Verdict with Ted Cruz - March 02, 2024


If Dallas' New Mayor Ran as a Republican, Could He Have Won plus What's Next in the Future of Big Tech & WH Blames Republicans for Border Crisis Week In Review


Episode Stats


Length

33 minutes

Words per minute

185.54637

Word count

6,209

Sentence count

462

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

11

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

The mayor of Dallas is running for re-election as a Republican. Can he beat a Democratic candidate with a D next to his name? Ted Cruz explains why he thinks so. Plus, what will Big Tech look like and how much influence could it have in the future of big tech?

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.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.600 Welcome.
00:00:05.320 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:07.300 Week in review.
00:00:08.940 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:10.080 And these are the stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week.
00:00:13.720 The mayor of Dallas won a race.
00:00:16.620 He had a D next to his name.
00:00:18.560 So the question is, after he changed to become a Republican,
00:00:22.340 could he still win that same election?
00:00:24.400 We'll break that down for you with our guest, the mayor of Dallas.
00:00:29.000 Also, what will big tech look like and how much influence could it have over this country?
00:00:35.240 I'm talking about politically and with AI.
00:00:37.920 We sit down with a tech expert to talk about the future of big tech in America.
00:00:43.900 And finally, the White House.
00:00:46.100 Press Secretary Jean-Pierre stands next to the president
00:00:50.260 and demands that Republicans fix the border,
00:00:53.960 even though they're the ones that destroyed it.
00:00:56.520 So what do we do to fight back?
00:00:57.980 We talk about that as well.
00:01:00.060 It's Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:01:02.220 Week in review.
00:01:03.340 And it starts right now.
00:01:05.220 You are up for re-election right now, running as a Republican for mayor.
00:01:09.500 Yes.
00:01:10.360 Your policies haven't changed.
00:01:12.100 The only thing that's changed is a D went to an R.
00:01:14.600 Correct.
00:01:15.280 Could you win?
00:01:16.520 I'd win overwhelmingly.
00:01:18.380 I don't have any doubt about it.
00:01:19.760 I have no doubt about it.
00:01:21.220 And I'll tell you why I believe that.
00:01:22.600 I'll tell you why.
00:01:23.120 I'm glad someone finally asked for that on the record.
00:01:25.940 Because that's sort of the chatter as well.
00:01:28.120 That's why I asked it.
00:01:28.900 Because you know they're going to say, oh, well, this guy could never win.
00:01:31.260 That's why he waited until the end of his term to then switch parties.
00:01:34.680 So here's the reality that people have to ignore to even make that argument.
00:01:39.880 But I understand why people need to make it.
00:01:41.480 I mean, I told someone, I said, you know, you don't switch parties in a two-party system
00:01:45.320 from one to the other and think the other party's going to say, well, you know, we wish him the best.
00:01:48.220 He was great.
00:01:48.940 And it's our loss.
00:01:50.480 You know, they've got to come up with something.
00:01:51.960 And this is kind of the kinds of arguments they've come up with.
00:01:55.720 But here's the reality.
00:01:57.260 I won my last election with, it wasn't 93%.
00:02:01.340 Dallas City, you know, has ordinances about how write-in candidates get on the ballot.
00:02:08.380 And if you write in a name other than the actual write-in candidate's name that's there,
00:02:13.020 you just essentially didn't vote.
00:02:14.380 You threw your ballot in the trash of the cast votes which were canvassed by the city
00:02:19.640 and are the official records of the city, 98.7% of the vote.
00:02:24.760 That's Democrats and Republicans in that group.
00:02:27.020 That's a pretty hearty endorsement of the incumbent mayor.
00:02:31.340 And I didn't run with a D or an R behind my name.
00:02:34.000 I ran just with, you know, as Eric Johnson because you don't run in Texas in any city with a D
00:02:38.960 or for folks who aren't from Texas.
00:02:40.540 We don't actually have partisan elections in Texas for mayor.
00:02:43.580 You just run.
00:02:44.700 And you don't run with a party's support.
00:02:47.340 Now, what do I think would have actually happened if I had just come out and said six months before the election,
00:02:53.820 I'm actually a Republican.
00:02:54.940 Here's what would have happened.
00:02:56.520 Some Democrats would have gotten together and said,
00:02:58.240 well, this is an opportunity for us to run an ostensibly just overtly partisan candidate.
00:03:05.760 We're going to do something that's never been done in Dallas before,
00:03:07.760 which is to just make it partisan, like to say, okay, we've got an R running,
00:03:11.760 and now we're going to run a D against them.
00:03:14.380 The problem is that the R you're talking about for four years,
00:03:17.880 well enough to clear the field and win with 98.7% of the vote,
00:03:20.940 but that didn't happen yet.
00:03:22.320 So let's just go back and say a Republican who's been that effective,
00:03:27.700 who happens to also be African American and supported by the African American community,
00:03:32.040 we think that that person would lose simply by saying I've become a Republican.
00:03:38.080 I think what happens is I won the first race in a contested nine-person field
00:03:43.860 that it went to a runoff with 12% of the vote.
00:03:46.360 I won, you know, 56-44.
00:03:49.620 I think that goes down to the normal, you know, pretty solid win of a, you know, 54, 53% win.
00:03:58.780 But I still win. There's no question I still win that race because I'm the incumbent at that point.
00:04:03.580 No incumbent mayor, we've had Republican and Democrat mayors before, by the way.
00:04:07.980 No incumbent mayor seeking re-election in Dallas has ever lost, ever.
00:04:12.200 All right, so let me ask a final question, which is you have started now a national organization,
00:04:18.540 the Republican Mayors Association,
00:04:20.220 and you have been out articulating that Republicans need to have an agenda for the cities,
00:04:26.260 that we can't just write off big cities where an awful lot of Americans live.
00:04:31.440 And I think that's a very important message.
00:04:34.020 It's something.
00:04:35.460 And I want to ask you, what's your vision for the message Republicans should have in the cities,
00:04:42.000 and how do we end up with a lot more Republican mayors in the big cities?
00:04:47.860 What's the path forward there?
00:04:49.240 I said this in the Wall Street Journal, and I meant it.
00:04:51.640 It's a two-way benefit for America and for our party.
00:04:58.940 America needs the leadership that Republicans provide at the local level
00:05:02.720 because of the things we talked about just a few minutes ago.
00:05:05.720 So a Republican mayor is going to, because it's part of the DNA of the party,
00:05:11.720 is going to be right on law and order issues, going to be right on public safety.
00:05:16.520 People who've asked me about that have said, let me just quiz you very quickly.
00:05:21.300 Every bad idea you can think of about public safety came from one side of the aisle.
00:05:26.080 There's not even a mixed bag on this issue.
00:05:28.320 If it's a bad idea when it comes to public safety, you know, defund the police,
00:05:31.420 don't prosecute, shopper, whatever, Republicans don't propose ideas that undermine law and order.
00:05:37.060 Not every Democrat believes them, but they only emanate from the Democrats.
00:05:42.400 That's just a factual statement.
00:05:44.960 So a Republican is going to be right on law and order and public safety.
00:05:48.760 A Republican mayor is going to be right on taxes. 0.92
00:05:51.300 A Republican mayor ought to be right on infrastructure spending and investing prudently,
00:05:56.740 and there's studies that show, I mean, have proven that you actually have lower debt levels
00:06:04.060 and you issue less debt when you have a Republican mayor versus a Democrat.
00:06:08.060 When they've, they've, an MIT professor actually studied this and concluded
00:06:11.700 that it is a statistically significant different level of debt associated with a city
00:06:17.740 when there's a Republican in charge and a Democrat in charge.
00:06:20.140 So we actually need Republicans running our major cities because 80% of Americans live in cities.
00:06:27.460 By 2050, that number is going to be 90%.
00:06:30.020 So the country actually needs the leadership.
00:06:32.600 But I'm actually telling you as a group of partisans, we actually have to pay attention to this.
00:06:38.400 And I think we have to pay attention to it because I, in my heart of hearts, believe
00:06:43.700 that by being competitive in the cities, by basically re-engaging, because we were once engaged.
00:06:51.680 There was a Republican mayor's association at one time.
00:06:54.200 It had a similar name.
00:06:55.460 It was like the Republican conference.
00:06:57.660 It was during the Ford administration.
00:06:59.160 And at some point, we just lost interest in competing at that level, and it sort of just faded away.
00:07:06.600 But it was very active at one time, and we were more competitive in our cities at one time.
00:07:10.540 We need to get more competitive there again because the margin of victory at the state level
00:07:16.780 in states like Wisconsin, in states like Michigan, in states like Pennsylvania,
00:07:21.580 is the difference between performing at the city level in, you ready, Madison, Green Bay,
00:07:31.240 and in Detroit, and in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by just 5 or 10 percentage points better.
00:07:38.140 So, in other words, engaging in the cities in a more significant way and having the GOP brand
00:07:44.200 associated with the things we're talking about at the local level, it doesn't take that many votes,
00:07:49.720 and now all of a sudden the whole state is no longer lock, stock, and barrel going one direction
00:07:56.520 because of the advantage that's been run up in the cities.
00:07:59.140 You've cut into the advantage that the cities have.
00:08:01.680 You know, Eric, I'll tell you on that point, so Heidi and I met 25 years ago
00:08:08.760 when we were both working on the George W. Bush campaign in 2000, the presidential campaign.
00:08:13.760 And actually in that campaign, you know, I was a young 29-year-old staffer,
00:08:18.500 but I wrote a memo urging that the campaign consider at the time Condoleezza Rice as a VP nominee.
00:08:27.680 And in the course of the memo, I laid out all sorts of reasons why I thought this was worth considering carefully.
00:08:35.620 But one of the things I did is I did an electoral analysis.
00:08:38.620 I looked at the three preceding presidential elections, and I posited a series of hypotheticals.
00:08:45.760 I said, what would have happened if Republicans had gotten 5% more, 10% more,
00:08:52.400 or 15% more of the African-American and Hispanic vote?
00:08:57.440 So I didn't posit, what if we get 50% more?
00:09:00.340 I did 5%, 10%, or 15%.
00:09:02.260 So goals that were achievable, I believe.
00:09:07.260 And I ran through the numbers, and the one that stood out the most
00:09:11.480 was if Republicans had gotten an additional 15% of the African-American and Hispanic vote
00:09:17.760 in 1996, Republicans would have won an additional 96 electoral votes.
00:09:25.500 I mean, it lips the election dramatically.
00:09:29.260 But to do that, we've got to compete.
00:09:31.360 It's a whole different national conversation about the competitiveness of this party
00:09:38.520 if we are a factor at the city level.
00:09:42.500 Yep.
00:09:42.840 Because it's just where so many people are concentrated.
00:09:45.600 It's getting harder and harder to figure out how to win elections
00:09:47.920 where we're just not even playing there.
00:09:49.640 I mean, we just, it's just not even, it's just, we ought to be competing in every major city
00:09:55.780 where we're currently just sort of saying, you know, a Democrat hasn't won,
00:10:02.540 I mean, a Republican hasn't won there in a long time, so let's not try.
00:10:05.560 We just flipped, just in this last cycle, the mayor, the current mayor of,
00:10:12.500 I believe it was Charleston, South Carolina, is now a Republican.
00:10:15.540 They hadn't elected a Republican mayor in Charleston in like 175 years.
00:10:22.880 So it can happen.
00:10:24.940 It can be done.
00:10:25.880 You have to run the right candidate.
00:10:26.980 He was a former legislator like I was, and he ran a great campaign.
00:10:30.260 Now they've got a Republican mayor. 0.97
00:10:31.360 So what's going to happen next is he's going to do a good job.
00:10:34.460 And when he does a good job, these people who've been voting for Democrat mayors
00:10:37.320 for 175 years are going to say, you know what, Republicans are in charge.
00:10:41.080 The city just seems to be, it's safer.
00:10:42.760 We hire more cops, and crime goes down, and you know what, the taxes go down,
00:10:47.500 and you know, things are just better.
00:10:50.040 The brand means something to them at the local level, and not just,
00:10:54.760 the brand will always have a federal aspect to it.
00:10:57.600 It'll always have a state aspect to it.
00:10:58.980 But right now, in this party, we're missing a brand at the local level.
00:11:03.580 It doesn't mean anything right now at the local level.
00:11:05.640 And we get to decide what it means.
00:11:07.120 And I'm saying we should be running solid conservatives at the local level,
00:11:11.860 winning elections, running cities well, and then that makes people at the local level go,
00:11:16.200 yeah, I'm actually a Republican.
00:11:18.040 I love my Republican mayor, and so I'm a Republican.
00:11:20.460 And that has benefits for people running for U.S. Senate, running for president, running for governor.
00:11:26.000 But we are right now just aren't doing anything.
00:11:28.260 I mean, I was shocked to find that there was no one even in this lane.
00:11:31.440 I wasn't even stepping on anybody's toes by doing this.
00:11:35.020 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation,
00:11:37.720 you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:11:42.260 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:11:44.420 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:11:48.540 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:11:52.280 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:11:53.460 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:11:54.680 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:11:58.060 entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:12:04.200 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:12:07.420 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:12:12.880 Now on to story number two.
00:12:15.520 You know tech better than most people alive.
00:12:19.480 Where are things going in terms of innovation 10 years from now?
00:12:23.740 What should we know now that we don't know?
00:12:27.260 And how will the world be different in a decade?
00:12:29.880 Well, the really positive thing that's happening right now, and I was never a huge crypto guy.
00:12:34.440 I don't love fiat currencies.
00:12:35.600 I think there's a good use against, like, you know, corrupt governments.
00:12:37.920 But I was never that in a crypto.
00:12:39.840 AI actually, to me, is actually very real.
00:12:43.380 The way to think about it, we could talk all about sorts of complicated things.
00:12:46.420 But the simple thing to think about is productivity is just really key in our economy.
00:12:50.020 The reason we have more wealth is we do more with less.
00:12:52.060 And there's all these industries in our economy where this AI combined with operations can do things much more affordably, much cheaper.
00:12:59.800 And so if you look at this, like health care billing, for example, we spend probably over a quarter trillion dollars a year health care billing.
00:13:04.860 And you can probably cut that in a third over the next five or six years.
00:13:08.100 There's tons of areas like that.
00:13:09.340 So there are lots of Cassandras painting stories of impending doom from AI.
00:13:14.880 Is AI going to destroy us all?
00:13:17.140 And do you know what year does Skynet go online?
00:13:19.660 Well, I do work a lot in defense, so I'm working on it, Ted.
00:13:23.100 But there's this.
00:13:24.960 Now we can control all of you.
00:13:28.920 No, listen.
00:13:29.800 There's two different conversations with AI.
00:13:31.460 Yes, my master.
00:13:32.480 Thank you.
00:13:33.260 No, I'm getting in trouble there.
00:13:35.380 Ted's in charge.
00:13:38.600 There's two different conversations with AI.
00:13:40.040 One of them is productivity and wealth creation.
00:13:42.600 And it's actually extremely positive.
00:13:43.960 And that's really good.
00:13:44.560 The other conversation with AI, it's very funny.
00:13:46.540 A lot of people in the tech world are not religious.
00:13:48.500 They've given up their religion.
00:13:49.840 And so this is kind of like a form of their religion, the singularity, the taking over the world of AI.
00:13:54.820 And it's very funny.
00:13:55.760 It's a very messianic vision.
00:13:56.940 It's very much like revelations in Judaism and Christianity where this thing comes and it changes everything.
00:14:02.540 And it's effectively a new God because once it improves itself, it keeps getting better.
00:14:05.980 And so it's like it's a secular religion in Silicon Valley.
00:14:08.940 People are obsessed with it.
00:14:10.020 And there's a talk about end of times with it all the time.
00:14:12.920 And it's funny because America's had a lot of other religious revival movements over the last 200 years where people were convinced end of times was coming very soon.
00:14:19.400 This is quite a weird one based in Silicon Valley.
00:14:21.660 All right.
00:14:21.840 So we're going to wrap up momentarily.
00:14:23.320 But I want to ask.
00:14:24.160 So you are very engaged in policy.
00:14:27.240 A policy question Washington is wrestling with right now.
00:14:30.460 So as you know, I'm the ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee.
00:14:34.000 And AI is squarely within our jurisdiction.
00:14:36.300 In fact, back in 2015, I chaired the first ever congressional hearing on AI and have been focused on it for a long time.
00:14:43.400 Now, there are a lot of voices in Washington, most notably Chuck Schumer, but also including some Republicans that are eager for a very heavy hand of government when it comes to AI.
00:14:54.100 And Schumer and Democrats are proposing literally prior government approval before innovations in AI. 0.99
00:15:01.920 I've been very vocal in saying that is catastrophically stupid. 0.98
00:15:06.600 And if we put government in the position of prior approval, we will cede leadership of AI to our enemies, to China and other countries, and we will kill American leadership. 0.97
00:15:16.800 I'm interested in your views because this policy discussion, and I've got to tell you, a lot of big tech, the Googles and Facebooks of the world, are saying, yes, yes, regulate us,
00:15:26.060 because they believe they can capture the government and use it to shut everyone down.
00:15:30.220 What's your take on how government should approach AI?
00:15:33.880 Because this is as hot as any question in Washington right now.
00:15:38.300 Well, you know, Mr. Senator, I 100% agree with you.
00:15:41.080 I'm really glad you're taking that tactic.
00:15:43.520 As you know, the big companies, a lot of them know they're losing some of their best talent.
00:15:47.080 They know it's going to be hard to compete.
00:15:48.560 But you know what they have?
00:15:49.500 Like if I want to start a competitor, for example, to BlackRock right now in New York, I have to spend $100 million a year on lawyers, even just to do what they do.
00:15:56.300 They love the fact that there's tons of rules and regulations.
00:15:59.040 These big companies would love it to make it impossible to compete against them in AI.
00:16:02.500 So number one, 100%.
00:16:04.160 Keep the regulations as small as possible.
00:16:05.660 Now, the thing I will give them, and we have to be very careful because this is not why they're doing it.
00:16:10.340 The thing I will give them is there probably are ways that some people could figure out how to use AI in bioterror and other areas.
00:16:16.320 And so we have to watch it.
00:16:17.140 We have to be very careful.
00:16:18.400 We have to see as it goes along.
00:16:19.380 But let's not give them the ability to make the whole thing crony and break it.
00:16:22.680 Well, and look, there is no doubt there will need to be regulations applied to AI like to any other industry.
00:16:28.240 Now, many of our existing laws can apply.
00:16:30.320 So are there risks of fraud?
00:16:31.660 Are there risks of deception?
00:16:33.240 Yes.
00:16:33.540 So do you see things like Taylor Swift had the AI fake porn put on?
00:16:38.780 And because she was Taylor Swift and had such a prominence, she was able to get it pulled down. 1.00
00:16:43.880 Well, what happens if that's your kid?
00:16:45.780 Well, if it's you.
00:16:46.580 Yeah, and nobody would watch that.
00:16:49.060 That's all right.
00:16:50.340 The market forces would take care of that all on its own.
00:16:54.020 I was so ready to get in there.
00:16:56.600 So ready.
00:16:57.460 That was my moment.
00:16:58.460 And you knew it.
00:16:59.220 And you jumped in beforehand.
00:17:00.520 Okay, keep going.
00:17:05.400 That was all me, folks.
00:17:07.160 Go ahead.
00:17:07.540 But there's no doubt there are going to be needs to apply laws and rules, whether fraud, whether deception.
00:17:15.260 The legal system will have to be applied.
00:17:17.560 But I think we should move slowly and understand what we're doing because the productivity benefits potentially are massive.
00:17:27.760 And I will say when you talked a minute ago about how the big tech companies want barriers to entry.
00:17:35.200 And that is the most common.
00:17:36.680 One of the great lies of politics is the idea that conservatives are pro-big business.
00:17:45.400 The reality is big business loves big government.
00:17:49.560 Big business usually gets in bed with big government.
00:17:52.940 And big business loves when government puts barriers to entry to stop the next generation of entrepreneurs.
00:18:00.260 And I'll say this.
00:18:01.540 Look, I have nothing for or against big business.
00:18:04.200 But I am interested in the little guys, the next group of entrepreneurs, what the economist Joseph Schumpeter called creative destruction.
00:18:12.180 And one of my favorite images on the Internet is a picture of the founders of Microsoft in 1978.
00:18:20.000 And you have Paul Allen with long hair and a beard.
00:18:22.260 And he looks like one of the Bee Gees.
00:18:23.640 You've got Bill Gates with glasses the size of hip hubcaps.
00:18:28.800 And it's just that picture of a bunch of college dropouts.
00:18:33.140 And it just asks, would you invest money with these guys?
00:18:37.120 And that is – and they were taking on IBM Big Blue, the giant behemoth.
00:18:41.260 And they were the creative destruction.
00:18:43.140 Now they're the giant.
00:18:44.460 And I will say, let's do this to wrap up.
00:18:47.240 Talk about the importance of disruptors, of innovation, of the next generation driving techs, driving productivity, driving our economy.
00:18:55.780 I mean, this is 100% how America works, as you say.
00:18:58.820 And by the way, it's our biggest advantage against China as our adversary. 0.85
00:19:01.940 In China right now, the CCP, aside from just having killed a bunch of our billionaire Chinese tech friends,
00:19:06.780 everyone's terrified to build more tech if you're already successful in China.
00:19:09.560 The other thing they have going against them –
00:19:11.820 Hold on.
00:19:12.260 Say that again. 0.71
00:19:13.340 A lot of our tech friends died and or fled in the last five years out of China.
00:19:18.020 And a lot of them were taken away and disappeared, then came back, and they won't talk about it anymore.
00:19:21.740 So do we know names of people who were killed?
00:19:24.280 Because I don't.
00:19:25.820 I'll give you a friend.
00:19:26.780 Andy Tienren, Asian Innovations Group, 47 years old, about to go public last year after working hard for 11 years.
00:19:32.840 And they told him they wanted to do things differently with the data and going in China.
00:19:36.760 He said, I'm going to go talk to him in Beijing.
00:19:39.020 Next I heard, he died in his sleep that night at 47 years old.
00:19:41.600 Wow.
00:19:42.260 And there's a lot of stories like this.
00:19:43.760 There's a lot of guys who built a lot of it, who fled, and who are very scared of Xi Jinping.
00:19:47.480 But I'll tell you the other big advantage we have, though, against them, other than them screwing that up,
00:19:51.420 is basically all this productivity coming from AI, it's going to disrupt health care.
00:19:56.600 It's going to change how health care works.
00:19:57.480 It's going to change how logistics works.
00:19:59.080 It's going to change how all these industries work.
00:20:00.120 In China, the government people and their cronies, they own those industries.
00:20:03.280 They are not going to allow those to be disrupted.
00:20:04.840 The question is, is in America, are we still able to disrupt things?
00:20:08.380 Are we still going to be allowed by our government to go in and change how those things work?
00:20:11.800 And it's going to be about, because we have regulatory agencies that also want to slow it down with the big companies.
00:20:16.060 But I still believe in America, with the right leadership, we actually can disrupt these things and we can grow.
00:20:20.320 Well, look, when AI replaces podcasts, I hope that the computer that takes my place does a really fine job.
00:20:26.880 Final question for you, and I want to go back to the university, because there's going to be a lot of kids that listen to this,
00:20:32.540 a lot of parents, grandparents, and maybe even professors, that may want to reach out.
00:20:39.040 What does next year's class look like?
00:20:40.740 Is there a cap on that?
00:20:41.780 If someone says, I want more information, if there's a professor that's listening to this and says,
00:20:45.640 hey, I want to leave this great institution that I'm at because of being stifled or silenced, I want to talk to you.
00:20:51.920 How can they do that?
00:20:53.520 So we're bidding our first class right now.
00:20:55.700 This is just as competitive to get into as the other top ten schools.
00:20:58.300 But if you have a really bright young student who's a founding personality, entrepreneurial personality,
00:21:03.440 it's pretty much one of the coolest places you can go.
00:21:05.060 We have a hundred of my top tech friends who put their names on and advising it.
00:21:08.340 We have all these top academics.
00:21:09.660 It's going to be very competitive to get in.
00:21:11.180 But yes, please, please, please apply.
00:21:12.860 You can go to youaustin.org and search the University of Austin online.
00:21:16.660 Professors, they're welcome to email.
00:21:18.480 Obviously, if they're amazing, we'd love to talk to them.
00:21:20.400 We have a pretty big line of people trying to get in as professors right now.
00:21:23.280 But obviously, they're very, very interested in meeting great people.
00:21:26.300 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic,
00:21:30.100 you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.
00:21:35.400 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:21:37.420 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:21:41.400 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:21:45.260 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:21:46.520 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:21:47.740 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:21:51.520 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers,
00:21:55.040 all at different stages of their journey.
00:21:57.240 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:22:00.480 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:22:04.540 I want to get back to the big story, number three of the week you may have missed.
00:22:10.740 White House Press Secretary Jean-Pierre asked about it on CNN.
00:22:13.660 Here's what she said about it at the White House this morning.
00:22:16.200 One of the things that some Americans are focused on are crimes that are allegedly being committed
00:22:21.540 by migrants who are in the country illegally.
00:22:24.780 There was the death of Lake and Riley in Georgia.
00:22:27.260 There's been an arrest made there.
00:22:29.960 Republicans are directly blaming President Biden for this.
00:22:33.220 Republican Senator Josh Hawley said, quote, these deaths are on him.
00:22:38.240 What's the White House response to that?
00:22:40.600 So first of all, I want to offer our condolences to the family of Lake.
00:22:45.760 And I mean, this is a horrific, horrific loss for any family.
00:22:49.760 And obviously, if whoever is found guilty, we need to make sure that that happens.
00:22:57.140 And obviously, we don't want to see anything happen like that again.
00:23:02.500 But here's the thing.
00:23:04.320 We have done the work to make sure we're dealing with a broken immigration system.
00:23:10.600 Senator, have they done the work?
00:23:12.260 Because that's news to me.
00:23:13.420 We've done the work to make sure we're dealing with a broken immigration system.
00:23:17.440 Did they or did they not break the system on purpose to flood the country with millions of illegal immigrants? 1.00
00:23:23.560 So, look, at some level, yes, they did the work.
00:23:27.280 They did the work to break the system.
00:23:30.040 Why is the system broken?
00:23:31.620 Because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the congressional Democrats wanted to break it.
00:23:37.440 Understand, when Joe Biden came into office just over three years ago,
00:23:41.780 he inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.
00:23:49.600 All he had to do was do nothing.
00:23:52.280 Simply sit there.
00:23:53.900 Don't screw it up.
00:23:56.060 And Donald Trump, I worked hand in hand with Donald Trump.
00:24:00.320 We had made enormous progress securing the border.
00:24:03.680 Joe Biden does nothing.
00:24:05.220 And he could have a victory.
00:24:07.160 But instead, he deliberately caused this crisis.
00:24:11.360 He broke the border.
00:24:13.000 Three decisions caused this crisis.
00:24:15.740 He halted construction of the border wall.
00:24:18.260 He reinstated catch and release of the border.
00:24:21.080 And he pulled out of the amazingly successful Remain in Mexico agreement.
00:24:25.600 That was deliberate.
00:24:27.340 He knew what he was doing.
00:24:29.020 And the consequence was this invasion at our southern border.
00:24:32.880 But let me tell you, every dead body, Laken Reilly, Laken Reilly, her parents ought to say, 0.99
00:24:38.560 why, why, why didn't Joe Biden take that damn murderer, put him on a plane and send him the hell out of here? 0.99
00:24:45.780 He should have. 1.00
00:24:46.860 The law provides that he needed to.
00:24:49.460 And yet his politics, his partisan interests said, you know what?
00:24:53.920 I don't care if I'm releasing a murderer.
00:24:57.980 If Americans die, it doesn't matter if it keeps Democrats in power.
00:25:03.580 And I got to tell you, Ben, that pisses me off.
00:25:06.160 Because I don't believe a word I just said there is hyperbole.
00:25:09.880 I think these people, all they care about is political power.
00:25:15.420 And if more Americans die, that is perfectly acceptable to them. 1.00
00:25:19.840 Senator, lastly, White House Press Secretary Jean-Pierre on Biden's trip to the border,
00:25:25.580 she said this is not about politics, which made me about fall out of my seat.
00:25:31.060 What does it tell you that both President Biden and Donald Trump are going to be at the border on the same day?
00:25:37.900 Here, there's a difference here.
00:25:39.520 And I want to be very clear about this because the president is going to, as you just said,
00:25:43.460 Brownsville, Texas, to hear directly from the Border Patrol agents,
00:25:47.340 to hear directly from the frontline personnel on what is going on on the ground.
00:25:51.980 And let's not forget, the president was at the border just about a year ago in January of 2023 to do the same.
00:25:57.660 This is not about politics for the president.
00:26:00.020 Senator, this is all about politics.
00:26:02.700 He's seen the poll numbers that you and I have seen.
00:26:06.080 And everything this White House does is about politics.
00:26:08.940 Yeah, and they know it.
00:26:10.020 And the majority of Americans right now believe that the President of the United States of America
00:26:14.260 doesn't know how to fix the border, can't fix the border.
00:26:18.560 And the majority of Americans now say that Donald Trump is the only one that can do it.
00:26:22.580 So, look, it's worse than that.
00:26:25.000 I actually don't think it's right that Biden and the White House doesn't know how to fix the border.
00:26:29.660 They don't want to fix the border.
00:26:31.640 They made three decisions the first week in office.
00:26:34.440 They halted the border wall.
00:26:35.960 They reinstated catch and release.
00:26:38.000 They pulled out of Remain in Mexico.
00:26:40.240 If you want to fix the border, it's not rockin' science.
00:26:43.680 I've said this a thousand times in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:26:47.560 I've said this a thousand times on the floor of the Senate.
00:26:50.280 I've said this a thousand times on national television.
00:26:54.040 Reverse those three decisions.
00:26:55.920 Build the wall.
00:26:57.240 End catch and release.
00:26:59.240 Return to the Remain in Mexico agreement.
00:27:01.520 That would work.
00:27:03.520 Understand, Joe Biden and the Democrats do not want it to work.
00:27:08.960 They are making the most cynical political decision I have seen in my lifetime.
00:27:13.500 Because they are allowing people to die.
00:27:16.540 We've talked about the people who've been murdered. 0.84
00:27:18.480 We've talked about the children who've been raped.
00:27:21.920 And by the way, we've talked, not on this podcast, but many times before, about the risk of a major terrorist attack.
00:27:28.240 God forbid, Ben, I don't want to wake up tomorrow or the next day or the next day and find out that we've had another 9-11 here in the United States.
00:27:35.980 That we've had another mass murder by violent terrorists.
00:27:40.880 But I have been very explicit.
00:27:43.820 I believe the risks of another major terrorist attack are greater today than they've been any time since September 11, 2001.
00:27:55.380 And it is not that the Democrat Party is oblivious to this.
00:28:00.340 It's they simply don't give a damn. 0.76
00:28:03.020 They're willing to risk.
00:28:03.880 They're the first to know about it, by the way.
00:28:05.220 I mean, the White House is the first to know.
00:28:07.140 Myorka is the first to know.
00:28:09.040 They know before you know or I know or anybody else knows how many on the terrorist watch list are getting caught coming across the southern border.
00:28:15.280 And we know how many were caught in September, October, November, and December of last year at record numbers.
00:28:20.720 More than the last four years combined when Trump was the president.
00:28:24.080 That is exactly right.
00:28:26.620 And the only, only way this problem is going to be solved is to reelect a Republican president, to reelect Donald Trump, put him in the White House.
00:28:37.420 And understand, this crisis will be solved not over the course of a year, not over the course of six months, but literally within days.
00:28:47.260 Because the driving factor.
00:28:49.700 So what determines whether you have an illegal immigration crisis?
00:28:52.940 And what happens, when people cross over the border, almost all of them have a cell phone with them.
00:28:57.520 And right now, they look for border patrol agents.
00:29:01.220 They turn themselves in.
00:29:02.260 They're not caught.
00:29:03.920 They go, when I'm on midnight patrol, they turn themselves in to me.
00:29:08.120 They have a cell phone.
00:29:10.060 And if you ask them, the last time I was down at the border, I asked multiple illegal immigrants,
00:29:14.740 do you believe you get to stay in America now that you're here?
00:29:17.720 And they all said, every single one said, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
00:29:21.220 As long as that's the case, we will have an invasion.
00:29:25.740 Every one of them has a cell phone.
00:29:27.420 They pick up the phones.
00:29:28.460 They call their friends.
00:29:29.400 They call their family.
00:29:30.340 They call their loved ones.
00:29:31.400 And they say, you know what?
00:29:33.360 Come to America. 0.95
00:29:34.340 When you get here, they let you go.
00:29:37.460 You get to stay.
00:29:38.540 If that is the result, we will continue to have a full-scale invasion.
00:29:44.920 The only, only, only way to stop it is when people come here illegally, you put them on 1.00
00:29:50.480 a plane, and you send them back to where they came from.
00:29:52.720 And again, they have a cell phone, so they call their friends. 0.99
00:29:55.060 If you deport them, they say, oh, crap. 0.98
00:29:57.240 You could spend months and thousands of dollars and be horribly brutalized by traffickers. 0.99
00:30:02.240 And you get here, and they send you home.
00:30:04.160 Don't do it.
00:30:05.460 And it's why, I'm going to make a prediction.
00:30:08.160 January of 2025, the numbers of illegal immigrants are going to plummet massively.
00:30:16.700 And it's not like it takes a year-long program from the president.
00:30:21.780 All it takes, Donald Trump as president, when you cross illegally, we'll deport you. 0.99
00:30:27.200 And that will cause, that single fact, will cause the numbers to plummet.
00:30:32.700 If there's anything that may be turning the tide here, and that seems to actually be media
00:30:37.920 covering the stories that you mentioned and the tragedies, KABB-TV in San Antonio actually
00:30:45.360 ran this on the local news.
00:30:47.300 Listen.
00:30:47.860 As for the question of why now, political experts have suggested to me that it's because the
00:30:53.060 president has kind of had his oh-shoot moment, meaning that Biden and his campaign staff have
00:30:58.700 realized that the immigration issue is important to the American people, and it isn't going away.
00:31:04.220 That fact, only further evidenced by numerous recent polls that show that immigration is a top 0.95
00:31:11.100 three issue for voters this election cycle, and for many, it's the number one issue.
00:31:16.720 I mean, Senator, lastly, you look at this, and that's on local TV.
00:31:21.480 We have not seen that type of scrutiny of this president ever, and when we go back over the
00:31:27.920 tragedies that are happening in all these different states around the country, just in the last week,
00:31:33.100 there are so many illegal immigrants.
00:31:35.740 Millions and millions have come across the border.
00:31:38.600 They are in every state in America, and there are a lot of bad actors committing heinous crimes
00:31:43.440 in every state in America.
00:31:44.940 There's no way now that you can't hold this president, I think, accountable if you're in the media
00:31:50.920 telling these stories.
00:31:52.960 Tell the truth.
00:31:54.320 That is all that is needed right now.
00:31:56.580 Tell the truth about what is happening at the border.
00:31:59.440 Tell the truth about how Joe Biden and the Democrats are deliberately, willfully allowing
00:32:05.360 this invasion.
00:32:07.360 The reason Biden and Kamala and the Democrats don't go to the border is because when they come,
00:32:13.300 they bring the TV reporters.
00:32:16.060 Their entire strategy is not to defend this.
00:32:18.180 Look, understand, on Senate Judiciary Committee, I lay out these facts day after day after day.
00:32:25.080 No Democrat jumps up and says, you know what?
00:32:27.200 Ted's wrong.
00:32:28.020 He doesn't understand it.
00:32:29.060 Let me tell you the alternative.
00:32:30.740 It's not like reasonable minds can differ.
00:32:33.900 Their strategy is simple.
00:32:35.320 Shut their mouths because they know CNN will never cover what's said.
00:32:39.840 They know MSNBC will never cover it.
00:32:42.100 They know ABC, CBS, NBC will never cover it.
00:32:45.500 And so the most powerful thing we can do is simply tell the stories of the death, of the
00:32:54.920 rape, of the suffering, of the misery that Joe Biden and the Democrats are causing.
00:33:00.120 That is the most powerful tool to turn it around and stop it.
00:33:03.860 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:33:09.640 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:33:13.300 You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:33:16.680 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:33:20.400 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
00:33:22.800 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:33:26.720 Guaranteed human.