Verdict with Ted Cruz - The Meme Gurus

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.440 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.820 Markets are going crazy as the meme gurus over at Reddit.com confound the entire financial

00:00:12.640 and regulatory establishment.

00:00:14.520 But the establishment is pushing back big tech, big government, big corporate America,

00:00:20.260 all coming back to squeeze the little guy.

00:00:22.980 We'll get into what it all means.

00:00:24.500 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict.

00:00:32.860 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:00:33.920 I am joined by the nefarious, infamous murderer himself, Ted Cruz.

00:00:40.280 We have got some very, very exciting news.

00:00:43.940 After so long of being locked down, being kept apart, we're taking Verdict on the road.

00:00:49.820 We will be at YAF's Freedom Conference in Miami, Friday, February 5th, 8 p.m. Eastern.

00:00:57.280 If you're in Miami, I hope that we'll see you there.

00:00:59.200 Even if you're not in Miami, we will get to speak with you.

00:01:02.220 We will be taking your questions live through the YAF YouTube channel.

00:01:05.960 So if you want to submit a question and have it answered in real time, go to youtube.com

00:01:10.700 slash YAF TV.

00:01:13.380 We have been talking about a whole lot of things, but there's so much more to get to.

00:01:16.740 Senator, what are we going to talk about?

00:01:18.880 Well, the best thing about Miami is that we'll be with real live human beings out of the

00:01:23.980 COVID caves to which we've all been sent.

00:01:27.440 You had to flee the state of California to actually encounter other human beings.

00:01:31.400 And so it'll be good to be in Florida, an actual state that is open and operating with live,

00:01:37.400 liberty-loving human beings.

00:01:38.880 And apparently I will continue my murderous rampage down in Miami.

00:01:44.540 Yet, you know, ever since Northern California in the 60s, you know, I've had a proclivity

00:01:50.380 to mass murder.

00:01:52.860 And so we'll see if that continues.

00:01:55.400 You got that.

00:01:56.100 Again, this actually, the most recent accusation of your murderous tendencies, it came in response

00:02:02.400 to this GameStop wild stock market question.

00:02:06.240 I know some people are a little confused by what's been going on in the markets.

00:02:11.680 And by some people, I especially mean me.

00:02:14.260 I'm not exactly the most financially literate person here.

00:02:17.140 What exactly is going on?

00:02:19.560 There's, as far as I can tell, there are these guys on Reddit who decided that there was a

00:02:24.740 vulnerability at some big hedge fund and Wall Street had taken out certain positions.

00:02:29.040 And so they were going to make a bunch of money at Wall Street's expense, and then everything

00:02:33.640 went haywire.

00:02:34.580 Well, I think you actually understand it pretty well.

00:02:36.900 You had a couple of big Wall Street hedge funds that were short-selling GameStop.

00:02:41.220 So they were making bets in the market that GameStop was going to go down.

00:02:45.420 And if the stock price went down, they made a bunch of money.

00:02:48.780 And over at Reddit, at this subreddit called WallStreetBets, a bunch of folks got ticked off at

00:02:56.320 that and said, I'll tell you what, let's all go buy GameStop.

00:03:00.160 And number one, we'll make money and drive the stock up.

00:03:02.540 But number two, we'll put those other guys out of business.

00:03:05.160 And miraculously, they got enough people to do it that the stock started going up and going up

00:03:11.220 and going up.

00:03:11.920 And it went from like four bucks a share to I think it's been as high as $400 a share.

00:03:17.960 I mean, it's a massive increase.

00:03:19.940 I checked a few minutes ago.

00:03:21.380 It's trading about $3.18 right now.

00:03:24.240 That is enormous volatility.

00:03:28.700 That did a number of things.

00:03:30.980 Number one, for everyone that bought it four bucks, if you sold it $400, you made a lot of money.

00:03:36.580 Number two, the hedge funds that are betting on it going down, I mean, they got caught with

00:03:41.880 their shorts down and they're really, really unhappy.

00:03:44.760 Because, Senator, when you take a short position or when you're short selling a stock, you're

00:03:51.600 betting against it, right?

00:03:52.960 And so if it goes down, you make money.

00:03:54.780 But if it goes up, it's not like you get to just hold your position in midair forever.

00:03:59.880 You've got to start putting cash on the table as the stock goes up.

00:04:03.000 So what has happened is if you're shorting it, you have sold the stock at a really low

00:04:08.680 price and you've already executed that transaction.

00:04:11.360 You've sold it.

00:04:12.180 And so if the stock goes up, you have to fulfill on that promise, which means you've got to

00:04:16.740 buy it.

00:04:17.780 Let's say you sold it at three bucks.

00:04:20.700 You might have to buy it at $400 to be able to deliver on the stock you've sold at three.

00:04:26.360 In other words, when you're shorting a stock, you've got enormous vulnerability if there's

00:04:33.260 a big delta on the upside.

00:04:36.120 And so this, look, this is chaotic.

00:04:39.000 This is disconcerting.

00:04:42.280 But then it took a really, I've got to say, screwed up step because a number of trading

00:04:48.400 platforms, most prominently Robinhood, you know, Robinhood popularized itself as democratizing

00:04:54.020 stock sales that you on your phone can participate with the big boys.

00:04:58.640 Well, suddenly Robinhood decided, no, no, you can't.

00:05:01.520 The big boys, they can still buy and sell, but you, the ordinary schmo, they prevented 0.99

00:05:09.140 you from buying GameStop.

00:05:13.040 You could still sell it.

00:05:13.920 You just couldn't buy it.

00:05:16.060 It's unbelievable.

00:05:17.000 And I got to admit, a whole lot of folks, a whole lot of folks on the left, a whole lot

00:05:22.600 of folks on the right. 0.86

00:05:23.620 I mean, we all said, all right, this is screwed up.

00:05:25.920 If there's going to be a rule, it ought to be a rule that applies to everyone.

00:05:29.360 We shouldn't have one rule for rich, powerful, connected hedge funds in Manhattan and a different

00:05:35.560 rule for every other American that is trading your own money. 0.77

00:05:39.240 And what Robinhood did is basically implemented that rule and said, all right, we're going

00:05:44.320 to screw the little guy and only favor the big guy. 1.00

00:05:47.460 And that does seem to be getting the whole notion of Robinhood a little bit backwards.

00:05:51.480 Yeah.

00:05:52.040 Steal from the poor to give to the rich.

00:05:54.120 Because one thing that has been so nauseating about this entire issue is when apps like Robinhood

00:06:02.320 came in and protected Wall Street, basically protected these hedge funds.

00:06:06.580 It was as though they were these vulnerable, innocent, poor little hedge funds, you know,

00:06:11.520 and the mean old guys on Reddit were coming in.

00:06:14.340 And of course, that isn't the case when you've got a retail investor, an ordinary American

00:06:18.540 coming in, trying to play with the big guys.

00:06:20.620 And then the big guys seem to get this separate set of rules here.

00:06:24.620 So the left and the right did kind of come together about this.

00:06:28.000 They said, this seems a little bit rigged, guys.

00:06:30.040 This seems unfair.

00:06:31.720 AOC, as far left a congressman as you can get, she came out and said, we've got to look

00:06:36.440 into this.

00:06:37.560 You said, you know, a stopped clock twice a day.

00:06:41.300 I agree with this.

00:06:43.160 And it could have been this moment of unity and healing and bipartisan support.

00:06:49.260 And then she called you a murderer.

00:06:51.320 Yeah.

00:06:51.620 So my tweet, I took her tweet where she said, this is messed up.

00:06:55.240 This needs to be investigated.

00:06:56.920 Congress needs to look into why Robinhood shut down ordinary investors.

00:07:00.760 But hedge funds can continue to try to get out of their short position and try to cover

00:07:05.860 their rear ends.

00:07:07.280 I read her tweet and I was, you know, on my phone. 0.81

00:07:09.320 I read it and I said, huh, that's right. 0.98

00:07:11.080 I'll be damned. 0.81

00:07:11.780 That doesn't happen very often. 0.60

00:07:13.340 And so I retweeted her.

00:07:14.860 And the sum total of my tweet was two words, fully agree.

00:07:19.340 And then I had a finger pointing down.

00:07:21.220 And by the way, no, it was not the middle finger.

00:07:22.980 It was the index finger pointing down.

00:07:25.000 In an ordinary world, if someone retweets you and say they fully agree with you, that

00:07:31.140 does suggest, gosh, maybe there's something to this.

00:07:34.340 If people all across the ideological spectrum agree this is screwed up, maybe there's something

00:07:39.040 to it.

00:07:40.080 Her reaction was a little different.

00:07:41.880 She sent a series of really unhinged tweets screaming that she's not willing to work with

00:07:48.440 me.

00:07:48.620 She'll work with other Republicans, although I'm not sure who or where.

00:07:51.900 But but this theoretical Republican.

00:07:55.280 But because I tried to have her murdered three weeks ago, she's not willing to work with

00:08:01.000 me.

00:08:01.220 And it's just that look, the left right now, they're angry.

00:08:06.620 They're filled with hate.

00:08:08.660 And and and they're they're exercising a primal scream.

00:08:13.900 I mean, we are seeing it right now, leftist id.

00:08:19.020 And they're expressing hate.

00:08:20.660 And it's like, all right, look, our country is really divided right now.

00:08:23.460 I'd like to see us actually interact like human beings and adults and show some decency

00:08:28.920 and and actually address the real problems in the country. 1.00

00:08:32.300 But on the other hand, you can just scream, screw you, screw you, screw you. 0.99

00:08:35.780 If that's what makes you feel good. 1.00

00:08:37.920 Well, this brings up a conversation that's happening right now among conservatives as as

00:08:42.960 all of these kind of big powers, big, big, big are coming in and clamping down.

00:08:47.360 It's making us rethink some things, I think, because as you say, AOC says, I'm happy to

00:08:52.420 work with Republicans, just not Ted Cruz and just not Donald Trump and just not really any

00:08:57.920 Republican who who could work with her.

00:09:00.100 You know, it's just this hypothetical Republican.

00:09:01.660 But but basically she's delegitimizing any Republican. 1.00

00:09:05.840 You've heard this from other people on the left who say 75 million Americans are Nazi,

00:09:10.140 white supremacist, whatever.

00:09:11.640 And we on the right used to say things like, well, you know, Twitter is a private company.

00:09:17.080 If they want to kick people off, build your own Twitter.

00:09:19.840 You know, we want private people to be able to run their business however they want.

00:09:24.520 But increasingly, we're finding out the left won't let us build our own Twitter.

00:09:28.580 We tried to do that with with an app called Parler.

00:09:31.060 They kicked it out of the app store.

00:09:32.340 Then they kicked it off the Internet.

00:09:33.740 Same thing here.

00:09:35.460 Are we now if we're not allowed to invest in Robin Hood or through Robin Hood rather or

00:09:41.020 really any of the other brokerage apps, are we supposed to build our own broker dealer or

00:09:46.340 are we supposed to build our own stock market or are we supposed to build our own account?

00:09:50.140 You know, where is the end of this and how can we tackle the problem so that we're not

00:09:55.080 totally ostracized from society?

00:09:57.820 So there's a whole bunch of substance there to unpack.

00:09:59.940 Let me let me take that at several levels.

00:10:01.980 Number one, if you look at what happened to Parler, Parler was kicked out of existence

00:10:06.360 by essentially every gigantic tech company acting in concert.

00:10:10.020 So it was so it was Apple and Amazon and all of them just said, we're shutting down your

00:10:14.200 servers.

00:10:14.620 We're kicking you off.

00:10:15.760 And and it was it was swift.

00:10:19.300 It was brutal.

00:10:20.180 It was obviously illegal.

00:10:21.320 By the way, when giant competitors work together to eliminate another competitor, that is on its

00:10:28.100 face an antitrust violation.

00:10:29.420 And they're all going to be sued.

00:10:30.500 They're all going to pay big damages and they don't care.

00:10:32.440 They're so big.

00:10:34.100 And and they're now convinced the Biden administration are so in their pocket that they just don't

00:10:40.760 care.

00:10:41.140 It's an exercise of brute power.

00:10:44.920 Secondly, you know, the AOC response is is typical of how the left responds to a lot of 0.52

00:10:51.340 issues, which is they don't actually want to talk substance.

00:10:53.500 They don't actually want to want to talk about the underlying merits.

00:10:56.860 They want to engage, number one, it's all politics.

00:11:01.020 You know, we talked in the last verdict about how this is the final scene for every Godfather

00:11:05.940 movie, that they are playing out Michael Corleone.

00:11:08.460 They are settling the debts.

00:11:10.280 They want you and me and all of us to sleep with the fishes.

00:11:13.160 And so they are trying to eliminate everyone. 0.75

00:11:16.520 They're trying to eliminate Donald Trump. 0.76

00:11:18.220 They're trying to eliminate me. 1.00

00:11:19.300 They're trying to eliminate you. 0.60

00:11:20.380 They're trying to eliminate conservatives on on on social media.

00:11:24.960 They're trying to erase the 75 million Americans who voted for Trump.

00:11:29.560 And it is completely devoid of substance.

00:11:32.600 Now, you talked about how does that mean we can't you know, the ordinary American can

00:11:38.760 can't invest, say, in GameStop through Robinhood.

00:11:41.800 But look, one important caveat.

00:11:45.600 GameStop is almost surely a terrible investment, right?

00:11:49.940 And it's worth noting.

00:11:51.160 I mean, there are I mean, since there have been investments, since there's been stock markets,

00:11:54.600 there have been bubbles.

00:11:55.660 You know, you look at in Holland, the tulip bulbs where they bid up tulip bulbs to insane

00:12:01.160 amounts.

00:12:02.440 Now, anytime you have a bubble, anytime you have prices going way, way, way, way, way up, you

00:12:06.840 can make a ton of money if you buy it 100 and sell it 200.

00:12:09.760 That math works really well.

00:12:11.780 So if you happen to catch something that is soaring on an artificial bubble, if you can

00:12:17.300 time it right, you can make a good chunk of money.

00:12:19.840 Now, people get worried about bubbles because if you buy it a thousand and it drops to two.

00:12:26.160 You can be devastated and and predictably with giant bubbles, these they soar high and then

00:12:33.760 they crash precipitously.

00:12:36.520 So I'll be honest.

00:12:37.480 I'm not buying GameStop right right now.

00:12:40.060 Me neither.

00:12:40.580 I think it is fair to say GameStop is not today a 70 billion dollar company, which is where

00:12:48.900 its market cap was, given that it was a tiny fraction of that a couple of weeks ago.

00:12:54.120 I mean, this is this is a casino.

00:12:57.540 So there are people rightly saying, look, a lot of people could lose their shirt and lose

00:13:02.540 all their money on this.

00:13:03.320 And that's right.

00:13:04.940 But the same rules ought to apply for everyone.

00:13:07.440 So if it's a casino, you know what?

00:13:09.040 You or I can walk into a casino in Vegas.

00:13:11.560 We can put everything we got on red, spin the wheel.

00:13:15.660 And if it hits, it hits.

00:13:16.740 And what dismayed so many people, what I think was wrong and what so many other people think

00:13:23.240 was wrong about what Robin Hood did is it had differential rules.

00:13:27.960 The giant hedge funds, they could keep buying and selling, but ordinary Americans couldn't.

00:13:32.400 And yes, there's risk. 0.99

00:13:33.900 But if you want to do some dumb ass things, you ought to have as much right to do a dumb 0.99

00:13:38.100 ass thing as the politically well connected are. 1.00

00:13:41.620 And that differential is significant.

00:13:45.520 And a final point that is not being discussed at all.

00:13:48.120 And I'm sure AOC, this has not occurred to her remotely.

00:13:52.900 But there's a very real possibility that one of the major reasons that Robin Hood halted

00:14:00.000 the ability of consumers to buy GameStop is because of Dodd-Frank, because of leftist

00:14:07.300 regulations that came in.

00:14:08.960 So as a broker, under Dodd-Frank, Robin Hood has a requirement essentially to put up funding

00:14:17.860 and to borrow funding to cover the differential of their risk exposure.

00:14:22.000 And it's set up in such a way.

00:14:24.780 And listen, I am a lawyer.

00:14:27.200 I don't do math, so I'm not going to purport to explain the mechanics of it, other than

00:14:31.600 I think there are good discussions to be had about how much was Robin Hood's actions

00:14:38.720 driven by Dodd-Frank and pressure from the regulators?

00:14:42.160 Did the regulators get involved directly?

00:14:44.380 Did Janet Yellen, the new Treasury Secretary, did she get involved directly?

00:14:47.920 That's a question that needs to be asked.

00:14:49.640 What did the banking regulators do?

00:14:51.560 And also the fear of lawsuits.

00:14:54.940 I don't doubt that a reason, a significant reason Robin Hood did this is they said, well,

00:14:59.480 gosh, a whole bunch of people are going to buy the stock really high.

00:15:01.960 It's going to plummet.

00:15:02.680 They're going to lose all their money and they're going to turn around and sue us.

00:15:05.900 And they were understandably scared about being sued.

00:15:09.640 And so there is, if we're going to let people go to a casino and bet, it does seem to me there

00:15:18.320 ought to be some form of basically a liability waiver, which is, you know, you sign something 0.97

00:15:23.420 saying, you know, dumbass release. 0.99

00:15:27.180 I recognize I may be being a dumbass right now. 0.99

00:15:29.960 If I am, I'm not going to sue you. 0.98

00:15:32.560 Yeah.

00:15:32.640 That could well make sense.

00:15:34.300 And I suspect our democratic friends will have no interest in that because that does

00:15:40.020 not conform with their ideology.

00:15:42.480 Well, this, I mean, this is a very important point that GameStop itself, right?

00:15:46.040 This is a brick and mortar store that sells physical video games.

00:15:49.520 This is a company that's going to go the way of Blockbuster.

00:15:51.780 And these kind of Reddit boards have also targeted BlackBerry, Nokia companies, also

00:15:59.000 where the technology, you know, they're not the companies they once were.

00:16:02.280 That was the point.

00:16:03.660 I mean, it was kind of a joke to them.

00:16:05.780 And they saw this massive short position and they saw that they could basically run the

00:16:10.300 price up and force these hedge funds that they don't like to buy up the stock.

00:16:14.120 And, you know, it becomes a bubble.

00:16:15.420 Some people are going to make a lot of money.

00:16:16.540 Some people are going to get hurt.

00:16:17.500 And the establishment is going to expose itself.

00:16:21.200 To me, what's so interesting about all this volatility is a political point that you've

00:16:27.000 been making now for quite some time.

00:16:29.160 And we're seeing it expressed.

00:16:31.220 The guys on these Reddit boards, I don't know them personally.

00:16:34.680 It seems their politics are a little more on the right than they are on the left.

00:16:39.540 I've been told my whole life that the Republicans are the party of Wall Street.

00:16:44.440 Republicans are the party of the big hedge funds.

00:16:47.060 Republicans are the party of these plutocrats in the establishment. 0.96

00:16:49.760 And yet, if you look right now, who is defending this sort of unfair set of rules that's protecting

00:16:57.220 Wall Street?

00:16:58.220 It's the establishment Democrats.

00:17:00.140 It's not the Republicans.

00:17:01.120 We're the ones who are complaining about it.

00:17:03.060 Is this shift?

00:17:04.380 We've been talking about the difference between the party of Paris and the party of Pittsburgh.

00:17:08.140 Is this shift settling in?

00:17:10.200 And are people going to realize it?

00:17:12.460 Yes, it's settling in, and it drives Democrats crazy.

00:17:16.600 You are right.

00:17:17.460 Today's Democratic Party is the party of the rich.

00:17:19.660 It's the party of elites.

00:17:20.580 It's the party of Wall Street.

00:17:21.860 It's the party of big tech.

00:17:23.480 It's the party of Hollywood.

00:17:24.700 It's the party of universities.

00:17:26.600 That's who big tech listens to.

00:17:29.840 That's who, rather, Democrats listen to.

00:17:31.660 I say, I can't even tell the difference between big tech and Democrats anymore.

00:17:34.400 It's actually one of the reasons why today's Democrats are so pro-China, why they're so

00:17:39.000 in bed with communist China, because all of their patrons, all of the people writing 0.57

00:17:43.500 them checks and funding what they're doing are in bed with China. 0.94

00:17:46.900 Big tech, Hollywood, they're in bed with China, which means the Democrats are in bed

00:17:50.720 with China.

00:17:51.900 Who are the Democrats not supporting?

00:17:54.920 Working men and women, blue-collar workers, union members.

00:17:59.180 You know, you think back, you know, you and I both read in history books, neither one of

00:18:02.420 us are old enough to remember FDR, but there was a time where FDR, where union workers, a

00:18:09.720 steel worker, was the prototypical Democrat voter.

00:18:14.160 And actually, you know, you look at Joe Biden.

00:18:17.140 Joe Biden's whole political career has been marketing that he was the kid from Scranton,

00:18:22.720 that he was the blue-collar, working-class kid from Scranton.

00:18:25.880 And what does he do?

00:18:26.720 He gets elected, and literally within minutes of being sworn in, he takes out a pen.

00:18:32.420 And he destroys thousands upon thousands of blue-collar union jobs.

00:18:36.580 Just the Keystone Pipeline, which he eliminated with one executive order, that was 11,000 jobs.

00:18:43.520 11,000 jobs.

00:18:45.780 8,000 of those were union jobs.

00:18:47.700 And with a stroke of one pen, 11,000 people, their jobs just poof, go away.

00:18:52.880 And, you know, I've spent the last couple of weeks in confirmation hearings for Biden cabinet appointees asking them,

00:18:59.840 what do you say to those 11,000 people whose jobs you just destroyed?

00:19:03.040 And the answer that they've said over and over again is essentially jump in a lake.

00:19:09.100 You know, we saw this week John Kerry.

00:19:12.740 I've got to say, by the way, if you were to pick the perfect spokesperson to understand the travails of the blue-collar working class,

00:19:21.640 it is John Kerry with tuxedo and tails riding his windsurfer.

00:19:28.560 And he really does.

00:19:30.160 He gave this lecture where he says, well, we're going to help them, quote, make better choices. 0.99

00:19:40.500 Well, with all respect, John, screw you.

00:19:43.420 You don't get to sit there with $800 million in the bank, which, by the way, you didn't earn, 0.99

00:19:51.300 and tell the lowly, dirty people who have to work for a living, we're going to help you make better choices.

00:19:58.060 So they all need to make solar panels.

00:20:01.580 You know, I would invite you, John, come to South Texas to the oil patch

00:20:06.380 and talk to an Hispanic guy in a Ford F-150 and tell him, sorry, I don't like the choices you have, 1.00

00:20:14.300 so your job has just been eliminated, your ability to provide for your family is gone.

00:20:18.460 I mean, the arrogance and condescension, Thurston Howell telling you, I'm destroying your life,

00:20:27.480 sadly, that's where the Democrats are right now.

00:20:29.400 Well, there's something that was, I mean, the whole Kerry press conference I felt was extraordinarily condescending

00:20:35.520 and typically lock-jawed and disturbing.

00:20:38.580 But the most disturbing aspect I felt was where he presented his political plan

00:20:45.200 and the Biden administration's political plan as inevitable.

00:20:49.520 And, you know, just a few months ago, Joe Biden was saying, I'm not against fracking, I'm not against coal,

00:20:54.660 I'm not against oil, natural gas.

00:20:56.600 And then we find out, you know, the rug is pulled out from under everybody.

00:21:00.020 Yes, I am.

00:21:00.720 We're going to kill the coal jobs. 0.99

00:21:01.880 We're going to kill the energy sector jobs. 0.97

00:21:04.500 But it's inevitable.

00:21:06.120 It's inevitable.

00:21:06.820 You have to move to solar.

00:21:08.960 You have to move to wind.

00:21:10.520 Go learn how to fix a wind turbine.

00:21:12.300 You know, it reminds us a few years ago when liberal journalists told American manufacturing workers,

00:21:18.500 learn to code.

00:21:19.520 Sorry.

00:21:20.500 And as if there were no choice here.

00:21:23.380 But, of course, there is.

00:21:24.040 You know, the last four years, we had a different policy and we prioritized keeping energy jobs in America,

00:21:30.100 bringing manufacturing jobs back.

00:21:32.260 When we think about the difference between populism and elitism and all these isms that are coming up, 1.00

00:21:38.900 what is the future for the Republican Party?

00:21:41.360 And is there any way that we can stop this inevitable flow of progressive history?

00:21:46.100 So let me make three points on that.

00:21:49.020 Number one, you know, when Joe Biden was saying in the general election he wasn't going to end fracking,

00:21:55.860 everyone knew he was lying.

00:21:58.440 Biden knew he was lying.

00:22:00.000 Trump knew he was lying.

00:22:01.160 The press knew he was lying.

00:22:02.520 Everyone listening knew he was lying.

00:22:04.560 And what did the press do?

00:22:05.700 And this is a great illustration of how we don't have journalism anymore.

00:22:09.480 The press, the fact checkers, and by the way, fact checkers are among the most pernicious liars we have in our political process.

00:22:16.560 The fact checkers declared it a lie.

00:22:19.720 If you said Biden was in fact going to ban fracking.

00:22:23.200 Because.

00:22:24.700 He was lying to the American people and saying he wasn't.

00:22:27.200 And we were required to accept his lies.

00:22:29.640 Right.

00:22:30.240 Boom.

00:22:30.740 What happens?

00:22:31.220 He gets elected.

00:22:31.960 And now the fact checkers are saying it's a lie that he ever said he wasn't going to ban fracking.

00:22:38.580 I mean, it is, you know, I wish George Orwell or Aldous Huxley were still alive to see the absolute fluidity with which CNN and the Washington Post,

00:22:53.240 they are able to tell the exact opposite lie on the flip of a switch without even the hint of any recollection to what they were saying yesterday.

00:23:04.640 Yep.

00:23:05.520 Secondly, you know, when the John Kerry's of the world tell these poor, dirty, little working class people learn to code, you know, one of the ironies is almost inevitably the politicians who are doing this, they don't know how to code. 0.98

00:23:21.060 Yeah.

00:23:21.460 John Kerry doesn't know how to code.

00:23:22.880 Well, I guarantee you can't program his iPhone like like Joe Biden doesn't know how to code.

00:23:29.560 You look at politicians are exercising power.

00:23:34.440 To destroy other people's lives.

00:23:36.420 And one of the things the left loves to virtue signal, they love to show how virtuous they are by being willing to give away your job, never their job, never, never a penny out of their pocket, never anything out of their life.

00:23:49.800 But your job, they are so virtuous, they will obliterate your life.

00:23:55.000 Look, if you actually respect people, you say you ought to be able to choose what you want to do with your right life.

00:24:00.640 Listen, I'm not a steel worker.

00:24:01.880 If you put me in a steel foundry, I wouldn't know what the hell to do.

00:24:04.260 I'd probably burn my fingers off.

00:24:06.060 Being a lawyer was the right call for me.

00:24:10.860 That was my skill set.

00:24:12.120 But I'm not going to presume to tell you that what you chose to do is somehow illegitimate and should be eliminated.

00:24:22.320 The wrong choice.

00:24:23.340 And a third point, you know, you talked about inevitable.

00:24:28.900 And I have to say it brought to mind Avengers Endgame.

00:24:34.840 And, you know, Carrie doesn't quite have the massive Thanos hands and fingers, but you could see the inevitable and the fingers snapping. 1.00

00:24:42.840 And it actually, what is interesting, and Endgame is curious, have you noticed in how many movies how often rabid environmentalists are the bad guys?

00:24:56.160 Whether it's Thanos or go to Watchmen.

00:24:59.740 You know, where the view of the left is people are a disease.

00:25:06.400 They buy into the Malthusian line that there are too many people in the world, that people are bad, and everything would be better if we had fewer people.

00:25:14.780 I mean, Thanos wanted to eliminate 50 percent of the life forms in the universe with one finger snapping.

00:25:20.300 And, you know, Senator, I don't want people to think that you're being hyperbolic here or that you're – I mean, this has been the explicit view of very prominent leftists for a long time.

00:25:28.960 You're talking about the sort of Malthusian theories that people are going to destroy the world.

00:25:33.220 You saw this with the population bomb in the latter part of the 20th century where we were told by the top genius scientists that if we didn't have hopefully voluntary suppression of the global population but, if necessary, coerced suppression of the global population, we'd inevitably have starvation, famines everywhere.

00:25:53.720 We had to do this.

00:25:54.920 You hear this with very prominent environmentalists up to and including Al Gore and others.

00:25:59.380 It is a creepy point, and it seems so radical when you say it, but it is undeniable that that has been the position of prominent leftists.

00:26:08.720 And, Michael, I got a question for you.

00:26:10.720 Do you own a private jet?

00:26:12.840 Not yet, unfortunately.

00:26:14.620 Nor do I.

00:26:15.420 Now, listen, I would love a private jet, but I don't have one.

00:26:19.200 You know who does own a private jet?

00:26:20.840 John Friggen Carey.

00:26:22.040 Oh, my goodness.

00:26:23.100 You don't say. 0.83

00:26:23.600 So the same person, the hypocrisy on the left on this is really screwed up, and you see Hollywood movie stars come in in their G5.

00:26:35.080 They've got the carbon footprint of small towns, and are they willing to change how they travel? 0.87

00:26:41.140 Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

00:26:42.100 John Kerry is going to fly in his jet.

00:26:44.300 He's going to have a caravan of Suburbans carry him everywhere. 0.99

00:26:47.340 He's perfectly happy to have a carbon footprint of Paul Bunyan.

00:26:52.240 The rest of us, your jobs must go away.

00:26:57.160 I'm sorry.

00:26:57.860 I learned something else to do.

00:26:59.760 And it's driven by money, and it's driven by power.

00:27:04.960 Listen, this is not about climate.

00:27:06.720 You know, one of the weird things to understand, everything that Joe Biden is doing in the name of climate will make the climate dirtier.

00:27:18.720 So as the Biden administration destroys U.S. oil and gas production, and that's what they're doing.

00:27:24.780 They're trying to utterly destroy U.S. oil and gas production.

00:27:27.800 You're not going to wake up tomorrow and magically have your car or truck in your driveway not need gasoline.

00:27:36.680 You're not going to be able to put pixie dust in your car.

00:27:39.780 You're still going to go to the gas station.

00:27:41.480 You're going to fill the tank.

00:27:42.860 So if Biden succeeds in destroying U.S. energy production, what does that mean?

00:27:47.760 It means America is going to buy more oil and gas from the Middle East, from Russia.

00:27:55.480 That does several things.

00:27:56.740 Number one, it puts billions of dollars in countries that hate us and want to kill us.

00:28:01.060 That's really bad.

00:28:02.140 Why are we sending money to people who want us dead?

00:28:05.240 But number two, they produce energy much dirtier than we do.

00:28:10.760 So literally what Biden is doing and what Kerry is doing is screwing the environment because they want to destroy American energy jobs.

00:28:19.280 Because since they don't have a magic solution for what's going to power your car if you get on an airplane,

00:28:24.740 and you and I, we don't get on our own private jets.

00:28:27.700 We get on Southwest Airlines or whatever the commercial airline is.

00:28:31.920 You know, jets don't operate on wind.

00:28:35.760 It's really hard if you imagine putting, say, a windmill on the front of a jet.

00:28:39.760 It just doesn't work.

00:28:41.120 No.

00:28:41.600 You know, I'm not a physicist, but they're just kind of a problem with that.

00:28:45.800 We're going to continue to have energy needs, but what they're doing is hurting the environment, destroying jobs, and they're doing it for power and money.

00:28:55.180 Every time you hear this, it's about power and money.

00:29:00.640 The Keystone Pipeline, by the way, Keystone Pipeline, Biden just stopped.

00:29:06.620 Keystone Pipeline would bring oil from Canada down south to the U.S.

00:29:09.940 Without the Keystone Pipeline, you know what's happening?

00:29:12.040 Well, we're still taking that oil.

00:29:13.200 We're just driving it on trucks and trains.

00:29:16.140 A dirtier way to transport it that's more expensive.

00:29:19.240 So it doesn't actually – every step they're taking hurts the environment.

00:29:25.040 Here is a data point that the listeners of Verdict will know because you all are engaged and educated, but it's worth underscoring because no Democrat will ever acknowledge it, which is what country had the single greatest reduction in carbon emissions last year in 2020?

00:29:43.020 I think I have an idea.

00:29:44.960 Yeah, please give the answer.

00:29:46.900 The United States of America.

00:29:48.120 By far, it's not even close because our energy production is so much cleaner.

00:29:54.160 And so literally what the Biden folks are doing is destroying the cleanest energy in the world to shift to dirtier energy because it makes California environmentalist billionaire donors happy.

00:30:07.480 And that's – that doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:30:11.020 You know, the tell on this, of course, is that the solutions that the left propose, they always remain the same.

00:30:19.280 And their reasoning for why we need those solutions changes sometimes to the complete opposite.

00:30:24.160 So, you know, very famously in the 1970s, we were hearing about the threat of global cooling and a new ice age.

00:30:30.500 And today's environmentalists try to write this off and say, well, that was just a sort of media phenomenon, not within the scientific community.

00:30:37.340 That isn't true.

00:30:38.260 You can go back and see major scientific institutions warning about global cooling.

00:30:42.560 That's where the media got it from.

00:30:43.820 Then it changes to global warming.

00:30:45.380 Then it changes to the population bomb, as we were just discussing.

00:30:49.680 Then it changes to, I don't know, climate crisis, and they come up with all these new terms.

00:30:53.360 No matter what the argument, it's always the same answer.

00:30:57.160 Give more power to the state.

00:30:58.680 Give more power to the state's favored corporations.

00:31:01.440 Take away choice from Americans. 0.82

00:31:03.440 Tell them to thrive less, live less, do less.

00:31:06.160 It always seems to be the same thing.

00:31:08.200 And, you know, I guess this is related to the power grab that you're seeing in the Biden administration.

00:31:15.140 You see the same inevitability talk with regard to China and China, a major polluter.

00:31:22.180 Let's not forget, you know, and we're talking about climate.

00:31:24.620 But you heard from Biden and the kind of establishment consensus for decades.

00:31:30.120 We need to support China, a rising China.

00:31:32.660 It's a good thing for the world.

00:31:33.800 Sure, we might lose some manufacturing jobs, but, hey, it's good, and even more than that, it's inevitable.

00:31:41.140 Then we saw over the past few years, well, maybe it's not necessarily inevitable.

00:31:44.980 Now we're hearing this again.

00:31:46.860 I know the media are not reporting on these Biden nominees.

00:31:50.300 They're not really reporting on Biden's stance toward China.

00:31:53.480 You happen to be in the room.

00:31:55.180 What can you tell us about that issue as it pertains to the new administration?

00:32:00.580 Well, let me make two points.

00:32:01.500 Let me comment on what you just said there because it was very insightful.

00:32:07.140 But it's even worse than that, which is the Democrats that purport to be motivated by a climate crisis, by their actions, have made clear they don't actually give a damn about the climate.

00:32:21.000 Right.

00:32:21.280 Like, okay, if you're going to put forth that the criterion to judge success is are we protecting the environment?

00:32:30.220 Then under that criterion, the Democratic policies are a train wreck.

00:32:35.620 They're a disaster.

00:32:37.060 And this is where media narratives are exactly opposite.

00:32:40.320 To be honest, if you look at which parties care about actually clean air and clean water, the record of success, every major environmental law in the past 50 years has been passed with a Republican president.

00:32:53.320 The EPA was created with a Republican president.

00:32:55.980 If you look at you look at states like Texas with Republican leadership that clean the air and clean the water substantially improve.

00:33:03.280 Look, all of us, we've got we breathe.

00:33:06.000 We drink water.

00:33:07.260 Look, we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment.

00:33:11.460 I want the world to be cleaner and better after we've left it than when we came.

00:33:15.740 So if you look at separate the rhetoric of Democrats from their actions, the actions they're taking make the environment dirtier. 0.99

00:33:27.780 If you're shifting from clean energy production in the U.S. to dirty energy production in Russia, if your criterion that matters more than anything is cleaning the environment, that is a stupid thing to do. 0.96

00:33:41.720 Paris climate deal. 0.93

00:33:43.260 And this connects to your China point.

00:33:44.880 So Biden opening week rejoins the Paris climate deal.

00:33:48.480 Paris climate deal is designed to destroy a whole bunch of high paying jobs in the U.S. 0.99

00:33:53.580 and it does virtually nothing on China.

00:33:55.520 China is polluting like crazy. 0.98

00:33:58.020 They are using dirty coal powered production. 0.54

00:34:01.800 They're dumping massive plastics in the rivers.

00:34:04.020 By the way, I joined with a bunch of other Republicans in passing legislation to clean up the seas and to get plastics out of the seas.

00:34:11.540 But an enormous percentage of that is coming from China and India that are dumping in rivers enormous quantities of plastic.

00:34:18.840 The Democrats don't care about any of that.

00:34:21.040 Their policies make it worse.

00:34:23.380 So the Paris climate deal makes the environment dirtier.

00:34:27.820 And the reason you can tell that they're not telling the truth is when you make this point, they don't care.

00:34:34.300 They don't care.

00:34:35.420 They don't actually even dispute it.

00:34:37.800 It doesn't matter because it's not about cleaning up the environment for them.

00:34:42.460 It is about power.

00:34:43.800 Their objective is to destroy those jobs because they want control and they want power.

00:34:49.000 Now, you talked about China.

00:34:51.540 In terms of big policy shifts, I think over the next four years, we're going to see a big, big shift towards embracing communist China.

00:35:02.360 We've had multiple confirmation hearings for Biden cabinet nominees.

00:35:06.280 One after the other after the other has been moving back towards China.

00:35:11.620 So, for example, Tony Blinken is the new secretary of state.

00:35:15.120 Blinken was asked if he would commit to maintain the entities list, the sanctioned companies in China who are participating in genocide, participating in repressing the Uyghurs, participating in big brother control of society. 0.80

00:35:29.880 He wouldn't make that commitment.

00:35:31.480 He said, no, I can't commit to that.

00:35:33.900 Gina Raimondo, who's the governor of Rhode Island, she was nominated to be the commerce secretary.

00:35:37.380 I asked her at her confirmation hearing, I said, all right, will you commit at least to Huawei?

00:35:44.400 And we've talked about Huawei on verdict before.

00:35:48.040 Huawei is this gigantic Chinese company.

00:35:51.060 It is a global espionage company.

00:35:53.500 It mass parades as a telecom company, but it is the Chinese communist government uses Huawei to intercept communications from other countries and to engage in espionage.

00:36:03.760 Huawei is currently listed.

00:36:05.760 I asked Gina Raimondo, will you commit to leaving Huawei on the list?

00:36:09.800 Nope, she can't commit to that either.

00:36:11.140 She'd have to review it.

00:36:12.860 Alejandro Mayorkas, who Biden has nominated to be the head of DHS, Department of Homeland Security.

00:36:18.620 When he was at DHS before, he personally arranged for a visa for a senior vice president at Huawei and for other big Democratic donors because Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton's brother, arranged it.

00:36:37.700 And he was basically in charge of making sure there were favors for big Democratic donors, including taking care of Huawei.

00:36:44.840 There is a pattern across this, and I'll tell you this week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, we had a confirmation hearing for Biden's nominee to UN ambassador.

00:36:56.540 And Linda Greenfield Thomas, she is a career Foreign Service officer.

00:37:04.460 We've talked before on the podcast about Confucius Institutes.

00:37:09.260 Confucius Institutes are owned and controlled and paid for by the Chinese communist government.

00:37:16.980 They have been opened up at U.S. universities all across the country, and they serve as hubs for espionage, hubs for propaganda.

00:37:24.740 There's actually been pretty wide bipartisan agreement that Confucius Institutes are really bad and really harmful.

00:37:30.220 So a couple of years ago, I wrote legislation that passed, had big bipartisan support passed into law, clamping down on Confucius Institute.

00:37:41.540 The bill I wrote has ended up shutting down dozens of Confucius Institutes across the country.

00:37:47.000 Well, a little over a year ago, Biden's UN ambassador nominee gave a paid speech at a Confucius Institute.

00:37:55.420 She got paid $1,500 to give a speech.

00:38:00.720 I questioned her at the hearing about it, and it's interesting.

00:38:03.460 She backed away from it and said, oh, it was a mistake, and she was horrified, just horrified to see what the Confucius Institute was doing, to which I responded, well, did you keep the money?

00:38:17.880 And she was like, well, yeah, of course I kept the money, but I was horrified.

00:38:23.040 And I will also note the speech she gave.

00:38:29.200 So she handed the speech over to the Foreign Relations Committee.

00:38:32.100 It's handed over to context that it's deemed confidential.

00:38:35.040 So I have a copy of the speech.

00:38:37.040 She doesn't say one critical word about China.

00:38:39.440 So she goes to Confucius Institute and gives this puff piece praising China, praising the Belt and Road Initiative, which is billions of dollars that China is investing in infrastructure in the developing world, trying to make developing countries captive economically to China.

00:38:58.500 And not only that, her speech says America should be more like communist China.

00:39:03.380 We ought to have similar policies to what they have.

00:39:06.520 This is who Joe Biden has picked to be the representative for the United States of America at the United Nations.

00:39:12.960 We are in the midst of and getting ready to see a massive pivot back towards China, and that's really bad for the country.

00:39:21.520 In a way, I'm sorry that I have to say this.

00:39:24.280 It seems like a return to normal.

00:39:27.240 You know, we're talking about this kind of crooked establishment, and you see it in stories as disparate as the GameStop sort of kerfuffle.

00:39:35.120 And you see it all the way in foreign policy, which you're seeing a return to this old consensus.

00:39:41.340 It's pretty ugly, and they are exercising political power right now.

00:39:45.880 We will have to discuss how we can exercise our freedom and push back against that power.

00:39:50.440 We'll be discussing it in Miami on Friday, February 5th.

00:39:54.140 I've got a whole bunch of mailbag questions.

00:39:55.880 Unfortunately, we're out of time now.

00:39:57.340 I will bring these mailbag questions with me to Miami.

00:40:01.040 We will get your questions live if you go to youtube.com slash GAFFTV.

00:40:05.960 We might see you in person there.

00:40:08.780 Senator, certainly I at least will see you in person there.

00:40:11.800 Very much looking forward to it, and that's just assuming that the big establishment doesn't clamp down on us before then.

00:40:18.200 But hopefully we'll at least get a week, and we will see all of you in Miami.

00:40:22.660 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:40:23.680 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:40:31.040 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack,

00:40:39.940 a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country.

00:40:46.520 In 2022, Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress

00:40:52.860 and help the Republican Party across the nation.

00:40:56.460 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:40:58.740 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 01, 2021

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