Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 03, 2023


Hunter ADMITS it's his laptop, China holds an American hostage, Blocking SPR sales to China & Getting Newsmax back on the air.


Episode Stats


Length

44 minutes

Words per minute

166.39282

Word count

7,359

Sentence count

574

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Toxicity

22

sentences flagged

Hate speech

6

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Joe Biden s son, Hunter Biden, is suing the government for allegedly stealing his father s laptop. Was it his laptop or was it someone else's? What does the media have to say about this?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.740 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.600 Senator, nice to be with you today.
00:00:06.400 Let's just start so we know if either of us are going to get sued.
00:00:10.100 This is maybe the first I've ever wanted to be sued.
00:00:12.740 I think it would be hysterical to get sued by Hunter Biden,
00:00:14.820 but unfortunately I never took a piece of that laptop with me anywhere.
00:00:19.080 No one gave it to me.
00:00:19.980 Actually, someone tried to, and I said I didn't want it.
00:00:22.420 I'm kind of regretting that now.
00:00:23.840 Do you have a copy of the hard drive?
00:00:26.160 I do not.
00:00:27.140 I do not have Hunter's laptop.
00:00:28.500 I've never seen it.
00:00:29.600 I have seen some of the images on it that have been put on Twitter
00:00:33.300 and on the Internet, but always secondhand, not first.
00:00:36.700 So I don't need to pass you a dollar to be my official lawyer for this one.
00:00:39.600 I'm in the clear.
00:00:40.340 Well, I didn't say whether you, you know, you just asked to be sued.
00:00:45.080 I mean, don't blame anyone if they follow what you requested.
00:00:47.260 That's very true.
00:00:48.900 So Hunter comes out.
00:00:50.000 The media goes nuts.
00:00:51.280 They say they love the fact that he's playing offense.
00:00:54.420 I just do want to go back to the Hunter Biden who said he wasn't sure it was
00:00:58.160 his laptop back in the day when he did that big sit-down interview.
00:01:02.280 Take a look.
00:01:03.080 Was that your laptop?
00:01:04.360 For real?
00:01:04.760 I don't know.
00:01:05.360 I know, but you know that.
00:01:06.480 I really don't know if the answer is.
00:01:08.320 You don't know, yes or no, if the laptop was yours.
00:01:11.640 I don't know.
00:01:12.640 But now he does know, and he's going to sue everybody, and he's going on offense.
00:01:16.380 Well, so this week he sent a series of letters, including he sent a 14-page letter to the
00:01:23.980 Department of Justice addressed to the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, and
00:01:29.400 he's asking the Department of Justice to prosecute everyone who had access to the laptop.
00:01:36.140 And so it says, for example, John Paul MacIsaac, and it says, Mr. MacIsaac is admitted to gaining
00:01:43.280 access to our client's personal computer data without Mr. Biden's consent, therefore prosecute him.
00:01:50.080 So he wants the laptop repairman prosecuted, and then he also wants, he says he shared it with third parties,
00:01:58.440 so he wants Steve Bannon prosecuted.
00:02:02.160 He wants Rudy Giuliani prosecuted.
00:02:04.940 Now, there are a couple of things that are interesting.
00:02:07.960 It's a whole list of people that he wants.
00:02:09.460 Please begin criminal charges.
00:02:12.520 Bring these charges.
00:02:13.720 And this is from a very high-priced lawyer.
00:02:16.660 This is a lawyer who charges probably a couple thousand dollars an hour to write this letter.
00:02:24.400 Several points worth noting.
00:02:25.880 Number one, this is the son of the president writing a letter to an individual appointed by
00:02:33.380 the president, the assistant attorney general for national security, who reports to the deputy
00:02:40.620 attorney general appointed by President Biden, who reports to the attorney general appointed by
00:02:46.940 President Biden.
00:02:47.880 So this is the president's son saying, hey, everyone who got their jobs from my dad,
00:02:52.740 I'm asking you through a high-priced lawyer, please bring these criminal cases.
00:02:57.520 Now, I got to say, if you're dealing with accusations of partisan bias at DOJ and a political double
00:03:06.360 standard between Democrats and Republicans, it may not be the best idea in the world to start
00:03:14.240 publicly calling for a political prosecution of the people that are your partisan enemies.
00:03:21.740 That's point number one.
00:03:23.900 Point number two, as you noted, the letter explicitly admits, finally, that this is Hunter's laptop,
00:03:32.660 except then they walked it back.
00:03:35.640 So after they sent the letter and everyone said, well, wait a second, you just admitted
00:03:39.920 it was his laptop, they put out a statement, his lawyer, that says, these letters do not
00:03:47.960 confirm Mac Isaacs or other versions of a so-called laptop.
00:03:52.640 They address their conduct of seeking, manipulating, disseminating what they allege to be Mr.
00:03:58.080 Biden's personal data, wherever they have claimed to have gotten it.
00:04:02.520 So they've gone back to Hunter's answer.
00:04:06.120 Oh, I don't know.
00:04:06.800 I don't know if it's real, except for the fact that they wrote a whole series of letters,
00:04:11.500 all predicated on the claim, you harmed my client by handing his laptop over.
00:04:18.380 Well, and everybody in the media was covering this as, okay, he's admitting it's his laptop,
00:04:22.640 but then they also went back to this idea they wanted you to feel sorry for him because he's a
00:04:27.980 kid of the president, leave him alone. 0.99
00:04:30.260 He's a drug addict, leave him alone. 0.98
00:04:32.520 And look, I have the same mentality that kids of politicians should be off limits. 0.98
00:04:38.520 But this is a 54-year-old man.
00:04:41.940 This is someone who is trading off his father's name, who wouldn't have a business without
00:04:46.400 his father's name.
00:04:47.600 I don't think you can go there.
00:04:48.940 And I want to play one of the clips in the media.
00:04:50.340 Again, going back out there today and telling everybody, feel sorry for Hunter Biden.
00:04:54.200 Be nice to Hunter Biden.
00:04:55.260 Leave Hunter Biden alone.
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00:05:44.480 Senator, let's play this for everybody that's watching.
00:05:47.420 This is MSNBC again saying, feel sorry for Hunter Biden.
00:05:50.600 He should be off limits because he's a kid of the president.
00:05:53.100 I don't think you're going to buy the BS, but take a look how they spin this.
00:05:56.760 The political thing is more opaque to me.
00:06:00.420 And Hunter Biden is of singular, obsessive.
00:06:03.940 I mean, other than the big lie about losing in 2020, I don't know that there's anything more
00:06:08.140 obsessive for Trump. Help me understand.
00:06:11.540 I mean, I think that if people are being honest, not many people aren't touched by or not many
00:06:17.360 people don't have some window into the disease of addiction, which has afflicted Hunter Biden
00:06:21.520 at various points in his life.
00:06:23.760 Most people understand a president's kids are not they're not a president.
00:06:29.500 They haven't stepped into the arena.
00:06:31.160 You know, look, this is actually typical of the talking points that are being used to
00:06:37.780 defend Joe Biden and Nicole Wallace, the host there.
00:06:42.280 She used to be the communications director at a White House in the George W. Bush White
00:06:46.440 House. Yeah.
00:06:47.260 And now Nicole Wallace, whatever she used to believe is gone, is no longer operative.
00:06:53.680 She went to MSNBC.
00:06:55.240 They pay her paycheck. 0.99
00:06:56.560 And now she is a hard left flack every day. 1.00
00:07:00.340 And what's interesting is what she's doing there.
00:07:03.740 She's operating right there as Joe Biden's communications director.
00:07:08.000 Those are their talking points.
00:07:09.660 And we've talked about this on this podcast quite a bit, that the issue is not Hunter Biden's
00:07:17.520 addiction.
00:07:18.120 I agree addiction is a terrible disease.
00:07:21.460 She's rice. 1.00
00:07:22.380 Right.
00:07:22.920 Most people, most families have loved ones who have wrestled with the demons of addiction.
00:07:28.860 If that that was all that was going on, this would not be a matter of public concern.
00:07:33.440 And I'll say also, I very strongly agree with the principle that kids are off limits.
00:07:39.680 Hunter Biden is not a kid.
00:07:41.360 He's a grown man.
00:07:43.220 If he were a child, this would be very different.
00:07:45.780 But he is not a child.
00:07:47.040 But the key point, when you are making the defense feel sorry for Hunter Biden because
00:07:56.280 of addiction, you are trying to shift the topic.
00:08:00.540 The reason this matters is because of Joe Biden's potential corruption.
00:08:07.300 Hunter Biden, for years, made a living, made millions of dollars.
00:08:11.260 This wasn't a small little thing.
00:08:13.300 This was an ongoing operation selling access to daddy, made millions of dollars from very
00:08:19.860 shady characters, from Ukrainian oligarchs and the communist Chinese government.
00:08:24.800 Not to mention the Russians, too.
00:08:27.960 And the reason this is significant is it implicates Joe Biden in that corruption.
00:08:36.000 It's the connections between the two.
00:08:37.680 We've talked about the tell.
00:08:40.720 What is the tell?
00:08:42.520 If you're trying to be a political flack, you want to draw a line and separate Hunter
00:08:48.740 and Joe.
00:08:49.340 If you're following the facts, you want to look at the connections between Hunter and
00:08:53.280 Joe.
00:08:53.940 She's being a flack right there. 1.00
00:08:55.460 She's saying it's all about Hunter and his addiction.
00:08:59.180 Leave him alone.
00:09:00.880 She says, I don't even understand why anyone's concerned about this.
00:09:04.220 Well, she does understand.
00:09:05.860 That's why she's doing the whole segment on it. 1.00
00:09:07.600 And she even said earlier in that same conversation, she said, well, there's nothing on this laptop
00:09:13.060 that is incriminating to the president.
00:09:16.360 That may be one of the most absurd statements.
00:09:18.660 We have him talking about the money.
00:09:20.280 We have voicemails.
00:09:21.520 We talk about the big guy.
00:09:22.940 We have flights.
00:09:24.360 We have conversations in Mexico.
00:09:26.180 We have conversations in China.
00:09:27.660 We have billions of dollars in loans.
00:09:29.580 We have millions of dollars to defend the people who are being actually charged with crimes
00:09:34.320 in America from China that he was doing business with.
00:09:36.900 We have conversations between the Russian oligarch and the wife of the Moscow mayor who's
00:09:41.600 tight with Vladimir Putin.
00:09:43.340 We have conversations.
00:09:44.880 And we've seen this come out this week.
00:09:46.220 Are you sure you don't have the laptop?
00:09:47.100 Yeah, I don't have the laptop.
00:09:48.820 I just read a lot about it.
00:09:50.560 But even you look at Burisma, we now know a lot more about that timeline and this document
00:09:56.120 and this email that had these 22 points in it of everything about what was going to happen
00:10:01.160 in Ukraine.
00:10:02.220 Many people believe it could be tied, as you and I talked about in the last podcast,
00:10:05.580 to classify documents.
00:10:06.740 By the way, did you see this?
00:10:08.020 The Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, their fact checker, fact checked us.
00:10:12.860 Really?
00:10:13.260 And they gave us three Pinocchios.
00:10:16.460 Why?
00:10:17.400 Because they said we could not prove that Hunter Biden's email about Ukraine, the 22-point
00:10:23.400 email that we walked through in the earlier pod, we couldn't prove it came from a vice
00:10:30.140 presidential briefing or classified materials.
00:10:32.720 Now, mind you, we didn't assert that it came from classified materials.
00:10:39.380 We said it has a level of scholarship and erudition that is markedly atypical from anything else
00:10:46.580 Hunter Biden wrote.
00:10:48.200 It reads in the same style with the same level of analysis one typically sees in these briefings.
00:10:56.900 And I said from having read a great many of these briefings that much of this could easily
00:11:03.640 have been classified.
00:11:06.760 All of those are true. 0.99
00:11:08.260 Glenn Kessler said, well, we're the Washington Post, damn it. 0.94
00:11:12.100 And it is our job to be the press secretary of the White House, of the White House. 0.97
00:11:17.960 So because you asked, and I actually laid out a way to test it.
00:11:21.760 I said, how do you find this out?
00:11:23.280 Well, Joe Biden's briefings from this week, the week that Hunter Biden was writing the email,
00:11:29.960 the week before he was, Joe Biden was going to Ukraine.
00:11:33.800 Two weeks before his son got the big job, $80,000 a month from Burisma.
00:11:37.480 So it's a limited time.
00:11:39.600 There are briefings.
00:11:40.600 They are in the National Archives.
00:11:42.100 At least they should be.
00:11:43.300 They may be in the Corvette.
00:11:44.360 I don't know.
00:11:45.620 But what we called for on this podcast was for the special counsel to pull those briefings
00:11:52.980 and compare them to Hunter Biden's email.
00:11:57.580 I can't do that.
00:11:58.900 I don't have those briefings.
00:12:00.400 By the way, the Washington Post can't do that.
00:12:03.220 They don't have those briefings.
00:12:04.760 So there are three Pinocchios.
00:12:06.400 I'll tell you this, Ben.
00:12:08.320 If it ends up being proven that they did come from those briefings, I look forward to the
00:12:16.220 Washington Post formal retraction, which they won't do.
00:12:20.140 Yes.
00:12:20.600 Because these people kept the Pulitzer for reporting on the bogus Russian corruption story.
00:12:25.740 And they happily display their Pulitzer saying, look, we spread misinformation as well as the
00:12:30.980 New York Times.
00:12:31.180 That's what we get prizes for.
00:12:32.260 Yes.
00:12:32.960 You look at this White House now and it does seem that they are at least starting to lose
00:12:37.820 some of the media because either there's self-preservation for them because they don't want to keep 0.99
00:12:43.340 looking like total morons or they're mad at the White House for just misleading them and lying to 0.97
00:12:48.600 them as they scream they're being transparent when there's a new raid or new documents found 1.00
00:12:54.160 every other day.
00:12:55.600 CBS News, and you've got to listen carefully here, they're covering this, they're going
00:13:00.040 to the Beach House, and Gayle King kind of just knocks them off the bus a little bit here and 1.00
00:13:04.480 is like, hey, let's not let them keep getting away with claiming they're transparent.
00:13:08.320 Here it is.
00:13:09.120 They were very public when the FBI searched the Wilmington home, his private residence in
00:13:13.860 Delaware that happened on January 20th.
00:13:16.160 And the search we're talking about that we learned about from two sources, that happened
00:13:20.400 back in November.
00:13:21.660 And now we're just learning about it right now.
00:13:24.520 And in terms of the timeline early on, November 2nd was when this all started, this entire
00:13:28.920 ordeal.
00:13:29.820 Roughly 10 documents were found in the Penn Biden Center when President Biden's lawyers
00:13:34.540 were packing things up.
00:13:36.140 They alerted the National Archives.
00:13:37.780 National Archives alerted the Department of Justice.
00:13:39.760 And we now know that the Department of Justice took this seriously enough to have the FBI
00:13:45.520 go in and search.
00:13:46.540 We keep hearing about transparency, but then you hear stories like this.
00:13:49.620 So it does raise even more questions.
00:13:51.660 Did the FBI find anything else?
00:13:53.340 And what does it mean?
00:13:54.440 That's what we don't know.
00:13:55.440 We don't know if they found anything else.
00:13:57.040 They may have found items that were classified or not classified.
00:14:00.480 Because remember, any records from a vice president or president should all be at the National
00:14:05.200 Archives.
00:14:05.900 I mean, they should all be at the National Archives.
00:14:08.700 Gayle King says what she said.
00:14:09.940 You've called for them to go look at the documents in Delaware, at the University of Delaware.
00:14:13.900 You've also said you should be looking at Hunter Biden's office.
00:14:16.300 I don't think there's any way now the White House can separate these two stories.
00:14:19.500 Well, and you can see the instincts to try to defend the White House, saying things like,
00:14:25.380 you know, they've been through this ordeal.
00:14:27.600 Yeah.
00:14:28.140 And, you know, the raid on January 20th, they were very clear about it and let us know.
00:14:34.020 So, but even while they're trying to spin for it, the Justice Department took it very
00:14:38.760 seriously, you see the CBS reporter saying, well, we just heard from two sources there
00:14:46.560 was another raid back in November that they didn't tell us about on the Penn Biden Center
00:14:53.220 and that the FBI went in search.
00:14:54.480 And you saw when the reporter repeats, well, this all started when the lawyers were packing
00:15:00.940 up the boxes.
00:15:03.120 Ben, I've seen some lousy lawyers in my day, but I've never seen lawyers whose billing rates
00:15:09.360 are cheap enough that you use them to pack boxes. 0.97
00:15:12.800 You only send in the lawyers when you realize, oh, crap, we got a problem.
00:15:17.300 So she's, of course, not skeptical of any of that. 0.96
00:15:20.180 But you're right.
00:15:21.500 Gail King comes in and says, wait a second here. 0.97
00:15:24.440 They ain't being transparent.
00:15:26.820 Yeah.
00:15:27.840 And you can see even as shameless as the corporate media is in defending this White House, they
00:15:36.760 are getting irritated at the constantly changing story every single day where they keep hiding
00:15:43.960 the truth and the new facts come out and they hide the truth and new facts come out.
00:15:48.660 But at the same time, they're telling everyone how transparent they're being.
00:15:52.420 Take a listen.
00:15:53.040 Yeah.
00:15:53.200 Look at the White House.
00:15:54.440 Yeah, I think we've been pretty transparent from the very beginning with providing information
00:15:57.880 as it occurs throughout this process.
00:16:00.560 You know, we have released probably thousands of words of statements from the president's
00:16:04.760 personal attorney and the White House counsel's office about the process that has been undertaken
00:16:08.780 here, that process that has been fully coordinated with the Justice Department as they conduct
00:16:14.260 an ongoing investigation.
00:16:15.180 And we want to be very careful to be respectful of the integrity of that ongoing investigation.
00:16:19.760 And so and so I think that it's important to understand that as these things develop and
00:16:24.360 as information develops throughout an investigation, we're trying to get you guys access to as much
00:16:28.540 information as we can.
00:16:29.940 I don't buy it.
00:16:31.400 I don't believe it.
00:16:32.180 I don't think you do either.
00:16:33.260 And I think the majority of the American people are starting to lose trust in this administration.
00:16:36.880 We saw that in the poll from YouGov last week.
00:16:39.060 Look, his claim is that they've been, quote, fairly transparent.
00:16:43.680 Now, that's they've shifted back from very transparent, which is what Corrine Jean-Pierre
00:16:47.500 kept saying.
00:16:48.540 But even fairly transparent, they claim that the first batch of documents was discovered
00:16:53.580 November 2nd, a week before Election Day.
00:16:56.100 You know what they didn't do?
00:16:57.780 Tell any of the American people, tell any reporters, let it be published before the election.
00:17:02.480 So they certainly weren't they weren't fairly transparent.
00:17:04.980 They weren't a little transparent.
00:17:06.060 They were zero transparent.
00:17:07.700 They hid it from the American people before the election.
00:17:11.300 We're just learning now about about the FBI searching the Penn Biden Center back in November.
00:17:17.080 Again, they hid that November, December, January.
00:17:22.500 And it just now is becoming public.
00:17:26.200 You know, their their spokesperson there says, well, we're coordinating closely with the Justice
00:17:31.760 Department that I actually believe that's part of the problem.
00:17:35.460 Because the Justice Department didn't leak a word of this during any of that period either.
00:17:40.280 They leak like crazy against Donald Trump.
00:17:43.200 But when it comes to protecting this White House, suddenly they are perfect.
00:17:47.860 They view their job.
00:17:51.700 Tragically, as political.
00:17:53.520 And that's not what DOJ should be.
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00:18:21.660 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:18:27.840 Last question on this.
00:18:29.160 There was a very interesting timeline that we now know a lot more about.
00:18:33.560 That when they were looking at his house in Delaware, he happened to be at the beach house for three days.
00:18:39.800 Then all of a sudden, they go to the beach house.
00:18:42.340 They say it was planned and coordinated with the DOJ.
00:18:46.140 They keep saying there was no, you know, warrant needed.
00:18:49.800 We've planned this and coordinated.
00:18:51.380 And then they can't say, well, they didn't find any classified documents at the beach house. 0.51
00:18:55.120 And there's a lot of people asking the question, well, no crap, they didn't find any there. 0.80
00:18:58.680 They just went there for three days, knowing apparently they were going to come and search the daggum place anyway. 1.00
00:19:04.040 I saw a lot of people talking that way. 0.99
00:19:05.820 Do you think they'd be dumb enough to do that? 0.92
00:19:08.600 No, I don't think Joe Biden went and like hid or destroyed classified documents. 1.00
00:19:14.460 That would be spectacularly foolish.
00:19:17.680 That would be, to use the old Watergate adage, it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. 0.96
00:19:23.160 Right.
00:19:23.600 You know, that would be like, you know, erasing, what was it, 18 minutes of audio tape from the Oval Office
00:19:29.440 that ultimately played the pivotal role in bringing Nixon down.
00:19:34.940 I don't think the Bidens did that.
00:19:37.520 I think they're sloppy.
00:19:39.080 I think they're messy.
00:19:40.060 And I think they got caught.
00:19:42.360 And then I think there's an awful lot of incompetence.
00:19:44.540 They just keep getting caught again and again and again and again.
00:19:47.780 There's two other major issues that I want to talk about.
00:19:50.600 And they deal with China.
00:19:52.240 One deals with strategic oil reserves.
00:19:54.180 And I certainly want to deal with that.
00:19:55.840 Another one deals with an issue that I'm going to ask all of our listeners and viewers to get involved in.
00:20:01.900 Because it is something that's not been covered by the media.
00:20:05.280 You have been really pushing this issue over the last several days because there's an important meeting coming up in China
00:20:10.640 with an American hostage from Texas.
00:20:13.320 Let's lead off with that because people, and I'll say this because I think it's important,
00:20:17.200 people need to be calling their congressmen and their senators and the White House,
00:20:21.160 begging and getting this name out there, telling this story, posting articles on social media.
00:20:25.960 He needs our help.
00:20:26.840 Yeah, there's a Texan, an American named Mark Swedan, who has been unjustly imprisoned in China for more than 10 years now.
00:20:37.320 And it is a horrific story.
00:20:40.480 It began in 2012 where Mark traveled to China on a business trip.
00:20:46.000 And on November 13th of 2012, he was abducted by China's Public Security Bureau.
00:20:53.660 And a witness to the abduction said that he was abducted because the Chinese government wanted to view the contents of his cell phone.
00:21:03.200 He was accused of being part of a criminal conspiracy to manufacture and sell drugs.
00:21:09.340 They tried to coerce him into confessing.
00:21:11.360 He refused to confess.
00:21:13.440 He pleaded not guilty.
00:21:14.960 They had a trial in 2013.
00:21:16.740 He was found guilty.
00:21:18.040 The prosecution at the trial produced no forensic evidence to back up their allegations.
00:21:23.960 They never found drugs on Mark.
00:21:25.960 They never found drugs in his hotel room.
00:21:28.500 The records in his passport show that he wasn't even in China during the time of the alleged offenses.
00:21:36.440 And the 11 other people they indicted, none of them could identify Mark.
00:21:40.540 Nevertheless, he spent 10 years in jail.
00:21:46.420 And in 2019, a Chinese court formally sentenced him to death.
00:21:51.520 His time in jail has been horrific, horrific.
00:21:57.760 They confiscated his Bible.
00:22:00.020 They confiscated his rosary because they want to do everything they can to dampen and undermine faith.
00:22:06.380 His cell is exposed to extreme heat and extreme cold.
00:22:11.560 He's been deprived of sleep.
00:22:13.960 He's been subjected to really serious physical abuse.
00:22:18.440 He's lost more than 100 pounds in jail.
00:22:24.520 And throughout all of this, by the way, he also has been denied access to American diplomats.
00:22:32.180 And so they haven't been able to go see him.
00:22:35.340 His mother, I've spoken with his mother a couple of times.
00:22:40.340 She is a wonderful woman.
00:22:43.420 Catherine Sweet Anna is her name.
00:22:44.860 She lives in Luling, Texas, which is where Mark was born.
00:22:49.200 And Catherine has been fighting for her son for a decade, trying to get him freed.
00:22:55.480 The communist government won't let her speak to him.
00:22:57.520 It's been years since she's been able to speak to him.
00:22:59.620 But she's been praying for him.
00:23:01.460 She's been speaking out.
00:23:02.620 She's been trying to draw attention to get him out.
00:23:07.240 And so this week, I introduced in the Senate a resolution formally calling on the Chinese government to release Mark Svedan.
00:23:14.880 And also calling on the Biden administration to use every tool at its disposal to secure his release.
00:23:21.860 And and the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, is going to Beijing, is going to China in the next couple of days and is going to be meeting with senior Chinese officials.
00:23:31.820 And my resolution formally calls on the Biden administration to use those meetings to try to get Mark released.
00:23:40.160 My resolution was co-sponsored with John Cornyn, the other senator from Texas.
00:23:44.520 There was an identical resolution introduced in the House by Congressman Cloud, who introduced it there.
00:23:52.320 And I spoke this week on the Senate floor telling Mark's story.
00:24:00.200 And, you know, one of the points that I made, China tells people they aspire to be a great nation.
00:24:09.780 Great nations don't behave this way.
00:24:11.660 Yeah. Great nations don't hold hostages.
00:24:15.200 Third world dictators take hostages.
00:24:19.780 And their treatment of Mark Svedan has been shameful.
00:24:27.760 And so it is my hope that when Tony Blinken is there, that he makes it a priority to press for Mark's release.
00:24:37.400 People need to call their congressman.
00:24:39.140 They need to call their senators.
00:24:40.060 They need to call the White House.
00:24:41.760 You need to get the articles online about him and start posting these on social media.
00:24:45.840 Because this goes back to what I refer to as what we saw with Russia recently and the WNBA player.
00:24:52.340 And when the name is out there and people start to talk about it, it gets more pressure and it can grow.
00:24:57.440 That's why I tell people, take our podcast, share it, promote it, tell everybody you know.
00:25:02.240 But there's also a question people are going to ask, and I'm going to ask you this.
00:25:05.760 In certain situations like this, sometimes media attention can be a bad thing early on.
00:25:09.980 Yeah.
00:25:10.120 And there's a strategic nature to this.
00:25:13.780 And depending on which country you're dealing with, there's different protocol that usually are followed.
00:25:18.000 There's going to be people that are going to say, why have we not heard about this over the last decade?
00:25:23.240 Why did it take so long for us to get to this point that we're at now?
00:25:26.700 Walk us through how this kind of works because it's got to be confusing.
00:25:30.380 So the approach you take in a hostage case actually varies quite a bit based on the circumstances.
00:25:36.400 And I've been very active in fighting for the release of a significant number of American hostages held abroad.
00:25:45.320 It's a deep passion of mine, and so I've spent 10 years fighting for the release of hostages.
00:25:54.320 In some cases, you make the decision to do so publicly.
00:25:59.600 In other cases, and I'd say probably even the majority of cases, you make the decision to do so privately.
00:26:07.520 And it depends upon an assessment of, okay, would the public attention help or hurt?
00:26:13.640 In some instances, so there have been instances where, you know, I've talked with the U.S. ambassador in the country or senior State Department officials,
00:26:25.160 and their judgment is, you know, we're negotiating this, we're making progress,
00:26:29.420 and putting public heat and attention on it right now would be counterproductive.
00:26:35.820 There are other times where you just make the individual judgment, okay, public attention would move the ball forward here.
00:26:45.220 And so, and many times I'll make those determinations or my staff will, talking with the families of the hostages.
00:26:54.760 And it's, you know, you certainly hope what you say doesn't make things worse.
00:27:03.880 I mean, that would be a terrible outcome.
00:27:06.460 There's a reason why, in my floor speech on the Senate floor, what I said was carefully calibrated.
00:27:13.520 What I said on this podcast, there's a reason why I pulled out and used the same language.
00:27:19.460 Because when you're dealing with an active negotiation, you don't want to say anything that screws it up.
00:27:26.580 And so that balance can change.
00:27:33.900 You know, I can tell you, if you go back to the Obama administration, there was a woman in Sudan, Miriam Ibrahim,
00:27:42.800 who had been, who was imprisoned and sentenced to death for the crime of being a Christian.
00:27:49.860 And Miriam had had two children, a little boy and then actually a little girl that she gave birth to in jail in leg irons.
00:28:02.160 Wow. 0.76
00:28:02.880 And she was sentenced to receive a hundred lashes and then hang by the neck until dead. 0.99
00:28:10.900 And she could avoid that sentence if she renounced Jesus. 0.95
00:28:15.980 And it was horrific.
00:28:17.520 It was evil.
00:28:20.040 It was indefensible.
00:28:23.460 I spoke out on her behalf repeatedly.
00:28:26.020 I spoke about her on the Senate floor, as I just did about Mark Swadon.
00:28:29.320 I also tried desperately to get President Obama to engage.
00:28:36.240 And I couldn't do it.
00:28:37.880 He would not say her name.
00:28:40.860 Samantha Power, who was in his administration, she would say his name.
00:28:47.380 And I tried to get her help to get Obama to say his name.
00:28:51.140 And Obama would not do it.
00:28:52.860 But ultimately, there was enough heat and light and attention put on the case that the government of Sudan caved and they released her.
00:29:03.440 They released her and she came to New Hampshire and is living in America. 0.95
00:29:09.200 And I had a chance to meet her.
00:29:12.080 And Miriam Ibrahim is this small woman. 0.61
00:29:16.460 And she was in her 20s.
00:29:18.620 She's quite young.
00:29:20.980 And she's slight.
00:29:24.000 And I remember asking her, I said,
00:29:26.560 When you were in that jail,
00:29:29.500 when you were with your children,
00:29:33.080 when you were facing death, torture and death,
00:29:38.960 how did you not give up?
00:29:42.000 How did you not lose hope?
00:29:43.720 And she looked at me with this profound sense of peace.
00:29:50.560 And she just said to me,
00:29:52.000 Jesus was with me.
00:29:53.900 It's incredible.
00:29:55.340 I got to say, it was a wow moment.
00:29:58.360 So there are times when public attention can be very helpful.
00:30:03.400 There are other times where I've been advised,
00:30:05.500 based on the circumstances here,
00:30:07.400 your engaging in public would be counterproductive.
00:30:11.000 And so I don't do it if the judgment is made that in that circumstance,
00:30:15.500 it would be harmful.
00:30:17.460 Talk about the UN very quickly.
00:30:19.380 They're also speaking loud about this right now,
00:30:23.360 speaking up.
00:30:24.280 And that, I think,
00:30:25.320 tells you that obviously the calculus and the timing has changed here.
00:30:28.720 And there seems to be kind of a unity right now that we're seeing on this,
00:30:32.580 for this opportunity to say to China,
00:30:35.140 hey, we're all acknowledging what you've done here is wrong.
00:30:38.620 And we're all saying it's time to release this individual.
00:30:42.200 Now, that's exactly right.
00:30:43.400 The United Nations has what's called a working group on arbitrary detention,
00:30:48.760 which is a UN group of human rights experts
00:30:51.660 who investigate cases of arbitrary detention all around the world.
00:30:56.820 And they found that Mark was being held in violation of customary international law
00:31:02.660 and international norms
00:31:04.480 and in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
00:31:09.620 So you've got the United Nations that has come out for this
00:31:13.140 and said it is unjust and unlawful.
00:31:15.860 And I'll tell you, I have raised Mark Suedan's case directly
00:31:21.100 with very senior Chinese government officials
00:31:25.020 and have leaned in very hard one-on-one pressing the case.
00:31:30.760 I hope that Tony Blinken, when he's there, does the same thing.
00:31:34.200 And I have some reason to be optimistic that he will.
00:31:37.740 But I think the more public encouragement, the more forceful it may be.
00:31:43.900 So it's amazing when you think about 10 years, your entire time in the Senate.
00:31:47.060 Yeah.
00:31:47.580 And for him to be in jail in these conditions with the heat and the cold
00:31:51.300 and having a jail cell that's in that climate at those times
00:31:54.720 is just so shocking and sad.
00:31:57.300 So I'm glad that we're getting this out there.
00:31:59.100 People, call your senators, call your congressman, grab articles about him.
00:32:02.840 Let's make his name well-known.
00:32:05.580 And that's going to be what can make a difference here.
00:32:07.560 Let's talk about this other issue.
00:32:09.700 And this is something that a lot of people may not realize happening right now.
00:32:13.040 The deals with strategic oil reserves.
00:32:16.060 Obviously, there was a lot of news earlier in the last year
00:32:19.080 where strategic oil reserves were released right before the election
00:32:22.180 to artificially lower the price of gas.
00:32:24.360 We also saw that some of that oil went directly on a ship
00:32:27.240 to Chinese communist individuals that had direct ties to Hunter Biden's business dealings.
00:32:32.180 And the big guy, we would assume that would be Joe Biden.
00:32:34.860 And now there's some movement on the Senate on this type of issue.
00:32:37.980 Well, this week I authored and introduced legislation on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve,
00:32:44.580 and it's bipartisan legislation.
00:32:46.480 So I teamed up with Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia.
00:32:50.600 The bill is the Cruz-Mansion bill.
00:32:52.520 Awesome.
00:32:53.200 And what the bill will do if it's passed is make it illegal for the federal government
00:32:58.720 to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to communist China.
00:33:03.080 So it just takes China off the table. 0.81
00:33:06.800 And what's interesting, so there are a bunch of Republicans who co-sponsored it with me,
00:33:10.680 but there were also a total of five Democrats who were on board.
00:33:16.400 Why is that?
00:33:17.380 I mean, that's kind of shocking.
00:33:18.640 We haven't seen this type of, you know, kind of cohesion here
00:33:21.240 between Republicans and Democrats on this type of issue in a long time.
00:33:24.420 Well, we haven't.
00:33:25.500 The Democrats who joined me, we've got Joe Manchin, we have Kyrsten Sinema,
00:33:31.740 we have Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire, we have Angus King from Maine,
00:33:39.920 and then we have Michael Bennett from Colorado.
00:33:43.460 So those are the five that have joined it.
00:33:45.980 And so, look, Manchin and Sinema are the two most likely to break and do bipartisan legislation,
00:33:51.380 but to get Hassan and King and Bennett is encouraging.
00:33:57.200 And I don't know if we...
00:34:00.120 But you'll take it.
00:34:01.040 This is awesome.
00:34:02.340 Well, and listen, Manchin was helpful in that.
00:34:04.780 And so I rounded up a bunch of Republicans,
00:34:07.820 coordinated closely with Manchin who helped round up a bunch of Democrats.
00:34:12.700 My hope is that we'll get a vote on this and pass it.
00:34:15.720 And I don't think it's impossible that this bill gets passed,
00:34:20.160 that it may well be the fact that you have five Democrats signing on to this right now
00:34:25.720 is an encouraging sign.
00:34:27.220 I'm certainly going to press for it.
00:34:30.500 And if we could actually get it passed, that would be a very good outcome.
00:34:34.160 If this does happen, is this a blow to the White House at all?
00:34:38.400 Is that how they're going to spin this?
00:34:39.700 Is that this takes away their power to manipulate prices when they need it right for elections?
00:34:43.960 Well, no, not really, because they'd still have the ability to deplete the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
00:34:50.940 And I am supportive of additional legislation that would limit the president's ability to engage
00:34:56.300 in political manipulations like Biden did so shamelessly.
00:35:00.060 But I think the piece of selling to China was particularly indefensible.
00:35:07.460 There's other legislation, Republican legislation, that's broader.
00:35:10.760 And in fact, I've co-sponsored that broader legislation.
00:35:15.000 But if we can get China taken off the table, that's worth passing into law. 1.00
00:35:20.180 And if it's a bipartisan vote, it will be a result of Democrats saying,
00:35:27.420 OK, what the White House did here, we can't defend and we want to get some distance from.
00:35:32.020 Lastly, there was a letter sent and OAN was kicked off DirecTV.
00:35:39.060 Now Newsmax, they say, oh, we had a fight over fees.
00:35:43.100 They're now gone.
00:35:44.920 There's been a letter that you've been a part of now that is saying, hey,
00:35:48.840 this looks like you're just trying to cancel conservative media.
00:35:52.240 And of course, they claim, well, we're going to fight back and show you guys transparently
00:35:58.020 that this is Newsmax's fault, that you can't watch them anymore, not our fault.
00:36:03.620 Give everybody a recap of that letter.
00:36:05.840 Yeah.
00:36:06.320 So this is a letter I wrote.
00:36:08.800 And I am, as of this week, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee.
00:36:14.160 Congratulations, by the way.
00:36:15.240 Well, thank you.
00:36:16.020 That's a really big deal.
00:36:17.360 And that's great for conservative values to have this position.
00:36:19.860 It is the top Republican spot on the Senate Commerce Committee.
00:36:24.860 The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over roughly half of the U.S. economy.
00:36:30.500 And so and we also have a very significant staff that I'm in the process of hiring up right now
00:36:37.320 who prepared this letter, who wrote this letter.
00:36:40.440 The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over agencies like the Federal Communications Commission,
00:36:46.280 the FTC, when it comes to media and censorship, the Commerce Committee has that falls directly
00:36:57.620 under our authority.
00:36:59.000 The other committee that has major authority on that is the Judiciary Committee.
00:37:03.520 I serve on that committee as well.
00:37:05.800 The ranking member on the Judiciary Committee is Lindsey Graham.
00:37:09.440 Yeah.
00:37:09.560 So I went to Lindsey and Lindsey and I co-authored this letter together.
00:37:13.880 So it's from the ranking member of Commerce and the ranking member of Judiciary.
00:37:17.680 And that's significant.
00:37:18.660 Any company that gets this letter, they're going to take it seriously.
00:37:21.680 Yes.
00:37:22.660 And then also Mike Lee and Tom Cotton both signed the letter as well.
00:37:26.260 They were both very interested in the issue.
00:37:27.900 And what happened, so DirecTV, all right, let's back up.
00:37:34.680 A year ago, the three biggest cable news networks that were right of center were Fox News, Newsmax,
00:37:45.900 and One American News, in that order in terms of ratings.
00:37:48.740 A year ago, Democrat members of Congress wrote to AT&T, which owns DirecTV, owns 70 percent of DirecTV.
00:37:58.600 Texas Pacific owns the other 30 percent.
00:38:01.860 Democrat members of Congress wrote to the CEO of AT&T and said,
00:38:06.620 please throw off air Fox News, Newsmax, and One American News.
00:38:11.200 We don't like what they're saying.
00:38:12.880 We call it misinformation, which is the Democrat code word for seeking censorship.
00:38:17.040 So they asked the CEO of AT&T to throw them off air.
00:38:21.380 And this wasn't a hidden letter.
00:38:22.480 People need to understand.
00:38:23.080 This was very out in the open, transparent.
00:38:25.160 They put out press releases.
00:38:25.920 Yeah, they were wanting this fight.
00:38:27.880 Yes.
00:38:29.340 In the year that followed, DirecTV has now thrown off the air two of the three.
00:38:35.980 So about a year ago, they threw One America News off.
00:38:40.020 I thought that was a terrible decision.
00:38:41.900 I spoke out against it then.
00:38:43.660 And I think in many ways that may have been a trial balloon for what they just did last week,
00:38:51.440 which was to throw Newsmax off the air.
00:38:55.380 And so now two of the three have been deplatformed.
00:38:59.340 And so what my letter does is it lays out those facts.
00:39:01.920 And in particular, there was a negotiation between Newsmax and DirecTV where Newsmax was trying to get paid for its content.
00:39:10.200 Not a crazy idea, by the way.
00:39:13.840 Well, although I will say in the cable and satellite world, some channels get paid and some don't.
00:39:19.600 And it depends on how big your market is.
00:39:21.920 In fact, there are some channels that pay the carrier to carry that channel.
00:39:26.840 So it's not crazy, but it's not necessarily damning.
00:39:30.980 Newsmax was making the case they wanted to be paid because their ratings were high enough that it merited it.
00:39:41.760 DirecTV said no.
00:39:44.220 Newsmax has made the allegation that DirecTV pays a number of other channels that are left of center and have much lower ratings than Newsmax.
00:39:56.280 So what this letter does is it asks a whole series of questions.
00:40:02.180 It asks them, number one, to preserve all their documents.
00:40:06.080 And then it walks through very specific questions about why they terminated Newsmax.
00:40:12.080 Is it true they said they were not going to pay them a penny?
00:40:15.700 Is it true that they pay liberal stations that have lower ratings money, but they won't pay them?
00:40:20.700 And so it walks them through systematically.
00:40:22.820 I will say I have subsequently had a long phone conversation with the CEO of DirecTV.
00:40:30.820 He disputed the facts.
00:40:32.820 He said the facts that Newsmax had conveyed were not accurate.
00:40:36.620 And I'll tell you what I told him.
00:40:37.600 I said, look, I understand and appreciate that.
00:40:41.440 I've been, before I was in the Senate, I was a practicing litigator for a long time.
00:40:45.620 I've handled a lot of cases, and I understand that any dispute, there's always at least two sides to it.
00:40:52.520 So I told him, listen, there's a reason we ask these questions.
00:40:55.540 I'm interested in what the facts are.
00:40:58.080 And if the facts, as they've been conveyed, are not accurate, I'm interested in seeing that.
00:41:02.220 And I will say DirecTV committed to giving full and candid and real answers to the questions.
00:41:09.720 And so we'll see what those answers are.
00:41:12.420 But the goal is transparency at this point.
00:41:14.660 Know how they got from point A to point B.
00:41:16.620 And is this about silencing conservatives or is this just really about business?
00:41:20.360 And listen, the goal is also a couple of other things.
00:41:22.660 The goal is also one of the things I ask for is any communication they've had or their corporate owners have had with Democrat members of Congress or with the White House or with the administration.
00:41:33.600 We know from the Twitter files this White House is quite eager to silence people.
00:41:38.700 I want to see any communications that have happened with Democrats.
00:41:43.560 But I also told him straight out.
00:41:45.560 I said, look, the outcome I'd like to see, I'd like to see Newsmax back on the air.
00:41:50.360 Um, and they are on other carriers, but DirecTV is a pretty big carrier and they lost a whole bunch of households when they got pulled down from DirecTV.
00:41:59.580 And I said, listen, there are millions of Texans and millions of Americans who would like the choice, who would like the option to be able to watch Newsmax.
00:42:11.140 There are a ton of choices left of center.
00:42:13.520 There are only a handful right of center.
00:42:15.340 And one of the things I made very clear also, I said, listen, if you disagree with what Newsmax says or OAN says or Fox News says, there's a remedy for that.
00:42:24.860 You can say you disagree with it.
00:42:26.860 You can.
00:42:27.340 The best cure for bad speech is more speech.
00:42:31.080 Look, we played MSNBC.
00:42:33.120 I think most of what MSNBC says is utter nonsense.
00:42:37.120 But I don't want them censored.
00:42:39.200 I don't want them pulled down. 0.96
00:42:40.680 They have a right to spew their nonsense.
00:42:42.840 If nothing else, they help support podcasts like this because they give us easy pinatas to tee off of.
00:42:48.820 Great material, yeah.
00:42:49.820 So the answer, if you disagree, is engage on the substance and actually present the argument.
00:42:57.680 It's not use corporate power and money to silence the voices you disagree with.
00:43:03.580 And so what I hope comes from this is that we learn more what happened.
00:43:06.920 We learn the extent to which Democrat politicians were involved.
00:43:10.720 We know of the opening letter that at the beginning of this, we don't know if there were subsequent communications.
00:43:15.820 But I also hope that this scrutiny, and it's our intention to drill down and investigate what happens here,
00:43:24.360 we hope that this scrutiny causes them to revisit the decision and say, you know what?
00:43:30.320 Our viewers are better off having the choice to watch Newsmax if they want than they are not having that choice.
00:43:36.740 That's the outcome.
00:43:37.720 That's the goal.
00:43:38.760 It's fun to get to hear what's going on in D.C.
00:43:41.080 This is exactly why we do this podcast.
00:43:43.440 For all of you that are watching, thank you.
00:43:45.580 Don't forget, we have two audio versions of the show that come out each week.
00:43:49.320 We publish Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
00:43:51.380 So make sure you download our podcast at that subscribe button.
00:43:55.360 Tell your family and friends, don't forget to make those phone calls this week,
00:43:58.900 especially on behalf of this American hostage in China.
00:44:01.360 And let's make sure that everybody knows that story.
00:44:03.880 So share our podcast as well to let other people know that.
00:44:07.340 Write us a five-star review, and we'll see you back here in a couple of days.
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