Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 22, 2020


Montecristos with Bibi (and Peace in the Middle East)


Episode Stats

Length

28 minutes

Words per Minute

172.42677

Word Count

4,886

Sentence Count

393

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

20


Summary

Ted Cruz was there for the Abraham Accords and the deal for peace in the Middle East, and he's here to talk about why we should all be trying to broker a deal to bring peace to the region and to the world.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.540 There have been very few things harder to achieve in foreign policy,
00:00:08.320 maybe nothing harder to achieve in foreign policy,
00:00:10.800 than peace in the Middle East.
00:00:13.440 Nobody was able to see that coming.
00:00:15.540 And yet, just this past week,
00:00:18.720 we have had an historic deal for peace in the Middle East,
00:00:22.500 and we happen to have a guy who was there for all of it.
00:00:25.580 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:35.180 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:00:36.460 Senator, I have to point out that this past week,
00:00:40.180 we've seen not just one, but two historic milestones.
00:00:43.900 A pathway to peace in the Middle East,
00:00:46.140 and episode 50 of Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:48.400 I don't know which one is more historic.
00:00:51.460 Look, it's been 50 episodes, and I gotta say,
00:00:55.300 you know, when it was clear to me you weren't paying attention
00:00:57.600 is when the fellow came up with a little clicky thing.
00:01:00.000 And said episode 50.
00:01:01.780 Well, what's that called, by the way, the clicky thing?
00:01:03.480 It's called the clicky thing, actually.
00:01:04.400 That's the technical term for it.
00:01:05.600 And you apparently had no idea,
00:01:07.780 so you weren't listening to him when he said episode 50.
00:01:09.880 I've had some of my eyes glazed over, absolutely,
00:01:12.560 because I was focusing on this other, I suppose,
00:01:15.440 more minor historic milestone, peace in the Middle East.
00:01:18.380 World peace.
00:01:19.840 You know, I just think you need to re-examine your priorities, Michael.
00:01:23.280 That's true.
00:01:23.840 You're right, absolutely.
00:01:25.200 Well, I wasn't there.
00:01:26.380 I wasn't there for the Abraham Accord at the White House.
00:01:30.000 You've got President Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, leader of Bahrain,
00:01:33.780 leader of the United Arab Emirates.
00:01:36.980 What makes this historic, and what happened?
00:01:39.900 So the Abraham Accords, they were signed this past week,
00:01:43.120 and the signing was on the south lawn of the White House.
00:01:46.160 Yeah.
00:01:46.320 So I was there, and then they had chairs set up outside.
00:01:50.180 It was a beautiful September day, probably 70 degrees outside.
00:01:54.540 I mean, it was as pretty a day as you ever see in Washington.
00:01:57.420 And there are a number of us gathered on these little white wooden folding chairs,
00:02:01.240 and out from the White House comes the president, comes Bibi Netanyahu,
00:02:07.020 the prime minister of Israel, and then the foreign minister of the UAE,
00:02:11.420 and the foreign minister of Bahrain.
00:02:13.080 And they each give speeches, and then they sit at a table down below,
00:02:20.000 and each of them signs the agreement.
00:02:21.940 And what has happened is both the UAE and Bahrain
00:02:25.960 have normalized relationships with Israel.
00:02:30.040 In other words, they're treating Israel just like any other country.
00:02:33.520 And that's a big damn deal.
00:02:37.540 This is the first time an Arab country has normalized relations with Israel in 26 years.
00:02:44.540 The last time was 1994, Jordan.
00:02:47.400 Okay. What about before that?
00:02:49.160 Before that was Egypt, 1978, Camp David.
00:02:53.080 Wow.
00:02:53.300 So this doesn't happen very often.
00:02:55.180 And I think it's an extraordinary step forward in terms of bringing peace to the region,
00:03:05.200 but also peace globally.
00:03:07.360 Because look, for a long time, the Middle East has been a powder keg.
00:03:10.200 Yeah.
00:03:10.300 And diffusing the tensions, and it was really fitting,
00:03:14.620 the Bahrain peace was announced on September 11th.
00:03:18.120 And I pointed out, I said, you know,
00:03:20.600 there are few greater acts of revenge we can have on the terrorists
00:03:24.840 who committed that horrific attack on September 11th
00:03:27.860 than to bring about peace in the Middle East
00:03:32.140 and help make Jews and Arabs and Americans friends.
00:03:37.800 Yeah.
00:03:38.160 Well, you mentioned 1978.
00:03:40.020 So we've been working on peace in the Middle East
00:03:42.820 since at least the Carter administration,
00:03:44.680 I suppose, further back than that.
00:03:46.380 And I know this is probably a simple question,
00:03:49.400 but I think sometimes when we think about our own domestic problems,
00:03:52.540 we do wonder this,
00:03:53.600 which is why is America always trying to broker peace in the Middle East?
00:03:57.960 Why do we care?
00:03:59.440 Well, Israel is a unique country.
00:04:00.900 It is the world's only Jewish nation.
00:04:04.120 It was founded in 1948, so it's just over 70 years old, 72.
00:04:10.340 And you look at 1948, it was coming out of World War II.
00:04:16.000 It was coming out of the Holocaust,
00:04:19.160 six million Jews being murdered by the Nazis.
00:04:23.460 And the state of Israel was formed for many reasons.
00:04:27.940 One, the historical connection of the Jewish people to Judah and Samaria
00:04:34.760 and to the land of Israel,
00:04:36.700 but also to ensure that never again would something like the Holocaust happen,
00:04:42.700 that there would always be a Jewish state
00:04:44.720 where Jews could be safe and avoid persecution.
00:04:51.700 Now, when Israel was formed in 1948,
00:04:56.040 the Arab nations all declared war.
00:04:58.380 Yeah.
00:04:58.720 And there was war after war after war.
00:05:00.940 It was not something that happened happily.
00:05:05.380 It's not that their neighbors did not celebrate, to put it mild.
00:05:09.260 And, you know, you think about it.
00:05:10.600 UAE and Bahrain are nearby neighbors who,
00:05:15.420 until this week, didn't recognize Israel.
00:05:20.000 Because some people have been saying,
00:05:21.900 well, it's not a peace deal because the UAE and Bahrain,
00:05:25.240 they've never been in open war with Israel.
00:05:27.240 So, oh, you know, guys, look, it's not a big deal.
00:05:29.320 Forget about it.
00:05:30.040 Okay.
00:05:30.240 And that's just a weird argument.
00:05:32.360 Listen, Democrats are scrambling
00:05:33.900 because President Trump helping broker a peace deal in the Middle East
00:05:39.680 really counteracts their narrative
00:05:41.420 as him as the embodiment of everything that is terrible in the world.
00:05:44.600 Right.
00:05:44.720 And so there's a combination.
00:05:47.880 Joe Biden, when the UAE deal broke, he said,
00:05:50.400 well, this is really the culmination of his work.
00:05:53.920 And so.
00:05:54.980 It's convenient.
00:05:55.860 You know, it's a big deal if Biden's trying to take credit for it.
00:05:58.980 Yeah.
00:06:00.220 And then the other sort of democratic talking point is,
00:06:03.480 well, it's not that important because they weren't
00:06:06.320 actively in a state of war firing missiles at each other.
00:06:09.440 They didn't recognize each other.
00:06:11.000 They didn't acknowledge the Arab states.
00:06:13.400 UAE and Bahrain didn't acknowledge that Israel existed as a nation,
00:06:17.440 as a Jewish state.
00:06:18.380 Yeah.
00:06:18.660 And I think it's important to pause and reflect how this came about,
00:06:22.520 because part of the reason that we're seeing the left,
00:06:25.180 both the media and the academic world and Democrats,
00:06:28.040 pushing back so hard on this is these Abraham Accords
00:06:32.540 are the culmination of a very, very different approach
00:06:35.380 Trump took than Obama-Biden.
00:06:38.000 And the Obama-Biden approach doesn't work.
00:06:40.480 Yeah.
00:06:40.660 And the approach we've taken the last four years does.
00:06:43.240 Well, this is the issue.
00:06:44.560 I remember when Barack Obama was running,
00:06:46.880 this was 2008, people told me,
00:06:48.940 if I voted for John McCain, we'd get more wars in the Middle East,
00:06:51.860 which was true.
00:06:52.680 I voted for John McCain, and we got more wars in the Middle East,
00:06:55.160 even though Barack Obama got elected.
00:06:57.780 We haven't had one of these peace deals in 26 years, right?
00:07:02.240 So what did they do wrong?
00:07:04.140 And what did Trump do right?
00:07:05.480 Because we were told Trump was going to lead to World War III.
00:07:07.580 Yeah, and to some extent, those are different issues,
00:07:12.380 or they're parallel issues.
00:07:13.720 I do think too many Democrats, including the Clintons,
00:07:17.180 including Hillary, and too many Republicans,
00:07:19.320 including John McCain,
00:07:21.580 have been too eager to get us into wars,
00:07:24.340 have been too eager to use U.S. military force.
00:07:27.080 And I think that has been an important and worthwhile shift
00:07:30.340 the last four years,
00:07:31.320 is to be much more restrained
00:07:32.900 in terms of when we get into foreign entanglements,
00:07:37.140 to use a phrase from George Washington.
00:07:42.460 With respect to Israel,
00:07:43.740 I think there were two decisions early on
00:07:45.900 in the first year of the Trump administration
00:07:48.780 that really set the stage for this,
00:07:50.460 and they were intertwined.
00:07:51.520 I think these are the two most important
00:07:52.960 foreign policy decisions President Trump has made.
00:07:56.100 The first was moving the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
00:07:59.980 Now, we had our embassy in Tel Aviv.
00:08:01.860 Tel Aviv's not the capital of Israel.
00:08:04.040 Jerusalem's the capital of Israel.
00:08:05.680 We had our embassy in Tel Aviv
00:08:07.440 because the Palestinians lay claim to Jerusalem as well,
00:08:11.380 and so it was viewed as if you have your embassy in Jerusalem,
00:08:15.180 you are somehow favoring Israel's choice of its capital city.
00:08:19.840 Now, mind you, we have our embassies in the capitals
00:08:22.240 everywhere else on Earth.
00:08:23.420 Yeah, just this one exception that we didn't.
00:08:26.060 When the Trump administration began,
00:08:27.780 there was a big debate within the administration
00:08:30.680 about whether or not to move the embassy.
00:08:33.140 Because presidents had been promising to do this for decades.
00:08:36.820 It had been official U.S. policy,
00:08:38.620 and just no one actually did it.
00:08:40.140 Obama promised to do it.
00:08:41.460 George W. Bush promised to do it.
00:08:43.220 Bill Clinton promised to do it.
00:08:44.520 Both Democrats and Republicans had broken that promise
00:08:46.860 over and over and over again.
00:08:49.100 In 2017, the Trump administration,
00:08:51.220 both the State Department and the Defense Department
00:08:53.020 opposed moving the embassy.
00:08:54.600 Yeah.
00:08:54.740 You had Rex Tillerson, he was Secretary of State.
00:08:57.700 You had Jim Mattis, he was Secretary of Defense,
00:08:59.680 and they both didn't want to move the embassy.
00:09:01.800 And the reason they said they didn't want to move the embassy
00:09:04.320 is they said it would enrage the enemies of Israel
00:09:07.240 and the enemies of America.
00:09:09.500 This is a foreign policy battle I engaged in very actively.
00:09:13.740 And so, I mean, I spent a lot of time talking to the president,
00:09:17.080 leaning in, making the case.
00:09:19.200 Look, the enemies of Israel and America,
00:09:20.880 they hate us anyway.
00:09:22.520 It's not like there's suddenly some other day
00:09:25.100 where they break out in hosannas and start singing songs.
00:09:28.580 You're not going to appease them.
00:09:30.120 And that appeasement word, we're going to come back to that,
00:09:31.960 because that appeasement word is very, very important
00:09:34.380 for understanding the shift in path
00:09:36.260 that led to this peace agreement the past week.
00:09:39.620 There were voices in the White House
00:09:41.480 who were arguing against moving the embassy to Jerusalem
00:09:44.760 because they said this will make peace harder
00:09:48.200 to achieve in the Middle East.
00:09:49.500 We want to see peace in the Middle East.
00:09:51.740 If we move the embassy, it will tick off everyone
00:09:54.380 who's angry with Israel, and that makes it harder to achieve.
00:09:56.840 And you saw this throughout the mainstream media as well.
00:09:59.060 This was being echoed in the popular press.
00:10:01.300 And the case I made to President Trump
00:10:03.340 and the case I made repeatedly in the White House
00:10:05.040 is I said, look, there is virtue to clarity
00:10:08.920 and lack of ambiguity.
00:10:11.700 If we move the embassy,
00:10:14.060 it will be seen by both our friends and our enemies
00:10:17.120 as a statement that the United States stands
00:10:19.640 unapologetically in foursquare with Israel,
00:10:22.900 and that there's a president
00:10:23.940 who is not going to be cowed
00:10:27.540 by the New York Times or CNN.
00:10:29.340 At the end of the day, the president agreed with me.
00:10:35.220 He overruled his own State Department.
00:10:37.080 He overruled his own Defense Department.
00:10:39.440 And he moved the embassy.
00:10:41.160 I was there when we opened the embassy in Jerusalem.
00:10:44.060 It was in May of 2018.
00:10:45.880 It was actually on the date of the 70th anniversary
00:10:48.860 of the creation of the modern state of Israel.
00:10:50.700 And it was powerful.
00:10:53.600 It was emotional.
00:10:54.540 There's literally dancing in the street in Jerusalem.
00:10:56.540 I've been to Jerusalem four times.
00:10:59.300 I've never seen jubilation
00:11:01.120 like there was when we opened the embassy.
00:11:04.360 And what I argued to the president
00:11:07.160 when he was debating whether or not to move the embassy
00:11:09.420 is I said, listen, our Arab allies,
00:11:13.660 Jordan, Egypt, the Saudis, UAE,
00:11:16.940 said they will all publicly denounce the decision.
00:11:19.500 Because they'll feel they have to.
00:11:21.360 For domestic political reasons,
00:11:22.720 they'll feel obliged to denounce it.
00:11:25.520 But what I argued is I said,
00:11:27.660 secretly, they will be overjoyed.
00:11:31.260 And here's why.
00:11:33.000 They will say a president with the backbone
00:11:36.680 to move the embassy,
00:11:39.680 maybe, just maybe, just maybe,
00:11:41.460 will have the backbone to stand up to Iran
00:11:43.760 and stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
00:11:46.540 And there are few things that have clarified
00:11:51.600 the minds of our Arab allies more
00:11:53.720 than the Obama-Iran nuclear deal,
00:11:55.780 which put Iran on a barreling path
00:12:00.780 towards getting nuclear weapons.
00:12:02.080 And sent them pallets of cash,
00:12:03.720 very famously, right?
00:12:04.640 Over $100 billion.
00:12:05.960 I do not believe it is a coincidence
00:12:10.940 that the very same week we opened our embassy
00:12:15.000 in Jerusalem is the week the president announced
00:12:17.980 he was withdrawing from the disastrous
00:12:20.180 Obama-Iran nuclear deal.
00:12:22.120 Those two were connected.
00:12:23.240 Okay.
00:12:23.540 And the same fight played out
00:12:28.100 in the Trump administration.
00:12:29.320 On pulling out of the Obama-Iran deal,
00:12:31.620 state was opposed, defense was opposed.
00:12:33.960 Even though it was clear when President Trump was running,
00:12:36.740 he said, I'm going to get out of this Iran nuclear deal,
00:12:39.920 the base hates it.
00:12:40.860 So he actually didn't.
00:12:42.660 It is a little bit astonishing.
00:12:45.480 The Iran nuclear deal is one of the issues
00:12:47.840 on which Donald Trump and I sharply disagreed
00:12:51.120 in the 2016 primary.
00:12:52.260 Really? Well, I remember you were certainly opposed to it.
00:12:54.460 So when I was running in 2016,
00:12:56.080 I pledged to do five things
00:12:57.980 on the first day in office, January 20th, 2017.
00:13:00.860 One was move the embassy to Jerusalem.
00:13:02.460 Yeah.
00:13:03.160 Another was rip the Iran deal to shreds.
00:13:05.160 So those were two of the five things I pledged to do.
00:13:09.460 Trump as a candidate in 2016
00:13:11.560 explicitly disagreed with me.
00:13:13.820 And he said, no, I'm not going to rip the deal up.
00:13:16.080 I'm going to renegotiate.
00:13:17.060 I'm going to try to get a better deal.
00:13:18.200 And so we had, we had, I mean,
00:13:20.840 in several presidential debates,
00:13:22.400 we disagreed on this policy issue.
00:13:24.820 So you fast forward to 2017,
00:13:26.660 there's a debate within the Trump administration.
00:13:29.640 Tillerson and Mattis are both saying,
00:13:31.260 stay in the deal.
00:13:31.920 Mattis kept saying, a deal is a deal.
00:13:34.720 America's given our word.
00:13:36.100 Yeah.
00:13:36.700 And I kept pointing out to, to, to, to Mattis.
00:13:39.660 I said, no, America didn't give our word.
00:13:43.200 Obama signed that agreement
00:13:44.560 with the explicit opposition of the United States Congress.
00:13:48.980 The America gives our word,
00:13:51.060 either when we pass a statute
00:13:52.520 or a treaty ratified by the Senate.
00:13:55.060 The Obama-Iran deal was neither.
00:13:56.900 He, he made an end run to the UN
00:13:58.600 to try to get around Congress and the opposition.
00:14:03.800 Once again, Trump agreed with me
00:14:06.080 and overruled his own state and defense department.
00:14:09.580 Now let's fast forward to now.
00:14:12.560 Those decisions, part of the reasons
00:14:14.140 those decisions were so important
00:14:15.620 is, is you look at the UAE and Bahrain.
00:14:19.500 You no longer had this moral ambiguity,
00:14:22.500 this hang, hand wringing.
00:14:24.140 This is, oh, we don't want to take a stance on Israel.
00:14:26.740 We don't know what we believe,
00:14:28.080 which I think prolonged conflict.
00:14:30.020 You talked about appeasement.
00:14:31.480 The Obama-Biden path was appeasement
00:14:33.580 over and over and over again.
00:14:35.160 It was undermining Israel
00:14:36.480 and undermining Israel ironically produces
00:14:40.280 more terrorism, tension, warfare,
00:14:42.720 dissension in the Middle East.
00:14:45.060 In the last couple of weeks,
00:14:46.440 I've spoken with the UAE ambassador.
00:14:48.980 I've spoken with the Saudi ambassador.
00:14:50.560 So Saudi Arabia has not normalized relationships.
00:14:53.320 But we've been told there could be other countries,
00:14:55.980 as many as nine countries,
00:14:57.140 that will join on to this sort of a peace deal.
00:14:59.440 And look, the Saudis are the whale.
00:15:02.540 They're the biggest of the players
00:15:04.820 that is outstanding.
00:15:06.540 And Bahrain is very closely allied with the Saudis.
00:15:10.360 Most people think that Bahrain would not have done this
00:15:13.740 without the Saudis at least giving implicit approval to it.
00:15:18.060 The Saudis also announced,
00:15:19.660 and this is historic as well,
00:15:21.620 that they would allow Israel to have overflights,
00:15:25.280 to have their airplanes fly over Saudi Arabian territory.
00:15:28.700 That's a big deal.
00:15:29.640 Used to be Israel had to fly around Saudi Arabia
00:15:31.540 because Saudi Arabia would not allow
00:15:33.140 Israeli planes in their airspace.
00:15:36.780 Both the UAE ambassador and the Saudi ambassador
00:15:39.240 in the past week when I spoke to them,
00:15:42.180 they said, listen, we're doing this
00:15:44.620 because we want to be friends with America.
00:15:47.600 Because it is important for us to be friends with America.
00:15:50.940 And we know that it is important to you
00:15:55.560 for us to be friends with Israel.
00:15:57.400 We know where you stand.
00:15:59.440 It's the clarity.
00:16:01.040 And they said, that's why we're doing this.
00:16:03.460 There's something called the Iran echo chamber.
00:16:06.260 Okay.
00:16:06.340 So that was when Barack Obama was president.
00:16:09.640 They were negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.
00:16:11.440 There was a so-called echo chamber that it's locus
00:16:15.960 was the National Security Council under Obama.
00:16:18.320 Yeah.
00:16:18.900 But it was reporters.
00:16:20.440 It was academics.
00:16:21.160 It was think tanks.
00:16:22.320 And it was all these lefties who were pushing
00:16:24.100 the Iran nuclear deal.
00:16:25.480 Yeah.
00:16:25.860 They viewed that as the single biggest foreign policy
00:16:28.460 accomplishment of the Obama presidency.
00:16:32.300 And it's all predicated on appeasement.
00:16:35.840 It's predicated on if we give Iran $100 billion,
00:16:39.780 they'll make nice and won't make nuclear weapons,
00:16:42.900 even though the Ayatollah regularly chants
00:16:46.160 death to America and death to Israel.
00:16:48.380 It should be made clear.
00:16:49.500 This is not ambiguous here.
00:16:50.860 You've got a country that chants death to America.
00:16:52.960 You've got a country that is an open,
00:16:54.440 explicit ally of the United States.
00:16:56.100 And yet under the Obama administration,
00:16:57.620 it made us all scratch our heads.
00:16:58.920 They thought the path to peace was to make nice
00:17:02.240 with the people chanting death to America.
00:17:03.880 This obviously, look, Middle East peace
00:17:05.180 is perhaps the most complicated foreign policy issue.
00:17:08.940 So just to simplify here,
00:17:10.560 because it seems like there are so many layers,
00:17:13.060 we were told for a very long time
00:17:14.860 that supporting Israel was the cause of this chaos
00:17:19.360 and violence in the Middle East.
00:17:20.880 It would seem to be that the opposite has been proved true.
00:17:24.980 We were told by the leaders of these countries
00:17:27.820 that they hated our support for Israel explicitly,
00:17:30.660 and yet behind closed doors and in their own interest,
00:17:33.840 it would seem that they actually have supported American clear support for Israel.
00:17:39.580 Is that right?
00:17:40.180 Am I clarifying here a little?
00:17:41.920 I think that's right.
00:17:43.340 On the latter point,
00:17:44.340 they haven't as much explicitly supported it
00:17:46.400 as I think it is in their interest.
00:17:48.460 And they are, you know, I've joked,
00:17:51.340 you remember Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009,
00:17:54.920 right after he was elected.
00:17:55.920 He literally, I don't think he'd unpacked his boxes yet.
00:17:58.760 He was still trying to find a stapler.
00:18:00.220 I believe it was nine days after he was sworn in,
00:18:04.880 he was nominated for the Peace Prize.
00:18:06.380 And he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
00:18:08.800 for not being George W. Bush.
00:18:11.340 The fact that he was,
00:18:12.400 by the way, why didn't you win a Nobel Peace Prize?
00:18:14.160 You're not George W. Bush.
00:18:14.680 I'm waiting.
00:18:15.300 I know, where's my phone call?
00:18:16.880 So they awarded him that prize,
00:18:21.300 but you look at,
00:18:24.400 I've joked that in retrospect,
00:18:27.260 Obama may have deserved it
00:18:28.900 because he did something heretofore impossible,
00:18:32.220 which is he united the Arabs and the Israelis.
00:18:35.160 All he had to do was put in place a plan
00:18:37.340 to give $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khamenei
00:18:39.880 that he could use to develop nuclear weapons
00:18:41.860 to threaten all of their lives.
00:18:43.640 And suddenly the Jews and the Arabs are like,
00:18:46.100 holy crap, are you out of your mind?
00:18:48.020 Well, because this introduces an aspect
00:18:50.300 that I think is often overlooked
00:18:51.540 when people are trying to grapple with this,
00:18:53.360 which is they think of the issue as Jews versus Muslims.
00:18:56.320 And that's a simple,
00:18:57.160 but of course we're talking about nation states here.
00:18:59.580 And there are a lot of these Arab states
00:19:01.300 that don't particularly like Iran.
00:19:03.600 So you've, instead of just two-
00:19:05.080 And there's a divide between Sunnis and Shiites.
00:19:07.480 Exactly.
00:19:07.660 And so Iran is a Shiite state
00:19:09.540 and most of the Arab states are Sunni states.
00:19:13.800 And so there's a religious divide within Islam
00:19:17.040 between the Sunnis and Shiites.
00:19:18.420 And they're fully aware of what Iran is capable of.
00:19:22.680 I mean, Iran is the leading state sponsor
00:19:24.300 of terrorism in the world,
00:19:25.600 but yet both Obama and Joe Biden,
00:19:29.520 who was very active in foreign policy as vice president,
00:19:32.840 they fully believed in appeasement.
00:19:36.180 I've also joked,
00:19:37.160 there's a reason we don't see
00:19:39.120 the Neville Chamberlain school of foreign policy.
00:19:41.200 Neville Chamberlain was prime minister of Great Britain,
00:19:45.980 championed appeasement of Adolf Hitler
00:19:48.840 and said, if we just give him what he wants-
00:19:51.620 He'll leave us alone.
00:19:52.840 Everything will be fine.
00:19:54.060 And history teaches us that appeasement doesn't work,
00:19:58.100 that it's provocative,
00:19:59.080 that actually weakness and appeasement
00:20:01.140 to a dictator, to a tyrant,
00:20:03.620 makes war more likely.
00:20:05.240 This is where a lot of the media gets it backwards.
00:20:07.140 Listen, I agree with Ronald Reagan,
00:20:09.460 who talked about and emphasized
00:20:12.760 and built his foreign policy on peace through strength,
00:20:15.560 that if you want to avoid war,
00:20:17.880 be strong enough that no one wants to mess with you.
00:20:20.320 Well, it's interesting on that point
00:20:21.960 of peace through strength.
00:20:23.320 And we were told at that time that Reagan's a cowboy,
00:20:26.920 he's a warmonger, he's crazy.
00:20:28.560 I guess we were told the same thing
00:20:29.700 when the Trump administration came in as well.
00:20:31.680 But there is an irony here
00:20:32.960 to both of those administrations.
00:20:35.320 We really did get that peace.
00:20:37.080 I mean, it's not just an empty slogan.
00:20:39.480 When you have weakness,
00:20:40.800 you're inviting this kind of aggression.
00:20:43.060 Look, in eight years in the White House,
00:20:44.820 the biggest nation Reagan ever invaded was Grenada.
00:20:48.140 That's right.
00:20:49.040 He was reluctant to use military force,
00:20:53.180 as Trump has been as well.
00:20:54.640 And I think that is exactly right.
00:20:56.140 I think there were too many cowboys in the GOP
00:20:59.560 and the Democratic Party
00:21:00.800 that option A was always send the Marines.
00:21:05.100 And listen, if there's a threat
00:21:07.040 to the national security of the United States,
00:21:08.860 if Americans' lives are being threatened,
00:21:10.480 that's what the armed forces is for,
00:21:12.520 is to keep us safe.
00:21:13.940 But being reluctant to pull that trigger,
00:21:16.340 I think, is the right thing to do,
00:21:17.760 not to put our sons and daughters in harm's way,
00:21:19.860 but also being clear and strong.
00:21:22.820 It's why moving the embassy was such an important pivot point.
00:21:28.340 And, you know, look, I'll give you an example
00:21:30.160 of Obama-Biden and their policies.
00:21:34.100 Back in, I think it was 2014,
00:21:35.940 I was in Israel.
00:21:38.500 And I had a meeting set up with Netanyahu.
00:21:41.820 Okay.
00:21:42.100 And I've gotten to know Bibi well.
00:21:44.800 Yeah.
00:21:46.500 And the meeting was set up,
00:21:48.540 and the U.S. ambassador,
00:21:50.240 the Obama ambassador,
00:21:51.300 is a guy named Daniel Shapiro.
00:21:53.400 And Shapiro told me,
00:21:55.820 the meeting was the next day with Bibi,
00:21:57.280 and he said,
00:21:57.780 you are not meeting with Netanyahu without me.
00:22:00.920 Did he now?
00:22:01.560 He just said flat out,
00:22:02.660 you are not going to meet with him without me.
00:22:05.300 And I said,
00:22:06.520 well, listen,
00:22:07.160 this is a trip I set up.
00:22:09.340 I set up this meeting.
00:22:10.680 I didn't go through you.
00:22:13.680 And you're not invited to the meeting.
00:22:17.080 You know, sir,
00:22:17.720 I am a senator.
00:22:18.520 You don't get to tell me what to do.
00:22:20.220 Well,
00:22:20.720 and Shapiro comes back,
00:22:22.840 and he threatens me.
00:22:23.760 He says,
00:22:23.980 well, then I'll pull your security.
00:22:26.040 So when you're traveling in Israel,
00:22:27.420 you get a security detail from the embassy.
00:22:29.580 Right.
00:22:30.180 He said,
00:22:30.540 I'll pull your security.
00:22:31.780 I said,
00:22:32.040 fine.
00:22:32.440 Within an hour,
00:22:33.460 I'll hire private security.
00:22:34.660 If you want to do that.
00:22:35.900 And it was clearly a bluff.
00:22:38.640 Yeah.
00:22:39.160 They're not going to let a U.S. senator
00:22:40.760 go without security.
00:22:41.880 But what was obvious
00:22:43.160 is John Kerry,
00:22:44.720 who was Secretary of State,
00:22:46.400 had told Shapiro,
00:22:47.880 you keep an eye on Cruz.
00:22:50.040 Yeah.
00:22:50.820 And don't you dare let him in a room
00:22:52.700 together with Bibi.
00:22:53.640 That we don't want this
00:22:55.120 because they hated Netanyahu.
00:22:57.800 Yeah.
00:22:58.200 And they hated me.
00:22:59.020 Right.
00:22:59.300 And the last thing they wanted
00:23:00.560 was us talking to each other.
00:23:01.880 Right.
00:23:02.580 And so,
00:23:03.920 but you got to picture it.
00:23:05.440 So,
00:23:05.460 so Ambassador Shapiro is not a very big guy.
00:23:08.400 Yeah.
00:23:09.160 And we were literally bumping chests,
00:23:12.640 standing in front of the Knesset,
00:23:14.960 which is the Israeli parliament.
00:23:16.300 Yeah.
00:23:16.620 And we're,
00:23:17.300 I mean,
00:23:17.460 it was a junior high,
00:23:19.100 like chest to chest of him saying,
00:23:22.040 I'm coming.
00:23:22.540 And me saying,
00:23:24.020 you're not invited.
00:23:26.620 And he backed down.
00:23:28.220 And so the next day.
00:23:29.260 Peace through strength.
00:23:30.320 Well,
00:23:30.940 and clarity and lack of ambiguity.
00:23:34.460 Right.
00:23:34.760 And,
00:23:34.920 and,
00:23:35.140 and so the next day,
00:23:36.340 when you,
00:23:36.600 when you go and meet with,
00:23:37.800 with Netanyahu,
00:23:38.520 there's a conference room
00:23:39.760 that you do all the meetings in.
00:23:41.300 And so if you look at any picture
00:23:42.360 of any delegations,
00:23:43.940 it's in Israel,
00:23:44.780 there's Israeli flags.
00:23:46.540 And you'd take a picture
00:23:47.260 with the prime minister
00:23:47.900 and you sit at the conference table
00:23:48.920 and talk about issues.
00:23:49.660 And so I've done that multiple times.
00:23:52.260 This time we'd prearranged
00:23:53.900 with,
00:23:54.160 with BB's office
00:23:55.000 that we'd come into the conference room,
00:23:56.800 but that BB would say,
00:23:58.160 here,
00:23:58.300 come on back to my office,
00:23:59.340 Ted.
00:24:00.100 And so I went back to his office,
00:24:01.720 which is actually not that big an office.
00:24:03.300 It's right adjoining the conference room.
00:24:06.280 And we sat down
00:24:07.620 and,
00:24:07.900 and I had brought two cigars.
00:24:10.080 BB loves to smoke cigars.
00:24:11.840 I knew I liked that guy.
00:24:13.140 And we lit up two Monte Cristos.
00:24:16.540 And we sat there smoking cigars.
00:24:19.200 And for,
00:24:20.000 I don't know,
00:24:20.380 an hour,
00:24:21.300 maybe a little bit longer,
00:24:22.620 we talked geopolitics.
00:24:24.640 We talked Middle East.
00:24:25.540 We talked Middle East peace,
00:24:26.680 America,
00:24:27.240 the world.
00:24:28.500 And I got to say,
00:24:30.620 that may have been
00:24:33.200 the single coolest moment
00:24:34.440 I've had in the entire USA.
00:24:36.220 Like it,
00:24:37.680 look,
00:24:38.260 you get a chance
00:24:40.000 to meet all sorts of people.
00:24:41.660 You meet presidents,
00:24:43.380 you meet senators,
00:24:44.140 you meet cabinet officials,
00:24:46.540 you meet heads of state.
00:24:50.480 Bibi Netanyahu
00:24:51.440 is one of the most serious,
00:24:53.560 impressive,
00:24:54.780 brilliant world leaders
00:24:56.040 I've ever encountered.
00:24:57.200 And I'm sitting there
00:24:58.200 smoking a Monte Cristo cigar
00:25:00.060 in his office going,
00:25:01.080 what in the hell
00:25:02.420 am I doing here?
00:25:03.820 Like,
00:25:04.280 hold on,
00:25:04.660 like,
00:25:05.080 like it was,
00:25:06.280 it was surreal.
00:25:07.880 I kept thinking
00:25:08.480 like it was candid camera.
00:25:09.680 Someone was going to come out
00:25:10.480 and say this was all a joke.
00:25:12.520 But,
00:25:12.960 part of it is
00:25:14.880 Netanyahu has
00:25:16.180 a seriousness,
00:25:18.880 a gravity.
00:25:19.920 Listen,
00:25:20.200 he,
00:25:20.420 he leads a country
00:25:21.520 that historically
00:25:22.880 has been surrounded
00:25:23.720 by enemies
00:25:24.320 that would drive them
00:25:25.080 into the sea.
00:25:25.880 Yeah.
00:25:26.900 Um,
00:25:27.920 and he's been running it
00:25:28.880 forever it seems.
00:25:29.760 So,
00:25:30.040 let me give it an analogy
00:25:31.100 from literature.
00:25:32.340 And you're going to laugh
00:25:33.080 at what the literature is.
00:25:35.140 Um,
00:25:35.700 which is a children's book.
00:25:37.080 Okay.
00:25:37.340 That I read as a kid.
00:25:38.240 Did you ever read the series
00:25:39.160 called The Great Brain?
00:25:40.080 The Great Brain?
00:25:40.600 No,
00:25:40.920 I had,
00:25:41.200 I didn't.
00:25:41.780 I read The Mediocre Brain.
00:25:43.160 That's probably,
00:25:43.800 it didn't work out.
00:25:45.080 All right.
00:25:45.360 So,
00:25:45.560 The Great Brain
00:25:46.240 is a seven book series
00:25:48.320 that I read as a,
00:25:49.540 I don't know,
00:25:50.260 as a kid.
00:25:50.900 It's by,
00:25:51.820 uh,
00:25:52.520 John D. Fitzgerald,
00:25:53.500 J.D. Fitzgerald.
00:25:54.400 And it,
00:25:55.340 he is the younger brother
00:25:56.700 and it's talking about his,
00:25:58.500 the middle brother,
00:25:59.300 Tom D. Fitzgerald
00:26:00.240 and the older brother,
00:26:01.040 Swen D. Fitzgerald.
00:26:02.240 And Tom,
00:26:02.980 the middle brother,
00:26:03.720 is a con man.
00:26:04.560 I mean,
00:26:04.720 he's just a huckster
00:26:06.000 and he,
00:26:06.560 he's always coming up
00:26:08.000 with these sort of scams
00:26:09.220 to con the other kids
00:26:10.260 out of something
00:26:10.860 and sort of think Tom Sawyer
00:26:12.400 in Painting the Fence,
00:26:13.300 but,
00:26:13.520 but every chapter
00:26:15.580 was a different elaborate con.
00:26:17.640 And they're growing up
00:26:18.980 in Utah,
00:26:20.580 um,
00:26:21.000 if I remember correctly
00:26:22.020 at,
00:26:22.360 at,
00:26:22.580 at essentially the,
00:26:23.580 the turn of the 1900s.
00:26:26.760 So late 1800s,
00:26:27.820 early 1900s.
00:26:29.140 And,
00:26:29.740 and in,
00:26:30.100 in one of the books
00:26:30.860 early on,
00:26:31.640 uh,
00:26:34.080 Fitzgerald is explaining,
00:26:35.800 he said,
00:26:36.760 he said,
00:26:37.260 you know,
00:26:37.540 when we were growing up
00:26:38.580 in Utah,
00:26:39.040 he said,
00:26:39.520 almost all the other kids
00:26:40.600 were Mormon.
00:26:41.360 Yeah.
00:26:42.040 And he said,
00:26:42.620 my family,
00:26:43.240 we weren't Mormon.
00:26:45.360 And he said,
00:26:46.880 it really wasn't all that hard.
00:26:48.320 It was simply a matter
00:26:49.460 of me learning
00:26:50.640 to whip all the boys
00:26:51.500 my age
00:26:52.180 and Tom D
00:26:53.140 learning to whip
00:26:53.800 all the boys his age
00:26:54.840 and Swendi learning
00:26:56.340 to whip all the boys
00:26:57.360 his age.
00:26:58.260 And,
00:26:58.740 and once we did that,
00:27:00.340 they were very,
00:27:01.240 very tolerant.
00:27:02.280 It's amazing
00:27:03.120 how tolerant
00:27:03.760 a boy can be
00:27:04.380 when you can whip it.
00:27:06.720 There's a geopolitical
00:27:07.860 lesson there.
00:27:08.360 I read that
00:27:09.440 probably at age 10
00:27:11.020 and it's stuck
00:27:12.220 in my brain then.
00:27:13.740 And that's frankly
00:27:14.440 Israel's view.
00:27:15.380 It's,
00:27:15.480 it's amazing
00:27:16.180 how tolerant
00:27:16.840 their neighbors
00:27:17.360 can be
00:27:17.980 when Israel's military
00:27:19.600 has defeated them
00:27:20.440 over and over again.
00:27:21.360 And the qualitative
00:27:22.400 military advantage
00:27:23.520 they have
00:27:24.140 is,
00:27:26.600 is part of what
00:27:27.840 produces peace
00:27:28.820 in the Middle East.
00:27:29.560 And so
00:27:29.960 this past week
00:27:31.500 was a big deal.
00:27:32.180 It's a big deal.
00:27:32.640 I think we should
00:27:33.200 celebrate with
00:27:33.780 Monte Cristos
00:27:34.460 and we will
00:27:35.320 hopefully bring peace
00:27:36.140 not just to the
00:27:36.840 Middle East
00:27:37.200 but to the
00:27:37.760 Southeast as well
00:27:38.720 and then rejoin you
00:27:40.140 over here
00:27:40.620 for the next episode.
00:27:42.380 In the meantime,
00:27:43.120 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:27:43.920 This is Verdict
00:27:44.620 with Ted Cruz.
00:27:45.620 This episode of
00:27:55.720 Verdict
00:27:56.120 with Ted Cruz
00:27:56.960 is being brought to you
00:27:58.060 by Jobs Freedom
00:27:59.060 and Security Pack,
00:28:00.400 a political action
00:28:01.400 committee dedicated
00:28:02.200 to supporting
00:28:02.980 conservative causes,
00:28:04.380 organizations,
00:28:05.260 and candidates
00:28:05.940 across the country.
00:28:07.280 In 2022,
00:28:08.520 Jobs Freedom
00:28:09.140 and Security Pack
00:28:10.160 plans to donate
00:28:11.020 to conservative
00:28:11.760 candidates running
00:28:12.660 for Congress
00:28:13.380 and help the
00:28:14.100 Republican Party
00:28:15.020 across the nation.
00:28:16.880 This is an
00:28:17.320 iHeart Podcast.
00:28:19.200 Guaranteed Human.