Verdict with Ted Cruz - Naughty List of Corrupt Biden Officials, Dems Afraid of some Serious Kash & SCOTUS Gender Transition for Minors Case Week In Review

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.380 Welcome, it is Verdict with Ted Cruz, The Weekend Review.

00:00:08.520 Ben Ferguson with you, and these are the stories you may have missed that we talked about this past week.

00:00:13.620 First up, the Democrats, well, they've released a list of the people they believe are corrupt officials

00:00:20.200 within the Democratic apparatus in the deep state.

00:00:23.400 And now they're claiming this is an enemy's list of Donald Trump.

00:00:26.880 Why did they do it?

00:00:27.880 Because they want them to all get pardons.

00:00:30.660 Yes, we're going to dive into this list and what it means for Democrats.

00:00:34.360 Also, Kash Patel has been tapped for FBI director and the media turning on him trying to make sure it never happens.

00:00:41.560 We'll explain that.

00:00:42.840 And finally, the Supreme Court dealt with a transition case when it comes to minors.

00:00:49.460 As the left says that you should be able to chemically castrate or cut off certain body parts of kids

00:00:55.380 even as young as 2, 3, 4, and 5 years old.

00:00:59.060 We'll break that down for you as well.

00:01:01.040 It is The Weekend Review, and it starts right now.

00:01:04.860 All right, so let's go back to this list.

00:01:07.840 And it was a list that Democrats put out.

00:01:10.700 They started adding names to the list and saying this is somehow Trump's list, even though they're the ones creating it out of thin air.

00:01:18.080 So early in the day, yesterday, it started with, well, it needs to, the president needs to pardon himself.

00:01:25.020 That also means he would need to pardon his brother.

00:01:27.480 And then they added Joe Biden to the list.

00:01:30.500 And then the list just started expanding to, like, everyone that worked for him that may have done something wrong or illegal.

00:01:36.920 Alex Mayorkas, for example, was on the list.

00:01:39.660 James Comey on the list.

00:01:41.400 Andrew McCabe on the list.

00:01:43.300 Peter Strzok, you may remember that guy who said, we're going to stop back in 16.

00:01:47.500 We're going to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

00:01:50.500 Bruce Ohr, Nellie Ohr, Rod Rosenstein.

00:01:52.860 And then it expanded from there to the point where the Atlantic has an article saying there needs to be mass pardons.

00:02:02.680 And this conversation took place on MSNBC.

00:02:06.160 You argued we defend norms by defending norms, not preaching them.

00:02:11.720 A lot has happened between now and then.

00:02:15.200 And I wonder how you're thinking about the president's pardon power today and how he should wield it.

00:02:20.700 Well, back in 2017, I thought that Trump was an aberration and unusual and black swan, if you will.

00:02:33.480 And my thought was that you had to defend the norms of the rule of law, good governance.

00:02:40.320 And the only way to do that was to maintain them, even in the face of his aberrational behavior.

00:02:45.600 Today, I think we know that Trump is not an aberration.

00:02:51.780 He's a phenomenon.

00:02:52.980 He's a movement.

00:02:54.600 And as such, what we have to do is recalibrate how we respond to that.

00:03:00.040 And it now strikes me as essential to at least begin to play to the edge of the field, right, to go as far as the law permits in combating the authoritarian excesses of Trump.

00:03:16.860 And the way I wrote about in The Atlantic is is the pardon power.

00:03:20.740 A pardon for Hunter Biden, a pardon for Trump's critics would be completely normative breaking.

00:03:30.540 And it would be out of character, out of historical tradition.

00:03:36.340 But at this point, I was listening to your earlier broadcast.

00:03:42.080 You were talking about Kash Patel.

00:03:43.620 He's got a list of 60 people he wants to prosecute.

00:03:47.740 That's a real list.

00:03:48.880 Will he do all of them?

00:03:49.920 I don't know.

00:03:50.740 Will there be resistance at the FBI?

00:03:52.960 Probably.

00:03:54.560 But, you know, one of the realities of being investigated is that investigation has a cost, even if you're not prosecuted in the end.

00:04:04.340 You have to hire a lawyer, the mental cost, the time, the resources.

00:04:07.880 And so it strikes me as perfectly reasonable to ask, what can President Biden do within the bounds of law, even if it would not be normatively traditional to save his allies from that?

00:04:22.300 And the answer is obviously pardon them.

00:04:25.000 Let's just stop there.

00:04:26.360 And he said more.

00:04:27.360 But let's just let's break that down.

00:04:30.360 Senator, he's saying it's personally perfectly reasonable for Biden to pardon any Trump critic and says, well, it's a cost issue because you'll have to get a lawyer. 0.98

00:04:42.640 Well, no crap. 0.89

00:04:43.580 Like everybody around Trump knows that they tried to financially break so many people around Donald Trump to work to the White House, tried to financially ruin them. 0.95

00:04:53.560 I have friends, I'm not going to say their names, who worked at the White House, who were strapped with legal bills over a half a million dollars, just having to answer questions in and around what happened on January the 6th, even though they weren't involved in it.

00:05:07.800 Look, that's absolutely right.

00:05:09.440 But I got to say the hypocrisy is even more rich than that.

00:05:12.880 So the person, the man whose voice you're hearing is a guy named Paul Rosenweig.

00:05:16.600 Now, who is Paul Rosenweig?

00:05:18.600 Well, he was a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security under George W. Bush.

00:05:23.940 And listen, I know Paul a little bit.

00:05:26.220 I don't know him well, but I know him socially around D.C. lawyer circles.

00:05:30.560 He wears a bow tie every day.

00:05:32.460 And he was one of the like he would run around Federalist Society events.

00:05:36.700 And he was part of the sort of Republican lawyer cadre during the George W. Bush campaign.

00:05:46.600 He is also someone who Donald Trump has broken his brain.

00:05:53.240 And Trump derangement syndrome is a very real phenomenon.

00:05:56.380 And he is he is now advocating that Biden pardon everybody, pardon every critic of Trump, pardon every member of the cabinet, pardon his entire family, pardon anyone who may have committed any crime because he doesn't want anybody to be held account for breaking the law.

00:06:17.980 Now, I'm going to tell you what the particular irony is.

00:06:22.380 Paul Rosenweig is also one of the leaders of a group called the 65 Project.

00:06:28.920 Now, what is the 65 Project?

00:06:30.940 It is this left wing group.

00:06:32.680 And it's Paul Rosenweig.

00:06:33.880 And it's also David Brock, who was Hillary Clinton's attack dog, who went around filing complaints trying to get Republican lawyers disbarred for supporting Donald Trump.

00:06:44.400 And Paul Rosenweig, his group, filed a complaint with the Texas bar asking that I be disbarred.

00:06:51.360 Understand this guy way before the Texas bar.

00:06:53.800 I remember that story, but this is the guy that was actually doing it.

00:06:57.700 Yes, yes, he was doing it.

00:06:59.700 And so I'm going to read to you from the New York Times story when they filed this complaint.

00:07:03.980 And it says this is a quote from the complaint.

00:07:06.300 Quote, Mr. Cruz played a leading role in the effort to overturn the 2020 elections.

00:07:10.620 And while the same can be said about several other elected officials, Mr. Cruz's involvement was manifestly different.

00:07:16.000 This is what the complaint says.

00:07:18.140 He chose to take on the role of lawyer and agreed to represent Mr. Trump and Pennsylvania Republicans in litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court.

00:07:27.880 In doing so, Mr. Cruz moved beyond his position as United States senator and sought to use more than his Twitter account and media appearances to support Mr. Trump's anti-democratic mission.

00:07:40.360 So understand, their complaint is that when I was asked, when the appeal in 2020 challenging Pennsylvania's violating the Pennsylvania Constitution and changing the law in Pennsylvania, when that was appealed to the Supreme Court, I was asked, if the court takes it, would you be willing to argue the case?

00:08:02.340 And Donald Trump asked me that.

00:08:03.800 And I said, yes, if the court takes it, if four justices decide they want to hear this case, and I believe they should have heard the Pennsylvania case, that I'll do the oral argument.

00:08:15.360 Their argument, Paul Rosenweig's argument, is because I said yes, I would represent a client before the Supreme Court.

00:08:23.260 I should be disbarred.

00:08:25.040 So he's talking about the cost of frivolous complaints and attacking people.

00:08:29.620 Well, he was one of the point people doing it. 0.97

00:08:32.100 And by the way, thankfully, the Texas bar is not an insane, woke nest of lunatics.

00:08:39.320 And so what did the Texas bar do? 0.65

00:08:40.860 They threw their complaint out as frivolous and baseless.

00:08:43.560 So it got thrown out.

00:08:44.820 It was absurd.

00:08:46.040 But this is someone who was asking that I be barred from practicing law.

00:08:51.800 And by the way, this group has gone after over and over and over again lawyers who dared to represent Donald Trump.

00:08:59.020 So they're willing – when we talk about weaponization, weaponization of law enforcement and weaponization of law, I got to say Paul Rosenweig is a great example of that.

00:09:09.460 He's happy to go and attack and try to bankrupt people.

00:09:13.040 You mentioned the – look, at the end of the day, if they come after me, I am a sitting senator.

00:09:21.480 I have the ability to raise money.

00:09:22.900 I can defend myself.

00:09:24.040 I am not a particularly faint flower.

00:09:28.220 I am not a vulnerable person who – if they want to come after me, let's go, and they're going to regret picking that fight.

00:09:35.920 But there are a bunch of people in the Trump administration who were 20-somethings or 30-somethings.

00:09:41.380 They were young people. 0.99

00:09:42.620 And these bastards went after them, tried to bankrupt them. 1.00

00:09:47.780 They had hundreds of thousands or more in legal expenses. 1.00

00:09:53.280 And they tried to make it – and by the way, these are the same people that publicly said,

00:09:57.360 if you work for Trump, we're going to do everything we can to make you unemployable.

00:10:01.960 To pressure law firms, they shouldn't hire you.

00:10:04.480 To pressure companies, they shouldn't hire you.

00:10:06.480 They wanted to destroy anyone who was willing to work with Donald Trump.

00:10:12.720 That's the viciousness.

00:10:14.580 And at the same time, they're urging Joe Biden, pardon everybody, because people who actually committed felonies,

00:10:22.020 we don't want them investigated and we certainly don't want them prosecuted.

00:10:25.860 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.

00:10:32.420 Canadian women are looking for more – more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them. 0.99

00:10:39.400 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:10:43.080 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:10:44.280 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:10:45.560 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:10:49.340 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.

00:10:55.060 So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:10:58.040 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:11:02.420 Now, on to story number two.

00:11:06.660 All right.

00:11:07.040 So, we originally thought we were going to start this show tonight, Senator, talking about the FBI and Kaspatel being named the FBI Director.

00:11:16.040 This is a name that Democrats do not like, Kaspatel, so people understand history.

00:11:20.600 This is a guy that actually the deep state went after when he was working for Donald Trump the first time with Russia, Russia, Russia.

00:11:29.700 And he found out about it that when apparently Google, five years after the fact, sent him a letter saying, hey, we had to disclose to you now that we gave a bunch of your information over to the FBI.

00:11:42.700 That's the now the guy that will be running the FBI if he gets confirmed.

00:11:47.940 Your reaction?

00:11:50.080 Well, I think this is a strong nomination.

00:11:52.340 I think we're seeing Democrats and we're seeing the media freaking out.

00:11:56.200 And they're freaking out, not because they think Kaspatel is unqualified, but rather because they believe he will actually do what Trump promised he would do.

00:12:04.800 They believe he will actually clean out the corruption at the FBI, that he will take on the partisans that have burrowed into senior career positions.

00:12:15.120 This is something we've been calling for on this podcast for a long time, to have leadership that is willing to really root out the partisanship and corruption and say no more.

00:12:24.500 The FBI needs to restore its integrity.

00:12:27.060 I think this is that this is a nomination.

00:12:30.040 The reason people are losing their minds is because they believe Kashpatel is going to do exactly what Trump said he would do.

00:12:36.560 And Senator, you actually talked about this on Sunday morning on Face the Nation on CBS, and it was very interesting to see the back and forth.

00:12:44.940 Take a listen to that for people that may have missed it.

00:12:47.540 Kashpatel suggested by Trump as the new leader of the FBI.

00:12:52.260 How enthusiastic are you about that?

00:12:56.240 Listen, I think Kashpatel is a very strong nominee.

00:12:59.280 I think the entire slate of cabinet nominees President Trump has put forward is very strong.

00:13:04.640 I believe every one of these cabinet nominees is going to be confirmed by the Senate.

00:13:09.400 I think Kashpatel is going to be confirmed by the Senate.

00:13:12.640 You look at his background.

00:13:13.820 He has a serious professional background.

00:13:16.520 He was a prosecutor.

00:13:17.640 He was a public defender.

00:13:19.640 He was a senior intelligence staffer on Capitol Hill.

00:13:23.160 He was a senior intelligence staffer in the White House.

00:13:26.240 He was the chief of staff at the Department of Defense.

00:13:28.660 He was the deputy director of national intelligence.

00:13:31.080 And I got to say, all of the weeping and gnashing of teeth, all of the people pulling their hair out are exactly the people who are dismayed about having a real reformer come into the FBI and clean out the corrupted partisans who sadly have burrowed into senior career positions at the FBI.

00:13:49.720 The FBI and the Department of Justice are two institutions incredibly important to the rule of law in the United States.

00:13:56.480 I revere both.

00:13:58.180 And one of the most tragic consequences of four years of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is both DOJ and the FBI have been politicized and weaponized.

00:14:08.120 And I think Kash Patel is a very strong nominee to take on the partisan corruption in the FBI.

00:14:15.280 As you know, Senator, there isn't a vacancy at the top of the FBI.

00:14:18.340 What should become of Christopher Wray appointed by President Trump?

00:14:22.820 Well, I think he'll make a choice.

00:14:24.500 I think either he will resign or President Trump will fire him.

00:14:27.460 But it's no secret to anybody, including Chris Wray, that he is not going to continue to serve as the head of the FBI under Donald Trump.

00:14:35.420 Listen, if you look at James Comey and Chris Wray, there has never been a period in our nation's history where the FBI has suffered a greater loss of respect,

00:14:45.840 where more Americans doubt the fundamental integrity of the FBI.

00:14:50.180 And it's because James Comey and Chris Wray presided over allowing the FBI to become a partisan cudgel to be used to target parents at school board meetings,

00:15:00.400 to be used to target people who chose not to take the COVID vaccine, to be used to target President Trump and to target the political opponents of Joe Biden in the White House.

00:15:09.740 It is tragic.

00:15:11.100 That is not what the FBI is for.

00:15:12.980 That is not what the DOJ is for.

00:15:14.700 And I've got to say, Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, I think, together are a very strong slate of nominees to go and restore integrity to both institutions.

00:15:25.080 I don't think it can be better said than that.

00:15:27.520 And that's why there's so many that are freaked out over Patel, because he's going to go in and do his job the way it's supposed to be done.

00:15:35.500 And also, that means part of this is clearing house of the political partisans that are in there that have weaponized the government.

00:15:44.700 That's exactly right.

00:15:46.260 And we've seen, you know, I wrote a book called Justice Corrupted, How the Left is Weaponized the Legal System.

00:15:53.000 And in the book, I described how, starting with Barack Obama, we saw the Department of Justice and the FBI and the CIA and the alphabet soup of the federal government

00:16:02.920 turned into a weapon to target and persecute the political enemies of Barack Obama.

00:16:09.500 When Trump became president, those partisans, what they did is they went into senior career positions in the agencies.

00:16:18.220 And from day one, from the first day of Trump's first term, they waged war on Donald Trump from within.

00:16:25.060 The deep state, they wanted to destroy him.

00:16:27.640 They wanted to stop his agenda.

00:16:29.660 They hated him.

00:16:30.640 And then when Joe Biden became president, they came out in the open.

00:16:35.080 They were brazen.

00:16:36.100 They were completely, they were not pretending anymore.

00:16:41.380 And so, listen, as I said, I think Kash Patel will be confirmed.

00:16:45.780 And when he is, I think it is going to be hugely important that he follow through on those promises to get rid of the partisans.

00:16:55.260 And, listen, a point I made, Major Garrett was pressing back saying, well, isn't this terrible that Chris Wray would be fired?

00:17:01.380 Listen, in the entire history of the FBI, we have never seen the respect for the FBI diminished as greatly as it has been under Chris Wray and under James Comey before him.

00:17:13.840 The American people no longer trust the integrity of the FBI.

00:17:19.620 That is, listen, with James Comey, I think he's a hard partisan.

00:17:22.920 I think he was the point of the spear.

00:17:25.280 With Chris Wray, I think it's different.

00:17:26.700 I actually think Chris Wray, he's not a Democrat, he's a Republican, he's not a leftist.

00:17:30.940 But he views his job as protecting the institution.

00:17:35.480 And I think he made a fundamental mistake that he believes that protecting the career senior officials, who themselves are vicious partisans,

00:17:44.180 I think he thinks that's somehow protecting the FBI, where the result is that the public respect of the FBI has been profoundly damaged.

00:17:53.460 I think the new director of the FBI has a very important job to root out those partisans and to bring it back to a fidelity to law.

00:18:03.660 By the way, I think the other political prosecutions that have been brought are natural candidates for the pardon power.

00:18:11.600 If you look at Donald Trump, I think Donald Trump should pardon those people who've been prosecuted for January 6th who did not engage in crimes of violence.

00:18:20.000 If you engage in a crime of violence, if you physically and violently assaulted a police officer, you shouldn't be pardoned.

00:18:26.400 You should face criminal prosecution if you committed a crime of violence against a police officer.

00:18:31.620 But if you were engaged in a peaceful protest, I think those are natural candidates for pardons.

00:18:36.620 I also think Lauren Handy, who is the pro-life protester, who's right now serving six years in federal prison for nonviolent protest against abortion.

00:18:48.280 I think Lauren Handy is a natural candidate for a pardon from President Trump. 0.99

00:18:53.640 I think there's a very substantial likelihood she will receive a pardon.

00:18:57.100 I think the nonviolent January 6th protesters are likely to receive pardons, and that is going to cause Democrats in the media to lose their mind because not only are they happy to look the other way at the weaponization of the Department of Justice and the FBI, they are vested in defending that weaponization, and that is a mandate.

00:19:16.560 Understand, Donald Trump campaigned to the American people saying, I will root out this corruption, and I think this nomination and his following through on that promise is fundamentally about respecting democracy.

00:19:30.000 The American people said, yes, we don't want the federal government weaponized against the political opposition of the White House.

00:19:38.040 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.

00:19:47.820 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00

00:19:50.040 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

00:19:54.180 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.

00:19:57.900 I'm Jennifer Stewart.

00:19:59.060 And I'm Catherine Clark.

00:20:00.300 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.

00:20:04.060 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.

00:20:07.360 All at different stages of their journey.

00:20:09.820 So, if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

00:20:13.020 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

00:20:18.800 I want to get back to the big story, number three of the week you may have missed.

00:20:23.720 Senator, I want to move to this other case.

00:20:26.220 And it is a case that has really been interesting to follow.

00:20:30.480 The Supreme Court hearing this case on gender transitions for minors.

00:20:35.120 Now, this has all come out of a case in Tennessee where Tennessee was arguing that you must protect children from harm and body mutilation, especially at very young ages.

00:20:48.440 And the left and the federal government saying, well, hold on a second.

00:20:54.380 We're in favor of this transgender care, arguing that even those that are two and three and four years old, they know that they're trans. 0.98

00:21:03.480 So, let them be sterilized and castrate themselves. 0.96

00:21:06.860 That is what the ACLU lawyer said in his own words while he was arguing this on TV, on CNN.

00:21:15.160 I want you to listen and get your reaction to that.

00:21:17.900 I would say nobody has to provide this medication to adolescents.

00:21:22.520 These are not doctors being forced to provide this medication.

00:21:25.260 These are doctors who are wanting to treat their patients in the best way that they know how, based on the best available evidence to us.

00:21:32.500 And these are young people who may have known since they were two years old exactly who they are, who suffered for six, seven years before they had any relief.

00:21:39.940 And what's happening here, it's not the kids who are consenting to this treatment.

00:21:43.280 It's the parents who are consenting to the treatment.

00:21:45.380 And as a parent, I would say we, when our children are suffering, we are suffering.

00:21:49.580 And these are parents who love their children, who are listening to the advice of their doctors, of the mainstream medical community, and doing what's right for their kids.

00:21:57.220 And the state of Tennessee has displaced their judgment.

00:22:00.080 Now, you hear that argument, and that to me is just, I'm sorry, child abuse.

00:22:04.280 If you're mutilating a child at two and three and four years old, and that's what Tennessee was saying.

00:22:09.480 Well, Tennessee passed, I think, a very reasonable law that prohibited puberty blockers and hormones and sterilizing children, sterilizing minors. 0.67

00:22:21.480 And we're seeing multiple state legislatures that are acting to protect children.

00:22:26.120 I think that is a reasonable and common sense step.

00:22:28.400 And what happened is, unsurprisingly, that the state got sued, and the ACLU argued that making it illegal for a small child to be sterilized and made permanently unable to have children, or even to be mutilated, that prohibiting that violated the 14th Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

00:22:52.480 That was the argument, and the Court of Appeals upheld the Tennessee law, and the Supreme Court took the case.

00:22:59.220 And so that was the argument.

00:23:01.220 You heard right there the ACLU lawyers arguing for being able to sterilize eight-year-olds.

00:23:07.660 Just using the math the lawyer laid out, the lawyer talked about a child at the age of two might know that he or she is transgender, and they might have had to wait six years.

00:23:19.280 Last I checked, two plus six is eight.

00:23:21.500 Eight, and so the legal argument is that eight-year-old, the parent should be able to sterilize that child.

00:23:29.020 And you know what?

00:23:29.600 If that child decides that at 18 he or she wants to be a dad or wants to be a mom, well, too late now, because when you were eight, we went ahead and sterilized you. 0.59

00:23:40.360 So there's no going back.

00:23:41.700 And this argument went back and forth.

00:23:43.780 All right, I'm going to make a prediction.

00:23:45.440 My prediction, I think the Supreme Court is going to uphold Tennessee's law.

00:23:50.140 And I think we may see a breakdown that plays out along pretty familiar ideological lines now.

00:23:57.000 It was pretty striking.

00:23:58.780 The three liberal justices all were asking questions that I got to say were really extreme and showing the modern left, they are all in on mutilating and sterilizing children.

00:24:16.680 However, this is not a fringe view on the left.

00:24:20.600 Today's elected Democrats and sadly, the left-wing activists they put on the courts are absolutely committed to this extreme agenda.

00:24:31.480 So I want you to listen.

00:24:32.860 Justice Sotomayor downplaying the risk of mutilation of minors in this back and forth in these oral arguments.

00:24:40.280 This is what she said.

00:24:41.860 You cannot eliminate the risk of detransitioners. 1.00

00:24:45.100 So it becomes a pure exercise of weighing benefits versus risk.

00:24:50.900 And the question of how many minors have to have their bodies irreparably harmed for unproven benefits is one that is best left.

00:24:58.480 I'm sorry, councillor.

00:25:00.440 Every medical treatment has a risk, even taking aspirin.

00:25:07.120 There is always going to be a percentage of the population under any medical treatment that's going to suffer a harm.

00:25:14.820 So the question in my mind is not, do policymakers decide whether one person's life is more valuable than the millions of others who get relief from this treatment?

00:25:31.600 The question is, can you stop one sex from the other? 1.00

00:25:35.120 I mean, she's saying this is not a big deal at all if you're mutilating a child because even aspirin has risks and effects.

00:25:46.740 So therefore, just put it under the category of everything goes.

00:25:50.860 Well, that sums up today's radical left. 0.60

00:25:55.040 In their view, severing a child's genitals is comparable to taking aspirin.

00:26:02.700 She also claimed, quote, millions of people are getting relief from this.

00:26:10.180 Now, thankfully, we do not currently have millions of children being sterilized.

00:26:15.280 But let's be clear, that's the left's worldview, is that sterilizing little boys and little girls, mutilating them, making them permanently unable to have children,

00:26:26.400 that should be happening on the scale of millions and millions of little boys and little girls.

00:26:32.700 That is Justice Sotomayor here.

00:26:35.200 Take a listen to Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson.

00:26:41.740 Drawn by the statute.

00:26:43.180 That was sort of like the starting point.

00:26:45.000 The question was whether it was discriminatory because it applied to both races and it wasn't necessarily invidious or whatever.

00:26:52.540 But as I read the statute here, excuse me, the case here, the court starts off by saying that Virginia is now one of 16 states which prohibit and punish marriages on the basis of racial classifications.

00:27:04.540 And when you look at the structure of that law, it looks in terms of, you know, you can't do something that is inconsistent with your own characteristics.

00:27:13.460 It's sort of the same thing.

00:27:14.840 So it's interesting to me that we now have this different argument.

00:27:17.880 And I wonder whether Virginia could have gotten away with what they did here by just making a classification argument the way that Tennessee is in this case.

00:27:28.320 Yes, I think that's exactly right.

00:27:30.080 I think that there is absolutely a parallel between any law that says you can't act inconsistent with a protected characteristic and in all other contexts.

00:27:38.280 You hear it there.

00:27:39.560 This is another example of just how extreme these.

00:27:42.700 And this is why the elections, by the way, are so important, Senator.

00:27:45.120 I mean, this is why Donald Trump being elected was so important, because when he's not when you don't have a conservative in the White House, you get these radical activists who are Supreme Court justices.

00:27:55.660 And if they have the majority, this is what they want you to be able to this is what they want to happen to your children.

00:28:00.760 Well, and let me break down what that exchange back and forth was.

00:28:04.440 So Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Joe Biden put on the Supreme Court, is comparing this Tennessee law to the law in Loving versus Virginia.

00:28:14.620 Now, Loving versus Virginia is a Supreme Court case.

00:28:16.920 It's a landmark case that struck down Virginia's ban decades ago, many, many years ago on interracial marriage, on on African-Americans and Anglos choosing to get married.

00:28:29.700 And she says, quote, it's sort of the same thing.

00:28:34.260 Now, Virginia's law was an abomination.

00:28:37.120 It was restricting adults making the decision to get married.

00:28:41.720 It was deliberately doing so on the basis of race, which, mind you, we fought a civil war in significant part to end slavery and to vindicate equal rights.

00:28:55.200 And we passed and adopted the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to end slavery, to protect equal protection and to give African-Americans the right to vote to ensure that there's not racial discrimination.

00:29:06.800 But in the less few, not sterilizing an eight year old is the same thing like that is bizarre.

00:29:16.480 And by the way, the person who responds to Justice Jackson is Joe Biden's solicitor general, the top lawyer for for the Biden administration before the United States Supreme Court.

00:29:28.360 She's saying, oh, yeah, they're exactly the same thing in our worldview.

00:29:31.500 You ought to be able to mutilate children. 0.99

00:29:34.300 It doesn't matter how how young the Constitution protects your right to mutilate your child.

00:29:41.100 That is a bizarre view.

00:29:44.300 That is an extreme view.

00:29:46.780 And that, sadly, is is is where where today's modern left is.

00:29:53.100 Final question on this issue with this case coming out of the Supreme Court.

00:29:57.200 And if you look at the way that this was being argued and I think one of the other things that's just so unhinged about this, the argument for medically mutilating minors is the fact that the issue really does seem to come down to to money.

00:30:11.960 The amount of money that people are now making off these surgeries is saying it is it is an increase year over year of over 14.4 percent on average.

00:30:21.440 So the transgender surgery world and then the lifetime of care is expanding at a 14.4 percent rate year over year.

00:30:33.540 That's why so many medical areas, doctors and hospitals are advocating for this because they make money.

00:30:43.260 Vanderbilt said very clearly to their doctors, either you get on board with this or you get out.

00:30:48.460 We're not going to let you say no to this because there's too much money to be made in, quote, gender care. 1.00

00:30:54.320 Yeah, there are vast amounts of money at stake and and it has become it really is a strange obsession of the radical left.

00:31:06.540 It is it is a virtue signal.

00:31:09.600 Remember, we had on on on verdict a couple of months ago, Sean Theory.

00:31:17.120 Sean Theory was an African-American Democratic state rep in Texas.

00:31:22.260 She was an elected Democrat. She had been elected for four terms.

00:31:26.720 And on this issue, there was a bill in Texas to prohibit mutilating minors.

00:31:32.440 And and she ended up voting for it.

00:31:34.820 And and the Democrat Party she described on the podcast.

00:31:38.220 If you didn't listen to that podcast, you ought to go back and listen to it because it's incredibly revealing.

00:31:42.700 She described how how her fellow Democrats, African-Americans in the Texas state legislature would come to her and she say,

00:31:49.640 did you have you study the damage this does to children, that if you give puberty blockers and you sterilize a child,

00:31:56.540 it does lifelong medical damage to him. It's horrible.

00:31:59.780 And she said that many other Democrats she described said, oh, we know we agree.

00:32:04.180 It's terrible. But you cannot oppose this in our party.

00:32:07.660 They will end you. Our party will end you. 0.94

00:32:10.960 Well, she ended up doing the courageous thing and voting for common sense and voting for kids.

00:32:15.220 And the Democrats recruited a primary challenger to her and beat her in the primary.

00:32:22.100 And they spent over one million dollars in a Democrat primary for a state house seat.

00:32:29.960 That is how radical this issue is.

00:32:33.300 So there is money. There is big money on the other side.

00:32:36.720 And it is enforced in the U.S. Senate.

00:32:41.220 Every single Democrat has voted in favor of mutilating minors.

00:32:44.800 There is no dissension that is allowed on this. 0.97

00:32:47.520 It's so sick.

00:32:48.880 And I got to say, and Joe Biden is enthusiastically in favor of it.

00:32:53.500 You know, I got to say also, look, this Supreme Court case,

00:32:57.700 part of the reason that there is is such focus on it is there was a previous Supreme Court decision called Bostock.

00:33:05.780 And Bostock is a decision that interpreted federal anti-discrimination law, unemployment discrimination.

00:33:13.680 And it is currently illegal under federal law to discriminate in employment based on race and other characteristics, including sex.

00:33:21.560 And in Bostock, the Supreme Court took a prohibition on discrimination based on sex and construed sex to mean also being transgender.

00:33:31.760 And that decision, that was a 6-3 decision.

00:33:35.560 That decision was authored by Justice Gorsuch.

00:33:39.160 And it was a fairly shocking decision.

00:33:41.100 A lot of people were shocked that Justice Gorsuch wrote that opinion.

00:33:44.760 It was joined by Chief Justice Roberts in addition to what were then four liberals who were on the court at the time.

00:33:51.160 Justice Ginsburg was still on the court.

00:33:53.120 It was before Amy Coney Barrett had been nominated and before Justice Ginsburg obviously had passed away.

00:33:59.240 So that was 6-3 on the other side.

00:34:02.000 I don't think we will see the same outcome.

00:34:05.620 I will say at the oral argument, Justice Gorsuch did not say a word.

00:34:10.020 Not a word.

00:34:10.740 So we do not have any indication from him as to how he will vote.

00:34:16.100 But Justice Roberts was quite vocal.

00:34:18.380 And what he laid out is actually the reason why I'm confident the Tennessee law will be upheld,

00:34:24.400 which is he laid out the proposition that the court should be deferring to state legislatures,

00:34:31.160 and particularly when you're dealing with contested medical evidence,

00:34:34.880 that state legislatures are far better suited to assess contested medical evidence

00:34:39.440 and make a determination and make a policy decision.

00:34:42.500 That that's how our democratic system works.

00:34:47.060 And I think Chief Justice Roberts' reasoning that he articulated at the oral argument is going to lead him to vote,

00:34:53.500 to uphold the law.

00:34:55.220 I think we will see, I think we will certainly see Justice Alito and Justice Thomas,

00:35:00.740 and Amy Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh also, their arguments at oral arguments,

00:35:06.520 that suggested that they would defer to the Tennessee state legislature as well.

00:35:12.440 I hope Justice Gorsuch will as well.

00:35:15.380 I think there's a very good chance that this will be a 6-3 decision upholding the Tennessee law.

00:35:22.260 But the fact that the court decided Bostock the other way.

00:35:27.060 Now, Bostock was a question of federal statute and interpreting the words Congress had adopted.

00:35:33.840 It was not a constitutional case.

00:35:36.780 It was not interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

00:35:41.640 And I'll note, by the way, there is a third outcome.

00:35:44.400 So what could the Supreme Court do here?

00:35:46.240 They could do three things.

00:35:47.500 They could do more than three things, but three key things.

00:35:50.040 One, they could affirm the Tennessee law.

00:35:52.660 That's what I think they are likely to do.

00:35:54.160 Two, they could strike down the Tennessee law.

00:35:57.380 They could rule that this law violates the Constitution and therefore is null and void.

00:36:02.720 I do not think they're likely to do that, but I think the three liberals will vote to do exactly that.

00:36:07.560 The third option they could do is they could reverse the decision and conclude that this law is sex discrimination,

00:36:17.060 and under the Constitution, sex discrimination is subject to what's called intermediate scrutiny.

00:36:23.100 Now, the toughest standard constitutionally for legal analysis is what's called strict scrutiny,

00:36:30.320 and racial discrimination under the Constitution by government is subject to strict scrutiny.

00:36:37.380 Sex discrimination is subject to intermediate scrutiny.

00:36:40.440 So the middle ground they could do is they could vacate the decision below and send it back to the lower court to apply intermediate scrutiny.

00:36:48.900 I hope they don't do that, and I don't think they will, but there is a non-zero chance they might do that,

00:36:57.120 which is what makes this case concerning.

00:37:00.460 All of that being said, my prediction is they're going to conclude correctly that the Tennessee law is constitutional,

00:37:08.740 and that is a judgment for the state legislatures to make.

00:37:11.620 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:37:17.280 Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day if you're not listening to Verdict,

00:37:21.900 or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.

00:37:24.300 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.

00:37:30.440 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:37:34.040 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - December 07, 2024

Naughty List of Corrupt Biden Officials, Dems Afraid of some Serious Kash & SCOTUS Gender Transition for Minors Case Week In Review

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