Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
Speaker 2: and Senator let's just start with congratulations.
Speaker 1: It's official.
Speaker 2: Your new book is out, Unwoke How to Defeat Cultural
Speaker 2: Marxism in America. And I have to say if when
Speaker 2: you get the book, if you haven't gotten the book,
Speaker 2: the best, the best page, just skip right ahead to
Speaker 2: page number forty.
Speaker 1: It's the best page of the book. So congrats on that.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, Senator, Page forty phenomenal. You should definitely just
Speaker 2: go right there, read that and then start the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Ben, what the hell is on page forty? I don't
Speaker 3: know what's on page forty.
Speaker 2: Page forty it says, and I will quote here, every
Speaker 2: podcast is one alongside my cost today that's Ben Ferguson
Speaker 2: the nationally syndicated radios has become a very dear friend.
Speaker 1: I got a shout out. I thank you, sir. I
Speaker 1: appreciate that now.
Speaker 3: So I actually think maybe the best page of the
Speaker 3: book is the very first page of the book. Of
Speaker 3: your copy, because I gave you a copy, I gave
Speaker 3: you a signed copy. You did, and if you recall
Speaker 3: the inscription that I wrote on the front, I said, Ben,
Speaker 3: you are one of the three best hosts in history
Speaker 3: of the Verdict podcast.
Speaker 1: Don't leave out the word undoubtedly. You use that word undoubtedly,
Speaker 1: there we go. I want to make sure I get
Speaker 1: that in the history books.
Speaker 3: Now. Never mind that there have only been three hosts
Speaker 3: a Verdict and that would be you and me and
Speaker 3: Michael Knowles. But you are undoubtedly one of the three best.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's and that's on the shelf right now.
Speaker 3: And the second sentence I actually liked even better than
Speaker 3: the first. And I said, of all of the men
Speaker 3: to play college tennis, you're one of them.
Speaker 1: There we go, you were one of them. So this
Speaker 1: is the best part when you sign this.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to travel with it, and you and
Speaker 2: I've been on the road, and we were on the
Speaker 2: road last week, and I didn't want to travel with
Speaker 2: the book because I was like, all right, this is
Speaker 2: what I want to I genuinely say forever. So I
Speaker 2: got home for the trip and I didn't want to,
Speaker 2: you know, knock the book around. So I was reading
Speaker 2: all day yesterday and all day today to get to
Speaker 2: make sure that we can have a stellar interview on
Speaker 2: your own show about your book. So let's start with
Speaker 2: the title. Why did you pick the title Unwoke? And
Speaker 2: also for people that don't understand what the definition of
Speaker 2: cultural Marxism is, what is that mean?
Speaker 1: Look?
Speaker 3: I wrote this book because the world has gone insane,
Speaker 3: and my reaction is the same as as millions of people,
Speaker 3: as the listeners of this podcast, that our reaction is
Speaker 3: what the hell happened? How did things get so crazy
Speaker 3: so fast? This book is my best effort to explain it,
Speaker 3: and in particular, it's explaining how the radical left has
Speaker 3: seized every major institution in America. And so the book
Speaker 3: starts Chapter one is the universities, and I call the
Speaker 3: universe cities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. The
Speaker 3: universities are where the virus was created, It's where it mutated,
Speaker 3: and it's where it spread. Each chapter the book focuses
Speaker 3: on a different institution the radical left is seized. So
Speaker 3: Chapter two focuses on K through twelve education and all
Speaker 3: the radical garbage being put in our kids, whether it's
Speaker 3: critical race theory or radical transgenderism. Chapter three focuses on
Speaker 3: journalism and how journalism has changed from covering the news
Speaker 3: to propaganda. From there, I go to big business and
Speaker 3: how big business today the Fortune one hundred are the
Speaker 3: economic enforcers of the radical left. From there, I go
Speaker 3: to big tech and how big tech is pervasively censoring speech.
Speaker 3: From there, I go to entertainment and by the way,
Speaker 3: if if I could have just one back, I would
Speaker 3: have entertainment back. Enterpertainment and I think is the most
Speaker 3: consequential of all of these. And in entertainment we talk
Speaker 3: about Hollywood and movies and television and sports and music.
Speaker 3: We break it all down. From there, we go to
Speaker 3: science and I talk about how science has been corrupted
Speaker 3: and politicized. And the final chapter in the book is
Speaker 3: on China and explains how China is a nexus that
Speaker 3: links them all. And the book was really designed to
Speaker 3: do two things. Number one, explain how and why specifically
Speaker 3: the radical left took over every one of those institutions,
Speaker 3: and they did it from the inside. But secondly, to
Speaker 3: lay out a clear battle plan how we take them back,
Speaker 3: how we fight back. I believe we will take this
Speaker 3: country back. And this book is laying out how we
Speaker 3: recapture the institutions of America.
Speaker 2: You know, in this book and I encourage people to
Speaker 2: get it because there is just an incredible history in
Speaker 2: the very beginning as well about your family. I know
Speaker 2: your father and have gotten to spend some time with him.
Speaker 2: He's an awesome just individually around he's jovial, he can
Speaker 2: be funny.
Speaker 1: He loves this country.
Speaker 2: But there is some incredible history not only about your family,
Speaker 2: but also how your father was involved in Cuba in
Speaker 2: the students and at a young age, and what was
Speaker 2: happening really with the revolution down there, and how he
Speaker 2: was I guess you could say, brought in to this
Speaker 2: revolution with Castro, not realizing what Castro was doing, and
Speaker 2: it started at a young age where they were targeting children,
Speaker 2: and it was an incredible part of the story, not
Speaker 2: just because of what happened, but also how he was
Speaker 2: beaten and how his life was threatened, and how he
Speaker 2: was a marked man who had to get out and
Speaker 2: come to America. Talk a little bit about that story
Speaker 2: of that being your history of your family, and also
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Speaker 2: It's the beginning of the book and it's just an
Speaker 2: It takes your breath away when you realize how close
Speaker 2: your father was to death in Cuba.
Speaker 3: Well, my family story is a huge part of why
Speaker 3: this matters so much to me. It's personal and it's real,
Speaker 3: and what I want to do is just read you
Speaker 3: the first page of the book. His white linen suit
Speaker 3: was stained red with blood, blood that had been beaten
Speaker 3: out of him with a club regularly each hour, breaking
Speaker 3: his nose, shattering his teeth, Scarlet red blood, as if
Speaker 3: his suit were emblazoned with the color of the Marxist
Speaker 3: revolution of which he was a part. As my father
Speaker 3: lay on that prison floor, crumpled and broken, not a
Speaker 3: spot of white was visible on the now torn and
Speaker 3: tattered suit he had been given for his seventeenth birthday. Instead,
Speaker 3: mud and dirt and grime and blood. To this day,
Speaker 3: my dad remembers what he was thinking in that dark hole,
Speaker 3: nobody depends on me. I have no wife, no children.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if I live or I die. Three
Speaker 3: years earlier, when he was just I was fourteen, my
Speaker 3: father had made the fateful decision to join up with
Speaker 3: the revolution in his homeland of Cuba, to follow Fidel Castro.
Speaker 3: My dad was young and ignorant and naive. Raphael bim
Speaker 3: Venio Cruz did not know that Castro was a Communist.
Speaker 3: He didn't know the horrors that would befall the Cuban
Speaker 3: people at the hands of his new comrades. He just
Speaker 3: knew that the then dictator of Cuba, full of Gensio Battista,
Speaker 3: was corrupt and cruel and oppressive, as Francis Ford Coppola
Speaker 3: immortally chronicled in The Godfather Saga. Batista was in bed
Speaker 3: with the American mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased with
Speaker 3: the blood beaten out of the Cuban people. Look, that's
Speaker 3: my family story. My dad at seventeen was tortured, he
Speaker 3: was in prison, he fled Qubi, came to America. My aunt,
Speaker 3: my Theo Sonya, whom I adore, who we actually had
Speaker 3: on verdict as a guest talking about Cuba. She fought
Speaker 3: in the counter revolution. After Castro succeeded, she was in prison.
Speaker 3: She was tortured by Castro's goons. I tell her story
Speaker 3: in this book too. I also tell the story of
Speaker 3: my grandmother, Myabuela. Miabuela was a sixth grade teacher, and
Speaker 3: she told me she loved teaching. She loved teaching, teaching
Speaker 3: her students, and she had a pure photographic memory. Man,
Speaker 3: it was incredible. She literally everything she read she remembered
Speaker 3: word for word. She told me about when Castro took
Speaker 3: over that they almost immediately targeted the children. And one
Speaker 3: thing to understand, Marxist always begin with the kids, always, always, always,
Speaker 3: As my father told me, the revolution, like he was,
Speaker 3: were a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year old boys
Speaker 3: who didn't know any better, teenagers. And you look at
Speaker 3: every kind immunist revolution in the world, whether you're talking
Speaker 3: about Russia or China or North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela,
Speaker 3: it is always the young teenagers who are idealistic, who believe,
Speaker 3: and who are naive, who don't have the world experience
Speaker 3: to understand they're being lied to. But Communists start not
Speaker 3: just with teenagers, they go younger. And what my grandmother
Speaker 3: told me is she said, almost immediately after the revolution,
Speaker 3: they sent the army into the elementary schools, and soldiers
Speaker 3: would go into kindergartens in first grade and they would
Speaker 3: tell all of the little kids, they'd say, close your
Speaker 3: eyes and pray to God for candy, and the kids
Speaker 3: all did so, and then they'd open their eyes and
Speaker 3: there'd be no candy. And then the soldiers would tell them,
Speaker 3: they'd say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel Castro
Speaker 3: for candy, and the kids did so, and while their
Speaker 3: eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly slip a piece
Speaker 3: of candy on each child's desk. That's not an aberration.
Speaker 3: Chay Gavara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer. He was
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro's right hand chay Gavara described children as malleable
Speaker 3: clay that you can take the defects out of them.
Speaker 3: You want to know why the cultural Marxist in America
Speaker 3: started in the universities. You want to know why they've
Speaker 3: gone into k through twelve, to elementary schools and junior
Speaker 3: highs and high schools, because if you take the children,
Speaker 3: you take the nation, and this book is designed to
Speaker 3: lay out how they did it and how we take
Speaker 3: them back.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was reading this book, Senator, I
Speaker 2: go back to there's certain pivotal moments, and I think
Speaker 2: everyone's life that you look back on and you go, wow,
Speaker 2: if that would have gone differently, my whole life would
Speaker 2: have gone differently, or may not even exist in the
Speaker 2: first place. I was hit by a drunk driver when
Speaker 2: I was a young kid. We were in a car wreck.
Speaker 2: He died, we lived. And I go back to that
Speaker 2: moment in my life. Many times I was in, as
Speaker 2: you know, a shooting. I was a target of a
Speaker 2: gang initiation. I wonder if I would have been hit
Speaker 2: that night in my life, would have you know, I
Speaker 2: wouldn't have my kids. There's that moment in this book
Speaker 2: where you wrote my father joined up and began doing
Speaker 2: acts of sabotage, berning government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever he
Speaker 2: could to undermine the oppressure of regime.
Speaker 1: That's what had landed him in prison at seventeen. But
Speaker 1: Tesu's police had.
Speaker 2: Caught him and they.
Speaker 1: Were extracting their brutal revenge.
Speaker 2: The next day was dragging the office of a colonel
Speaker 2: who told him, I'm letting you go, but if another
Speaker 2: bomb goes off, if another fire starts, I'm blaming you.
Speaker 2: How can I be responsible for every bad thing that
Speaker 2: happens in the city, my father asked, I don't care,
Speaker 2: replied the commander, I'm holding you responsible. Your father returned home.
Speaker 2: My well wept. Her eldest child had walked in the door, beaten,
Speaker 2: cover in his own blood. As she told me when
Speaker 2: I was a child. That imagine that from that day
Speaker 2: was scared into her mind for a forever. My bod
Speaker 2: told him get out of the country, and that was
Speaker 2: the turning point for your entire family history, because not
Speaker 2: only did he get out, but he applied to colleges
Speaker 2: in America, to the University of Miami, to LSU, the
Speaker 2: University of Texas, Texas was the first one that led
Speaker 2: him in, and that's how he came to America. That's
Speaker 2: how you became a Texan, and that's how your family
Speaker 2: history started anew with a clean slate in America. When
Speaker 2: you were writing that, I'm assuming you've heard the story
Speaker 2: many times, but when you put it on paper, it
Speaker 2: took my breath away.
Speaker 3: Look the book is actually dedicated. I don't think they
Speaker 3: know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father,
Speaker 3: my Theosnia, and Miabuela in my family, the original freedom fighters.
Speaker 3: I don't think Miabuela is dead, but I don't think
Speaker 3: either my dad or the Asnia have seen that yet.
Speaker 3: Now my dad listens to Verdict, so he may find
Speaker 3: it out right now on listening to the podcast. But
Speaker 3: it was I mean when I and it's actually the
Speaker 3: very last thing I type on the book is the dedication,
Speaker 3: and that was. Look, it's why I am who I am.
Speaker 3: I grew up as a kid sitting at the feet
Speaker 3: of my father in my Thea Sonia and hearing about
Speaker 3: freedom fighters. And it is an unbelievable blessing when you
Speaker 3: were the child of someone who fled oppression and came
Speaker 3: to America seeking freedom. Our freedom's not a joke. It's
Speaker 3: not something of that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly serious. We either we defend our freedom
Speaker 3: here or we lose America. I hate communists. I hate
Speaker 3: them with a passion from the pit of my gut.
Speaker 3: They are evil. Communism has been responsible for more death,
Speaker 3: more misery, more destruction, more poverty, more suffering than any
Speaker 3: force in the history of humanity. And this book is
Speaker 3: all about how the same philosophy that has produced such
Speaker 3: misery is taking over and has taken over the major
Speaker 3: institutions of America. And look, you've heard me say this before,
Speaker 3: but as a child, my father probably a thousand times
Speaker 3: said to me, when we lost our freedom in Cuba,
Speaker 3: I had a place to flee to. If we lose
Speaker 3: our freedom here in America, where do we go? That's
Speaker 3: what the stakes are right now.
Speaker 2: There is also a point in there that hit me,
Speaker 2: and you said that your dad did something that I
Speaker 2: think we've lost in this country. And that's admitting sometimes
Speaker 2: that maybe we get things wrong.
Speaker 1: Maybe this woke agenda is a failure.
Speaker 2: Maybe green alternative energy is in this green religion is
Speaker 2: a failure. We've tried this, you know, the government taking
Speaker 2: over our kids. It's a failure. And your dad was
Speaker 2: an advocate for Castro early on, and he was ashamed
Speaker 2: by it. He advocated for him even in America. And
Speaker 2: he sat down, I'm reading from the book. He sat
Speaker 2: down and he made a list of every place he'd
Speaker 2: spoken in Austin, Texas in support of Castro. He then
Speaker 2: went back to each and every one of them and
Speaker 2: stood before the same people to make amends. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: I am here to apologize. He told them, I misled you.
Speaker 2: I didn't do so knowingly, but I did so. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: I urge you to support an evil man and an
Speaker 2: evil Marxist regime. And for that, I am truly sorry
Speaker 2: for me. That's not just a point of incredible character.
Speaker 2: But why don't we have that with politicians today, where
Speaker 2: they can admit, Hey, I may have gotten something wrong,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry that I got it wrong. We tried
Speaker 2: this and it didn't work because we are now we
Speaker 2: have so many elected officials that refuse to ever admit
Speaker 2: they ever make a mistake.
Speaker 1: In as humans, we make mistakes.
Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly right, And that story, likewise, my father
Speaker 3: told me thousands of times. I was probably I don't know,
Speaker 3: two or three years old the first time I heard that,
Speaker 3: and I've admired it every time I've heard it. Because
Speaker 3: to have the courage he had gone and spoken at
Speaker 3: rotary clubs and Kuwanas clubs in Austin supporting Castro. When
Speaker 3: he got here. He got here, it was nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 3: he was still a young revolutionary. He didn't know that
Speaker 3: Castro was a communist, and he hated Batista. And then
Speaker 3: when Castro took over and declared he was a communist,
Speaker 3: and in my dad saw the evil and oppression and
Speaker 3: theft and murder and cruelty, and that as bad as
Speaker 3: Batista was, Fidel Castro was a thousand times worse. He
Speaker 3: had the character to admit he's wrong. Yet you know,
Speaker 3: I'm reminded of the clip recently where Barack Obama played
Speaker 3: that he said, you know, we are all complicit in
Speaker 3: the Middle East because he says, well, what Hamas did
Speaker 3: was terrible, but he said, what's happening to the Palestinians.
Speaker 3: The occupation is unbearable. And I got to admit, of
Speaker 3: all the clips of Obama, that might be the one
Speaker 3: that pisses me off the most. I actually did did
Speaker 3: yesterday Megan Kelly's show her podcast in New York and
Speaker 3: was talking about the book and and and she played
Speaker 3: that clip for me. And I try to try to
Speaker 3: speak reasonably and respectably, and I try to limit my cursing,
Speaker 3: but she played it to me and I just said,
Speaker 3: what utter bullshit. And by the way, anytime I say
Speaker 3: something like that. My father will call or text me
Speaker 3: and say, would you please watch your language. That's that's
Speaker 3: not really a good thing to do. And my dad's
Speaker 3: right on that, but it just it's infuriating, and it's like, look, Obama,
Speaker 3: you sent over one hundred million dollars to the Iyahtola
Speaker 3: to Iran. You funded these Hamas terrorists, You set flooded
Speaker 3: money into the Gaza Strip. You put money directly in
Speaker 3: the hands of these death squads, and you say we're
Speaker 3: all complicit. And by the way, you're repeating the bigoted,
Speaker 3: racist lie that there's an occupation. The Gaza Strip is
Speaker 3: not occupied. Hamas can controls the Gaza Strip. Israel left
Speaker 3: the Gaza Strip. It's entirely the Palestinian. There is no
Speaker 3: occupation zero in Gaza. And yet, you know, is Barack
Speaker 3: Obama capable of saying it was a mistake to send
Speaker 3: one hundred million dollars to the Iatola who chanced death
Speaker 3: to American death to Israel. No is Joe Biden capable
Speaker 3: of saying it was a mistake for him to send
Speaker 3: nearly a hundred million dollars to Iran subsequently, when that
Speaker 3: money was used to fund the worst terror attack on
Speaker 3: Israel in over fifty years. No, they're not capable of
Speaker 3: admitting that, and I do think admitting when something has
Speaker 3: failed is critic critically critically important.
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Speaker 2: You mentioned education and how it's easiest way to change
Speaker 2: a country in one generation, but there was also one
Speaker 2: of the things you said on page sixty four.
Speaker 1: It says how to fight back. He said.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, you walked in to your daughter's
Speaker 2: bedroom and asked what she'd been learning about in school.
Speaker 2: She said she had been learning about Christopher Columbus, the
Speaker 2: quote unquote real story. I asked what that meant. For
Speaker 2: the next few minutes, I heard about the crimes of
Speaker 2: Christopher Columbus in minute detail, every murder, Native American, transmitted disease,
Speaker 2: and stolen acre of lamb seemed to be accounted for.
Speaker 2: I heard that Columbus, who claimed the land for himself
Speaker 2: because his straight white privilege or something like that, had
Speaker 2: not actually discovered anything at all, but rather had landed
Speaker 2: on the shores of what would come to be known
Speaker 2: as America by accident. This quote unquote revolution, familiar to
Speaker 2: most adults in the United States, is something that American
Speaker 2: children encounter sooner or later in a textbook, believing that
Speaker 2: they've accessed some secret, hidden knowledge that the grown ups
Speaker 2: don't want them to have. That moment, for me is
Speaker 2: the moment that terrifies me for our kids in this
Speaker 2: my kids generation, is that we have handed our children
Speaker 2: over to this school systems. And it's not just public
Speaker 2: schools now, it's private schools as well, who are indoctrinating
Speaker 2: them in this idea that America somehow was started on evil,
Speaker 2: bad motives and that you should not love this country,
Speaker 2: but you should be ashamed of this country.
Speaker 1: And you had to deal with this with your own daughter.
Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly right, And the problem is this indoctrination
Speaker 3: is happening in every school in America. It's happening to
Speaker 3: every child in America. And what I describe part of
Speaker 3: the way that this book is all about how we
Speaker 3: fight back. But you know, as she was saying that
Speaker 3: Columbus was evil and racist and genocidal and terrible, and
Speaker 3: she hated Christopher Columbus, you know, I just just sat
Speaker 3: down in her bedroom and I tried to have a
Speaker 3: conversation with her, and I said, look, I'm not deeply
Speaker 3: vested in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some
Speaker 3: incredible hero. But I said, you know what, we do
Speaker 3: have a federal holiday named after him. Do we typically
Speaker 3: name federal holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs? Like? Might
Speaker 3: there be another side of the story? Is there anything
Speaker 3: admirable about him? And she was not really able to
Speaker 3: see much that was admirble. I said, well, what do
Speaker 3: you think about getting in three rook rickety wooden ships
Speaker 3: and leaving Europe and heading heading west when you think
Speaker 3: you're falling off the edge of the world to explore
Speaker 3: and discover I mean, I mean, is that spirit, that
Speaker 3: intrepid spirit, is that anything to be admired? And and And
Speaker 3: I said, secondly, look, it is true that Columbus and
Speaker 3: and and the man who traveled with him, that that
Speaker 3: that they carried some some germs that that that were
Speaker 3: that were new to to the to the western hemisphere,
Speaker 3: and that when they got here some of the some
Speaker 3: of the Native Americans died from those germs. Now, it's
Speaker 3: also true it was the fifteenth century. They didn't know
Speaker 3: what a germ was, so they didn't know they were
Speaker 3: carrying it. And and when you accuse him of mass murder,
Speaker 3: does culpability matter? Does the fact that they didn't know
Speaker 3: what a germ was, they had no idea they were
Speaker 3: doing it? Is that at all relevant if you're going
Speaker 3: to call him this evil, terrible murder? And when I
Speaker 3: talk about in the book is not long thereafter Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: of that year, we were talking about Thanksgiving. And she
Speaker 3: and a friend of hers from school and this is
Speaker 3: when they were in grade school, said said, likewise, oh
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving is is is terrible. It's when the Pilgrims were
Speaker 3: oppressing that the Native Americans. And and and you know
Speaker 3: again I made the argument, I think even more vigorously
Speaker 3: this time. And I said, listen, it is certainly right
Speaker 3: that the settlers that came to America, that they settled
Speaker 3: America and they ultimately conquered America, and they they committed
Speaker 3: some terrible acts to Native Americans. But if you look
Speaker 3: at the history of humanity in every continent, every nation
Speaker 3: was acquired by conquest. And every time there's conquest, you
Speaker 3: have one group of people who are conquering another group
Speaker 3: of people. By the way, in the United States, before
Speaker 3: we were the United States, the Native Americans, one tribe
Speaker 3: conquered another, conquered another, conquered another. And you look at Europe,
Speaker 3: you look at Asia. That's the history of humanity, one
Speaker 3: group of people conquering another. And anytime you have conquest,
Speaker 3: there are horrible things that happen. They're terrible things that
Speaker 3: are done. But I said, look in any war, there
Speaker 3: were atrocities on both sides. And you know, I asked,
Speaker 3: I asked my daughter. I said, you know, from whence
Speaker 3: do you think the verb to scalp was derived? The
Speaker 3: Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers who
Speaker 3: came here also, And the connection that I made for her,
Speaker 3: and that I make in the book is those two
Speaker 3: discussions are interlinked and intertwined, which is for all of
Speaker 3: the teachers and all of the professors and all of
Speaker 3: the people advocating that Columbus was evil and advocating that
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving is evil because the pilgrims were stealing from the
Speaker 3: Native Americans. It comes down to one antecedent question. Was
Speaker 3: the settlement of the New World a good thing or
Speaker 3: a bad thing? Was the formation of the United States
Speaker 3: of America good or bad? And I'm not neutral or
Speaker 3: ambivalent on that question. I think the United States of
Speaker 3: America has been the greatest force for good of any
Speaker 3: nation in the history of the world. That we had
Speaker 3: produced more prosperity, more abundance. We have liberated more prisoners
Speaker 3: and captives. We have shed our blood and treasure and
Speaker 3: tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the history
Speaker 3: of the world. Do we have our flaws, yes, of course.
Speaker 3: Do we have our problems, yes, of course. But America,
Speaker 3: I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining city on
Speaker 3: a hill. And I want to make a special request
Speaker 3: of our verdict.
Speaker 1: Listeners.
Speaker 3: You guys are incredible, you guys are patriots. You guys
Speaker 3: give me hope and optimism in America. I want to
Speaker 3: ask every one of you please today, when you finished
Speaker 3: listening to this podcast most of you are listening on
Speaker 3: your cell phones, click over to Amazon, type in Unwoke
Speaker 3: and buy the book right now. We have nearly a
Speaker 3: million unique listeners who listen to verdict. If every one
Speaker 3: of you goes online and buys the book, it would
Speaker 3: soar to the very tops of the New York Times
Speaker 3: bestseller list. Drive them nuts. By the way, and and
Speaker 3: I wrote this book for the same reason Ben, that
Speaker 3: you and I do this podcast. It is right now
Speaker 3: eleven o three pm on Tuesday night. Podcast will come
Speaker 3: out early Wednesday morning. Why am I sitting here at
Speaker 3: eleven o three? Why are you sitting here at eleven
Speaker 3: o three? Because we care about this. We want we
Speaker 3: want our incredible listeners to be armed with information and
Speaker 3: know how to fight to save this country. And this
Speaker 3: book is exactly in the same spirit. The book is
Speaker 3: I think interesting and fun. It's not some abstract academic treatise,
Speaker 3: but it's designed. When you read it, you'll enjoy it.
Speaker 3: And by the way, I encourage you. Look, if I
Speaker 3: can be immodest for a second, don't buy just one.
Speaker 3: You know Christmas is coming up very soon. Buy a
Speaker 3: copy for your mom, buy a copy for your brother,
Speaker 3: buy a copy for your next door neighbor, your best friend.
Speaker 3: Because the reason that I spend the time to write
Speaker 3: these books, the reason that you and I do this
Speaker 3: podcas cast, is we either persuade and win hearts and minds,
Speaker 3: or we lose America. That's what the stakes are, and
Speaker 3: that's what this book is about. It's the exact same
Speaker 3: thing the podcast is about.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that what We're up against in one of
Speaker 2: your chapters is about the newsroom revolution, and you start
Speaker 2: with a great story of a former colleague of mine
Speaker 2: that is hard to deal with, Jake Tapper in a
Speaker 2: fight is he's in essence, calling you a liar.
Speaker 1: And this is the new thing that the media has done.
Speaker 2: They've become so sanctimonious that they are always looking for
Speaker 2: a moment to tell you why you're wrong and why
Speaker 2: they're brilliant. We've seen this in the last several days
Speaker 2: as they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists
Speaker 2: in Gaza, who the Israelis are trying to eradicate from
Speaker 2: the face of this earth with good reason after what
Speaker 2: they did just one month ago.
Speaker 1: And we talked about this on Verdict Israel. We knew
Speaker 1: was on a on an.
Speaker 2: Artificial clock the day the terrorist attack happened, before the media,
Speaker 2: before the left started going to the aid of Hamas
Speaker 2: and the Palestinian people that were backing Hamos, many them
Speaker 2: that were and saying, okay, all right, you had a
Speaker 2: few days now to go after these terrorists. Now you've
Speaker 2: got to stop it now. Now it's your your, your
Speaker 2: obligation to stop trying to protect yourself. And this is
Speaker 2: our media now. And it goes back to this this
Speaker 2: idea that they have, which is they're better than everyone else.
Speaker 1: They're not here to report news anymore.
Speaker 2: They're here to go after people like you and others
Speaker 2: that they don't like and indoctrinate a nation to believe
Speaker 2: in socialism and communism and Marxism.
Speaker 3: Look that that is exactly right, and and the media
Speaker 3: has fundamentally changed. And so the chapter on journalism, I
Speaker 3: talk about how when I was first elected to the
Speaker 3: Senate eleven years ago, and I actually focus on CNN
Speaker 3: as really a case lesson eleven years ago CNN they
Speaker 3: aspired to be journalists. If you ask them, they'd say,
Speaker 3: we want to be journalists. We want to present both sides.
Speaker 3: We want to be fair and objective and balanced, and
Speaker 3: we want to focus on facts and not our opinion. Now,
Speaker 3: they were terrible at it. They leaned hard left and
Speaker 3: they couldn't help themselves. But that was the objective. Number one,
Speaker 3: they would articulate to you they were trying to achieve.
Speaker 3: But number two, I think they believed in their heart
Speaker 3: they were trying to do that. And so when I
Speaker 3: was first elected to the Senate, you may find this
Speaker 3: hard to believe, but I went on CNN just about
Speaker 3: every week. I went on there over and over and
Speaker 3: over again, and they would give you a chance to
Speaker 3: lay out a conservative argument, and they'd attack you from
Speaker 3: the left, and they'd be unfair and they'd play gotcha questions,
Speaker 3: but they would give you a chance to present the
Speaker 3: other side. And what happened is when Donald Trump became president,
Speaker 3: I think it fundamentally broke the media. Their brains shattered.
Speaker 3: They hated him so much that today the media no
Speaker 3: longer views its vision being journalists as being fair and
Speaker 3: impartial and presenting both sides. Instead, they have embraced a
Speaker 3: vision that they are advocates, they are defenders of democracy
Speaker 3: and what they mean by democracy is left wing, radical policies.
Speaker 3: And you know. So the story I tell in the
Speaker 3: very beginning of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race,
Speaker 3: I was out on the campaign trip. I was actually
Speaker 3: in our campaign bus, and I was doing an interview
Speaker 3: with Jake Tapper. And look, I'll confess I like Jake.
Speaker 3: I've known Jake for over twenty years. I've known Jake
Speaker 3: since he was a CUB reporter on the George W.
Speaker 3: Bush two thousand campaign and I was a baby staffer
Speaker 3: on it, and so I've known him a long time.
Speaker 3: And he was interviewing me for his Sunday show and
Speaker 3: we did an interview and it was I don't remember,
Speaker 3: probably ten minutes or so, and I had learned a
Speaker 3: lesson and it's something that I do with every Sunday show,
Speaker 3: which is that I insist that the Sunday Show show
Speaker 3: either be live or it'd be live to tape. And
Speaker 3: the reason I learned that is I had done just
Speaker 3: a few weeks earlier in an interview with Bob Scheffer
Speaker 3: at CBS, and Bob Scheffer I hadn't insisted on that,
Speaker 3: and he'd done the interview, and then afterwards his show
Speaker 3: had edited it and basically cut out every good argument
Speaker 3: I made and just put this slash job where he
Speaker 3: decimated me because he excluded all my good answers and
Speaker 3: just edited it in a way that was really deceptive.
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, never again. If we do one
Speaker 3: of these, they must air what I actually say. And
Speaker 3: I said, look, if you want to give you five
Speaker 3: minutes or six or eight or ten or twelve or whatever,
Speaker 3: you can pick the time, but when we film it,
Speaker 3: you air exactly what happens during that time. So we
Speaker 3: had agreed with that with CNN. And in the course
Speaker 3: of the interview, we were talking about the shooting at
Speaker 3: Fort Hood and thea Dal Hassan, who was the radical
Speaker 3: Islamist who had walked through and murdered fourteen innocent souls
Speaker 3: yelling at Luha, and I mentioned that the Obama administration
Speaker 3: knew that Hassan was a radical jahadist. They knew that
Speaker 3: he had been in email communication with Anwar al Alaki,
Speaker 3: who was the Islamist cleric, the radical that he'd asked
Speaker 3: al Alaki about the permissibility of waging jahad on his
Speaker 3: fellow soldiers. And yet the Obama administration did nothing until
Speaker 3: he committed that act of mass murder. And when I
Speaker 3: said all of that, Jake immediately interrupted and he said,
Speaker 3: that's not true. No, that's not right, and he said,
Speaker 3: what you're saying is fundamentally false. That's a lie, it's
Speaker 3: not true. And you know, I just kind of smiled
Speaker 3: and I said, well, you know, Jakes, as John Adams said,
Speaker 3: facts are stubborn things, and what I'm saying is entirely accurate.
Speaker 3: And you know, when you research the issue, that's exactly
Speaker 3: what you're going to find out. So we do the interview,
Speaker 3: Jake and his production team leaves the bus, and I
Speaker 3: don't know five ten minutes later, there's a knock on
Speaker 3: the door of the bus and we open it. It's
Speaker 3: Jake and he's very sheepish and he said, hey, can
Speaker 3: to come in and talk for a second. I said, yeah, sure,
Speaker 3: come on in and he said, look, after we did
Speaker 3: the interview, he said, I went and got on the
Speaker 3: internet and I researched it, and actually, you were right,
Speaker 3: he said, I didn't know that I had missed. I
Speaker 3: just had not seen the revelation that the Obama administration
Speaker 3: knew it. It just I couldn't believe it, but turns
Speaker 3: out you were right. I was wrong, And Jake said, listen,
Speaker 3: I'll give you a choice. We can do it one
Speaker 3: of two ways, he said. I agreed we would do
Speaker 3: this live to tape, and so if you want, I
Speaker 3: will air it exactly as it happened, and then after
Speaker 3: I air it, I will come on live and I'll
Speaker 3: say after the interview, I researched it, and it turns
Speaker 3: out I was wrong, and Cruz was right. What he
Speaker 3: said was exactly right, and I was in error when
Speaker 3: I said he was not telling the truth. He said,
Speaker 3: that's option number one. He said. Option number two, which
Speaker 3: he said, I'd really much prefer it, is that we
Speaker 3: just edit out that segment. We just remove it from
Speaker 3: from the interview, and we air everything else and just
Speaker 3: not include that segment. And I describe in the book
Speaker 3: that you know, I thought about it, and it was
Speaker 3: obviously in my self interest to pick option number one.
Speaker 3: That like having CNN having Tapper admit he was full
Speaker 3: of crap and I was right. That was a big
Speaker 3: political victory.
Speaker 1: But I also.
Speaker 3: Expected that I would be doing a whole lot more
Speaker 3: interviews with Tapper and with CNN, and I frankly respected
Speaker 3: how he approached it. That he came to me and
Speaker 3: he admitted he was wrong, and he gave me that option.
Speaker 3: I thought was an honorable way to handle it. And
Speaker 3: so I made what I would say is a long
Speaker 3: term play rather than a short term play, and I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: you can go ahead and cut the segment out, and
Speaker 3: so they did. So the story I recount in the book,
Speaker 3: that segment never aired because CNN cut the segment out.
Speaker 3: I focus on Tapper in particular because I think he's
Speaker 3: a smart guy, and I think he wants to be
Speaker 3: a journalist, and I think in his heart right now,
Speaker 3: he knows that he's not that broke Tapper. That now
Speaker 3: CNN will have a panel of five experts there to
Speaker 3: discuss true or not Donald Trump is the devil, and
Speaker 3: all five of them agree, of course he's the devil. No,
Speaker 3: he's worse than the devil. That's the whole debate. And
Speaker 3: you know, look, CNN used to be a place if
Speaker 3: you go back to twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, I
Speaker 3: did three town hall debates on CNN with Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 3: We did one on healthcare and two on tax policy,
Speaker 3: and They were great debates. I think they were among,
Speaker 3: if not the highest rated shows on CNN that whole year.
Speaker 3: They were ninety minutes. Bernie is an unapologetic defender of socialism.
Speaker 3: I'm an unapologic defender of capitalism. And we had a
Speaker 3: real and subsim debate that CNN doesn't exist anymore, and
Speaker 3: it's bad for America, it's bad for the world that
Speaker 3: we don't have functioning journalism. And I describe all of
Speaker 3: this in the book, but I also describe how because journalism,
Speaker 3: corporate media is broke, it's part of what makes the
Speaker 3: radical Democrats so extreme, why they vote for such ridiculous
Speaker 3: policy positions that are so out of the mainstream, because
Speaker 3: they know they will never ever ever get asked about
Speaker 3: it by reporters back home. They will never have to
Speaker 3: defend it, and so it's radicalized the Democrat Party in Washington.
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Speaker 2: Senator, There's another part of your book that I want
Speaker 2: to mention real quick, and it's a trend. Whether it's
Speaker 2: you talking about big tech or the schools or Marxism
Speaker 2: in Washington. The list goes on on especially and you
Speaker 2: have a lot talking here about science and COVID. That
Speaker 2: chapter is probably my favorite. As I was reading it today,
Speaker 2: I was marking it up. But there's a trend in
Speaker 2: this book and I love this. This may be my
Speaker 2: favorite part. Is you at each in each chapter, in essence,
Speaker 2: ask how do you fight back? How to reclaim control?
Speaker 2: How do we win? It's not just a book of
Speaker 2: you ranting about issues, but you actually lay out how
Speaker 2: we can succeed and get our and win on our
Speaker 2: side of the argument. And that's what empowers the reader
Speaker 2: to not just read a book, but to take something
Speaker 2: from it.
Speaker 1: And I love that well.
Speaker 3: It is critically important and there are all sorts of
Speaker 3: elements of how we fight back and win. One of
Speaker 3: it is transit, parency and sunshine. The views of the
Speaker 3: radical left are wildly unpopular. Look, no rational person supports
Speaker 3: abolishing the police. That's a nutty position. No rational person
Speaker 3: supports open borders and the chaos at our southern border.
Speaker 3: No rational person supports medically and surgically sterilizing and castrating
Speaker 3: eight year old children. No rational person is befuddled by
Speaker 3: the question what is a woman? All of those are
Speaker 3: ninety ten issues, and the radical Left is on the
Speaker 3: extreme minority position on every one of them. It's why
Speaker 3: they rely on force rather than persuasion, because their positions
Speaker 3: are out there and so often shining a light is really,
Speaker 3: really potent. I'm gonna give an example. I'm going to
Speaker 3: give an example from Verdict. So we had a podcast
Speaker 3: several weeks ago that was in titled black Lives Matter
Speaker 3: is Hamas, and we walk through how black Lives Matter
Speaker 3: is a statement, is a truism. It's absolutely true, yes,
Speaker 3: period the end. However, Black Lives Matter, the organization Black
Speaker 3: Lives Matter, Inc. Is a very different thing. It is
Speaker 3: found founded by a vowed Marxists who are trained Marxists.
Speaker 3: They're trained in fomenting communist revolutions. That's their own self description,
Speaker 3: not our language. Their language. They are vicious racists and
Speaker 3: they are deeply, deeply anti Semitic. They hate Israel. Indeed,
Speaker 3: one of the co founders of Black Lives Matter, has
Speaker 3: called since nineteen ninety five for the destruction of the
Speaker 3: state of Israel. And on our podcast, we laid out
Speaker 3: all of that evidence, and then we named names of
Speaker 3: all of the or a number of the giant corporations
Speaker 3: who had given millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 3: and that included Amazon, and Apple and Coca Cola, and
Speaker 3: we said, listen to these companies, do you support vicious racism,
Speaker 3: do you support vicious anti Semitism? Do you support demanding
Speaker 3: the destruction of the state of Israel? Do you support
Speaker 3: these avowed Marxists because you gave money to them? That
Speaker 3: podcast came out, I believe October eighteenth. The next day,
Speaker 3: Coca Cola went online and they scrubbed their website to
Speaker 3: remove every reference to the five hundred thousand dollars that
Speaker 3: they had given the Black Lives Matter And it was
Speaker 3: a direct result of this Verdict podcast. We put the
Speaker 3: podcast out and almost immediately they erased it. Now they
Speaker 3: thought they could do it quietly, they could just hide
Speaker 3: and evade responsibility. I'm calling them out. I'm calling them out,
Speaker 3: and I'm shining a light and I'm saying, look, have
Speaker 3: you apologized to the American people for why you were
Speaker 3: funding a viciously racist and anti Semitic organization And it
Speaker 3: wasn't a secret, they were open about it. Then you
Speaker 3: just didn't care because you're well, politics mattered more to
Speaker 3: you than doing the right thing. And that's one of
Speaker 3: the strategies that is inherent in this book is shining
Speaker 3: the light and calling them out, and that's how you
Speaker 3: win victories. In chapter after chapter, I talk about winning victories.
Speaker 3: Whether it's winning school board seats back, or flipping Virginia
Speaker 3: read as Parents Got Furious, or whether it's Elon Musk
Speaker 3: buying Twitter. All of these are strategies where we take
Speaker 3: these institutions back.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible book, Center and congratulations on it. It's
Speaker 2: one that I hope everybody listing will go grab. You
Speaker 2: can go to Amazon right now, you can order it.
Speaker 2: It's a fabulous Christmas gift. It is three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty six pages from beginning to end. One of the
Speaker 2: chapters that you've got to read. If you get it,
Speaker 2: make sure you read the big tech tech chapter and
Speaker 2: also science. The science chapter to me was one that
Speaker 2: as I was reading it Center. I know you well
Speaker 2: enough to know when you really get passionate about something,
Speaker 2: you were really really passionate when writing to that chapter
Speaker 2: on science and what has happened and how science has
Speaker 2: just been totally corrupted, whether it's by Fauci or others
Speaker 2: that are pushing agendas through science, and those are two
Speaker 2: chapters I just want to mark for people.
Speaker 1: Make sure you take a look at those as well.
Speaker 2: Grab the book Unwoke How to defeed a Cultural Marxism
Speaker 2: in America. You can get on Amazon, order it now
Speaker 2: wherever you get your books. Don't forget hit that follow,
Speaker 2: subscribe or auto download button wherever you're listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2: We do this podcast Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. We also
Speaker 2: have a recap pod on Saturday mornings. That is some
Speaker 2: of the things deeper in each podcast maybe you miss
Speaker 2: because of time restraint, so make sure you check that
Speaker 2: out as well. And on those in between days, I'd
Speaker 2: love for you to join me as I'll keep you
Speaker 2: update on breaking news on my podcast, the Ben Ferguson
Speaker 2: Podcasts as well on those tween days. It makes you
Speaker 2: download that as well in the center and I will
Speaker 2: see you back here in a couple of days