Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 29, 2024


Why Israel's & America's Interests are Intertwined-An Exclusive Interview w Dr. Victoria Coates


Episode Stats


Length

39 minutes

Words per minute

165.3805

Word count

6,522

Sentence count

446

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

14

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Ted Cruz reflects on his mother s 90th birthday and the joy of being on the campaign trail with Donald Trump on election night. He also reflects on the importance of being thankful for the blessings God has given us throughout the year.

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.
00:00:02.620 Guaranteed human.
00:00:06.000 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:00:09.880 And to all of you listening right now, I hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving.
00:00:13.460 Senator, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving with your family as well.
00:00:17.480 A wonderful Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone had a chance to have some turkey and stuffing and cranberry and be with family.
00:00:24.640 And pause to just reflect on the many things we have to give thanks for being Americans, being free, living in the greatest country in the history of the world.
00:00:34.960 And I hope that you're taking these few days a break from work, just a hug on people you love.
00:00:43.280 And to remember, you know, I've never met anyone at the end of life who says, you know, I just wish I'd spent less time with my kids.
00:00:52.520 Because that's not what people say.
00:00:55.620 And so spend time, you know, this past weekend was my mother's 90th birthday.
00:01:00.620 And Heidi and I hosted a dinner, and we had family and friends come in and just went around the table.
00:01:06.460 And everyone took the chance just to talk about my mom, talk about what an amazing person she is, talk about how she had touched each of our lives.
00:01:14.860 My mom is 90 and still going strong.
00:01:16.860 And I'll tell you, it was kind of fun, Ben.
00:01:19.960 So I had everyone also record a little video that we played for her at the restaurant.
00:01:26.340 And as a surprise to her, when I was flying with Trump on Trump Force One down to Boca Chica for the rocket launch, I asked Trump if he'd be willing to record a video for my mom for her birthday.
00:01:39.260 So I pulled out my cell phone, and he was happy to do so.
00:01:42.020 He recorded a very nice video and wished her happy birthday.
00:01:45.120 And in classic Trump style, he said, Eleanor, I hear you're an amazing woman.
00:01:49.500 I understand you're turning 90, although everyone says you look 40.
00:01:52.360 That's in Trump fashion right there.
00:01:57.100 By the way, that's exactly what you would expect from him.
00:02:01.040 Did she absolutely love the moment?
00:02:02.780 Yeah, she laughed out loud.
00:02:04.000 She was astonished.
00:02:06.300 I got to brag.
00:02:07.140 I just got to brag on you for a second, because it was so fun election night, getting to spend a little time with your mom to watch how much fun she was having and how proud she was of you.
00:02:19.120 You would never talk about this, so I'm just going to do it.
00:02:21.740 And I've never enjoyed watching a parent, and I've been around your dad a lot, and your dad is incredible, but I think it's a little bit more normal for him.
00:02:31.820 He's in the fight.
00:02:33.300 He's really in there.
00:02:34.540 He gets into it.
00:02:36.040 And that's fun.
00:02:37.160 And if you've ever seen Sineker's dad, he's just a blast to spend time with, and he's so animated, and he loves the campaign trail.
00:02:44.240 Well, it's different with a mom just to see the pure, I think, joy.
00:02:50.360 It's when parents, when a kid succeeds, it's like 100 times more excitement.
00:02:55.300 And to watch her on election night in the war room and just the pure joy on her face, watching you get to do what you do and watching the room react to you winning, I don't know, because there was so much going on, if you got to see it from the angle I did.
00:03:10.920 I just got to say, I have never enjoyed a moment on the campaign trail, and I mean this sincerely, more than I did that moment, watching your mom watch you win re-election.
00:03:18.960 I don't know if you got to see that moment, but she was so proud of you.
00:03:22.980 That's awesome.
00:03:23.500 She's an amazing woman.
00:03:24.400 Maybe we'll do a podcast and have my mom on, because she's got quite the life story. 0.99
00:03:28.820 That'd be kind of fun to let her tell her story.
00:03:31.160 I love that idea.
00:03:32.380 No doubt about it.
00:03:33.800 And it was, yeah, it's fun.
00:03:35.560 So to everybody, we hope you had a fabulous Thanksgiving.
00:03:38.320 Be safe on the road.
00:03:39.360 Many of you download this, listening on your way home.
00:03:41.300 Even during this holiday season, there are still attacks that are happening each and every day against the people in Israel, and that is incredibly sad.
00:03:52.120 The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving as you gather with your families.
00:03:59.440 Grateful for the blessings that God has given all of us, but we need to remember those who are facing unbelievable hardship and a real need right now of food and hope in Israel.
00:04:11.300 The people of Israel, they're being threatened, and the attacks continue from enemies all around them.
00:04:18.120 And during these hard times, Israelis are thankful for the fellowship, for the food, and the basic assistance that they so desperately need.
00:04:26.200 We're talking about life-saving aid that the rest of the world seems to have turned their back on the people in Israel.
00:04:31.740 And that's why I'm asking you to pause and give a gift of $25 right now that will help provide food, a box of food, to an elderly Jew or a Jewish family who are suffering and are in desperate need.
00:04:44.600 A gift of $100 will help provide four of these life-saving food boxes.
00:04:49.720 This Thanksgiving season, take a moment and help the people in Israel.
00:04:54.120 Please consider standing with Israel and the Jewish people.
00:04:57.180 How do you do this?
00:04:58.860 Go to supportifcj.org.
00:05:04.740 That is supportifcj.org.
00:05:08.740 To make a gift now, that's supportifcj.org.
00:05:13.280 Or you can call and give as well over the phone.
00:05:16.340 888-488-IFCJ.
00:05:20.160 That's 888-488-4325 or supportifcj.org.
00:05:28.900 Senator, this is one of those fun episodes for us.
00:05:31.460 You get asked, I know, to lend your name to certain things here and there.
00:05:37.140 And there is a book that is coming out you're excited about.
00:05:40.860 The forward was written by you.
00:05:43.080 And it deals with a very, very important issue, the Jewish state and the people of Israel and America and this connection.
00:05:51.860 Well, that's right.
00:05:52.840 And we've got a special guest on the podcast today.
00:05:55.000 And our guest is a very dear friend of mine, Dr. Victoria Coates.
00:05:59.380 Now, Dr. Coates is the vice president of the Heritage Foundation for National Security and Foreign Policy.
00:06:05.860 And Victoria is an amazing woman.
00:06:09.540 She has a Ph.D. in art history, which she's one of the preeminent foreign policy and national security experts in the country.
00:06:16.540 And those who doubt her sometimes scoff at the fact that she's an art historian.
00:06:23.000 She actually was a professor at Penn and was teaching art history at Penn.
00:06:28.500 And I'll tell you an amazing story of how Victoria got full time into the national security and foreign policy world, which is 20 some odd years ago.
00:06:39.640 She was blogging anonymously on Red State and she had a pseudonym.
00:06:44.760 And Don Rumsfeld was the secretary of defense at the time.
00:06:48.020 And he was reading what she was writing on Red State.
00:06:50.960 And it was really profound and insightful about foreign policy.
00:06:53.900 And Rumsfeld called in his staff and said, hey, I want you to figure out who is writing these columns because – and he said, listen, this is obviously a colonel buried somewhere in the heart of the Pentagon who understands military policy, foreign policy, national security.
00:07:11.900 This guy is an expert.
00:07:13.220 I want to hear what he has to say.
00:07:14.700 Well, they tracked the colonel in the Pentagon down and it turned out it was a professor of art history at Penn named Victoria Coates.
00:07:21.080 And she ended up coming and working for Don Rumsfeld when he was writing his autobiography.
00:07:26.640 She worked with him on that.
00:07:28.580 And when I was newly elected to the Senate, she was my very first national security advisor.
00:07:33.720 And Victoria and I worked hand in hand for four years.
00:07:36.940 She was amazing helping advise me on the very complicated and dangerous world in which we live.
00:07:43.060 And when Trump became president, she went into the Trump White House and she went into the Trump National Security Council and she managed to actually survive four national security advisors.
00:07:55.660 She was hired initially by Mike Flynn.
00:07:58.140 I remember Mike Flynn lasted just about 30 days.
00:08:01.500 And then she ended up staying through H.R. McMaster and then staying through John Bolton and then staying through Robert O'Brien.
00:08:11.280 And she rose to be deputy national security advisor to President Trump.
00:08:16.340 And then she finished the Trump administration at the Department of Energy where she was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy.
00:08:26.900 And she was dealing with the Middle East in particular.
00:08:29.520 And Victoria is an expert on many things, but one of the things she's an expert on is the Middle East.
00:08:35.400 And this book, she has a brand new book that is coming out right now.
00:08:38.740 And the book is called The Battle for the Jewish State, How Israel and America Can Win.
00:08:45.340 And with that, Victoria, welcome to Verdict.
00:08:48.400 Well, thank you for having me on.
00:08:50.160 I'd just like to correct the record a couple of things.
00:08:54.060 Sure.
00:08:55.640 Although my first boss said never let truth stand in the way of a good story.
00:08:59.520 No, I'd just say it wasn't quite 20 years ago.
00:09:05.660 There we go.
00:09:06.480 I like that.
00:09:09.180 Maybe a little bit less.
00:09:10.880 Wait a second.
00:09:11.540 When was Rumsfeld's Secretary of Defense?
00:09:14.200 Well, this one's more 25, 26, so more 18, 19 years ago.
00:09:20.040 You split the hairs there on that one.
00:09:24.100 I don't like to be dated.
00:09:26.500 No, it's been an extraordinary journey.
00:09:30.500 And the other date I'd like to mention is 2014, when you and I made my first journey to Israel together.
00:09:36.900 I think your second, if not your third, in May of that year, which was our first trip abroad, as a senator, and to go to Israel and have that experience together with our then Chief of Staff, Chip Roy, who has obviously become something of a name on his own right.
00:09:59.860 But to have that experience was really profound.
00:10:03.680 And I would just add, we went from Israel to Kiev.
00:10:08.280 We went to Ukraine.
00:10:09.360 And so we got to see these two theaters that are so important to us right now, 10 years ago, and experience this, meet these people.
00:10:23.180 But the book was really very much a document of these 10 years that have gone on since then.
00:10:30.120 And I think for both of us, watching Israel, observing it, studying it, and then, in your case, actually, legislating on it, has been quite an extraordinary experience.
00:10:45.140 It has been an amazing journey, and it is a very dangerous world.
00:10:50.160 Let's start with Israel itself, and let's start with maybe the simplest question.
00:10:55.360 Why is Israel at war right now?
00:10:57.480 What happened to take us from four years ago, we had peace and prosperity, we had the Abraham Accords being signed on the South Lawn of the White House,
00:11:07.300 and now we've had October 7th, the worst mass murder of Jews in a single day since the Holocaust, we have war throughout Gaza, we have war in Lebanon.
00:11:16.400 What happened to change things so dramatically?
00:11:20.960 Well, clearly it was a change of the executive branch.
00:11:23.960 And one of the most obvious policy contrasts between the Trump administration and the Biden-Harris administration was on Middle East policy.
00:11:35.380 And so you had President Trump go in, work on a number of the things that you and I worked on, moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,
00:11:45.900 the recognition of Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, and conventional wisdom held by those like John Kerry, among others,
00:11:57.860 that this would cause upheaval in the region.
00:12:01.140 Instead, it caused clarity.
00:12:04.220 This is where the United States is.
00:12:06.700 The United States stands with Israel.
00:12:09.160 And if you want to stand with us, great.
00:12:12.900 And what we found was that many of our Arab partners, traditional partners and allies, decided that's what they wanted to do.
00:12:22.060 So we signed the Abraham Accords with Bahrain and UAE and Morocco. 0.95
00:12:30.240 And this led to peace in the region.
00:12:33.280 And then we had Biden-Harris come in, and they decided that they were going to embrace the Obama-era policy of having distance with Israel,
00:12:42.760 trying to domesticate the Iranians. 0.56
00:12:45.060 And this led to disaster.
00:12:48.220 And instead of peace, we wound up with October 7th of 2023, now I guess 14 months ago,
00:12:56.540 and the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
00:13:01.180 And I felt like so many Americans kept asking me, why is this happening?
00:13:06.180 And that's why I wrote the book.
00:13:07.400 So, Victoria, I've got to ask you this question with all the news that has happened with Israel.
00:13:11.940 When did you actually decide to write the book?
00:13:15.240 And it was actually a bit of temporary insanity last April, where I had the idea,
00:13:22.660 and I thought, I need to answer these questions that people keep asking me.
00:13:27.360 And I got in touch with my publisher at Encounter Press, and Roger Kimball said,
00:13:33.360 okay, if you can get this to me in 90 days, I can get it out.
00:13:37.440 Wow.
00:13:37.720 So, as I said, a bit of temporary insanity, but we got it done, just because the questions were so clear.
00:13:49.160 How did this happen?
00:13:50.520 Why Israel? 0.84
00:13:52.340 Is there an alternative to Israel? 0.95
00:13:55.200 And then, what's next?
00:13:56.780 Those are the four questions that drive the book,
00:14:00.400 and it just kind of was a crie de coeur.
00:14:04.920 I just needed to get it out there, and I did it in 90 days, and here it is.
00:14:10.200 So, what's the answer to each of those four?
00:14:13.580 So, how did this happen is a question actually, Senator, you really answered in the forward to the book,
00:14:20.760 which is, how did we get from October 7th to all of the demonstrations in the United States that are pro-Habas?
00:14:31.080 I mean, most normal people responded to the terrorist attacks with horror,
00:14:38.220 but then suddenly all of these people were flooding our children's campuses, our streets.
00:14:44.180 And I thought you wrote very movingly about the testimony of the three university presidents,
00:14:54.160 my president, Amy McGill, the president of Harvard, your alma mater, and the president of MIT,
00:15:01.280 being unable to speak to why this was a problem.
00:15:04.480 And it's why this is a war, not just on Israel, but also on America,
00:15:10.940 because we have anti-Semitism here on our streets.
00:15:14.840 We have it on our campuses, where it's being taught to our children.
00:15:19.760 This is a huge problem, and we have to get after it.
00:15:23.300 And the Biden administration clearly had no answer to that.
00:15:27.260 And many Americans want to know why Israel is a great ally to the United States.
00:15:34.640 And that's a little bit of a history lesson.
00:15:37.120 And as you mentioned, I'm an art historian.
00:15:39.120 That just makes you able to write about history.
00:15:41.940 Sometimes there are pictures.
00:15:44.420 But in this case, it's going back to, you know,
00:15:49.440 what is the connection between the Jews and the Holy Land?
00:15:52.700 Why was the modern state of Israel founded?
00:15:56.060 What is the relationship between the United States and Israel?
00:16:00.780 That, I mean, is not well understood.
00:16:03.240 And I tried to approach it like a 101 class in college,
00:16:07.060 so that you would have that kind of information in front of you.
00:16:12.400 Then there's what I call the bipartisan history of failure,
00:16:16.560 which is the third question is, is there an alternative?
00:16:20.640 And the answer to that question is, yes, there are two.
00:16:23.480 One is the Palestinians and the other is the Iranians. 0.99
00:16:28.200 And we've had lots of folks on both sides of the aisle try to domesticate both of those groups. 0.91
00:16:34.120 As you and I know very well, that has not turned out well.
00:16:37.300 And that's exactly where they, Biden and Harris people were heading.
00:16:43.160 God forbid if they had gotten another four years.
00:16:46.020 And then the fourth question is, what's next?
00:16:48.580 And the amazing thing is, is that we can right now talk about a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
00:16:57.340 If you told me eight years ago, when I first went into the Trump administration,
00:17:02.320 that I could talk on a podcast about an Israel-Saudi deal and not get angry phone calls from both sides,
00:17:09.780 I would have been shocked.
00:17:11.500 But now it's talked about as when, not if.
00:17:16.240 And that's an extraordinary development.
00:17:18.660 So we can build on that.
00:17:20.480 We can go forward with that.
00:17:23.780 Well, and that's the direct result of clarity.
00:17:27.080 Of, you know, for decades, the conventional wisdom in Washington was to deliberately embrace strategic ambiguity.
00:17:37.700 That whatever you give to Israel with one hand, you take away with the other, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. 0.60
00:17:43.320 So Jerusalem, maybe Israel can have it, but maybe the Palestinians can have it. 1.00
00:17:47.540 Maybe the West Bank needs to be, go back to, we need to go back to the 1967 lines. 0.99
00:17:52.040 And we saw with Democrats and with a lot of Republicans that there was a very deliberate strategic blurring of the lines.
00:18:00.580 And the most important thing that Trump did on Middle East policy, and this is something that I advocated strenuously,
00:18:08.520 it's something that you advocated within the White House for, is have that clarity to say,
00:18:14.880 we stand with Israel, period, the end. 0.89
00:18:18.620 And that produced an historic flowering of peace.
00:18:23.060 And, you know, Victoria, I want to pause on something you said at the outset when you were answering the first question.
00:18:27.400 And you were talking about those who hate Israel and hate America.
00:18:31.040 And it just occurred to me as you were talking that there is an almost perfect equivalence.
00:18:36.600 That if you look at the people on college campuses chanting, we love Hamas, chanting against Israel, 0.85
00:18:45.420 to a person, almost every single person who hates and despises Israel, hates and despises the United States of America.
00:18:54.340 And I guess the question I wanted to ask you is why?
00:18:56.700 Why is that if you're an anti-Semite, if you hate Israel, we know that you are very, very likely to hate America as well?
00:19:04.540 You know, this is an interesting phenomenon.
00:19:08.280 And it's a new phrase I learned, which is called settler colonialism.
00:19:13.100 And at the Heritage Foundation, we were watching very carefully from our balconies
00:19:19.540 as the thousands of pro-Hamas protesters marched past Heritage to go down to Union Station
00:19:26.980 when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here.
00:19:30.060 I know you were there at the addressed Congress in July.
00:19:34.540 And they marched down to Union Station and dragged down flags and burned them and put up Palestinian flags.
00:19:44.100 And those were American flags.
00:19:45.680 Those aren't Israeli flags.
00:19:48.200 And then being a Philadelphian, I was particularly offended that they defaced the cast of the Liberty Bell
00:19:54.680 that also is there on Columbus Circle.
00:19:56.820 Well, but it's, I mean, that's it.
00:19:59.820 They hate us both.
00:20:00.900 And the reason they hate us is this whole issue of settler colonialism,
00:20:06.200 which is both Israel and the United States are the two countries that are theoretically settled by others.
00:20:14.780 My particular ancestors came from Scots-Irish and Denmark.
00:20:21.040 I know you are both Irish and Cuban.
00:20:24.060 Ben, I don't know what your pedigree is.
00:20:27.160 And I did want to take a minute to wish a very happy 90th birthday to Eleanor and send her lots of love.
00:20:35.600 But this is the thing, is these are the two countries that they consider illegitimate
00:20:42.400 because most of the people who live here come from other places.
00:20:47.220 And so that's why it's a war on both of us.
00:20:50.520 And if you look at our enemies, our enemies like Iran, they refer to Israel as the little Satan
00:20:58.020 and the United States as the great Satan.
00:21:00.520 But guess what? 0.98
00:21:01.500 We're both Satan.
00:21:03.300 And in that, you know, in that we are the same to them.
00:21:07.600 And what you're seeing from all of these enemies of the United States and Israel,
00:21:12.780 they're buying into that, that we're more or less the same.
00:21:16.220 And what, you know, you and I have discussed so many times.
00:21:18.880 Okay, fine.
00:21:20.300 Let's make that a strength rather than a weakness.
00:21:23.240 You say we're the same?
00:21:24.760 Great.
00:21:25.460 Then we're in this together.
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00:23:43.540 Let me ask you a question about college campuses.
00:23:46.220 And we talked a moment ago, you mentioned, and the Senator and I talked about this a lot
00:23:50.860 on the show, those presidents that came before Congress.
00:23:54.500 And it was shocking that they would not stop the just abuse of the Jewish students and not 0.99
00:24:02.040 protect them.
00:24:03.120 Do you feel like the pendulum will swing back watching what happened to some of those presidents
00:24:08.900 and just seeing how extreme these college campuses have gotten?
00:24:13.180 Or do you think they're just so indoctrinated to hate Israel now that this is just the policy
00:24:17.960 of almost all of these Ivy League schools?
00:24:20.880 Well, the good news, Ben, is as a sort of broken down academic myself, I can tell you
00:24:27.680 one thing, which is the one thing they care more about than their parking spaces is their
00:24:35.180 funding.
00:24:36.640 And so if you hold their funding at risk, they will stop this behavior. 0.64
00:24:42.680 And so I was at Penn last April to give remarks on why I think it's a bad idea to hate Jews.
00:24:50.820 And I required three layers of armed guards.
00:24:54.660 I had Philadelphia city cops.
00:24:56.620 I had Penn cops.
00:24:58.360 And Heritage was not satisfied with that.
00:25:00.880 And they sent an additional armed guard with me because it was such a radical thing for me
00:25:07.320 to go on campus and make these remarks.
00:25:10.300 And actually, that speech isn't free.
00:25:13.980 A lot of people had to pay for that, including the taxpayers of Pennsylvania, amongst others.
00:25:20.760 And it was a really enlightening moment that we have to hold this funding at risk.
00:25:27.560 And I've heard President Trump talk about this, I think, very forcefully, that no university
00:25:34.660 should get federal funding.
00:25:36.800 And I think we can also look at this from the state perspective and hold that funding
00:25:42.880 at risk.
00:25:43.560 And that will actually change this behavior.
00:25:46.940 Well, and I've got to say, Victoria has a lot of courage going on to college campuses 0.99
00:25:50.560 and facing the crazy left, the angry left, the Israel-hating and America-hating left.
00:25:57.360 And we need to see more of that courage, more of that courage among academics, more of that
00:26:02.220 courage among students.
00:26:03.820 And, you know, I think back, you know, I mentioned, Ben, at the outset that Victoria was my first
00:26:09.220 national security advisor.
00:26:10.480 And I think it's worth recounting a little bit of that story when we first started working
00:26:14.720 together.
00:26:15.620 So I was elected to the Senate 12 years ago.
00:26:19.160 I show up in December of 2012, sworn in in January of 2013.
00:26:24.220 And when you're a brand new senator, when you're a baby senator, they put you down in these little
00:26:29.600 bitty basement offices.
00:26:31.400 And it's basically freshman hazing.
00:26:33.260 I mean, there are 100 Senate offices that are full offices.
00:26:36.940 But they keep the new senators down in the basement for three, four, five months, just
00:26:41.820 basically as an initiation.
00:26:43.760 And then so Victoria was part of our very first team that came together right when I was newly
00:26:48.780 elected.
00:26:49.160 And she came and joined us initially for what was going to be two weeks and just to help
00:26:53.700 us get started, help us hire some staff.
00:26:56.060 And then she then she was going to move on.
00:26:58.900 And when we got there, one of the very first things we had is we had a vote on John Kerry
00:27:03.860 who had been nominated as secretary of state.
00:27:06.600 And John Kerry, at the time I was elected, he was a senator.
00:27:09.240 So he was a colleague of mine for like four minutes.
00:27:11.780 And then Obama, the beginning of the second term, nominated Kerry as secretary of state.
00:27:15.640 And I remember John Kerry came by my basement office.
00:27:17.680 As Victoria was sitting in the office in the meeting and Kerry was, let me speak nicely,
00:27:25.860 incredibly confident in himself.
00:27:28.740 I'm trying to put that in a kind tone.
00:27:32.140 And he gave me this sort of long lecture how I really needed to embrace the law of the
00:27:39.400 sea treaty, which the law of the sea treaty, among other things, significantly undermines
00:27:44.500 U.S. sovereignty and gives away the ability of we, the people to make our own laws.
00:27:48.680 And I remember sitting there just kind of laughing and being like, OK, this guy has no idea who
00:27:52.940 I am.
00:27:55.020 Like none whatsoever.
00:27:56.340 And we then came to the vote on the floor of the Senate.
00:28:02.180 And it was one of the very first votes I ever took.
00:28:04.520 And I went down and voted no.
00:28:06.940 And there was literally an audible gasp on the floor of the Senate when I voted no.
00:28:14.320 Because a freshman senator was certainly not supposed to do that.
00:28:17.780 The vote was 97 to 3.
00:28:20.020 So 97 senators voted yes.
00:28:22.040 There were only three of us that voted no.
00:28:24.160 It was actually 94 to 3.
00:28:26.320 Oh, was it 94 to 3?
00:28:27.400 OK, well then I guess Kerry didn't vote for himself.
00:28:29.920 And I remembered the three.
00:28:30.960 Exactly.
00:28:31.200 I didn't remember that.
00:28:32.420 I don't know who skipped.
00:28:33.480 Whoever skipped, they did better than the 94.
00:28:37.260 And then immediately thereafter, about concurrently with it, was the confirmation of Chuck Hagel.
00:28:44.120 Now, Chuck Hagel is who Obama had nominated to be secretary of defense.
00:28:48.140 And Chuck Hagel had been a Republican senator.
00:28:50.400 I didn't know Hagel.
00:28:52.020 But as I looked at his record, his record was terrible.
00:28:55.520 And so I ended up leading what was the very first filibuster in American history against a defense secretary.
00:29:03.640 And it was successful.
00:29:05.000 It was before Harry Reid had used the nuclear option, before he'd blown up the filibuster.
00:29:08.960 So you can't filibuster now a cabinet nominee anymore.
00:29:12.260 But you could then.
00:29:13.960 And we successfully held 41 Republicans.
00:29:17.100 We stopped his nomination.
00:29:19.280 And then actually, Republicans being what they are, several other Republicans who joined us went wobbly and decided to confirm him anyway.
00:29:26.200 But that's another story.
00:29:28.260 But what I will say is I think it got Victoria's attention that this was not going to be just a quiet, go-along-to-get-along tenure in the Senate,
00:29:37.640 that we were there to fight battles and lead battles.
00:29:41.840 And she ended up staying in.
00:29:45.600 And I'll tell you something astonishing, Pat.
00:29:48.100 So if you rewind the clock 12 years ago.
00:29:50.780 12 years ago, I am elected to the Senate.
00:29:54.540 I'm elected to the Senate.
00:29:55.360 I'm 41 years old, brand new, elected to the Senate.
00:29:58.540 And as I came into the Senate, I had areas that I knew a lot about.
00:30:01.540 If you were talking about legal issues, if you're talking about criminal justice, if you're talking about constitutional law, I had a long background in all of those issues.
00:30:09.920 When it came to foreign policy, I had essentially zero background, just my professional career.
00:30:17.740 I'd never worked in foreign policy.
00:30:19.320 I'd never worked in the State Department or the Defense Department.
00:30:22.180 I'd never dealt with foreign policy.
00:30:24.100 My focus had always been domestic.
00:30:26.540 When I was on the George W. Bush campaign 24 years ago, I was the domestic policy advisor.
00:30:32.300 That was my specialty.
00:30:33.420 And so, look, economic matter, domestic matters, I had a lot of experience.
00:30:37.300 Foreign policy, I had essentially none.
00:30:40.760 But I did have some strong beliefs.
00:30:44.040 I'm, you know, the son of a Cuban immigrant who had fought in the Cuban Revolution.
00:30:48.060 I believed profoundly in freedom.
00:30:50.780 I was inspired by Reagan.
00:30:53.460 Peace through strength is a principle and philosophy that I believed deeply in.
00:31:00.000 But I didn't have a terribly deep subject matter expertise.
00:31:05.040 And so one of the things, I give that background, because one of the remarkable things Victoria did is basically convened a university in the United States Senate to train me up in foreign policy.
00:31:19.240 And I say so with complete humility.
00:31:21.320 And what proceeded for four years is we would do deep dives.
00:31:27.940 And when I'm in D.C., Heidi and the girls stay back in Houston.
00:31:31.520 So when I'm in D.C., I'm solo.
00:31:33.160 I don't have I don't have anybody at home.
00:31:35.300 And so my philosophy, if I get to get to my apartment at seven or eight or nine o'clock at night, I'll be mad at my team.
00:31:41.880 I'll be like, wait, what am I doing sitting in an apartment staring at a wall?
00:31:45.000 There's work to be done.
00:31:45.940 And like now, if Heidi and the girls were there, I'd want to be home with the kids.
00:31:49.220 But if they're not there, I want to work.
00:31:51.400 And so every night when I'm in D.C., I do a working dinner.
00:31:56.620 And what what Victoria began convening is we do working dinners. 0.99
00:32:01.020 And many of them were with subject matter experts where we'd bring in, say, a Middle East policy expert or a couple.
00:32:06.740 We'd bring in an Israel expert or an Iran expert.
00:32:08.840 We'd bring in a Russia expert.
00:32:10.240 We'd bring in a China expert.
00:32:12.120 And we do a deep dive onto a subject matter and sit there and have a three, four hour dinner really asking. 0.96
00:32:20.680 You know, I'm a big believer that that there are no stupid questions other than the question you don't ask because you're afraid to ask. 0.61
00:32:29.100 And so I was perfectly happy to ask question after question after question. 0.77
00:32:32.200 And I will just say now, 12 years later, where I have been in the middle of virtually every foreign policy battle in the Senate for a long time now.
00:32:43.020 So it's worth looking back to 12 years ago, the incredible job Victoria did systematically giving me a knowledge set to go along with principles that I started with.
00:32:59.200 But I didn't have the subject matter expertise.
00:33:02.280 And there's literally no person on planet Earth more responsible for my being able to develop that subject matter expertise than Victoria.
00:33:11.280 Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders and the world around them. 0.97
00:33:18.660 And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:33:22.400 I'm Jennifer Stewart.
00:33:23.580 And I'm Catherine Clark.
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00:33:34.300 So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:33:37.280 Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:33:43.640 Victor, let me ask you a question following up on what he just stated there.
00:33:47.040 And that is, it's getting close to Christmas.
00:33:49.940 A lot of people buying gifts.
00:33:51.200 It's Black Friday right now as people are listening to this.
00:33:55.240 When you wrote this book, who did you envision reading it?
00:33:58.320 Is this one of those books that you should absolutely get for maybe your kids are in high school or in college?
00:34:04.800 Is this, I mean, when you write it, when I wrote my book, I'm like, I was trying to envision, who do I want to read this book?
00:34:11.620 Who am I trying to give information to?
00:34:14.640 I'm trying to give information, Ben, to people who are interested in American national security.
00:34:21.140 And not to correct Senator Cruz, but not that I ever would.
00:34:24.180 But the only thing I would adjust to what he just said is it's not foreign policy.
00:34:29.120 This is national security.
00:34:30.480 This is what touches all Americans every day.
00:34:34.820 And so I would hope everyone from a high school senior to somebody who's just interested in the Middle East would be interested in this book because they want to know why this is in the United States' best interests.
00:34:48.820 And I would boil this down to a single issue.
00:34:52.100 And I remember so clearly when we made the decision to do this, which was when Senator Heller's bill to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem came up right away in January of 2013, and it did not have a co-sponsor.
00:35:10.880 And I said to Senator Cruz, would you like to be co-sponsored?
00:35:13.520 And he said, yes, I would.
00:35:14.700 You know, this seems like a really good idea because this gives that kind of clarity that we were just talking about.
00:35:22.300 And that's when I knew we were off to the races.
00:35:24.740 Same thing with the vote on John Kerry.
00:35:27.220 Same thing with Chuck Hagel, that we are going to take a new approach to these issues.
00:35:35.900 And it's one of the reasons it was not easy for me to leave Senator Cruz's staff to go into the Trump administration, but I had no conflict of interest because it was essentially the same policies.
00:35:49.140 These are the America first policies.
00:35:51.580 And one of those keystones of that is the relationship between the United States and Israel.
00:35:58.080 And so that's really the purpose behind the book, to explain to people why that is, and then to give them ammunition to spread that information around.
00:36:10.420 Because I think the disinformation about Israel, the very negative information about the Jewish people as well as Israel, is so pervasive.
00:36:21.960 So that's why I wrote it.
00:36:23.340 I know it's going to be an important book, and a lot of people are going to want to try to grab this.
00:36:28.620 Where can they get it?
00:36:29.700 Where do you tell people to go?
00:36:32.560 Unfortunately, they can get it anywhere they would like.
00:36:34.940 They can get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.
00:36:37.500 They can go to the Encounter Press website.
00:36:41.320 But Amazon's probably the easiest, what we all have on our phones.
00:36:44.920 So really appreciate any kind of pre-orders.
00:36:48.200 And I hope it makes a great gift.
00:36:50.500 So the book is The Battle for the Jewish State.
00:36:52.900 How Israel and America Can Win.
00:36:55.020 It's an excellent book.
00:36:57.020 Victoria is a preeminent expert.
00:36:59.460 If you find yourself around the Thanksgiving table or at work or at school with people arguing, arguing about Israel, arguing, well, don't the Palestinians have a point? 0.97
00:37:10.320 Aren't the Israelis really terrible to them? 1.00
00:37:12.740 And you feel like something's wrong with that argument, but you're not sure what?
00:37:16.840 This book is a really helpful tool to understand, okay, wait a second.
00:37:20.500 Here are actually the facts.
00:37:22.140 And I'll say something real quick that Victoria just said a minute ago, and this is something I think that is incredibly important.
00:37:28.480 For all of us who are strongly pro-Israel, I urge everyone in the pro-Israel movement to articulate a defense of Israel very directly from the perspective of why it is good for the United States of America.
00:37:45.240 I think too many in the pro-Israel movement talk about aid for Israel as if you're giving welfare to some down-on-his-luck neighbor who just needs help.
00:37:54.620 And I think that's a profound mistake.
00:37:56.960 If you look at every year the United States provides roughly $3 billion in military assistance to Israel, that is incredibly beneficial to America.
00:38:06.460 If we tried to recreate the intelligence network of the Mossad, the benefits that America gets from the Mossad spying on, sabotaging, engaging with the enemies of America, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, it would cost tens of billions of dollars, and we wouldn't recreate it half as good.
00:38:26.920 But the enemies of Israel are the enemies of America, and when Israel defeats Hamas, as they are doing now, and when Israel defeats Hezbollah, as they are doing now, that benefits America. 0.65
00:38:39.640 And this book explains that.
00:38:41.180 It's powerful and useful to know.
00:38:43.500 So I'll say with Christmas season coming up, you should go and order a copy, The Battle for the Jewish State, How Israel and America Can Win, and it's by Victoria Coates.
00:38:52.580 There you go.
00:38:53.340 Be safe on the road for all of you that are driving home from Thanksgiving with your family and your friends.
00:38:58.560 Don't forget, Senator Cruz and I do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
00:39:01.860 Hit that subscribe or auto-download button.
00:39:04.520 We also have on Saturday the Week in Review, what you may have missed during the week.
00:39:09.040 We've got that for you on Saturdays as well.
00:39:11.400 And don't forget on those in-between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, and I'll keep you updated on the latest breaking news there.
00:39:17.820 And the Senator and I will see you back here Saturday for the Week in Review.
00:39:21.380 This is an iHeart Podcast.
00:39:25.080 Guaranteed Human.