Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 17, 2021


What Happens in Wuhan, Stays in Wuhan


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

166.1578

Word count

3,102

Sentence count

218

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted and Mark answer a question from a Verdict listener, and debate whether or not the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the source of the mysterious Ebola virus that has swept across the U.S. over the past year.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:00:02.660 Guaranteed human.
00:00:04.280 There is a whole lot going on.
00:00:06.160 You know what?
00:00:07.300 You know what?
00:00:07.840 Enough.
00:00:08.700 Enough from me.
00:00:09.860 I've talked enough on this show.
00:00:11.720 This episode, I only want to hear from you.
00:00:14.360 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:00:21.880 Senator, I say this with no false modesty.
00:00:25.560 I've been asking too many questions of late.
00:00:27.720 We have not been taking nearly enough questions from the mailbag of our wonderful Verdict
00:00:32.440 subscribers who regularly leave us five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts, which we greatly
00:00:36.920 appreciate if you wouldn't mind doing that right now, who subscribe to us on YouTube,
00:00:41.460 who listen to us on all of the podcasting apps that they have.
00:00:44.980 So what do you say?
00:00:45.580 Should we just make this all about the mailbag?
00:00:48.020 I think that's a great idea.
00:00:49.060 But I will say when you talk about YouTube subscribers, as of this week, we're at 194,000,
00:00:54.180 which means we're just 6,000 short of 200,000.
00:00:56.620 It'd be nice to break that mark.
00:00:58.180 I'm not saying you have to.
00:00:59.460 Just throwing that out there, folks.
00:01:00.880 We would love it if you would go and subscribe, particularly now when big tech is trying to
00:01:05.780 suppress all of the conservative voices.
00:01:07.980 Without further ado, Senator, first question from Mark.
00:01:11.760 This is a little bit of a flattering question for us, so that's obviously why I wanted to
00:01:15.960 choose it first.
00:01:17.440 Mark writes,
00:01:18.160 I just watched that hearing with Dr. Fauci.
00:01:22.580 I've just been seeing the Wuhan Institute in the news.
00:01:26.660 I've just been seeing reports about U.S. funding of Wuhan Institute research.
00:01:34.100 Where did I hear about all of that?
00:01:36.420 Oh, that's right.
00:01:37.540 Last year on Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:01:40.440 Keep up the great work.
00:01:41.600 Love the show.
00:01:42.520 I guess that's not really a comment.
00:01:44.020 I suppose that's just applaud it, but I'll take it.
00:01:47.080 You're right.
00:01:47.720 A year ago on Verdict, we talked about the Wuhan Institute for Virology.
00:01:52.140 We don't know for sure if that's the source of the virus.
00:01:56.140 Why?
00:01:57.020 Because the Chinese government destroyed all the records and prevents anyone from actually
00:02:00.860 determining what happened in the Wuhan Institute for Virology.
00:02:04.440 But today, my colleague, Senator Rand Paul, had a very effective series of questions with
00:02:09.980 Anthony Fauci, where he asked him about, you know, do you regret the NIH giving a bunch
00:02:15.260 of money for the Wuhan Institute for Virology?
00:02:17.520 And Fauci, you want to talk about someone who's just unrepentant?
00:02:22.400 He almost said to Rand, screw you, because everything about Fauci's demeanor and temperament
00:02:28.860 was, you know, you know, it reminded me of like a guy in Goodfellas, you know, hurling
00:02:39.280 Italian curse words at Rand.
00:02:41.700 And Michael, I don't mean to upset you by suggesting that Italians can curse.
00:02:46.420 Yeah, I've never heard it.
00:02:47.680 The defiance of it.
00:02:49.080 I mean, Fauci, like, doesn't apologize for sending a bunch of money to Wuhan, doesn't
00:02:55.340 express any responsibility.
00:02:57.280 I think it is more likely than not that the virus escaped from one of those two labs.
00:03:03.140 It's not proven, it's circumstantial, but the odds are exceptionally daunting that you
00:03:11.180 would have labs studying this exact kind of virus exactly where the outbreak occurs and
00:03:16.480 there not be a connection.
00:03:17.700 And I think we need to have a serious, credible investigation to figure it out.
00:03:21.740 And Fauci doesn't seem remotely concerned.
00:03:24.980 He changes what he says seemingly every week.
00:03:28.880 And every time he says it, he is confident as hell until next week he says something different.
00:03:33.380 Of course.
00:03:34.040 And he'll have the same confidence that following week.
00:03:36.480 You know, this observation, this strange coincidence of the presence of the Wuhan Institute
00:03:41.900 of Virology, right where the virus was found, right near this supposedly awful wet market.
00:03:48.540 400 bloody yards.
00:03:50.120 400 yards.
00:03:51.900 That ain't far.
00:03:52.860 Yes.
00:03:53.420 This is being called a conspiracy theory.
00:03:55.580 It was being called a conspiracy theory last year, more than a year ago now, I guess,
00:03:59.360 when we were speaking about it.
00:04:00.400 And you know how much I hate to say we told you so, but I am pleased that we talked about
00:04:05.600 it on the show.
00:04:06.460 Well, and you remember, Michael, we talked about how the Washington Post and other reporters
00:04:11.640 tried to refute the, quote, conspiracy theory.
00:04:14.820 And their refutation was that if you looked at the genetic markers, and this is where it's
00:04:19.440 dangerous to have a lawyer pretending to talk about science because I'm not a medical
00:04:23.100 doctor or virologist, but the Washington Post reported that if you looked at the genetic
00:04:27.520 markers, they didn't believe it was a virus that was constructed in a lab, but rather one
00:04:33.100 that occurred naturally in nature.
00:04:36.120 And so they said, oh, the theory that the escape from the lab is bogus.
00:04:40.220 Look, I find that plausible.
00:04:41.940 Could it have been constructed in the lab?
00:04:43.420 Sure.
00:04:43.620 And I think that needs to be investigated.
00:04:45.900 But I find it an entirely plausible hypothesis that this was a naturally occurring virus
00:04:52.420 that they discovered in a cave in China.
00:04:55.300 And by the way, the bats in question have caves 900 miles away from the wet market.
00:04:59.640 Right, right.
00:05:00.440 So it last I checked, most bats don't fly 900 miles to hang out in a wet market and spread
00:05:07.660 a pandemic.
00:05:08.840 But I think the most likely hypothesis is they were studying a naturally occurring virus in
00:05:16.020 the lab and somebody was sloppy.
00:05:18.100 Do I believe the Chinese government deliberately released this?
00:05:21.460 Probably not.
00:05:22.240 I don't think the chances are zero.
00:05:24.080 But I think the most likely thing is someone was sloppy and either an animal or person got
00:05:28.120 it.
00:05:28.280 But it spread outside the lab.
00:05:30.940 And then what the Chinese government did do is cover it up, hide it, arrest the whistleblowers,
00:05:36.120 do everything they could to suppress it, which allowed it to become a pandemic and spread
00:05:40.580 across the globe.
00:05:41.740 Next question from Thomas.
00:05:42.980 I would like to hear the senator's prediction on the Hyde Amendment.
00:05:46.180 The Hyde Amendment theoretically stops taxpayer dollars from going to fund abortion.
00:05:50.760 Obviously, money is fungible.
00:05:52.040 So if money is going to an abortion organization, then obviously they're going to spend the money.
00:05:59.000 But this is now coming under threat by Democrats, including Joe Biden, who for years said they
00:06:04.300 support the Hyde Amendment.
00:06:05.360 Now they're against it.
00:06:06.020 Yeah.
00:06:06.520 Look, I'm very concerned about the Hyde Amendment.
00:06:08.480 If you look at today's Democrats, they're radicalized.
00:06:12.200 They're radicalized on virtually every issue.
00:06:14.920 You know, we've talked in this podcast about the book I wrote a few months ago called One
00:06:19.240 Vote Away, How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History. 0.91
00:06:22.640 There's a chapter in that book on abortion, on life.
00:06:25.560 And it talks about how today's Democrats, their position is they support unlimited abortion
00:06:32.980 on demand up until the moment of birth, partial birth abortion, with no parental notification,
00:06:39.180 with no parental consent, and with full taxpayer funding, with the taxpayers paying for the
00:06:44.020 abortion.
00:06:44.900 And that view is so extreme, 9% of Americans agree with it.
00:06:50.420 So 91% of Americans disagree with the unlimited radical abortion view that right now is the
00:06:57.820 view of just about every Democratic politician in Washington.
00:07:00.560 When it comes to the Hyde Amendment, Democrats want your tax dollars to pay for abortions across
00:07:07.560 the country.
00:07:08.440 We're seeing Joe Biden through executive orders and through regulatory action trying to expand
00:07:13.220 that.
00:07:13.960 And we're also seeing the Democrats, and they're using the vehicle of budget reconciliation to
00:07:19.260 try to get around the filibuster and to ram through funding that ignores the Hyde Amendment.
00:07:23.780 The Hyde Amendment has been the consensus for decades in Washington.
00:07:27.940 Although people can disagree on the question of abortion and protecting life, and you and
00:07:34.080 I are both strongly pro-life, there used to be a wide consensus that it wasn't fair to
00:07:40.080 use taxpayer funds to pay for abortion, to force people who are pro-life to pay for taking
00:07:45.240 the lives of unborn children.
00:07:46.760 Today's Democrats, they don't care about that consensus because they've been radicalized.
00:07:52.820 So I think that question is a very real and active threat.
00:07:57.540 Right.
00:07:58.240 Yeah.
00:07:58.520 This was always the fear of the safe, legal, and rare line from Democrats, which never
00:08:03.640 made a lot of sense.
00:08:04.740 If abortion is morally comparable to murder, then it shouldn't be legal.
00:08:08.780 If it's not, if it's just a choice and has no effect on anyone else, then it shouldn't
00:08:13.360 be rare.
00:08:13.900 But that at least was the consensus for a long time.
00:08:16.920 But it would appear that we've ditched the rare part of that argument.
00:08:22.240 Yeah.
00:08:22.420 I mean, that's no longer, Bill Clinton said that in the State of the Union address.
00:08:25.980 There's, I don't know of a Democrat in the Senate who believes that.
00:08:30.680 Yeah.
00:08:30.880 That's no longer their position.
00:08:32.680 Yeah.
00:08:33.420 It is unlimited abortion on demand.
00:08:36.320 And by the way, when we have votes on things, and I talk about this in One Vote Away, when
00:08:40.460 we have votes on things like the pain-capable legislation, which is legislation that says
00:08:45.840 unborn children after 20 weeks of development, the science shows that that unborn child can
00:08:53.300 feel pain, that he or she writhes in pain during abortion, writhes in agony.
00:08:59.340 And it's a limitation on late-term abortions when the unborn child can feel pain.
00:09:05.940 The Democrats vote party-line against that restriction.
00:09:09.300 They're perfectly happy with partial birth abortion, late-term abortion. 0.96
00:09:14.140 Most Americans are not.
00:09:16.320 But today's congressional Democrats listen to the radical activists and not actual voters back home.
00:09:23.380 Very practical question from Real Truth Cactus, who I suppose is our colleague on the show.
00:09:28.400 I can't believe that the cactus would write into the show this way.
00:09:31.920 The cactus asks, what are some practical things everyday Americans can do to protect their
00:09:37.180 financial well-being in economically chaotic times such as these?
00:09:42.160 I think inflation is a real risk.
00:09:45.660 That means to the extent you can limit your exposure to variable interest rates, that's a good thing.
00:09:54.320 I think we are likely to see interest rates rising significantly.
00:09:57.920 We're likely to see mortgage rates rising significantly.
00:10:01.780 We're likely to see the cost of goods rising significantly.
00:10:05.160 When you have Joe Biden and the Democrats proposing $6 trillion in new spending, I think there's a good chance
00:10:13.000 that's going to prove significantly inflationary.
00:10:15.700 So to the extent you can hedge yourself against that, that is a good thing.
00:10:21.120 You know, I think we've got cross-cutting economic factors right now.
00:10:25.080 On the plus side, we just went through a year where the entire economy was shut down and we artificially
00:10:32.740 basically froze our GDP and we had a double-digit decrease in GDP.
00:10:38.740 The fact that we've got vaccines now and the economy is opening up means we're seeing economic growth.
00:10:44.760 We're seeing the economy come back significantly.
00:10:48.480 The countervailing factors on that are, number one,
00:10:51.680 I'm hearing over and over again from small businesses and employers that the federal government
00:10:57.260 is paying people more not to work than to work and they're having a very hard time getting
00:11:01.940 employees to come back because, you know, if you pay people not to work, wonder of wonders,
00:11:06.400 they actually don't work.
00:11:08.220 I also think the massive taxes and regulations coming from the Biden administration are going
00:11:12.600 to hammer the economy and see you've got kind of two vectors.
00:11:18.240 One, the economy taking off because it's reopening, two, the taxes and regulations pushing it down.
00:11:24.260 How that plays out exactly, I don't know.
00:11:27.540 I'm not smart enough to have a crystal ball on the economy, but I think I would expect some
00:11:36.140 real volatility.
00:11:37.780 And so, you know, to the extent you can save, to the extent you can invest in investments
00:11:43.960 that are guarded against inflation, and that often includes things like real estate, includes things
00:11:51.100 like commodities, like gold and silver, where if there's inflation, real estate or gold and silver
00:11:55.860 are likely to go up to go along with inflation.
00:12:00.400 I think those are all sensible.
00:12:02.480 But with the caveat that I ain't your fiduciary, and if you're taking financial advice from a lawyer
00:12:10.320 and Supreme Court litigator who's a senator, you might want to rethink your financial priorities
00:12:15.840 to begin with.
00:12:16.640 Well, I'll tell you, Senator, I just assumed you would tell people to invest everything
00:12:19.740 in Dogecoin or something.
00:12:20.940 You know, that was always my really stable investment strategy.
00:12:23.960 And depending on the hour of the day, I'm either bankrupt or a trillionaire.
00:12:27.580 Yeah, I got to admit, Michael, so the whole Bitcoin, Dogecoin, I have some friends who've
00:12:34.120 invested in it who've actually done quite well, and they've encouraged me.
00:12:37.140 I have not invested anything in it, and maybe I'm a fool.
00:12:39.280 No, nor have I.
00:12:40.480 I don't really understand it.
00:12:42.400 I don't really understand it.
00:12:44.100 And I'm, you know, worried.
00:12:45.120 You know, you look at like Holland and the tulip bulb mania, where tulip bulbs got bid
00:12:49.980 up and up and up and up, and it became a bubble, and then it all cratered, and everyone lost
00:12:54.640 everything.
00:12:55.320 And maybe I'm just a Luddite, and I don't understand that Bitcoin is the future.
00:13:00.640 I think it's fine if people want to do it.
00:13:02.300 I'm quite libertarian about it.
00:13:04.040 But in terms of my assets to invest, I don't like to invest in things that I don't fully
00:13:10.000 understand.
00:13:10.420 And I will readily admit, I don't fully understand the Bitcoin world.
00:13:14.160 Well, I don't know about you.
00:13:14.880 I think the bulbs are coming back.
00:13:16.260 I'm very long, tulip.
00:13:17.720 But I guess only time will tell.
00:13:20.100 Before we go, this question actually is incendiary, but I find it difficult to answer.
00:13:26.880 This is from Chelsea, who says, hey, Michael, big fan of the show, which president is worse,
00:13:33.080 Joe Biden or Woodrow Wilson?
00:13:36.400 All right.
00:13:36.600 So as you know, Woodrow Wilson, I have a slight bias towards because he was president of Princeton
00:13:41.120 University, and I am a Princeton alum.
00:13:43.080 It's true.
00:13:43.440 Although I'll tell you, you want to talk about something irritating?
00:13:46.240 So when I was in college, I was a college debater.
00:13:51.440 As you know, I was one of the cool kids.
00:13:54.680 Going to all those cool debate parties every weekend.
00:13:56.880 Oh, yeah.
00:13:57.640 Yeah.
00:13:57.980 Very, very impressive.
00:13:59.200 Red Solo cups, kegs of stale beer, but, you know, really cutting edge stuff.
00:14:04.740 So the debating society at Princeton is called the American Whig Cliosophic Society, and it
00:14:11.720 was actually two different societies.
00:14:14.280 One was the American Whigs. 0.95
00:14:15.740 The other was the Cliosophic Society.
00:14:17.360 They're all they're both over 200 years old.
00:14:19.980 One, the American Whigs was founded by James Madison, the father of the Constitution. 0.92
00:14:24.380 Cliosophic Society was founded by William Patterson.
00:14:27.600 The two merged.
00:14:28.980 And today, the Cliosophic Society are the conservatives and the Whigs are the liberals. 0.83
00:14:34.160 I actually find it ironic because James Madison, the founder of the Whigs, I agree with on practically
00:14:39.380 everything.
00:14:39.900 But when I was in college, I was chairman of the Cliosophic Society, so the conservative
00:14:45.500 part of the debating society.
00:14:47.020 And in 2016, Whig Clio awarded me their James Madison medal for public service while following
00:14:59.560 the whole January 6th thing and the left and the academic world going into a fit and screaming
00:15:08.580 insurrection and doing it completely disconnected to actual facts of what I did as a senator giving
00:15:16.860 a speech on the Senate floor and urging for a commission to examine electoral claims of
00:15:21.640 election fraud.
00:15:22.340 The students voted to rescind my James Madison award, which frankly kind of irritated me that
00:15:29.900 you have a bunch of lefty students who decided we want to rescind the award.
00:15:33.500 The trustees of Whig Clio actually vetoed the students' decision.
00:15:38.340 So they didn't, in fact, rescind my award, but the students voted.
00:15:41.720 And it was apparently a pretty close vote.
00:15:43.280 It was something like 36 to 37 to 35 or something like that.
00:15:46.320 So all of which is a digression to say Woodrow Wilson, before he was president, was governor
00:15:52.460 of New Jersey.
00:15:53.060 Before he was governor of New Jersey, he was president of Princeton University.
00:15:55.800 So I have some mild predilection towards Wilson.
00:16:00.680 That being said, Wilson was an avowed racist, which is consistent with a lot of Democrats.
00:16:07.580 He aired a film about the Ku Klux Klan in the White House.
00:16:12.280 He was a massive progressive.
00:16:13.780 He pushed the League of Nations.
00:16:16.640 He pushed the Federal Reserve.
00:16:18.920 He pushed the income tax.
00:16:20.320 He did a lot of damage.
00:16:22.220 So Wilson set up the disaster that has befallen us.
00:16:28.140 That being said, what Joe Biden is doing, he has handed the government over to Schumer and
00:16:35.480 Pelosi and to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and AOC.
00:16:39.460 And they're pushing the most radical agenda.
00:16:41.900 We're 100 days in, there's never been a president with a more radical agenda than we've seen
00:16:46.820 these first 100 days.
00:16:47.680 So as problematic as Wilson is, and Wilson did a lot of damage, I am not a Woodrow Wilson
00:16:54.460 fan.
00:16:56.060 I think Biden, if he succeeds with a radical agenda that's coming from Bernie and AOC and
00:17:01.460 Elizabeth Warren, would do even more damage to the country than Wilson did. 1.00
00:17:05.160 And you're seeing in some ways Woodrow Wilson is this progressive genius who sets up progressivism
00:17:11.280 in the federal government.
00:17:12.700 But now you're seeing the flowering of that.
00:17:14.480 So Joe Biden, you know, I don't think he's a deeply red man.
00:17:18.920 I don't think he's particularly scholarly.
00:17:21.800 I'm not telling tales out of school here.
00:17:23.680 He's had some issues with his academic claims over the years.
00:17:26.540 But he is, as you say, boring but radical.
00:17:29.660 He's kind of the flowering of that.
00:17:30.980 So I would have to agree.
00:17:32.440 And Senator, before we go, just to give you one more book club, it occurred to me when
00:17:35.840 you mentioned the very tense vote between the trustees of the society that that vote
00:17:41.160 was very nearly one vote away.
00:17:43.120 If only they had read your book, perhaps they would have understood the law better, the matters
00:17:47.000 at stake.
00:17:47.700 We have to hold it there.
00:17:48.820 We look forward to taking more mailbag questions from our wonderful subscribers very soon.
00:17:53.840 Please send those in.
00:17:55.420 If you happen to leave a five-star review on Apple while you do that, if you happen to get
00:17:59.980 us over that hurdle on YouTube by subscribing, that would be terrific.
00:18:02.700 In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles.
00:18:04.480 This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
00:18:29.980 plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party
00:18:34.980 across the nation.
00:18:36.820 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:18:39.260 Guaranteed human.