Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 05, 2020


Inside The State Of The Union


Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

174.80157

Word count

5,440

Sentence count

482

Harmful content

Misogyny

12

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz and Michael Bloomberg react to the results of the Democratic primary in Iowa and discuss what it means for Joe Biden's chances of winning the nomination. They also talk about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders' chances in New Hampshire and what that means for the rest of the field.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.660 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.260 The state of our union, much like the state of our podcast, is strong.
00:00:09.380 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:17.360 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:19.820 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:00:21.020 Senator, you have just come from the Capitol and the State of the Union address.
00:00:24.400 I want to get into that because it was one of the greatest State of the Union addresses
00:00:29.060 I've ever seen.
00:00:29.740 It was raucous.
00:00:30.880 Before we get to that, I have to talk about Iowa because the last time I saw you, we were
00:00:36.840 here for three hours last night waiting to do a podcast about Iowa and then the results
00:00:42.320 never came in.
00:00:43.140 Look, two words, dumpster fire.
00:00:45.880 I mean, it is.
00:00:47.000 So last night, last night, Monday night, you and I arrived here at nine.
00:00:52.380 The plan was we're doing a podcast.
00:00:54.440 So we said, all right, we'll get Iowa results and we'll go just on air and react to them.
00:00:58.560 And then nine o'clock became 10.
00:01:00.800 That became 11.
00:01:01.780 That became 12.
00:01:02.640 And we're sitting there going, we have no results.
00:01:04.660 We still don't have results.
00:01:05.780 But the nice thing about a podcast, look, if we had a TV show that went on at 9 p.m., we'd
00:01:11.460 have to go on air and say, tonight, we know nothing.
00:01:14.060 And then you just kind of sat there.
00:01:16.080 And so we said, all right, if we don't know the results, let's do the podcast tomorrow.
00:01:19.320 But you remember, then we said, all right, let's do it 10 a.m.
00:01:22.120 We didn't have results at 10 a.m.
00:01:23.460 Then we said, let's do it at 3 p.m.
00:01:25.120 We didn't have results at 3 p.m.
00:01:26.800 And we're sitting here now at 1243 in the morning and we have 60 percent of Iowa reporting.
00:01:33.700 We have 60 percent of Iowa reporting.
00:01:35.660 There is a discrepancy between the delegates and the popular vote.
00:01:40.440 Now, you happened to win Iowa in 2016.
00:01:43.320 So I want your insider take.
00:01:44.880 But just from what I'm reading, Pete Buttigieg, who declared victory last night with no results
00:01:49.500 in, he has 27 percent.
00:01:50.640 Which I like to give him some credit.
00:01:52.540 That was a ballsy move.
00:01:54.720 And so, look, in that scenario, and actually the numbers are backing him up.
00:01:59.500 If he had come in with 3 percent, he would have looked pretty ridiculous.
00:02:03.740 But that was...
00:02:05.060 Fortune favors the bold.
00:02:06.500 That's exactly right.
00:02:07.300 Right now, in terms of delegates, Pete Buttigieg has 27 percent.
00:02:11.300 Bernie is at 25 percent.
00:02:13.320 Elizabeth Warren, 18 percent. 0.77
00:02:15.220 Poor Joe Biden down at 15 percent.
00:02:16.920 Amy Klobuchar, 12.6 percent.
00:02:19.920 And yet, Bernie is leading in the popular vote.
00:02:23.680 I think people have no idea what the Iowa caucus is, including many Iowans.
00:02:28.640 You spent a lot of time in Iowa in 2016, and it paid off because you won the state.
00:02:33.620 What happened?
00:02:34.640 What does it look like?
00:02:36.080 So, Iowa is a state where they take their responsibility very seriously.
00:02:42.420 And people pour thousands of hours into grassroots campaigning in Iowa because Iowa has proven to be a launching ground.
00:02:50.500 Where, look, Iowa rarely elects a nominee or elects a president, but it excludes a lot of people.
00:02:57.800 And it could elevate someone who wasn't a frontrunner, who wasn't dominant, to major top-tier status.
00:03:05.120 And so, you know, you look at the results in Iowa tonight, or whenever we get them, assuming they resemble the ones you just read, it's a catastrophic night for Joe Biden.
00:03:16.400 Joe Biden was the inevitable, the unstoppable frontrunner, and he's in fourth place.
00:03:22.020 That's a big problem.
00:03:25.720 It wasn't a great night for Elizabeth Warren.
00:03:28.420 Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are battling for who can be the great leftist hope.
00:03:33.500 Right.
00:03:34.080 And Bernie right now won.
00:03:36.780 If those numbers hold up, and you've got to assume moving into New Hampshire, the poll numbers out of New Hampshire, Bernie, as a neighbor in Vermont, is in a very strong position.
00:03:46.540 And all the polls bear that out.
00:03:47.660 So Warren coming in third, she's still around, but between Bernie and Warren, she's not in a great place.
00:03:55.960 It was a great night for Buttigieg. 0.84
00:03:58.020 And, look, Biden's donors right now are freaking out.
00:04:02.780 Biden's supporters are freaking out.
00:04:04.720 And if you figure there's 20 to 30 percent of moderate Democrats, they've got to flee somewhere.
00:04:11.240 Buttigieg did a nice job of throwing himself in contention.
00:04:14.280 Klobuchar would have been another person in contention.
00:04:17.660 But she's not totally out, but fifth place is not.
00:04:22.920 She wanted to come in and shock the world with, say, a second place finish in Iowa. 1.00
00:04:27.440 If that had happened, it could have really elevated Klobuchar to be the alternative to Biden.
00:04:34.940 What you may see some oxygen for is a Michael Bloomberg coming in.
00:04:39.720 He seems to be trying to veer into this moderate lane.
00:04:43.240 The Biden campaign is collapsing.
00:04:45.300 It's amazing what $50 billion could do.
00:04:47.660 But, you know, the Democrats are the party of the people and the party of poor people.
00:04:52.400 And, you know, frankly, you know, Bloomberg does look at Tom Steyer and say, you're a really poor billionaire.
00:04:59.180 That's true.
00:05:01.020 As far as billionaires go, it's a rarefied air.
00:05:03.040 But, you know, this this does make the Democratic candidates look a little bit ridiculous, in part because the candidate who won the popular vote very well may not win the state.
00:05:13.580 And in part, Bernie's a socialist.
00:05:14.820 So he's going to redistribute his votes to others.
00:05:16.660 You know, I got to say, number one, that they the Democrats couldn't and it's the state Democratic Party that screwed this up.
00:05:27.340 They couldn't figure out how to count the votes.
00:05:30.000 Last night I was thinking about, you know, I felt really bad for the volunteers.
00:05:34.180 Every one of these candidates had people who pour their hearts into it.
00:05:38.620 I mean, I remember four years ago in Iowa, I mean, we had worked for over a year.
00:05:44.280 We had volunteers who had come in from Texas, from all over the country who'd moved to Iowa.
00:05:49.360 We actually rented an entire dormitory, a college dorm that was filled with volunteers that would go out in blizzard conditions, knocking on doors.
00:06:01.200 And there's something called the Full Grassley, where Chuck Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa, Chuck goes to all 99 counties in Iowa every single year.
00:06:13.060 And four years ago in Iowa, I did the Full Grassley.
00:06:17.300 The Full Grassley, you hit every county.
00:06:18.520 I hit. And in fact, we hit the 99th county on the day of the caucus.
00:06:23.360 And it look, Iowa, you drive through a lot of sparse rural counties.
00:06:29.680 You're doing events.
00:06:30.880 I remember one of my favorite events was about 1030 at night.
00:06:34.680 And it was a county where there were not many kind of big gathering places.
00:06:38.040 So we did a gas station and it was a pretty big gas station.
00:06:41.360 And it was it was on the road and it was 1030 at night.
00:06:43.720 And we had, I think, close to 100 people came out to the gas station from from the county.
00:06:48.960 And I jumped behind the counter and, you know, began serving people coffee because it was 1030 at night.
00:06:55.460 And they came out to here.
00:06:57.000 You know, it's a place where people have poured their hearts in.
00:07:00.600 And to get to last night, to get to the caucus, complete debacle, it collapses and to not have a result.
00:07:08.660 Yeah.
00:07:08.780 I think that I've never seen anything more messed up.
00:07:15.660 So there's and by the way, Democrats are the people that tell you they want the federal government to be in charge of everything.
00:07:22.760 They think they're geniuses.
00:07:24.860 And so they say, put us in charge of your health care.
00:07:27.000 Put us in charge of the economy.
00:07:28.720 Put us in charge of your life.
00:07:30.640 These people can't count votes.
00:07:33.060 It ain't complicated.
00:07:34.200 You literally go to a gymnasium and go stand over there if you're with Biden, go stand over there if you're with Bernie.
00:07:39.900 That's very complicated, but they can control your entire health care.
00:07:43.260 There is a big contrast, right, between the Democratic Iowa caucuses, a complete debacle and tonight's State of the Union, which you've just come from.
00:07:51.780 This is the Republican president counting off his victories.
00:07:55.460 And the president spent the first, what, 20, 25 minutes of the speech just listing off his victories.
00:07:59.980 I know that you spoke with the president a few days before the State of the Union.
00:08:05.020 I was obviously not on the phone call, but I suspect you you've talked about what that speech should look like.
00:08:11.040 So I talked to him on Sunday.
00:08:12.520 He called me and we visited about a number of topics.
00:08:15.260 But but on the State of the Union, I I encouraged him.
00:08:19.400 I said, make it positive.
00:08:21.020 Make it optimistic.
00:08:22.820 Focus on substance.
00:08:24.040 Focus on results.
00:08:25.140 Focus on success.
00:08:26.320 Don't focus on impeachment.
00:08:27.480 And that was my very explicit advice.
00:08:29.600 I said, Mr. President, for what it's worth, I wouldn't say a word about impeachment.
00:08:34.240 And and and the reason is, look, impeachment is going to be over tomorrow, but there are still potentially a couple of votes in flux.
00:08:42.620 So I told the president on Sunday, I said, I think the votes, the votes for not guilty will be somewhere between 50 and 56.
00:08:52.460 OK.
00:08:53.840 I said 50 is the bare minimum.
00:08:55.900 There will be 50 not guilty votes.
00:08:57.640 And I'm confident of that.
00:08:59.360 And as long as he is, I mean, he'll he would need 67 votes of guilty to be removed from office.
00:09:05.320 So it's not going to be that's not going to happen.
00:09:06.940 There was never any risk of that.
00:09:08.880 But on the upside, I think we could get as high as 56 not guilty votes.
00:09:13.240 And I said, look, Mr.
00:09:15.140 President, if you gave a state of the union that people saw spiking the ball and it ticked them off, I said, look, a lot of the you could end up seeing a few of these votes go south.
00:09:25.560 And you have a little insider knowledge here because you're speaking to the people who could be those votes that go one way or the other.
00:09:31.340 And you're speaking to the president.
00:09:32.580 And so on Sunday, the six votes that were in play, you had three three Republicans, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney.
00:09:42.160 Now, I told the president, I said, frankly, I think all three will vote not guilty.
00:09:46.820 Now, we know as of tonight, Collins and Murkowski have announced they're going to vote not guilty.
00:09:51.220 So that that much is right.
00:09:52.900 If Mitt has announced, I haven't seen it.
00:09:54.860 So I think he probably will as well.
00:09:56.980 But but we'll find out tomorrow on the Democratic side.
00:10:00.460 I think there are only three votes that are even plausibly in contention.
00:10:03.900 And that's Joe Manchin, who I think probably does vote not guilty.
00:10:07.160 He has.
00:10:07.820 It seems he's signaled that he's seriously considering voting not guilty, breaking with his party.
00:10:13.580 Yeah, I had a reporter run up to me in the Capitol, all excited and said, hey, what do you think of Joe Manchin's censure motion?
00:10:18.620 And I said, I hope it means he's voting not guilty.
00:10:20.180 And like, you know, that's that's what he suggested instead of voting guilty removed from office.
00:10:24.340 He suggested vote vote for censure, say that the president did a bad thing, slap him on the hand, but leave him in office.
00:10:31.400 And I think the odds are pretty good that Manchin votes not guilty.
00:10:34.940 The other two votes that are potentially in play are Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, who has she hadn't been in the Senate long, but she's been trying to carve out a more moderate path. 1.00
00:10:47.020 I think it's at least possible she votes not guilty.
00:10:51.060 And then the third one is Doug Jones from from Alabama.
00:10:53.680 Right.
00:10:53.980 Who at least possibly could.
00:10:55.400 So my advice to the president was.
00:10:58.500 Rather than, you know, rather than risk getting out of them angry, just focus on the incredible results and a positive vision.
00:11:07.680 And I got to say, and I wasn't the only one who gave the president that advice that was that was a lot of people were giving him that advice.
00:11:14.620 But how did he do?
00:11:15.920 I don't know that any of us were sure he would follow it.
00:11:18.800 To be honest, I don't know that he was sure he would follow it.
00:11:21.340 But he was open to it when we talked.
00:11:23.640 And I thought he did spectacularly tonight.
00:11:25.700 It is the best speech I've ever seen Donald Trump give.
00:11:29.180 And it started out just relentlessly making the case of the substantive victories we've had in the last three years.
00:11:38.040 And and and it was powerful.
00:11:41.240 It was compelling.
00:11:42.360 It was it was optimistic.
00:11:43.620 And the contrast, the way congressional Democrats behaved tonight was horrible.
00:11:53.200 They they wouldn't even stand up or applaud for low unemployment or there were women wearing white or like the suffragettes. 1.00
00:12:03.360 And they wouldn't stand up and applaud for low female unemployment.
00:12:07.700 It was one after the other where the president says we have the lowest unemployment in history.
00:12:12.120 Stone cold silence, the lowest African-American unemployment in history, stone cold silence, lowest Hispanic unemployment in history, stone cold silence. 0.96
00:12:20.300 As you point out, lowest unemployment for women in 70 years.
00:12:25.280 And you have all of these congressional women in white. 1.00
00:12:29.660 Who just are sitting there snarling.
00:12:31.740 What do they want?
00:12:32.460 What more could they ask for?
00:12:33.860 And I like that the president, he didn't just have one line about it.
00:12:38.300 He had one after the other after the other.
00:12:41.380 They were all based on facts.
00:12:43.060 They were all based on substance.
00:12:44.260 So when the president says the lower 50 percent of income, the people who are struggling the most have seen their incomes go up, that go up the most as a percentage.
00:12:52.300 Stone cold silence for the Democrats.
00:12:54.020 When he talks about poverty, the lowest African-American poverty in history, stone cold silence.
00:12:58.580 Right.
00:12:59.240 You know, the moment in the early part of the speech that was most dismaying.
00:13:03.120 The president talked about how seven million Americans have come off of food stamps and 10 million Americans have come off of welfare.
00:13:11.620 And not only did the congressional Democrats not applaud.
00:13:16.040 There was hissing.
00:13:17.680 I mean, it was because you couldn't really hear that on the TV feed.
00:13:20.260 On the floor.
00:13:21.520 They were hissing.
00:13:23.120 And it was like it was like some leftists in a college college classroom.
00:13:26.800 And I'm going to say that's really twisted and it reveals where the modern Democratic Party is, because they're saying they're saying to people who are struggling that they want you to remain dependent.
00:13:40.880 They want you to remain unemployed.
00:13:43.060 They want you to those seven million people the last three years have gotten jobs.
00:13:48.180 These are real men and women.
00:13:49.920 These are single moms who are suddenly now working. 1.00
00:13:53.260 They're providing for their kids.
00:13:54.820 They have the dignity of work, the self-respect.
00:13:58.140 Right.
00:13:58.640 And the approach of the Democrats, the congressional Democrats, they hissed that it's bad that they're off welfare.
00:14:07.000 And it is revealing of, I think, a really cynical attitude.
00:14:12.940 There was also.
00:14:14.720 So one of the things the president did did really well, there are what are called Lenny Stutnik moments.
00:14:20.260 OK.
00:14:20.660 Now, what is a Lenny Stutnik moment?
00:14:22.640 So Lenny Stutnik is is we see them a lot in State of the Unions where the president calls someone out in the gallery.
00:14:27.680 OK.
00:14:27.940 And the origin of that, it was actually Ronald Reagan who invented that.
00:14:30.580 It was 1982, and Reagan called out Lenny Stutnik, who had saved someone who had crashed into the Potomac.
00:14:38.300 And it, look, Reagan was a master showman. 1.00
00:14:40.920 He understood the power of it.
00:14:42.600 But that was the first time in 200 years of our country's history that a president had done that.
00:14:48.220 Now, every state of the union, you have a Lenny Stutnik moment.
00:14:51.240 What President Trump did with that tonight, I've never seen, and he's taken it to another level.
00:14:58.960 So we saw, for example, Rush Limbaugh.
00:15:03.400 That was an amazing moment.
00:15:04.440 When the president awarded him the Medal of Freedom, right there and then, and Melania put it around his neck.
00:15:18.880 Rush, I think, and I was sitting kind of right beneath where Rush was, so I was looking right up at him.
00:15:23.960 He was probably, I don't know, 50 feet away from me.
00:15:28.460 Rush was so astonished.
00:15:30.220 And, look, yesterday Rush announced he has stage four lung cancer.
00:15:35.460 And if you haven't listened to his announcement on air, it's worth listening to.
00:15:40.400 And you know Rush.
00:15:41.920 Rush is a friend.
00:15:43.320 He is, I think the man is a hero, and he's a patriot.
00:15:47.700 And, you know, I remember having dinner with Rush, I think it was 2015, before the whole presidential campaign had started.
00:15:57.020 And we were talking about the future, and it would have been eight years of Obama, or seven years at the time.
00:16:03.560 And Rush at the time was a little, I wouldn't say discouraged, but he wasn't sure we could turn things around.
00:16:11.500 It was a discouraging era.
00:16:12.700 And I remember telling him, I said, Rush, you have 20 million Americans who listen to you every single week.
00:16:21.360 Look, you and I are pretty hop-daddy, skippy-happy that we've had two million downloads in two weeks.
00:16:27.420 So, look, that ain't nothing.
00:16:28.880 That's pretty good.
00:16:29.800 That's not, and you know, we didn't, by the way, just to mention it's in passing, we didn't podcast for a few days here.
00:16:36.940 The show's still at number two, even with several days of silence.
00:16:39.980 Well, that's the sound of silence.
00:16:42.540 That's the power of people wanting content.
00:16:45.940 But my point with it, I said to Rush, is I said, look, you've got 20 million people a week that listen to you.
00:16:50.460 If every one of your listeners gets two other people to come out and vote, that's it.
00:16:57.340 Just each person find two people in America to come vote.
00:17:01.840 That's 60 million people.
00:17:03.240 I remember telling Rush, with 60 million people, we can turn this country around.
00:17:06.440 Donald Trump won in 2016 with 62 million votes.
00:17:09.980 Those numbers were almost, and Rush, you know, it's an interesting, you and I both went on Glenn Beck this morning.
00:17:17.300 We were back-to-back.
00:17:17.900 Back-to-back.
00:17:18.740 We pounded this podcast.
00:17:21.020 I think Glenn was ready to strangle us both.
00:17:23.060 It was a full hour of plugging this over.
00:17:24.820 But both Glenn, and then I did Hannity earlier tonight, and both of them gave beautiful, emotional tributes to Rush, that he had blazed the field.
00:17:38.980 I mean, that he's number one.
00:17:40.960 I mean, in many ways, what we're doing right now would be unthinkable without Rush Limbaugh.
00:17:45.400 And he was the kind of lonely voice in the wilderness.
00:17:49.800 And what was so powerful, there was all sorts of people across America that were sitting there going, I thought I was the only one.
00:17:59.200 And he just, he spoke for the everyman.
00:18:03.640 And by the way, he speaks for the everyman.
00:18:06.400 And I don't want to, so my mom is a two-time cancer survivor. 0.67
00:18:11.300 Cancer is a horrific, nasty, vicious disease.
00:18:17.040 And having been by my mom's side through chemo, through radiation.
00:18:21.740 Seen it up close.
00:18:22.960 It's horrible.
00:18:24.500 Rush is a tough, tenacious fighter.
00:18:26.780 So, I mean, I sent Rush a note yesterday that one of the things I said is, look, yours is an incredibly important voice in America, and we need you.
00:18:38.460 And we're all, and it was a great moment to see Melania put it on, and obviously everybody's praying for him.
00:18:43.220 But that we've never seen, in terms of a Lenny study, but to actually have the medal.
00:18:47.820 It's historic.
00:18:48.160 And Rush was blown away.
00:18:49.840 There were three times I had tears in my eyes.
00:18:53.060 And I've been to now, I think, seven State of the Unions.
00:18:55.340 I've never had tears in my eyes, and I had three times time.
00:18:57.300 What were the other two?
00:18:58.160 That moment, Kayla Mueller, who was tortured and killed by ISIS.
00:19:06.780 Her parents were there.
00:19:07.860 The president did an incredible job telling her story.
00:19:12.140 Yeah.
00:19:14.440 Seeing them looking up, look, particularly as a father of daughters.
00:19:20.940 You know, I kept looking at the dad.
00:19:22.620 I mean, look, and the mom, but, you know, I identified with the dad.
00:19:26.880 And to know the horrific hell that their daughter went through.
00:19:34.500 And the president told a great story about the special forces team naming their mission to take out al-Baghdadi.
00:19:42.800 Yeah.
00:19:43.880 After her birthday.
00:19:45.040 Because it ties in.
00:19:46.760 Look, we all know about the policy accomplishment.
00:19:48.840 But the personal story is what, I agree, I had tears in my eyes at the same moment.
00:19:52.980 I, I, it was beautiful and powerful.
00:19:57.300 And the third time was, was the, the mom with her two little kids, who's a soldier, and her husband's a soldier.
00:20:07.400 And he was deployed in Afghanistan, I think.
00:20:09.600 And then the president said, and he's back here now.
00:20:14.920 Yeah.
00:20:15.240 Talk about a reveal.
00:20:16.680 And the look on her face.
00:20:19.220 And to see him come down, that sergeant come down the steps.
00:20:23.040 And her, like, she was next to Melania. 0.56
00:20:26.000 And the joy she expressed, her kids.
00:20:28.480 I mean, seeing him hug his little girl, hug his little boy, I, okay, that, that is a new threshold.
00:20:37.640 There's never been a Lenny Stutnik moment where you actually reunite a soldier's family right in front of you.
00:20:43.200 I think to the surprise of, of, of, of, of the family.
00:20:47.360 That, that was incredible.
00:20:48.340 It was powerful.
00:20:49.100 It was, it turned everything up to 11.
00:20:51.960 And I, I agree.
00:20:53.940 I mean, it was, it was just such an effective speech.
00:20:56.180 He didn't mention impeachment, which I'm very glad that was part of your conversation.
00:21:00.820 And other, other people had, had encouraged him that way too.
00:21:04.080 And by the way, he did a great contrast last week.
00:21:07.120 Yeah.
00:21:07.500 Last week, I was the White House twice.
00:21:10.280 One day for the announcement of his Middle East peace proposal.
00:21:13.840 He was there with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:21:16.740 The next day for the signing of the US MCA, the Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
00:21:21.660 And, and I thought the silent contrast of he's working for the country for good, for the future, while the congressional Democrats are just consumed with hate.
00:21:32.800 I think that was a really sharp contrast.
00:21:35.240 And we'll see the contrast again tomorrow because you had the State of the Union, a really, really strong State of the Union and State of the Union address.
00:21:43.120 Tomorrow is the vote on impeachment.
00:21:45.740 I mean, you're going to go, it's pretty late into the evening.
00:21:48.080 So, you know, in a few hours, you're going to head back to the Senate.
00:21:50.880 How does impeachment end?
00:21:52.960 Well, before we finish the State of the Union, let me say two quick things on it.
00:21:56.680 Okay.
00:21:57.700 Number one, I think the Democrats seemed incredibly out of touch.
00:22:02.980 I think to any American watching, you wonder why can't you cheer for Americans?
00:22:09.540 Yeah.
00:22:09.980 Like when the president says 12,000 new factories, we're seeing a blue collar boom.
00:22:14.180 Democrats for years have claimed to be the party of working men and women, the party of unions, and they're sitting there snarling.
00:22:21.480 Furious.
00:22:21.960 At manufacturing jobs.
00:22:23.340 You know, when the president pointed out, one of the first people he pointed out in the gallery was an African-American man from Ohio who'd been homeless, who'd been had substance abuse problems.
00:22:34.380 And because of an opportunity zone, part of what we implement in the tax cuts that incentivizes capital and jobs in struggling neighborhoods.
00:22:42.320 He now has a job, he's clean, and he's got to turn his life around, and the Democrats just snarled.
00:22:51.320 And you think about it, most of these inner cities, these areas with severe poverty, almost all of them are represented by Democrats.
00:23:01.380 And it was literally their own congressional representatives angry that their constituents who are struggling are doing better.
00:23:11.480 I guess someone else did it for them.
00:23:12.860 It ruins their narrative.
00:23:16.840 And the moment that I think captured the whole night, sadly, was at the end of the speech when Nancy Pelosi stood up and ripped the speech in half.
00:23:26.160 I thought that was the Constitution she was ripping. 1.00
00:23:27.880 It was the speech.
00:23:28.640 Okay.
00:23:29.000 Maybe I mistook that.
00:23:30.100 And I was sitting not very far from her either.
00:23:33.300 I was off on the side.
00:23:34.700 I was actually sitting between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.
00:23:37.800 It was kind of an interesting, the day after Iowa was sort of amusing, but that was just an accident.
00:23:42.340 A little reunion.
00:23:43.240 Where we walked in, but we were kind of, I was kind of laughing at how the seating worked out.
00:23:47.840 But, and I didn't initially see her tear the speech.
00:23:51.880 It was Marco who nudged me and said, did you see her tearing the speech? 0.91
00:23:54.580 And I looked up and she was still tearing it. 0.80
00:23:57.880 And I was seething.
00:23:59.700 I, it, it was pitiful.
00:24:03.340 Yeah.
00:24:04.120 And disgusting.
00:24:05.620 And, and, and it, it, I think Nancy Pelosi should be ashamed.
00:24:09.220 And, and, and, listen, it, it, fine.
00:24:12.860 I get that parties have different views and you don't like, but look, I went to, I think, four State of the Unions Obama gave.
00:24:19.200 He talked about all sorts of policies I didn't like.
00:24:23.280 And I didn't applaud for all of them.
00:24:25.700 So there's one picture.
00:24:26.720 I think it was from the 2013 State of the Union where you had in a row me.
00:24:33.440 I forget the order, I forget the order, but it was me, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Lindsey Graham, John McCain.
00:24:39.880 And Obama was saying, we need to give amnesty for illegal aliens.
00:24:43.760 And Schumer and Lindsey and McCain and Gillibrand are all standing cheering and I'm sitting there silently.
00:24:49.380 I'm actually perfectly fine with that picture.
00:24:51.620 They want to cheer for amnesty.
00:24:52.880 I ain't gonna.
00:24:53.660 Right.
00:24:54.160 That, that, that's fine.
00:24:55.520 I, I don't mind where there's a policy disagreement expressing it.
00:25:01.540 But to rip the speech in half.
00:25:05.260 Yeah.
00:25:05.920 Showed a contempt, not just for Donald Trump personally, but a contempt for the presidency.
00:25:11.640 For the office.
00:25:12.360 A contempt for the American people that I, I thought was repulsive.
00:25:18.060 And I can tell you one Democratic senator who, who will remain nameless, but on the elevator down, he, he turned to me and said, did Pelosi really rip up the speech?
00:25:27.460 You mentioned this the other day.
00:25:29.500 You said.
00:25:30.640 And it was, no, this was just tonight.
00:25:32.200 This was just like an hour or two hours ago.
00:25:33.900 You mentioned also how some of these Democratic senators or more moderate senators, they really have not liked this intense.
00:25:42.180 He was really unhappy with that.
00:25:44.020 I said it was pitiful and offensive and disgusting.
00:25:46.540 And I was, I was, I was genuinely pissed.
00:25:50.200 Yeah.
00:25:50.580 I mean, it made me angry.
00:25:52.300 And it was interesting.
00:25:53.360 This one Democratic senator, he said, that's terrible.
00:25:55.540 That's completely.
00:25:57.240 Now, look, he didn't like some of what Trump said, but it was sort of the.
00:26:03.780 When I look at the congressional Democrats, they're consumed by hate.
00:26:08.240 And hate's ugly.
00:26:10.600 Yeah.
00:26:10.980 It is an ugly.
00:26:14.200 Like, fine, if you want to disagree on substance, but we should be rooting for the American people.
00:26:20.200 We should be celebrating victories.
00:26:22.700 And by the way, my job, I represent 28 million Texans.
00:26:25.520 I don't just represent the Republicans in Texas.
00:26:28.380 I represent Democrats in Texas and libertarians and independents.
00:26:32.140 But you know what?
00:26:33.160 If I'm fighting for more jobs and higher wages and protecting their rights, that benefits everyone.
00:26:38.800 And it it made me angry.
00:26:40.800 But it also made me sad to see that right now, hatred of Trump consumes all else.
00:26:48.120 We ought to all be able to root for Americans because that that that should be who we are.
00:26:53.380 I was obviously not there in person.
00:26:55.260 I was just watching on TV and I agree with you.
00:26:57.360 The the anger, the sourpuss, the the what appeared to be hatred doesn't play well on TV.
00:27:03.400 I'm glad to hear that there were there was at least one Democratic colleague who who found it troubling as well.
00:27:09.760 Before we go, we're obviously so much to get to.
00:27:12.320 We'll have to get to more tomorrow.
00:27:13.880 Let's try to get to one or two mailbag questions.
00:27:17.420 First question from Miles.
00:27:19.420 Iowa caucus implosion.
00:27:21.120 Hilarious thing or the most hilarious thing?
00:27:26.620 Ridiculous.
00:27:27.700 Ridiculous.
00:27:28.460 Inept.
00:27:29.080 As I said, I felt bad for the activists like the volunteers who worked.
00:27:33.020 Right.
00:27:33.120 But look.
00:27:34.720 For Democrats who want to run everything, they ought to demonstrate they can count votes first.
00:27:46.220 Right.
00:27:47.320 One question I guess can tease.
00:27:48.880 By the way, can you can you imagine these rockin scientists taking over and deciding like whether, when and if you get a heart transplant?
00:27:57.300 Yeah.
00:27:59.020 Well, we got a system and an app and I'm sorry the app doesn't work.
00:28:01.780 So I'll have to cross some border if that ever comes to be.
00:28:05.280 I'll let you know in three days whenever the app operates.
00:28:07.520 Hope you're doing all right by then.
00:28:08.660 This is a question.
00:28:09.680 It's a little bit on impeachment, but I guess it'll touch on tomorrow's vote as well, because tomorrow is going to be the big vote.
00:28:14.020 Do you quit the president or do you remove him from office?
00:28:17.420 From Karen.
00:28:18.120 I understand treason, bribery and high crimes as grounds for impeachment.
00:28:21.200 What I do not understand is misdemeanors.
00:28:23.880 How do you go from treason to misdemeanors?
00:28:26.220 So far, no one's explained what that means exactly.
00:28:28.720 And I'm hoping you, Senator, can.
00:28:30.000 Yeah, look, it's a good question and it's a weird term.
00:28:33.500 Some of it to remember is the distinction of felonies and misdemeanors didn't exist as those terms are understood.
00:28:40.780 OK, because you think of a misdemeanor as kind of a minor crime.
00:28:43.460 And so that's a confusing part of the phrase.
00:28:45.920 I wouldn't think of them as separate categories.
00:28:48.520 The phrase as a whole is other high crimes and misdemeanors.
00:28:52.500 And that that was a unified.
00:28:53.940 So there were misdemeanors at the time the Constitution was adopted that were punishable by death.
00:28:58.820 Yikes.
00:28:59.700 So so a misdemeanor was not a speeding ticket.
00:29:02.200 It was not a parking ticket.
00:29:03.360 It was the phrase high crime or misdemeanors were serious crimes and they were crimes against the public trust.
00:29:10.900 They were things like bribery and treason.
00:29:13.080 So it wasn't just, you know, knocking over a 7-Eleven.
00:29:17.820 It was it was a crime that did harm to the public, to the nation like treason.
00:29:25.460 But by the way, the you know, one of the examples that that Adam Schiff used is is well under the definition of high crimes and misdemeanors that that Dershowitz and others are saying, what happens if if a president allowed Alaska to be invaded?
00:29:42.480 And I got to say, Dan Sullivan, the senator from Alaska, is pretty worked up about this.
00:29:46.720 I don't know.
00:29:47.120 I'm against that.
00:29:47.760 Yeah, I oppose the invasion of Alaska.
00:29:49.900 And I pointed out, Dan, and he agreed with me on this.
00:29:52.740 But I said, Dan, if a president allows a foreign country to invade the United States of America, that's treason.
00:29:58.160 That is actively aiding and abetting.
00:30:01.000 Like, the Constitution defines treason in the text of the Constitution.
00:30:04.600 And you don't get to allow our enemies to invade and take over any of the United States.
00:30:09.320 It's a shame that we have to teach our legislators that now, although I'm sure.
00:30:12.240 Although Dan knew that.
00:30:13.520 Right, of course.
00:30:14.460 He agreed emphatically, so I'm not throwing him.
00:30:17.140 I'm sure, though, that there are going to be many House Democrats who do try to impeach the president again for speeding tickets and for parking tickets.
00:30:24.700 So that's something to look forward to.
00:30:25.840 We will be discussing, obviously, the big vote that comes out tomorrow.
00:30:29.320 But unfortunately, we're out of time today.
00:30:31.580 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:30:33.340 We'll see you tomorrow.
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