Verdict with Ted Cruz - Who We Are-Dems Abandon God & the Declaration of Independence plus Cartels in every Community in America

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00:00:05.280 Welcome.

00:00:06.060 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:09.780 We've got a packed show for you today.

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00:00:24.040 The Democratic Party, Senator, is really starting to show their true colors in a proud way.

00:00:30.680 Their disdain for American values, American families, and for God is on full display now.

00:00:37.160 Now, we started to witness some of this when they were going after the Jewish people with 0.99

00:00:41.020 the war when Israel was attacked.

00:00:44.040 But Tim Kaine testifies that the constitutional rights come from the government.

00:00:51.420 Let me say that again.

00:00:52.840 Come from the government, not from God.

00:00:57.940 You had a very interesting interaction with him.

00:01:01.000 And this is something that should terrify all Americans because now this is where the Democratic

00:01:06.600 Party truly is.

00:01:08.720 Disdain for God and family.

00:01:10.860 Well, every day the Democrat Party gets more and more radical.

00:01:13.560 They've now decided that God has no place in our nation and God has no place in our founding

00:01:18.900 documents and that our rights, critically, do not come from God.

00:01:23.640 This is truly an extreme position.

00:01:26.120 Tim Kaine and I went back and forth this week in the United States Senate on the foundations

00:01:30.480 of our nation.

00:01:32.100 We're going to get into that.

00:01:33.160 We're also going to get into the threat that Joe Biden and the Democrats' open borders pose

00:01:40.620 to you, even if you don't live in a border state, you may think you live far, far away from

00:01:44.740 the border.

00:01:45.780 Well, four years of open borders has endangered every community, every day, every family.

00:01:51.600 Up in New England, just this week, 171 Sinaloa cartel members were arrested.

00:01:59.920 New England is nowhere near the southern border, and yet the Mexican drug cartels have penetrated

00:02:05.700 communities all across the country.

00:02:07.300 We're going to break that down as well.

00:02:09.260 Yeah, it's really important.

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00:04:26.000 All right.

00:04:26.340 So let's start with this.

00:04:28.420 I actually am shocked by this, Senator.

00:04:30.560 When I saw this come out, I'm like, did Tim Kaine really say that constitutional rights come from government, not God?

00:04:42.940 And that is exactly what he said.

00:04:44.800 It wasn't a joke on the Internet.

00:04:47.340 Yeah.

00:04:47.580 And let me set the stage.

00:04:48.820 This was a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this week.

00:04:52.120 And it was a confirmation hearing for a number of nominees.

00:04:54.940 And the way hearings work in the Senate is often you have multiple hearings simultaneously.

00:05:00.760 And so that day I had a Senate Foreign Relations hearing.

00:05:04.240 I had a Commerce Committee hearing that I was chairing and conducting.

00:05:07.380 And then I also had a Judiciary Committee hearing.

00:05:09.020 And so you have to go from hearing to hearing.

00:05:10.620 So you're walking in and out of each of the hearings trying to make it to all of them.

00:05:15.820 And so I was just walking into the Foreign Relations Committee hearing, and Tim Kaine happened to be questioning and speaking.

00:05:23.740 And I was getting ready to speak myself, so I sat down.

00:05:26.640 And one of the Trump administration nominees to the State Department had included in his testimony the observation that our rights come from God and not from government.

00:05:40.080 And Tim Kaine took offense to this.

00:05:42.360 And he just teed off on it.

00:05:44.280 And I sat there dumbfounded listening to him, and then I responded.

00:05:49.040 So I'm going to play first what Tim Kaine said, and then I'm going to play my response that I said afterwards.

00:05:55.000 Here, give a listen.

00:05:56.300 The notion that rights don't come from laws and don't come from the government, but come from the creator, that's what the Iranian government believes.

00:06:05.740 It's a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Shia law and targets Sunnis, Baha'is, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities.

00:06:17.060 And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their creator.

00:06:22.160 So the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.

00:06:30.720 I think the motto over the Supreme Court is equal justice under law.

00:06:34.680 The oath that you and I take pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, not arbitrarily defined natural rights.

00:06:42.960 Mr. Barnes, I'd actually like to go back to the exchange you had with Senator Kaine, and I wish Senator Kaine was still here.

00:06:52.260 Senator Kaine and I were elected together 13 years ago.

00:06:56.020 He is a friend.

00:06:57.560 I would actually encourage observers to go back and listen to what Senator Kaine said.

00:07:01.780 Because I have to say it, I think, was disturbing and showed much of where today's Democrat Party has gone wrong.

00:07:12.700 So Senator Kaine said in this hearing that he found it a radical and dangerous notion that you would say our rights came from God and not from government.

00:07:24.240 I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that I almost fell out of my chair because that radical and dangerous notion, in his words, is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created.

00:07:40.020 And if you do not believe me, and you made reference to this, Mr. Barnes, then you can believe perhaps the most prominent Virginian to ever serve, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence,

00:07:56.540 we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator.

00:08:06.960 Not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:08:16.960 I have to say it is stunning to me that the principle that God has given us natural rights is now deemed by Democrats some radical and dangerous notion.

00:08:29.700 Mr. Jefferson was right when he wrote those words.

00:08:33.640 Government exists to protect those rights, but slavery was not okay when U.S. law allowed it.

00:08:41.720 It was wrong then, it is wrong now, it is always wrong.

00:08:45.560 So, let's break this down.

00:08:48.880 This seems to be where the Democratic Party, not where it's going, this is where it is at its core right now.

00:08:55.740 Yeah, no, that's exactly right.

00:08:57.440 Tim Kaine is not some fringe character in the Democrat Party.

00:09:01.060 Tim Kaine, as you know, was Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee.

00:09:05.120 He came very close to being vice president of the United States.

00:09:08.140 Tim Kaine has been in the Senate for 13 years.

00:09:11.300 He was elected to the Senate the same time I was. 0.95

00:09:13.440 Tim Kaine is not a dumb man.

00:09:16.040 He's very smart. 0.85

00:09:16.920 He's a lawyer.

00:09:17.560 He's a serious guy.

00:09:18.580 He's a careful thinker.

00:09:20.260 He knows what's in the Declaration of Independence.

00:09:23.220 He just doesn't agree with it.

00:09:25.540 And what troubled me about this, I actually had an entirely different line of questioning that I was planning to get into at the hearing.

00:09:32.260 And I just walked in and heard him saying this.

00:09:34.660 And what troubled me was just how casually, how casually he said, look, the basic ideas that were the foundation of America, those ideas are radical.

00:09:45.960 They're extreme.

00:09:47.580 They are the ideas of Iran. 0.95

00:09:49.540 And that's what he argued, that if you believe our rights come from God, you are a theocratic mullah in Iran.

00:09:55.420 I want to go back.

00:09:56.180 I want to read the first paragraph and a half of the Declaration of Independence.

00:10:00.980 You know, next summer, next July 4th, will be the 250th anniversary of the United States.

00:10:06.280 So it was 250 years ago, next summer, that the Declaration was signed on July 4th, 1776.

00:10:13.160 Here's how it begins.

00:10:14.720 In unanimous declaration of the 13 United States of America, when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another,

00:10:27.400 and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them.

00:10:38.600 A decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

00:10:48.600 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,

00:11:00.060 that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:11:04.640 And then I want you to listen to the next sentence, because it really explains why Tim Kaine is fundamentally wrong in the relationship between rights that come from God and the role of government.

00:11:14.360 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

00:11:28.940 That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,

00:11:38.860 and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness.

00:11:52.960 Now that's the right relationship, which is that government is not the source of the rights.

00:11:59.680 God is the source of the rights. It is God who has given you and me and everyone listening to this a right to life.

00:12:05.640 It is God who has given us a right to liberty. It is God who has given us a right to the pursuit of happiness.

00:12:11.600 Historically, and if you go back to some of the great English thinkers, people like John Locke,

00:12:17.140 the three standard natural rights that people were discussed having were life, liberty, and property.

00:12:23.740 And Jefferson did not include property in the Declaration because he did not want to get into the debate on slavery.

00:12:29.940 And so in place of property, he put in pursuit of happiness.

00:12:33.400 A pursuit of happiness in many ways is just an aspect of liberty that is part of liberty, is the pursuit of happiness.

00:12:40.740 But the relationship that is important, and every one of our founding fathers knew this.

00:12:45.960 Thomas Jefferson knew this. George Washington knew this. James Madison knew this. Ben Franklin knew this.

00:12:51.820 They understood, look, God has given us these rights.

00:12:55.580 Now, Tim is saying, well, no, no, it's government who gives us his rights.

00:13:00.460 That's backwards. As the Declaration says, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men. 0.82

00:13:09.020 That means the purpose of government is to secure, to protect those rights.

00:13:13.180 Do you need government to protect our rights? Absolutely.

00:13:15.780 Absolutely. And actually, the point I made in the debate with Tim Kaine, listen, slavery was wrong.

00:13:22.240 It was immoral, even for the hundred plus years that it was legal here.

00:13:27.500 The fact that our laws allowed slavery didn't make it suddenly moral and just and okay.

00:13:32.580 It was a violation of human rights.

00:13:35.040 It was a violation of human rights.

00:13:36.640 As the Declaration promised, all men are created equal.

00:13:42.020 When you had African Americans that could be held as slaves, our country was not living up to that promise. 1.00

00:13:48.460 And so we fought a bloody civil war.

00:13:50.960 600,000 Americans died to end the scourge of slavery.

00:13:55.480 And then we amended the Constitution to explicitly end slavery.

00:13:59.880 But slavery was not magically okay before the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

00:14:06.560 And that's a point that Tim Kaine is really representing well today's Democrat Party because the entire party rejects that.

00:14:16.280 And I'll tell you why they reject that.

00:14:18.180 Because if rights don't come from God, if they come from government, then government can take them away.

00:14:23.980 The Declaration refers to these rights as unalienable.

00:14:27.140 Unalienable means they can't be taken away.

00:14:29.200 The Democrats believe your rights are entirely alienable, that the only God is government, and government can give, government can take away.

00:14:39.060 That's the fundamental debate, and it's a debate right at the heart, I think, of where today's Democrat Party has gone off the rails.

00:14:45.200 Yeah, final question on this, because I do believe we're also witnessing a public disdain for people of faith coming from the Democratic Party.

00:14:54.380 We've seen the undertones of that, but now it just seems to be at the forefront, that it's almost like they mock and roll their eyes at people of faith.

00:15:04.220 We've seen this, certainly with the debates and the conversations over people that are Jewish and people of faith in Israel.

00:15:10.880 And now this has become mainstream.

00:15:14.180 How dangerous is that?

00:15:16.240 Look, it is very dangerous.

00:15:18.200 The Democrat Party position often seems to be people of faith need not apply.

00:15:23.240 If you're a Christian, the Democrats don't want you.

00:15:25.840 If you're Jewish, the Democrats don't want you.

00:15:28.040 If you're Catholic, the Democrats don't want you.

00:15:31.600 If you believe your faith, if you worship, if you are faithful and it matters to you, the Democrats have said that is not welcome.

00:15:42.640 And, you know, it wasn't too long ago when there was a real bipartisan commitment to religious liberty.

00:15:49.480 You know, you go back to the 1990s, 1993, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed Congress protecting the religious liberty of every American.

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00:16:28.040 Senator, I want to ask you one other question about this bigger issue with Tim Kaine.

00:16:34.880 There have been some religious leaders, thank goodness, that have actually stood up to him.

00:16:38.940 Some of the headlines, the Federalist had one that said,

00:16:41.320 Tim Kaine thinks you're a terrorist if you believe rights come from God.

00:16:45.660 The Christian Post said Ted Cruz torches Tim Kaine for describing God-given rights as very, very troubling.

00:16:52.560 And there's some religious leaders that have also gotten in to talk about this as well.

00:16:55.900 That's a good sign.

00:16:57.700 Yeah, one of the most thoughtful responses to what Tim Kaine said came from Bishop Robert Barron,

00:17:03.300 who is the bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Rochester in Minnesota.

00:17:07.540 And I want you to listen to what the bishop had to say, because I think this is very thoughtful and accurate.

00:17:12.600 Hey everybody, it's Bishop Barron.

00:17:14.680 I just feel obligated to speak out against something that I came across today.

00:17:18.840 I just found it so outrageous and really so dangerous to our democracy.

00:17:24.280 It was Senator Tim Kaine at a, I think it was a Senate confirmation hearing.

00:17:28.760 And he was actively contesting the view that our rights come from God and not from the government.

00:17:34.960 And he said, it's very dangerous if you claim that our rights don't come from laws and from government.

00:17:41.300 Well, what struck me was he's a senator from Virginia.

00:17:44.860 Virginia was a state of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, both of whom took it as fundamental to our democracy,

00:17:52.840 that our rights don't come from the government, they come from God.

00:17:55.800 So we know the familiar words of Jefferson, right?

00:17:59.500 That we are created equal, created by God.

00:18:03.200 We're endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.

00:18:07.840 Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

00:18:11.060 You see, so basic to Jefferson was the fact that rights come first.

00:18:16.380 They're not invented by the government.

00:18:19.020 Rather, government exists, and remember this language from the prologue of the Declaration,

00:18:23.580 to secure these rights, doesn't invent them, doesn't ground them.

00:18:29.160 It secures them, it recognizes them as objectively coming from God,

00:18:33.840 and then its whole purpose is to secure them, to serve them.

00:18:37.720 Think, too, of that familiar word from Jefferson, inalienable.

00:18:41.680 These rights are inalienable.

00:18:43.760 Now, why?

00:18:44.700 Because they come not from the government, but from God.

00:18:48.200 If the government creates our rights, it can take them away.

00:18:52.300 If the government is responsible for our rights, well, then it can change them.

00:18:56.640 You think this never happens.

00:18:58.380 You don't know much about the history of the 20th century.

00:19:00.840 Look at the great totalitarian systems of the 20th century

00:19:03.700 that followed from the denial of God and denial of rights coming from God,

00:19:09.820 and so those rights became eminently alienable whenever it served the purposes of the government.

00:19:15.020 It just strikes me as extraordinary that a major American politician

00:19:19.260 wouldn't understand this really elemental part of our system.

00:19:24.860 God help us.

00:19:25.920 I mean that literally.

00:19:26.840 God help us.

00:19:27.860 If we say our rights are coming to us from the government,

00:19:31.480 that gives the government, indeed, God-like power.

00:19:35.980 We are, and this is not pious boilerplate, it's basic democracy.

00:19:39.680 We are a nation under God.

00:19:42.820 Lincoln says in the Gettysburg Address that this nation under God

00:19:46.060 shall have a new birth of freedom.

00:19:47.660 Again, that's not just pious declaration.

00:19:49.720 That's a very important political statement.

00:19:53.740 We are a government that recognizes the objective rights

00:19:57.100 that come from outside of government.

00:19:59.500 Government exists to serve them and to secure them.

00:20:03.340 Well, the fact that this rhetoric, and it's popped up elsewhere, too, in recent years.

00:20:07.160 I spoke out against it a little while ago, is troubling.

00:20:10.800 Because it's a fruit, I would say, of the increasing marginalization

00:20:15.440 and privatization of religion, if not outright hostility to it.

00:20:20.140 But see, everybody, religion is elemental.

00:20:22.880 It's basic to our democracy.

00:20:24.740 So I'm speaking out against this statement I think is really dangerous,

00:20:28.120 both as a Catholic bishop and as a proud American

00:20:31.400 who's very happy to follow Thomas Jefferson.

00:20:35.120 I love what he said there.

00:20:36.440 He says, as an American as well.

00:20:38.640 Like, you need to understand this is how our country was founded.

00:20:41.940 Let's not rewrite history and act like this isn't what we are.

00:20:46.140 I think that's exactly right.

00:20:48.120 And this is something that everyone ought to come together and say,

00:20:52.120 look, these are the basic principles America was founded upon,

00:20:55.760 and particularly as we move into next year celebrating our nation's 250th anniversary.

00:20:59.900 It's important that people understand them.

00:21:02.100 And I wish that the Democrat Party would get back to them,

00:21:07.400 because the idea, you know, you look at the hat worn by Trump supporters,

00:21:14.640 make America great again.

00:21:15.780 I've got to say it infuriates so many Democrats, the idea that America was ever great.

00:21:21.340 I mean, they're offended by that.

00:21:23.620 And this is why America was great, because we were founded on principles that are true,

00:21:30.600 that our rights are derived from our creator,

00:21:33.620 that our government exists to protect those fundamental rights.

00:21:37.140 That is the genius idea right at the beginning of the American experiment

00:21:43.480 that put us on this journey to be the shining city on a hill that we are.

00:21:48.140 Yeah, great point.

00:21:50.480 I want to also move on to the other story that is one that is not getting a lot of coverage,

00:21:55.360 and it's really important.

00:21:57.040 It's why I love doing this show with you.

00:21:59.460 The Sinaloa cartel is now, in essence, in every single major city in America.

00:22:06.100 They have set up a massive network.

00:22:09.400 They are making billions and billions of dollars poisoning and killing Americans, 0.98

00:22:14.320 human trafficking, sex trafficking, child trafficking. 0.75

00:22:17.580 The list goes on and on.

00:22:19.040 Anything that's illegal, they've got their tentacles in it.

00:22:22.620 And you may think that you're far away from the border,

00:22:26.540 so this isn't actually in your city or your big city or your area of the country.

00:22:31.080 Great example of that is New England.

00:22:33.020 If you're in New England listening to us right now,

00:22:34.820 you're probably thinking,

00:22:35.440 ah, it's not near as bad as where we are in Houston at the moment.

00:22:38.780 Well, guess what?

00:22:39.860 You'd be wrong.

00:22:40.640 Now, 171 Sinaloa cartel members were arrested in New England, the DEA has now announced.

00:22:49.980 That was in a single week.

00:22:51.900 In a single week, 171 Sinaloa cartel members arrested in Boston.

00:22:56.040 The arrest also led to the seizure of more than 22,000 counterfeit pills,

00:23:01.960 fentanyl powder, and packaging branded with the Sinaloa cartel logo.

00:23:07.220 And the DEA agent in charge for the New England field division said the Sinaloa cartel is,

00:23:13.380 quote, public enemy number one in New England.

00:23:19.120 That's what the Democrats' open border policies have done.

00:23:22.220 And listen to a local news story covering this arrest of 171 Sinaloa cartel members in Boston.

00:23:28.740 Give a listen.

00:23:29.480 Yeah, and by the way, ask yourself this question, America.

00:23:32.200 Why did you not hear about this on the national news?

00:23:34.620 This is Boston 25 News covering it there.

00:23:37.900 The Federal Drug Enforcement Administration says a week-long cartel crackdown

00:23:42.020 led to nearly 200 arrests just in New England.

00:23:45.420 The DEA says they were all members of the Sinaloa cartel, the largest drug cartel in the world.

00:23:51.200 25 investigates went one-on-one with the DEA special agent in charge about their recent operation.

00:23:57.140 He says the vast Sinaloa network has deep roots in New England.

00:24:01.100 They're our public enemy number one.

00:24:02.840 Jared Forge, the special agent in charge of DEA's New England field division,

00:24:07.420 says last week the DEA set out to arrest as many members

00:24:10.700 of the Mexico-based Sinaloa cartel as possible.

00:24:14.600 New England saw the highest number of regional arrests at 171.

00:24:18.820 With 49 in Massachusetts, 33 in New Hampshire, Connecticut saw the most at 64.

00:24:24.780 Do you think people would be surprised to learn how many members of that cartel are operating

00:24:30.200 probably in plain sight in their communities?

00:24:33.320 Sure. So Sinaloa cartel in every single state across America, more than 40 countries around

00:24:39.900 the world, and obviously they're in every state throughout New England.

00:24:43.200 What's their number one product they push? Is it the pills?

00:24:46.240 So we see fentanyl powder and we see counterfeit pills, pills that are made to look like legitimate

00:24:51.700 pills, notably M30s.

00:24:54.240 M30 pills are counterfeit oxycodone, but Forge says they're also increasingly seeing counterfeit

00:25:00.440 stimulant pills made to look like Adderall.

00:25:04.220 Forge showed us some of the more than 22,000 pills and other drugs seized during the operation,

00:25:10.520 like signature purple fentanyl and some drug packaging even displaying the Sinaloa cartel stamp.

00:25:16.820 I'm a DEA agent. I cannot tell the difference between a fake one and a real one.

00:25:20.760 So we need to remind parents, schools, caregivers, everybody in the community,

00:25:26.540 have those conversations with each other, have them with your kids.

00:25:29.640 Forge says the cartel targets unsuspecting young people online through common social media apps.

00:25:35.980 Many have no idea they're buying potentially deadly counterfeit pills.

00:25:40.720 171 arrests throughout New England. Does that make a dent?

00:25:45.160 We're the DEA. We're not going after low-level retail drug traffickers.

00:25:48.880 We are going after drug trafficking organizations, the networks.

00:25:52.420 How do you disrupt that, something that is so large, so vast, and seemingly so powerful?

00:25:58.300 Right. It's an ongoing battle, one that we cannot, we can't afford to give up, right?

00:26:02.720 It's, the Sinaloa cartel is a threat to public safety, our public health, and our national security as a country.

00:26:10.720 This year, the Centers for Disease Control reported while drug overdose deaths are declining,

00:26:16.200 overdose is the leading cause of death for young people ages 18 to 45.

00:26:21.220 Senator, you hear that report. It should be national news.

00:26:24.300 It's not. Thank goodness we're doing this show to make it national.

00:26:28.660 But this is concerning because it's not just in New England.

00:26:32.020 This is in every major city in America they've set up shop.

00:26:35.720 Well, CNN won't cover it. MSNBC won't cover it.

00:26:39.160 I'm glad the local news covered it, and it is critically important.

00:26:43.120 The cartel's public enemy number one in New England, brought to you by the Democrats, is the Sinaloa cartel.

00:26:48.940 And, you know, it was striking what they were arrested with.

00:26:51.580 They were arrested with, among other things, counterfeit pills, pills like Adderall.

00:26:57.140 And those are designed to be sold to your kids.

00:26:59.320 Ben, you and I are both parents.

00:27:01.180 I will tell you it is terrifying being the parents of young kids today.

00:27:06.600 Your kids are younger than mine, Ben.

00:27:08.520 My girls are teenagers. 0.78

00:27:10.040 And, you know, I think back, when you and I were teenagers, you'd go out to a party.

00:27:14.440 There may be some kids in high school.

00:27:15.860 They might be drinking.

00:27:16.820 Maybe someone would smoke some marijuana.

00:27:19.880 But the odds were that you were not going to die going to a party when you and I were kids.

00:27:25.340 What is terrifying now is that kids go to a party, and someone says,

00:27:30.300 Here, hey, try a pill.

00:27:31.580 It's an Adderall.

00:27:33.780 It's a Ritalin.

00:27:34.680 It's something they think is fairly innocuous.

00:27:37.800 And the kid takes one pill, and it is a counterfeit pill that has fentanyl, and the child drops dead.

00:27:44.740 And that is happening at a scale that is truly terrifying.

00:27:50.120 In 2023, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses.

00:27:56.060 70% of those were fentanyl.

00:27:58.000 And overdose is the wrong word for those.

00:28:00.060 Those are poisonings, because, you know, you think of an overdose.

00:28:04.500 If you have a junkie on the street who's shooting up heroin, he shoots up a little bit too much heroin.

00:28:09.460 That's a tragedy, but there are a series of decisions that put the person in that situation.

00:28:15.100 This circumstance is much more frightening because it can be one tiny mistaken decision made by a 14-year-old that ends that child's life.

00:28:27.040 And that is the result.

00:28:28.500 Open borders are endangering our families in a very fundamental way.

00:28:32.960 It's an epidemic.

00:28:33.840 And what's interesting is when you do research on this, Senator, one of the things that's the most shocking about it is a lot of police forces are actually running out of their Narcan, which is what you can give to try to save someone's life when they overdose.

00:28:51.480 Their yearly supply, they're eating through it in two to three months into the year.

00:28:58.320 And they're having to go to their city council and their board of aldermen, their county commissioners, depending on what type of government they have.

00:29:04.240 And they're having to beg them for more money because they're running through the budget for what they need to save people's lives.

00:29:11.120 That's how big of an epidemic this has become.

00:29:13.420 And again, it's the number one killer of young people in this country.

00:29:16.520 That is something that needs to be said over and over again.

00:29:18.760 And it's something that we must stop.

00:29:21.360 Well, and police officers and first responders, they often wear gloves.

00:29:26.280 They're very frightened because if they inadvertently touch fentanyl, a tiny amount can kill them.

00:29:31.340 The level that this is deadly is truly unprecedented.

00:29:38.100 And, you know, I'll say I want to share an illustration that a DEA agent told me a number of years ago, which we were sitting and doing a roundtable with a DEA agent and with a mom who had lost her child to fentanyl poisoning.

00:29:50.900 And here's what the DEA agent did is he handed out everyone sweet and low packets of the sweetener you put in your tea or coffee.

00:29:58.900 And he said, OK, tear open the sweet and low packet.

00:30:01.460 And he said, empty all the sweet and low onto the table.

00:30:04.220 So we all did that.

00:30:04.920 He then said, stick your pinky, your little finger into the empty packet.

00:30:10.560 So we did that.

00:30:11.880 And he said, pull it out.

00:30:13.620 And you pull it out.

00:30:14.860 You have a handful of tiny little grains of sweet and low that are on your finger. 0.79

00:30:19.880 And he said, that is enough fentanyl to kill you.

00:30:23.420 And it's a very effective illustration.

00:30:26.460 I'll tell you, with both of our teenage girls, I sat them down in the kitchen.

00:30:30.980 I handed them packets of sweet and low.

00:30:33.140 And I had them do exactly that illustration.

00:30:35.640 And if you are a parent, if you are a grandparent, have this conversation with your kids or your grandkids.

00:30:43.240 Because, look, hopefully your kids will not make catastrophically wrong decisions.

00:30:48.120 But in this circumstance, one small decision that seems easy.

00:30:53.780 Hey, it's a friend of theirs that has, you know, hey, hey, try this pill.

00:30:57.620 We're all at a party.

00:30:58.460 And they don't think they are risking their lives.

00:31:02.480 I don't know a parent who is not terrified about the risks that their kids will make one wrong choice and it will cost them their entire life.

00:31:12.080 Yeah, it is.

00:31:12.980 It really is scary.

00:31:14.100 There's no doubt about it.

00:31:15.200 And this is part of the reason why I think the president is also, as you wrap up this last week, going after these drug cartels and saying,

00:31:24.380 we're going to use the full force of our government to go after them since we've declared them terrorist organizations because they're killing Americans.

00:31:32.840 Look, obviously, the U.S. military took out a Trenderagua narco-terrorist boat off the shores of Venezuela just this past week.

00:31:44.260 As you know, last week I was in Mexico meeting with senior government officials in Mexico and making clear to them, the United States is going after these cartels.

00:31:53.560 And we're going to do so either with or without you.

00:31:57.040 You know, listening to the story of the 171 Sinaloa cartel members arrested New England reminded me of the MS-13 cartel member that I spoke with down in El Salvador.

00:32:08.720 I went to the SECOT, the Maximum Security Terrorist Prison.

00:32:12.440 And if you didn't listen to our podcast last week, let me encourage every one of you to go back and listen to last week's podcast where I take you inside this prison,

00:32:21.360 this maximum security prison built for 40,000 gang members, mass murderers, and terrorists.

00:32:27.320 And I met with one MS-13 gang member who'd lived in Texas many years.

00:32:31.500 He spoke perfectly fluent English.

00:32:34.200 He became an MS-13 member when he was 13 years old, living in Falls Church, Virginia.

00:32:43.680 That's the level at which these gangs have penetrated our society.

00:32:49.360 And by the way, the only way you become a member of MS-13 is you have to murder someone.

00:32:54.260 So at age 13, he murdered someone to become a member of this gang.

00:32:59.580 When I asked him why he did it, he said all of his friends were doing the same thing,

00:33:02.840 that he was hanging out with other 13-year-olds who were joining the same gang.

00:33:06.860 And this is now a 42-year-old man who's spending the rest of his life in a maximum security prison because of the multiple murders he committed.

00:33:17.400 That is not in Colombia.

00:33:20.420 That's not deep in Mexico City.

00:33:22.400 That was Falls Church, Virginia.

00:33:25.060 And later he moved to Dallas, Texas.

00:33:27.520 We've heard New England.

00:33:28.780 This is public enemy number one.

00:33:31.000 You and I and our families, we want the border secured.

00:33:33.960 And I'm grateful that we have a president, commander-in-chief who says we are going to stop the human trafficking.

00:33:39.800 We're going to stop the drug trafficking.

00:33:41.820 We are securing the border.

00:33:43.180 That's an incredible success, and it's incredibly important.

00:33:46.920 Yeah, you're absolutely right about that.

00:33:49.160 And also, Reuters is now reporting, and this is just showing, I think, the president's commitment to fighting these narco-terrorists. 0.99

00:33:57.320 Reuters is now saying the U.S. is deploying stealth fighter jets to the Caribbean for drug fight

00:34:02.400 as the tensions with Venezuela continue to rise.

00:34:06.540 They're saying, Axios is saying, that 10 F-35 jets are being dispatched also to Puerto Rico to support the drug war there.

00:34:15.420 And this is on top of the—

00:34:16.640 And Ben, Ben, when I was down at the Panama Canal, I actually saw the USS Lake Erie

00:34:22.960 that was transiting from the Pacific to the Caribbean, specifically to participate in the war on drugs.

00:34:30.460 This is a missile ship with enormous capacity.

00:34:33.680 I don't know if this was the particular ship that took out the Trandaragua,

00:34:37.240 but I went and toured the ship, met many of the sailors on board.

00:34:40.160 We are moving major assets to take on the cartels and to defeat the cartels.

00:34:45.100 Yeah, exactly.

00:34:46.000 We're going to keep covering this.

00:34:47.380 So download Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts.

00:34:50.900 Don't miss a single episode, and The Center and I will see you back here on this radio station next week.

00:34:56.380 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:34:59.080 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - September 05, 2025

Who We Are-Dems Abandon God & the Declaration of Independence plus Cartels in every Community in America

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