Verdict with Ted Cruz - December 23, 2023


Unwoke： How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America


Episode Stats

Length

44 minutes

Words per Minute

170.81465

Word Count

7,568

Sentence Count

548

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.
00:00:05.540 Welcome.
00:00:06.280 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.980 And Senator, let's just start with congratulations.
00:00:13.360 Your new book is out, Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.
00:00:18.820 And I have to say, when you get the book, if you haven't gotten the book,
00:00:22.260 the best page, just skip right ahead to page number 40.
00:00:27.920 It's the best page in the book, so congrats on that.
00:00:31.380 Most importantly, Senator, page 40, phenomenal.
00:00:34.560 You should definitely just go right there, read that, and then start at the very beginning.
00:00:38.140 Ben, what the hell is on page 40?
00:00:39.900 I don't know what's on page 40.
00:00:41.640 Page 40, it says, and I will quote here,
00:00:44.740 Every podcast is done alongside my co-host today.
00:00:47.880 That's Ben Ferguson, the nationally syndicated radio host has become a very dear friend.
00:00:52.320 I got a shout out.
00:00:53.200 Thank you, sir.
00:00:53.880 I appreciate that.
00:00:54.820 So I actually think maybe the best page in the book is the very first page of the book of your copy.
00:01:02.500 Because I gave you a copy.
00:01:04.020 I gave you a signed copy.
00:01:05.420 You did.
00:01:06.520 And if you recall the inscription that I wrote on the front,
00:01:11.600 I said, Ben,
00:01:13.200 you are one of the three best hosts in history of the Verdict podcast.
00:01:21.320 Don't leave out the word undoubtedly.
00:01:23.100 You used that word.
00:01:24.480 Undoubtedly.
00:01:25.140 There we go.
00:01:25.840 I want to make sure that I get that in the history books.
00:01:27.960 Now, never mind that there have only been three hosts of Verdict,
00:01:31.040 and that would be you, me, and Michael Knowles.
00:01:32.620 But you are undoubtedly one of the three best.
00:01:35.600 Yes.
00:01:36.220 And that's on the shelf right now.
00:01:39.320 And the second sentence I actually liked even better than the first,
00:01:42.820 and I said, of all of the men to play college tennis,
00:01:48.300 you're one of them.
00:01:49.040 There we go.
00:01:49.900 You are one of them.
00:01:50.860 So this is the best part.
00:01:52.860 When you signed this, I didn't want to travel with it.
00:01:55.640 And you and I have been on the road.
00:01:56.680 We were on the road last week,
00:01:57.940 and I didn't want to travel with the book because I was like,
00:02:00.380 all right, this is what I want to genuinely say forever.
00:02:03.300 So I got home from the trip,
00:02:05.640 and I didn't want to knock the book around.
00:02:07.660 So I was reading all day yesterday and all day today
00:02:11.120 to make sure that we could have a stellar interview on your own show about your book.
00:02:17.660 So let's start with the title.
00:02:21.100 Why did you pick the title Unwoke?
00:02:23.320 And also, for people that don't understand what the definition of cultural Marxism is,
00:02:29.600 what does that mean?
00:02:30.860 Look, I wrote this book because the world has gone insane,
00:02:35.480 and my reaction is the same as millions of people,
00:02:38.860 as the listeners of this podcast.
00:02:40.520 Our reaction is, what the hell happened?
00:02:42.640 How did things get so crazy so fast?
00:02:45.980 This book is my best effort to explain it,
00:02:48.840 and in particular, it's explaining how the radical left has seized
00:02:53.540 every major institution in America.
00:02:57.140 And so the book starts, chapter one,
00:03:00.860 is the universities.
00:03:02.340 And I call the universities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus.
00:03:07.740 The universities are where the virus was created.
00:03:11.120 It's where it mutated, and it's where it spread.
00:03:14.660 Each chapter of the book focuses on a different institution the radical left has seized.
00:03:20.400 So, chapter two focuses on K-12 education and all the radical garbage being put in our kids,
00:03:27.840 whether it's critical race theory or radical transgenderism.
00:03:32.060 Chapter three focuses on journalism and how journalism has changed from covering the news to propaganda.
00:03:40.220 From there I go to big business, and how big business today, the Fortune 100,
00:03:46.480 are the economic enforcers of the radical left.
00:03:49.260 From there I go to big tech, and how big tech is pervasively censoring speech.
00:03:56.080 From there I go to entertainment, and by the way, if I could have just one back, I would have entertainment back.
00:04:02.900 Entertainment, I think, is the most consequential of all of these.
00:04:06.840 And in entertainment, we talk about Hollywood and movies and television and sports and music.
00:04:11.340 We break it all down.
00:04:12.880 From there, we go to science, and I talk about how science has been corrupted and politicized.
00:04:18.860 And the final chapter in the book is on China, and explains how China is a nexus that links them all.
00:04:27.140 And the book was really designed to do two things.
00:04:29.180 Number one, explain how and why, specifically, the radical left took over every one of those institutions.
00:04:36.980 And they did it from the inside.
00:04:39.000 But secondly, to lay out a clear battle plan, how we take them back, how we fight back.
00:04:46.980 I believe we will take this country back.
00:04:49.680 And this book is laying out how we recapture the institutions of America.
00:04:54.600 You know, in this book, and I encourage people to get it because there is just incredible history in the very beginning as well about your family.
00:05:05.120 I know your father and have gotten to spend some time with him.
00:05:09.460 He's an awesome, just individual to be around.
00:05:12.980 He's jovial.
00:05:13.880 He can be funny.
00:05:14.780 He loves this country.
00:05:17.300 But there is some incredible history, not only about your family, but also how your father was involved in Cuba in the students at a young age.
00:05:31.780 And what was happening really with the revolution down there and how he was, I guess you could say, brought in to this revolution with Castro, not realizing what Castro is doing.
00:05:45.800 And it started at a young age where they were targeting children.
00:05:49.300 And it was an incredible part of the story, not just because of what happened, but also how he was beaten and how his life was threatened and how he was a marked man who had to get out and come to America.
00:06:02.720 Talk a little bit about that story of that being your history of your family.
00:06:08.900 And also, it's a warning to what's happening in this country right now.
00:06:13.180 It's the beginning of the book, and it's just it takes your breath away when you realize how close your father was to death in Cuba.
00:06:21.100 Well, my family story is a huge part of why this matters so much to me.
00:06:25.640 It's personal and it's real.
00:06:26.920 And what I want to do is just read you the first page of the book.
00:06:29.840 His white linen suit was stained red with blood, blood that had been beaten out of him with a club regularly each hour, breaking his nose, shattering his teeth.
00:06:42.400 Scarlet red blood, as if his suit were emblazoned with the color of the Marxist revolution of which he was a part.
00:06:51.680 As my father lay on that prison floor, crumpled and broken, not a spot of white was visible on the now torn and tattered suit he had been given for his 17th birthday.
00:07:03.960 Instead, mud and dirt and grime and blood.
00:07:09.200 To this day, my dad remembers what he was thinking in that dark hole.
00:07:14.940 Nobody depends on me.
00:07:16.840 I have no wife, no children.
00:07:19.580 It doesn't matter if I live or I die.
00:07:22.720 Three years earlier, when he was just 14, my father had made the fateful decision to join up with the revolution in his homeland of Cuba.
00:07:31.860 To follow Fidel Castro.
00:07:35.180 My dad was young and ignorant and naive.
00:07:40.060 Rafael Bienvenido Cruz did not know that Castro was a communist.
00:07:46.140 He didn't know the horrors that would befall the Cuban people at the hands of his new comrades.
00:07:52.060 He just knew that the then dictator of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, was corrupt and cruel and oppressive.
00:08:00.140 As Francis Ford Coppola immortally chronicled in the Godfather saga, Batista was in bed with the American mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased with the blood beaten out of the Cuban people.
00:08:15.900 Look, that's my family story.
00:08:18.480 My dad at 17 was tortured.
00:08:20.460 He was in prison.
00:08:21.560 He fled Cuba.
00:08:22.640 He came to America.
00:08:23.580 My aunt, my aunt, my Tia Sonia, whom I adore, who we actually had on verdict as a guest, talking about Cuba.
00:08:30.800 She fought in the counter-revolution after Castro succeeded.
00:08:33.640 She was in prison.
00:08:34.780 She was tortured by Castro's goons.
00:08:36.900 I tell her story in this book, too.
00:08:40.800 I also tell the story of my grandmother, my abuela.
00:08:44.300 My abuela was a sixth-grade teacher.
00:08:47.040 And she told me she loved teaching.
00:08:50.260 She loved teaching her students.
00:08:52.380 And she had a pure photographic memory, man.
00:08:54.220 It was incredible.
00:08:54.980 She literally, everything she read, she remembered word for word.
00:09:00.640 She told me about when Castro took over, that they almost immediately targeted the children.
00:09:08.200 And one thing to understand, Marxists always begin with the kids.
00:09:13.480 Always, always, always.
00:09:14.880 As my father told me, the revolution, like he was, were a bunch of 14- and 15-year-old boys who didn't know any better.
00:09:22.600 Teenagers, and you look at every communist revolution in the world, whether you're talking about Russia or China or North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela,
00:09:31.660 it is always the young teenagers who are idealistic, who believe, and who are naive,
00:09:37.260 who don't have the world experience to understand they're being lied to.
00:09:40.640 But communists start not just with teenagers, they go younger.
00:09:45.660 And what my grandmother told me is she said almost immediately after the revolution,
00:09:50.800 they sent the army into the elementary schools.
00:09:55.120 And soldiers would go into kindergartens and first grade.
00:09:57.760 And they would tell all of the little kids, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to God for candy.
00:10:06.020 And the kids all did so.
00:10:08.680 And then they'd open their eyes and there'd be no candy.
00:10:11.480 And then the soldiers would tell them, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel Castro for candy.
00:10:18.660 And the kids did so.
00:10:21.160 And while their eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly slip a piece of candy on each child's desk.
00:10:27.580 That's not an aberration.
00:10:29.920 Che Guevara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer, he was Fidel Castro's right hand.
00:10:35.560 Che Guevara described children as malleable clay that you can take the defects out of them.
00:10:41.540 You want to know why the cultural Marxists in America started in the universities.
00:10:45.700 You want to know why they've gone into K through 12, to elementary schools and junior highs and high schools.
00:10:50.840 Because if you take the children, you take the nation.
00:10:54.520 And this book is designed to lay out how they did it and how we take them back.
00:10:58.980 You know, when I was reading this book, Senator, I go back to there's certain pivotal moments in I think everyone's life that you look back on.
00:11:06.320 You go, wow, if that would have gone differently, my whole life would have gone differently or may not even exist in the first place.
00:11:13.080 I was hit by a drunk driver when I was a young kid.
00:11:17.100 We were in a car wreck.
00:11:18.120 He died.
00:11:18.660 We lived.
00:11:19.260 And I go back to that moment in my life.
00:11:21.460 Many times I was in a, as you know, a shooting where I was a target of a gang initiation.
00:11:27.100 I wonder if I would have been hit that night and in my life would have, you know, I wouldn't have my kids.
00:11:33.240 There's that moment in this book where you wrote, my father joined up and began doing acts of sabotage, burning government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever he could to undermine the oppressive regime.
00:11:45.420 That's what had landed him in prison at 17.
00:11:48.260 Batista's police had caught him and they were, they were extracting their brutal revenge.
00:11:53.600 The next day was dragging the office of a colonel who told him, I'm letting you go.
00:11:58.000 But if another bomb goes off, if another fire starts, I'm blaming you.
00:12:02.220 How can I be responsible for every bad thing that happens in the city?
00:12:05.340 My father asked.
00:12:06.460 I don't care, replied the commander.
00:12:08.300 I'm holding you responsible.
00:12:10.900 Your father returned home.
00:12:12.580 My abuela wept.
00:12:13.960 Her eldest child had walked in the door, beaten, covered in his own blood.
00:12:17.380 As she told me when I was a child that imagined that from that day was scared into her mind forever, forever.
00:12:25.380 My abuela told him, get out of the country.
00:12:29.060 And that was the turning point for your entire family history because not only did he get out, but he applied to colleges in America.
00:12:37.980 He, to the University of Miami, to LSU, the University of Texas.
00:12:42.200 Texas was the first one that let him in.
00:12:44.180 And that's how he came to America.
00:12:47.320 That's how you became a Texan.
00:12:49.900 And that's how your family history started anew with a clean slate in America.
00:12:55.240 When you were writing that, I'm assuming you've heard the story many times, but when you put it on paper, it took my breath away.
00:13:02.900 Look, the book is actually dedicated.
00:13:05.940 I don't think they know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father, my Tia Sonia, and my abuela in my family, the original Freedom Fighters.
00:13:17.200 I don't think my abuela is dead, but I don't think either my dad or Tia Sonia have seen that yet.
00:13:22.840 Now, my dad listens to Verdict, so he may find it out right now listening to the podcast.
00:13:29.260 But it was, I mean, when I, it's actually the very last thing I type on the book is the dedication.
00:13:35.040 And that was, look, it's why I am who I am.
00:13:39.960 I grew up as a kid sitting at the feet of my father and my Tia Sonia and hearing about Freedom Fighters.
00:13:45.780 And it is an unbelievable blessing.
00:13:49.660 When you are the child of someone who fled oppression and came to America seeking freedom, our freedom is not a joke.
00:13:56.820 It's not something, oh, that's kind of interesting.
00:13:58.820 It is incredibly serious.
00:14:02.300 We either, we defend our freedom here or we lose America.
00:14:05.800 I hate communists.
00:14:07.460 I hate them with a passion from the pit of my gut.
00:14:11.280 They are evil.
00:14:12.140 Communism has been responsible for more death, more misery, more destruction, more poverty, more suffering than any force in the history of humanity.
00:14:21.720 And this book is all about how the same philosophy that has produced such misery is taking over and has taken over the major institutions of America.
00:14:34.760 And look, you've heard me say this before, but as a child, my father probably a thousand times said to me, when we lost our freedom in Cuba, I had a place to flee to.
00:14:43.860 If we lose our freedom here in America, where do we go?
00:14:49.480 That's what the stakes are right now.
00:14:51.740 There was also a point in there that hit me.
00:14:54.440 And you said that your dad did something that I think we've lost in this country, and that's admitting sometimes that maybe we get things wrong.
00:15:03.020 Maybe this woke agenda is a failure.
00:15:06.280 Maybe green alternative energy in this green religion is a failure.
00:15:11.100 We've tried this, you know, the government taking over our kids.
00:15:14.760 It's a failure.
00:15:15.240 And your dad was an advocate for Castro early on, and he was ashamed by it.
00:15:20.680 He advocated for him even in America.
00:15:23.120 And he sat down, I'm reading from the book, he sat down, and he made a list of every place he'd spoken in Austin, Texas, in support of Castro.
00:15:31.240 He then went back to each and every one of them and stood before the same people to make amends.
00:15:37.200 He said, quote, I am here to apologize.
00:15:39.980 He told them, I misled you.
00:15:42.640 I didn't do so knowingly, but I did so nonetheless.
00:15:46.080 I urge you to support an evil man and an evil Marxist regime.
00:15:51.160 And for that, I am truly sorry.
00:15:53.960 For me, that's not just a point of incredible character.
00:16:00.060 But why don't we have that with politicians today where they can admit, hey, I may have gotten something wrong, and I'm sorry that I got it wrong.
00:16:09.680 We tried this, and it didn't work.
00:16:11.820 Because we are now, we have so many elected officials that refuse to ever admit they ever make a mistake.
00:16:16.780 And as humans, we make mistakes.
00:16:18.780 Look, that's exactly right.
00:16:20.360 And that story, likewise, my father told me thousands of times.
00:16:24.020 I was probably, I don't know, two or three years old the first time I heard that.
00:16:27.820 And I've admired it every time I've heard it, because to have the courage.
00:16:31.780 He had gone and spoken at rotary clubs and Kiwanis clubs in Austin supporting Castro.
00:16:38.200 When he got here, he got here, it was 1957.
00:16:40.600 He was still a young revolutionary.
00:16:42.380 He didn't know that Castro was a communist.
00:16:44.460 And he hated Batista.
00:16:46.480 And then when Castro took over and declared he was a communist, and my dad saw the evil and oppression and theft and murder and cruelty,
00:16:55.620 and that as bad as Batista was, Fidel Castro was a thousand times worse.
00:17:00.420 He had the character to admit he's wrong.
00:17:02.560 You know, I'm reminded of the clip recently where Barack Obama played that he said, you know, we all, we are all complicit in the Middle East.
00:17:12.960 Because he says, well, what Hamas did was terrible.
00:17:15.620 But he said, what's happening to the Palestinians, the occupation is unbearable.
00:17:21.340 And I got to admit, of all the clips of Obama, that might be the one that pisses me off the most.
00:17:26.680 I actually did yesterday Megan Kelly's show, her podcast in New York, and was talking about the book.
00:17:37.100 And she played that clip for me.
00:17:39.900 And I try to speak reasonably and respectably, and I try to limit my cursing.
00:17:45.580 But she played it to me, and I just said, what utter bullshit.
00:17:49.140 And by the way, anytime I say something like that, my father will call or text me and say, would you please watch your language?
00:17:54.420 That's not really a good thing to do.
00:17:56.100 And my dad's right on that.
00:17:57.200 But it just, it's infuriating.
00:18:00.100 And it's like, look, Obama, you sent over $100 million to the Ayatollah, to Iran.
00:18:06.360 You funded these Hamas terrorists.
00:18:08.100 You flooded money into the Gaza Strip.
00:18:10.000 You put money directly in the hands of these death squads.
00:18:14.120 And you say, we're all complicit.
00:18:15.740 And by the way, you're repeating the bigoted racist lie that there's an occupation.
00:18:20.900 The Gaza Strip is not occupied.
00:18:22.320 Hamas controls the Gaza Strip.
00:18:25.340 Israel left the Gaza Strip.
00:18:26.560 It's entirely the Palestinian.
00:18:28.160 There is no occupation, zero, in Gaza.
00:18:31.420 And yet, you know, is Barack Obama capable of saying it was a mistake to send $100 billion to the Ayatollah who chanced death to America, death to Israel?
00:18:40.980 No.
00:18:41.180 Is Joe Biden capable of saying it was a mistake for him to send nearly $100 million to Iran subsequently when that money was used to fund the worst terror attack on Israel in over 50 years?
00:18:54.100 No.
00:18:54.520 They're not capable of admitting that.
00:18:56.200 And I do think admitting when something has failed is critically, critically important.
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00:20:32.000 You mentioned education and how it's the easiest way to change a country in one generation.
00:20:39.000 But there was also one of the things you said on page 64.
00:20:42.100 It says how to fight back.
00:20:42.960 He said a few years ago, you walked in to your daughter's bedroom and asked what she'd been learning about in school.
00:20:49.080 She said she had been learning about Christopher Columbus, the quote-unquote real story.
00:20:53.900 I asked what that meant.
00:20:55.560 For the next few minutes, I heard about the crimes of Christopher Columbus in minute detail.
00:21:00.820 Every murdered Native American, transmitted disease, and stolen acre of land seemed to be accounted for.
00:21:06.920 I heard that Columbus, who claimed the land for himself because his straight white privilege or something like that,
00:21:13.940 had not actually discovered anything at all, but rather had landed on the shores of what would come to be known as America by accident.
00:21:22.760 This quote-unquote revolution, familiar to most adults in the United States, is something that American children encounter sooner or later in a textbook,
00:21:31.260 believing that they've accessed some secret hidden knowledge that the grown-ups don't want them to have.
00:21:39.480 That moment for me is the moment that terrifies me for our kids and my kids' generation,
00:21:45.020 is that we have handed our children over to the school systems.
00:21:48.840 And it's not just public schools now, it's private schools as well,
00:21:52.300 who are indoctrinating them in this idea that America somehow was started on evil, bad motives,
00:22:00.680 and that you should not love this country, but you should be ashamed of this country,
00:22:04.980 and you had to deal with this with your own daughter.
00:22:07.580 Look, that's exactly right, and the problem is, this indoctrination is happening in every school in America.
00:22:13.120 It's happening to every child in America.
00:22:14.780 And what I described, part of the way, this book is all about how we fight back,
00:22:19.280 but, you know, as she was saying that Columbus was evil and racist and genocidal and terrible,
00:22:25.080 and she hated Christopher Columbus,
00:22:27.420 you know, I just sat down in her bedroom and I tried to have a conversation with her,
00:22:30.600 and I said, look, I'm not deeply vested in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some incredible hero,
00:22:37.320 but I said, you know what, we do have a federal holiday named after him.
00:22:44.200 Do we typically name federal holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs?
00:22:51.480 Like, might there be another side to the story?
00:22:54.920 Is there anything admirable about him?
00:22:57.020 And she was not really able to see much that was admirable.
00:23:00.640 I said, well, what do you think about getting in three rickety wooden ships
00:23:05.420 and leaving Europe and heading west when you think you're falling off the edge of the world
00:23:12.080 to explore and discover?
00:23:15.040 I mean, is that spirit, that intrepid spirit, is that anything to be admired?
00:23:19.560 And I said, secondly, look, it is true that Columbus and the men who traveled with him,
00:23:27.040 that they carried some germs that were new to the Western Hemisphere,
00:23:35.480 that when they got here, some of the Native Americans died from those germs.
00:23:40.020 Now, it's also true it was the 15th century.
00:23:41.840 They didn't know what a germ was, so they didn't know they were carrying it.
00:23:44.920 And when you accuse him of mass murder, does culpability matter?
00:23:50.480 Does the fact that they didn't know what a germ was, they had no idea they were doing it,
00:23:54.060 is that at all relevant if you're going to call him this evil, terrible murder?
00:23:58.400 And what I talk about in the book is not long thereafter, Thanksgiving of that year,
00:24:03.500 we were talking about Thanksgiving, and she and a friend of hers from school,
00:24:06.400 and this is when they were in grade school, said likewise,
00:24:09.140 oh, Thanksgiving is terrible.
00:24:11.140 It's when the pilgrims were oppressing the Native Americans.
00:24:14.920 And, you know, again, I made the argument, I think, even more vigorously this time,
00:24:19.460 and I said, listen, it is certainly right that the settlers that came to America,
00:24:24.920 that they settled America and they ultimately conquered America,
00:24:30.340 and they committed some terrible acts to Native Americans.
00:24:35.060 But if you look at the history of humanity in every continent,
00:24:39.460 every nation was acquired by conquest.
00:24:43.520 And every time there's conquest, you have one group of people who are conquering another group of people.
00:24:47.620 By the way, in the United States, before we were the United States,
00:24:52.080 the Native Americans, one tribe conquered another, conquered another, conquered another.
00:24:55.620 And you look at Europe, you look at Asia, that's the history of humanity,
00:24:58.260 one group of people conquering another.
00:24:59.980 And any time you have conquest, there are horrible things that happen,
00:25:06.860 there are terrible things that are done.
00:25:08.080 But I said, look, in any war, there were atrocities on both sides.
00:25:12.420 And, you know, I asked my daughter, I said, you know, from whence do you think the verb to scalp was derived?
00:25:21.040 The Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers who came here also.
00:25:25.680 And the connection that I made for her and that I make in the book is those two discussions are interlinked and intertwined,
00:25:35.960 which is for all of the teachers and all of the professors and all of the people advocating that Columbus was evil
00:25:43.780 and advocating that Thanksgiving is evil because the pilgrims were stealing from the Native Americans.
00:25:48.820 It comes down to one antecedent question.
00:25:52.560 Was the settlement of the new world a good thing or a bad thing?
00:25:57.980 Was the formation of the United States of America good or bad?
00:26:02.900 And I'm not neutral or ambivalent on that question.
00:26:05.920 I think the United States of America has been the greatest force for good of any nation in the history of the world,
00:26:12.260 that we have produced more prosperity, more abundance.
00:26:15.460 We have liberated more prisoners and captives.
00:26:18.760 We have shed our blood and treasure and tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the history of the world.
00:26:26.680 Do we have our flaws?
00:26:27.660 Yes, of course.
00:26:28.460 Do we have our problems?
00:26:29.460 Yes, of course.
00:26:30.740 But America, I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining city on a hill.
00:26:34.880 And I want to make a special request of our verdict listeners.
00:26:38.220 You guys are incredible.
00:26:39.680 You guys are patriots.
00:26:41.880 You guys give me hope and optimism in America.
00:26:44.180 I want to ask every one of you, please.
00:26:48.020 Today, when you finish listening to this podcast, most of you are listening on your cell phones.
00:26:54.640 Click over to Amazon.
00:26:56.820 Type in Unwoke and buy the book right now.
00:27:01.320 We have nearly a million unique listeners who listen to Verdict.
00:27:05.920 If every one of you goes online and buys the book, it would soar to the very tops of the New York Times bestseller list.
00:27:15.040 Amen to that.
00:27:15.820 That would drive them nuts, by the way.
00:27:18.740 And I wrote this book for the same reason, Ben, that you and I do this podcast.
00:27:24.800 It is right now 1103 p.m. on Tuesday night.
00:27:27.920 The podcast will come out early Wednesday morning.
00:27:30.420 Why am I sitting here at 1103?
00:27:32.020 Why are you sitting here at 1103?
00:27:33.760 Because we care about this.
00:27:35.320 We want our incredible listeners to be armed with information and know how to fight to save this country.
00:27:42.820 And this book is exactly in the same spirit.
00:27:46.560 The book is, I think, interesting and fun.
00:27:49.420 It's not some abstract academic treatise.
00:27:53.040 But it's designed when you read it, you'll enjoy it.
00:27:56.180 And by the way, I'd encourage you, look, if I can be immodest for a second, don't buy just one.
00:28:02.040 You know, Christmas is coming up very soon.
00:28:04.640 Buy a copy for your mom.
00:28:06.180 Buy a copy for your brother.
00:28:07.300 Buy a copy for your next door neighbor, your best friend.
00:28:09.500 And because the reason that I spend the time to write these books, the reason that you and I do this podcast,
00:28:16.840 is we either persuade and win hearts and minds or we lose America.
00:28:23.280 That's what the stakes are.
00:28:24.560 And that's what this book is about.
00:28:25.740 It's the exact same thing the podcast is about.
00:28:28.700 Canadian women are looking for more.
00:28:30.580 More out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:28:35.000 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:28:38.140 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:28:39.940 And I'm Catherine Clark.
00:28:41.240 And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers,
00:28:48.480 all at different stages of their journey.
00:28:50.660 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:28:53.900 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:28:57.960 You mentioned what we're up against.
00:29:01.700 And one of your chapters is about the newsroom revolution.
00:29:06.120 And you start with a great story of a former colleague of mine that is hard to deal with, Jake Tapper.
00:29:13.360 In a fight, he's in essence calling you a liar.
00:29:18.060 And this is the new thing that the media has done.
00:29:20.640 And they've become so sanctimonious that they are always looking for a moment to tell you why you're wrong and why they're brilliant.
00:29:29.100 We've seen this in the last several days as they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists in Gaza,
00:29:36.800 who the Israelis are trying to eradicate from the face of this earth with good reason after what they did just one month ago.
00:29:44.940 And we talked about this on Verdict.
00:29:47.260 Israel, we knew, was on an artificial clock the day the terrorist attack happened before the media, before the left,
00:29:54.920 started going to the aid of Hamas and the Palestinian people that were backing Hamas, many of them that were,
00:30:02.500 and saying, okay, all right, you had a few days now to go after these terrorists.
00:30:05.500 Now you've got to stop it.
00:30:07.020 Now it's your obligation to stop trying to protect yourself.
00:30:11.580 And this is our media now.
00:30:13.460 And it goes back to this idea that they have that they're better than everyone else.
00:30:18.520 They're not here to report news anymore.
00:30:20.300 They're here to go after people like you and others they don't like
00:30:24.440 and indoctrinate a nation to believe in socialism and communism and Marxism.
00:30:29.460 Look, that is exactly right.
00:30:31.700 And the media has fundamentally changed.
00:30:33.860 And so the chapter on journalism, I talk about how when I was first elected to the Senate 11 years ago,
00:30:39.940 and I actually focus on CNN as really a case lesson.
00:30:44.040 11 years ago, CNN, they aspired to be journalists.
00:30:48.640 If you asked them, they'd say, we want to be journalists.
00:30:50.800 We want to present both sides.
00:30:52.020 We want to be fair and objective and balanced.
00:30:53.960 And we want to focus on facts and not our opinion.
00:30:57.720 Now, they were terrible at it.
00:30:59.720 They leaned hard left and they couldn't help themselves.
00:31:02.980 But that was the objective.
00:31:04.560 Number one, they would articulate to you they were trying to achieve.
00:31:07.660 But number two, I think they believed in their heart they were trying to do that.
00:31:11.200 And so when I was first elected to the Senate, you may find this hard to believe.
00:31:14.440 But I went on CNN just about every week.
00:31:17.600 I went on there over and over and over again.
00:31:19.620 And they would give you a chance to lay out a conservative argument.
00:31:23.280 And they'd attack you from the left and they'd be unfair and they'd play gotcha questions.
00:31:26.620 But but they would give you a chance to present the other side.
00:31:30.300 And what happened is when Donald Trump became president, I think it fundamentally broke the media, their brains shattered.
00:31:39.980 They hated him so much that today the media no longer views its its vision as being journalists, as being fair and impartial and presenting both sides.
00:31:50.940 Instead, they have embraced a vision that they are advocates.
00:31:55.420 They are defenders of democracy.
00:31:57.520 And what they mean by democracy is is is left wing radical policies.
00:32:01.820 And and and, you know, so so the story I tell in the very beginning of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race, I was out on the campaign trail.
00:32:14.720 I was actually in our campaign bus and I was doing an interview with Jake Tapper.
00:32:18.700 And look, I'll confess, I like Jake.
00:32:20.520 I've known Jake for for over 20 years.
00:32:22.540 I've known Jake since he was a cub reporter on on the George W.
00:32:27.700 Bush 2000 campaign.
00:32:28.760 And I was a baby staffer on it.
00:32:30.580 And so I've known him a long time.
00:32:32.380 And he was interviewing me for his Sunday show.
00:32:35.040 And and we were we did an interview and it was I don't remember probably 10 minutes or so.
00:32:40.300 And I had learned a lesson.
00:32:41.920 It's something that I do with every Sunday show, which is that I insist that the Sunday show either be live or it be live to tape.
00:32:50.180 And the reason I learned that is I had done just a few weeks earlier, an interview with Bob Schieffer at CBS and Bob Schieffer.
00:32:56.780 I hadn't insisted on that.
00:32:58.700 And he'd done the interview.
00:32:59.920 And then afterwards, his show had edited it and basically cut out every good argument I made and just just put this this slash job where he decimated me because he excluded all my good answers.
00:33:12.340 And just just edited it in a way that was really deceptive.
00:33:16.220 And I said, OK, never again.
00:33:17.940 If we do one of these, they must air what I actually say.
00:33:21.940 And I said, look, if you want to give me five minutes or six or eight or 10 or 12 or whatever, you can pick the time.
00:33:27.560 But when we film it, you air exactly what happens during that time.
00:33:30.920 So we had agreed with that with CNN and in the course of the interview, we were talking about the shooting at Fort Hood and Nadal Hassan, who was who was the radical Islamist who had walked through and murdered 14 innocent souls yelling,
00:33:46.260 Aluha Akbar, and I mentioned that the Obama administration knew that Hassan was a radical jihadist.
00:33:54.440 They knew that he had been in email communication with Anwar al-Awlaki, who was the Islamist cleric, the radical, that he'd asked al-Awlaki about the permissibility of waging jihad on his fellow soldiers.
00:34:09.600 And yet the Obama administration did nothing until he committed that act of mass murder.
00:34:14.040 And when I said all of that, Jake immediately interrupted and he said, that's not true.
00:34:18.940 No, that's not that's not right.
00:34:20.320 And he said, what you're saying is fundamentally false.
00:34:22.660 That's a lie.
00:34:23.440 It's not true.
00:34:25.000 And, you know, I just kind of smiled and I said, well, you know, Jake, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things.
00:34:31.400 And what I'm saying is entirely accurate.
00:34:33.160 And, you know, when you research the issue, that's exactly what you're going to find out.
00:34:37.180 So we do the interview.
00:34:39.260 Jake and his production team leaves the bus.
00:34:41.340 And I don't know, five, 10 minutes later, there's a knock on the door of the bus.
00:34:45.540 And we open it.
00:34:46.200 It's Jake.
00:34:46.640 And he's very sheepish.
00:34:47.680 And he says, hey, can you come in and talk for a second?
00:34:49.340 I said, yeah, sure.
00:34:49.840 Come on in.
00:34:51.160 And he said, look, after we did the interview, he said, I went and got on the Internet and I researched it.
00:34:56.320 And actually, you were right.
00:34:58.600 He said, I didn't know that I had missed.
00:35:00.400 I just had not seen the revelation that the Obama administration knew it.
00:35:05.560 It just I couldn't believe it.
00:35:07.160 But it turns out you were right.
00:35:08.540 I was wrong.
00:35:09.180 And Jake said, listen, I'll give you a choice.
00:35:12.080 We can do it one of two ways.
00:35:14.000 He said, I agreed we would do this live to tape.
00:35:16.660 And so if you want, I will air it exactly as it happened.
00:35:20.360 And then after I air it, I will I will come on on live and I'll say after the interview, I researched it.
00:35:29.000 And it turns out I was wrong and Cruz was right.
00:35:32.320 What he said was exactly right.
00:35:33.860 And I was an error when I said he was not telling the truth.
00:35:36.680 He said, that's option number one.
00:35:39.060 He said, option number two, which he said, I'd really much prefer is that we just edit out that segment.
00:35:45.700 We just remove it from from the interview and we air everything else and just not include that segment.
00:35:51.100 And I describe in the book that, you know, I thought about it.
00:35:53.920 It was obviously in my self-interest to pick option number one that like having CNN, having Tapper admit he was full of crap and I was right.
00:36:02.780 That was a big political victory.
00:36:05.920 But I also expected that I would be doing a whole lot more interviews with Tapper and with CNN.
00:36:13.940 And I frankly respected how he approached it, that he came to me and he admitted he was wrong and he gave me that option.
00:36:19.160 And I thought it was an honorable way to handle it.
00:36:21.640 And so I made what I would say is a long term play rather than a short term play.
00:36:25.660 And I said, OK, you can go ahead and cut the segment out.
00:36:27.760 And so they did.
00:36:28.420 So the set the story I recount in the book, that segment never aired because CNN cut the segment out.
00:36:34.700 I focus on Tapper in particular because I think he's a smart guy and I think he wants to be a journalist.
00:36:42.380 And I think in his heart right now, he knows that he's not that Trump broke Tapper, that now CNN will have a panel of five experts there to discuss true or not.
00:36:53.800 Donald Trump is the devil.
00:36:55.920 And all five of them agree.
00:36:57.560 Of course, he's the devil.
00:36:58.600 No, he's worse than the devil.
00:36:59.660 That's the whole debate.
00:37:01.000 And, you know, look, CNN used to be a place.
00:37:03.960 If you go back to 2017, in 2017, I did three town hall debates on CNN with Bernie Sanders.
00:37:11.940 We did one on health care and two on tax policy.
00:37:16.520 And they were great debates.
00:37:18.160 I think they were among, if not the highest rated shows on CNN that whole year.
00:37:21.680 They were 90 minutes.
00:37:23.140 Bernie is an unapologetic defender of socialism.
00:37:26.440 I'm an unapologetic defender of capitalism.
00:37:29.060 And we had a real and substantive debate.
00:37:32.380 That CNN doesn't exist anymore.
00:37:34.740 And it's bad for America.
00:37:37.060 It's bad for the world that we don't have functioning journalism.
00:37:40.500 And I describe all of this in the book.
00:37:42.220 But I also describe how, because journalism, corporate media is broken, it's part of what makes the radical Democrats so extreme.
00:37:50.940 Why they vote for such ridiculous policy positions that are so out of the mainstream.
00:37:56.720 Because they know they will never, ever, ever get asked about it by reporters back home.
00:38:01.240 They will never have to defend it.
00:38:03.000 And so it's radicalized the Democrat Party in Washington.
00:38:06.720 Senator, there's another part of your book that I want to mention real quick.
00:38:10.220 And it's a trend.
00:38:11.560 Whether it's you talking about big tech or the schools or Marxism in Washington.
00:38:19.380 The list goes on and on.
00:38:21.100 Especially, you have a lot to talk in here about science and COVID.
00:38:25.040 That chapter is probably my favorite as I was reading it today.
00:38:29.660 I was marking it up.
00:38:31.160 But there's a trend in this book.
00:38:33.440 And I love this.
00:38:34.260 This may be my favorite part.
00:38:35.540 Is you, in each chapter, in essence, ask, how do you fight back?
00:38:41.660 How to reclaim control?
00:38:43.940 How do we win?
00:38:44.920 It's not just a book of you ranting about issues.
00:38:48.000 But you actually lay out how we can succeed and win on our side of the argument.
00:38:55.100 And that's what empowers the reader to not just read a book, but to take something from it.
00:39:00.600 And I love that.
00:39:02.540 Well, it is critically important.
00:39:04.760 And there are all sorts of elements of how we fight back and win.
00:39:07.600 One of it is transparency and sunshine.
00:39:10.960 The views of the radical left are wildly unpopular.
00:39:14.940 Look, no rational person supports abolishing the police.
00:39:18.940 That's a nutty position.
00:39:21.080 No rational person supports open borders and the chaos at our southern border.
00:39:25.820 No rational person supports medically and surgically sterilizing and castrating eight-year-old children.
00:39:33.300 No rational person is befuddled by the question, what is a woman?
00:39:38.600 All of those are 90-10 issues.
00:39:41.900 And the radical left is on the extreme minority position on every one of them.
00:39:48.020 It's why they rely on force rather than persuasion, because their positions are out there.
00:39:55.040 And so often, shining a light is really, really potent.
00:39:59.360 And I'm going to give an example.
00:40:00.520 I'm going to give an example from verdict.
00:40:02.880 So we had a podcast several weeks ago that was entitled Black Lives Matter is Hamas.
00:40:12.900 And we walked through how Black Lives Matter, as a statement, is a truism.
00:40:18.320 It's absolutely true.
00:40:19.380 Yes, period, the end.
00:40:21.420 However, Black Lives Matter, the organization, Black Lives Matter, Inc., is a very different thing.
00:40:27.140 It is founded by avowed Marxists who are trained Marxists.
00:40:32.820 They're trained in fomenting communist revolutions.
00:40:35.520 That's their own self-description, not our language, their language.
00:40:39.760 They are vicious racists.
00:40:41.920 And they are deeply, deeply anti-Semitic.
00:40:45.560 They hate Israel.
00:40:46.600 Indeed, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter has called since 1995 for the destruction of the state of Israel.
00:40:52.840 And on our podcast, we laid out all of that evidence, and then we named names of all of the or a number of the giant corporations who had given millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter.
00:41:04.020 And that included Amazon and Apple and Coca-Cola.
00:41:07.340 And we said, listen, do these companies, do you support vicious racism?
00:41:13.960 Do you support vicious anti-Semitism?
00:41:15.980 Do you support demanding the destruction of the state of Israel?
00:41:20.280 Do you support these avowed Marxists because you gave money to them?
00:41:24.560 That podcast came out, I believe, October 18th.
00:41:29.400 The next day, Coca-Cola went online, and they scrubbed their website to remove every reference to the $500,000 that they had given to Black Lives Matter.
00:41:43.620 And it was a direct result of this verdict podcast.
00:41:46.720 We put the podcast out, and almost immediately they erased it.
00:41:50.020 Now, they thought they could do it quietly.
00:41:52.340 They could just hide and evade responsibility.
00:41:54.640 I'm calling them out.
00:41:55.580 I'm calling them out, and I'm shining a light.
00:41:57.520 And I'm saying, look, have you apologized to the American people for why you were funding a viciously racist and anti-Semitic organization?
00:42:04.420 And it wasn't a secret.
00:42:05.540 They were open about it then.
00:42:07.340 You just didn't care because your woke politics mattered more to you than doing the right thing.
00:42:12.580 And that's one of the strategies that is inherent in this book is shining the light and calling them out, and that's how you win victories.
00:42:21.180 And chapter after chapter, I talk about winning victories, whether it's winning school board seats back or flipping Virginia red as parents got furious or whether it's Elon Musk buying Twitter.
00:42:31.900 All of these are strategies where we take these institutions back.
00:42:36.520 It's an incredible book, Senator, and congratulations on it.
00:42:41.000 It's one that I hope everybody listening will go grab.
00:42:44.720 You can go to Amazon right now.
00:42:46.200 You can order it.
00:42:47.020 It's a fabulous Christmas gift.
00:42:49.740 It is 356 pages from beginning to end.
00:42:54.080 One of the chapters that you've got to read if you get it, make sure you read the big tech chapter and also science.
00:43:02.560 The science chapter to me was one that as I was reading it, Senator, I know you well enough to know when you really get passionate about something, you were really, really passionate when writing that chapter on science and what has happened and how science has just been totally corrupted,
00:43:22.540 whether it's by Fauci or others that are pushing agendas through science, and those are two chapters I just want to mark for people.
00:43:31.020 Make sure you take a look at those as well.
00:43:33.300 Grab the book, Unwoke, How to Defeat a Cultural Marxism in America.
00:43:38.360 You can get it on Amazon.
00:43:39.480 Order it now wherever you get your books.
00:43:41.160 Don't forget, hit that follow, subscribe, or auto-download button wherever you're listening to this podcast.
00:43:47.740 We do this podcast Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
00:43:50.020 We also have a recap pod on Saturday mornings that is some of the things deeper in each podcast maybe you missed because of time restraint.
00:43:59.880 So make sure you check that out as well.
00:44:01.460 And on those in-between days, I'd love for you to join me as I'll keep you updated on breaking news on my podcast, the Ben Ferguson podcast as well, on those in-between days.
00:44:09.540 So make sure you download that as well.
00:44:10.900 And the Senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.
00:44:13.420 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:44:17.320 Guaranteed Human.