Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 02, 2026


Trump Accounts Transform the Future plus Talarico Pledges to “Dismantle” Capitalism


Episode Stats


Length

35 minutes

Words per minute

182.93

Word count

6,542

Sentence count

401

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:35.120 Hey, I'm Jack Armstrong.
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00:00:54.580 Welcome.
00:00:55.220 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:57.020 Ben Ferguson with you as well.
00:00:58.560 Well, Senator, it's the middle of the day.
00:01:00.740 You're rested.
00:01:01.760 It's been a fabulous week.
00:01:03.740 The book is killing it, by the way.
00:01:05.960 It's still at the top of the list on Amazon.
00:01:08.540 Congratulations for that as well.
00:01:10.540 And you had an amazing week with American companies getting behind something that we've been advocating.
00:01:15.340 You've been fighting for for a long time with the Trump accounts.
00:01:18.520 And you got to do some really cool things with some CEOs this week that said we're behind this.
00:01:22.960 We're advocating for it and we're going to give to our employees.
00:01:25.920 is. Well, this week in Austin, I chaired a roundtable along with Michael Dell of CEOs from
00:01:33.200 across Texas and across the country. And it was a roundtable. We had about 30 CEOs sitting around
00:01:38.180 the table talking about the Trump accounts and how transformational this policy is. As you know,
00:01:44.080 the Trump accounts, I authored the Trump accounts last year as part of the working families tax cut.
00:01:49.280 It was signed into law. I think the Trump accounts may well be the single most consequential element
00:01:55.200 of the entire tax cut that passed last year and it has been implemented we we had at at the round
00:02:01.540 table we we had number one michael dell obviously the ceo of dell and someone michael and susan has
00:02:07.400 have personally pledged and are giving six and a quarter billion dollars to kids all across the
00:02:13.920 country in the trump accounts and just to remind everyone how the trump accounts operate the trump
00:02:19.400 accounts are designed to be and this year will be personal investment accounts that for every
00:02:26.920 single child in america there are over 70 million kids under 18 in america every child will have a
00:02:32.180 personal investment account open for him or her newborn children will have it seated with a
00:02:38.240 thousand dollars and parents family employers can contribute five thousand a year in a tax
00:02:44.160 advantage account all of that's invested in the stock market which gives every kid in america
00:02:49.120 the miracle of compound growth. That's going to enable kids to accumulate hundreds of thousands
00:02:55.640 of dollars in investments, which will change their whole lives. But number two,
00:03:00.400 we will create a whole new generation of capitalists as our kids are going to be the
00:03:07.140 owners of the biggest employers in America. And so this event, when I drafted the Trump
00:03:11.760 account legislation, I included two accelerants deliberately into the legislation. Number one
00:03:17.400 is the ability for employers to contribute.
00:03:20.600 So think about 401ks and how 401ks,
00:03:24.140 most employers, certainly most big employers,
00:03:26.600 will either contribute to a 401k
00:03:28.200 or at least match the contribution of an employee.
00:03:31.520 Likewise, we are seeing that more and more
00:03:34.280 for Trump accounts, and that speeds it up
00:03:37.940 because when you're talking about investing over time,
00:03:40.760 the faster you invest and the more you invest early,
00:03:44.320 the more it compounds and the bigger it gets.
00:03:47.320 And so employer contributions are a huge accelerant.
00:03:50.740 And then the second huge accelerant is charitable contributions, the ability to give directly into the Trump accounts of others.
00:03:57.720 We're seeing both of them. And this roundtable was was multiple CEOs and business leaders discussing how they're doing exactly that.
00:04:05.560 All right. I want to take a moment real quick and talk to you about something that's extremely important.
00:04:10.040 Right now, somewhere in the world, there's a child waiting, not waiting for a birthday,
00:04:15.500 not waiting for Christmas, but waiting for someone just like you to choose them.
00:04:21.080 That's what Compassion International does every single day.
00:04:25.200 They connect children living in poverty with someone who will know their name, who will
00:04:30.600 pray for them, who will encourage them and help provide the food, the medical care, the
00:04:36.540 education and the hope they need through a local church now this year compassion is expanding into
00:04:44.780 four new countries malawi zambia cambodia and mirmar meaning thousands of children are being
00:04:52.860 reached which is incredible for the very first time and i want you to join me for just 43 a month
00:05:00.500 you can be the reason one child stops waiting sponsor a child today at compassion.com that's
00:05:09.580 compassion.com i gotta tell you the the part of the trump accounts i think is also going to be
00:05:15.560 the most successful aspect of it is you get to set up these accounts in your kid's name you get
00:05:20.840 to be interactive it's not a piece of paper that comes in the mail with a quarterly statement or
00:05:24.800 monthly statement your child can look at your phone and their account in real time and see
00:05:30.980 what's happening and so now what's happening with my kids is they every day are wanting to know how
00:05:36.300 much money they have I love this because now instead of them going and buying something the
00:05:40.860 store the other day my seven-year-old George looked at me he's like dad I want to buy some
00:05:44.700 more stock with my money I was like great how much money do you have he's like I got six dollars and
00:05:49.560 $0.12. Now, I love that because he got $6. I don't know what he got it from. It was like $6.12. I'm
00:05:57.200 like, buddy, I love this. Yes, we'll invest it for you this week. And there's a little bit of
00:06:01.540 excitement and also competition. Like, what are you in? I'm in Ford. I'm in SpaceX. I'm in this.
00:06:07.100 They love the ownership. And that's how you create a lifetime investment idea. And it's also teaching
00:06:13.900 the value of a dollar. Hey, you can take a dollar now. It can be something else later. But if your
00:06:18.560 kids get involved that means the parents get more involved which means you think about saving for
00:06:23.100 your kids more that is the best part is i think technology with this it is watching a kid's eyes
00:06:28.980 light up when they see an account with their name and their ownership it is is a total game changer
00:06:35.220 i say it with excitement because i'm witnessing it firsthand but this is why people need to sign
00:06:40.040 up for this if they haven't already look roughly half of americans don't own a single stock or a
00:06:45.860 single bond. And I talked about creating a whole new generation of capitalists. This is designed
00:06:50.780 so that kids see that and they see compound growth. They see that they have an investment,
00:06:55.620 but then it grows and it grows upon itself and it grows upon itself. And one of the things that was
00:07:00.260 really important designing the app is designing it so it doesn't just show the total amount you
00:07:05.700 have in the S&P 500, but there are 500 stocks broken down in the S&P 500. So you can see
00:07:11.360 how much how much you own of Apple, how much you own of General Motors, how much you own of Exxon
00:07:17.660 Mobil, how much you own of McDonald's. And that investment makes it personal. You've got skin in
00:07:25.080 the game. And that was something I pressed the Trump administration really vigorously on. They
00:07:30.060 actually had a guy named Joe Jebbiaz, who's a buddy of mine. He's actually a Texan. He's from
00:07:34.840 Austin. He is one of the founders of Airbnb. So he's been very, very successful in business. But
00:07:40.400 Airbnb knows how to design an app that that is consumer friendly.
00:07:45.840 And one of the things that was really important is that when kids log on to these accounts, they see all the individual stock holdings that they have.
00:07:54.720 And they are right now. We also had at this roundtable.
00:07:59.340 So we had Michael Dell. We had Brad Gerstner, who is the CEO of Altimeter Capital.
00:08:05.300 And he's the one who came up with the idea for the Trump accounts. He's become a very close friend.
00:08:09.080 And he and I have worked hand in hand the last two years to get this passed with Michael Dell, who Dell is is contributing and matching to the Dell, to the Trump accounts of their kids.
00:08:19.340 And Michael and Susan are personally giving six and a quarter billion dollars.
00:08:23.780 We had the CEOs of Bank of New York and Robinhood.
00:08:28.100 And they're the two companies that are implementing this.
00:08:31.580 And it is remarkable.
00:08:32.840 So one of the things the CEO, Vlad Tenev, who's the CEO of Robin Hood, showed us is the new developments they're putting on for philanthropy.
00:08:40.300 Look, most of us are not Michael Dell.
00:08:43.060 We can't give six and a quarter billion dollars, but this is available for philanthropy if you want to give $100, if you want to give $500 or $1,000 or whatever you can give.
00:08:54.220 And one of the fun things is for Trump accounts, it also doesn't have to be massive accounts.
00:09:00.160 I mean, think about your kids' birthday parties, Ben, where you have Aunt Susie, who otherwise would have gotten your kids an ugly sweater, who instead can give your kids $100 into the Trump account or $50 into the Trump account.
00:09:16.220 And that over time. Think about a bar mitzvah. Think about an eighth grade graduation or 12th grade graduation where you tell people, hey, here's the link to give to the Trump accounts.
00:09:26.320 And you end up with with investments where the kids see. And by the way, just just like you described with your boys, the kids see as a practical matter.
00:09:35.460 I have 20 bucks. I can go buy a pepperoni pizza and eat it and have nothing. Yep. Or I can invest
00:09:42.740 20 bucks and see it grow and learning about the power of investing. That's going to be one of the
00:09:49.180 most long lasting aspects of this. It's changed dynamics. Dinner the other night, it was really
00:09:53.900 fun to watch my 10-year-old and his cousin, who's also 10, talk to my son's uncle. And they're like,
00:10:00.940 hey, what should we invest in?
00:10:03.000 What are you investing in?
00:10:04.060 And then he was like, well, I like to invest in things that I know, that I use.
00:10:08.120 And he started talking to them like, what do you guys use?
00:10:10.980 What is it that you like?
00:10:12.200 And they're like, well, I like this.
00:10:13.640 I like this.
00:10:14.640 Well, great.
00:10:15.160 And we were at the dinner table looking up the stocks connected to the things that they use.
00:10:19.800 But you can see the light bulbs going off.
00:10:22.480 And then we had a conversation about what is the Walmart stock of this generation,
00:10:27.020 of our kids' generation, right?
00:10:28.140 For me, it was, and our parents was like, if you own Walmart, you never touched it, it turned into X, right?
00:10:32.520 It was a stock.
00:10:33.680 And so we had a conversation about if you had a share of Walmart back in the day, what it was worth today.
00:10:39.180 And with AI, you can easily figure these questions out, these answers.
00:10:43.220 And their eyes were just like, wait, if you own just one share of Walmart when it came out, now it would be worth yes.
00:10:48.960 So then they're like, well, what's the Walmart stock of today?
00:10:51.280 So you have all these conversations.
00:10:53.580 And I say it with pure joy.
00:10:56.200 finally I say the government really got something right
00:10:59.360 like they got something right
00:11:01.520 it's going to have a massive impact
00:11:03.480 for kids and it's
00:11:05.480 a way for parents to also get
00:11:07.400 involved but I'll say it if you've
00:11:09.420 not done this with your children or your grandkids
00:11:11.800 yet make it a priority
00:11:13.480 because there's no
00:11:15.540 way a kid doesn't get excited or locked in on this
00:11:17.680 because it's just fun to see
00:11:19.380 their name with ownership
00:11:21.220 in a real company and then they understand
00:11:23.380 they start asking questions and that's
00:11:25.660 how you change an entire generation. Well, and on the employer side, so we had Robert Isom,
00:11:30.780 the CEO of American Airlines there, and American Airlines announced that they're going to match
00:11:34.840 the contributions to Trump accounts for all their employees. And they have employees all
00:11:39.080 over the country. They have 40,000 employees just in the state of Texas. And you look at
00:11:43.420 those employees for those kids, I think this is going to become a ubiquitous employee benefit,
00:11:50.600 Just like 401k accounts are now. And to give you a sense, why do I say the Trump accounts are the most consequential element of the working families tax cut?
00:12:00.380 You know, in 1974 is when Congress passed Section 401k of ERISA.
00:12:06.300 And I don't think anyone in Congress had any idea how fundamentally they were changing how Americans save for retirement.
00:12:13.620 Today, Ben, there's more than $12 trillion invested in 401k accounts.
00:12:17.860 It's a massive amount of cash. Trump accounts are 401ks for kids.
00:12:22.020 They're going to be we're going to have trillions of dollars invested in Trump accounts and the employer contributions.
00:12:29.760 Dell is doing it. American is doing it. Lots and lots of companies are doing so.
00:12:34.840 But but then the second piece of it and I'm urging, you know, Cory Booker.
00:12:39.000 This is also there's now bipartisan support for this.
00:12:41.420 Cory Booker is a liberal Democrat from New Jersey. He and I together co-authored a letter
00:12:46.900 to the CEO of every one of the Fortune 1000 companies, urging every one of them to contribute
00:12:51.900 to the Trump accounts of the kids of their employees, to match, to help grow, because that
00:12:56.940 accelerates the growth massively. But the second piece, the philanthropic piece. So Michael and
00:13:03.480 Susan Dell's gift, what they're giving is $250 to every child under age 10 who lives in a zip code
00:13:11.580 where the median income is $150,000 or less. And I wrote the statutes so you could adjust those
00:13:18.460 dials and you can target your gifts. Brad Gerster, whose idea this was, Brad is giving money to every
00:13:25.520 kid in the state of Indiana, which is where he's from, where he grew up, under the age of five,
00:13:30.540 again, who lives in zip codes where the median income is $150,000 or less. Now, let me tell you
00:13:36.780 another really cool element of the Trump accounts, which is at my urging, and I had to work very hard
00:13:43.580 to get the Treasury Department to do this, Treasury has issued guidance that not only can you
00:13:50.600 contribute money to the Trump accounts, and it's a charitable contribution, it's tax deductible.
00:13:55.300 So not only can you can you contribute money to Trump accounts of kids, you can also contribute individual shares of stock.
00:14:04.040 So one of the which is a game changer, it's a game changer.
00:14:08.540 One of the people at the roundtable was Gwen Shotwell.
00:14:10.820 Now, Gwen is the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX.
00:14:15.380 And obviously, SpaceX just had a massive IPO.
00:14:19.520 Yep. And Gwen made an enormous amount of money. 1.00
00:14:22.760 and after that she announced that she was giving two million shares of spacex that's incredible
00:14:31.980 to trump accounts and and in part because michael dell did kids under 10 she decided to give it to
00:14:36.880 kids between the ages of 10 and 18 and and so two million kids are going to get a single share of
00:14:43.520 spacex in their account and and that means they're now invested and they can see as spacex grows and
00:14:51.220 succeeds and does better they're looking at that going wow that and by the way her gift was what
00:14:56.560 was worth over over 300 million dollars so i mean it's you want to talk about real money
00:15:02.560 300 million dollars giving away to two kids and i will tell you i'm in conversations with multiple
00:15:10.980 founders and ceos who started incredibly successful companies and i'm going to tell you in the coming
00:15:16.980 year, we are going to see literally billions of dollars, I believe, of shares of companies,
00:15:23.560 big AI companies, big tech companies, given directly to kids. And that's a powerful thing.
00:15:29.900 Here, I want you to listen to David Sachs. So David Sachs is an incredibly successful
00:15:33.880 tech investor. He's the chairman of the president's committee on science and technology. So he's the
00:15:39.800 AI czar and the crypto czar for President Trump. And David is a longtime friend of mine. He was at
00:15:46.000 the roundtable with us. Listen to what David had to say about the Trump accounts.
00:15:50.140 Thanks to Trump accounts, the next generation of Americans is going to have direct ownership
00:15:54.720 in these AI companies. They're going to be participating as owners in the AI revolution.
00:16:01.220 And I think Gwen Shotwell's gift, I think, is exactly the right template for this, where
00:16:06.620 you've got two million kids who are now going to own a share of SpaceX AI, and they're going
00:16:10.780 tracking that and now they have a vested interest in the success of ai and i hope that all the other
00:16:17.040 ai companies will follow suit and make by the way i couldn't agree with him more he hopes they follow
00:16:23.280 suit that suit that's the reason why you guys wrote it this way yep it also makes it easy if
00:16:27.720 you talk to people that want to give money away their biggest concern is they're going to give a
00:16:32.220 bunch of money away and then they're going to have this big thing that happens and then it doesn't
00:16:36.160 really get implemented this is such a great way to encourage responsible giving because it's going
00:16:42.360 to have an impact for these kids for a very long time and the future growth it's not going to be
00:16:47.300 you know shelled out a bunch of bureaucrats and non-profits start getting their friends involved
00:16:51.740 and we see things like that that happen this is a direct way to say i'm going to impact a child
00:16:57.160 and it's something that's going to grow and help them as they get older if you if you're someone
00:17:02.500 that's worked hard your whole life and you built something incredible like SpaceX, to see that
00:17:07.580 continue to grow long after you're gone, that's a legacy. That's legacy building. That gets, I think,
00:17:13.320 CEOs excited as well. Yeah. And there are several aspects of this. One, you know, one of the reasons
00:17:19.920 Michael and Susan Dell got so excited. So Michael chairs the CEO council of Invest America that has
00:17:25.280 been supporting the Trump accounts and has been a coalition behind it. And Michael and Susan are
00:17:30.520 worth somewhere between $100 and $200 billion, depending on where the market is at any given
00:17:34.440 day. But it's a massive amount of money. He's one of the 10 wealthiest people on planet Earth.
00:17:38.640 And they both are quite responsible about their philanthropy. They intend to give away
00:17:43.920 a huge portion of the wealth they've accumulated. And the problem is it's such a large amount of
00:17:50.940 money that it's hard to give away. I mean, there are very few charities that can take a billion
00:17:56.780 dollars like it's so much money that it crushes a charity if you give them that much money
00:18:00.700 and and so they're trying to think very responsibly how do you give money away so it has a maximum
00:18:05.940 impact and it can be used productively and i'll tell you what is so potent about the trump accounts
00:18:11.400 it is infinitely scalable you can literally give there's no sum of money someone has that is too
00:18:17.900 much to be able to give to trump accounts it has zero friction and zero transaction costs so if
00:18:23.840 you give $100, $100 goes to the count, not $99, not $95, every penny of it. There's no
00:18:30.120 administration. There's no overhead. There's no guy getting rich. So you're putting every bit of
00:18:36.000 leverage to impact and in the impact of a child becoming an investor starting to accumulate
00:18:41.840 that will grow and compound over time. And so let's take the six and a quarter billion dollars
00:18:48.300 That gives $250 to 25 million kids.
00:18:53.540 Now, that's a ton of money, but you know what?
00:18:55.500 If Michael and Susan decided—I don't know if they're going to, but they could decide—
00:18:59.140 suppose they decided they wanted to 10x that.
00:19:02.360 Well, instead of giving $250, they could give $2,500.
00:19:06.980 Instead of $6.25 billion, that would be $62 billion.
00:19:10.880 And yet it would be—there are enough kids that it could absorb that.
00:19:16.220 And by the way, look, if you have other people giving and suddenly that $2,500 becomes $5,000 or $10,000, the math becomes amazing if suddenly kids, and we're talking millions of kids, low-income kids, have, say, $10,000 invested in the market at a young age.
00:19:33.180 the compounding we're talking about these kids being able to accumulate millions of dollars
00:19:38.980 that totally changes not just their perspective but but their entire future because look kids of
00:19:48.900 wealthy people they learn to invest they learn to save but but but kids of of parents who are not
00:19:55.320 in the market often don't understand they don't understand compound growth they don't have they're
00:19:59.940 not taught a culture of saving and investing, this is going to change their whole worldview.
00:20:04.720 And look, you're seeing it with your boys firsthand.
00:20:07.600 Yeah, it truly is incredible.
00:20:09.300 It's going to be so fun to see how this grows, as you mentioned, and the excitement around
00:20:13.840 it.
00:20:14.180 And I think it's really important with this show that we tell you, we remind you, you
00:20:19.540 get your kids, your grandkids involved, have the conversation with your nieces or your
00:20:23.820 nephews and make sure they're doing it.
00:20:25.440 It's free money.
00:20:26.200 I mean, I was talking to a lot of my friends.
00:20:28.680 they have not done this and and they're and they're smart i'm like guys it's free money for
00:20:32.460 your kids why are you not doing change so that's going to change one of the most important so i
00:20:36.940 wrote the statute so that it would be auto enroll so right now the way it has been launched it's
00:20:43.460 opt-in so you have to go and affirmatively sign into it you've got about seven million people
00:20:47.180 who have done so there are about 70 million kids in america the way i wrote it was that it that
00:20:53.580 that treasury would automatically enroll every child in america and by the way it was a fight
00:20:58.160 The career lawyers at Treasury did not want to make it auto enroll.
00:21:01.300 And I remember this. Yeah. The White House was with me.
00:21:04.140 We wrote it that way. And one of the people who was at the roundtable was Frank Bisognano, who is this who is the head of the IRS.
00:21:11.220 And he's the one charged by Treasury with implementing this.
00:21:14.820 And he is committed and President Trump has committed that they're going to do auto enroll.
00:21:18.940 They're going to create the accounts for 70 million kids.
00:21:21.600 Now, there are a couple of huge benefits from that.
00:21:24.480 Number one, if you have an opt-out rather than an opt-in, you get massively higher take-up rates.
00:21:30.760 And that's been true.
00:21:31.620 There have been some states like Oklahoma and Rhode Island who've done similar programs at a smaller scale.
00:21:36.440 And the difference between opt-out and opt-in is massive.
00:21:39.220 We want every kid to participate.
00:21:42.160 And also, if it's opt-in, you end up having a skew where wealthier kids, kids from families that are more financially sophisticated are more likely to opt-in.
00:21:50.740 and low-income kids whose parents are not invested in the market themselves are less likely to opt
00:21:56.520 in and the entire point of this program is to help the kid of the single mom waiting tables
00:22:01.780 and and so the auto enroll is massively important but you know why it's even more important
00:22:07.080 why is that because with the charitable gifts you've got to have the account open to be a vessel
00:22:13.860 to put michael dell can't put his six and a quarter billion dollars in unless you have 25
00:22:19.440 million accounts that are open that can take it. Gwen Shotwell's two million shares can't go to
00:22:23.920 kids unless those accounts are open. So you need to have the auto enroll. That's going to happen. 0.63
00:22:28.800 I believe it. It's going to happen this year. I talked to the head of the IRS today who is
00:22:34.800 working to implement it right now. That's a huge deal. And by the way, I want you to listen to
00:22:40.920 Brad Gerstner, who's this very successful venture capitalist whose idea this was and who he and I
00:22:46.280 have worked hand in hand in fact brad michael dell and i at the round table they referred to
00:22:51.100 the three of us as the three amigos and we literally have been on the phone non-stop
00:22:55.560 talking to the president regularly talking to scott besant the treasury secretary talking to
00:23:00.420 the head of the irs to get this implemented and get get it right give a listen to brad gerstner
00:23:04.860 at the round table we did this week legislation championed by this senator and let me tell you
00:23:09.960 I stomped around Capitol Hill for years.
00:23:13.460 Everybody loved the idea, but it's amazing in Washington.
00:23:18.020 Everybody loves the idea, but nobody can find their pen to actually begin drafting a piece of legislation.
00:23:24.100 It takes an entrepreneurial warrior like this senator who says, I'm going to make this happen.
00:23:30.340 It doesn't happen without that.
00:23:32.140 And then Michael Dell, who, you know, through our partnership from day one, did the work, did the study, said this is if we could make this happen, it would change the country.
00:23:43.120 And together, talking with the president, getting the president's entrepreneurial leadership.
00:23:48.100 And, you know, when we saw President Trump, it would have been very easy for him to say, great idea.
00:23:53.780 Talk to my people.
00:23:54.960 And this would have went to die like every other idea.
00:23:58.100 Instead, he said, I'm calling the speaker and telling him to put it in the bill.
00:24:01.640 And the only way we could put it in the bill is if we had drafted the legislation, scored it, and had it ready to go.
00:24:08.440 That's why this became the law of the land.
00:24:11.200 But why I'm so excited to be here in Texas today is there are 7.3 million kids in the state of Texas eligible for a Trump account.
00:24:20.360 Hundreds of thousands have already claimed their account, but we're going to get all 7.3 million signed up.
00:24:28.120 Stay tuned.
00:24:29.180 In the months ahead, because of the leadership of Frank, we're going to make sure that no
00:24:33.560 child in this country is left behind.
00:24:35.880 The president said very clearly, every child.
00:24:38.940 The Invest America Act left the discretion to the Treasury Secretary and to Frank to
00:24:44.620 get every child automatically signed up for an account.
00:24:47.820 And that's what we intend to do.
00:24:49.740 You can even just hear it in his voice.
00:24:51.560 He is really excited about what this means and how it came together.
00:24:55.840 He fought hard for it.
00:24:56.900 You guys, the three amigos, got it done, and it's going to be your legacy.
00:25:00.900 I said this to you early on, I think, in a private conversation.
00:25:03.820 I remember I was like, this is going to be what you're going to be remembered by from your time,
00:25:07.820 and it may be the most important thing you've ever done in the Senate.
00:25:10.800 Yeah, look, I don't think that's an exaggeration.
00:25:15.800 This and school choice, the federal school choice program,
00:25:18.180 are the two most consequential things I've been able to do in the Senate,
00:25:21.480 and they both, I think, are going to make a massive difference for kids for generations to come.
00:25:26.900 You remember the origin story of the Trump accounts.
00:25:28.920 You know it, but it's a fun story, and verdict listeners have heard it before, but not everyone has heard it.
00:25:35.100 It actually started from a poker game.
00:25:36.960 And by the way, you and I played poker.
00:25:38.800 You just had a birthday.
00:25:41.160 I had a birthday.
00:25:42.380 You turned 74.
00:25:44.500 Yes, yes.
00:25:45.460 Halfway to 90 is, I think, how you described it.
00:25:47.700 I just want everybody to know.
00:25:48.940 I'm closer to 90 than I am to zero.
00:25:51.620 So it's all perspective, folks.
00:25:54.180 You are past the halfway point now.
00:25:55.320 Yeah, yeah.
00:25:55.900 And so we had a poker game, and you and I played poker together.
00:25:59.700 But another poker game.
00:26:01.840 Hold on.
00:26:02.500 I'm going to give you accolades.
00:26:04.180 You were one of the winners at the birthday poker.
00:26:06.820 I just want people to know you did come out ahead.
00:26:09.040 You did not lose money at my birthday party.
00:26:10.680 I want to make that very clear.
00:26:11.680 I did take home chips, and I took home cash,
00:26:15.100 and I will say my daughter's investment accounts, thank you for that.
00:26:20.260 Well played.
00:26:21.280 Well played.
00:26:22.000 But it was another poker game where this came up.
00:26:24.160 Yeah.
00:26:24.900 It was another.
00:26:25.420 So two years ago, I do every year, I do a poker fundraiser, which you've been to.
00:26:30.280 We do it out in Vegas.
00:26:32.180 And I love to play poker.
00:26:33.400 And we bring a number of poker pros who are buddies of mine.
00:26:36.860 They come play.
00:26:38.160 And so April two years ago, I'm playing poker.
00:26:41.720 And one of the people there is Phil Helmuth, who Phil is one of the greatest poker players to have ever lived.
00:26:47.060 He's won the World Series.
00:26:50.000 Phil would tell you he's the greatest poker player to have ever lived.
00:26:52.380 and he's easily on the very, very short list.
00:26:57.120 We're playing late at night and he asks me, he says, hey, Ted, do you know Brad Gerstner?
00:27:03.160 And at the time I did not.
00:27:04.420 I did not know Brad.
00:27:05.180 And I said, no, tell me who he is.
00:27:06.580 And he says he's an amazingly successful venture capitalist in Silicon Valley.
00:27:11.080 And he has this idea called Invest America.
00:27:13.840 And I'd never heard of it.
00:27:15.040 And he describes it to me.
00:27:16.320 And it's what became the Trump accounts.
00:27:19.300 And I said, wow, I'd be really interested in that.
00:27:21.800 That sounds like the sort of policy I could get really excited about.
00:27:25.480 And so Phil pulls out his cell phone and he puts together a text thread and he texts Brad and me and puts me on the thread and says, you two really need to talk.
00:27:34.460 And the next week, Brad gets on a plane and flies to D.C. and sits down in my office and he just pitches the idea.
00:27:40.700 He said, here's the idea, lays it out.
00:27:43.080 And I listened to it and I said, this is fantastic.
00:27:46.080 Let's do it.
00:27:46.720 And I called my policy team in and I said, let's draft the bill right now.
00:27:51.800 And we drafted it right there. That is the bill that became the Trump accounts.
00:27:56.920 It is literally that bill that we drafted out of that meeting.
00:27:59.100 And the wild thing is, if I'm not sitting at three in the morning at the Bellagio playing poker with Phil Hellmuth two years ago.
00:28:07.220 Yeah. The Trump accounts don't exist.
00:28:09.380 There's literally trillions of dollars that are not invested for our kids without that poker game.
00:28:14.320 And and it is, I think, the legacy, the rewards from this for for our kids and their kids and their kids are just going to keep reverberating for a long time to come.
00:28:27.060 Yeah, I'll say it again. Sign your kids up for this. Don't wait.
00:28:31.080 There's money out there. It's free money. It is there for you right now.
00:28:35.280 Get your Trump accounts open and do it with your kids. It's really, really educational and really, really fun.
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00:28:58.480 participating canadian restaurants excluding quebec why should you listen to armstrong and
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00:29:29.380 gotta make a rule don't shoot at the united states or if you prefer iran blah blah blah
00:29:35.620 America haters are winning.
00:29:37.840 The would-be communists, the Marxists, are winning in America.
00:29:41.960 And they're doing so openly, and nobody cares.
00:29:45.680 I think giving the downtrodden money enables them.
00:29:48.560 They aren't getting the money.
00:29:49.860 I'm winning.
00:29:50.920 Good Lord, that was the voice of the patriarchy right there, folks.
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00:30:00.320 All right, Senator, I want to pivot real quick and move to James Tallarico.
00:30:05.800 He'd be the perfect candidate for California for Senate.
00:30:08.820 He's running, though, in Texas.
00:30:11.180 And there's those Zoom meetings, and they're coming out of what he actually believes and what he's actually said.
00:30:18.160 And it's a really bad look, especially in Texas.
00:30:21.920 Well, I got to say it is a sharp contrast to what we talked about in the first part of the pod was the Trump accounts and capitalism
00:30:27.820 and creating a whole new generation of capitalists.
00:30:30.240 And that's, I am a diehard, unapologetic capitalist.
00:30:34.660 I believe that if people are invested in the future of America, that's good for everyone.
00:30:38.840 Well, it turns out James Tallarico believes exactly the opposite.
00:30:42.460 And he's running for Senate.
00:30:43.600 It's a very close race in Texas.
00:30:44.900 He's not going to win.
00:30:46.260 Ken Paxton is going to be the next senator from Texas.
00:30:49.420 Because James Tallarico is a radical.
00:30:52.440 He's extreme.
00:30:53.120 Now, he's trying to hide that.
00:30:54.080 He's trying to pretend that he's somehow middle of the road.
00:30:57.160 This is a guy who says God is non-binary. This is a guy who says there are six genders, whatever the hell those six are.
00:31:04.960 But this week, there's a video that was unearthed where a few years back, James Tallarico was on a Zoom call with a bunch of Sierra Club activists.
00:31:15.300 I want you to listen to what Tallarico said. This is in his own words, him speaking to radical left wing activists just a few years ago in 2020.
00:31:23.640 The multifaceted threat of a climate crisis, an economic crisis, and a social justice crisis,
00:31:32.840 I think that kind of New Deal effort would be the only approach to start to address all three in a thoughtful and meaningful way.
00:31:40.780 Good for you, Jim.
00:31:41.600 Thank you very much.
00:31:43.860 The second question, communities of color receive the most harm from the impacts of climate change
00:31:49.980 and yet received the least government support to deal with it.
00:31:54.520 Tell us about one of the committees you are on or hope to be on
00:31:58.640 and the most important actions that committee could take to fight for climate justice
00:32:03.680 and mitigate the impacts of climate change for all Texans.
00:32:07.740 Yeah, and I'm so thankful that you asked this question
00:32:11.080 and also thankful that young activists have really drawn the link between climate change
00:32:16.520 and white supremacy and capitalism in our country.
00:32:19.320 And I think only in the ways that all three of those oppressive systems work together, are we going to be able to begin the process of dismantling them?
00:32:27.820 Dismantling that word. If you didn't hear it, he just talked about dismantling what makes this country this country.
00:32:34.300 Well, what he specifically said is he said, capitalism, climate change and white supremacy are all linked together. They are all three systems of oppression. And he wants to dismantle all three.
00:32:50.840 Now, again, you mentioned he'd be a great Senate candidate in California. Sadly, that that is probably the case. But he ain't a great candidate in Texas because there are very few Texans who want to dismantle capitalism. That's in his own words. That's not me speaking for him. That's what he's saying he wants to do.
00:33:08.840 And by the way, in that same conversation, he said the oil and gas industry is going to go away.
00:33:17.180 And he says that Texas's leadership of the oil and gas industry, he said, is like, quote, being a leader in cassette tapes in the 1980s.
00:33:27.760 That industry is not going to last.
00:33:30.960 So he wants oil and gas to go away, which would destroy millions of jobs in the state of Texas. 0.59
00:33:37.040 And by the way, would massively benefit communist China. And Tallarico has also voted to allow communist China to buy hundreds of thousands of acres of Texas land, including land next to military bases in Texas.
00:33:51.480 so he wants to end oil and gas in texas and dismantle capitalism well listen comrade tallarico
00:34:01.040 i get in in the woke circles you run in where when you say uh god is non-binary people clap
00:34:09.200 and go oh yes oh yes so nice remember tallarico is the also the guy who who declared his campaign
00:34:15.400 was going to be vegan because meat is destroying the world. This is a woke radical, and the media
00:34:23.660 is deeply invested in making sure you don't know that. So this portion of the podcast, look, I'm
00:34:30.300 going to ask everyone, share this podcast, but especially the video. Watch Tallarico in his
00:34:35.740 own words, and he thinks he's just talking to left-wing radicals. So on the campaign trail
00:34:41.880 today, he's not admitting he wants to dismantle capitalism. That's just what he tells the radicals,
00:34:47.740 the DSA nuts who elected Mondami, who are supporting El Saeed. That is James Tallarico's
00:34:53.540 base. And it's why he's going to lose this Senate race in Texas, because we don't want a nutcase
00:34:59.220 who wants to dismantle capitalism. We want capitalism to grow. We want free enterprise.
00:35:04.200 And we want every American to be an investor invested in capitalism, invested in the future
00:35:08.960 of our country. Amen. Don't forget to share
00:35:11.000 the podcast. We do it Monday, Wednesday, Friday
00:35:12.860 and the Senate and I will see you back here on
00:35:15.020 Friday morning.
00:35:38.960 Listen to Armstrong and Getty On Demand on the iHeartRadio app,
00:35:43.060 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.