Verdict with Ted Cruz - February 12, 2022


We Are All at Risk


Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

177.46817

Word count

9,324

Sentence count

699

Harmful content

Misogyny

15

sentences flagged

Toxicity

29

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz is running for president of the United States in 2020. He's a conservative firebrand who's been a long-time member of the conservative Cato Institute and has been a frequent guest on conservative talk shows like CNN and Fox News.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.400 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.040 Government is using big tech to shut down dissent.
00:00:09.180 They're doing it on the biggest podcast platform in the world.
00:00:13.660 They're doing it up in America's hat with Canadian truckers. 0.62
00:00:18.460 We are all at risk here.
00:00:21.680 And what happens now will have a lot to say
00:00:24.740 about the future of free speech in our society.
00:00:29.000 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:37.480 Today's episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is brought to you by IPVanish.
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00:04:19.860 Welcome back to VERDICT with Ted Cruz.
00:04:22.020 I'm Michael Knowles.
00:04:23.500 Senator, they seem like very different issues, Canadian truckers and the most popular podcaster
00:04:30.040 on the planet, except for the week that VERDICT launched.
00:04:32.540 But we'll digress.
00:04:33.920 We leave that for a couple of years ago.
00:04:37.160 They're deeply connected stories.
00:04:39.460 And actually, you seem to have played a role in all of this.
00:04:42.200 You caused a little bit of an international incident, Senator, when you got into a Twitter
00:04:46.380 spat with the mayor of Vancouver over this trucker protest going on up in Canada.
00:04:52.880 Well, that's true enough.
00:04:54.100 The mayor of Vancouver said, you know, we Canadians don't want you truckers.
00:04:57.720 You guys go home.
00:04:58.660 And I had to point out, I said, gosh, you know, the Canucks might have a different view if
00:05:03.580 the truckers actually did go home and suddenly your shelves were empty.
00:05:06.840 I mean, it seems to me two years ago, people were waxing eloquent about the great heroes
00:05:12.560 that truckers were.
00:05:13.580 And I agree.
00:05:14.020 They make our entire system, our economy move forward.
00:05:19.160 But now these leftist politicians are saying, to hell with you truckers.
00:05:24.200 We don't like what you have to say.
00:05:26.160 So it's not just the little guy.
00:05:27.880 It's not just the working class that is being put upon here.
00:05:30.440 It's even one of the most elite, influential, popular voices in the world.
00:05:37.440 That would be Joe Rogan, this podcaster who's got a massive, massive audience.
00:05:41.540 He's politically independent and a big tech is shutting him down.
00:05:46.020 We touched on it a little bit.
00:05:47.600 Some aging hippies were trying to boot him off of Spotify, but it appears to be sort of 1.00
00:05:53.400 working.
00:05:54.560 Well, these two stories are deeply interconnected and they represent together the most dire threat
00:06:02.160 to free speech we have.
00:06:04.360 Joe Rogan, you have petty government authoritarians enlisting their buddies in big tech.
00:06:11.540 to silence the voice of dissent.
00:06:14.160 Canadian truckers, you have petty government authoritarians enlisting the voice of big tech
00:06:19.780 and the power of big tech to silence the voice of dissent.
00:06:23.520 And both, look, this would never have happened even a year or two or three ago.
00:06:29.140 This is a new phenomenon.
00:06:30.600 Let's take Joe Rogan.
00:06:32.540 So Jen Psaki publicly called from the White House podium for Spotify to take down his episodes, 0.91
00:06:39.540 for Spotify to silence him.
00:06:41.780 I will say, let me start off by saying I'm pissed off.
00:06:44.400 Look, our last podcast, we talked about how this pod was the first podcast to be mentioned
00:06:49.460 from the White House podium.
00:06:50.800 And in comes Joe Rogan and Bigfoots us.
00:06:54.620 That's true.
00:06:55.480 Senator, we were the first two.
00:06:57.080 We can at least hang our hat on that.
00:06:58.800 But yes, Joe Rogan has come in.
00:07:00.620 He is now the third podcast to be referenced at a White House briefing.
00:07:03.500 I will say in between the two, Jen Psaki was asked about this podcast and her comment was
00:07:10.600 she said she is blissfully not a spokesperson for Ted Cruz, which I have to admit, Michael,
00:07:18.280 I retweeted and just said the bliss is mutual.
00:07:21.300 The feeling is reciprocated, right?
00:07:23.160 But I will say what we did talk about actually setting up margaritas and kickboxing and see
00:07:27.700 if we could recruit her over because she, thankfully, we're not going to do that. 0.98
00:07:32.240 Look, stop for a second and think about the White House, the executive office of the
00:07:40.240 leader of the free world, the most powerful man on planet Earth, calling for a voice of
00:07:47.960 dissent to be silenced and calling very specifically, calling out big tech, calling out the oligarchs
00:07:55.440 in Silicon Valley.
00:07:57.640 Jen Psaki was very specific. 0.60
00:07:59.260 Spotify, take down this post.
00:08:01.380 Now, normally when you have suppression of free speech, there's a big power imbalance
00:08:05.680 and it's powerful people trying to silence weak people.
00:08:09.380 Well, here, the person they're trying to silence is Joe Rogan.
00:08:11.980 Joe Rogan is many things, but not weak.
00:08:14.300 He's got 100 million listeners and viewers.
00:08:16.920 That is a crap ton of listeners and viewers.
00:08:20.480 And, you know, he gets more viewers.
00:08:24.620 He's.
00:08:26.760 For many episodes, he's he's 10x or 100x what CNN is.
00:08:32.980 And the White House is terrified of him.
00:08:37.080 CNN is terrified of him.
00:08:38.900 The blue check marks on Twitter are terrified of him.
00:08:41.120 And it's worth worth pausing.
00:08:43.460 Look, you and I are unlikely advocates for Joe Rogan.
00:08:48.100 I don't know Joe Rogan.
00:08:48.940 I've never met the guy.
00:08:50.780 Me neither.
00:08:51.220 As far as I know, he's not a conservative. 0.86
00:08:53.880 He endorsed Bernie friggin Sanders.
00:08:56.260 Generally, conservatives don't endorse wild eyed socialists.
00:08:59.240 But Rogan, look, I've really grown to admire Rogan because he's demonstrated backbone.
00:09:08.140 He's willing to speak out on COVID. 0.82
00:09:10.100 He's called bullshit to the continued propaganda and the contradictions and the lies coming out 0.96
00:09:19.020 of Fauci, coming out of the Biden White House, coming out of the press. 0.97
00:09:22.480 And for those in power, having someone willing to dissent with a really big megaphone scares them.
00:09:31.840 And so they want to destroy them.
00:09:33.460 And the important thing to know about Joe Rogan, this is not spontaneous.
00:09:36.560 This is not organic.
00:09:38.440 This is an organized assassination of speech.
00:09:42.480 It started off kind of comical.
00:09:45.380 But then the White House chimed in.
00:09:47.300 And then you noticed it started off with COVID misinformation because he brought in scientists
00:09:52.340 and doctors who had views that differed from the enlightened view of Dr. Fauci, which changes
00:09:58.820 every week.
00:09:59.420 But whatever it is that week is holy scripture and cannot be challenged.
00:10:03.880 Yeah.
00:10:04.340 But then, you know, this kind of hack writer Don Winslow, who I'd never heard of other than
00:10:10.720 he's loud and obnoxious on Twitter, puts out this video, an old video of Rogan using the
00:10:17.960 N-word.
00:10:18.640 And look, using the N-word is wrong.
00:10:20.740 Neither you nor I support it.
00:10:22.880 And suddenly all of the blue check marks gathered up together and Rogan is a racist for having
00:10:29.620 used it.
00:10:30.140 Look, that's not a word that should be used in polite society.
00:10:34.280 But I will tell you who else has used the N-word repeatedly, Joe Biden, rappers like crazy,
00:10:41.960 Howard Stern.
00:10:42.840 They're not canceling Howard Stern.
00:10:44.120 Why?
00:10:44.460 Because Howard Stern is is serviling, kissing the behinds of those in power. 0.92
00:10:53.040 It's really a shame. 0.81
00:10:53.740 Howard Stern started out a rebel and now he echoes the the words of the petty tyrants.
00:10:59.060 If you shut up and echo what they say, you're OK. 0.91
00:11:02.080 If you're Jimmy Kimmel, you can dress in blackface. 0.99
00:11:04.680 You can do whatever you want because you're a mouthpiece for the regime.
00:11:09.340 This has followed a familiar script.
00:11:12.040 And I guess this also ties it to the Canadian trucker protest, which is the actual substantive
00:11:17.020 issue that this is about is COVID.
00:11:19.740 And so Joe Rogan questioned the COVID narrative.
00:11:22.500 He brought on very respected, very well-known scientists.
00:11:25.140 They questioned the government's COVID narrative, the narrative du jour, because as you say,
00:11:29.880 it changes all the time.
00:11:31.840 And and so what happens then?
00:11:33.360 They try to attack him.
00:11:34.400 It doesn't work.
00:11:35.120 Then the left calls him a racist.
00:11:37.340 That is always the next card that they play.
00:11:39.220 They pull it out of nowhere.
00:11:40.640 They take clips out of context.
00:11:42.020 They do whatever they can.
00:11:42.960 They apply a standard unevenly.
00:11:44.380 And they're trying to do that.
00:11:45.820 That seems to have weakened him a little bit.
00:11:48.100 He's made some concessions.
00:11:49.320 We'll see where it goes.
00:11:50.560 But I guess my question on it is, what is it about this COVID issue?
00:11:54.340 Because I guess what the left would say is, Michael, Senator, this is about health.
00:12:00.880 People are going to die if this information gets out there.
00:12:03.320 And that's why we've got to suppress the truckers.
00:12:05.460 It's why we've got to shut up, Rogan.
00:12:07.220 Is this a unique issue where people are not not allowed to dissent?
00:12:11.740 It is unique in the following way.
00:12:14.020 It has revealed the authoritarianism of these government leaders.
00:12:18.620 They believe they have the power to force you to comply, to force you to take a vaccine.
00:12:22.960 My body, my choice doesn't matter to them anymore.
00:12:25.640 Nope, not your body, not your choice.
00:12:27.260 We're going to force you to take a vaccine, to force you to wear a mask, to force you to obey.
00:12:32.040 And if you don't, they will use the coercive force of government to shut your business down.
00:12:37.160 You know, there's a restaurant here in D.C. that was shut down because they refused to enforce the vaccine mandate.
00:12:43.820 So local restaurants said, look, I don't want to like have my customers come in, demand their papers, you know, intrude on their medical business.
00:12:50.440 And so what did D.C. do?
00:12:51.680 D.C. District of Columbia came in and shut them down.
00:12:54.740 I mean, it is arbitrary power.
00:12:56.260 They will shut your business down.
00:12:57.740 They will shut your restaurant down.
00:12:59.440 They'll shut your bar down. 1.00
00:13:00.320 They'll shut your store down. 0.96
00:13:01.960 They will fire you.
00:13:03.200 If you're active duty military, a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, a Navy SEAL, they will fire you.
00:13:08.440 If you're a doctor, a nurse, they will fire you.
00:13:11.100 If you're a government employee, if you're an FBI agent, if you're a Border Patrol agent, they will fire you.
00:13:15.840 It is force.
00:13:18.520 And these are the same guys that during the height of COVID when it started, we're shutting down playgrounds.
00:13:24.900 We're shutting down churches.
00:13:26.440 We're suing to say, if you sing Amazing Grace, everyone's going to die.
00:13:31.340 And what COVID has done has revealed the arbitrariness, the power.
00:13:39.680 And by the way, you know, some might say, all right, you're exaggerating. 0.99
00:13:44.780 Listen, all these Democratic politicians know it's crap. 0.99
00:13:47.780 We all saw this week Stacey Abrams sitting in a classroom full of little kids. 1.00
00:13:51.880 The kids are all masked and she's sitting there grinning ear to ear with no mask right in front. 0.87
00:13:56.620 Why? Because she's a Democratic overlord and the rules don't apply to her. 1.00
00:14:01.640 They just apply to the little people. 0.96
00:14:03.200 In this case, it really was little people.
00:14:05.160 It was children.
00:14:07.700 And it's all the Democratic politicians, every one of them.
00:14:10.500 Gavin Newsom, you know, palling around with Magic Johnson.
00:14:15.260 That's pretty cool.
00:14:15.860 He gets to hang out with Magic Johnson.
00:14:17.040 I'm jealous about that.
00:14:18.900 You know, Eric Garcetti saying, oh, I held my breath.
00:14:22.760 I had my mask off, but I held my breath.
00:14:25.360 Baloney.
00:14:25.800 But it's the lie is so absurd.
00:14:30.420 The person saying it doesn't believe it.
00:14:32.460 The person hearing it doesn't believe it.
00:14:34.720 But what it's really about.
00:14:36.180 And by the way, Barack Obama this week, he's having this massive house built in Hawaii.
00:14:41.340 Never mind global warming.
00:14:42.460 Never mind the environment.
00:14:43.420 And he's standing there with the workers, little working people.
00:14:47.720 The workers are all masks.
00:14:48.920 And there's Obama, no masks, supervising the servants.
00:14:52.800 That's the same as Nancy Pelosi when she does her fundraisers, where the serving people must 0.99
00:14:57.920 be masked. 1.00
00:14:58.860 It's garbage. 1.00
00:15:00.320 It is contempt of elitists. 1.00
00:15:03.000 But the fact that they take their mask off.
00:15:05.240 I've talked in this pod all the time.
00:15:07.220 Democratic senators remove their masks all the time behind closed doors.
00:15:12.880 When the TV cameras aren't there, boom, the mask comes off.
00:15:16.280 But as soon as they come out, they put the mask on.
00:15:19.100 This is about power.
00:15:20.800 And Rogan and the truckers are threats to it. 0.97
00:15:25.740 And I got to say, look, Rogan in the world of speech has a damn powerful megaphone. 0.82
00:15:34.860 Spotify is paying him $100 million.
00:15:37.580 $100 million is a lot of money.
00:15:39.000 Michael, if Spotify offered it to you tomorrow, $100 million, shave your head and become an
00:15:43.680 M&A wrestler.
00:15:44.740 I got to say, I think we'd see Michael Knowles, you know, you know, dressed in in a red tights
00:15:51.360 going to wrestle.
00:15:53.060 I don't want to undercut my negotiation.
00:15:55.100 I would do it for 95.
00:15:57.020 I would.
00:15:57.520 I believe you.
00:15:59.080 And I'd buy tickets to it.
00:16:01.880 Well, I guess this this is what's so scary here is Joe Rogan.
00:16:06.200 He's got this huge megaphone.
00:16:07.560 And yet they can at least to some degree make him concede.
00:16:11.620 We were always told that, yes, the government is bad and they do lots of bad things, but
00:16:16.340 we've got private enterprise.
00:16:18.000 We've got our own private organizations.
00:16:19.560 We can do our own work in the culture, fight back, build your own Google, all that kind
00:16:23.960 of stuff.
00:16:24.460 And yet what we've seen here in the States and with the Canadian truckers is you're seeing
00:16:28.620 the government using these private these private entities.
00:16:32.540 So you've got Spotify is being pressured by the White House to boot Rogan or at least to
00:16:36.640 censor him.
00:16:37.280 You've got GoFundMe.
00:16:38.500 There was a GoFundMe set up for these Canadian truckers.
00:16:41.040 A lot of people were donating to them.
00:16:42.440 And then GoFundMe under a lot of political pressure says, whoops, never mind.
00:16:47.160 We're going to take that money away from the truckers.
00:16:49.900 Well, so now we don't have the government.
00:16:51.700 We don't have the private enterprise.
00:16:52.940 What are we supposed to do?
00:16:54.300 So you look at Spotify.
00:16:55.720 They haven't kicked Rogan off yet, but the goal is to kick him off entirely.
00:16:59.360 That's what the White House called for.
00:17:01.220 They have taken down about 100 episodes of his show.
00:17:04.140 So they've decided that you and I, we don't get to see what he said those episodes were 0.98
00:17:08.200 too dumb or too ignorant. 0.99
00:17:10.000 We can't listen. 1.00
00:17:11.280 That speech is dangerous.
00:17:12.820 And so they're going to ban it.
00:17:14.680 I got to say, Rogan responded by apologizing.
00:17:17.960 And listen, if there's one lesson Donald Trump has taught us is don't apologize to the woke
00:17:23.640 left-wing mob because they're not interested in apology.
00:17:26.920 They're not interested in truth.
00:17:28.140 They're not interested in facts.
00:17:29.960 Nobody cares in the mob about the substance of what was on those 100 episodes.
00:17:34.860 They don't care at all.
00:17:35.960 They want to destroy him.
00:17:37.700 And you look at the truckers, listen, in Canada, the Canadian politicians, you know,
00:17:43.180 the mayor of Ottawa was reveling in calling for GoFundMe to pull down the site and was bragging
00:17:55.360 about it.
00:17:56.400 And GoFundMe, people had given $10 million to support this.
00:18:00.740 I mean, it was, you know, a spontaneous movement.
00:18:04.440 And when the government officials called on GoFundMe, just like the White House did, the
00:18:09.540 government officials in Canada called on GoFundMe, stopped this.
00:18:14.160 You know, GoFundMe didn't have $100 million tied up with the truckers.
00:18:18.040 If they did, they might have behaved differently.
00:18:19.760 Spotify's been a little bit trying to have their cake and eat it too.
00:18:23.100 Yeah.
00:18:24.180 So GoFundMe just said, nope, we're taking the money.
00:18:27.140 And first they said, we're going to give it to a bunch of left-wing causes that we support.
00:18:31.920 Then there was so much outrage, they backed off and said, oh, no, no, we'll just refund
00:18:35.520 the money.
00:18:36.160 Look, this weekend, I sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the FTC to
00:18:42.060 investigate GoFundMe for deceptive trade practices.
00:18:45.340 Because if you take $10 million, if you steal it from people and divert it to a place that
00:18:51.740 the consumers who gave it didn't intend it to go, that is deception.
00:18:57.180 That is consumer fraud.
00:18:58.760 And it is indicative of the arrogance of big tech and the willingness for them to act as
00:19:05.540 enforcers for government officials.
00:19:08.600 Now, there was a second part of this GoFundMe story.
00:19:11.580 So I'm very glad that you are bringing legitimate government power against GoFundMe here.
00:19:17.780 I will never use GoFundMe again.
00:19:20.120 Obviously, we can't trust it if they're going to take the money away from the causes we think
00:19:24.020 we're giving to.
00:19:24.780 Now, Michael, that's not fair.
00:19:26.320 If you want to support Black Lives Matter or Antifa, if you want to support rioters and
00:19:30.180 people that are firebombing police cars, if you want to support people that are taking
00:19:33.440 over police stations and declaring CHAZ autonomous zones, GoFundMe is the site for you.
00:19:38.600 So if you want to support Marxists, that's the place to go.
00:19:42.480 And you don't even need to donate directly to – you can donate to whoever you want.
00:19:46.040 Don't worry.
00:19:46.960 GoFundMe will redirect your money.
00:19:48.980 You don't even need to think about it.
00:19:50.400 So I'm really glad that you are leading on this issue and getting the government to look
00:19:54.500 into this obvious fraud.
00:19:56.720 But there was a second part to the story here, which is that after GoFundMe took all the
00:20:00.800 money, a bunch of people then got together and started to fund the truckers, not through
00:20:07.060 the government, obviously, not even through some private enterprise, some organization
00:20:11.840 like GoFundMe.
00:20:13.140 They did it through Bitcoin.
00:20:14.560 Bitcoin is a powerfully revolutionary technology.
00:20:18.920 Cryptocurrency, I am very bullish on Bitcoin and on crypto generally.
00:20:24.600 And I got to tell you, the same petty authoritarians who hate Joe Rogan, who hate the Canadian
00:20:32.260 truckers, they hate Bitcoin, and they hate crypto.
00:20:36.100 And there's some irony.
00:20:37.580 So I've become a very vocal defender of crypto, probably the leading defender or certainly
00:20:42.440 one of the leading defenders in the U.S. Senate.
00:20:44.960 And it's interesting.
00:20:45.920 A lot of the Bitcoin and crypto folks were Bernie bros, just like Rogan, you know, the kind
00:20:52.240 of cool socialists that seem hip.
00:20:55.340 And yet these authoritarians hate Bitcoin and they hate crypto.
00:21:00.740 And it's for the same reason.
00:21:02.500 Why do they hate Joe Rogan?
00:21:03.940 Because they can't control him.
00:21:05.800 He's not subject to their authoritarian power.
00:21:09.900 Why do they hate Bitcoin?
00:21:11.300 Because they can't control it.
00:21:13.600 It is a system of currency outside of the monopoly control of the U.S. government.
00:21:17.960 And I got to say, as I've addressed, you know, I spoke at a big crypto conference in Austin
00:21:24.040 several months ago and I said, listen, you need to understand this administration, I believe,
00:21:29.140 is going to go after you and is going to try to destroy you. 0.95
00:21:33.060 And by the way, that's a pattern of authoritarians.
00:21:37.480 China, communist China, outlawed Bitcoin for the exact same reason.
00:21:43.180 Why does Elizabeth Warren hate Bitcoin? 1.00
00:21:45.320 For the same reason that she and China hates Bitcoin, because neither one of them can control 0.90
00:21:50.320 it.
00:21:51.160 And the theme through all of this is the power of freedom to be not subject to the arbitrary
00:22:00.260 whims of those in government power.
00:22:02.900 Now, you have convinced me on this.
00:22:04.700 I don't know anything about crypto.
00:22:06.820 I'm a terrible investor.
00:22:08.200 My investment strategy generally is buy high, sell low.
00:22:11.020 That's whenever I'm involved.
00:22:12.260 But what a lot of listeners probably don't know is that you are much hipper than I am.
00:22:18.280 You have been on this crypto thing for a while.
00:22:21.080 It's true.
00:22:21.680 And you did make headlines because, well, while crypto was collapsing and I was panicked and
00:22:27.180 selling all my crypto, you were apparently buying the dip.
00:22:31.640 That is true.
00:22:32.700 So I bought Bitcoin.
00:22:34.280 I own Bitcoin.
00:22:35.180 I think according to the public reports, there are three senators that own Bitcoin, me, Cynthia
00:22:40.180 Lummis and Pat Toomey, you know, I'll say, I don't know, six, eight months ago, I didn't
00:22:46.020 know a whole lot about Bitcoin and crypto.
00:22:48.500 And I saw that it was growing and developing.
00:22:51.940 And I said, look, I need to educate myself.
00:22:53.940 And so I started setting up dinners with people involved in the crypto world and just
00:23:00.520 sitting down and listening to them. 0.93
00:23:01.860 And I started off with, you know, all sorts of dumb questions. 0.93
00:23:05.080 You know, what is it? 0.81
00:23:05.660 How does it work in learning?
00:23:06.820 And it's complicated stuff.
00:23:08.060 And I certainly I would not hold myself out as an expert today.
00:23:11.960 But I started learning and listening to it and being fascinated by it, by the development
00:23:16.480 of it, by the ability that there's a book actually that Cynthia Lummis recommended to
00:23:20.980 me called Layered Money, which I read that talks about some of the history of the development
00:23:26.140 of money from the beginning.
00:23:27.140 But but crypto is the next evolution of it.
00:23:30.080 And I've gotten very bullish on on crypto, especially Bitcoin.
00:23:35.000 And and really horrified at the efforts of Elizabeth Warren and big government Democrats
00:23:45.140 to crush this growing industry.
00:23:47.600 You know, Texas is becoming an oasis for Bitcoin.
00:23:51.560 We're seeing more and more crypto moving to Texas, particularly Austin.
00:23:56.140 And so I started several months ago.
00:23:58.040 I actually have a weekly buy order in for Bitcoin that every week I just have an automatic
00:24:02.560 buy.
00:24:03.080 You know, look, given that there's volatility, I'm a fan of dollar cost averaging, which
00:24:07.800 is just having a buy that occurs weekly automatically so that high or low it averages out.
00:24:14.740 And then what I ended up doing, I guess, a couple of weeks ago is when Bitcoin dropped about
00:24:22.600 in half, I said, all right, I, I don't believe this drop.
00:24:26.300 And so and so I made a bigger purchase.
00:24:28.280 I bought twenty five thousand worth of worth of Bitcoin under the Senate.
00:24:32.580 You have to file a financial disclosure for a purchase over a thousand dollars.
00:24:36.460 So I filed that financial disclosure.
00:24:38.860 And, you know, usually those financial disclosures don't you know, maybe they get a little
00:24:44.020 bit, but they don't they don't get a whole lot of attention.
00:24:46.600 Actually, it was fascinating, Michael, when I filed the financial disclosure, it generated
00:24:50.700 a ton of press.
00:24:52.340 And and listen, I am bullish on Bitcoin.
00:24:54.820 So I'm proud to say I got skin in the game.
00:24:57.180 I believe in it.
00:24:57.940 And that's that's what that's why I invested in it.
00:25:00.020 But but I think we ought to be encouraging.
00:25:02.420 I want cryptocurrency.
00:25:04.600 I want America to be the hub of cryptocurrency globally.
00:25:08.680 And frankly, I want Texas to be the hub of cryptocurrency in America.
00:25:13.180 So I I have been convinced by you and by other.
00:25:17.080 I mean, Ronald Reagan's favorite economist, George Gilder, was really bullish on blockchain
00:25:21.640 technology years ago even and said this is kind of the future of the Internet.
00:25:25.820 Yeah.
00:25:25.940 And so what I'm convinced on here now is that this would be a way to avoid government control.
00:25:32.480 This would be a way to avoid even the control of private businesses that are often working
00:25:36.300 at the behest of the government anyway.
00:25:38.360 But then my final question to you is this.
00:25:40.880 If the government was able to clamp down on all these private businesses and build your
00:25:46.920 own Google and all of that and that hasn't worked, we saw it with the truckers.
00:25:49.960 We're seeing it with Rogan, too.
00:25:52.200 What is to stop them from clamping down on Bitcoin?
00:25:55.600 You've already heard rumblings out of the government.
00:25:57.320 What is the likelihood that Biden does that?
00:25:59.920 So, look, they may well and I am quite concerned about it.
00:26:03.880 This administration could kill crypto.
00:26:05.780 When I talk to the conference in Austin, you know, there are a lot of folks in the crypto
00:26:10.000 world who are a little bit utopian, that they have a view that we are inevitable, that Bitcoin
00:26:18.100 is inherently superior to all other forms of money.
00:26:20.800 I will say one of the things I like about it is it's a potential hedge against inflation.
00:26:25.080 And given this administration spending trillions and driving up trillions in debt, I'm interested
00:26:30.140 in the hedge and inflation as they're devaluing the dollar.
00:26:32.480 And so I like Bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.
00:26:35.860 But the point I made at this conference is y'all need to understand, government can destroy
00:26:41.580 you.
00:26:41.880 I asked, how many of y'all have heard of Napster?
00:26:45.600 You know, and they all did.
00:26:48.060 And I said, listen, it's easy to think we're happily in our sort of Austin peaceful place.
00:26:54.460 And I think Bitcoin is actually where Silicon Valley was maybe 15 or 20 years ago, which
00:27:02.800 is at a fork in the road where Silicon Valley could have chosen to go towards a libertarian
00:27:08.340 utopia.
00:27:09.540 Leave us alone.
00:27:10.420 Let's be entrepreneurs.
00:27:11.620 Let's have freedom.
00:27:13.240 Or they could have done what they did, which is to go down the socialist woke path of we
00:27:17.840 exercise power.
00:27:18.940 We are totalitarian and we're hard leftist woke.
00:27:22.580 And unfortunately, Silicon Valley took the wrong choice.
00:27:25.980 I think Bitcoin and crypto more generally is at that same fork in the road.
00:27:29.900 I hope that they go the libertarian way.
00:27:33.100 I hope they go the small business.
00:27:35.740 Leave us alone.
00:27:37.320 Let us be entrepreneurs.
00:27:39.620 You know, that is really potent.
00:27:41.600 So I'm trying to encourage it.
00:27:43.120 But absolutely, there is a very real and potent threat from the Biden administration that they
00:27:49.300 will go after it, that they will try to destroy it.
00:27:52.020 And I'm going to fight against that because I think it is a huge, huge industry going forward. 0.99
00:27:58.360 And I don't want to see the idiot politicians in Washington drive it out of America and send 0.99
00:28:03.800 it overseas. 1.00
00:28:04.460 It won't disappear.
00:28:06.120 But Washington is perfectly capable of sending the jobs overseas and sending sending that business
00:28:12.160 overseas.
00:28:12.680 I think that would be catastrophic.
00:28:14.440 Right.
00:28:14.620 And especially at a moment where we're dissent against the ruling class, the liberal establishment,
00:28:20.400 the regime, whatever you want to call it, where that is so difficult and where people
00:28:24.260 are genuinely persecuted for it.
00:28:26.900 Yes, we have to wield what political power we can.
00:28:29.000 Yes, we need to wield what market power we can.
00:28:30.460 But if there were an instrument, a technology really to be able to exercise our rights and
00:28:35.660 our way of life, that's something very hopeful.
00:28:37.840 And so I hope that we can maintain it.
00:28:40.200 Uh, we unfortunately so far are not accepting Bitcoin in the verdict store, but I think we
00:28:46.420 really should.
00:28:47.200 I think that would be a great way to do it.
00:28:48.600 So Michael, I've actually introduced legislation in Congress to have the congressional store
00:28:54.220 accept Bitcoin.
00:28:55.200 Really?
00:28:55.400 So that's one of the pieces of legislation I've introduced as, as a way of, of, of spreading
00:29:00.840 its, its, its acceptance.
00:29:02.380 By the way, in El Salvador, I spoke with the president of El Salvador last week.
00:29:06.280 El Salvador, it's, it's legal currency, it's legal tender in, in, in El Salvador.
00:29:10.780 And it is, Bitcoin has all sorts of potential, particularly in a developing economy, for people to have
00:29:16.760 secure savings.
00:29:17.600 You may not have access to a bank account, but if you have a cell phone, if you have
00:29:20.780 any technology, you can have secure savings that can't be stolen from you.
00:29:24.840 It can also is secure instantaneous transactions.
00:29:28.560 You can transfer it, buy and sell, you know, there are massive inefficiencies right now in
00:29:33.620 the transfers of cash that crypto and Bitcoin go all around.
00:29:36.840 And so it is a generation skipping technology, uh, which is potent.
00:29:42.180 And that, that's one of the reasons.
00:29:44.060 So I've introduced legislation to repeal what the Democrats did, putting additional burdens
00:29:49.440 on crypto.
00:29:49.980 And I've also, as I said, I, I think the congressional store ought to accept it because it, it helps,
00:29:55.980 uh, it helps expand the ability of this industry to grow.
00:30:01.780 And I think there's enormous benefit to Texas and the country as this, uh, industry grows.
00:30:08.140 Well, it's great to know that Bitcoin is good for developing economies because if, uh, Joe
00:30:12.980 Biden's policies continue to destroy our dollar and our, and our jobs, we may soon be a developing
00:30:18.120 economy, uh, ourselves.
00:30:19.720 Now we have more you just, when you think it's over, there is still more, uh, some of
00:30:24.700 you who have gone over and gone to verdict with Ted Cruz.com slash shop and headed over
00:30:29.240 and subscribe to the verdict plus community.
00:30:31.020 Some of you know about this, but some of you might not, uh, know this quite yet, but our
00:30:35.820 friend Liz Wheeler is hosting a new series with Senator Cruz, the hardest working man in
00:30:41.140 show business and in politics.
00:30:43.080 And that is called cloak room.
00:30:44.940 Uh, Liz, what are you talking about?
00:30:47.000 Hi, Michael.
00:30:47.480 Hi, Senator.
00:30:48.240 Yes.
00:30:48.520 And Michael, you and I joke one series is simply not enough for Senator Cruz.
00:30:52.420 So there must be two.
00:30:53.940 I, I, I'm so excited.
00:30:55.300 This will be our second, our second episode in the series.
00:30:57.420 I'm excited to introduce it.
00:30:58.480 It's called the cloak room.
00:30:59.520 It's on verdict plus it is only for verdict plus subscribers.
00:31:03.280 You can of course, join us at verdict with Ted Cruz.com slash plus it's a, it's a brand
00:31:08.200 new series with Senator Ted Cruz.
00:31:09.760 It's co-hosted by me, Liz Wheeler.
00:31:11.580 Basically how it's going to work is I'm going to pick his brain.
00:31:14.140 Like I would in a strategy session, it's a behind the scenes peek into the details of
00:31:18.540 what goes on in DC, just like the real cloak room of the Senate today.
00:31:22.280 We're going to talk about Stacey Abrams and that infamous maskless photo of her with kids
00:31:27.220 who were wearing masks next to her.
00:31:29.000 Plus the proper role, this is the nerdy part, the proper role of public health and the administrative
00:31:33.360 state and the separation of powers doctrine.
00:31:36.220 Now, like I said, you can join us at verdict with Ted Cruz.com slash plus.
00:31:39.440 I also have a promo code cloak room for you.
00:31:42.500 If you use this promo code cloak room, you'll get one month free, a one month free trial on
00:31:46.680 your annual subscription.
00:31:48.240 It's, it's going to be a good time.
00:31:49.800 Then as I have mentioned before, soon after that, we're going to have a series where it
00:31:54.700 is just me and Liz and no Senator, then a series of Liz and the cactus.
00:31:59.260 And we're, we're just building out a whole universe here because as, as the left tries
00:32:04.180 to clamp down on us, it's more important than ever to speak out.
00:32:06.820 And Liz, in our beneficence, in our charity, which is a theological virtue, we are not going
00:32:13.120 to keep this episode behind the paywall.
00:32:15.100 In the future, the episodes are going to be behind the paywall, but right now we have a
00:32:17.800 sneak peek.
00:32:18.420 So I'm going to get out of here.
00:32:19.880 Liz, you take it away with the cloak room.
00:32:21.740 Thank you, Michael.
00:32:22.400 I'm Liz Wheeler.
00:32:23.200 This is cloak room on verdict plus Senator.
00:32:26.000 We have a great episode planned today.
00:32:29.100 So let's start with this photograph.
00:32:30.400 This is the photograph heard around the country.
00:32:32.360 If you will, it is of course, Stacey Abrams, gubernatorial candidate for the state of Georgia.
00:32:36.760 She is not wearing a mask in this photograph, but she is surrounded by school children,
00:32:40.740 very small children with wearing masks on their face.
00:32:43.740 And not only is this a terrible look, she actually is defending this in the wake of all
00:32:48.340 the outrage.
00:32:48.900 So my question to you, like I said, is purely political.
00:32:50.740 Is this photograph going to be the reason that she loses her election? 0.81
00:32:54.300 Is this going to disqualify her in the eyes of her voters? 1.00
00:32:57.040 Look, I think this photograph has the potential to be something like Terry McAuliffe's comment
00:33:01.680 at the end of the Virginia governor's race, where he said in the debate, he said, parents
00:33:06.220 have no right to say what's taught to their kids in school.
00:33:09.560 And I think if there was one sentence that defeated McAuliffe and elected Glenn Youngkin,
00:33:14.660 it was that sentence.
00:33:15.540 It was the arrogance that was revealed.
00:33:18.300 It was, you know, there's an old line that a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth,
00:33:22.580 tells you what they really think.
00:33:24.460 This picture shows you what Stacey Abrams really thinks.
00:33:27.440 And it is, I think this picture will play a central role in the election.
00:33:33.540 You know, several things are striking.
00:33:35.200 Number one, they put the picture out.
00:33:39.540 They were proud of this picture.
00:33:40.900 They saw nothing wrong with it.
00:33:42.300 And then suddenly the reaction was so intense, they deleted it.
00:33:46.700 And they got the school to delete it, too.
00:33:48.520 They, like, tried to ban it, tried to erase it, just delete the, in fact, the school person
00:33:53.520 deleted her entire account.
00:33:54.980 But then, when everyone naturally criticized the self-evident hypocrisy, the Abrams campaign
00:34:05.900 put out this statement just snarling with attacks that, of course, people are attacking 0.85
00:34:12.100 me because they're racists. 0.94
00:34:13.800 And it's all about, you know, undermining Black History Month because they're all just horrible 1.00
00:34:19.300 racists who hate me. 0.95
00:34:20.520 And completely ignoring the substance, also, her campaign put out a statement that, well,
00:34:26.220 Stacey requested that everyone wear a mask, and she just took hers off briefly.
00:34:31.760 Well, OK, so that doesn't make it better.
00:34:34.540 Maybe she held her breath like Garcetti did.
00:34:38.100 Indeed.
00:34:38.920 And by the way, I think it's much better.
00:34:41.600 The world would be better if Democratic politicians held their breath because it would mean they 0.84
00:34:45.040 couldn't talk.
00:34:45.740 So that would be an improvement.
00:34:46.960 Um, look, this picture, I was reading something today that was comparing this, saying, this
00:34:53.900 is the most consequential image of a politician in a room full of kids since George W. Bush
00:35:00.520 was reading a children's story to a room full of kids when they came in and told him the
00:35:05.520 news about 9-11, about the plane flying into the Twin Towers.
00:35:08.940 And, you know, we all remember that image and know that image.
00:35:14.180 And I think this one, likewise, people will remember years from now.
00:35:18.320 This is an image that will define the double standards, the arrogance, the hypocrisy.
00:35:25.780 Um, and it speaks volumes.
00:35:29.960 I also thought it was notable, like the Washington Post wrote a story, um, uh, about, uh, you
00:35:37.720 know, Republican outrage over Abrams in the picture.
00:35:42.920 And, and what's interesting is they didn't show the picture.
00:35:46.020 They had a picture of Stacey Abrams, like out on the campaign trail, smiling.
00:35:49.380 The Washington Post very deliberately wouldn't show the picture because you actually don't
00:35:53.180 need any commentary.
00:35:54.040 You just need to see the image and it tells you everything you need to know, including
00:36:00.160 the fact that of everyone in the picture, the person at greatest risk from a serious illness
00:36:06.580 of COVID was clearly Stacey Abrams.
00:36:08.440 Yeah.
00:36:08.640 She's the one not wearing a mask.
00:36:10.580 The little children, the odds are overwhelming if one of those kids got COVID that, that there
00:36:17.240 would be few, if any symptoms, and it would not be life threatening.
00:36:20.460 Uh, but what it reveals is, is that neither she nor the other democratic politicians that
00:36:29.900 are insisting the kids be masked, they don't believe in this stuff.
00:36:34.040 No, they don't.
00:36:34.540 It's worse than hypocrisy, isn't it?
00:36:36.300 It's, it's, it's elitism. 0.66
00:36:37.620 They actually aren't just violating rules that they think apply to themselves.
00:36:40.940 They actually don't believe that their own rules apply to themselves.
00:36:43.620 And this has been, this is the reason the Washington Post isn't picturing or showing this
00:36:48.320 photograph is because they know it's not a Republican or a Democrat issue anymore among
00:36:51.640 voters, especially parents, that parents across the aisle are outraged at how the public
00:36:55.880 health establishment has treated their children and continue to treat their children in school.
00:37:00.180 And that's where I want to dive into this, uh, a little more nerdy, a little more philosophical
00:37:04.620 aspect of this.
00:37:05.440 We've seen, uh, up close and personal the last two years, how the public health establishment,
00:37:10.460 um, holds so much power over the American public.
00:37:14.340 Like how much they influence politicians who issued dictates and mandates and lockdowns
00:37:20.120 and masks and vaccines and all of these, all of these fairly invasive measures in the
00:37:26.600 name of health, in the name of public health.
00:37:28.360 And so I want to talk to you tonight.
00:37:29.860 I want to ask you from a philosophical perspective, what is the role or what should be the role of
00:37:37.360 the public health establishment in our country?
00:37:39.820 Well, it depends what qualifies for public health establishment in, in many ways that
00:37:45.980 is functionally Dr. Anthony Fauci.
00:37:48.460 And, and, and he has become the face of it so much so that, that on TV he has said, I represent
00:37:54.620 science.
00:37:56.300 You know, it reminds me of scripture in the beginning was the word.
00:37:59.200 I mean, it, it, it, it, it is this, this hubris to embody science with which Fauci, look, two
00:38:08.460 years ago, Fauci had a pretty good reputation.
00:38:10.840 He was well-respected.
00:38:12.680 Um, the arbitrariness, the arrogance, the attitude of infallibility and the obvious contradictions
00:38:22.120 that have come from Fauci, um, I think you've done massive and long-term damage to the credibility
00:38:30.240 of the CDC, of the NIH, of, of the public health establishment.
00:38:35.840 Listen, you want to minimize the spread of disease, lock every person on planet earth
00:38:40.100 in a, in a dungeon and never let them out.
00:38:42.200 You, you will reduce the spread of disease.
00:38:44.260 There just are other negative consequences.
00:38:47.720 Right.
00:38:48.200 Well, that, that kind of gets, that kind of gets to my question.
00:38:50.940 That's, that's why I think that we as a nation, especially the Republican party and the conservative
00:38:54.440 movement need to analyze.
00:38:56.540 We need to be thoughtful about what the proper role of public health is when public health
00:39:00.440 is defined as you, I mean, as the premise that you laid out as, as Fauci, as these government
00:39:06.780 bureaucrats who weren't elected, they were appointed, who have the highest salary of all
00:39:10.920 federal employees, including the president of the United States.
00:39:13.440 And it, to me, it speaks to the administrative state because we could get, we could get rid
00:39:18.040 of Fauci, meaning president Biden could fire him.
00:39:20.200 He could resign.
00:39:21.040 I mean, he's old.
00:39:21.620 He's not going to be in this position forever.
00:39:22.860 You can replace one bureaucrat with another bureaucrat, but as long as you have this system, as we
00:39:27.980 do of these executive agencies that Congress defers rulemaking to, I don't see this problem,
00:39:34.840 particularly now that they have cemented how they want to handle pandemics or public health.
00:39:39.320 They know that they can wage this power the way that they have.
00:39:42.080 I don't see this going away unless we address the administrative state specifically.
00:39:46.640 Yeah, look, I think it's a very good point.
00:39:48.980 I think the Trump administration made serious mistakes as COVID broke out.
00:39:53.220 And one of the mistakes was elevating Fauci and deferring to him for far too long.
00:39:59.140 The Trump administration should have fired Fauci.
00:40:01.240 The way Fauci and the declared overlords of public health treated us is that they were infallible.
00:40:08.560 And they did it while being cynically political at the same time.
00:40:14.160 That combination is a really toxic brew.
00:40:18.500 It is.
00:40:18.960 And especially because if there's a doctor in the private sector who has a terrible opinion
00:40:22.880 or gives you terrible medical advice, you just, you go somewhere else.
00:40:25.700 You go to a different practice.
00:40:26.780 You go to a different provider.
00:40:27.920 Sure.
00:40:28.180 And that doctor, I mean, it's a meritocracy or it's supposed to be.
00:40:30.760 And that's not the case when it's a government bureaucrat.
00:40:32.840 Again, that's why I think that when we're looking at the power of these bureaucrats and 0.86
00:40:39.360 federal agencies, we have to understand the history a little bit, that this idea of the
00:40:43.440 administrative state was introduced, you know, at least theoretically by Woodrow Wilson.
00:40:48.180 He thought that there should be this class of neutral bureaucrats that ran our federal 0.99
00:40:52.420 government.
00:40:52.840 I personally don't believe that there can be someone who is politically neutral.
00:40:55.740 I think everyone has an opinion.
00:40:57.360 Then LBJ and FDR expanded this administrative state.
00:41:00.400 So now we have this bloated, this bloated apparatus, which a lot of people called the
00:41:05.000 deep state because of all these, these politicos that work there that aren't accountable to
00:41:09.380 the voter, in my opinion, and I want your take as a constitutional lawyer on this, in my
00:41:14.320 opinion, the advent of this or what really caused this to grow out of control was when
00:41:20.220 the Supreme court stopped applying the separation of powers doctrine.
00:41:23.480 That of course was when Congress would delegate their legislative authority to the executive
00:41:31.120 agency.
00:41:31.880 The judicial branch used to not allow that, but then they stopped and they did allow Congress
00:41:36.500 and now look what we have.
00:41:37.860 So I'd love to hear your take on that and how we reverse that.
00:41:41.340 So you're exactly right.
00:41:42.960 It got exacerbated by a decision from the Supreme court that was called the Chevron decision,
00:41:47.180 where they created something that's called Chevron deference, which the courts now will
00:41:52.880 defer to the judgment of an agency.
00:41:56.040 Even if the statute, even if the law doesn't require that outcome, if the expert agency has
00:42:01.680 an outcome, they will defer to it if there's any ambiguity in the statute.
00:42:05.920 I think there are a lot of folks, and I would count myself among them, who think Chevron was
00:42:09.680 a mistake, that it contributed to the growth of the regulatory state.
00:42:12.980 And you've got a couple of things at play here.
00:42:15.180 Number one, elected politicians like to shift power to the executive branch because they
00:42:22.720 can avoid responsibility.
00:42:24.100 They can pass a vague and general law, and then when the agency does something bad, they
00:42:28.980 can say to their voters, hey, it's not me that did it.
00:42:31.100 It's the EPA that did it.
00:42:33.200 It's the agency.
00:42:34.600 It's OSHA that did it.
00:42:36.260 But secondly, there's a problem that we've seen that's called regulatory capture.
00:42:40.780 And this is a notion from economics, where you have regulators that are regulating a
00:42:45.640 particular industry who become captured by it.
00:42:48.200 They have a revolving door where people come from the agency to the private sector that
00:42:53.880 they're regulating and back again.
00:42:55.620 And they end up following the interests of the giant companies in that industry.
00:43:01.860 So you see it in the aviation world with the FAA and a company like Boeing.
00:43:06.580 And you look at the 737 MAX, where there was an instance, the FAA was not remotely effective
00:43:13.020 enough in ensuring the safety of the 737 MAX.
00:43:16.080 With respect to COVID, you look at the FDA and just how in bed the FDA is with big pharma.
00:43:22.720 I've seen some data with ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine that have suggested good results, particularly
00:43:28.260 in the developing world.
00:43:29.320 But both of those drugs are incredibly cheap.
00:43:33.180 Both of those drugs are you can get for pennies, whereas big pharma, if you look at at the
00:43:39.920 treatments they're pushing, they're thousands of dollars.
00:43:42.640 And I do think there is a real question of agency capture.
00:43:46.800 Why is it?
00:43:48.540 That the agency favors treatments that cost thousands of dollars versus treatments that
00:43:53.080 cost pennies, and particularly in the weird politicized world where the fact that Trump
00:44:02.760 said hydroxychloroquine good caused half the country to say it must be bad if Trump likes
00:44:08.540 it, which is a really weird way to make medical or scientific decisions.
00:44:12.680 Yes, that's well, that's science.
00:44:14.140 If you're defining science as Dr. Fauci here.
00:44:16.340 So get a little bit nerdier, if you can, on the Chevron deference here.
00:44:23.420 I don't understand, Senator, why so many in the judiciary, and this is not just the Supreme
00:44:28.360 Court, this is all levels, why there's such deference to precedent for the sake of precedent
00:44:33.620 when precedent is so clearly unconstitutional.
00:44:36.900 Now, you know, you and I have talked about Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health.
00:44:39.960 We talked about Roe v. Wade.
00:44:41.480 We talked about decisions that are obviously unconstitutional, that the left, there are judicial
00:44:45.740 activists who actually don't want to overturn a demonstrably wrong and unconstitutional decision
00:44:51.280 just because it's been, quote unquote, settled for decades.
00:44:54.780 So I don't understand that jurisprudence, if you want to call it a jurisprudence, but how
00:45:00.120 do we undo the Chevron deference because it is incorrect?
00:45:04.180 And you're right, Congress is never going to do anything about it because it makes their
00:45:07.940 jobs easier not to be responsible for what they legislate.
00:45:11.180 So there's a doctrine courts follow that's called stare decisis, that is respect for precedent.
00:45:17.020 It's following precedent.
00:45:18.380 And look, stare decisis makes sense in that you want predictability in a legal system.
00:45:25.820 You know, if you look at how laws are structured, there's a tension between rules and standards.
00:45:32.960 Rules are clear, bright lines where you know which side you fall on them.
00:45:37.220 Now, they have the advantage of predictability.
00:45:39.300 They have the advantage that ex ante beforehand, you can know where you will be afterwards.
00:45:47.420 The downside of clear, bright line rules is sometimes that are unfair.
00:45:51.080 Sometimes a line will result in a particular case where you say, well, gosh, that rule resulted in
00:45:56.260 unfairness for this particular person because of some weird circumstances.
00:45:59.840 On the other hand, standards where things are flexible, they can respond to, oh, if it's
00:46:05.500 unfair to do this here, let's not do it here.
00:46:07.360 If it's fair to do it there, let's do it there.
00:46:08.880 So you can respond to the exigencies of the circumstance.
00:46:13.520 But the problem with standards is they're unpredictable.
00:46:15.600 It's hard to predict on the front end what the answer will be.
00:46:20.560 Stare decisis is a structural rule that you want players in our society, whether individuals,
00:46:28.180 whether people looking at the civil law, whether people looking at the criminal law, whether
00:46:31.760 companies to be able to predict the outcome.
00:46:35.060 And so if you know, all right, there is this precedent, so the courts will follow this precedent,
00:46:40.020 then you could order your behavior accordingly and say, OK, here's what the law is.
00:46:44.200 You can go to your lawyers, ask what the law is, and you can know what it is.
00:46:47.540 That that has an advantage.
00:46:48.800 You want stability.
00:46:49.780 You don't want the law changing willy nilly.
00:46:53.100 Um, but stare decisis is not absolute.
00:46:58.460 Um, there are times when precedents are wrong and precedents are overturned and the courts
00:47:04.300 have laid out rules for when precedents should be, should be overturned.
00:47:09.000 And the rules look to things like, uh, have, have there been, uh, has the law been settled?
00:47:16.140 Have people had reliance interest on it?
00:47:18.260 Has, has the, has the law proven administrable as, as it proven sometimes there's a bad decision
00:47:23.640 that just produces chaos and the courts say, OK, this didn't work.
00:47:27.680 The courts also are more willing to follow stare decisis for a statutory question than they
00:47:36.720 are for a constitutional question.
00:47:38.260 Now, why is that?
00:47:39.520 Because a statutory question, which is the interpretation of a federal law passed by Congress, signed
00:47:43.720 a law by the president, if the courts get it wrong, Congress can change the statute.
00:47:48.620 And it does that sometimes.
00:47:49.540 So, so if there's a statutory question, the courts get it wrong.
00:47:53.560 Congress has the ability to fix it.
00:47:55.340 So there's a higher protection for stare decisis in that instance, because you want the predictability,
00:48:01.060 even if the court got it wrong with respect to the constitution.
00:48:04.700 Um, there's more of a view that, that a constitutional decision, if it is wrong, uh, can be revisited.
00:48:14.140 So for example, the, the most famous, uh, overturning of, of, of precedent was Plessy versus Ferguson,
00:48:21.420 which upheld, uh, separate but equal and upheld the discrimination in schools and Brown versus
00:48:28.240 board of education overturned Plessy.
00:48:30.280 That was the right thing to do, um, that, that, uh, Brown was the right decision.
00:48:35.780 Plessy was wrong.
00:48:37.360 Um, during the argument in Dobbs, you had the Supreme Court justices asking the, the council,
00:48:43.240 well, okay, look, here are all the decisions we've overruled.
00:48:45.480 And they listed some big ones.
00:48:47.300 Um, why doesn't Roe meet that standard?
00:48:50.400 But how willing a justice is to overrule precedent that varies justice by justice.
00:48:56.580 I will say, by the way, as a final point on this, the liberals, it's not that they're
00:49:02.180 devoted to stare decisis.
00:49:03.420 They don't believe in stare decisis at all.
00:49:05.980 They're devoted to left-wing outcomes.
00:49:08.000 Yeah.
00:49:08.280 So they want stare decisis to be followed for left-wing decisions.
00:49:11.600 So Roe versus Wade for them.
00:49:13.680 Stare decisis is critically important because they support Roe. 0.91
00:49:16.940 They don't want stare decisis when it comes to Heller, which is the court's decision
00:49:20.860 upholding the second amendment right to keep and bear arms.
00:49:23.640 The liberals would immediately overrule Heller.
00:49:25.740 They don't want stare decisis when it comes to Citizens United, which protects our political
00:49:30.600 speech and the right to engage and, and, and, and criticize politicians.
00:49:34.660 They disagree with Citizens United, they would overturn it.
00:49:37.340 So particularly for the left, when it comes to stare decisis, that is usually an excuse for
00:49:46.800 whatever policy outcome they want, because the left views the courts as, as really very little
00:49:52.620 different from a super legislature enacting the policy they agree with.
00:49:57.780 Right.
00:49:58.380 And so we have to get to, we, we don't have to, we want to get to a really funny question
00:50:03.060 from the Verdict Plus subscriber pool here in just a second.
00:50:07.080 But let me ask you a very quick yes or no question.
00:50:09.500 Is there a possibility that Chevron deference, that Chevron could be overturned at the Supreme
00:50:13.900 Court level?
00:50:14.980 So, yes, I think there's a good possibility.
00:50:16.880 The, uh, especially Neil Gorsuch has been quite critical of Chevron deference and it's, it's
00:50:21.300 a doctrine that has come under more and more criticism.
00:50:23.440 I think, I think there's a real possibility Chevron's overturned.
00:50:26.240 Because the left, as they have the past decade has overshot, they've overshot on their abuse
00:50:31.680 and the American people want to reject it.
00:50:33.620 Okay.
00:50:33.880 This is a really funny question.
00:50:35.300 I saw this one.
00:50:35.940 It's not a, it's not a policy question at all.
00:50:37.880 This is from Paul on the Verdict Plus community.
00:50:40.980 Paul says, is Ted short for Theodore?
00:50:43.060 Or is Liz short for Elizabeth and is Michael short for Michelangelo?
00:50:48.260 Ooh, I like that.
00:50:50.320 Um, so I'll address my piece of it at least.
00:50:52.920 So Ted is actually not short for Theodore.
00:50:56.020 Uh, my, my full name is Raphael Edward Cruz.
00:50:59.020 Raphael is after my father, Raphael Bienvenido Cruz, who's Cuban.
00:51:02.920 Uh, my middle name, Edward, is after my grandfather, my mother's father, who was Edward Dara.
00:51:08.720 Um, so sometimes people refer to me as Eduardo.
00:51:11.420 No, he was Irish and Italian.
00:51:13.440 He was not, or actually he was Irish.
00:51:15.660 Um, my grandmother was Irish and Italian.
00:51:17.560 Um, it was Edward and Ted is a nickname for Edward.
00:51:20.520 And so that's, that's where Ted comes from.
00:51:22.100 And Liz is short for Elizabeth.
00:51:23.580 I will answer on behalf of Michael and say that it's not short for Michelangelo.
00:51:26.960 It's short for St. Michael.
00:51:29.140 Kidding.
00:51:29.820 Obviously kidding.
00:51:31.060 This actually will be a test to see if Michael does watch this series, because if he does,
00:51:34.780 you know, he'll comment on it.
00:51:35.960 If you are not already a subscriber over on Verdict Plus, please join us at verdictwithtedcruise.com
00:51:41.900 slash plus.
00:51:42.400 I have a promo code for you.
00:51:43.700 The promo code is, of course, Cloakroom.
00:51:45.860 If you use this promo code, you will get one month free on your annual subscription.
00:51:49.460 So go to verdictwithtedcruise.com slash plus and use promo code Cloakroom.
00:51:55.260 I'm Liz Wheeler.
00:51:55.980 This is the Cloakroom on Verdict Plus.
00:52:05.920 This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom, and Security
00:52:11.640 Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,
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00:52:19.160 In 2022, Jobs, Freedom, and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running
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