00:08:02.040And this followed 10 days of being difficult in private and now one day of being stupid in public.
00:08:08.960But this did not have to go down this way.
00:08:13.200And however you feel about why it started, why it's going on, who's right and who's wrong, we can help them in this and come out okay on the other side and he's making it hard.
00:08:22.960Now, first of all, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I actually agree with Scott.
00:08:26.480And everything that he said was basically right.
00:08:29.540I know, I'm going to get killed on social media for admitting that, but so be it.
00:08:34.360We'll follow to him something, and he has not.
00:08:38.000So the short answer is the Trump administration believes that if Ukraine goes into business with the United States, that in and of itself is a security guarantee.
00:08:47.680If your interests become our interests, we're going to be interested in making sure our interests are secure.
00:08:53.420So it would have been wise for him to understand the economic deal, the mineral deal, is a security guarantee in and of itself.
00:09:00.580And he lost sight of that today in the argument premeditated.
00:10:13.340Look, this deal on minerals had the advantage for Ukraine of having the Trump administration being an integrally involved economic partner with Ukraine.
00:10:27.640And the alternative is very different, which is without the United States, Ukraine's prospects are really dim.
00:10:39.580And so if you know that your prospects for success are miserably sad unless President Trump supports you, in what universe do you come in and start attacking and insulting him?
00:10:54.500Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
00:11:01.100Canadian women are looking for more – more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.
00:11:08.040And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:11:34.980Senator, I want to go back to one other point that we mentioned earlier, but I think it's important to kind of expand on it.
00:11:41.940And it was a shocking moment of just either completely out of touch or this Democratic Party, I guess you could just say, is in a sense just completely lost.
00:11:54.320You had not a single Democrat applaud Peyton McNabb, who suffered brain damage after a volleyball spiked by a trans person, a man acting like a woman, ended her hopes of a college career.
00:12:09.660That's how significant the injury was.
00:12:11.820And it made her retire and also that took potentially like a scout, changed her life forever.
00:12:23.540Now, not a Democrat clap for not not one.
00:12:26.240And by the way, just this past week, every single Democrat in the Senate voted against protecting girls from from boys competing in sports, every one of them.
00:12:37.660And, you know, in the campaign, listen, in my reelection campaign, Colin Allred claims, I don't support boys playing in girls sports.
00:12:45.960Well, every Senate and except the fact that he voted for it over and over and over again, every single Senate Democrat, when they're on reelection campaigns, they tell the voters, I don't support boys and girls sports.
00:12:56.560And yet every single one of them just voted for it and not a one of them applauded.
00:13:01.060I mean, it's the simple reality of how extreme their party is.
00:13:06.760Now, I will tell you one thing that that that was particularly meaningful to me was was all the Texans who whom President Trump honored tonight, including Alexis Nungary, the mom of Jocelyn.
00:13:20.020Now, Alexis was going to be my guest tonight.
00:13:28.540So so she went and she was sitting with Melania Trump.
00:13:32.880I was really grateful for the for her being being invited by the president to come there.
00:13:39.240And then right next to Melania Trump was Elliston Berry.
00:13:43.220And Elliston Berry is someone also another Texan who was the inspiration for the Take It Down Act.
00:13:48.980So Elliston Berry is a 15 year old girl from North Texas, from Alito, who when she was 14 and a freshman in high school,
00:13:56.580a boy, a classmate of hers took an innocent social media picture of her and used artificial intelligence to create a deep fake naked image of her that that appeared to be real.
00:14:11.440But it was fake and then sent it to her classmates.
00:14:14.200And she was the inspiration for my legislation, the Take It Down Act, which which passed the Senate unanimously.
00:14:21.720And and by the way, how many times have you been involved in legislation that was passed unanimously in your in your career in the Senate?
00:14:29.380A lot of times I passed one hundred and one different pieces of legislation into law.
00:14:36.980The Senate often if you do the work, you can bring people together and pass something.
00:14:41.800And actually, just yesterday, the first lady, Melania Trump, came came to the Capitol.
00:14:46.840First time she has his first lady, the second term supporting the Take It Down Act.
00:14:51.040And we did a roundtable, which we're going to we're going to talk about significantly more on Friday's pod.
00:14:55.600But we did a roundtable where Melania Trump heard from Elliston Berry, heard from other victims of of nonconsensual intimate images and called on the House to pass the Take It Down Act.
00:15:06.560And President Trump tonight called on the House to pass the Take It Down Act.
00:15:10.160So I was really glad the two people directly next to Melania Trump to her left were were two Texans, Elliston Berry and Alexis Nungary.
00:15:22.260It was that that may have been one of the best parts of the night.
00:15:25.260Let's talk about what this looks like moving forward.
00:15:27.800I think the president's speech is going to play very well with the American people.
00:15:33.360I think it's going to help with momentum moving forward.
00:15:35.840Yeah, I also do think that the American people, in the way they were watching this on TV, saw the the the shocking moments when they wouldn't stand for children that were, you know, murdered by illegal immigrants, their families.
00:15:50.400Police officers dying live duty duty is on the list.
00:15:55.120I mean, you look at all of this bringing an American hostage home from Russia, by the way, they wouldn't stand for that.
00:16:00.880That was another moment we left out earlier.
00:17:08.260I think the president's approval rating is going to stay solid and in certain categories, support on certain issues will actually rise coming out of this state of the union.
00:17:18.300I think this is going to continue the momentum on on things like Doge and even in some of the issues that we're talking about that are in tough ones, whether it's dealing with Mexico and cartels or tariffs or Canada and fentanyl.
00:17:49.720I think the American people are going to be happy with this speech.
00:17:53.260They're going to be happy with the results.
00:17:54.720The American people are happy with successes for America and we're getting on the border seeing illegal immigrations and illegal border crossings drop over 90 percent.
00:18:04.800That's an unambiguous victory on energy, seeing energy production going up, seeing regulations being repealed, seeing wasteful spending being eliminated.
00:18:17.020In terms of jobs, he went through the investments, the investments on on new investments, whether from Oracle or Apple or car companies bringing new factories here.
00:18:30.380Those are the sorts of things, frankly, when Joe Biden talked about if he would, you know, he had Democrats in their speeches would talk about a new factory.
00:18:37.320And you know what? The Republicans would all stand and cheer because, hey, a new factory in America is a good thing.
00:18:42.340And we even if we don't support many, if not most of Biden and Obama's policies, we cheer for the American people.
00:18:50.760I think that the president's message was really strong, but I also think the contrast with the Democrats made it even stronger.
00:18:59.880And so I think this was a good night for America, but but but not a good night for today's Democrat Party.
00:19:08.940As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and download the podcast from early this week to hear the entire thing.
00:19:17.580Canadian women are looking for more, more out of themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders and the world around them.
00:19:24.700And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast.
00:19:28.440I'm Jennifer Stewart and I'm Catherine Clark.
00:19:30.840And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women, entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey.
00:19:40.320So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.
00:19:43.320Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on iHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
00:19:49.300I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed.
00:19:53.820Almost 100 terrorist linked migrants released in 2024.
00:19:59.000The part that I think we really should hone in on is this wasn't an accident.
00:20:04.100It wasn't like a misappropriation of paperwork.
00:21:42.300There are many, many areas that we need to stay very focused on, working with Department of Homeland Security, working with the FBI to ensure that we're keeping the American people safe.
00:21:52.120Our counterterrorism center is working on making sure that we have that single source for vetting so that we can figure out who is actually in our country and identify those who pose a threat and get them removed.
00:22:04.360The president's designation of the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations falls directly into this, especially as we're seeing some of the tactics that these cartels are using reflect some of the tactics that we've seen used by Islamist terrorists in countries that many of us have served in overseas.
00:22:32.400The vice president was down there as well.
00:22:33.940Well, the team and, you know, you compare that to the border czar who never decided to go to Eagle Pass, didn't want anything to do with it.
00:22:39.420And now we understand, again, more why, because they knew they were doing all of the things that they were doing to put America's national security at risk.
00:22:47.780Yeah, and it's worth really focusing on the facts that Tulsi Gabbard, who's now the director of national intelligence, what she said.
00:22:56.020She said, from Central Asia, there were more than 4,000 people who came across our borders using an ISIS-affiliated network.
00:23:05.860So ISIS, you know, kind of bad guys, terrorists who've killed lots and lots of Americans, they're smuggling over 4,000 people illegally into this country from Central Asia.
00:23:16.680By the way, Central Asia includes multiple Islamic countries like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, where radical Islamic terrorism is a real threat.
00:23:25.080And Tulsi said the National Counterterrorism Center went through and identified those over 4,000 individuals, and there were hundreds of them, hundreds is the word she used, who were either known terrorists or associated with known terrorists.
00:23:44.080And then she says, quote, that information was provided to the Biden administration.
00:23:50.940So the Biden administration knew hundreds of either known terrorists or people associated with known terrorists were smuggled into America illegally by an ISIS-affiliated network.
00:24:03.320And then she goes on to say in 2024, a little over 100 of those terror-linked people were arrested.
00:24:12.840And then the shocking thing, of the little more than 100, only eight were either deported or remained in custody, only eight.
00:24:25.740Quote, the rest of them were released back into our country.
00:24:31.580So this is not illegal aliens crossing the border that get apprehended, they let them go, but they don't know they're terrorists.
00:24:37.560These are people they know are either themselves known terrorists or associated with known terrorists.
00:24:45.400They also know that they were smuggled illegally into this country by an ISIS-affiliated network, and they were arrested again.
00:24:52.540And yet, over 90 of them, nearly 100, the Biden administration released into America, into your community, into my community, in a single year.
00:25:11.100And I've got to tell you, Ben, I've never heard a single Democrat give any justification for what is just idiocy.
00:25:19.760Let's release terror-linked illegal immigrants into America.
00:25:23.540What possibly could go wrong with that?
00:25:25.860When you look at the, and sometimes it's just people are stupid, is it, but it also could be more, I could be more sinister than that, I guess.
00:25:34.580Because, I look at this, I'm like, they knew it.
00:25:37.680Did they just not want to admit that the open border would allow for so many bad actors to come across, with many that may just be coming across, right, for a better life, a job, if you put it in the best light possible, Senator.
00:25:51.760And so they knew that if they admitted they caught these people, and then they didn't release them, and they actually prosecuted them or sent them back to their country, there's a lot of options here.
00:26:01.660That was going to sign a huge light on the problem.
00:26:04.340So therefore, hey, we can't admit it's happening.
00:26:06.080So are we just going to go with this anarchy and insanity until the end?
00:26:39.540But then why the hell would you release these people?
00:26:42.380And I guess the only plausible explanation I can come up with is they're such radicals on open borders.
00:26:50.460They're so committed to their open borders because they want millions and millions of illegal immigrants because they view them as future Democrat voters,
00:26:58.300that they're just deportation was off the table.
00:28:34.540And they said that this speech, 68% said they felt hopeful.
00:28:40.74054% said they felt proud of the country from the speech.
00:28:44.820And when you look at these numbers, even on the issue of inflation, where Democrats leaned in heavy over the last few weeks to try to say everything that's, you know, eggs and everything else are the problem of Donald Trump.
00:28:55.900The American people aren't buying that either.
00:28:57.460When they were asked whether the president had a clear plan to battle inflation, 68% said yes to that as well.
00:29:03.520And then on the issue of immigration at the border, the people watched and 77% said they were in favor of Donald Trump's plan on immigration at the border.
00:29:17.460When you see this, right, and you look at what the president's saying, and then all those that are working towards this, you've got the vice president, you've got Tulsa, you've got the secretary of state.
00:29:29.140Everyone seems to be in lockstep on this issue of the border.
00:29:32.580Is that the reason why you think the president's winning so much right now on securing this border?
00:29:37.760Because he's explaining it the way we are right now as well?
00:29:41.200Because he is not absolutely frigging nuts?
00:29:44.220I think the Democrat Party has gone insane.
00:29:49.660Releasing murderers and rapists and child molesters into America is a really bad idea, and it turns out it's a really unpopular idea.
00:29:57.040Releasing terrorists into America is a really bad idea, and it turns out it's a really unpopular idea.
00:30:01.980Look, you and I, we did a pod the night of the State of the Union, and we talked a lot about how the Democrats, for the first time ever, didn't applaud for the president of the United States, didn't stand for the president of the United States, didn't applaud at anything.
00:30:18.560I'll tell you, actually, yesterday in the Senate, Jim, I had a conversation with a Senate Democrat.
00:30:23.620I'll keep him anonymous, but he was a Senate Democrat, one of my colleagues.
00:30:30.180He said something about he thought we were just living in a surreal world.
00:30:34.600And I said, look, I got to say, I was shocked that you guys didn't applaud or stand for the president at all.
00:30:44.860And he was like, well, you got to understand, we just think he's destroying the Constitution.
00:30:52.220And I said, look, I stood and applauded every year for Barack Obama.
00:30:58.180I stood and applauded every year for Joe Biden.
00:31:00.300And I disagreed with almost everything they were doing.
00:31:03.560But I respect the office and I respect the American people.
00:31:07.240And he just kind of shrugged and said, we're living in different universes and we're and we're we're we're our bases are fundamentally different.
00:31:16.160You look at Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
00:31:18.560He also announced a policy to penalize foreign countries that allow the transit of illegal immigrants and is pressuring many countries that refuse to accept the return of their migrants as well.
00:31:30.900This could also have a big impact on this country.
00:31:42.880And they are going to deport illegal aliens.
00:31:45.940They are going to send out of the country, especially the violent, criminal illegal aliens, the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the gang bangers and the countries that don't take it.
00:31:57.500They're they're going to make them take it.
00:31:59.380And that's what a strong president who's actually defending this country does.
00:32:03.080As always, thank you for listening to verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
00:32:08.740Don't forget to download my podcast and you can listen to my podcast every other day.
00:32:12.380You're not listening to verdict or each day when you listen to verdict afterwards.
00:32:15.640I'd love to have you as a listener to, again, the Ben Ferguson podcast.
00:32:19.280And we will see you back here on Monday morning.