Speaker 1: President Biden promised us unity and healing. A lot of
Speaker 1: people expected moderation circumspection from good old sleepy Joe. Instead,
Speaker 1: what we have gotten is the most radical agenda of
Speaker 1: any presidential administration, by my lights, in American history, and
Speaker 1: we are not even halfway through the first hundred days.
Speaker 1: This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Noles. Thank you all for
Speaker 1: being with us. It is good to be with you again.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody who has subscribed on Apple podcasts, on Spotify,
Speaker 1: on YouTube if you haven't already, we would very much
Speaker 1: appreciate your doing that, as everybody is getting canceled these days,
Speaker 1: up to and including doctor Seuss, mister potato Head. We
Speaker 1: fear that big tech could clamp down. So it would
Speaker 1: be great to be with you and have you subscribe
Speaker 1: as well. Senator, I have to tell you I wish
Speaker 1: I had a happy outlook on the first hundred days
Speaker 1: of this administration. It kills me to say this. I
Speaker 1: think we were right when we discussed on this show
Speaker 1: why people ought to fear the worst from President Biden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these have been dangerous times. But let me first of
Speaker 1: all say, welcome back. It's been too long since we've
Speaker 1: done at Verdict, It's been too long since I've seen you.
Speaker 1: We had intended to do one last week, but but
Speaker 1: unfortunately we discovered there are no TV studios in Cancun.
Speaker 1: You know, Senator, I wasn't going to bring it up
Speaker 1: because some people have said that you ought to apologize,
Speaker 1: and I do think that you ought to apologize to
Speaker 1: me for not inviting me to can Koon. I'm very upset,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure that we'll be able to move on
Speaker 1: from this well. And as you know, in kan Koon,
Speaker 1: smoking Cuban cigars is legal, so I owe you a
Speaker 1: double apology for leaving you where the products from my
Speaker 1: family's homeland are are prohibited. Yes, but I'm glad we
Speaker 1: could clear the air here because it is. It is
Speaker 1: very good to be back with you, even amid all
Speaker 1: this crazy turmoil here in the United States. They're they're
Speaker 1: actually I don't want to just be too doom and
Speaker 1: gloom here, because there actually has been some good news
Speaker 1: in some ways. I know that you and your colleagues
Speaker 1: have been stymying some of the worst impulses of the
Speaker 1: Biden administration, particularly on the nominations, But I want to
Speaker 1: get the bad news out of the way first. Just
Speaker 1: even one single piece of legislation that's made its way
Speaker 1: through the House, the Equality Act, seems to me that
Speaker 1: maybe the single most radical piece of legislation ever in
Speaker 1: American history? Am I wrong? Am I overreacting here? Well?
Speaker 1: Give them time that they will pass even more radical stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, if I were to sum up the
Speaker 1: first fifty ish days of of of the Biden administration
Speaker 1: with three words, those words would be boring but radical.
Speaker 1: So I think what Joe Biden is doing that's smart
Speaker 1: is not making news. He's dull. He doesn't say much
Speaker 1: of anything. And listen, after four years of every day
Speaker 1: Donald Trump driving the news twenty four to seven, the
Speaker 1: latest tweet, the latest reporters breathlessly grasping their pearls. You know,
Speaker 1: I do think people kind of breathe a sigh of
Speaker 1: relief that you don't wake up and wonder what did
Speaker 1: the President say today? And I think Joe Biden is
Speaker 1: leaning into say as little as possible, be as boring
Speaker 1: as possible. But that is very much a mask. It's
Speaker 1: a mask that is designed to hide the really radical
Speaker 1: agenda they're moving forward. If you look at the nominees
Speaker 1: they're putting forward, you look at the Secretary of Homeland
Speaker 1: Security Mayorkas, who said, just a couple of days ago,
Speaker 1: said there is no crisis at the border, none whatsoever,
Speaker 1: right in the midst of their projecting over one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand unaccompanied children being detained at the border, and there
Speaker 1: is no crisis. There's no crisis because they've gone back
Speaker 1: to catch and release, and their view is, what's the crisis.
Speaker 1: We're letting everyone in. We're just not enforcing our laws.
Speaker 1: We're saying that pattern replicated over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: The Equality Act would be profoundly damaging, damaging to Christian schools,
Speaker 1: damaging to churches, the government forcing anyone, regardless of faith,
Speaker 1: regardless of belief, to embrace the lefts definition of gender,
Speaker 1: or rather lack thereof, and to do otherwise is to
Speaker 1: face serious and crushing legal penalties. That that is that
Speaker 1: that would be a profound transformation and a harmful transformation
Speaker 1: of our country. And yet it's all silently moving forward.
Speaker 1: You know, we're sitting here, it's Wednesday night when you
Speaker 1: and I are recording this, and tomorrow we're going to
Speaker 1: be taking up the so called stimulus bill. Now, the
Speaker 1: stimulus bill actually has nothing to do with stimulus. It's
Speaker 1: a title that might as well have been picked out
Speaker 1: of the air. It's one point nine trillion dollars, nine
Speaker 1: percent of which has to do with COVID nine percent.
Speaker 1: Ninety one percent is not health spending concerning COVID. And
Speaker 1: you know, you think about last year. Last year we
Speaker 1: passed five different COVID relief bills. Every one of them
Speaker 1: was bipartisans every one of them. Republicans worked with Democrats,
Speaker 1: rolled up our sleeves, said all right, let's work together
Speaker 1: on on assistance for healthcare workers. Let's work together on
Speaker 1: assistance for small businesses. Let's work together on vaccinations. Republicans
Speaker 1: are eager to do that again. Look, this COVID crisis
Speaker 1: is real. You could easily achieve a bipartisan bill if
Speaker 1: the Democrats wanted to. But it says something about Joe
Speaker 1: Biden zero interest in anything bipartisan. I think what we're
Speaker 1: going to see tomorrow is their intention is to ram
Speaker 1: this through with fifty Democrats and Kamala Harris breaking the tie.
Speaker 1: They don't want a single Republican vote. They probably won't
Speaker 1: get a single Republican vote because the bill is just
Speaker 1: a whole series of liberal wish lists that have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with COVID. It's just pent up desire and
Speaker 1: in particular desire to take care of their political allies,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a cynical way to approach it. Senator,
Speaker 1: do you think, though, that Republicans are going to face
Speaker 1: any backlash, knowing that the Democrats control the media, do
Speaker 1: you think they're going to face backlash for not voting
Speaker 1: for a COVID relief bill. You know, they're letting people
Speaker 1: hang out to dry amid this unprecedented crisis. I mean,
Speaker 1: will the Democrats succeed in any way at manipulating Publican
Speaker 1: voters even if you know ninety percent or ninety percent
Speaker 1: plus of this bill is just pork for Democrats? Do
Speaker 1: you think that message will be effective at all? We'll
Speaker 1: see There's no doubt the media will relentlessly show for
Speaker 1: the Democrats, because that's what they do now. They don't
Speaker 1: pretend otherwise. You know, I do think you will see
Speaker 1: Republicans voting for significant COVID relief tomorrow in the form
Speaker 1: of this is being brought up through the process called
Speaker 1: budget reconciliation, which we've talked about before. It's the main
Speaker 1: exception to the filibuster rule. It's the main way you
Speaker 1: can pass legislation where you don't need sixty votes in
Speaker 1: the Senate. You can just do it with fifty one.
Speaker 1: Aspect of budget reconciliation is vote Arama. We talked in
Speaker 1: an earlier verdict about vote Arama unlimited amendments. That's by statute,
Speaker 1: and so normally the majority leader can shut down amendments,
Speaker 1: and we've seen sadly majority leaders in both parties do that.
Speaker 1: If you're using budget reconciliation, you can't shut down amendments.
Speaker 1: I expect a lot of amendments tomorrow night. I think
Speaker 1: it is likely we will go all night. I think
Speaker 1: we may go into the morning. We may even go
Speaker 1: further than that into Friday. I think there is a
Speaker 1: real anger among Republicans in the Senate at this bill.
Speaker 1: At you know, Joe Biden gave an inauguration speech talking
Speaker 1: about unity and bipartisanship, and he starts his administration by
Speaker 1: saying to half the country go jump in a lake.
Speaker 1: Today he called the twenty nine million people in Texas,
Speaker 1: he called us Neanderthals. He's mad that Texas is open,
Speaker 1: and so you know, he just apparently we're cavemen. We're
Speaker 1: like in the Geico commercial and we're just we're just cavemen.
Speaker 1: You know. That's uh, you know, great job they're unifying,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it's it's reminiscent of Hillary calling
Speaker 1: calling half the country deplorables. It's it is a level
Speaker 1: of condescension. And if you look at this bill. All right,
Speaker 1: so the bill that passed the House had Chuck Schumer's
Speaker 1: Bridge to Canada because apparently that somehow will help us
Speaker 1: defeat COVID. The bill in the House had Nancy Pelosi's
Speaker 1: Tunnel of Love, a tunnel in Silicon Valley. Do I
Speaker 1: want to know what that is? I don't know. This
Speaker 1: doesn't sound it's not X rated. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: a boondoggle port project that Pelosi wanted to bring back
Speaker 1: to Silicon Valley. Has zero to do with COVID, nothing
Speaker 1: at all. And actually even with the media shilling form.
Speaker 1: It was interesting Pelosi blink last night and pulled it out.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting with just the tiniest bit of attention,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a provision in this bill that forgives
Speaker 1: loans to farmers from historically disadvantaged races. Now it is
Speaker 1: explicitly race tiede and it has no income test. So
Speaker 1: if you are a rich farmer who happens to be
Speaker 1: African American, happens to be Hispanic, happens to be Asian,
Speaker 1: your loans will be forgiven. If you're a poor white farmer,
Speaker 1: no soup for you, of course, you're too privileged. But
Speaker 1: it's worse than that. It is explicitly race based. Not
Speaker 1: only are they forgiving it the loans, do you know
Speaker 1: what they're what rate? They're forgiving the loans at one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty percent. That's literally written into the bill,
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty percent if you are from an
Speaker 1: historically disadvantage race or ethnicity. Look, we were talking about
Speaker 1: this at lunch and I turned to Ron Johnson. I said,
Speaker 1: I gotta get me a farm. You know, I'm Hispanic Hill.
Speaker 1: If they're if they're gonna like the one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty percent, like I mean, it is laughable and indefensable,
Speaker 1: and the bill is filled with garbage like that. I
Speaker 1: want to get to just on this point, Senator it's
Speaker 1: something you mentioned because I hadn't heard it put this
Speaker 1: way before, But I think it's somes it up boring
Speaker 1: but radical. And it seems that the way that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden has gotten away with this kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: he doesn't really hold press conferences. He was asked today
Speaker 1: about the briefing he had on the border and all
Speaker 1: these migrants who are coming over. They said, were you
Speaker 1: briefed on the border? He said yes. They said, what
Speaker 1: did you learn? He said a lot, and then he
Speaker 1: just kept walking and wouldn't answer. So it's very effective
Speaker 1: if you can have covered by the media and you
Speaker 1: can just sort of push these things through. People aren't
Speaker 1: going to look at it, and you'll be able to
Speaker 1: get your agenda. But there have been times, as you note,
Speaker 1: where the minute that a little light is shed on
Speaker 1: this in the case of Pelosi's pork spending, or in
Speaker 1: the case of the nomination of Neira Tandon, a particularly
Speaker 1: radical nominee, Joe Biden's nominee for the Office of Management
Speaker 1: and Budget, the minute a little bit of light is
Speaker 1: shined on all of a sudden, Joe Biden has a
Speaker 1: much harder time pushing this agenda through well. So I
Speaker 1: actually take a different lesson from Naratanden. So Nara Tanden
Speaker 1: and was nominated to be the head of the Office
Speaker 1: of Management of Budget. It's a cabinet position, very important
Speaker 1: cabinet position. And I don't know Nara, but apparently she
Speaker 1: was an activist and outspoken and led this political think
Speaker 1: tank shop, and she had this habit of tweeting hard
Speaker 1: partisan attacks at senators and it seemed that she had
Speaker 1: criticized just about every senator. One of the senators she
Speaker 1: criticized all the time was Bernie Sanders because she was
Speaker 1: a hardcore Hillary supporter, so she blasted Bernie constantly. She
Speaker 1: blasted Republicans, Mitch McConnell. I think she called Mitch voldemart,
Speaker 1: which is pretty funny. She blasted Susan Collins. I mean
Speaker 1: she's she's you know, said Susan Collins is the worst.
Speaker 1: And apparently she has nine pages of tweets about me.
Speaker 1: I knew she was not a fan of You're a Senator,
Speaker 1: but I did. I didn't know it was quite that
Speaker 1: extensive for commentary. So my first reaction is, she's really
Speaker 1: not very good at Twitter, because I don't think i've
Speaker 1: ever read a tweet she sent about me and and so,
Speaker 1: and I'm on Twitter a lot, so it says something
Speaker 1: like the only one I know of the content of
Speaker 1: which Rob Portman, Senator Republican from Ohio read at her hearing,
Speaker 1: where she tweeted that that vampires have more heart than
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz and so I hadn't seen it when she
Speaker 1: said it, but when Rob read it at the hearing,
Speaker 1: I laughed out loud, and I jumped on Twitter and said,
Speaker 1: you know why she being so mean to vampires? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's outrageous. But what's interesting what she went down for
Speaker 1: was not being radical. What she went down for she'd
Speaker 1: criticized a bunch of senators, right, She'd sent some mean tweets.
Speaker 1: It was interesting. Last week I did Hugh Hewitt's radio show,
Speaker 1: and you know Hugh, he's a good guy, he's a friend,
Speaker 1: and interesting that surprised me. Hugh pushed me on this
Speaker 1: and pressed me really hard to vote for Nia Tandon
Speaker 1: and I was like, really, why, like what and he
Speaker 1: was and he's like, well, the standard can't be that
Speaker 1: mean tweets makes you unconfirmable. And I actually had a
Speaker 1: bit of a constitutional debate with you where I said,
Speaker 1: you know, your constitutional scholar, Hugh, the constitutional system provides
Speaker 1: for executive nominations to be made by the president confirmed
Speaker 1: by the Senate. And it has been true since the
Speaker 1: very first Congress that if you attack and blast a
Speaker 1: bunch of senators, you ain't get confirmed. Like it's real.
Speaker 1: Simply that this is not actually a Twitter phenomenon. I
Speaker 1: promise you in the George Washington administration, if you wanted
Speaker 1: to get nominated to the cabinet and you attacked a
Speaker 1: bunch of senitors, they're going to vote against you. That
Speaker 1: Hugh pressed me on. He said, well, she's not the
Speaker 1: worst of Biden's nominees, and I actually agree in terms
Speaker 1: of substance. Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, was much worse. He's
Speaker 1: been a radical, he's pushing for open borders. And I
Speaker 1: think the most indefensible nominee is Javier Bassa, who's been
Speaker 1: nominated to lead a HHS Health and Human Services. And
Speaker 1: Hugh agreed with me on that, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: maybe you should go to Mansion because the reason she
Speaker 1: went down as Joe Mansion said he wouldn't vote for Narritandon,
Speaker 1: and Hugh said, we'll go to Mansion, and you and
Speaker 1: Joe together announce you're going to support Narritandon and he'll
Speaker 1: save her nomination and convince him to vote instead against Bessarah.
Speaker 1: I said, I'll tell you what, Hugh, If you can
Speaker 1: get Mansion to vote No. One Bessarah, sure, I'll vote
Speaker 1: for Narritandon that. And here's why, let's stop for a
Speaker 1: second on Bassarah, because I think it's likely to be
Speaker 1: a party line vote right now. I think it appears
Speaker 1: every Democrat will vote for him, and every Republican will
Speaker 1: vote now. Bassarah is the Attorney general California. It's a
Speaker 1: long time congressman. He's been nominated to be the Secretary
Speaker 1: of Health and Human Services. He's not a doctor. He
Speaker 1: has no scientific background. He has no medical background. He
Speaker 1: has no background and healthcare administration. He has no background
Speaker 1: in virology and vaccines. He has no background even in logistics.
Speaker 1: HHS is right now in the middle of the largest
Speaker 1: vaccine distribution effort our country has ever seen. Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has nominated a trial lawyer who's a radical leftist. As
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, his only experience with healthcare
Speaker 1: is suing the little sisters of the poor, which he denies.
Speaker 1: During his testimony, he said, I never sued the nuns.
Speaker 1: If you're having to explain why you didn't technically sue nuns,
Speaker 1: that's a problem. You're not in a good position, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, just on the merits of it. Pause
Speaker 1: and think about what the reaction would be if a
Speaker 1: Republican president nominated as Secretary of HHS someone with zero
Speaker 1: medical experience, zero health experience, zero experience with anything related
Speaker 1: to HHS in the midst of a global pandemic, when
Speaker 1: HHS is incredibly important. This guy's wildly unqualified. But why
Speaker 1: did he get the nomination? Number one, the Democrats it's
Speaker 1: a box chess exercise, and so he's Hispanic. That fits,
Speaker 1: that fits their desire to check that box. But number two,
Speaker 1: he's been a radical, and so they want want him
Speaker 1: for his political positions. I think we actually ought to
Speaker 1: have someone running HHS who I don't know know something
Speaker 1: about viruses. I mean, I mean that is that asking
Speaker 1: too much? And and Biden claims claims his priorities defeating COVID,
Speaker 1: and yet he nominates someone with no medical experience, and
Speaker 1: mind you at the same time saying follow the science,
Speaker 1: except right, the person he's putting there doesn't know anything
Speaker 1: about science. Well, of course, and the Bissara nomination, especially
Speaker 1: as someone who fled the Republic of California and Nussolini's
Speaker 1: dictatorship of California, as some of us call it. I
Speaker 1: remember Bissarah, he's a very radical guy. But but to
Speaker 1: your point earlier of boring but radical, you know, I
Speaker 1: expect radicalism from someone like Bissarah. I expect radicalism from
Speaker 1: someone like Neritandon. But you made the point. I believe this.
Speaker 1: We that even the so called moderate nominees, people like
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland, who's nominated for Attorney General. He's supposed to
Speaker 1: be the moderate guy, he's supposed to be maybe the
Speaker 1: most moderate person that Biden puts up, he would appear
Speaker 1: to be just as radical as everybody else from his
Speaker 1: testimony maybe. So when Biden nominated Merrick Garland, my initial
Speaker 1: reaction I was relieved, because there are a lot of
Speaker 1: radical partisan lawyers that could have been nominated as AG.
Speaker 1: For that matter, how your but Sarah is actually qualified
Speaker 1: to be AG. He's not qualified for HHS, but he
Speaker 1: is in fact an attorney general. But Sarah is a
Speaker 1: rabbit partisan, so he would have been a much worse
Speaker 1: Attorney general on the face of it than Merrick Garland.
Speaker 1: Merrick Garland spent twenty three years as a Court of
Speaker 1: Appeals judge. He's a Democrat, he was in the Clinton administration,
Speaker 1: but he hasn't built a reputation as a hard partisan.
Speaker 1: His reputation as a judge has been one of integrity
Speaker 1: and he hasn't been seen as overly partisan. I was gratified.
Speaker 1: My reaction was, you know what, this may be about
Speaker 1: the best we can hope for from the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: I think there were a number of Republicans on Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary that were initially inclined to vote for Merrick Garland.
Speaker 1: And his confirmation hearing, it was remarkable because he refused
Speaker 1: to answer essentially anything. He was asked question after question
Speaker 1: after question, and he just refused to answer them. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the questions concerned John Durham. Now John
Speaker 1: Durham is the special counsel that was appointed to investigate
Speaker 1: the abuse of power Operation Crossfire Hurricane and the extent
Speaker 1: to which the Obama Biden administration broke the law in
Speaker 1: targeting Donald Trump, very important investigation. Marick Garland was asked
Speaker 1: by me and others. Are you going to fire him?
Speaker 1: That is a really important question if you're going to
Speaker 1: have any semblance of integrity and rule of law at
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice. Now, when Bill Barr was nominated
Speaker 1: BAG he was asked the same thing about Bob Muller,
Speaker 1: Are you going to fire him? And Barr said he
Speaker 1: said he would only fire him for good cause. And
Speaker 1: so that was during his confirmation hearing. Barr said, absent
Speaker 1: good cause, no, he wouldn't fire me, and he didn't.
Speaker 1: He let Muller complete his investigation, submit his report. Barr
Speaker 1: kept his word on that. Garland refused to make that commitment.
Speaker 1: We said, how about you hold of the same standard
Speaker 1: Bill Bar did. Would you agree only to fire him
Speaker 1: for a good cause? Nope, can't do that. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything about it. Just don't know anything about it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to make the commitment. And he
Speaker 1: did that over and over and over again. And then
Speaker 1: I actually submitted a lot of senators submitted questions for
Speaker 1: the record in writing, and he would see in writing.
Speaker 1: He refused to take a position. He was asked, will
Speaker 1: DJ prosecute people across the border illegally? He said, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I can't tell you, but that shouldn't be complicated.
Speaker 1: The Constitution obliges the president to take care that the
Speaker 1: laws be faithfully executed. He said, I can't tell you
Speaker 1: if we'll prosecute people who crossed the border illegally. I
Speaker 1: asked him if the Department of Justice would urge the
Speaker 1: courts to overturn the Heller decision, which which upheld the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment right to keep into our arms. He wouldn't
Speaker 1: tell us that. One after the other after the other,
Speaker 1: where he refused to answer even the barrass minimum questions.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say it was sad after all of that,
Speaker 1: after essentially telling the senators go jump in a lake,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to answer any of your questions. All
Speaker 1: the Democrats voted for him, and a bunch of the
Speaker 1: Republicans voted for him. Yeah, and you kind of throw
Speaker 1: your hands up in the air. I still don't know
Speaker 1: if he will be a hard partisan as attorney general.
Speaker 1: He is very likely to be confirmed, but I have
Speaker 1: no reason to think that he will have any willingness
Speaker 1: to stand up to the hard partisans that will surround him.
Speaker 1: Based on his performance at his confirmation hearing, it was
Speaker 1: the sergeant's schultze sense I see nothing, I know nothing.
Speaker 1: I mean that that is essentially what he was telling us,
Speaker 1: because what you would hope from the so called moderate nominee.
Speaker 1: I shared your relief actually when it was reported that
Speaker 1: Garland was going to get the nomination over some of
Speaker 1: the radical people. But you would expect from the so
Speaker 1: called moderate nominee to give you some answer, to give
Speaker 1: you some reason to have confidence in their moderation. We
Speaker 1: didn't get that, but you're seeing this as part of
Speaker 1: a broader strategy from the White House. Jen Saki, the
Speaker 1: White House Press Secretary, was asked, will Joe Biden force
Speaker 1: doctors to violate their conscience and performed abortions? She couldn't
Speaker 1: give an answer on that. Jen Saki was asked about
Speaker 1: a possible world in which Mexico sends six hundred to
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand migrants to the United States to work.
Speaker 1: She was asked for comment on that. She said, well,
Speaker 1: she couldn't possibly comment on that. This just quiet dismissal
Speaker 1: of questions and the kind of boring radicalism that we're
Speaker 1: getting is pretty worrisome, and you know, I have to
Speaker 1: bring it up because you're probably the most famous reader
Speaker 1: of Doctor SEUs in the entire country outside of politics,
Speaker 1: outside of the government. You're seeing private companies canceling Doctor SEUs,
Speaker 1: taking the Spuds off of mister potato Head, and now
Speaker 1: taking very ordinary, mainstream scholarly books off of Amazon, largest
Speaker 1: bookseller in the world because they contradict left wing orthodoxies.
Speaker 1: It feels as though the liberal establishment is colluding and
Speaker 1: closing in on us. It is the death Star and
Speaker 1: they're trying to eliminate all their enemies. Look, hasbro you
Speaker 1: mentioned mister potato head. They dropped the mister. It's now
Speaker 1: just potato head. It's not mister potato head, it's not
Speaker 1: missus potato head, it's just potato head. So much for
Speaker 1: preferred pronouns. And by the way, among the attachments on
Speaker 1: the potato head, I don't recall many that actually distinguished
Speaker 1: male and female. I'm glad for that. We didn't need
Speaker 1: to get that quite anatomically specific. True, you know, the
Speaker 1: Doctor SEUs thing is just moronic. And the president removed
Speaker 1: Doctor SEUs from I don't know what is it National
Speaker 1: Reading Week or something. I don't even remember exactly what
Speaker 1: it is, some celebration of reading the Doctor SEUs has
Speaker 1: usually been a part of that. Biden pulled it out
Speaker 1: of You know what's amazing. I looked today on Amazon.
Speaker 1: I was actually checking my own book One Vote Away
Speaker 1: and periodically seeing where I By the way, if you
Speaker 1: haven't gone and bought One Vote Away, go on Amazon.
Speaker 1: You should buy it. It's a great book. Now's the
Speaker 1: time to do it too, before it gets canceled. Well,
Speaker 1: there is that, And I was checking it and do
Speaker 1: you know the author of the top eight best selling
Speaker 1: books on Amazon today number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,
Speaker 1: and eight. I'm gonna guess Doctor SEUs. And actually of
Speaker 1: the top hundred, more than half of the top hundred
Speaker 1: were Doctor SEUs. It's really funny. I have never seen
Speaker 1: on Amazon anything like this. As people are going on,
Speaker 1: so I jumped on Twitter. I tweeted out a screenshot
Speaker 1: of that and said, you know who knew Joe Biden
Speaker 1: was such a great bookseller, right? You know? I asked
Speaker 1: him if he could try to ban my book. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you know, let's go back to number one on Amazon.
Speaker 1: Well we'll take it. But it is and actually the
Speaker 1: even more the Doctor Seuss thing is is idiotic. It's asinine.
Speaker 1: The even more dangerous thing is Amazon now taking down
Speaker 1: books it disagrees with, right, because Amazon has a near
Speaker 1: monopoly on book sales. Well, I do want to pause
Speaker 1: you there, a senator, because this is an argument I
Speaker 1: hear from left wingers a lot when we decry Cancel
Speaker 1: Culture and Amazon taking down a very humorously titled but
Speaker 1: actually scholarly book from Ryan T. Anderson, which is called
Speaker 1: When Harry Became Sally. That's sort of the book at
Speaker 1: issue here. They say, Michael, this isn't cancel Culture. This
Speaker 1: is a private company that wants to take take out
Speaker 1: a product that they don't agree with that's absolutely within
Speaker 1: their rights. Stop complaining. This is just the free market
Speaker 1: at work. Well, and that's the argument they use on
Speaker 1: social media and big tech generally, they just say, go
Speaker 1: build your own. By the way, Parlor did build their own,
Speaker 1: and big Tech colluded to take them down and destroy them,
Speaker 1: and so they want no competition. It has long been
Speaker 1: US laws that monopolies cannot abuse monopoly power. Amazon and
Speaker 1: Google are the two most powerful companies on the face
Speaker 1: of planet Earth. And when it comes to books, actually
Speaker 1: you're in My mutual friend Ben Shapiro has been really
Speaker 1: good on this topic, and I've been retweeting them a
Speaker 1: lot this week because you know, you think about Fahrenheit
Speaker 1: four fifty one, Ray Bradbury's classic dystopian novel, four fifty
Speaker 1: one being the temperature at which paper burns. That's all
Speaker 1: about censorship and book burning. And today, with Amazon, you
Speaker 1: don't actually have to burn the books anymore because if
Speaker 1: everything is becoming digital, Yeah, you can burn books just
Speaker 1: by hitting delete. If Jeff Bezos gets to decide what
Speaker 1: books exist and what books don't, and you know, sure
Speaker 1: it's a defense. Well maybe there's some bookstore in Peoria
Speaker 1: that has the book, but everyone gets their books from Amazon.
Speaker 1: That is suddenly giving a tech overlord the power to say,
Speaker 1: here are the books that are now you are prohibited
Speaker 1: from reading functionally because our monopoly will not allow anyone
Speaker 1: to get them. Because big tech is already controlling the
Speaker 1: flow of news throughout the Internet, I mean, they're controlling
Speaker 1: the new public square. But this takes that even further. Now,
Speaker 1: as you say, I think it's such an astute point
Speaker 1: when when all the books are digital, they can go
Speaker 1: back and control the flow of classical information. They can
Speaker 1: go in and if some big tech oligarch wanted to
Speaker 1: delete that book from your e reader. It's one reason
Speaker 1: that I find myself now buying physical media much more
Speaker 1: so because it is a threat. And I think to
Speaker 1: throw our hands in the air and say, oh, there's
Speaker 1: nothing we can do. It's a private company. I think
Speaker 1: it totally disregards the enormity of the problem. This has been.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to say a little bit of a downer
Speaker 1: of an episode and a downer of a first forty
Speaker 1: two days of an administration. So I do want to
Speaker 1: end on a high note with a mail bag question,
Speaker 1: and this is a genuine high note. This question from
Speaker 1: NBA Bubble question for Ted how do you feel about
Speaker 1: Texas being reopened? Fantastic? It needed to happen. It is great. Look,
Speaker 1: Texans want to go back to work, We want to
Speaker 1: go back to school. And by the way, schools, we
Speaker 1: need to be talking more about schools. I'll give you
Speaker 1: a stat that is really stunning. Forty percent of school
Speaker 1: kids in America are back in in person school five
Speaker 1: days a week for less than half. That's staggering. And
Speaker 1: Democratic politicians do not give a damn because these kids,
Speaker 1: by the way, that are not going to school. It's
Speaker 1: now been been a year, it's been a year with
Speaker 1: no school, and these kids are falling behind. The data
Speaker 1: are showing they're falling behind six months, falling behind a year,
Speaker 1: and you never get that back. That's just lost, and
Speaker 1: we're getting a whole generation and it's not uniformly distributed.
Speaker 1: So rich families are finding a way to educate their kids,
Speaker 1: whether it's going to a private school, whether it is
Speaker 1: doing homeschooling, whether it's hiring tutors. If you've got money,
Speaker 1: you're going to make sure your kids are being educated.
Speaker 1: But low income kids, single moms, they don't have those choices,
Speaker 1: they don't have those abilities. And so if the local
Speaker 1: school isn't open, and in particular, if the single moms
Speaker 1: working a couple of jobs and being pulled nine different directions,
Speaker 1: that just means those kids are getting left behind. They're
Speaker 1: not learning to read, they're not learning to write, they're
Speaker 1: not learning the skills they need for life. It disproportionately
Speaker 1: harms African American kids and Hispanic kids, and the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party doesn't care at all. They say follow the side.
Speaker 1: The head of the CDC said kids need to be
Speaker 1: back in school, and they immediately said, oh no, never mind,
Speaker 1: never mind, not that science. Yeah, don't why because the
Speaker 1: teachers union bosses don't want the schools open. And it's
Speaker 1: this goes back to boring. But radical Joe Biden made
Speaker 1: the determination he cares more about the money from and
Speaker 1: the campaign donations from the teachers union bosses than he
Speaker 1: cares about fifty million school kids in this country. And
Speaker 1: and the proof is in the pudding because they're willing
Speaker 1: to so. Gavin Newson, the governor of your former state,
Speaker 1: was blasting Texas As it's utterly reckless because you're opening
Speaker 1: businesses and opening schools. I say, I say, God, bless freedom.
Speaker 1: By the way, the press went a little bit crazy
Speaker 1: because I did William Wallace's Cry of Freedom at Cepack,
Speaker 1: and I think a bunch of reporters started having fits
Speaker 1: and tremors of rage that I would do such a thing. Oh,
Speaker 1: it was so awful. They couldn't bear the word. But
Speaker 1: you know what, Californians are coming to Texas. It's almost
Speaker 1: like vampires and sunlight to use a near attan in reference.
Speaker 1: But look, there's a reason why thousands and thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of Californians are fleeing Californian coming to Texas because
Speaker 1: you can actually go to work, you can actually have
Speaker 1: a job, you can actually open your small business, you
Speaker 1: can actually have your kids in school, you can actually
Speaker 1: enjoy some freedom that we're not run by a bunch
Speaker 1: of nutbags. And by the way, Newsom, what does it
Speaker 1: say that Newsom is so crazy that he's getting recalled
Speaker 1: in bright blue California, right that even the left wing
Speaker 1: voters there like, whoa dude, You've shut the whole state
Speaker 1: down for a year. This is a problem, and that's
Speaker 1: what Biden wants to do the country. I know this
Speaker 1: is the glimmer of hope that I have to hold
Speaker 1: on to at least. And I think obviously we're going
Speaker 1: to see how this plays out. You're going to be
Speaker 1: up all night at the Senate and voting on these
Speaker 1: sorts of things. Is if we can shed a little
Speaker 1: bit of light, then perhaps we can call people's attention
Speaker 1: to this boring yet radical agenda, and perhaps when you
Speaker 1: call enough people's attention to it, perhaps we'll be able
Speaker 1: to stop it and fight for freedom. We'll have to
Speaker 1: leave it there, but there will be much more to
Speaker 1: talk about next time. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack,
Speaker 1: a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,
Speaker 1: and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs
Speaker 1: Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates
Speaker 1: running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.