Verdict with Ted Cruz - Unpacking Court Packing

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.500 Guaranteed human.

00:00:04.380 We have got the latest from the Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill with

00:00:10.060 someone who has sat through all of it.

00:00:12.480 But before we get to that, let us turn to the Democratic presidential candidate, Joe

00:00:17.980 Biden, in 1983 on a topic very, very important to the Supreme Court.

00:00:24.080 President Roosevelt clearly had the right to send to the United States Senate and the

00:00:27.740 United States Congress a proposal to pack the court.

00:00:30.400 It was totally within his right to do that.

00:00:33.160 He violated no law.

00:00:35.180 He was legalistically absolutely correct. 0.99

00:00:38.080 But it was a bonehead idea. 0.95

00:00:40.840 It was a terrible, terrible mistake to make. 0.90

00:00:44.080 And it put in question for an entire decade the independence of the most significant body,

00:00:52.660 including the Congress, in my view, the most significant body in this country, the Supreme

00:00:57.180 Court of the United States of America.

00:00:59.440 Boneheaded indeed.

00:01:01.280 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:01:08.100 Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz.

00:01:10.300 I'm Michael Knowles, Senator.

00:01:11.460 I do want to get to the Supreme Court hearings.

00:01:14.640 You've just come from Capitol Hill.

00:01:16.400 But I have to ask you, because you actually know the guy.

00:01:19.620 You've served with the guy.

00:01:22.340 What happened to that Joe Biden?

00:01:24.140 I think I find myself agreeing with that Joe Biden in 1983 than the one today.

00:01:29.180 I don't know about.

00:01:30.640 Well, look, in 1983, I mean, I was 13.

00:01:35.060 And were you even a sparkle in your daddy's eyes?

00:01:38.680 Not for a number of years after that, actually.

00:01:42.160 It that Joe Biden is is is wandering an Iowa cornfield somewhere.

00:01:49.140 You know, I like that he he gave a clear answer on this.

00:01:55.300 And today we're getting a clear answer from the other side of the left.

00:01:58.340 I mean, there are people explicitly advocating for court packing.

00:02:02.280 And Joe Biden, he has said that voters don't deserve to have an answer on where he stands

00:02:09.020 on the issue.

00:02:10.080 But this is a significant issue.

00:02:11.800 I mean, this could radically shift the balance of power in the country.

00:02:15.100 Well, look, that's exactly right.

00:02:16.680 It's not accidental that Biden won't answer this question.

00:02:20.300 It's not accidental that that Kamala Harris won't answer this question.

00:02:24.480 I think the reason they won't answer it is their answer is yes.

00:02:27.720 Their hardcore base wants them to pack the court.

00:02:32.480 And I think they recognize that's a really unpopular idea.

00:02:37.040 So they're refusing to answer it.

00:02:38.960 And they pretty much assume the press will give them a pass.

00:02:41.060 I mean, you mentioned, you know, so Biden was asked a couple of days ago, do the voters

00:02:46.060 deserve to know the answer on your question?

00:02:47.780 And his response was, no, the voters don't deserve to know that.

00:02:51.560 Like what?

00:02:52.520 What have you ever heard?

00:02:55.260 I mean, that's a bizarre thing.

00:02:58.440 For a candidate for president to say, and it's I believe if Biden wins, if there's a Democratic

00:03:05.320 majority in both houses, they will pack the court.

00:03:09.020 I think that's the path we're on.

00:03:12.000 And I actually think so.

00:03:13.340 We finished the hearing today, the second round of questioning.

00:03:16.900 It was kind of a snooze fest.

00:03:19.500 It went, you know, nine, 10 hours.

00:03:23.220 It was shorter than yesterday.

00:03:24.800 Yesterday was about 12 hours.

00:03:26.380 And the interesting news about today is the Democrats surrendered.

00:03:31.420 They just gave up.

00:03:32.400 They have decided Amy Coney Barrett is going to be confirmed.

00:03:38.520 And you know what?

00:03:39.480 The American people watching her are really impressed.

00:03:41.800 I mean, this is a remarkable woman.

00:03:44.420 She's an impressive woman. 1.00

00:03:46.140 I think the people turn it on the TV, see her calm, cool, collected, see her sitting there

00:03:50.500 at a table with not a single note in front of her answering the questions. 0.97

00:03:55.340 And I think the Democrats realized, OK, we're getting the crap beat out of us right now. 0.76

00:04:00.280 And the word came out, essentially run away. 0.98

00:04:03.200 It was striking.

00:04:05.040 By this afternoon, and I guess I had my round of questioning right about lunchtime, the hearing

00:04:12.760 room was almost empty.

00:04:14.140 There were two Democrats left in the room.

00:04:16.720 They had fled.

00:04:17.660 And I actually started started my questioning by pointing out that that they had given up,

00:04:22.720 that the good news is we now know for a fact Judge Barrett is going to be confirmed as Justice

00:04:27.360 Barrett.

00:04:28.000 And I pointed out there were only two Democrats in the room.

00:04:30.760 And Dick Durbin from Illinois, he just about lost it.

00:04:34.760 He exploded.

00:04:35.500 He jumped in and interrupted me, which rarely happens at hearings.

00:04:38.560 I mean, you don't see that very often.

00:04:40.260 And he jumped in and he said, well, well, there's a pandemic.

00:04:43.220 And I couldn't help but responding.

00:04:47.100 Well, yeah, that's true.

00:04:48.060 There is a pandemic.

00:04:48.820 But yesterday you were all here and you had all the Democrats lined up.

00:04:53.080 Pat Leahy didn't show up and Kamala Harris. 0.89

00:04:55.420 Those are the only two Democrats who didn't show up to the hearing.

00:04:57.520 Everyone else was physically present today.

00:04:59.880 They literally they would show up for their little round of questioning, but nobody there

00:05:05.180 were really no fireworks.

00:05:07.200 And I think they.

00:05:09.860 They realize they can't stop it.

00:05:11.760 They've got to put on enough of a show that they're hardcore activists aren't mad at them. 0.93

00:05:18.940 But.

00:05:20.580 It is clear they're dialing it in.

00:05:24.420 Every time they try to throw a fastball at her, she she just smiles and she she knows the 0.69

00:05:31.860 substance a lot better than they do, and she's not going down like the traps they tried to

00:05:36.940 lay.

00:05:37.140 She's not falling into.

00:05:39.240 But part of I think their objective at the beginning of the hearing was to lay the predicate.

00:05:45.520 That the nomination and the confirmation itself is fundamentally illegitimate because that's

00:05:50.800 the predicate.

00:05:52.100 Their end game is court packing in a few months.

00:05:54.440 So I think they're willing to say, OK, we lose now.

00:05:58.000 They think they're going to win a couple of weeks.

00:05:59.840 Maybe they're right.

00:06:00.600 Maybe they're wrong.

00:06:01.180 I don't know who wins on Election Day, but they think they're going to be in power.

00:06:05.140 And I think their answer next year.

00:06:08.600 Is pack the court.

00:06:09.940 I don't know if they plan to go to 11 or 13, but one of the interesting things.

00:06:15.980 So what is packing the court mean?

00:06:18.400 What does that term mean?

00:06:19.380 It's a term that everyone has understood for 100 years.

00:06:24.960 It is expanding the number of justices in order to put your political supporters on there.

00:06:32.380 So it's changing the number of justices in the court.

00:06:34.920 Yeah.

00:06:35.860 So a couple of interesting things on this.

00:06:37.540 Number one, the number of justices in the court is not specified in the Constitution.

00:06:41.140 Well, this is something that the left wingers have been bringing up.

00:06:44.240 They say, look, there is no constitutional requirement that it be nine judges.

00:06:48.320 So come on, we've changed the number of judges before.

00:06:51.220 What's the big deal?

00:06:52.180 You're making a mountain out of a molehill.

00:06:54.440 And it has varied anywhere from five justices to as many as 10.

00:06:59.500 And for the first hundred years or so of our country's history,

00:07:04.140 the number of justices largely followed the number of court of appeal circuits there were.

00:07:10.980 And the idea was each Supreme Court justice was the circuit justice for that particular court of

00:07:16.620 appeal.

00:07:16.940 So as Congress added another court of appeals, they added another justice.

00:07:23.420 It's been at nine, though, for 150 years.

00:07:26.300 So really kind of Civil War era forward, it hasn't moved.

00:07:32.260 And nine has been steady.

00:07:33.360 Now there are 13 courts of appeals, but there's still only nine justices.

00:07:36.700 It's been steady.

00:07:37.480 And the most famous instance of court packing is the one Joe Biden was talking about in the

00:07:43.000 clip we played a few minutes ago, which is FDR.

00:07:46.020 So FDR, four term dominant Democratic president, Great Depression, pushing, trying to push through

00:07:55.340 his new deal.

00:07:56.020 And he was finding different components of the new deal struck down by the Supreme Court.

00:07:59.780 And he was really frustrated.

00:08:02.020 He was really angry.

00:08:03.600 And so he proposed to pack the court.

00:08:07.620 His plan was it for each justice over a certain age.

00:08:12.740 I forget if it was 70 or 75.

00:08:14.780 No, it was 70 or thereabouts.

00:08:16.880 But there would be a new justice appointed.

00:08:19.520 So you wouldn't kick the old ones off.

00:08:20.880 You just appoint a new one for all the old guys.

00:08:24.520 And and that would have immediately taken the court up to, I think, 15.

00:08:30.700 And it was interesting.

00:08:32.240 Number one, the Democratic Congress, the big Democratic majorities of both houses.

00:08:37.620 They said, this is too much.

00:08:39.000 We're not going that far.

00:08:40.000 We're not going to do it now.

00:08:42.860 History.

00:08:43.880 And so they resisted.

00:08:45.080 They said it would destroy the independence.

00:08:46.560 They actually agreed with what Joe Biden just said, that it would destroy the independence

00:08:49.420 of the court.

00:08:49.860 It would politicize the court.

00:08:52.320 One interesting thing about that fight, though, is that is actually history in many ways.

00:08:58.700 FDR may have won that fight anyway.

00:09:01.520 So at least the good news here is, though, FDR tries to stack the courts and and pack the

00:09:07.460 courts, rather, and he loses.

00:09:09.340 So then the issue goes away for a while, right?

00:09:12.300 Well, yes and no.

00:09:13.320 Um, he lost the fight to pack the court.

00:09:16.180 But but actually history shows in many ways he won the political fight.

00:09:20.340 So there had been five justices who were striking down multiple New Deal programs.

00:09:26.180 And when he introduced the court packing legislation, one of those justices, a justice named Owen

00:09:36.300 Roberts, switched his vote.

00:09:37.920 And and and it's it's referred to as the switch in time that saved nine because he had Justice

00:09:50.240 Roberts had been voting with with four other justices.

00:09:54.220 The four others were known as the four horsemen, which was not meant to be a compliment.

00:09:59.780 And and and Roberts switched his vote in 1937 in a case that upheld the minimum wage laws from the state of Washington state.

00:10:11.260 And there's some dispute among historians about whether Roberts switched his vote because of the court packing plan or not.

00:10:22.360 Uh, but whether he did or not, before the plan, there were five justices ruling regularly against FDR.

00:10:29.380 Once FDR launched a full on assault on the court, it switched and and they began rolling over for him a whole lot more.

00:10:38.260 So either way, the the independence of the court was was, I think, substantially jeopardized even by the proposal of court packing.

00:10:48.520 And I think that lesson has a lot of powerful significance for where we are today.

00:10:55.500 I think part of the reason Democrats are threatening court packing is is a I think they mean it and they'll do it.

00:11:01.880 But B. I think they're also perfectly happy to try to intimidate the current justices.

00:11:09.740 Um, you know, we've seen John Roberts flipping his votes in a bunch of cases late lately in voting with the liberals.

00:11:16.900 And and and in fact, Sheldon Whitehouse, a colleague of mine on on the Judiciary Committee,

00:11:22.620 um, wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in in a gun control case, basically threatening the court that if they didn't do what he wanted,

00:11:30.680 they would have to I think the phrase he used was restructure the court.

00:11:34.540 But it was a threat of court packing.

00:11:38.800 And what's interesting and part of the reason I believe that this threat is real, this is not you know, there's some folks.

00:11:45.320 In the media, some folks who think, gosh, they really wouldn't do that.

00:11:50.100 If that seems really radical, the biggest indication to me that they really mean it is there is a concerted effort among Democrats in the media to redefine what it means to pack the court.

00:12:02.320 Right. Right.

00:12:03.920 So, you know, we've talked about before the incredible message discipline that Democrats have.

00:12:09.840 About a week ago, the talking point went out that every Democrat began repeating, which is, well, the Republicans have been packing the court for four years.

00:12:17.120 Well, that's not actually what packing the court means, filling vacancies when there's a vacancy, appointing a justice, confirming the justice.

00:12:26.540 That's not packing the court.

00:12:28.940 Packing the court is expanding the number of justices to put your cronies on there.

00:12:34.360 It's a very different thing.

00:12:35.520 And they're trying to you're seeing the media exercise this theme.

00:12:39.720 And I think it's all set up to have it be the predicate for next year to say, well, Judge Barrett was illegitimate.

00:12:47.400 Trump packed the court already.

00:12:48.940 So we just need to actually AP.

00:12:52.840 They recently wrote an article where they said to depoliticize the court.

00:12:58.600 So you want to talk about an Orwellian term, packing the court, adding new left wing justices and growing it beyond nine to, I don't know, 11, 13, wherever they go is, is according to the Associated Press, is depoliticizing the court.

00:13:15.500 The AP wrote that this week.

00:13:18.480 And it went on to say, which some critics have referred to as packing.

00:13:23.660 Well, no, actually, everybody referred to it as packing.

00:13:27.780 Of course, the term court packing is much older than the term depoliticizing.

00:13:33.680 So what you're telling me, because I was just about to celebrate when you told me there was a Democrat surrender on Amy Coney Barrett today, I thought, oh, gosh, this is good news.

00:13:42.820 We finally got a win here.

00:13:44.000 But what you're suggesting is this may have been a tactical surrender.

00:13:47.780 They've got no dirt on Barrett.

00:13:49.360 They're not going to stop this nomination.

00:13:51.000 It would maybe hurt them if they did.

00:13:52.400 But they are going to use the confirmation of Judge Barrett as another excuse for court packing, which, you know, we played it earlier.

00:14:01.780 Joe Biden in the 1980s may have said that he thought it was a boneheaded scheme.

00:14:05.440 But don't forget, Joe Biden has changed his views 180 degrees multiple times over the course of his career.

00:14:12.860 You saw this actually during the George H.W.

00:14:15.880 Bush administration, where he said it would be a terrible idea to nominate and confirm a judge, a Supreme Court justice in an election year.

00:14:22.840 Then fast forward to 2016.

00:14:24.220 He said it is absolutely essential that we nominate and confirm a Supreme Court justice in an election year.

00:14:29.300 Fast forward to 2020.

00:14:30.300 He's flipped on this again.

00:14:32.020 So I see there's no reason not to suspect something similar would hold for the question of court packing.

00:14:37.660 Well, it's not just Joe Biden that changes views.

00:14:40.820 Practically every Democrat has.

00:14:42.360 I read a number of these statements today at the questioning.

00:14:45.360 Pat Leahy in 2017, quote, the Judiciary Committee once stood against a court packing scheme that would have eroded judicial independence.

00:14:54.060 That was a proud moment.

00:14:56.040 Dick Blumenthal, 2018, commenting on the 1937 Judiciary Committee statement that it is a measure which we should be which should be so emphatically rejected that its parallel will never again be presented to the free representatives of the free people of America.

00:15:15.320 That was two years ago.

00:15:17.060 Dick Durbin, 2018, 75 years ago, we went through this.

00:15:21.080 And I think the Congress was correct in stopping this popular president named Franklin Roosevelt from that idea.

00:15:29.000 And Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2019, just last year.

00:15:32.940 Here's what Justice Ginsburg said.

00:15:34.780 She said, if anything would make the court look partisan, it would be that one side saying we're in power.

00:15:41.500 We're going to enlarge the number of judges.

00:15:44.280 Notice she knows what packing is so that we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to. 0.99

00:15:49.840 And she went on to say nine.

00:15:52.320 It seems to be a good number.

00:15:54.160 It's been that way for a long time.

00:15:56.220 I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.

00:16:00.700 Um, they all agreed with this until they got very unhappy with with the president's judicial nominations for the for the vacancies that he had.

00:16:13.520 And at this point, I think it is all about power.

00:16:16.860 And it's all about, you know, we talked yesterday in the podcast about I went through the litany of constitutional rights that are hanging in the balance, that are one vote away a lot.

00:16:27.340 All the different rights that I talk about in my book, one vote away, religious liberty, free speech, the Second Amendment.

00:16:32.880 And I explained in the hearing how every one of those rights was hanging in the balance.

00:16:38.160 You know what's amazing, Michael?

00:16:40.000 Both yesterday and today, not a single Democrat disagreed with me.

00:16:43.460 Not a single one of them argued on the merits.

00:16:45.660 Not a single one of them made the case for what their radical justices actually want to do, taking away those constitutional liberties.

00:16:53.880 Instead, this is about brute power.

00:16:56.620 I think they recognize they can't stop it now.

00:17:00.100 So their plan and their hope is they win in November and then they use brute power to just grow the court and and force in radicals who will mandate their their view of policy from the court.

00:17:11.500 Well, I want to ask you about one particular example of the exercise of brute power, which today, frankly, completely overshadowed the confirmation hearings.

00:17:21.540 That was the matter of big tech censoring a new report just came out from the New York Post.

00:17:26.980 It showed emails in between Hunter Biden and one of his oligarch pals over in Ukraine.

00:17:34.760 We've talked at length on this podcast about the shady business connections between Hunter Biden and these Ukraine energy companies and oligarchs an email suggesting that Hunter Biden not only discussed this issue with Joe Biden, but actually introduced the Ukrainian oligarch to Joe Biden.

00:17:52.500 This is very explosive stuff during a presidential campaign, big tech platforms, Facebook and Twitter censored the New York Post report.

00:18:02.880 They offered no evidence to the contrary.

00:18:05.740 They had no reason to suggest that this was not real.

00:18:08.840 They simply said this could be damaging information, damaging to whom damaging, of course, to the Biden campaign.

00:18:15.180 And the craziest part of it all is it worked.

00:18:19.320 It didn't work to stop the conversation, but it it worked to stop the spread of of this particular link throughout big tech.

00:18:27.320 I you know, we've criticized big tech on this show before.

00:18:30.700 I did not know that those companies would take election interference to this kind of a dangerous extent.

00:18:38.960 I don't know if this New York Post story is true or not, but it was really quite stunning this afternoon.

00:18:43.160 Both Twitter and Facebook just decided we're going to block this story.

00:18:48.060 And by the way, so they would block it a if you tweeted it, if you tweeted it, if I tweeted it and you link to the story.

00:18:54.740 If you tried to click on the link, you'd get a warning on Twitter that that that this link has has content that may be harmful.

00:19:03.080 Well, maybe harmful to Joe Biden's political prospects, but but it's not.

00:19:06.760 Right. And not only that, they did something which which I don't recall seeing them have the cajones to do before.

00:19:15.880 That being a Cuban term, I'll look it up, which is they banned the New York Post itself.

00:19:23.000 So the New York Post publisher, the Post was and the Post has one of the largest circulations of any newspaper in the country.

00:19:30.340 I mean, this is not, you know, Bob's newsletter.

00:19:35.160 This is the New York friggin Post.

00:19:36.740 And and they they blocked the Post from tweeting out their own story.

00:19:43.600 And mind you, neither Twitter or Facebook say it's false.

00:19:46.220 Neither of them have they don't have any evidence that it's inaccurate.

00:19:49.040 They simply made the unaccountable decision, the arrogant decision.

00:19:56.280 We will not allow this to be shared, discussed.

00:20:00.020 And you, the press, can't even put out your own stories.

00:20:04.640 And it was so brazen, Senator, the staffer in communications at Facebook who made this decision to suppress the information.

00:20:12.920 He ended up tweeting about it.

00:20:13.960 I looked up his bio.

00:20:15.420 Do you know what his jobs were before he started working at Facebook?

00:20:18.580 He worked for Democratic political action committees.

00:20:22.420 He worked for Democratic elected politicians.

00:20:24.820 He is a Democrat operative at a supposedly neutral tech platform using that neutral tech platform to suppress damaging information about Democrats mere weeks to an election.

00:20:36.600 How can we permit that to continue?

00:20:39.420 So he has on his Twitter bio that he is an alum of California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer's office.

00:20:46.480 So not just any Democrat, but one of the most partisan left wing Democrats to ever serve.

00:20:52.160 And he's also an alum of the D triple C, which is the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

00:20:56.820 It is literally their political arm who exists for one purpose to elect Democratic members of Congress.

00:21:02.160 That's the Facebook spokesperson explaining their decision.

00:21:06.880 We're going to silence that.

00:21:08.140 Nothing to see here.

00:21:09.540 So I sent today letters to the CEOs of both Facebook and Twitter as chairman of the Constitution subcommittee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, setting out a series of questions, asking them who made the decision.

00:21:22.000 What was the basis for what was the basis for what other news sites have you have you blocked and silenced?

00:21:28.160 Have you ever blocked The New York Times?

00:21:29.420 Have you ever blocked The Washington Post?

00:21:31.020 Have you ever blocked anything damaging of Donald Trump?

00:21:33.300 Or is it only stories that you think are damaging of Joe Biden that you're going to block?

00:21:37.560 And what's interesting about this, you said a minute ago, well, you know, they were able to succeed in this.

00:21:44.620 I actually think they screwed up.

00:21:46.020 I think their arrogance is their pitfall because this is now a 10 times bigger story because they blocked it than if they just ignored it, if they'd let people tweet about it.

00:21:57.720 Look, one of the challenges, and we find this, you know, when we did the podcast talking about James Comey and, you know, all the Russiagate and everything, people are tired of it.

00:22:12.620 They're just, all the names and Brennan and Comey and it's complicated and people want to tune it out and it's noise and I get it.

00:22:19.720 Look, I do this for a living and it's hard to follow all this stuff.

00:22:23.940 I think this story could very easily have faded into that kind of mist of noise of I'm not sure what Burisma is anymore, Ukraine or Biden, whatever, Hunter Biden.

00:22:36.160 And I'm not sure it would have gotten a whole lot of attention beyond right wingers who already are going to vote for Trump.

00:22:41.400 But I'm not sure it would have gotten a lot of attention beyond that.

00:22:45.100 Except for Twitter and Facebook censoring it where you're sitting there going, OK.

00:22:49.320 If they can block a major newspaper a couple of weeks before a presidential election publishing what purports to be evidence of corruption at the very highest level of politics, that's a big frigid deal.

00:23:04.060 And I think it actually backfired on them.

00:23:06.400 And it's frankly, that itself is a bigger story, perhaps even than Joe Biden's potentially corrupt dealings with Ukraine.

00:23:14.160 The idea that a few oligarchs in Silicon Valley are now going to control effectively the public sphere, the control of information around the Internet, interfering in an election in a way that the Russians could only have dreamed of.

00:23:26.320 They would never have been able to interfere to that regard.

00:23:28.740 Is there something that we can do?

00:23:31.720 I mean, obviously, the Democrats control the House.

00:23:34.600 The Republicans have the Senate and the White House for now.

00:23:36.980 Hopefully that that continues.

00:23:38.360 Is there anything that we can do or are we basically at the whims of these Silicon Valley masters of the universe?

00:23:44.840 So there's a lot we can do.

00:23:46.220 As you know, I've been leading the charge on this for several years.

00:23:49.980 The most of the action that can be done on this is in the executive branch.

00:23:53.580 So so I have met and talked with on this topic.

00:23:57.240 President Trump, Vice President Pence, the White House chief of staff, the White House counsel, Attorney General Bill Barr, the deputy attorney general, the assistant attorney general for the antitrust division, the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

00:24:07.780 I've urged all of them to use the enforcement power of the executive branch.

00:24:13.360 Look, in Congress, we don't have the ability to impanel a grand jury.

00:24:17.460 We don't have the ability to bring indictments.

00:24:21.460 The.

00:24:23.380 Authority to enforce the law is with the executive branch.

00:24:28.280 And so I've chaired multiple hearings.

00:24:29.900 I shine a light on it.

00:24:30.940 But at the end of the day, the executive has to move.

00:24:32.940 And one of the challenges at DOJ.

00:24:37.200 Is it tends to be very siloed where the antitrust division thinks about antitrust issues, the civil division thinks about civil issues in each little silo.

00:24:45.960 This challenge of tech censorship.

00:24:49.480 Is a new creature and it doesn't fit neatly into any of those silos.

00:24:54.160 And so.

00:24:55.720 I've been I've had multiple conversations with Barr about it.

00:24:59.880 I hope DOJ is is is willing to press forward, but I'm frustrated.

00:25:04.420 We're four years into it.

00:25:05.480 I know the president's frustrated with it.

00:25:06.920 I've had multiple conversations with him.

00:25:08.520 Um, I also think Section 230, the special immunity from liability that Congress has given big tech is plainly failing.

00:25:17.220 That that was based on the notion that these big tech entities would be neutral public fora.

00:25:22.700 They're not anymore.

00:25:23.880 They're not pretending.

00:25:24.660 I mean, just today alone, I think obliterated that pretense there.

00:25:29.000 There is no way that you can argue when you are interfering weeks before an election for one political party over another.

00:25:34.480 There is no way that you can argue that you are a neutral tech platform.

00:25:39.440 Yeah.

00:25:39.660 Although I will say it all comes down to the election, because if if if we start next year with Biden, Schumer and Pelosi, they're not going to do a damn thing about big tech.

00:25:49.780 They want big tech to censor your speech.

00:25:52.780 So not only are they going to go after your speech through the Supreme Court, but they're also going to go after your speech through big tech.

00:25:58.660 You know, we had a couple of years ago, Mark Zuckerberg testify before Judiciary Committee and Commerce Committee.

00:26:05.620 And it was this month monstrosity of a joint committee meeting where there were 40 some odd senators.

00:26:12.180 And it was.

00:26:16.300 It was striking in that virtually every senator, Democrat and Republican was critical of Zuckerberg and big tech.

00:26:23.220 And it should have gotten the nervous weight.

00:26:25.280 Why is everyone pissed at us?

00:26:26.400 This is dangerous.

00:26:27.100 But if you listen to what they were saying, the two sides were pissed for very different reasons.

00:26:34.740 Republicans, at least some of the Republicans, were upset at the censorship, at the abuse of power, at the silencing of dissenting views.

00:26:44.460 The Democrats were upset that they didn't censor more.

00:26:48.600 The Democrats were upset on the other side.

00:26:50.380 And basically, if I were to sum up the Democrats' argument at that hearing, it was how the hell did you let Donald Trump win? 0.97

00:26:57.820 How could you possibly let these crazy conservatives communicate on your platform? 0.97

00:27:02.620 Next time, censor more. 0.97

00:27:04.480 That's what the Democrats want.

00:27:05.800 So if they win, there's not going to be any DOJ enforcement.

00:27:09.300 There's not going to be any enforcement of law.

00:27:10.820 If the Democrats win, big tech is unchecked and it is the oligarchs running things until another election changes things.

00:27:20.800 And so that's one of many reasons why I hope we have a good election and Trump gets reelected because we need to address this is the biggest concentration of power.

00:27:31.700 In the world of the media and communication that the world has ever seen.

00:27:36.760 That's right.

00:27:37.620 And it's an important point you make that the election is the key here.

00:27:43.120 The 2016 election is the impetus for so much of this censorship.

00:27:47.400 Now this new censorship is coming down to the 2020 election.

00:27:50.440 If we want to control our public sphere again, our public square again, we're going to have to focus on those elections as well.

00:27:57.420 Before I let you go, Senator, I know you've worked now what a 12 or 14 hour day, but before I let you go, I have to get to the mailbag.

00:28:04.280 And there's one question in particular that popped up that I really want to hear your answer on.

00:28:08.340 This question is from Steve.

00:28:10.860 Senator Cruz, what did you think of Jim Carrey's portrait of you as a demon entering hell?

00:28:20.020 It was pretty surreal.

00:28:22.380 Look, Jim Carrey is a funny guy.

00:28:24.220 I love his movies.

00:28:27.420 You know, Mask was hysterical.

00:28:31.200 What is the one where he plays the newscaster who becomes God for a period of time?

00:28:36.200 Oh, yes.

00:28:36.760 Bruce Almighty.

00:28:37.560 Bruce Almighty.

00:28:38.260 I mean, Bruce Almighty is side-splittingly funny.

00:28:42.020 He's a talented guy.

00:28:43.820 He's gone hard, hard lefty.

00:28:46.740 And he's actually a pretty talented artist. 0.88

00:28:49.220 He paints, but he paints these sort of hard, lefty, nasty.

00:28:56.640 So he actually, back when I was in my reelection campaign against Beto, he did a painting of me that was really horrible attacking me.

00:29:03.980 So this is the second time he's painted me, which is very odd that Jim Carrey is like, so this second one, I'm like bright red and look like a demon out of hell.

00:29:12.240 And actually, I'll tell you, I'll answer this question by telling you the story as I had the conversation with Caroline last night.

00:29:19.820 So Caroline is my 12-year-old, and she is a spirited girl.

00:29:25.520 And she was explaining, she said, she said, Dad, I'm really sarcastic.

00:29:34.540 You wouldn't understand it because you're not sarcastic.

00:29:37.420 I'm like, wait, what do you mean I'm not sarcastic?

00:29:39.360 I'm a smart aleck all the time.

00:29:40.760 Like what?

00:29:41.280 Like when your 12-year-old tells you, like you're not sarcastic, it actually kind of hurts.

00:29:46.440 And she's like, when?

00:29:47.140 When have you ever been sarcastic?

00:29:48.680 And then you're just like, okay, all my like dad efforts here are not succeeding.

00:29:53.640 And I said, well, all right, I'll give you an example, Caroline.

00:29:56.760 I said, you know who Jim Carrey is?

00:29:58.540 She's like, yeah, everyone knows who Jim Carrey is.

00:30:00.280 Of course I do.

00:30:01.340 And I said, well, this week he painted a picture of me as a devil and a demon.

00:30:05.700 She's like, what?

00:30:06.880 Why would he do that?

00:30:07.680 So I actually texted her the demon devil thing.

00:30:10.920 And then what I tweeted the picture out and I said, hey, Jim Carrey, can I get a copy of this from my office?

00:30:18.200 And it was just kind of, you know, I figured embrace it, have fun.

00:30:21.060 And she's like, Dad, that's not sarcastic.

00:30:22.340 That's not sarcastic at all.

00:30:26.560 She was, if you know how to impress a 12-year-old, please tell me.

00:30:31.960 My nine-year-old, I can do no wrong.

00:30:34.700 My 12-year-old, I can do no right.

00:30:36.800 So, you know, Senator, everybody is a critic from the 12-year-old girls all the way up to former comedic actors.

00:30:46.300 I have to tell you, I agree with you.

00:30:47.960 Jim Carrey is very funny.

00:30:49.200 Me, myself, and Irene is one of my favorite films.

00:30:51.120 I think, though, these days, Jim Carrey is funnier when he's being serious than when he's in these comedy films.

00:30:57.080 I don't know.

00:30:57.540 That's my view.

00:30:58.680 Look, his Joe Biden at SNL is pretty funny.

00:31:00.640 I mean, he's a talented actor.

00:31:02.540 I just wish he would do a little less politics, a little more acting.

00:31:06.080 I will tell verdict listeners something.

00:31:08.720 So I'm already planning.

00:31:11.800 Don't tell anyone else this, but on Halloween, I'm going to make his painting my avatar on Twitter.

00:31:18.980 Well, luckily, this conversation is just between me, you, and, I don't know, a million or so people.

00:31:24.000 So no one will know, and I look forward to that.

00:31:29.180 I'm sure Jim Carrey will be very honored.

00:31:32.640 We've got a question on court packing that actually we didn't touch on.

00:31:36.160 This is more of a tactical question, I guess, for Republicans.

00:31:39.880 This is from Chris.

00:31:40.520 If Democrats win in November and actually do pack the court, do Republicans then respond in kind when they return to power?

00:31:48.400 You know, Democrats grow the court from 9 to 12, and then Republicans grow at 12 to 15.

00:31:52.520 Who knows?

00:31:53.540 I think we do.

00:31:54.820 I think, of course, we do.

00:31:55.960 I think that'd be terrible for the court and terrible for the country.

00:31:58.200 So I don't want to go down that road.

00:32:00.020 But I think if they go, I think I think whatever happens, it would go to an odd number just so that you have you have you don't have the possibility of a tie.

00:32:08.540 But if they go to 11 or 13, I think we go to 15 or 17.

00:32:13.200 And I think it becomes tit for tat.

00:32:15.960 And you end up having the court as this super legislature with a bunch of politically appointed people.

00:32:23.740 And it's an escalation that I think would be a terrible idea.

00:32:29.300 Now, by the way, there is a chance that Republicans are too wimpy to do it, that we let Democrats pack the court.

00:32:34.800 And then when we take control, we like are scared of our own shadow and don't do anything.

00:32:37.980 I'm hopeful we wouldn't do that because, frankly, if we find ourselves in that picture next year, even though I think they're going to do it, I'm going to fight as hard as I can to stop it.

00:32:49.520 And then one of the main arguments I plan to use is if you do it.

00:32:55.140 We'll we'll respond in kind.

00:32:56.940 And if you can't even credibly respond to that, then then you might as well just give up right now.

00:33:02.220 Right. It's a sort of political version of peace through strength.

00:33:06.360 You know, you if you have strength that will hopefully encourage your opponents not to be so aggressive.

00:33:13.240 But I think you're absolutely right.

00:33:14.980 The idea of unilateral political disarmament is just absolutely mad.

00:33:19.620 And it will will only invite more political aggression.

00:33:22.080 It's worth noting.

00:33:24.260 That Republicans, the first two years of Trump.

00:33:27.800 We had the presidency, we had the Senate and we had the House.

00:33:31.640 We could have packed the court there.

00:33:34.300 We could have expanded it from nine to 11 or 13 and just immediately stuck on justice.

00:33:40.080 We didn't do that.

00:33:41.260 I mean, that and I would have opposed it.

00:33:42.760 It would have been and no one even suggested it was such a bad idea that no one even suggested it.

00:33:49.560 And so the the level of escalation, the fact that the Democrats are going down this road, the fact that Joe Biden is saying the voters don't deserve to know his answer.

00:33:59.060 I mean, it's a really scary escalation.

00:34:01.560 And and it's you don't have to look back to ancient history to say Republicans didn't do it.

00:34:06.000 You have to look back two years ago.

00:34:07.780 We didn't do it when we could have.

00:34:09.700 It was the right thing not to do it then.

00:34:12.780 And I hope we don't find find it happening a few months from now.

00:34:16.800 And it is it is scary to see even just that redefinition, the normalizing of that idea, as you said earlier, of court packing, changing the meaning of the term.

00:34:24.820 You actually just saw this yesterday as a result of the hearings.

00:34:27.940 Senator Hirono was lambasting Judge Barrett for using the term sexual preference.

00:34:33.500 She said this was which has been an innocuous term for as long as one can remember.

00:34:37.600 She said this is offensive. And then over the course of the day, everyone seemed to get on on board, the media, leftist politicians, even the dictionary online.

00:34:46.820 I think Merriam Webster's changed the definition of sexual preference to say that it's now an offensive term.

00:34:53.100 And that that kind of power all all in one place is obviously a great threat.

00:35:00.220 And it just shows you what the normalization of a term like court packing could lead us to.

00:35:05.240 So Webster's dictionary in one day when the Democrats criticize the term sexual preference, they change the dictionary definition the next day.

00:35:14.880 That's a little terrifying. Noah Webster's got to be twirling in his grave.

00:35:19.300 Right. Right. A final point that's just kind of an interesting observation on that that sexual preference issue.

00:35:26.720 So both Maisie Hirono and Cory Booker lambasted Judge Barrett for using using the phrase sexual preference, which I don't think Judge Barrett meant to convey anything.

00:35:35.820 But just an interesting observation, both Hirono and Booker insisted that sexual orientation is immutable.

00:35:45.880 Immutable. Which I thought was actually a fascinating point.

00:35:50.200 I was genuinely not aware that it is a position of the far left.

00:35:54.560 Immutable means not capable of changing, always constant, never changing.

00:35:59.300 I wasn't aware that the far left maintains that sexual orientation never can change, that it is unalterable.

00:36:06.180 And it's it's it's it's an odd position to have when they simultaneously insist that gender is capable of continuously changing.

00:36:16.140 Right. So, I mean, it's.

00:36:19.280 And I don't know that that is the position of the left, but both Hirono and Booker insisted upon it.

00:36:24.760 And I think it's a vestige of some of the arguments that used to be common between left and right about whether whether sexual orientation, whether being gay is is genetics and or or a choice.

00:36:38.660 And so when they say immutable, what they mean is innate.

00:36:42.700 But innate is different from immutable to say you can never at any point.

00:36:47.660 Change your orientation.

00:36:49.040 I just thought it was a fascinating observation about the lack of introspection and the incoherence of the left's views on sexuality, more broadly speaking.

00:37:03.100 Well, of course, I mean, just to put it in very simple terms, if a gay man has a homosexual orientation that can't ever change, 1.00

00:37:12.640 if he then transitions and identifies as a woman, but his his preference or orientation doesn't change, then then is he still he's not a gay man anymore.

00:37:24.820 He can't you can't have those two things at once.

00:37:28.820 Who knows? It's it's not reasoned.

00:37:31.200 It's it's ideology that they state it as a virtue signal.

00:37:35.000 So when they said immutable, I don't know that they're actually focused on what that word even means.

00:37:39.420 It just was sort of a I sent out a tweet yesterday just being like, this is curious.

00:37:44.080 This is this is odd.

00:37:46.420 Well, I think if they don't know what the word means, they might very likely redefine it very soon.

00:37:51.020 That does seem to be well.

00:37:52.580 You know, we have much more mailbag to get to.

00:37:54.940 But alas, Senator, we are out of time.

00:37:56.880 I can't make you work a 13 hour work day to day.

00:37:59.700 So we will be back again on verdict.

00:38:01.880 We will save questions until next time.

00:38:03.740 Please, to everybody, do send your questions in.

00:38:06.860 We love reading them.

00:38:08.020 We like bringing them up on the show.

00:38:09.500 Thank you, of course, to everyone for subscribing.

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00:38:15.420 You can subscribe, as you know, on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify.

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00:38:24.200 But until then, we will be on all of those platforms.

00:38:27.180 Thank you, as always, for listening.

00:38:28.560 Senator, I will see you next time.

00:38:30.060 I am Michael Knowles.

00:38:30.900 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

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Verdict with Ted Cruz - October 15, 2020

Unpacking Court Packing

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