Verdict with Ted Cruz - Massive School Choice WIN in Texas & Opportunity for Massive WIN Nationally, plus Stopping a Nuclear Iran

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.700 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.420 Good Monday morning.

00:00:06.620 Nice to have you with us.

00:00:07.580 It's Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:10.600 And Senator, I hope you had a great Mother's Day with your family.

00:00:14.640 We'll start with that as well.

00:00:16.100 Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there listening.

00:00:18.680 And I know you wanted to say something as well.

00:00:20.680 Well, I had a wonderful Mother's Day.

00:00:22.660 We took my mom out.

00:00:23.720 My mom is 90 years old.

00:00:24.980 We took her out for a dinner in town.

00:00:28.580 We took her out along with Heidi and both the girls.

00:00:31.080 And we had a great dinner together as a family.

00:00:34.920 We celebrated moms.

00:00:36.060 My mom is 90 and still going strong.

00:00:39.060 Heidi is a rock. 0.96

00:00:40.720 And I'm just grateful for all the moms in our lives because there ain't nothing better.

00:00:46.460 Amen to that.

00:00:47.380 Amen to that.

00:00:48.220 We've got a big show today, including a big victory in Texas that could have a big impact

00:00:54.960 on the country on the issue of school choice, which is something you've been championing

00:00:58.480 now for years.

00:01:00.140 Well, that's exactly right.

00:01:01.440 We've got three big stories that we're going to break down tonight.

00:01:04.020 Number one, school choice.

00:01:05.220 And school choice, Texas just passed the biggest, the boldest, the most significant

00:01:09.400 school choice program in the entire country.

00:01:12.020 We're going to tell you all about it and what it means for the school children in Texas.

00:01:16.260 We're also going to talk to you about on school choice, we have an historic opportunity right

00:01:21.340 now to win the biggest victory in the country ever on school choice as part of budget reconciliation.

00:01:28.860 I'm going to explain to you how.

00:01:30.640 We're going to talk also about Iran and their ongoing negotiations right now with Iran.

00:01:36.720 There are those who are advocating for another Obama-Iran nuclear deal, which would be disastrous.

00:01:43.460 It would be terrible.

00:01:44.240 I agree with President Trump and the red line that he has drawn, that any agreement with

00:01:49.720 Iran must include total dismantlement of Iran's nuclear capability. 0.73

00:01:57.020 All of that, up next.

00:01:58.660 Yeah, it's a great story, and it's one that's important.

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00:04:07.000 So, Senator, let's start with this big story.

00:04:09.380 It is one that media really hasn't been covering.

00:04:11.580 I think it's because they're terrified that this is going to give parents freedom to give

00:04:15.540 their kids a great education, and there's a bill that passed in Texas.

00:04:19.880 It deals with school choice.

00:04:21.400 It's something that you have been advocating for for such a long time.

00:04:24.500 Now it's becoming a reality.

00:04:25.960 Talk about it.

00:04:27.280 Well, Governor Abbott just signed into law in the state of Texas.

00:04:30.200 The biggest, the broadest, the most significant school choice program in the entire country.

00:04:35.380 This has been the result of decades of battle and hard work, decades that I've been fighting

00:04:40.400 in the field.

00:04:40.960 So I'm going to walk you through, number one, the details of the bill.

00:04:43.740 The details of the bill.

00:04:45.380 It's a billion dollars that the state has allocated to school choice.

00:04:48.900 One billion dollars.

00:04:50.000 That is going in the form of education savings accounts.

00:04:53.240 Education savings accounts that are going to be funded by the state to the tune of just

00:04:58.880 under $11,000 for roughly 90,000 school kids statewide.

00:05:06.240 In addition, kids with disability are eligible to get education savings accounts that can

00:05:12.240 be as high as $30,000.

00:05:14.660 Now these are not accounts that you're saving into.

00:05:16.880 This is the state putting funding, making it available to parents so that they can choose

00:05:22.480 the best school for their kids.

00:05:24.320 It is historic.

00:05:25.380 Many other states have done small little pilot programs.

00:05:29.040 The breadth, the scope of this is massive.

00:05:33.180 And it's worth remembering, Texas comprises 10% of the entire American population.

00:05:40.760 Texas comprises roughly 10% of the school kids in America.

00:05:45.040 So having robust school choice for 10% of the school kids in America is a massive and game-changing

00:05:54.380 victory.

00:05:54.880 And I got to tell you, Ben, it's one that has been hard fought for a long time.

00:06:00.520 You know, if you look at school choice and over the past two decades, the states that have

00:06:06.300 led on it have been states like Florida, Arizona, Ohio, and Texas had been lagging behind.

00:06:14.960 And I got to say, for Texans, it is infuriating not to lead.

00:06:18.400 It is infuriating not to be standing up doing the right thing.

00:06:21.580 And Texas, it was a big battle.

00:06:23.260 And our challenge was not partisan.

00:06:26.760 It wasn't Republican or Democrat.

00:06:28.160 And it wasn't even ideological, conservative versus moderate.

00:06:31.600 It was rather geographic in that Texas has a lot of rural areas.

00:06:37.580 And the challenge you faced is in the Texas State House, there were a number of rural Republicans

00:06:43.660 who were good guys.

00:06:45.160 But the biggest employer in their district is the public school district.

00:06:50.240 And the school superintendents in the rural districts vigorously opposed school choice,

00:06:56.840 most significantly because the urban superintendents and the teachers unions hated school choice.

00:07:03.620 And so what we had in Texas for a long time is a bunch of urban Republicans who would vote

00:07:09.420 to kill choice programs.

00:07:11.140 Now, I'll tell you what changed that.

00:07:12.880 What changed that was a massive political effort and something I started six years ago.

00:07:18.200 Six years ago, I began intervening and making endorsements in primaries all across the state.

00:07:25.080 And I got to tell you, Ben, out of 100 U.S. Senators, to the best of my knowledge, 99 of

00:07:31.860 them don't do that. 0.99

00:07:33.360 They don't.

00:07:33.820 Yeah, because why take the political risk?

00:07:36.360 And it's where you said, this is how we get it changed. 1.00

00:07:39.660 It is, frankly, politically stupid for a U.S. Senator to make endorsements in primary 0.98

00:07:47.860 races in his own state.

00:07:49.120 And that's why none of my colleagues do so.

00:07:50.980 Because when you make an endorsement, the old rule of thumb is you get half their friends

00:07:55.620 and all their enemies.

00:07:57.320 Yep.

00:07:57.660 And so every time you do it, you're losing votes, you're losing support.

00:08:01.620 Well, what I've done for three cycles in a row is I sit down with my team, I have them

00:08:06.180 make an Excel spreadsheet, and I say I want to see every vote that they've cast, every

00:08:10.440 state rep and every state senator on school choice.

00:08:13.160 And my rule is, if you voted in favor of school choice, and you're otherwise relatively

00:08:19.980 conservative, you're very likely to get my support.

00:08:23.800 If you voted against school choice, the chances of my supporting you are zero.

00:08:28.780 And if you have anything resembling a credible primary challenger, I'm going to endorse your

00:08:34.440 primary challenger.

00:08:35.420 And when I do so, I don't do so gently.

00:08:37.040 I come in, and I...

00:08:40.340 Wait, hold on.

00:08:40.920 Are you saying you're not subtle when it comes to you endorsing people?

00:08:43.980 It's shocking.

00:08:44.780 This is so off-brand for you, Senator.

00:08:47.540 Look, I come in, I cut radio, I cut TV, I get kinetic.

00:08:54.040 And my view is, all right, if you're not going to support choice, that's fine, but you're

00:08:58.320 going to find something else to do, because you're not going to be representing the people

00:09:02.600 of Texas, because the people of Texas want and deserve school choice.

00:09:06.320 I think school choice is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

00:09:10.420 And so for three cycles, I've done that, and there were a bunch of Republicans who voted

00:09:15.960 against choice, and you know what?

00:09:17.200 We've beaten almost every one of them.

00:09:19.240 They came in, and we ran primary challengers against them, and we beat them.

00:09:23.040 And so this time, the state senate passed a strong bill.

00:09:26.840 They sent it to the House.

00:09:28.220 And I'll tell you, I went down to the House.

00:09:29.920 I spent an entire day on the floor of the House.

00:09:32.540 This wasn't that long ago, by the way.

00:09:34.500 It was in April.

00:09:35.060 Yeah, you went all in.

00:09:37.680 I spent an entire day on the floor of the House.

00:09:39.920 It is weird for a U.S. senator to be on the floor of the statehouse.

00:09:43.960 That does not happen very often.

00:09:45.580 I sat in the speaker's office, and I was there trying to shore up the votes while they're

00:09:50.360 considered school choice.

00:09:51.460 And for everyone I'm in, I sat down, and there's some great men and women serving in the state

00:09:55.960 house.

00:09:56.420 And for those that are there, I told every one of them, I said, listen, this is the single

00:10:01.060 most important vote you will cast in your time in the legislature.

00:10:05.640 I'm here to tell you, the teachers' unions, they're going to spend millions attacking you

00:10:09.940 when you stand up for the kids of Texas.

00:10:11.840 And I wanted to tell them, I've got your back.

00:10:13.420 I'm going to support you.

00:10:14.320 And in fact, when I went and did that, I spent a quarter million dollars in TV ads, support,

00:10:20.540 actually not TV ads, digital ads, supporting state reps, and in particular freshman state

00:10:26.260 reps who were standing up for school choice, who were demonstrating courage.

00:10:30.320 And I did that to say, look, you've got friendly air cover.

00:10:33.960 You've got support.

00:10:35.020 But at the same time, people understood the flip side.

00:10:39.360 If you vote on the other side, I'm going to do everything I can to retire you and put

00:10:43.920 someone in that position who actually is going to fight to do the right thing for the kids

00:10:48.020 of Texas.

00:10:49.140 So let's talk about the practical aspect of this.

00:10:51.960 What does this mean for a parent moving forward when it comes to their kid and practically apply

00:10:59.580 school choice?

00:11:00.760 Because, look, the Teachers Union Center made this incredibly, I guess the best way to put

00:11:07.460 it is they've complicated it with doom and gloom and extremism instead of simplifying it,

00:11:13.180 which is part of the reason why we've seen some of you worried about school choice.

00:11:16.260 They're like, oh, it seems too complicated.

00:11:17.600 Let's not do it.

00:11:19.160 Well, look, the Teachers Union's scaremonger.

00:11:21.480 But the good news is we now know the truth.

00:11:24.060 So it was literally 30 years ago that I got involved with the school choice movement.

00:11:28.080 I was a young lawyer, and early on in the 1990s, I was the national chairman of the

00:11:34.740 School Choice and Education Reform Committee for the Federalist Society.

00:11:38.660 And I did that coming off of my clerkship with Chief Justice Rehnquist, where Leonard Leo,

00:11:43.500 who was helping run the Federalist Society, asked me, would you lead this because you're

00:11:47.060 passionate about this issue?

00:11:48.600 And I'll tell you what I said, actually, when he did.

00:11:50.700 He said, look, I said I'd love to.

00:11:53.360 But I said, to be honest, I don't have a record on this.

00:11:55.500 I've never done anything on choice.

00:11:56.880 I was a, what, 27-year-old lawyer?

00:11:59.420 Sure.

00:12:00.000 And so I said, I'll do it, but I want to have a co-chair with me.

00:12:04.400 And I asked for the co-chair to be a woman named Nicole Garnett. 1.00

00:12:08.320 Nicole is a good friend of mine.

00:12:10.820 She was a law clerk to Clarence Thomas.

00:12:13.500 She was married to Rick Garnett, who was my co-clerk with Chief Justice Rehnquist.

00:12:18.860 Both Rick and Nicole are professors at Notre Dame.

00:12:21.020 But Nicole, at the time, was a lawyer at the Institute for Justice, and she was litigating

00:12:26.760 school choice cases all over the country.

00:12:28.340 And so she had been representing, defending these programs and winning victories.

00:12:32.940 And I said, look, Nicole's got a record on this. 0.98

00:12:35.100 I've got passion, so I'm happy to do the work.

00:12:37.160 But I didn't want to do it alone.

00:12:39.520 We did it together.

00:12:40.900 I got to tell you, so in the 1990s, when you were debating school choice, like in 1999,

00:12:46.420 all right, I had a very odd speaking invitation.

00:12:49.360 Where do you think I was invited to speak in 1999?

00:12:51.480 I genuinely have no clue at all on this one.

00:12:55.440 I was the keynote speaker, or one of the keynote speakers.

00:12:59.000 If you say the Democratic National Convention, I'm going to laugh out loud.

00:13:02.320 Worse.

00:13:03.040 At the National Convention of the ACLU.

00:13:07.360 No way in hell.

00:13:09.320 And the ACLU, they had a one-on-one debate on school choice between me and Juan Williams.

00:13:16.960 Oh, yeah.

00:13:18.340 And you know Juan, and it was moderated by Barry Lynn, who runs Americans United for Separation

00:13:24.780 of Church and State, who's a big lefty who hates school choice.

00:13:28.200 And I did it in San Diego.

00:13:31.040 There were over 500 hardcore left-wing ACLU activists, maybe the most hostile audience

00:13:37.420 I've ever spoken in front of my life.

00:13:39.180 But I was out there pounding it away.

00:13:42.360 I will tell you, in the 1990s, when you were arguing about school choice, the teachers'

00:13:46.460 unions would say, if kids have a choice, it'll destroy the public schools. 0.99

00:13:52.340 And I've got to say, that's a serious and powerful argument.

00:13:56.180 If that were true, Ben, I would oppose school choice.

00:13:59.800 Sure.

00:14:00.140 Because the vast majority of kids are educated by the public schools, and for the foreseeable

00:14:06.160 future, will continue to be educated by the public schools.

00:14:09.180 Back then, school choice was a theoretical idea.

00:14:12.740 Milton Friedman, another free market economist, had talked about it.

00:14:15.760 But it hadn't been implemented a lot of places.

00:14:18.260 What has happened in the last 30 years is we have seen roughly 30 different school choice

00:14:24.160 programs implemented all over the country, and we now know the facts.

00:14:27.860 Number one, the claim that it destroys the public schools, we know, is objectively false.

00:14:33.100 Because everywhere it's been implemented, that has not happened.

00:14:36.280 What has happened?

00:14:38.300 Consistently, when choice is implemented, you see, for the students who exercise a scholarship,

00:14:45.040 who take another choice and leave off at a failing school to go somewhere else, the results

00:14:50.060 are unequivocal.

00:14:51.460 Their reading scores go up, their math scores go up, their high school graduation rates

00:14:56.160 go up, their college admissions go up.

00:14:58.320 It has a profound effect on the students that accept and use the scholarships or use the education

00:15:06.440 savings accounts to choose a preferred, something they want more than where they were already.

00:15:12.300 But here's the striking thing that is really important.

00:15:15.200 We now know that choice is also good for the public schools.

00:15:20.940 So for the students that never exercise choice, that stay at the same school that had been struggling

00:15:26.820 or failing, when the other students have the ability to exercise choice, we've seen quality go up,

00:15:33.500 that competition is good.

00:15:34.940 It turns out when you have to fight for your customers, for your clients, for your students,

00:15:40.700 or else they leave, you end up providing a better product.

00:15:45.160 We know that consistently across the country, and we're about to see it, I believe, powerfully

00:15:51.180 in Texas in numbers that are frankly just bigger than any other state.

00:15:55.640 So, Senator, the next question I've got to ask is, how do we get this federally?

00:15:59.340 How do we have the ability for so many people to get what we just accomplished in Texas

00:16:05.060 on the federal level?

00:16:06.680 That seems like an uphill battle.

00:16:08.340 It took you a long time to pull this off in Texas, and you got your hands dirty in the process.

00:16:13.740 Well, it is an uphill battle, and it's a battle that I've been fighting for the past 13 years.

00:16:19.060 Since I've been in the Senate, I've been the leading defender, the leading advocate of school choice.

00:16:24.460 The single biggest legislative victory that I've had that I'm most proud of in my entire time in the Senate

00:16:30.460 concerns school choice.

00:16:32.120 Back in 2017, when we were passing the Trump tax cuts, I introduced an amendment that expanded college 529 savings plans

00:16:42.440 to include K-12 education.

00:16:45.720 So, 529 savings plans let parents and grandparents save in a tax-advantaged way for college expenses,

00:16:53.180 and I had an amendment to say this can now apply to K-12, to public schools, private schools, parochial schools, your choice.

00:17:01.100 It ended up passing on the floor of the Senate at 1 in the morning.

00:17:05.040 It was a 50-50 vote.

00:17:06.640 It was tied, and so the vice president came down at 1 in the morning and broke the vote.

00:17:11.080 It remains, to date, the single most far-reaching federal school choice bill that's ever passed.

00:17:16.720 Now, when Trump was president, I then introduced a much broader school choice bill.

00:17:22.780 And it was a school choice bill that I introduced along with President Trump's secretary of education at the Department of Education.

00:17:30.360 And it would create a federal tax credit for contributions given to scholarship-granting organizations in the states.

00:17:39.300 The states would administer them. The states would run them.

00:17:41.860 But you would get a dollar-for-dollar contribution.

00:17:44.300 So if Ben Ferguson gave money to a scholarship-granting organization in Texas,

00:17:49.420 you would get a credit on your federal income tax for the amount of your contribution.

00:17:54.160 And it was structured so it was $10 billion a year, so $100 billion over 10 years.

00:18:00.180 Now, there are no federal strings on the money, other than the only requirement is that the scholarship-granting organizations cannot discriminate against private or parochial schools.

00:18:13.020 They have to let the parents and the kids actually decide.

00:18:16.940 And as long as the parents and kids are choosing, it is up to the states to administer and the parents and kids to administer.

00:18:24.040 So that bill I rolled out at the Department of Education.

00:18:27.580 President Trump, in the State of the Union address, called on Congress to pass it.

00:18:33.400 And we had a problem.

00:18:34.140 The problem is every Democrat in the Senate opposes school choice because the teachers' unions are the single most important donors and the most important foot soldiers for Democrat candidates.

00:18:47.240 And so every one of the Democrats is more afraid of the teachers' union bosses than they are motivated to help the kids who are trapped in failing schools.

00:18:55.840 So we couldn't get it passed.

00:18:57.740 Now, your question, Ben, is how can we get it done at a federal level?

00:19:02.280 Well, you know what we're doing right now?

00:19:04.180 We're doing budget reconciliation.

00:19:06.640 Budget reconciliation means that we can pass a tax bill with only 50 votes in the Senate, with only Republican votes.

00:19:15.440 So I'll tell you, I am making the hard run at my colleagues, that we have the chance right now, as a part of one big, bold, beautiful bill, to pass the biggest federal school choice bill in history.

00:19:29.660 We can get it done right now.

00:19:31.300 The Democrats cannot stop it if Republicans stand together.

00:19:34.460 So I'm urging my colleagues.

00:19:35.980 We had this past week, we had a retreat of all the Senate Republicans, and we're talking about all the different priorities for budget reconciliation that we're trying to pass.

00:19:47.440 And one of the things I stood up and said to my colleagues is, look, this bill is going to be $4 trillion, $4.5 trillion.

00:19:53.780 It's going to be a big bill that impacts a lot of things.

00:19:56.640 A lot of what we're working on, individual tax cuts, corporate tax cuts, small business tax cuts, those are all massively, massively important.

00:20:04.280 But I said, we ought to focus at least a little bit on legacy.

00:20:08.820 We ought to focus on 10, 20, 30, 40 years from now.

00:20:13.700 What in this bill do people remember?

00:20:16.240 What will make a difference 40 years from now that people will say, this changed the country, this changed my family?

00:20:23.720 And the case I made to my colleagues is there's just about nothing we could do that would have a bigger legacy than school choice, $10 billion a year in federal tax credits for contributions to scholarship granting organizations.

00:20:39.040 In the states, you would see $10 billion worth of new scholarships in all 50 states.

00:20:45.060 We can get that done if we simply stand together right now.

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00:21:19.760 I want to talk about what we all saw, some big news that deals with the issue of Iran.

00:21:24.640 You went on Life, Liberty, and Levin, our good friend Mark Levin's show.

00:21:28.500 And we're talking about Iran right now and what they're actively trying to do.

00:21:33.900 Fill us in on that for a second.

00:21:35.660 Well, right now there's ongoing negotiation going on with the nation of Iran. 0.99

00:21:40.580 And the Ayatollah is a theocratic lunatic. 0.99

00:21:46.000 He regularly leads mobs chanting, death to America and death to Israel. 1.00

00:21:52.600 And by the way, if history teaches us anything, it's that if somebody tells you they want to kill you, believe them. 0.78

00:22:00.620 Yeah.

00:22:00.760 And when it comes to Iran, I'll tell you, there are some voices in Washington and the administration that are pushing for another Iran deal.

00:22:10.640 They really want an Iran deal.

00:22:12.500 And basically they want...

00:22:13.920 By the way, why?

00:22:14.320 Why did...

00:22:14.880 I got to ask, because there's some of you listening, they're going to say the same thing I'm saying right now is,

00:22:18.560 why on earth would you want an Iran deal if you know that they cheated on the last deal?

00:22:22.620 So, look, I don't know, I'm not Sigmund Freud, I'm not their psychoanalyst, I just know they're advocating for it.

00:22:28.800 If you look at the Obama-Iran nuclear deal, the elements of it, it lifted international sanctions,

00:22:35.980 it allowed Iran to sell oil on the global market,

00:22:39.920 and it allowed Iran to have its nuclear program continue unmolested.

00:22:44.360 There are voices within the administration, and by the way, I led the charge to pull out of that disastrous deal,

00:22:52.420 and President Trump did exactly that.

00:22:54.480 He did the right thing.

00:22:55.660 It was the single most important decision, national security decision of his first term,

00:23:00.460 to pull out of the disastrous Obama-Iran nuclear deal.

00:23:05.260 And right now there's a battle within the administration,

00:23:08.020 but I agree with the red line that President Trump has drawn.

00:23:11.080 And he has said that any deal must include full dismantlement,

00:23:17.500 dismantling the centrifuges, shutting them down, that anything short of that is unacceptable.

00:23:24.320 When you look at that deal, and I want to play part of what you said on Mark Levin's show,

00:23:31.100 because it is more background just on how crazy the Atilla is in Iran,

00:23:35.620 and how big of a threat it is, and why you shouldn't trust them.

00:23:38.400 Take a listen.

00:23:38.880 It's my understanding that the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate and the House

00:23:43.660 are saying Iran must dismantle its nuclear program.

00:23:49.860 It's not a joke.

00:23:51.400 We know what it means when people talk about a civil or civilian nuclear program.

00:23:55.980 We're not going to be fooled.

00:23:57.400 They must dismantle their program.

00:23:59.700 Is that what you understand?

00:24:01.260 That is exactly right.

00:24:02.840 And I got to say, Mark, there's a real contrast between the strength that President Trump has

00:24:08.200 shown with respect to Iran and the weakness and appeasement that Joe Biden showed for four years.

00:24:13.800 The first term, President Trump took on Iran directly, pulled out of the disastrous Obama-Iran 0.69

00:24:21.120 nuclear deal.

00:24:22.420 He ended the civilian nuclear waivers.

00:24:25.180 He ended the oil waivers.

00:24:26.800 And the result, maximum pressure put the Iranian economy into freefall.

00:24:33.520 Their oil sales fell from a million barrels a day of oil down all the way down to 300,000

00:24:40.340 barrels of oil.

00:24:41.620 When Joe Biden came into office, the Iranian economy was in shambles, and the Ayatollah and

00:24:46.880 the mullahs were teetering and near collapse.

00:24:49.460 But sadly, Biden reversed everything.

00:24:53.020 He did complete appeasement.

00:24:54.600 He stopped enforcing the oil sanctions.

00:24:57.600 And as a result, the Ayatollah's oil sales skyrocketed from 300,000 barrels a day to 2 million

00:25:05.600 barrels a day.

00:25:06.620 That's $100 billion that Joe Biden and the Democrats gave the Ayatollah. 0.97

00:25:11.800 And the Ayatollah is using it to fund the IRGC to attack and kill Americans. 0.92

00:25:16.920 The Ayatollah is using that to fund Hamas and Hezbollah.

00:25:20.940 In a very real sense, Joe Biden and the money he gave the Ayatollah funded October 7th.

00:25:26.940 Now that Donald Trump is back in office, he's drawn a clear red line.

00:25:31.520 Iran must dismantle their nuclear capacity. 0.93

00:25:35.300 They must shut down their centrifuges.

00:25:37.760 It is the only thing that is verifiable, is full dismantlement.

00:25:41.840 And I have every confidence the president is going to hold that line.

00:25:45.260 I do, but I don't have any confidence in the Iranians who lie and cheat and steal and 1.00

00:25:50.740 murder. 0.99

00:25:51.140 Yes.

00:25:51.800 And so the question is, how can we expect a regime that does all those things and is

00:26:00.860 not abided by anything it's agreed to, anything it has promised over the course of the last

00:26:06.080 15 years?

00:26:06.880 So here we are at the 11th hour.

00:26:08.340 Here we are at the 11th hour trying to deal with this.

00:26:12.560 How can we trust them?

00:26:14.420 Or better put, we're not going to trust them.

00:26:16.800 How do we make sure that they do what we tell them they must do?

00:26:21.440 Well, listen, we can't trust them because we know that they lie and they lie over and

00:26:25.540 over and over again.

00:26:26.240 It's worth noting the Ayatollah right now today is actively trying to murder Donald J. 0.96

00:26:32.400 Trump, has hired hit men trying to murder the president of the United States.

00:26:36.640 The Ayatollah is also actively trying to murder the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo,

00:26:41.560 and the former national security advisor, John Bolton.

00:26:44.100 They have hired hit men that are targeting former senior U.S. officials and the sitting

00:26:49.660 president of the United States.

00:26:50.860 These are not people who can be trusted, which is why the objective must be full dismantlement,

00:26:57.720 must be the centrifuges disassembled, destroyed, taken out.

00:27:02.740 And as President Trump said recently, we can do that either nicely or not so nicely.

00:27:09.300 Nicely, if they agree and we go in and dismantle them ourselves or not so nicely, is if Iran refuses 0.97

00:27:16.780 to negotiate, we have the capability to take out these nuclear facilities.

00:27:22.380 And I got to say, Mark, you and I have talked about this.

00:27:25.180 Listen, there are some voices in the Trump administration that are on the isolationist

00:27:30.240 wing of foreign policy that say, let's not worry about Iran.

00:27:34.700 Let's not do anything about Iran.

00:27:38.380 And listen, I am someone who is very reluctant to use military force, but Iran is trying to 0.82

00:27:43.460 build nuclear weapons because Iran wants to be able to threaten to use nuclear weapons,

00:27:48.180 and they might even use them.

00:27:49.660 And I believe a nuclear Iran is an unacceptable threat of seeing an atomic bomb detonated in 0.99

00:27:57.140 the skies of New York or the skies of Los Angeles.

00:28:00.680 And so our commander in chief, President Trump, I don't think he's going to allow that risk.

00:28:06.020 We are going to demand the centrifuges, the nuclear capability be dismantled.

00:28:11.240 And they either do so willingly or they'll be dismantled unwillingly.

00:28:16.400 It doesn't seem to be any gray area here.

00:28:18.900 From you, Levin there, and the president, it seems to be y'all are all in lockstep on the

00:28:25.020 same thing here.

00:28:25.880 You cannot trust Iran at all. 1.00

00:28:28.280 Well, and you asked, why do people oppose this?

00:28:31.660 The rhetoric they use is they say, well, if you're standing up to Iran, you're a warmonger.

00:28:36.960 And let me be clear, as I mentioned to Mark Levin, I have consistently been very reluctant

00:28:44.200 to use military force.

00:28:46.200 You know, you go back to 2016, the presidential race.

00:28:49.060 You had 17 Republicans running for president that year.

00:28:52.820 Set Rand Paul aside because Rand's views are unique in the Senate.

00:28:57.860 Of the remaining 16, there were only two of us on that stage who believed and said the Iraq

00:29:04.680 war was a mistake. 0.79

00:29:06.580 Donald Trump and me, both of us said the Iraq war was absolutely a mistake.

00:29:11.360 I believe it was a mistake because you had a dictator, a cruel dictator, Saddam Hussein,

00:29:17.060 who was killing terrorists.

00:29:18.640 We came in and we toppled that dictator. 0.63

00:29:21.220 And the result was the terrorists took over and they began killing Americans.

00:29:25.020 That did not help America.

00:29:27.080 Toppling a dictator and putting the terrorists in charge was a mistake.

00:29:31.180 By the way, we made the same mistake in Libya where you had Qaddafi, another very cruel 1.00

00:29:36.740 dictator, but he was killing terrorists.

00:29:39.100 We came in and toppled him and the terrorists took over and they began killing Americans.

00:29:43.120 I think that's a bad tradeoff.

00:29:45.180 So when I say that we need to focus on American national security, it doesn't mean we should

00:29:55.960 invade other countries. 0.92

00:29:57.020 It doesn't mean we should send the Marines.

00:29:59.100 It means we should look at serious, real threats to our national security.

00:30:03.580 And I think the single most acute threat we face, the urgent threat we face right now, 0.97

00:30:10.240 is a nuclear Iran because you've got a theocratic lunatic who has said he wants to murder us. 0.98

00:30:18.760 And by the way, we know that he's willing to hire hit men to try to murder the president 0.99

00:30:24.500 already. And if he had nuclear weapons, I think the odds are unacceptably high he would

00:30:28.940 use them. And so in the first term, what I advocated for and what President Trump agreed

00:30:34.080 with was maximum pressure using sanctions, cut cutting off their financial system.

00:30:40.780 Their economy went into free fall because President Trump stood up against the Ayatollah.

00:30:47.280 And it was incredibly effective until Joe Biden undermined it by embracing appeasement.

00:30:52.420 That was a massive mistake. And I hope and believe President Trump is turning that around

00:30:57.680 right now.

00:30:58.840 Yeah, it is really incredible to see him standing up and saying, hey, there are certain things

00:31:03.380 that we're just not going to deal with and certain things that we're not going to negotiate

00:31:07.680 on. And that's exactly what you're hearing from the president now.

00:31:10.640 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

00:31:13.240 So hit that subscriber auto download button wherever you're getting this podcast and make sure that

00:31:19.260 you tell your friends about it, put it up where you are in social media. And then Senator and I will

00:31:24.020 see you back here on Wednesday morning.

00:31:26.980 This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 12, 2025

Massive School Choice WIN in Texas & Opportunity for Massive WIN Nationally, plus Stopping a Nuclear Iran

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