Verdict with Ted Cruz - The Prosecution Rests

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. The Democrat House impeachment managers have

00:00:06.880 concluded their case against former President Trump. The second impeachment trial in one year

00:00:14.060 of Donald Trump seems to be heading for a conclusion. And we are going to speak with a man

00:00:19.760 who is watching it all, is going to be a juror on the case and has spent most of today speaking

00:00:25.560 with the Trump legal team. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:00:30.000 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowles. It's funny that we're in the

00:00:40.420 midst of this impeachment trial of the former president and the bigger news of the day would

00:00:44.740 seem to be Disney firing one of their big TV stars, Gina Carano. Other news, cancel culture,

00:00:50.740 not just affecting the former president, but affecting conservative journalists as well.

00:00:55.160 We will get to all of that. But I do have to ask you, Senator, what is going on today? I know that

00:01:01.720 the Democrats concluded their case, but unlike last year, it seems like there's just not a lot

00:01:09.000 being reported. It seems like kind of an opaque process. We don't even know how long this thing

00:01:13.040 is going to go. So could you just briefly tell us about how that case concluded and then what the

00:01:18.800 Trump legal team is thinking? Well, sure. I think the the kind of quick bottom line is that the

00:01:24.080 Democrats failed to get the job done and they've run out of steam. So so they were given 16 hours.

00:01:29.040 They were given eight hours both days. They ended up finishing four or five hours early today. So so

00:01:34.340 they they quit early. And I think it was because they had been, number one, unbelievably repetitive,

00:01:41.160 making the same points over and over again. In fact, I had fun today. Claire McCaskill, you remember

00:01:45.640 the former Democratic senator from Missouri, tweeted out that that she thought the House manager's case

00:01:52.100 was getting really repetitive and redundant and kept repeating itself. She didn't quite do that,

00:01:58.320 but I thought you would appreciate that. And I I saw that and just hit retweet like with no commentary

00:02:05.760 whatsoever. I'm just I'm sure Claire loved that I was retweeting her, but she was right on that.

00:02:10.340 You know, I mean, even a stop clock. When she's right, she's right. So they ran out of steam.

00:02:17.000 And the bottom line is they didn't get the job done. And and so where are we now? Tomorrow,

00:02:22.660 the president's defense lawyers will present their case. They have a total of 16 hours over two days.

00:02:29.700 They will not take all that time. They will take substantially less time than that.

00:02:33.380 And so after we finished today, I went and sat down with the lawyers. I actually grabbed

00:02:39.680 Lindsey Graham and I grabbed Mike Lee and said, hey, let's go sit down and just talk through with

00:02:45.120 the lawyers what they're planning and give our thoughts. And so the three of us went in

00:02:48.860 president's defense team. They're they're meeting in the LBJ room, which is actually the room where

00:02:57.120 in non-COVID times the Senate minority has lunch. So they're in what will be our lunchroom. Sadly,

00:03:04.000 we weren't in the LBJ room for the last six years, but we will have moved back to the LBJ room once

00:03:09.500 COVID is over. Right. With this sort of smirking portrait of LBJ looking down on you. And it's

00:03:14.820 right off the side of the Senate floor.

00:03:17.880 Sure. And so what happened? Lindsey shared his thoughts. Mike shared his thoughts. I I'm going

00:03:27.460 to refrain from saying what they had to say, but I'm happy to tell you and verdict listeners what

00:03:33.480 I had to say. Well, I would like to know sort of your your advice for the legal team, because I know

00:03:38.840 on the one hand, people are thinking, look, this case is over, as you made, I think, very clear last

00:03:44.880 night. It ain't going anywhere. They're they're not going to convict Trump. And so as a practical

00:03:50.120 matter, they're obviously not going to remove him from office because that's not possible and they're

00:03:54.040 not going to convict him anyway. But as a historical matter, this really does matter. I mean, this is

00:03:59.780 setting a new precedent, I guess, that, you know, this could have huge political effects into the

00:04:06.400 future. So the arguments they make are going to redound throughout history. There's no doubt. And

00:04:12.500 and we've had two days of the Democrats pounding their narrative. And so there needs to be a

00:04:16.440 counter story. What I started out saying is actually what you just said is I said, look, you got you got to

00:04:21.920 remember, you've already won. There are not 67 votes to convict there. There are 55 votes to convict

00:04:29.940 plus minus two. I think there's a low of 53. I think there's a high of 57. And that's really the

00:04:36.740 the ban that's in play. So my opening advice was don't do anything to screw it up. Don't,

00:04:42.900 you know, don't piss anyone off. You know, related to that, my advice was be calm. I thought the

00:04:50.960 jurisdictional argument for President Trump's lawyers at times they got a little hot, they got

00:04:57.800 a little angry. And I encourage them be calm, be reasonable, be rational. The way I put it is I said,

00:05:05.840 think more like an appellate argument, like you're arguing to Supreme Court justices and less like a

00:05:12.200 jury argument. So we'll see if they follow through on that. The most important advice I had, I said,

00:05:20.280 look, we've had two days of the Democrat House managers arguments and and 90 percent of what

00:05:26.120 they've done has focused on being emotional and powerful and telling the story of what happened on

00:05:34.900 January 6th, telling the story of the assault, the attack on the Capitol, telling the story of the

00:05:39.880 police officers who were physically assaulted, telling the story of of Officer Sicknick, who was

00:05:45.800 murdered that day. And and I got to say, they did it powerfully. The Democrats, they have some good trial

00:05:52.420 lawyers. They have some good storytellers. And and so as they told that story over and over again,

00:05:58.280 it was powerful and effective. And that was 90 percent of their argument. And my advice to the

00:06:03.520 Trump lawyers is disagree with none of it. Look, yes, we agree. Everyone in this jury, all the senators

00:06:09.980 were here that day. It was a horrific terrorist attack. It was despicable. And anyone who committed

00:06:16.920 crimes of violence that day should be fully prosecuted and locked up a long, long time.

00:06:20.860 And so don't argue with them on that. That that is indisputably true. Everyone in the in the Senate

00:06:26.020 understands that, believes that. And everyone agrees on it. The only question before the Senate

00:06:34.380 is whether President Trump committed high crimes or misdemeanors. And there's only one that is

00:06:40.460 charged, and that is incitement, incitement to violence. And I pointed out in the entire 16 hours

00:06:46.060 they had allocated. The Democratic House managers devoted about 15 minutes to that question.

00:06:53.120 And it was the the second to last speech that the House managers gave. It was congressman from

00:07:00.220 Colorado is actually a talented trial lawyer who got up and he spent about 15 minutes laying out

00:07:06.480 the legal argument why they believe this constitutes incitement. And to be honest, it's the only

00:07:12.800 relevant moment. In fact, I said the entire time it's the only time I pulled out a notepad and made

00:07:17.720 any notes because it was the only time they actually said anything relevant to the question

00:07:21.020 before the body. What the House managers articulated was a three-part standard for incitement.

00:07:28.960 They said number one was violence foreseeable. Number two, did President Trump encourage the violence?

00:07:35.160 And number three was the president's conduct willful. So I wrote those three down.

00:07:41.200 And the point I made to the Trump lawyers, I said, first of all, you'll notice those three elements

00:07:48.580 are not found anywhere in a statute. They're not elements of a crime. They're not actually the

00:07:59.660 elements of incitement. They're not found in Brandenburg, the Supreme Court case that that talks

00:08:05.600 about incitement and lays out the constitutional standard. They literally just made them up.

00:08:09.860 Yeah, that's a very strange way to prosecute a crime. As I said, look, you know, a lot of the lawyers

00:08:16.720 on the defense team have been either prosecutors or criminal defense lawyers. The way a prosecutor

00:08:21.980 proceeds, if they're charging you with a with a crime, there are statutory elements of the crime.

00:08:27.100 Here's what constitutes the crime. And the prosecutor sets out to prove each of the elements

00:08:31.400 of the crime. That's not, in fact, how the House managers proceeded here because they can't meet

00:08:36.760 the statutory elements for incitement. So they just made these three up.

00:08:40.920 OK, those are the three they made up. I said, look, I'd start by pointing out where did these

00:08:44.820 come from? They literally just pulled them out of whole cloth. But then here's the critical point.

00:08:49.580 I'd say, look, on any standard, the question for the Senate to assess is, is there any coherent

00:08:55.840 way this test can distinguish between the conduct of Donald Trump versus the conduct of countless

00:09:03.140 other political figures, including a whole bunch of Democrats? Right. Right. And and I said, look,

00:09:09.380 I think you should walk through in particular Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer,

00:09:17.500 Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris. Nancy Pelosi. She referred to police officers as stormtroopers,

00:09:25.520 compared to the Nazis. Right. You know, there's some rich irony that suddenly the Democrats are the

00:09:30.640 defenders of cops. Of course. Yeah. Where for a year. They've been vilifying, demonizing police

00:09:37.840 officers. They've been marching against cops. They've been saying abolish the police. They've been saying

00:09:42.460 abolish ICE. They've been embracing. ACAB as a slogan. And Michael, you know what ACAB means?

00:09:51.700 It's that all cap cops are bastards. Right. Yeah, that's. And that has been the Democratic base

00:10:00.400 that they've been snuggling up with. They don't get to suddenly be the grand defenders of police

00:10:05.740 officers. Yeah. You know, I love this, Senator, this, I guess, two points here in this advice that

00:10:11.640 a lot of Republicans have have not recognized, which is one, don't always be on the defensive.

00:10:18.480 You can go on the offensive or you can point at inconsistencies. You can use the Democrats'

00:10:22.680 words against them. But but maybe even more importantly, you don't have to accept their

00:10:27.680 ridiculous premises. You know, the early premise that I think that the Democrats are trying to get

00:10:33.460 these Republicans to buy into is that somehow Republicans support riots at the Capitol.

00:10:39.500 I don't know any serious Republicans who say, yeah, I loved when the guy in the bullhorns

00:10:43.940 walked in there. He's my guy. Where can I vote for him? And likewise, I mean, you've just spelled

00:10:50.220 it out so perfectly on on the question of incitement. If I look, I'm not a constitutional

00:10:56.000 law scholar. I'm not a lawyer of any sort. If if I were just listening. But you did stay at a holiday

00:11:02.000 in last night, but I did stay. And that's right. You know, if I were just listening to them lay out

00:11:08.700 this standard for incitement, I guess I would say, OK, that sounds about right. I mean,

00:11:11.940 I don't know what the real standard is. So if if the legal team can go in there and say,

00:11:15.160 wait a second, just so you all know, they completely made that up out of whole cloth.

00:11:19.740 That is not the actual standard for incitement. There is no reason for us to accept premises

00:11:24.660 that have been crafted purely to put us at a disadvantage. We're going to talk about the

00:11:30.140 law. We're going to talk about what what is always been true. You know what the longstanding

00:11:35.720 standard here for incitement. That seems much more effective than just going along with with what

00:11:41.840 the Democrats are trying to lead them. I think that's exactly right. And what I encourage the

00:11:46.920 Trump lawyers to do is say, all right, take their standard and apply it to the conduct of Democrats.

00:11:51.520 Let's take, for example, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders uses all sorts of hot incendiary rhetoric.

00:11:57.260 And you'll recall we had a crazed lunatic, a leftist who was an enthusiastic Bernie Sanders

00:12:05.220 supporter who came to Washington, D.C. with with an AR-15, went and sought out the congressional

00:12:12.440 baseball game practice, asked, are they Democrats or Republicans? They're Republicans. So he went to

00:12:18.140 kill Republican members of Congress. There were two senators there, Rand Paul and Jeff Flake,

00:12:23.300 that there were a dozen or so House members there. And he opened fire on them. And and

00:12:28.740 and it was only the coincidence that Steve Scalise happened to be there. So Steve Scalise is a member

00:12:35.660 of House leadership. So his detail was there. And there were Capitol Police officers who engaged

00:12:41.300 with this crazed lunatic and stopped him. But they didn't stop him before he had shot Steve Scalise

00:12:48.040 and nearly killed him. I mean, Steve spent months in the hospital. I mean, it was a serious wound.

00:12:54.380 Steve, Steve, for many months after that, could couldn't walk, was on crutches. He's doing much

00:12:59.300 better now. But it was a life threatening injury. And and and. All right, let's take their three

00:13:07.420 standards. Was violence foreseeable? Well, given the rhetoric Bernie was using and I encourage them,

00:13:13.300 you know, play video, show the rhetoric Bernie was using. He said they're trying to take your health

00:13:16.840 health care away and want you to die. OK, is violence foreseeable from that? Did Bernie encourage it?

00:13:23.180 You know, I guarantee you, Bernie has rhetoric saying go fight, stop it, go has exactly the

00:13:28.700 kind of rhetoric Donald Trump used. Yeah. And then was it willful under that standard?

00:13:37.440 Bernie's conduct apparently is incitement. I guess we're going to start the removal proceedings for

00:13:42.120 Bernie Sanders. Maxine Waters, who told her supporters, if you see a Republican, go harass them,

00:13:47.260 engage them, yell at them, surround them. I mean, that is invite inviting violence. By the way,

00:13:52.140 Cory Booker did the same thing. And the most compelling Chuck Schumer on the steps of the

00:13:59.020 Supreme Court calling out to Supreme Court justices by name and saying you've unleashed

00:14:04.980 the whirlwind, you're going to pay the price. But the central example and what I encourage them to

00:14:11.420 make it exactly side by side is Kamala Harris. So Kamala Harris did a couple of things.

00:14:18.820 Number one is we had Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots all over the country and we had

00:14:24.880 violence going on. We had police cars being firebombed. We had police cars, police officers

00:14:30.780 being murdered. Kamala Harris went on Stephen Colbert and was asked about it, said this is a

00:14:36.760 movement. It's powerful. And she said, and it needs to keep going.

00:14:40.560 Right. It won't end and it shouldn't end. And it shouldn't end. She explicitly encouraged that.

00:14:47.300 And this was, by the way, after the violence, after the riots, not only that, but she raised money

00:14:53.040 for bail money to bail out. And by the way, it wasn't bailing out the peaceful protesters. The

00:14:59.120 people who were arrested were the people committing acts of violence. So she literally raised bail money

00:15:04.900 to support the violent criminals. And all right, let's look at the three standards. This is

00:15:10.400 apparently the standard for incitement. Was violence foreseeable? It was going on right then.

00:15:16.000 It was not only foreseeable, it was blazingly obvious and indisputable because it was happening

00:15:20.980 as she was speaking. She knew full well. Did she encourage it? She explicitly said, yes,

00:15:27.380 it needs to go on. Was it willful? She raised money supporting the violent criminals. And there's

00:15:35.280 no coherent way that the standard the House Democrats have put forward can conclude that

00:15:41.680 Trump committed incitement and Kamala Harris didn't. You can conclude rightly that neither

00:15:47.620 committed the crime of incitement. That's actually the right answer. Or you can use their made up

00:15:53.560 standard, in which case, right after we finish with Donald Trump, I guess we're going to start

00:15:58.160 an impeachment proceeding of Vice President Kamala Harris. Right, right. But you don't get both.

00:16:02.880 And by the way, under their standards, in a lot of ways, Kamala's behavior was worse. Yeah. As I told

00:16:09.700 him to ask, I said, listen, last I checked, Donald Trump isn't raising bail money for the violent

00:16:14.880 criminals. There are a whole bunch of people who've been arrested. He's not raising bail money for them.

00:16:19.120 She raised money for them. So if it is, and this is another important point I made, Michael. So

00:16:25.580 the House managers put a lot of emphasis on, did President Trump do enough to stop the riot once

00:16:35.160 it's happened? Did he denounce it? Did he tell him to stand down? And I said, look, you guys got to

00:16:41.460 decide as president's lawyer what you think about that. Frankly, I wish he'd done more. When I look back

00:16:48.240 at what he said that day, I wish he had been clearer, more unequivocal saying, stop this right

00:16:52.780 now, immediately go home and leave. There were a lot of Republicans calling on him to do that.

00:16:56.880 I wish he had been clearer. But within an hour or two, he sent out a tweet telling him to stand down.

00:17:05.540 He put out a video calling on him to stand down. So he did, in fact, tell him to stand. I wish it

00:17:10.960 had been clearer and more unequivocal, but he did, in fact, do it. Kamala Harris still hasn't done it.

00:17:15.120 Yeah, right, right. We had this week Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters marching in D.C.

00:17:22.080 saying, burn the place down. She still hasn't told them to stand down. Yeah. And so if that's the test,

00:17:31.220 did you tell him to stand down after the violence erupted? Look, what we had in the Chaz Autonomous

00:17:38.000 Zones, we had Democrats defending it, calling it the summer of love. Remember that? It's just

00:17:44.740 harmless. Yes, people are being murdered, but it's harmless because we agree politically with those

00:17:50.260 guys. Yeah. And so what I urge the Trump legal team is to calmly, without emotion, just compare

00:17:59.040 the conduct of Democrats to what the conduct of the president and under the standard they're laying

00:18:06.000 out. Either we're going to start impeaching dozens of people or ain't nobody guilty of this because

00:18:12.400 this is a made up political persecution, which is, again, the right answer to what's happened.

00:18:16.820 You know, I think this is great advice, not just for the impeachment trial, though it is,

00:18:21.000 but but just generally speaking, reject their false premises and hold them to their own standards,

00:18:28.080 because this is so much bigger than impeachment. Frankly, I think impeachment isn't even the biggest

00:18:33.140 news story right now. It'll have historical implications. So so we really have to focus on

00:18:37.860 it. But the bigger stories right now involve cancel culture more broadly, not just canceling

00:18:43.960 the former president, but canceling TV stars, canceling journalists. And we've seen this with Gina

00:18:50.480 Carano, who is in the Star Wars show, The Mandalorian. Disney has fired her because of

00:18:57.280 they're accusing her of making anti-Semitic comments. I've read all the comments. I can't find

00:19:01.780 even a hint of anti-Semitism in any of them. Really, I think they're going after her because

00:19:06.320 broadly speaking, she's been a little more conservative. She's been a little more right

00:19:09.880 wing and they can't tolerate that. So they're going after her. We've just found out that James O'Keefe,

00:19:16.080 the investigative journalist, a real thorn in the side of the liberal establishment,

00:19:20.480 he's been permanently kicked off of Twitter because it turns out he's now running investigations

00:19:25.740 on big tech companies. What what these people have been ostracized for and censored for

00:19:32.540 would absolutely fall apart if you held the left to that same standard. It seems there's one set

00:19:39.180 of rules for conservatives, another one for liberals. But that's the world we live in. What

00:19:43.960 are we supposed to do about it? Look, I think you're exactly right. What happened with Gina Carano

00:19:48.360 is nuts. I mean, number one, you have a strong kick ass character on the Mandalorian, which which

00:19:55.200 lots of kids, especially little girls are are inspired by and, you know, made, you know,

00:20:01.900 help made Star Wars more fun. It's always been fun. And I mean, look, I grew up on Star Wars. I still

00:20:06.980 remember standing in line with my dad on opening day of Empire Strikes Back. And we stood in line for two

00:20:13.600 hours to see Empire the first day it opened up. Disney. Disney is not the company it used to be.

00:20:21.440 Disney is a giant corporate, politically correct propaganda outfit. And and you look at here.

00:20:33.480 So so I haven't read all of the blog posts that that that Gina Carano put up. I've I've seen I

00:20:39.720 actually looked for it online and it was hard to find. Yeah. But I read stories quoting excerpts

00:20:45.040 of it. So I read the excerpts that were quoted in stories. And what I read that she posted is she

00:20:49.680 was saying, look, if you looked at the rise of the Nazis in Germany and and all of the horrific

00:20:57.020 things that that happened to the Jewish people that culminated in six million Jews being being

00:21:01.900 murdered in concentration camps. That began because the Nazis demonized the Jews, they dehumanized the

00:21:10.180 Jews. They they they used rhetoric that caused ordinary Germans, not SS stormtroopers, but a baker or,

00:21:19.860 you know, a storekeeper to view the Jews as as subhuman, as not human to to inculcate hatred.

00:21:27.980 And and her point was that hatred. Yes, it erupted in in the horrific, grotesquely evil

00:21:36.180 genocide that was carried out by the Nazis, but it also manifested in day to day barbaric inhumanity

00:21:44.560 because they had been dehumanized. And and and from what I read of her blog post, she was saying,

00:21:50.260 you know what? We're seeing that same dehumanizing happening in America where people are

00:21:56.440 demonizing their other rising their political opponents, that if you disagree, you you are not

00:22:05.020 that it's not valid for you to have a different point of view. Now, from what I read, she didn't

00:22:10.740 say that we become Nazi Germany. She didn't say we're erecting concentration camps. But because she

00:22:17.100 simply made the point that spreading a culture of hate and dehumanizing is really dangerous and leads

00:22:22.600 in bad directions. Disney described her comments as abhorrent. And I was like saying we shouldn't

00:22:31.260 hate each other and dehumanize each other. What what am I missing? Unless there are portions of the

00:22:35.860 blog post that weren't quoted in the stories, then given that the stories are critical, I'm assuming they

00:22:40.240 included whatever the worst portions were. This is there's an irony that she's complaining we're

00:22:50.000 becoming hateful and intolerant of differences and opinions. And what does Disney say? We hate your

00:22:56.240 opinion. You're fired. It would seem to me there's this even deeper irony here, which is maybe the best

00:23:04.140 way I can read Disney's statement is they're saying that any comment that makes any comparison to Nazi

00:23:10.460 Germany is unacceptable. It's abhorrent. We can't we can't tolerate that sort of thing. And OK, let's

00:23:16.120 just take that standard for what it is. Am I wrong or has the left not spent the past five years calling

00:23:22.000 Donald Trump literally Hitler? Right. They call him Hitler. They refer to to 75 million Americans as

00:23:28.780 Nazis, neo-Nazis regularly. So they make the exact same analogy. And before Trump, they called George

00:23:36.600 W. Bush Hitler. That's their standard. Any Republican they dislike, they call Hitler. Now, my view is

00:23:42.100 you shouldn't actually call people Hitler unless they are, in fact, genocidal maniacs that are

00:23:46.880 murdering millions of people. But there is a unique like like in Dante's circles of hell, there is a

00:23:53.800 unique hell. The Nazis are the most grotesque example of evil in in certainly modern times and

00:24:01.880 maybe ever. Look, there is a reason why. Never forget has such power. There's a reason why

00:24:09.820 Holocaust museums are important, because it's worth reflecting on the absolute inhumanity. You know,

00:24:16.640 you look at Hannah Arendt, who, you know, wrote on what led to to the to the evil that is the Nazis.

00:24:25.840 And she had a phrase that that was really powerful, the banality of evil. And and and it's worth

00:24:32.960 reflecting. She really she talked about how it's not just, you know, someone cackling with horns and a

00:24:40.860 red tail, like so obviously evil that that, you know, you're like, OK, this is this is a crazy bad

00:24:49.100 guy. It was the boring aspect she talked about. I think it was Eichmann. How when he testified

00:24:57.660 at Nuremberg, he he sounded like an accountant, that it wasn't it wasn't Hannibal Lecter in Silence of

00:25:07.260 the Lambs to to sort of mixed references. It wasn't like, you know, Lecter's giant eyes on the

00:25:13.380 screen. You're like, oh, God, that guy's really creepy and evil. But it was a boring accountant

00:25:18.740 simply carrying out Hitler's, quote, final solution to murder six million people. It was.

00:25:26.800 It's worth asking. What conditions. Led. To use another movie, you know, Schindler's List.

00:25:37.260 Which is one of the greatest movies ever. I love Schindler's List, but it talks about how

00:25:42.400 in a different world, these people would be regular, ordinary people. And yet the conditions

00:25:48.200 of evil made them all complicit in this grotesque horror. We should ask what causes that to happen.

00:25:57.360 And from what I read, that's that's what Gina was doing. Right. I mean, you just, you know,

00:26:03.320 take the the Nazi comparison out, because that seems to be what they're objecting to.

00:26:07.660 Just the circumstances and the broader point that Gina was making seems to be perfectly true. I don't

00:26:14.860 know. I don't know how you could disagree with it. And this is, you know, it's not just happening.

00:26:19.140 And let me jump in. Jump in real quick, Michael. There's also a broader pattern of evil,

00:26:23.460 which is that dehumanizing anyone, defining them to no longer qualify as human invariably leads to

00:26:34.540 horrific oppression. And so it was integral to what the Nazis did, but it was also integral to

00:26:41.560 slavery. And you look at at all of the reasoning that that was used to justify the horrific evil

00:26:48.480 that was slavery in America. It was based on the proposition. Dred Scott, the Supreme Court decision

00:26:53.740 was based on the proposition that an African-American was not a human being, but instead

00:26:58.800 was defined as property. And that is incredibly dangerous. And it leads to grotesque oppression

00:27:05.020 and evil. And and you and I have talked about this before. That is also the justification that is used

00:27:10.240 to justify abortion is to say an unborn child is not a human being that any time you're taking

00:27:16.440 and it leads to today's Democrats justifying things like partial birth abortion, delivering a

00:27:23.880 child who's living and and and with cold blood taking their life. All of those begin with saying

00:27:33.000 the person in question is not a person. And that is a really dangerous step one of an analysis,

00:27:40.440 because step two is is. Invariably horrific. And, you know, we've been hearing on the topic of

00:27:48.520 other rising or dehumanization, half the country called deplorable, irredeemable, going back to

00:27:55.600 Obama, bitter clingers, right? You know, these people who basically ought to be ostracized from

00:27:59.940 society. We're now seeing this ostracism manifest through cancel culture. So people lose their jobs.

00:28:05.340 They lose their platforms through the censorship, through the through actual deplatforming on the

00:28:10.240 social media platforms. The cancellation of journalists. James O'Keefe would be a key example

00:28:15.740 of this. This seems to be that's outrageous, by the way, the fact that that social media has banned

00:28:22.980 James O'Keefe. Look, James O'Keefe, the guy has done incredible undercover journalism and they may not

00:28:30.500 like that he's exposed what people on the left are doing, including exposing big tech. By the way,

00:28:36.580 this is a protect their own asses step because he's uncovered the corruption of big tech. And so

00:28:44.260 they're like, well, let's just muzzle him. That's, you know, this is trying to silence a whistleblower

00:28:49.560 because he gets whistleblowers and he engages in in undercover tactics, which, by the way,

00:28:56.060 60 Minutes does. Other journalistic outlets do. But the difference is that big tech agrees with

00:29:01.940 their politics. So that's great. But if you disagree with their politics, this is the left

00:29:08.900 is trying to consolidate power and they're systematically trying to silence every single

00:29:13.780 dissenting voice. And I think this word banality is very important because the way they're doing it,

00:29:19.440 what has really impressed me most about it is how steady it is, how gradual. It's not,

00:29:25.600 you know, people jumping out with the devil horns and saying, aha, it's just this slow,

00:29:29.700 more and more people being kicked off of social media, not being permitted to even work or not

00:29:35.600 being permitted to go to school. It's boiling a frog. Yes, it is boiling a frog. And, you know,

00:29:40.600 this gets to a mailbag question that I was hoping to get to last night, but obviously there was a lot

00:29:45.300 going on with the trial. This is from RightMindedUSA who asks, he's referring to that Time magazine

00:29:52.360 article where liberal establishmentarians basically said there was a conspiracy in the 2020 election.

00:29:59.060 It was right before our eyes, though, it was all these groups kind of working to make the situation

00:30:03.360 more advantageous to Democrats. He says, in light of that Time article that detailed the collusion

00:30:07.680 between the AFL-CIO, Big Tech and the Chamber of Commerce to win the 2020 election, what does the

00:30:13.720 senator think the GOP and conservatives should be doing right now to build something to counteract it

00:30:19.360 in 2022 and, more importantly, in 2024? Look, it's a great question, and that article was chilling.

00:30:26.120 Number one, Time magazine was celebrating that you had the titans of industry, the Fortune 500 CEOs,

00:30:34.340 teaming up with Big Tech and then teaming up with the big union bosses, all of them together saying,

00:30:40.520 let's work together to make sure Donald Trump can't win this election. Let's work together

00:30:46.340 to hand this election over to Joe Biden. And by the way, anyone who said this before the election,

00:30:52.060 who said that the fix was in, would get ridiculed as a crazy conspiracy theorist.

00:30:57.520 And then afterwards, Time magazine said, oh, look how wonderful the fix was in. Aren't we happy?

00:31:02.280 Because we're part of the people engaged in this. Look, I think as conservatives, we need to be not

00:31:07.720 naive. You and I did a live episode in Miami last week, and our big theme was Big is Bad.

00:31:16.340 Big business is bad. Big government is bad. Big tech is bad. Any big accumulation of power and money

00:31:23.820 will be used. You know, it's like Lord Acton said, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts,

00:31:29.140 absolutely. Giant corporation, name me one Fortune 100 CEO who's actually a courageous conservative.

00:31:38.140 We'd be here all night. It doesn't. It's why, in fact, they were willing to get in bed with their

00:31:45.720 ostensible adversary, the union bosses, to preserve power. I think the answer is we've got to empower

00:31:54.460 the people. We've got to go around big tech. I think the answer, frankly, is things like the podcast.

00:31:58.720 I think the answer is finding ways to empower the people and to focus on small businesses. Look,

00:32:04.800 it is the small businesses that, you know, the economist Schumpeter talked about creative

00:32:09.820 destruction. I'm interested in small entrepreneurs, people that are shattering the status quo.

00:32:17.040 And frankly, there are more of us than there are of them. They're willing to use power

00:32:21.700 to hold on to control. But there is a common sense conservative core in this country, and we've got to

00:32:29.060 develop ways to mobilize, educate, energize, and turn them out. That's how we fight against it,

00:32:35.420 because you better believe they've done it once. They're going to keep doing it again and again.

00:32:39.680 Those with power want to hold on to power, and the only way to stop them is to take it away from

00:32:44.560 them. And the only thing powerful to do that is the people.

00:32:47.000 You know, you're going to be accused of being a populist for saying these sorts of things. But what

00:32:52.400 you are saying is such an important point, and it's something that has driven me crazy about the

00:32:57.020 GOP for years, which is they have all too often cozied up to these big business. And in many

00:33:04.700 cases, these oligarchs who hate our values, who often have very little loyalty to the country,

00:33:10.020 who push radical leftism, who abuse their power, who are cronies and crooks very often.

00:33:15.920 And there's nothing particularly conservative about that. You know, conservatives once understood that

00:33:20.620 big unlimited power is a danger to the people and to constitutional government,

00:33:26.280 whether it's in a government bureaucracy or whether it's in a corporate bureaucracy.

00:33:29.880 I think that's exactly right. And there's another dynamic. Look, I'm not interested in

00:33:34.880 attacking a company that's a job creator and trying to destroy them. I like jobs. I want as many jobs

00:33:40.240 as possible. But if you look at what happens with big business, they almost invariably get in bed

00:33:46.300 with big government. There's a reason big business wants Joe Biden, wants socialism, because they

00:33:52.580 profit. And in my view, a big business and I look, I've worked with lots of companies, lots of employers.

00:33:58.460 As I say, if you want to if you want a subsidy, if you want corporate welfare, if you want a special

00:34:03.860 handout, I ain't your guy. Yeah, we shouldn't be in the business of corporate welfare of benefiting

00:34:09.560 corporations. Doesn't mean I'm going to go out and try to destroy businesses that are giving people

00:34:14.180 good livelihoods. But, you know, the big companies of the world, they don't need government's help.

00:34:19.480 Also, what big business does, it's not just that they want subsidies and welfare. They want

00:34:26.200 government to hammer the little guys. So big business goes to government and says, you know,

00:34:31.120 the only thing that can beat us is some upstart small business that might challenge us. Can you

00:34:36.660 shut them down? And that pattern, it is they're both focused on maintaining the power of the status

00:34:44.980 quo. And and it's. Look, conservatives who believe in the free market, there's something

00:34:51.100 revolutionary about the free market. You look at socialist countries and communist countries,

00:34:56.740 there are giant companies that are the status quo. Nothing changes when government is controlling the

00:35:03.240 economy. Whoever's in charge stays in charge. It is about maintaining power. There is a a chaos

00:35:10.980 that that that status hate in a free market society. But that's incredibly good for prosperity

00:35:18.720 and opportunity because it means little guys can achieve great things. You don't have to be

00:35:23.380 born into the lucky sperm club of just happening to be, you know, gosh, I was born in the right

00:35:28.540 family. So I get to be a a Duke or what have you. Instead, it is you succeed based on the content of

00:35:36.020 your character. I did not anticipate the phrase lucky sperm club coming up on the show tonight,

00:35:41.580 but I think the point is very, very important. And this this is really what we're talking about.

00:35:46.140 And by the way, if we do get sponsors and advertisers, let's turn them down. If that's

00:35:51.120 actually like, you know, sort of a CD club, let's just not. That one is they they have no place

00:35:57.620 on this show. But, you know, that that is really what we're talking about here is the future,

00:36:01.720 because this impeachment trial, this whole thing that's happening right now, this feels like we're

00:36:06.860 just stuck in mud that is coming to an end. And we'll have to look to the future, the future for

00:36:11.540 the conservative movement and the future for the country. And Michael, two things to go back where

00:36:15.680 we started, two things just to close out on of advice that I gave the Trump lawyers. Number one,

00:36:21.640 I said that the house managers keep using the word insurrectionist. And my advice to the Trump

00:36:28.680 lawyers is don't repeat that. I would refer to them either as rioters or violent criminals.

00:36:35.760 And the reason is, look, insurrection actually has a definition under the law. An insurrection is an

00:36:40.620 organized it's like a revolution. It's designed to to overturn the government and to take over the

00:36:46.700 country. That's the Democrats political narrative. It's why they keep using insurrectionists,

00:36:52.040 insurrectionists, insurrectionists. It's by the way, why they also apologize for and brush under the rug

00:37:00.860 the rioters who are burning cities all across the country because they say, oh, well, they're not

00:37:05.120 insurrectionists. They're just murderers. Murderers are OK. Or peaceful protesters. And my advice,

00:37:09.760 I told the Trump lawyers, look, don't make the argument about whether they're insurrectionist or not.

00:37:14.860 That that that is quicksand. Just don't buy into the Democrats phrasing of terms. Just call them

00:37:21.280 what they are unquestionably, which is violent criminals. And then a second thing that I told

00:37:26.680 them, as I said, look, sitting on the Republican side of the Senate floor and talking with a lot of

00:37:31.840 the Republican senators, as I have been during this trial, a sentiment that is very widely felt

00:37:37.800 is real frustration with the Democrats of their hypocrisy.

00:37:45.800 And the hypocrisy is rich. You know, I mentioned before how they're

00:37:50.240 waxing eloquently about how how much they love police officers after spending a year demonizing

00:37:56.060 cops. One of the House managers did a presentation of protesters who showed up at the House of I think

00:38:01.800 it was the Michigan Secretary of State. And it was a high dungeon. Just can you believe they would

00:38:07.860 come to the House? How terrible that is. And I got to tell you, most of the Republican senators,

00:38:12.580 we've had protesters coming to our house. Right. I had a couple of weeks ago, protesters put three

00:38:18.720 full sized coffins in my front yard while Heidi was at home and while my kids were at school.

00:38:25.040 And and and virtually all of us have had this happen. Susan Collins,

00:38:29.520 leftist protesters dropped off. I think it was hundreds of body bags at her home. Not only that,

00:38:37.080 they threatened both Susan Collins and her staff with sexual assault, they threatened to rape them.

00:38:44.640 Eric Swalwell is one of the House impeachment managers. When they did that, he tweeted out in

00:38:50.500 response to the threats of rape against Susan Collins and her staff. He tweeted out boo hoo.

00:38:57.900 Cry me a river.

00:38:59.000 These guys, the hypocrisy. And by the way, Susan remembers that. Yeah. So when we're listening to

00:39:07.600 these Democrats suddenly decry, oh, we don't like people coming to your house. OK, I actually agree

00:39:16.940 that you shouldn't be coming to any right public officials house and terrorizing their family,

00:39:23.000 engage in a free speech in the public square, but leave people's families and homes alone.

00:39:27.560 Yeah. But the Democrats don't. They've remained silent and not just silent. They've cheered it on

00:39:33.920 when it's their leftist supporters harassing others. And now suddenly they discovered virtue.

00:39:39.660 And I think I think tomorrow in in the president lawyers presentation, we're going to see the theme

00:39:46.520 of hypocrisy coming out pretty powerfully. And I think that will resonate certainly among Republican

00:39:53.060 senators. It's something that a lot of Republican senators, when we sit down

00:39:57.400 for lunch before the trial, a lot of us are thinking and pretty irritated with the the holier

00:40:04.640 than thou sense we're getting from the house managers. Well, if that advice can in any way

00:40:09.580 persuade the this legal team and the Republicans more broadly to hold Democrats to their own standards,

00:40:16.240 that will be a massive step forward and an advantage. We have to leave it there, but we will

00:40:21.740 get into a whole lot more, I assume, depending on how long it takes to finally acquit President Trump,

00:40:28.020 former President Trump in the impeachment trial of a now private citizen. We will obviously break

00:40:33.140 down more of that. Thank you to everyone for subscribing. If you haven't already subscribed,

00:40:36.900 be sure to subscribe to Verdict wherever you get your podcasts, be that YouTube, Apple Podcasts,

00:40:43.860 Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify. We'll be back with a whole lot more. In the meantime,

00:40:48.040 I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:41:18.040 And help the Republican Party across the nation. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 12, 2021

The Prosecution Rests

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