Verdict with Ted Cruz - Mexico & Canada CAVE, Trump Stands up to Iran & DOGE Halts Shocking Government Waste

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.060 Well, welcome.

00:00:06.140 It is The Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:09.300 And Senator, I got to say you were right,

00:00:11.780 but you were kind of like a really long, you know,

00:00:15.420 big cast that you said of Annette over the time frame.

00:00:19.660 You said that Canada and Mexico would cave in 36 days

00:00:25.460 and it was only 36 hours.

00:00:27.780 Like, I need you to narrow that window down next time.

00:00:30.940 Well, it was a stunning victory, a victory for the United States, 0.63

00:00:34.000 a victory for President Trump.

00:00:35.360 We predicted on Monday's podcast that the tariffs that had been announced

00:00:39.300 against Mexico and against Canada, that they would be lifted.

00:00:42.080 And we predicted the reason they would be lifted is that both Mexico and Canada

00:00:45.440 would cave to President Trump's demands and would lean in vigorously

00:00:50.460 to help us secure our borders.

00:00:52.500 You're right.

00:00:53.320 We got the time frame wrong.

00:00:54.480 I said that within 36 days, the tariffs would be lifted.

00:00:58.200 It was, as you noted, 36 hours.

00:01:00.320 They immediately said, no, we can't take these tariffs.

00:01:04.160 We'll do whatever you want to secure the border.

00:01:06.680 It is a huge victory for keeping America safe.

00:01:10.020 Secondly, this week, we had Prime Minister Netanyahu from Israel

00:01:13.160 in the United States meeting with President Trump.

00:01:16.700 President Trump directly made major news on multiple fronts,

00:01:20.300 including announcing that the United States is withdrawing

00:01:23.800 from the UN Human Rights Council, is cutting off funding for UNRWA.

00:01:28.640 And President Trump addressed the threats of Iran to try to assassinate him.

00:01:34.800 It was powerful, and it demonstrated real strength.

00:01:39.220 And finally, Doge, Elon Musk and Doge.

00:01:42.620 I got to say, I'm excited about Doge.

00:01:44.400 I'm excited about what they're doing.

00:01:45.760 They're already highlighting and going after incredible waste,

00:01:49.920 incredible abuse throughout our government system.

00:01:53.480 And I got to say, the Democrats are lighting their hair on fire.

00:01:57.220 They're running around in absolute terror.

00:01:59.840 We're going to break that all down for you.

00:02:01.780 I tell you, the pace that they are getting things done is one that is amazing.

00:02:08.160 It's why we love doing this show.

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00:02:33.680 Let me take a moment and tell you about what's happening in Israel.

00:02:36.920 And after more than a year of war, terror, and pain in Israel,

00:02:40.300 there is still a great demand for basic humanitarian aid.

00:02:44.140 The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has supported

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00:02:50.080 still facing the lingering horrors of war

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00:02:57.560 Your gift today will provide critically needed aid

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00:03:05.620 Your generous donation will help deliver help to those in need,

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00:03:58.320 So Senator, we talked about this and you said it spot on.

00:04:02.780 Donald Trump knew what he was doing with the tariffs.

00:04:05.940 He knew not a 5% or 10% or 12% tariff was probably not going to get it done.

00:04:11.320 He needed to go heavy-handed.

00:04:12.440 He went 25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada, and he didn't flinch.

00:04:17.840 He signed the executive order and said,

00:04:19.600 you know, your move, Canada, your move, Mexico.

00:04:22.300 And both countries, not only did they flinch,

00:04:25.100 but they said, let us help you secure the border

00:04:27.260 and stop the flow of fentanyl at the same time.

00:04:29.900 Well, and one of the things to understand,

00:04:32.120 we talked about this at length in Monday's podcast.

00:04:35.180 I think there's a real difference between the tariffs

00:04:37.620 President Trump announced on Mexico and Canada

00:04:40.080 and the tariffs he announced on China.

00:04:43.180 The tariffs on Mexico and Canada,

00:04:45.440 President Trump uses tariffs as leverage

00:04:48.640 to get concessions on other issues that matter to America.

00:04:52.440 And I think with Mexico and Canada, that's what he was doing.

00:04:55.680 Separately, President Trump also believes in tariffs.

00:04:58.200 He believes in them as a source of revenue

00:05:00.500 for the federal government,

00:05:01.440 and he believes in them in terms of supporting

00:05:04.820 U.S. manufacturing and production.

00:05:06.620 And what we said on Monday's podcast is the Chinese tariffs,

00:05:11.760 the 10% tariffs, I believe will continue the entire Trump presidency.

00:05:15.820 They may even go higher.

00:05:17.460 That's an additional 10% on Chinese goods

00:05:19.840 above and beyond the existing tariffs.

00:05:22.480 That I expect to be longstanding Trump policy.

00:05:27.080 The Mexican and Canadian tariffs, and it was 25% on all Mexican goods,

00:05:31.480 25% on all Canadian goods, except for energy exports.

00:05:35.480 And energy exports from Canada, it was just 10%.

00:05:38.400 That was designed, as I said on Monday,

00:05:42.000 to bring Canada and Mexico to the bargaining table

00:05:46.940 and to force them to make real concessions.

00:05:50.600 And what I predicted is they would do that,

00:05:52.640 and in particular, that Mexico would deploy thousands of troops

00:05:56.600 to the border to help us secure the border.

00:05:58.340 Well, within hours, on Monday, President Claudia Scheinbaum,

00:06:03.000 the president of Mexico, announced that she'd struck a deal with Trump

00:06:06.160 to pause the tariffs only for a month.

00:06:09.000 So he hasn't eliminated them from a possibility,

00:06:11.560 but he's paused them for a month in exchange for her promise

00:06:14.940 to, number one, deploy 10,000 Mexican troops to secure the border.

00:06:21.020 And number two, to tighten cooperation on drugs and weaponry trafficking.

00:06:24.880 And number three, to further negotiations on border security and trade.

00:06:28.620 And so that was the concession that Mexico made.

00:06:31.960 Canada made similar concessions.

00:06:34.040 Canada said, likewise, that they were going to lean in

00:06:36.640 and assist on stopping illegal immigration across our northern border.

00:06:41.820 They were going to lean in and join us in fighting against fentanyl trafficking.

00:06:47.580 And Canada did the same thing.

00:06:49.600 Canada put out an announcement that they were implementing

00:06:51.660 a $1.3 billion border plan with new choppers, technology personnel.

00:06:58.440 And they said that they're also deploying 10,000 frontline personnel

00:07:05.500 working on protecting the border.

00:07:08.300 And beyond that, Canada's prime minister said that he's going to appoint

00:07:12.540 a fentanyl czar to lead the fight against fentanyl.

00:07:18.060 And Canada also designated the Mexican drug cartels as terrorists.

00:07:22.040 And a Canada-U.S. joint strike force was launched to fight organized crime and fentanyl and money laundering.

00:07:31.200 What happened with both Mexico and Canada is exactly what the president anticipated.

00:07:37.460 Now, to be clear, the president delayed these tariffs only for a month.

00:07:41.980 I think that is very much embodying Reagan's old adage of trust but verify.

00:07:46.160 Okay, they've committed to lean in and help.

00:07:48.780 Now they need to do it.

00:07:49.700 If they don't want these tariffs to go into effect.

00:07:52.300 And look, the tariffs, if they went into effect, they would hurt U.S. consumers,

00:07:57.160 but they'd hurt Canada and Mexico much more.

00:08:00.000 Because their trade with us is a much, much bigger percentage of their economy

00:08:04.400 than it is the other way around.

00:08:06.400 And that's why Trump's threat produced such rapid action.

00:08:10.280 You talk about a trend, and in government, we see a lot of what I refer to as kind of BS,

00:08:17.560 fluff, press releases of bipartisan this, or we're going to get this done.

00:08:22.380 And we see a lot of that happen, certainly for the last four years in the Biden-Harris administration,

00:08:26.580 where you name things like, you know, that you're going to do and fix,

00:08:30.440 and everything's going to be amazing, and nothing comes of it.

00:08:32.820 But these announcements that are happening, I mean, you want to talk about significant,

00:08:40.020 real changes happening with these countries and what we're doing.

00:08:44.500 Just looking at the aspect of, hey, we're going to help you stop fentanyl coming into your country,

00:08:50.420 and we're going to work with you, and we're going to do all of these things,

00:08:53.660 and we're going to put money and resources.

00:08:56.040 This is a significant win for keeping people safe in this country from the drugs as well.

00:09:01.220 It is, and, you know, today in the Senate Judiciary Committee, we had a hearing on the fentanyl crisis,

00:09:08.300 and over 100,000 Americans died last year of drug overdoses.

00:09:13.280 It is an enormous crisis, and we've got to stop it.

00:09:17.140 The vast majority of it is coming across our southern border.

00:09:20.380 It's coming from China.

00:09:21.540 It's coming from Mexican drug cartels.

00:09:23.680 A significant part of it is coming from Canada as well.

00:09:26.300 And so I think what the president is doing is he's acting on the mandate from the voters.

00:09:32.440 The voters want a secure border, and he's acting on it.

00:09:34.980 And I've got to say, a lot of the pundits, they got very upset at these threatened tariffs.

00:09:41.380 I'll note this is exactly the strategy President Trump employed in his first term.

00:09:45.860 In his first term, when he threatened 25% tariffs against Mexico,

00:09:49.800 I expressed real concerns that if he implemented those tariffs, it would hurt Texas and hurt America, and it would.

00:09:56.520 But what we saw is that Mexico blinked, that in the face of the threat, it proved to be leveraged.

00:10:03.380 So this time around, I was not dismayed by the threat because we'd seen that it produced success,

00:10:08.860 and it produced success again, although this time it produced success even faster than you and I had predicted.

00:10:15.260 One other question on this, and that is moving forward, what message does this send to other countries that we may be going into negotiations with?

00:10:26.080 Things are changing quickly.

00:10:28.020 This isn't just a success on the standpoint of our northern-southern border.

00:10:33.240 This is going to have huge ramifications for other countries that think they can mess with us.

00:10:38.680 Yeah, look, there is a credibility of deterrence.

00:10:41.700 One of the real differences, when Joe Biden was president, our enemies were not afraid of him.

00:10:47.220 They didn't fear him.

00:10:48.140 Our allies didn't trust him.

00:10:49.740 Nobody thought he was a credible threat.

00:10:52.180 And that's one of the reasons why our enemies walked all over us, all over the country,

00:10:56.040 that when you have weakness in the commander-in-chief, it makes America at much greater peril.

00:11:01.880 With Donald Trump, our enemies are terrified of him.

00:11:04.540 And even our friends and allies, they understand that when he makes a threat, he'll follow through on that threat.

00:11:12.580 And that credibility is incredibly valuable.

00:11:16.960 If America is going to be fighting and negotiating to advance American interest,

00:11:21.900 it is important for other countries to understand that the president will follow through on what he says he will.

00:11:27.960 And I think this past week really underscores it.

00:11:31.380 And you put it on top of what happened last week with Colombia, where Colombia said,

00:11:35.880 we're not going to take illegal aliens that are coming back to Colombia from America.

00:11:40.960 And Trump immediately did the same thing.

00:11:43.440 He announced 25 percent tariffs.

00:11:44.980 He said he'd ratchet it up to 50 percent shortly thereafter.

00:11:48.800 And Colombia caved within eight hours.

00:11:51.180 That credibility, the next time we're in a showdown with a foreign country, 0.99

00:11:55.920 they're going to understand that President Trump is not bluffing.

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00:12:30.740 And this brings us back to national security and an international issue.

00:12:34.880 And it deals with Iran.

00:12:36.940 And I want to move to that because Donald Trump says that he was asked in the Oval Office.

00:12:43.080 In fact, I just want to play it about these real threats from Iran on his life. 1.00

00:12:48.120 And this is what he said in response.

00:12:50.560 And why is it you're unhappy to sign it if it's Iran and their proxies who threaten to retaliate against you

00:12:58.880 and your team by killing you guys or taking out Soleimani?

00:13:03.140 Well, they haven't done that. 0.95

00:13:04.840 And that would be a terrible thing for them to do.

00:13:09.140 Not because of me. 0.56

00:13:10.140 If they did that, they would be obliterated. 0.96

00:13:13.040 That would be the end.

00:13:13.880 I've left instructions.

00:13:15.760 If they do it, they get obliterated.

00:13:18.340 There won't be anything left.

00:13:20.600 And they shouldn't be able to do it.

00:13:22.340 And Biden should have said that, but he never did.

00:13:24.480 I don't know why.

00:13:25.160 Lack of intelligence, perhaps.

00:13:27.040 But he never said it.

00:13:28.260 If that happens to a leader or close to a leader, frankly, if you had other people involved also,

00:13:38.140 you would call for total obliteration of a state that did it.

00:13:41.560 That would include Iran.

00:13:43.140 So I'm signing this.

00:13:44.280 And it's a very powerful document.

00:13:46.020 But hopefully we're not going to have to use it.

00:13:48.960 That was a pretty interesting and I would also say historic moment in this presidency, the second term.

00:13:56.760 He's making it very clear.

00:13:58.680 Not only can we block Iranian oil sales, as he was talking about, and ratcheting that up,

00:14:02.920 but if they come after me or my people, like, first of all, they take me out, their whole country's gone.

00:14:09.140 Yeah, look, and I think that was exactly the right thing to say.

00:14:12.640 But I think it's also important to understand, you know, as we start this second Trump term,

00:14:17.940 there are a lot of people that are trying to read their own policy agendas onto the Trump administration.

00:14:23.420 When it comes to foreign policy, you and I on this podcast have talked a lot

00:14:26.900 about how Republican foreign policy is divided really into two camps.

00:14:31.640 You have the isolationists who want to withdraw back behind our borders and ignore the rest of the world.

00:14:38.860 And you have the interventionists who I think have never seen a country they didn't want to invade.

00:14:44.620 And a lot of people, when they think of Republican foreign policy, they think in a very binary term.

00:14:49.060 You're either an isolationist or you're an interventionist.

00:14:53.020 Now, I've long rejected both of those camps.

00:14:55.800 I think both of them are wrong.

00:14:57.160 I describe myself as a non-interventionist hawk.

00:15:02.180 What that means is I think we should be exceptionally reluctant to use U.S. military force.

00:15:07.060 I don't want to send our sons and daughters into combat unless absolutely necessary.

00:15:12.340 The only reason to do so should be to protect the vital national security interests of the United States to keep Americans safe.

00:15:19.500 That means we should be incredibly reluctant to invade other countries.

00:15:24.200 It's worth noting in eight years the biggest country Ronald Reagan ever invaded was Grenada.

00:15:30.040 Yeah.

00:15:30.220 But there are some people who have been saying in the second Trump term that Trump's foreign policy is isolationist, that he's just withdrawing from everything.

00:15:39.600 And it's worth noting that was not Trump's policy the first term.

00:15:42.760 He killed General Soleimani, the leader in Iran who was responsible for murdering over 600 American servicemen and women.

00:15:50.000 Killing General Soleimani was exactly the right thing to do.

00:15:53.440 And I've got to say, President Trump's foreign policy the first term very much was the coterminous with my philosophy of being a non-interventionist hawk.

00:16:05.980 And that's not entirely an accident.

00:16:07.980 I spent thousands of hours talking with President Trump and urging him to make the foreign policy decisions that he did.

00:16:15.680 He said, this is exactly right.

00:16:17.520 When it comes to Iran, a nuclear Iran, I think, is an existential threat to Israel. 0.99

00:16:22.840 I think it is a enormous threat to America.

00:16:26.620 And an Iran threatening to murder the president of the United States, Trump is right. 1.00

00:16:31.560 The way you respond to that is with absolute credible deterrence that they will be obliterated.

00:16:38.200 And for everyone that wants to read isolationism onto President Trump, I think today illustrates that is not where he is.

00:16:45.560 Yeah, it's a great point.

00:16:46.860 And we talked about this.

00:16:48.920 And let's go back to this kind of American first policy and looking at where our dollars are going.

00:16:53.440 If there's anything that we're seeing a trend and a theme coming out of the first two weeks of the Trump administration,

00:16:58.620 is that they're saying we're going to stand up for your tax dollars.

00:17:02.140 We're going to make sure they're not being abused or sent to people that are actively working against the United States of America.

00:17:07.240 If you're new to this show, we really did a lot on deep dives on the money that goes to UNRWA.

00:17:16.520 And where this money was going, not just against our interests, but we're going towards people that were clearly terrorists.

00:17:24.760 We talked about it.

00:17:25.900 We exposed it on this show.

00:17:27.660 I would encourage people to go back and find those episodes and listen to them.

00:17:30.840 If you haven't subscribed to the show, this is when you hit that button right now.

00:17:34.160 Because this is some things we talk about way in advance.

00:17:36.660 And now, months after we talked about it, President Trump has signed an executive order withdrawing from anti-American U.N. organizations.

00:17:46.000 This is incredible.

00:17:47.240 Well, this is a president and a commander in chief who is standing up for America and standing up to anti-American institutions.

00:17:53.880 The U.N. Human Rights Council has been viciously anti-American, viciously anti-Israel.

00:17:58.820 So UNRWA, UNRWA, look, was was complicit in funding Hamas terrorists.

00:18:03.840 In fact, they had actual Hamas terrorists on their payroll.

00:18:07.180 And so the president rightly withdrew America from the U.N. Human Rights Council, but also cut off funding, American funding for UNRWA.

00:18:14.400 That was exactly the right thing to do.

00:18:16.660 He was asked about that today at the White House.

00:18:18.600 And listen to what President Trump said on this.

00:18:21.460 In light of numerous actions taken by a number of bodies of the United Nations, which exhibited deep anti-American bias,

00:18:29.800 we have an executive order prepared for your attention that would withdraw the United States from the U.N.

00:18:35.680 Human Rights Council would withdraw the United States from the U.N.

00:18:39.540 RWA, which is a refugee organization and would also review American involvement in in UNESCO, which is also exhibited anti-American bias.

00:18:51.080 More generally, the executive order calls for a review of American involvement and funding in the U.N.

00:18:57.820 in light of the wild disparities in levels of funding among different countries that, as you've expressed previously, as deeply unfair to the United States.

00:19:08.440 So I've always felt that the U.N. has tremendous potential.

00:19:12.440 It's not living up to that potential right now.

00:19:15.240 It really isn't.

00:19:16.040 It hasn't for a long time.

00:19:17.820 It has.

00:19:18.720 There are great hopes for it, but it's not being well run, to be honest.

00:19:25.820 And they're not doing the job.

00:19:28.220 A lot of these conflicts that we're working on should be settled, or at least we should have some help in settling them.

00:19:34.040 We never seem to get help.

00:19:35.500 That should be the primary purpose of the U.N., the United Nations.

00:19:38.840 And again, it's got great potential.

00:19:41.660 And based on the potential, we'll continue to go along with it.

00:19:44.320 But we've got to get their act together.

00:19:52.200 What would they need to do, sir, to get their act together?

00:19:54.220 Well, they've got to be fair to countries that deserve fairness.

00:19:58.400 They have some countries, as you know, that are outliers, that are very bad.

00:20:04.180 And they're being almost preferred as countries to those that do their job and are doing a good job.

00:20:11.360 And they have to really – they're going to end up losing a lot of countries.

00:20:15.220 They're going to end up losing their credibility like other organizations.

00:20:17.940 And then they're going to be nothing.

00:20:19.500 The potential of the United Nations – and not everybody agrees with me on this – the potential of the United Nations is fantastic.

00:20:27.500 If properly run.

00:20:29.240 So we'll see what happens.

00:20:30.580 I mean, you hear him. 0.68

00:20:32.760 He's telling the world, you mess with us, you screw with us, and you have organizations that are corrupt like this.

00:20:39.840 Don't expect America to stay involved, no matter what the president has been beforehand.

00:20:44.500 Yeah, look, we're not going to foot the bill.

00:20:46.260 We're not going to write the checks to fund people that are actively undermining Americans, that are undermining our allies.

00:20:52.020 And this is creating an incentive.

00:20:54.900 It's creating an incentive, number one, for our allies to stand with America, that there's upside to standing with the United States.

00:21:01.160 But at number two, it's creating real disincentives for our enemies to move against us because there are real consequences, negative consequences.

00:21:08.860 And that's what a president should do.

00:21:11.560 And I've got to note, Ben, every single thing Donald Trump is doing is 180 degrees the opposite of what Joe Biden did.

00:21:19.760 Joe Biden undermined our allies and showed weakness and appeasement to our enemies.

00:21:24.880 And it's why the foreign policy and national security scene became such an utter mess, utter chaos, wars across the globe, because weakness doesn't work.

00:21:36.140 And this is President Trump demonstrating strength.

00:21:39.300 That's what we want and expect in our president.

00:21:42.020 Well, we may have won this election.

00:21:43.680 The fight to restore our great nation is only beginning.

00:21:46.220 And now is the time to take a stand.

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00:23:16.160 Finally, this one was a big one, Senator, and it got a lot of attention.

00:23:22.780 I'm glad that it got a lot of attention.

00:23:25.100 People that listen to the show and conservatives out there said,

00:23:28.060 okay, let's let everybody know where your tax dollars is going after Elon Musk and Doge, yet again, blowing the whistle.

00:23:36.380 They're going to, I mean, they've got to be exhausted because they're finding so much waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.

00:23:43.920 And a perfect example of this is USAID.

00:23:47.540 And some of the abuse that they found, walk us through it.

00:23:50.720 Well, I've got to say, Elon Musk is doing a fantastic job.

00:23:54.320 He is working around the clock at Doge and really focused on reining in government spending and reining in the absolute abuse,

00:24:02.660 the abuse that you would never see in a private company.

00:24:06.040 But yet in government is commonplace and is a result of politicians funding their own political hobby horse, their own political pet project.

00:24:16.540 Right. And so I've got to say, one of the areas that Doge and the new White House has done is freeze funding at USAID.

00:24:25.680 And Democrats in the media have been losing their minds over this, have been lighting their hair on fire.

00:24:31.200 In fact, a bunch of Democrats went to the USAID offices to storm the offices this week, which was really pretty ridiculous.

00:24:38.800 But they're really, they're very, very upset about it.

00:24:41.700 They're not upset, by the way, about the abuse of the money and the fraud at all.

00:24:44.900 They're just, they're just upset that they've lost their power, right?

00:24:47.840 Well, they're upset that the abuse is stopping.

00:24:51.580 But, you know, when reporters have asked me about it, I've said, listen, the president got a mandate from the American people.

00:24:58.800 And part of the mandate is to stop the out of control spending and debt.

00:25:01.900 And USAID engages in all sorts of abuse.

00:25:04.800 Let me give you some of the examples.

00:25:06.940 USAID spent $1.5 million for advancing DEI in Serbia's workplaces.

00:25:14.900 They spent $2 million for sex changes in Guatemala.

00:25:21.660 They spent $6 million for tourism in Egypt.

00:25:26.500 They paid for, quote, hundreds of thousands of meals that went to Al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters in Syria.

00:25:35.500 They gave funding for the production of opium, the primary ingredient in heroin, in Afghanistan, which benefited the Taliban.

00:25:47.040 Yeah.

00:25:47.160 They spent $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become, quote, climate leaders.

00:25:57.820 They spent $1 million for Hamas-linked charity.

00:26:02.660 And they spent $15 million for contraceptives and condoms in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

00:26:12.440 This is all nonsense. 0.90

00:26:14.680 This is a waste. 0.78

00:26:15.920 And there's a reason Elon Musk is going after it.

00:26:18.420 There's a reason President Trump is going after it.

00:26:20.540 And there's a reason Democrats in the press are horrified that this gravy train is stopping.

00:26:26.980 It is a gravy train.

00:26:28.500 And it's a very, very big one that's costing taxpayers massive amounts of money.

00:26:32.680 Elon Musk said early on that he thought there was probably like 10 percent waste in our government.

00:26:38.540 He's now changing those numbers.

00:26:40.620 I want to get your reaction.

00:26:41.540 He's saying it could be well above 20 percent.

00:26:44.900 Yeah, there's massive waste.

00:26:47.140 And it is by design.

00:26:48.660 Understand, it's not just that they picked things out of a hat.

00:26:52.060 These are all ideological.

00:26:53.720 This is this is the agenda of the radical left.

00:26:56.260 They're funding the agenda of the radical left.

00:26:58.920 But it shouldn't be the taxpayers paying for this nonsense.

00:27:01.840 And let me give you an example of one of the ones that I found, frankly, funniest.

00:27:06.100 AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, went off on Elon Musk this week.

00:27:13.340 And listen to what she says. 0.98

00:27:16.280 Her argument is that Elon Musk is a dummy. 0.98

00:27:19.620 Give a listen. 0.99

00:27:20.880 This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires I have ever met or seen or witnessed,

00:27:31.280 which, you know, you can probably even glean that from watching these people on TV.

00:27:36.100 Anyways, all of that is to say is that they don't do their homework.

00:27:41.100 Clearly, like, they're putting 19-year-olds in at the Treasury. 0.98

00:27:45.980 This dude is not smart.

00:27:48.420 And the danger in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise that Elon has. 0.73

00:27:58.240 I mean, this guy is one of the most morally vacant, but also just least knowledgeable about these systems that we really know of.

00:28:12.740 But the point is, is that what that means is that they're going to hit a button inevitably.

00:28:22.300 They are going to hit a button and things can go sideways.

00:28:25.620 I mean, this is one of those moments where you actually get to watch the you-know-what, the sausage being made in her brain.

00:28:35.000 She's making it up and pausing as she goes to try to figure out a way to hit a guy that's having massive success at saving taxpayers' dollars.

00:28:43.200 Look, I got to say, I laughed out loud when I listened to that and watched that.

00:28:50.760 It should be a Saturday Night Live skit.

00:28:53.200 Of course, Saturday Night Live wouldn't actually make fun of liberals, so they wouldn't show it.

00:28:57.060 But, listen, you can criticize Elon Musk on all sorts of fronts. 0.97

00:29:01.720 But the one front you can't criticize him on is being a dummy.

00:29:06.180 I've spent a ton of time with Elon.

00:29:07.800 Elon, listen, I've been blessed, Ben.

00:29:10.160 I have known a lot of brilliant people.

00:29:12.860 I've known Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

00:29:18.960 I have known brilliant, brilliant scientists and world leaders.

00:29:24.180 And I believe Elon Musk, this is without exaggeration, is the most brilliant man I've ever met.

00:29:29.900 I've spent a lot of time with Elon.

00:29:31.320 If you think about the distribution of intelligence, you assume roughly 8 billion people on planet Earth.

00:29:38.720 Intelligence is distributed along a bell curve.

00:29:41.260 Someone is at the bleeding edge of that bell curve, and I think Elon Musk is that person.

00:29:46.740 And, I mean, I've sat with him for two, three, three and a half hours talking with him,

00:29:50.560 and it's fascinating watching his brain work because the guy, it's not even that he thinks outside the box.

00:29:57.140 He doesn't know there is a box.

00:30:00.260 And so listening to AOC say he's unintelligent, I've got to say, it reminded me of a scene from my favorite movie.

00:30:09.620 Oh, I know where we're going with this one.

00:30:11.760 And so give a listen to what AOC was saying, and she was really, she was channeling Vecini.

00:30:18.760 Give a listen.

00:30:20.140 You're that smart.

00:30:21.300 Let me put it this way.

00:30:22.280 Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? 1.00

00:30:25.220 Yes, morons. 1.00

00:30:27.760 Really? 1.00

00:30:28.580 So that's AOC.

00:30:30.800 Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Elon Musk. 1.00

00:30:36.160 Morons. 1.00

00:30:37.520 AOC. 1.00

00:30:38.860 She knows what's right.

00:30:40.380 There you go.

00:30:41.180 Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

00:30:43.420 Hit that subscribe or auto-download button.

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00:30:53.460 Write us that five-star review.

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00:30:56.420 It helps us reach new hearts and minds.

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00:31:04.080 And that's how we change hearts and minds in this country.

00:31:06.340 That's when we ask you to do that.

00:31:07.720 And the Senate and I will see you back here in a couple of days.

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00:31:14.800 Thank you.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 05, 2025

Mexico & Canada CAVE, Trump Stands up to Iran & DOGE Halts Shocking Government Waste

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