Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 11, 2026


Inside the Senate Elections, plus Turning Texas Around & Defeating Hegseth Impeachment

BONUS POD： Democrats Declare War on Trump's Cabinet BONUS POD： Migrant Caravan Surges After Democrats Capture Congress

Episode Stats


Length

45 minutes

Words per minute

185.08

Word count

8,474

Sentence count

332

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

23

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


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 .
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00:00:20 Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty.
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00:00:48 hey it's drew franklin from nfl cover zero the 2026 season is underway and we are loving football
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00:01:25 Welcome. It is Vertical Center Ted
00:01:27 Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as well. And I tell you, after the beatdown we had last week, Senator,
00:01:32 the good news is we actually have movement happening in Washington and things that might
00:01:37 actually get done before the new Congress is sworn in in January. And this should get a lot
00:01:43 of people listening actually excited. Well, that's right. We had an all day leadership
00:01:49 meeting today to discuss what Republicans in the Senate were going to do for the lame duck for
00:01:54 for November and December. And it was a long extended meeting. What I'm going to do for
00:02:00 listeners here in verdict is I'm going to take you inside that meeting. I'm going to let you know
00:02:03 what happened, what was said. But at the end of the day, I hope and believe we're going to see
00:02:08 Republicans come together, stand together and fight and make a real difference in these two
00:02:13 months. And then going forward, be prepared to fight for the next two years against the lunacy
00:02:18 that is coming from the radicals who were just elected. That is encouraging, that you're seeing
00:02:26 after the beatdown of Election Day, Republicans in the Senate ready to fight. We also had a great
00:02:33 result in the House of Representatives, which is the Pete Hegseth impeachment, which was widely
00:02:39 considered to be very likely to happen. It got defeated. Republicans beat it. That is a good
00:02:45 sign it is a sign of life it is a sign of fighting back it is a sign of hope and optimism we're going
00:02:51 to break that down as well yeah it's awesome and and i tell you i think there's a lot happening
00:02:57 even at nine o'clock we were seeing some of these nominees go through this was great news we'll take
00:03:02 it all for you and explain it what happened today in just a moment but before we get to that
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00:04:18 All right. So, Senator, take us into the room how all this went down.
00:04:22 I do think the encouraging moment for me was not only do we have a fighter, someone that we've had on the show, Jim Jordan, who who is now going to take over for the House Republicans.
00:04:33 That was an encouraging moment.
00:04:34 But then we saw that you clearly were heavily involved in making sure that the last couple of months, there's real work that's going to get done for the American people.
00:04:45 Well, let me talk to you about Tuesday and what happened in the Senate.
00:04:48 We'll talk about the House as well, because Jim Jordan becoming the minority leader is a really good development.
00:04:53 Jim is a close friend.
00:04:55 He's a strong conservative.
00:04:56 He's been a good friend of mine for a very long time.
00:04:59 And so I'm glad to see that outcome.
00:05:01 We'll talk about that as well.
00:05:02 but let's start with the Senate. So Tuesday morning, 9 a.m., the Senate Republicans all
00:05:09 gathered in the old Senate chamber. It's the historic Senate chamber where the Senate used
00:05:13 to meet before the full Capitol was built. And that is where we do leadership elections.
00:05:20 And we were there. It was initially scheduled to be from 9 a.m. to 1030. It was funny. I was
00:05:25 meeting with my senior staff yesterday, and they said, okay, this will just be an hour and a half,
00:05:29 and I laughed at them. I said, no, no, it's not. It is going to run many, many hours. I said, look,
00:05:37 we just had an epic ass kicking. It was ugly. We've got a whole bunch of us who just lost. 0.99
00:05:44 They're going to be mad. They're going to be frustrated. We're going to need people to yell.
00:05:49 We're going to need catharsis. We're going to need people to express their frustration, their anger.
00:05:54 And I said, this is going to take the whole day. I've just, I've been around here long enough.
00:05:58 I know the nature of it.
00:05:59 And my staff was skeptical of me.
00:06:02 I will say they should not have been because that.
00:06:06 I love when you get to grandstand of the staff, especially when they listen to the show.
00:06:09 This is great.
00:06:10 This is therapeutic for you right now.
00:06:12 Keep going.
00:06:13 By the way, I was giving grief to one of my great staff members who was up in Alaska on the campaign trail when I was making fun of him for being a nervous flyer.
00:06:22 And he was at dinner with me tonight.
00:06:24 And I was pointing out that, like, I comforted him when we were flying in the prop plane in Alaska that was held together by duct tape.
00:06:31 Instead of his normally being nervous and peeing his pants, I just, like, ribbed him.
00:06:36 And he was laughing so much that he wasn't scared.
00:06:41 So, but he did point out his wife, who is a regular verdict listener, and his wife is awesome.
00:06:46 He, like, you want proof that this guy is a great political staffer.
00:06:50 his wife is beautiful and brilliant and he's so outkicked his coverage it's the best sign of of
00:06:57 a persuasive guy when you can convince by the way your wife is a rock star my wife is a rock star
00:07:03 somehow we're really damn persuasive yes yes thank goodness otherwise we'd all been in real trouble
00:07:10 as you know my favorite toast is god bless nearsighted women amen to that
00:07:19 and heidi believes i'm six five and blonde please do not correct her on that anyway let's get back
00:07:27 to the meeting so we're in the meeting in the historic senate chamber and there were just a
00:07:31 couple of hours of venting and people frustrated and pissed and and towards the end of the morning
00:07:36 meeting i i get up and i spoke and i said look because there was a big effort to delay the senate
00:07:44 leadership election and and it was a number of the the senate conservatives are like we need to
00:07:48 delay it we need to delay it a week we need to delay it a month and i gotta say i i thought that
00:07:53 whole thing was kind of silly and the reason i thought it was kind of silly is because nobody
00:07:59 was running against the existing leadership like what is the purpose of delaying if you got an
00:08:06 election fine but but if nobody is running why do you want to delay other than just sort of yell
00:08:11 and to be honest there was an awful lot of sentiment of we want to yell we want to yell
00:08:15 and i'm like all right if someone wants to run let's consider like the two candidates if someone's
00:08:22 going to run against any of the leadership by the way nobody did spoiler alert and when i stood up
00:08:29 And I said, I said, look, I am less concerned about the timing.
00:08:34 Do we vote on our leadership today or a week from now or two weeks from now?
00:08:38 I don't think that's terribly consequential.
00:08:41 What I'm interested in is a plan of attack.
00:08:45 And I actually share the story.
00:08:46 I said, look, it's 14 years ago.
00:08:48 I was a brand new baby senator.
00:08:50 So you get elected in 2012.
00:08:52 You show up.
00:08:52 You're in this little basement office.
00:08:54 By the way, new senators, they stick in a basement office for several months.
00:08:58 it's actually kind of weird because there are a hundred big senate offices and a hundred senators
00:09:03 so it'd be easy to put you in your office immediately we basically stick new senators
00:09:08 in basement offices as hazing it's like like a fraternity i was never in a frat but it's the
00:09:13 same sort of idea like we're gonna stick in the basement for a few months by the way i will say
00:09:16 having been here a little while i don't think they're in the basement nearly long enough i
00:09:20 think maybe two years is would be better how long were you in the basement by the way till you move
00:09:25 Six months.
00:09:26 Six months.
00:09:27 Yeah.
00:09:27 And by the way, now they're only in the basement two or three months.
00:09:30 It's actually gotten, we're just getting softer and wimpier.
00:09:34 But anyway, I said, look, the timing doesn't matter as much.
00:09:38 But I remember I went to my first leadership election and I'm 41 years old.
00:09:42 I'm a young guy.
00:09:43 Just got elected. 0.99
00:09:44 I'm like, holy crap. 0.99
00:09:45 I'm in the Senate. 0.99
00:09:45 Wow.
00:09:46 And I'm going to the leadership election.
00:09:48 I'm like, this is going to be exciting.
00:09:49 Like, we're going to hear a debate about what the Senate's going to do.
00:09:53 2012, Obama just been reelected.
00:09:55 so I expected to hear, all right, here's how we're going to fight against all the bad things
00:09:59 Obama wants to do. And it was the strangest damn thing I've ever seen. You think back to, 0.96
00:10:08 look, when you and I were in high school or junior high, think back to like a student council election.
00:10:15 Student council, someone stands up and says, hey, elect me to student council,
00:10:19 and I'll give free vanilla ice cream to all the seniors. And you're like, oh, I want free vanilla
00:10:24 ice cream okay i'll vote for that guy like like that's how elections happen i sort of figured okay
00:10:29 mitch mcconnell at the time was was the leader i said okay he's gonna give me a speech about
00:10:33 what he wants to do and i'll listen to it and see see if hey is that something i like
00:10:37 turns out that's not what happens um instead you had one senator stand up and nominate the
00:10:45 existing leader and just give this speech that was like if effusive and just just kissing their
00:10:51 behind and then you'd have typically two seconding speeches and you had people just saying so and so
00:10:59 is is handsome and beautiful and wise and charming and it was just I'm sitting there going like how
00:11:06 is this possible and then whoever the person was in this case Mitch McConnell would stand up and
00:11:13 say okay thank you very much I accept and that was the whole election and I'm like wait we didn't
00:11:18 discuss a word of what we're going to do that's weird so at the conference meeting today i stood
00:11:26 up and said i'm not terribly concerned about the timing i don't care if it's today or later
00:11:31 but i am interested in the plan like the strategy what are we going to do and i said listen we need
00:11:36 to break it into two categories number one we got the lame duck we have november and december
00:11:42 we have 54 days until january 3rd when the democrats are sworn in these are our last 54 days
00:11:51 where we actually have majorities and we need to have a plan to accomplish the maximum amount
00:11:59 possible to confirm nominees to to pass a reconciliation bill to go and fight and get
00:12:05 something done for the next 54 days that's a strategy and i want to hear a plan how is our
00:12:10 leader going to do that and then secondly after january 3rd we're going to have a democrat senate
00:12:17 democrat house now the democrats are coming in we have a lot of radicals who came in they're going
00:12:24 to be extreme i want to plan for the next two years how are we going to fight against them
00:12:28 what is our plan to battle against them so i said that uh late this morning right before lunch that's
00:12:35 what i laid out this is what we need to do what we ended up doing is deciding okay we're not going
00:12:40 to vote on the leader right now we're going to break for lunch and then we're going to come back
00:12:44 after lunch and continue meeting and discussing so we did that came back at two o'clock we spent
00:12:49 the rest of the afternoon arguing back and forth at the end of the day there was a vote on do we
00:12:57 delay leadership elections that vote failed because there was nobody running like what was
00:13:04 the point of delaying the election if you have one candidate you're just delaying the election
00:13:10 to like let democrats say gosh these guys are in chaos and and and disorganized and since nobody
00:13:17 was running uh by a two-to-one majority the conference said no we're not going to delay the
00:13:22 election after that uh we actually had ran paul made a motion he said look we don't need this
00:13:30 this was i don't know maybe three four o'clock in the afternoon so it'd been a long day we'd been
00:13:33 going from from the morning all day long with lots and lots of speeches and rand said i moved
00:13:39 that rather than all the nominating and seconding speeches that we just vote everyone in block by
00:13:45 acclamation and everyone cheered like everyone's like okay good because by the way all sorts of
00:13:51 people every candidate for like the the minority leader for the whip for the conference chair for
00:13:56 the vice chair for the nrsc everyone had a nominator and two seconders lined up so that
00:14:01 was a ton of speeches and and senators are not known for brevity so these were long speeches
00:14:07 we were going to sit there for like three hours and listen to our colleagues praise each other
00:14:12 i was really grateful for rand saying can we just like be done with it if these are the only people
00:14:18 running we all agree let's go forward we did that so the speeches we were spared i was i was like
00:14:24 thank you, Rand. We then had a second debate, and it was something that began with Rick Scott.
00:14:32 Rick is a good friend of mine. He's a good man. Rick had a proposal that he wanted to pass a
00:14:38 resolution that was a sense of the Senate, that the Senate will stay in continuous session every
00:14:45 day through Thanksgiving, through weekends, no matter what, we're going to stay in session
00:14:50 to show that we're working and there was a lot of discussion there were several senators said hey
00:14:55 that's a good idea that's a good idea now i gotta admit i'm sitting there listening to this and and
00:15:00 this is where there's an advantage to having been in the senate now 14 years i've been through
00:15:07 i've been through elections where we won and had great victories i've been through elections where
00:15:11 we lost so i've sort of seen the sentiments that people have and i stood up and i said listen
00:15:17 i think this is a really bad idea and the reason it's a bad idea is we're focusing on inputs
00:15:24 rather than outputs i said no one really gives a damn if what days we are in session and the
00:15:33 reason this matters also listen it is good politics it's natural politics people say let's
00:15:39 just let's just self-flagellate you'll get people that say okay no salaries until we have a balanced
00:15:45 budget by the way it's typically very very rich senators who say that we don't want to get
00:15:49 salaries and listen congress is dysfunctional in a million things and if you can just stand up and
00:15:56 say i hate the senate we're all terrible we're all horrible beat the hell out of us that's actually
00:16:01 pretty good politics and so the idea we're going to work every saturday we work every sunday look
00:16:06 how tough we are raw yeah and i'm like okay but why would we focus on the inputs rather than the
00:16:14 outputs let's focus on what we're going to accomplish rather than just particularly because
00:16:20 the way the senate works if you say we're going to work every every weekend all the way through
00:16:24 thanksgiving and beyond the senate rules delay lots of votes by like 30 hours so there would
00:16:33 be saturdays and sundays where you have no votes where you're literally doing nothing where you
00:16:37 can do nothing and yet we would be passing a resolution saying we're going to stay in
00:16:42 washington to do nothing because we hate ourselves so much we want to show we're tough and we're
00:16:47 sitting here doing absolutely nothing and i'm like okay that that doesn't make a whole lot of sense
00:16:56 what we ought to focus on is the results and and so i pulled out a pad of paper and i wrote a new
00:17:05 resolution it was a very different resolution and and what the resolution said and i'll read
00:17:11 it verbatim because it's what i wrote on the notepad i said it is the sense of the republican
00:17:16 conference that we will maximize the 54 days we have with congressional majorities
00:17:22 to confirm every judicial nominee and every executive nominee that the conference approves of
00:17:32 to pass our core Republican priorities
00:17:36 and to do everything humanly possible
00:17:39 to pass a reconciliation bill before January 3rd.
00:17:44 So that's what I wrote out.
00:17:46 We debated that for about an hour.
00:17:48 There was some disagreement, but I said,
00:17:50 look, the objective here, and this is consistent.
00:17:54 I spoke twice in the meeting,
00:17:55 once at the beginning when I said we should do this,
00:17:57 and then once at the end when I wrote this resolution.
00:18:00 I said, number one, on judges,
00:18:02 what clear the decks every judicial vacancy we can we ought to fill all right senator when you
00:18:07 say all that we can there's going to be some of you listening that say them says well why not just
00:18:11 fill all of them and i want you to explain that in a moment but before we get to that right now
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00:19:47 back to this important question you said we should clear the deck all of them that we can fill we
00:19:53 should and there's people that are going to say why not all of them why would we not make sure
00:19:58 every single one of them is filled because the president has to nominate someone first
00:20:03 got it we we can't confirm people who haven't been nominated yet and and so their vacancies
00:20:08 we're trying a lot how many are there out of curiosity i believe the number is 23 okay so
00:20:16 there are 23 vacancies now now by the way the democrats can drag it out we could be here a lot
00:20:20 of hours. And my view is, look, if there are vacancies and the president has nominated,
00:20:28 so we had today, we cleared several nominees out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today.
00:20:33 We will clear several more next week, and we'll have another markup in a couple of weeks. And so
00:20:38 we will clear the decks. If there are nominees that have the support of Republicans, my view is
00:20:44 we should confirm them. Now, if Republicans object to a particular nominee, all right, that's part of
00:20:49 the confirmation process so if there's a particular nominee who's problematic that's fine 0.87
00:20:53 but we ought to fill every damn vacancy and so in texas it's my intention to fill every single
00:21:00 vacancy and i think we're going to so judges number one because judges are lifetime appointments 0.98
00:21:06 and i think come january 3rd the senate's going to stop judicial confirmations by the way that's
00:21:12 weird historically i i've been in the senate when you have a president of one party in the senate
00:21:19 of the other and usually you move judicial confirmations forward you end up moderating
00:21:25 the nominees so if if it's a republican senate and democrat president instead of their nominating
00:21:30 crazy left-wing radicals they nominate more centrist judges they're they're not conservatives
00:21:37 But they tend to be kind of prosecutors, kind of law and order people, kind of non heavily ideological.
00:21:43 And so you can have a check and balance. And the same would be true with the Democrat Senate and a Republican president.
00:21:48 Instead of getting rock rib conservatives, you'd get people who are competent and capable and more towards the middle.
00:21:55 I don't think that'll happen the next two years. I think Chuck Schumer and the Democrats will shut down all judicial confirmation.
00:22:00 So it's why I'm saying we had to clear the decks. Let's confirm everyone we can, because I think for two years we're going to be done.
00:22:08 There's agreement on that. On executive nominees, so one of the things we did this year.
00:22:14 So two years ago when Trump came in, the Democrats did something unprecedented.
00:22:20 They began objecting to every single nominee, every cabinet nominee, every sub cabinet nominee, everybody.
00:22:26 and they began delaying them all and so it used to be and this was true with republican presidents
00:22:32 and democrat presidents there were nominees who were non-controversial or you would pass by
00:22:37 unanimous consent they'd be you'd move them through and so the big ones like if it was a
00:22:41 really controversial nominee you'd have a battle and you'd spend time on it but the lower level
00:22:45 folks you'd process through two years ago when trump came in the democrats said no we're fighting
00:22:51 on everybody even nominees they agreed with they would fight and delay and burn the clock
00:22:56 and so we ended up changing the rules to allow what what is called unblock confirmation so now
00:23:03 instead of one confirmation at a time we can do a bunch we can do 10 or 20 or 50 or 100
00:23:10 so what we're going to do is confirm a block of executive nominees and i think it'll probably be
00:23:19 somewhere in the neighborhood of 100. We'll see how many get through. But it'll be somewhere in
00:23:24 the neighborhood of 100 that we'll vote for all at once. It takes eight days under the Senate
00:23:29 rules to move forward. We'll get that done in November and December. Now, the way it works,
00:23:34 and the reason I wrote the rules to say executive nominees of whom the conference approves,
00:23:39 is we wrote it that if any one Republican objects, they can throw them out of the unblock.
00:23:44 And look, that's one of the real values of the Senate is it's a check and balance. And
00:23:49 And so if there's a bad nominee, a Republican can kill them or at least you can't kill them. 1.00
00:23:57 But if it's a lower level nominee, it's effectively killing them. 0.82
00:24:00 If it's a big nominee, if it's a cabinet member, you're going to get a vote on the Senate floor.
00:24:05 So one Republican senator can't kill them.
00:24:08 But if it's an assistant secretary of whatchamacallit, which is not a super high priority, the only chance of getting them through is part of the on block.
00:24:18 So if a particular Republican senator objects, it's going to take them out.
00:24:22 So we ended up and we had a big debate.
00:24:25 And by the way, the most controversial, there were a couple of things.
00:24:29 My initial proposed resolution did not include the phrase and other Republican priorities.
00:24:36 That was in Rick Scott's proposal.
00:24:38 And there were some folks that said, well, if we just say judicial nominees and executive nominees in reconciliation, it says we're not going to do anything else.
00:24:45 I'm like, all right, fine.
00:24:47 Give me that phrase from Rick's.
00:24:48 I'll add it to mine. So I added it to mine. And then there was a big debate about reconciliation.
00:24:53 Now, reconciliation. This is a wonky term, but the good thing about verdict is the folks that
00:24:59 listen to this are incredibly knowledgeable. Reconciliation is the principal exception to
00:25:05 the filibuster rule. It is the way we pass the working families tax cut that was called the
00:25:10 one big beautiful bill, which had massive Republican victories. The case I'm trying
00:25:15 to make to my colleagues is we ought to do another reconciliation. We ought to pass. Let's get one
00:25:20 more big legislative victory before we lose our majorities. Now, I don't know if we can. It's the
00:25:27 reason why the resolution says do everything humanly possible, because to get a reconciliation
00:25:33 through, we need 50 senators and we need 218 House members. Both of those are hard. In the Senate,
00:25:41 you've got a number of senators particularly those senators who have lost who are mad
00:25:45 they may not vote for anything we may not be able to get 50 senators i hope we can
00:25:50 but it may not be possible in the house it's going to be even harder because you've got 40 plus
00:25:57 house republicans who've lost who are pissed many of them they had votes this week and
00:26:04 almost 40 house members didn't even show up they didn't come back they're mad and they're not even
00:26:10 coming back to washington so i don't know that we can get 218 republicans to vote for anything
00:26:16 right now but sure but it's worth the try is what you're saying it's worth the try like like i said
00:26:23 to my colleagues don't we want to accomplish anything let's try to put together a really good
00:26:28 policy victory for our voters let's get it through the senate if we can get 50 votes
00:26:34 then it goes to the house and the 20 30 40 house republicans who are mad that they lost 0.98
00:26:40 we ought to be able to say put your ass on a plane and fly back for one day to vote for this 0.98
00:26:46 and let's get another victory i think i i don't know that we can get it done but i don't understand 0.98
00:26:52 how we wouldn't try and and and so it ended up the resolution that i wrote on the notepad was adopted
00:26:58 by the conference and and that's that that's what our plan of attack is going to be fall is here and
00:27:04 so are the comforting flavors at egg smart try the new caramel apple pie pancakes fluffy buttermilk
00:27:10 pancakes topped with warm cinnamon
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00:27:19 Hey, I'm
00:27:20 Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We're Armstrong
00:27:21 and Getty. We've been trying to figure out how to
00:27:23 describe what is Armstrong and Getty on
00:27:25 demand for many years. I'm going to give it a shot.
00:27:27 So, most media is either agenda
00:27:29 driven, so they intentionally leave parts out or they
00:27:31 lie to you, or they're so shallow and
00:27:33 boring, you don't learn anything
00:27:35 anyway. We try to get to the bottom of the
00:27:37 stories that are shaping our worlds and help
00:27:39 you understand what's actually happening the armstrong getty show practically perfect in
00:27:44 every way yeah i really like you guys the show i've been listening for over 10 years i'll always
00:27:49 be an avid listener and better informed for the show is a collection of silly serious and irreverent
00:27:54 musings of the day hilariously balanced with more than just a pinch of sarcasm whether it's on the 0.98
00:28:01 left or the right if somebody does something or says something stupid they're gonna call it out 0.99
00:28:05 And I love that. 0.99
00:28:07 I love it.
00:28:07 Keep up the great work.
00:28:08 I'm rocking with A&G.
00:28:09 So give it a try sometime.
00:28:10 Entertaining and you learn something?
00:28:12 Where do I do now?
00:28:12 Listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:28:19 Let me ask you this.
00:28:20 Was there excitement after you guys started to feel like there was a little bit of momentum moving forward in this way?
00:28:26 And like, all right, we have a game plan.
00:28:28 Was there some excitement that, hey, maybe we can actually get some of this done this way?
00:28:32 oh look excitement would be a generous term i mean to be clear we just got shellacked we just
00:28:38 lost the majority in the house but the majority in the senate we just had a bunch of our colleagues
00:28:42 who lost really rough races and so the throughout the course of the day there were senators who
00:28:49 stood up who ran really tough races who stood up and said hey i love you guys i lost i i'm gonna
00:28:55 miss you and so there were lots of applause it wasn't quite tears but it look it's it's close
00:29:02 I've been on both sides. And the winning times, like when we've won a great victory, those are fun. I mean, I wasn't in the Democrat meetings, obviously, today. But I'm confident the Democrat meetings were exultant.
00:29:16 Now, there's a natural pendulum to politics.
00:29:21 So right now, the Democrats feel unstoppable.
00:29:24 They're like Ozymandias.
00:29:25 They're unstoppable gods.
00:29:29 That's going to be, or I'm going to mix my classical metaphors, instead of Ozymandias,
00:29:34 they're going to be like Icarus.
00:29:35 They're going to fly too close to the sun, and the wax in their wings is going to melt.
00:29:40 The crazies in their conference are going to be empowered.
00:29:43 Let's do every crazy thing we can. 0.61
00:29:46 And that's going to be actually how we turn the country around.
00:29:48 It's going to be how we turn the Senate around and the House around.
00:29:53 And it's going to be how we turn Texas around.
00:29:55 And listen, one of the things I announced this week is that I am leading the effort to turn Texas around.
00:30:03 We are going to turn Texas red again.
00:30:05 We're going to retake the Texas legislature.
00:30:08 We're going to retake the congressional delegation.
00:30:10 We're going to retake the statewide elected positions.
00:30:13 And so an organization called Saving Texas that is organized by my political team, we're opening a headquarters in Austin to recruit candidates, to raise money, to go and fight for Texas.
00:30:28 Because let's be clear, nothing else works if we can't get Texas back, by the way.
00:30:33 Yeah. And by the way, what you mean by that is if we don't get Texas back, we don't win the presidency again.
00:30:37 We don't win anything because California is blue.
00:30:40 New York is blue.
00:30:40 Illinois is blue.
00:30:42 If Texas is blue, it's game over.
00:30:44 There's nothing to talk about.
00:30:45 You don't worry about the swing states.
00:30:47 You don't worry about the Michigans or Ohio's or Pennsylvanians.
00:30:51 Because if Texas joins the bright blue states, close the door, pack up everything, it's all over.
00:30:58 And so we're going to turn this around.
00:31:01 I believe Texas is red.
00:31:03 We are conservative.
00:31:04 We have not become a bunch of tofu-eating, gun-controlling, rabid left-wing socialists.
00:31:11 that is not who texas is this election was a screw you statement people were mad they were
00:31:19 mad at republicans they were mad at the president they were mad that that they felt that the national
00:31:23 agenda was not listening to them but i do not believe texas has suddenly become california
00:31:28 but let's be clear if we do not turn texas around it's game over for the country so we
00:31:36 have to turn texas around right now somewhere in the world there's a child waiting not waiting for
00:31:41 a birthday not waiting for christmas waiting for someone to choose them that's what compassion
00:31:47 international does every single day they connect children living in poverty with someone who will
00:31:52 know their name who will pray for them encourage them and help provide the food medical care
00:31:57 education and hope they need through a local church and that is key the local church now this
00:32:04 year, Compassion is expanding into four new countries, Malawi, Zambia, Cambodia, and Myanmar,
00:32:11 meaning thousands of children are being reached for the very first time. For just 43 hours a month,
00:32:17 you can be the reason one child stops waiting. And let me just tell you, this is a great
00:32:22 opportunity for you to teach your kids, your grandkids about helping others. So do it as a
00:32:28 family. Sponsor Child Today at Compassion.com. That's Compassion.com. Yeah, it's going to be
00:32:35 very fun and interesting, I say, to watch. So tell me what we can expect for the next few weeks.
00:32:41 What does y'all's work week look like? Obviously, it's a countdown clock, 54, 53 days,
00:32:46 right? It's going to be moving quickly. So what does this look like for you guys the days and
00:32:50 weeks ahead going into the holidays as well? Yeah, look, the initial plan, by the way,
00:32:55 the Senate was going to be gone today. We're all going to get a plan and go because tomorrow's
00:32:59 Veterans Day, and so we're all going to go home. And this was going to be a two-day work week. And
00:33:03 we said, you know what? No, we're staying here. So we're all here tomorrow. We're going to be
00:33:07 voting on judges. Now, the reason I didn't want the resolution that just says we're going to be
00:33:12 here every day, no matter what, on weekends, because bah humbug, we hate ourselves, is because 0.95
00:33:18 that's actually a dumb strategy. Because the way the Senate works, look, Democrats want to get out 0.93
00:33:24 of town. And an awful lot of decisions get made by consent, by agreement. And so the way you get
00:33:31 23 judges confirmed is you tell Democrats on Thursday who really want to go home on Friday
00:33:38 and be home for the weekend and do fundraisers and do events and do different things, hey,
00:33:44 you can do that. We'll let you fly home. If you agree to shorten the time frames,
00:33:51 and we can vote on a bunch of them on say thursday afternoon and by the way if you don't agree
00:33:56 we'll stay and we'll vote on one thursday one friday one saturday one sunday so we'll get the
00:34:01 same people confirmed but it can either be really painful and you get stuck here the whole time
00:34:07 or it can be less painful and we do the same thing and and the phrase in in in washington
00:34:16 and particularly the Senate, is jet fumes get in the air, that come Thursday morning. So a typical
00:34:21 Senate calendar is you fly in Monday mornings, you fly home Thursday nights. And by the way,
00:34:28 I will say to folks who say, gosh, you work three days, that is not in fact accurate. If you're
00:34:34 doing your job as a senator, you're working, look, a really good and effective senator is working 70,
00:34:40 80 90 hours a week but you're in dc in session typically monday through thursdays so for my
00:34:48 my example i typically fly from texas to dc monday mornings we have our opening vote typically at 5 30
00:34:56 p.m on mondays that's set at 5 30 so even from the west coast you can fly in and get in that day
00:35:01 you have hearings and and and and votes all day tuesday votes hearings and votes all day wednesday
00:35:07 hearings and votes Thursday, and then you fly home typically Thursday night. And then my typical
00:35:13 schedule is on Fridays. I fly around Texas. Look, you've got to represent the whole state. I've got
00:35:17 32 million people that I need to go listen to and talk to, so I fly around the state.
00:35:23 And I often will fly around also the state or nationally on Saturdays as well.
00:35:29 And then what I try to do is keep Sundays as a down day at home with the family. So I try to be
00:35:34 like a dad and a husband and have one day a week or a day of rest and honor the sabbath and then i
00:35:39 go back to doing the same thing so the the point is senators and it's a weird dynamic because you
00:35:49 often don't know your schedule and so you get to thursday and there are a bunch of democrats that
00:35:54 want to get out of town they've got things they want to go to maybe it's a kid's soccer game
00:35:57 maybe it's a fundraiser maybe it's like a parade i you know it's all sorts of things they want to
00:36:02 get to and so on wednesday they're like damn it we're gonna fight everything and then on thursday
00:36:09 they're like well if they could confirm everyone they want to do anyway and the only choice is do 0.65
00:36:16 we have to be here the whole time or not why don't we compress the time and just do the same thing
00:36:21 and so that's part of the reason why and and my colleagues all agreed with me i mean we we adopted
00:36:27 this the the resolution that i wrote is what we adopted and my point was let's not focus on if
00:36:34 we're sitting here sunday with no votes because we're burning 30 hours under the senate rules 0.50
00:36:41 and literally doing nothing but but just sitting here twirling in the air that's dumb yeah that
00:36:47 makes sense let's focus on the objective the objective is confirm every judicial nominee
00:36:52 and clear the decks of executive nominees that we agree on and then beyond that and we actually had
00:36:59 a rigorous debate are we going to do a reconciliation or not i don't know if we can
00:37:03 but i'm going to try everything humanly possible for us to get that done because it is our single
00:37:10 best opportunity of winning real legislative victories before the democrats take over in
00:37:16 january yeah well we're going to keep you updated we're going to have a lot to talk about in the
00:37:19 days and weeks ahead on this one before we wrap up senator i want to talk about uh about the
00:37:24 impeachment of pete headseth it is it is clear that the democrats were lying to the american
00:37:29 people when they said hey you elect us we're going to go to washington and fight for affordability
00:37:33 that was their their favorite word online they use and in interviews it should have really been 0.98
00:37:39 the word impeachment and they have wasted no time getting what i would refer to as a useful idiot of 0.92
00:37:45 the Republican Party, Thomas Massey, to come along and help them try to move this forward 0.93
00:37:49 with impeaching the man in charge of the Department of War?
00:37:53 Well, look, the Democrats, they spent six months campaigning, say all we care about
00:37:58 is affordability and cost.
00:38:01 And then you're right.
00:38:02 Their priority when they actually get in power is impeachments, investigations, subpoenas,
00:38:09 attacks.
00:38:09 We're going to see two years of that nonstop.
00:38:11 they started off with the hegseth impeachment now i'm going to say something look regular
00:38:19 podcast listeners you know that i often make predictions and and by the way over the course
00:38:26 of verdict the predictions i haven't done the numbers but they're 80 to 90 percent accurate i
00:38:32 make some bold predictions um you know including that i predicted that joe biden would not be the
00:38:38 nominee, that they'd pull him from the ballot. That happened. We've gone through, we typically
00:38:43 each year go through the predictions that we've made and have some accountability. Now, I will
00:38:49 say on Monday's podcast, I said something that proved not to be accurate. I'm very happy to be
00:38:53 wrong on this, by the way. I said on Monday, I said that I believe Pete Hegseth would be impeached,
00:39:00 that all the Democrats would vote for him, there would be enough Republican votes to impeach him
00:39:04 as well. That didn't happen. The Republicans defeated impeachment. And let me say, bravo,
00:39:10 I'm very happy with that. I like Pete personally. I've been a strong advocate of Pete's.
00:39:18 And it is one of the very few predictions on verdict that I've made that proved wrong.
00:39:25 Now, I'll tell you the basis why I made that prediction is I had multiple conversations
00:39:30 with house leadership in september and october and they told me categorically and repeatedly
00:39:36 if we come back in september and october we don't have the votes to stop a hegseth impeachment
00:39:43 they just said look the reason that the house was gone for two months before the election and the
00:39:48 reason they were gone is house leadership said if we're back thomas massey can force a vote
00:39:56 on Hegseth impeachment. They said we'd lose. And so you recall, look, I passed the Protect
00:40:02 College Sports Act bill in the Senate, which I'm hoping the House will pass in the next two months.
00:40:07 I think it will. I wanted the House to come back and pass it. I was arguing vociferously for the
00:40:13 House should come back and pass it in one day. It would be really important. And the argument
00:40:18 that leadership, House leadership gave is no, we can't do that because if we come back, we can't
00:40:24 stop a hegseth impeachment we don't want hegseth to be impeached right before the election
00:40:28 and to be honest ben i didn't have a really good response to that like i'm like okay yeah that would
00:40:35 be bad i don't really want two weeks before the election for the house to impeach the secretary
00:40:40 of war that that strikes me as not a great political move um that's why they didn't come
00:40:47 back. Well, look, I don't know if it was that Democrats overreached, and by the way, you had
00:40:54 Democrats saying, let's not just impeach Hegseth, let's go after and persecute and prosecute the
00:40:59 soldiers who waged the war against Iran, let's go after them. That may have backfired. I don't
00:41:06 know if the crazies in the Democrats were so extreme that they went too far. All I know is
00:41:14 it failed and let me say congrats to pete and now by the way i think the democrats will try again in
00:41:20 january when they have majorities and they may be able to succeed in january uh but i was very
00:41:26 pleasantly surprised that hegseth impeachment was defeated and and and i will say actually i want to
00:41:33 play for a moment so right before the election i was on bill maher and and i was on bill maher with
00:41:39 with the guy who is the the editor of axios who is a very prominent journalist in in dc
00:41:45 and and and he said every republican senator hates pete hegseth and and i gotta say i i
00:41:53 disagreed with that here i want to play the exchange give a listen i love him i think the
00:41:58 case against hegseth that is a fair one and senators should weigh in is there's a lot of
00:42:04 really really really highly competent people who are serving in the military at the highest level
00:42:09 who he ran out of town and at a moment where we're at war and it's not like we have a surplus
00:42:15 of super talented people ready to fill in that void and i think the reason that a lot of republican
00:42:20 senators privately dislike the man profoundly the senator probably won't say it but also i can't
00:42:24 think of a single republican senator i talked to who does not profoundly dislike him no i like
00:42:29 i'll say that definitely and you think he's been an awesome defense secretary look i like you like
00:42:34 the way he's prosecuted the Iranians. Seriously, I'm not doing it. I think one of the most important 1.00
00:42:39 things he did was try to get the Defense Department back to a war fighting culture. You look at the
00:42:45 enlistment rates that are skyrocketing. I think young men and women are eager to come serve this
00:42:49 country again. And he's someone that was on the front lines fighting. And you look at as he goes
00:42:55 out and works out with servicemen and women. I'll tell you, they love him and believe in him.
00:43:02 and will the house impeach him they probably will but but it has very little to do with him and has
00:43:07 everything to do with the iran war and if the democrats take control they'll want to do months
00:43:12 of impeachment hearing to just attack the trump administration all day long that's
00:43:17 senator by the way you're absolutely right uh and and what you said there
00:43:22 well look and i think that's one of the the best legacies of of hegseth's tenure is is that he
00:43:30 He's brought a war-fighting culture back to the Pentagon, to the military.
00:43:35 We were seeing enlistment rates plummet because people didn't want to be part of woke social justice warriors.
00:43:44 Instead, what Hagseth has been really, and it's why I was such an enthusiastic supporter of his,
00:43:51 is he said, look, the job of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines is to fight to defend America,
00:43:57 to keep americans safe to defeat our enemies and and and that that that is really refocusing
00:44:03 get out of the politics get back to the core mission i think that's something pete has done
00:44:08 well and that being said as i noted on bill maher i thought they would impeach him and i thought
00:44:15 they would impeach him because that's what house leadership told me was going to happen
00:44:18 but at least this week that failed i'm i'm very glad of that yeah it's it certainly is going to
00:44:26 be interesting to see just how far they go on this. I think they're going to be way over their
00:44:29 skis on this one. That's not surprising. We're going to keep watching it. We'll keep covering
00:44:34 it and we'll let you know exactly what is going on. Don't forget, we do the show Monday, Wednesday
00:44:38 and Friday. Hit that subscribe and auto download button in the center. And I will see you back here
00:44:43 on Friday morning. Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong. He's Joe Getty. We've been trying to figure out how
00:44:49 to describe what is Armstrong and Getty on demand for many years. I'm going to give it a shot. So
00:44:53 Most media is either agenda-driven or they're so shallow and boring.
00:44:58 You don't learn anything anyway.
00:44:59 We try to get to the bottom of the stories that are shaping our worlds
00:45:02 and help you understand what's actually happening.
00:45:05 So give it a try sometime.
00:45:07 Entertaining and you learn something?
00:45:08 Where do I tune in?
00:45:09 Listen to Armstrong and Getty on demand on the iHeartRadio app,
00:45:12 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:17 Hey, it's Drew Franklin from NFL Cover Zero.
00:45:19 The 2026 season is underway and we are loving football on TV.
00:45:24 Here's what you can expect from the podcast in our second season.
00:45:27 I would suggest for these preseason games, I think they should do what they do on the NFL draft.
00:45:33 You know, when coverage of the NFL draft is basically for moms and they're just like, hey, he has a dog named Spartan.
00:45:42 Listen to NFL Cover Zero on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.