Verdict with Ted Cruz - How Screwed Are We？

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00:00:51.340 For now, I am Michael Knowles.

00:00:53.500 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:57.980 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:01:02.640 I'm going to jump right in.

00:01:03.520 I'm not going to allow myself to say one extra word from Eddie.

00:01:07.760 First question.

00:01:08.480 Senator, what was your least favorite part of Joe Biden's terrible State of the Union speech?

00:01:16.020 Well, it disturbed my nap.

00:01:17.720 That was irritating.

00:01:18.520 But, but look, the, the, the, the, the part I hated the most was, was, was a line that he had where he said, we, the people.

00:01:29.540 And then he said, that's us.

00:01:33.020 That's the government.

00:01:34.400 And that just pissed me off because I'm sorry. 0.98

00:01:37.200 That is utter and complete crap that, that, that, look, I know that Joe Biden was, was not a very good law student. 0.98

00:01:43.720 But he needs to go back and take con law again. 0.99

00:01:47.580 Because we, the people, which is how the Constitution begins, means us, the people, damn it. 0.99

00:01:56.800 It's not government. 0.98

00:01:57.920 It's the opposite of government.

00:01:59.900 And, and, and, you know, this is Joe Biden being a, a totalitarian, like justifying massive government power by saying, you know, I am we, the people.

00:02:10.720 I mean, you know, it reminded me of, of Louis the 14th, l'état c'est moi.

00:02:14.660 L'état c'est moi.

00:02:16.160 Okay.

00:02:16.700 And you did actually get me to, to, to mangle French on the podcast.

00:02:19.880 So we, I've been hanging around with Yalies too much. 1.00

00:02:23.140 It's clearly, clearly a problem.

00:02:24.780 It's far too.

00:02:26.240 But, but, you know, Joe Biden thinks he's the sun god. 0.83

00:02:29.140 I mean, I, I, I mean, it, it, it is the arrogance and ignorance of that statement.

00:02:36.100 And it is what big government Democrats believe. 0.99

00:02:39.700 But I think a lot of people think this, Senator, and I, I, I will try to refrain from ascribing to malice, that which is equally explained by stupidity. 0.99

00:02:48.380 True enough. 0.99

00:02:49.240 Barack Obama said this.

00:02:50.360 Do you remember Barack Obama said the government?

00:02:52.040 That's, that's what we do together.

00:02:53.660 That's, that is us.

00:02:54.760 It was what Joe Biden said was basically a plagiarized line from Obama and Joe Biden.

00:02:59.620 Biden, Biden would never plagiarize.

00:03:01.580 No, no, come on.

00:03:02.500 Joe would not do that.

00:03:03.700 Not him.

00:03:04.420 Not him.

00:03:04.900 But what do you say to people who say, look, yeah, the government is when we, we all get together, you know, we, the people get together.

00:03:11.760 And then the thing that we do that expresses our unity together is the government. 0.95

00:03:16.620 And you, you're just some crazy conservative who has an irrational fear of government. 0.91

00:03:20.660 So we, the people is the boss of government. 0.97

00:03:25.380 Look, for most of human history, government was the monarch, was the ruler.

00:03:32.160 And, and, and the power of government came from God Almighty.

00:03:36.460 And, and, and, and it was a top-down vision.

00:03:38.880 And, and, and when the framers rested sovereignty with the people and the people lent government power to office holders for a temporary period of time, that transformed the face of the planet.

00:03:54.900 I mean, that was a revolutionary idea.

00:03:58.440 You know, Thomas Jefferson put it really well when he said that the Constitution serves as chains to bind the mischief of government.

00:04:07.500 It's all about restraining government.

00:04:11.040 Now, we want a government strong enough to, to, to defend the nation, to do the essential functions that the government needs to do.

00:04:17.560 But the Constitution and Bill of Rights are all about protecting we, the people, from the Joe Bidens of the world that want to take our freedoms away. 0.65

00:04:26.840 And there seems to be this total blurring of the distinction between the different parts of the government.

00:04:33.360 I'm, I'm no con law expert, but I have read the document once or twice.

00:04:36.700 And it seems to me, you have the people, and you have the states, and you have the federal government, and you have a separation of powers, and you have checks and balances, and you have federalism.

00:04:47.960 And yet, when you hear Joe Biden talk about it, it's all just kind of the same blob, and we got to do whatever it tells us to do.

00:04:55.980 Yeah, look, the modern left is openly socialist.

00:05:01.560 The people driving the agenda in the Biden administration are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC.

00:05:10.540 Bernie and AOC explicitly are socialists, and Warren is not too far behind that.

00:05:16.440 And that means they believe their solution to everything is government and government power.

00:05:22.960 Now, one of the consequences, I will say, the Biden guys, they came in on January 20th.

00:05:27.520 They immediately fire everyone connected with the Trump administration.

00:05:30.340 They immediately start rescinding rules.

00:05:32.720 And they are, frankly, much more effective at doing this than Republicans are.

00:05:39.100 But for them, this is religion.

00:05:42.500 Government is religion.

00:05:44.440 It is faith.

00:05:45.160 It is what they do.

00:05:46.520 You know, too often, Republicans treat politics like a game of croquet in the back lawn.

00:05:54.220 And the differential in seriousness is, it's a problem.

00:05:59.180 So speaking of the differential in seriousness between the Republicans and the Democrats, this question comes from Jonathan.

00:06:07.360 Caitlin 2021, are you with her?

00:06:10.820 Look, I think it will be interesting to see, see how California resolves that.

00:06:17.920 I find it wonderfully beautiful that Gavin Newsom is getting recalled.

00:06:29.220 I mean, it, you know, karma has a way of coming back on you.

00:06:33.720 You know, it says something that his shut everything down policies were so extreme that even the people of California said enough of this nonsense.

00:06:43.740 That's good.

00:06:44.520 That's good.

00:06:45.040 That's actually good for hope in America.

00:06:47.820 So I don't know, Caitlin.

00:06:49.320 I met Caitlin back, oh, 2013, I think it was, when I came out to L.A. to speak to the Friends of Abe, the conservative group in Hollywood.

00:07:00.560 And then Caitlin was Bruce, and Bruce Jenner was openly conservative, which was a really risky position to take in Hollywood.

00:07:11.580 People don't know this, but Bruce Jenner would go to conservative events.

00:07:15.860 He was not exactly hiding this sort of thing.

00:07:19.860 Bruce had demonstrated real courage.

00:07:22.520 Now, Caitlin is running, you know, in 2016, when I was running for president, Caitlin Jenner publicly said that she wanted to be my trans ambassador, the trans ambassador for Ted Cruz, which caused a lot of the LBGT world to lose their minds that Caitlin said such a thing.

00:07:41.920 Listen, I don't know.

00:07:43.060 I don't know who all is going to run and what's going to happen.

00:07:45.260 But I think it's great.

00:07:46.240 I think democracy is all about standing up for what you believe in, and if the people of California choose anybody who is more protective of liberty than Gavin Newsom, that's a step in the right direction.

00:08:00.720 There is a real world, because obviously it would raise lots of questions about even just the pronouns.

00:08:05.220 What pronouns do you use?

00:08:06.680 What does this mean for these broader issues of gender and sex?

00:08:09.500 But it may simply be the case that in California, that's about as conservative as you get.

00:08:14.680 And so, yes, I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

00:08:16.880 A lot of other people are going to be part of this race as well.

00:08:21.120 We have a question, Senator, that is, well, just cuts right to the point.

00:08:26.320 From the Panda Tribune, when no one is watching, are any members of Congress actually productive public servants?

00:08:34.380 Yeah, I would say there are.

00:08:36.280 Look, there are actually a number of members of Congress who work pretty hard.

00:08:40.860 It varies, and there's a wide variance.

00:08:44.960 You know, I remember when I was first elected to the Senate, it's probably, I don't know, 2013, 2014, first couple of years I'm up there.

00:08:51.940 And I went out to dinner with John McCain.

00:08:54.480 And John McCain, he and I had a famously combative relationship.

00:09:02.760 Was that the time he, I believe he called you a wacko bird?

00:09:06.440 Was that the phrase?

00:09:07.560 He did.

00:09:07.860 He publicly called me a wacko bird.

00:09:10.300 And actually, when he called me a wacko bird, I went to the Senate floor and I gave a speech praising John McCain.

00:09:17.380 And it so happened it was the 40th anniversary of his release from the Hanoi Hilton.

00:09:23.340 And so I gave a speech just unambiguously praising him.

00:09:27.880 He served our nation.

00:09:29.120 He was shot down.

00:09:30.340 He was a prisoner of war.

00:09:31.520 And most incredibly, he was offered early release.

00:09:35.340 And he said no because he thought it would be dishonorable.

00:09:37.800 And I said, you know, genuinely and from the heart that I admire and revere that service and sacrifice.

00:09:46.440 I hope in the same situation I would do the same thing.

00:09:50.100 Yeah.

00:09:50.360 But you and I, we've never been tortured.

00:09:52.540 We've never been imprisoned.

00:09:53.460 I don't know what I would do in that circumstance.

00:09:55.380 And so every word I said praising him in that speech was heartfelt.

00:09:59.340 I didn't praise him for the terrible liberal policies he supports.

00:10:02.220 There's lots of things John McCain did that I didn't like.

00:10:04.780 But I praised him for that, which was praiseworthy.

00:10:09.100 But I also meant it to be a statement that if you go low road, if you go nasty and personal and in the gutter, I'm not going to respond in kind.

00:10:18.260 And so I didn't.

00:10:19.820 But anyway, the story I was going to tell, because this is a digression from the very good question.

00:10:25.180 Some months later, John and I went out and had dinner and we're talking just about the Senate.

00:10:29.540 And he made a point to me then.

00:10:30.660 And he said, you know, in the Senate, like in most places in life, the 80-20 rule applies, which is that 80 percent of the work is done by 20 percent of the people.

00:10:42.760 That the Senate is a place where if you really want to roll up your sleeves and you want to lead and you want to engage, that you can and you can very quickly lead.

00:10:52.120 You don't have to – you know, the House can be tougher.

00:10:54.680 The House, seniority matters a lot.

00:10:57.800 There are 435 members.

00:10:59.780 It can take a while to have an impact in the House.

00:11:03.480 You know, in the Senate, there are only 100 senators.

00:11:05.660 It's not that big a place.

00:11:06.900 Right now there are 50 Republicans.

00:11:09.380 If you care about an issue, you can stand up and lead and make a difference.

00:11:13.340 So there are a number of senators that make a big difference.

00:11:16.420 Mike Lee, I adore Mike Lee.

00:11:18.480 He is a constitutionalist.

00:11:20.660 He is passionate.

00:11:22.100 He works hard.

00:11:24.640 You know, someone who just retired, Lamar Alexander.

00:11:27.660 Lamar, a lot more moderate than I am.

00:11:30.520 But actually, Lamar and I got along very well.

00:11:33.420 He was a hardworking – he delved into details.

00:11:38.280 He delved into substance.

00:11:39.800 And he would drive a legislative agenda.

00:11:42.700 There are other senators that, frankly, just go to cocktail parties.

00:11:49.480 Yeah.

00:11:49.840 Like, it is a job.

00:11:51.160 I mean, the 80-20 rule means also that 80% of the folks are not working that hard.

00:11:56.280 But you know what?

00:11:57.100 That's true.

00:11:58.660 That's true most places you go.

00:12:00.520 That's true in most companies.

00:12:02.700 Yep.

00:12:03.100 And if you resolve – so when I'm talking to potential candidates who are thinking of running for Senate, and I talk to a fair number of people who are looking at Senate seats, and they'll ask.

00:12:14.000 They'll be like, well, can you make a difference in the Senate?

00:12:16.200 Can you do anything?

00:12:16.940 And with the right person, I'm very encouraging because I say, look, if you want to, if you're willing to do the work, this is, to a significant part, self-directed.

00:12:29.060 How many issues are you going to lead on?

00:12:30.500 What are you going to do?

00:12:31.280 Are you going to – how hard are you going to work?

00:12:33.460 But if you're willing to work and lead and you've got courage, you can make a big difference.

00:12:38.320 Yes, and I actually can attest to your compliment of Senator Alexander because just about a month ago, my newborn son was baptized in Lamar Alexander's punch bowl.

00:12:50.160 This was a very strange circumstance.

00:12:51.980 It said, Lamar Alexander, businessman of the year, 1980 or something.

00:12:55.700 Somehow a Catholic church in Nashville fell into this sort of thing.

00:12:59.980 And so Lamar Alexander is still doing good work, including bringing my son into the body of Christ.

00:13:05.000 That – I'm almost speechless on that.

00:13:08.600 I will say Lamar owns something that is a unique connection between your new home and my longtime home, which is that Lamar has a walking stick that was owned by Sam Houston.

00:13:23.780 And Sam Houston was governor of Tennessee and was governor of Texas, the only person in U.S. history to be governor of two different states.

00:13:31.460 And so it's a very cool walking stick that Sam Houston had.

00:13:35.900 By the way, on the question of senators doing things productive, I'll give you an example that might surprise folks, which is a Democrat.

00:13:44.800 Okay.

00:13:45.460 Kirsten Gillibrand.

00:13:46.620 So I like Kirsten.

00:13:47.880 She and I are friends.

00:13:49.060 We get along.

00:13:49.640 And actually, just today, I did a press conference with Kirsten Gillibrand on an issue that she has been relentlessly leading on and that I've been working with her for about eight years.

00:14:02.680 And it's sexual assault in the military.

00:14:05.500 It's a real problem.

00:14:06.800 The numbers are very discouraging that far too many servicewomen and even some servicemen are subjected to sexual assault in the military.

00:14:15.820 And, you know, I – 2013, I started on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

00:14:21.880 She was on it.

00:14:23.380 And she is passionate.

00:14:25.420 Her – she has legislation that would move the decision about whether to prosecute sexual assault from the commanding officer to a military prosecutor who is outside the chain of command.

00:14:39.960 And the top brass at the Pentagon hate this idea, and they argue vehemently against it.

00:14:46.280 And so I'm brand new on the Armed Services Committee, and I go to a hearing, and, you know, sometimes you think, well, debate doesn't make a difference.

00:14:53.160 That's all just play acting, and everyone knows what they think.

00:14:55.560 Yeah.

00:14:55.640 Well, I went into that hearing genuinely not knowing what I thought and wanting to listen to the arguments on both sides.

00:15:02.380 And the brass say, well, moving the prosecuting decision out of the chain of command, it would undermine good order and discipline.

00:15:12.380 It would make it harder for the commanders to lead their troops.

00:15:15.680 Kirsten came back with a number of facts, one of which is that multiple of our allies have done exactly this reform.

00:15:25.700 So Canada has done it.

00:15:27.000 United Kingdom has done it.

00:15:28.660 Israel has done it. 0.99

00:15:29.980 And they studied it, and it has not had an effect of undermining good order and discipline.

00:15:36.080 And the real challenge is that the rates of reporting in the military are very, very low.

00:15:41.120 That when someone is a victim of assault, they are far too frequently unwilling to come forward and report it.

00:15:49.160 And one of the biggest reasons is they don't believe the commanding officer will be fair and impartial.

00:15:55.340 That they're worried that the commanding officer may be buddies with the guy who committed the assault and will be reluctant to bring charges.

00:16:03.680 And so I listened to those arguments and was persuaded by them.

00:16:08.260 And so back in 2013, I signed up and co-sponsored the legislation with Kirsten and have been fighting.

00:16:17.760 And she's been fighting for eight years, and I've been fighting.

00:16:20.160 And so we sit down with whiplists where she goes and looks for Democrats to support it. 0.99

00:16:24.680 I go and look for Republicans to support it.

00:16:27.300 We just did a press conference this morning.

00:16:29.300 I think the bill is likely to pass in the next two years that we're seeing really growing momentum.

00:16:35.420 But I use that as an example where she has, I mean, just tirelessly bird-dogged this issue.

00:16:42.700 And I think if we can reduce the incidence of sexual assault in the military and do a better job protecting our servicemen and women, that's very worthwhile.

00:16:52.740 Certainly.

00:16:53.960 Next question comes from Pancake Robot.

00:16:57.540 I assume this is Mr. Robot's Christian name after St. Pancake of Alexandria.

00:17:02.380 Question is, I want to hear Senator Cruz's take on the paradox of Republican power.

00:17:08.920 We elect Republicans to make the federal government less powerful.

00:17:12.680 But in practice, that just means that elected Republicans are reluctant to wield power to achieve that objective.

00:17:19.440 That's a very insightful question.

00:17:21.520 How do we resolve that?

00:17:24.020 I think there are a couple of things that drive it.

00:17:25.940 One, we mentioned just earlier in the pod, Democrats are ruthlessly serious.

00:17:35.900 Government is life or death to them.

00:17:38.280 They spend every waking moment thinking about how to be effective.

00:17:44.000 Republicans, often politics, if they do it, it's a hobby.

00:17:47.900 It's not, it doesn't have the same seriousness.

00:17:50.720 So when it comes to wielding power, you don't get people that are nearly as serious about moving a policy agenda because they don't necessarily have the same passion to it.

00:18:03.620 There are a couple of different challenges.

00:18:05.380 Let me, let me break this down a couple of ways.

00:18:07.900 Number one, how do you run a federal agency?

00:18:09.980 And so a challenge that Republican appointees have in an agency is if you're in an agency that you think should be abolished, that can be a real problem for running it.

00:18:21.780 You know, you remember Rick Perry famously at the debate, you know, forgot one of the agencies that he wanted to abolish and said, oops.

00:18:28.920 The irony is the agency he forgot was the Department of Energy, which he later became Trump's Secretary of Energy.

00:18:35.120 So he literally led, led the department that he forgot that he wanted to abolish.

00:18:40.140 Undermining it from within.

00:18:41.700 One of my first jobs in, in politics was in the George W. Bush administration where I was at the Federal Trade Commission.

00:18:49.480 And, and, and my boss was a guy named Tim Muras, who was the chairman of the FTC.

00:18:55.000 He's a brilliant guy.

00:18:55.880 He's a lawyer.

00:18:56.500 He's an economist.

00:18:57.060 And, and he recruited me in to be the head of policy at the FTC.

00:19:00.840 This is 2000, uh, 2001 to 2003.

00:19:06.500 And what Tim understood, if you go into an agency as a Republican political appointee and you tell every person at the agency, your job is meaningless.

00:19:16.360 Everything you've done with your life is worthless. 1.00

00:19:18.480 I hate the mission of this agency and you suck. 1.00

00:19:21.400 Now follow me. 1.00

00:19:22.300 They're going to fight back.

00:19:24.300 They're going to resist you at every turn.

00:19:26.520 But what Tim understood instead, a government bureaucracy is like a fire and you can direct the fire in a positive direction. 0.96

00:19:34.660 But if you just, if you just try to kill it, it will try to kill you.

00:19:39.820 Um, and so for example, at the FTC, my office, the FTC is charged by statute with defending competition and defending consumers.

00:19:50.580 There's 75 PhD economists at the FTC.

00:19:53.460 And so one of the things that I led is something called competition advocacy, where we would study a state legislature or a state regulatory body would request our views on a particular and a competitive bill.

00:20:06.660 They were considering that was typically restricting competition, favoring big business and hurting consumers.

00:20:13.760 And we would study it.

00:20:14.940 And we would study it.

00:20:16.080 The PhD economists would study it.

00:20:17.960 And then we would go and provide testimony or provide expert, uh, guidance on if you do this, uh, prices will rise 20% for consumers.

00:20:29.220 And the competition advocacy, people were eager to do it.

00:20:33.100 It was beneficial, but it was expanding freedom and it was reducing the footprint of government.

00:20:37.660 Another example, um, class action lawsuits.

00:20:41.740 There, there were plaintiff's lawyers that were bringing abusive class action lawsuits where they have a big class.

00:20:50.300 They'd negotiate what's called a coupon settlement, which is, you know, anyone who ever bought a bag of Doritos gets a coupon for 10 cents off Doritos.

00:20:59.920 And, but, you know, as 50 million people, so everyone gets a 10 cent coupon and the lawyers take home $70 million.

00:21:06.560 And, and the coupon settlements, frankly, are a crock many times because they're designed to make lawyers fees and not actually to help the, the ostensible clients.

00:21:17.960 And so what we did in the FTC is we began intervening in cases that involved coupon settlements and arguing to the judge that the judge ought to chop down the lawyer's fees and give the money to the consumers.

00:21:31.720 And, you know, Michael, on the question of the Republican paradox, I like that, that the way that was put, it also sometimes is a conservative paradox.

00:21:42.020 And, and, and I'll give an example, many times moderates in government have been much better than the conservatives.

00:21:52.180 They've been better prepared, they've taken it more seriously, and they've won bureaucratic battles.

00:21:58.380 So I'll give an example.

00:21:59.600 One of my favorite books in politics is Jim Baker's book, his autobiography, and it's called Work Hard, Study, and Stay Out of Politics,

00:22:08.100 which was actually the advice his grandfather gave him.

00:22:12.660 And, you know, you think about it.

00:22:14.440 So Baker was the campaign manager of five presidential campaigns.

00:22:19.120 I mean, pause and like, you know, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of State.

00:22:22.800 I mean, the guy had an extraordinary career.

00:22:25.660 In 1980, Baker was the campaign manager of George Herbert Walker Bush's campaign running against Ronald Reagan.

00:22:32.420 And that was a bitter primary.

00:22:36.200 That's where Bush accused Reagan of voodoo economics.

00:22:39.620 I mean, they were pounding the heck out of each other.

00:22:42.600 Reagan wins.

00:22:44.760 And Jim Baker becomes Reagan's chief of staff in the White House.

00:22:51.100 I mean, that's, I don't know of any other circumstance where the campaign manager for your primary opponent becomes your chief of staff when you win.

00:22:59.200 That, that is an extraordinary thing.

00:23:00.840 And so Baker recounts in his book, right at the beginning of the Reagan White House, he sits down with Ed Meese.

00:23:07.220 Now, Ed Meese is someone who's a dear friend.

00:23:10.080 He was a longtime confidant of Reagan's.

00:23:12.780 He's a principled conservative.

00:23:14.600 When I first ran for Senate, Ed Meese was the chairman of my national leadership team.

00:23:19.420 He's an extraordinary guy.

00:23:21.920 Baker recounts how he sat down with Meese to divide responsibilities in the White House.

00:23:26.500 And he pulls out a yellow notepad and he, and he draws a line down the middle and so on.

00:23:32.200 And he says, all right, Ed, let's, let's divide responsibilities.

00:23:35.400 And he says, look, Ed, you've been with the president for so long.

00:23:40.340 You have his trust.

00:23:41.580 You have his confidence.

00:23:42.520 You know his heart.

00:23:43.880 Ed, you need to drive the substance.

00:23:45.880 You need to drive the meat.

00:23:47.140 You need to drive really the important stuff that we're doing.

00:23:50.120 So you need to lead the Domestic Policy Council.

00:23:53.100 You need to lead the National Economic Council.

00:23:55.340 All of the substance you should be in charge of.

00:23:58.500 And Baker says, look, I'll just do the admin stuff.

00:24:03.000 And he said, I'll take the schedule.

00:24:05.680 And I'll take personnel.

00:24:07.840 And I'll take budget.

00:24:09.740 And I'll take ledge affairs.

00:24:11.180 And so actually in his book, he reproduces, he has a Xerox copy of the actual yellow pad that says Ed and Jim.

00:24:18.680 And it has that on there.

00:24:20.100 And in his autobiography, Baker admits, he says, look, I knew I was eating Meese's lunch.

00:24:30.100 Because, all right, if he controls the schedule, he controls every minute of the president's time.

00:24:36.600 Well, that's a big deal if you decide how the president spends every day, all day long.

00:24:42.940 If he controls personnel, there's an old saying that I think is very true, that personnel is policy.

00:24:49.600 If Baker is picking the people that are throughout the administration, he controls the administration.

00:24:55.340 On budget, everything that happens in government happens through budget.

00:25:00.380 If he controls budget, the dollars drive the substance.

00:25:04.800 And then finally, on ledge affairs, the way he put it, he said, listen, if I'm the one sitting in the room with the Senate majority leader and the Speaker of the House, and I'm negotiating the bill, Ed can have whatever he wants in his cute little policy council.

00:25:20.680 And they can write as many white papers as they want.

00:25:23.280 But I get to decide what gets done.

00:25:25.200 And Jim Baker, extraordinarily capable guy, but not a conservative, very much a moderate.

00:25:31.780 And conservatives suffered because he was so good.

00:25:35.260 Dick Darman, who worked for Baker, likewise, not a conservative, but ruthlessly effective, really understood the machinery of government.

00:25:44.200 And I'm a big believer that conservatives need to be just as effective as the other guys, that we need conservatives who are as good as Jim Baker, who understand how to drive an agenda and actually get it accomplished.

00:26:00.240 You know, there is a lot to be said for the philosophical debates among conservatives.

00:26:05.580 You can throw 100 conservatives into a room.

00:26:07.940 They would somehow find a way to disagree with every single other one and how much they've read and how much they think.

00:26:13.240 No, they wouldn't. No, they wouldn't.

00:26:16.840 And there, but, you know, actually, you've proven this, too.

00:26:19.920 Not just the philosophical aspect.

00:26:22.580 There is a basic competence question here to politics as well.

00:26:27.700 And you have gotten things done.

00:26:29.760 There have been conservatives who haven't gotten things done.

00:26:32.160 You have. Why?

00:26:33.360 Because it's not enough to just sit in the freshman bull session and argue about philosophy all day.

00:26:38.200 You actually have to know how to wield the levers of power and accomplish the tangible aspect of the job.

00:26:44.360 No, that's exactly right.

00:26:45.600 And if you want to change the trajectory of the country, you look at Ronald Reagan did a phenomenal job of it because he understood.

00:26:53.860 He understood he understood the power of vision.

00:26:56.540 He understood the power of personnel and he understood how to drive that vision throughout.

00:27:03.380 And so, you know, Reagan ran on winning the Cold War, defeating the Soviet Union.

00:27:08.760 He ran on cutting taxes and bringing the economy back.

00:27:11.900 And he ran on cutting government spending.

00:27:14.080 He achieved two of those three.

00:27:17.360 So he was successful in winning the Cold War, defeating the Soviet Union. 0.73

00:27:21.440 He rebuilt the military and bankrupted the Soviet Union. 0.76

00:27:25.300 No one thought that was possible.

00:27:26.900 He was successful in cutting taxes and reducing regulations.

00:27:30.160 That produced enormous economic growth.

00:27:32.860 Where he wasn't successful was reigning in government spending.

00:27:35.760 And frankly, his own party fought him on that.

00:27:39.420 Democrats fought him on that.

00:27:40.720 And he, at times, slowed the rate of growth of spending.

00:27:46.920 But that was about it.

00:27:48.580 Yeah, two out of three ain't so bad.

00:27:50.700 We could try to get the rest now.

00:27:53.420 Which actually leads into my final question.

00:27:55.740 A quick question in our last moments here.

00:27:58.780 This is from Ben. 0.90

00:28:00.480 How screwed are we? 0.98

00:28:02.520 Very. 0.98

00:28:04.380 Very, very, very.

00:28:06.160 But I believe not permanently.

00:28:12.400 And let me break into a couple of things.

00:28:15.280 Taxes are going up.

00:28:16.820 They're going up a ton.

00:28:18.460 Every tax.

00:28:19.620 Every tax is going up.

00:28:21.120 By trillions of dollars.

00:28:23.080 And there's nothing Republicans can do to stop it.

00:28:25.620 Because they will use budget reconciliation.

00:28:27.640 That can't be filibustered to raise taxes.

00:28:31.380 The only question is how massive will the tax increase be?

00:28:36.620 And that will be decided by the 50 Democrats in the Senate.

00:28:39.400 They won't talk to Republicans.

00:28:41.020 They won't care what we have to say.

00:28:42.780 And it's going to be in the trillions.

00:28:44.540 The only question is how big.

00:28:46.960 Regulations are going to be horrific.

00:28:48.260 They're going to be terrible.

00:28:49.260 They're going to kill jobs. 1.00

00:28:50.260 They're going to be really harmful.

00:28:52.280 Foreign policy, I think, is going to be a mess.

00:28:54.200 Biden is going to kiss up to our enemies and alienate and antagonize our friends.

00:28:59.920 This is the worst motivational speech I've ever heard.

00:29:02.920 But no, go on.

00:29:03.700 I want the truth.

00:29:04.400 I want the truth.

00:29:05.180 Look, it's bad.

00:29:06.420 There are consequences when you elect Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer.

00:29:11.680 And you give the Democrats control of all three of the elected parts of government.

00:29:18.720 Really bad stuff is going to happen.

00:29:20.480 We're going to see some terrible judges put on the bench.

00:29:23.900 Terrible judges who are radical leftists who will consistently vote to undermine our constitutional rights.

00:29:31.100 All of that's going to happen.

00:29:33.960 The big unknown to me is whether they end the filibuster.

00:29:39.380 If they end the filibuster, we might be permanently screwed.

00:29:45.080 That's actually what frightens me if they end the filibuster.

00:29:49.820 And they have 48 votes.

00:29:51.840 There are two Democrats who say they won't end the filibuster.

00:29:56.380 Joe Manchin from West Virginia, Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona.

00:30:00.140 If they hold the line, everything I just said there is bad, but it can be undone.

00:30:05.660 It can be undone when we win the next elections and take over.

00:30:09.800 If they end the filibuster, what they will try to do is structural changes to make it so you can never unwind it.

00:30:15.960 So if they end the filibuster, they'll add D.C. as a state and they'll add Puerto Rico as a state.

00:30:22.000 They believe that will elect four new Democratic senators.

00:30:25.000 D.C. certainly will.

00:30:26.740 Puerto Rico might.

00:30:27.780 The Democrats believe it definitely will.

00:30:29.480 Well, I actually think Republicans could compete in Puerto Rico, but at a minimum, it's two new Democratic senators from D.C.

00:30:38.240 If they end the filibuster, they will pass H.R.1, the Corrupt Politicians Act, that will federalize elections, that will massively expand voter fraud, that will register millions of illegal aliens and felons.

00:30:51.920 That's designed, that will weaponize the Federal Election Commission to target Republicans.

00:30:56.340 That's designed to keep Democrats in power for 100 years.

00:31:00.420 And if they end the filibuster, they'll pack the Supreme Court. 0.99

00:31:03.180 They'll grow the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13 justices.

00:31:07.840 Because that is the greatest threat to our constitutional liberties we're facing.

00:31:12.880 So, on the question of how screwed we are, the biggest thing that hinges on that in my mind is whether the filibuster goes or not.

00:31:23.340 I'm worried.

00:31:24.220 I think the filibuster, they might end it.

00:31:26.240 But if you're a person of faith, pray for spinal fortitude for Manchin and Sinema.

00:31:33.840 But let me, you know, you said this was a lousy pep talk, so let me try to take it around.

00:31:39.440 I'm actually very optimistic.

00:31:41.940 The crazier they get, politics always has a pendulum to it.

00:31:47.120 When one side gets in power and they go too far, the country moves back the other direction. 1.00

00:31:52.420 These guys are bat crap crazy. 0.98

00:31:54.540 Like they are, they're not just going left. 1.00

00:31:57.820 They're going off the charts, extreme left.

00:32:00.900 Every time they do something like that, I think that makes it more likely that we have a very good election in 2022 and a very good election in 2024.

00:32:10.020 And the analogy that I draw often is it took Jimmy Carter to give us Reagan.

00:32:14.120 And I think Biden going radically left sets us up to move back in the direction of freedom, back in the direction of the Constitution in 2022 and in 2024.

00:32:24.740 Senator, I'm relieved to hear that because when you said that you had some hope and you said, I'm an optimist.

00:32:30.900 I feared you were going to say, I'm an optimist.

00:32:33.020 I think things can get much, much worse than they are right now.

00:32:36.040 You know, I think I absolutely do.

00:32:37.820 So I'm pleased to hear a little glimmer of hope.

00:32:40.080 Many more questions to get to.

00:32:41.200 We will have to hold them until the next episode of Verdict.

00:32:44.280 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:32:45.000 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:33:00.900 A political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations and candidates across the country.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 03, 2021

How Screwed Are We？

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