00:05:28.400He accuses the Colombia administrators of manufacturing, quote,
00:05:33.680public hysteria about anti-Semitism without once mentioning the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered under bombs made of your dollars.
00:05:44.700So understand, this guy's complaint is that the Colombia administrators stood too strongly against anti-Semitism.
00:05:52.540They let their entire campus get taken over.
00:05:54.800They let Jewish students be terrorized.
00:05:57.080They let campus buildings be taken over.
00:05:59.620They were weak and infective, which is why the president of Colombia had to step down.
00:06:04.880And yet this guy's claim is, nope, nope, they were too strong against anti-Semitism.
00:06:10.480They should have been effectively marching alongside me in favor of Hamas.
00:07:15.320Listen, let me say to any anti-American radicals who've come in on student visas, you are not welcome in America.
00:07:22.860And 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.
00:07:36.040And we're going to help you get the hell out.
00:07:38.100And that is one of the best things the Trump administration is doing right now.
00:07:42.360Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:08:01.880And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women.
00:08:05.520Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers.
00:08:09.200All at different stages of their journey.
00:08:11.060So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:08:14.620Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:08:20.460Now on to story number two, which brings us to Harvard.
00:08:24.520And Trump has said we are freezing the funding going to Harvard.
00:08:29.220They have slashed over $2.2 billion in funding to Harvard after the school has defied federal law.
00:08:36.640And the White House says we're not playing around.
00:08:39.260A 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.
00:08:48.040Yeah, Harvard gets roughly $9 billion in federal taxpayer dollars.
00:08:53.640Now it's a huge research institution, and it does some good research.
00:08:56.660It does medical research and scientific research, and some of that research is valuable.
00:09:01.600But 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.
00:09:12.580And 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.
00:09:22.980And 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.
00:09:33.580Now I will say, most other institutions, when the Trump administration has threatened their funding, they've caved, and they've caved very quickly.
00:09:39.680But the other institutions are happy to applaud Harvard and say, yes, yes, yes, yes, lose your funds, you're so brave.
00:09:46.940And what is striking is that Democrats, Barack Obama, the Democrat governor of Massachusetts, are all lining up behind Harvard.
00:09:56.800When 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.
00:10:06.960In the age of FDR, it was a party of union members and working class.
00:10:12.280And in fact, one of the reasons that FDR was treated with contempt is because he was a very wealthy person, as many Democrats are.
00:10:20.320But he was considered a, quote, traitor to his class because he was a rich man who became a historic Democrat leader.
00:10:28.200Well, that Democrat Party doesn't exist anymore.
00:10:31.660The Democrat Party no longer cares about the blue-collar.
00:10:34.000In fact, they routinely destroy blue-collar jobs.
00:10:37.040Today'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.
00:10:51.860All of them are in bed with China, and all of them have been taken over by radical leftism, by cultural Marxism.
00:11:01.480As you know, the most recent book I wrote is entitled Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.
00:11:07.940And each chapter breaks down a different major institution that's been captured by the radical left.
00:11:13.380The first chapter is entitled Universities, the Wuhan lab of the woke virus.
00:11:20.880And what I argue is that it is universities, and sadly my alma mater, Harvard, where the woke virus was first created in a lab,
00:11:30.200and then it mutated and spread, and it spread throughout just about every other major institution in this country.
00:11:37.740And so Harvard has been the locus of much of the radical leftism and cultural Marxism that has done enormous damage to our institutions.
00:11:46.140And Harvard is digging in, and they're claiming that they're digging in in defense of free speech,
00:11:54.700but what they're really digging in on is they don't want to change their policies, number one, that discriminate on race.
00:12:01.500They 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.
00:12:10.600And they also want to continue admitting radical anti-Semites.
00:12:15.320They want to continue looking the other way at pro-Hamas protesters who threaten Jewish students,
00:12:20.420who threaten violence, who threaten intimidation, who call for genocide.
00:12:24.560And they want to continue admitting and promoting anti-American radicals, and that includes both students and faculty.
00:12:31.960And so when the administration put a series of demands in place, Harvard said no.
00:12:37.880So I've got to tell you, Harvard thinks they want this fight.
00:12:42.120In my opinion, the Trump administration is eager for this fight with Harvard, and you could not ask.
00:12:48.360Harvard has an endowment of over $50 billion.
00:12:52.220And, you know, one of my favorite responses to that, to Harvard's supposed stance on principle,
00:12:58.420where they talked about standing for the First Amendment is Hillsdale College, which is a great college.
00:13:04.280It is a conservative college, a free market college.
00:13:09.180But one of the things they do is they don't take federal money.
00:13:11.960And Hillsdale actually tweeted, well, you can say anything you like, just don't take federal money.
00:13:16.520And oddly enough, Harvard doesn't want to do that.
00:13:18.840They want the taxpayers to fund them, but they want to continue to be embracing racism and vitriolic anti-American sentiment,
00:13:28.500while at the same time being funded by American taxpayers.
00:13:31.060So 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
00:13:38.780now Americans are really waking up and realizing, like, where their money has been going, how much of it is going.
00:13:59.440They've been doing a great job of doing that for the last several decades.
00:14:02.960So if the money does dry up at places like Harvard, and then we start to see more questions being asked about other money,
00:14:10.500not only could this change universities in a positive way, I think, for free speech,
00:14:15.260and not having one set of views that are indoctrinated, but it could also save the taxpayers a hell of a lot of money,
00:14:21.660because it's not just Harvard that's getting cash.
00:14:23.520Oh, yeah, but Harvard is the perfect test subject, and our universities right now have become indoctrination labs.
00:14:31.800They've become places that enforce rigid orthodoxy, and if you say something that is contrary to the radical leftist view,
00:14:39.840you risk being disciplined, you risk having your grades, and you also risk just not being admitted.
00:14:46.140And look, some of the question comes down to a very simple, what is it that the administration was requesting?
00:14:54.220Because if the administration was demanding Harvard must teach in every class that Donald Trump is the greatest president to have ever lived,
00:15:01.380I would agree with Harvard that no university could give in to a government demand about a specific position like that,
00:15:10.880particularly if it's one they disagree with.
00:15:12.340But that's not what the Trump administration said, and I have in front of me the letter that the Trump administration said.
00:15:20.080I'm not going to read it all, but I'm going to read some of the portions of it.
00:15:23.220So 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.
00:15:32.720Penny Pritzker, by the way, was a cabinet member under Barack Obama.
00:15:36.040And 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.
00:15:47.220Dear 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.
00:15:56.400But an investment is not an entitlement.
00:15:59.860It 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,
00:16:09.040both of which are antithetical to ideological capture.
00:16:12.680Harvard has, in recent years, failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment.
00:16:20.580But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the university to its promise.
00:16:28.240We therefore present the below provisions as the basis for an agreement in principle that will maintain Harvard's financial relationship with the federal government.
00:16:40.380By August 2025, Harvard must make meaningful governance reform and restructuring to make possible major change consistent with this letter,
00:16:50.360including fostering clear lines of authority and accountability.
00:16:57.040Empowering tenured professors and senior leadership, and from among the tenured professorate and senior leadership,
00:17:03.560exclusively those most devoted to the scholarly mission of the university and committed to the changes indicated in this letter.
00:17:09.620Reducing the power held by students and untenured faculty.
00:17:14.440Reducing the power held by faculty, whether tenured or untenured, and administrators more committed to activism than scholarship.
00:17:23.260Now, again, this is something Harvard found unacceptable.
00:17:26.280We're not willing to focus on scholarship instead of activism.
00:17:29.460Nope, that's a violation of what we want to do.
00:17:31.900And reducing forms of governance, bloat, duplication, or decentralization that interfere with the possibility of the reforms indicated in this letter.
00:17:47.760By 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.
00:18:04.280Now, mind you, that is existing federal civil rights law.
00:18:08.100You cannot discriminate based on race.
00:18:11.300And yet, for Harvard, that is outrageous.
00:18:16.080Of course they want to discriminate based on race.
00:18:23.100By 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.
00:18:38.600Again, 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.
00:18:56.240By 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.
00:19:19.180Again, apparently, that is outrageous and unacceptable.
00:19:24.100The next one, viewpoint diversity in admission and hiring.
00:19:26.820By 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.
00:19:45.920Now, notably, they're not saying higher conservatives.
00:19:48.920They'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.
00:20:04.880And by diversity, they mean we must all be leftist who believe the same thing, but say so with different skin colors.
00:20:11.640Now, I actually think diversity means having different ideas, confronting ideas you disagree with.
00:20:40.800As 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.
00:20:49.200Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:20:56.340And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:24:18.980For the record, Lee Zeldin is officially speechless.
00:24:21.340He doesn't know what to do with that smart ass comment.
00:24:23.340I'll tell you, it was such a missed opportunity to lead.
00:24:30.680And that EPA, over the course of time, there ended up being 220,000.
00:24:35.860We saw 220,000 tons of contaminated soil removed.
00:24:39.800We saw tens of millions of gallons of water removed.
00:24:42.960It ended up becoming a massive EPA effort that actually is still ongoing.
00:24:48.040And in a way, for the environmental and human impacts, there's going to be testing going on for a long time to come.
00:24:55.700And 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.
00:25:05.780We all need to do our part to help bring East Palestine, Ohio, back.
00:26:36.320And actually, when you were being confirmed and you came by my office, you and I have been good friends for over a decade.
00:26:41.200But 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.
00:27:35.740You could just imagine how much sweat equity was around that table.
00:27:40.580A people who have poured their lives, their heart, blood, tears, creating jobs, providing energy to Texans and beyond.
00:27:51.580And 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.
00:28:02.840We shouldn't be trying to shut them out.
00:28:03.680By the way, these guys are all close friends and buddies of mine.
00:28:07.740And I have had great joy in recent weeks and months asking them how much they're like Billy Bob Thornton.
00:28:14.560Have they ever been tied up and had a mask over their head?
00:28:17.260Had they been covered in gasoline by cartels?
00:28:20.420Our host, Bill Holmes, great, great, great friend, landman, very successful businessman.
00:28:27.280I asked him, so by the way, if you haven't watched Landman, you should.
00:28:31.940I 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.
00:28:45.420It's the best three minutes on television of our lifetime.
00:28:48.560And I will say, at least, the landmen I know in Midland tell me that they murder fewer people than they do in the show.
00:28:55.720And 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.
00:29:03.320Playing it for President Trump in the Oval, bringing a great show to the people.
00:29:09.600And listen, we need to get smart with energy policy.
00:29:12.260There are people promoting wind as an intermittent source, as if that's a substitute for baseload power.
00:29:17.120For all of you out there listening, let's get smart, educate, advocate the people who are around us need good policy.
00:29:23.960As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:29:29.840Don'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.
00:29:36.880I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:29:40.600And we will see you back here on Monday morning.