Verdict with Ted Cruz - January 04, 2025


Media Rewriting Biden Legacy, The Pardoning of Federal Death Row Inmates & Democrats Kicked Ol' Joe to the Curb Week In Review


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

163.10298

Word count

6,466

Sentence count

461

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Toxicity

64

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson discuss the major stories of the week in review, including an article written by a reporter for a newspaper that said Joe Biden was an amazing leader. Why on earth would a reporter write that article when the majority of Americans say that his presidency was a disaster? We ll break down the Biden failures.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.460 Welcome.
00:00:06.140 It is Verdict with Ted Cruz and the Week in Review.
00:00:09.340 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:10.500 And these are the major stories that we chatted about this week that you may have missed.
00:00:14.200 First up, I can't believe I'm saying this, but there was an actual article in a major
00:00:19.180 newspaper that said that Joe Biden was an amazing leader.
00:00:23.660 They did incredible things.
00:00:25.680 Why on earth would you be writing that article when the majority of Americans say that his
00:00:29.500 presidency was a disaster?
00:00:30.860 We'll break down the Biden failures for you in a moment.
00:00:34.660 Also, there was a big prediction that Joe Biden was going to pardon or give clemency to people
00:00:41.440 that were hardcore criminals, including those on death row.
00:00:44.660 Well, that is exactly what he did.
00:00:46.940 And could it be because he's about to pardon many others around the Biden crime family?
00:00:52.420 And finally, there is another big question that Democrats are dealing with right now.
00:00:57.860 And that is, should they have kicked Joe Biden to the curb sooner than they did?
00:01:02.920 And would that have changed the outcome of the election?
00:01:05.920 Meaning Donald Trump wouldn't have been elected president.
00:01:09.100 We'll break that down as now they're trying to figure out what they're going to do next.
00:01:13.400 It's the Week in Review and it starts right now.
00:01:16.420 So let's move to the Washington Post.
00:01:19.500 And I'm going to do something unusual on this podcast.
00:01:21.900 So I read this article and my head exploded and I texted you and said, this is the most
00:01:30.480 absurd, self-satirizing article I've ever seen.
00:01:33.840 So I just want to go through it literally line by line.
00:01:36.840 This is a major story in the Washington Post, banner headline on Drudge.
00:01:41.940 And it is entitled, we're just going to go through sentence by sentence.
00:01:46.700 It's entitled, How Biden Leads, Joe Biden's Lonely Battle to Sell His Vision of American
00:01:52.220 Democracy.
00:01:53.500 In his presidency's final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled
00:01:58.300 some decisions differently.
00:02:00.680 And the guy who wrote this is a guy named Tyler Pager.
00:02:03.300 We're going to come back to him later.
00:02:05.000 So let's start.
00:02:06.760 Earlier this year, Representative James E.
00:02:08.720 Clyburn met President Joe Biden at the White House to deliver a stern message.
00:02:12.760 Biden had to find a way to revitalize his flagging campaign.
00:02:16.620 Clyburn, who had been pivotal to Biden's 2020 victory, also made a confession about his
00:02:20.960 own longstanding belief that substance is more important than style and politics.
00:02:25.580 Quote, I've come to the conclusion in recent days that I'm wrong about that.
00:02:28.640 The South Carolina Democrat 84 remembers telling Biden, the new environment that we currently
00:02:33.940 live in, style seems to carry the day more than substance.
00:02:36.900 Your style, he told the president, does not lend itself well to the environment we're currently
00:02:42.720 in.
00:02:44.120 Clyburn's conclusion, which was shared by anxious Democrats in the months before the
00:02:47.920 president ended his reelection bid, undermined Biden's theory of presidential leadership.
00:02:53.780 After Donald Trump's assent, Biden believed that he just needed to show Americans that traditional
00:02:59.980 democracy still worked by listening to experts, working with Republicans, passing popular
00:03:07.080 policies, and voters would rally around him.
00:03:10.100 All right, let's stop there.
00:03:11.980 Okay, so, so far, every word of this article, if this was written by the Biden press office,
00:03:18.380 it would not be any different.
00:03:20.020 And this entire article is hagiography.
00:03:22.560 This entire article is not journalism.
00:03:25.420 It is not only trying to praise breathlessly, as we're going to go through, Joe Biden and
00:03:31.740 cast him as a mighty titan, but it is profoundly dishonest.
00:03:37.880 So it starts with the frame that Biden's great success is on substance, not style.
00:03:43.960 And the obvious implication, of which we're going to get more, is that all Trump has is
00:03:48.040 style.
00:03:48.540 There's no substance.
00:03:49.400 That's the obvious implication.
00:03:50.620 But let's take this last sentence.
00:03:53.180 After Donald Trump's assent, Biden believed he just needed to show Americans that traditional
00:03:58.660 democracy still worked.
00:04:00.160 We're going to get more into democracy in a second.
00:04:02.700 By listening to experts, working with Republicans, and passing popular policies.
00:04:08.540 All right, what experts did he listen to?
00:04:10.880 He did not work with Republicans. 0.99
00:04:12.400 Every damn thing he passed, he rammed through on a vicious party line vote. 0.99
00:04:16.800 Would he use budget reconciliation over and over again with no Republicans and passing popular 0.99
00:04:22.120 policies?
00:04:24.120 Nobody helped Donald Trump get elected more than Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
00:04:28.740 because his policies were so incredibly unpopular.
00:04:31.360 All right, let's keep going.
00:04:35.200 Back to the article.
00:04:36.280 Quote, he succeeded in phase one of his plan.
00:04:39.800 Did he now?
00:04:41.160 Enacting legislation, much of it bipartisan, to reshape the nation's infrastructure, revive
00:04:46.360 the semiconductor industry, and fight climate change.
00:04:50.420 Let's be clear.
00:04:51.120 The climate change, the Inflation Reduction Act, was a straight party line vote, rammed through
00:04:55.320 on reconciliation.
00:04:56.000 But phase two never happened.
00:04:59.760 The truth of Biden's presidency is that he has failed in what, by his own count, his most
00:05:05.920 important mission, making Trump's presidency seem like an aberration. 0.99
00:05:11.220 Quote, he governed through traditional processes and institutions, said Julian E. Zelizer, a moron 0.96
00:05:18.020 presidential historian at Princeton University. 0.99
00:05:20.280 It doesn't say moron, but you're going to see that everything this guy says, and I know 1.00
00:05:24.460 he's sadly a professor at my alma mater, he's a complete moron. 1.00
00:05:28.000 Let's start with the traditional processes and institutions. 1.00
00:05:32.880 There's nothing traditional about weaponizing the federal government to go after your opponents.
00:05:38.280 There's nothing traditional about prosecuting and indicting the former president over and
00:05:43.240 over and over again.
00:05:44.000 There's nothing traditional and using the institutions about opening the border and having an invasion
00:05:51.420 of our country.
00:05:52.100 But here, the good Princeton professor, quote, it didn't change the picture where he started.
00:05:57.640 This anger in the electorate towards the institution, this support for a pretty radical conservative
00:06:03.460 vision that Trump embodied.
00:06:05.680 It didn't do anything to end the very intense polarization that exists in this country.
00:06:11.260 Now, the idea that Trump is a radical conservative is a bizarre idea.
00:06:16.420 Trump ran on securing the border, bringing down inflation, standing with our friends and defeating
00:06:21.060 our enemies that that is that is very hard to characterize as a, quote, radical conservative
00:06:26.340 vision.
00:06:26.800 But, hey, the Princeton professor says it and The Washington Post breathlessly reports it.
00:06:33.020 We're going to go on.
00:06:33.860 But but but give me your thoughts so far.
00:06:35.400 Then we'll go back to the article.
00:06:36.240 I'm not surprised that this is how they want to just rewrite history, part of this and just
00:06:42.740 be be so delusional. 0.54
00:06:44.960 I am a little bit gets worse.
00:06:48.060 I'm a little bit shocked, though, if they like you know how you're supposed to like proofread
00:06:53.560 before you print.
00:06:54.480 But if you're reading what you just wrote that you just read, I would think there would
00:07:00.480 be a moment where you might be like, yeah, I don't know if this needs to see the light
00:07:03.800 of day.
00:07:04.340 Yet here it is.
00:07:05.420 They put it out there.
00:07:07.480 All right.
00:07:07.660 Let's keep going because it gets much, much worse.
00:07:10.480 Previous articles in this series examined the pillars.
00:07:13.900 Oh, they're so strong.
00:07:15.040 The pillars, the pillars of Biden's leadership, how he absorbs information, how he makes decisions,
00:07:21.020 how he communicates with Americans, they showed that Biden, even at the peak of his glorious,
00:07:26.440 magnificent power, doesn't say glorious, magnificent, but it's just implied, struggled
00:07:30.900 mightily to communicate his decisions and vision.
00:07:33.700 This article, based on interviews with more than two dozen people close to Biden, reveals
00:07:38.180 the ways in which his theory of how to succeed in an era of American politics dominated by Trump
00:07:43.260 fell apart in the final phase of his presidency and how he's been publicly and privately
00:07:48.500 rethinking whether he should have handled some decisions differently.
00:07:52.320 Even some of his closest advisors, without faulting Biden, conceded recently that his
00:07:57.000 style of governing did not always mesh with today's politics.
00:08:01.240 Quote, the president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the
00:08:08.320 political cycle is measured in four years.
00:08:11.620 Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security advisor, said with his lips planted firmly on Biden's
00:08:17.500 rear end.
00:08:18.500 That last piece was my comment.
00:08:20.800 Like, I want you to go back and listen to that sentence again.
00:08:24.560 The president has been operating on a time horizon measured in decades, while the political
00:08:31.100 cycle is measured in four years.
00:08:33.840 Now, look, kudos to the Biden White House for just having the chutzpah to say, oh, Biden's
00:08:41.780 presidency would be hysteric.
00:08:43.280 And, you know, you really have to measure decades.
00:08:44.940 Twelve million people invading this country. 0.97
00:08:46.960 Four years is too short to measure it.
00:08:48.760 We're going to screw up this country for decades.
00:08:52.520 You know, undermining our allies, causing two wars, a war in Ukraine and a war in Gaza.
00:08:58.380 Like, you're right.
00:08:59.280 The harm from Biden will last decades.
00:09:04.120 But that's their entire spin.
00:09:05.740 Well, yes, everything Biden did was profoundly unpopular because all of his policies failed.
00:09:12.320 But he's really playing the long game. 0.99
00:09:16.120 You foolish people don't understand this. 1.00
00:09:19.340 This this misery is good for you. 1.00
00:09:21.980 All right.
00:09:22.180 Let's let's keep going.
00:09:23.520 Sullivan added that Biden's accomplishments by their nature will take a long time to bear
00:09:29.940 fruit.
00:09:30.380 And, quote, how to govern at this moment to set the U.S. up for long term success has one
00:09:36.000 answer and how to deal with midterm and presidential elections in the very short term might have a
00:09:40.840 different answer.
00:09:41.460 He said the president went with doing things that really put America in a strong position.
00:09:48.600 Ben, what the hell have they done to put America in a strong position in every part of the world?
00:09:54.540 America is weaker today than when Joe Biden entered the White House.
00:09:59.100 Like, this is absurd.
00:10:02.500 And I got to say the absurd thing.
00:10:04.220 We're going to go back to this in a minute. 0.82
00:10:05.900 Is the Washington Post just publishes this drivel like it's news.
00:10:11.700 There's not a moment of reflection.
00:10:14.720 There's not a moment of facts.
00:10:18.300 There's not a moment of reality.
00:10:20.400 And it's I mean, how do you react to that?
00:10:26.360 Oh, he's playing the long game.
00:10:30.420 Yeah, I think there's two things here.
00:10:33.340 One, there's a part of me that's like, I can't believe it.
00:10:36.720 And then there's another part of me.
00:10:37.800 It's like, good, because if you don't learn from your losses, then you're going to repeat
00:10:43.520 the same mistakes that you just made.
00:10:45.340 And I think the Democratic Party learned nothing from November, nothing from losing the popular
00:10:50.160 vote, nothing from the resurrection of Donald Trump from from 2000 to 2024, nothing from
00:10:56.860 weaponizing the government, nothing from overspending and no accountability.
00:11:00.540 And honestly, nothing.
00:11:01.600 They've learned nothing from having a president that clearly was incapacitated.
00:11:05.480 So part of me is like, good, keep writing these types of articles because it's going to
00:11:09.960 help conservatives like you and I be able to be way more successful and getting this
00:11:15.580 country back on track.
00:11:16.700 Well, Ben, the Post just reported that he absorbed information like, you know, some some
00:11:23.080 sort of Nobel, you know, scientist like like just all right, let's let's go back as his
00:11:29.200 presidency and his 50 year political career wind down far faster than he wanted.
00:11:34.420 Biden has taken to acknowledging some strategic mistakes, both big and small.
00:11:38.340 Many of those missteps resulted from his determination to restore the age old rules of the American 0.99
00:11:43.760 presidency after Trump's term, a determination that many of his supporters in retrospect consider
00:11:49.960 a politically fatal error.
00:11:52.520 All right.
00:11:52.880 So what are the age old rules of the American presidency that he returned to? 0.99
00:11:57.180 Earlier this month in a speech on his economic legacy, Biden admitted he was stupid for not 0.92
00:12:03.660 putting his own name on the pandemic relief checks his administration sent out in 2021. 0.97
00:12:08.960 Yeah, that really was the problem.
00:12:10.220 He just didn't sign the checks.
00:12:12.120 Clearly, Kamala would have won if Biden had just signed those checks that that that was 0.98
00:12:17.020 the pivotal issue. 0.99
00:12:18.240 Damn it. 0.99
00:12:19.200 I didn't see Joe Biden's name on those checks. 1.00
00:12:21.340 So forget it.
00:12:22.980 But hey, Trump, by contrast, made a point of signing his own relief checks in 2020.
00:12:27.260 And Biden suggested that Trump got more credit for the economic recovery because of it.
00:12:31.860 Balderdash.
00:12:32.940 Biden acknowledged that he had, quote, screwed up.
00:12:36.040 It is June 27th debate against Trump, you think, as he struggled to put together sentences 0.99
00:12:41.120 and defend his policies as his rivals held forth with a series of falsehoods, evil liar 1.00
00:12:47.080 who I hate named Donald Trump. 0.99
00:12:48.880 That is not there. 0.97
00:12:50.160 It's just implied and called him a criminal.
00:12:52.740 He does not regret participating in the debate.
00:12:54.720 Just his performance that night.
00:12:56.660 Now, at this point, there's a breakout quote.
00:13:00.600 And you know what the breakout quote is?
00:13:02.700 It's Jake Sullivan saying the president is operating on a time horizon measured in decades
00:13:06.660 while the political cycle is measured in four years.
00:13:09.240 So if you missed the central political spin from the White House, then, well, that's your
00:13:14.920 problem.
00:13:15.780 Let's keep going.
00:13:17.480 He is also amused on changes in the media, arguing that he did not get enough credit for
00:13:22.100 his accomplishments, especially on the economy.
00:13:24.160 But in citing examples like Richard M. Nixon's 1960 debate against John F. Kennedy, Biden has
00:13:29.800 suggested that, like Nixon, he has struggled to adjust to a new media landscape.
00:13:34.280 We pick what news we want to hear.
00:13:35.720 It's a totally different deal, Biden said in a podcast interview this month.
00:13:39.180 We've got to figure out how we deal with this significant technological change.
00:13:43.020 If Nixon was more accustomed to television, he wouldn't have perspired so much.
00:13:47.100 And he would be president when he beat Kennedy.
00:13:49.500 I know that sounds silly, but think of the changes taking place.
00:13:52.560 Where do you go?
00:13:53.220 What is true?
00:13:53.780 We have no evidence anymore.
00:13:55.060 I'm not sure how that gets resolved.
00:13:56.920 The president and his aides have acknowledged that they struggled to communicate.
00:14:01.040 See, that's the whole problem.
00:14:02.280 The record was phenomenal.
00:14:03.420 They just failed to communicate it.
00:14:05.440 Struggled to communicate about the administration's efforts to lift the country out of the pandemic.
00:14:10.720 Frustrated that even as the United States fared better than other countries, Americans
00:14:14.800 did not feel the impact psychologically. 1.00
00:14:17.180 You idiots, you're doing great. 1.00
00:14:18.840 Why are you so dumb that you don't realize it? 1.00
00:14:21.060 And now here's, all right, now remember, so, so far there's two main themes that the post 1.00
00:14:27.760 has laid out.
00:14:29.100 Number one, genius Biden is playing for the history books for the decades rather than the
00:14:34.640 short-term political cycles.
00:14:35.980 So, don't blame him for the disasters of his policies.
00:14:40.180 But number two, that he wanted to restore the norms of the presidency and the norms of democracy.
00:14:46.060 So, this next paragraph is going to blow your mind.
00:14:51.980 In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general.
00:15:00.340 Well, no kidding.
00:15:01.360 He was the most partisan and political attorney general in history and a disgrace to the Department of Justice.
00:15:05.720 But no, no, no, no, no, no.
00:15:07.160 That's not Biden's complaint.
00:15:08.560 Biden, quote, complaining about the Justice Department's slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump
00:15:18.400 and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden's son, Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.
00:15:25.660 So, understand this great titan restoring the norms of the White House.
00:15:31.400 His DOJ is the first Department of Justice to indict and prosecute a former president and a leading candidate for president
00:15:40.080 who later got elected president in the history of our country.
00:15:42.940 It's never been done.
00:15:44.160 Under Biden, they did it twice.
00:15:46.180 They absolutely weaponized the DOJ to go after his opponents over and over and over again.
00:15:51.760 They weaponized the FBI. 0.98
00:15:53.160 And his complaint is, damn it, they didn't do enough. 0.98
00:15:56.220 They should have been more vigorous. 0.98
00:15:57.660 They should have indicted him more.
00:15:59.160 They should have indicted him faster.
00:16:00.440 We should have, we should have attacked him from day one.
00:16:04.220 I mean, it is, and by the way, everything I'm saying, there's not a word of that in this article,
00:16:10.840 that they don't acknowledge no other DOJ has indicted a president.
00:16:15.520 They just report like a blinking doe-eyed four-year-old.
00:16:22.280 Well, his complaint was Biden didn't move fast enough.
00:16:25.360 And the other thing, he was too aggressive in prosecuting Biden's son.
00:16:30.080 Now, mind you, the Biden DOJ went to a court and tried to enter a sweetheart deal that Biden got a slap on the wrist and no jail time.
00:16:39.680 And it was so egregious that the judge threw it out only after public scrutiny, including this podcast,
00:16:46.140 which shined a great deal of light on it.
00:16:48.320 But he still says that's too much to hold Hunter accountable.
00:16:51.960 And by the way, the DOJ also bent over backwards to protect Joe Biden.
00:16:58.180 It, that paragraph may be the most astonishing paragraph of this entire article.
00:17:04.260 You look at this article, and I think there's three different points that I want to dive into with you.
00:17:10.900 One, what was the real purpose of writing it?
00:17:14.880 I'm still trying.
00:17:15.680 I mean, I get the whole rewriting of history, but it's so extreme that I don't even think many on the left could take this seriously.
00:17:22.940 Or am I wrong?
00:17:23.780 So let's start with that.
00:17:24.800 Well, I think they have the audacity to believe that they can, that they are, that the newspaper, the Washington Post is the first draft of history.
00:17:37.840 And as I said, this is not journalism.
00:17:41.080 This is hagiography.
00:17:43.220 The article continues.
00:17:44.480 We've only done about the first third of it.
00:17:46.120 I'm not going to continue reading the rest of it.
00:17:48.340 It goes on to say how Biden modeled himself after FDR.
00:17:53.000 And I am just going to skip to the end because the end is every bit as absurd as the earlier parts we read.
00:17:58.720 So here's the end of the article.
00:18:00.740 To show that he respects the peaceful transfer of power, Biden is welcoming Trump, who openly challenged that transition.
00:18:10.120 Biden has repeatedly directed his aides to do all they can to help Trump assume the presidency.
00:18:15.800 After years of calling Trump unfit for high office.
00:18:20.300 Now, mind you, every day in the White House, Biden is doing everything he can to frustrate Trump coming in.
00:18:27.220 So what is he doing?
00:18:28.620 Number one, he pardoned Hunter Biden, which we predicted on this podcast, because he does not want any accountability for the rampant lawlessness of his son and the corruption of selling access to himself, Joe Biden.
00:18:41.240 Number two, he pardoned every single federal death row inmate, except for the three most notorious.
00:18:50.520 So of the 40, he pardoned 37 of them.
00:18:52.600 Again, we predicted that it was absolutely brazen.
00:18:56.640 Why?
00:18:57.000 Because he knew Trump was going to actually carry out the law.
00:18:59.580 And so he's trying to frustrate that.
00:19:01.080 Number three, he's selling off the border wall for five dollars a parcel because he doesn't want Trump to build the wall.
00:19:08.160 Number four, he's granting, considering granting wholesale pardons.
00:19:13.440 He is actively trying to do, by the way, number five, Trump has said he wants federal workers to go back to work.
00:19:19.560 So Biden is signing contracts, collective bargaining contracts to make sure the federal workers can stay home because he wants to tie up the next administration on litigation.
00:19:29.540 So but here, here's what the Post said.
00:19:33.960 Biden has repeatedly directed his aides to do all they can to help Trump assume the presidency. 0.99
00:19:40.260 Like what utter and complete garbage? 0.99
00:19:42.700 And let me let me say something. 0.99
00:19:43.780 Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. 1.00
00:19:46.520 Jeff Bezos should be ashamed of this garbage. 0.99
00:19:49.760 If Jeff Bezos cared at all about the integrity of The Washington Post, this guy, Tyler Patriot, I have no idea who this numbskull is. 1.00
00:19:59.600 He should be fired.
00:20:01.020 He is not a journalist. 1.00
00:20:02.180 Anyone who writes this garbage that contains no facts, it contains no no counterbalancing, countervailing side. 0.97
00:20:11.400 It is simply if Madison Avenue were hired to come in and let's rewrite the Biden presidency to be exactly what we wanted it. 0.99
00:20:22.640 They couldn't write it more ridiculous than this. 0.89
00:20:25.360 And by the way, the editor who signed off on this should be fired as well. 0.94
00:20:29.540 This is you want to know why nobody trusts the media. 0.82
00:20:32.880 It's because they publish garbage like this without even a tiny nod to facts or the simple reality that we just saw a overwhelming election where Trump won the popular vote of the seven battleground states. 0.95
00:20:53.900 He won all seven. 0.99
00:20:55.440 Like someone at The Post should say, gosh, maybe these incredibly popular policies that were so good for America, maybe people really didn't like it.
00:21:06.500 Maybe waging a war on oil and gas and driving up energy prices was a really bad idea and hurt a lot of Americans.
00:21:12.960 Maybe undermining our allies, maybe giving Vladimir Putin a gift of waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and causing the biggest war in Europe since World War II,
00:21:23.660 maybe that wasn't a great idea, maybe sending $100 billion to Iran, who sends it to Hamas and Hezbollah, who uses it to fund a war on Israel, the worst war in the Middle East in 50 years.
00:21:33.500 Maybe that wasn't a good idea.
00:21:35.220 Maybe turning a blind eye and refusing to prosecute anti-Semitic terrorists all across or their protesters.
00:21:41.560 Terrorists is too strong, but anti-Semitic protesters who threaten violence.
00:21:45.680 Maybe that is a profoundly bad idea.
00:21:48.240 Maybe watching the integrity, half of America believes the FBI and the Department of Justice are completely unprincipled because, well, they've been completely unprincipled.
00:22:00.080 None of that.
00:22:02.000 There isn't even the tiniest acknowledgement of facts.
00:22:07.160 This is the Washington Post behaving in a way that I think everyone connected with this article ought to be thoroughly, thoroughly embarrassed.
00:22:16.500 When your principal points are, we're aiming for 50 years, not four, so as bad as our policies are, in 50 years we'll claim they were great.
00:22:27.460 And Merrick Garland's problem was he wasn't political enough and he should have indicted Trump even more.
00:22:34.460 And he should have covered up Biden's wrongdoings even more. 0.99
00:22:38.100 And you don't acknowledge any, like, this is a load of crap. 0.98
00:22:45.300 That ain't journalism. 0.94
00:22:47.060 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:22:53.540 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them. 0.98
00:23:00.500 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:23:04.220 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:23:05.400 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:23:06.640 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:23:10.400 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:23:16.140 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:23:19.120 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:23:23.540 Now on to story number two.
00:23:27.700 Number five is another big one here, and that is the prediction that Joe Biden would pardon death row inmates.
00:23:37.720 You said that it was going to happen, and it did.
00:23:41.000 Plus the even more, I would say, disgusting deal that was given out to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, 0.94
00:23:51.260 to spare his life, the mastermind of 9-11, and a man that was also, before even 9-11,
00:23:58.420 involved in many other terrorist attacks that killed women and children and the elderly,
00:24:03.580 innocent bystanders that he did around the world.
00:24:05.840 Well, and this is a prediction that we made on August 18th, 2023.
00:24:13.420 Give a listen to what we said back in August of 23.
00:24:17.060 I'm going to make a prediction as well, which is that these are not the only mass murderers
00:24:24.740 that I think this administration is going to refuse to follow federal law and impose the death pen.
00:24:30.740 And I'm going to make a prediction right now, which is Joe Biden, before he leaves the White House,
00:24:36.320 will commute the sentence of every federal prisoner on death row,
00:24:42.320 that he will do it for every one of them. 0.52
00:24:44.140 And that includes, it includes the white supremacist and Nazi who murdered nine African Americans 0.95
00:24:52.700 at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in a horrific hate crime. 0.95
00:24:58.820 He's on federal death row.
00:25:00.480 It includes the Boston bomber who murdered innocent people by exploding a bomb at the Boston Marathon.
00:25:07.840 One of the two brothers is still alive.
00:25:09.960 He's on death row.
00:25:11.000 And my prediction right now is Joe Biden intends to spare every one of these mass murderers, 1.00
00:25:20.180 every one of them, many of them, are racist, bigoted, homicidal lunatics. 0.53
00:25:26.340 And I think we're going to see him commute all of their sentences before he leaves the White House. 0.98
00:25:32.000 Well, if you won't take out the mastermind of 9-11 and you won't give him the death penalty,
00:25:38.140 is there anyone that you'll give it to?
00:25:40.100 I mean, it doesn't get any worse than this.
00:25:44.440 It doesn't.
00:25:45.520 And yet that's exactly what he's done.
00:25:47.680 Well, so my prediction, again, in August of 23, is that he would remove the death penalty,
00:25:53.800 that he would commute the death penalty for the federal death row prisoners.
00:25:57.080 That has come to pass.
00:25:58.560 Now, to be clear, this prediction proves slightly off.
00:26:02.220 I predicted that he would commute the sentence of every single federal death row prisoner.
00:26:06.800 He instead commuted the sentence of 37 out of the 40 federal death row inmates.
00:26:14.440 And so there were three he did not.
00:26:16.440 And interestingly enough, the three he did not are the three that I identified in October,
00:26:22.440 or rather in August of 2023.
00:26:24.300 So the three he did not were the murderer at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh,
00:26:30.400 the murderer at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and the Boston Marathon bomber.
00:26:37.220 And those three are the only three he did not.
00:26:39.280 Now, I identified those three because they're the most horribly egregious.
00:26:43.280 They're the most famous and infamous. 0.97
00:26:45.760 They are two of the three, at least, are vicious, unrepentant racists.
00:26:52.640 And so I have to say, my prediction, it was not 100 percent right.
00:26:55.780 It was 92.5 percent right, because instead of commuting 40 death sentences,
00:27:01.860 Biden commuted 37 out of 40, and he left the three most egregious and famous ones off the table.
00:27:08.060 Why?
00:27:08.360 Because they knew that the press was so utterly corrupt that without those three,
00:27:14.200 that they would get almost no criticism for it, that you would just go under the carpet,
00:27:20.580 not really be seen.
00:27:21.940 And I have to say, I underestimated the incredible cynicism.
00:27:27.360 And I got to say, nonetheless, that that is a profound disrespect for the rule of law. 0.68
00:27:35.200 Among those that Biden did commute the sentences was a Nazi, an Aryan brotherhood racist.
00:27:44.260 You know, Joe Biden stepped forward and said, hey, we're the Democrat Party.
00:27:47.320 We're here. 0.65
00:27:47.720 We're here for Nazis and Klansmen. 0.99
00:27:51.140 I mean, it but. 0.60
00:27:53.940 90, 92.5 percent prediction, correct.
00:27:57.260 And sadly, another element of this prediction just just became confirmed moments ago.
00:28:04.880 So this episode, we were talking about the plans to spare the life of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,
00:28:12.080 the mastermind of 9-11.
00:28:14.480 And this podcast put enormous public pressure on the White House.
00:28:19.080 The White House, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about it, and the heat became so much that they
00:28:23.560 backed off of it.
00:28:25.240 Well, sadly, the news just broke that they're going back to trying to spare Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
00:28:31.000 They're trying to do it literally on the way out the door.
00:28:34.500 And the contempt that Joe Biden, this entire White House, has for the voters.
00:28:39.260 They are trying to break everything on the way out the door.
00:28:42.200 They're trying to frustrate Donald Trump every way they can.
00:28:45.360 They are such vicious partisans that there is no respect for the Constitution, for the rule of law,
00:28:53.840 no respect for the voters.
00:28:54.820 They don't care what the voters said in November.
00:28:57.900 They are trying to literally break everything on the way out the door.
00:29:02.480 And I got to say, it is grotesque.
00:29:05.640 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic,
00:29:09.740 you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:29:14.960 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:29:18.940 Let's move on to another prediction.
00:29:22.460 This may be one of my favorite predictions that we've ever made here on this show,
00:29:27.400 because when we said it, we got a lot of pushback.
00:29:31.340 And there were a lot of people that said what you were saying was just absurd.
00:29:36.780 We had our tinfoil hats on again.
00:29:39.000 I mean, there were people that were angry over this.
00:29:41.380 And that was the big prediction that you made that Joe Biden would not be the 2024 Democratic nominee.
00:29:52.120 Well, that's right.
00:29:53.240 And I made two related predictions.
00:29:55.180 Number one, early on, I said I believe Joe Biden would not be the Democrat nominee.
00:30:01.180 He would not be on the ballot in 2024.
00:30:03.120 I also predicted, I said, the only people that were when people were later talking about replacing him with Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer or some other people,
00:30:12.780 I said, no, that will never happen.
00:30:15.320 The Democrat Party is a bean counting party.
00:30:19.700 Next in line is Kamala Harris. 0.79
00:30:22.420 And the Democrat Party cannot, cannot, cannot push her aside, cannot push an African-American woman aside for a white guy like Gavin Newsom.
00:30:31.100 Their, their, their party would spontaneously combust if they tried to do that.
00:30:34.940 So I said, the only people who could replace Joe Biden are Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama.
00:30:42.880 And I did lay out that I thought Michelle Obama, if I were a Democrat, I would much prefer Michelle Obama to Kamala Harris because Kamala Harris, as the whole world has seen, is a lousy candidate.
00:30:52.480 So if you're a Democrat who wants to win and you're stuck with Kamala Harris, there's only one human being who can push Kamala, Kamala Harris aside.
00:31:01.820 That is Michelle Obama.
00:31:03.180 Now, what I think happened, I think they tried with Michelle.
00:31:06.500 I think Michelle said no.
00:31:07.700 And so prediction number one, that Joe Biden would not be the nominee, that came 100 percent correct.
00:31:14.000 Prediction number two, that he would be replaced either by Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama.
00:31:18.020 That came, came true as well, although I did think Michelle Obama had a very real possibility.
00:31:24.220 So let's listen.
00:31:26.140 This, this first excerpt is from September 18th, 2023.
00:31:30.720 So more than a year, a year and three months ago where I laid out, laid out this possibility and, and, and give a listen.
00:31:39.600 So here's the scenario that I think is perhaps most likely and most dangerous.
00:31:46.760 In August of 2024, the Democrat kingmakers jettison Joe Biden and parachute in Michelle Obama.
00:31:56.440 And I want you to pause and reflect on this.
00:31:58.440 Oh, I'm pausing and I'm reflecting as we said, and so is everybody else listening right now.
00:32:02.660 I view this as a very serious danger.
00:32:06.800 I'm smiling right now because it terrifies me and I also could totally see this happening.
00:32:11.340 So Michelle Obama, number one, you don't infuriate African-American women, which is a critical part of the constituency that Democrats are relying on to win. 1.00
00:32:20.720 But number two, you avoid the problem.
00:32:23.420 If you pick from any of the four, the other three are pissed because they're all to some extent peers.
00:32:30.120 They're rivals.
00:32:30.840 They're all jabbing knives at each other.
00:32:32.500 Michelle Obama, because she was first lady, has the ability to kind of parachute in above all four and say, hey, we're not picking among any of you. 0.99
00:32:43.540 You guys can all fight it out next time.
00:32:45.720 You're all going to be on the same level.
00:32:47.740 We're coming.
00:32:48.860 This is the Obamas saving the day.
00:32:50.820 And I think in terms of a solution that unifies Democrats, there ain't nothing like that.
00:33:00.280 I also think Michelle is not all that eager to run for president. 0.99
00:33:05.140 But to parachute in in August of 24, a couple of months before the presidency and suddenly wake up and be president.
00:33:11.900 Not a bad, not a bad gig.
00:33:13.280 It's not a bad gig at all.
00:33:14.440 Now, would she do it?
00:33:15.700 I don't know.
00:33:17.240 I've met Michelle, but I don't know her personally in any meaningful way.
00:33:22.000 I don't know if she would do it.
00:33:23.780 I do think Barack Obama is already running the Biden administration.
00:33:29.120 I think he is already the puppet master behind this Biden White House.
00:33:33.260 I don't think Joe Biden is the decision maker.
00:33:35.300 And so when I see the media turning on Joe Biden right now, I think the odds of Michelle Obama parachuting in in August of 2024 have risen dramatically.
00:33:49.840 And that ought to scare the hell out of anyone who who is unhappy about the direction this country is going and doesn't want us to go even crazier in an even worse direction.
00:34:01.140 In an even worse direction.
00:34:02.280 Well, and there you heard in September of 2023, making the prediction that Joe Biden would be jettisoned.
00:34:08.740 And by the way, at the time that happened, very few people were making that prediction.
00:34:12.720 When we put that podcast out, it drove a lot of news.
00:34:16.120 There were headlines.
00:34:16.940 There were people that were were shocked when when when I laid out that that that Biden was not capable, that that his mental capacity had diminished, that he was not going to be the nominee, that the Democrats realized it, that they were going to jettison him.
00:34:30.880 That the media ridiculed it.
00:34:33.920 But you go forward to February of 2024.
00:34:37.120 I went on Maria Bartiromo.
00:34:38.600 I said, I think Obama is driving the train, which is which is also what I said back in September of 2023.
00:34:43.280 John Harwood, who, you know, was the former journalist for The Wall Street Journal and and and for NBC and who's a hard leftist, a vicious leftist. 0.98
00:34:54.580 Um, he retweeted my comments on Maria Bartiromo and his his his entire commentary was, quote, impossibly stupid conversation. 0.99
00:35:05.240 So so that was his learned journalistic view is that it was impossibly stupid to say that. 0.97
00:35:13.120 I will tell you, just just in November of this year, I retweeted Harwood shot a shot at me and I just said, want to know why nobody trusts the media? 0.99
00:35:24.760 Just nine months ago, a fake, quote, journalist claimed it was, quote, impossibly stupid to observe that Joe Biden was not mentally competent to be president. 0.94
00:35:35.660 Now, everybody admits it. 0.97
00:35:40.340 What say you, John J. Harwood?
00:35:43.820 Of course, Harwood didn't respond at all.
00:35:47.280 He ignored it.
00:35:48.000 All right, let's go forward, though.
00:35:50.440 Not only did we lay it out in September of 2023, but then fast forward to the debate, the debate between Joe Biden and and Donald Donald Trump.
00:36:01.140 That was on June 28th, 2024.
00:36:03.240 You and I recorded a verdict podcast immediately after the debate.
00:36:08.240 We went live, recorded it that night and give a listen to what the verdict podcast said the night of the debate.
00:36:16.680 Senator Cruz, I didn't think it could actually be this bad.
00:36:21.580 It was worse than even I think either of us could have imagined.
00:36:25.280 And now the Democratic Party is screaming, replace the president.
00:36:29.780 Well, you and I are sitting here.
00:36:31.720 It is 1017 p.m. Texas time.
00:36:34.060 It is 1117 p.m. East Coast time, the night of the debate.
00:36:37.640 The debate just ended.
00:36:39.160 And I have to say we have just witnessed what I believe is the most consequential presidential debate in U.S. history.
00:36:45.820 Sometimes debates change things.
00:36:48.100 Sometimes they don't.
00:36:48.980 I believe tonight's debate changed things fundamentally, and I believe the odds have now skyrocketed.
00:36:56.300 I believe the odds are north of 80 percent that the Democrat Party will remove Joe Biden from the ticket and replace him.
00:37:03.980 And I believe they are likely to replace Joe Biden with Michelle Obama because Biden did so disastrously badly tonight that Democrats across the country are in utter free fall and complete panic.
00:37:16.860 We're going to break all that down tonight.
00:37:18.920 Yeah.
00:37:19.140 And by the way, this is a prediction that you made on this show back in September of 2023 that the Democratic kingmakers could bring in Michelle Obama.
00:37:30.480 We'll break all that down.
00:37:32.640 Senator, yet another prediction there.
00:37:34.760 Again, you go back and look at the night you made it right at that debate.
00:37:38.200 And you said there's no way he's going to be on the ticket.
00:37:40.780 And it was absolutely correct.
00:37:42.440 Well, to be fair, what I said was the odds were north of 80 percent that he would be pulled off the ticket.
00:37:49.580 That prediction that Joe Biden would be removed from the ticket, which, by the way, is is unprecedented and was almost universally ridiculed in the media.
00:37:58.600 That prediction came 100 percent true.
00:38:01.040 I also articulated there were only two people who could replace him, Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama.
00:38:06.200 I believe Michelle Obama was more likely.
00:38:08.400 The Michelle Obama thing did not come to pass, but the Kamala Harris thing did. 0.57
00:38:14.060 And in fact, I predicted that the Democrat kingmakers would jettison Biden in August of 2024.
00:38:22.180 They, in fact, did so on July 21st of 2024.
00:38:26.580 So I was 10 days off in terms of predicting it.
00:38:30.040 And by the way, to be clear, I predicted that way back in September of 2023.
00:38:33.600 So so over a year earlier, I predicted within 10 days when they would throw Biden off the ballot.
00:38:41.020 And and I'm going to make actually a brand new prediction here.
00:38:45.300 I'm going to predict that in the next year or two, we're going to get confirmation that there was serious outreach to Michelle Obama to see if she was willing to replace Joe Biden on the ballot.
00:38:58.800 And that Michelle Obama said no, I don't know that.
00:39:02.760 But my instinct, my judgment tells me that happened.
00:39:06.340 And we'll see in the next year or two if that gets confirmed.
00:39:09.880 We'll have a subsequent podcast.
00:39:11.500 If that gets confirmed publicly, we'll go back and revisit it.
00:39:14.680 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:39:20.700 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:39:24.360 You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:39:27.620 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:39:31.240 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
00:39:35.280 This is an iHeart podcast.
00:39:37.900 Guaranteed human.