Verdict with Ted Cruz - Riots, Plagues, & Murder Hornets

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.780 2020 has started off with a bang. We have had riots. We have had plagues. Worst of all,

00:00:10.380 we have had murder hornets. And don't forget, this is an election year, so the year is only

00:00:14.640 going to get crazier. Lots of seats in play, including the U.S. Senate. The U.S. Senate is

00:00:20.560 far from safe. Luckily, we've got a guy here who knows a thing or two about winning a Senate race.

00:00:24.740 We'll go behind the scenes. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles. And Senator, you know,

00:00:37.560 I forgot because when I come to town, I'm here doing this show. When I'm not doing this show,

00:00:41.880 I'm swilling martinis. I'm smoking cigars. I'm generally loafing around.

00:00:46.760 Well, you are a California man.

00:00:47.880 I'm a California man. You don't want to work too hard. You actually have been working. You are

00:00:51.780 in session right now. You've just come from the Capitol. You had a vote today. Could you tell

00:00:55.600 us a little bit about that? Well, sure. We just voted a few minutes ago to confirm the new chief

00:01:01.160 of staff of the Air Force, General CQ Brown, who is the first African-American service chief in U.S.

00:01:07.980 history. So Colin Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but he wasn't head of one of the service

00:01:13.240 branches. And interestingly enough, a little bit astonishing, there's never been an African-American

00:01:17.960 service chief. And so we confirmed him this afternoon. And actually, Mike Pence, the VP,

00:01:26.440 presided, which is fairly unusual. Normally, it's a senator from the majority party who is presiding.

00:01:33.200 Right.

00:01:33.340 And the vice president comes to break a tie.

00:01:36.060 Right.

00:01:36.340 And so I looked up, cast my vote, and there was Pence sitting in the chair. And so actually,

00:01:40.420 Mike Lee and I, we both walked up and said, you know, hey, Mike, what are you doing here?

00:01:44.640 Yeah.

00:01:44.780 Is this going to be a close vote?

00:01:46.300 Yeah. I said, look, is this going to be 50-50? I mean, what, are we missing something?

00:01:49.640 And he laughed and said, no, that it just was history to have the first African-American service

00:01:56.460 chief. And, you know, today being the day of George Floyd's funeral in Houston, I think it is

00:02:05.580 particularly momentous to be making that confirmation. And Pence pointed out, he said, look,

00:02:10.440 Trump had nominated General Brown back in March.

00:02:16.560 Right. So it's not like he nominated him because race happens to be dominating the conversation.

00:02:20.540 No. He was the choice on the merits to be the chief of staff of the Air Force. And, but, you know,

00:02:25.880 Pence laughed and said, you know, in our house, we call that God's timing.

00:02:28.480 Right. There's a little providential aspect to this.

00:02:31.680 Indeed.

00:02:32.080 Indeed. So you mentioned 50-50 in the Senate.

00:02:35.300 Yeah.

00:02:35.940 This brings up some worries for November because Republicans control the Senate now. That is not

00:02:41.420 guaranteed to be the case after the 2020 elections. Things are looking tight in a lot of different

00:02:46.460 states. You know a thing or two about winning a Senate race. What is it looking like right now?

00:02:51.520 So look, it is very much hanging in the balance. We've got right now, the majority is 53-47. So

00:02:58.360 there are 53 Republicans. But 2020 is a difficult map. So if you think about it, the Senate, you've got

00:03:04.820 100 senators. They're each broken into thirds and a third are elected every two years. You've got six

00:03:10.180 year term.

00:03:10.720 Right.

00:03:11.420 That means every Senate election is the echo of the election six years earlier.

00:03:16.640 And so if you have a really good Republican election, six years later, it can be a much

00:03:25.260 tougher election if it ends up not being a great Republican year. Likewise, if you have a great

00:03:30.220 Democratic year, six years later, Republicans can pick up seats. 2020 is the six-year echo of 2014.

00:03:38.440 2014 was a phenomenal year. 2014 is the year we took the majority in the Senate and retired Harry Reid as

00:03:45.780 majority leader. As a result, we've got a bunch of Republicans in very purple states that are tough

00:03:52.100 states. And right now, the poll numbers in a lot of these races are right on the bubble. I think we could

00:03:59.900 easily lose control of the Senate in this election.

00:04:02.440 Because everybody's focused on the presidential. I get it. That's where all the attention gets paid.

00:04:07.760 Don't forget, there's a lot more to our government than just the president. It seems very important to

00:04:11.800 hold the Senate, you know, to maybe retake Congress if that were possible, to keep these local races as

00:04:18.060 well. And if you break it down state by state, so you take a state like Colorado. Yeah. Colorado is a

00:04:24.820 tough state. It's a purple state. Trump lost Colorado four years ago. Cory Gardner is a freshman

00:04:30.460 senator up for re-election in Colorado. That's going to be a tough race. Yeah. Arizona. Arizona has

00:04:36.200 historically been a pretty red state. It's gotten a lot more purple. Martha McSally is the incumbent,

00:04:42.020 but she ran in 2018 for Senate and lost in Arizona. So the last election, Martha lost. She got

00:04:48.820 appointed to the seat and she's running again. Arizona is going to be a tough, tough race. And 0.87

00:04:54.640 the polling there, the polling there doesn't look great. You got a state like Maine. Susan Collins is 0.99

00:05:01.140 running. Now, longtime senator, much more moderate than you and I are. Yeah. But listen, Maine is a

00:05:06.580 pretty blue state. And particularly with Trump on the ballot, I don't know how Maine's going to go,

00:05:13.720 but Susan will have a fight. There are a whole lot of liberals nationally putting a bunch of money 1.00

00:05:18.580 against her. North Carolina, Tom Tillis. North Carolina is another battleground state. It's another

00:05:25.080 purple state. That will be a hard-fought race. We could easily lose that race. Georgia. Georgia, 0.74

00:05:34.020 we've got not just one, two Senate seats up on the ballot in Georgia. So we've got David Perdue and

00:05:39.960 Kelly Loeffler. And Kelly Loeffler is in the middle of a tough primary race. So it's what's called a

00:05:44.540 jungle primary, where in all likelihood on election day, someone won't win outright. The top two people

00:05:50.680 will go on to a runoff in December. We could end up with control of the Senate

00:05:55.820 being decided by the Georgia runoff in December. Yikes. And you know, one of the patterns, if you

00:06:02.280 look at states like North Carolina, like Georgia, like Arizona, one of the patterns in the age of Trump

00:06:07.900 is the suburbs. Yeah. We've talked before about the two broad demographic trends going on in this

00:06:14.700 country. Working class voters are moving right. That's moving Midwestern states, more Republican. 0.96

00:06:22.520 The same time, suburban voters are moving left. That is moving states with big suburban population,

00:06:28.980 states like Texas, states like Arizona, states like Georgia, much more purple, because in particular

00:06:36.140 suburban women, that has been a tough demographic for Trump. And so 2020, the Senate is very much in play. 1.00

00:06:43.180 Right. Especially when you, when you consider those two demographics, it's very hard to pin

00:06:46.680 down. Okay. This will be the effect on this state. This will be the effect on another state.

00:06:51.140 Now you, and there aren't a whole lot of Senate seats that are being contested in states where

00:06:57.180 there's a big working class population. It's not like, so we picked up Indiana, for example, 1.00

00:07:02.960 last time around, Indiana is a great example. Well, we don't have an Indiana seat on the ballot this

00:07:08.040 time. And so the states that are up are states where it's, it's particularly challenging.

00:07:13.380 It becomes tricky. And now you've run two Senate races, first time challenger, you kind of come

00:07:19.060 out of nowhere. Obviously you'd had a long career, but in terms of national political office,

00:07:23.480 all of a sudden you're the new guy in town. Six years later, you run a race where the mainstream

00:07:30.660 media, the national political media, they were gunning for you. They got behind this other candidate,

00:07:36.100 Beto O'Rourke. It actually took me a moment to remember his name, but that was, he was all anyone

00:07:40.860 was talking about for quite some time. Those two races, how were they different? What lessons do

00:07:47.140 you think you could take from those races for the senators who were maybe up in tough fights this

00:07:51.540 year? Well, very different races, very different strategies. Let's start with 2012. 2012, I had no 0.51

00:08:00.440 name idea. No one knew I was, and I'd never been elected to anything. I mean, it's a little bizarre,

00:08:07.900 but the first office I was ever elected to was the United States. That's right. That's pretty good.

00:08:12.560 That's not too bad. You know, I've joked the last thing I was elected to before that was student

00:08:16.160 council. And that, that is literally true. Um, so when I ran in 2012, actually, actually let's,

00:08:26.220 let's watch. So the very first poll we did, um, I had 2% name ID. Those are real numbers. And, and,

00:08:35.580 and, uh, the margin of error on that poll was 3%. So you may, it could have been negative one.

00:08:42.680 So I appreciate that sunny optimism and, and, and you and Heidi are on the same page. I actually came

00:08:50.060 home. I was amazed to be at 2%. I was really psyched. I'm like, look, I'm not at zero. And, and Heidi's

00:08:54.460 response was the same as yours. Well, couldn't you be at negative? Yeah, we're not positive here.

00:08:57.920 All right. Thanks my love. But, but, but that's where we started. Yeah. And that was a race. It

00:09:03.300 was a grassroots race. Um, we had a strategy, um, of systematically earning the support of

00:09:11.260 conservative leaders, raising money and, and being using guerrilla tactics to drive messaging. So,

00:09:19.740 so my opponent in the Senate race was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, a guy named David Dewhurst.

00:09:25.520 He had a lot of money, as I recall. He's personally worth over $200 million. So he's massively wealthy.

00:09:31.120 He'd been elected statewide repeatedly. Yeah. In Texas, the Lieutenant Governor is the most powerful

00:09:36.640 state official because the Lieutenant Governor runs the state Senate and has almost total power,

00:09:42.760 can assign any bill to any committee, can assign any Senator to any committee,

00:09:46.100 can basically decide what bills die and what bills live. Right. That meant that every lobbyist in the

00:09:54.160 state was against us. Yeah. Every special interest in the state was against us. Every big company in

00:09:58.820 the state was against us. We didn't even really try with them. I mean, to be honest, if you had business

00:10:03.220 in front of the state legislature, you had to be with him. Um, and he also had universal name ID. He'd run

00:10:09.300 statewide and won over and over and over again. He'd poured millions of his own, own dollars into the

00:10:14.660 races in the past. And in the Senate race, he ended up putting about $35 million of his own money into

00:10:20.220 the race. Um, so we had to find other ways to succeed. Uh, we started, for example, going to

00:10:28.880 all sorts of candidate forums all over the state. Um, and you'd have a local tea party, you'd have

00:10:34.600 Republican women, you'd have a county party that they'd do a candidate forum. And there were, I think, 1.00

00:10:39.040 nine candidates who ran in that race. Dewhurst was the 800 pound gorilla. Right. And then the rest of

00:10:45.100 us. So he wouldn't show up at the debates. So I'd go to them against candidates who,

00:10:51.840 who were not running serious campaigns, not raising money, but we'd go and have,

00:10:56.980 I think we did something like 40 or 44 debates. It was something like, I mean, it was some crazy

00:11:02.860 number. Dewhurst wouldn't show up at anything. Yeah. So we began doing things. Uh, we launched a

00:11:10.660 website, duckanddewhurst.com. Um, I got a campaign staffer to dress as a duck and show up at Dewhurst

00:11:20.480 event and he's a full size duck and he'd show up and, and, and I actually told him, I said, Josh,

00:11:27.220 if you can get him to take a swing at you, I'll give you 20 bucks. Just once. I just want the

00:11:33.260 headline, Lieutenant Governor punches a duck. Punches a man dressed as duck. But, but what,

00:11:38.460 what would happen is he'd go do an event designed to get some great press. And the opening line of

00:11:44.840 the news story would be today, a man dressed as a duck went to the Lieutenant Governor's event

00:11:48.440 and we'd steal the story from it. Right. Um, we had one candidate forum where a grassroots activist did 0.96

00:11:54.780 this actually made a milk carton with his picture on the side. Have you seen this missing? Um,

00:12:02.320 we put out a, a humorous cartoon, uh, that, that, that's very campy. And, and, and, and it had, uh,

00:12:11.040 uh, a broadcaster that sounded like an old timey horror movie and said, you know, Bigfoot,

00:12:17.280 uh, the Loch Ness monster, the Chupacabra, a strange coyote like creature that some claim to have

00:12:24.560 seen in South Texas. There's mysteries. And then there's our Lieutenant Governor. And we have an

00:12:31.240 image of the Lieutenant Governor. Somehow he can't seem to be found anywhere. We have him dancing

00:12:37.000 around and we list all the places he, he skipped. Right. It was campy. It was corny. I think it cost

00:12:45.240 us like $2,000 to make this cartoon. And we got all this free media. People shared it on social media.

00:12:52.060 They laugh. And so when you're running a guerrilla campaign, you got to find ways to, to, to take

00:13:01.140 asymmetric advantage to, to use. And, and our greatest strength is that Dewhurst totally took it for

00:13:08.060 granted. He thought there was no way on earth, this punk kid, uh, which is how he viewed me this,

00:13:15.780 you know, young, young, never been elected to anything. No, no. And we, you know, my attitude was

00:13:20.880 like, you know, David, you're exactly right. Please, please sit on your couch. Yes. Good. Relax.

00:13:26.400 No, no, no. Nothing to worry here. And we systematically got the support of conservative

00:13:33.840 leaders across the state. We got conservative leaders nationally. Yeah. Uh, we raised a ton of

00:13:40.540 money and, and that was shoe leather. And it's interesting. Self-funding candidates often lose.

00:13:45.980 And part of the reason is if, if you write a check, writing a check is, is relatively easy. If you write

00:13:53.240 a check for a million dollars, I would rather have a million dollars raised from real voters. Yep. Yes.

00:14:01.200 Then 5 million or 10 million just from your own bottomless bank account. You know, this is something

00:14:06.820 I've noticed in successful campaigns, whether they're challenger campaigns or whether they are

00:14:11.380 incumbent campaigns. I remember this was in 2011, I think Mitch Daniels, then governor of Indiana,

00:14:17.660 there was talk he might run for president. Mitch Daniels was facing this tough legislative fight

00:14:22.280 there. And the, the Democrats in the house, they're the, you know, the house of Indiana,

00:14:27.320 they just left town. They skipped town because they didn't want to vote on something.

00:14:30.900 And as I recall, Mitch rewrote, he made a parody of a 1940s song joking about how the guys had skipped

00:14:39.740 town, put it on the radio and a campaign. It was fun. It was campy, just like you're describing.

00:14:44.380 I was, the first campaign I ever worked on, this was in 2010. It was for my friend Nan Hayworth.

00:14:49.820 She was running a challenger race against this guy who, his name is John Hall. He was a rock star in

00:14:55.900 the seventies. He was in the band Orleans. They did the song, still the one, you know, those kinds of

00:15:00.180 like silly songs you see on commercials. And so we decided, this is again, a challenger campaign,

00:15:05.480 very low name ID. We decided to start a side group called the young voters for an Orleans reunion tour

00:15:11.980 to get the guy out of Congress, get him back on the road again. So he wasn't passing bad laws.

00:15:18.440 Same thing. They said, this is so stupid. They're ignoring it. They net, well, guess what? Those

00:15:23.000 kind of campy grassroots tactics that got a lot of people involved. It was fun. It was offbeat.

00:15:29.460 They, they really helped. They raised a little bit of money, got some good press. And I've noticed

00:15:34.800 this even with reelection campaigns. So it's, it's not as though you were only doing this sort of

00:15:39.240 thing in your first race. The second time around the presidential race and the second Senate race,

00:15:44.180 you were still doing the same kinds of tactics. You, you didn't get, you didn't get complacent about

00:15:50.040 it. Well, there are a couple of things really important that you said that are good lessons for,

00:15:54.120 for any campaign. Um, one is, is have fun. Yeah. Um, you know, too many candidates take it too damn

00:16:02.820 seriously. And, and particularly with negatives. Yeah. Um, they're like so ominous and there's a

00:16:11.280 voice we all know, a political attack act. And I don't know, it's this dude that apparently has a

00:16:16.660 voice like so deep that comes on. Did you know that Michael Knowles eats kittens for breakfast?

00:16:22.960 I know. I don't tell them. Like, like, I mean, it's, it's, and, and the voters are smart enough to

00:16:27.840 come. Like, like, like they just don't believe it. You just hear it. You just tune it out. It just

00:16:32.980 much more effective, especially with, with, with negatives is having a light touch, having a,

00:16:38.940 a, a tweak. Go, go, go back to that first Senate race. Um, the Houston symphony invited

00:16:47.080 Dewhurst on, I think the 4th of July to be a guest conductor. And I have to admit, I sent an email to

00:16:53.320 my team. I'm kind of a little annoyed. I'm like, okay, why is the symphony favoring him? I don't,

00:16:57.160 I don't get it. It was outrageous. And, and, and my, the guy running my campaign guy named Jason

00:17:01.340 Johnson is a great, great guy, dear friend. Yeah. He sees that and he sends an email,

00:17:06.460 must dot, dot, dot, get dot, dot, dot video. And so Jason went to the concert. It was an outdoor

00:17:17.720 symphony concert. And you have Dewhurst in white tie tuxedo conducting with a symphony behind us.

00:17:26.440 And Jason's sitting there with his phone recording it. And we put out this ad. I don't even remember.

00:17:31.840 It was something about flip-flopping or something, but the whole image is him in white tie conducting.

00:17:39.220 And it was priceless, but it wasn't so over the top as to be unbelievable. Um, that's one piece.

00:17:46.640 Yeah. A second piece that you said also, that's really important is getting others to invest in

00:17:53.540 the campaign. You know, one of the better political books I read was, um, Chris Matthews wrote a book

00:18:00.760 called Hardball. Uh, and he talked about lessons and he talked about a lesson he learned from Jimmy

00:18:06.040 Carter, which is, he said, you know, in politics, if, if you want to have a chit, most people think,

00:18:13.060 okay, if, if, if I want Michael to be on, on board, I'll do you a favor. Yeah. And if I do you a favor,

00:18:20.440 then I owe you, you owe me. Yep. And, and what Jimmy Carter apparently told Chris Matthews, he said,

00:18:26.140 look, that actually doesn't work very well. He said, human nature is weird. If, if Michael owes

00:18:32.380 me half the time you grow to resent it and get ticked off that you owe me. Yep. He said, if you

00:18:37.580 really want to get Michael on your team, you know what you do? You get him to do you a favor.

00:18:43.300 This is a profound insight. It doesn't matter what it is, anything, because if you do something for me,

00:18:52.340 you're invested in me. Yep. And it becomes then it becomes what you're doing. And ironically,

00:18:59.880 you want to do more favors once you're invested. I think the example, if I remember right, that Carter

00:19:05.500 used was having someone pick them up at the airport, having a volunteer drive to the airport and pick

00:19:09.540 them up that, that just, Hey, you know, I went and got that guy. Yep. That person's more likely to do

00:19:13.960 more. I'm involved. You know, this is, it's the same thing with campaign swag, having, you know,

00:19:18.060 having worked on a number of campaigns, people think that campaigns make a lot of money on the

00:19:22.520 swag. They don't make a lot of money on the swag. I mean, you know, it's a little pricey or something,

00:19:26.280 but trust me, you're not making your campaign money by selling t-shirts and buttons. But part of the

00:19:32.700 reason you sell the t-shirts and buttons is so that people feel a connection to the campaign.

00:19:36.380 I buy a lot of campaign swag for campaigns that I support, politicians I support. And it, it bonds me to

00:19:43.100 them in that I say, okay, I've got the big foam finger, you know, I've got the t-shirt or whatever.

00:19:46.680 I'm on the team now. It's a way of creating that relationship with the constituents that you hope

00:19:52.340 to represent. Well, you're absolutely right. And if you get someone to do a little, they're much more

00:19:57.200 likely to do a lot. You know, going back to that 2012 campaign, I remember that the Texas state

00:20:01.960 convention. So we made it to a runoff, which was our whole challenge was hold Dewhurst to 49.9%.

00:20:07.820 Right. And if we got to a runoff, I believe we'd win. That's what ended up happening. Yeah.

00:20:12.700 The Texas state Republican convention happened between the primary and the runoff. So it was the

00:20:16.520 it's the biggest gathering of grassroots Republicans actually in the whole country and it was all

00:20:22.740 there. And, and so in terms of swag, now we didn't have any money. Yeah. So the Dewhurst campaign had

00:20:27.660 these fancy buttons. They're like two, three bucks a piece to print, you know, they're nice buttons that

00:20:31.640 you pin. We didn't have the money to pay for a bunch of two, $3 buttons. Right. So what we did is we

00:20:36.360 printed really cheap stickers that were the exact same size. And then we told people, go get a Dewhurst

00:20:42.480 button and put our sticker on top of it. And like everyone had the Dewhurst button, took all their

00:20:47.520 money to do it and then put our stickers on top of it. And it was one of the great.

00:20:52.240 That is a fiscal conservative, right? That is a fiscally conservative campaign. So I, you know,

00:20:56.880 we've got to get into the mailbag, but just for, for your colleagues and maybe other people who are

00:21:00.940 running in 2020. One thing I'm getting from you here is we are in, we are in probably the most

00:21:07.440 negative news cycle of my lifetime. I mean, this is a really tough news cycle. And I think there

00:21:13.200 are a lot of campaigns who just really want to play into that negativity and really just, but

00:21:18.220 maybe what I'm hearing is that might not be the most successful way to, uh, to inspire people.

00:21:25.180 Have fun. People can tell a joyful campaign. People can tell a campaign that are miserable,

00:21:29.560 miserable, but empower the people. Yeah. Um, best political advice I ever got in my life was,

00:21:36.100 was from Heidi. It was years ago. It was right when I started to run. I was getting ready to

00:21:39.360 give a speech and Heidi told me, said, remember, it's not about you. It's not about you. It's about

00:21:45.700 them. Yep. It's about their families, their kids, their future. And I still to this state to try to

00:21:51.060 remind myself of that in front of every speech. That means, all right, so quick anecdote I'll tell

00:21:56.280 back from the 2012 campaign. Yeah. So we're down in South Texas and we're doing an event in a,

00:22:01.200 in a church. It's a Saturday night. We're in the fellowship hall. About 300 people gathered there.

00:22:05.540 And, and the county Republican chairman comes in. He says, you know,

00:22:09.620 most Republican candidates, when they come down to the valley in Texas, they do a, they do a

00:22:13.360 fundraiser. And he said, they go to the local country club. They charge a thousand bucks a plate.

00:22:18.540 And he said, this is not a fundraiser. Yeah. He said, Ted is here because he wants to listen to

00:22:22.760 you. He wants to hear what you have to say, uh, and be part of conversation. So I got up and I,

00:22:27.060 and I said, I said, listen, thank you everyone for being here. Thank you. It's a Saturday night. You

00:22:31.360 could be home with your kids. Thank you for coming out to this instead. And I said, thank you.

00:22:35.180 Javier to their local Republican chairman for, for being here as well. So there's one thing

00:22:39.360 Javier said that was wrong. He said, this is not a fundraiser. Everything we do is a fundraiser.

00:22:45.820 I said, listen, if you can max out, if you can write a $5,400 check for you and your spouse,

00:22:51.320 God love you. We need it desperately. But you know what? Everyone here can give something.

00:22:57.500 Yeah. If, if you're in college, if you're in high school, you can get 25 bucks. Yep.

00:23:01.320 25 bucks is two pizzas. You're telling me you can't afford two pizzas. And here's the thing.

00:23:07.580 Here's why. If you give $10, 25, 50, whatever, if you give, you're invested. You know what? If you

00:23:14.500 give 25 bucks, you're going to vote. That's right. But not only that, you're going to talk to your

00:23:18.180 friends. You're going to talk to someone else because suddenly your skin is in the game. And so

00:23:23.140 we treated every event, grassroots events as, I told them there, I said, you know what?

00:23:30.200 I can't win this race. Flat out. It is impossible for me to win this race. We can win this race.

00:23:38.520 But I certainly can't. If it's just me, it ain't going to happen.

00:23:40.840 And most campaigns, look, campaign consultants, they don't get paid for grassroots. They don't

00:23:45.740 know how to do it. And the concept of empowering, creating ownership, you know,

00:23:51.580 you mentioned the presidential in 2016. We had 326,000 volunteers in that presidential campaign.

00:24:01.720 We raised over $90 million. That is the most money any Republican has ever raised in the

00:24:07.760 history of presidential primaries, more than George W. Bush or John McCain or Mitt Romney.

00:24:12.520 And that came from 1.8 million contributors. That's right. You know, well, so mentioning the

00:24:19.540 political consultants here, just quickly before a mailbag, I have to ask you, you gave the best

00:24:23.520 political advice you ever got. What's the worst political advice you ever got?

00:24:31.500 I don't know. I think I have an answer to this question, but I'd be curious.

00:24:34.300 Go ahead. What's your answer? So the worst political advice I ever got on any campaigns,

00:24:39.380 and I've heard it on a lot of campaigns, is listen to what the Washington consultants tell you to do.

00:24:45.160 So that's a kiss of death. It's the kiss of, you've got, you start out with the great

00:24:48.920 local campaign and it's working. And the minute it starts working really, really well,

00:24:53.340 all of a sudden, some guy from Washington decides to come on in, tell you how to redo everything.

00:24:59.760 Nine times out of 10, they will lose the campaign you were winning.

00:25:03.720 So, so let me give an example. I don't know about worst advice, but I had conflicting advice. It was one

00:25:07.780 of the hardest moments. So 2012 campaign against Dewhurst. We run a grassroots campaign for months.

00:25:16.680 Start building support. Dewhurst's campaign does what any dominant front runner does,

00:25:20.960 which is ignore us. Doesn't mention my name. We don't exist. And our numbers were steadily going

00:25:25.840 up. We're steadily going up. Remember, we just had to get to a runoff. So we just had to keep him

00:25:29.540 below 50 and he was well below 50. So their consultants, we know we're telling them, all right,

00:25:36.740 ignore him, ignore him, ignore him. Okay. That this is not working. We're not, we're not breaking 50 by

00:25:40.860 ignoring him. All right, let's unload. And so they, they launch over a million bucks a week

00:25:47.740 of negative attacks. I mean, just carpet bombing us. And, and by the way, their attack was that I was a

00:25:54.580 Chinese communist. Well, I always knew that about you. I thought that was a given.

00:25:58.040 I mean, down to, and it was based on when I was a lawyer in private practice, there was a civil

00:26:03.480 lawsuit between two tire companies, both of which were manufacturing tires in China, but one of which

00:26:09.960 was owned by a Chinese company because my firm had been on that side of the litigation. They argued

00:26:15.060 that, that, that Cruz, I mean, they like put out mailers with me next to the Chinese flag.

00:26:20.000 They handed out money, Chinese money with my face on it, discolored to make it look Chinese. I mean,

00:26:26.660 it was campaigns are so stupid. And so, all right, million bucks a week of just saturation ads and

00:26:33.100 I'm watching them. And, and at the time, Dick Morris, the campaign consultant, who's a friend,

00:26:39.620 he was someone who, who would, it was giving me advice, not charging me. He wasn't on the campaign

00:26:43.680 payroll. We don't have any money, but, but I asked Dick, what do you think of this ad? And he watched,

00:26:48.840 he said, it's fatal. This is, this is this, if you don't respond, you're dead.

00:26:54.060 Because it's so ridiculous.

00:26:55.340 But it's, it's, he said, this is crushing. You must get a response. And I mentioned Jason,

00:27:00.680 who's running my campaign. I talked to Jason and Jason begged me, do not respond, please.

00:27:06.120 And we had at the time, a couple million dollars in the bank. So we could have gone up on, on,

00:27:10.720 on air, but that was all we had. Yeah.

00:27:13.660 And it was like, look, if you go up and respond, then the whole campaign is going to turn on whether or not

00:27:18.340 you are a red Chinese communist. Yeah. Yeah. And instead what Jason convinced me to do, 0.94

00:27:24.560 he said, I'll tell you what, let's do a tracking poll. Let's monitor what happens. And if our

00:27:29.740 numbers are just cratering, if we're getting crushed, then let's respond. Yeah. But let's

00:27:34.460 see what happens first. And so I agreed to do that. So we went through several weeks of,

00:27:38.720 it was a million bucks a week. And then it became 2 million bucks a week of attack. And we had zero

00:27:43.060 response. And it's like a boxer in the ring, putting his hands up, just saying, punch my ribs.

00:27:47.580 You're literally just standing there getting hammered. And we had no money to respond. We

00:27:53.180 put out on grassroots, we put on social media, these response, this attack is crap. And here are the

00:27:58.500 facts. Yeah. But we put no money behind it. Yeah. And the tracking poll showed our numbers were going

00:28:05.060 down. They were going down. My unfavorables were going up about a point a day. Okay. So we could see

00:28:11.340 every day my unfaves would go up a point, up a point, up a point. What we also saw is do her sun phase, 1.00

00:28:16.700 we're going up about two points a day. And so because the ads were so nasty, yes, they were

00:28:22.600 hurting me, but they were hurting him even more. And so we ended up, we never did respond to that ad

00:28:28.260 with paid advertising. Instead, when we went up on air, it was our positive message, my record,

00:28:34.160 my vision. Do you want a proven conservative fighter or do you want a moderate establishment

00:28:40.180 dealmaker? And that choice is what won us the race. But those couple of weeks.

00:28:46.280 It's tough to be in the moment.

00:28:48.820 Just getting pounded. I still remember Jason said after that, he said, I remember this first

00:28:53.080 race I'd done, but Jason said, well, we know you don't have a glass jaw.

00:28:58.400 That's right. And that is good advice. Very quickly, there's one mailbag question that keeps

00:29:04.080 coming up. It has been coming up since we started the show. And I've just got to ask it. This is from

00:29:09.820 Ryan. Boxers or briefs? Those are the only two choices. On that note, moving right along,

00:29:17.860 we will have to get to more of the mailbag questions tomorrow. I'm Michael Knowles. This

00:29:21.840 is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs,

00:29:36.180 Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative

00:29:41.020 causes, organizations and candidates across the country. In 2022, Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack

00:29:47.640 plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party

00:29:52.480 across the nation. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - June 16, 2020

Riots, Plagues, & Murder Hornets

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