Ted Cruz and Ben Fergus break down what it's like to attend an Inauguration weekend in Washington, D.C. and the events that took place throughout the weekend. They also discuss TikTok's ban on streaming services and what it means for the future of the space.
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00:06:39.380I think today you are going to see somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 executive orders that are going to come down.
00:06:45.100It is – and the election results were so overwhelming for Trump to win, the popular vote for Trump to win of the seven swing states, all seven, with a big majority in the Senate, 53 Republicans, a majority in the House.
00:07:03.720And so I will say there's an excitement in the air.
00:07:06.340You also don't have the same anger and resistance that we had in 2017.
00:07:15.000It was such a resounding result that the left really is in shock.
00:07:20.240But there's not the disbelief there was in 2017.
00:07:24.320In 2017, they thought this is a clear aberration.
00:07:28.740It makes no sense, and it will be over very, very soon.
00:07:31.540They now recognize, wow, this is what the voters wanted.
00:07:34.440And so the feel is fundamentally different.
00:07:39.120You know, after Friday on Saturday, I went then, had meetings, went and spoke to the Texas State Society, which was great to see all the folks up from Texas, and then went to a party that was hosted by Peter Thiel and David Sachs, and that was kind of a tech artificial intelligence party.
00:08:01.800And as you know, Peter Thiel and I have been friends for 25 years, so that was fun to see a lot of the techies.
00:08:08.620I then went to the Hispanic inaugural ball, which was massive, a couple thousand people.
00:08:32.080But it is, when people are like, oh, I'm going to go to D.C., like, if you don't have an invite, it is very different than if you're there and you're in the know.
00:08:39.940And that's one of the things I think is actually the excitement around it, is that you may not get one of these every four years.
00:08:44.780It can be eight years in between, like we saw with Obama.
00:08:47.920So when they get to celebrate your team winning, it's a big celebration.
00:09:20.140But at the same time, I've got a job to do.
00:09:22.320And so, you know, the Hispanic inaugural ball, I was one of the honorary co-chairmen of the ball.
00:09:27.760And so I had an obligation to be there and talk to the folks there and congratulate everyone.
00:09:32.940And the enthusiasm that's there is enormous.
00:09:35.060I went from there to the America First Policy Institute ball, which is, you know, AFPI is a big think tank now that came out of Trump world.
00:10:16.220He took Air Force One from Mar-a-Lago up to D.C. and then went to Blair House.
00:10:20.840And Blair House is also where visiting heads of state will stay.
00:10:23.640So if the British prime minister is in town, the U.S. government will put him up in Blair House.
00:10:29.320And it's it's a very nice residence right across from the White House.
00:10:32.500So that's where Trump is until he's sworn in and moves into the White House.
00:10:36.880And and we had we literally arrived at 930 for breakfast and we left shortly before noon.
00:10:42.500I mean, and it was he basically just kind of talked stream of consciousness for two and a half hours.
00:10:48.740And we all talked back and forth and had a really and he was in in in great spirits.
00:10:54.340And and then on Sunday night, the big thing that is Sunday night is black tie and boots, which is the Texas State Society ball.
00:11:03.660That is always a huge it's it's typically the hottest ticket in town that actually the Texas ball has always been considered probably the top ball and most fun.
00:11:14.840And and then you get to Monday morning and Monday morning is is is is the real shebang when when when Trump takes the oath of office that will happen noon today.
00:11:25.540So let's talk about also the big change.
00:11:29.300And there was everybody saying, hey, was it the weather?
00:12:13.420As it so happened, I was in the office of the speaker of the house and I spent an hour in the speaker's office with with the speaker and me.
00:12:21.680And Lindsey Graham, the three of us talking about the issue we did a podcast on last week, which is whether to do one reconciliation bill or two reconciliation bills.
00:12:31.400And as we talked about on that podcast, the speaker disagrees with with Lindsey and me and with with just about every senator.
00:12:41.920And we're spending about an hour talking about that.
00:12:43.720And I got to say, as I was walking into the meeting with the speaker, we were talking about the inauguration and the fact that we were all expecting to be freezing our asses off sitting outside.
00:12:54.280You know, typically for an inauguration, you're out on the steps of the Capitol.
00:12:58.760And Monday is projected to be very, very cold to be in the teens.
00:13:04.160And and I'll tell you what I was telling the speaker.
00:13:07.400Look, I just want to make sure that they don't like Secret Service doesn't drag us out there two hours early and have us just sit there and freeze way before the president gets there.
00:13:17.100And I'm like, you know, come on, Mr. Speaker, you can get this done.
00:13:20.360We can get out there right before it starts instead of having to, like, turn into ice boxes and have a bunch of octogenarians getting pneumonia.
00:13:27.840Yeah. Well, while we're meeting with the speaker, we get he gets handed a note card and said, oh, well, problem solved.
00:13:34.280Trump just decided to move it indoors.
00:14:10.100There are 535 senators and members of the House.
00:14:13.840If you got 600 total, there ain't a whole lot more people than than the members of Congress and an additional 65, 70 people.
00:14:23.000So so virtually everyone who was planning to go.
00:14:28.200There were thousands and thousands of seated seats that people had flown up for tickets.
00:14:33.520There were many, many more thousands of standing room only seats that would that would extend for blocks and blocks.
00:14:40.580And I do feel really bad for all the folks who came up here who were planning to see it.
00:14:45.220I mean, it's an expensive trip to fly to D.C.
00:14:47.460They were excited and they found out, well, OK, now we're not going to get to see it.
00:14:51.300But, you know, what most people are doing is is going somewhere where there's a TV and it's warm to go watch it.
00:14:58.960I can tell you, I had a bunch of of our top supporters that that flew up here.
00:15:04.680And so we've we've tried to we've been talking with them and trying to help folks find find warm places.
00:15:10.400We've got some folks that we've got a sports bar where they're going to come come watch it there.
00:15:14.860But it a lot of people were left just just in the cold.
00:15:21.240I will say this, though, if it had been outside, you would have people, particularly in the standing room, only seats who might be out there six hours or more.
00:15:30.380And I did. And that's one thing people don't I don't think understood because I had someone calling like, hey, we got seats.
00:15:35.340We're going to go and, you know, it should be fine.
00:15:38.120We'll just get there right before. And I'm like, it doesn't work that way.
00:15:40.120There's incredible security protocol. And you're out there for hours.
00:15:43.660I remember it during oh four. It pushes at a seated seat right up at the front.
00:15:49.060And that seat was frozen solid when we sat down.
00:15:53.120It was a solid basically sitting on an ice cube.
00:15:56.600And so even if you think, oh, well, you have a seat and you can sit down, I would have actually preferred to be standing so you could move around a little bit.
00:16:03.140Because when it's cold in D.C. and windy, it is cold and windy.
00:16:06.680And look, a lot of people would be getting there at like six and seven in the morning and the swearing in doesn't happen till noon.
00:16:13.060So that's a lot of hours to be out in the cold and wind and ice.
00:16:18.460You know, Heidi's in town for it. Caroline's in town for it.
00:16:21.800I had advised them they were going to have heavy jackets and wrap up.
00:16:25.040I'll tell you, I bought a new set of long johns.
00:16:27.100I went on Amazon and ordered some long johns.
00:16:29.100And actually, we had there were hundreds of tickets that I gave out of Texans who wanted to come and asked me to.
00:16:35.220And so we gave out hundreds of tickets.
00:16:38.040And one of the things I had my team do with everyone that was going to get a ticket is is is I got them hand warmers and feet warmers.
00:16:44.420I figured, all right, if they're going to be freezing, you know, the things that you take skiing that like you can put in your gloves or put in your boots and warm your feet and hands.
00:16:51.380And I thought that was a nice thing to give the Texans who were coming up here.
00:16:55.280But I will say this because they canceled it.
00:16:59.000Number one, look, I'm glad you've got a bunch of members of Congress who are in their 80s.
00:17:03.220I mean, you could easily have had someone catch pneumonia and die.
00:17:06.240Yeah, I'm sure Trump was thinking of William Henry Harrison, who was president.
00:17:12.400He gave a speech on a very cold Washington Day at inauguration speech, and he died 30 days later.
00:17:18.880He is the shortest president in U.S. history.
00:17:22.160And, you know, Trump at 78, I'm sure that precedent occurred to him.
00:17:26.840You know, I can't think it would be very healthy for Joe Biden at his age and in his health to have him sit a couple hours out in the freezing cold.
00:17:33.940And for that matter, the thousands of people standing there, we probably would have had some people get frostbite.
00:17:41.240We might have had some serious health issues.
00:17:42.940So I do think that was a major factor and behind President Trump's decision to move it indoors.
00:17:51.420So here's to put it in perspective, your family that's up there for it.
00:17:54.780Do they get to go in the rotunda for the swearing in?
00:17:58.280So just and I knew the answer, but it was just to put it in perspective.
00:18:01.920That's how different it's going to be, that even senators' own family members who thought they were going to watch the inauguration, they're going to be watching it on TV as well.
00:18:10.820So what works to each member of Congress has a spouse ticket, and the spouse ticket, when it's outside, they're seated nearby, and you get one ticket for that.
00:18:21.360Those tickets are not even going to be in the rotunda.
00:18:23.960They're going to be in the Capitol Visitor Center.
00:18:25.780So they will be watching it on TV nearby, but they won't be physically there able to see it.
00:18:32.640So let's talk about afterwards what's going to happen, because you mentioned this earlier, that this Trump administration is just operating at a different level of sophistication than 2016.
00:18:47.260It is a different level of readiness, and this is going to be a huge day for the country, specifically for people that voted for change and voted for safety and security and secure borders.
00:19:01.420The number of things that we're going to get done right away after Trump is sworn in is significant.
00:19:08.800You know, this is something I talked about.
00:19:10.240So I did two other podcasts this weekend.
00:19:12.120I went on with Barry Weiss on the Free Press podcast and talked with her, and then I also went on the All In podcast.
00:19:20.740Both of them I talked about verdict and then urged listeners of those podcasts to come over here and subscribe to verdict.
00:19:27.320But, you know, we talked about what to expect today, and shortly after the president is sworn in, we are going to see a flurry of executive orders.
00:19:36.940And I think we're going to see something on the order of magnitude of 100 executive orders signed today.
00:20:43.680And the phrase that's being used is shock and awe.
00:20:46.920And I think that's exactly what it is.
00:20:49.300And I'll tell you, Ben, in my view, I think there is a fixed quantum of outrage.
00:20:55.100And I actually call that quantum the arsenic quantum.
00:20:58.780And so you and I both remember the first term of George W. Bush, Bush 43.
00:21:05.380So when Bush 43 came in in 2001, one of the first things the Bush administration did is it rescinded an EPA reg that had regulated how much arsenic can be in water.
00:21:17.980And it changed it from one microscopic amount of arsenic to a different microscopic amount of arsenic.
00:21:26.160And for six weeks, the press lost their mind and their hair was on fire.
00:21:31.100And they said the evil Republicans are trying to poison our children with arsenic.
00:21:34.740Now, I think today, when Trump issues all of these executive orders, you're going to see the same outrage, except instead of all directed at arsenic, it's going to be at all 100.
00:21:45.840And I actually don't think the outrage gets any greater.
00:21:49.300That's how much outrage there is, which is why I'm expecting today to be an extraordinary day.
00:21:55.720I hope and believe these orders are focused on delivering on our promises and carrying through on the mandate from the election.
00:22:02.860And if and when they do that, that's a very good thing.
00:22:05.940There's also a different aspect of this, this winning a second time after losing.
00:22:11.280And that is, if these hundred executive orders that are signed today make the media mad, the press mad, and they lose their mind,
00:22:22.040I think there's a lot of Americans like, good, he's doing exactly what I sent him back to Washington to do.
00:22:27.960And you didn't have that type of mandate feel, I think, in 16 like you do now.
00:24:13.080And it's a Chinese company that is under the direct control of the Chinese communist government.
00:24:17.820The Chinese communist government uses TikTok and uses it in a way that I think poses a very real national security risk to the United States.
00:24:27.080There are some 170 million Americans that use TikTok, overwhelmingly young people, teenagers, young adults, young professionals.
00:24:38.360And the Chinese communist government uses it, number one, to engage in espionage, to monitor what those Americans are doing, what they're saying, potentially where they are.
00:24:49.460They have the potential to monitor their locations.
00:24:51.900But number two, the Chinese communist government uses TikTok aggressively to push propaganda, to push propaganda that is, number one, pro-China.
00:25:03.300And they suppress content, things like Tiananmen Square.
00:25:07.560They suppress content about the one million Uyghurs that are in concentration camps in China.
00:25:13.380They suppress content about Hong Kong or China or Taiwan.
00:25:16.960But they also push anti-American content.
00:25:38.780I got to say that the same company that owns TikTok, they have a TikTok version in China that's very different from the TikTok in America.
00:25:48.120The Chinese kids that are on TikTok, they're getting videos on math and calculus, and they're limited in the number of hours they can do it.
00:25:55.440But it's developing the kind of skills that are going to make them really effective in life.
00:25:58.940You know, the Chinese kids are getting calculus, and our kids are getting chewing Tide Pods.
00:26:06.340The Chinese communist government is not doing it because they love our kids and they want to see a good outcome.
00:26:12.440We also see heavily skewed political propaganda.
00:26:17.240So, for example, anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah propaganda is rampant on TikTok and at a complete differential, wildly different ratios than on other social media platforms.
00:26:34.080And so, given China's malevolent use of TikTok, Congress passed a bipartisan bill designed to force China to divest from TikTok.
00:26:46.380And the terms of the bill said that TikTok had to shut down by January 19th unless it had been sold and was no longer under the ownership or control of the Chinese communist government.
00:27:02.740Now, TikTok has done next to nothing to comply with the efforts to sell itself.
00:27:08.620In fact, they brazenly said, we will not sell.
00:27:12.240Instead, they've tried to do a couple of things.
00:27:14.280Number one, they've tried to engage in litigation.
00:28:13.020And so TikTok, for most of Sunday, was shut down.
00:28:16.520And then Sunday afternoon, they turned it back on.
00:28:19.560And they turned it back on because Trump had indicated that he intends to give TikTok another 90 days.
00:28:27.040The statute has a provision that the president can extend the ban for 90 days in order to help facilitate a sale of TikTok.
00:28:35.940And Trump has said that's what he intends to do.
00:28:38.040Look, my view on this, if in the next 90 days, TikTok follows through and sells the company to a non-Chinese buyer, a non-Chinese government-controlled buyer, ideally to an American company, that will be a very, very good thing.
00:28:58.520The objective of this law, it's important to understand, the objective of this law was never to ban TikTok.
00:29:04.780The objective of this law was to force the Chinese communist government to end its ownership and control of TikTok.
00:29:12.980I don't know if that's going to happen.
00:29:33.060Your opinion, if it is a threat to national security and to our way of life, and that's why you say it's so important for it to be sold to a non-Chinese controlled company.
00:30:31.660And as I said, I don't know what President Trump will do, but certainly my counsel to him will be, use this law as leverage and let's force China to sell TikTok.
00:30:42.660Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how this happens.
00:30:46.860Let me ask you one final question on this inauguration day.
00:30:50.260Didn't you just have a final question?
00:31:03.220That's my story, and I'm sticking with it.
00:31:04.920When you look at where we are, January 20th, 2025, how excited are you for what we're about to witness compared to January 20th of 2017 because of how prepared we are this time?
00:31:23.280Much more excited because I think we're much more prepared.
00:31:27.320As I said, the initial Trump team, they'd never done this before.
00:31:30.520The initial Trump White House had never worked in the federal government.
00:31:33.600I think there's just a much greater level of experience and also awareness of the deep state, awareness of the career bureaucrats who fight against a common sense, free market, freedom-oriented agenda.
00:31:49.340And look, as I look at this array of cabinet nominees, I'm really excited.
00:31:52.820And I think the most consistent characterization of these or characteristic of these nominees is that they're change agents.
00:32:02.780They're disruptors, and they're going into these agencies to change and disrupt how they operate.
00:32:36.520And I can tell you, I really think also verdict is going to be really fun this year.
00:32:40.820I think we're going to have a lot of guests that because of this victory and get to cover a lot more victories than we've ever got to do before.