00:11:31.240I want to move to something else that obviously got pushed back in the headlines, but it still is important.
00:11:35.940The crime wave that we're seeing is not just sweeping the nation, but now it's affecting Democratic leaders and leaders in the liberal movement like we haven't seen before.
00:11:49.580You have a Democratic representative, Henry Queller, who was carjacked at gunpoint in D.C.
00:11:57.020This comes as in just the past, well, it was in a 24-hour period.
00:12:01.360You had a liberal gay reporter that was shot and killed in his home in Philly.
00:12:05.940You had a far-left activist that was stabbed to death by a deranged stranger in Brooklyn in front of his girlfriend.
00:12:12.920You had this Democratic congressman who was carjacked at gunpoint in D.C. by four African-American men.
00:12:19.160And yet we have Democrats who have a soft on crime policies that aren't just hurting their neighborhoods that I mentioned, these different spots, but it's hurting people in Texas as well.
00:12:30.180And almost every House Democrat voted against the Republican efforts to stop the D.C.
00:12:37.300Weak on crime bill, which specifically would have reduced carjacking penalties.
00:12:43.660This is something that the Democrats, I mean, they voted for this.
00:12:48.280Aldridge, for example, voted with the Dems on this one.
00:12:52.080Well, listen, crime is out of control in this country, and it's an issue that has people understandably very concerned.
00:12:59.200I watched tonight the video of the liberal activist in New York at 4 in the morning being stabbed to death on the streets of New York by a guy that certainly appears deranged.
00:13:12.140You're right, the news of the left-wing journalist in Philadelphia who was shot, I think, seven times at his own home and killed in the past few days.
00:13:27.100Henry represents Laredo up to San Antonio.
00:13:30.020Henry is the most conservative of the Texas Democrats.
00:13:33.360I worked hand-in-hand with Henry, for example, on the Texas bridges.
00:13:39.600We've talked on this podcast before about four bridges from Texas to Mexico that Henry and I teamed up in and won big legislative victories to build new bridges to Mexico for legal commerce, to expand bridges.
00:13:52.480Henry, as I said, is by far the most conservative of the Texas Democrats.
00:13:56.400Well, in the last couple of days, Henry was coming to his apartment in D.C.
00:14:01.520It was 9.30 at night, and he was getting out of his car, and he was carjacked.
00:14:18.840My understanding is Henry lives at an apartment building where there are multiple members of Congress who live there.
00:14:26.100There are apparently multiple members of congressional leadership who live there, which means there are a lot of Capitol Police around there.
00:14:32.400At 9.30 at night, he was carjacked on the streets of D.C., and then that reflects the crime wave that is sweeping this country.
00:14:43.620The city council, which is populated by left-wing Democrats, they voted to lower the penalties for violent crimes, including carjackings.
00:14:52.080In particular, they voted to lower the sentence from 21 years to seven years, and they voted to lower the sentence from 40 years, if armed, to 15 years.
00:15:06.680And under the revised code, carjacking is now divided into three gradations, dependent on severity, with the lowest penalties for an unarmed defense ranging from 4 to 18 years, and the highest penalties from an armed defense ranging from 12 to 24 years.
00:15:25.160Now, in the Congress, thankfully, the Congress has the ability to rescind any legislation in the District of Columbia, and the reason for that is the Constitution gives Congress total authority over D.C., unlike a state.
00:15:37.620We can't rescind laws in Texas or any other state, but D.C. is a federal district, and Congress has plenary authority over it.
00:15:44.400And so, in Congress, we voted to rescind these softened crime laws that lessened the penalties for violent crimes, and the results are horrific, as we're seeing carjacking, murders, crime rates skyrocketing in D.C. and all across the country.
00:16:01.260You also have the White House, who was asked about part of this, and I want to play that for everybody. Take a listen.
00:16:07.640If a member of Congress is not safe on the streets of the nation's capital, who is?
00:16:14.760Look, we're grateful and relieved that the congressman is unharmed. We understand what communities are going through across the country, not just in D.C.
00:16:24.880That's why the president took action very early on in his administration to get the American Rescue Plan done, without the help of Republicans.
00:16:32.080That's why every time he puts forward his budget, he makes sure there are billions of dollars to deal with crime.
00:16:37.880That's just a fact. All you've got to look at is what the president has been able to do this past two years.
00:16:43.060There's always going to be more work to be done, but the fact is, the president has taken action.
00:16:48.920He hasn't taken action. He's done the opposite of that.
00:16:51.820She didn't have an answer to that. Holy crap, if a Democrat congressman is getting carjacked on the streets of D.C. at 9.30 p.m., what the heck is the answer?
00:17:00.940And she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to answer that.
00:17:04.020And what was her answer? Well, you know, Joe Biden's spending a ton of money.
00:17:07.760Mind you, not actually putting criminals in jail, not supporting police, not doing anything to stop crime.
00:17:12.920But he's shoveling a whole lot of cash at Democrat special interest groups.
00:17:17.840He's shoveling a whole lot of cash at deficit spending that's causing rampant inflation.
00:17:22.700That is her answer. It's an utter non sequitur.
00:17:25.760And by the way, it's not just Henry Cuellar.
00:17:28.320Angie Craig, who is a Democrat member of Congress from Minnesota, was assaulted in the apartment of her D.C.
00:17:34.740her D.C. apartment in February of this year.
00:17:38.620And this is a pattern that is happening over and over and over again.
00:18:21.040And you're saying Corrine Jean-Pierre and the Biden White House utterly dodging responsibilities for their soft on crime policies that are endangering people all across the country.
00:18:44.180If President Biden's policies are helping bring crime down, would he be comfortable with somebody borrowing his Corvette and parking it on the street overnight in southeast D.C.?
00:18:55.000I'm not going to get into hypotheticals.
00:18:56.740I'm just going to get into the facts about what this president has done in this president.
00:20:21.720In Congress, thankfully, we overturned that.
00:20:25.020In the House, every single House Democrat except two.
00:20:31.960Vicente Gonzalez, a Texan, and Henry Cuellar, a Texan who was just carjacked in the last 48 hours, are the only two who voted no.
00:20:40.900That means every other House Democrat, if you can think of a House Democrat, they voted in favor of lessening the penalties on carjackers and on murderers.
00:20:51.240Why do you think crime is out of control?
00:20:53.120Yeah, this is a Democratic Party, and this is certainly going to be an issue with the presidential election.
00:21:32.280It's not like you were a high school principal.
00:21:35.360It's not like you were a high school principal in a high school that had fire alarms.
00:21:38.680It's not like you were a high school principal in a high school that had fire alarms that had a policy that said if you, a student, pulls the fire alarm, you will be expelled.
00:21:48.300Jamal Bowman, the Democrat congressman, was a principal at a high school that had a policy that if you, Ben Ferguson, a student in his high school, pulled the fire alarm, you would be expelled.
00:22:00.460Oh, I'm going to pull the fire alarm because I want to stop the Republican vote.
00:22:04.140And why is it his claim, if you believe him, his defense is, I'm dumber than a box of rocks, and I think a fire alarm is a doorknob.
00:22:14.900That is his defense, and that's the best interpretation he can hope for.
00:22:19.360By the way, I have to ask now, because you brought it up.
00:22:21.960If a Republican would have done that, how fast would they have been kicked out of Congress?
00:22:25.900And would they have a mugshot at this point?
00:22:29.760To be honest, I don't think they'd be kicked out of Congress, but I think they might have a mugshot.
00:22:35.040And my guess is, look, kicking people out of Congress is pretty severe.
00:22:41.120My guess is the votes won't be there for that.
00:22:43.160My prediction is they will censure him.
00:22:45.800I think the votes will be there for censuring him.
00:22:48.060But it is a criminal offense in the District of Columbia to pull a fire alarm fraudulently, and he is on video doing that, but he is counting on the corporate media to ignore the fact that he was willing to pull a fire alarm to try to stop the Congress from voting on a provision that he didn't like, which, mind you, was a provision to fund the government.
00:23:08.380And he wanted to force a government shutdown, so he pulled a fire alarm to cause it to happen.
00:23:13.280But again, he knew the corporate media would cover for him, and they're doing it right now.
00:23:18.460As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.
00:26:07.560You have to be 30 years old to be elected to the Senate.
00:26:10.680And you have to be 35 years old to be elected president.
00:26:14.020Other than that, there are currently no limits when it comes to serving in federal elected office.
00:26:19.280And it's one of the reasons why you see so many people in the Senate who are 142 years old.
00:26:25.640I have joked, if you ever want to feel young, come work in the U.S. Senate because the median age is such
00:26:33.100that I have colleagues reminiscing about Eisenhower.
00:26:36.020I mean, it's, you know, I feel like a sprightly young lad in the body in which I serve.
00:26:44.060Term limits is something that I emphatically support.
00:26:48.460And so I have repeatedly introduced in the Senate a constitutional amendment to mandate term limits,
00:26:56.040to limit senators, each senator to two terms, to limit each House member to three terms.
00:27:00.880You know, it's interesting. Term limits was something I supported before I got to the Senate.
00:27:07.180But having seen this place firsthand now, I support it a thousand times more.
00:27:12.220Because this place is the swamp. It is corrupt.
00:27:16.140And the people who are here a long time are the worst.
00:27:19.260You get drawn in and corrupted by the swamp.
00:27:22.080And it's both parties. Look, the Democrats are bad.
00:27:25.120But for much of this spending that is bankrupting the country, we have a uniparty.
00:27:30.100We have Republican career politicians who jump in bed with the Democrats and eagerly spend trillions of dollars.
00:27:37.580And so term limits would be a major step to reducing that power and reducing that corruption.
00:27:45.180And it's an amazing thing if you look at term limits nationally.
00:27:48.920Over 70% of Americans support term limits.
00:27:51.600That's true among Republicans, among Democrats, and among independents.
00:27:56.000You see massive majorities supporting term limits.
00:27:59.040The one group that doesn't is career politicians in Washington.
00:28:04.040In the Senate, I have zero Democrats who support my term limits amendment.
00:28:08.360Every one of the Democrats is opposed to it.
00:28:11.300And I've chaired—I used to be chairman of the Constitution subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:28:17.240I chaired a hearing on term limits, brought in witnesses to talk about term limits.
00:28:22.260And the reality is in the Senate, the young guys support my term limits amendments, and none of the long-time career politicians do.
00:28:31.980And that's why neither Chuck Schumer nor Mitch McConnell wants term limits to get a vote on the Senate floor because they oppose it that much.
00:28:39.920So I've been fighting, but I have not been able to get it on the floor because Schumer and McConnell control what gets on the floor.
00:28:47.560Let's get a question on this side over here.
00:28:52.700And I wanted to ask how Congress can give back some Tenth Amendment rights to the state and people after events like 9-11 and COVID have taken it away and given it to the federal government.
00:29:07.140If you look at the Bill of Rights and you asked about the Tenth Amendment, when I was in college, I wrote my senior thesis on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution.
00:29:16.480And I'll tell you a little bit of the history of why they're written, and then I will get straight to your question.
00:29:22.260But originally the Constitution was written.
00:29:38.620We should have it be the organic document forming our government.
00:29:42.640The Anti-Federalists were arguing against it.
00:29:44.900And one of the big arguments the Anti-Federalists had is they said, well, there's no Bill of Rights.
00:29:49.860This is a flawed document because there's no provision in it protecting our fundamental liberties.
00:29:55.300Now, the Federalists came back and they said, no, no, no, we don't need a Bill of Rights.
00:30:00.300And the reason the Federalists gave is they said, this is a government of enumerated powers.
00:30:05.600If you look at Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Article I establishes the Congress, the legislative function.
00:30:12.760And Article I, Section 8 specifies it enumerates 18 specific powers that Congress has.
00:30:19.760And the argument the Federalists said is, look, we don't need to say that the Federal government cannot violate your free speech, cannot violate your religious liberty, cannot violate your right to keep and bear arms,
00:30:32.760because there's nothing in the enumerated powers that gives the Federal government the power to violate those rights.
00:30:39.980And so we've already done that by limiting the Federal government's authority initially.
00:30:44.360Now, the Anti-Federalists came back and they had lots of arguments, one of which was, well, there's nothing to stop them from violating those rights within the enumerated powers.
00:30:55.880So, for example, one of the enumerated powers is the power to create and maintain post offices.
00:31:02.160Under the original Constitution, without a Bill of Rights, a government could say, the Biden administration will say, we will only transport letters from Democrats.
00:31:12.280All Republicans, we've decided, we don't want Republicans speaking anymore, so we won't transport their letters.
00:31:20.900Now, if the government tried to do that today, that would obviously be an unconstitutional violation of free speech.
00:31:28.140Without a Bill of Rights, it would be permissible.
00:31:30.280I think the Anti-Federalists won that debate.
00:31:35.420The first ten amendments to the Constitution are the Bill of Rights.
00:31:38.180And the first eight are protecting specific rights.
00:31:44.960And then amendments nine and ten both say, amendment nine says the enumeration of certain rights in the Bill of Rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.
00:32:00.120The tenth amendment says the powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states and to the people.
00:32:10.000Basically, the ninth and tenth amendments restate that the Constitution is a constitution of enumerated powers.
00:32:17.580In other words, they say, even though we just listed these eight Bill of Rights,
00:32:20.740we agree that the federal government probably couldn't have done any of this anyway.
00:32:56.400I agree that a vast we should put as much decision making, as much authority as possible at the state level or even better at the local level,
00:33:06.140because it's more likely to meet the needs of the people that are being affected.
00:36:25.400But the alternative is give up on our country.
00:36:28.320And I've got to tell you, there are a lot of Democrats and a lot of people in the corporate media that want all of us to give up on our country.
00:36:35.240They want conservatives to say, well, voter fraud is still there, so I'm not going to vote to hell with it.
00:36:41.000And I'll tell you what, if we do that, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
00:37:05.160One year later, in 2021, Glenn Youngkin, who's a good friend of mine, I campaigned with Glenn Youngkin all over Virginia, spent two days barnstorming the state of Virginia with Glenn.
00:37:17.240One year after Biden was elected, Glenn Youngkin was elected as a Republican in Virginia.
00:37:23.000Now, Virginia had not changed a single voter integrity law.
00:37:25.940They had the same lousy election laws they had the year before.
00:37:29.560But a whole bunch of moms, moms who had voted for Joe Biden, got ticked off at what the schools were doing to our kids, and they flipped over and voted Republican.
00:37:40.600That gives us a roadmap to what we can and I think what we have to do in this next election.
00:37:46.260As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:37:54.120Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:37:57.780You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:38:01.040I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:38:04.880And we will see you back here on Monday morning.