Verdict with Ted Cruz - Ted's Brand-New Book—A Biography of Clarence Thomas, Telling his Incredible Life Story and his Historic Impact on our Nation

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00:00:34.520 Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson.

00:00:37.700 With you, Senator, we've got a jam-packed show,

00:00:40.460 and we can start with some exciting news.

00:00:43.060 You decided to write a book, yet again, another book,

00:00:46.620 which more than likely I'm going to predict it now.

00:00:48.340 We like making predictions here on Verdict.

00:00:50.420 I'm going to predict right now, I want it to be clear,

00:00:53.500 on 4-22-2026, I am predicting that your book will be a bestseller.

00:00:58.960 there, that's my confidence in you. So there you go. Well, I appreciate that. So this is book

00:01:04.560 number five. I am really excited. Books one through four have all been bestsellers. So I'm hopeful

00:01:09.580 book number five will be. And this one is a topic that I'm really excited about. So my latest book

00:01:17.760 is coming out in August, and it is a biography of Justice Clarence Thomas. It is entitled

00:01:25.140 Going Further, The Incomparable Clarence Thomas. And what I try to do is a couple of things. Number

00:01:31.900 one, tell his story. I know Justice Thomas very well. I sat down for extensive one-on-one

00:01:38.280 interviews with Justice Thomas. And so I tell his story because it's an inspirational,

00:01:44.220 it's an incredible story. But I also try to take his jurisprudence and explain it in terms that

00:01:51.680 real and understandable and make sense to folks. The book is coming out in August. You can pre-order

00:01:56.560 it right now. There's a new website, goingfurther.com. Go to goingfurther.com right now. Pre-order the

00:02:04.380 book. I think you're going to enjoy it. I think this is an important topic, and we're going to

00:02:08.680 talk about it at considerable more length in just a moment. Let me also just talk to you real quick

00:02:13.580 about the incredible work that you guys are involved with, with the International Fellowship

00:02:18.460 of christians and jews and helping so many people in need right now in israel right now our jewish

00:02:24.480 friends are feeling forgotten there's a jewish woman named esther i'd like to tell you about

00:02:29.660 and her home is in israel esther is living through days and nights of fear sirens are sounding

00:02:35.820 rockets screaming through the sky long stretches spent in a bomb shelter she's 84 years old esther

00:02:43.580 is elderly she's fragile and all alone now imagine that no help no food deliveries no medical care

00:02:50.200 no one knocking at the door it's a war zone but because of friends like you esther is not alone

00:02:57.060 now through the ifcj they are there bringing her food meeting her urgent needs and reminding jewish

00:03:05.060 people like esther you are not forgotten in times of feared uncertainty your compassion brings hope

00:03:12.320 and real help.

00:03:13.920 Esther asks that you hear these words,

00:03:16.120 quote,

00:03:17.020 to those who give,

00:03:18.240 you are doing a very great mitzvah,

00:03:20.220 a good deed.

00:03:21.540 You give from your heart.

00:03:23.280 May God protect you.

00:03:25.340 Friends, I want you to know

00:03:26.500 that your gift to God's people

00:03:28.180 is truly hope-giving and life-saving.

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00:03:50.540 So, Senator, this is one of those books

00:03:53.620 That I actually was excited about

00:03:55.580 I can't remember if it was a year ago, year and a half ago

00:03:58.020 We were having dinner

00:03:59.000 And you were basically taking the temperature

00:04:03.360 Of like, alright, what do you guys think

00:04:05.160 If I did a book about Clarence Thomas

00:04:07.160 I got excited about it because I know

00:04:09.660 Number one, how much you love Clarence Thomas

00:04:11.600 and how well you know him.

00:04:13.260 Two, that is your just history with the Supreme Court.

00:04:18.440 It's something you genuinely love.

00:04:20.440 You loved your time there when you clerked.

00:04:22.840 You love having many of your best friends

00:04:24.720 involved somehow the court.

00:04:26.880 I think that makes this really exciting.

00:04:29.080 But rarely do you get an opportunity as a senator

00:04:32.100 to then write a book about someone else

00:04:34.480 that you admire in the game of politics.

00:04:37.360 And you kind of got to hit pause

00:04:39.300 and just spend time talking about an amazing man.

00:04:42.960 I'm very lucky.

00:04:43.980 I got to know him when I was much younger,

00:04:45.980 when I was starting out in Washington, D.C.

00:04:48.160 Have so much respect for Clarence Thomas.

00:04:50.940 And this is just what a cool story to get to write the book as well.

00:04:54.840 Well, I've been blessed.

00:04:56.440 I've known Justice Thomas for more than 30 years.

00:04:58.860 And I think he is truly an American hero.

00:05:02.480 There's a reason the subtitle of this book is the incomparable Clarence Thomas

00:05:07.480 because there's nobody else like it.

00:05:09.300 You know, if you think about someone, number one is life story.

00:05:13.300 Justice Thomas grew up in Pinpoint, Georgia, an incredibly poor rural area.

00:05:18.740 It's an island just off the coast of Georgia.

00:05:22.180 He grew up actually not speaking English, speaking a dialect, either Guller or Gaethje, depending on how you describe it, that was a dialect unique to the area.

00:05:32.660 He grew up in absolute poverty.

00:05:35.380 He was raised by his grandfather.

00:05:37.200 His grandfather raised him as—Justice Thomas's autobiography is entitled My Grandfather's Son, and it's one of the best autobiographies I've ever read.

00:05:47.800 I highly recommend it to everyone.

00:05:49.260 He tells his story of coming from nothing, enduring racism, enduring oppression, enduring poverty, and he excelled academically.

00:05:59.540 He initially, he thought he was going to be a Catholic priest.

00:06:02.460 He went to seminary.

00:06:03.380 His plan was to be a Catholic priest.

00:06:05.000 and then he got disillusioned he got disillusioned by by the church's unwillingness to stand up to

00:06:11.280 racism to stand up uh to to to the incredible racial discrimination we saw in this country

00:06:18.160 then went to holy cross for college he went to yale for law school he was a young radical

00:06:24.180 clarence thomas was a left-wing black power radical in fact he was part of a riot that

00:06:31.660 happened in harvard square when he was a student he could have easily gotten arrested he could have

00:06:36.420 easily destroyed his entire career then he got fortunate that didn't happen and then the journey

00:06:42.480 he went from being an angry black man and that's how clarence thomas described himself a a left

00:06:49.120 leaning radical in college to becoming a conservative that took years that that took

00:06:55.060 more than a decade and his journey through going to work for jack danforth who was the the attorney

00:07:01.180 General of Missouri. He was a Republican at the time. Clarence Thomas was not a Republican. He

00:07:06.260 didn't really want to go work for a Republican. But coming out of Yale Law School as a black man

00:07:12.380 in an era of affirmative action, every major law firm he applied to said no. They did not value his

00:07:19.000 degree. He went to work for Jack Danforth. He had an incredible experience. He learned to practice

00:07:24.200 law in Missouri. He enjoyed it a great deal. He then went after a brief stint at Monsanto,

00:07:32.560 the big chemical company. He went to D.C. to work for Jack Danforth, who got elected to the Senate,

00:07:38.360 and he was a Capitol Hill staffer. And we talk about in the book, I lay out how he ended up

00:07:48.040 being outed, outed in an interview with Juan Williams that he didn't realize he was having.

00:07:54.000 He was going and speaking at a conference and suddenly Juan Williams wrote a big expose in the Washington Post about this black conservative and his life changed dramatically.

00:08:04.440 And from there, he went on to be the assistant secretary of education under Ronald Reagan for civil rights.

00:08:10.720 And then he became the chairman of the EEOC, which he did nearly eight years.

00:08:15.980 He then became a federal appellate judge on the D.C. Circuit, and then he became, in his early 40s, a Supreme Court justice, the second black justice in history.

00:08:28.300 And the journey, there is nobody else who has traveled a journey from bleak poverty in Pinpoint, Georgia, to a Supreme Court justice.

00:08:40.300 And Clarence Thomas right now, Ben, do you know that Justice Thomas is two years away from being the longest serving Supreme Court justice in the history of the United States?

00:08:51.560 I did not know that.

00:08:52.460 So William O. Douglas right now has that record.

00:08:55.220 Clarence Thomas will surpass that record in 2028.

00:08:59.620 And as I said, I've known him a long time.

00:09:02.420 I admire him.

00:09:03.380 I think he's truly an American hero.

00:09:05.300 And I think his story is inspirational.

00:09:07.560 And I got to say, if the guy were a liberal, he would be venerated.

00:09:12.940 He would be celebrated.

00:09:14.220 You would you would have a law school buildings named after him in law schools and universities would be clamoring for him to come speak.

00:09:21.300 And he'd be celebrated because he's a minority on the Supreme Court.

00:09:24.520 He would be an icon of icons.

00:09:26.760 That's exactly right.

00:09:27.780 You would have honorary degrees from law schools.

00:09:30.160 You'd have elementary schools named after him.

00:09:32.600 You would have liberal talk show hosts inviting him on and just fawning over him.

00:09:36.600 you'd have them pushing chic attire remember uh notorious uh rbg no notorious i was literally

00:09:45.220 thinking the same thing he would be the the male version of her basically yes no no it the entire

00:09:50.900 culture would elevate him the smithsonian museum on african-american history would have an entire

00:09:57.160 section dedicated to him yeah instead because he's a conservative he has endured enormous racism

00:10:04.180 enormous vilification enormous hate enormous attacks and and i think his story is incredibly

00:10:10.920 consequential but also his impact on the court is profound and so about a year and a half ago

00:10:17.060 i called him up and said justice can i come by the the chambers to talk with you he said sure

00:10:22.360 so i went by he didn't know what i wanted to talk about and i said listen i want to write

00:10:28.000 this biography of you i think it's an important story to tell and i'll tell you ben you know he

00:10:33.700 he looked at me and he said by the way he did not know this was coming I want everybody to really

00:10:37.780 understand yeah I just said hey can we talk he said sure Ted Cruz is coming to see today rank

00:10:43.380 and order the top 100 things you think you might want to talk to you about I bet you none of those

00:10:47.360 100 would have been he wants to write an autobiography about me well not an autobiography

00:10:51.800 but about but a biography biography excuse me biography yeah uh so so look I I do think he

00:10:57.640 I don't know that he was surprised but I don't think he expected that and it was interesting

00:11:02.360 his comment is about a year and a half ago and he sort of stopped and and reflected for a minute

00:11:06.780 and he said you know ted if it was anyone else asking he said i would say no he said if you were

00:11:16.240 just a law professor he said i i would not be willing to cooperate but it was very kind he said

00:11:21.740 because it's you the answer is yes and and what proceeded for the next year is i did a whole

00:11:28.880 series of one-on-one interviews about nine and a half hours I spent with him one-on-one where I

00:11:33.640 just head over to his chambers and I'd spent an hour or two just asking him questions and it was

00:11:37.540 free-flowing asking him questions about his life his childhood growing up about the time of the

00:11:42.720 court about his jurisprudence and and part of what he said is he said look your background so

00:11:50.040 I was a Supreme Court law clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist that's when I first got to know him when

00:11:55.200 I was a law clerk. Then I was a lawyer in private practice. Then I was the Solicitor General of

00:12:01.520 Texas. And my entire career was litigating in front of the Supreme Court. So I argued nine

00:12:07.120 cases at the Supreme Court. And then, obviously, for the last 14 years, I've been in the Senate

00:12:13.120 and have been on the Senate Judiciary Committee. So I've been part of numerous judicial

00:12:20.360 confirmation hearings, Supreme Court confirmation hearings. And what Justice Thomas said is he

00:12:25.160 said look with with your background i i think you can tell this story in a way that is effective

00:12:29.520 and that's what i wanted to do ben so as i said my grandfather's son is a fabulous autobiography

00:12:36.700 so if you just want his life story go buy that book it's fabulous but my grandfather's son ends

00:12:43.900 when he goes to the supreme court so what i tried to do with this book uh is tell his story but also

00:12:53.500 analyze his jurisprudence 30 years of supreme court opinions why they mattered why they were

00:12:59.620 consequential and and what i try to do in the book is explain it in a way that is understandable

00:13:06.840 you don't have to be a lawyer you don't have to be a constitutional expert i try to write every book

00:13:11.200 as i said this is book number five every book i've written i try to write so that a smart high school

00:13:16.700 student can read it and get it and understand it so you don't have to be an expert but why does

00:13:22.740 Justice Thomas's Jurisprudence Matter, and so I try to interweave that and tell that story. As I

00:13:29.260 mentioned, the website is goingfurther.com, goingfurther.com, and I would encourage you,

00:13:34.840 go to the website right now, goingfurther.com, and pre-order the book. The book will come out

00:13:39.560 in August, so if you pre-order it right now, in August when it comes out, it'll be shipped

00:13:43.680 straight to you. It is, I think, a fun read. It's an interesting read. I really, really enjoyed

00:13:50.560 writing this book Canadian women are looking for more more of themselves their businesses

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00:14:20.320 listen to your podcasts you know it's interesting i don't think you know this but the first supreme

00:14:26.160 court justice i ever met was clarence thomas i did not know that and and i told him and i don't

00:14:31.420 think i've ever told you this either the clarence thomas hearings was the first political thing i

00:14:37.460 ever watched in tv i was i think 10 years old when it 1991 in that right i think that was the time

00:14:43.300 He was 91.

00:14:44.180 91.

00:14:45.380 And by the way, for our younger listeners, you may not know this.

00:14:49.340 So George Herbert Walker Bush nominated him to the court.

00:14:52.820 And his confirmation was the most brutal Supreme Court confirmation hearing we've ever seen.

00:14:58.360 Ever.

00:14:58.600 It followed Robert Borks. 0.91

00:15:00.680 Robert Borks was really ugly and brutal.

00:15:03.280 In fact, Robert Borks' confirmation hearing turned his name into a verb.

00:15:07.840 to bork someone is to attack them unfairly to go after them because the senate democrats led by ted

00:15:14.220 kennedy savaged robert bork clarence thomas took it to a totally different order of magnitude so

00:15:20.940 one of the things i do in in the book is break down the entire confirmation hearings the allegations

00:15:25.920 of sexual harassment uh by anita hill i break them down and by the way the clarence thomas

00:15:31.620 hearing set the stage for the brett kavanaugh impeachment hearings where they were not impeachment

00:15:37.600 hearings but confirmation hearings they felt like impeachment hearings where they replayed the same

00:15:42.500 playbook including including anonymous allegations that the democrats had for months they sat on they

00:15:48.980 didn't release and on the eve of the vote they leaked them to the press to just slander the

00:15:53.700 nominee and so i walked through and part of what i do the brett kavanaugh confirmation hearing i was

00:15:59.980 intimately involved in i was on the senate judiciary committee so part of what i do in the

00:16:03.680 book is draw the parallels between those two but try to tell the inside story but for for those

00:16:10.300 too young to remember i will say clarence thomas was savaged at a level there have been very few

00:16:17.280 people in public life who ever have and and and i gotta say after donald trump i don't think there

00:16:26.120 is anybody the left hates more than clarence thomas and that's part of why i got excited about

00:16:32.000 writing this book because because i've got to say if you were to pick a role model someone to say

00:16:38.420 i want to be like that person yeah i am hard pressed to find a better example than clarence

00:16:45.540 thomas for someone deeply principled and by the way his journey he didn't arrive at at his beliefs

00:16:51.860 and principles today it it took him decades to get there but but it was a commitment to truth

00:16:57.720 and it was a perseverance that i'm going to stick to truth even if the whole world comes crashing

00:17:03.980 down upon me even if i'm criticized so many people in public life when they're criticized

00:17:10.260 they give in they surrender they give up everything they believe clarence thomas is not

00:17:14.920 he will go down in history as one of the most consequential supreme court justices

00:17:18.300 to ever live and and i gotta say let's say you're a young person right now maybe you don't want to

00:17:24.000 be a lawyer you don't want to be a judge maybe you want to be i don't know you want to be an

00:17:27.020 accountant you want to be a business person you want to be a nurse i don't know what you want to

00:17:31.600 be clarence thomas is a role model of what it means to live a principled life and and that's

00:17:41.800 why i got excited about telling this story because i don't think this story has been told

00:17:46.280 in a long time in a way that is effective and communicates and and and so again i would

00:17:52.720 encourage you go to goingfurther.com. You can pre-order the book. I think you're going to like

00:17:57.560 it. It's a fun book. It's readable. It's understandable. I've got lots of stories

00:18:02.800 about that Justice Thomas has not told previously about the inside. I was going to ask for one tease.

00:18:09.300 Give us one little thing that even you learned that was surprising to you that you put in the

00:18:15.560 book. Look, we will get to more teases in the weeks and months to come. No, I like this. He's

00:18:20.680 You see, he's selling right now.

00:18:23.720 I like this.

00:18:24.420 This is good.

00:18:25.180 This is citizenship.

00:18:25.980 What I will say.

00:18:27.300 All right.

00:18:27.600 Last week, Clarence Thomas gave a speech at the University of Texas.

00:18:33.840 Yeah.

00:18:34.360 And the speech was positively magisterial.

00:18:37.120 In fact, I texted Justice Thomas and I told him, thank you.

00:18:40.000 That was an important speech.

00:18:41.840 It was beautifully done.

00:18:43.800 I want to play a minute of the speech so you can hear because this was this really sort

00:18:50.000 of encapsulates who he is. I was proud of UT for inviting him. I think the student body,

00:18:56.540 those in attendance, were enraptured. Give a listen to what Justice Thomas said last week

00:19:02.000 in his speech at UT. There isn't a single judge I know who does hard things because they get joy

00:19:10.860 out of it. They do hard things because they signed up to do hard things. And they may not agree with

00:19:17.560 it and it may be difficult they may think it's not a great law but their job as article 3 judges

00:19:25.400 is to enforce the law to interpret it and to apply it to that particular case when i first became a

00:19:32.040 judge judge larry silverman who's unfortunately passed away said ask yourself before each case

00:19:40.760 What is my role in this case as a judge?

00:19:44.380 Notice how that limits you, not as a person, not as a Catholic, not as a policymaker, not as a husband, as a judge.

00:19:55.000 And that is early on that required more discipline.

00:19:59.920 More discipline. Yeah, that's a great way of putting that from Clarence Thomas there.

00:20:05.580 You said earlier, being a kid in the audience at UT, getting to hear this conversation, truly an incredible moment.

00:20:13.040 And I will say, when he's talking about being a judge and more discipline, a lot of what I talk about in the book is his approach to being a judge.

00:20:20.260 And it's very much, look, his grandfather, he was raised by his grandfather, his grandfather worked him hard.

00:20:28.320 He worked delivering fuel oil.

00:20:31.240 He worked on the farm.

00:20:32.520 He helped build their home on the farm.

00:20:34.020 he worked his fingers literally bloody um his grandfather during the the bitter cold of the

00:20:41.920 winter would not let clarence thomas wear gloves because he thought gloves made you soft he wanted

00:20:47.520 to make him strong and tough and disciplined and and part of what clarence did it by the way

00:20:52.860 the school of hard knocks mentality behind a lot of great men they had really tough people in their

00:21:02.200 life that made them into great men and that's an example of that well and and clarence thomas had

00:21:07.600 enormous expectations on him and his approach to being a justice there are a lot of justices who

00:21:12.900 use much more highfalutin rhetoric you look at clarence thomas opinions they're plain spoken

00:21:18.380 they're very matter of fact that they are designed so they can be read by every man so so they can 0.63

00:21:24.880 and look he was growing up in georgia with a lot of poor african-americans surrounding them many

00:21:30.560 of whom were illiterate. His grandparents who raised him were almost functionally illiterate.

00:21:36.940 They had very limited reading skills. And so he tries to write his opinions in a way that they

00:21:41.980 are accessible, they're straightforward, and he approaches each opinion. I use the analogy in the

00:21:47.780 book, it's like a carpenter. It's like someone building a home. He lays the foundation, he frames

00:21:53.840 the house, he does it piece after piece, trying to get to the truth. And the title of the book,

00:21:59.640 going further if you look at 30 plus years of clarence thomas's time on the court his consistent

00:22:05.500 theme is we should go further that's a quote from his dissent in the term limits case but but it is

00:22:12.100 a theme that that other great conservative justices would say let's go do x and he would say no let's

00:22:20.820 go further and his focus is let's get back to the original understanding of the constitution let's

00:22:26.220 all the way and and and the impact he has had has changed law profoundly and and i want you to

00:22:33.520 listen to him again at ut last week talking about the importance of the constitution but also the

00:22:40.640 importance of the declaration of independence and i think clarence thomas emphasizes and

00:22:45.340 highlights the declaration more than any other justice here give a listen none of our rights

00:22:52.100 come from the government.

00:22:55.120 All of the government's authority comes from our consent.

00:23:01.080 And the structure and limited role of government

00:23:04.340 is to assure that it does not exceed the authority

00:23:09.000 to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights.

00:23:15.540 The Constitution is the means of government.

00:23:18.680 It is the Declaration that announces the ends of government.

00:23:24.360 The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and our liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy.

00:23:35.920 our constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism truly for the first time in modern

00:23:45.260 history to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights

00:23:53.620 he takes his time and that's one of the things he doesn't wing it he understands he's not putting

00:24:01.260 on a show speaks yeah he's these words are deliberate and you can tell that he has just

00:24:06.440 an incredible amount of compassion and care for this country and i also think when you get a

00:24:12.660 little bit older um you probably are thinking about your legacy and what you're leaving behind

00:24:17.040 and he clearly speaks that way to those students going hey i'm not always going to be here being

00:24:21.240 a shepherd somebody else is going to have to step forward and do this and it may take a lot of people

00:24:27.440 to accomplish what he's done in his lifetime. Well, and I'll tell you again in that UT speech,

00:24:32.060 he contrasts the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the Constitution,

00:24:37.300 the immutable principles upon which our country was founded. He contrasts them with progressivism,

00:24:43.760 and progressivism, I think, has been a poison that has led the United States in a very dangerous

00:24:49.540 direction. Listen to Justice Thomas drawing that contrast. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic

00:24:56.560 premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government. It holds that our

00:25:04.420 rights and our dignities come not from God but from government. It requires of the people a

00:25:11.980 subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin

00:25:19.420 of our rights. Wow. I mean, wow. What else can you say besides wow? And by the way, you might

00:25:28.020 say, well, gosh, is progressivism really at war with the principles of the Declaration of

00:25:33.520 Independence? You may remember last year at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Tim Kaine,

00:25:38.720 Democrat from Virginia, was questioning a nominee to the State Department, a President

00:25:45.240 Trump-nominated the State Department, who had written in his testimony that our rights come

00:25:50.940 from God, not government. And Tim Kaine got outraged, and he said, that is a radical statement,

00:25:57.000 that is a dangerous statement, that is an extreme statement. That is the kind of thing theocratic

00:26:02.580 societies like Iran believe. We don't believe that. God doesn't give us our rights, government does.

00:26:09.240 And I walked in right as Tim Kaine was saying this, and I had a whole line of questioning

00:26:14.700 that I had planned to go down on the hearing, and I threw it all in the trash, and I spoke shortly

00:26:20.400 after Tim Kaine, and I said, you know, Tim Kaine said the idea that our rights come from God is a

00:26:26.840 radical and dangerous and extreme idea, and he's right, it is. It also happens to be the founding

00:26:32.600 principle upon which our nation was created, and I said, listen, if you don't believe me,

00:26:38.300 maybe you're inclined, you're politically left of center, and you may be inclined not to believe me.

00:26:43.260 If you don't, maybe you might believe another Virginian who wrote, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator, not by government, not by the DNC, but by God Almighty, with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:27:11.880 That was, of course, Thomas Jefferson.

00:27:14.360 That was in the Declaration.

00:27:16.360 That's what Justice Thomas is referring.

00:27:18.300 And part of what was so disturbing about Tim Kaine so cavalierly dismissing the idea that our rights come from God and instead insisting they come from government is Tim Kaine and the Democrat Party is not some crazy radical.

00:27:33.540 He's not Bernie Sanders.

00:27:34.600 He's not Elizabeth Warren.

00:27:36.380 He was Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee.

00:27:39.060 he is about as mainstream a Democrat as you can find. And it really shows how progressivism has

00:27:45.660 suffused the Democrat Party. And I got to say at UT last week also, Justice Thomas talked about the

00:27:54.020 need to engage and engage in the fight for truth. Here, give a listen. I think if we don't stand up

00:28:01.280 and take ownership of our country and take responsibility for it, we are slowly letting

00:28:06.080 others control how we think and what we think the I think the beauty of going to

00:28:12.200 school is that you learn how to think for yourselves you develop the

00:28:16.600 discipline to think things through you if you think it's losing confidence then

00:28:23.040 you get up and you participate you don't sit on the sidelines you think that the

00:28:27.780 kind of sit cut that the the state is being run and inconsistent with how you

00:28:32.900 field then you get up and you participate you prepare yourself if you think that the medical

00:28:38.820 profession is not right well you become a doctor or be a medical uh person and you deal with that

00:28:45.920 i think we need to take ownership of our country it's our country it's our country and and you

00:28:54.800 know one of the things he said there that was interesting is he said you know you go to school

00:28:57.660 to learn how you know to figure out what you believe and what you think and those type of

00:29:00.800 things i i think the left and learn how to think and learn how to think they think no no you come

00:29:05.840 here so we can indoctrinate you yep and tell you what to think and tell you what to say and tell

00:29:11.500 you what to protest and tell you what to how to act that is the difference between conservatism

00:29:17.580 and liberalism on a college campus well let me say this if you're a young person maybe you're

00:29:23.660 in high school maybe you're in college maybe you're a young professional maybe you're not

00:29:29.360 that young anymore maybe you're in your 30s or your 40s or your 50s or maybe you're 60 70 80

00:29:34.020 maybe you're in your 90s um if you want a hero i think you could do a lot worse than clarence

00:29:44.760 thomas that's a great way of putting it he is someone look i spent the better part of a year

00:29:51.880 writing this book um there's a lot of things to devote my time to the reason i wrote this book

00:29:58.760 is i believe this book needed to be written his story needed to be told his autobiography is great

00:30:04.780 but it was written a long time ago and and a lot of people today haven't read it and and his

00:30:10.760 jurisprudence there have been other other books that have been written that have been academic

00:30:16.120 discussions of his jurisprudence and if you're a federal judge if you're a law professor that can

00:30:21.080 be useful but there's very little in terms of if you're just an american who cares about our

00:30:27.720 country who cares about truth, there's very little that explains what Clarence Thomas has stood for,

00:30:35.080 what he said, what he's argued on the court. And this book, I've tried to do so in a way that is

00:30:40.580 fun, that is interesting, that's telling inside stories. And so again, the website is goingfurther.com,

00:30:47.460 goingfurther.com. I'd encourage you, if you're listening to this podcast right now, if you're

00:30:52.320 watching on YouTube, just click over on your phone to goingfurther.com. Pre-order a copy,

00:30:58.380 and, you know, you may even think about this will be August. If you have a child, if you have a

00:31:05.600 grandchild, if you have a relative, you have a friend, a birthday's coming up, Christmas is

00:31:10.680 coming up. This book I wrote because I want people to read it. I want people to read it because I

00:31:17.420 think Clarence Thomas's life his journey his principles his his commitment to truth and his

00:31:26.560 courage yeah look one of the things frankly courageous I don't think people understand

00:31:32.040 what a beating he took in the confirmation hearings yeah I go back to that that data point

00:31:36.880 there it it engaged me in politics and I watched it as a 10 year old and my parents were really

00:31:44.400 concerned because the subject matter yeah they thought it was important for me to see i was

00:31:49.480 homeschooled at the time what a confirmationary look like but also how like there's good and evil

00:31:56.140 in the world and i think my parents were understanding that i was learning that there

00:32:00.800 is evil and there is good and i became not only a fan of his but i also fell in love with the

00:32:06.220 political process from watching it saying i want to stand up those people they're trying to destroy

00:32:10.020 his life and that's what i want to do with my life and that was a very pivotal moment when i

00:32:15.880 was 10 years old because two years later becoming talk shows yeah look i remember it was 1991 during

00:32:21.780 his confirmation hearing i was in college and i remember a good friend of mine who lived down the

00:32:25.860 hall from me coming in and just being like ted our guy is on the ropes and and it was brutal i

00:32:32.120 mean they were savaging him at a level that conventional wisdom was this guy's going to

00:32:37.480 crumble. He's not going to last. The president, George Herbert Walker Bush, he's going to lose

00:32:42.900 faith and withdraw him. That could easily have happened. I think the Democrats were shocked

00:32:48.160 that they did not destroy him with the assault they brought in. By the way,

00:32:53.420 ever since he went to the court, he's been there over 30 years, and the left hates him with a

00:32:59.640 venom. They accuse him of being stupid. They accuse him of following white men. They accuse 1.00

00:33:05.300 of just doing what what Antonin Scalia does there is a bigotry and racism from the left that is

00:33:11.840 nasty listen Antonin Scalia was a rock rib conservative and yet the the left did not heap 0.91

00:33:19.220 the hatred and and there is a sense from the left Clarence Thomas is a black man is not allowed to 0.97

00:33:26.900 be a conservative he is a traitor to his race for daring to to have conservative beliefs and and

00:33:34.500 And I admire people who endure adversity and who persevere, who stay true to their principles.

00:33:41.560 And so this book is really trying to tell the story in a way that I hope inspires you.

00:33:46.800 And I hope inspires you in your life.

00:33:48.600 Listen, I will say the folks that listen to Verdict, we have an amazing – we have millions of people that listen to this podcast.

00:33:55.180 And I love – I get the chance.

00:33:57.500 You do too, Ben.

00:33:58.200 All across the country, we meet Verdict listeners who come up.

00:34:00.860 They say, I love the podcast.

00:34:02.400 I listen to it.

00:34:03.640 It informs me.

00:34:05.700 I wrote this book because knowing our verdict listeners, I believe if you know who Clarence Thomas is, what he has endured, what he has stood for, and the journey he has traveled, that it will inspire you because it inspires me.

00:34:22.800 That's why I wrote the book, and I think it'll be – I think it's a fun book.

00:34:28.360 It's an interesting book.

00:34:29.780 You know, a bunch of the guys on my team, they read it.

00:34:31.720 I've written five books.

00:34:33.200 I had several people who said when they read it, they said,

00:34:35.940 I think this is the best book you've ever written.

00:34:37.580 It's the most interesting.

00:34:38.820 It's just fun and interesting to read.

00:34:41.280 I hope that's right.

00:34:42.280 I hope people enjoy it.

00:34:43.900 Well, it's going to be cool in your homework, as I describe it as,

00:34:46.480 hey, you got until August until the book comes out.

00:34:48.640 You can preorder it now, goingfurther.com, goingfurther.com.

00:34:51.920 But I would challenge everybody.

00:34:53.600 I'm going to be one of those.

00:34:55.340 I've never read Clarence Thomas' autobiography.

00:34:59.100 So I would say you got until August to read that.

00:35:02.160 you pick up the story where that ends in essence it's the single best autobiography ever read

00:35:07.480 it was also it was also excruciatingly painful for justice thomas to write one of the things he

00:35:14.180 shared look this book is based on nine and a half hours of one-on-one exclusive interviews and he

00:35:19.840 shared he doesn't intend to write another uh autobiography he doesn't want to tell his own

00:35:24.300 story because he had to relive really painful chapters and in particular his relationship with

00:35:30.480 his grandfather. He was a very hard man. He was a strong man, but for a substantial chunk of their

00:35:36.300 lives, they were estranged, and he goes through those painful chapters where at one point his

00:35:42.560 grandfather threw him out of the house and said, you can't come in here anymore, and he details

00:35:47.580 that, and I tell that story too, but it was, it made Clarence Thomas into the man he was, and he

00:35:56.260 had periods where he struggled. His first marriage did not succeed. He struggled for a period of time

00:36:03.120 with drinking. He was angry. He had rage for many years, and how he dealt with that, how he dealt

00:36:12.180 with the rage, and the rage at racial bigotry. And a lot of what I talk about in the book is

00:36:17.300 Justice Thomas's views on race, where he has been the most powerful and eloquent proponent

00:36:23.220 of a colorblind constitution that our country's ever seen, of not having government

00:36:28.460 discriminate based on race. And as an African American, look, one story he describes is when

00:36:37.380 he was in the Reagan administration and he went, was hauled, he was head of the EEOC,

00:36:41.480 was hauled to a meeting at the White House, and a White House staffer said, here's what you got to 0.97

00:36:46.560 do and clarence thomas responded there are only two things i gotta do die and be black like 0.68

00:36:54.740 that is clarence thomas he he is he is tough and strong and unshakable and and the entire world 0.90

00:37:05.540 can pound down upon him and he will stand strong and resolute there you go grab the book again

00:37:12.660 online you can pre-order it goingfurther.com that's goingfurther.com and obviously you can

00:37:17.640 get Clarence Thomas's autobiography I'm sure online Amazon wherever you get your your books

00:37:21.960 and uh and and grab both those it's going to be really cool what a fun show I love getting to hit

00:37:26.860 pause sometimes for the news of the day to talk about really important things like this I hope

00:37:31.880 it inspires people to get the book get it for your kids get it for your grandkids I got my

00:37:35.780 summer reading list now I'm expecting my advanced copy so I can use on summer vacation before August

00:37:40.700 and it should be signed, of course.

00:37:43.220 So we'll make sure we do that.

00:37:44.460 But grab it.

00:37:45.220 Again, goingfurther.com.

00:37:47.240 Ben, I can promise you yours will be signed

00:37:50.220 to whom it may concern.

00:37:54.940 Thank you.

00:37:55.660 Thank you.

00:37:55.980 That's so kind of you.

00:37:57.020 To whom it may concern.

00:37:58.460 Well played.

00:37:59.760 All right. 1.00

00:38:00.160 Well, send her out.

00:38:00.800 We'll see you back here Friday morning

00:38:02.440 for the next episode.

00:38:03.460 Have a great day until then.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 22, 2026

Ted's Brand-New Book—A Biography of Clarence Thomas, Telling his Incredible Life Story and his Historic Impact on our Nation

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