Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is a special pod Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz,
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Speaker 2: It is a special pod because it's the GOP debate
Speaker 2: and I want to get your first overall thoughts on
Speaker 2: the night, Senator I watched it. I didn't really think
Speaker 2: there was any big shock or anything that's going to
Speaker 2: catapult somebody out of this debate. I found parts of
Speaker 2: it a little fatiguing and just kind of boring.
Speaker 3: Your reaction, Well, I basically think that's right. We're sitting
Speaker 3: here right now. It's ten thirty at night. The debate
Speaker 3: just ended, and I didn't see anything this evening that
Speaker 3: fundamentally changed the race. We are seeing the field start
Speaker 3: to winnow. Some the last debate there was seven candidates
Speaker 3: on the stage. This time there were five, and so
Speaker 3: you had Mike Pences dropped out of the race, and
Speaker 3: you had Doug Bergham, who didn't make the threshold for
Speaker 3: this debate. And so the field winnowing is significant. I
Speaker 3: think you're seeing more and more that that that that
Speaker 3: the battle for who is the principal alternative to Trump
Speaker 3: is shrinking down to DeSantis and Nikki Haley. Uh, you
Speaker 3: saw the other candidates on the stage. Chris Christy continues
Speaker 3: just just throwing throwing bricks at Trump, but not not
Speaker 3: getting as I see, at any significant traction.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: Tim Scott, I like Tim a lot. He's my colleague,
Speaker 3: he's my friend, but but he has been having real
Speaker 3: trouble getting traction in this race. And Vivek. Look, Vivek
Speaker 3: had some some colorful moments, some fiery moments, but but
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, most of the dynamic
Speaker 3: tonight seemed to be a battle between DeSantis and Haley,
Speaker 3: and you could tell they were both throwing some hard,
Speaker 3: hard shots at each other, trying to knock the other
Speaker 3: off and say, Okay, I'm the lead person to take
Speaker 3: on Trump.
Speaker 2: You've obviously done this. Been in a presidential debate, quite
Speaker 2: a few of them. And as that stage gets smaller
Speaker 2: and smaller, there is a perk, I think for the voter,
Speaker 2: and that is much more of a subset of debate.
Speaker 2: There was one part of this debate that dealt with
Speaker 2: the border. It was a part where DeSantis, I think,
Speaker 2: was really trying to make himself be the front runner
Speaker 2: on border security issues, and it dealt with the issue
Speaker 2: of going after drug cartels and actually using special ops
Speaker 2: to take them out. Here's part of what he had
Speaker 2: to say on the debate stage.
Speaker 5: Well, first, I was speaking to a dad who lost
Speaker 5: the son fentanyl overdose.
Speaker 4: Son wasn't a drug addict.
Speaker 5: He had taken some pill that happened to be lace
Speaker 5: with fentanyl and it was a fatal overdose. And when
Speaker 5: he told me, obviously the pain of losing a child
Speaker 5: is as bad as it gets. But he said, what
Speaker 5: was salt in the wounds is that these elites in
Speaker 5: DC don't give a damn about what's going on in
Speaker 5: this country. They don't care that we have tens of
Speaker 5: thousands of opioid deaths that the fentanel's pouring in. They
Speaker 5: are not taking the type of action who need to.
Speaker 5: We're declaring it a national emergency on day one. I'm
Speaker 5: sending US military to the border. I'm going to stop
Speaker 5: the invasion cold. I am going to deport people who
Speaker 5: came illegally. And I'm even going to build the border
Speaker 5: wall and have Mexico pay for it, like Donald Trump promised.
Speaker 4: How are you going to do it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Mexico is not going to fork over money. We're
Speaker 5: going to impose fees on the remittances that foreign workers
Speaker 5: send to foreign countries.
Speaker 4: We'll raise billions of dollars.
Speaker 5: I'll build a wall, But we are going to designate
Speaker 5: the cartels to be foreign terrorist organizations or something similar
Speaker 5: to that, and we're going to authorize the use of
Speaker 5: deadly force. We're going to have maritime operations to interdict precursor.
Speaker 4: Chemicals going into Mexico. But I'll tell you this.
Speaker 5: If someone in the drug cartels is sneaking fence and
Speaker 5: all across the border when I'm present, that's going to be.
Speaker 4: The last thing they do. We're going to shoot them,
Speaker 4: stone cold dead.
Speaker 2: We're gonna shoot him, stone cold dead. The audience absolutely
Speaker 2: erupted to that line. I'm saying, Hey, we'll treating Mike Terris.
Speaker 2: I want your reaction to that.
Speaker 3: So look, I think on the fentanyl question, the answers
Speaker 3: from the candidates were all fine. To be honest, many
Speaker 3: of the answers felt like talking points. There was very
Speaker 3: little done in terms of an indictment of Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: In fact, it was really hard to hear Joe Biden's
Speaker 3: name even tonight. It was really striking that the candidates
Speaker 3: didn't say Joe Biden's name, and they didn't say Donald
Speaker 3: Trump's name very much, both of them. You know, it's
Speaker 3: kind of ironic right now. I think most people think
Speaker 3: the most likely nominees or Biden and Trump, and yet
Speaker 3: the five on the stage rarely mentioned either name. I
Speaker 3: think that was a strategic mistake on the border, you know,
Speaker 3: I think it would have been more effective to see
Speaker 3: someone really vigorously, passionately litigate the case against Biden. This
Speaker 3: is a man made disaster. Joe Biden created it. Joe
Speaker 3: Biden inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in forty
Speaker 3: five years, and he came in and deliberately screwed it up.
Speaker 3: And he screwed it up by ending remain in Mexico.
Speaker 3: He screwed it up by reimposing catch and release. He
Speaker 3: undermines the border patrol. And the president can fix this.
Speaker 3: And I got to say, I didn't hear any of
Speaker 3: the candidates really explain it. I don't know if they
Speaker 3: understand it or not, but they didn't explain it that
Speaker 3: this is one of the issues on which a president
Speaker 3: can fix it and can fix it immediately, and that
Speaker 3: was not clearly articulated. I have to say, several of
Speaker 3: the candidates talked about using the military to go into
Speaker 3: Mexico and kill the cartels. I gotta say, I think
Speaker 3: that position is loopy. Our military doesn't invade sovereign nations,
Speaker 3: and we should not start. We shouldn't be invading Mexico
Speaker 3: or candidate or anyplace else.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: What I do think we need I've talked about this before,
Speaker 3: is something like planned Colombia, which happened under George W. Bush,
Speaker 3: when you had when you had the Mediine cartel, when
Speaker 3: you had a massive wave of drugs coming in and
Speaker 3: President Uribe and Colombia asked for America's help, said please
Speaker 3: come in and help us get rid of the drug dealers,
Speaker 3: and we did. We sent the military in and eradicated
Speaker 3: much of their leadership. I think that would make enormous sense.
Speaker 3: But I didn't hear anyone point out that to do
Speaker 3: this you would need the Mexican government's approval, that we
Speaker 3: should not be in the business of invading Mexico. And
Speaker 3: I think fundamentally the reason people are saying let's send
Speaker 3: the military in and invade Mexico is because they're not
Speaker 3: explaining what has caused this crisis. It is a deliberate,
Speaker 3: deliberate choice by Joe Biden, by Kamala Harris, by Alejandro Majorcis,
Speaker 3: and by the Democrats in Congress to open up our borders.
Speaker 3: And that choice could be reversed immediately by a president
Speaker 3: who understood the problem and was prepared to say, if
Speaker 3: you are apprehended, you will be deported, we will put
Speaker 3: you on a plane, we will send you back. The
Speaker 3: numbers would plummet, Both the numbers of illegal immigration and
Speaker 3: the numbers of drugs coming into this country would plummet.
Speaker 3: I'll mention something else also, which is on immigration. Vivek
Speaker 3: talked about our northern border and he said another thing
Speaker 3: that I thought was really kind of odd, and he said,
Speaker 3: we need to build two walls, one on our southern border,
Speaker 3: one on our northern border. I don't know what the
Speaker 3: guy's talking about, the idea that we would build a
Speaker 3: wall on our border with Canada. Number one, it would
Speaker 3: be a massive wall that's a much much bigger wall
Speaker 3: than our southern border. And number two, there is nowhere
Speaker 3: near the traffic to justify building a massive wall across
Speaker 3: what is in many cases open wilderness between Canada and
Speaker 3: very sparsely popular related parts of the United States. That
Speaker 3: was an odd policy recommendation, but I think look, people
Speaker 3: are looking for something that sounds catchy and sexy to
Speaker 3: solve this problem, rather than explaining and articulating what really
Speaker 3: caused it.
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Speaker 2: or Patriotmobile dot Com. Well, I want to get the
Speaker 2: facts compared to talking points so that people understand this
Speaker 2: and dive into this a little bit more. I hear
Speaker 2: the idea that we go after the cartel members, and
Speaker 2: we treat them like terrace and we use special forces
Speaker 2: to go after them. And yes, in theory center, that
Speaker 2: sounds great, but if we're not welcomed, and there's no
Speaker 2: indication that Mexico would welcome that right now, they haven't
Speaker 2: asked for it, from what I understand, unless you know
Speaker 2: something different than what's been publicly reported, they're not begging
Speaker 2: or clamoring for us to come down there and take
Speaker 2: on the cartels.
Speaker 1: Could we do that?
Speaker 2: Could a president do that without the permission, just airspace
Speaker 2: and all the other logistics that are involved, and go
Speaker 2: after these cartels are bringing in fentanyl, because that sounds
Speaker 2: like a great promise that may be very hard to
Speaker 2: fill eagerly.
Speaker 3: Look, could a president do that? A president's commander in chief,
Speaker 3: you could order the military to go in. But ordinarily,
Speaker 3: if you invade another country, that's considered a declaration of war.
Speaker 3: And listen, I would love to and the military after
Speaker 3: the cartels. If if, if the Mexican government asked for
Speaker 3: our help, and to be clear, Colombia did, but it
Speaker 3: took the situation getting bad enough that they recognized they
Speaker 3: needed our help. And one of the problems is under
Speaker 3: Joe Biden because he's opened up the border. The cartels
Speaker 3: in Mexico have have increased their profits by two six
Speaker 3: hundred percent. Back in twenty eighteen, they made roughly five
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars profits from human trafficking. Last year they
Speaker 3: made thirteen billion dollars from human trafficking. The consequence of
Speaker 3: that is the cartels have become one of, if not
Speaker 3: the dominant player in Mexican society. We've seen crime rate skyrocket.
Speaker 3: We see murders and kidnapping and disappearing all across Mexico.
Speaker 3: It is tragic. We see Mexican politicians, Mexican journalists, we
Speaker 3: see prosecutors, judges threatened at massive numbers. I sat down
Speaker 3: with with with the mayor Reinosa, major American city right
Speaker 3: across from McCallen, just a few weeks ago for lunch
Speaker 3: along with several others in McCallen. He was describing how
Speaker 3: in Renosa they've had roughly six thousand people disappeared by
Speaker 3: the cartels. These are horrific numbers, and so right now
Speaker 3: at least Amlo, who is viciously anti American, has become
Speaker 3: more anti American with a weak president like Joe Biden
Speaker 3: would never ever ever invite the military in to take
Speaker 3: out the cartels. Now AMLO's going to be out of office.
Speaker 3: The next president will see what happens. But I think
Speaker 3: the answers on illegal immigration were fine, but none of
Speaker 3: them expressed a deep understanding of what in fact is happening.
Speaker 2: It was interesting as I was watching it, and I
Speaker 2: want to get your take. I was looking at these
Speaker 2: answers and almost like they were saying, I'm with Trump too,
Speaker 2: and then Rama Swami's like, I'm with Trump, and then
Speaker 2: I'll build even more wallwa in Canada. It was like
Speaker 2: an overreach there. There wasn't any sense of like ownership
Speaker 2: of their own ideas on how to deal with Fetano,
Speaker 2: how to deal with China, and how to deal with
Speaker 2: the cartels, and how to deal with the southern border.
Speaker 2: It was regurgitating what I think. It's like they'd all
Speaker 2: already heard that was popular. That concerned me as a Republican.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and remember, look, every one of these candidates is
Speaker 3: theoretically running to be the alternative to Trump. Having an
Speaker 3: immigration debate where nobody mentions the name Joe Biden and
Speaker 3: nobody mentions Donald Trump. It's just kind of weird, like
Speaker 3: it's sort of missing the point. It's people reading a
Speaker 3: few kind of like I said, talking points without acknowledging.
Speaker 3: Number one, this is an area Trump had very significant success,
Speaker 3: and he negotiated the remaining Mexico deal. That was a
Speaker 3: big damn deal. It was a game changer. It was
Speaker 3: unbelievably successful, and then Biden on his first week in
Speaker 3: office ripped it to shreds and caused this crisis. And
Speaker 3: to have that discussion without acknowledging that context, I think,
Speaker 3: let me put it this way, I don't think any
Speaker 3: of those candidates in discussing illegal immigration moved a single voter,
Speaker 3: and that from their perspectives is a problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly is.
Speaker 2: There was also a grand debate over pro hamas propaganda
Speaker 2: on TikTok. Now, we've had debates about TikTok before. Should
Speaker 2: it be banned? It's been banned on government devices, and
Speaker 2: many states have banned from state government devices. Is it
Speaker 2: a spying app ration is also in a sense of
Speaker 2: mind control, where they're pushing propaganda in the face of
Speaker 2: young people, in the face of people on TikTok twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven. What we saw after what happened with
Speaker 2: the attack on Israel is a massive and there's data
Speaker 2: to back this up, A massive onslaught of pro Hamas
Speaker 2: propaganda that was being pushed into the feeds, into the
Speaker 2: scrolling of people that are on TikTok. This is a
Speaker 2: reason why I don't use TikTok. I believe it is
Speaker 2: nothing more than the Chinese Communist Party spying apparatus and
Speaker 2: propaganda machine.
Speaker 1: This was part of the debate.
Speaker 2: I want you to hear it, and I want to
Speaker 2: get your debate, your reaction to it as well.
Speaker 6: We're going to stay on China and we're going to
Speaker 6: talk specifically about TikTok. Last week, Congressman Mike Gallagher, who
Speaker 6: is chairman of the House Bipartisan Select Committee on the
Speaker 6: Chinese Communist Party, published a long essay on TikTok. Following
Speaker 6: the flooding of pro Hamas propaganda on the TikTok accounts
Speaker 6: across the United States, Chairman Gallagher called it shocking. He
Speaker 6: called the app predatory controlled by America's pre eminent adversary,
Speaker 6: one used to push propaganda and divide America. It's spyware,
Speaker 6: he said, a means of surveievance Governor Christy, do you
Speaker 6: agree with Chairman Gallagher and if so, would you ban
Speaker 6: or force the sale of TikTok.
Speaker 7: I agree one hundred percent with Chairman Gallagher. And let
Speaker 7: me say this, TikTok is not only spyware, it is
Speaker 7: pool looting the minds of American young people all throughout
Speaker 7: this country. And they're doing it intentionally. And when you
Speaker 7: saw what happened in the last few weeks with all
Speaker 7: of this anti Semitic, horrible stuff that their algorithms were
Speaker 7: pushing out at a gargantuan rate, this is China trying
Speaker 7: to further divide the United States of America.
Speaker 4: And this is one of the big.
Speaker 7: Failings among many of the Trump administration. He talked tough
Speaker 7: about TikTok. I heard him do it many times, but
Speaker 7: when it came down to it, he did not ban
Speaker 7: them what he could have and should have. And now
Speaker 7: since then, we've had an additional nearly six years of
Speaker 7: this type of poison be put out throughout the United States, even.
Speaker 4: Putting aside the spine which we.
Speaker 7: Know is going on and the theft of American personal
Speaker 7: data and information. So in my first week as president,
Speaker 7: we would ban TikTok. They want to go ahead and
Speaker 7: sell it, Let them go ahead and sell it. But
Speaker 7: I'll tell you another reason we would do it. Facebook's
Speaker 7: not in China. X is not in China. They're not
Speaker 7: permitting a free full of information to the Chinese people
Speaker 7: from our social media companies. Yet we just open the
Speaker 7: door and let them do what they're doing. TikTok's to
Speaker 7: be banned because they are poisoning American minds, and I
Speaker 7: would do it week one.
Speaker 1: Governor, Senator.
Speaker 2: You hear those talking points that came there from a
Speaker 2: guy that actually, I think is a pretty good debater,
Speaker 2: and it probably hit with a lot of Americans the
Speaker 2: way that Chris Christy described them, And I think the
Speaker 2: comparing contrast with China is brilliant. He's like, look, they
Speaker 2: ban our stuff all the time. They don't let X
Speaker 2: in their Twitter, they don't let Facebook in there. Why
Speaker 2: are we so shy as a nation to get rid
Speaker 2: of of TikTok? Are forced to sale your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3: Look, I think you're right. I think Chris's answer there
Speaker 3: was quite good. But at the same time, one of
Speaker 3: the things that was striking is is as I saw it,
Speaker 3: there was basically complete agreement on TikTok across the debate
Speaker 3: stage that immediately after that, Hugh Hugh had asked asked
Speaker 3: DeSantis if he agreed. He said he did, He asked
Speaker 3: Nicky Haley, and Ramaswami Vivek said that he agreed, although
Speaker 3: he said more broadly that other tech companies are are
Speaker 3: sharing information with China. We need to crack down on that.
Speaker 3: He's right on that, and then he asked Nikki Haley,
Speaker 3: and Nicki Haley used it as a chance to punch
Speaker 3: back at other candidates on the stage who had attacked
Speaker 3: her on China generally. So I didn't hear her answer
Speaker 3: the question. But look, the answers were good, and what
Speaker 3: you just played from Chris was well articulated. Again, I
Speaker 3: don't know that any of these answers are differentiating. When
Speaker 3: you get everyone on the stage agreeing, it's difficult to
Speaker 3: see what votes are being moved. If they're all saying
Speaker 3: the same thing. It's status quo. And I will say,
Speaker 3: you know, Chris there saying if I were president, I
Speaker 3: would ban it. You know, I would have liked to
Speaker 3: actually have seen a follow up from the moderator, Well,
Speaker 3: what under what legal authority would you ban it? Look,
Speaker 3: she and China can ban whatever the hell he wants
Speaker 3: because it's a dictatorship. But to actually ban something in
Speaker 3: America takes some legal authority. And it's one thing to
Speaker 3: say I would go to Congress and push legislation to
Speaker 3: ban it. That's that's a position. That is a reasonable
Speaker 3: position for a presidential candidate to make. But I have
Speaker 3: not seen an effective argument that the president has the
Speaker 3: unilateral power to wave a magic wand and suddenly say
Speaker 3: TikTok is banned in America. And if Christy has an
Speaker 3: argument for that, he certainly didn't articulate.
Speaker 1: How would you ban it?
Speaker 2: I mean, explain to people how that would work legally
Speaker 2: if you let's let's say that any one of these
Speaker 2: people magically could do this instantly tomorrow.
Speaker 1: It's not as simple as as you just described it. Right.
Speaker 2: This is one of those empty promises in a campaign
Speaker 2: that people make which drive voters insane. But what would
Speaker 2: it actually take to get rid of TikTok or force
Speaker 2: a sale?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 3: Look, you could have and there was discussion under Trump
Speaker 3: of trying to force a sale. And there they're existing laws,
Speaker 3: there's there's there's a process called SCIPHIUS that deals with
Speaker 3: foreign investment in the United States. I'm not saying it
Speaker 3: is impossible to come up with an argument of executive
Speaker 3: power to do this, but but Christy did not present
Speaker 3: any argument under that, and I haven't seen a persuasive
Speaker 3: argument that it can be done as an executive matter.
Speaker 3: If it's not done as an executive matter, then it
Speaker 3: would take legislation, and you'd have to actually get get
Speaker 3: that to move through Congress, and it certainly has not
Speaker 3: moved yet. I do agree. Look TikTok. The Chinese government
Speaker 3: has has control of TikTok, the ability to monitor, monitor
Speaker 3: what's happening on TikTok. They are pushing very harmful messages.
Speaker 3: I think they are deliberately harming the United States. I
Speaker 3: think they are targeting our kids. They're targeting our kids
Speaker 3: with garbage. They're targeting our kids with self harm messages.
Speaker 3: They're targeting our kids with with substance abuse and drug
Speaker 3: use messages, and and on hamas. It has been horrific
Speaker 3: the pro Hamas propaganda that's being pushed on on TikTok. Now,
Speaker 3: I will say that we saw we saw it back
Speaker 3: and forth where NICKI Haley slammed Vivek because he's on TikTok,
Speaker 3: and and he came back with a pretty good response
Speaker 3: and said, well, look, you know, all the lefties are
Speaker 3: on TikTok and we need to actually have some positive
Speaker 3: messaging there. I understand that argument. I'm not on TikTok myself,
Speaker 3: but but but because of the Chinese control. But it
Speaker 3: worries me at times that if all conservatives abandoned that
Speaker 3: platform and so many kids are are following it, that
Speaker 3: that that we're leaving it to be almost entirely negative.
Speaker 3: And so I thought Vivek's response there was pretty good
Speaker 3: until he went too far and he had a nasty
Speaker 3: shot at Nikki Haley where he said, well, your daughter's
Speaker 3: on it, and you're a hypocrite and and and NICKI
Speaker 3: quite rightly got pissed off at that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was this was that response for this point.
Speaker 2: It was a great back and forth. And if you
Speaker 2: missed it, here's what it sounded like.
Speaker 9: Well, I want to laugh at why Nikki Haley didn't
Speaker 9: answer your question, which is about looking at families in
Speaker 9: the eye. And the last debate she made fun of
Speaker 9: me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was
Speaker 9: actually using the app for a long time, So you
Speaker 9: might want to take care of your family first. A daughter,
Speaker 9: the next generation of Americans are using it. And that's
Speaker 9: actually the point. You have her supporters cropping her up.
Speaker 9: That's fine, here's the truth. The easy answer is actually
Speaker 9: to say that we're just going to ban one app.
Speaker 9: We got to go further. We have to ban any
Speaker 9: US company actually transferring US data to the Chinese.
Speaker 4: Here's a story.
Speaker 1: Most people.
Speaker 2: I'm going to jump back in there because you heard
Speaker 2: the back and forth where she even says you're just scum.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, I think that was a very very bad moment
Speaker 3: for VIC. When you're attacking someone's kid, she was exactly
Speaker 3: right to pop back at him. And I just think
Speaker 3: that's out of bound. Don't don't attack people's kids. You
Speaker 3: will you want, you want to criticize the candidate, great,
Speaker 3: but going after their kid. I I think Vivek lost
Speaker 3: votes and lost support on that, and and I think
Speaker 3: a lot of parents are like, leave the kids the
Speaker 3: hell out of it, and and and and her reaction,
Speaker 3: look the disgust she had where I think that was real,
Speaker 3: and and that was I think one of the most
Speaker 3: consequential moments of the debate.
Speaker 2: And I want to move to Israel real quick and
Speaker 2: get your reaction. This obviously has become a presidential election cycle,
Speaker 2: that is that is heavy in now foreign policy. Ron
Speaker 2: DeSantis was asked the question about Israel. There's an obsession now,
Speaker 2: you and I talked about this yesterday. Uh, there's an
Speaker 2: obsession by the laugh for a ceased fire. Now the
Speaker 2: White House is pushing for a ceasefire. Babe has made
Speaker 2: it very clear, No, if you want to seize fire,
Speaker 2: then release all of the hostages. Otherwise, we're moving forward
Speaker 2: and we're not stopping until we get rid of Hamas.
Speaker 2: And now there's new warnings coming from the UN and
Speaker 2: even the White House about Israel. If you go too
Speaker 2: far in their words, they're now the atturning Israel and
Speaker 2: the bad guys. Also what you predicted, they had a
Speaker 2: few weeks to do what they need to do, and
Speaker 2: after that they were going to people are going to
Speaker 2: turn on them very quickly. But Desantas said this when
Speaker 2: he was asked about America's foreign policy and net Yahoo.
Speaker 5: I would be telling Bbe finish the job once and
Speaker 5: for all with these butchers Hamas. They're terrorists, They're massacring
Speaker 5: innocent people. They would wipe every Jew off the globe
Speaker 5: if they could. He cannot live with that threat right
Speaker 5: by his country. That Hamas should release every hostage and
Speaker 5: they should unconditionally surrender.
Speaker 4: I'm sick of hearing the media.
Speaker 5: I'm sick of hearing other people blame Israel just for
Speaker 5: defending itself. We will stand with Israel in word and indeed,
Speaker 5: in public and in private. And I can tell you,
Speaker 5: as governor, I actually did something about it. Biden's and
Speaker 5: neglect has been atrocious. We had Floridians that were over
Speaker 5: there after the attack.
Speaker 4: He left them stranded.
Speaker 5: They couldn't get flights out, so I scrambled resources in Florida.
Speaker 4: I sent planes over.
Speaker 5: To Israel and I brought back over seven hundred people
Speaker 5: to safety. There could have been more hostages had we
Speaker 5: not acted. And I'll tell you this. I met the
Speaker 5: first planeload when they came to Florida and one of
Speaker 5: the mothers pointed to a six year old daughter and
Speaker 5: she said, my daughter had been saying the last two nights, mommy,
Speaker 5: I don't want to hear any more bombs.
Speaker 4: No more rockets.
Speaker 5: I just want to get back to Florida. So there's
Speaker 5: a difference between words and deeds. We acted and we
Speaker 5: save lives.
Speaker 2: I thought that was a strong point, not just about
Speaker 2: American leadership and how we should make sure that we
Speaker 2: get people out of countries when we can. This is
Speaker 2: I think a clear indirect shot in essence at the
Speaker 2: President for what happened in Afghanistan and also what's happening now,
Speaker 2: but also him saying to me, be you can't expect
Speaker 2: it to do anything but what he's doing now to
Speaker 2: keep his people safe.
Speaker 1: He cannot live with terrorists next door.
Speaker 3: Now, that was an excellent answer. It was one of,
Speaker 3: if not the strongest moment of the night. It was
Speaker 3: excellent both on substance that he was calling out the
Speaker 3: need to support Israel and destroying hamas he called out Biden.
Speaker 3: So unlike the other points I made where they were
Speaker 3: reluctant to call out Biden, he went very directly at Biden.
Speaker 3: And part of what made that answer so strong is
Speaker 3: that Dessanus acted decisively. He had something to say there
Speaker 3: because as governor of Florida, sending those planes to bring
Speaker 3: Floridians home from Israel, that was a big deal, that
Speaker 3: was well done, that showed initiative, that showed leadership. It's
Speaker 3: part of why Ron has such a strong record as
Speaker 3: governor of Florida. As an executive, He's able to act
Speaker 3: Youni latterly in a way the other candidates can't. It's
Speaker 3: not something it's not like Chris Christy could suddenly send
Speaker 3: planes to take people to New Jersey. He does not
Speaker 3: have that capacity. Ron as governor did, but no other
Speaker 3: governor did that. They're fifty governors in America and only
Speaker 3: one did that. And so it was a combination of
Speaker 3: substantively strong combined with a unique moment in his record
Speaker 3: that Ron was able to capitalize on. And Look, this
Speaker 3: is one of the things that I've been emphasizing. Debates
Speaker 3: are all about one of a couple of things. Number One,
Speaker 3: are you moving votes? Are you moving votes and moving
Speaker 3: them from whom they've got to come from somewhere. So
Speaker 3: if you are adding to your vote total, you're taking
Speaker 3: votes from somebody else. For the candidates on that stage,
Speaker 3: if they're adding to their vote total, they're either taking
Speaker 3: votes from one of the other candidates on that stage
Speaker 3: or from Donald Trump. And you do that through points
Speaker 3: of differentiation. If you all say the same thing, nothing changes.
Speaker 3: Well that's an instance where what de Santus was saying
Speaker 3: was different and I think that was a differentiating moment.
Speaker 3: There needed to be more of those in the debate
Speaker 3: for the candidates. I do think the field is shrinking.
Speaker 3: I think it is more and more becoming between Dissantus
Speaker 3: and and Haley. I think Nikki had a good and
Speaker 3: effective night. She's articulate, she defended herself well, there were
Speaker 3: lots of shots coming at her. But I think all
Speaker 3: of the candidates would have been better off by having
Speaker 3: more differentiators between themselves and the other people on that stage,
Speaker 3: and critically between themselves and Trump and between themselves and Biden.
Speaker 2: Do you think, lastly on the debate that there will
Speaker 2: be this many candidates on the next debate stage or
Speaker 2: do you think there will be more that fall off?
Speaker 2: And it goes to as you mentioned earlier that DeSantis
Speaker 2: Nikki Haley, you know, kind of two people.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I have read the press speculation.
Speaker 3: So the RNC has increased the threshold for the next debate,
Speaker 3: and at least the press speculation is that Tim Scott
Speaker 3: is unlikely to clear that next threshold. I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's right, and we'll see where things are, but
Speaker 3: I do think falling off the debate stage is effectively
Speaker 3: fatal in this race that if you're not there, it
Speaker 3: is difficult to see how a candidacy survives if it
Speaker 3: can't make the debate stage. I don't know if Christy
Speaker 3: makes this the debate stage or not. I have not
Speaker 3: looked at his numbers closely enough to see if he
Speaker 3: would make the stage. It would be a very different
Speaker 3: debate if it were down to three people. I think
Speaker 3: the three that will make it for sure our DeSantis, Haley,
Speaker 3: and probably Vivek. His numbers are strong enough, and I
Speaker 3: will say so in twenty sixteen when I was doing debates,
Speaker 3: and this is true of every debate that I do.
Speaker 3: You try to think in terms of moments. Do you
Speaker 3: have a moment that catches fire, that goes viral, that
Speaker 3: results in fundraising. So if you have a really good
Speaker 3: moment that catches fire the next day and even that night,
Speaker 3: your fundraising can explode. I had debates where within twenty
Speaker 3: four hours we'd raise millions of dollars because you had
Speaker 3: a moment that really just just resonated and it can
Speaker 3: move votes. You know, when we had a great debate,
Speaker 3: it was striking where we'd go to events and events
Speaker 3: that used to have three hundred people would have two
Speaker 3: thousand people, and it was an immediate effect of a
Speaker 3: really strong debate.
Speaker 1: And so that feeling, I mean, it's no joke.
Speaker 2: You can really feel like, wow, we really did well
Speaker 2: last night because the people showed up for us today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so there were not a whole lot of
Speaker 3: moments like that. Now, I will Sayvivek had a good
Speaker 3: moment in his opening and his opening he blasted the
Speaker 3: RNC and it was memorable, and he blasted the debate moderators.
Speaker 3: And if you have that clip, you ought to play
Speaker 3: that because that was one of the more striking moments
Speaker 3: of the debate.
Speaker 4: I'm mister Ramaswami. Let me turn to you. Please make
Speaker 4: your case.
Speaker 6: Why would you Why should you be the nominee and
Speaker 6: not the former president?
Speaker 9: I think there's something deeper going on in the Republican
Speaker 9: Party here, and I am upset about what happened last night.
Speaker 9: We've become a party of losers at the end of
Speaker 9: the day. Is a cancer in the Republican establishment.
Speaker 1: Speak the truth.
Speaker 9: I mean, since Ronald McDaniel took over best chairwoman of
Speaker 9: the R and C in twenty seventeen, we have lost
Speaker 9: twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: No red wave that never came.
Speaker 9: We got trounced last night in twenty twenty three. And
Speaker 9: I think that we have to have accountability in our
Speaker 9: party for that matter. On if you want to come
Speaker 9: on stage tonight, you want to look the GOP voters
Speaker 9: in the eye and tell them you resign, I will
Speaker 9: turn over my yield my time to you, and frankly,
Speaker 9: look the people they're cheering for losing in the Republican Party.
Speaker 9: Think about who's moderating this debate. This should be Tucker Carlson,
Speaker 9: Joe Rogan and Elon Musk. We'd have ten times the viewership,
Speaker 9: asking questions that GOP primary voters actually care about and
Speaker 9: bringing more people.
Speaker 4: Into our party.
Speaker 9: You think the Democrats, and I've got Christian Walker here,
Speaker 9: You think that Democrats would actually hire Greg Guttfeld toast
Speaker 9: a Democratic debate.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't do it.
Speaker 4: And so the fact of the matters, I mean, christ I'm.
Speaker 9: Gonna use this time because This is actually about you
Speaker 9: in the media and the corrupt media establishment.
Speaker 1: Ask you the.
Speaker 9: Trump Russia collusion hoax that you pushed on.
Speaker 1: This network for years.
Speaker 9: Was that real or was that Hillary Clinton made up disinformation?
Speaker 1: Answer the question, go.
Speaker 4: Mister, this is how we get a puncher.
Speaker 9: We need accountability because this media rigged the twenty sixteen election.
Speaker 9: They rigged the twenty twenty election with the Hunter Biden
Speaker 9: laptop story, and they're.
Speaker 4: Gonna rig this election accountability.
Speaker 2: By the way, I love how fast he jumped in
Speaker 2: there to take those blows, which, by the way, his
Speaker 2: attack on that debate moderator is accurate. She did, in
Speaker 2: fact push the Russian hoax for years on the network.
Speaker 3: So listen. I will say that that was a striking opening.
Speaker 3: I mean that that that is unusual, that may be
Speaker 3: unique in the in the history of presidential debate openings,
Speaker 3: and it will be memorable. I'm not sure uh that
Speaker 3: it moved a lot of votes, but it's the sort
Speaker 3: of thing that will go viral online. It's the sort
Speaker 3: of thing there was fire flowing now. It also feels
Speaker 3: a bit performative. So for example, unloading on on Rona McDaniel, listen,
Speaker 3: I'm frustrated. We're all frustrated at the election results last night,
Speaker 3: and that we've had multiple elections with with results that
Speaker 3: that that were subpar, and and and we can have
Speaker 3: long discussions about why that is. I gotta say it
Speaker 3: is a bit of a weird argument to say it's
Speaker 3: Ronal McDaniel's fault, like, I'm sorry, the head of the
Speaker 3: r NC is not winning or losing national elections. And
Speaker 3: so what I felt that was it is really Vivek
Speaker 3: has run his whole campaign never ever ever criticizing Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: so he didn't want to blame Trump, and and so
Speaker 3: Rona was kind of a convenient whipping boy for that.
Speaker 3: But the sort of solution he was pointing to is
Speaker 3: you need to resign, I thought was less effective. And
Speaker 3: you could point to Trump, you could point to Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 3: you could point to candidates selection as to why we lost,
Speaker 3: you could point to messaging. But targeting Rana on there
Speaker 3: I thought was odd. Look, going after the media is
Speaker 3: pretty much always a good strategy and a Republican debate,
Speaker 3: and I will say his substantive point is exactly right
Speaker 3: and something I've called for for a long time. I
Speaker 3: believe Republican presidential primary debates should only be moderated by
Speaker 3: people who will vote in a Republican primary debate. If
Speaker 3: you look at Democrat primary debates, you have media journalists,
Speaker 3: all of whom are Democrats, who moderate the debates, and
Speaker 3: every one of the moderators wants one of the Democrats
Speaker 3: on the stage to win. If you look at many
Speaker 3: Republican debates, they're moderated by journalists. Often all of them
Speaker 3: are going to vote in the Democrat primary, want every
Speaker 3: person on the stage to lose. And and so tonight
Speaker 3: the only person on that stage who's going to vote
Speaker 3: in the Republican primary is Hugh Hewett. And I thought
Speaker 3: Hugh did did an admirable job. I like you, He's
Speaker 3: a smart guy, he's very knowledgeable on foreign policy and
Speaker 3: national security. I thought he did an admirable job. And
Speaker 3: and I did think Vivek's point about Welker pushing the
Speaker 3: the the Russia hoax was was really it scored. I
Speaker 3: will say it would have been more effective if the
Speaker 3: moderators had been more blatantly biased. And I will say
Speaker 3: I did think that that that Welker and Lester Holt
Speaker 3: did not do a bad job tonight. There have been
Speaker 3: debates where where we've seen moderators do horrible, horrible jobs
Speaker 3: and make it all about themselves. And and here I
Speaker 3: thought the moderators were fairly restrained and and and did
Speaker 3: a good job of not making it about themselves. And
Speaker 3: it's striking there, even at the end after he blasts Welker,
Speaker 3: where she doesn't engage, she just says, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: moving on and you know when it comes to authenticity.
Speaker 3: I mean that that whole riff felt to me a
Speaker 3: bit like a performance piece because he was resolved to
Speaker 3: blast the moderators before they'd done anything. I think it
Speaker 3: would have been more effective in response to demonstrated bias
Speaker 3: and and and and I didn't see nearly as much
Speaker 3: bias from the moderators as we've seen in other debates.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great point.
Speaker 2: It was like you said, when sometimes you have lines
Speaker 2: that you get ready for and you look for, and
Speaker 2: he played that hand before they showed their bias in
Speaker 2: this debate. Uh, and it may have looked like you said,
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Speaker 2: a little comedy and congratulations. Jimmy Kimmel is promoting your book, Senator.
Speaker 2: I'm very excited about this. I also am waiting for
Speaker 2: the restraining order because he's absolutely obsessed with you. Your
Speaker 2: new book that is out, Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural
Speaker 2: Marxism in America. He gave it a prime time promotion
Speaker 2: on his show last night. Here's what it sounded like.
Speaker 8: Ted Cruz has a new book. It's called Unwoke. It's uh,
Speaker 8: he's you know what, he's so cool. He's you can
Speaker 8: tell it's Ted's book because the dust jacket doesn't quite fit.
Speaker 4: It won't won't button in the front. But this is
Speaker 4: Cruse's fifth book.
Speaker 8: The last one was called Ted Cruz A Time for
Speaker 8: Truth there without the beard. He also wrote Ted Cruz
Speaker 8: head Ooze. He wrote Glued Pubes, the Guy from Islasa
Speaker 8: Katuro Beard. It, of course, the new York Times bestseller,
Speaker 8: A partially Digested Rat, and other things I found in
Speaker 8: my Chin Pouse. There are many interesting musings and revelations
Speaker 8: in the books. He says The Princess Bride is his
Speaker 8: favorite movie and he's seen it hundreds of times, which
Speaker 8: is definitely not true. No one's seen anything hundreds of times.
Speaker 8: And apparently he's not a big fan of late night television.
Speaker 8: This is an excerpt, real excerpt. He wrote a late
Speaker 8: on TV is virtually unwatchable. I love comedy, but watching
Speaker 8: angry leftists scream about how much they hate Donald Trump,
Speaker 8: is it remotely funny?
Speaker 4: It's pitiful.
Speaker 8: Well, all I'll say is it's an honor to be
Speaker 8: called pitiful by a man who abandoned his dog in
Speaker 8: an ice storm to go to Mexico.
Speaker 4: But congrats ted Is.
Speaker 3: And seriously, I do want to say, you.
Speaker 8: Know, writing writing a book like this is a huge accomplishment,
Speaker 8: especially for him.
Speaker 4: You know, it's very difficult to type with.
Speaker 2: Hook I mean cider. It doesn't it prove your point
Speaker 2: that you just wrote in your book. That was the
Speaker 2: part that made me laugh is as he's forcing this
Speaker 2: comedy on the audience, and there's some awkward laughter. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: thanks for proving the point of what that you just
Speaker 2: wrote about in your book.
Speaker 3: Sure, look, I mean it was when when he did
Speaker 3: that last night. I actually tweeted his monologue out this
Speaker 3: morning and I said, hey, thank thanks for pitching my book.
Speaker 3: You forgot the link to where you can buy it,
Speaker 3: and I sent the link, and I did something that
Speaker 3: that that is is fairly obligatory also, which is Kimmel
Speaker 3: regularly blasts me in his late night monologues, and every
Speaker 3: time he does, I respond and I point out that
Speaker 3: that that ever since I whipped Jimmy Kimmel's ass in
Speaker 3: one on one hoops, it seems that I'm living rent
Speaker 3: free in his head.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so I sent a video of me scoring on
Speaker 3: him and blocking him, just to remind him of that
Speaker 3: moment that I think he probably still wakes up in
Speaker 3: Tremor's about. But I thought it was hysterical what he read.
Speaker 3: There was an actual excerpt from the book, and he
Speaker 3: put up the book cover and I think that's fabulous.
Speaker 3: But I do wish the substantent point that late night
Speaker 3: humor I wish was actually funny. I love comedy. I
Speaker 3: grew up watching sn L. I like real comedians who
Speaker 3: are funny, and they used to be funny. And now
Speaker 3: it's one of the many examples that I discussed it
Speaker 3: at length in the book Unwoke How How Trump broke
Speaker 3: the media, Trump broke the Democrat Party, and Trump broke
Speaker 3: late night comedy because they just it's a partisan, primal
Speaker 3: skeet scream instead of good comedy, makes fun of both sides.
Speaker 3: I'm perfectly fine with making fun of me, but they
Speaker 3: never ever make fun of the Democrats. It's purely a
Speaker 3: I am leftist? Hear me, roar Yeah. It's a great point.
Speaker 2: Don't forget grab the book, especially you know now that
Speaker 2: Jimmy Kimmel's promoting it. Unwoke How Did Defeat Cultural Marxism
Speaker 2: in America? Congrat Center. It's number one in multiple categories
Speaker 2: right now on Amazon. You grab it right now on
Speaker 2: Amazon will get to you really quickly. You can grab
Speaker 2: a copy for a great Christmas gift as well, or
Speaker 2: wherever you get your books. It is out now, Unwoke
Speaker 2: How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. And there's also
Speaker 2: another liberal book, by the Way, that you were beating
Speaker 2: earlier today just a little side note, Rachel Maddow has her
Speaker 2: new book out and you were ahead of that, which
Speaker 2: made me just grint a little bit.
Speaker 3: Senator, Well, that is a good thing, and beating the
Speaker 3: lefties is a great American pastime.
Speaker 1: There we go. Don't forget this show is money was
Speaker 1: Ay Friday.
Speaker 2: Hit that subscribe, auto download or follow button because if
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Speaker 2: and we'll see you then