Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 20, 2026


Trump Endorses in Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky & Texas, Castro about to be Indicted, and Dems’ Disgraceful History on Race


Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

166.84839

Word count

6,733

Sentence count

434

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

13

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:01:21.300 Welcome.
00:01:21.980 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:01:24.920 And Senator, we've got a lot of news that's happening, including a big runoff election day in America.
00:01:31.880 And there are a lot of results that have come in.
00:01:34.300 And it did not look good for people that didn't get the endorsement of Donald Trump.
00:01:38.140 Well, elections in America, it turns out that Donald Trump's endorsement has enormous potency in a Republican primary.
00:01:44.520 That was not really much in doubt two weeks ago, but it's even less doubt today.
00:01:50.560 We're going to talk about the results there.
00:01:52.320 We're also going to talk about the pending news coming out today that the Trump Department of Justice is expected to indict Raul Castro in Cuba.
00:02:02.920 We're going to break that down as well.
00:02:04.360 And we're also going to talk about fireworks on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in particular a battle over racial gerrymandering.
00:02:12.040 The Democrats trying to claim they have clean hands, that racial gerrymandering is a wonderful thing.
00:02:18.600 And, you know, I did my very best this week to hold them to account.
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00:04:24.300 So Senator, leave no doubt in this country, Donald Trump's endorsement is extremely important
00:04:31.260 And if you didn't get his endorsement, it is not good news for you if you're a Republican running for office
00:04:37.040 Now, there's two ways to interpret this
00:04:39.420 I interpret it this way simply
00:04:41.080 Donald Trump's agenda is what's on the ballot in this midterm election coming up
00:04:45.640 Redistricting is a part of that
00:04:47.560 If you are not standing and fighting with Donald Trump
00:04:50.660 then there's a lot of American voters that say we want someone different.
00:04:53.920 And clearly that was the thought process for many people that went to the voting booth.
00:04:58.380 Yeah, look, in the last two weeks, we've had four illustration of the potency of President Trump's endorsement.
00:05:03.340 We had, first of all, Indiana.
00:05:05.380 So Indiana, President Trump and the White House asked Indiana to redistrict,
00:05:10.580 to redraw their congressional map, to gain additional Republican seats.
00:05:14.620 The Indiana legislature refused.
00:05:17.360 They rebuked the president.
00:05:18.400 They said, no, we're not going to do that.
00:05:20.320 And then the president got pissed off. And so there were seven Indiana state senators that Trump endorsed against and five of them were defeated in their primaries.
00:05:32.580 That was two weeks ago. It was really a striking result that if you stand up and defy the president, if you declare I'm opposed to the president, at least in the Republican Party, there is no never Trump lane in the Republican Party.
00:05:47.600 That does not exist, or it does not exist with any staying power.
00:05:54.180 The never-Trump lane is largely nonexistent.
00:05:58.720 Then we saw the state of Louisiana.
00:06:00.780 State of Louisiana, my colleague Bill Cassidy, the incumbent Republican senator from Louisiana, was in a primary.
00:06:07.720 President Trump endorsed against him.
00:06:10.520 And Louisiana has a multi-person primary.
00:06:15.680 They require that in order to win, you've got to win a majority.
00:06:19.020 So if you don't win a majority, the top two go to a runoff.
00:06:21.780 What ended up happening in Louisiana is two other candidates, Julia Letlow and John Fleming, ended up winning the primary.
00:06:31.220 And Bill Cassidy, the incumbent Republican senator, did not make the top two.
00:06:36.420 So he was defeated.
00:06:37.600 He's not going to be in the runoff, so he will not be a senator next year.
00:06:41.460 And that was a powerful illustration.
00:06:43.540 Cassidy had millions of dollars behind him. Look, Cassidy's most significant step that he took
00:06:49.540 is that he voted to convict President Trump during the impeachment. I'll tell you,
00:06:54.560 I was sitting next to Bill Cassidy. He and I, our seats on the floor of the Senate were next
00:06:59.940 to each other during the impeachment trial. When he cast that vote to convict,
00:07:06.740 it felt like he knew what he was doing. It felt like he knew that he was ending his political
00:07:12.260 career. I was surprised. I think most Republicans were surprised. We did not anticipate that Bill
00:07:18.980 Cassidy would vote to convict. That was a shock in the moment when it happened. If you take people
00:07:24.500 back to that day, it wasn't like he was out on TV talking about how he was going to convict
00:07:28.500 Donald Trump. It wasn't like he was Democrats and the media were not floating. That is a real
00:07:33.180 possibility. And then when it happened, I remember it was a total shock on social media at that
00:07:38.180 moment look and louisiana is now a bright red state and and so it was that vote was costly he
00:07:45.880 did not make the top two he will not be either fleming or letlow will be the next uh senator
00:07:51.880 from louisiana uh but it will not be bill cassidy and so the the trump endorsement was demonstrated
00:07:57.820 to be extremely potent uh then we saw uh tonight you and i are here it is 11 19 p.m
00:08:06.200 And tonight in Kentucky, Thomas Massey, incumbent Republican congressman, has been defeated.
00:08:12.480 Has been defeated by, it looks like, maybe up to 10 points.
00:08:16.600 The numbers are still being counted.
00:08:19.940 Massey, look, Massey used to win by big margins.
00:08:23.200 Massey is a libertarian.
00:08:25.940 Massey is, in some ways, Massey is similar to Rand Paul, but in the House version.
00:08:30.560 I was going to say, he's the Rand Paul of the House, in essence.
00:08:32.840 Yeah. And listen, President Trump endorsed against him, leaned in against him. They had a Navy SEAL running against him who was a strong Donald Trump supporter. And listen, I know Thomas. Thomas is a very smart guy. He's an MIT graduate. He's a principled libertarian. I don't doubt that he believes what he's doing.
00:08:53.180 but but i will say thomas's tenure in in the house had become simply relentless votes against trump
00:09:01.620 he voted no no no no no on everything he voted no on the big reconciliation bill the one big
00:09:08.960 beautiful bill also called the working families tax cut um and and it got to the point that i
00:09:14.980 think president trump was really frustrated listen if we had if we had a huge majority
00:09:21.440 If we had 250 Republicans in the House, you only need 218 for a majority.
00:09:26.040 Yeah.
00:09:26.620 It wouldn't hurt to have a constant no vote.
00:09:29.440 But if you vote against President Trump all the time and if you vote with the Democrats almost all the time, that's frustrating when you have a one or two vote margin in the House.
00:09:40.040 It really hurts.
00:09:41.580 If you want to be an op-ed columnist and say, I'm against everything.
00:09:46.580 No, no, no, no, no.
00:09:47.700 Fine.
00:09:48.020 Write your columns.
00:09:48.820 Express your opinions.
00:09:49.760 But when you're in an incredibly narrow congressional body, those votes have consequence.
00:09:56.560 I will say also Thomas's votes and positions on Israel.
00:10:02.140 This was a bitter, nasty primary.
00:10:06.380 Yeah, it really was.
00:10:07.780 He had a line when he was conceding his race where he said it took some time to call his opponent to concede because it took some time to track him down in Tel Aviv.
00:10:17.360 Yeah.
00:10:17.720 That was gratuitous.
00:10:19.120 That was unnecessary. I get that Thomas is unhappy that he lost.
00:10:22.460 But that kind of nastiness, I wish he hadn't have done that.
00:10:29.320 There's no doubt. But for Donald Trump, Thomas Massey wins.
00:10:33.480 And so Trump endorsed against him, leaned in hard.
00:10:36.920 He wanted a House member who will vote with him.
00:10:39.740 And the challenger who beat Massey will win the win the general election.
00:10:44.520 He will vote with Trump consistently.
00:10:46.780 And then today we got the bombshell news in Ben, you're in my home state of Texas,
00:10:51.600 which is that President Trump endorsed Ken Paxton against John Cornyn.
00:10:56.980 As we're sitting here right now, the primary for Senate is unfolding in Texas.
00:11:02.220 We're in early votes.
00:11:03.900 I voted yesterday.
00:11:05.280 I voted on Monday, the first day of early votes.
00:11:07.080 And Texas early votes run from Monday to Friday.
00:11:09.600 And then election day is next Tuesday.
00:11:11.360 and this is already the most expensive primary in u.s history just the primary the two candidates
00:11:18.420 spent over 100 million dollars in the runoff we don't have the firm numbers yet but my guess is
00:11:24.940 well over 50 million dollars will have been spent in the runoff so i think all told this will be
00:11:29.800 over 150 million dollars in a primary so it's by a massive margin the most expensive senate primary
00:11:35.800 in the history of the country and look keyword by the way is primary because now you got money
00:11:42.960 going in the general election as well after this which is going to be a ton of money as well
00:11:46.780 listen we don't know for a fact what will happen on election day but but any observer will will
00:11:53.540 acknowledge that president trump's endorsement makes it significantly more likely that ken
00:11:58.360 paxton wins how much more likely i don't know but given what we've seen the last two weeks
00:12:03.500 nobody can dispute the trump endorsement is a big deal and and so this has been a powerful
00:12:08.920 demonstration of the president that he wants uh he wants members of the house he wants members
00:12:13.220 of the senate who stand with him who support with support him uh and and if they don't uh
00:12:18.840 there are real consequences you know it's interesting you mention that because there's
00:12:22.480 even some that reached out to me and i had media people they were calling saying hey we want to
00:12:27.480 have you talk about this exact issue just described with with this you know why did the president
00:12:32.300 endorsed when he did was it worth it should he just stay out of the primary with cornyn because
00:12:36.920 there are consequences uh cassie is another example of this with consequences because now
00:12:42.680 there's real talk about about the war powers act now i'm getting fast track because you have i think
00:12:47.540 it's four if i'm not mistaken as before we started the show the latest news i saw is four senate
00:12:52.740 republicans are now willing to go and say yeah we're gonna we're gonna now talk about the wars
00:12:58.520 Power Act and maybe taking away some power from the president. Yeah, so we had a vote today. The
00:13:03.680 Democrats have done, repeated, I think it's been about a dozen now, War Powers Act resolutions
00:13:09.660 trying to restrict the president's power to wage war in Iran to defend this nation and to take out
00:13:16.400 the Iranian regime. They have lost every one of those until today, and they've had voting in 0.76
00:13:23.760 favor of them has been susan collins and and lisa murkowski and ran paul but today for the first
00:13:29.900 time they won because they got a fourth vote bill cassidy and and i assume i've not talked to bill
00:13:34.620 i did not see bill today but i assume he's pissed he's pissed the president endorsed against him
00:13:39.060 he's pissed he lost and and i don't think it's a crazy assumption that he's going to be pissed
00:13:43.960 the rest of the year it's going to be complicated on votes um if cornyn loses i can imagine he's
00:13:50.960 going to be pissed as well. And so that dynamic, when we have a 53-47 majority, if we have several
00:13:57.800 members, Tom Tillis is not running again, and he has been quite expressed a lot of animosity
00:14:04.040 towards the president. Mitch McConnell's not running again. He's expressed a lot of animosity
00:14:07.940 towards the president. That makes the Senate complicated. If you've got a three-vote majority
00:14:12.440 and you have four or five senators who are pissed at the president, that ain't easy. By the way,
00:14:17.760 Another result that happened today was the Kentucky Senate race, so the race to replace Mitch McConnell.
00:14:23.800 Mitch is not running for re-election.
00:14:25.700 You had multiple candidates running, and it was close.
00:14:30.320 It was a bitterly, hotly contested race.
00:14:33.660 Millions of dollars were spent.
00:14:35.940 Trump, a week or two ago, endorsed Andy Barr, who's a congressman, and that basically ended the race.
00:14:43.240 Barr won the primary today, I think, by about 65 percent was the last number I saw.
00:14:47.760 But once Trump endorsed, the race was over. And so his endorsement clearly has a lot of potency.
00:14:57.320 And I think he wants senators and House members that are going to stand with him and fight for the agenda that he was elected to fight for.
00:15:03.960 And there's a reason that I have been Donald Trump's single strongest ally in the Senate for 10 years, because I believe in the agenda he's fighting for.
00:15:13.460 And listen, Trump, by far his greatest attribute is he has a cast iron backbone.
00:15:22.880 He is a courageous fighter and he's willing to stand up and fight.
00:15:26.500 And that I and so many other Republicans have been frustrated by Republicans who were jellyfish, who were afraid of a fight.
00:15:33.440 And so I'm glad to see the president standing up and standing up for what he believes in.
00:15:37.100 Is it a fair assessment to say that for Donald Trump, it may be really tough for him on the Senate side, as you mentioned, through the end of the year?
00:15:47.460 But there's a real now possibility that Donald Trump could have even more power in the Senate moving forward because of some of these changes that are coming.
00:15:56.920 And yeah, there's going to be retribution until they're out of office and, you know, at the end of the year, January, technically.
00:16:01.760 But like this could be very interesting to see that he went in knowing, hey, I'm going to have a hard, you know, five, six months here, seven months here.
00:16:10.920 But by golly, it's going to get a lot better for two more years after that.
00:16:15.220 Yeah. And look, if you look at how President Trump has done this, I don't think he has abused his decisions on this.
00:16:23.800 It has not been the case that if somebody disagrees with the president on one particular issue that is discreet and not that consequential, that he responds with, you know, massive retribution.
00:16:38.700 It has been, look, Cassidy voted to convict him and impeach him and remove him from office. 0.94
00:16:42.980 That's a big damn deal. 0.75
00:16:44.200 That's not a small vote. 0.98
00:16:46.520 The Indiana state legislators, look, the Democrats had gerrymandered the heck out of much of the country.
00:16:52.600 President Trump wanted Republicans to counterbalance that.
00:16:55.460 And the Indiana state legislators told the president, go jump in a lake.
00:16:59.420 That was significant.
00:17:01.320 You look at Thomas Massey.
00:17:03.160 It's not like Thomas Massey just voted against the president on one vote.
00:17:07.300 He voted against the president on almost every single vote over and over and over again.
00:17:11.760 I think it's fair to say Massey was fighting harder against Donald Trump than he was even the Democrats out there.
00:17:16.460 And I will say, at least the political retribution for Massey, I don't know how he could vote against Trump more.
00:17:23.120 Like at this point, when the Speaker of the House is counting votes in the House, he counts all the Democrats as a no and he counts Massey as a no.
00:17:31.140 So it's not like Massey can vote no twice.
00:17:33.780 He's going to vote no.
00:17:34.920 He was voting no before.
00:17:36.020 He'll keep voting no.
00:17:37.500 And so I think the President acted to say, look, I need people in the House who actually support me.
00:17:43.440 I'll tell you what, it's pretty awesome.
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00:19:12.280 All right, Senator, I want to move to the other big breaking news story.
00:19:15.780 And this is happening as you and I were getting ready to do the show.
00:19:19.700 There is word now that there could be indictments coming from the DOJ against the Castro regime family members.
00:19:27.580 This is significant.
00:19:29.080 Break it down.
00:19:29.860 And what does this actually mean if it does happen in the next 24 hours?
00:19:33.260 Yeah, we don't know a whole lot of details right now because it is Tuesday night.
00:19:37.940 The Department of Justice sent out an advisory.
00:19:40.400 there's an event tomorrow at miami's freedom tower to honor the victims of the brothers to
00:19:47.460 the rescue murders and acting attorney general todd blanche is expected to attend and a castro
00:19:55.300 indictment is is expected to be announced so what we are anticipating is that the department of
00:20:01.640 justice will indict raul castro raul castro is fidel castro's brother um fidel is dead raul is
00:20:08.480 still alive. And it is anticipated that the Department of Justice will indict Raul Castro,
00:20:13.580 presumably. We don't have the details, so this may not be exact. But the brothers to the rescue,
00:20:19.740 the Cubans, shot down a plane, and it resulted in a loss of life. And I'm assuming that is the
00:20:26.720 basis for the indictment. We don't know for sure. We'll find out tomorrow. But that
00:20:32.460 That indicting Raul Castro, assuming DOJ does that tomorrow, is a big deal.
00:20:38.500 And part of the reason it's a big deal is, remember the predicate for going in and seizing Maduro.
00:20:44.120 That's exactly what I was going to ask you is, is this Maduro 2.0?
00:20:48.240 I don't know.
00:20:49.640 But Maduro had been indicted.
00:20:51.520 Maduro had been indicted by a grand jury for trafficking, for narco-trafficking, for sending thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States.
00:20:59.860 And that indictment served as the predicate for the Delta Force going and arresting him.
00:21:05.860 And so, indicting Raul Castro, I don't know if we'll see a military conflict with Cuba.
00:21:11.880 I'm still a little skeptical that the president will engage in a shooting war with Cuba.
00:21:17.460 Right now, the president is imposing massive economic cost on Cuba.
00:21:23.340 So if you look at Cuba for the history since the Communist Revolution in 1959,
00:21:29.080 Cuba spent 40 years as essentially a vassal state of the Soviet Union,
00:21:33.360 and the Soviet Union supported Cuba with money and with oil.
00:21:37.260 And then when the Soviet Union collapsed, when America won the Cold War,
00:21:42.040 Cuba entered into a Faustian bargain with Venezuela. 0.59
00:21:47.500 And Venezuela, Cuba provided them soldiers, they provided them thugs.
00:21:52.120 You know, the soldiers that were guarding Maduro were all Cuban soldiers.
00:21:55.700 and they did this throughout Latin America 0.98
00:21:58.700 where they would provide thugs and enforcers 0.51
00:22:00.820 to abuse and suppress the populace 0.91
00:22:03.040 and Venezuela reciprocated
00:22:05.380 with money and with oil
00:22:07.020 and that's what kept Cuba's
00:22:08.960 communist regime alive
00:22:10.360 when President Trump arrested
00:22:13.060 Maduro the Venezuelan oil
00:22:14.920 and money dried up immediately
00:22:16.320 for a brief period of time Mexico
00:22:18.920 stepped in the gap and began providing
00:22:20.920 oil to Cuba and the Trump
00:22:22.840 administration quite rightly and this is
00:22:24.880 something i i publicly encouraged leaned on mexico and said cut off the oil stop sending oil to cuba
00:22:31.900 and they did mexico did and as a result cuba is in a massive economic crisis their public
00:22:38.940 transportation is all but halted they're almost entirely out of jet fuel we saw just a week ago
00:22:44.880 john ratcliffe the head of the cia in cuba meeting with the heads of multiple cuban agencies i don't
00:22:51.400 know what they were discussing uh but the economic crisis and the pressure on cuba is massive and i'll
00:22:56.400 say this ben look and by the way they're out of oil people need to understand like their lights
00:23:00.480 are off they're having blackouts they're there yeah no i mean it's it's an absolute their economy
00:23:05.620 is shut down and i also want to say look look it is a testament to what an extraordinary moment we
00:23:11.100 are in there is a very real possibility that in the next year we will see new governments
00:23:17.580 in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. Now, I want to be clear. I'm not naive. I'm not Pollyannish about
00:23:25.680 this. There are a thousand ways those could go wrong. So those are not guaranteed outcomes.
00:23:30.440 Yeah. But if we wake up a year from now and we have governments in Cuba, Iran, and Venezuela
00:23:36.140 who are not enemies of America, who want to be friends with America, that will be the single
00:23:41.320 greatest geopolitical shift since the fall of the Berlin Wall, since America won the Cold War.
00:23:47.340 And if you look at Cuba, my vision, I've never been to Cuba.
00:23:49.860 Obviously, my father was born, grew up there, fought in the revolution, was imprisoned, was tortured in Cuba.
00:23:55.660 And by the way, you want to go, but only if the regime falls, correct?
00:23:59.660 I do not want to go to a communist Cuba.
00:24:02.260 I will happily go and visit a free Cuba.
00:24:05.480 And that could happen in the next year.
00:24:08.260 And my vision, what I'd like to see happen in Cuba, I would like to see Cuba free.
00:24:14.680 I would like to see Cuba with free speech.
00:24:16.660 I'd like to see Cuba with free elections.
00:24:19.000 I would love to see Cuba as a haven for free enterprise.
00:24:23.880 Think a Singapore or Hong Kong before China took it over.
00:24:28.240 And I think they could have extraordinary prosperity.
00:24:31.120 And one of the amazing things is there are billions of dollars from Cuban Americans who would be eager to invest back in Cuba.
00:24:38.960 if you had a government that would respect the rule of law
00:24:43.060 and property rights and contract rights
00:24:44.720 and would welcome American investment.
00:24:47.260 And the Cuban beaches...
00:24:49.120 It's a beautiful place, by the way.
00:24:49.800 Tourism would explode.
00:24:51.660 The Cuban beaches, by all reports,
00:24:53.480 I've never seen them myself,
00:24:54.860 but everyone who has says they're among,
00:24:57.280 if not the most beautiful in the world.
00:24:59.460 And it's only 90 miles away from America.
00:25:03.160 So it's a very quick flight. 0.96
00:25:05.100 Cuba could boom,
00:25:06.780 could enjoy enormous prosperity if the communist regime falls.
00:25:11.780 And I know President Trump wants that to happen, and so I hope and pray that's what occurs.
00:25:15.920 Final question on this.
00:25:17.240 If something does happen in Cuba the same way that we saw with Maduro,
00:25:22.620 where we actually take someone with the last name Castro,
00:25:27.000 how significant is that in the moment in history and for all the victims of the Castro regime? 0.99
00:25:32.460 Look, the Castros are among the most evil people to have ever lived. 0.99
00:25:35.500 They have ruled a regime of tyranny, of murder, of torture, of oppression, that they took an economy. 1.00
00:25:44.120 You look at Cuba when the Cuban Revolution happened, was the number one sugar producer at all of Latin America.
00:25:50.240 Cuba is like the land that time forgot.
00:25:52.500 They strangled the economy.
00:25:54.640 There's misery.
00:25:56.000 There's poverty.
00:25:57.400 You look at Cuba.
00:25:58.760 The cars that most of the people drive are cars from the 1950s.
00:26:03.700 It was like just time froze, because communism is a failed economic model.
00:26:09.500 It's a failed governmental model.
00:26:11.840 And so you have cars from the 1950s that they're stitching together.
00:26:15.000 The mechanics, they're almost holding them together with rubber bands and bubble gum.
00:26:19.160 But look, the misery and poverty that the communists have inflicted on that nation, enough is enough.
00:26:26.940 And we have a moment right now where we could see finally, finally, finally a Cuba Libre, a free Cuba.
00:26:32.580 get rewarded just for shopping with simon plus don't miss memorial day sales at simon premium
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00:27:45.860 Have a great day.
00:27:46.460 I want to move to some fireworks that took place today in the Senate Judiciary
00:27:54.720 where they were talking, you guys were talking about the issue of gerrymandering
00:27:59.540 and it got very heated between you and another senator. Walk us through that.
00:28:06.040 Well, we had a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on racial gerrymandering and the
00:28:09.480 Supreme Court's recent decision making clear that you cannot draw congressional lines discriminating
00:28:15.020 based on race. And the Democrats have been losing their minds about this. They've been screaming
00:28:19.000 that it's Jim Crow. And Maisie Hirono, the very, very liberal Democrat from Hawaii, she spoke right 0.67
00:28:25.420 before me. And she gave a whole speech about how Republicans are racist, how they want to hurt
00:28:34.120 minorities. And it was a typically vicious, false, slandering speech. I'll tell you, I had a whole 0.97
00:28:43.320 set of remarks prepared for me. I had a whole set of questions prepared for me. I did not ask a
00:28:49.040 single one of the questions my team had prepared. What I did instead was just off the cuff. It was
00:28:54.720 reacting to Maisie Hirono's comments. Give a listen and hear what I had to say.
00:29:00.800 Mr. Chairman, just a moment ago, our colleague Senator Hirono said there's a lot more to say,
00:29:05.900 and indeed she's right. And in fact, I want to go back to her comments. She began by saying we
00:29:11.980 have a long history of racial discrimination in this country. That's undoubtedly correct. 1.00
00:29:16.700 And then she said, quote, we had poll taxes, we had literacy tests, we even had tests of how many
00:29:23.600 jelly beans are in a jar. Mr. Chamberlain, when Senator Hirono says we had poll taxes,
00:29:30.500 I want to ask you who we is. And in particular, what party was it that implemented poll taxes
00:29:36.780 in the South? I don't want to necessarily speak in every single case, but I'm pretty confident
00:29:41.480 it was mostly the Democrats. And what party was it that put literacy tests in place in the South?
00:29:47.000 Same answer, mostly the Democrats. And what party was it that had tests like how many jelly beans
00:29:51.420 are in a bottle? The Democrats. Tell me, what party were the founders of the Ku Klux Klan from?
00:29:59.900 I'm pretty sure that was the Democrats. Indeed. In fact, Nathan Bedford Forrest, 0.90
00:30:03.820 the founder of the Klan, was a delegate to the 1860 Democrat National Convention.
00:30:09.660 What party wrote the Jim Crow laws in the South? The Democrats. 0.58
00:30:15.020 And so on this side of the aisle were members of the Republican Party. Who was the first
00:30:20.220 Republican president? Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party was literally founded
00:30:26.460 to oppose slavery. We came into existence because slavery was a grotesque evil,
00:30:32.940 and it was President Lincoln, the first Republican president, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation,
00:30:38.940 who won the Civil War, and that resulted in the freeing of the slaves and the passage of the 13th,
00:30:45.340 14th and 15th amendments by the way fast forward to the civil rights era bull connor one of the
00:30:52.620 most noxiously racist politicians what party was he from he was a democrat the democrats for the
00:30:59.900 entire history of their party have been a party based on racial discrimination they affirmatively
00:31:07.340 embrace it they support it let me ask you mr grime is discrimination is discriminating based
00:31:13.260 on race consistent with the united states constitution no uh what does the 14th amendment
00:31:19.660 say about discrimination based on race it's prohibited what does the 15th amendment say
00:31:25.160 about discriminating based on race and in particular drawing congressional lines and
00:31:30.200 explicitly discriminating based on race it's prohibited now the democrats are fond of telling
00:31:37.160 this story that is, and I wish I could find a kinder way to say it, a flat-out lie, that without
00:31:43.240 discriminating based on race, that no African Americans will be elected and no Hispanics will
00:31:50.340 be elected. Indeed, there was one fellow online who was a vocal left-wing spokesperson who tweeted
00:31:56.680 out, if I'm advising anybody to run for president, they sure as hell better have a solution to how 0.86
00:32:01.960 you make sure that it's not another hundred years before another black person can represent 0.73
00:32:08.720 South Carolina. So that's a typical Democrat statement, that we cannot elect a black person 0.97
00:32:14.700 in South Carolina without discriminating based on race. I want to ask you, Mr. Chamberlain,
00:32:21.620 who is the junior senator from South Carolina right now? That would be Tim Scott.
00:32:26.420 And, all right, I'll tell you what I said online.
00:32:29.580 I said, hey, Grock, who is Tim Scott, and why do Democrats think he isn't black?
00:32:35.200 And, by the way, was Tim Scott elected because of a gerrymandered district drawn only to elect an African American?
00:32:42.240 No, he won statewide.
00:32:43.080 He won statewide. 0.65
00:32:45.660 By the way, the Democrat position is you can only elect African Americans with a gerrymandered district.
00:32:51.360 I will point out Burgess Owens, an African-American, is elected in the majority white district in the state of Utah.
00:32:56.720 He's a Republican.
00:32:58.140 Byron Donalds, another African-American, is elected in the majority white district in Florida.
00:33:02.660 He is a Republican.
00:33:04.080 John James, another African-American, is elected in the majority white district in Michigan.
00:33:09.260 He is a Republican.
00:33:10.240 And my own congressman, Wesley Hunt, who represents me in the House of Representatives,
00:33:15.220 he is elected in the majority white district.
00:33:17.560 He is a Republican. 0.52
00:33:18.480 And yet, in the Democrats' world, you're not black if you're not a liberal Democrat. 0.81
00:33:24.060 There is an arrogance to African-American voters. 0.75
00:33:27.360 By the way, they also have that same arrogance to Hispanic voters. 0.56
00:33:31.920 They say you're not Hispanic if you're not a liberal Democrat.
00:33:36.120 Well, I'll tell you, I am proud to be the first Hispanic ever elected to represent the state of Texas in the United States Senate.
00:33:43.800 And Mr. Chamberlain, in my election in Texas, was I elected in the gerrymandered district that could only elect an Hispanic?
00:33:51.820 No, you were elected statewide.
00:33:54.900 Discrimination based on race is wrong.
00:33:59.160 Final question.
00:34:00.700 The Democrats are now clutching their pearls that seats drawn to elect liberal Democrats in the South are going to go away. 1.00
00:34:08.500 You may get black Republicans instead. 0.85
00:34:10.100 indeed in Tennessee, they're freaking out that a liberal white guy who's a Democrat
00:34:15.140 is likely going to lose his seat to an African American woman who's a Republican, and they
00:34:19.700 say that's horrible racial oppression.
00:34:24.440 My final question is this, if you look nationwide, which party has egregiously abused gerrymandering
00:34:34.400 for decades?
00:34:35.400 Parties are guilty of it, but who has been the worst offender, and in particular, take New England, take Massachusetts, take Connecticut, take Rhode Island, take Maine, take Vermont, take New Hampshire?
00:34:47.120 How many Republicans are elected from all of New England in the House of Representatives?
00:34:51.360 I think the answer to that is zero.
00:34:52.700 Zero. They've drawn every district in a naked gerrymander, and yet they're very upset that their illegal pursuit of power has now been stopped by the Supreme Court that is enforcing the Constitution and prohibiting the racial gerrymandering and discrimination their party is built on.
00:35:09.800 Senator Padilla.
00:35:11.020 Mr. Chairman, part of personal privilege.
00:35:13.620 Sure.
00:35:14.220 I feel personally aggrieved to sit here and to be lectured by my colleague from Texas.
00:35:22.760 And this reminds me of the time when he was first elected to the Senate and the Judiciary Committee had a hearing on gun safety.
00:35:31.020 And he felt a need to lecture Dianne Feinstein, who was a leader on gun safety legislation.
00:35:37.300 And he took that opportunity to lecture Dianne Feinstein about gun safety and her leadership on the issue.
00:35:44.220 And she said to him something along the lines of I did not sit here on this committee for however many years she did only to be lectured by you.
00:35:53.580 And that is how I feel. So why don't you just stop lecturing the rest of us just because you think you are the smartest person in the world doesn't mean the rest of us agree to that.
00:36:02.900 OK, thank you. Senator Hirono, I knew Dianne Feinstein.
00:36:06.900 I served with Dianne Feinstein and you're not Dianne Feinstein.
00:36:09.460 All right. Senator, I just got one question for you.
00:36:12.080 You're not a big morning person, so who made you mad this morning, and what did you eat?
00:36:16.920 Because that was brilliant. 0.99
00:36:18.420 Well, look, I couldn't stand seeing the Democrats being hypocritical and dishonest. 0.99
00:36:23.960 And, you know, it was striking. 0.98
00:36:25.920 Maisie Hirono said, I'm offended.
00:36:27.700 I'm offended that you said this.
00:36:29.820 You know what she didn't do?
00:36:31.380 She didn't dispute a single word I said, because every word I said was factual.
00:36:35.680 She didn't dispute that her party has been viciously racist since the very beginning of that party,
00:36:40.780 that it embraces racial gerrymandering.
00:36:42.920 Like every word of substance, she just, and this is a classic Democrat tactic,
00:36:47.900 how dare you speak the truth?
00:36:49.680 I'm offended by the truth.
00:36:50.940 And obviously my reference at the end, I was quoting a Democrat.
00:36:54.480 If you'll recall when George W. Bush, or not George W. Bush,
00:36:59.760 George H.W. Bush was running for president, and he was running with Dan Quayle,
00:37:05.160 and he was running against Michael Dukakis, and his running mate was Lloyd Benson,
00:37:09.020 and Lloyd Benson was a senator from Texas.
00:37:11.700 And Dan Quayle, when he was nominated to be vice president,
00:37:14.900 was a very young senator.
00:37:16.280 I think he was 41 or 42, and he did not have a ton of experience.
00:37:20.320 And in the vice presidential debate between Dan Quayle and Lloyd Benson,
00:37:25.060 Dan Quayle had a riff that I suspect was prepared by his team
00:37:29.400 where he said, look, I'm the same age that John Kennedy was
00:37:32.260 when he became president.
00:37:34.460 And it was, I think, their line to say, gosh, I'm not inexperienced
00:37:38.520 because Kennedy and I are the same age.
00:37:40.560 And Lloyd Benson looked at him and said,
00:37:43.040 Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy.
00:37:46.880 Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.
00:37:50.020 I served with Jack Kennedy.
00:37:52.820 Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.
00:37:56.100 And that obviously was the riff I was using for Maisie.
00:38:01.900 Diane Feinstein, my first year, 1.00
00:38:03.820 we did have a fiery blow up over gun control 1.00
00:38:05.900 because she was a big advocate of gun control.
00:38:09.800 I am a big defender of the Second Amendment.
00:38:13.380 And when I asked her a specific question about the constitutional basis for what she was proposing,
00:38:18.580 she got very upset.
00:38:19.760 And she, much like Mazie Hirono, she said, I am not a sixth grader.
00:38:24.800 And she was horrified that I would actually ask her the constitutional basis for what she was trying to do. 0.82
00:38:29.680 uh maizey does not have she could not refute a word i said so instead she she resorted to 0.88
00:38:39.780 to insults and and emotional offense and and look i think that's a fairly typical example
00:38:46.560 of where the democrats are truth and facts are not their strong points and they're not going
00:38:51.320 going to engage in them instead they're going to try to engage in deception and and and sadly that
00:38:56.820 that that was the entire democrat theme in the entire hearing no it really was don't forget we
00:39:02.580 do this show monday wednesday friday we'll have a lot for you on friday's episode i have a feeling
00:39:07.000 especially after that press conference in cuba so make sure you join us then hit that subscribe or
00:39:11.760 auto download button you can also watch this show on youtube and please write us a five-star review
00:39:16.460 it makes a huge difference on the charts and the center and i will see you back here friday morning
00:39:20.940 Get rewarded just for shopping with Simon Plus. Don't miss Memorial Day sales at Simon Premium Outlets and Mills. You can get points at scores of stores, access to exclusive offers and exciting surprises. You've got an extra day off, so make it pay off with the best deals from brands you love all in one place. It's a summer kickoff thing. Join today at SimonPlus.com. Rewards program terms apply.
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