue is in particular relevant because Keir Starmer, the prime minister, was England's director of public prosecutions between 2008 and 2013.

00:30:23.720 And so he was actively involved in looking the other way.

00:30:28.040 And, all right, so let's break down a little bit of the facts of what happened because the story sounds so extreme as to not be credible.

00:30:40.760 But the child sex rapes weren't just individual instances done by rogue individuals.

00:30:50.100 Rather, in nearly all the cases, there were groups of mostly Pakistani men that cooperated and conspired to groom and sexually abuse girls over decades. 0.91

00:31:04.040 And they targeted mostly vulnerable girls, poor orphans, children in care homes. 0.99

00:31:13.040 They raped the girls. 0.97

00:31:14.340 They passed them around networks. 1.00

00:31:16.280 So raping them one after the other after the other. 0.99

00:31:19.540 Some of these child rapists had roles in local governments. 0.94

00:31:24.560 The leader of one of the rape gangs in Oldham, an individual named Shabir Ahmed, worked for the local council as a, quote, welfare rights officer and ran his gang from the council's welfare office.

00:31:41.220 And let me give you some of the facts because they're just horrifying.

00:31:46.280 One of the victims, a girl named Victoria Agaglia.

00:31:51.540 Victoria was a 15-year-old teenager.

00:31:54.540 And she was subject to the government's round-the-clock caretaking, but she went missing 19 times in three months for up to two weeks at a time.

00:32:04.200 Instead of trying to find her, the welfare workers simply messaged her saying, when are you coming back? 0.87

00:32:09.360 It turns out she was forced into a Pakistani sex ring by older women who raped her in exchange for cash, alcohol, and hard drugs. 0.94

00:32:20.320 She was sometimes abused by up to 25 men in a single night. 0.78

00:32:25.880 Victoria wrote, wrote a heartbreaking letter to the police documenting her abuse, but it was ignored.

00:32:32.260 And eventually ignored.

00:32:34.880 And she was found dead from a fatal dose of heroin given by an abuser. 0.54

00:32:41.340 And she was repeatedly drugged and raped the night she was killed.

00:32:45.140 I'll give you another example. 0.93

00:32:47.600 Charlene Downs.

00:32:49.000 In Blackpool in 2003, 14-year-old Charlene Downs disappeared.

00:32:53.860 Police had a leave that Charlene's body had been dismembered and disposed of at a kebab shop in Blackpool.

00:33:00.480 Police uncovered evidence that Charlene had been the victim of child sexual exploitation after being groomed by a gang.

00:33:07.500 The criminals have not been found, and her body is missing 20 years later.

00:33:12.920 Lucy Lowe in Telford, an individual named Azhar Ali Mahmoud, groomed Lucy Lowe from the age of 12 and impregnated her at 14.

00:33:25.120 He burned her alive in her own home with her mother, her disabled sister, and her unborn second child, also fathered by Mahmoud. 0.99

00:33:39.240 Mahmoud was jailed for life in 2001 for murder, not for the sex crimes, for murder.

00:33:44.800 Reports indicated that South Asian men were targeting teenagers in Telford since the 1980s.

00:33:50.580 I'll give you one other example.

00:33:52.160 Sophie.

00:33:52.460 In Oldham in 2006, a 12-year-old girl named Sophie entered a police station and reported that she had just been molested in a graveyard by a man named Ali.

00:34:04.780 A desk officer told her to come back with an adult when she was sober.

00:34:09.480 Mind you, she was 12.

00:34:11.300 Two men accosted her in the police station. 0.63

00:34:15.460 Joined by a third, they raped her in their car.

00:34:18.780 When they dumped her on the street, she asked a man named Sarwar Ali for directions. 0.96

00:34:26.280 He took her to his home, raped her, and gave her money for bus fare home.

00:34:32.640 Sarwar Ali was arrested and remanded to prison over his attack on Sophie.

00:34:36.780 However, he was then released following a bail application to a judge, despite being an illegal immigrant in the United Kingdom.

00:34:43.520 He subsequently failed to attend his appointment with the immigration service and is still at large.

00:34:50.740 Then, a man named Shaquille Chowdhury pulled up at his car and offered to take Sophie home.

00:34:59.360 He abducted her, took her to a house, fed her alcohol. 0.93

00:35:04.240 Soon after, he and four other men repeatedly raped her. 0.65

00:35:07.220 Only Shaquille was convicted, six years in prison.

00:35:11.400 During his trial, Chowdhury named two of the other men involved in the rapes of Sophie as part of his mitigation,

00:35:16.480 but these were not followed up by police at the time.

00:35:20.040 One of the men named by Chowdhury was subsequently convicted in 2009 of the attempted murder of his wife.

00:35:26.720 This pattern happened over and over and over again, and the numbers are staggering.

00:35:37.360 We are talking about thousands of girls systematically, repeatedly raped, and the entire British government looked the other way for decades.

00:35:49.100 So, Senator, the question that I'm sure everyone listening is thinking to themselves, like, A, has anything changed now?

00:35:56.740 And, B, what should happen, the fact that now this is all out in the open?

00:36:00.960 Well, what has changed is Elon Musk has started tweeting about it, and Elon has over 200 million followers,

00:36:09.480 and it has drawn attention to it in a way that is really important, and it has become, thankfully, a political crisis in the United Kingdom.

00:36:19.580 But I want you to listen to Keir Starmer, this is just about a week ago, addressing this crisis, and listen to what he had to say.

00:36:27.220 This is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

00:36:28.880 And when politicians, and I mean politicians, who sat in government for many years, are casual about honesty, decency, truth, and the rule of law,

00:36:43.960 calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right,

00:36:49.860 then that affects politics, because a robust debate can only be based on the true facts.

00:36:56.400 So there you have it. The sitting Prime Minister is saying that if you're concerned about the ongoing rape of thousands of girls in the United Kingdom

00:37:07.720 and the complicity of government, he says you're jumping on the bandwagon of the far right.

00:37:14.320 That continues to be the multiculturalism, political correctness that he does not want to acknowledge.

00:37:20.160 And by the way, he was the chief prosecutor for many of these years.

00:37:24.280 He was the one who was directly involved in looking the other way.

00:37:29.360 So naturally, he doesn't want an inquiry.

00:37:32.140 Now, I'll give you the response of Nigel Farage, one of the leaders, and actually Nigel Farage we've had on this podcast.

00:37:40.400 He's been a guest on this podcast before.

00:37:42.260 Nigel Farage obviously led the fight for Brexit in the United Kingdom.

00:37:46.860 And listen to Nigel Farage's response to what Keir Starmer said.

00:37:51.380 Well, so much talk over the last few days about grooming gangs, or should I say rape gangs.

00:37:56.520 And Keir Starmer today saying that anyone who's calling for a full public inquiry is jumping on the bandwagon of the far right.

00:38:04.080 Wrong, Prime Minister.

00:38:05.040 The vast majority of people in this country are absolutely mortified by what has gone on.

00:38:11.040 But even worse, the cover-up we've had from the police, social services, and both Conservative and Labour governments.

00:38:18.960 The inquiries that have happened so far have been nothing more than a whitewash.

00:38:22.540 There needs to be a full public inquiry.

00:38:25.560 Let us find out the truth of the scale of this.

00:38:27.960 I'm told that in up to 50 British towns, these gang rapes were going on.

00:38:33.500 I believe the public need the truth.

00:38:35.380 We must have an inquiry.

00:38:37.640 Senator, you hear the frustration there from Nigel.

00:38:41.000 But it also, and this is where I say, let's bring it back to the U.S. 0.85

00:38:44.880 Because I worry that we're going to have the same type of conversation in the not-too-near-distant future about all the children that we've lost in this country.

00:38:54.800 So the answer to both needs to be the same, which is there needs to be an inquiry.

00:38:58.840 There needs to be transparency in the United Kingdom.

00:39:02.020 You know, Nigel Farage mentioned that there are allegations of up to 50 towns where these rape gangs were ongoing for years and years.

00:39:11.380 That's a staggering scale.

00:39:13.500 So there needs to be full transparency, the opposite of a whitewash or a cover-up, but real transparency.

00:39:19.620 In the United States, the over 300,000 children that the Biden administration lost, we need full transparency.

00:39:25.720 We need to find those kids, those kids who are being abused right now.

00:39:29.680 We need to get them out of harm's way.

00:39:32.020 And sunlight and transparency is powerful, but there also needs to be accountability for those who are culpable.

00:39:39.760 Amen to that.

00:39:40.300 Finally, I want to just get your reaction to a shocking headline that may not be as big of a deal in just a few days as it could be.

00:39:49.320 And that is Joe Biden waiting to the very last moment to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terror.

00:40:00.260 Why?

00:40:01.340 Because he says, well, they haven't been involved in sponsoring terrorism in the last six months.

00:40:07.220 So now they're all good.

00:40:08.660 Don't worry about them.

00:40:09.720 Your reaction to that.

00:40:12.520 Well, until today, Cuba was one of four designated state sponsors of terrorism.

00:40:18.180 The four were North Korea, Iran and Syria.

00:40:21.380 And they're designated pursuant to determination from the secretary of state that those countries have, quote, repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.

00:40:31.880 Cuba was designated in 2021 by the Trump administration.

00:40:35.380 The designation noted that, quote, for decades, the Cuban government has fed, housed and provided medical care for murderers, bomb makers and hijackers, while many Cubans go hungry, homeless and without basic medicine.

00:40:49.340 And the Biden administration today delisted them, even though Cuba is today a sponsor of terrorism right now.

00:41:01.760 So Cuba is right now refusing requests by Colombia to extradite 10 members of the National Liberation Army.

00:41:10.220 Cuba also harbors several American fugitives wanted on or convicted of charges of political violence or murdering police officers.

00:41:27.400 Cuba also supports FARC terrorists and props up the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

00:41:34.540 Venezuela. And all of those facts are clear.

00:41:38.180 They're indisputable.

00:41:39.240 The Biden administration doesn't dispute them.

00:41:41.820 Today's decision was just politics.

00:41:45.580 It was left wing politics of the very worst sort.

00:41:50.220 And thank goodness Donald Trump will be here in just a few more days.

00:41:54.960 And I believe and I believe this determination will be reversed next week.

00:42:00.360 I fully expect next week.

00:42:03.220 And in fact, I think one of one of Marco Rubio's very first acts when he is confirmed as secretary of state.

00:42:10.540 And my prediction is I think Marco will be confirmed on January 20th, the same day that that that President Trump is sworn into office.

00:42:18.400 It would not surprise me if Marco on January 20th lists Cuba again.

00:42:23.820 So understand what this is.

00:42:25.820 This is not going to be a fundamental shift in U.S. policy. 0.98

00:42:29.000 This is just Biden saying, screw you on the way out.

00:42:32.680 And the Biden White House saying, number one, we stand with communists. 0.91

00:42:36.740 We like the Cuban communists. 1.00

00:42:38.340 You know, when we were in college, we had posters of Che Guevara on the wall and we find communists.

00:42:43.460 We just think they're really cute and lovely.

00:42:45.440 And it's consistent with their pattern of kissing up to communists across across the world.

00:42:49.820 But number two, this is yet another manifestation of Biden and Harris's and Democrats' contempt for democracy in the closing hours.

00:43:02.240 They're trying to do everything they can to make it difficult for the Trump administration.

00:43:06.320 And to just say, screw you to the voters in November who gave a clear and unequivocal mandate, that there's an arrogance and contempt for the voters that this is just just one of the most one of the latest and one of the most shocking manifestations of.

00:43:23.040 Yeah, incredible.

00:43:24.780 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

00:43:26.980 We're going to keep you up to date on all the confirmation hearings.

00:43:29.400 And as we get closer to Inauguration Day, there will be more big news.

00:43:33.540 So make sure you don't miss an episode.

00:43:35.300 Hit that subscribe auto download button.

00:43:37.060 I will also keep you up to date each and every day on my podcast when we don't do verdict.

00:43:42.760 Ben Ferguson Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts as well.

00:43:46.540 It is going to be a very exciting month and a very exciting next four years.

00:43:50.060 We'll see you back here on Friday morning.

00:43:53.040 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:43:55.700 Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - January 15, 2025

Hegseth Shines at Hearing, a Shocking Child Rape Scandal in the UK & Biden Excuses Cuban Sponsored Terrorism

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