Ted Cruz was in the midst of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida when Hurricane Harvey made landfall near the Texas-Louisiana border. He went down to survey the damage and meet with local officials. Ted Cruz joins us to talk about what he did and why he felt it was the right thing to do.
00:04:51.180So a verdict in legal sense, obviously, is is the judgment of the court.
00:04:59.500And it's the judgment of a jury, typically of guilt or innocence in a criminal case or the judgment of whether the plaintiff or defendant prevails in a civil case.
00:05:13.140And and it is what I'm not going to intrude on you.
00:05:16.280I was going to say what it's from in the Latin, but but but let me not step on the great Michael Knowles to tell us what is it in the Latin, Michael?
00:05:23.460Well, in the Latin, since you bring it up, Senator, it means a true saying ver like for truth and dict like dictum, you know, a saying.
00:05:33.120And so we try to obviously speak the truth on the show.
00:05:36.020And, Senator, you know, in our in our absolutely populist appeal, every so often we have to get into Latin etymology.
00:05:42.720We have to cover everything, everything on the program.
00:06:51.920I'm just a bill, you know, sitting on the steps of Capitol Hill.
00:06:56.100And I will not injure anyone's ears by trying to sing it because I can't carry a tune to save my life.
00:07:03.980But an interesting story of a bill that was proposed by some New Jersey high school students and it somehow came to the attention.
00:07:17.240And I don't remember exactly how of Alabama's Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat.
00:07:23.880And it was a bill to take the records from cold cases, civil rights cases from the 1950s or 60s.
00:07:32.820So a church bombing, a Klan murder or something, but but a case that had never been solved.
00:07:37.840And and the idea of the New Jersey high school students was to put these records, make them public and let citizen journalists go try to solve the case.
00:07:47.640Yeah, 50, 60, 70 years later. And and somehow Doug heard about this.
00:07:54.140And so he was giving a floor speech on the Senate floor as a brand new freshman.
00:07:58.820He was talking about that. He'd introduced a bill to do this, that he'd heard that idea.
00:08:02.720He liked the idea. And and I was presiding.
00:08:05.900And so the way it works in the Senate is the majority party gets to preside.
00:08:10.040And it typically rotates between the more junior senators, either first term or second term senators.
00:08:16.140You typically preside for maybe an hour a week. So I just happened.
00:08:20.080I was in the chair and and Doug was was standing there and he was talking about this idea.
00:08:26.300And I try to listen when people give floor speeches, by the way, a speech on the Senate floor usually is to an empty cavernous room and C-SPAN and no one's listening.
00:08:35.400But I listened to what Doug was saying, thought it was an interesting idea.
00:08:39.860And so I went down afterwards and said, hey, let's do this together.
00:08:42.020We teamed up together, worked together and passed the bill into law.
00:08:45.260So it started with New Jersey high school students and it ended up being a good idea and getting passed into law.
00:08:52.580Well, so this is a hugely important aspect of it.
00:08:56.520And then I know some people have asked about the deep state, you know, or the administrative state or the bureaucracy, which seems like it makes a lot of laws for people.
00:09:06.200But they're they're not accountable. You can't call your senator.
00:09:08.760You can't call your congressman. And I know this is an issue you've talked about quite a lot.
00:09:12.060Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, it's one of the massive problems of the administrative state and for that matter of judicial activism.
00:09:19.180Right. You have government officials that are completely unaccountable.
00:09:23.920Federal judges have life tenure. And so if they're if they're enacting policy, you don't have a constraint over them.
00:09:29.820Bureaucrats, many of their views is they will outlast every elected official.
00:09:35.820They're the permanent government. And whoever is coming and going is just sort of a temporary irritant.
00:09:40.740Yeah. And and it's one of the great virtues of our Constitution is accountability.
00:09:48.060And so I think it's really important to have as much decision making as possible in the elected parts of government.
00:09:56.160And also, I mean, that's really separation of powers at the federal level, but also as much decision making and policies at the state or local level,
00:10:06.400because all of that increases accountability. It empowers the people.
00:10:11.040Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. A question in from Daniel. Could you guys explain the Hatch Act?
00:10:20.340Somewhat, although I'm not an expert in it. The general principle on the Hatch Act is it restricts many, many federal employees from from engaging in politics.
00:10:32.780Yeah. And and so there are some exceptions to it. Some are allowed to do so.
00:10:37.280But as a general matter, the kind of run of mill, run of the mill, federal employee, the Hatch Act bars them from engaging in politics because the idea behind it is they don't want to politicize our government.
00:10:50.020It also prohibits using official assets. So, you know, I can't I can't do a political thing in my Senate office.
00:11:04.880I'm not I'm not allowed to do that. That would be a violation. It's actually, I think, not technically the Hatch Act for for Congress.
00:11:10.620It's the Senate ethics rules, but it's the same principle. Yeah. And the reason everyone is asking is there's lots of chatter about the president's speech tonight on the White House and whether that violated the Hatch Act.
00:11:22.220The short answer for me is, I don't know. I haven't studied that question.
00:11:25.260The the argument that it doesn't violate the Hatch Act, as I understand it, is there portions of the White House that are considered the president's residence that are separate from the official part.
00:11:37.520So as I understand the argument, he would not have been able to give that speech in the Oval Office.
00:11:42.120But but the South Lawn is is essentially his residence. It's also covid. And so these are extraordinary times.
00:11:49.820But but but to be fair, I haven't studied the legal arguments on either side. So so I don't know who that who has the better of that argument.
00:11:56.160Right. And there was a moment during the president's speech where he said this is the White House.
00:12:01.740Really, though, I think of it as a home. And perhaps that that was a nod at this controversy.
00:12:07.520The Democrats are cooking up a question from Nietzsche. Nietzsche says, hello, I'm a young conservative and plan to open up a business later in my life, then use that money to campaign for Congress.
00:12:18.000Wow. There's a it's a full plan. So my question to Senator Cruz is, what are your best campaign suggestions?
00:12:23.520Get involved in an issue you care about and fight for it rather than just run for office and have all these ideas.
00:12:35.420Go fight for something that matters and build a record.
00:12:38.960And so that when you do run, you can point to what you've done and you've said, look, you want to know what I believe.
00:12:46.000Look at what I've been fighting for. And so you can be engaged in in whatever issue motivates you, get your get your blood boiling.
00:12:55.180Go and build a record on that. Yeah. Yeah.
00:12:57.480From Paul, what is the deepest reason why the Democrats won't disavow Antifa or the rioters?
00:13:04.860What philosophical hangups keep them from taking a stance against political violence?
00:13:09.680You know, I got to say for Paul, that that is a great question.
00:13:15.580I don't know for sure. You know, a couple of weeks ago, I chaired a hearing on Antifa violence and mob violence, and we heard really chilling testimony about all of the assaults, the assaults on police officers, the violence.
00:13:29.460Seven Democratic senators participated in that hearing and not a one of them was willing to denounce Antifa.
00:13:38.560And there's it's interesting. The Democrats.
00:13:42.340They have a message disciplined to them. I mean, look, part of it is Democrats believe in government, they're collectivist.
00:13:48.340And so when they have orders, they follow orders. I mean, it's yes, comrade.
00:13:52.060And they all say the same damn thing. You know, Republicans, we can barely agree on what time of day it is.
00:13:58.260I mean, we bicker like crazy. And look, a little bit is that you've got some individualists.
00:14:02.660So you've got, you know, any party that has Susan Collins and Rand Paul in it is a party with a lot of diversity because they and everyone else.
00:14:10.960There's a lot of disagreement. So for whatever reason, at that hearing, it was clear the Democratic talking points had gone out that whenever Antifa or BLM violence is is raised,
00:14:23.640simply attack and say it's right wing violence, it's a problem.
00:14:27.940That was their talking point. And so they'd say, well, what about the Klan? What what about Nazis?
00:14:33.360And look, of course, my response is the Klan and Nazis are ignorant, bigoted racists and that they commit violence.
00:14:39.520We should lock them up in jail. Like, I don't have a problem denouncing them.
00:14:43.000How about you? How about Antifa? Right.
00:14:45.000And crickets. I don't know how much of it is fear that that, you know, right now, the Democratic Party, it's driven by angry voices.
00:14:56.700Um, and maybe they're scared to take them on.
00:15:02.720Um, I don't know how much of it is in the Democratic Party.
00:15:06.580There's kind of a a glorifying of 1960s protests.
00:15:13.260And, you know, it's sort of part of the the self-narrative of a lot of Democrats is we're back at Berkeley and we're, you know, protesting against Vietnam.
00:15:23.780You know, his famous story of of Reagan when he was governor driving through Berkeley during protests.
00:15:29.300And there were a bunch of hippies who were yelling and screaming in a protest.
00:15:32.820And they they they either held up a sign or they chanted, we are the future.
00:15:38.800And Reagan grabbed a pad of paper and he scrawled on it and held it up to the window and said, I'll sell my bonds.
00:15:47.520So maybe that's some of it that they identify with protesters.
00:15:51.020But I also think some of it is there's a woke identity politics that that particularly because much of this violence arose in the context of questions of racial justice.
00:16:06.000I think Democrats are terrified to say anything criticizing someone who they perceive as a racial justice warrior, even if they're committing horrific and organized acts of violence.
00:16:21.700So so I don't know what's driving it, but some combination of those factors.
00:16:26.100I do know the end result, which is, you know, we went through a Democratic convention last week where we've got cities on fire, police officers being attacked, being murdered.
00:16:36.660And the Democrats are unable or unwilling to bring themselves to condemn it.
00:16:41.600Yeah, that's right. And I think you make a great point.
00:16:43.640It hadn't really occurred to me in all of this madness, but this this glorification of the 1960s protests and rioting and violence in some cases is still there, even with these boomer Democrats who who don't don't ever seem to have really left Berkeley.
00:17:00.400Maybe they did physically, but not mentally.
00:17:14.260You know, look, I'm passionate about free speech and I believe you've got a right to advocate any view you want, no matter how how idiotic.
00:17:22.980Look, I defend people who attack me because you've got a right to do it.
00:17:26.240What you don't have a right to do is violence.
00:17:28.120And what's strange about today's left is when it comes to someone speaking on college campus or speaking in their job or speaking anywhere else and saying some view that is inconsistent with their orthodoxy, they'll get you fired.
00:17:44.280I mean, they're perfectly happy to stifle free speech.
00:17:46.520But when it comes to, you know, there was a CNN still shot that was making the rounds on Twitter today of of, you know, a building just totally in flames.
00:18:02.100And the chyron at the bottom was was and I may be getting this slightly wrong, but was something to the effect of although fiery, largely peaceful protest.
00:18:11.380And it's literally all on frigging fire, like fire is not peaceful.
00:19:00.500And, you know, speaking of burning, I mean, I think the Democrats are caught in this this issue, which is that they've encouraged the protests.
00:19:06.980They've encouraged the riots in some cases.
00:19:08.960And when you play with fire, you might get burned.
00:19:12.220And I think they're seeing that probably in the polling.
00:19:14.640Speaking of polling, Dean wants to know this is an important issue.
00:19:19.160It keeps coming up as people talk about the election.
00:19:21.640How does the GOP win over more suburban women voters?
00:19:30.340We've talked a lot on verdict about what I think are the two broadest demographic trends of the U.S. politically, which is number one, blue collar voters moving right.
00:19:40.420That's moving midwestern states, more Republican.
00:20:26.540And I think the Republicans did a very good job with with our convention this week.
00:20:30.380But but I actually think it was a broader turning point.
00:20:33.880The violence we saw in places like Kenosha.
00:20:37.060And I think as we've seen this violence continue, not just in in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's death, but continuing week after week after week.
00:20:53.680I do think there are a lot of folks who may not even be all that political.
00:20:58.800Who are seeing this and understandably saying this.
00:21:25.400And it's I mean, it's screaming angry.
00:21:29.260If you don't salute what we demand, we're going to berate you.
00:21:33.780And there's a real threat of or worse.
00:21:36.780There's a I mean, the threat of violence is in the air.
00:21:41.600And and I do think and you know why I think it may be something of a turning point is we're suddenly seeing Democrats react like they touched a hot stove.
00:21:51.760Yeah, they're suddenly realized, oh, crap, people don't like it when their cities are on fire and like people are threatening violence to them.
00:21:59.060And it's it's been even the past couple of days where it seems like we may have reached a little bit of a tipping point on this.
00:22:37.480When the country is on fire, that's not what people are thinking about.
00:22:40.860They're thinking about who's burning down the country, who's trying to put water on those fires, who, you know, wants to tear down George Washington and who wants to look forward to an American future.
00:22:50.580That resonates with people, even if even if you don't have your nose in white papers from think tanks and that sort of thing.
00:22:57.240Question from people want to be prosperous.
00:22:59.460But but but even more fundamentally, people want to be safe.
00:23:03.400You know, and I do think that the basic contrast between the two conventions on the Republican side, the kind of core message is we'll keep you safe.
00:23:18.380And we're going to fight for you to have a job.
00:23:20.480And the Democratic side, not promising to keep anyone safe.
00:23:25.740And on the economy, they don't really have a message either other than we hate Trump.
00:23:44.580And when you have when you have Democrats, you know, led by the future of the Democratic Party, as DNC Chairman Tom Perez calls AOC, talking about the Green New Deal, this ninety three trillion dollar plan by by some estimates.
00:23:57.500I don't think people look at that and say this is going to lead to prosperity now.
00:24:02.380So let me actually disagree with with Perez on one thing.
00:24:06.960I don't think she's the future of the Democratic Party.
00:25:05.660And if he becomes majority leader, he is going to be utterly terrified of being primaried by AOC.
00:25:13.820And for all intents and purposes, that will make AOC effectively the Senate majority leader, because whatever she demands, he's going to be so scared of that primary challenge that I think he'd be more than happy to jump to her tune.
00:25:27.800And it was kind of an interesting point for Alaskans to think about.
00:25:31.280And I was saying, look, Alaska is a great bellwether where if Sullivan loses and Alaska has elected both Democrats and Republicans, it's a state that has shown it can vote either way.
00:25:42.340If Alaska loses and there are a number of states for which this is true, there's a real possibility Schumer's majority leader and AOC is is driving the train and setting the agenda.
00:25:53.960And the Democratic Party today, not tomorrow in the future, you know, as a native New Yorker, I'm not even an Alaskan.
00:26:00.780I have no excuse that hadn't occurred to me.
00:26:03.560But there has been chatter that AOC could primary Chuck Schumer.
00:26:07.140And you're right. Effectively, what that means is AOC is going to be calling the shots even more than she already is.
00:26:13.280And she obviously is already wielding a lot of influence.
00:26:15.580Schumer is a political being, which means like his only objective will be to stop that.
00:26:22.120And so just as a practical matter, that means he's going to be terrified.
00:26:26.940He does not want to let her out outflank him to the left in any respect.
00:26:31.800You know, minority leader, that's much less of a problem.
00:26:33.900But if he actually controls a Senate majority, yeah, that's that could be very dangerous.
00:26:39.660They do have a saying in New York, I think, even still with the riots and all the mayhem that the most dangerous place in the state of New York is between Chuck Schumer and a television camera.
00:27:44.220You know, spend time listening to what the left says, listening to what the right says.
00:27:48.740And even, you know, how do we know the right is correct?
00:27:51.500One of the things and we talked about this before, there's a lot of diversity on the right in terms of what is even whether you're, uh, uh, you know, a paleo conservative, a neoconservative, a libertarian, half these things.
00:28:04.300I don't even, I barely know what they mean, but, but, but there are sharp differences of opinion when it comes to foreign policy within the whole world on the right.
00:28:14.580Uh, when it comes to the role of government within the whole world on the right, what I would say is take the time to think through and analyze the issues.
00:28:28.120Um, one side, the left, though, right now, doesn't want you to do that.
00:28:34.280But the fact that they're willing to use coercion, to silence views that contradict, look, I mean, you know, you, you look at college campuses where they won't allow conservative speakers to come.
00:28:46.760When I was in school, uh, when I was in law school at Harvard, there, there were more openly Marxist professors on the faculty than there were Republicans.
00:28:57.560And it wasn't even close. There was one open Republican on the faculty, Charles Freed, um, who, who worked in, in the Reagan administration as solicitor general.
00:29:08.280Um, I, I worked as a research assistant for him. And by the way, Charles Freed, who at the time was the lone Republican on the faculty voted for Barack Obama.
00:29:16.800So, so, so, so that, uh, he ended up, even he ended up voting democratic.
00:29:22.700There were and are multiple open Marxists. And, and, you know, it's, it's interesting. One, one person who listens to our podcast, Michael, um, is Heidi.
00:29:36.160And, and, and look, you and I are both married. The fact that my wife actually listens to what we say, A, is complimentary, but, but I'll tell you, she kind of chewed us out recently and said, you guys are getting too dogmatic and preaching to the choir too much.
00:29:49.780Hmm. And, and, and, and she, the reason she listens to it is she says, listen, I'm really busy.
00:29:57.280And what she said, and it's the same thing we've heard a lot on this show is she says, I learned things from the show, but spend a little more time.
00:30:05.800And she actually brought up like, you know, you talked about several of the organizers of BLM or avowed Marxists.
00:30:14.920She said, a lot of people don't know what Marxists are. And, and, and, and it reminds me, we spent a lot of time early in impeachment kind of tapping the brakes and saying, okay, what is this?
00:30:25.860What is, what does this mean? And look, Marxism is, is a philosophy. It was propagated by Karl Marx, obviously.
00:30:31.240It's the, the foundation of communism. But, but it, it, it advocates, it, it, it, it, it views history through a lens of class warfare and a battle of the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie, the working people versus the property owners.
00:30:50.840And, and, and, and it calls for a revolution. Um, Marxism, it's an approach to history. It's an approach to government, but it, it, and it advocates socialism as its economic system.
00:31:05.620So socialism is just the economic arm of Marxism. It's, it's, but Marxism also consistently says we need actually a phrase, I think it was Lenin used, a dictatorship of the proletariat.
00:31:20.840Which is inevitably to get to Marxism, you have to have a totalitarian government come in and take the property from the people who have it.
00:31:29.820And, and what happens every single time is the Marxists who have power live like kings and everyone else lives in misery.
00:31:38.440And, and so when someone is a Marxist, they, they are advocating for the principles reflected in, in the communist manifesto that Karl, Karl Marx wrote, um, that, that, that, that advocated for, for, for, for Marxism.
00:31:50.260Anyway. So, so, so, so I give, I'm not going to necessarily tell you the right is always correct on everything. Uh, what I am going to say is, is that I believe if you look at the evidence, free enterprise is much more successful, uh, than socialism in terms of, of lifting people's economic welfare, combating poverty, producing prosperity.
00:32:14.000And I also believe that our constitutional liberties, uh, are important. And, and, and, and that includes the, the pluralism and diversity of thought that free speech and religious liberty and all the rest allows.
00:32:30.920That, that, that, that, that if you don't agree, go make your case and convince your fellow citizens.
00:32:36.220That's right. And, and look at the evidence, you know, as you say, these socialists never seem to get to that Marxism where everybody's free and equal.
00:32:44.020I was reminded of an expression I once heard, uh, someone asked the difference between socialism and communism.
00:32:49.900And, uh, they said, well, Christians go to heaven and socialists go to communism.
00:32:55.900And the problem is you don't get heaven on earth. So it never, never seems to materialize.
00:32:59.780I do also want to see, I'd get, I'd give a simpler answer, which is the differences in AK 47.
00:33:11.560In communism with brute force and oppression.
00:33:15.620I also want to, uh, remind all of our viewers right now, we have a lot of viewers right now live, uh, to click that subscribe button, ring the bell.
00:33:24.240We really appreciate it. That way you will get notifications so long as big tech does not shut us down, which I'm sure is, is always a possibility.
00:33:31.080Uh, you can also head over to Apple podcasts and if you would like, if you were so inclined to leave a five-star review, we would really appreciate that.
00:33:38.040It helps us get over a little bit of the hurdle that is sometimes imposed on, uh, non-leftist outlets out there.
00:33:45.420Uh, we're also on Google play stitcher, probably my space. I don't know. We're just all over the place on the internet for now.
00:33:51.560We really appreciate it. We we've got, uh, a lot of views at this point. Uh, you know, the, the show hit number one, uh, unexpectedly in the first couple of weeks of it.
00:34:00.280And we just appreciate all of our listeners sticking around a question from then Ray lol.
00:34:06.440Something tells me that's not the name that, uh, your parents gave you Vin Ray, but I like it anyway.
00:34:11.860Hey, Senator, why do you think it took tonight's speech to mention David Dorn on the mainstream media, despite the mainstream media's support for black lives matter?
00:34:23.780Um, because the media are hypocrites and they're pitching a, an ideological message.
00:34:29.660Um, and Dorn speech was incredible and powerful. So, and Dorn is the widow of David Dorn, a retired St. Louis police officer, uh, who was murdered in the riots.
00:34:43.780Um, and, and, and he is African-American and, and, and when, when you have people screaming black lives matter, uh, apparently David Dorn's is not included because, because he was murdered in the violence, uh, by the rioters.
00:34:59.400And, and, and, and his wife, her speech, it's one of the things I think the RNC did better than the DNC is it told real stories.
00:35:08.000I'm actually glad they had a lot fewer politicians on the RNC.
00:35:11.280Um, I, I, I, I, you know, I, I think listening, uh, to, to an Ann Dorn or a Clarence Henderson or, or, or, or the, the stories that were told were, were really powerful.
00:35:24.740And, and, and her story, now she's a police sergeant as well.
00:35:30.180And, and she told the story of, of, of waking up and finding out he'd been murdered, that he'd gone.
00:35:36.280And he was, he was retired and was working security at a pawn shop and the alarm went off and he went, went, went to the pawn shop and was, was murdered by the, uh, rioters and looters.
00:35:47.520And in any sane conversation, we ought to be talking about the victims of this violence and, and, and, and those that, that, uh, have, have been murdered.
00:36:03.300But, but, but the media doesn't want you to know that.
00:36:05.880And, and, and it's part of it is, we've talked about this before.
00:36:23.900I watched the president's speech tonight at home, um, on, on CNN.
00:36:29.000I don't know why, but that just happened to be what I turned on.
00:36:31.740And did you, did you watch it on CNN or do you remember what network you watched?
00:36:35.380No, Senator, I, I, I assume you must live in an airport if you were watching it on CNN.
00:36:39.380That's the only place I ever see CNN live.
00:36:41.760No, I was actually watching it on C-SPAN because we were doing the stream, but sometimes I will click on just to see the left-wing commentary on it.
00:36:49.520So what was fascinating on CNN is, is when they were airing the president's speech, um, when he got to talking about, uh, coronavirus and COVID-19,
00:36:59.720they put up at the bottom, a chart of the number of cases of COVID-19 in the U S and the number of people who've died on COVID-19.
00:37:08.200And then they began doing a, a real time, what I guess they were pitching is fact checking of the president's speech.
00:37:17.280And so it was denominated facts first.
00:37:20.960And so, and they just did this during the COVID-19 portion of the speech.
00:37:24.900I mean, he spoke 70 minutes and it was just during the, you know, kind of, I don't know, eight, 10 minutes that he was talking about, about the pandemic.
00:37:31.580And so the first one said something like for months, you know, facts first for months, the president dismissed the seriousness of this crisis.
00:37:40.300So the first one was really tendentious.
00:37:55.480Like, have you ever seen a, a, a network covering either political party's nominee putting at the bottom, what they call fact checking, disputing what he said, right?
00:38:09.140Like it was really like, who in the hell do they think they are?
00:38:13.420Like you're literally listening to the nominee's speech and they're going to put under him, but you know, it was fascinating.
00:38:19.120So, so, so that's in part an answer to why they, they don't want to say the name of David Dorn.
00:40:46.140And so you have to view things almost through the lens of, all right, let's get partisans on both sides.
00:40:51.880So, so for years I used to read every day, I would read, uh, the Washington Post on politics and I'd read national review.
00:40:59.120And the two side by side would give you some modicum of that.
00:41:05.240Um, sorry for like a daily wire is a great place to do.
00:41:08.420So I don't mean to be pitching competitors, but, but you know, read folks on both sides.
00:41:14.180And to be honest, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle that people are pitching something, but, but getting educated on both sides helps them to assess what's right.
00:42:08.880But I think, oh, if I was, if I was editor of either, I think what I would do is rather than purport to be objective, I would consciously try to frame a dialectic.
00:42:21.040I'd consciously try to frame and say, you know what, we're going to have conservative voices and liberal voices.
00:42:26.120So on our op-ed pages, they're going to battle it out and you're going to get to listen to both.
00:42:30.920And by the, actually the Post used to do that.
00:42:33.260They used to have some pretty good conservatives and they still do it more than the Times does.
00:42:38.640But, but instead I would just embrace the dialectic and say, you'll be smarter and more informed if you listen to smart conservatives and smart liberals and assess it.
00:42:47.020And here's the piece on, on the news media side.
00:42:50.820I do the same thing on news stories and where a lot of the bias of journalism comes in is what stories get greenlit.
00:42:58.820What gets decided this is news and this isn't.
00:43:02.120So frankly, if, if I owned a newspaper, if I was the editor of a newspaper, I'd probably have a conservative news editor and a liberal news editor, both with the authority to greenlight stories.
00:43:13.960And, and I, and I'd allow some of that same dialectic, um, and, and have real conservatives and liberals.
00:43:20.580So they would, you know, and you would get, hopefully in, in that clash, you'd get somewhere closer to truth.
00:43:29.760And it's funny you mentioned that the Washington Post used to be a little more balanced back when it was, I would read the Washington Post certainly much more than I do now.
00:43:37.620It's a great idea, but certainly no one in the mainstream media is going to take that advice.
00:43:50.520I'm going to defend the owner of the Washington Post and defend big tech, which is, excuse me, sir.
00:43:57.240Where, where have you put Senator Cruz?
00:43:58.820I, we got to get Senator Cruz back here.
00:44:01.020I don't know if you saw like protesters set up a guillotine outside of the home of Jeff Bezos.
00:44:10.060And, and look, I, I've got lots of criticisms of the Washington Post.
00:44:14.560I think Bezos, big tech, I have lots of criticisms of the Amazon has been less noxious than some of the other players, but there are lots of reasons to criticize Bezos.