Verdict with Ted Cruz - January 30, 2022


Only Black Women Need Apply


Episode Stats


Length

38 minutes

Words per minute

174.19687

Word count

6,769

Sentence count

494

Harmful content

Misogyny

29

sentences flagged

Toxicity

25

sentences flagged

Hate speech

15

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz reacts to the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and explains why this is a good thing. He also talks about the best cigar deals you can get from Thompson Cigars and American Heart For Gold, and how to hedge your savings against inflation.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.420 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.360 Liberal Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has officially retired.
00:00:09.080 We do not know who will replace Justice Breyer.
00:00:12.280 We do not know what this means for the court in the long term.
00:00:16.240 We know only two things.
00:00:18.580 One, President Biden is going to play to the furthest extremes of leftist identity politics.
00:00:26.120 And two, this decision has a whole lot to do with November and Democrats believing that
00:00:34.580 they are going to get clobbered in the midterms.
00:00:37.380 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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00:04:19.220 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:04:21.520 Senator, I have to ask, I know I bring this up, every time there is a Supreme Court opening,
00:04:26.820 you were on the shortlist under President Trump.
00:04:29.740 And despite Joe Biden saying he will pick a black woman to fill this seat, because these 0.99
00:04:36.800 days we can identify however we like, will you consider being the nominee for President
00:04:42.380 Biden?
00:04:44.420 Well, I don't know that I'm going to hold my breath on that, because I think the most fundamental
00:04:48.920 problem with Biden is that I identify as a conservative and a constitutionalist, and that
00:04:53.980 he most definitely does not want on the court.
00:04:57.320 Right.
00:04:57.540 Although I am told that spies have observed Merrick Garland getting on a plane and heading to
00:05:05.000 Sweden for an operation.
00:05:06.180 So, you know, whatever it takes to get the nomination, I imagine former Judge Garland
00:05:12.160 may do.
00:05:12.600 He was so close.
00:05:14.280 It's got to be killing current Attorney General Garland right now.
00:05:18.320 We don't know who the nominee is going to be.
00:05:20.500 You obviously have spent a lot of time with the court up close, and you were up for the
00:05:24.060 court just during the last administration.
00:05:26.940 So what are we looking at here?
00:05:29.180 Is this just a liberal replacing a liberal, and the court is going to go on as it always
00:05:33.900 has?
00:05:34.840 What is it going to mean for the future of jurisprudence?
00:05:38.460 Well, I think it's going to be bad.
00:05:40.120 If you look at the Biden judicial appointments, they have been almost systematically hard left.
00:05:46.380 He has been appointing radicals, more radical than Obama's nominees, much more radical than
00:05:51.840 Bill Clinton's nominees.
00:05:53.100 It's been a consistent pattern.
00:05:54.660 Look, that's been true with the administration across the board on just about every policy,
00:05:58.360 whether spending or taxes or debt or the border or foreign policy.
00:06:03.020 Biden has been completely captured by the far left.
00:06:05.460 So I think this Supreme Court nomination is going to very much follow that pattern.
00:06:10.480 I expect an activist and an activist to the left of where Steve Breyer was.
00:06:15.660 You know, Steve Breyer was always a liberal.
00:06:18.300 He was appointed by Bill Clinton.
00:06:20.340 But Breyer, you could occasionally get on a case.
00:06:25.580 So for example, one of the big cases I litigated when I was Solicitor General is the Texas Ten
00:06:32.420 Commandments case, where we were defending the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments
00:06:37.080 monument on the state capitol grounds in Texas, went all the way to the Supreme Court.
00:06:42.240 And all of the arguments in our brief I crafted trying to get Sandra Day O'Connor's vote
00:06:47.280 failed miserably.
00:06:49.700 O'Connor voted against us.
00:06:51.000 I channeled just about every word she'd said about the Establishment Clause, about religious
00:06:56.540 liberty and all of the arguments she'd put forth in the past.
00:07:00.560 Missed her, but bizarrely enough, hit Steve Breyer.
00:07:03.980 And so we won five to four.
00:07:06.020 But Breyer was our necessary fifth vote.
00:07:08.260 If Breyer had voted no, Texas would have lost.
00:07:11.560 The court would have ordered us to bulldoze, to tear down a monument that has been on the
00:07:16.700 state capitol grounds since 1961.
00:07:18.900 And it would have meant that Ten Commandments displays across the country would have to be
00:07:22.980 taken down.
00:07:24.320 Breyer didn't often deviate from the left.
00:07:27.220 He was a very reliable, he was a 90 plus percent liberal vote.
00:07:31.780 But every once in a while he would.
00:07:34.020 And I have high confidence that Biden is going to nominate someone who not only is a hundred
00:07:42.600 percent liberal vote, but I think what his real objective is, is to get someone who is
00:07:47.520 further to the left, even to the liberals on the court, and will drive the court even further
00:07:52.560 left.
00:07:53.540 And presumably he'll try to get someone young, which is probably why Merrick Garland is out
00:07:57.920 of the running, because he wants someone to be on the court for decades, if possible.
00:08:01.680 Well, yes, although I think more broadly than that, listen, Biden, the fact that he's willing
00:08:08.740 to make a promise at the outset that it must be a black woman, I got to say, that's offensive.
00:08:13.580 Right.
00:08:13.960 You know, black women are what, six percent of the U.S. population? 1.00
00:08:18.200 He's saying to 94 percent of Americans, I don't give a damn about you. 0.99
00:08:21.820 You are ineligible. 0.99
00:08:23.060 And he's also saying it's actually an insult to black women. 0.77
00:08:25.860 If he came and said, I'm going to put the best jurist on the court, and he looked at a 0.51
00:08:30.120 number of people, and he ended up nominating a black woman, he could credibly say, OK,
00:08:34.580 I'm nominating the person who's most qualified.
00:08:36.880 He's not even pretending to say that.
00:08:38.520 He's saying, if you're a white guy, tough luck.
00:08:42.640 If you're a white woman, tough luck. 1.00
00:08:44.120 You don't qualify. 0.99
00:08:44.900 If you're Merrick Garland, all right, how much does it suck to be Merrick Garland?
00:08:49.340 He's literally got to sit here and be told at the outset, he is ineligible.
00:08:53.720 You're out.
00:08:54.800 Because, sorry, wrong skin pigment and wrong Y chromosome. 0.94
00:09:02.480 And it's just, it is an example how Democrats, and particularly the far left, everything is
00:09:11.500 race.
00:09:12.060 Everything is that they will discriminate based on race.
00:09:15.140 They will pigeonhole you.
00:09:16.200 They don't care about the independent, the individual.
00:09:19.540 It is offensive if you're this woman who probably hasn't been selected yet, but this future 0.95
00:09:25.220 black woman who's going to be the nominee, you are being told at the outset, you are a 0.87
00:09:29.520 diversity hire.
00:09:30.400 I'm not picking you for your merits.
00:09:32.240 I'm picking you for your skin and for your sex. 1.00
00:09:34.660 So when I was at law school at Harvard, the Harvard Law Review has affirmative action, and
00:09:40.520 there are 40 editors selected each year.
00:09:45.120 At the time I was there, I don't know if they still have the policy, but when I was there,
00:09:48.080 of the 40 slots, eight of the slots were reserved for affirmative action.
00:09:51.700 So 32 were based on grades in a writing contest, and eight of the slots were explicitly affirmative
00:09:57.740 action policies.
00:09:59.500 And the year I was there as a second year law student, there were actually several conservatives
00:10:04.900 who were editors in the Law Review, and they decided to mount a fight to try to end affirmative
00:10:10.360 action at the Law Review.
00:10:13.360 I have to admit I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the fight because I could count votes and
00:10:17.380 we were going to lose.
00:10:18.040 There were a lot more lefties than there were us, and I was like, okay, I'm not sure why
00:10:21.800 we're tilting in windmills, but okay, sure, all right, let's do it.
00:10:24.520 So we had a big meeting of all the editors, so 80 editors, 42nd-year law students, 43rd-year
00:10:28.860 law students, and we're arguing back and forth about whether the Law Review should end racial
00:10:34.120 affirmative action.
00:10:35.840 And I remember at one point, one particularly supercilious liberal law student stood up and
00:10:42.240 said, if we end affirmative action, the Law Review will be nothing but white men.
00:10:50.120 And I was actually, Michael, I was sitting in the back of the room, I was quite quiet,
00:10:53.840 and that pissed me off.
00:10:57.560 And I ended up raising my hand and speaking, and I said, you know what, that comment right
00:11:02.760 there shows just how pernicious affirmative action is.
00:11:07.300 What you're saying is you believe in a meritocracy that only white men would succeed. 0.73
00:11:15.740 You're also saying to every one of us in the room who is not a white man, to every one of
00:11:20.580 us who's Hispanic or African-American, that you think on a fair objective measure, you're
00:11:25.900 better than we are.
00:11:26.640 And I got to admit, I got a little spicy.
00:11:30.080 I said, listen, buddy, you want to pull your transcript out and my transcript?
00:11:32.960 We can go head to head right now on who's earned their place on the Law Review.
00:11:38.420 But I said, there's something even more invidious that you have stated with your implicit
00:11:43.040 assumption.
00:11:44.520 The Law Review, at the time at least, did not have affirmative action for women. 0.96
00:11:49.740 So it had racial affirmative action, but did not have gender affirmative action. 0.97
00:11:53.800 And I said, but what you're stating, which is a total load of crap, is you believe every 0.97
00:11:58.400 woman on this Law Review doesn't deserve to be there, that you think men are inherently 1.00
00:12:02.660 smarter. 1.00
00:12:03.180 It's utter garbage. 1.00
00:12:04.040 But you've shown why affirmative action is so pernicious. 0.99
00:12:07.820 This is doing the same thing where whoever gets this nomination.
00:12:12.540 And by the way, Kamala Harris is VP.
00:12:14.940 I mean, Biden did the same thing for her.
00:12:17.160 Yeah.
00:12:17.580 And it really does.
00:12:19.080 If you're explicitly setting up a discriminatory quota, it's unfair to everybody else.
00:12:25.800 And it undermines whoever ends up getting named.
00:12:28.420 This raises a real question about the process, because as you say, Joe Biden said before he picked
00:12:32.400 Kamala to be the VP, he said, I'm going to pick a black woman. 1.00
00:12:35.300 I don't know which one. 0.98
00:12:36.080 I don't really care, but I'm going to pick a black woman. 1.00
00:12:37.800 And then there were only a few options.
00:12:39.960 Susan Rice, there were only a few options who were prominent at the national level in
00:12:43.140 the Democrats.
00:12:44.100 Susan Rice was the fall man for Benghazi.
00:12:46.800 Karen Bass is an actual communist.
00:12:49.060 That was probably not going to work.
00:12:50.340 And so you had Kamala Harris, who was one of the first people out of the primary.
00:12:53.780 She becomes VP.
00:12:54.560 Now she's being talked about for this Supreme Court vacancy. 1.00
00:12:59.060 But the last time I checked, Senator, this is a 50-50 Senate.
00:13:02.560 Last time I checked, it's the sitting vice president who casts the tie-breaking vote.
00:13:07.360 What happens if it's the sitting vice president who's being nominated for the court?
00:13:12.120 So look, it's a great question.
00:13:13.880 And let's unpack it a little bit.
00:13:15.300 Let's go back.
00:13:16.780 So when Biden was naming a VP nominee, it was actually slightly different than that.
00:13:21.560 He did not promise his VP nominee would be a black woman.
00:13:25.060 He promised his VP nominee would be a woman.
00:13:27.380 So he specified gender, but he didn't specify race.
00:13:30.820 And then what happened is after that, George Floyd happened.
00:13:36.000 And we had riots across the country.
00:13:38.000 And I think he felt the political imperative meant he had to name a black woman.
00:13:45.780 I actually think Biden would have named Amy Klobuchar under his initial promise to name
00:13:50.460 a woman.
00:13:50.760 And I think that's actually who Biden wanted to name.
00:13:54.380 When George Floyd happened, he felt it had to be a black woman. 1.00
00:13:57.700 And then his choices.
00:13:59.040 So Biden doesn't like Kamala.
00:14:01.480 They don't like each other personally.
00:14:02.620 It seems pretty clear.
00:14:03.760 Yeah.
00:14:04.260 You know, if you remember those Democratic debates, I mean, she basically called him a
00:14:09.060 bigot and almost a Klansman.
00:14:10.960 I mean, she went after him hard.
00:14:13.500 And to say there's no love lost between them is an understatement.
00:14:16.260 But his problem was that once he narrowed the field to not only must it be a woman, but
00:14:21.940 as a matter of politics, it needed to be a black woman. 1.00
00:14:24.580 His choices were there were a couple of members of the House there.
00:14:29.640 There was a mayor in Atlanta and there was Kamala. 1.00
00:14:33.120 And Joe is a creature in the Senate.
00:14:35.220 He spent 40 years in the Senate.
00:14:36.900 I actually think Joe is like incapable of naming a House member or a mayor.
00:14:42.040 It just he has a certain worldview where it had to be a senator.
00:14:46.460 So he was stuck naming someone he can't stand.
00:14:50.320 And we've all seen she's done a really poor job as VP and she's managed to be even less
00:14:57.660 popular than Joe Biden, which is a really hard thing to do, given the abysmal job he's done.
00:15:03.040 So fast forward, I think there is a chance they nominate Kamala to the court in part because
00:15:11.360 they can't stand her. 1.00
00:15:12.640 And and one of the one of the virtues of naming her to the court is they get to get her out 0.99
00:15:18.160 of the White House and out of look, the Democratic Party is very worried that she's the presumed
00:15:25.100 successor to Joe Biden.
00:15:26.480 Right.
00:15:27.160 Because her political negatives are so strong, she's just not very good at this stuff.
00:15:32.000 I mean, it's you know, you've seen the video of the sort of weird video of her with kids
00:15:37.860 that's almost like a Stepford Wives robotic.
00:15:43.060 It's bizarre.
00:15:44.500 Yeah.
00:15:46.200 But you raise probably the biggest negative to naming Kamala.
00:15:50.240 So there are two related questions.
00:15:52.700 One, there is a dispute.
00:15:54.520 Let's just say Kamala is not the nominee.
00:15:55.920 It's somebody else.
00:15:56.580 There is a dispute about whether a vice president can cast a vote on a 50-50 Supreme Court nominee.
00:16:06.060 Larry tried one of the most well-known left wing constitutional law professors was actually
00:16:12.660 my con law professor in law school.
00:16:15.080 Larry tried publicly and vocally when when Trump was president said that he believed the vice
00:16:21.180 president can't cast the tiebreaking vote on a Supreme Court nominee.
00:16:24.720 And and in history, it's never happened.
00:16:27.320 We've never had a Supreme Court nominee confirmed with the vice president casting the tiebreaking
00:16:32.000 vote.
00:16:32.360 It's clear the vice president can cast the tiebreaking vote on legislation.
00:16:35.780 That happens a lot.
00:16:37.120 It has not happened with a Supreme Court nominee.
00:16:39.600 Is the argument that it's it's a problem of the separation of powers if the vice president
00:16:43.980 is essentially that it's a role for the Senate.
00:16:48.000 I got to admit, I don't find tribes argument very persuasive.
00:16:50.420 I haven't studied the question closely, but just just sort of reading it on the on the
00:16:55.700 face of it, I think it's likely the better constitutional argument is, yes, the VP has
00:17:00.820 the authority to cast the tiebreaking vote.
00:17:02.820 So if if Michael Knowles starts identifying as a black woman and Joe Biden nominates Michael
00:17:08.260 Knowles, I think it is probably the case that Kamala could cast the deciding vote in favor
00:17:13.360 of of Michelle Knowles.
00:17:15.360 I can't wait.
00:17:16.020 You know, I've said some mean things about her, so I don't know if she'll vote for me,
00:17:18.860 but I'll start trying.
00:17:21.200 The more interesting question is if Kamala herself is the nominee.
00:17:26.500 Right.
00:17:28.100 So it is not 100 percent resolved whether Kamala could vote for herself.
00:17:35.680 The usual precedent when a senator is nominated is something.
00:17:39.520 And this happens.
00:17:40.140 Look, there are senators that are nominated to different positions that require confirmation.
00:17:44.320 Jeff Sessions was a senator.
00:17:46.220 He was nominated for attorney general.
00:17:48.140 The usual practice is the senator abstains from the vote.
00:17:50.980 John Kerry was nominated to be secretary of state.
00:17:54.100 He was a sitting senator.
00:17:55.500 He abstained.
00:17:56.300 The usual practice is you don't vote on yourself because that's kind of tacky.
00:18:02.600 I'm sure if she was nominated, she would love to abstain. 1.00
00:18:05.740 My guess is if Kamala was nominated, it probably would be a 50 50 vote. 0.98
00:18:10.700 I don't know that for sure.
00:18:11.580 Maybe she'd pick up a Republican vote. 0.99
00:18:13.160 I would not be on the fence.
00:18:15.720 I would be a hell no on Kamala if she were nominated. 1.00
00:18:17.980 As a matter of Senate precedent, there are some Senate precedents from previous nominations, not Supreme Court nominations, that suggest that a senator at least can vote for himself or herself to be confirmed.
00:18:33.220 That the argument would go at the instant she votes, she's still vice president. 0.97
00:18:38.060 And so she has the authority to cast that vote.
00:18:40.980 It would be a fight.
00:18:41.720 It'd be a fight with the parliamentarian.
00:18:43.080 It'd be a fight back and forth.
00:18:45.020 The bigger challenge would be whether or not technically she'd have the power to do it.
00:18:49.860 It's certainly unseemly and raises some ethical questions.
00:18:53.320 Now, that being said, on the flip side, we've seen multiple times governors of states, when there's a Senate vacancy, appoint themselves.
00:19:01.600 Say, I'm governor.
00:19:02.340 I get to appoint the senator.
00:19:03.480 I looked around.
00:19:04.360 And the most qualified candidate is moi.
00:19:06.680 So that is much you could do.
00:19:10.540 My guess is, though, the kind of unseemliness, the ethical problems of a vice president casting the tiebreaking vote on her own confirmation makes Kamala less likely to get the nomination. 0.99
00:19:25.440 Right now, the early horse race prediction, there are two judges that are sort of the leading candidates.
00:19:32.480 One is Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who is on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
00:19:39.620 The other is Judge Michelle Childs, who is a South Carolina district judge, although she's been nominated also to be on the D.C. Circuit, nominated by Biden, but she hadn't had her hearing yet.
00:19:52.720 There are other potential contenders, but those are the two kind of early frontrunners.
00:19:56.780 It's interesting, Ketanji Brown-Jackson, I know her.
00:20:02.560 We were classmates in law school together.
00:20:04.420 Oh, wow.
00:20:04.880 She was a year behind me at law school.
00:20:07.160 I was class of 95.
00:20:08.060 She was class of 96.
00:20:09.280 We were both in the law review together.
00:20:11.960 Look, she was very nice personally.
00:20:13.700 We didn't know each other well.
00:20:14.900 We were not particularly pals.
00:20:16.520 But she was, you know, certainly pleasant, cordial, civil.
00:20:22.500 And I got to say, if she's the nominee, the sort of early horse race betting, she's probably the frontrunner.
00:20:30.560 She's on the D.C. Circuit.
00:20:32.060 Ironically, she has Merrick Garland's old seat.
00:20:34.220 So when Garland was named A.G., Ketanji got nominated to fill his seat.
00:20:38.920 I'm sure that particularly sticks in Garland's craw, that his successor, because he has the wrong skin color and wrong gender, he's not eligible, but his successor is. 0.85
00:20:48.880 Insult to injury.
00:20:49.800 You know, I have to say on her confirmation hearing, Ketanji has been very, very careful.
00:20:58.020 At least in her confirmation hearing for the D.C. Circuit, she had said very little that reveals her political orientation, that reveals what kind of judge she would be.
00:21:08.920 She did not have, as so many of the Biden nominees have had, she didn't have these outrageously partisan statements.
00:21:15.680 She didn't have these wildly left-wing statements.
00:21:18.260 Now, I think more than a few people suspect those may be her sentiments, but she hasn't left much of a paper trail.
00:21:25.480 And that, I'm sure, will be attractive to the White House, is if you nominate her.
00:21:30.280 She got confirmed.
00:21:31.520 Three Republicans voted to confirm her for the D.C. Circuit.
00:21:34.460 Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski.
00:21:37.120 So, that will be attractive to the White House, is there was not much of a paper trail, so it's hard to find something tangible in her record to object to.
00:21:48.680 And she got three Republicans last time. 1.00
00:21:51.440 The other potential frontrunner is Michelle Childs. 0.91
00:21:57.660 Michelle is, I don't know her.
00:21:59.960 She's on the district court in South Carolina, nominated the D.C. Circuit.
00:22:04.940 The biggest asset she has is Jim Clyburn is fighting like hell to get her the nomination.
00:22:12.020 Now, Jim Clyburn, House member from South Carolina, African-American, huge proponent of her.
00:22:19.940 I mean, he's openly, aggressively, vigorously lobbying for her.
00:22:23.700 But, um, Clyburn was pivotal to Joe Biden winning the nomination.
00:22:29.260 In fact, I don't think it's too much to say, without Jim Clyburn, Joe Biden is not president.
00:22:34.500 If you remember, Bernie Sanders was winning, winning Iowa, winning New Hampshire.
00:22:38.340 It was, the wheels were coming off.
00:22:40.240 And Clyburn assembled, helped bring together the African-American vote, both in South Carolina and in the South,
00:22:47.360 and gave Biden the nomination.
00:22:50.440 And I think Clyburn is doing everything he can to call in a chit and say, nominate Childs.
00:22:56.660 And, and I don't know how effective that argument will be in the White House or not.
00:23:00.020 Two other interesting points about Childs versus, uh, Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
00:23:06.360 Yeah.
00:23:06.980 Uh, number one, Clyburn is pitching.
00:23:11.000 One of the reasons that Childs should get the nomination is that both Republican senators from South Carolina,
00:23:19.560 Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, according to Clyburn, are, quote, very high on Childs.
00:23:25.320 And, in fact, Clyburn has been stronger.
00:23:26.940 He said both of them would vote to confirm her.
00:23:30.680 Lindsey would vote to confirm her. 0.78
00:23:32.520 And, and Tim Scott would vote to confirm her.
00:23:34.880 I don't know if that's true.
00:23:36.440 But, but Clyburn has not been hedging his language.
00:23:39.920 He said categorically they would vote yes.
00:23:43.420 That is a plus.
00:23:45.360 Um, a second argument being made for Childs, uh, is that she went to state schools.
00:23:50.480 Uh, she went to the University of South Florida.
00:23:52.440 She went to University of South Carolina.
00:23:54.680 Um, Ketanji is a double, double-barreled Harvard graduate.
00:23:58.860 Harvard College, Harvard Law School.
00:24:01.260 Um, all of the Supreme Court, uh, justices are Ivy League graduates.
00:24:06.020 You and I know how singularly unqualified Ivy League graduates are to do anything.
00:24:10.900 Of course.
00:24:11.520 Yeah.
00:24:11.940 Um, and so that is a, a plus being argued for Childs.
00:24:16.400 A final plus that's being argued is that she's a Southerner. 1.00
00:24:19.620 And, and Clyburn is arguing, look, you know, Southerners are a big part of the country.
00:24:24.160 She understands the experience of life as a Southerner.
00:24:27.060 I don't know who will win that.
00:24:29.300 Um, and I expect an epic battle.
00:24:31.200 The Democrats, whoever's nominated, we're going to get a nomination quickly, I think.
00:24:35.200 I think we will get a nomination.
00:24:37.860 By the end of February, we'll have a nomination.
00:24:40.160 It wouldn't surprise me if we had a nomination in two weeks rather than a month.
00:24:43.140 I think they're going to move fast.
00:24:45.140 And then I expect the Democrats to try to ram this through really, really fast.
00:24:50.520 To try to hold fast hearings, um, and, and jam it through.
00:24:54.900 They're scared about, about the election coming in November.
00:24:57.680 And you already see the left-wing advocates saying, look, we don't know what happens.
00:25:02.740 Like somebody could die.
00:25:04.000 And, and with a 50-50 Senate, I mean, it's, you know, there, there's some, some senators
00:25:09.060 on both sides of the aisle that, that are not spring chickens.
00:25:11.700 And, and, you know, somebody resigns, somebody dies, something happens.
00:25:16.580 They could lose their majority in a moment.
00:25:19.340 Uh, so I expect this to be an epic battle, but a fast battle, because I think the Democrats
00:25:25.640 are going to try to ram it through quickly.
00:25:27.560 I'm going to do everything I can to lead the fight against any left-wing activists being
00:25:32.260 put on the court, but we got to see who, who, who Biden nominates.
00:25:35.840 Well, on that point, before we move on, what do you think the odds are that Republicans
00:25:40.420 try to Kavanaugh, whoever this nominee is, meaning dredge up all these either real or completely
00:25:47.720 imagined scandals from their past and really try to drag this person through the mud, like
00:25:52.940 the Democrats always do to the Republicans?
00:25:54.960 So I don't think that will happen.
00:25:58.200 In fact, I'm confident it will not happen.
00:25:59.920 You remember you and I did, uh, uh, one of my favorite verdicts, uh, what we did with,
00:26:06.000 with, uh, Eric Weinstein.
00:26:08.020 Yeah.
00:26:09.200 And, uh, and, and it was a great, you know, he's, he's a man of the left, but brilliant.
00:26:14.180 And, and we were talking about judicial confirmations and, and he did what, what is sort of a talking
00:26:19.780 point on the left of, well, both sides do it.
00:26:23.240 Yeah.
00:26:23.380 And if you remember, you and I pushed back and said, well, no, no, that's actually not
00:26:26.520 right.
00:26:27.320 Yeah.
00:26:27.540 Both sides don't do it.
00:26:29.240 Borking is 100% a democratic problem.
00:26:34.200 Robert Bork was borked by Joe Biden and Ted Kennedy.
00:26:37.200 Biden, you want to talk about having the, the blood on your hands, so to speak.
00:26:41.260 That's Biden who was directly involved in borking Robert Bork.
00:26:44.420 Clarence Thomas, which, which, you know, as, as Thomas put it, it was a high tech lynching.
00:26:48.700 That kind of slandering and dragging him through the mud was a hundred percent done by Democrats.
00:26:54.200 Obviously Brett Kavanaugh was done by Democrats.
00:26:57.440 Republicans have never done this to a judicial nominee.
00:26:59.560 And I don't believe we would.
00:27:00.560 I think it's wrong.
00:27:01.860 I think it's unethical.
00:27:03.300 And, and ineffectual.
00:27:04.180 I mean, I suppose, you know, it, it worked for Bork.
00:27:06.360 It worked the first time, but Clarence Thomas got through Brett Kavanaugh got through.
00:27:10.660 So I suppose there might be some argument if, if borking actually did destroy the nomination.
00:27:16.680 Well, but remember, borking worked because Republicans were so feckless that they bailed
00:27:21.380 on Bork.
00:27:22.260 Right.
00:27:23.400 Part of the problem is Democrats, they ain't bailing on a nominee.
00:27:27.740 I mean, you could literally have video of the nominee, you know, strangling a live kitten
00:27:32.740 on television.
00:27:33.580 They'd be like, okay, great.
00:27:34.400 That's, that's a justice.
00:27:35.640 But like, like they don't bail on their people ever. 0.92
00:27:37.660 Uh, but, but I also believe, look, I wouldn't be willing to, to engage in the kind of garbage 0.91
00:27:43.340 that they engage on their nominees.
00:27:45.380 Now, if a nominee has a problematic record, if they have, uh, if they've been overly partisan,
00:27:51.980 if they've been an activist, I'll press them hard on substance on, on matters relevant for
00:27:57.700 the job.
00:27:58.240 But, but going into the gutter, if history is a guide that has been exclusively a democratic
00:28:05.000 practice, we've never seen a Republican do it.
00:28:07.080 And I hope we don't, I, I don't want to see, see our side behave like that.
00:28:11.660 Right.
00:28:12.000 Right.
00:28:12.380 Now, moving from DC to a little insider view down in Texas, in the remaining moments we
00:28:18.060 have, it, it occurs to me that not so long ago, just some weeks ago, there was an actual
00:28:23.740 terror attack in our country, a religiously motivated Muslim terrorist held up a synagogue,
00:28:32.360 took Jews and a rabbi hostage civilians for a political purpose.
00:28:38.000 This is about as plain a definition of terrorism as there can be.
00:28:42.020 And within what, six or seven hours, the story completely disappeared from the headlines.
00:28:46.900 You have met with the people involved, the hostages, the people who were on the scene there.
00:28:52.380 What do we know?
00:28:53.120 What, what happened to this story?
00:28:55.280 Yeah.
00:28:55.480 So as, as we're doing, recording this pod right now, I'm in Fort Worth today.
00:28:59.460 And, and actually this morning, uh, I did a round table in Colleyville, which is the community
00:29:04.140 where, where the, the, the terror attack occurred.
00:29:06.980 Um, and I met with the mayor and members of the city council and, and, and leaders of the
00:29:11.040 Jewish community.
00:29:11.680 And, and, uh, uh, the, the actual hostages were not at the in-person, uh, meeting, but I've
00:29:17.340 spoken on the phone with the rabbi who was a hostage and with each of the individuals,
00:29:22.100 each of the four people who were, who were hostages.
00:29:24.260 Um, and, and, and I gotta say what happened was horrific.
00:29:27.940 You had a British national, um, a, a, a Muslim who it appears had significant mental health 0.87
00:29:34.320 issues and, and criminal history who came to the United States, uh, acquired a gun from
00:29:40.140 a criminal, uh, who had that gun illegally and came in with a gun and, and held, uh, held
00:29:46.680 these four people hostage.
00:29:48.300 And, and it was a terror attack.
00:29:50.680 It was an anti-Semitic attack.
00:29:52.460 They were targeted because they were Jewish.
00:29:55.360 Uh, and, and it riveted, uh, the eyes of, of people across Texas, across the country,
00:30:01.440 across the world.
00:30:02.880 Um, because for much of it, it was live streamed.
00:30:05.640 Thank God there were only four people in that synagogue with Shabbat services because of
00:30:09.800 COVID meant many of the people from that synagogue were attending remotely.
00:30:13.580 So they weren't physically there.
00:30:15.780 And, uh, during the terror attack, I, I spoke with a special agent in charge of the FBI,
00:30:22.400 uh, who was handling the investigation.
00:30:24.980 I wanted to make sure they had all the resources needed.
00:30:28.140 They had all the federal assets needed.
00:30:29.800 And, and actually, encouragingly, he said, we've got, we got everything we need.
00:30:33.440 Um, the, the hostage rescue team was at the time in the air flying from Quantico to come,
00:30:38.860 come to Fort Worth.
00:30:40.300 Um, and, and he said between federal and local and state resources, we've got a ton of law
00:30:45.820 enforcement focused on it.
00:30:47.560 And, and I gotta say at the outset, what is remarkable is that all four emerged unharmed.
00:30:52.540 Um, when this was happening, all of us, Heidi and I were lifting them up in prayer and we
00:30:57.260 were working to make sure law enforcement resources were mobilized, but we were all prepared for
00:31:01.760 the worst because we've seen too many of these terror attacks, many of them targeting Jews
00:31:07.400 because of antisemitism, uh, and, and tragically, many of them and horrifically, many of them
00:31:14.000 end with, with serious casualties.
00:31:17.000 And in this case with, with God's blessings, it didn't end up that way.
00:31:21.500 Uh, the terrorist, uh, released one of the, the, the congregants who, who was elderly released
00:31:27.480 him early because of his advanced age.
00:31:29.640 Uh, the others remained there and, and it ended up that, that all of the hostages escaped
00:31:34.880 and escaped unharmed.
00:31:36.880 And then, then the FBI went in and law enforcement went in and they killed the terrorist.
00:31:42.460 I gotta say, speaking to the rabbi, speaking to the hostages, one of the things that was
00:31:46.380 remarkable was the heroism those men showed, um, they've got someone who was a radical extremist
00:31:56.600 and was also mentally unbalanced, uh, with a firearm threatening to kill them. 0.62
00:32:03.580 And they ended up, fortunately, this synagogue had had training on what to do in the event 1.00
00:32:11.000 of a terror attack.
00:32:11.840 And so they'd had extensive training.
00:32:14.080 So when they were sitting, they sat very, very near the exit door and they did it because
00:32:19.080 of their training.
00:32:19.680 They knew that, that, that proximity to the exit door, uh, would, if there was a moment
00:32:25.400 to escape, they wanted to minimize the distance between where they were and the way out.
00:32:29.700 And so they deliberately, uh, sat near that.
00:32:35.000 Ultimately, uh, the, the, the, the terrorist, as he was ranting and raving and as the FBI hostage
00:32:40.280 negotiators were talking to him, uh, at one point he put down his gun and, and when he
00:32:45.800 put down his gun, uh, the rabbi threw a chair at him and, and that delayed him.
00:32:51.880 And in the moment when the rabbi threw the chair at him, the three of them ran out and
00:32:56.380 they ran to the door, um, and, and made it out.
00:33:00.400 Um, and, and the terrorists picked up the gun and chased them out and was seen outside
00:33:04.340 brandishing the weapon, but, but praise God, no one, no one was shot.
00:33:07.940 And then the FBI went in and, and, and shot and killed the terrorist.
00:33:11.840 Um, it was incredible heroism.
00:33:15.140 Uh, it's a testament to the value of training.
00:33:18.680 And, you know, there are far too many of these attacks on synagogues, but also on churches,
00:33:23.160 on mosques, on houses of worship.
00:33:25.560 You know, it is messed up, Michael.
00:33:27.300 You ought to be able to go and worship God and whatever your faith without being afraid
00:33:31.820 some lunatic is going to try to kill people, but there's evil in the world.
00:33:36.400 And, and so we need to be prepared. 0.69
00:33:39.180 We need to, to keep houses of worship safe and protected.
00:33:43.400 Uh, I will say in the aftermath, uh, the FBI, when they were publicly talking about it, described
00:33:50.300 this and said, well, we don't know the motivation, but it doesn't appear it was linked to antisemitism, 0.68
00:33:55.940 which was complete garbage. 0.94
00:33:58.640 Yeah. 0.94
00:33:58.840 I, it seemed a little less, and I'm no expert.
00:34:00.880 I'm no forensic genius here, but it would seem that if you, uh, fly to a country, you
00:34:06.500 stick up a bunch of Jews because you're trying to get an Al Qaeda terrorist released from prison, 0.92
00:34:10.940 by the way, that was the backstory of part of his motivation. 0.96
00:34:14.500 Yeah.
00:34:14.860 You think that might have something to do with like a little bit of antisemitism, don't
00:34:18.380 you?
00:34:19.580 Well, and, and you know what really drove it?
00:34:21.820 It was fascinating as I talked with, with everyone involved, the antisemitism that was
00:34:27.040 driven, it wasn't directed at this particular synagogue.
00:34:30.100 He didn't know anything about this synagogue.
00:34:31.820 What happened was he flew, he flew to New York, then he, then he, then he flew to Dallas,
00:34:36.100 Fort Worth.
00:34:37.120 And, and this synagogue is pretty near the airport.
00:34:39.480 He just went to a nearby synagogue.
00:34:41.820 And what this guy believes, so he wanted an Al Qaeda terrorist who is in U.S. prison released,
00:34:48.200 and she's known as Lady Al Qaeda. 1.00
00:34:49.620 Now she has a really bad record as a terrorist being involved in terrorist activity. 0.89
00:34:55.380 And what, what he believed is that you just have to find some Jews, that, that, that you
00:35:02.800 look at the antisemitic trope of, of, of Jews run the world.
00:35:06.380 And he believed in America because Jews have so much power and they control everything that 1.00
00:35:11.620 he believed if he just captured some Jews, that, that, that they could pick up the phone 0.90
00:35:16.600 and call whoever they believe are the Jews in charge and just order the, the, the Al Qaeda 0.52
00:35:21.660 terrorist released.
00:35:22.600 I mean, I mean, it really was, this guy believed that, that, that, that like, you know, I don't
00:35:28.240 know, that, that, that, that all the rabbis know each other and, and they could order it done.
00:35:32.020 And, and it shows the danger of, of, of this propaganda and hateful rhetoric that these tropes,
00:35:40.600 these lies that are told led him to believe that, that this would, would get the action he wanted.
00:35:49.480 And, and obviously it didn't, and, and the terrorist wasn't released.
00:35:54.020 And, and, and, but thankfully the hostages, uh, escaped and, and, and escaped unharmed.
00:35:59.160 You know, whenever it's raining, I always ask Shapiro, I say, Ben, make a phone call,
00:36:03.880 please change the weather.
00:36:05.260 He says it's not possible, but apparently some people really believe this sort of thing
00:36:09.580 can happen.
00:36:10.440 There was a, um, obviously it's a wonderful resolution to this whole, whole, uh, issue in
00:36:16.020 Texas at the synagogue.
00:36:17.480 There is still the scandal, of course, of the media just completely ditching the story because
00:36:22.760 it doesn't serve their political agenda.
00:36:25.400 Well, they've ignored it.
00:36:26.380 And I'll tell you a very important follow-up is how the hell did this guy get into the country?
00:36:31.660 So, so I've joined with several other senators in writing letters to the attorney general,
00:36:36.760 to the head of the FBI, to the head of Homeland Security saying, how did he get in?
00:36:41.440 What information did we have about him?
00:36:43.060 What information did he have?
00:36:44.320 He had a criminal history in the United Kingdom.
00:36:46.420 What did we know about his criminal history?
00:36:48.140 What did we know about his terrorist ties?
00:36:49.720 What did we know about his radicalizations?
00:36:51.460 What did we know about his mental illness?
00:36:53.560 I mean, what happened to let him in?
00:36:57.060 At least so far, the Biden administration hasn't answered.
00:37:00.900 And they are incredibly slow.
00:37:04.300 They drag their feet.
00:37:05.920 They view it as, as Congress doesn't have a right to engage in oversight.
00:37:10.700 Now, to be fair, Republican administrations are pretty bad at this too.
00:37:14.720 I mean, some of it is an institutional perspective, but, but Biden has been really bad.
00:37:20.680 And they need to answer those questions because I think the American people deserve to know, did we have sufficient information to prevent this terrorist from coming in?
00:37:31.920 And if the answer is yes, why didn't the system work and how can we fix it to stop the next terrorist from getting in?
00:37:38.700 Of course, the media has zero interest in those questions because it's sort of a twofer.
00:37:44.820 Number one, they support open borders.
00:37:46.820 And number two, that they refuse to acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism exists.
00:37:51.600 And so there's zero interest in the media covering it.
00:37:53.700 But I think these are questions that are very important to ask in terms of keeping Americans safe.
00:37:59.120 There are lots of questions that remain.
00:38:00.600 There are a lot of questions from our listeners in the mailbag.
00:38:03.440 But unfortunately, we are out of time.
00:38:05.860 We're well over time.
00:38:06.940 So on the next episode, we will, I promise, we will get to some of these excellent questions in the mailbag.
00:38:11.980 So thank you to all of our listeners.
00:38:13.760 For now, though, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:38:15.420 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:38:45.420 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:38:50.680 Guaranteed Human.