Verdict with Ted Cruz - January 24, 2026


Oil Means National Security, Rep. Jim Jordan vs Jack Smith & Crime Crashes Coast‑to‑Coast Week In Review

Topics
crime stats nationwide oil independence national security oil production and infrastructure in Venezuela communist regimes and economies collapse murder rates decrease
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Donald Trump Jack Smith Jim Jordan Maduro Verdict Castro Batista Cassidy Hutchinson Miss Hutchinson Ben Ferguson Biden Jennifer Stewart Caitlin Clark Carol Lenning Hugo Chavez Tony Ornato Sean Davis Vladimir Putin Gavin Newsom Barron Trump and 8 more
Murder Rate Plummets-Trump Literally Saving Lives plus Disastrous Jack Smith Testimony Mayhem in Minneapolis： Why it's Happening, How to Stop it & Why Dems Will Shut the Government Down to Encourage More 

Episode Stats


Length

31 minutes

Words per minute

171.41

Word count

5,431

Sentence count

433

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

8

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz delivers a weekend review of the big stories of the past week, including the price of oil, Jim Jordan's challenge to Jack Smith, and why the media isn't talking about crime stats that show a massive drop in crime in the first year of Donald Trump's presidency.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.360 Welcome.
00:00:06.020 It is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:07.700 Weekend Review.
00:00:08.720 Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.760 And here are some of the big stories that we talked about this week that you may have missed.
00:00:13.260 First up, oil.
00:00:15.020 Is it a issue of national security?
00:00:17.440 Well, President Trump is dealing with that exact issue.
00:00:20.500 And oil executives are also breaking it down.
00:00:23.240 We had a very interesting conversation with some of those oil executives.
00:00:26.140 And we're going to explain to you exactly what they say about that issue.
00:00:30.200 And energy independence.
00:00:31.780 Also, Jim Jordan goes up against Jack Smith.
00:00:35.660 You remember Jack Smith, the special prosecutor that tried to overthrow the will of the people and get rid of Donald Trump.
00:00:41.180 Well, now he's having to answer for exactly what he did.
00:00:44.340 And it's truly unbelievable.
00:00:46.300 And finally, the media not talking about the most amazing part of all.
00:00:51.280 In the first year of Donald Trump's presidency, the crime stats nationwide have come down drastically.
00:00:58.100 Literally saving people's lives.
00:01:00.520 So why is the media not talking about it?
00:01:02.700 We'll give you those stats and explain it all.
00:01:05.080 It's the Weekend Review.
00:01:06.420 And it starts right now.
00:01:08.980 I had dinner the other night with some oil executives.
00:01:12.000 And they were frustrated a little bit because the price of oil has come down.
00:01:15.720 And one of the people at the table was also White House.
00:01:19.020 And they said, what you don't understand is that our energy independence policy is also a national security policy.
00:01:26.100 Because when you take away the money that is to the leadership in Iran, to Vladimir Putin in Russia, Venezuela is another example of this, right?
00:01:36.360 Then the money that they need to survive and to hold on to power and to pay their forces to keep them in power and to go after their citizens just completely disappears.
00:01:48.740 That is part of, I think, what Donald Trump, and it was very interesting to hear this kind of back and forth.
00:01:53.640 It was like, hey, I'm sorry that the price per barrel is not where you want it.
00:01:57.460 But it's helping American families to lower gas prices.
00:02:00.400 And it's a national security thing for us as well.
00:02:03.040 And it's allowing some of these horrible people in the world to start teetering a little bit because they don't have the cash flow they had two, three, four years ago under Democratic leadership.
00:02:13.500 I think that's right.
00:02:14.880 There's also a balance that President Trump and the Trump administration are trying to strike, which is we've seen the price of oil drop dramatically from $100 a barrel to down just around $60 a barrel, a little bit lower.
00:02:26.960 That has weakened almost every bad guy in the world that has weakened Russia, that has weakened Iran, that has weakened Venezuela and Maduro because it is, I guess, God has a sense of humor in that many of the worst players on planet Earth depend upon oil revenues.
00:02:45.220 They're in many ways petro-tyrants.
00:02:47.160 Now, Maduro's not.
00:02:48.300 Maduro is inmate number 257-whatever.
00:02:53.180 But he used to be.
00:02:54.020 Hanging out with P-Diddy.
00:02:54.860 Yeah.
00:02:55.380 But I'll say this.
00:02:57.380 Look, there is a balance because from a U.S. national security interest, look, oil and gas and energy are powerful weapons against our enemies and to buttress America.
00:03:08.860 But you don't want to slash the price of oil so dramatically that you devastate U.S. producers.
00:03:16.220 And as you know, I talk to, I represent Texas.
00:03:18.740 I talk to a lot of U.S. producers.
00:03:20.320 And I will say, at down around $60, $70 a barrel, you see what we've got now, which is gas prices at about $2, $3 a gallon, depending on what part of the country you're in.
00:03:31.880 Now, if you're in California, there's still $4 or $5 a gallon.
00:03:34.760 But that's on you for living in California, voting for those nut jobs. 1.00
00:03:37.920 But yeah, that's Gavin Newsom and the Democrats' fault.
00:03:40.280 But here in Texas, you fill up your tank.
00:03:42.680 It's, you know, somewhere between $2 and $3 typically is what you're paying right now.
00:03:47.060 I think that's a sweet spot is $60 to $70 where it lowers.
00:03:51.440 Of course, under Biden, when we had $100 oil, you were seeing $4, $5, $6, $7 a gallon of gasoline.
00:03:57.900 That really hurts consumers.
00:03:59.780 Yeah, crushing middle and lower class families, even more than anybody else.
00:04:03.740 I will say this.
00:04:04.880 If you see oil prices plummet, so let's say they drop from the 60s down to, say, the 40s or below.
00:04:11.840 It hurts a lot of people.
00:04:13.380 That's when it starts doing real damage, in particular to the independent producers.
00:04:18.240 The small guys in West Texas and the Permian, that's when you see drilling basically stop.
00:04:25.500 And by the way, the majors will be fine.
00:04:27.600 The ExxonMobil's, the Chevron's.
00:04:29.600 I mean, look, those are companies that literally have more revenue and assets than most countries on planet Earth.
00:04:36.020 They're that massive.
00:04:37.360 So the majors will survive a drop.
00:04:40.060 But what happens, if we see $40 oil, you'll see bankruptcies throughout the Permian Basin of the small producers.
00:04:49.900 And when those guys go away, those are the guys driving production.
00:04:53.980 And what it does is it weakens America's ability to produce oil and makes us more dependent on foreign adversaries.
00:05:01.760 So I think what President Trump and the administration is trying to do is stay in a sweet spot where oil is low enough that our enemies are weakened, but not so low that we're devastating U.S. small businesses.
00:05:13.900 And I think they're doing a pretty good job of trying to balance those two factors.
00:05:18.720 Well, I was talking to some small refineries, and that was exactly their concern, Senator, was, hey, these small refineries that keep these small towns going, that employ a lot of people, they want to make sure that they're OK as well.
00:05:30.580 And like you said, that's where this administration kind of has to weigh both ends of this, because you don't want to hurt mom and pops.
00:05:37.060 You don't want to hurt the small ones.
00:05:38.280 Like you said, the big ones will be OK.
00:05:40.260 But these small refineries that literally power these small towns where they are, you don't want them to get hurt either.
00:05:47.840 Yeah.
00:05:48.060 And look, in the last several weeks, with everything happening in Iran, everything happening in Venezuela, I've been reaching out to energy leaders, primarily in Texas.
00:05:55.260 So I've had conversations with the CEO of Chevron and the CEO of Valero, the biggest refiner in America.
00:06:02.240 And I've had conversations with a number of smaller E&P, exploration and production independents in West Texas.
00:06:11.520 And they've expressed optimism, number one, in terms of Venezuela.
00:06:17.120 Venezuela, as we've talked about, has the highest proven reserves of oil in the world.
00:06:21.720 No country has more.
00:06:23.640 But the Venezuelan infrastructure is completely collapsed.
00:06:27.260 Communism is not capable of producing what they should.
00:06:31.400 And so Venezuela right now is producing about a million barrels a day, which is a fraction of what their capacity is.
00:06:38.200 I will say I asked one of the major CEOs, I said, OK, what would the time frame be to take Venezuela from one million barrels a day to three million barrels a day?
00:06:49.560 And the response was 10 years, that it doesn't happen overnight.
00:06:55.540 It would take tens of billions of dollars of investment and perhaps north of a hundred billion dollars.
00:07:01.580 Now, you would recoup that, but the infrastructure has so degraded.
00:07:06.060 And I said, all right, so 10 years to go from one million a day to three million a day.
00:07:10.400 How about just from one to two?
00:07:12.220 And the answer was five to seven years.
00:07:15.040 So the first million you add would take longer.
00:07:18.540 It's an infrastructure.
00:07:19.480 It's just straight up infrastructure.
00:07:20.680 Right, right.
00:07:21.300 And you could keep going up from there.
00:07:23.200 I also am talking to refiners.
00:07:25.920 So Venezuela produces what is called heavy sour crude, which is a different sort of crude than in West Texas.
00:07:35.300 They produce what's called light sweet crude.
00:07:37.680 You refine them very, very differently.
00:07:39.860 Now, it so happens that the refineries that were built to handle heavy sour crude are along the Gulf Coast.
00:07:46.760 They're in Texas and Louisiana.
00:07:48.460 And so we've got the capacity.
00:07:50.160 I've been told that the Gulf Coast refineries could almost overnight refine an additional 250,000 barrels of the heavy crude from Venezuela.
00:08:00.940 Now, interestingly enough, when I've asked the refiners, OK, what would the tradeoff be?
00:08:04.560 What would the impact be, say, for West Texas producers?
00:08:07.860 The refiners, at least, were not that concerned about it.
00:08:10.780 And they said, look, the other producers of heavy crude are Canada.
00:08:16.240 And so the tar sands in Alberta.
00:08:18.060 And I said, look, more Venezuelan crude would impact Canada.
00:08:21.240 And actually, Mexico.
00:08:23.160 Mexico also produces similar crude to what Venezuela and Canada produce.
00:08:28.500 And so that, in terms of the impact, those are the tradeoffs.
00:08:32.760 And that's the kind of decision making the Trump administration is engaged in right now.
00:08:38.000 I want to ask you one final question before we wrap here.
00:08:41.140 We talked a lot about Venezuela in the last couple of shows.
00:08:43.860 We kind of know the state of play there.
00:08:46.420 We talked a lot about Iran today.
00:08:49.120 Can you give us, for everyone listening, just a quick update on what's happening in Cuba?
00:08:53.880 We've mentioned it several times of how things could be teetering there.
00:08:58.640 Give a little bit of an update for people so they understand what's happening on the ground there as we wrap things up.
00:09:03.920 So, look, the Cuban regime has been a communist dictatorship since 1959.
00:09:09.500 As you know, that, for me, is not some abstract statement because my family was directly involved in it.
00:09:15.140 My dad was a kid.
00:09:16.180 He was 14 when he began fighting in the Cuban Revolution.
00:09:20.200 And to this day, my dad turns 87 in March. 0.99
00:09:24.480 And he told me, he said, look, the revolution, he said it was 14- and 15-year-old boys who, he said, were too stupid to know any better. 0.98
00:09:33.800 And as you know, you know my dad well. 0.99
00:09:36.140 But when I want to give my father grief, I'll call my dad a communist guerrilla. 0.54
00:09:42.260 He gets very mad.
00:09:44.260 I have a feeling that's during game night when you guys are playing games.
00:09:47.360 I feel like that's when that's going to get used the most.
00:09:50.380 Yeah, and he will say, I was not a communist.
00:09:52.720 I was never a communist.
00:09:54.720 He was a kid.
00:09:55.900 And they were fighting against Batista, who was a dictator. 0.98
00:09:59.820 He was corrupt. 0.76
00:10:00.880 And Batista's thugs threw my father in prison, and they tortured him. 0.77
00:10:06.180 And so when my dad came to America, he was fleeing Batista.
00:10:09.080 And he came to Texas at 18 with nothing, and he couldn't speak English.
00:10:13.040 He came seeking freedom.
00:10:14.540 His younger sister is my Tia Sonia.
00:10:18.140 And my Tia Sonia, I adore my Tia Sonia.
00:10:20.380 I call her my Tia Loca.
00:10:21.640 She's my crazy aunt. 0.99
00:10:23.280 She is a fireball. 1.00
00:10:25.260 She was there in 59 when Castro took over.
00:10:29.280 And the young people, the Cubans didn't realize Castro was a communist.
00:10:33.760 They just thought it was a people's revolution against Batista.
00:10:37.680 He took over.
00:10:38.460 He declared he was a communist.
00:10:39.740 He began firing squads. 0.93
00:10:42.440 He began executing anyone who disagreed with him.
00:10:44.660 He began seizing people's lands.
00:10:46.960 And my Tia Sonia fought in the counter-revolution.
00:10:50.080 She was—there was a whole counter-revolution of the people trying to fight back.
00:10:54.380 And my Tia Sonia ended up being thrown in prison and tortured by Castro's goons.
00:11:00.480 So I take it very personally.
00:11:02.720 When it comes to communism, it strikes very close to home.
00:11:06.240 If you look at the history of Cuba, starting early on from when Castro took over and made
00:11:11.560 Cuba a communist dictatorship, for decades, Cuba was effectively a satellite state of the
00:11:18.780 Soviet Union.
00:11:19.360 Remember the whole Cuban Missile Crisis under JFK?
00:11:21.980 And the Soviets provided them a financial lifeline.
00:11:25.740 Look, if you're a communist, you destroy the economy.
00:11:29.520 That happens all across the world.
00:11:31.960 Communism is a great way to destroy jobs and make your people incredibly poor.
00:11:36.520 Cuba went from—it was the number one sugar producer in all of Latin America.
00:11:41.400 They just destroyed the sugar industry and everything else and brought massive poverty to Cuba.
00:11:47.460 They survived because the Soviet Union sent them money.
00:11:50.440 And they sent them money because the Soviets wanted a military satellite just 90 miles off
00:11:55.400 the coast of America.
00:11:57.100 Now, when we won the Cold War, when the Soviet Union collapsed, suddenly that financial lifeline
00:12:04.060 disappeared.
00:12:05.160 And what happened was Venezuela stepped into the breach.
00:12:08.440 And you had Hugo Chavez and then later Maduro, both communist dictators, who destroyed the
00:12:15.080 economy in Venezuela, just like Castro had in Cuba.
00:12:18.640 Chavez and Maduro did the same thing in Venezuela.
00:12:21.660 And Venezuela had a corrupt bargain where they would send oil, which they had a ton of.
00:12:27.400 And they would send money, which they had a lot of in exchange for selling the oil.
00:12:31.180 And what they would get back is enforcers and thugs.
00:12:35.580 There was a reason Maduro's entire protection detail were Cuban guards.
00:12:40.220 And, you know, in the article I just read, it talked about how one of the reasons is Maduro
00:12:44.980 didn't trust Venezuelans because he was such a terrible leader that he was afraid Venezuelans
00:12:49.020 would turn on him, which is why he used Cuban enforcers instead.
00:12:52.360 Well, with Venezuela, with Maduro having been arrested no longer in power, Venezuela is no
00:13:00.020 longer sending oil and no longer sending money to Cuba.
00:13:03.420 And the Cuban economy is in freefall, just like the Iranian economy is in freefall. 0.51
00:13:07.560 The regime is incredibly precarious.
00:13:10.180 And I'll tell you what's keeping it alive right now, which is Mexico is still sending 1.00
00:13:14.600 oil to Cuba.
00:13:15.700 And my hope is the Trump administration is going to lean on Mexico to stop that oil going to
00:13:21.780 Cuba.
00:13:22.020 I think that may be the single most important piece to nudge Cuba beyond the tipping point, 0.99
00:13:29.780 much like Iran is. 0.90
00:13:31.500 And I think the communist dictatorship is terrified that they will lose control.
00:13:37.440 Now, the counterbalance to that is the Cuban regime has a massive oppressive machinery that
00:13:46.500 has been in place for decades.
00:13:49.240 And that machinery can be really brutal.
00:13:53.060 And so I think the vulnerability right now is that when people face a collapsing economy,
00:14:01.000 they get angry and they can turn on their leaders.
00:14:04.000 And so I think the Trump administration, I think President Trump is encouraging that.
00:14:09.160 But it is the economic factor more than anything that I think is putting the regime in a massively
00:14:14.760 fragile position.
00:14:15.720 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to
00:14:19.900 the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:14:22.900 Canadian women are looking for more, more to themselves, their businesses, their elected 0.99
00:14:27.500 leaders and the world around them.
00:14:29.260 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:14:33.080 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:14:34.180 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:14:35.400 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,
00:14:40.240 athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:14:44.900 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:14:48.120 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:14:53.940 Now on to story number two.
00:14:56.120 All right.
00:14:56.520 I want to get to another big story, Senator, and it deals with Jack Smith.
00:15:00.200 He was in front of Congress.
00:15:01.600 I would assume 90% of this audience does not know that he had to testify before Congress
00:15:07.200 this week, not because they're uninformed, because the media refuses to cover this.
00:15:12.220 They think this is old news and just hashing out something that happened a long time ago,
00:15:17.080 so no one should care.
00:15:18.760 I think we should remind people of why accountability is still so vitally important and what Jack
00:15:26.360 Smith was a part of.
00:15:28.480 Can you just give a quick synopsis to people so that people remember, who is Jack Smith?
00:15:34.000 What was he doing to abuse power?
00:15:36.020 And just how corrupt was his, quote, investigation to Donald Trump and others?
00:15:40.620 Jack Smith was the point of the spear on the greatest abuse of power we have seen in modern
00:15:45.640 times.
00:15:46.180 And to put it in context, what Jack Smith did was orders of magnitude worse than what the
00:15:52.960 Nixon administration did during Watergate.
00:15:55.100 During Watergate, you had a couple of half-rate burglars break into the headquarters of the
00:16:01.420 DNC, the Democrat National Committee.
00:16:04.620 In this instance, Jack Smith, what he did was orders of magnitude worse.
00:16:09.140 He went directly after President Trump, indicted him multiple times.
00:16:13.680 He did so for a very explicit reason, because he wanted to prevent the American people from 0.74
00:16:17.940 re-electing him.
00:16:18.800 It was an effort directly to subvert democracy.
00:16:22.480 It was the first time in the history of the United States that a president or former president
00:16:26.080 has been indicted.
00:16:27.000 Jack Smith did it twice.
00:16:28.300 And then he also teamed up with his rogue Democrat local prosecutors to do it two more
00:16:33.660 times.
00:16:34.180 He also subpoenaed the phone records of roughly 20 percent of the Republicans in the Senate
00:16:40.660 in a fishing expedition.
00:16:42.120 He targeted over 400 Republicans.
00:16:44.940 It was a political persecution.
00:16:47.060 If you're a fan of Les Mis, Jack Smith would make Javert blush.
00:16:54.220 He was out of control, and he continues to be brazen.
00:16:57.100 And I will tell you, his testimony testified before the House of Representatives.
00:17:00.500 It was a disaster.
00:17:01.860 Jim Jordan, your friend and mine, he's been a guest on the Verdict podcast before.
00:17:06.480 Jim Jordan chaired the hearing.
00:17:08.080 He opened the hearing by pointing out that the FBI, when it raided Mar-a-Lago, that it searched
00:17:13.380 Melania's closet because apparently her clothing and underwear is a matter of national security, 1.00
00:17:20.420 according to Jack Smith and the Biden DOJ.
00:17:23.020 And it searched Barron Trump's bedroom because, you know, going after a teenager is really
00:17:28.560 the best use for the Department of Justice.
00:17:30.680 And I guess it is if you're willing to abuse your power.
00:17:33.800 I want you to listen to Jim Jordan talking about Jack Smith at the hearing.
00:17:40.240 Here, give a listen.
00:17:41.240 Gentleman yields back.
00:17:42.380 Mr. Smith, is Cassidy Hutchinson a liar?
00:17:45.220 She was their star witness.
00:17:47.480 January 6th committee, their star witness in one of those staged and choreographed hearings
00:17:52.200 they paid the former president of ABC News to put together.
00:17:56.360 She was, in fact, the only witness at this special primetime hearing, Tuesday, June 28th,
00:18:03.140 2022, 8 o'clock in the evening.
00:18:05.840 And she told some stories.
00:18:08.080 I mean, these were, these were some stories.
00:18:10.660 She talked about the president lunged across the back seat, grabbed the steering wheel,
00:18:16.120 tried to drive the car to the Capitol.
00:18:18.720 And I just want to know, you think she was lying?
00:18:20.980 Chairman Jordan, my assessment of that particular issue is that with respect to the testimony
00:18:29.540 about someone lunging, the president lunging towards the driver, my recollection of her
00:18:36.340 testimony about that is that it was secondhand.
00:18:38.760 She said she'd heard that from somebody.
00:18:40.740 You familiar with the name Tony Ornato?
00:18:42.760 I'm sorry.
00:18:43.340 You familiar with the name Tony Ornato?
00:18:45.480 Yes.
00:18:46.420 White House deputy chief of operations, deputy chief of staff for operations, right?
00:18:50.040 You remember, you know, you remember what he said about it?
00:18:53.480 As I sit here right now, I do not.
00:18:55.020 Yeah.
00:18:55.140 He said it didn't happen.
00:18:56.600 How about Bobby Engel?
00:18:57.480 You familiar with that name?
00:18:58.960 Yes, I am.
00:18:59.880 Secret service agent who was actually in the car that day.
00:19:03.280 You know what he said?
00:19:04.440 He said it didn't happen.
00:19:06.020 And they both said the first time they ever heard this story was when Miss Hutchinson testified
00:19:12.360 in the primetime hearing as their star witness of the January 6th committee.
00:19:17.020 By the way, did you ever confirm her testimony about this particular incident?
00:19:22.100 We conducted, as I said before, our own independent investigation of all aspects of the case that
00:19:29.140 we thought was relevant.
00:19:30.580 We attorneys from my office.
00:19:32.540 Did you ever confirm it?
00:19:33.280 That's a simple question.
00:19:35.100 We interviewed her.
00:19:36.560 I should say attorneys in my office.
00:19:38.000 Did you ever confirm the president leaping across the seat, grabbing the steering wheel,
00:19:42.820 this whole concoction she brought up in the January 6th hearing?
00:19:45.580 Did you ever confirm that?
00:19:46.680 Right.
00:19:47.000 We interviewed another firsthand witness who was in the car who did not confirm that that happened,
00:19:55.860 but also stated...
00:19:56.940 In your deposition to the committee last month, Mr. Smith, you said this.
00:20:01.340 My recollection with Miss Hutchinson was a number of the things that she gave evidence on
00:20:05.060 were secondhand hearsay.
00:20:06.400 You remember making that statement to us last month in the deposition?
00:20:09.480 I did, and I was referring particularly to what we're talking about now.
00:20:13.560 Yeah, and you also said Miss Hutchinson, regarding this particular claim, was a second or even
00:20:17.300 thirdhand witness.
00:20:18.380 We asked you, if you were a defense attorney, how would you handle cross-examining her if
00:20:22.120 she was on the witness stand?
00:20:23.200 And you said, if I were a defense attorney and Miss Hutchinson were a witness, the first
00:20:26.500 thing I would do was seek to preclude her testimony because it was hearsay.
00:20:30.080 You remember saying all that?
00:20:31.220 Yes, that's correct, sir.
00:20:32.120 That's correct, right?
00:20:33.140 Were you going to put her on the witness stand if you ever got to trial? 0.79
00:20:35.240 Uh, we had not made final determinations as to who we were going to call as a witness.
00:20:40.200 We had a large...
00:20:41.240 You were still considering her?
00:20:42.440 We had a large choice of witnesses in this case.
00:20:45.640 Are you familiar with what Washington Post reporters Carol Lenning and Aaron Davis said
00:20:50.240 in their book?
00:20:50.760 They did this book, 300-some pages book, on Chronicle and the whole investigation of the
00:20:54.680 Justice Department.
00:20:55.620 And here's what they said on page 310.
00:20:58.360 They said, Jack Smith had wondered whether some of Hutchinson's claims might be relied upon
00:21:02.300 at trial.
00:21:02.820 Still, at one point, Smith told the elections team he wasn't ready to give up on Hutchinson's
00:21:07.460 account.
00:21:08.340 Ultimately, however, Trump administration officials uniformly, fiercely disputed her accounts under
00:21:14.180 oath.
00:21:14.720 Prosecutors on your team told Smith they wouldn't want to use Hutchinson as a witness in court,
00:21:19.360 and Smith agreed.
00:21:21.360 Are Carol Lenning and Aaron Davis, who wrote this, are they lying?
00:21:24.460 My recollection is that I certainly had not made any final determinations about who we were
00:21:30.860 going to call as...
00:21:31.240 And that's the point.
00:21:32.560 That is the point.
00:21:33.640 The fact that they used her in a primetime hearing, and you won't rule out using her,
00:21:38.800 didn't rule out using her, putting her on the witness stand, when everybody knows she
00:21:42.320 wasn't telling the truth, that says it all.
00:21:45.960 That's the degree the left and Democrats were willing to go to get President Trump.
00:21:50.580 Putting on the witness stand someone everybody knows is making it up.
00:21:54.740 Everybody knows that.
00:21:56.580 And you were willing to do...
00:21:57.300 By the way, you know how many times Cassie Hutchinson was mentioned in their report,
00:22:00.640 the January 6th report?
00:22:02.120 Any idea, Mr. Smith?
00:22:03.640 I do not.
00:22:04.200 A hundred and eighty-five times.
00:22:06.520 Someone that the whole country knows wasn't telling the truth, and you were still considering
00:22:11.980 putting her on the witness stand because you had to get President Trump.
00:22:16.920 And everybody can see that.
00:22:18.600 Senator, you listen to that line of questioning, and that's just five minutes of pure facts
00:22:25.240 and gold from Jim Jordan reminding people what they were trying to do on the left, even
00:22:31.660 when they knew that things were being made up, that lies were being told.
00:22:35.200 And this is no different than Russian collusion back in 16, when the FBI had already declared
00:22:40.420 that they thought that the Steele dossier was, quote, user-generated, and they used it anyway.
00:22:45.200 Anyway, that's exactly what was happening here with the special counsel.
00:22:50.220 It was weaponize and do whatever you want to do to try to stop Donald Trump from becoming
00:22:54.820 president again.
00:22:56.300 Well, and what Jim Jordan did there was also highlight the willingness to rely on people
00:23:01.160 that were lying, that were obviously lying.
00:23:03.760 You know, I will say it's interesting.
00:23:04.900 Cassidy Hutchinson, I don't know her personally.
00:23:08.500 Before she worked in the White House, she was apparently an intern in my office. 0.53
00:23:12.840 I have no recollection of her.
00:23:14.720 We have lots of interns who come in and out of the office.
00:23:18.040 We tend to have interns in the spring semester, in the fall semester, and also during the summer.
00:23:22.000 And typically, I will sit down with the group of interns that are with us for like a 20-minute
00:23:26.960 meeting in my office, and I'll talk with them a little bit.
00:23:29.040 So I assume I met her when she interned, but I don't remember her.
00:23:33.160 She wrote a book right after her star testimony.
00:23:36.700 She wrote a book of all of her stories.
00:23:39.600 And in it, she describes this exchange with me, this conversation that she says happened
00:23:46.700 with me that is truly fantastic because it never occurred.
00:23:50.960 And it was an exchange that she said occurred after she went to the White House.
00:23:54.760 And the dialogue back and forth she makes up has me kind of like tugging on her shirt sleeve
00:24:02.220 and asking for her help.
00:24:03.920 And it has her like strongly like sticking it to the senator.
00:24:08.800 I have to admit, so I didn't read her book.
00:24:11.660 And I think very few people actually did.
00:24:14.420 I did what's called the Washington read when someone writes something about you that's
00:24:18.480 sort of making a little bit of news, which is I went and read the like page where she
00:24:21.840 talks about it.
00:24:22.840 And I literally laughed out loud at the exchange because it was truly fiction.
00:24:30.080 And the fact that she was willing to fictionalize a conversation with me that did not occur tells
00:24:37.140 me that the other pages of the book are quite likely to be fiction as well.
00:24:41.980 And it speaks volumes that both Jack Smith and the Democrats running the January 6th
00:24:48.280 commission were perfectly happy to rely upon a fabulist whom they knew was not telling
00:24:52.900 the truth.
00:24:53.760 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go
00:24:58.420 back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:25:03.120 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected 1.00
00:25:07.660 leaders and the world around them.
00:25:09.220 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:25:13.240 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:25:14.340 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:25:15.560 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists,
00:25:20.680 athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:25:25.060 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:25:28.300 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:25:32.340 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:25:38.220 All right, Senator.
00:25:39.240 So let's just get back to this headline.
00:25:41.940 A lot of people not paying attention to it because why?
00:25:45.420 Well, no one's covering it because it's good news.
00:25:48.960 There are fewer Americans that are becoming victims of crime.
00:25:52.380 Fewer people in America that are being murdered.
00:25:54.220 All of this because of Donald Trump's leadership and trying to go into dangerous cities and
00:26:00.360 make them safer for all Americans.
00:26:03.240 That's right.
00:26:04.060 Let's let's start with crime.
00:26:05.380 And what was released this week is the latest murder rates and the murder rates across the
00:26:10.320 United States decreased nationwide roughly 20 percent.
00:26:15.040 And let's put that in specific numbers.
00:26:17.440 If you look at January through October of 2025 and you compare it to the same time period
00:26:23.260 in 2024, in 2025, approximately 5,912 murders were recorded in the U.S.
00:26:32.760 In that same time period in 2024, 7,369 murders were recorded.
00:26:39.580 In other words, there are about 1,400 people, 1,400 people alive who were not murdered.
00:26:47.440 Because of common sense, law and order policies, because of not releasing murderers onto the
00:26:54.620 street, because of deporting murderers and violent gang members.
00:26:58.000 And let's break the numbers down.
00:27:00.560 Chicago, the murder rate dropped 30 percent.
00:27:04.400 New York City, the murder rate dropped 20 percent.
00:27:08.380 Birmingham, Alabama, it dropped 49 percent.
00:27:11.580 Albuquerque, New Mexico, it dropped 32 percent.
00:27:14.360 Baltimore, Maryland, it dropped 31 percent.
00:27:16.800 Atlanta, Georgia, 26 percent.
00:27:20.020 Oakland, California, 33 percent.
00:27:22.940 Washington, D.C., where President Trump deployed the National Guard, 31 percent.
00:27:28.160 These are historic lows.
00:27:30.820 And if these trends continue, the U.S. may record its lowest murder rate since 1960.
00:27:40.420 That is 66 years ago.
00:27:42.920 That is a stunning result.
00:27:44.940 By the way, border crime, border crime, other violent crimes also decreased in 2025, including
00:27:53.140 a 25 percent drop in motor vehicle theft, an 18 percent drop in robberies, and an 8 percent
00:28:01.700 drop in aggravated assaults.
00:28:04.080 Now, these data are being reported, and what is really quite interesting is the media is doing everything they can to cover it up.
00:28:15.540 So Axios wrote the first story on this, and they talk about the murder rate has fallen, but they say, well, it's unclear that this has anything to do with Donald Trump or DOJ or the FBI or policies that Republicans have put in place deporting
00:28:28.960 and violent criminals and murderers and gang members, which is truly, it is a level of dishonesty that is incredible.
00:28:39.040 And I want to give you some of the raw backgrounds that explains why the murder rate has dropped so profoundly.
00:28:49.560 Here are some raw numbers, and this was put out by FBI Director Cash Patel, of what has happened that would explain why is it that we've seen a 20 percent drop in murder rate.
00:28:58.860 In the last year, we've seen an increase in violent crime arrests.
00:29:04.420 What rate do you think the increase in violent crime arrests has been?
00:29:07.260 What has it been? I have no clue.
00:29:09.860 One hundred percent.
00:29:11.620 Wow.
00:29:13.180 All right, how about this? Gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted.
00:29:18.140 What rate do you think that that increase has been?
00:29:21.220 I'm going to guess it's got to be significant.
00:29:23.260 Two hundred and ten percent.
00:29:26.680 A total of one thousand eight hundred gangs and criminal enterprises disrupted.
00:29:31.600 All right.
00:29:32.480 Fentanyl.
00:29:33.440 More than two thousand kilos of fentanyl seized.
00:29:36.600 That's up thirty one percent.
00:29:38.040 That's enough to kill one hundred and thirty million Americans.
00:29:41.080 There have also been more than six thousand child victims located.
00:29:46.380 That's an increase of twenty two percent.
00:29:48.240 There have been more than one thousand seven hundred child predators arrested.
00:29:53.320 That's an increase of ten percent.
00:29:55.040 There have been more than three hundred human traffickers arrested.
00:29:58.860 That's up fifteen percent.
00:30:00.560 There's a thirty five percent increase in espionage arrests.
00:30:05.400 And four of the FBI's top ten most wanted fugitives were captured.
00:30:12.420 And to give you a sense of that, in one year, do you know how many how many of the FBI's top ten list were captured in the four years of the Biden presidency?
00:30:21.560 I'm going to guess it's less than five.
00:30:24.340 Four.
00:30:25.380 So in one year, they captured as many on the top ten list as Biden did in all four years.
00:30:31.800 And the media want to do everything they can to say, no, no, this drop in the murder rate, it just happened magically.
00:30:39.260 It's probably due to global warming or something.
00:30:41.560 It has nothing to do with arresting murderers.
00:30:45.480 It has nothing to do with deporting murderers.
00:30:47.920 It certainly has nothing to do with MS-13 gang members being put in jail and deported, despite the fact that the way you join MS-13 is by murdering someone.
00:30:58.660 And this is real results.
00:31:02.760 And then you put on top of it, you put on top of it the drop in overdoses.
00:31:08.540 And when we come back, we're going to give you the drop in overdoses, which is even more profound.
00:31:14.840 Even more lives have been saved in the past year.
00:31:18.380 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:31:23.200 Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:31:26.880 You're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:31:30.140 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:31:33.760 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
00:31:37.400 This is an iHeart podcast.
00:31:40.320 Guaranteed human.