Verdict with Ted Cruz - Sleepy Joe’s Soporific Speech

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.500 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.560 100 days into his administration, President Biden has finally addressed a joint session of Congress,

00:00:11.120 sort of, with a State of the Union address, sort of.

00:00:15.100 The room was largely empty.

00:00:16.920 There were lots of masks, people going in and out.

00:00:19.860 We will cover all of that.

00:00:21.580 Senator Cruz, rather, was there in the room.

00:00:25.000 Senator, any reports?

00:00:27.920 Senator?

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:37.180 I am Michael Knowles.

00:00:38.720 I have often been called boring but radical.

00:00:42.640 And, Senator, I guess you've been getting a lot of that these days.

00:00:45.740 You had the finest moment of the night.

00:00:49.060 I'm sort of damning with faint praise because that State of the Union address was unbearable to watch.

00:00:54.440 And I really empathized with you in the room because the TV cameras caught you front and center, dozing off during the speech.

00:01:03.100 Well, look, the whole thing was 63 minutes.

00:01:06.040 I'm amazed that I didn't sleep more during the speech.

00:01:09.160 I mean, it was – so, it was actually on this podcast, what, a month, two months ago, that we actually coined the three-word summary for the Biden administration, a boring but radical.

00:01:21.820 It was on verdict.

00:01:22.640 And that prediction had proven right.

00:01:26.940 And, in fact, going into the State of the Union, I did a bunch of preview interviews where reporters say, okay, well, what's tonight going to be?

00:01:34.100 And I said it's going to be boring but radical.

00:01:35.840 So, I didn't realize just how true that was.

00:01:40.220 In both directions, in both the boring side and the radical side.

00:01:43.880 The radical didn't surprise me.

00:01:46.000 It was – I was trying to stay awake.

00:01:49.760 And it – you know, actually one of the reasons why it was so boring – so, there's a weird aspect of State of the Unions.

00:01:57.320 And actually, you and I talked about this last State of the Union, which is there's kind of a game Republicans, Democrats play.

00:02:05.980 If it's your party, you're popping up like pop goes the weasel on every sentence, like yay, yay, yay.

00:02:12.760 And what's interesting is if you're in the out-of-power party, so if you're a Democrat when Trump's president, if you're a Republican when Obama or Biden's president,

00:02:22.260 a State of the Union is often kind of a complicated thing because you're listening to each sentence and try to evaluate, do I clap?

00:02:30.940 Do I not clap?

00:02:31.900 Do I stand?

00:02:32.920 Do I not stand?

00:02:34.120 And, you know, look, the Supreme Court justices, the generals, they kind of clap and stand for nothing other than the beginning of the speech and occasionally America is good.

00:02:43.740 And then there's sort of statements in between.

00:02:47.480 This was bizarre.

00:02:48.740 This is now the ninth State of the Union or that kind of speech that I've been to.

00:02:53.980 There was virtually nothing for any Republican to clap at.

00:02:58.440 I mean, it was strange.

00:03:00.160 There were whole swaths of, I don't know, seemed like 10, 15 minutes where we're just sitting there and every word out of Biden's mouth is directed only to Democrats.

00:03:10.860 And it's only Democrats clapping.

00:03:13.280 And he wasn't even throwing like a tiny fig leaf trying to bring anyone together, trying.

00:03:19.140 And that's part of why I nodded off and, you know, helped the Internet go crazy last night.

00:03:25.340 So in terms of the big takeaways for people who, like you, were nodding off, not in the Capitol but in their own homes, what are we supposed to make of this?

00:03:38.360 Because I almost wish that Biden were more overtly radical, that he were more exciting because he would be calling more people's attention to what he's trying to do.

00:03:50.000 So what is he trying to do, what is going to get done, and do Republicans have any hope?

00:03:55.220 Well, Michael, your point is really important, that the boring is by design.

00:04:00.600 It's a mask.

00:04:01.700 It's a facade.

00:04:02.520 It's designed to hide just how extreme the policies are that are being implemented.

00:04:08.580 By the way, interestingly enough, I also saw screenshots of at different points Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi both nodding off.

00:04:15.480 And I guess Mitt Romney was also filmed nodding off.

00:04:21.300 And so I saw Mitt on the floor today, and I said, Mitt, man, you and I apparently need to get more sleep.

00:04:27.180 And he laughed and said, I wasn't sleeping.

00:04:31.160 I was looking at my phone.

00:04:32.540 It's like, oh, yeah.

00:04:33.740 Me, I was sleeping.

00:04:34.680 It's not a great excuse.

00:04:35.480 Yeah, I was genuinely like, I was nodding off.

00:04:39.540 And, you know, but look, if you look at what this administration has done, the hard partisan nature of it is remarkable.

00:04:50.620 They start with a so-called COVID relief bill, get zero Republican votes in the House, zero Republicans in the Senate.

00:04:58.180 That's actually hard to do.

00:04:59.840 I mean, last year we did five COVID relief bills that were overwhelmingly bipartisan.

00:05:05.020 I mean, they made the decision.

00:05:06.400 They didn't want any Republicans.

00:05:07.300 They wanted a hard partisan bill.

00:05:10.140 Infrastructure, their $2.6 trillion infrastructure bill, as written, will get zero Republicans.

00:05:16.700 And again, which is hard to do because there are a lot of Republicans that care about infrastructure.

00:05:21.460 But Biden's bill, 5% of the bill is roads and bridges.

00:05:25.280 I mean, it really is absurd.

00:05:27.840 And, you know, everything on earth they're going to tax.

00:05:31.920 Every tax is going up.

00:05:33.280 I mean, that's there.

00:05:34.100 We're looking at trillions and trillions and trillions in new taxes.

00:05:38.360 The brazenness of it.

00:05:40.540 You know, you think about the speech last night.

00:05:42.620 Not a word about the crisis at the border that his policies have created.

00:05:47.020 By the way, in the midst of the speech, I don't know how much of this made it on TV, but Lauren

00:05:52.260 Boebert, who's, you know, a new freshman House member and someone I like and helped get elected

00:05:57.000 and supported.

00:05:57.660 And she's a fireball. 1.00

00:05:58.720 But midway through the speech, she pulled out of her bag a reflective emergency blanket, like the

00:06:08.880 children are wrapped in the cages on the border.

00:06:12.220 And she wrapped herself up in the reflective emergency blanket.

00:06:15.640 I got to tell you, Kevin McCarthy is sitting in front of her and turns and just glares with

00:06:21.640 dagger eyes.

00:06:23.160 I was doubled over laughing, but it was an interesting sort of quiet protest of the hundreds

00:06:32.240 of thousands of illegal immigrants that Biden is ignoring and the crisis that he's created

00:06:38.100 that he's ignoring.

00:06:39.780 You know, not a word about the massive debt, not a word about, you know, not a word of graciousness

00:06:46.640 to President Trump and Operation Warp Speed.

00:06:50.140 I mean, he just crowed about the vaccines.

00:06:52.540 Yeah.

00:06:53.560 Without acknowledging that he laughed at Trump when he said that we would have a vaccine

00:06:58.380 by the end of the year.

00:06:59.520 And that's, of course, exactly what they did.

00:07:01.520 So I thought the substance of it, if you actually hired an actor to give the identical speech,

00:07:10.960 but in an angry partisan tone.

00:07:14.160 Yeah.

00:07:14.800 People would have been shocked.

00:07:16.320 I mean, it really is.

00:07:18.460 It's almost a theatrical thing of having these, you know, soporific tones, which, as you know,

00:07:25.820 being a Yalie, soporific is an underused term, but it literally means putting people to sleep.

00:07:31.420 And last night, that was a literal use of the word.

00:07:35.700 Yeah.

00:07:36.040 You know, this has been Biden's great advantage, certainly in the last several years, which is,

00:07:42.740 if you just read the text of the speech last night, that would have, I think, put a lot of

00:07:46.860 Republicans on their guard.

00:07:48.200 If Kamala Harris, for instance, gave that speech, I think it would have put a lot of people on the

00:07:53.460 defensive.

00:07:53.660 But because it's Biden, it lulls everyone into this false sense of security.

00:07:59.420 There was, however, one moment I noticed of quasi-almost bipartisanship, and it was the moment when Joe

00:08:07.620 Biden began to take ownership of a major Trump policy, or at least a presumptive Trump policy, which was

00:08:16.320 getting out of Afghanistan.

00:08:18.400 And what was very curious was in that room, the Democrats applauded, the Republicans weren't

00:08:23.980 applauding, with a couple of exceptions.

00:08:26.760 Yeah.

00:08:27.000 When President Biden said, we're going to pull out of Afghanistan, there were, that I saw, only two

00:08:32.520 Republicans who applauded.

00:08:33.680 I applauded, and Mike Lee applauded.

00:08:36.520 And the rest of our side of the aisle sat there stone-faced, just looking at him.

00:08:42.600 And I think that's unfortunate, because I think this is an area where President Trump was right, 0.80

00:08:47.420 and he was leaning in to end the endless wars that we'd been in.

00:08:52.500 Afghanistan, it's been 20 years, and it's time to bring our sons and daughters home.

00:08:57.280 That doesn't mean we stop killing terrorists and defending our nation, but we don't need to be

00:09:02.560 on the front lines of a battlefront for generations.

00:09:07.360 And you're now literally having soldiers serving on a front that their parents served on.

00:09:14.740 And that's a pretty strong sign that we've been there too long.

00:09:18.940 Yeah.

00:09:19.320 This issue is one that I think shows the way that the GOP is kind of transforming from the

00:09:27.640 way that it once was, and the way that Biden is transforming.

00:09:30.660 Let's not forget the decision to restart the war in Afghanistan, to really surge the troops

00:09:35.000 there.

00:09:35.260 That was an Obama-Biden decision back when President Obama came into office.

00:09:39.700 But other than that one brief moment, it did seem extraordinarily divisive.

00:09:44.400 And then there was the visual fact that you had the masks in the room.

00:09:48.920 You had Joe Biden, who was very much pushing this idea of public health crisis and we're

00:09:54.880 not allowed to go back to normal.

00:09:57.040 And everything about it just felt so eerie.

00:10:01.180 When are we going to be able to get back to normal?

00:10:04.120 How are we going to be able to push this unified government to get us back to normal?

00:10:07.900 Look, I thought there was an enormous amount of political theater.

00:10:11.360 Now, listen, State of the Union, there's always political theater.

00:10:14.760 But when it comes to COVID and masks, every person in that room has been vaccinated.

00:10:21.400 And we're also spread out.

00:10:23.420 So we were far away from each other. 0.99

00:10:25.220 I actually think it's idiotic that anyone was wearing a mask. 0.96

00:10:28.320 And there was a little moment at the beginning of the speech. 0.97

00:10:31.120 I don't know if you saw when Biden goes up there, he walks up in his mask, because of course

00:10:35.180 he does. And then he turns and looks to Nancy Pelosi and asks permission before he removes

00:10:41.480 his mask. It may have been the most beta moment for a U.S. president in history.

00:10:48.420 And it was just pitiful.

00:10:50.320 And look, I got to tell you, I was conflicted on what to do.

00:10:53.960 So for, I think, three weeks now, I have not been wearing a mask on the Senate floor.

00:10:58.780 Yeah. And you've made a big point about this.

00:11:02.200 There have been reporters who have said, please put a mask on.

00:11:04.720 And you've said, you're more than welcome to walk away from me.

00:11:06.820 But I've been inoculated.

00:11:07.920 You know, and listen, I'm not a zealot on mask issues.

00:11:11.040 I wore a mask for a year on the Senate floor.

00:11:13.820 This is a dangerous disease.

00:11:15.120 I thought take reasonable precautions make sense.

00:11:18.800 But in the Senate, it's every person or virtually every person has been vaccinated.

00:11:27.140 And it doesn't make it, I believe in vaccines.

00:11:31.720 And so it's interesting.

00:11:33.300 I just, so Rand Paul has not worn a mask throughout.

00:11:36.240 He was kind of the lone in the heat of the pandemic.

00:11:39.760 Now, he got the disease.

00:11:40.740 So he said, look, I got the disease.

00:11:42.220 I have antibodies, which is reasonable.

00:11:44.480 But Rand was the only one of 100 that wasn't wearing a mask for months and months and months.

00:11:49.280 And then after everyone got vaccinated, and, you know, Michael, you'll remember,

00:11:53.960 I actually delayed getting vaccinated.

00:11:55.560 So they offered us the vaccines, I think, early January.

00:12:00.700 And I didn't think it was right for members of Congress to cut in line.

00:12:05.360 I mean, I'm relatively young, relatively healthy.

00:12:08.700 I get that a whippersnapper like you doesn't think I'm that young.

00:12:11.780 But, you know, compared to my colleagues in the Senate, I'm still in short shorts and wearing a beanie.

00:12:18.340 That's true.

00:12:18.700 And you remember when the polio vaccine came out.

00:12:21.260 So, you know, you're well acquainted with all these vaccines.

00:12:24.820 And so, you know, I said, all right, I'm going to wait and let seniors get the vaccine.

00:12:29.260 I'm going to let first responders get the vaccine.

00:12:31.480 It's not right for me to cut in line.

00:12:33.780 And I did that until about March.

00:12:35.840 And at March, there had been tens of millions of vaccines.

00:12:38.400 The people who were at highest risk had had the opportunity to get the vaccine.

00:12:42.500 And then I said, OK, I'll get it.

00:12:43.860 So I've gotten it now.

00:12:45.380 And so a couple of weeks ago, I just stopped wearing the mask.

00:12:48.620 So what's funny, two, three days, I stopped wearing the mask, walk on the Senate floor and nobody notices.

00:12:54.880 Like I was doing it for two, three days and it was just a nothing burger.

00:12:58.460 And then finally, one reporter for CNN, like sticks a camera in my face and is like, wait, wait, you're not wearing a mask.

00:13:06.020 Why are you not wearing a mask?

00:13:07.040 And I said, because we're all vaccinated.

00:13:09.040 And actually, this reporter says, well, I'm not vaccinated.

00:13:12.180 I'm like, well, that's your choice.

00:13:14.740 Like, and the elevator closed and I remember thinking like, OK, if you're choosing not to get a vaccine, you can do that.

00:13:24.280 But what right do you have to insist that the rest of us must wear masks because you've chosen not to get a vaccine?

00:13:30.640 You don't have a right like it is available to you.

00:13:34.940 And and so I have not been wearing it for two, three weeks.

00:13:39.200 I did wear my mask last night and I sort of struggled with the question.

00:13:43.840 But Pelosi is running this, you know, military installation.

00:13:50.860 Do you know that she is fining House members, fining them if they don't wear a mask on the floor? 0.99

00:13:58.140 And she is insisting that House members go through metal detectors as and as idiotic as it is, because she's afraid some Republican is going to be packing heat. 1.00

00:14:08.280 It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. 1.00

00:14:10.220 And thankfully, the Senate is not that idiotic. 1.00

00:14:13.240 And they actually they took down the detectors or whatever, because like when I walked in, we didn't go through metal detectors. 0.98

00:14:17.960 But I went ahead and wore the mask on the House floor because that's sort of what they're doing there.

00:14:23.340 But but but I felt pretty sheepish for doing so because it was all theatrics.

00:14:29.500 There is something deferential and conservative about saying, well, I'm in this chamber now. 0.99

00:14:34.640 It's being run by this crazy lady. 1.00

00:14:36.200 So I guess I'll follow the rules. 0.94

00:14:38.340 But that's pretty much exactly what I was doing there.

00:14:42.140 And it is really nice to see that you you've taken this very sensible approach, I think, from the beginning.

00:14:48.320 And I don't think that people on either side can call you reckless about the masks or particularly zealous.

00:14:55.160 Sure, they can.

00:14:55.640 But well, they certainly will.

00:14:58.280 Regardless, the only question is now there are so many layers to this question.

00:15:03.440 And I think even a lot of conservatives are very confused.

00:15:06.520 What do we do here?

00:15:07.780 It's not just I recognize the pun of many layers to the masks, but you do.

00:15:12.940 You have some people who say we need to wear three masks.

00:15:15.300 There are some people who say just wear one mask is fine.

00:15:17.960 Some people are saying you don't need to wear a mask.

00:15:19.780 Some people are saying everyone needs to get vaccinated.

00:15:22.340 Some people are saying you need a vaccine passport.

00:15:24.600 Some people are saying ban it at the government level, ban it at the private level.

00:15:27.560 What is the conservative, sensible American way to approach this issue?

00:15:33.440 So I think a vaccine passport is a terrible idea.

00:15:36.140 And I have been vocal and outspoken saying the government shouldn't require it.

00:15:40.280 It would be horrific if the government did it.

00:15:42.600 And I don't think private businesses should.

00:15:44.200 So I don't think airlines should.

00:15:45.660 I don't think I don't think private businesses should.

00:15:49.520 I'm someone who believes in vaccines.

00:15:51.320 I think vaccines are a good thing.

00:15:53.880 I've gotten the covid vaccine.

00:15:55.600 Heidi's gotten the vaccine.

00:15:56.940 My parents have both gotten it.

00:15:58.300 Heidi's parents have gotten it.

00:16:00.440 And I'm encouraging people to get it.

00:16:02.280 I'd like to see as many people as possible get it.

00:16:04.820 But I also believe in individual liberty.

00:16:06.720 And if you don't want to get it, that's your choice.

00:16:09.540 And there are some people who've got health issues for whom it may not make sense to get it.

00:16:14.500 And so I think each person should evaluate whether it makes sense in your circumstances.

00:16:19.020 But, you know, I think the CDC is actually doing real damage with the arbitrariness of of their their rules.

00:16:29.540 So, for example, even after people get vaccinated, they're still idiotically saying, oh, well, we're wear masks here and there and everywhere.

00:16:36.600 And it's like, well, wait a second. 1.00

00:16:38.300 If we want people to get vaccinated, one of the best ways to do so is make clear once you get vaccinated, take the damn mask off. 0.99

00:16:45.780 I mean, I mean that. 0.99

00:16:46.700 Yeah, I think CDC is dragging their feet on that.

00:16:51.480 Is very possibly disincentivizing millions of people from getting vaccines.

00:16:57.160 And, you know, this week they put out the guidance of, OK, now you don't need to wear a mask when you're outside if you've been vaccinated. 0.99

00:17:03.760 It's like, well, OK, only morons were doing that. 0.99

00:17:07.600 Like, like, thank you. 1.00

00:17:08.840 And like, do I need a mask when I'm taking a shower?

00:17:11.300 Like, like you haven't clarified that point.

00:17:13.020 Oh, although did you see, Michael, a track coach in Massachusetts was fired because he wouldn't make his kids wear masks while running cross-country track outside.

00:17:29.240 He didn't want his students to collapse in the woods and fall, fall down on a rock.

00:17:34.200 It you know, there's so much of this mask stuff that is just petty totalitarianism.

00:17:39.760 It is we can control you and we want to control you.

00:17:43.280 And that's what we're doing.

00:17:44.700 Well, the rules keep changing, but it's not really about the rules themselves, I find.

00:17:48.320 It's about, as you say here, the imposition of the rule.

00:17:51.960 Who gets to to impose their will on others?

00:17:54.840 I want to go back to something you said, though, that I think is extraordinarily important.

00:17:59.420 On the question of the vaccine passport, a number of governors have been divided on this because a lot of it's taking place at the state level.

00:18:07.000 Some are saying we will not have any mandates from the government on the vaccine passport.

00:18:12.880 Others are saying we will not permit private businesses to force you to show your medical history when you come into the bar or when you try to go on an airline or something to that effect.

00:18:24.520 Well, and you're seeing employers that are that are firing employees for not getting the vaccines, which I think is terrible.

00:18:30.840 I think that that is deeply, deeply troubling and shouldn't be allowed.

00:18:37.040 This ties in with something that you published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal.

00:18:40.520 And you did not tell me that this was coming out.

00:18:43.520 It's not like I got advance notice.

00:18:44.720 I just saw the alert in the journal.

00:18:46.860 And I basically stood up and cheered when I saw this op-ed because it's something that conservatives just don't get except for very few who are pretty rock ribbed.

00:18:56.720 You said that the era of conservative shilling for private companies, corporations that hate our values and are opposing our country and are opposing even voter integrity measures.

00:19:09.340 That time is over, and you said that you will not accept corporate PAC money in your campaigns.

00:19:15.620 So that's right.

00:19:17.600 I mean, look, we've all been watching the rise of the woke corporations and these big businesses, these Fortune 500 companies, where the CEOs have essentially decided they're going to be the political enforcers for the radical left.

00:19:34.000 They're going to be the muscle for the Democratic Party.

00:19:37.220 And we've seen, whether it's Coca-Cola or Delta Airlines, demagoguing on the Georgia voter integrity law or companies demagoguing on the Texas voter integrity law.

00:19:48.500 And obviously Major League Baseball yanking the All-Star game out of Atlanta and moving to lily-white Denver instead, which just totally beclowns it. 0.93

00:20:00.220 Atlanta is 51 percent black. 0.97

00:20:02.020 Denver is 9 percent black.

00:20:04.420 So they are so racially woke that they're going to take $100 million out of the pockets of a bunch of African-American small business owners and move it to a bunch of wealthy white people in Denver.

00:20:17.660 Like, it's weird.

00:20:19.500 Also worth pointing out that Georgia, they left because of the voter integrity law.

00:20:24.840 Colorado has relatively strict voter laws.

00:20:27.220 It's not a clear-cut issue over which has the more lenient voter laws.

00:20:30.980 So the dynamic that's playing out in the Fortune 500, big business is not conservative.

00:20:37.960 They are not our friends.

00:20:40.000 Many of them are just risk-averse and scared.

00:20:42.680 And the liberal mob comes after them.

00:20:46.100 And they mobilize their employees.

00:20:48.820 They mobilize their shareholders.

00:20:50.080 They mobilize the press.

00:20:51.500 And these CEOs are more than willing to just cave in and give the mob whatever they want.

00:20:57.940 And it's really dangerous.

00:21:00.100 And so what I announced this week is that I am no longer going to accept any corporate PAC checks.

00:21:06.120 That corporate PACs, I won't take their money.

00:21:09.360 And to give a sense of the magnitude of that, so I've been in the Senate nine years.

00:21:13.940 Over those nine years, I've gotten about $2.6 million in campaign contributions from corporate PACs.

00:21:20.640 Now, I've raised well over $100 million during that time.

00:21:24.340 And so that's not – it's not the lion's share of the money that I've raised.

00:21:28.700 But it is, you know, $2.6 million ain't nothing.

00:21:31.620 And I just decided enough is enough. 0.64

00:21:34.520 If you guys are going to be actively fighting the American people, tearing down America, tearing down freedom, I don't want your stinking money.

00:21:45.880 And I've called on other Republicans to do the same.

00:21:49.680 And I think it's a powerful thing. 0.99

00:21:52.300 And listen, you and I have talked about before, corporate welfare has always been garbage. 0.52

00:21:57.360 And Republicans have been too willing to engage in that, where big companies come and say, give us a subsidy, give us corporate welfare, give us a Band-Aid. 0.92

00:22:06.720 And I've been fighting against that from day one.

00:22:09.920 A lot of other Republicans get sucked in.

00:22:12.700 So the Export-Import Bank, which serves as essentially a giant subsidy for Boeing, a massive corporate welfare scam.

00:22:21.860 I've fought against the XM Bank for the entire time I've been in the Senate, but a whole lot of Republicans are eager to carry Boeing's water on that.

00:22:30.200 Major League Baseball.

00:22:31.340 Major League Baseball has a unique exemption from the antitrust laws that no other sports league has.

00:22:40.960 And so in response to moving the All-Star game, I joined with Mike Lee.

00:22:45.980 We introduced legislation to revoke Major League Baseball's exemption from the antitrust laws.

00:22:50.340 And I think these two should be tied together, which is no corporate welfare and no more money from big companies.

00:22:58.120 And I think that if other Republicans follow suit, that will be a real improvement.

00:23:03.740 I hear this all the time from conservatives writing in.

00:23:07.380 I'm not talking about elected people.

00:23:08.980 I'm not talking about Beltway staffers or anything, but just conservatives around the country.

00:23:13.620 They say these Republicans are such shills.

00:23:17.540 Even the ones who will call out the woke corporations, they're totally in their pockets.

00:23:22.640 They'll still accept a lot of money.

00:23:24.600 I think it is such a great move, it said, and such a strong message.

00:23:28.760 And it shows what we all know to be true, that there is nothing conservative about letting these giant woke corporations totally undermine the American way of life.

00:23:38.260 And that you're not going to accept their money to do it.

00:23:41.560 Well, big business gets in bed with big government.

00:23:45.060 Big business likes big government.

00:23:46.860 Big business uses government regulations to crush their enemies, to crush their competition.

00:23:53.320 I think we should be the party of the little guy. 0.97

00:23:55.400 I think we should be the party of the entrepreneurs, of the disruptors.

00:23:58.540 The giant companies don't need our help.

00:24:03.400 And frankly, the policies they push for are almost uniformly terrible.

00:24:09.560 You know, I was encouraged.

00:24:10.860 So I put this op-ed out Thursday morning.

00:24:15.560 And within a few hours, one of my colleagues, Josh Hawley, had already put out on Twitter that he was going to follow my lead and likewise turn down corporate PACs.

00:24:26.080 I think that's going to increase the pressure on a lot of other Republicans to go down the same road.

00:24:31.540 And if that happens, that's a good thing.

00:24:33.900 I love that.

00:24:34.980 You know, there was a line in Joe Biden's speech, which was, it was totally regurgitated left-wing talking points.

00:24:43.140 Where he said, you know, the 99% and the 1% and we've got to make the rich pay their fair share, even though they already pay virtually all of the taxes.

00:24:51.240 And it was this classic class warfare sort of stuff.

00:24:54.040 But then I remembered the rich and especially corporations voted for Biden, donated to Biden.

00:25:03.020 That is this idea that the Democrats are the party of the working man and the Republicans are these plutocrats with their fancy cigars.

00:25:10.940 I mean, I might have the fancy cigars, but the idea that we're all rich Uncle Pennybags, it's just not what's going on in the parties.

00:25:17.500 And I can say this.

00:25:18.560 I've smoked multiple cigars with you.

00:25:20.280 I've never once seen you use a $100 bill to light it, and I think you're too cheap to do that, which is good.

00:25:25.680 I would advise against that.

00:25:28.160 Fiscal conservative.

00:25:29.380 You know, look, you look at the Fortune 100.

00:25:32.720 There are only a handful of CEOs in the Fortune 100 who could be remotely characterized as right of center.

00:25:40.620 They're almost all Democrats.

00:25:42.300 And that is the ethos of big business because big business does great under the Democrats.

00:25:49.760 They're quite happy with this massive expansion of spending and regulations and even taxes.

00:25:58.100 The giant companies think if you tax everyone, you'll drive the little guys out of business and the big guys will be just fine.

00:26:04.760 And that's bad.

00:26:10.260 Right.

00:26:10.460 Of course, Barry Goldwater put it very well in Conscience of a Conservative.

00:26:14.380 He said conservatives need to make war on all monopolies.

00:26:18.560 We need to make war on all unlimited power, all of this unchecked power.

00:26:23.300 And anyway, I don't mean to lay it on too thick here, but I was just so pleased to see that op-ed.

00:26:28.560 I hope that all the other Republicans feel the pressure.

00:26:31.260 It's absolutely the right direction for the party.

00:26:34.900 And, you know, we've got a lot of questions in from our wonderful listeners, all of whom are – they're so great.

00:26:41.880 They subscribe.

00:26:42.940 They leave a five-star review on the Apple Podcasts.

00:26:46.820 They go to all the different platforms.

00:26:48.440 So we really, really appreciate that.

00:26:49.980 And we are not going to get to a single one of those mailbag questions right now because I want to spend most, if not all, of our next episode on verdict.

00:26:59.080 Getting to our listeners in the mailbag.

00:27:01.720 So please be sure to send those questions in.

00:27:04.640 And while you're at it, maybe you subscribe.

00:27:07.000 Maybe you leave a five-star review.

00:27:08.300 Maybe you send it around to your friends.

00:27:09.940 And we will get into all of those questions ASAP.

00:27:13.220 Senator, I'm Michael Knowles.

00:27:15.440 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:27:16.620 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack,

00:27:31.540 a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country.

00:27:38.140 In 2022, Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 30, 2021

Sleepy Joe’s Soporific Speech

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