Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 17, 2022


If You Give Iran a Nuke


Episode Stats


Length

42 minutes

Words per minute

165.47052

Word count

7,009

Sentence count

527

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

38

sentences flagged

Hate speech

31

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz is a presidential candidate running for president in 2020. He has been a long-time member of the Texas Republican Party and is a frequent contributor to conservative publications such as The Weekly Standard and National Post. Ted has also been a frequent guest on conservative radio shows such as Rush Limbaugh and Rush Limbaugh.

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.
00:00:02.400 Guaranteed human.
00:00:03.960 The Olympics are on and nobody is watching.
00:00:08.360 The Olympics have reached a record low in terms of ratings,
00:00:11.880 down 43% over the Winter Games in 2018,
00:00:16.480 down 20% over the previous lowest-rated Olympics,
00:00:20.540 all the way back in the 1980s.
00:00:23.340 So nobody is watching the Olympics.
00:00:25.500 Nobody wants to watch the Olympics.
00:00:26.960 And even more distressing, our own athletes don't seem to want to play for the American teams.
00:00:34.140 What has happened to America's role in the world?
00:00:37.960 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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00:04:19.740 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:04:21.960 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:04:23.580 Senator, have you been watching the Olympics?
00:04:26.700 To be honest, I have not turned it on even once.
00:04:29.720 I have seen the snippets, frankly, on Twitter of the opening ceremonies where they had a Uyghur 1.00
00:04:40.160 athlete light the torch and it was so obnoxious.
00:04:46.220 The Chinese Communist Party literally has one million Uyghurs, more than one million Uyghurs
00:04:52.020 in concentration camps right now.
00:04:54.860 They are being tortured, murdered.
00:04:58.360 They are working in slave labor.
00:05:00.220 And for the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party to use this Uyghur athlete to say everything
00:05:10.060 is great.
00:05:10.600 And I got to say, NBC, Savannah Guthrie, you know, said, well, critics accuse China of doing
00:05:17.900 this.
00:05:18.360 Well, no.
00:05:19.120 OK.
00:05:19.540 It is a genocide.
00:05:21.920 Those are the facts.
00:05:22.960 They are literally trying to exterminate the Uyghurs. 1.00
00:05:26.600 But NBC wants to apologize for the Chinese Communist atrocities.
00:05:31.620 And given that, you know, I can't bring myself to watch it.
00:05:36.900 It just is these games never should have happened in China.
00:05:40.980 It's wrong that the International Olympic Committee allowed China to host these games.
00:05:46.880 Now, what do you think is at play here?
00:05:49.140 Because there are a couple of dynamics going on.
00:05:51.360 One, you have communist China doing all sorts of heinous, horrible things in their own country 0.98
00:05:56.220 and around the world.
00:05:57.220 So people just don't want to tune in for that.
00:05:59.500 Two, you've got this strange dynamic where an American athlete born and raised in San
00:06:04.320 Francisco, though, frankly, maybe that explains it, an American athlete choosing to compete
00:06:09.000 not for America, her country, but for China, the country that her mother is from, to compete 0.95
00:06:16.040 for the Chinese Communist Party.
00:06:18.380 It seems so shocking, so disgusting to me, that an American would ever want to compete 1.00
00:06:22.720 for any other country to say nothing of China.
00:06:27.160 What is it?
00:06:27.860 Is it a revulsion at China?
00:06:30.040 Is it a revulsion at America?
00:06:31.420 Or is it just that people are tuning out of the mainstream media?
00:06:34.340 So look, I don't know.
00:06:35.760 I mean, I don't know this athlete.
00:06:37.160 I was certainly saddened by those headlines.
00:06:39.540 You know, I want to be a little bit careful throwing rocks.
00:06:43.200 I guess she has renounced her citizenship.
00:06:44.780 She's decided she wants to be a Chinese national.
00:06:47.960 OK, that that is an unusual choice.
00:06:50.920 That's not a choice many people make.
00:06:54.080 Most people don't go from freedom to tyranny.
00:06:56.400 Most people don't choose to subject themselves to the oppression of a communist dictatorship.
00:07:02.660 I don't know what her reasoning was.
00:07:04.040 I don't know what her thinking was.
00:07:05.260 I will say I am saddened whenever anyone gives up on America, that that is an unfortunate thing.
00:07:15.660 You know, it reminds me if this is not exactly the same, but another guy from the San Francisco
00:07:20.500 area, I remember what was his name?
00:07:21.940 John Walker Lynn, the American Taliban who was in Marin County and decided he wanted to 0.98
00:07:26.720 go be a Taliban. 0.99
00:07:27.560 I'm not suggesting she's a terrorist.
00:07:29.020 So I don't want that to be a false equivalency, but it was someone born and raised in America
00:07:38.200 deciding to pledge their allegiance to a foreign power and to an oppressive foreign power, to
00:07:43.740 a foreign power that that commits atrocities.
00:07:46.620 you know, that it's, we don't know the whole story there, but it, but it's certainly a dismaying
00:07:57.720 development.
00:07:58.920 And it, it speaks, I think, to a deeper problem, not just this one girl or a handful of athletes
00:08:04.640 who want to compete for other countries, but you're, you're seeing on the left, a disavowal
00:08:11.100 of American power and influence because they say America's immoral and unjust and a terrible
00:08:15.700 place and wherever it goes, it just oppresses people.
00:08:18.740 But you're also seeing on the right, uh, a sort of disappointment with America looking
00:08:24.520 around and, and saying, what are we doing when we go overseas?
00:08:27.900 Are we fighting to, I don't know, raise the pride flag over Kandahar?
00:08:32.220 What does it even mean?
00:08:33.060 I think you're seeing a little bit, certainly in, in certain aspects of the right, uh, a demoralization
00:08:39.760 there as well.
00:08:40.980 What are we just, are we just in a national malaise Senator, the likes of which we might
00:08:46.380 have seen in the seventies?
00:08:47.340 Look, some people are, and some are not.
00:08:49.720 And unfortunately this really does follow a political polarization.
00:08:54.000 Um, the left, it is proudly and brazenly anti-American, uh, whether it is, you know, Nike celebrating
00:09:04.820 Colin Kaepernick and, and pulling the Betsy Ross flag off their shoes, um, which actually
00:09:10.220 if truth in advertising is what they followed, Nike would put the Chinese flag on their shoes
00:09:14.440 because that's where their shoes are made.
00:09:15.820 And in fact that they, they, they would put Chinese children on their shoes because it's 1.00
00:09:19.740 Chinese children who, who sadly are, are, are forced far too often into slave labor. 0.96
00:09:26.120 But the left generally, you know, ESPN covering the Olympics, there was, you know, one clown 0.54
00:09:32.280 on ESPN who did this moral equivalency and says, well, yes, there are Chinese concentration
00:09:38.480 camps, but you know, who are we to judge?
00:09:42.100 Because America has faults also.
00:09:44.300 And Michael, he literally says, well, states like Georgia and Texas pass voter ID laws.
00:09:50.780 So apparently requiring a driver's license to vote is equivalent to creating a concentration 0.97
00:09:57.780 camp, putting a million people in them, torturing them, raping them, murdering them. 0.58
00:10:03.180 That's exactly like requiring an ID to vote. 1.00
00:10:06.180 Makes sense. 0.98
00:10:06.680 It's the most asinine moral equivalency. 0.93
00:10:09.840 And I do wonder if, you know, people that grow up surrounded by that leftism, they're incapable 0.95
00:10:17.920 of making judgments, you know, is America perfect?
00:10:22.860 Of course not.
00:10:23.660 But, but the idea that we are literally the Biden administration is the number one customer
00:10:32.980 for slave labor coming out of communist China.
00:10:39.580 John Kerry, when he was asked about, about the slave labor camps, he says, well, that's 0.99
00:10:44.280 not my department.
00:10:45.580 You know, I, I, I've joked, but it's not really a joke that John Kerry should be named the customer
00:10:50.060 of the year for the Chinese communist slave labor.
00:10:52.700 Um, several months ago, I introduced an amendment on the floor that said it should be illegal
00:10:59.840 for the U S government to purchase products.
00:11:03.600 And in particular, electric cars, electric batteries, solar panels made with slave labor 0.99
00:11:09.100 in China.
00:11:10.480 Right.
00:11:11.540 Every single Democrat voted.
00:11:13.360 Now, except Joe Manchin, Joe Manchin was the one Democrat who voted.
00:11:16.440 Yes.
00:11:16.560 Everyone else voted.
00:11:17.400 No, the amendment failed.
00:11:19.180 And, you know, it, it is stunning.
00:11:22.240 We are literally, you know, if you look through history at times when there had been concentration
00:11:27.820 camps without exception, those are shameful, deplorable, disgusting times that history is
00:11:35.280 not kind to.
00:11:36.560 And we are funding concentration camps right now by purchasing the fruits of that slave labor. 0.73
00:11:43.280 It's grossly immoral and today's Democrats don't care.
00:11:49.880 This, this raises my next question because a lot of people are suggesting, well, it's
00:11:54.960 ideological, you know, the radical left, they hate America and they, they do hate America
00:11:58.700 and they protest the flag.
00:11:59.840 And so there, there's no question there's an ideological element here.
00:12:03.280 Well, and they're taught that America is evil and that the evil is at best equivalent
00:12:09.240 and in many ways worse than really evil stuff globally.
00:12:14.760 And no, they're not the same.
00:12:16.440 No, George W. Bush was not Adolf Hitler.
00:12:19.480 No, Donald Trump was not Adolf Hitler. 0.99
00:12:21.460 And the nuts who say that are nuts. 0.97
00:12:24.520 Right.
00:12:24.800 But then this raises this question.
00:12:26.880 How does China keep getting away with it? 0.99
00:12:29.460 Is it just because we're all brainwashed or is it because of cold, hard cash?
00:12:34.680 Is it because China owns a ton of our debt, our, our businesses in America are totally
00:12:40.100 in bed with the Chinese. 0.91
00:12:41.280 They make all of our goods.
00:12:43.100 I mean, is it, is it an economic problem?
00:12:45.320 It is massively an economic problem.
00:12:47.360 And by the way, the political problem is an economic problem.
00:12:50.480 So, so one of the things to understand about the Democratic Party today, they are structurally
00:12:56.580 pro-China.
00:12:57.520 Now, what does that mean?
00:12:58.980 That means that their leading supporters are all completely in bed with China.
00:13:04.460 So who is today's Democratic Party funded by?
00:13:07.220 It's funded by big tech.
00:13:08.440 Big tech are monster supporters of the Democratic Party.
00:13:11.680 It's funded by big business, giant corporations, almost all of which are overwhelmingly Democrat
00:13:17.160 right now.
00:13:18.200 It's funded by big Hollywood and it's funded by big universities.
00:13:23.180 All four of those big tech, big business, big Hollywood, big universities are up to their
00:13:29.960 eyeballs with the Chinese communists.
00:13:32.220 They have billions of dollars depending on the Chinese communists.
00:13:36.120 And so the people who write the checks that keep Joe Biden in power, that keep Kamala Harris
00:13:40.900 in power, that keep Chuck Schumer in power, that keep Nancy Pelosi in power, they have
00:13:45.880 billions of dollars at stake with keeping us intertwined with communist China.
00:13:53.480 So the Democratic Party does not want to decouple, does not want to delink.
00:13:59.540 They may occasionally have a little bit of tough rhetoric because they realize that the
00:14:03.700 Chinese communists poll badly, but they are opposed to actually doing anything about China.
00:14:11.700 Well, he who pays the piper calls the tune.
00:14:13.780 But then the next question would be, how do we fix that?
00:14:17.040 If this is not merely the ideological whims of some kooky leftist politicians, but this is
00:14:22.720 really a structural issue, as you say, I think quite persuasively, then what's the answer
00:14:27.640 to that?
00:14:27.940 How do we fight back?
00:14:29.580 Well, I do think the debate has changed and it's changed a lot.
00:14:32.480 You know, when I got to the Senate a decade ago, I was arguing then in 2013 that China
00:14:40.680 poses the single greatest geopolitical threat to the United States over the next century.
00:14:45.660 That I believe this.
00:14:47.280 I think it is a massive.
00:14:49.600 The goal of the Chinese communist dictators is global domination.
00:14:55.380 And they are playing the game, not on the short term, but over decades and over the next century.
00:15:04.080 And I got to say, when I got to D.C. and started saying that, that was a lonely view.
00:15:11.140 Almost all of Washington thought that view was nuts.
00:15:14.960 Every Democrat did.
00:15:15.940 Every Democrat.
00:15:17.200 Remember, Joe Biden used to say, come on, man.
00:15:19.520 Come on, man.
00:15:20.820 They're our friends.
00:15:21.740 Come on, man.
00:15:23.460 But back then, most of the Republicans believed that also.
00:15:28.160 Most of the Republicans, you know, you go back to 2013, 2014.
00:15:32.240 The Republican Party was, in a very significant way, the Chamber of Commerce Party.
00:15:35.920 And the Chamber of Commerce looked at China and saw big bucks.
00:15:40.800 And the Republican enlightened view was, well, we can make a whole lot of money in China.
00:15:46.120 And eventually, that human rights and democracy stuff, we'll worry about that another time.
00:15:50.960 You know, there's a clip that makes the rounds now of Joe Biden, way back when, this was 10 years ago now,
00:15:56.420 saying that a rising China is good for America.
00:15:59.840 It's good for the whole world.
00:16:00.960 And we should encourage a rising China.
00:16:02.520 And one of the reasons why it's a little tough to use that clip against him is because many, if not most Republicans,
00:16:09.640 at the same time, were saying the exact same thing.
00:16:12.560 No, that's exactly right.
00:16:14.540 And it was, there were a handful of us that were calling out the threat of China. 0.61
00:16:19.380 And we were lonely voices in Washington.
00:16:24.600 I will say, two things have really changed that.
00:16:27.660 And they both, you know, you asked, how do we deal with this in the long term?
00:16:30.120 Two things have changed that for the better.
00:16:32.520 Number one is Donald Trump.
00:16:34.140 And Trump changed the discussion on China fundamentally.
00:16:38.740 Trump came in, talked about China, China.
00:16:41.820 He changed the pronunciation, really.
00:16:43.860 He did.
00:16:44.720 I don't do a very good Trump impersonation.
00:16:46.800 But he, by force of will, changed the focus to China considerably.
00:16:54.480 And I will say, in the Republican Party, that made a real difference.
00:16:58.240 But then secondly, what really changed it was COVID.
00:17:02.520 And COVID, the Chinese Communist government's complicity in covering up COVID.
00:17:08.580 And now the overwhelming evidence suggests complicity in COVID likely being released from a Chinese government lab in Wuhan.
00:17:17.840 And the very real possibility that it was the Chinese Communist government that developed COVID through gain-of-function research.
00:17:25.300 And that culpability in something that has taken so many lives in America and across the world that has destroyed trillions of dollars in jobs and productivity and savings.
00:17:41.320 That has changed the fundamental view of the Chinese Communist here at home and abroad.
00:17:48.620 And I think that is potent.
00:17:50.400 Now, as long as the government in the U.S. is controlled by Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi, they're not going to do a damn thing about China.
00:17:56.680 But I'm hopeful when the election happens in November and we see new Republican leadership in the House and Senate, we'll see, I hope, leaders willing to stand up and take on China directly.
00:18:09.640 And then in 2024, we need a strong Republican president who's willing to take on China because it's not going to happen from today's Democratic Party.
00:18:17.500 So you've got the China issue seems clear enough, at least today.
00:18:21.160 Republicans against China, Democrats, very pro-China, really bought and paid for by China.
00:18:27.300 Then there's another issue, which is Iran.
00:18:30.820 And for a much longer time, Republicans have opposed Iran and Iran's attempts to get a nuclear weapon and Iran's attempts to grow.
00:18:38.660 And the Democrats just keep coming back to Iran.
00:18:42.420 Barack Obama signed the Iran nuclear deal.
00:18:44.900 Donald Trump comes into office, rips up that deal.
00:18:47.740 Now, again, Joe Biden seems to be trying to revive it, as far as I can tell, without any input from the U.S. Senate.
00:18:54.080 Yeah, no, it really is incredibly dangerous.
00:18:58.560 And it is a story, the Democrats' history in Iran is horrific.
00:19:02.740 You go back to Jimmy Carter, where, you know, the Shah of Iran was a U.S. ally, supported America.
00:19:09.400 And then they had an Islamist revolution led by the Ayatollah Khomeini, which, among other things, took Americans hostage and held our Americans hostage for 444 days.
00:19:24.760 And Jimmy Carter, who had undermined our ally, the Shah, and then sat there helplessly while the revolution that displaced the Shah held Americans hostage.
00:19:35.680 Now, Jimmy Carter was even worse than sitting there helplessly.
00:19:39.020 He sent a rescue team in to try to rescue the hostages.
00:19:42.980 This is before you were alive, Michael.
00:19:45.600 Just a glint in my father's eye.
00:19:46.960 Yeah, indeed.
00:19:48.560 The rescue team crashed in the desert.
00:19:51.540 The helicopters crashed with no opposing fire.
00:19:54.860 They weren't even confronting the enemy.
00:19:56.720 I mean, it was the incompetence of the Carter administration had not been met until we got the Bidens today.
00:20:04.500 But before we do that, let's go in between.
00:20:07.360 Let's go.
00:20:09.000 And by the way, the Ayatollah Khomeini released the hostages the day that Ronald Reagan was sworn in.
00:20:17.700 Literally, as Reagan put his hand on the Bible, raised his hand on the oath, January 20, 1981, is when the Ayatollah released the hostages.
00:20:26.700 Because he understood there was a new sheriff in town, and Reagan was going to blow the crap out of them if they didn't let the Americans go.
00:20:34.720 You couldn't ask for a better demonstration of weakness and appeasement versus peace through strength.
00:20:42.780 Right.
00:20:43.160 All right, fast forward to Obama.
00:20:46.160 Obama first term, big domestic agenda is Obamacare and Dodd-Frank.
00:20:52.220 Obama gets reelected in 2012.
00:20:53.960 Obama's second term major agenda was a nuclear deal with Iran.
00:21:00.300 And in fact, Ben Rhodes, who was the deputy national security advisor in the Obama White House, he described an Iran nuclear deal as the Obamacare of the second term, which I think he meant as a compliment.
00:21:14.580 You look at the Obama-Iran deal.
00:21:20.260 John Kerry negotiated it with Iran.
00:21:22.880 It is absolutely catastrophic.
00:21:25.760 The Iran deal on its face was a total capitulation to Iran, and it is dangerous.
00:21:33.520 The Obama-Iran deal put Iran unavoidably on a path to having a nuclear weapon.
00:21:41.020 I led the opposition to the Iran deal in the Senate.
00:21:45.780 And in fact, it was interesting.
00:21:48.240 As the presidential campaign started getting going in 2015, I helped organize a huge rally on the steps of the Capitol.
00:21:58.160 Thousands of people in opposition to the Iran deal.
00:22:00.680 I invited Donald Trump to the rally.
00:22:04.040 And it was interesting.
00:22:05.060 He was like, why would you invite me to your rally?
00:22:06.620 You're running against me.
00:22:07.620 He was like, well, and I just said, well, Donald, because when I invite you, every TV camera in the universe follows you. 0.94
00:22:14.780 And I want to stop this deal because I don't want a theocratic lunatic.
00:22:20.360 Now, there's a different Ayatollah.
00:22:21.720 The old one was the Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:22:24.140 The new Ayatollah is the Ayatollah Khomeini.
00:22:26.940 Just when you think the Iran issue can't get more confusing, the two guys have almost the same name.
00:22:33.140 And look, there's an easy solution.
00:22:34.580 Call him the Ayatollah. 1.00
00:22:35.780 He's a bearded jihadist who wants to murder us. 1.00
00:22:39.060 And by the way, the Ayatollah Khomeini, like the Ayatollah Khomeini, literally chants death to America and death to Israel. 0.99
00:22:50.140 And he was doing this.
00:22:51.380 This is not hyperbole.
00:22:52.520 Secondly, while John Kerry and the State Department were negotiating the Iran nuclear deal, the Ayatollah was leading mobs in Iran chanting death to America.
00:23:04.100 They actually have every year they celebrate death to America Day.
00:23:08.160 And it's the anniversary of the revolutionaries taking Americans hostage.
00:23:14.780 And there's a great political cartoon that came out about that time.
00:23:18.400 I think it was 2015 that had the Ayatollah and it had John Kerry.
00:23:23.000 And it had the Ayatollah saying death to America.
00:23:26.660 And it had John Kerry saying, can we meet you halfway?
00:23:30.840 Could we just be mortally wounded in some way?
00:23:33.680 Well, so this is what the left says, because if you look at the facts on the face, it seems absurd that the left would continue.
00:23:40.720 And Democrats specifically and Kerry and Biden specifically would try to get this deal.
00:23:45.600 But what they have said is, look, forget about that.
00:23:49.560 That's all just PR from the mullahs. 0.95
00:23:51.560 They don't really believe it.
00:23:53.060 Don't listen to the Republicans.
00:23:54.820 This deal is not only not going to give Iran a bomb, but it is going to prevent Iran from getting a bomb.
00:24:01.740 And on an issue like Iran, as we've just said, it's hard to keep track of the guy's name.
00:24:07.480 It's difficult to know who to believe.
00:24:09.120 So you're right.
00:24:10.440 Those are the talking points.
00:24:12.140 And I will say a couple of things.
00:24:15.280 So I actually met today with a Biden nominee to be an ambassador in the Middle East.
00:24:20.600 And we were talking about Iran and the nuclear agreement.
00:24:24.700 And he made a comment.
00:24:26.500 He said, I think everyone agrees with with with the foreign policy world that Iran must never get a nuclear bomb.
00:24:34.880 And I sort of stopped him and I laughed and said, let me be clear.
00:24:37.940 I don't think everyone agrees with that.
00:24:39.860 I think the Biden White House is perfectly OK with Iran having a nuclear weapon.
00:24:45.880 And I said, look, go back to the Obama White House.
00:24:48.660 So when Obama was newly elected president, one of the very first speeches he ever gave was in the Middle East.
00:24:55.100 He went to the University of Cairo.
00:24:57.380 And he at the University of Cairo, he gave a speech and he said that Iran has a right. 0.98
00:25:03.400 And he used that word right to nuclear technology.
00:25:07.380 Now, that is absurd.
00:25:09.900 I'm familiar with the right to life, to liberty, to property.
00:25:12.680 There is no right to nukes. 0.99
00:25:14.120 And if you're a crazy, theocratic lunatic who wants to murder millions of people, you especially don't have a right to nukes. 0.97
00:25:22.060 Fast forward, there was an article that got a lot of attention during the Obama administration by a writer in The Atlantic. 0.99
00:25:30.900 And what got all the attention was a senior White House official in the Obama White House.
00:25:35.600 In fact, a lot of people speculated it was Obama himself, but that was never conclusively confirmed. 0.99
00:25:40.960 But this senior Obama official referred to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, as chicken shit. 0.99
00:25:49.440 And it was sort of a startling, it got a lot of attention. 0.99
00:25:54.400 My view was always that that actually wasn't much of news.
00:25:57.920 It was obvious that the Obama White House viewed Netanyahu with contempt. 1.00
00:26:03.040 They treated him like crap. 0.99
00:26:04.120 Like the fact that they directed that epithet to him was not surprising in the slightest for anyone who watched how they treated them. 0.97
00:26:11.780 What was interesting in that that same, quote, senior Obama White House official said, the good thing is, and I'm paraphrasing, but this is pretty accurate.
00:26:20.740 The good thing is, we've delayed Israel from acting for so long that they're no longer capable, militarily capable, of acting to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. 0.77
00:26:37.900 And those are chilling words where, listen, I think Obama and Biden, they're leftists, that it's the same.
00:26:45.960 We were talking a minute ago with respect to China about the anti-Americanism of the left.
00:26:51.600 They view American leadership in the world as illegitimate.
00:26:55.620 They think we have no right.
00:26:57.640 What right do we have to deny to these peaceful little Iranians a nuclear bomb? 1.00
00:27:02.520 That's just American arrogance.
00:27:04.260 Well, you know what? People that want to murder us, I want to keep the weapons that they can use to murder us out of their hands. 0.96
00:27:11.680 The left doesn't believe this.
00:27:13.780 I totally agree with that.
00:27:15.540 But then, Senator, what do you say to – look, this is a longstanding Democrat-held belief.
00:27:21.560 Even if they won't admit it publicly, they'll at least admit it on background.
00:27:24.760 And they've obviously been working toward a world in which Iran will have an easier time getting a nuclear weapon.
00:27:30.220 Okay, what do you say to those who tell you, look, Iran talks a big game on destroying Israel.
00:27:36.320 They're not going to destroy Israel.
00:27:37.820 Iran is not going to come over and detonate a nuclear bomb in the United States.
00:27:41.240 They have no reason to do it, no incentive to do it.
00:27:43.920 A lot of countries have nuclear weapons.
00:27:45.680 For goodness sakes, you know, Pakistan, North Korea, a bunch of places we don't want to have nuclear weapons.
00:27:49.920 They've got them.
00:27:50.620 A lot of more people are going to get them.
00:27:52.100 What's the big deal?
00:27:53.000 This does not pose an existential threat to the United States.
00:27:56.360 I think these are people that do not understand evil and they don't understand – if history teaches anything, it is that if somebody tells you they want to kill you, you should believe them.
00:28:08.040 Believe them.
00:28:10.720 I'll give one example.
00:28:11.980 The so-called father of the Iranian nuclear program, an Iranian scientist who has since gone to meet his maker, many say at the hands of the Israeli Mossad, he had written in his last will and testament that he wanted the following words written on his tombstone.
00:28:29.440 Here lies a man who sought the annihilation of Israel.
00:28:33.960 Not loving father, you know, good husband, no, no, just soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, no, no, it's – think about just how much hatred you have to have.
00:28:48.040 That's what you wanted to be remembered for. 0.99
00:28:50.180 I want to murder as many people as possible. 1.00
00:28:53.640 That's like I'm a vicious, racist bigot who wants to commit mass murder. 1.00
00:28:58.980 And look, you talked about North Korea. 0.99
00:29:01.200 North Korea with nukes is incredibly dangerous. 1.00
00:29:03.960 Kim Jong-un is a megalomaniacal, narcissistic dictator. 0.98
00:29:09.600 It was a catastrophic mistake for the Clinton administration to screw up and allow him to develop nuclear weapons. 0.92
00:29:18.240 Now that he has them, there is some chance possibly of something resembling rational deterrence because the one thing that Kim wants is to stay in power.
00:29:28.240 And he does know if he used a nuclear weapon that that would be the end of his regime.
00:29:32.220 That the imbalance of power, he would be destroyed.
00:29:36.980 Right.
00:29:37.080 The danger with the Ayatollah, and this is where religion is particularly dangerous, is that he's a theocratic zealot. 0.79
00:29:44.640 It's not just – if he were an ordinary dictator, you may be able to have some real cost-benefit analysis.
00:29:51.380 But when you have a zealot who embraces death and suicide, it's like the math of suicide bombers.
00:29:58.940 When you have people that are willing to strap dynamite to their chest and walk into a bus or walk into a shopping mall, ordinary deterrence doesn't work if they're willing to blow themselves up.
00:30:08.560 The Ayatollah knows if he detonated a nuclear weapon that the consequences would be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Iranians killed in a war.
00:30:19.160 I mean the consequences would be devastating.
00:30:20.860 The danger for a religious zealot is that he just might be willing to make that cost-benefit analysis.
00:30:29.740 If I get to murder, he might say millions of Jews, it's worth it, that I will be rewarded with 72 virgins. 1.00
00:30:37.320 What they didn't mention were that the virgins were Gomer Pyle, but that's different.
00:30:43.940 Yeah, you don't – they don't put it in the fine print.
00:30:46.720 Yep.
00:30:47.220 That is profoundly dangerous, and I think if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, the odds are unacceptably high.
00:30:55.040 They would detonate it in the skies of Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or New York or Los Angeles.
00:31:03.580 Now, what are those odds?
00:31:05.360 I don't know.
00:31:06.360 Right.
00:31:07.240 I don't want to find out.
00:31:08.920 That's not a roll of the dice I'm interested in finding out.
00:31:13.060 Let's suppose Iran gets a nuke and that doesn't happen.
00:31:17.280 They don't use it.
00:31:19.140 The best-case scenario.
00:31:21.380 Well, if Iran gets a nuke, every other country in the Middle East suddenly will feel the urge to get nuclear weapons as well.
00:31:28.540 The Saudi Arabians will want nukes. 1.00
00:31:30.580 The UAE will want nukes.
00:31:32.060 Qatar will want nukes. 1.00
00:31:33.220 They'll all want nukes to defend themselves against the Iranians. 1.00
00:31:36.280 It's actually one of the ironies I joked that amazingly enough, Barack Obama inadvertently deserved the Nobel Peace Prize they gave him because he actually brought the Arabs and the Israelis together. 0.98
00:31:50.980 All he had to do was negotiate a deal that would give the Iranians nuclear weapons and the Arabs and Israelis said, are you frigging nuts? 0.97
00:31:58.460 Let's put aside our differences. 0.95
00:32:01.020 Yes, because look, they understand that in Iran with nukes, Iran today is the leading state sponsor of terrorism. 0.60
00:32:08.920 Even if they don't use the nukes, every other country in the Middle East gets nukes to counter Iran. 0.97
00:32:14.560 Talk about a tinderbox that you're just like throwing gunpowder into.
00:32:18.500 Right.
00:32:18.600 And on top of that, if Iran is willing to fund terrorists murdering Americans across the world today without nuclear weapons, how aggressive do you think they would be with nuclear weapons where they feel they have impunity?
00:32:34.980 And by the way, that's the best case scenario.
00:32:38.480 So.
00:32:40.340 Obama-Iran deal, disastrous deal.
00:32:42.820 They gave over 100 billion dollars to the Ayatollah.
00:32:45.820 On the face of it, the deal was obvious it would end up with it with it with a nuclear weapon.
00:32:50.100 Why?
00:32:50.440 Number one, it sunsetted.
00:32:52.020 After a decade, it went away.
00:32:53.360 So on the terms of it, Obama was like, yeah, 10 years from now, you can have a nuke.
00:32:56.980 No problem.
00:32:57.380 So, secondly, the deal gives them 100 billion dollars, counts on them, to be honest.
00:33:04.520 It provided that any inspection of nuclear facilities, you had to give Iran 21 days advance notice.
00:33:15.620 Just to tidy up the place.
00:33:17.280 Yeah.
00:33:18.220 You know, I've suggested, imagine a law that said before a search warrant is executed on a drug dealer,
00:33:26.920 you've got to give them 21 a day's advance notice of the place to be searched.
00:33:31.360 You think you would find anything?
00:33:33.300 Yeah, probably not.
00:33:35.720 Not only that, the deal on the face of it says there are certain sites, sites designated as military sites,
00:33:42.160 that are exempt from inspections.
00:33:43.860 Now, if there are sites that are exempt from inspections, gosh, where do you think it is that they will develop the nuclear weapons?
00:33:50.780 Right.
00:33:50.880 This was a deal, as radical as the Obama folks were, as Kerry were, no one can look at this deal
00:33:59.240 and conclude anything other than Iran will get a nuclear weapon under this deal.
00:34:02.540 They were okay with it.
00:34:04.020 Then Trump ended the deal.
00:34:05.480 Most important national security decision Trump made.
00:34:08.700 I spent an enormous amount of time with President Trump urging him to end the deal.
00:34:12.800 Well, now Biden wants to reenter the deal, and it is, I think, his top foreign policy objective to reenter the deal.
00:34:22.140 Biden is desperate to enter a deal that will be worse than the Obama deal.
00:34:27.900 It is an ideological commitment.
00:34:30.120 So I brought together a group of 33 senators, wrote a letter to Biden making clear that under a law that we passed that was the Iran review legislation,
00:34:43.100 that no deal can have force without being submitted to Congress, first of all, for review and a vote.
00:34:50.800 The Biden administration is going to ignore that law.
00:34:52.940 They intended to defy that law.
00:34:54.060 And by the way, the right way to do any deal is submit a treaty that takes two-thirds of the Senate to ratify, but they can't get the vote.
00:35:00.620 So they're going to ram through a bad deal.
00:35:02.980 Can they do that, though?
00:35:03.720 I mean, if the Constitution says the Senate's got to ratify treaties, then how can the White House just go in and say,
00:35:09.400 well, no, this isn't a treaty.
00:35:10.720 It's just a nice, it's a fun compact between friends, between nation friends.
00:35:17.860 So that's basically what Obama did.
00:35:19.700 And I and others made clear in order for this to have force, it has to be a treaty.
00:35:27.560 And actually, here's a way to illustrate it is actually go back to the Trump administration.
00:35:31.500 We're sort of jumping in the timeline, but let's go to the beginning of the Trump administration.
00:35:35.040 Both the State Department and the Defense Department under Donald Trump wanted to stay in the Iran deal.
00:35:41.380 Rex Tillerson was Secretary of State.
00:35:43.060 He said we need to stay in the Iran deal.
00:35:44.300 Jim Mattis, who's a Democrat, was Secretary of Defense, and he said we need to stay.
00:35:49.620 And Mattis used to say, and he said this both public and private, he said, America gave our word.
00:35:54.360 We need to keep our word.
00:35:56.200 And I told him, General and later Mr. Secretary, no, America did not give our word.
00:36:01.500 There are two ways and only two ways that we give our word in a binding international context under the Constitution.
00:36:07.520 Number one, through legislation that passes both houses of Congress and has signed it a law.
00:36:13.480 That is a formal commitment.
00:36:15.140 It is a legal commitment.
00:36:15.980 Or number two, the typical way for an international agreement is a treaty negotiated and signed by the president and ratified by two-thirds of the Senate.
00:36:24.380 Those are the two ways America can give our word that are binding.
00:36:28.280 This deal was neither, and we made absolutely clear to Obama that the Senate rejected it.
00:36:36.720 And thankfully, Trump ended up agreeing with me.
00:36:42.580 He overruled his own Secretary of State and his own Secretary of Defense and ended the deal.
00:36:47.820 And it was the most important foreign policy decision.
00:36:50.880 Now, Biden's trying to negotiate it.
00:36:53.700 The reports are they're close to a deal.
00:36:56.140 The one thing that saves us from a deal so far is the Iranians are so extreme. 1.00
00:37:00.060 They see so much weakness with Biden that they're demanding an even bigger sweetheart deal than Obama gave them.
00:37:06.360 Their unreasonableness may delay this a little bit.
00:37:09.740 But what the Ayatollah is holding out for is he's saying to Biden, what I want is a commitment that will last and will last beyond this administration.
00:37:18.100 And what I've said repeatedly is Joe Biden can't give you that because the next Republican president who comes in is going to rip this deal up just like the last Republican president is.
00:37:30.940 This is disastrous, but Biden wants to sign it anyway.
00:37:34.520 Well, speaking of acts of violence, I think our listeners are going to commit acts of violence potentially with nuclear weapons on me if we don't get to at least one mailbag question.
00:37:42.440 So I want to get to that before we go.
00:37:45.420 There were a number of great questions that came in.
00:37:48.160 This one, though, is completely out of left field, and it ties in with a little bit of a news story.
00:37:53.140 So I wanted to bring it up from SPAC.
00:37:55.460 It says, what is Ted Cruz's view regarding the legality of illicit drugs?
00:38:00.820 Love the show.
00:38:01.560 I've been a fan from episode one, and it ties into the news because Joe Biden might not be able to give us very much in this economy, but he is promising to give out free crack pipes.
00:38:13.620 So it's a topic at the top of people's minds.
00:38:17.540 It's a great question, but let me stop, Michael.
00:38:19.760 How is that not a headline from the Babylon Bee?
00:38:22.580 It literally is the case that the Biden administration is giving out free crack pipes because this will be good for America.
00:38:28.780 If everyone's smoking crack, you know, talk about a great crime policy.
00:38:32.800 As many people on crack as possible, these are your Democrats.
00:38:36.320 He actually went further.
00:38:37.560 He said that crack pipes were important for racial equity, which seems extremely offensive to me to say that.
00:38:42.980 But so not only extremely offensive, if you were to come up with a conspiracy theory, this would usually be attributed to Republicans.
00:38:50.820 If you were to say racist and the media conspiracy theorists always claim them to be Republicans, the CIA – so this is another one.
00:38:58.980 The CIA wants to give crack pipes to minorities to destroy minority communities.
00:39:05.800 That sounds like a conspiracy theory, except Biden is saying that's what he wants to do. 0.99
00:39:10.600 It's like, holy crap. 0.97
00:39:11.940 You want to fight for minority communities? 1.00
00:39:14.400 Get the kids off crack.
00:39:15.700 Don't give them crack pipes.
00:39:16.900 All right.
00:39:17.240 That's a good rule of thumb.
00:39:18.500 Get the kids off crack.
00:39:19.500 Yes, reasonable people can disagree on lots of questions here, but I think we can all agree, don't give the kids crack pipes.
00:39:27.600 Amen.
00:39:28.040 Not a great idea.
00:39:29.380 Just say no.
00:39:30.240 Just say no, because we're high on life.
00:39:33.680 We're high on all of this.
00:39:36.280 We're high on all this great content that we're trying to bring to our verdict listeners.
00:39:40.700 So if you haven't subscribed already, you should go.
00:39:42.820 Go and subscribe.
00:39:43.660 You can get your merch at verdictwithtedcruz.com slash shop.
00:39:47.320 You can sign up for Verdict Plus on Locals.
00:39:49.900 There's a whole other series right now on Verdict Plus hosted by our friend Liz Wheeler.
00:39:55.920 It is called The Cloak Room.
00:39:57.300 And I think we have Liz with us right now.
00:39:59.440 Hi, Michael.
00:40:00.060 Hi, Senator.
00:40:00.940 We do indeed.
00:40:01.700 We are now, believe it or not, on episode three of The Cloak Room on Verdict Plus.
00:40:05.300 So if you haven't joined us at verdictwithtedcruz.com slash plus, please do.
00:40:09.220 We're actually going to do a deep dive into the Democrat crack pipe controversy.
00:40:15.740 There's, I mean, I guess I should be used to saying sentences like that since we've had
00:40:19.380 to deal with Hunter Biden for the last however many years at this point.
00:40:23.060 It's a low blow.
00:40:24.540 I know.
00:40:24.940 I couldn't resist.
00:40:25.700 I couldn't resist.
00:40:26.560 But this is a good conversation.
00:40:27.900 This is about the philosophy of the thing, right?
00:40:29.760 Whether the libertarian version or the conservative version of the war on drugs is not only the
00:40:34.100 most effective, but the most constitutional.
00:40:36.500 So we're going to dive into this.
00:40:38.040 This is a topic, as you know, that creates a little discord among members of the Republican
00:40:44.460 party.
00:40:45.020 So that's always fun to dive into that.
00:40:47.280 Again, The Cloak Room is a brand new series on Verdict Plus with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:40:51.440 It's co-hosted by me, Liz Wheeler.
00:40:53.100 Basically, I'm going to pick the senator's brain like I would in a strategy session.
00:40:56.800 It's a behind-the-scenes peek into the details of what goes on in D.C., just like the actual
00:41:01.340 cloakroom of the Senate.
00:41:03.000 So you can join us at verdictwithtedcruz.com slash plus to join us.
00:41:08.460 Use the promo code cloakroom for a one-month free trial on your annual subscription.
00:41:13.120 You don't want to miss it.
00:41:14.220 We have talked about many different things.
00:41:16.820 Stacey Abrams, not wearing a mask.
00:41:18.640 We've talked about foreign policy and how to create a foreign policy philosophy so that
00:41:23.660 when things like China happens or things like Russia and Ukraine happen, you know how to
00:41:28.400 apply that foreign policy.
00:41:29.520 It's verdictwithtedcruz.com slash plus promo code cloakroom for a one-month free trial on
00:41:34.720 your annual subscription.
00:41:36.440 Sounds wonderful, Liz.
00:41:37.360 I intend to raise a glass to the new series.
00:41:39.940 I intend to raise a cigar.
00:41:41.600 I will not raise a crack pipe.
00:41:43.440 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:41:44.500 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:41:46.320 See you next time.
00:41:47.000 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security
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