Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 18, 2022


MAJOR VICTORY, Nancy Pelosi Is No Longer The Speaker Of The House, Plus We Talk GOP Investigation Into Joe Biden Business Deals!


Episode Stats

Length

43 minutes

Words per Minute

161.88686

Word Count

7,088

Sentence Count

499

Misogynist Sentences

12

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.220 Welcome. It's Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:08.940 We've got a lot to talk about, including the big exciting news.
00:00:12.480 Nancy Pelosi is out.
00:00:14.260 Also, the leadership fight in the Senate.
00:00:16.820 We're going to get into that, plus a big vote on gay marriage.
00:00:19.880 And finally, Republicans paying off, ready to rock and roll as they've taken the majority in the House.
00:00:26.100 They are now going to be looking into the Biden crime family.
00:00:28.980 What does this mean moving forward?
00:00:31.120 That is going to be on today's podcast.
00:00:33.420 Now, Senator, I want to get to this big, exciting moment.
00:00:36.820 And we should enjoy it because you fought hard for this.
00:00:39.760 The bus tour was part of this mission to make sure we could get the House out of the hands of the leadership of Nancy Pelosi.
00:00:47.440 It is official.
00:00:48.600 The Republicans control the House.
00:00:50.780 Nancy Pelosi retiring from leadership today.
00:00:53.740 That was obviously a massive story.
00:00:56.420 So I just want to say one very simple thing.
00:00:59.640 Nancy Pelosi is gone.
00:01:01.420 Nancy Pelosi is gone.
00:01:03.500 Nancy Pelosi is gone.
00:01:05.560 Hot diggity damn.
00:01:07.620 Nancy Pelosi is gone.
00:01:09.040 Isn't it amazing?
00:01:09.940 I mean, it really is.
00:01:10.800 Like, when this happened today, I was sitting there hosting Outnumbered, and no one knew if she was going to resign from leadership or not.
00:01:18.040 We were sitting there on set, and I was sitting there with Kayleigh McEnany, and we were like, all right, what's the over-under?
00:01:23.220 And apparently, Senator, she went home last night with two different speeches, one if she was going to stay in leadership and one if she wasn't.
00:01:31.060 And there were zero leaks.
00:01:32.440 No one knew what she was going to say.
00:01:34.280 And she finally said it.
00:01:35.780 I am no longer going to be in leadership.
00:01:37.300 And the entire set just was a gasp.
00:01:39.820 Look, that's incredible.
00:01:41.940 I had not heard that.
00:01:43.700 I will tell you, as you know, when we did the month-long 17-state national bus tour, the closing of my speech at every single rally, and you were at a bunch of them, Ben, was I said, I and whoever I was campaigning with, whatever House member or Senate member or Senate candidate I was campaigning with,
00:02:03.880 I said, you know, I and J.D. am going to be walking down the hallway in the Capitol, and we're going to bump into a little man wearing overalls, carrying a screwdriver, coming to change the sign on Nancy Pelosi's door.
00:02:22.440 And inevitably, the crowd would go wild at that point, and then I would say, and Nancy is going to get on her broom, and people would laugh, and I'd say, okay, that's not fair.
00:02:39.100 That's not right.
00:02:41.240 Nancy is going to get on her private jet, the USS Broom, and she's going to fly back to San Francisco.
00:02:52.440 And for her sake, I really hope that her husband doesn't pick her up at the airport.
00:03:02.040 When I said that, the crowd went crazy.
00:03:05.460 In one state, two state, three state, four state, five states, 17 states, the crowd went crazy.
00:03:12.720 And listen, we're all bummed that last week's election wasn't much, much better.
00:03:18.300 It should have been phenomenal.
00:03:19.720 We should have had a big majority in the Senate.
00:03:21.440 We should have had a massive majority in the House.
00:03:23.680 We don't.
00:03:25.740 But let's take a moment to celebrate and say we did something that really mattered, which is we won a majority in the House of Representatives,
00:03:35.360 and Nancy Pelosi is out of a job, and America is better off.
00:03:39.220 Our liberty is safer.
00:03:40.380 Our lives are more secure because the most radical, demagogic, socialist, left-wing Speaker of the House in the history of America is now out of a job.
00:03:54.980 Let's talk about how meaningful this would have been over the last two years, for example, to put it in compare and contrast, Senator, if the Republicans would have had the House.
00:04:05.680 Yes, people are bummed we don't have the Senate.
00:04:08.160 Yes, people are upset that he's still the President of the United States of America.
00:04:11.420 But having the ability to say no in the House is so significant to stopping so much damage that had been done just over the last two years, for example, if we would have had one of those chambers.
00:04:22.900 So what does it mean?
00:04:24.760 What does having the House mean?
00:04:25.840 It means, number one, we'll have real oversight.
00:04:27.920 We'll have meaningful oversight.
00:04:29.280 We'll have House committees issuing subpoenas, engaging in oversight of the abuses, the ridiculous policies from this administration.
00:04:37.120 That's a big deal.
00:04:38.620 Number two, it will mean we will not have the disastrous legislation of the last two years.
00:04:45.180 If Democrats have a massive tax increase, it ain't going to pass a Republican House.
00:04:50.980 If Democrats want to make the District of Columbia a state and add two new Democrat senators, it ain't going to pass a Republican House.
00:04:59.900 If Democrats want to pack the U.S. Supreme Court and add four left-wing justices to take the Supreme Court from nine justices to 13, it ain't going to pass a Republican House.
00:05:14.140 That's a big deal, and I'm happy for that.
00:05:16.840 One other thing that I think people look at when they see the fact that Nancy Pelosi is out is it also comes back to accountability now.
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00:07:00.540 The accountability of the Republicans seem to have their act together on the House side to really look into some of the corruption,
00:07:06.980 not only within our government, but the FBI and also with the Biden family.
00:07:11.520 And that is one of, I think, the payoffs to campaigning on the issues that so many conservative Republicans ran on,
00:07:18.840 and it looks like they're going to pay off on it right away.
00:07:21.520 Well, we need to do that.
00:07:23.120 I was encouraged to see Jim Jordan and James Comer come out and say they're going to investigate, for example, the corruption with Hunter Biden.
00:07:31.540 Now, as everyone who is a regular listener of this podcast knows, we've been talking for a long time that the issue with Hunter Biden is not his personal challenges.
00:07:45.120 He is a troubled soul.
00:07:46.900 It's clear he's had an anguished life where he's struggled with substance abuse his entire life.
00:07:55.160 If that were it, if he was some sad sap with substance abuse issues, it would not be an issue of public concern.
00:08:06.160 What matters about Hunter Biden is the official corruption of Joe Biden.
00:08:13.200 Joe Biden is the target of these investigations, whether it's Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company that paid Hunter Biden a million dollars a year,
00:08:24.240 and all of the evidence suggests that was essentially payola to get protection from Joe Biden,
00:08:33.420 or whether it's communist China paying Hunter Biden millions of dollars a year with 10% for the big guy, again to Joe Biden.
00:08:42.660 What the House is focused on, I was very pleased.
00:08:45.240 They had a press conference Tuesday morning where they said,
00:08:49.000 We're focusing not on Hunter, but on Joe Biden's corruption, on how much Joe Biden has been for sale being sold to the enemies of America,
00:09:01.280 being sold to foreign governments, being sold and engaged in corruption, literally millions of dollars into the Biden family bank accounts.
00:09:12.320 That's important, and I've got to say I was really encouraged.
00:09:17.460 The press conference yesterday morning that Jim Jordan and James Comer held was exactly on the themes that you and I have been talking about on this podcast for months,
00:09:30.500 which is the focus is Joe Biden, not Hunter Biden, and Hunter is just the conduit for the corruption that goes straight to the president of the United States.
00:09:40.420 It's not only that, but there seems to be a real comfort level now, Senator, with whistleblowers.
00:09:45.880 Jim Jordan mentioned this, and I want to play this because it seems that people now feel safe to come out of the woodworks
00:09:52.940 and risk their careers by whistleblowing on the corruption, the deep state, the FBI.
00:09:58.460 And here's how Jim Jordan described it at that press conference you mentioned a moment ago.
00:10:02.720 We did a report two weeks ago, a report that talked about the political influence and the political shenanigans going on in our Justice Department
00:10:11.640 based on 14 FBI agents who've come talk to our office as whistleblowers.
00:10:16.700 One of those agents said, and this is a term he used, he said at the highest levels of the FBI, specifically the Washington field office,
00:10:23.860 he said it's rotted to the core.
00:10:25.640 Not talking about rank and file agents.
00:10:27.260 They're doing good work.
00:10:28.580 Talking about the top people at the Washington field office.
00:10:31.420 I mean, he says rotten to the core, and the whistleblowers in Washington, D.C. are coming to him with this.
00:10:38.700 And I think that's where, once it takes one or two brave people to come forward, Senator, as whistleblowers,
00:10:44.720 and now it looks like the floodgates have just opened now that the Republicans have the majority in the House,
00:10:49.700 and that may be the biggest blessing out of all of this.
00:10:52.980 Well, I think that's exactly right.
00:10:54.680 Jim Jordan is a close friend of mine.
00:10:56.320 He and I have been in the foxholes battling against the forces of darkness over and over and over again.
00:11:03.140 I've got to tell you, just like Jim Jordan, I've had multiple FBI agents and multiple DOJ prosecutors come to me,
00:11:11.020 come to my office as whistleblowers and say the politicization, the corruption at DOJ and the FBI is enormous.
00:11:18.280 As you know, the book I just wrote the last couple of weeks, Justice Corrupted, How the Left Has Weaponized the Legal System,
00:11:26.000 is entirely about how the Democrats have turned the DOJ and the FBI into political weapons to attack their enemies.
00:11:35.200 This is a real and important problem.
00:11:37.700 And one of the great benefits that we have a majority in the House,
00:11:42.180 we're now going to have chairman willing to investigate this corruption.
00:11:48.300 And when you twist and pervert the Department of Justice and the FBI,
00:11:54.460 it is an incredible danger to the rule of law and to our individual liberty.
00:12:00.000 Now, Ben, I'll tell you, some people on the right say abolish the FBI.
00:12:04.300 And I understand that sentiment.
00:12:05.440 They're so corrupt.
00:12:06.620 I get it.
00:12:07.700 I'm not in the camp of abolish the FBI.
00:12:10.660 Why?
00:12:11.200 Because they do a lot of work that is really important.
00:12:13.980 Fighting terrorists, fighting bank robbers, fighting child predators who kidnap and sexually assault kids.
00:12:21.520 All of that law enforcement work, God bless the FBI.
00:12:25.460 Go catch the bad guys.
00:12:26.800 Go catch criminals.
00:12:27.800 Go catch terrorists trying to murder American citizens.
00:12:31.860 But what Obama and now Biden have really endeavored to do, and sadly with real success,
00:12:37.700 is direct them away from, never mind the next Al-Qaeda 9-11 terrorists who want to fly a plane into a building.
00:12:45.160 Don't focus on that.
00:12:46.740 Go focus on moms and dads speaking at school boards.
00:12:49.620 Go focus on soldiers in Israel and the IDF.
00:12:54.180 As DOJ has recently announced, the FBI is going to be trying to target our friend and ally, the nation of Israel.
00:13:01.340 Go target pro-life activists who dare to speak up in favor of life.
00:13:06.380 And that politicization, it's what my book, Justice Corrupt, is all about.
00:13:10.660 It is incredibly wrong, and I believe we need to use whatever levers of power we have to stop it.
00:13:19.300 You know, one of the things that Representative Comer said on the Hunter Biden probe, he said,
00:13:23.300 and I said this again today, you and I have talked about this, this is no longer about Hunter Biden.
00:13:27.700 This is about the president.
00:13:29.600 Yes.
00:13:29.920 And he said today, the Bidens became millionaires.
00:13:32.700 And I want to play this clip by simply offering access to the family and the United States government.
00:13:38.700 President, right there behind Paul, four different pictures.
00:13:42.960 Committee Republicans have identified over 50 countries the Biden family sought businesses in.
00:13:47.360 On the international side of the Biden family business, the deals were often led by Hunter Biden.
00:13:51.640 And that map there behind Clay shows all the countries where the Bidens had a footprint in international business dealings.
00:13:59.660 The investigation reveals a family that engaged with some of America's most powerful adversaries,
00:14:06.060 planning to sell one of the largest sources of cobalt for electric vehicles in the world to the Chinese, for example.
00:14:12.260 The Bidens flourished and became millionaires by simply offering access to the family.
00:14:18.020 Among the dozens of shell companies the Bidens set up, there were millions of dollars of wire transfers,
00:14:24.000 flights on Air Force Two to conduct personal business,
00:14:27.100 and meetings with heads of state, all while Joe Biden was aware of what was happening.
00:14:31.760 All the while, he turned a blind eye.
00:14:35.380 Many transactions related to these businesses have raised red flags at U.S. banks.
00:14:40.460 A suspicious activity report, or SAR, is a document a bank must file with the Treasury Department
00:14:44.920 when a transaction is suspected to be related to money laundering or fraud or other types of criminal activity.
00:14:51.440 According to media reports, the Biden family accumulated over 150 SARs.
00:14:58.840 One SAR generated by an American bank to the Treasury Department connects Hunter Biden and his business associates
00:15:04.100 to international human trafficking, among other illegal activities.
00:15:09.540 The money that was being made from foreign principals in the same room as Joe Biden
00:15:12.980 was increasingly spent on furthering illegal activity.
00:15:15.720 The SAR showed that Hunter Biden was conducting business with suspected human traffickers.
00:15:21.340 I mean, Senator, this is not just, and this was breaking news,
00:15:25.320 more than 50 countries involved in human trafficking,
00:15:29.900 involved with the worst people in the world in China,
00:15:32.840 and trying to sell American resources.
00:15:34.720 I mean, when you think about 50 countries,
00:15:36.460 this was very clearly a mafia-style enterprise where the kingpin, the big guy,
00:15:44.460 is Joe Biden, who's now our president.
00:15:46.540 Then he was the vice president when much of this was going on as well.
00:15:49.260 But apparently none of this has stopped,
00:15:51.220 and all these suspicious activity reports of Democrats have been blocking us from being able to get those.
00:15:55.920 Will we be able to see those now that the Republicans have control of the House?
00:15:59.740 Look, I hope so,
00:16:01.180 and I have confidence in the House chairman that are leading these investigations.
00:16:05.580 I've got to say, you think about it,
00:16:07.720 in over two centuries of our American history,
00:16:10.780 we've had 46 presidents.
00:16:15.140 We've had vice presidents under every one of them.
00:16:19.280 We have never had a vice president,
00:16:22.060 not once in over 200 years,
00:16:25.180 whose family made millions of dollars selling access to the vice president.
00:16:31.960 That is the very essence of corruption.
00:16:34.100 And by the way, not selling access to the vice president,
00:16:37.200 to Americans, to lobbyists, that we've had before.
00:16:40.220 We've had sort of the domestic access corruption.
00:16:44.460 Selling access to foreign adversaries.
00:16:48.180 Selling access to the communist Chinese government.
00:16:52.140 Selling access to Burisma,
00:16:54.340 the corrupt Ukrainian natural gas company.
00:16:56.880 The degree to which it was brazenly,
00:17:00.580 you know, it feels like an episode of The Sopranos,
00:17:04.080 where literally they'd show up with Hunter Biden with a paper bag full of cash and say,
00:17:09.560 here's 10% for the big guy.
00:17:12.040 Like, that should not be reality.
00:17:15.400 That should be bad fiction on HBO.
00:17:18.780 But it is reality.
00:17:20.100 The Democrat majorities in Congress desperately want to cover it up.
00:17:24.940 And I do think one of the real consequences of House majorities
00:17:28.580 is that we're going to see serious oversight,
00:17:32.220 testimony, hearings, subpoenas.
00:17:34.780 We're going to get the facts.
00:17:36.320 I think that's important.
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00:18:07.180 I want to move to the Senate side.
00:18:10.680 And there's been this fight for leadership in the Senate.
00:18:14.160 We've talked about this.
00:18:15.840 Mitch McConnell, 7% approval rating among Republican voters right now.
00:18:20.060 He walked out, made it clear.
00:18:21.520 He said, I have the votes.
00:18:22.700 I have the votes.
00:18:23.520 I have the votes.
00:18:24.380 Whether it's decided today, tomorrow, the next day, I have the votes.
00:18:28.220 In other words, I dare you to challenge me or to come after me
00:18:33.020 or to try to find someone else to do this job.
00:18:35.420 So you better just get back in your positions.
00:18:38.840 I am the leader, even in the minority.
00:18:41.040 I have the votes.
00:18:42.940 Where are we now with all of this?
00:18:45.900 Well, dare, accept it.
00:18:48.080 So the last podcast we did, Wednesday morning, I was walking into the leadership elections.
00:18:56.580 And when that occurred, the very first thing that happened, literally we sat down.
00:19:01.780 So I want to paint the picture.
00:19:04.140 The leadership elections for the Republican conference are held in the old, the historic Senate chamber.
00:19:10.240 So it's not the Senate floor today.
00:19:12.000 It's the old Senate chamber.
00:19:13.540 It's the Senate chamber where in the Civil War, one senator beat another senator almost to death with a cane.
00:19:20.480 It's small.
00:19:21.600 It's intimate.
00:19:22.340 You're on top of each other.
00:19:23.440 So we're in there.
00:19:25.580 The very first thing it's done, it's called to order.
00:19:28.740 And the first thing that happened is I stood up and I made a motion.
00:19:32.480 I said I move that we delay this vote until after the Georgia runoff.
00:19:39.080 What preceded was a couple of hours of debate where many senators stood up and argued on both sides.
00:19:46.760 My argument was simple.
00:19:47.940 Number one, we don't know who's going to be in the Republican conference in this next Senate.
00:19:53.260 And Herschel Walker deserves a say in who the next Republican leader is.
00:19:58.220 But number two, more fundamentally, we need a debate and a discussion about how we're going to lead.
00:20:04.700 Are Republicans going to fight?
00:20:06.560 What are we going to fight on?
00:20:07.800 Is there any issue on which we're willing to fight?
00:20:12.100 We had a vigorous debate.
00:20:14.000 Now, I'll tell you, I've been in the Senate 10 years.
00:20:16.600 In the 10 years I've been there, Mitch McConnell's never been challenged.
00:20:19.380 We've never had a vote on leadership.
00:20:20.780 There's never been even a discussion or debate about what the agenda will be.
00:20:25.720 At the end of a couple of hours debate, we took a vote and I got 16 votes.
00:20:31.720 Now, there are 49 Republicans, so my motion failed.
00:20:35.520 But 25 was success.
00:20:37.480 So I got 16.
00:20:39.540 We were nine short of the 25 it would have taken to delay the election.
00:20:46.020 Ben, that is a big damn deal.
00:20:50.080 That's never happened before.
00:20:51.920 It was the first serious leadership challenge in the 16 years that Mitch McConnell has been the Republican leader.
00:21:00.400 That's a big deal.
00:21:01.700 I think it's justified because we had an election where we should have had a massive victory and we didn't.
00:21:07.700 And, you know, as we talked about in prior podcasts, if you have a football team that's the number one in the nation and it loses big game after big game after big game, you fire the coach.
00:21:19.960 We didn't have the votes to fire the coach, but we came very, very close.
00:21:25.660 And I hope it will lead to Republicans in the Senate now being willing to fight in a way that they haven't been the last two years.
00:21:34.060 What is the mentality?
00:21:35.840 I mean, you come back to D.C. right after Election Day.
00:21:39.520 Everybody knows where we are with the House.
00:21:42.340 Everybody, your colleagues know where we are now with the Senate.
00:21:44.880 I mean, you're obviously angry and pissed off.
00:21:48.500 That makes sense.
00:21:49.540 And it makes sense with you because you care about this country.
00:21:53.280 You wanted the Republicans to win.
00:21:55.060 You want a majority.
00:21:56.540 You worked hard to try to get it.
00:21:58.220 We came up short.
00:21:59.420 But are other senators angry or is it just business is usually like, oh, it is what it is.
00:22:04.420 We're in the minority for another two years and we'll see what happens then.
00:22:07.420 So it varies.
00:22:08.900 Look, I think everyone's frustrated.
00:22:10.780 I mean, you'd have to be dead.
00:22:12.340 You'd have to be blind and oblivious not to be frustrated.
00:22:15.600 Is leadership frustrated?
00:22:16.680 Maybe that's a better way of saying it.
00:22:18.440 Not really.
00:22:19.980 Leadership is engaged in the blame game.
00:22:22.720 They are trying desperately to blame the results of the election on Donald J. Trump.
00:22:27.600 And so that's their message is Trump did it.
00:22:29.860 Trump did it.
00:22:30.360 Trump did it.
00:22:31.300 And listen, this was enough of a cluster that there is blame to go around everyone.
00:22:38.520 I'm not saying anyone is immune from blame.
00:22:40.840 But leadership is trying so hard to paint the blame on Trump that they're pretending that their actions.
00:22:49.060 The case I made to my colleagues, I stood up and said, listen, for the last two years, over and over again, we have passed Democrat priorities with all of the Democrats.
00:23:03.260 Every single Democrat, all 50 Democrats and 10 to 15 Republicans.
00:23:09.740 We do that over and over and over again.
00:23:12.780 And I said, listen, the Democrats never do this.
00:23:16.240 When we had a Republican majority in the Senate, there were no cases, zero, where you had all 50 Republicans and 10 or 15 Ds.
00:23:25.960 They don't do it because from their perspective, their only focus is defeat the Republicans' agenda to hell with you.
00:23:32.960 On our side, our guys are chumps.
00:23:36.080 They're like, oh, okay, the Democrats want to do something.
00:23:39.480 Here, let us help.
00:23:41.040 And so the question that I asked, and in that historic Senate chamber, I asked Mitch McConnell, tell the conference, is there any issue, even one, on which you are willing to fight?
00:23:55.520 Maybe we should fight, we're going to be taking up very shortly, the National Defense Authorization Act.
00:24:02.200 That's a great avenue to fight.
00:24:04.460 The Biden administration is trying to fire thousands of soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines.
00:24:11.540 I think that is asinine.
00:24:13.680 It's idiotic.
00:24:14.820 It's indefensible.
00:24:16.520 Those servicemen and women declined to take the COVID vaccine.
00:24:20.260 And the Biden administration is saying, we don't care that you've defended our nation, that you've dedicated your life to keeping our country safe.
00:24:28.420 If you don't knuckle under and take this vaccine, you're fired.
00:24:32.040 I think that's grotesque.
00:24:33.820 So I stood up and argued to my colleagues, stand and fight.
00:24:38.060 Grow a pair.
00:24:39.200 Like, actually fight for real.
00:24:41.980 And the only way you can fight is to deny cloture on the NDAA.
00:24:47.920 What is the NDAA?
00:24:48.680 The National Defense Authorization Act.
00:24:51.100 It will not pass unless 60 senators vote for it.
00:24:54.620 You'll get all 50 Democrats.
00:24:57.060 So are there, if 10 Republicans vote for it, it's passed.
00:25:01.400 And guess what?
00:25:02.560 Those fighting men and women are fired.
00:25:04.240 I said, all right, if you don't want to fight on that, how about fight on the 87,000 new IRS agents?
00:25:09.780 That's what I was going to literally ask you is that question.
00:25:12.240 Because there's a lot of speculation now that if Republicans are smart on this, coming out of the House, into the Senate, that this could be the opportunity where the president actually has to veto, use a veto to get rid of something, which would be a very interesting moment, especially going into the presidential election.
00:25:30.860 How do Republicans play this to get rid of these agents?
00:25:34.100 But look, you know the White House is going to stand up.
00:25:36.440 So the question I ask leadership is, are we willing to fight in a way that uses actual leverage?
00:25:44.760 So what leadership is fond of is, let's schedule a vote on the floor, everyone votes, and then we lose.
00:25:53.300 And we can go home and tell our constituents, look, we voted against it, it's not our fault, but oh well, the country's screwed.
00:26:01.240 If you want to stop it, you actually have to use the levers of power you have.
00:26:07.660 If you want to stop the forced vaccination of servicemen and women, you block the NDAA, because Democrats want to pass that, so that's using leverage.
00:26:18.080 Next year, there are two and only two major lever points.
00:26:23.340 One is the government funding bills, either the continuing resolution or the omnibus funding bill.
00:26:29.060 The other is the debt ceiling.
00:26:32.140 If both of those, the Democrats desperately want to pass.
00:26:35.980 So historically, if you exert leverage on those, the minority has been able to get concessions over and over and over again.
00:26:46.860 Now, let's say you stand up on the government funding bill and say, we're not going to fund the government if the funding includes 87,000 new IRS agents, which is what I think we should do.
00:26:58.360 Here's what Joe Biden is going to say.
00:27:00.040 He's going to bellow, the Republicans are shutting down the government.
00:27:04.440 All of the Democrats in Congress are going to bellow, the Republicans are shutting down the government.
00:27:10.120 The corporate media, which is utterly corrupt in a Democrat mouthpiece, is going to bellow, the Republicans are shutting down the government.
00:27:17.580 And what I asked our leadership is, are you, the frigging Republican leadership, going to echo the message of the Democrats in the media that the Republicans are shutting down the government?
00:27:28.780 If you do, we will lose.
00:27:30.800 The short answer, Ben, Mitch McConnell didn't answer those questions.
00:27:35.200 But I will say, we got 16 votes to delay the election, and then Rick Scott ran against Mitch McConnell.
00:27:41.980 I voted for Rick Scott.
00:27:43.460 I'm tired of Mitch McConnell's leadership.
00:27:45.640 I don't think he's done it right.
00:27:47.280 We had 11 senators who did not vote for Mitch McConnell.
00:27:51.220 That is a big damn deal.
00:27:54.580 Mitch McConnell's been the leader for 16 years.
00:27:58.000 In 16 years, he has had zero senators vote against him.
00:28:02.680 This year, 11 senators didn't support him.
00:28:06.440 That's a step forward.
00:28:07.760 It wasn't your usual suspects either.
00:28:09.460 I mean, it was a pretty wide-ranging group of 11.
00:28:13.600 And I want you to mention just some of those names.
00:28:15.840 People need to understand, this wasn't just kind of a core group that you're good friends with.
00:28:21.300 I mean, this was across the spectrum where you got these 11 from.
00:28:24.800 So we don't know exactly who voted.
00:28:27.440 The vote was 37 Republicans voted for Mitch.
00:28:33.560 10 Republicans voted for Rick Scott.
00:28:35.880 I was one of the 10.
00:28:37.540 And one Republican voted present, which is really weird.
00:28:40.760 I don't know who that was.
00:28:41.680 So 10 voted for another leader, and one didn't vote for Mitch.
00:28:47.100 So it's a total of 11.
00:28:49.600 About half of the people have self-identified.
00:28:52.860 And that's what I wanted to get to.
00:28:54.600 I mean, there were some people that were open saying,
00:28:56.380 hey, I'm just going to be honest about this.
00:28:58.520 I think he should not be in leadership.
00:29:00.740 And by the way, if we had a functioning press corps,
00:29:04.380 they ought to ask every damn Republican, how did you vote?
00:29:07.420 Like, this should be public.
00:29:08.900 A lot of my colleagues, the reason they voted for Mitch is he's the single largest donor
00:29:13.580 to almost every Republican in the conference.
00:29:16.520 He stood up there and said to senator after senator, he pointed at them and said,
00:29:20.560 you, I gave you $30 million.
00:29:23.060 You, I gave you $40 million.
00:29:24.980 You, I gave you $50 million.
00:29:27.000 By the way, for me, he gave me $0.
00:29:30.640 For Mike Lee, he gave him $0.
00:29:33.440 For Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, six years ago, he gave him $0.
00:29:39.520 Now, I will say, to Mitch's credit, this cycle, Ron had a vigorous re-election campaign,
00:29:45.240 and Mitch put $30, $40 million into it.
00:29:47.760 So I'm glad of it this time.
00:29:49.880 But historically in the conference, there have been three Republicans willing to stand up
00:29:55.900 and fight against Mitch McConnell.
00:29:57.820 Me, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson.
00:30:01.680 Now, in more recent months, Rick Scott has joined that group.
00:30:06.340 But the maddening thing is, almost nobody else does.
00:30:10.380 And a huge factor in why that's the case is because Mitch McConnell, every cycle,
00:30:16.460 spends between $300 million and $400 million in his super PAC, supporting virtually every Republican.
00:30:23.740 So the fact that we got a third of the conference to vote with me to delay the leadership election
00:30:31.220 is shocking, it's stunning, and I hope that it begins to change leadership's willingness to fight.
00:30:39.460 I don't know if that will be the case, but I think this week was a big, big deal.
00:30:45.680 It was a big week because I think it also made it clear that there's a lot of conservatives out there,
00:30:50.820 for voters that are paying attention and expecting more of their elected officials.
00:30:56.160 And they're paying attention to what you're going to do with the majority in the House
00:30:59.800 and what you're going to do to stop the Democrats in the Senate,
00:31:02.500 or at least fight them, as you mentioned at the very beginning.
00:31:06.000 And this brings us up to this big gay marriage vote.
00:31:09.040 You know, there was no time wasted by Democrats coming back
00:31:13.120 and making sure that they could get as much stuff done as they possibly could get done as quickly as they can
00:31:18.380 before they lose this power, and this is a very important vote.
00:31:22.680 What happened with that?
00:31:24.760 Well, a lot of what we discussed in the leadership election is that for two years,
00:31:30.580 we passed bill after bill with all the Democrats and 10 to 15 Republicans.
00:31:36.460 And the case I made, I said, how come the Democrats manage over and over again
00:31:41.920 to unite all of the Democrats and to divide our party in a way that screws us?
00:31:48.680 But that's not the case.
00:31:51.120 Obergefell was the Supreme Court decision where the court struck down the marriage laws all across this country
00:31:57.700 and mandated gay marriage all across the country.
00:32:00.960 Now, the predicate for the Democrats taking this bill up is the Dobbs decision,
00:32:06.840 which overturned Roe v. Wade and returned decisions about abortion to the state legislature
00:32:12.840 so the voters could decide.
00:32:15.240 In Obergefell, Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence
00:32:18.400 where he suggested that the court might want to reconsider
00:32:22.740 all of its substantive due process decisions, including Obergefell.
00:32:27.760 The left lost their mind and they freaked out.
00:32:29.720 Now, importantly, it's worth understanding the majority opinion in Dobbs,
00:32:36.280 the case overturning Roe, said not once, not twice, but three times,
00:32:41.960 we are not going to revisit Obergefell.
00:32:46.580 We're not going to revisit the question of gay marriage.
00:32:49.120 The third time, Justice Alito, writing for the majority, said,
00:32:52.580 I don't know how to say this more clearly.
00:32:55.640 No, no, no.
00:32:57.720 So the whole predicate for this bill is Democrats scaremongering, saying,
00:33:02.780 oh, the Supreme Court's going to strike down the gay marriage ruling.
00:33:05.280 It's not, and it's told us it's not.
00:33:08.580 But this bill is Congress embracing gay marriage.
00:33:13.780 Now, folks listening to this might agree with that, might disagree with that.
00:33:17.880 There's a lot of disagreement across the country,
00:33:20.900 and gay marriage is one of the issues on which public opinion has been changing dramatically.
00:33:26.940 But the consequences of this bill are much more than Congress acknowledging
00:33:31.140 and passing into law gay marriage.
00:33:34.180 Because I believe this bill, if it becomes law, will set the stage for the Biden IRS
00:33:43.740 to target churches, to target religious universities,
00:33:49.140 to target religious schools, K-12,
00:33:51.960 to target religious social services like Catholic charities that do adoption services,
00:33:58.560 to target schools like Brigham Young, anyone that believes in a biblical definition of marriage,
00:34:07.020 anyone that believes that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,
00:34:11.080 whether they're Christian, whether they're Jewish, whether they're Muslim,
00:34:14.720 whatever faith they are, any organization that does not accept gay marriage,
00:34:19.740 I think faces an enormous risk of the DOJ and the Biden IRS targeting them,
00:34:27.920 suing them, and revoking their 501c3 tax-exempt status.
00:34:33.560 And that is the real risk of this bill.
00:34:36.260 And I got to tell you, it is sad and unfortunate because we had a vote on it,
00:34:42.720 and all the Democrats voted yes, of course,
00:34:45.560 but sadly, 12 Republicans voted yes as well.
00:34:51.000 Susan Collins of Bain, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,
00:34:55.040 Rob Portman of Ohio,
00:34:57.660 Mitt Romney of Utah,
00:35:00.200 those four are not terribly surprising,
00:35:03.300 but here are the next eight.
00:35:05.800 Tom Tillis of North Carolina,
00:35:08.680 Roy Blunt of Missouri,
00:35:11.640 Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming,
00:35:13.020 Richard Burr of North Carolina,
00:35:16.160 Richard is retiring,
00:35:18.360 Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia,
00:35:21.880 Dan Sullivan of Alaska,
00:35:24.740 Joni Ernst of Iowa,
00:35:26.940 and Todd Young of Indiana.
00:35:29.460 Wow.
00:35:30.060 Those are the 12 who voted yes.
00:35:32.340 I got to say,
00:35:34.520 I'm frustrated doesn't begin to describe it.
00:35:38.560 I am beyond upset.
00:35:41.580 So we had a lunch on Wednesday,
00:35:45.180 right before the vote.
00:35:46.980 It's the steering lunch.
00:35:48.360 Mike Lee is the chairman of steering.
00:35:50.160 I'm on the steering executive committee.
00:35:52.520 So that's the lunch where we discuss policy issues.
00:35:55.160 We talked about this bill.
00:35:58.040 Virtually every single Republican who voted yes skipped the lunch.
00:36:02.560 So of those 12,
00:36:03.600 I think three or four of them were there.
00:36:05.000 So they didn't discuss,
00:36:08.240 they didn't hear how the Biden IRS is going to go after Christian grade schools
00:36:15.400 and strip their 501c3 status.
00:36:18.540 It's going to go after Christian universities and strip their 501c3 status.
00:36:23.300 This bill provides a private right of action.
00:36:25.960 So you're going to get left-wing radical litigants suing Christian or Jewish or Muslim
00:36:33.900 charitable organizations or even churches.
00:36:38.420 If your church doesn't accept gay marriage,
00:36:42.120 get ready to be sued.
00:36:43.460 And I got to tell you,
00:36:45.440 I find it utterly insane
00:36:47.740 that 12 Republicans agreed with this.
00:36:51.400 And by the way,
00:36:52.020 Mike Lee has an amendment
00:36:54.060 that would explicitly prohibit the IRS and the government
00:36:57.660 from discriminating against people
00:36:59.680 because of their religious beliefs on marriage.
00:37:02.260 And yet,
00:37:03.500 the Democrats who support this bill
00:37:05.820 said,
00:37:07.280 hell no,
00:37:08.020 we won't take Mike Lee's amendment.
00:37:10.200 And the Republicans who support this bill
00:37:13.200 said,
00:37:14.780 who's Mike Lee?
00:37:15.560 I'm sorry,
00:37:15.980 we don't know what you're talking about.
00:37:18.480 Why do you think we lost on election day?
00:37:21.580 Well,
00:37:22.100 rolling over to Democrats is a big part of it.
00:37:25.840 And damn it,
00:37:26.700 Ben,
00:37:26.920 we need to stop it.
00:37:29.000 It's amazing.
00:37:30.360 How can people that are listening
00:37:32.400 have an impact on this issue specifically?
00:37:36.040 I mean,
00:37:36.240 is it basically
00:37:37.440 the damage is done
00:37:39.320 or should you still be reaching out
00:37:41.100 to your senators,
00:37:42.020 especially those that you mentioned?
00:37:44.180 No,
00:37:44.820 we're going to have another vote.
00:37:46.320 We'll have another vote
00:37:47.360 the Monday after Thanksgiving.
00:37:50.260 And it's a 60-vote threshold.
00:37:52.640 So of those 12 Republicans
00:37:54.860 who voted yes,
00:37:56.540 if three of them say,
00:37:59.180 we're not going to support this
00:38:01.300 unless Mike Lee's amendment
00:38:03.520 protecting religious liberty is added,
00:38:06.920 we can stop this travesty.
00:38:09.320 And by the way,
00:38:10.440 why are Democrats
00:38:11.280 ramming this through now?
00:38:12.880 Because they know in January
00:38:14.280 there'll be a Republican House
00:38:15.460 and they can't get it done.
00:38:16.740 So this is the lame duck.
00:38:18.500 This is their last gasp
00:38:20.640 where they're saying to the electorate,
00:38:22.640 screw you.
00:38:23.720 We don't care that you voted
00:38:25.700 a Republican majority.
00:38:26.940 Now I get,
00:38:27.960 Ben,
00:38:28.660 if you're Chuck Schumer,
00:38:29.820 if you're Nancy Pelosi,
00:38:31.700 screw you to Republican voters.
00:38:33.420 I understand where that comes from.
00:38:35.060 But why are Republican senators
00:38:38.700 supporting that?
00:38:40.440 That makes zero sense to me.
00:38:43.300 Yeah, it really does.
00:38:45.020 It's asinine.
00:38:46.340 At least there's this,
00:38:47.160 as you said,
00:38:47.640 this vote after Thanksgiving.
00:38:49.180 So reach out.
00:38:50.400 One last thing I want to ask you
00:38:51.700 about, Senator,
00:38:52.260 and that is this,
00:38:53.300 oh, by the way,
00:38:54.720 we want to give out amnesty
00:38:56.160 to every illegal immigrant
00:38:57.280 in the country
00:38:57.900 and we need to do it.
00:38:58.880 The New Democratic Line
00:39:00.400 is because we need workers
00:39:01.720 and Americans
00:39:03.100 aren't having enough kids,
00:39:04.480 so therefore we should
00:39:05.760 give out amnesty.
00:39:07.460 I didn't think Democrats
00:39:09.000 could be so transparent
00:39:10.560 in a moment
00:39:11.240 when they're asking for amnesty,
00:39:12.740 but they were.
00:39:13.480 They basically said,
00:39:14.420 we've been screwing you,
00:39:15.840 undermining your family,
00:39:17.800 undermining traditional households.
00:39:19.320 It's worked.
00:39:20.020 We've been aborting children
00:39:21.160 left and right.
00:39:21.980 It's worked.
00:39:22.980 And now we're going to say
00:39:24.140 because of a lack of population,
00:39:26.240 this is their argument,
00:39:27.040 that therefore we now need
00:39:28.860 to give out amnesty
00:39:29.640 to every single illegal immigrant
00:39:31.780 that's in this country.
00:39:33.200 Your reaction to that play by them
00:39:35.040 that was, again,
00:39:36.960 right away,
00:39:37.980 clearly they're going to make this
00:39:38.960 an issue for the presidential election.
00:39:41.100 So a bunch of Democrat senators
00:39:42.900 who were up for re-election this year,
00:39:45.460 they ran millions of dollars of ads
00:39:48.000 saying we are fighting
00:39:50.060 to secure the border.
00:39:51.900 Now it was fundamentally dishonest
00:39:53.460 because every single time
00:39:54.940 they've had an opportunity to vote,
00:39:56.360 they voted against securing the border.
00:40:00.320 But that's what they claim to the voters
00:40:02.580 and some of them,
00:40:03.660 like Mark Kelly in Arizona,
00:40:05.560 got re-elected lying to the voters.
00:40:08.980 What happens after election day?
00:40:10.760 The Democrats immediately come back
00:40:12.360 and they say,
00:40:12.820 what do we want to do with the lame duck?
00:40:14.560 Not secure the border.
00:40:15.780 Apparently all of their ads
00:40:17.100 had no bearing on reality.
00:40:19.000 What do they want to do?
00:40:20.240 They want to grant amnesty.
00:40:21.660 Joaquin Castro,
00:40:23.260 who's a left-wing Democrat
00:40:25.300 congressman from Texas,
00:40:28.200 he's leading the charge saying,
00:40:30.400 let's grant amnesty
00:40:31.520 to the so-called dreamers.
00:40:33.780 That's their priority.
00:40:35.180 Mind you,
00:40:35.600 he represents a South Texas district
00:40:37.740 that is feeling the pain
00:40:40.180 of illegal immigration.
00:40:41.840 But Joaquin Castro
00:40:43.060 doesn't give a damn
00:40:45.180 about the children
00:40:46.820 being physically assaulted,
00:40:48.860 being sexually assaulted
00:40:50.160 by human traffickers.
00:40:51.760 He doesn't care
00:40:52.680 about the women being raped
00:40:54.800 by human traffickers.
00:40:56.280 He doesn't care
00:40:57.140 about the dead bodies left
00:40:59.260 on the farms
00:41:00.440 and the ranches
00:41:01.300 of Texas farmers and ranchers.
00:41:03.400 He doesn't care
00:41:04.200 about the 100,000 Americans
00:41:06.880 who died last year
00:41:08.940 of fentanyl overdoses
00:41:11.060 from Chinese fentanyl
00:41:12.480 flooding across the border.
00:41:14.680 He doesn't care
00:41:15.160 about any of that.
00:41:16.020 What is his priority?
00:41:17.460 Hey,
00:41:18.120 let's grant amnesty
00:41:19.200 to the people
00:41:19.960 here illegally today.
00:41:22.320 That's today's Democrat party
00:41:24.260 and I got to say
00:41:24.920 Joaquin Castro
00:41:25.860 represents them perfectly.
00:41:28.640 They are radicals
00:41:29.780 who do not care about you,
00:41:32.500 your safety,
00:41:33.800 your family,
00:41:35.040 your liberty,
00:41:36.140 your life.
00:41:37.340 That's what this fight
00:41:38.340 is all about.
00:41:39.720 You know,
00:41:40.060 I got to say,
00:41:41.000 Senator,
00:41:41.280 the other great part
00:41:42.360 about this show today
00:41:43.260 is the fact
00:41:43.820 that we got to have
00:41:45.280 and give some good news
00:41:46.900 and end the show
00:41:48.260 by reminding everybody
00:41:49.640 Nancy Pelosi
00:41:51.140 is no longer
00:41:52.340 the Speaker of the House.
00:41:54.580 That is what
00:41:55.320 this midterm election
00:41:56.260 was all about.
00:41:57.080 Ben,
00:41:57.700 could you repeat that again?
00:41:58.960 Yeah,
00:41:59.160 Nancy Pelosi
00:42:00.420 is no longer
00:42:01.780 the Speaker of the House.
00:42:03.300 All right,
00:42:03.480 one more time.
00:42:04.140 I just need to hear
00:42:05.060 those words.
00:42:06.420 Nancy Pelosi
00:42:07.260 has resigned
00:42:07.840 from leadership,
00:42:08.880 right?
00:42:09.260 She's almost
00:42:11.300 a commoner now.
00:42:12.600 I love this.
00:42:13.120 I don't know
00:42:13.400 how much
00:42:13.740 that's going to affect
00:42:14.420 her insider trading.
00:42:15.180 All right,
00:42:15.440 let me ask you
00:42:16.040 a question,
00:42:16.520 Ben.
00:42:16.760 Yeah.
00:42:17.480 What's the over-under
00:42:18.560 on how long
00:42:19.920 till Nancy Pelosi
00:42:20.960 retires to Florida
00:42:22.480 and is a constituent
00:42:23.980 of Ron DeSantis?
00:42:24.760 Oh,
00:42:24.940 I think it'll be
00:42:25.760 well within,
00:42:27.500 let's go,
00:42:28.780 I say seven months.
00:42:31.380 All right,
00:42:31.820 seven months.
00:42:32.700 Seven months.
00:42:33.260 Okay,
00:42:34.140 listeners,
00:42:34.960 I want you
00:42:35.520 to hold Ben
00:42:36.040 accountable
00:42:36.520 seven months.
00:42:37.940 So we're in November.
00:42:39.520 Run forward
00:42:40.180 seven months from now.
00:42:41.680 Ben,
00:42:41.860 I'm going to trust you
00:42:42.560 to bring this up
00:42:43.260 on the show
00:42:43.740 and we're going to ask,
00:42:44.600 is Nancy Pelosi
00:42:46.100 a Florida voter?
00:42:47.940 I think she'll be
00:42:48.780 bored out of her mind.
00:42:49.960 I think she's going
00:42:50.580 to try to shepherd
00:42:51.480 the Democrat
00:42:52.520 young new leadership
00:42:53.760 through and I think
00:42:54.620 at some point
00:42:55.180 she's going to say,
00:42:55.620 all right,
00:42:55.860 screw it,
00:42:56.120 I'm out of here.
00:42:56.920 I don't think
00:42:57.380 she finishes her.
00:42:58.140 Do you think
00:42:58.480 she'll finish her term?
00:42:59.300 I don't.
00:43:00.060 Absolutely not.
00:43:01.000 Yeah.
00:43:01.900 See,
00:43:02.420 we're in agreement.
00:43:02.860 By the way,
00:43:03.520 on the over-under,
00:43:04.360 I'm taking the under.
00:43:05.640 Really?
00:43:06.120 Okay.
00:43:06.740 I like this.
00:43:07.720 I like this.
00:43:08.420 All right.
00:43:08.760 We got a little wager here.
00:43:10.260 I like this.
00:43:10.700 Diaz,
00:43:11.000 mark that.
00:43:11.600 We're going to save
00:43:12.320 this audio.
00:43:13.460 We'll play it back one day.
00:43:14.720 One of us is going
00:43:15.360 to be right.
00:43:15.840 One of us is going
00:43:16.440 to be wrong
00:43:17.000 and that's going
00:43:18.280 to be really fun.
00:43:19.100 Senator,
00:43:19.520 it's always a pleasure.
00:43:21.100 And by the way,
00:43:21.700 Diaz,
00:43:22.020 if I'm wrong,
00:43:22.740 delete the audio.
00:43:23.520 That's it.
00:43:24.980 I love it.
00:43:25.840 I love it.
00:43:26.460 See,
00:43:26.800 now you know
00:43:27.160 whose show it really is.
00:43:28.540 We'll see you guys
00:43:29.380 back here on Monday morning.
00:43:31.320 We will also have
00:43:32.500 a video podcast
00:43:33.660 that we will put out
00:43:34.480 on Monday as well
00:43:35.220 so you can watch that
00:43:36.100 on social media
00:43:36.660 on YouTube as well.
00:43:38.540 Senator,
00:43:38.820 I know you're traveling
00:43:39.500 the next couple days.
00:43:40.180 Be safe on the road
00:43:41.040 and we'll see everybody
00:43:41.860 back here on Monday morning.
00:43:43.700 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:43:46.360 Guaranteed Human.