Verdict with Ted Cruz - April 19, 2025


Trump Victory on Deporting Students, Harvard Loses Serious Funding plus EPA Chief Zeldin on CA Wildfire Clean Up Week In Review

Topics
midland rig trip impressions
Hosted by
Ted Cruz
Mentioned
Donald Trump Joe Biden Verdict Billy Bob Thornton Ben Ferguson Jennifer Stewart Caitlin Clark Penny Pritzker Barack Obama Alan Garber Lee Zeldin Pam Bondi Mahmoud Khalil Pete Buttigieg Sam Harris Chuck Schumer Jamie Comans Will Johnson Bill Holmes JD Vance and 1 more
American Energy Dominance： 1 on 1 w EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Dems Double Down on Illegal Alien Gang Members & Shocking Supreme Court Decision Halting Deportations

Episode Stats


Length

29 minutes

Words per minute

165.62

Word count

4,935

Sentence count

360

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is joined by Ben Ferguson (D-NJ) to discuss a major victory for President Trump, an immigration judge's ruling allowing him to deport pro-Hamas protesters, and Harvard being cut off from billions of dollars in federal funding.

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 .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.560 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.120 Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:00:07.600 The Week in Review, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:10.040 And here are some of the big stories that you may have missed that we talked about this week.
00:00:13.460 First up, a major victory for Donald Trump by immigration judge that has now said,
00:00:19.200 yes, he can deport foreign students who come to America and advocate violence against Jews.
00:00:26.340 And up next, Harvard has been receiving billions of dollars from us, the taxpayers.
00:00:32.480 Well, the Trump administration is now saying we're cutting off a lot of that money.
00:00:36.860 I'll give you the details why as well.
00:00:39.120 And finally, the EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin joined us to talk about the California wildfire cleanup that Trump inherited
00:00:46.060 and how the Trump administration was able to get it done quickly.
00:00:50.220 It's the Week in Review, and it starts right now.
00:00:53.300 I want to move to this other big issue also that we mentioned earlier,
00:00:57.340 and it was a massive victory for the Trump administration when it came to an immigration judge
00:01:03.740 doing a major ruling on deporting students that are advocating for the death and destruction of students on campus
00:01:11.000 that, by the way, are Jewish, are advocating their support for terrorist organizations. 0.76
00:01:16.280 And this all comes out of Columbia University, where it has become a major point of, all right, who's going to win this?
00:01:24.400 Is the Trump administration going to win this, or are the radicals on the left going to win?
00:01:28.240 And it was a big win for Donald Trump this week.
00:01:30.920 Well, it was a win.
00:01:32.180 I don't know that it was a massive victory because it's clearly right under the law.
00:01:36.200 So it was a win that was going to happen, but I'm glad it did.
00:01:40.560 And so, listen, one of the things that President Trump is doing that is exactly right
00:01:45.120 is the Trump administration is deporting those who engage in anti-Israel, anti-American protests,
00:01:53.320 who are foreign students, who are on student visas, who are non-American citizens.
00:01:57.560 You don't have an entitlement to be here.
00:01:59.240 And look, we talked about during the Biden administration, when these viciously anti-Israel,
00:02:05.020 anti-Semitic protests were going on, that the Biden administration could do something about it,
00:02:09.820 but they didn't want to because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Chuck Schumer, they agree
00:02:14.980 with the pro-Hamas protesters.
00:02:17.460 They agree with the radicals.
00:02:18.920 And so you didn't see the Department of Justice investigating them.
00:02:22.080 You didn't see them following the money.
00:02:23.400 You didn't see them trying to do anything, really, to protect the Jewish students on campus
00:02:29.960 who were being targeted for harassment and threats of violence.
00:02:33.060 Well, you and I, in fact, one of the very first pods we did in the new administration
00:02:37.460 is we interviewed Pam Bondi at CPAC.
00:02:40.660 And in that podcast with then-Attorney General Bondi right after she got confirmed, she made clear
00:02:48.120 then they're going to go after these radicals.
00:02:50.400 And I will say immigration law gives considerable flexibility to the administration to decide
00:03:00.980 who that is here on a permissive visa can be sent home.
00:03:06.840 And so in this case, you had Mahmoud Khalil, who was a Colombia anti-Israel protester,
00:03:12.840 who the administration is in the process of deporting.
00:03:15.960 And he is challenging that in court.
00:03:18.900 And an immigration judge ruled that he can be deported due to his involvement in last year's
00:03:26.540 pro-Hamas protest at Colombia.
00:03:28.700 And this is a judge, Judge Jamie Comans, and he said the government had met its burden of proof.
00:03:38.220 I think that's clearly right.
00:03:41.900 And the Department of Homeland Security laid out how Khalil misrepresented himself on his green card
00:03:47.920 application.
00:03:48.620 And in particular, he was not upfront about his involvement with organizations he's involved with.
00:03:55.360 He willfully failed to disclose his employment with the Syrian office in the British embassy in Beirut
00:04:03.460 when he applied for permanent U.S. residency.
00:04:07.220 And what the federal government argued is that made him inadmissible at the time he was given his green card
00:04:15.420 because of, quote, fraud or willful misrepresentation of material fact.
00:04:20.440 He also failed to disclose his work for UNRWA.
00:04:25.780 And, you know, UNRWA, we've talked about before, is the U.N. agency that has literally been in bed with Hamas.
00:04:32.480 You had multiple Hamas terrorists working at UNRWA.
00:04:35.720 UNRWA has given significant material aid to Hamas terrorists.
00:04:40.900 And the court ruled that, look, that is ample grounds to deport him.
00:04:51.380 I think that ruling is clearly right.
00:04:55.080 And if you looked at Khalil, you looked at his writings, this is someone who is viciously anti-Israel and anti-American.
00:05:04.520 And, in fact, he's using the deportation to just rail against America and what a hostile environment it is.
00:05:13.240 And, in fact, Khalil's argument, here's something he wrote.
00:05:20.940 He wrote an op-ed in Colombia, you know, attacking how dare you deport me.
00:05:24.460 And he says something.
00:05:28.400 He accuses the Colombia administrators of manufacturing, quote,
00:05:33.680 public hysteria about anti-Semitism without once mentioning the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered under bombs made of your dollars.
00:05:44.700 So understand, this guy's complaint is that the Colombia administrators stood too strongly against anti-Semitism.
00:05:52.540 They let their entire campus get taken over.
00:05:54.800 They let Jewish students be terrorized. 1.00
00:05:57.080 They let campus buildings be taken over. 0.97
00:05:59.620 They were weak and infective, which is why the president of Colombia had to step down.
00:06:04.880 And yet this guy's claim is, nope, nope, they were too strong against anti-Semitism.
00:06:10.480 They should have been effectively marching alongside me in favor of Hamas. 0.96
00:06:14.880 This ruling is clearly right. 1.00
00:06:16.400 I'm glad it came down.
00:06:17.680 There are going to be more rulings like this.
00:06:19.960 If you are here...
00:06:21.600 So this will have precedent.
00:06:22.540 Right?
00:06:22.880 Like this is going to now...
00:06:24.360 No, no.
00:06:24.820 It won't?
00:06:25.360 Okay.
00:06:25.560 This is a ruling of an immigration judge in this case.
00:06:29.340 So it doesn't resolve the issue across the country.
00:06:33.320 But the immigration law is quite clear that...
00:06:37.680 Look, Khalil's case was harder because he was a legal permanent resident.
00:06:43.360 He has a green card.
00:06:44.400 And legal permanent residents have greater legal protections than just somebody under a student visa.
00:06:49.120 Somebody under a student visa, they can have their visa revoked and sent back.
00:06:54.640 It is not a high threshold to do that.
00:06:56.940 To revoke a green card is a higher threshold.
00:07:00.080 And so the ruling here is, well, the Department of Homeland Security gave evidence that he had lied when getting his green card.
00:07:07.560 And that was basis for deportation.
00:07:09.200 And so that, I think that's the right ruling here.
00:07:11.600 It's a good ruling.
00:07:13.020 And I think you're going to see...
00:07:15.320 Listen, let me say to any anti-American radicals who've come in on student visas, you are not welcome in America.
00:07:22.860 And if you are going to use our hospitality to attack and threaten and harass fellow students, if you're going to use our hospitality to attack America, get the hell out. 0.51
00:07:36.040 And we're going to help you get the hell out.
00:07:38.100 And that is one of the best things the Trump administration is doing right now.
00:07:42.360 Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:07:49.360 Canadian women are looking for more. 1.00
00:07:51.560 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:07:55.740 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:07:59.480 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:08:00.660 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:08:01.880 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:08:05.520 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.
00:08:09.200 All at different stages of their journey.
00:08:11.060 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:08:14.620 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:08:20.460 Now on to story number two, which brings us to Harvard.
00:08:24.520 And Trump has said we are freezing the funding going to Harvard.
00:08:29.220 They have slashed over $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard after the school has defied federal law.
00:08:36.640 And the White House says we're not playing around.
00:08:39.260 A lot of Americans, by the way, may not realize that $2.2 billion, and in fact a lot more than that, is going to Harvard of your tax dollars.
00:08:48.040 Yeah, Harvard gets roughly $9 billion in federal taxpayer dollars.
00:08:52.200 So it gets an enormous amount.
00:08:53.640 Now it's a huge research institution, and it does some good research.
00:08:56.660 It does medical research and scientific research, and some of that research is valuable.
00:09:01.600 But what the Trump administration has announced, the Joint Task Force on Combating Antisemitism, has announced that it's freezing over $2 billion in multi-year grants and contracts to Harvard.
00:09:12.580 And that was following the school's president putting out a statement saying it would not comply with the Trump administration's demands on anti-Semitism.
00:09:22.980 And I've got to say, this is a battle that Harvard and a lot of academic institutions are putting out statements in support of Harvard, so brave, so brave.
00:09:33.580 Now I will say, most other institutions, when the Trump administration has threatened their funding, they've caved, and they've caved very quickly.
00:09:39.680 But the other institutions are happy to applaud Harvard and say, yes, yes, yes, yes, lose your funds, you're so brave.
00:09:46.940 And what is striking is that Democrats, Barack Obama, the Democrat governor of Massachusetts, are all lining up behind Harvard.
00:09:54.760 And there is a reason.
00:09:56.800 When you look at the core bases of the Democrat Party, you know, there was a time in a prior generation when the Democrat Party was considered a blue-collar party.
00:10:06.960 In the age of FDR, it was a party of union members and working class.
00:10:12.280 And in fact, one of the reasons that FDR was treated with contempt is because he was a very wealthy person, as many Democrats are.
00:10:20.320 But he was considered a, quote, traitor to his class because he was a rich man who became a historic Democrat leader.
00:10:28.200 Well, that Democrat Party doesn't exist anymore.
00:10:31.660 The Democrat Party no longer cares about the blue-collar.
00:10:34.000 In fact, they routinely destroy blue-collar jobs.
00:10:37.040 Today's Democrat Party is a party of coastal elites, and it is a party that is comprised of big universities and big business and big tech and big Hollywood, all of whom have overlapping problems.
00:10:51.860 All of them are in bed with China, and all of them have been taken over by radical leftism, by cultural Marxism. 0.74
00:11:01.480 As you know, the most recent book I wrote is entitled Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.
00:11:07.940 And each chapter breaks down a different major institution that's been captured by the radical left.
00:11:13.380 The first chapter is entitled Universities, the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. 0.96
00:11:20.880 And what I argue is that it is universities, and sadly my alma mater, Harvard, where the woke virus was first created in a lab,
00:11:30.200 and then it mutated and spread, and it spread throughout just about every other major institution in this country.
00:11:37.740 And so Harvard has been the locus of much of the radical leftism and cultural Marxism that has done enormous damage to our institutions.
00:11:46.140 And Harvard is digging in, and they're claiming that they're digging in in defense of free speech,
00:11:54.700 but what they're really digging in on is they don't want to change their policies, number one, that discriminate on race.
00:12:01.500 They love discriminating on race. They love DEI. They love putting race front and center, which, by the way, is directly contrary to federal civil rights law.
00:12:10.600 And they also want to continue admitting radical anti-Semites.
00:12:15.320 They want to continue looking the other way at pro-Hamas protesters who threaten Jewish students, 0.50
00:12:20.420 who threaten violence, who threaten intimidation, who call for genocide.
00:12:24.560 And they want to continue admitting and promoting anti-American radicals, and that includes both students and faculty.
00:12:31.960 And so when the administration put a series of demands in place, Harvard said no.
00:12:37.880 So I've got to tell you, Harvard thinks they want this fight.
00:12:42.120 In my opinion, the Trump administration is eager for this fight with Harvard, and you could not ask.
00:12:48.360 Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion.
00:12:52.220 And, you know, one of my favorite responses to that, to Harvard's supposed stance on principle,
00:12:58.420 where they talked about standing for the First Amendment is Hillsdale College, which is a great college.
00:13:04.280 It is a conservative college, a free market college.
00:13:09.180 But one of the things they do is they don't take federal money.
00:13:11.960 And Hillsdale actually tweeted, well, you can say anything you like, just don't take federal money.
00:13:16.520 And oddly enough, Harvard doesn't want to do that.
00:13:18.840 They want the taxpayers to fund them, but they want to continue to be embracing racism and vitriolic anti-American sentiment,
00:13:28.500 while at the same time being funded by American taxpayers.
00:13:31.060 So when you look at this fight, I do think one of the very interesting parts of all of this that we're talking about is
00:13:38.780 now Americans are really waking up and realizing, like, where their money has been going, how much of it is going.
00:13:44.740 And you're right.
00:13:45.180 There's some of this is research, and that's something we can be proud of, and that's a good thing.
00:13:48.940 But a lot of this is going to indoctrinating kids with radical leftist ideals.
00:13:54.120 And that's part of the reason why I think they need this money, right?
00:13:58.040 They want the money for that reason. 0.77
00:13:59.440 They've been doing a great job of doing that for the last several decades.
00:14:02.960 So if the money does dry up at places like Harvard, and then we start to see more questions being asked about other money,
00:14:10.500 not only could this change universities in a positive way, I think, for free speech,
00:14:15.260 and not having one set of views that are indoctrinated, but it could also save the taxpayers a hell of a lot of money,
00:14:21.660 because it's not just Harvard that's getting cash.
00:14:23.520 Oh, yeah, but Harvard is the perfect test subject, and our universities right now have become indoctrination labs.
00:14:31.800 They've become places that enforce rigid orthodoxy, and if you say something that is contrary to the radical leftist view,
00:14:39.840 you risk being disciplined, you risk having your grades, and you also risk just not being admitted.
00:14:46.140 And look, some of the question comes down to a very simple, what is it that the administration was requesting?
00:14:54.220 Because if the administration was demanding Harvard must teach in every class that Donald Trump is the greatest president to have ever lived,
00:15:01.380 I would agree with Harvard that no university could give in to a government demand about a specific position like that,
00:15:10.880 particularly if it's one they disagree with.
00:15:12.340 But that's not what the Trump administration said, and I have in front of me the letter that the Trump administration said.
00:15:19.140 It's five pages.
00:15:20.080 I'm not going to read it all, but I'm going to read some of the portions of it.
00:15:23.220 So it is addressed both to Alan Garber, who is the president of Harvard University, and to Penny Pritzker, who is the lead member of the Harvard Corporation.
00:15:32.720 Penny Pritzker, by the way, was a cabinet member under Barack Obama.
00:15:36.040 And the Harvard Corporation runs all of Harvard, and it's this privately held corporation of all Democrats that run Harvard as this left-wing bastion.
00:15:46.000 Here's how the letter begins.
00:15:47.220 Dear Dr. Garber, the United States has invested in Harvard University's operation because of the value to the country of scholarly discovery and academic excellence.
00:15:56.400 But an investment is not an entitlement.
00:15:59.860 It depends on Harvard upholding federal civil rights law, and it only makes sense if Harvard fosters the kind of environment that produces intellectual creativity and scholarly rigor,
00:16:09.040 both of which are antithetical to ideological capture.
00:16:12.680 Harvard has, in recent years, failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.
00:16:20.580 But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the university to its promise.
00:16:28.240 We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard's financial relationship with the federal government.
00:16:36.700 Here's the first.
00:16:38.600 Governance and leadership reforms.
00:16:40.380 By August 2025, Harvard must make meaningful governance reform and restructuring to make possible major change consistent with this letter,
00:16:50.360 including fostering clear lines of authority and accountability.
00:16:54.560 Apparently that was objectionable.
00:16:57.040 Empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and from among the tenured professorate and senior leadership,
00:17:03.560 exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the university and committed to the changes indicated in this letter.
00:17:09.620 Reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.
00:17:14.440 Reducing the power held by faculty, whether tenured or untenured, and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.
00:17:23.260 Now, again, this is something Harvard found unacceptable.
00:17:26.280 We're not willing to focus on scholarship instead of activism.
00:17:29.460 Nope, that's a violation of what we want to do.
00:17:31.900 And reducing forms of governance, bloat, duplication, or decentralization that interfere with the possibility of the reforms indicated in this letter.
00:17:40.980 So that's the first one.
00:17:42.620 Apparently something was objectionable about that.
00:17:44.360 What's the next one?
00:17:46.080 Merit-based hiring reform.
00:17:47.760 By August 2025, the university must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin throughout its hiring, promotion, compensation, and related practices among faculty, staff, and leadership.
00:18:04.280 Now, mind you, that is existing federal civil rights law.
00:18:08.100 You cannot discriminate based on race.
00:18:11.300 And yet, for Harvard, that is outrageous.
00:18:16.080 Of course they want to discriminate based on race.
00:18:18.600 It's an ideological commitment.
00:18:19.880 What's the next one?
00:18:21.420 Merit-based admissions reform.
00:18:23.100 By August 2025, the university must adopt and implement merit-based admission policies and cease all preferences based on race, color, national origin, or proxies thereof throughout its undergraduate program, each graduate program individually, each of its professional schools, and other programs.
00:18:38.600 Again, the idea of actually admitting students based on merit rather than discriminating based on race, which, mind you, discriminating based on race is illegal under federal civil rights law, to Harvard is anathema.
00:18:51.780 What's the next one?
00:18:53.100 International admissions reform.
00:18:56.240 By August 2025, the university must reform its recruitment, screening, and admission of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.
00:19:19.180 Again, apparently, that is outrageous and unacceptable.
00:19:23.100 The next one.
00:19:24.100 The next one, viewpoint diversity in admission and hiring.
00:19:26.820 By August 2025, the university shall commission an external party, which will satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse.
00:19:45.920 Now, notably, they're not saying higher conservatives.
00:19:48.920 They're saying you cannot have a faculty that is universally orthodox and indoctrinating that all have the same view that, you know, the left loves to prattle on about diversity as our strength.
00:20:04.880 And by diversity, they mean we must all be leftist who believe the same thing, but say so with different skin colors.
00:20:11.640 Now, I actually think diversity means having different ideas, confronting ideas you disagree with.
00:20:18.460 Look, I go through these.
00:20:20.240 To give an example, I think each of those demands are very reasonable.
00:20:24.520 They're saying comply with federal law, be an institution that actually does what you say, what you claim to be doing.
00:20:30.420 And yet Harvard is outraged.
00:20:33.880 How dare you hold us to the terms of federal law?
00:20:38.980 We cannot comply with that.
00:20:40.800 As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing.
00:20:49.200 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them. 0.98
00:20:56.340 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:21:00.080 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:21:01.260 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:21:02.480 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:21:06.240 Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:21:11.980 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:21:14.960 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:21:21.000 I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:21:25.460 You told a story earlier today about the EPA's involvement in cleaning up the California wildfires.
00:21:32.400 And it's a good example of how it impacts people's lives.
00:21:34.800 Like you wouldn't necessarily think the EPA is involved in dealing with wildfires, but you guys are deeply involved.
00:21:40.200 As soon as the wildfires hit Los Angeles, over 13,000 properties destroyed.
00:21:45.580 President Trump comes into office.
00:21:47.020 He inherits it.
00:21:47.780 It happened a few days before he got there.
00:21:49.680 He signs an executive order.
00:21:51.040 He says, EPA, you have 30 days to do your entire phase one hazardous material removal before phase two starts,
00:21:59.840 which is the Army Corps of Engineers doing their debris removal.
00:22:02.880 And like with the wildfires, you have people's homes that burn to the ground.
00:22:05.780 There's a lot of toxic sludge.
00:22:07.460 I mean, it's a mess.
00:22:08.360 It's dangerous, like fires produce bad stuff.
00:22:11.380 And you guys had to figure out how to clean it up, but do it in 30 days.
00:22:15.580 Yeah.
00:22:15.760 First, the response was, that's impossible.
00:22:18.280 This is going to take you until the summer at best.
00:22:20.660 It's going to take a few months for sure.
00:22:22.800 The lithium ion batteries were all over this particular area.
00:22:26.900 We got it done in less than 30 days after ramping up to 1,500 workers.
00:22:31.380 Proud of the effort from EPA.
00:22:32.980 We do a lot like this that the American public might not know about.
00:22:35.760 And that's why in just a couple days, we're heading to the Tijuana area in Southern California,
00:22:40.520 where a lot of Mexican raw sewage is entering for decades.
00:22:43.720 We need to end it.
00:22:44.720 Number one about you guys dealing with water issues and Tijuana.
00:22:49.220 And I also, and there's another one that a lot of Americans will remember.
00:22:52.500 And that was the train derailment.
00:22:55.460 And it seemed like the government was picking winners and losers with that cleanup or lack thereof.
00:23:00.960 You guys have also gotten involved with that because what you did in the wildfires in California is incredible.
00:23:06.460 That's what every American should get no matter where they live.
00:23:09.020 And politics shouldn't come into it.
00:23:10.600 This is something that really showed then Junior Senator J.D. Vance, as someone who understands leadership in a time of crisis.
00:23:20.680 When disaster strikes, your instinct as a leader should be to show up at that site and to be the voice of the people.
00:23:27.800 And what was wild was J.D. was like the only one there.
00:23:32.380 I think that might be Congressman Bill Johnson's district.
00:23:34.780 Well, to be fair, Donald Trump came too.
00:23:36.240 Yeah, well, and it was J.D.
00:23:39.520 Not Joe Biden, not Pete Buttigieg, but Donald Trump came.
00:23:43.600 That's right.
00:23:44.180 And I remember the conversations where J.D. was engaging with President Trump to make sure that President Trump was there.
00:23:51.920 And this was all in the initial days and weeks after disaster struck.
00:23:56.920 Yes.
00:23:57.400 And a lot of people were wondering, well, where is this person?
00:24:01.200 Where is that person?
00:24:02.120 Where is this agency?
00:24:03.100 Where is that agency?
00:24:04.020 It should be.
00:24:05.520 This is the ultimate gut check and instinct check.
00:24:09.360 And it's amazing because Biden and the Democrats, they really like Palestinians.
00:24:13.460 You would think they would have gone.
00:24:15.340 Oh, my gosh.
00:24:18.060 All right.
00:24:18.980 For the record, Lee Zeldin is officially speechless. 0.97
00:24:21.340 He doesn't know what to do with that smart ass comment.
00:24:23.340 I'll tell you, it was such a missed opportunity to lead.
00:24:30.680 And that EPA, over the course of time, there ended up being 220,000.
00:24:35.860 We saw 220,000 tons of contaminated soil removed.
00:24:39.800 We saw tens of millions of gallons of water removed.
00:24:42.960 It ended up becoming a massive EPA effort that actually is still ongoing.
00:24:48.040 And in a way, for the environmental and human impacts, there's going to be testing going on for a long time to come.
00:24:55.700 And I would encourage anyone who's out there listening who is in that community, in the area that maybe you used to go to East Palestine, but now you take a detour, you go somewhere else.
00:25:05.780 We all need to do our part to help bring East Palestine, Ohio, back.
00:25:09.340 Amen.
00:25:09.660 It's very important to the vice president.
00:25:12.060 But unfortunately, too many of these cases have shown that lack of leadership.
00:25:17.800 Well, tell us what you're doing in Tijuana because it's an amazing story.
00:25:20.320 Here you have an issue where for decades, Mexican raw sewage has been coming across the border. 0.98
00:25:25.380 It's been poured into the Tijuana River.
00:25:27.740 It ends up contaminating water and air.
00:25:31.420 We have Navy SEALs getting sick.
00:25:33.400 They have to do training somewhere else.
00:25:36.040 So we have decided enough is enough.
00:25:37.940 We're going to Tijuana in the coming days.
00:25:40.340 I can't wait to get there.
00:25:41.380 We're going to be on the U.S. side of that border.
00:25:43.820 We have a whole plan of action.
00:25:45.740 I'm just warning you when you're in the cabinet, what happens in Tijuana does not stay in Tijuana.
00:25:52.060 Yes, yes, sir.
00:25:53.080 Good, great, great advice.
00:25:55.060 And especially if you drink the water, you'll be bringing that back to you, back with you to D.C.
00:26:01.180 So listen, it's something that we're going to step up in on and tackle.
00:26:05.360 And we're proud of it.
00:26:06.540 EPA wants to assist.
00:26:08.700 And these are Americans that we see over there.
00:26:11.680 California, do they vote red or blue?
00:26:13.500 All your listeners know the answer to that one.
00:26:16.100 It doesn't matter. 0.97
00:26:16.940 But look, you're cleaning that crap up, literally. 0.91
00:26:20.200 I mean, that is valuable. 0.95
00:26:22.500 That's what we want the EPA to be doing.
00:26:25.400 That's important.
00:26:26.400 Let me ask you.
00:26:27.880 So you and I are in Midland, Texas.
00:26:29.900 We spent the day.
00:26:30.960 We started by going to a rig that was drilling an oil well.
00:26:34.880 We then had a roundtable.
00:26:36.320 And actually, when you were being confirmed and you came by my office, you and I have been good friends for over a decade.
00:26:41.200 But when you were being confirmed, I said, I want to ask you to commit to come to Midland, Texas and sit down with oil and gas leaders, with entrepreneurs, with people that are producing energy and hear from them.
00:26:55.180 And it's amazing.
00:26:55.960 You're the first EPA administrator in history to come to Midland, Odessa, which is astonishing.
00:27:03.260 It's like saying an ag secretary had never been to Iowa.
00:27:07.180 It's like saying a secretary of state had never been to the United Kingdom or never been to Israel.
00:27:11.660 Like your job, every EPA administrator should be in the Permian Basin, given the importance of it and the involvement of the EPA.
00:27:20.720 So tell us about, you met with wildcatters and business leaders, a lot of people that are good friends of mine.
00:27:27.140 Give us your impression of the folks you met and what you learned on this trip.
00:27:31.920 Was it valuable?
00:27:33.080 Salt of the earth job creators.
00:27:35.740 You could just imagine how much sweat equity was around that table.
00:27:40.580 A people who have poured their lives, their heart, blood, tears, creating jobs, providing energy to Texans and beyond.
00:27:51.580 And these people need us to be thanking them, to be praising them for their good work, to be supporting them, as opposed to using our power to try to make it more difficult for them.
00:28:02.840 We shouldn't be trying to shut them out.
00:28:03.680 By the way, these guys are all close friends and buddies of mine.
00:28:07.740 And I have had great joy in recent weeks and months asking them how much they're like Billy Bob Thornton.
00:28:14.560 Have they ever been tied up and had a mask over their head?
00:28:17.260 Had they been covered in gasoline by cartels?
00:28:20.420 Our host, Bill Holmes, great, great, great friend, landman, very successful businessman.
00:28:27.280 I asked him, so by the way, if you haven't watched Landman, you should.
00:28:30.780 It's the best show on television.
00:28:31.940 I did play for President Trump in the Oval Office last week, the segment from Landman where Billy Bob Thornton talks to the left-wing environmental lawyer about windmills.
00:28:45.420 It's the best three minutes on television of our lifetime.
00:28:48.560 And I will say, at least, the landmen I know in Midland tell me that they murder fewer people than they do in the show.
00:28:54.660 It's still a great show.
00:28:55.720 And for Billy Bob, if you're out there listening, that was a free sponsorship from Senator Ted Cruz, so you're lucky that you have that fan.
00:29:03.320 Playing it for President Trump in the Oval, bringing a great show to the people.
00:29:09.600 And listen, we need to get smart with energy policy.
00:29:12.260 There are people promoting wind as an intermittent source, as if that's a substitute for baseload power.
00:29:17.120 For all of you out there listening, let's get smart, educate, advocate the people who are around us need good policy.
00:29:23.960 As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:29:29.840 Don't forget to download my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day if you're not listening to Verdict, or each day when you listen to Verdict afterwards.
00:29:36.880 I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:29:40.600 And we will see you back here on Monday morning.
00:29:44.320 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:29:47.220 Guaranteed Human.