Speaker 1: Thank you. All right, this is great. Wow, thank you
Speaker 1: so much, thank you for being here. Wow, Wisconsin rocks.
Speaker 1: This is so good, you know, Senator, to be here,
Speaker 1: thanks to YAF, Thanks to the Logan family for supporting
Speaker 1: this tour. To be with everybody. And I don't know
Speaker 1: about you, at least in this room, I am breathing
Speaker 1: the sweet air of freedom. I don't feel muzzle. I
Speaker 1: feel like we're going speak. Oh that's great. Well, and
Speaker 1: it is fantastic to kick off our national tour right
Speaker 1: here on the campus at University of Wisconsin at Madison. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't did they brief you before you came out here.
Speaker 1: Well there's a yeah, there's a been a chain show.
Speaker 1: Maybe all right, you better sit down. I do a podcast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should do a podcast because Senator we uh, well,
Speaker 1: we're not on campus. I'll address all of you. We
Speaker 1: are not at the University of Wisconsin Madison, but we
Speaker 1: are here in Wisconsin. We are here with a lot
Speaker 1: of great students, and we are going to flip a
Speaker 1: certain signal at all of the tyrants who want to
Speaker 1: shut us up. This is Verdict with Ted Cruise. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Verdict with Ed Cruise. I'm Michael Noles, Senator.
Speaker 1: It's great to be with you and several hundred of
Speaker 1: our dearest friends. Brobably more than several hundred of our friends.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much to all of the students tonight
Speaker 1: who stood up to the petty leftist administrators at the
Speaker 1: campus of the University of Wisconsin Madison who tried to
Speaker 1: shut all of us up, who don't want any conservative
Speaker 1: ideas on campus. We're all here, well, Mike, So Michael,
Speaker 1: how could that be? We announced a national tour. We
Speaker 1: pick as the opening venue a campus right in the
Speaker 1: heart of the beast. And then the students and faculty
Speaker 1: and folks who came out came out because they wanted
Speaker 1: to hear a discussion. They want to hear an honest
Speaker 1: discussion of what's happening. So what happened? Why aren't we
Speaker 1: on campus? This was an amazing circumstance because we've talked
Speaker 1: for a long time about how the left wants to
Speaker 1: muzzle conservatives on campus, and usually they make it difficult
Speaker 1: for YAF in particular to book classrooms or lecture halls,
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll talk about hate speech, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you defend, for instance, the first Amendment, you're a hateful,
Speaker 1: terrible bigot, or if you defend I don't know, George Washington,
Speaker 1: you're a terrible, awful, terrible person. But what happened this
Speaker 1: time is they literally wanted to muzzle us. They wanted
Speaker 1: everybody in the lecture hall to put a mask on,
Speaker 1: including the speakers. And now I don't know how that
Speaker 1: would work, because if we had done that, the podcast
Speaker 1: would sound something like, Look, there's some people who think
Speaker 1: that would be an important think there are, and they
Speaker 1: have it to work at UW Madison. But it's even
Speaker 1: crazier because there is an exemption to this mask rule
Speaker 1: in the UW Madison Code, and they have granted it
Speaker 1: to other speakers, they just won't grant it to us. Well,
Speaker 1: I will note that one of the exemptions and the
Speaker 1: policy is for artistic performances. So we got a letter
Speaker 1: from the dean I guess, a couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: saying the only way you can do this event on
Speaker 1: campus is if everyone is masked, including the two of us,
Speaker 1: and you can film the whole podcast while wearing a mask.
Speaker 1: But there's an exemption for artistic performance. And I gotta say, Michael,
Speaker 1: I'm really offended that you were not willing to sing
Speaker 1: acapella for the entire podcast. You know, I all those
Speaker 1: years of cigars have not been great on the old
Speaker 1: volt tale. I thought it was mandatory there that you
Speaker 1: sing in like some some all boys club. It's a
Speaker 1: very thespian sort of place, there's no question about that.
Speaker 1: You know. This gets to something that we talked about. Gosh,
Speaker 1: going back over a year now, I think we're on
Speaker 1: the five hundred ninetieth day of fifteen days to slow
Speaker 1: the spread, and from the very beginning almost there, we're
Speaker 1: all pretty were pretty close. You know. At the beginning,
Speaker 1: a lot of people said, put the mask on. It's
Speaker 1: just going to be a short little while. And so
Speaker 1: people were willing to take prudential measures. They're always well,
Speaker 1: you know, protect the public health, no one will. No
Speaker 1: one wanted to see people dying. But there was always
Speaker 1: this fear that when you give in, and you give in,
Speaker 1: and now it's the sixteenth day, and now it's the
Speaker 1: fiftieth day, and now it's the hundredth day, and now
Speaker 1: everyone's got the vaccine if they want the vaccine, but
Speaker 1: you still have to wear the mask. It seems as
Speaker 1: though the mask is not intended to protect the public
Speaker 1: health anymore. It's just an excuse to take power. Well,
Speaker 1: and you look at what UW did here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I mean the idea. There have been multiple speakers on
Speaker 1: campus they've had who haven't worn a mask, because if
Speaker 1: you're actually speaking to a crowd, it doesn't work to
Speaker 1: wear a mask, particularly when you're televising it and sending
Speaker 1: it out worldwide. They know that, and I'll point out,
Speaker 1: you know, just this weekend they had seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: football fans screaming, shearing, maybe imbibing a little bit, and
Speaker 1: somehow that didn't pose any health threat. No, but yet
Speaker 1: the two of us are a lethal health threat. Yes,
Speaker 1: I have been called that on many an occasion. You know,
Speaker 1: there is another crazy aspect where this is a public university,
Speaker 1: so this is a taxpayer funded university. You would think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I would think maybe I'm just old
Speaker 1: fashioned that if anybody is going to be permitted to
Speaker 1: speak to help you educate the students, it would be
Speaker 1: a United States senator. This seems like a real affront
Speaker 1: to the American system of government, to civics, to our
Speaker 1: political tradition here. But so what they're they're going to
Speaker 1: do it anyway. Well, the provost who sent us the
Speaker 1: letter is a Democrat, he was served in Democrat administrations.
Speaker 1: He's given he gave a thousand dollars to Barack Obama,
Speaker 1: he gave a thousand dollars to Tammy Baldwin. He's given
Speaker 1: more money to Act Blue. And he sent a very
Speaker 1: thorough academic letter that said we will not grant you
Speaker 1: an exemption because there was a period out. There was
Speaker 1: no it was a blank. It was just because because
Speaker 1: I say so, and to really call the joke out.
Speaker 1: So the university requires when you do an event on
Speaker 1: campus that you have to do the rs vps through
Speaker 1: the campus of Edbright. So when we said we're not
Speaker 1: recording a friggin podcast, we're in masks, we rescheduled, and
Speaker 1: you know what, the university said, we won't give you
Speaker 1: your RSVP list. Yeah, we're not going to tell you
Speaker 1: the students who want to see so we had I
Speaker 1: want to thank everyone here who had the ingenuity to
Speaker 1: find us when this was rescheduled in one day. It
Speaker 1: just goes to show you, It just goes to show
Speaker 1: you what UW. Madison is interested in here, What the
Speaker 1: administrators are is not protecting their campus, protecting their students.
Speaker 1: They just don't want people to hear what we have
Speaker 1: to say. They don't want people to hear legitimate criticisms
Speaker 1: of Joe Biden, of the ruling class in this country,
Speaker 1: of the liberal establishment. And I imagine they're trying to
Speaker 1: stifle speech in this desperate way because they feel really confident, right,
Speaker 1: because they're just so popular. Is that it look, as
Speaker 1: you know, it's an admission of weakness. If you're strong,
Speaker 1: if you're confident in what you believe, if the facts
Speaker 1: are behind you, then you're not frightened, you're not threatened,
Speaker 1: you're not intimidated by those who disagree. You. Look on
Speaker 1: the national scene, you got people like Bernie Sanders, You've
Speaker 1: got people like AOC who are socialists. You and I
Speaker 1: don't want to silence them. We don't want to sense
Speaker 1: to them. Frankly, I want a lot more people to
Speaker 1: hear the inanities that come out of their mound. Turn
Speaker 1: the volume out, please please look like if you're the
Speaker 1: best cure John Stuart mill So, the best cure for
Speaker 1: bad speech is more speech, and the admission of the
Speaker 1: university administrators of the faculties of these Marxists, and I
Speaker 1: love Marxists that have life tenure. They get paid hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars forcibly paid from the taxpayers and
Speaker 1: never able to be fired. But they're terrified that anyone
Speaker 1: might disagree with them, and that ultimately it's a disservice
Speaker 1: to the students. Look, college is all about encountering ideas
Speaker 1: you disagree with. When I was in college, when I
Speaker 1: was in law school, I took classes from Marxists. My
Speaker 1: family was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba. I hate Communists
Speaker 1: like deeply and to the pit of my soul. You
Speaker 1: know what's amazing. What's amazing is that is a controversial
Speaker 1: statement these days. That didn't used to be a controversial statement.
Speaker 1: Now it is. But if you want to be all right,
Speaker 1: so years ago, this is back, oh, fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: I was invited, oddly enough to give the commencement speech
Speaker 1: at the University of California, Berkeley School of Governments. Did
Speaker 1: they not have Google at Berkeley? They didn't know to
Speaker 1: type in Ted Cruise. So all right, this is long
Speaker 1: before I was in the Senate, long before anyone had
Speaker 1: any do who I was, and apparently the way it
Speaker 1: came to pass as the School of Government there had
Speaker 1: for some years had leftist speakers, no surprise, and the
Speaker 1: head of the school said, you know, we ought to
Speaker 1: have a Republican just out of diversity, and I think
Speaker 1: he basically said, I don't know any Republicans. And so
Speaker 1: then he figured, well, okay, all right, if I want
Speaker 1: to find a Republican, what do I do? And he
Speaker 1: called a professor at the University of Texas, Texas. They
Speaker 1: got to know some Republicans there, and I think what
Speaker 1: happened is the professor I had spoken the year before
Speaker 1: at UT at their School of Government, and he said, look,
Speaker 1: you know this guy didn't suck, so why don't you
Speaker 1: invite him? And so I came out and it was interesting.
Speaker 1: It was the dawn of Facebook. It was right when
Speaker 1: it was. I think it was like three years off
Speaker 1: of Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook to try to find girls
Speaker 1: on campus. I mean it it was new, and there
Speaker 1: was a protest group I remember had ninety three people
Speaker 1: in it that were Berkeley students protesting that I was coming.
Speaker 1: Heidi said at the time, she said, oh god, You're
Speaker 1: not nearly important enough. To protest, but I went and
Speaker 1: gave the speech, and it was in this amphitheater, and
Speaker 1: the entire speech was on diversity, but it was on
Speaker 1: intellectual diversity. And what I said to the Berkeley students,
Speaker 1: which I would say to Madison students, and I think,
Speaker 1: I think we probably have a lot of conservatives and
Speaker 1: libertarians here, but I hope we have some liberal liberals here.
Speaker 1: I hope we have a conversation. And what I would
Speaker 1: say to the student body writ large into professors, into people,
Speaker 1: is the passion that's out of Berkeley, that's at of Madison,
Speaker 1: the passion to change the world, like the world, to
Speaker 1: make a difference. Don't let go of that. Keep that
Speaker 1: fire because it's powerful, and it's easy to settle into
Speaker 1: kind of middle aged complacency. Don't let go of that passion.
Speaker 1: But if you ever want to actually succeed in persuading anyone,
Speaker 1: understand how someone of good conscience, good morals would look
Speaker 1: at the issue you care most passionately about and come
Speaker 1: to one hundred and eighty degrees the opposite conclusion. Understand
Speaker 1: how your mother could come to the opposite conclusion, and
Speaker 1: that we don't do nearly enough of that we need
Speaker 1: to all try to understand each other and then see
Speaker 1: where we're right and see where we're wrong. Well, so
Speaker 1: in the spirit of people moving into complacency and squishiness
Speaker 1: and middle age, and also to be honest about censorship
Speaker 1: and free speech, I want to make an admission to
Speaker 1: the listeners of this show about something that we did
Speaker 1: last week. Okay, this is the first time this has
Speaker 1: ever happened on the show. Last Tuesday, we filmed an
Speaker 1: episode on this great news that the Republicans in the
Speaker 1: Senate they were standing firm. They were standing firm on
Speaker 1: the debt ceiling. They were taking this principled stand. We
Speaker 1: were so happy about this. What happened ten hours later? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is so. We filmed it Tuesday night, and
Speaker 1: Tuesday night we're doing Verdict, and I got to confess
Speaker 1: I was kind of victory lapping. I was like, look,
Speaker 1: we're all used to Republicans caving and not standing up,
Speaker 1: and right now I gotta say, Republicans are standing rock
Speaker 1: rib We're united, we are all standing together saying the
Speaker 1: Democrats are going to raise the debt ceiling on their own,
Speaker 1: We're not going to help. And we said we did
Speaker 1: a whole chunk of the podcast Victory Lapping at Tuesday night,
Speaker 1: and then Wednesday I went to lunch and Mitch McConnell
Speaker 1: stood up and said, okay, so we're gonna surrender down,
Speaker 1: Senator whyat Well, So before I answer why, I will
Speaker 1: say it forced us to do something we have never
Speaker 1: done in the history of our So we've been filming
Speaker 1: Verdict now year and a half, almost two years, ye
Speaker 1: coming up on two years, and we had this whole
Speaker 1: segment in Verdict that hadn't been released yet, that is
Speaker 1: the news broke that the Republicans were caving. Would have
Speaker 1: made no sense at all. It would have been like,
Speaker 1: all right, do these guys not read the news? Do
Speaker 1: they not know what's happening? So they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: go to the editing room and just edit that porshit
Speaker 1: out because we can't put out a podcast that sounds
Speaker 1: like we live in a cave and are like eating mushrooms.
Speaker 1: The whole time Republicans had a spine ten hours prior
Speaker 1: they lost it, they lost. So, Senator, it seems that
Speaker 1: right now on the economy, Biden's numbers are terrible. He's
Speaker 1: screwing everything up. Inflation is through the roof. People are
Speaker 1: quitting their jobs. There's a labor shortage. It's really really bad.
Speaker 1: They want to spend a gazillion dollars on a bunch
Speaker 1: of nonsense. And Republicans had this principle stand and now
Speaker 1: they don't. So we were holding the line, and the
Speaker 1: line for two months that Republicans had held is that
Speaker 1: we're not going to participate in raising the death ceiling.
Speaker 1: That the trillions and death that are being added added
Speaker 1: to the national debt are coming from the Democrats. They're
Speaker 1: passing it on their own. They're using reconciliation. They don't
Speaker 1: want Republican votes, they're not interested in compromise. They're ramming
Speaker 1: it through. And if they're going to bankrupt the country,
Speaker 1: they need to own it and vote for the debt
Speaker 1: that they're saddling on future generations. And we were united,
Speaker 1: every one of us. Mitch McConnell was saying that Mitt Romney,
Speaker 1: Susan Collins, the entire conference, all fifty of us were united.
Speaker 1: What happened and listen, Mitch got concerned that the Democrats
Speaker 1: were going to nuke the filibuster. He got scared that
Speaker 1: Biden and Schumer were going to get the votes and
Speaker 1: actually end the filibuster. All right, Look, if they end
Speaker 1: the filibuster, the damage that will be done to this
Speaker 1: country is cataclysmic. They'll pass S One, which is the
Speaker 1: federal takeover of elections, They'll pack the Supreme Court, They'll
Speaker 1: make the district of Columbia state. I mean, it will
Speaker 1: be structural and permanent. So I agree that if they
Speaker 1: end the filibuster, the damage is massive. I think though,
Speaker 1: that that our leadership made a mistake in believing they
Speaker 1: were going to get the fifty votes to do that,
Speaker 1: and so we gave in, and we had some pretty
Speaker 1: vigorous discussions over the next two days among the conference,
Speaker 1: including about two hour meeting of all the Republicans where
Speaker 1: we're basically I was objecting and standing up, and most
Speaker 1: of my colleagues were saying, all right, Ted, why the
Speaker 1: hell are you doing this? And I stood there pretty
Speaker 1: much on the hot seat and said, well, let me explain.
Speaker 1: And I said, look, my view of this was the
Speaker 1: view of all fifty of us two days ago, and
Speaker 1: I think we should have held the line. Unfortunately we didn't.
Speaker 1: What happened instead is that we kicked the can down
Speaker 1: the road to December, and so we're gonna have this
Speaker 1: debt ceiling fight again in December. But I will say,
Speaker 1: you know, periodically there are these moments Mike Lee calls
Speaker 1: it putting it, putting in the hot box, where they
Speaker 1: get mad at conservatives and they sit in a room
Speaker 1: and basically yell at you for a couple hours. Who
Speaker 1: is they? You mean the Democrats are the Republicans of course.
Speaker 1: Um So first book I wrote was a book called
Speaker 1: A Time for Truth, and the opening chapter of it
Speaker 1: is called Mendacity, and it talks about exactly this issue
Speaker 1: in twenty fourteen, the fight over the debt ceiling and
Speaker 1: the pandemonium and bloody battles that occurred behind closed doors.
Speaker 1: I will say the battles this time were less bloody,
Speaker 1: but it's still unfortunate. We couldn't hold the line because
Speaker 1: the argument from the Democrats here is, look, a nation
Speaker 1: has to deal with its debt. It's irresponsible for the
Speaker 1: US to default on its debt. Republicans are holding this
Speaker 1: issue hostage. Now. I think we did a good job
Speaker 1: of explaining on the podcast why that isn't the case,
Speaker 1: and Democrat can do it just with their own Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fifty votes plus a tiebreaker, But they say, look, this
Speaker 1: is a separate issue, has nothing to do with the budget,
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with the other aspects of
Speaker 1: the economy. But it does represent something. I think it
Speaker 1: was Patrick Deneen, who is a conservative writer who came
Speaker 1: out and he said, there's something really wrong about a
Speaker 1: society that leaves as an inheritance to its children a
Speaker 1: lot of debt, and it just keeps adding on to
Speaker 1: that debt. And there are national security implications here, and
Speaker 1: it could stifle economic growth. And so are we just
Speaker 1: never going to deal with this issue. We're just going
Speaker 1: to keep going along and giving into the Democrats. So
Speaker 1: it's interesting with the Democrats or argue they want to
Speaker 1: eliminate the debts sailing altogether, so they want no limit
Speaker 1: on how much they can borrow. Or they're saying, let's
Speaker 1: raise it to fifty trillion dollars. Let's raise it to
Speaker 1: a number that, at least right now seems crazy high.
Speaker 1: But given the way we've gone up that even that
Speaker 1: may not be crazy high in time. You know, the
Speaker 1: debt ceiling historically has worked to at least make adding
Speaker 1: more debt more painful. Yeah, you have to think about it,
Speaker 1: and it's been the most effective lever for meaningful spending reforms.
Speaker 1: So my view has never been that we should never
Speaker 1: raise the debt ceiling. And the reason is simple. About
Speaker 1: forty percent. And actually these numbers are old, but historically
Speaker 1: about forty percent of what we spend is borrowed unless
Speaker 1: you're prepared instantaneously, you know what you know, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that classically encapsulates the left. So it's a
Speaker 1: young lady. She came in and she screamed, let's go, Brandon.
Speaker 1: Was that that's your eye. I couldn't quite make it out,
Speaker 1: but your eye. And what I I like even better
Speaker 1: it is that she said, I don't know apparently I'm
Speaker 1: I'm the ignorant ass I've been saying, Yester, I don't
Speaker 1: know why you're not as ignorant as I am, but
Speaker 1: work on it. But then she promptly with this frison
Speaker 1: of courage. Oh, I yelled at him, and then runs
Speaker 1: out the door. You know, and we talked about the
Speaker 1: left is terrified. Look, we're gonna have open Q and A.
Speaker 1: You know, if she wanted to, if she actually had
Speaker 1: a second sentence. But beyond let's go, Brandon, do you know,
Speaker 1: we could have had a conversation, but that would have
Speaker 1: required actual reason and deductive thought, and the left doesn't
Speaker 1: want to do that. Do you know what I think happened?
Speaker 1: Obviously I can't ask her this because she ran out
Speaker 1: of the room screaming. But what I think happened is
Speaker 1: she was waiting for us to say something really offensive.
Speaker 1: You know, some something that the left says that we say,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, something vicious vibe, don't don't
Speaker 1: give an example. Yeah, I know, I'm not gonna give
Speaker 1: an example. The kittens are delicious at all. And there's
Speaker 1: the media matters flip and there it is, right there,
Speaker 1: We've got it. So she was waiting for us to
Speaker 1: say something really outrageous because I suspect that woman has
Speaker 1: never listened to a conservative speak for more than a
Speaker 1: thirty second sound by taking out of context. And so
Speaker 1: she was waiting and we didn't say anything, and we're
Speaker 1: actually just talking about cutting government spending and these sort
Speaker 1: of arcane Senate procedures have had to raise the debt ceiling,
Speaker 1: and so she got impatient, and she probably didn't you
Speaker 1: know that the synapses were kind of frustrating and tiring
Speaker 1: and so she said, all right, it's late, you know,
Speaker 1: I go I gotta go home and watch Netflix or something.
Speaker 1: And so she just screamed this vicious, vulgar language at us,
Speaker 1: and then before we could respond, she's gone. And I
Speaker 1: can't say I miss her, but I do wish that
Speaker 1: we could have continued to educate her. I don't know,
Speaker 1: for a moment there, it kind of felt like the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives. So maybe she'll watch the stream online.
Speaker 1: So I guess we should fit of that. I hope
Speaker 1: right now she is on her phone listening with bated breath,
Speaker 1: because this issue I think really does matter. And well,
Speaker 1: well it might seem abstract to be talking about the
Speaker 1: debt and how that relates to the economy at large
Speaker 1: in the way our society is going to work. This
Speaker 1: is having real effects. I mean, when we talk about
Speaker 1: the economy more broadly, right now, we're looking at inflation
Speaker 1: at a thirteen year record high. This means that the
Speaker 1: dollars you were spending are worthless. They're not going as far.
Speaker 1: We're seeing now millions and millions of people in the
Speaker 1: month of August, four point three million people just quitting
Speaker 1: their jobs. That seems kind of weird and actually people
Speaker 1: who wanted to be here tonight. I've gotten messages about
Speaker 1: this for people coming to the events. Some people were
Speaker 1: not able to make it because flights are getting caned.
Speaker 1: Why are flights getting canceled? Southwest Airlines is blaming the weather.
Speaker 1: It looks pretty sunny to me. It's because of these
Speaker 1: issues of mandates coming from the federal government reaking havoc
Speaker 1: on the economy. So, in very dollars and sense terms,
Speaker 1: what's the future looking like for us? Well, I gotta
Speaker 1: say what you just say that said there, There is
Speaker 1: a massive concerted effort by the White House and by
Speaker 1: the corporate media to silence what you just said there,
Speaker 1: which is it is the orthodox line that nobody is
Speaker 1: losing their job because of vaccine mandates. Look, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you headline that I read at a hearing last week,
Speaker 1: the largest health provider in New York fired fourteen hundred people.
Speaker 1: They're firing doctors and nurses. Mind you, in the middle
Speaker 1: of a pandemic. We were saying for a year and
Speaker 1: a half doctors and nurses are heroes. You're fired? Yeah
Speaker 1: with them? A little bit incoherent, I'll tell you. I
Speaker 1: am hearing from all over the country from soldiers and
Speaker 1: sailors and airmen and marines. I was in the Detroit
Speaker 1: airport just a couple of weeks ago, was stopped by
Speaker 1: a gentleman there who said he was a Navy seal,
Speaker 1: had been in the Seals ten years. And he said,
Speaker 1: I'm resigning from the Seals. And he said, I'm not
Speaker 1: getting the vaccine. And he said, a bunch of guys
Speaker 1: who served with me who have been in fifteen sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen years, which for those in the military retirements at twenty.
Speaker 1: He said, they're getting ready to quit after fifteen sixteen
Speaker 1: seventeen years. I am hearing over and over again. So
Speaker 1: a week ago I did a zoom call with the
Speaker 1: leaders of many of the big pilots unions of the
Speaker 1: airlines across the country. Just about every pilots union said,
Speaker 1: we are having pilots who are going to be quitting
Speaker 1: because they're not going to get a vaccine. Chicago Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Union is saying this Friday, so a week from now,
Speaker 1: the Chicago PD is going to be at fifty percent
Speaker 1: police capacity because the police officer are resisting this vaccine.
Speaker 1: And the White House said none of this is happening,
Speaker 1: they insist. Note this is not happening. And so you
Speaker 1: look at what happened with Southwest and in the past week,
Speaker 1: I've spoken with the CEO Southwest, Gary Kelly. I know
Speaker 1: very well he's a Texan, he's a good friend. I've
Speaker 1: spoken with the head of the Southwest Pilots Union. There's
Speaker 1: lots of disputes about what happened. Southwest canceled a thousand
Speaker 1: flights one day, canceled several hundred flights on the days
Speaker 1: before and afterwards. I can tell you one thing that
Speaker 1: a very senior person in the aviation sector told me.
Speaker 1: They said, on Friday, October eighth, at Jacksonville, there was
Speaker 1: a sick in among air traffic controllers and at the
Speaker 1: Jacksonville Air Traffic Control Facility, thirty three air traffic controllers
Speaker 1: were scheduled to come in that day. Three came in,
Speaker 1: thirty stayed home. Now, Jacksonville controls a lot of the
Speaker 1: air traffic going up and down the Eastern City Board,
Speaker 1: and Southwest has an enormous percentage of its flights going
Speaker 1: through Florida, and Southwest is unique among the airlines. So
Speaker 1: the other airlines used the hub and spoke system. So
Speaker 1: I live in Houston. Houston's a hub for United, so
Speaker 1: we get lots of United flights that end up in
Speaker 1: Houston or Chicago or other hubs. Southwest doesn't have hubs,
Speaker 1: so its planes are all over. And what Southwest has
Speaker 1: said is that when air traffic shut down, the consequence
Speaker 1: of that is it stranded a bunch of its planes,
Speaker 1: and stranded a bunch of its pilots, and it stranded
Speaker 1: a bunch of its crews. Now what's interesting is the
Speaker 1: Biden White House refuses to answer the question. It's a
Speaker 1: very simple factual question. Is it true or is it
Speaker 1: false that on Friday, October eighth there was a sick
Speaker 1: ind at the jan at the Jacksonville Air Traffic Control
Speaker 1: facility where the vast majority of the controllers stayed home
Speaker 1: because of the vaccine mandate. And the reason they don't
Speaker 1: want to answer it, based on what sources are telling
Speaker 1: me and Aviation is because that is absolutely true, right
Speaker 1: and on these mandates which are really on a lot
Speaker 1: of people's minds, not just for the economy, but because
Speaker 1: they want to have some control over their own medical decisions.
Speaker 1: There is the issue of the federal government saying federal
Speaker 1: employees need to get the vaccine. So that is a
Speaker 1: direct mandate. And then there is the bizarre byzantine sort
Speaker 1: of mandate where Biden instructs the Occupational Safety and Health
Speaker 1: Administration to instruct companies with more than one hundred employees
Speaker 1: to instruct their employees to get the vaccine, where there
Speaker 1: will be fines. But we don't even really know how
Speaker 1: that will be implemented. So it's it's more a threat
Speaker 1: than an actual order. And so some companies are going
Speaker 1: along with this. Some companies, like my company, The Daily Wire,
Speaker 1: is not going along with this. And so in a way,
Speaker 1: there you can blame Biden because Biden was the one
Speaker 1: who started it all. But some companies could just stand
Speaker 1: up and say no, we're not going to do this.
Speaker 1: You're right, and look there's a spectrum of orders coming
Speaker 1: from the White House. Now listen my view and vaccines'
Speaker 1: real quick as an aside, I'm pro vaccine. I've been vaccinated,
Speaker 1: my family's been vaccinated. I think it is an amazing
Speaker 1: technological accomplishment that Operation Warped Speed produced multiple vaccines in
Speaker 1: record time, cutting through massive PaperWorks. I think that's fantastic
Speaker 1: and I was glad to take the vaccine because I
Speaker 1: wanted to get back out and around and with people,
Speaker 1: and I was tired of the damn lockdowns that these
Speaker 1: numbskull politicians were putting in place. But I also believe
Speaker 1: in individual liberty, individual responsibility. Look, everyone here are adults.
Speaker 1: You have the right to make your own choice about
Speaker 1: what healthcare you're going to get. You have the right
Speaker 1: to make your own choice talking to your doctor. If
Speaker 1: you want to get the vaccine, God bless you make
Speaker 1: that decision. If you don't, that's your right too. You know, though,
Speaker 1: to play Devil's advocate Senator, that lady who ran out
Speaker 1: of ear screaming, I'm not sure that she can make
Speaker 1: her own decisions. I don't know. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of people who you need some maturity to be able
Speaker 1: to I don't know, I don't know. I will say
Speaker 1: the problem with liberals is their masks aren't tight enough.
Speaker 1: We need to add a few more. You know, we
Speaker 1: do have a lot of mature, serious people in this audience.
Speaker 1: We want to hear from them, We want to answer
Speaker 1: their questions. So would you mind, can we take some
Speaker 1: questions from the audience with up you all right, Can
Speaker 1: we bring our friend Liz Wheeler back out? All right,
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of people here lining up to
Speaker 1: ask these questions. We I hope have some answers for them.
Speaker 1: This is our absolute favorite part of the show. Be sure,
Speaker 1: if you have not already, subscribe to The Verdict podcast
Speaker 1: on Apple, podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. So, Michael, while we're waiting for everything to
Speaker 1: get set up, set up, I'm gonna ask is it
Speaker 1: gonna be like mail bag on the podcast typically where
Speaker 1: you get a question from some one Giuseppi, who asked,
Speaker 1: how come Michael is so handsome and so wise? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, look, I think some of those people ask
Speaker 1: very good questions. So I hope that we get them
Speaker 1: here tonight. If you see me putting on a fake
Speaker 1: mustache and running behind, maybe that that would explain how
Speaker 1: it happens. We have our friend Liz Wheeler here, let's
Speaker 1: bring her out and let's take some questions. Well, that
Speaker 1: was a great show. This is a great show. I
Speaker 1: was entertained. Thank you, you laughed, you cried, We're gonna
Speaker 1: get us. A lot of people did. So we're about
Speaker 1: to get these questions. But first, Liz, what are you
Speaker 1: holding in your hand? I do have a question. I'd
Speaker 1: like to actually be the one to start off the questions,
Speaker 1: if that's all right. And my question to you is,
Speaker 1: if you see right here we have this hat and
Speaker 1: it is adorned with a lovely cactus. I don't get
Speaker 1: the joke. Could you please explain that to us? Liz?
Speaker 1: Do you you don't know about the third co host
Speaker 1: of this podcast, our trusty sidekick, the cactus? Do you
Speaker 1: not the real truth? Cactus? And I gotta say I
Speaker 1: was complaining to Michael today as we've got now these
Speaker 1: fancy metal cacti, and I said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: really am offended to be upstaged by a cactus. I know,
Speaker 1: I know that it was unfortunate. You know it very humbling.
Speaker 1: I think, Senator, you came out really strong your first podcast.
Speaker 1: It hits number one within a couple of weeks, and
Speaker 1: so we just want to keep you humble. And that's
Speaker 1: why it seems that all of this merchandise has the
Speaker 1: cactus on. I mean, I don't want to hurt y'all's feelings,
Speaker 1: but it's not your face on this hat. It's not
Speaker 1: well That's why people aware it's right. So I'm very
Speaker 1: excited to announce tonight that you can acquire one of
Speaker 1: these hats, and not just one. If you go to
Speaker 1: Verdict with ted Cruise dot com, it slash shop and
Speaker 1: you use that promo code that I talked to you
Speaker 1: about before live, you can get ten percent off all
Speaker 1: kinds of crazy cactus gear, all kinds of crazy. I
Speaker 1: don't really want to hold this for the rest of
Speaker 1: the show. Does anybody? Does anybody want this? Can? We?
Speaker 1: Can we hear anybody want this pact us at Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not throwing it, so okay, okay, if you can
Speaker 1: hand it up to him. You know what they say,
Speaker 1: Enthusiasm wins every time. Enthusiasm wins every time. All right,
Speaker 1: are we ready for some live Q and A. All right,
Speaker 1: the first thing you're gonna do is introduce yourself. My
Speaker 1: name is Will Terry. I'm from Kacano, Wisconsin, moved down
Speaker 1: to Madison to work at the state Legislature. Highly revere
Speaker 1: you ever since your twenty sixteen campaign. While I certainly
Speaker 1: can't agree with every single thing that you advocate for,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate the opportunity to have this question. So,
Speaker 1: native born American fertility rates have been below replacement for
Speaker 1: nearly half a century, so much so that the number
Speaker 1: of babies born to black women have been trending down
Speaker 1: for two decades, and the American white population has declined
Speaker 1: three million people since his last consensus. What plan, if any,
Speaker 1: does a Republican in either chamber have to create a
Speaker 1: sustainable fertility rate in America. Wow. So that's a very
Speaker 1: good question, and it's a detailed and complex question. And
Speaker 1: I'd say several things. First of all, with what the
Speaker 1: gentleman called out, we've had over sixty million children whose
Speaker 1: lives have been taken in abortion, and this would be
Speaker 1: a much richer, a much more varied, a much more
Speaker 1: diverse country had those children had the chance to live
Speaker 1: and had we reaped the benefits of their lives. Um.
Speaker 1: I'd also say, more broadly, some of it is the
Speaker 1: consequence of prosperity, that that that you see with prosperity,
Speaker 1: you look at a degrarian society where where if you
Speaker 1: were on the farm, you needed kids because you needed farmhands,
Speaker 1: you needed people to work work on the farm, and
Speaker 1: kids were an engine of production. And as we've gotten
Speaker 1: more prosperous people are not looking looking for their kids
Speaker 1: necessarily to drive the plow um. There is also a
Speaker 1: difference I think between left and right in terms of
Speaker 1: our children. Are additional kids a good or bad thing?
Speaker 1: You know? You look at the Malthusian hypothesis that that
Speaker 1: there are too many people on planet Earth, that that
Speaker 1: that every child being born is a bad thing. Um,
Speaker 1: I think that is terrible and false. And I think
Speaker 1: every child is is is magnificent as an opportunity, as
Speaker 1: a benefit, is productive. And there is a difference between
Speaker 1: left and right. So is it government's job to say
Speaker 1: you silly people aren't having enough babies. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think it's government's job to say that. It's up to
Speaker 1: you to make that decision in your life. But I
Speaker 1: do think we ought to have number one policies from
Speaker 1: the government that are conducive to families. So, for example,
Speaker 1: the marriage penalty is a terrible thing in the tax law.
Speaker 1: It shouldn't be the case that if a man and
Speaker 1: woman get married, their tax rate goes up and the
Speaker 1: government is disincentivizing their forming a family. I think we
Speaker 1: ought to have an environment where kids are celebrated and welcomed.
Speaker 1: And also part of that is where kids can have
Speaker 1: a chance to get an education through like through school choice,
Speaker 1: where even regardless of their economic circumstances, they can have
Speaker 1: an opportunity to prosper. But you are right that without kids,
Speaker 1: any society has no future. And you know you're so right, Senator,
Speaker 1: to mention this Malthusian delusion on the left, this idea
Speaker 1: that people are a scourge and we've got we're all
Speaker 1: going to die from over a population. There was a
Speaker 1: book came out in nineteen seventy by Paul Arelik, a
Speaker 1: still admired in some corners and still honored scientist that
Speaker 1: was just completely bogus, and it was called the Population Bomb.
Speaker 1: It said that within a decade or two there were
Speaker 1: going to be famines. It was inevitable. You would need
Speaker 1: more abortion, more contraception, and if people wouldn't do it voluntarily,
Speaker 1: you had to force it. And actually a lot of
Speaker 1: this work was used in countries that did this, India
Speaker 1: and notably in China, and it was completely false. Since
Speaker 1: that time, the world population has doubled, we are fatter
Speaker 1: than ever, malnutrition is at an all time low. And
Speaker 1: so I think your answer is totally right, Senator. The
Speaker 1: gentleman's answer was totally right. Un abortion, and it's a
Speaker 1: very serious issue. By the way, even beyond the issue
Speaker 1: of birthrates, you mentioned the black birthrate. Well, a statistic
Speaker 1: came out a few years ago in New York more
Speaker 1: black babies were aborted than we're born. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a terrifying statistic. Or and you mentioned the other birthrates
Speaker 1: as well, but it's beyond that. Think about how the
Speaker 1: average life expectancy has actually declined in recent years, also
Speaker 1: because of deaths of despair. I mean that that is
Speaker 1: a big national problem. I think, as as everyone has said,
Speaker 1: it's really important to focus on that because if we
Speaker 1: want to have a strong, prosperous future, we need to
Speaker 1: have a country. We need to have people, and we
Speaker 1: need to have people who are excited about growing that country. Well,
Speaker 1: and let me make two additional points. It's a good question,
Speaker 1: and were we should get our answers shorter than this,
Speaker 1: But well, we'll do a speed round for the beginning
Speaker 1: of twenty people. You shouldn't come to a gathering of
Speaker 1: a radio host and a lawyer and politician and expect
Speaker 1: short answers. But two more observations you were talking about
Speaker 1: about African American fertility rates. You know, some of the
Speaker 1: most horrifying things to read are are the writings of
Speaker 1: Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood and
Speaker 1: was a unrepentant eugenicist and wrote horrible things advocating for
Speaker 1: widespread abortion precisely because she wanted to see more African
Speaker 1: American children aborted. And it's it's it is a horrifying
Speaker 1: history behind the aggressive push for locating abortion clinics in
Speaker 1: communities where I'm not going to use the term she
Speaker 1: used to describe those children, but but they were horrific
Speaker 1: and evil those terms that she used. And what I'd
Speaker 1: say also than that you you know, Michael used the
Speaker 1: word inevitable and and it reminded me of one of
Speaker 1: the podcasts that caused the biggest stir is You and
Speaker 1: I like to mess around in pop culture, and we
Speaker 1: pointed out how when when Hollywood does environmentalists, whether in
Speaker 1: The Watchmen or in Avenger's Endgame, that that that environmentalist
Speaker 1: or these Malthusian psychopaths, and you take thanos so and
Speaker 1: by the way, people flipped out, is it thanos thanos
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever, it's the big guy with the
Speaker 1: giant sword. But but you look at his whole hypothesis,
Speaker 1: which was the Malthusian hypothesis. There are too many people,
Speaker 1: they're consuming our resources. Therefore I'm going to snap and
Speaker 1: murder half of the living beings on planet Earth. That
Speaker 1: is the radical left view of people and online, the
Speaker 1: sort of Hollywood world freaked out that we pointed out
Speaker 1: how absurd this, this anti human life view of the
Speaker 1: radical left was. Yeah, yeah, really really excellent point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much. And I don't know
Speaker 1: about you guys, but the way that I heard that
Speaker 1: answer was as Michael as the good Catholic man, that
Speaker 1: he should continue to be fruitful and multiply. So that's
Speaker 1: how that's how I heard it. Michael. Let's try to
Speaker 1: keep these answers as succinct as possible so that we
Speaker 1: can get as many questions in as we possibly can.
Speaker 1: Introduce speed round. Um. Hello, I'm Samantha Givich. I'm a
Speaker 1: student at UW Madison. I'm a freshman studying political science
Speaker 1: and minoring in public policy. UM. My questionnaire today is
Speaker 1: I'm going to keep it to the content they had
Speaker 1: in the podcast is much of your message today was
Speaker 1: about the other side. I am personally democratic leaning, and um,
Speaker 1: how they're doing everything wrong, how they're yelling at you,
Speaker 1: how that girl ran out obviously speaking vulgar language, which
Speaker 1: I don't agree with. I think it's much productive to
Speaker 1: speak this way. But at the same time, and not
Speaker 1: to insult you. Um you came out saying like these
Speaker 1: idiom idiots are making us wear these masks, like all
Speaker 1: these things and shouting out insults and compromising the integrity
Speaker 1: of the university. And I just want I think my
Speaker 1: question is more broad about your party in general, because
Speaker 1: that's why we're here. Is are you willing if you
Speaker 1: is your message so important? Are you willing to compromise,
Speaker 1: like where are these faced diapers in order to put
Speaker 1: this message out that you think is so important, so
Speaker 1: more people are accessible, so it's more accessible to more people.
Speaker 1: Or are you is your message solely to oppose the
Speaker 1: other side and keep it to the people that agree
Speaker 1: with you? Good question, So, Samith, that's a very good question.
Speaker 1: Let let me start by just thanking you for being here,
Speaker 1: thank you for having an open mind and coming. Even
Speaker 1: though you said your your political leanings are different than ours.
Speaker 1: I appreciate. I think we need to be having more
Speaker 1: of a conversation we ought to be. One of the
Speaker 1: problems today is the two sides live in like parallel worlds,
Speaker 1: and the right wing listens to right wing media, the
Speaker 1: left wings listens to left wing media. We don't talk
Speaker 1: to each other, we don't have shared facts, and we
Speaker 1: believe these caricatures of each other that that are horrible,
Speaker 1: and they're horrible on both sides. Um The way I
Speaker 1: try to handle that it is, you know, I try
Speaker 1: not to get nasty and personal and go after the
Speaker 1: character of people who disagree with me. Now I'll disagree
Speaker 1: with them on substance and listen, I'll try to have
Speaker 1: some fun with it, and and and to make a joke,
Speaker 1: as I think, different than going straight straight to and
Speaker 1: saying they're horrible, evil people. I try on criticism to
Speaker 1: keep it lighthearted. On the question of compromise, yes, look,
Speaker 1: I think we absolutely should look for mental grounds. You
Speaker 1: ask about wearing masks. To be honest, I'm embarrassing to
Speaker 1: say I've got two masks in my pocket. I've got
Speaker 1: a Texas flag mask, which is awesome, and you know,
Speaker 1: I might just wear that for the fun of it.
Speaker 1: And and then I have a Houston Rockets mask, which
Speaker 1: shows that I'm really believing lost causes. But I'm a
Speaker 1: die hard, die hard Rockets fan. You know, I flew up,
Speaker 1: flew up from Houston today I wore a mask. You know.
Speaker 1: My view on Let's take COVID as an example. I
Speaker 1: think there were extremes on COVID on both sides that
Speaker 1: didn't make any sense. So there were people who would
Speaker 1: never wear a mask, never wear a vaccine, and personally
Speaker 1: I don't agree with that. I particularly at the height
Speaker 1: of the pandemic. You know, it made some sense to
Speaker 1: wear a mask. I wasn't sure how effective it was
Speaker 1: or not. But a year ago I was willing to
Speaker 1: wear a mask, and it made some sense. Now I've
Speaker 1: been vaccinated, and it seems to me a little bit
Speaker 1: bizarre after you've been vaccinated, saying everyone has to wear
Speaker 1: a mask and pretend the vaccine doesn't work. That logic
Speaker 1: and science doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I
Speaker 1: think we should be willing to find reasonable common grounds.
Speaker 1: I think in COVID, for example, the politicians who shut
Speaker 1: down millions of small businesses shut down restaurants, shut down bars,
Speaker 1: shut down jim shut down stores and destroyed them. And
Speaker 1: you know, people, if you have you know in Texas,
Speaker 1: you'll have a family that's say a second or third
Speaker 1: generation restaurant owner who their entire family's life work was destroyed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: politicians who shut down schools for a year, that hurt
Speaker 1: a lot of kids. I don't think that made sense.
Speaker 1: In my view, we should do reasonable common sense steps
Speaker 1: to limit the spread of the disease. COVID is a
Speaker 1: serious disease, particularly if you're elderly, particularly if you have
Speaker 1: serious health issues. It can be fatal, and so I
Speaker 1: think we should treat it seriously. But I absolutely agree
Speaker 1: we ought to find reasonable common ground. I think most
Speaker 1: people want to keep their families safe from disease, but
Speaker 1: they also want to be able to go to work
Speaker 1: and provide for their kids, and they like their kids
Speaker 1: to go to school. And I think most Americans are
Speaker 1: interested in that common ground. The political world is so
Speaker 1: polarized and the media world is so polarized. We don't
Speaker 1: have those conversations very often. That was a good answer.
Speaker 1: I have nothing more to add to that. No live
Speaker 1: owning or anything like that. It's really really really good question,
Speaker 1: and thank you for coming. I really we'll appreciate. Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. My name's THEO. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. UM,
Speaker 1: I work in the Madison State Capitol or Wisconsin State Capitol. Ironically,
Speaker 1: the first question asker is actually my boss. I'm his intern,
Speaker 1: so my question yeah, actually ironically it kind of is
Speaker 1: building off of his question on birthrates and whatnot. So,
Speaker 1: as we all know, yeah, I promise it's not it's
Speaker 1: not planned. It's not planned. I didn't even know there's questions. So,
Speaker 1: as we all know, the immigration policies of the Biden
Speaker 1: administration have changed drastically from the administration previously, and with
Speaker 1: the Haitian migrant caravan that transpired I don't know a
Speaker 1: week or two weeks ago, I'm not sure. Popular conservative
Speaker 1: pundits like Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson have been theorizing
Speaker 1: something that people like Patrick Buchanan or a Jared Taylor
Speaker 1: who runs American Renaissance have said in the past, which
Speaker 1: is replacement theory or a demographic replacement. So I kind
Speaker 1: of want not wanted to know what your guys's thoughts
Speaker 1: were on the validity of that and how that is
Speaker 1: becoming mainstream, and whether you think that it's the mass
Speaker 1: immigration of the Democratic Party is solely for electoral reasons,
Speaker 1: or if it is to change the demographics of America
Speaker 1: and to displace the white majority of America. Well, I
Speaker 1: think if you're asking the question, or do Democrats play
Speaker 1: racial identity politics and say that, you know, straight white
Speaker 1: guys are the worst people in the history of the world,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't think they would even disagree with
Speaker 1: that they put They put that sort of thing in
Speaker 1: the New York Times, But I think the question is
Speaker 1: probably a little broader than that, right, I mean, they
Speaker 1: it would seem to me in Senator you work with
Speaker 1: these elected Democrats more more closely, you see them more
Speaker 1: up close. But it seems to me quite clear that
Speaker 1: what they want to do is win elections, and so
Speaker 1: whatever the ethnic or racial, or sexual or geographic or
Speaker 1: whatever they're going to do. And by the way, that's
Speaker 1: just focusing on one aspect of the immigration issue, but
Speaker 1: there are obviously many other strategies that they're pursuing as well.
Speaker 1: But whatever it's going to take them to win those elections,
Speaker 1: that's what they're out there to do, and so I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think that is a conspiracy theory that Democrats
Speaker 1: are willing to fight dirty and to win elections, is it? So? Look,
Speaker 1: I am the son of a Cuban immigrants, and millions
Speaker 1: of Democrats wanted to replace me with a rich white
Speaker 1: guy named Beto Aurora. Um, wait on, he's not Spanish.
Speaker 1: Are you sure he's got a name like Beto? You know?
Speaker 1: It was amusing when he launched his campaign. His name
Speaker 1: is Robert Francis and and and the the AP reported
Speaker 1: when he launched his campaign that he gave his announcement
Speaker 1: speech in his native tongue. And I couldn't help but
Speaker 1: resist saying, really, I've never heard a speech in Gaelic.
Speaker 1: I'm running to be the next senator from Texas, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to say, since the Astros are about to
Speaker 1: play the Red Sox, so you know you know that
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to to our going back to the
Speaker 1: World series. UM, listen on your question. I don't buy
Speaker 1: the racially charged nonsense that is in these discussions. UM.
Speaker 1: I believe in immigration. UM. I have said many times
Speaker 1: my view and immigration can be summed up in forwards,
Speaker 1: legal good, illegal bad. You know, I represent the state
Speaker 1: of Texas. We have twenty nine million people. We're seeing
Speaker 1: firsthand the horrors of the Biden border crisis. I've been
Speaker 1: down to the border over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: when you've got one point three million people crossing the
Speaker 1: border illegally. I've been to the Biden cages that are
Speaker 1: filled with thousands of children. The last time I was
Speaker 1: in the Rio Grand Valley, the rate of COVID positivity
Speaker 1: in the Biden cages was over twenty four percent. I've
Speaker 1: seen when I brought nineteen senators down to the Rio
Speaker 1: Grand Valley and we went out on the river, we
Speaker 1: saw an illegal immigrant floating dead in the river. I've
Speaker 1: seen the dead bodies of the pregnant women that the
Speaker 1: coyotes abandon in the desert heat. I've seen the little
Speaker 1: girls and the little boys who are sexually assaulted and
Speaker 1: physically assaulted by the vicious criminals who are trafficking them in.
Speaker 1: And so there are lots of lies and politics, but
Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest lies it is the
Speaker 1: lie you hear from the media that the Democrats open
Speaker 1: border policy is somehow compassionate. There is nothing compassionate about
Speaker 1: a policy that has hundreds of thousands of children in
Speaker 1: the custody of vicious human traffickers that are assaulting and
Speaker 1: victimizing those kids. And so we ought to have a
Speaker 1: system that welcomes, that celebrates legal immigrants. There is a
Speaker 1: right way to come. You wait in line, you follow
Speaker 1: the rules, you come to America, but you don't have
Speaker 1: chaos at the border, which is what Joe Biden, Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris have given us. Hello, my name is Thomas, Thank
Speaker 1: you mister Nelson, Senator Cruz for coming. One of my
Speaker 1: brothers is modeling is Beard after you? So yeah, my
Speaker 1: question is a bit tangential. I'm a really big fan
Speaker 1: of comedy, and there's been a cultural trend toward, you know,
Speaker 1: the buzzword cancel culture, and I'm wondering what exactly is
Speaker 1: your interpretation of the line for cancel culture versus just
Speaker 1: holding somebody accountable, Say the difference between Colin Kaepernick no
Speaker 1: longer playing NFL because America is so oppressed if he
Speaker 1: makes millions and sage the guy who James Dumore, who
Speaker 1: was fired from Google because you send it a memo
Speaker 1: saying men and women are biologically different. Where is the line,
Speaker 1: and when does it become canceling? When is it just
Speaker 1: holding someone accountable? When is it being sensitive? When is
Speaker 1: it just having preferences. Look, that's a great question, and
Speaker 1: it's it's a subtle and nuanced question. Um. You know
Speaker 1: my view, as a general matter, we should not have
Speaker 1: people being fired, uh for for expressing their political views. Now.
Speaker 1: Now there are exceptions to that, and and one of
Speaker 1: the exceptions is we have a right as consumers. So
Speaker 1: you mentioned Colin Kaepernick. I don't like what Kaepernick said. Now.
Speaker 1: I don't think he should be censored. I don't think
Speaker 1: I don't think he should be silenced, but I'm not
Speaker 1: interested in supporting him with his message of that to
Speaker 1: me is disrespecting the American flag and as disrespecting the
Speaker 1: men and women who fought to defend the flag in
Speaker 1: our nation. Um, I don't think it's right that Kaepernick
Speaker 1: is not a quarterback today because of his stance. To
Speaker 1: be honest, his stance was embraced in the NFL because
Speaker 1: they're such leftists. They loved it. And the guy is
Speaker 1: making tens of millions of dollars from Nike right now.
Speaker 1: He's not a quarterback because he wasn't that good a quarterback,
Speaker 1: and he had a tryout that was lousy. I will say,
Speaker 1: by the way, it is clearly political discrimination that I'm
Speaker 1: not an NFL quarterback. They don't like my views and
Speaker 1: it's the only reason I'm not a starting quarterback. It's
Speaker 1: cancel culture if you ask me. You know. Coincidentally, I
Speaker 1: did just write a book on this very subject called speech.
Speaker 1: Let's controlling or it's controlling minds. So thank that's very kind.
Speaker 1: But thank since you know we're selling the Cactus Merged,
Speaker 1: so I might as well mention this book. And I
Speaker 1: think your question is really important. And Senator you make
Speaker 1: a good point here, which is it's a subtle and
Speaker 1: nuanced question. You know, I don't think that we as
Speaker 1: conservatives are saying we have no standards at all whatsoever.
Speaker 1: William F. Buckley Jr. When he launched the modern Conservative movement,
Speaker 1: he did so with a book called God and Man
Speaker 1: at Yale, The Superstitions of at Academic Freedom, in which
Speaker 1: he mocked this extreme idea of academic freedom that the
Speaker 1: left pretends to embrace, but they don't even really embrace.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think anyone believes that if you
Speaker 1: go to your water cooler and you make a zig
Speaker 1: hile and you start reciting mind coomp that when you
Speaker 1: lose your job, that is cancel culture, and we're all
Speaker 1: supposed to cry about that. No, obviously, societies have limits.
Speaker 1: There is going to be decorum. You know. The Left
Speaker 1: tries to shut us up on certain things and says
Speaker 1: you can't say certain things. Chivalry also suggests maybe you
Speaker 1: shouldn't say certain things. And so the questions involved are one,
Speaker 1: what should the government be involved in that's a procedural question,
Speaker 1: and then to a substantive question, what is the good?
Speaker 1: What do we want to have in our society, what
Speaker 1: do we want to look up to, what do we
Speaker 1: want to pursue, and what is really going to make
Speaker 1: us free people? You know that that distinction that our
Speaker 1: founding fathers found so important between liberty, true liberty and
Speaker 1: li entiousness, you know, just pursuing your basest passions. And
Speaker 1: so I agree with what you brought up and obviously
Speaker 1: what you said, Senator that we need to take this
Speaker 1: question in a much more serious way. And if that
Speaker 1: means we can't dunk on the Libs quite as much,
Speaker 1: so be it. But we want to be able to
Speaker 1: move forward into a society that has a culture that
Speaker 1: we can all really be proud of and live in. Well,
Speaker 1: and let me give an example of the line drawing,
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's just it's binary. State of
Speaker 1: Tennessee has actually a state law that, as I understand,
Speaker 1: it requires the governor every year to proclaim a Nathan
Speaker 1: Bedford Forrest Day, celebrating Nathan Bedford Forrest. And the governor
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago did that. I saw that
Speaker 1: and publicly said this is a mistake and you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do it now. For those of you who don't know
Speaker 1: who Nathan Bedford Forest was, he was a Civil War general,
Speaker 1: but he was also a slave trader, and he was
Speaker 1: the founder of the ku Klux Klan. And I said,
Speaker 1: this is absurd that we are celebrating this man, the
Speaker 1: ku Klux Klan as a force for evil, and we
Speaker 1: should not be celebrating him. And you know, some folks
Speaker 1: came back and said, well, cruizer being unrealistic, because state
Speaker 1: law requires a proclamation about him. I said, all right,
Speaker 1: if I were governor of Tennessee, you want to see
Speaker 1: a proclamation about him, I'll make a proclamation. You'll never
Speaker 1: forget about someone who built his entire fortune selling other
Speaker 1: human beings. Now there's a difference, I think, between not
Speaker 1: honoring the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and tearing
Speaker 1: down a statue of Thomas Jefferson. And part of it
Speaker 1: requires the exercise of judgment. It's not a clean narrow
Speaker 1: line that we should we should never express a view,
Speaker 1: or we should we should always silence views. It is
Speaker 1: somewhere in between. But but the Left. The thing to
Speaker 1: understand about cancel culture is the Left is trying to
Speaker 1: use power to dominate the terrain of discussion. So I
Speaker 1: remember last summer, two summers ago, I was in California.
Speaker 1: Heidi's families from California. We were visiting with a friend
Speaker 1: of the family as a kindergarten teacher, and she said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm scared to speak. There's a McCarthyist wind in the
Speaker 1: air that if I say the wrong thing at school,
Speaker 1: I'm fired and my job is lost. And there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people that feel frightened to speak because
Speaker 1: the Left is so unrelenting. And so I think we
Speaker 1: ought to have a lot of tolerance. We can draw
Speaker 1: lines at the extreme, but we ought to have a
Speaker 1: lot of tolerance for a reasoned discourse and debate, and
Speaker 1: that includes a reason discourse about our history, which is
Speaker 1: neither uniformly good nor uniformly bad, and we ought to
Speaker 1: be able to discuss that intelligently. This will be This
Speaker 1: will be the last question. But if you want to
Speaker 1: continue asking the senator more questions, you can go to
Speaker 1: Verdict with Ted Cruz dot com slash plus. You will
Speaker 1: get exclusive access to the Senator, including the opportunity to
Speaker 1: ask him questions. If you want to introduce yourself and
Speaker 1: ask your question. Yeah, my name is Lane Witt, and
Speaker 1: I found in an organization on campus called UNMASKUW, and
Speaker 1: our goal is to get where do I sign up?
Speaker 1: How do I how do I become a member of
Speaker 1: that club UNMASKUW dot org. So basically we just want
Speaker 1: to get rid of masks, obviously, but the university administration
Speaker 1: is not gonna help us no matter how many protests
Speaker 1: we hold. So my question basically is how do we
Speaker 1: get weaker Republicans in the state legislature to stand up,
Speaker 1: take a principle, stand and actually follow the law and
Speaker 1: get mask mandates removed from you? W Madison. Look, it's
Speaker 1: a great question. My view on all of COVID is
Speaker 1: there should be no mandates. There should be no mask mandates,
Speaker 1: there should be no vaccine mandates, there should be no
Speaker 1: vaccine passports. That it ought to be up to individual choice.
Speaker 1: If people want to wear a mask. We've got some
Speaker 1: people here wearing a mask, right, that's your choice, that's
Speaker 1: your right to do it. You can make your own
Speaker 1: choice about your own healthcare. If people choose to get vaccinated,
Speaker 1: that's what Heidi and I have done, that's what our
Speaker 1: parents have done. That's your choice too. But it shouldn't
Speaker 1: be the government forcing you to do that. And I
Speaker 1: would say, look, you've got a lot of folks and
Speaker 1: politics that are scared about this issue. It is a
Speaker 1: weird thing. So the way the United States Congress is
Speaker 1: right now, on the House side, Nancy Pelosi rules like
Speaker 1: a tyrant, so she forces everyone to wear a mask,
Speaker 1: and she has said that she will have the Capitol
Speaker 1: police arrest any staffer who doesn't wear a mask, and
Speaker 1: she's finding House members who don't wear a mask. And
Speaker 1: I think it's a complete abuse of power. We did
Speaker 1: a verdict on that topic, in particular the Senate. It's
Speaker 1: interesting the Senate, you've got a little bit more kind
Speaker 1: of a hundred islands where no one tries to exercise
Speaker 1: brute force on other senators. And right now, it's the
Speaker 1: strangest thing. It's like gang colors in the Senate. Every
Speaker 1: Democratic senator and every Democratic staffer wears a mask walking
Speaker 1: down the hall, and none of the Republican senators and
Speaker 1: none of the Republican staffers wear a mask. And it's
Speaker 1: it's it's the weirdest thing. You'll walk to the Capitol
Speaker 1: and you can literally see some intern who you've never
Speaker 1: met before, and you've been like Republican, Democrat, Democrat, Republican.
Speaker 1: It's bizarre. I mean, it's like the crypts of the
Speaker 1: Bloods or something. And even the same colors actually red
Speaker 1: and blue. There it is. And the thing to understand
Speaker 1: about it is the left knows what they're saying as
Speaker 1: a croc the hip hop accracy. So Nancy Pelosi when
Speaker 1: she has this fundraiser in northern California with all these
Speaker 1: rich Democrats, none of them have masks on. And of
Speaker 1: course the waiters and waitresses, the serving staff are masked,
Speaker 1: which which from a Democratic perspective, yes, you little people
Speaker 1: like Amelda Marcos. You know, let the little people do it.
Speaker 1: You know, Barack Obama is sixtieth birthday party in Martha's vineyards. Again,
Speaker 1: a bunch of rich Democrats dancing. None of them are
Speaker 1: wearing masks. Mayor of San Francisco while dancing, same issue,
Speaker 1: she was feeling the spirit, she said, it is and
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you in the Senate, so you see
Speaker 1: these Senate Democrats when they're behind closed doors, they don't
Speaker 1: wear masks when they're having conversations, and then suddenly a
Speaker 1: camera's They're like, oh crap, I gotta put my mask
Speaker 1: on them, because you know, the virus reacts to cameras
Speaker 1: like it has become this weird virtue signal the left
Speaker 1: is fond of projection. And all right, this is a
Speaker 1: dangerous thing because I'm gonna make a pop culture reference
Speaker 1: to a show I haven't watched. I watched a lot
Speaker 1: of shows, but I haven't watched Handmaid's Tale. So all
Speaker 1: I know is they wear those freakish outfits and they
Speaker 1: they all say Mike Pence wants to turn America into that.
Speaker 1: That's a documentary, yes, yeah, but so I haven't watched it.
Speaker 1: So my commentary is. I'm sure not informed on that show,
Speaker 1: but the left is literally like where you're burka as
Speaker 1: a sign of that you are virtuous. In DC, I'll
Speaker 1: be walking along the road and you'll see this liberal.
Speaker 1: I've seen this several times, like a liberal woman jogging.
Speaker 1: We'll see me jogging, reach out and put on her
Speaker 1: mask and glare at me. I was doing. I was
Speaker 1: speaking at an outdoor protest in DC. It was on
Speaker 1: the border, in the open borders, and it was outdoors,
Speaker 1: and I was at a microphone. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: gathered there and we're talking about the border crisis, and
Speaker 1: there was this angry lefty standing on the street screaming
Speaker 1: at me, and he was kind of like the young
Speaker 1: lady was here. He was cursing at me and didn't
Speaker 1: know any of the substance but was just f you, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for sharing, sir. And at one point he screamed,
Speaker 1: why aren't you wearing a mask? And I'm like, you're
Speaker 1: not wearing a mask, and it was the most bizarre.
Speaker 1: We ought to be able to find some level of
Speaker 1: common sense. If someone wants to wear a mask, knock
Speaker 1: yourself out. But I think we ought to have leaders
Speaker 1: with the courage to say, we're not going to force
Speaker 1: you to make that decision against your wishes. And clearly
Speaker 1: you've got a lot of courage. You were refusing to
Speaker 1: muzzle yourself. That your fellow students are refusing to muzzle themselves.
Speaker 1: All of us here, I guess, are at least in
Speaker 1: the metaphorical sense, refusing to muzzle ourselves and have these discussions.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate everyone here. I especially appreciate our friend
Speaker 1: Liz Wheeler. If you like Liz, which who doesn't? Who
Speaker 1: doesn't love Liz? Go check out here The Liz Reeler Show.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check it out. Also very exciting, Liz's
Speaker 1: partnering with YAF for her own campus speaking events, So
Speaker 1: if you want to bring Liz to your school, go
Speaker 1: to YAF dot org slash Liz bring Liz to your school. Liz,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: We'll see in Texas tomorrow at Texas A and M. So, Michael,
Speaker 1: what are the next stops? Where where are we headed
Speaker 1: next on this tour? So coming up next tomorrow, We're
Speaker 1: gonna be at Texas A and M can be very
Speaker 1: excitt Gigham. I can't wait very exciting. We're also going
Speaker 1: to be back in DC. We're going to Catholic University.
Speaker 1: That's going to be next week. And then we've got
Speaker 1: three more stops yet to be decided. So if you
Speaker 1: want to bring us to your school, head on over
Speaker 1: to yaf dot org slash verdict so you can bring
Speaker 1: Verdict live to your school. But it's late, Senator, it's late.
Speaker 1: These wonderful people have taken a stand against the forces
Speaker 1: of tyranny and suppression and censorship, a stand for America,
Speaker 1: a stand for free speech. Thank you so much, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for the students and the community here
Speaker 1: of the University of Wisconsin Madison. And I've got only
Speaker 1: one message for the administrators who tried to shut us up.
Speaker 1: Let's go, Brandon. This is vertical tech rooms.