Speaker 1: Welcome in his verdict with Ted Cruz the Weekend Review,
Speaker 1: Ben Ferguson with you as always, and my, oh my,
Speaker 1: do we have a lot of big stories that happened
Speaker 1: this week, especially before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Monday.
Speaker 1: First up, Bernie Sanders and the President Joe Biden going
Speaker 1: out with a bang, saying to any rich person in America,
Speaker 1: you better be careful before you work with Trump, because
Speaker 1: when we get back our power, we're coming after you.
Speaker 1: They even use the word ola garks. Yes, we'll explain
Speaker 1: that for you in just a moment. Also, shocking news
Speaker 1: coming out about rape gangs in the UK and how
Speaker 1: this is a very concerning issue, especially for what's happened
Speaker 1: in the United States of America with so many kids
Speaker 1: being lost that have come across the southern border. So
Speaker 1: what will the administration do about that. We'll explain that
Speaker 1: for you as well. And finally, Donald Trump went to
Speaker 1: Capitol Hill to meet with leaders on the Hill. How
Speaker 1: to sit down with the Senate Republican So what was
Speaker 1: said behind closed doors and what does it mean for
Speaker 1: the Trump agenda.
Speaker 2: It's the Weekend Review and it starts right now.
Speaker 1: It is also goes back to this other narrative when
Speaker 1: we heard it from the President of the United States
Speaker 1: of America the other night. He was obsessed with this
Speaker 1: idea of oligarchs. I actually think this was a little
Speaker 1: bit different. And Bernie Sanders started naming names when he
Speaker 1: was doing the confirmation hearing for the man who's up
Speaker 1: for Treasury Secretary, and I want to get your take,
Speaker 1: and we're going to play Bernie. But one of the
Speaker 1: things I felt was really kind of icky about this
Speaker 1: was the fact that it's like, hey, we're warning some
Speaker 1: of you that have stepped out of line from the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party that we're coming after you when we get
Speaker 1: our power back if you step out too far into
Speaker 1: the conservative side of things. And that's why we're warning
Speaker 1: you that if we name you as an oligar, then
Speaker 1: if we get our when we get our power back,
Speaker 1: there's going to be some sort of hell to pay.
Speaker 1: And you better be careful how much you work with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump and you support freedom of speech, and you
Speaker 1: support freedom of expression online and the able the ability
Speaker 1: to post things, and that's what it was boiling down to,
Speaker 1: and it was I think even more weird. It was
Speaker 1: in a back and forth with the guy for Treasury secretary.
Speaker 1: It's like, wait, are you trying to weaponize Treasury to say, hey,
Speaker 1: your job is to now make sure there's no billionaires
Speaker 1: in America.
Speaker 3: Well, look, it's it's worth giving a listen. So listen
Speaker 3: to this back and forth. And in terms of the
Speaker 3: demagogic language of the Democrat Party, this is a great example,
Speaker 3: give a listen.
Speaker 4: When you have a small number of multi billionaires who
Speaker 4: have enormous economic, media and political power. Would you agree
Speaker 4: with President Biden who last night stated, and I quote
Speaker 4: and Oligauki is taking shape in America of extreme wealth,
Speaker 4: power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic
Speaker 4: rights and freedom. Send of coot. That's what President Biden
Speaker 4: said last night. I agree with him, do you.
Speaker 5: I enjoyed our visit and I hope you got my
Speaker 5: follow up materials that we on the discussions, my predicious
Speaker 5: thinkings on the terrorists and China and the three billionaires
Speaker 5: who you listed that all made the money themselves. Mister
Speaker 5: Musk came to the country as an immigrant.
Speaker 4: I understand that. But what I'm asking you is when
Speaker 4: you have a handful of people like Musk who will
Speaker 4: soon be part of the Trump administration and others. When
Speaker 4: you have three people owing more wealth than the bottom
Speaker 4: half of American society, when these people have enormous influence
Speaker 4: over the media, when they spend huge amounts of money
Speaker 4: in both political parties to elect candidates. What Biden said
Speaker 4: last night is we're moving toward an oligarchy. I'm asking
Speaker 4: you that question. Do you think, forget how they made
Speaker 4: their money, do you think that when so few people
Speaker 4: have so much wealth and so much economic and political power,
Speaker 4: that that is an oligoxic form of society?
Speaker 5: Well, I wouldn't note that they. President Biden gave the
Speaker 5: Presidential Metal of Freedom to two people who I think
Speaker 5: would qualify for his oligarchs.
Speaker 4: So this is not a condemnation of any one individual.
Speaker 4: I'm just asking you when so few people have so
Speaker 4: much wealth and power, But do you think that that
Speaker 4: is an oligarchic form of society?
Speaker 5: Senator? I think it depends on the ability to move
Speaker 5: up and down the end.
Speaker 4: No, that's not really d answer. I mean, even if
Speaker 4: you had that mobility, no matter who those individuals might be.
Speaker 4: All right, but let me ask you another question.
Speaker 1: I love there how he's like, all right, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: move on because this isn't landing, and just threw it
Speaker 1: back in my face that we just gave medals of
Speaker 1: the highest level of metal you can give to a civilian,
Speaker 1: to two of the people that would be categorized oligarks.
Speaker 1: One of them, by the way, is a hard core
Speaker 1: radical by the name of George Soros.
Speaker 3: George Soros just got the Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: He celebrated. He also gave it to Hillary Clinton, and
Speaker 3: and by the way, before that, Barack Obama gave the
Speaker 3: Medal of Freedom to Bill Gates. And listen, the position
Speaker 3: of Bernie Sanders is we hate billionaires. Unless you're billionaires
Speaker 3: who support socialists and the Democrat Party, then you're okay.
Speaker 3: But to be clear, you're only okay if you're buying absolution.
Speaker 3: The instant you stop buying absolution, we will demonize you
Speaker 3: and we will burn you an effigy in the streets.
Speaker 3: And I gotta say, I like Scott Besson's point. He's like, wait,
Speaker 3: you're attack these people. None of these three people you're
Speaker 3: attacking none of them inherited wealth.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk came as an immigrant from Africa, like he
Speaker 3: built amazing companies and and to a socialist, they don't
Speaker 3: care what you did to build wealth. They're going to
Speaker 3: demonize you. They're going to attack you. And it's an
Speaker 3: example of and and by the way, it's it's why
Speaker 3: you get so many incredibly rich, so many billionaires who
Speaker 3: backed the Democrat Party because they're basically paying for protection
Speaker 3: from Roba spear from from from the guillotine in the
Speaker 3: French Revolution. And and I got to say that that
Speaker 3: is where the Democrat Party is. But I'll give Scott
Speaker 3: Besson a shout out. He responded with fantastic answers, which
Speaker 3: is why Bernie ran ran to the hills and ran
Speaker 3: away because he realized it wasn't going the way he wanted.
Speaker 3: Scott Besson's going to get confirmed. Every Trump cabinet member
Speaker 3: members going to get confirmed.
Speaker 1: Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation,
Speaker 1: you can go back and listen to the full podcast
Speaker 1: from earlier this week. Now onto story number two. I
Speaker 1: want to move to another story you mentioned earlier. And
Speaker 1: this is a story that on face value, it's something
Speaker 1: that's in the UK, and there's somebody that say, well,
Speaker 1: like this is the UK, why does this matter? To me,
Speaker 1: and I want to connect it to what has happened
Speaker 1: in this country because of our open borders and the
Speaker 1: number of miners that we have released in this country
Speaker 1: to non family members through the Biden Harris program, and
Speaker 1: when we go back to check on them, they are
Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. There are tens of thousands of children.
Speaker 3: Over three hundred thousand, ten thounds, over three hundred thousands
Speaker 3: that's in the United States that the Biden administration has lost,
Speaker 3: that they do not know where they are, that they
Speaker 3: came as unaccompanied miners and they were handed over to adults,
Speaker 3: and they have no idea where they are, and many
Speaker 3: of them are, no doubt being abused. And the corrupt
Speaker 3: corporate media could not care less. The Democrats could not
Speaker 3: care less. I don't know a Democrat senator who's ever
Speaker 3: asked about the three hundred thousand children that this administration lost.
Speaker 3: They don't care about it. But look, I want to say,
Speaker 3: what's happened in the UK and is happening right now
Speaker 3: is horrifying and it's a real warning sign here. I
Speaker 3: want to start by reading from an article in the
Speaker 3: Free Press because it sums it up really effectively. It's
Speaker 3: entitled the biggest peacetime crime and cover up in British history.
Speaker 3: The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls
Speaker 3: by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades
Speaker 3: is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe.
Speaker 3: It went on for many years, it is still going on,
Speaker 3: and there has been no justice for the vast majority
Speaker 3: of the victims. British governments, both conservative and labor, hoped
Speaker 3: that they had buried the story after a few symbolic
Speaker 3: prosecutions in the twenty tens, and it looked like they
Speaker 3: had succeeded until Elon Musk read some of the court
Speaker 3: papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on x over
Speaker 3: the new year. Britain now stands shamed before the world.
Speaker 3: The public's suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions,
Speaker 3: calls for a public inquiry and demands for accountability. The
Speaker 3: scandal is already reshaping British politics. It's not just about
Speaker 3: the heinous nature of the crimes. It's that every level
Speaker 3: of the British system is implicated in the cover up.
Speaker 3: Social workers were intimidated into silence, local police ignored excus
Speaker 3: used and even embedded pedophile rapists across dozens of cities.
Speaker 3: Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in
Speaker 3: the name of maintaining what they called quote community relations.
Speaker 3: Local councilors and members of Parliament rejected pleas for help
Speaker 3: from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs and labor
Speaker 3: MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and islamophobia.
Speaker 3: The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of
Speaker 3: their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain's media
Speaker 3: elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and
Speaker 3: its self serving priorities. They did this to defend the
Speaker 3: failed model of multiculturalism and to avoid asking hard questions
Speaker 3: about failures of immigration policy and assimilar They did this
Speaker 3: because they were afraid of being called racist or islamophobic.
Speaker 3: They did this because Britain's traditional class snobbery had fused
Speaker 3: with the new snobbery of political correctness. All of which
Speaker 3: is why no one knows precisely how many thousands of
Speaker 3: young girls were raped in how many towns across Britain
Speaker 3: since the nineteen seventies. What we do know is that
Speaker 3: the epicenter was in the post industrial mill towns of
Speaker 3: England's North and Midlands, where immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh
Speaker 3: settled in the nineteen sixties. White locals say the grooming
Speaker 3: and rapes began soon after. In Rotherdam, the run down
Speaker 3: Yorkshire city where the scandal first broke. Local police and
Speaker 3: councilors were notified about systematic grooming and sex abuse by
Speaker 3: two thousand and one. The first convictions did not occur
Speaker 3: until twenty ten, when five men in Pakistani background were
Speaker 3: jailed for multiple offenses against girls as young as twelve
Speaker 3: years old. The breadth of what occurred is staggering and
Speaker 3: the systematic willingness to look aside is truly horrific.
Speaker 2: And let's be clear.
Speaker 1: The reason why they look the other way you mentioned
Speaker 1: it is really from a pr standpoint. They wanted to
Speaker 1: have quote, good relations and not have a stigma related
Speaker 1: to people that were coming from the Middle East that
Speaker 1: were there, so they said, all right, we'll just look
Speaker 1: the other way and that'll make it easier.
Speaker 3: It's actually less Middle East than real, primarily Pakistan Pakistan,
Speaker 3: and it's Pakistani Muslims and what we've seen. So we
Speaker 3: have seen since the nineteen seventies the grooming and serial
Speaker 3: rape of thousands of children. And the issue is in
Speaker 3: particular relevant because Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was England's
Speaker 3: Director of Public Prosecutions between twenty eight and twenty thirteen,
Speaker 3: and so he was actively involved in looking the other way.
Speaker 3: And all right, so let's break down a little bit
Speaker 3: of the facts of what happened, because the story sounds
Speaker 3: so extreme as to not be be credible. But the
Speaker 3: child sex rapes weren't just individual instances done by rogue individuals. Rather,
Speaker 3: in nearly all the cases, there were groups of mostly
Speaker 3: Pakistani men that cooperated and conspired to groom and sexually
Speaker 3: abuse girls over decades, and they targeted mostly vulnerable girls,
Speaker 3: poor orphans, children in care homes. They raped the girls,
Speaker 3: they passed them around network, so raping them one after
Speaker 3: the other after the other. Some of these child rapists
Speaker 3: had roles in local governments. The leader of one of
Speaker 3: the rape gangs in Oldham, individual named Shabir Ahmed, worked
Speaker 3: for the local council as a quote welfare rights officer
Speaker 3: and ran his gang from the council's welfare office. And
Speaker 3: let me give you some of the facts because they're
Speaker 3: just just horrifying. One of the victims a girl named
Speaker 3: Victoria Agaglia. Victoria was a fifteen year old teenager and
Speaker 3: she was subject to the governments round the clock caretaking,
Speaker 3: but she went missing nineteen times in three months, from
Speaker 3: up to two weeks at a time. Instead of trying
Speaker 3: to find her, the welfare worker simply messaged her saying
Speaker 3: when are you coming back?
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: It turns out she would was forced into a Pakistani
Speaker 3: sex ring by older women who raped her in exchange
Speaker 3: for cash, alcohol and hard drugs. She was sometimes abused
Speaker 3: by up to twenty five men in a single night.
Speaker 3: Victoria wrote wrote a heartbreaking letter to the police documenting
Speaker 3: her abuse, but it was ignored and eventually ignored, and
Speaker 3: she was found dead from a fatal dose of heroine
Speaker 3: given by an abuser. And she was repeatedly drugged and
Speaker 3: raped the night she was killed. I'll give you another example,
Speaker 3: Charlene Downs. In Blackpool. In two thousand and three, fourteen
Speaker 3: year old Charlene Downs disappeared. Police had a lead that
Speaker 3: Charlene's body had been dismembered and disposed of at a
Speaker 3: kebab shop in Blackpool. Police uncovered evidence that Charlene had
Speaker 3: been the victim of child sexual exploitation after being groomed
Speaker 3: by a gang. The criminals have not been found and
Speaker 3: her body is missing. Twenty years later, Lucy Lowe in Telford,
Speaker 3: an individual named Azar Ali Mahmood groom Lucy Lowe from
Speaker 3: the age of twelve and impregnated her at fourteen. He
Speaker 3: burned her alive in her own home with her mother,
Speaker 3: her disabled sister, and her unborn second child, also fathered
Speaker 3: by Mahmood. Me Mood was jailed for life in two
Speaker 3: thousand and one for murder, not for the sex crimes.
Speaker 5: For murder.
Speaker 3: Reports indicated that South Asian men were targeting teenagers in
Speaker 3: Telford since the nineteen eighties. I'll give you one other example.
Speaker 3: Sophie in Oldham in two thousand and six, a twelve
Speaker 3: year old girl named Sophie entered a police station and
Speaker 3: reported that she had just been molested in a graveyard
Speaker 3: by a man named Ali. A desk officer told her
Speaker 3: to come back with an adult when she was sober.
Speaker 3: Mind you, she was twelve. Two men a cop rusted
Speaker 3: her in the police station, joined by a third, they
Speaker 3: raped her in their car. When they dumped her on
Speaker 3: the street, she asked a man named Sarwar Ali for directions.
Speaker 3: He took her to his home, raped her, and gave
Speaker 3: her money for bus fare home. Sarwar Ali was arrested
Speaker 3: and remanded to prison over his attack on Sophie. However,
Speaker 3: he was then released following a bail application to a judge,
Speaker 3: despite being an illegal immigrant in the United Kingdom. He
Speaker 3: subsequently failed to attend his appointment with the Immigration Service
Speaker 3: and is still at large. Then a man named Shaquille
Speaker 3: Chowdery pulled up in his car and offered to take
Speaker 3: Sophie home. He abducted her, took her to a house,
Speaker 3: fed her alcohol. Soon after, he and four other men
Speaker 3: repeatedly raped her. Only Shaquille was convicted six years in prison.
Speaker 3: During his trial, Chowtery named two of the other men
Speaker 3: involved in the rapes of Sophie as part of his mitigation,
Speaker 3: but these were not followed up by police at the time.
Speaker 3: One of the men named by Chottery was subsequently convicted
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine of the attempted.
Speaker 6: Murder of his wife.
Speaker 3: This pattern happened over and over and over again. And
Speaker 3: the numbers are staggering. We are talking about thousands of
Speaker 3: girls systematically, repeatedly raped and the entire British government looked
Speaker 3: the other way for decades.
Speaker 1: So sata the question that I'm sure everyone listening is
Speaker 1: thinking to themselves like, A, has anything changed now? And
Speaker 1: B what should happen the fact that now this is
Speaker 1: all out in the.
Speaker 3: Open, Well, what has changed is Elon Musk has started
Speaker 3: tweeting about it, and Elon has over two hundred million
Speaker 3: followers and it has drawn attention to it in a
Speaker 3: way that is really important, and it has become, thankfully
Speaker 3: a political crisis in the United Kingdom. But I want
Speaker 3: you to listen to Keir Starmer, this is just about
Speaker 3: a week ago addressing this crisis, and listen to what
Speaker 3: he had to say. This is the Prime Minister of
Speaker 3: the United Kingdom.
Speaker 7: And when politicians and I mean politicians who sat in
Speaker 7: government for many years a casual of our honesty, decency,
Speaker 7: truth and the rule of law, poling for inquiries because
Speaker 7: they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right,
Speaker 7: and that affects politics because a robust debate can only
Speaker 7: be based on the true facts.
Speaker 3: So there you have it. The sitting Prime Minister is
Speaker 3: saying that if you're concerned about the ongoing rape of
Speaker 3: thousands of girls in the United Kingdom and the complicity
Speaker 3: of government, he says, you're jumping on the bandwagon of
Speaker 3: the far right that continues to be the multiculturalism political
Speaker 3: correctness that he does not want to acknowledge. And by
Speaker 3: the way, he was the chief prosecutor for many of
Speaker 3: these years. He was the one who who was directly
Speaker 3: involved in looking the other way, so naturally he doesn't
Speaker 3: want an inquiry. Now, I'll give you the response of
Speaker 3: Nigel Farage, one one of the leaders. And actually Nigel
Speaker 3: Farage we've had had on on the on this podcast.
Speaker 3: He's been a guest on this podcast before. Nigel Farrag
Speaker 3: obviously led the fight for Brexit UH in the United Kingdom,
Speaker 3: and and and and listened to Nigel Farage's response to
Speaker 3: what Kiers Starmer said, Well, so.
Speaker 6: Much talk over the last few days about grooming gangs
Speaker 6: or should I say great gangs, and Kirs Starmer today
Speaker 6: saying that anyone is calling for a full public inquiry
Speaker 6: is jumping on the bandwagon of the far right. Wrong
Speaker 6: Prime Minister, the vast majority of people in this country
Speaker 6: are absolutely mortified by what has gone on, but even
Speaker 6: worse the cover up we've had from the police, social
Speaker 6: services and both conservative and labor governments. The inquiries that
Speaker 6: have happened so far have been nothing more than a whitewash.
Speaker 6: There needs to be a full public inquiry. Let us
Speaker 6: find out the truth of the scale of this. I'm
Speaker 6: told that in up to fifty British towns these gang
Speaker 6: rapes were going on. I believe the public need the truth.
Speaker 6: We must have an inquiry.
Speaker 1: Say you hear the frustration there from Nigel, but it
Speaker 1: also and this is where I say, let's bring it
Speaker 1: back to the US.
Speaker 2: I worry that we're going.
Speaker 1: To have this same type of conversation in the not
Speaker 1: too near distant future about all the children that we've
Speaker 1: lost in this country.
Speaker 3: So the answer to both needs to be the same,
Speaker 3: which is there needs to be an inquiry. That needs
Speaker 3: to be transparency in the United Kingdom. You know, Nigel
Speaker 3: Faraj mentioned that their allegations of up to fifty towns
Speaker 3: where these rape gangs were ongoing for years and years
Speaker 3: staggering scale. So there needs to be full transparency. The
Speaker 3: opposite of a whitewasher a cover up, but real transparence
Speaker 3: in the United States, the over three hundred thousand children
Speaker 3: that the Bide the administration lost, we need full transparency.
Speaker 3: We need to find those kids, those kids who are
Speaker 3: being abused right right now. We need to get them
Speaker 3: out of harm's way and sunlight and transparency is powerful,
Speaker 3: but there also needs to be accountability for those who
Speaker 3: are culpable.
Speaker 1: As before, if you want to hear the rest of
Speaker 1: this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
Speaker 1: dow the podcasts from earlier this week to hear the
Speaker 1: entire thing. I want to get back to the big
Speaker 1: story number three of the week you may have missed.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this just to paint the picture
Speaker 1: of the room. When you guys meet with him, are
Speaker 1: you seated?
Speaker 2: Yep? And then when you talk to him when you're
Speaker 2: making your points, do you stand? How does it what
Speaker 2: does it look like? Is it very chill room? Is
Speaker 2: it a is a casual room or very formal?
Speaker 3: So we're in a room called the Mansfield Room, which
Speaker 3: is a room named for Mike Mansfield, former Senate Majority Leader,
Speaker 3: Democrat senator from Montana. Has a big picture of Mike
Speaker 3: Mansfield holding a pipe, the big painting on the wall.
Speaker 3: It is a large room in the Capitol, and when
Speaker 3: we met with him, there's a table that's basically a
Speaker 3: giant table set in a rectangle, so we're all facing
Speaker 3: each other. So you know, fifty three of us plus
Speaker 3: the president around a table looking at each other. And
Speaker 3: it's a very nice room, and it's where we have
Speaker 3: lunch every days.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 3: It's actually one of the perks of being in the majority.
Speaker 3: So the majority has lunch in the Mansfield room. The
Speaker 3: minority has lunch in the LBJ room, which is smaller.
Speaker 3: So when we became a majority, we got into the
Speaker 3: bigger room, which is nice because the LBJ room it's
Speaker 3: pretty tight quarters and so there's a lot more space
Speaker 3: in the Mansfield room. So look, I made a case
Speaker 3: to him because he came in and he'd been told
Speaker 3: by the House, Hey, this is the only way we
Speaker 3: can get it done. And I said, miss President, I
Speaker 3: want you to understand something I said. We had a
Speaker 3: meeting of earlier today of all of the Senate committee chairs,
Speaker 3: all of us, every single one of us, agrees that
Speaker 3: doing this with two bills is the only way to
Speaker 3: get it done, and one bill has a massive, massive
Speaker 3: risk of failure and extending it to eight months. And
Speaker 3: I pointed out to him, I said, look, they're fifty
Speaker 3: three of us in this room. I want you to
Speaker 3: look around the room. Every single one of us agrees.
Speaker 3: All of us I agree, John Thune agrees, Lindsey Graham agrees.
Speaker 3: Said look, you've got Susan Collins and Ran Paul. They
Speaker 3: agree on nothing. They agree on this. I want you
Speaker 3: to understand why. And one point that I made to
Speaker 3: him is I said, look, you need to understand I
Speaker 3: love the House of Representers. I love Mike Johnson. He's
Speaker 3: a great man, he's a good friend. He has a
Speaker 3: nearly impossible job. So I feel for how difficult that
Speaker 3: job is. The House of Representatives. More than sixty percent
Speaker 3: of the House was not here when we pass twenty
Speaker 3: seventeen texts.
Speaker 2: Wow, that a significant number.
Speaker 3: So they do not understand what goes into it. They
Speaker 3: do not understand the thousands of hours of back and forth. Look,
Speaker 3: they're passionate, they believe in what they're saying, but they
Speaker 3: don't have the experience of having gone through this. By
Speaker 3: the way, they also many of them don't understand the
Speaker 3: rules of reconciliation of what the Senate could do. Remember
Speaker 3: I talked about we can do budgetary things and not
Speaker 3: policy things. There's always a battle between the House and
Speaker 3: Senate because the House gets mad at the Senate. You
Speaker 3: damn senators, you won't do what we want. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: there's a statue that governs what we can do, and
Speaker 3: it does limit what the Senate could do on reconciliation.
Speaker 3: That'll be a back and forth. It always is. Every
Speaker 3: reconciliation there's a battle between the House and Senate because
Speaker 3: the House wants to do things that the Senate is
Speaker 3: not allowed to do under the terms of the statue.
Speaker 3: What I told President Trump is I said, listen, if
Speaker 3: we put this all in one bill, we have a
Speaker 3: massive risk of film. If we do it in two bills,
Speaker 3: we can start with a huge victory securing the border,
Speaker 3: rebuilding the military, unleashing American energy, and then we will
Speaker 3: get tax cuts past.
Speaker 2: It's just going to take longer.
Speaker 3: And and you know on the argument that, well, gosh,
Speaker 3: this is the how House leadership's argument, we need each
Speaker 3: pieces a sweetener to get the votes. What I've said
Speaker 3: in response is okay, show me this magical unicorn of
Speaker 3: a House member, cause I know most of these guys. Yea,
Speaker 3: So show me. Don't talk about Well, I got members.
Speaker 3: I can't get their vote without it. All right, tell
Speaker 3: me who you're talking about, crazy right wing knuckle draggers. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm a crazy right wing knuckle dragger. Those are my peeps.
Speaker 2: I'll go talk to them. I'll go talk to them.
Speaker 3: But when I'm talking to them, they're not saying that.
Speaker 3: Are you talking about really moderate Republicans? All right, Fine,
Speaker 3: that's a different that's a different, different problem to solve.
Speaker 3: But we talk about that. One of the issues that
Speaker 3: complicates this is what's called.
Speaker 2: The salt Explain that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the salt tax is state and local tax deduction.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that happened when we passed
Speaker 3: the twenty seventeen tax cut is we eliminated initially, we
Speaker 3: eliminated deducting state and local taxes. So it used to
Speaker 3: be before twenty seventeen, if you're in California and you
Speaker 3: pay a crap ton of taxes to the state of California,
Speaker 3: you could deduct all those taxes on your federal taxes. Now,
Speaker 3: what that ended up doing was having the federal government
Speaker 3: subsidize big blue states that tax the hell out of
Speaker 3: their constituents and big blue states that have massive taxes.
Speaker 3: You just got it deducted from your federal taxes. And
Speaker 3: so we were, like Gavin Newsom, keep raising taxes, the
Speaker 3: feds will subsidize you on that. So in twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: we eliminated that. Now we eliminated it, but we actually
Speaker 3: allowed some deduction. We put a cap of ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: so you can deduct up to ten thousand dollars of
Speaker 3: state in local taxes. Are both homeowners in Texas. The
Speaker 3: biggest state tax we pay is property tax. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: you and I deduct our property tax on our federal
Speaker 3: income tax. But it's capped at ten thousand dollars. So
Speaker 3: if you're paying more than ten thousand.
Speaker 2: Dollars, it's on you. It's on you.
Speaker 3: Now, what's the political problem. The political problem is there
Speaker 3: are a number of House Republicans who come from blue states,
Speaker 3: in particular New York and California, and the blue state Republicans,
Speaker 3: the New York and California Republicans have a problem because
Speaker 3: eliminating the salt deduction really impacted people in high tax
Speaker 3: states because unfortunately they're big government Democrats keep taxing the
Speaker 3: hell out of them.
Speaker 2: We talked about this in California this past week.
Speaker 3: Those New York and California Republicans feel an obligation to
Speaker 3: do something to help the problem of not being able
Speaker 3: to deduct.
Speaker 2: More than ten more than ten now.
Speaker 3: And so the argument is, well, if we add border
Speaker 3: security to it, they'll have to vote for it because
Speaker 3: they can't vote against border security. So this is where
Speaker 3: the argument makes no sense. I'm like, all right, first
Speaker 3: of all, we tee up the first bill, secure in
Speaker 3: the Border, rebuilding our military, unleashing American energy. I don't
Speaker 3: know a Republican is voting against that. The mandate out
Speaker 3: of this election was secure the border. Show me the
Speaker 3: idiot Republican who is going to say, no, I'm for
Speaker 3: open borders. That that is a recipe for disaster. You're
Speaker 3: retiring when you're doing that, because you ain't running again.
Speaker 2: And if you do, you're gonna get primary, you'll get killed.
Speaker 3: None of them will vote against border security. They're just
Speaker 3: not going to.
Speaker 2: They know the American people, they know what they want.
Speaker 3: On the salt issue, Look will there have to be
Speaker 3: an accommodation for New York and California. Republican, sure, there will.
Speaker 3: There will have to be an accommodation. I understand that
Speaker 3: that's part of why this takes a while. You got
Speaker 3: to negotiate. There are geographic and regional issues that you
Speaker 3: have to negotiate, and there's a trade off. Now, will
Speaker 3: the accommodation be restoring in full the state and local
Speaker 3: tax deduction? I don't believe it will be, because that's
Speaker 3: terrible tax policy. That means the red states are all
Speaker 3: subsidizing the blue states and they're bad tax policy. Here's
Speaker 3: what I think the resolution will be. This action idea
Speaker 3: I got from Northquest. Grover Norquist runs America's for Tax Reform.
Speaker 3: He's a longtime friend of mine, one of the leading
Speaker 3: thinkers when it comes to tax policy. And Grover's idea.
Speaker 3: So right now, there is a marriage penalty in how
Speaker 3: you deduct state and local taxes. You as an individual,
Speaker 3: if you fire your tax return, you could deduct up
Speaker 3: to ten thousand dollars of state and local taxes. If
Speaker 3: you are married, as you are, you and your wife
Speaker 3: can deduct a total love ten thousand dollars on state
Speaker 3: and local taxes. What Grover suggested as a fix is
Speaker 3: eliminate the marriage penalty, which means you and your wife
Speaker 3: would be able to deduct No. Twenty thousand, so it
Speaker 3: doesn't hurt you.
Speaker 2: You're not being penalized for being married.
Speaker 3: Right now, that's good tax policy as well, getting rid
Speaker 3: of the marriage penalty. One of the negative things federal
Speaker 3: law does is discourages marriage, and marriage is a very
Speaker 3: good thing for our society. I think will end up
Speaker 3: if I were to predict the bill that gets enacted,
Speaker 3: I think will end up eliminating the marriage penalty on
Speaker 3: the salt deduction, which lets the California and New York
Speaker 3: Republicans go back and say.
Speaker 2: Hey, big win, big win, we double the deduction. Now.
Speaker 3: What it doesn't do is give a multimillion dollar tax
Speaker 3: break to Michael Bloomberg. What it doesn't do is give
Speaker 3: a massive benefit to billionaires in New York and California
Speaker 3: who have massive taxes. And I think that's where we'll
Speaker 3: end up. But again, that takes time, and so I
Speaker 3: don't know how we resolve this. I think we'll end
Speaker 3: up seeing the two per seed on parallel tracks. I
Speaker 3: think we're gonna see the set the House for a while,
Speaker 3: go forward and say we're doing one big, beautiful bill.
Speaker 3: And I think the Senate's gonna say, yeah, that's fine,
Speaker 3: we're moving forward.
Speaker 2: We're not wasting time.
Speaker 3: You're going to forward with our bill on the border,
Speaker 3: on the military, and on energy because we can get
Speaker 3: it done. We want a victory and this is how
Speaker 3: you win. And look, I don't know how it resolves,
Speaker 3: but I can tell you I think it is an
Speaker 3: enormously consequential question. And frankly, this is exactly the reason
Speaker 3: I think people listen to Verdict for sure, because there
Speaker 3: is not another show. There's not a news no, one's
Speaker 3: not a podcast. People don't understand this. And I will
Speaker 3: tell you this is the single biggest topic that the
Speaker 3: Senate and House and President Trump are discussing right now,
Speaker 3: and nobody is covering it in the news. But the
Speaker 3: reason it's the single biggest topic is I believe it
Speaker 3: is the difference between succeeding on Trump's legislative agenda and
Speaker 3: winning massive victories or losing and having a crushing failure.
Speaker 3: And in my view, failure is not an option. We
Speaker 3: cannot fail, which means we've got to do it right.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Sentner,
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
Speaker 1: with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts
Speaker 1: every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each
Speaker 1: day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to
Speaker 1: have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson
Speaker 1: podcasts and we will see you back here on Monday morning.