Verdict with Ted Cruz - Hollywood Has a Predilection for Minors and Communists

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.540 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.860 Just when you think Hollywood can't sink any lower,

00:00:09.520 one of the biggest studios in town pushes pedophilia,

00:00:13.040 and another huge Hollywood studio sucks up to one of the worst regimes on Earth.

00:00:18.220 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:25.200 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:27.080 I'm Michael Knowles, joined as ever by the senator.

00:00:30.080 I do want to get to cuties.

00:00:32.400 I do want to get to Mulan.

00:00:34.620 But first, there is some breaking legal news,

00:00:37.780 and I guess we're going to be talking about the legality of everything.

00:00:39.880 Actually, two bits of news that involve you, Senator.

00:00:41.840 One is your new book, your upcoming book,

00:00:45.640 One Vote Away, How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History.

00:00:50.880 That is coming out in about three weeks.

00:00:52.960 And then related to that, you have been added to the shortlist,

00:00:56.900 to the president's shortlist for the Supreme Court.

00:00:58.660 So I have to ask you, will you be that one seat that can change history?

00:01:03.500 No, I'm not going to be.

00:01:04.960 I'm very happy where I am.

00:01:06.500 Come on.

00:01:07.100 You're not going to do it?

00:01:08.140 But it matters immensely.

00:01:10.680 I don't want the job.

00:01:11.700 But I do care a great deal about who gets it.

00:01:15.680 And that book, that's a book I've been working on really since this spring.

00:01:20.860 I spent the spring and summer during lockdown writing it.

00:01:24.880 And actually, the copy you're holding is the first hard copy I've actually seen that it is like a physical, real book.

00:01:31.440 We literally just got that a few minutes ago.

00:01:34.380 October 6th is when it's going to be released, although it's on Amazon now for pre-order.

00:01:39.640 It's also, if you go to onevoteaway.com, that'll connect you to Amazon.

00:01:44.400 You can pre-order it there.

00:01:46.040 And what the book does is it really goes through all of the fundamental constitutional liberties that are hanging in the balance at the court.

00:01:54.660 And each chapter in the book is a different constitutional liberty.

00:01:59.300 So there's a chapter on free speech.

00:02:00.760 There's a chapter on religious liberty.

00:02:02.200 There's a chapter on the Second Amendment.

00:02:04.340 There's a chapter on U.S. sovereignty.

00:02:06.840 There's a chapter on politics and elections that talks in depth about Bush versus Gore, something that could well be highly relevant in another two months as we see Democrats in all likelihood litigating the results of this election.

00:02:22.860 You could have Bush versus Gore times 50, right?

00:02:25.800 All over the place in multiple jurisdictions.

00:02:28.100 And what the book tries to do is just – it tells the inside stories of the major landmark cases, many of which I helped litigate.

00:02:39.680 And so I was in the middle of a lot of these cases.

00:02:42.000 And so Bush versus Gore, I was a young lawyer as part of George W. Bush's legal team.

00:02:46.400 So I tell the inside stories, and it's designed to be interesting, to be accessible.

00:02:53.600 You don't have to be a lawyer to read it.

00:02:54.880 It's designed to really tell you, all right, what's going on in these cases?

00:02:58.560 What's going on at the court?

00:03:00.380 Why do I as an American care about Supreme Court nominations?

00:03:05.680 And what's stunning and most people don't realize is just how many of our fundamental liberties are hanging by a single vote, either positive or negative.

00:03:15.600 In some cases, one additional conservative vote would make a really positive difference.

00:03:21.400 In a whole lot of other instances, one additional liberal vote.

00:03:24.880 We have four radical leftist justices on the court.

00:03:28.320 One more I think would be devastating, and I don't think it's too much of an overstatement to say that that may well be the single most important issue in this 2020 election.

00:03:39.880 This is the problem, and it's why I like the idea of you, Senator, on the Supreme Court because we've had a lot of conservatives go squishy once they get onto the court.

00:03:48.980 But, of course, we also need you in the Senate.

00:03:51.600 We also need you in the political fights.

00:03:53.360 I like being in the political fight.

00:03:55.060 I like being – and the court's the wrong place to do that.

00:03:59.620 If I were a justice, I'd stay out of political fights.

00:04:02.760 I'd stay out of policy fights.

00:04:04.480 A principled judge doesn't engage in that.

00:04:07.040 You simply follow the law.

00:04:08.200 That's what I'd do if I were a justice.

00:04:10.060 I don't want to do that.

00:04:11.560 I want to be right in the middle of the fight.

00:04:14.220 And I got to tell you, I look at the Senate.

00:04:15.820 I look at the political scene.

00:04:17.480 We need fighters right now.

00:04:19.780 I think what we're doing on this podcast I hope makes a difference.

00:04:24.300 It's engaging on issues that matter.

00:04:27.320 And so I hope to be part of nominating and confirming two, three, four, five great principled constitutionalist justices.

00:04:36.960 But I don't want to be one of them myself.

00:04:39.200 All right.

00:04:39.440 So I will stop for now pressuring you to accept a potential Supreme Court nomination.

00:04:43.960 I do want to get to one of those fights that you're involved in now, which is this issue of Cuties.

00:04:49.500 Cuties is this French movie that sexualizes 11-year-old girls. 0.92

00:04:53.840 And it's now on Netflix.

00:04:55.800 Netflix is promoting this thing like crazy.

00:04:58.800 The poster is nauseating.

00:05:00.300 The movie is nauseating.

00:05:01.680 You came out very strongly and called for a Justice Department investigation into whether this is, what, child pornography or exploitation?

00:05:09.160 Can you lay down the legal aspect of this?

00:05:12.060 So last week I wrote a letter to Attorney General Barr and the Department of Justice asking the Department of Justice to investigate whether Netflix has violated any of the criminal laws prohibiting the distribution of child pornography.

00:05:25.880 And, you know, it's an interesting thing.

00:05:28.000 So this movie is all about 11-year-old girls and the actresses, as I understand it, are 11-year-old girls who are dancing suggestively, dancing like strippers engaged in sexually explicit conduct on screen.

00:05:45.820 And Netflix, a U.S. company, is promoting it and pushing it.

00:05:51.280 And that's not okay.

00:05:54.080 Sexually exploiting – look, I'm the dad of two little girls.

00:05:59.540 Abusing kids is not okay.

00:06:02.620 And just because Netflix is now one of the Hollywood elite, everyone treats it as perfectly fine to take out – to produce a movie and distribute a movie where kids are being sexually exploited.

00:06:15.300 And that is a federal crime to sexually exploit children.

00:06:20.240 Well, here's what Netflix is saying.

00:06:21.240 Netflix says this is completely misunderstood.

00:06:24.280 A lot of prominent left-wingers are saying this, too.

00:06:26.220 This is completely being misunderstood by right-wingers who haven't seen the movie.

00:06:29.380 And this puts conservatives in a terrible box because from everything we know about the movie, we don't want to watch it, right?

00:06:36.900 But then you're told that, well, if you haven't watched it and you can't have an opinion on it – I had no intention of watching this movie.

00:06:43.340 But, you know, I work for a news outlet.

00:06:44.940 I was told by my editor that I had to watch the movie.

00:06:48.840 I said, I don't want to watch it. 0.74

00:06:49.960 This is disgusting.

00:06:50.800 I don't want to – I said, no, you have to watch it to give a review of it.

00:06:54.080 So I was on vacation for a week.

00:06:55.860 I was there with my wife and two of our friends.

00:06:58.680 So we say, okay, put the movie on.

00:07:01.100 It is as bad as they say.

00:07:02.880 It is true that one of the messages of the movie, perhaps, is that it's bad to sexually exploit kids. 0.62

00:07:08.960 The problem is, in conveying possibly that message, the movie sexually exploits kids.

00:07:15.000 I mean, there were moments you have to look away.

00:07:17.500 My friend's fiancee, when we were watching this, stormed out of the room in tears. 0.98

00:07:21.460 It was that nauseating.

00:07:23.600 How do we fight that?

00:07:25.460 So, look, I haven't watched the movie.

00:07:27.620 I'm not going to watch the movie.

00:07:29.140 I don't recommend it.

00:07:29.160 Yeah.

00:07:30.780 And I get – and it's an odd thing, the sort of Twitter world of the blue checkmark journalists that are all defending kiddie porn.

00:07:39.160 Yeah.

00:07:40.320 You know, the law matters.

00:07:42.140 And there actually is – so my letter to Attorney General Barr explicitly cites the federal statute.

00:07:48.460 Let me tell you what the federal statute provides.

00:07:49.940 So it's 18 U.S.C., section 2252.

00:07:54.500 And it says that any person who knowingly transports or ships using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce, any visual depiction, if the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit content.

00:08:14.320 So this is the question because when I watch it, I mean the one good thing I can say about the movie is they're not nude, right?

00:08:22.420 But it is licentious.

00:08:24.420 There is no question it is exploitative.

00:08:26.440 So – and the statute doesn't require that they be nude.

00:08:29.120 It prohibits distributing materials that have children engaging in sexually explicit content is the language of the statute.

00:08:37.680 And the punishment under the statute for violating it is that you'll be fined under this title and in prison not less than five years and not more than 20 years.

00:08:48.020 But here's something interesting, Michael.

00:08:49.620 Yeah.

00:08:49.740 There's actually an aggravator in the statute that says if the child or children in question have not attained 12 years of age, that the punishment is actually increased to a minimum of 10 years and a maximum of 20 years.

00:09:06.680 So in this case, we know they're 11-year-old children.

00:09:09.960 There's no dispute about that.

00:09:11.260 Yeah.

00:09:11.480 I haven't seen the movie.

00:09:12.900 I don't know if the depictions satisfy the requirements of the statute for sexually explicit conduct.

00:09:19.320 But you know what?

00:09:20.400 It's not my job as a U.S. senator to investigate that.

00:09:24.760 It is the Department of Justice's job.

00:09:26.320 So I ask them – look, I don't know if this violates the law or not.

00:09:29.360 Yeah.

00:09:29.580 There's certainly a prima facie case.

00:09:32.000 We know they're children.

00:09:33.460 Yeah.

00:09:33.580 But the ads they're putting out are explicitly sexual on the face of it.

00:09:39.880 And, you know, there was one professor who tweeted back at me and said, well, you know, Cruz doesn't understand this is a French film.

00:09:50.420 And –

00:09:51.220 That's the excuse, right?

00:09:52.520 Well, it was kind of interesting, A, because my letter explicitly references that it's a French film.

00:09:56.720 So the professor – and this says something about the state of our academy – hadn't bothered to read my letter but instead was happy to criticize it.

00:10:02.960 Of course, yeah.

00:10:03.800 But number two, it actually – the child pornography laws in the U.S.

00:10:09.220 Yeah.

00:10:10.000 Don't give you a blank pass if it happens to be produced overseas.

00:10:13.540 Of course.

00:10:13.740 It doesn't matter where child porn is produced. 0.99

00:10:16.880 Yeah.

00:10:17.360 If you're distributing it, it is a felony.

00:10:19.780 And by the way, Netflix is a multibillion-dollar corporation.

00:10:23.700 These guys are getting rich.

00:10:24.880 This is a major for-profit endeavor.

00:10:28.060 And, you know, one of the people who has been completely silenced on this is Barack Obama.

00:10:34.520 And –

00:10:34.900 Who has a deal with Netflix.

00:10:36.320 And not a small deal.

00:10:38.140 I mean, according to the public reporting, he's been paid, what, $50 million from Netflix?

00:10:42.780 At least, yeah.

00:10:43.260 So he is literally making tens of millions of dollars.

00:10:46.760 Yeah.

00:10:46.920 And is completely silent on is he okay with a company that is distributing, at a minimum, sexual exploitation of children?

00:10:57.980 Yeah.

00:10:58.060 That's kind of the bare minimum.

00:10:59.820 And there are a couple of reasons.

00:11:02.800 Look, it is a reasonable question to say, all right, what is permissible?

00:11:07.920 What is art?

00:11:08.780 What is free speech?

00:11:09.860 What is pornography?

00:11:11.240 Those can be complicated questions.

00:11:13.460 But – and listen, on the question of free speech and sexual conduct, what consenting adults do is their business.

00:11:23.520 You know, consenting adults want to do something, knock yourself out.

00:11:27.740 You got a right to do whatever you want.

00:11:29.860 Well, on this issue of consenting adults, actually, this ties in with another very, very creepy thing that's going on now being pushed by Democrats in California.

00:11:37.140 It's called SB 145.

00:11:40.100 Gavin Newsom just signed it into law.

00:11:41.600 Well, this basically says that if a 24-year-old man has sex with a 14-year-old boy, he does not have to register as a sex offender.

00:11:52.740 What is going on?

00:11:53.780 I mean, what is that about?

00:11:54.580 And how is that legal?

00:11:56.280 Because obviously the 14-year-old is not a consenting adult.

00:11:59.760 Well, today's Democratic Party, and this was pushed by the Democratic supermajorities in the California legislature.

00:12:04.960 It was signed by the Democratic governor of California.

00:12:07.700 To the best of my knowledge, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been utterly silent on it.

00:12:12.140 If they said anything on it, I certainly haven't seen it.

00:12:14.240 Yeah.

00:12:14.660 But it is normalizing child abuse.

00:12:19.340 Yeah. 0.81

00:12:19.440 And what it's saying – listen, a 24-year-old having sex with a 14-year-old is not okay. 0.80

00:12:25.220 Yeah.

00:12:25.360 And under the law, 14-year-olds, young children, are not permissibly allowed to consent.

00:12:33.580 You have two adults.

00:12:34.920 They can consent to whatever they want, but children don't have the legal ability to consent.

00:12:41.300 And the problem is the left, they're normalizing.

00:12:45.980 It's why you see the media, they don't want to be critical of this Netflix movie because it suggests there are any standards or lines that can't be crossed.

00:12:54.420 But when you produce a movie like this Cuties movie, number one, it – look, you got to think every pedophile in America is going to watch this movie.

00:13:07.340 Yeah.

00:13:07.760 That this is titillation that will encourage and drive more pedophilia.

00:13:13.560 But it also – we know of at least some children who were directly harmed by this movie, and those are the child actresses, the 11-year-olds who are being asked by their producer, asked by the director to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

00:13:31.280 And under the law, there is no First Amendment right to film kiddie porn, to distribute kiddie porn, that when you're abusing a child, the usual response is that you're prosecuted and locked up in jail.

00:13:47.080 And that's designed to protect kids.

00:13:48.700 But here's what they say, right?

00:13:50.480 They'll say, well, it's not pornography.

00:13:52.580 It might be sexually explicit.

00:13:54.260 It might be exploitative.

00:13:55.360 But it's not – it doesn't rise to the level of pornography.

00:13:59.400 And the federal statute is not a pornography statute.

00:14:02.020 Right.

00:14:02.340 Well, this is the key.

00:14:03.260 So, and actually, this is not something I talk about in the book One Vote Away.

00:14:06.620 But, look, the Supreme Court for years engaged in the world of what is pornography, what is obscene, and what is not.

00:14:14.220 I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

00:14:16.260 That was Potter Stewart's famous test for it, which is I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.

00:14:22.680 And, you know, they're great stories.

00:14:25.440 I think Bob Woodward talks about it in The Brethren where they used to have in the 70s – they would have airings of porn movies that had been challenged on whether they were obscene or not.

00:14:34.880 And the court would have to watch it to figure out, and it would be, I think, in a basement.

00:14:39.560 They would air them, but I think it's Woodward tells the story of, like, the clerks would be sitting in the back going, I see it.

00:14:47.680 Yep, that's it.

00:14:48.640 I see it.

00:14:49.160 I know it.

00:14:49.800 I see it, and that's definitely it.

00:14:52.400 As I recall – I hope I'm not telling tales at a school here – did you watch a porn movie once with Sandra Day O'Connor?

00:14:59.660 I did.

00:15:00.580 It's one of the things.

00:15:01.680 I talk about it in the book as well.

00:15:03.440 And it was as awkward – you know, look, you're 26 years old, and you're with a woman in her 70s watching, like, graphic depictions.

00:15:10.820 You're like, wow, okay, this is really awkward.

00:15:12.700 But you know what was even, I'm sure, weirder and more awkward?

00:15:16.240 Yeah.

00:15:17.340 William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor dated.

00:15:19.800 That's right.

00:15:20.580 In law school.

00:15:21.320 I remember reading.

00:15:21.600 They were classmates at Stanford.

00:15:22.940 Yeah.

00:15:23.480 He was number one in the class.

00:15:24.780 She was number three.

00:15:25.580 I've always said, you know, I wonder what happened to the poor schlub who was number two. 0.99

00:15:29.600 He's got to feel like a total loser. 0.97

00:15:31.100 Just forgotten by history. 0.98

00:15:31.820 But not only did they date, so Rehnquist actually proposed marriage to O'Connor in law school.

00:15:39.400 Now, she turned him down.

00:15:40.500 She married – she was Sandra Day.

00:15:42.240 She married John O'Connor.

00:15:43.480 And it ended up for 50 years, Justice O'Connor and her husband and the chief and his wife were good friends.

00:15:51.900 They socialized together.

00:15:53.580 But imagine for a second you're in your 70s and your 80s and you're standing in a room with a woman you dated 50 years earlier and there's porn on the screen.

00:16:02.900 And that was a weird and awkward moment.

00:16:05.600 And you know it when you see it.

00:16:06.760 And I think this is the key here because regardless of –

00:16:10.960 By the way, I'm glad the Supreme Court is out of the business of assessing whether a particular film is or isn't obscene.

00:16:17.540 That sort of amorphous judgment didn't make any sense for the court to be in it.

00:16:24.720 I think the First Amendment protects a lot of speech but what it doesn't protect is abusing kids.

00:16:31.960 That kids are a line that is just qualitatively different from adults.

00:16:36.740 Right.

00:16:37.040 And even if the Netflix argument is right that this doesn't rise to the level of pornography – actually, frankly, I mean who – the parts that I shut my eyes to, who knows?

00:16:46.580 But it doesn't seem that it does.

00:16:48.860 It's degenerate filth. 0.85

00:16:51.100 It is exploitative.

00:16:51.920 And I think it meets the criteria of that statute.

00:16:54.400 The test of the statute is whether it's a visual depiction that involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

00:17:03.400 Yeah.

00:17:03.840 So, look, they could do a documentary on child abuse, on child trafficking.

00:17:08.520 That would actually be quite valuable.

00:17:10.020 A lot of kids – you know, one of the many problems with child porn is many of the kids are trafficked.

00:17:15.520 They're kept against their wishes.

00:17:16.780 Not only can they not consent, but in far too many instances, these are kids who are kidnapped and trafficked and forced to engage in these acts.

00:17:27.000 And I think the Department of Justice should investigate whether this violates the law.

00:17:33.220 But I think it speaks volumes that Hollywood thinks it's immune from the law, that the standards that apply to everyone else, Hollywood is exempt from.

00:17:42.220 There is something going on here.

00:17:44.000 You know, there is something in common with the promotion of this movie, Cuties, with SB 145.

00:17:49.000 And let me stop for a second on SB 145.

00:17:54.220 Yeah.

00:17:54.580 So, the argument that the California Democrats give in the legislature is they say this is a gay rights issue.

00:18:00.840 Right.

00:18:01.040 Because it's already the case that if it's a heterosexual relationship 24 to 14, then the offender doesn't need to register as a sex offender.

00:18:09.800 It's whether someone registers as a sex offender.

00:18:11.940 And as I understand it, California law, if it's heterosexual, says they don't have to.

00:18:16.940 And this law said if it is homosexual, they don't have to. 0.96

00:18:20.940 My view is, okay, the first law is a little bit crazy.

00:18:23.460 Well, if you want to address that and have parity, okay, how about if you abuse a child, you register?

00:18:30.600 Yeah.

00:18:31.520 This did remind me of an issue that hit Bernie Sanders, your colleague, in the Senate back in 2016 and 2020, which is he wrote some very odd essays in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

00:18:43.640 In 1969, he wrote an essay called The Revolution is Life Versus Death, something to that effect, in which he implies that we should normalize child sexual behavior.

00:18:54.160 And it wasn't just Bernie who said this.

00:18:56.780 This goes all the way back to a strange figure named Wilhelm Reich on the left, who in the 1930s, he developed this theory of the universe that the whole life force is something called an orgone.

00:19:09.600 And war, cancer, disease, it's all caused – I feel embarrassed even saying this in front of a U.S. senator.

00:19:17.120 It's caused by people not having enough orgasms.

00:19:19.200 Seriously, this is what he said.

00:19:20.740 And basically, you needed something called an orgone accumulator.

00:19:23.920 Woody Allen later parodied this as the orgasmatron.

00:19:27.080 Very prominent leftists owned these weird boxes.

00:19:29.900 Norman Mailer had one.

00:19:30.800 J.D. Salinger had one.

00:19:32.100 And this very kooky theory pervaded some leftist thought, radical thought, all the way up through the 1970s.

00:19:39.760 And that's what Bernie Sanders was writing about.

00:19:41.540 And frankly, I think it's what we're seeing today.

00:19:43.660 Can I ask you a question, Michael?

00:19:45.100 Here it comes.

00:19:46.040 What the hell do you guys study at Yale?

00:19:48.340 Like, I'm sorry. 0.69

00:19:49.420 I don't know who this –

00:19:50.420 It's a mandatory curriculum now.

00:19:51.480 Who this –

00:19:52.480 Schmuck, Schmidt, whatever his name is, I'm not familiar with his writing.

00:19:57.060 Professor Reich, yeah.

00:19:58.060 Well, okay.

00:19:58.900 Whatever it –

00:20:00.820 Yeah.

00:20:01.640 Okay.

00:20:02.180 That's weird stuff.

00:20:04.060 Well, in the remaining couple minutes we have, we've touched on Hollywood and the left broadly in all this kind of creepy sex issue.

00:20:11.520 But let's not forget about the creepy totalitarian issue because while you've got Netflix, you know, not just hosting this creepy movie but promoting it, you've simultaneously got Disney coming out and thanking the Chinese government, groveling to the Chinese government even as they say that they might not be able to work in Georgia because Georgia passes a pro-life law.

00:20:33.300 Yeah, so this is the movie Mulan, which Disney filmed and did a live-action version of the animated film, and they filmed it in the region in China where the Uyghurs are held in concentration camps where they're being tortured, where they're being murdered.

00:20:51.760 And we're talking – most estimates are more than a million Uyghurs.

00:20:56.480 Because Uyghurs are an ethnic and religious minority in China.

00:20:59.900 They're Muslims.

00:21:01.280 And the Chinese government viciously persecutes them.

00:21:05.880 So Disney goes and films presumably right next to the concentration camps.

00:21:11.480 Yeah.

00:21:12.180 And the police agency – and when I say police agency, I mean the Communist Party stormtroopers.

00:21:19.500 Yeah, police state.

00:21:20.240 Who are abusing and torturing the Uyghurs. 1.00

00:21:24.600 Disney thanks them.

00:21:25.540 I mean it truly is.

00:21:27.940 So I just joined a group of I think it's 20 other senators, a bipartisan group, in writing a letter to the CEO of Disney asking a whole series of questions about why they were filming in China, what concessions they had to make to the Chinese government,

00:21:48.620 what they knew about the torture and murder of the Uyghurs, and why they were thanking the totalitarian government engaged in that torture and murder. 0.97

00:21:58.760 Yeah.

00:21:58.860 And we also asked for what communications they had about them.

00:22:01.920 And look, we'll see how Disney responds.

00:22:06.520 But it's not complicated.

00:22:08.260 The answer is because of money.

00:22:10.760 I mean look, we saw a similar story with the NBA that had a basketball camp in this same region.

00:22:16.180 And they actually had Uyghur teenagers, 14- and 15-year-old boys, being physically abused.

00:22:23.840 NBA coaches knew about it.

00:22:25.200 The NBA knew about it.

00:22:26.500 And they were just fine.

00:22:27.840 And whether it's Disney or the NBA, you've got a lot of American companies that in pursuit of the almighty dollar are more than happy to kiss up to jackbooted thugs in the Communist Party in China. 0.95

00:22:42.360 Well, then just to play devil's advocate one more time in the last minute or so that we have left, what the left is doing right now is saying on the issue of cuties and on the issue of Mulan that conservatives are hypocrites.

00:22:54.960 Because conservatives, we talk a good game on free speech, but then we don't like the sexually explicit movie and we don't like Disney, a private company, doing what it wants to do in the pursuit of the dollar.

00:23:06.200 So are we hypocrites or not?

00:23:07.280 Well, no, the laws should apply and the standards should apply fairly and evenly to everyone.

00:23:12.880 So in the world of child exploitation and porn, that is a uniform standard.

00:23:19.180 It doesn't matter what your politics are.

00:23:21.200 You're not allowed to engage in child exploitation and porn.

00:23:25.780 When it comes to doing business with China, look, I mean, there are, number one, there are U.S. sanctions against certain Chinese entities.

00:23:33.200 That Disney needs to be sure it hasn't violated U.S. sanctions law because that can have real and crushing financial implications.

00:23:44.240 But look, there is an element, there are lots of people in the media, there are lots of people in the academy that will be apologists for the Chinese communists.

00:23:55.620 And you know what?

00:23:56.380 They got a First Amendment right to do it.

00:23:57.840 I will happily defend their right to speak out.

00:24:03.520 But you know what I will also do? 0.99

00:24:05.360 Happily condemn the garbage they're saying. 0.96

00:24:07.380 Free speech doesn't mean you're immunized from being criticized for what you say. 0.98

00:24:12.100 It means you still get to say things.

00:24:13.600 You get to say things.

00:24:14.560 And the rest of us get to say, why are you supporting and praising and apologizing for and condoning jackbooted thugs? 0.66

00:24:22.800 And why are you making money on it?

00:24:24.420 By the way, it's the same point I raised about Barack Obama.

00:24:27.540 Why is Barack Obama making $50 million for Netflix when they are distributing materials that are exploiting children?

00:24:34.880 And now that he can make the money from Netflix.

00:24:37.360 But people are entitled to ask that question about about what you're choosing to support.

00:24:42.840 Yeah.

00:24:43.740 And and in particular, whether it violates the federal criminal laws, as in this instance, it may well have.

00:24:49.620 At the same time that these studios are removing Gone with the Wind, one of the most celebrated movies in American history, removing cop shows because it's politically incorrect now from streaming platforms.

00:24:59.500 They're promoting cuties and they're promoting peons to the Chinese government. 0.98

00:25:03.720 That is a major cultural problem. 0.90

00:25:05.600 And I don't think there's anything hypocritical about about raising.

00:25:08.820 But but, you know, they do have new standards for the Academy Awards now.

00:25:13.320 And they have explicit racial quotas now that you have to have a percentage of disadvantaged populations to be eligible for best picture.

00:25:25.080 So so I don't know if if if like they're going to have to go back and remake the Godfather movies.

00:25:30.940 But apparently too many Italians, you and I are both you have more Italian blood than I am.

00:25:35.520 But we both have some Italian, apparently too many Italians in the Godfather.

00:25:38.560 So you need to like I'm not even sure what what they're going to do to make it comply.

00:25:44.020 Are we sufficiently persecuted?

00:25:45.380 I mean, that's a question, too.

00:25:46.720 Can we maybe win an Oscar?

00:25:48.040 I don't mean these are this brave new political world is really raising a lot of questions.

00:25:52.840 And maybe, Senator, in one of these episodes, we can do it live from the Academy Awards.

00:25:56.500 Hopefully.

00:25:56.740 Absolutely. As long as you promise never, never to pose as as as Oscar that that I can promise you.

00:26:07.300 I think that would be exploitative and explicit.

00:26:09.180 Nobody wants to see that either.

00:26:10.280 Indeed.

00:26:11.000 That is our show, Senator.

00:26:12.060 Thank you very much.

00:26:12.760 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:26:13.400 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:26:14.860 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs Freedom and Security Pack,

00:26:29.820 a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country.

00:26:36.400 In 2022, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.

00:26:46.260 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:26:48.580 Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 19, 2020

Hollywood Has a Predilection for Minors and Communists

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript