Speaker 1: Thanks. I want to ask you about the question about
Speaker 1: migrants whether they have or haven't been walking across the
Speaker 1: Southwest border. Senator Ted Cruz has publicly invited and suggested
Speaker 1: that you've come down to see that for yourself. Senator
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz of Texas, he's suggested that you come down
Speaker 1: and see for yourself whether migrants are actually crossing the
Speaker 1: border or by foot. Is that something that you would
Speaker 1: take them up on. So I've been to the border.
Speaker 1: I went in twenty eighteen. I stood outside facilities where
Speaker 1: the Trump administration was separating families, tearing babies out of
Speaker 1: their mother's arms. Some of those kids still haven't been
Speaker 1: reunited with their families. And so one thing I will
Speaker 1: say is I certainly don't need lectures or invitations from
Speaker 1: Republicans about the border or border policies. And you know,
Speaker 1: and I certainly won't take advice on border from from
Speaker 1: anyone who voted against securing record level of funding for
Speaker 1: the Department of Homeland Security, and and you know, and
Speaker 1: while folks are sending invites, I'll use this opportunity to
Speaker 1: invite him or anyone else next time to vote for
Speaker 1: record funding for DHS. As President Biden has requested, so
Speaker 1: we'll move on. Nope, we'll move on from that. This episode,
Speaker 1: A Verdict with Ted Cruz is sponsored by American Hartford Gold.
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Speaker 1: number is eight five five seven, six eight one eight
Speaker 1: eight three. Or you can text the word captus to
Speaker 1: six five five three two. Welcome back to Verdict with
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, the show that the White House just cannot
Speaker 1: stop talking about. I am Michael Knowles, and if you
Speaker 1: want to bring this show, by the way to a
Speaker 1: campus near you, time is running out to apply. We
Speaker 1: will be going on tour with Young America's Foundation. You
Speaker 1: can apply. We've just got a week or so left
Speaker 1: at YAF dot org slash Verdict and maybe the White
Speaker 1: House Press Secretary. We'll talk about you and your fellows students,
Speaker 1: because they sure seem to be tuning in here. Senator,
Speaker 1: I think we're the first, second, third, and now fourth
Speaker 1: podcast that the White House has referenced from the press briefing.
Speaker 1: You know, it really is quite striking. And maybe when
Speaker 1: we're doing our college tour, we ought to film Verdict
Speaker 1: down on the border and invite Karine to come down
Speaker 1: to Verdict and be on the podcast and she can
Speaker 1: lie directly on the podcas cast rather than doing it
Speaker 1: from the White House. Look, I had to say, it
Speaker 1: is studying. Look, no one is surprised to see a
Speaker 1: press flack flacking. That's what they do. She's supposed to
Speaker 1: spend whether you're a Democrat or Republican. White House Press
Speaker 1: Secretary spins. What is wild about this is she is brazenly, openly,
Speaker 1: shamelessly lying, and at this point she knows she is,
Speaker 1: and everyone in the room knows she is. This all
Speaker 1: started when she said at a previous briefing that people
Speaker 1: are not walking across the border. It's just not happening.
Speaker 1: That is not happening. Now, that's not kind of sort
Speaker 1: of right, that's not a little bit wrong. It is
Speaker 1: precisely exactly opposite. And the imitation that I issued to her,
Speaker 1: as I said, come down to the border and spend
Speaker 1: one hour with me, go out on patrol with a
Speaker 1: border patrol Union sixty minutes you pick the time doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: Pick any hour of the day. We'll go out for
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, and I guarantee you we will encounter not one,
Speaker 1: but multiple groups of illegal immigrants, because they are coming
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day. Every time I've gone out there,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take sixty minutes. It takes about five minutes
Speaker 1: before you encounter the first group, and it is a
Speaker 1: steady stream of humanity. And I suggested to her also,
Speaker 1: I said, okay, you said, as we just played in
Speaker 1: that clip, that you don't need to be lectured by
Speaker 1: Republican senators. I said, I'll tell you what. Bring the
Speaker 1: entire Washington press corps. Bring them all down to the
Speaker 1: valley with us. You and I can go out for
Speaker 1: an hour and we'll hold a press conference, and one
Speaker 1: or two things will happen. If we don't encounter anyone,
Speaker 1: I'll stand up and say I was wrong. But when
Speaker 1: we encounter multiple groups women, children, one after the other
Speaker 1: after the other, you'll stand up and you'll admit you
Speaker 1: were lying, and not just lie. You were lying from
Speaker 1: the White House deliberately and repeatedly. And to be clear,
Speaker 1: it's not just her lying. Joe Biden's responsible he's paying
Speaker 1: for her to lie. And all of the corporate media
Speaker 1: that sat there silently, that haven't run fact checks, we
Speaker 1: haven't seen pants on fire because none of the corporate media.
Speaker 1: This is an objective, factual statement, and it is objectively
Speaker 1: and completely false. All of the corporate media is complicit
Speaker 1: in the lies. And actually this week she escalated it
Speaker 1: even more where she said absurdly, Joe Biden has done
Speaker 1: more to secure the border than Donald Trump. Like that
Speaker 1: is I actually wonder if the reporters and the press
Speaker 1: briefing move back a few feet because they're afraid lightning
Speaker 1: is going to strike her as she stands there, Like
Speaker 1: I cannot think of a White House Press secretary who
Speaker 1: repeatedly brazenly lied to the American people the way she
Speaker 1: is doing, even Jensaki, who would spin like crazy. But
Speaker 1: I can't think of flat out objective lies of the
Speaker 1: kind that Karine is now making a weekly, if not
Speaker 1: daily occurrence. So the lie is pretty shocking. I don't
Speaker 1: think anybody buys it. You just look at the numbers.
Speaker 1: You're going to get two million plus illegal aliens this year,
Speaker 1: way more than you got under Trump, way more than
Speaker 1: we've ever gotten. But I guess what is confusing to
Speaker 1: me is one, does she really believe that anybody in America, Republican, independent,
Speaker 1: or Democrat, believes that Joe Biden is tougher on illegal
Speaker 1: immigration than Donald Trump. No, not a single person believes that.
Speaker 1: But but furthermore, Biden and the Democrats ran on opening
Speaker 1: up the border. They said Trump's restrictive border policies are
Speaker 1: bad and immoral and Unamerican, and diversity is our strength,
Speaker 1: and no person is illegal and come across the border.
Speaker 1: I mean, they explicitly said that. So is this new
Speaker 1: line coming out of the White House, beyond it being dishonest,
Speaker 1: is it a reflection that, wait a second, voters actually
Speaker 1: don't like the policies that we ran for president on,
Speaker 1: and so now we're just going to pretend that those
Speaker 1: were never our policies in the first place. So I
Speaker 1: think it is. And it's a combination of number one,
Speaker 1: speaking to the hard left partisans who are with them
Speaker 1: no matter what, and number two, they're counting on the
Speaker 1: media to assist in the cover up. Look, it's reminiscent.
Speaker 1: She's also said in recent weeks about school shutdowns. When
Speaker 1: the nape scores came back so we had. NAPE is
Speaker 1: the National Assessment of fourth graders. It's considered the gold
Speaker 1: standard for testing educational progress, and the national standards show
Speaker 1: that fourth graders have had a dramatic drop in both
Speaker 1: mass scores and reading scores, the biggest drop since the
Speaker 1: NAPE test has begun being implemented. It is massive. It
Speaker 1: is obvious because of the school shutdowns, and not only that,
Speaker 1: the racial gap has widened to the widest level ever
Speaker 1: because the people who got hurt the most by the
Speaker 1: school shutdowns were low income kids, many of which are
Speaker 1: African American and Hispanic. And so the racial gap under
Speaker 1: Joe Biden congratulations, dams have gotten much broader. So what
Speaker 1: does Kareem do. She stands up and says, well, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden worked to reopen schools, and it was Republicans who
Speaker 1: blocked us. And it is a level of okay, that's
Speaker 1: not just spin inversion, that is flat out mendacity. It
Speaker 1: was Republicans, certainly on this podcast and from the Senate floor.
Speaker 1: I was screaming early early on, open up the schools,
Speaker 1: send the kids back to schools, let them go. Republicans
Speaker 1: across the country where and by the way, people like
Speaker 1: Greg Abbott and Rhnda Santis were opening up schools. Amazingly enough,
Speaker 1: in the Biden White Houses world, these dastardly Republicans managed
Speaker 1: to shut down schools only in bright blue jurisdictions controlled
Speaker 1: by Democrats. Now that's some nefarious power. I'm going to
Speaker 1: shut down the schools in New York City, but not
Speaker 1: in any place where there's actually Republican leadership. It is asinine.
Speaker 1: But she tells that lie because the Washington Post won't
Speaker 1: call her on it, because CNN won't call her on it,
Speaker 1: because the New York Times won't call her on it,
Speaker 1: And so it's gas lighting taken to just a The
Speaker 1: word Orwellian is used too often, but it is truly Orwellian.
Speaker 1: Two plus two is five, but it's not even that.
Speaker 1: It's two plus two is umbrella. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: what they're doing now, the Senator, I can't help, but
Speaker 1: notice you just mentioned Governor DeSantis. And while I'm very
Speaker 1: pleased that people in the White House are listening to
Speaker 1: this show, I have to wonder if some people down
Speaker 1: in Florida are listening to this show as well, because
Speaker 1: there's a great headline that just came out about something
Speaker 1: to Santis and the Florida Republicans are doing. They've just
Speaker 1: sent airplanes full of illegal aliens to Martha's vineyard. And
Speaker 1: I cheered when I saw the headline, and then I
Speaker 1: had to think, you know, there's a certain podcast hosted
Speaker 1: by a certain senator from Texas that has been calling
Speaker 1: exactly for that for many weeks now, and I just
Speaker 1: can't help but wonder if that may have had some
Speaker 1: effect on this policy going into effect. I was thrilled
Speaker 1: when the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, took me up
Speaker 1: on the ID and began sending illegal immigrants, first to DC,
Speaker 1: then to New York, then to Chicago. It's had a
Speaker 1: fantastic event as these these Democratic mayors have lost their
Speaker 1: minds and declared national emergencies. The mayor of DC declared
Speaker 1: a national emergency or a city emergency because six thousand
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants were sent to DC. Of course, we've had
Speaker 1: since Biden became president, we have had four point two
Speaker 1: million illegal immigrants cross illegally with Biden as president. It
Speaker 1: is horrific. That's a crazy number. Four point two million.
Speaker 1: That is a crazy number. It is larger than many
Speaker 1: of the states of our Union. I mean four point
Speaker 1: two million since Joe Biden put his hand on the
Speaker 1: Bible and took the oath of office. That's what's coming.
Speaker 1: It continues to get worse. And what is amazing about
Speaker 1: when red state governors, first Texas now Florida are shipping
Speaker 1: two blue strongholds is the Democrats, who talk a good
Speaker 1: game immediately flipped tailed. So I want to give you
Speaker 1: a quote from Martha's Vineyard. When I introduced the legislation,
Speaker 1: you had democrats. Democrats in the House of Representatives slammed me.
Speaker 1: But I want to read from the county commissioner of
Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard, Keith chattonover and here's the quote he's at
Speaker 1: about my legislation. I would love to see Martha's Vineyard
Speaker 1: become a haven for new immigrants in the country. But
Speaker 1: Senator Cruz has no idea what he's talking about regarding
Speaker 1: a border crisis. He went on to say, immigrants make
Speaker 1: our country stronger, as evidenced by immigration from Brazil and
Speaker 1: other countries to the vineyard. And he is trying to
Speaker 1: whip up racial anxieties for political gain, which is essentially
Speaker 1: the entire GOP platform. Anyhow, that's before they arrived. I
Speaker 1: want to see if after two, three, four, five, six, ten,
Speaker 1: one hundred planeloads or bus loads, if the county commissioner
Speaker 1: has the same view, and I'm going to predict he's
Speaker 1: going to do exactly the same as the mayor from
Speaker 1: DC and the mayor from New York and the mayor
Speaker 1: from Chicago, which is runs screaming, oh crap, this is
Speaker 1: a real problem. All those mayors, by the way, they're
Speaker 1: doing that after five thousand, maybe ten eleven thousand illegal
Speaker 1: aliens in their cities. Not a drop in the bucket,
Speaker 1: A fraction of an iota of a drop in the
Speaker 1: bucket when you're talking about four point two million foreign
Speaker 1: nationals coming into the country. I'm so pleased. Big kudos
Speaker 1: to Governor Abbott for following up on this. Big kudos
Speaker 1: to Governor de Santis for following up on this. And
Speaker 1: all I can say is, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other red state governors, and there is a major illegal
Speaker 1: immigration problem in this country, and there are a whole
Speaker 1: lot of other liberal cities that you mentioned there. I
Speaker 1: want to see more airplanes. I want to see more buses.
Speaker 1: Doll out those tickets. Give these blue state and blue
Speaker 1: city mayors some of a taste of their own medicine
Speaker 1: and put them on the record. Look, I think that's
Speaker 1: exactly right, and it makes it impossible for the Biden
Speaker 1: White House to defend their lies when you have blue
Speaker 1: Democrat mayors suddenly realizing, oh wow, this is an enormous
Speaker 1: bird and honest. And to put it in perspective, So
Speaker 1: DC is a big city. The mayor declared an emergency
Speaker 1: when six thousand, five hundred illegal immigrants had been sent
Speaker 1: to DC. Let's take Del Rio, Texas. Del Rio, Texas
Speaker 1: is a border city. It's on the Rio Grand River
Speaker 1: Del Rio, Texas. Its population is about thirty thousand people.
Speaker 1: I was down there where when under the bridge that
Speaker 1: crosses the Rio Grand that's right there in Del Rio
Speaker 1: there were at one time fifteen thousand illegal immigrants, almost
Speaker 1: all of whom were from Haiti, and they were crossing it.
Speaker 1: And you want to talk about people freaking out, this
Speaker 1: is one small town that had fifty percent, five zero
Speaker 1: percent of the population of the town crossing in a
Speaker 1: single day. That's what Texas is facing. And so look
Speaker 1: sending them to blue jurisdictions has a purpose, which is
Speaker 1: to cause these hypocrites to be forced to acknowledge their
Speaker 1: hypocrisy and admit that it's a crisis. They're right that
Speaker 1: it's a crisis, but it's an even bigger crisis for
Speaker 1: Texas and for other states along the border. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of legislation that you've filed, turning away from this absolutely
Speaker 1: marvelous new approach on immigration, which I'm which I again
Speaker 1: encourage other GFP governors to follow. Going back to the Senate,
Speaker 1: there were some fireworks that took place, and all I'm
Speaker 1: getting is, we actually haven't really talked about this yet,
Speaker 1: so I'm really going to be hearing it mostly for
Speaker 1: the first time now on air, but I've read the headlines.
Speaker 1: There was a school safety bill that you pushed in
Speaker 1: the Senate that looked like it could pass by unanimous consent,
Speaker 1: and then one Democrat senator shot the thing down. And
Speaker 1: I saw the main points of the bill. They didn't
Speaker 1: seem particularly right wing or extreme or Republican. They seemed
Speaker 1: perfectly common sense. What happened, Well, it's September. School is
Speaker 1: starting and school kids across the country are going back
Speaker 1: to school, including kids in Uvaldi, where we had just
Speaker 1: a few months ago the worst school shooting in Texas
Speaker 1: history was horrific, and I think we need to do
Speaker 1: much much more to keep our kids safe. And so
Speaker 1: I have legislation. When the Senate took up its gun
Speaker 1: control bill, I authored the lead alternative to the Democrats
Speaker 1: gun control bill, and it was legislation that was called
Speaker 1: Cruiz Barosso, and it had all sorts of elements to
Speaker 1: go after violent criminals, to lock them up, to get
Speaker 1: them off the streets, to protect our kids. The Democrats
Speaker 1: party line vote voted against it. So what I did
Speaker 1: today is I took just the school safety components of
Speaker 1: Cruiz Barosso, so not the whole thing, but what was
Speaker 1: focused directly at enhancing school safety. And in particular it
Speaker 1: was thirty billion dollars, and that's with a bee of funding.
Speaker 1: Thirty billion dollars of funding to enhance school safety. And
Speaker 1: it has a number of elements. One element is doubling
Speaker 1: the number of police officers in schools so that we
Speaker 1: have twice as many police officers on campus. They're physically
Speaker 1: to protect our kids, to stop praise madmen from from
Speaker 1: getting into classrooms and trying to murder our children. Number two,
Speaker 1: it has ten billion dollars to hire fifteen thousand new
Speaker 1: mental health professionals to help spot these deranged young men
Speaker 1: before they commit these kind of crimes, to help intervene
Speaker 1: early to stop this before it happens. And in addition
Speaker 1: to that, it is as funding for school safety improvements
Speaker 1: throughout the campus, things to make the campus more physically secure.
Speaker 1: So what I did today as I stood up on
Speaker 1: the Senate floor and I asked unanimous consent for the
Speaker 1: Senate to pass it. Now, the procedures in the Senate,
Speaker 1: if you ask, it's called asking for a U see
Speaker 1: unanimous consent. The presiding officer then says is their objection,
Speaker 1: and if nobody objects, it passes it. It passes the
Speaker 1: same in it and it is treated as having passed
Speaker 1: one hundred to nothing. So there's a process for a UC,
Speaker 1: which is before you seek a UC, you tell the
Speaker 1: other side you're going to do it so they can
Speaker 1: determine if they're going to object. So I told the
Speaker 1: Democrats last week I was going to seek UC to
Speaker 1: pass this, and we heard from the Democrats that they're
Speaker 1: going to object it. In particular, we heard Chris Murphy,
Speaker 1: who was the Democrat from Connecticut, was going to object.
Speaker 1: And I did a media interview a few days ago
Speaker 1: where a reporter asked me, said, well, well, what is
Speaker 1: his objection going to be? And I told the report
Speaker 1: I said, actually, I don't know. I have no idea
Speaker 1: because they haven't articulated any substantive reasons why the bill
Speaker 1: is a bad idea. They haven't indicated anything they oppose.
Speaker 1: So I said, I guess I'm looking forward to hear
Speaker 1: what he has to say. So I stand up. I
Speaker 1: give a speech in favor of it, saying we need
Speaker 1: to do more, we need to keep our kids safe.
Speaker 1: This is a common sense bill. This ought to be
Speaker 1: a bill that passes one hundred to nothing. Presiding Officer
Speaker 1: turns and says, is there any objection? And Chris Murphy
Speaker 1: stands up and he says, and I'm going to read
Speaker 1: you the entirety of his speech, Madam President, I object
Speaker 1: periclean wow, soaring oratory. And I have to admit I
Speaker 1: stood up at that point and I was flabbergasted. I've
Speaker 1: been in the Senate ten years. I've never seen that
Speaker 1: happen on a debate on the Senate floor. He provided
Speaker 1: not one word of argument, not one reason why it
Speaker 1: was a bad idea, not one harm. He has no
Speaker 1: basis to object. He simply says I object and kills it.
Speaker 1: And I said, look at a time when I mean
Speaker 1: our kids, there is a real problem of mass murderers,
Speaker 1: of lunatics, who are targeting schools, who are targeting churches,
Speaker 1: who are targeting malls. I mean it is crime, is
Speaker 1: a serious problem which has gotten worse under Democrats. And
Speaker 1: this is this legislation would be the most comprehensive of
Speaker 1: the most far reaching, the most serious school safety legislation
Speaker 1: ever enacted by the federal government. And the Democrats are
Speaker 1: killing it. Chris Murphy's killing it without even bothering to
Speaker 1: explain why. And I further said, on the Senate floor,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, there's a reason he feels he
Speaker 1: can do that. And I pointed up to the Senate
Speaker 1: gallery where the reporters normally sit, and I said, if
Speaker 1: you look at the gallery, the number of reporters presently
Speaker 1: here is zero point zero zero, not a single but
Speaker 1: reporter bothered to show up. Why is it that the
Speaker 1: senator from Connecticut feels he can just kill this bill
Speaker 1: and provide zero reasoning as to why, because he knows
Speaker 1: the docile corporate media won't report on it, won't tell
Speaker 1: an when it happened, and we'll never ask him. He
Speaker 1: knows he will not get a question. Why did you
Speaker 1: single handedly prevent us from doubling the number of police
Speaker 1: officers on school campuses? Why did you kill fifteen thousand
Speaker 1: new mental health counselors on school campuses? Because the media propagandists.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I then asked for a second,
Speaker 1: you see, I said, Look, I had assumed he would
Speaker 1: present some argument as to why he thought this was
Speaker 1: a bad idea. I don't know what it is because
Speaker 1: he chose not to, so I said, And maybe he
Speaker 1: disliked how we were spending it. Maybe he says we
Speaker 1: should spend more on counselors than on cops. I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't. I mean, he didn't say anything.
Speaker 1: So my second amendment was, there are right now, there's
Speaker 1: one hundred and thirty billion dollars in unspent COVID relief
Speaker 1: funds designated for schools. So Congress has appropriated it. It's
Speaker 1: sitting there, it hasn't been spent. The way my bill
Speaker 1: was paid for is it was using had unspent COVID funds,
Speaker 1: so it did not cost any additional money because that's
Speaker 1: money that has already been allocated to schools. But I said,
Speaker 1: all right, if he doesn't like how my bill is
Speaker 1: spending it, I had a very simple, one page bill
Speaker 1: that simply says schools, if they wish to, can spend
Speaker 1: some of that COVID relief money on enhancing school security.
Speaker 1: So they can spend some of it on hiring police officers,
Speaker 1: or spend some of it on enhancing the physical security
Speaker 1: on campus. Right now, the Democrats have put in place
Speaker 1: rules that stop them from doing that. So the very
Speaker 1: simple rule let the schools decide if they want to
Speaker 1: spend it on school safety. What did Murphy do? Stood
Speaker 1: up and objected and gave a very short speech, this
Speaker 1: time maybe a minute or two, where he says, I'm
Speaker 1: not arguing because this isn't real. He says, this is clickbait,
Speaker 1: to which I responded, okay, is very real. And in
Speaker 1: order for both of these bills, or either of these
Speaker 1: bills to pass, the Senator for Connecticut had to do
Speaker 1: one thing, just shut up. If he simply had closed
Speaker 1: his mouth, these bills would have passed unanimously. But he's
Speaker 1: unwilling to do it, and it's because the Democrats, when
Speaker 1: it comes to crime and mass shootings, they have one
Speaker 1: political objective, and that's taking away the Second Amendment rights
Speaker 1: of law abiding citizens. When it comes to actually stopping
Speaker 1: these crimes, not only are they not interested in doing it,
Speaker 1: they actively and affirmatively oppose serious steps to enhance the
Speaker 1: security of schools, and we saw it tragically today. It's
Speaker 1: also just such weak sauce to say, I object and
Speaker 1: I want to participate because politics involves a certain aspect
Speaker 1: of rhetoric and theater to it. Yes, of course that's
Speaker 1: what politics. It involves talking and making speeches and persuading
Speaker 1: fellow members. Yeah, duh, of course that's politics. And that,
Speaker 1: to me is such a weak sauce. But it's also
Speaker 1: not really a plausible objection because he's saying, this is clickbait.
Speaker 1: This is clickbait. But to your point, the media didn't
Speaker 1: show up. The press weren't even there. And this actually
Speaker 1: brings me, to my mind an even more amazing moment,
Speaker 1: which is, as far as I can tell, Senator, and
Speaker 1: please fill in the details here. The Democrats had a
Speaker 1: pro media cartel bill that they've been working on for
Speaker 1: a very long time to give our corporate left wing
Speaker 1: propagandist media even more power, and specifically to try to
Speaker 1: get some more money at a big tech but maybe
Speaker 1: to wield some more power than they already do over
Speaker 1: all the rest of US and over free speech in
Speaker 1: the country. And as far as I can tell, you
Speaker 1: single handedly derailed it somehow, even though the Democrats still
Speaker 1: run the Senate. How did that happen? So we had
Speaker 1: a markup last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee on
Speaker 1: a bill that is called the Journalism Competition Protection Act,
Speaker 1: and it actually I would characterize the bill differently than
Speaker 1: you did, um in that I think there are some
Speaker 1: good aspects of the bill, and I was genuinely mixed
Speaker 1: on whether the bill was a good idea or not.
Speaker 1: What the bill purports to do is to help smaller
Speaker 1: journalistic out outlets and in particular local media, so local broadcasters,
Speaker 1: local newspapers. Right now, if you're a local newspaper and
Speaker 1: you write a story, big tech can take your story
Speaker 1: and put it online and run ads like get ad
Speaker 1: revenue from putting your story your content that you produced online.
Speaker 1: Big tech can and does makes billions of dollars distributing
Speaker 1: the content you provided that. You know, look, if you
Speaker 1: were a musician, a radio station wouldn't have the ability
Speaker 1: to take your music and play it against your wishes
Speaker 1: and make money off of it without paying you. Right.
Speaker 1: So the argument from local media is what we have
Speaker 1: either written these stories or put together these news stories
Speaker 1: in the case of broadcast TV, and big tech just
Speaker 1: monetizes it for themselves and doesn't pass anything. So what
Speaker 1: this bill does is it allows smaller journalistic outlets, and
Speaker 1: it defines smaller journalistic outlets as those with fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: employers employees or fewer. So it excludes the New York
Speaker 1: Times and the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: for example, because they all have more than fifteen hundred employees.
Speaker 1: But smaller outlets can band together and can form a
Speaker 1: joint group to negotiate with big tech in order to
Speaker 1: get paid for their content. What you're describing, Senator, actually
Speaker 1: see fine, and so so then my question would be
Speaker 1: why derail it? Yeah, so, and it's modeled after what
Speaker 1: happened in Australia where they did something very similar to
Speaker 1: it and Facebook said We're not going to comply, and
Speaker 1: then like two days later they said, oh crap, we
Speaker 1: need all this content. So now they're paying the local media.
Speaker 1: So it was in significant respects successful in Australia. That
Speaker 1: was the model for this. So this was a bill
Speaker 1: that was authored by Amy Klobuchar, the Democrat from Minnesota,
Speaker 1: and John Kennedy, the Republican from from Louisiana. Was a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine and a really good guy. And
Speaker 1: I said at the Markup, so I was being lobbied
Speaker 1: by both sides on this. Big tech hates this bill.
Speaker 1: So that's that's a plus. Anything big tech hates I
Speaker 1: have a natural inclination to. Like Here's what I said
Speaker 1: at the Markup. I said, when I look at big
Speaker 1: tech in journalism, the single greatest threat to free speech
Speaker 1: we have today is big tech censorship. And I don't
Speaker 1: want anything we do to increase big tech censorship. Moreover,
Speaker 1: I want anything we do to decrease big tech censorship.
Speaker 1: And what this bill did was create an exemption from
Speaker 1: the antitrust laws. So ordinarily, a bunch of competitors you
Speaker 1: can't get all the newspapers in a state to come
Speaker 1: together and negotiate, is one that violates the antitrust laws.
Speaker 1: So this bill creates an exemption from the antitrust laws
Speaker 1: to let them come together and negotiate with big tech.
Speaker 1: And so I introduced an amendment. I said, the immunity
Speaker 1: from antitrust under this bill does not apply to any
Speaker 1: negotiations or agreements concerning content moderation, concerning censorship. In other words,
Speaker 1: you can get together and negotiate on price. You can
Speaker 1: say you got to pay me for what we're producing.
Speaker 1: But what you can't get together as you can't get
Speaker 1: a media cartel together with a big tech cartel and
Speaker 1: say hey, let's all agree that we will censor any
Speaker 1: story about Donald J. Trump. And this bill would give
Speaker 1: that immunity for manitrust laws for them to get together
Speaker 1: as a cartel and collude to censor more effectively. And
Speaker 1: so it says, hey, if this is about price, they
Speaker 1: let them negotiate on price, but censorship should not be
Speaker 1: a topic that is covered by this bill. And so
Speaker 1: we vote on it, and all the Republicans vote for me,
Speaker 1: including John Kennedy. And what John Kennedy says at the markup,
Speaker 1: he says, listen, I want to help the local newspapers
Speaker 1: and local stations, but I'm not interested in censorship, and
Speaker 1: what Cruiz is saying seems very reasonable that when they're bargaining,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be bargaining about censorship, they should be bargaining
Speaker 1: about price. So Amy Klobuchar got very angry, begins screaming
Speaker 1: at John Kennedy in the market. She's like, we had
Speaker 1: a deal and you're not. You're not following our deal.
Speaker 1: He's like, we didn't have a deal to allow censorship.
Speaker 1: That wasn't our deal. So they're going back and forth
Speaker 1: and we have a committee vote. Now here's what's very interesting.
Speaker 1: One of the Democrats, John Ossoff from Georgia, was not there.
Speaker 1: He actually had COVID and was an India, so he
Speaker 1: was out of the country. Normally, if you are absent,
Speaker 1: if a senator is absent from a mark up, your
Speaker 1: staff can have a proxy to vote for you. So
Speaker 1: even if you're not physically there, your staff can cast
Speaker 1: a proxy vote that counts well. Osoff was not physically
Speaker 1: there and he had not given his staff the proxy
Speaker 1: to vote. They didn't have a vote from him one
Speaker 1: way or the other. So we voted on my amendment. Jesshry.
Speaker 1: Committee has eleven Democrats and eleven Republicans. We voted on it,
Speaker 1: and the vote was eleven to ten, eleven ours voting
Speaker 1: yes and only Tends voting no because asof wasn't there.
Speaker 1: Dick Durban, the chairman of the committee, has head explode,
Speaker 1: like like they're it is worth watching how these Dems
Speaker 1: are just fulminating and spewing and they're losing their minds.
Speaker 1: And then Michael, what happened next was truly hysteric. Amy klobucharcis,
Speaker 1: so my amendment's been adopted. It's now part of her bill.
Speaker 1: And she says, well, if this isn't the bill, I
Speaker 1: can't support my bill. There you go, I no longer
Speaker 1: it is. I no longer support my own bill. And
Speaker 1: she said, and we're gonna pull it down. I made
Speaker 1: clear if you adopt my amendment, I'll vote for your bill.
Speaker 1: And once the amendment was adopted, I would have voted
Speaker 1: for it. But it was amazing because the Democrats made
Speaker 1: clear in that mark up that they value censorship over
Speaker 1: anything else. It's total vindication of the Republican skepticism, right
Speaker 1: because the Democrats come out they say, this is just
Speaker 1: a bill about helping small newspapers, which I'm totally four.
Speaker 1: You're totally for. I think most people are totally for. Okay, great, okay, man,
Speaker 1: you're not going to censor right now. No, we're not
Speaker 1: going to censor. Okay, great, Well, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: put in this little amendment that says you can't use
Speaker 1: this as a way to censor everybody. Then the amendment
Speaker 1: passes and then they say, yeah, never mind. It's just
Speaker 1: it just tells you what they were after the whole time.
Speaker 1: It was truly brazen, and I think it was revealing.
Speaker 1: It showed censorship and silencing of the political opposition has
Speaker 1: become a core value of today's Democrat party. They support it,
Speaker 1: and apparently they're now willing to vote against their own
Speaker 1: bills if there's anything in them that might actually stop
Speaker 1: big tech from censoring Michael Knowles. That's amazing, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I love it. I even I just love the whole
Speaker 1: kind of nitty gritty technical way. Because ass Off was
Speaker 1: out and you saw your life. I love the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Speaking of close votes, though, I've got to ask you
Speaker 1: about a vote that's coming up that is causing me
Speaker 1: to lose my hair. You know, I count on my
Speaker 1: hair for a like count on it for like three
Speaker 1: inches of height, and it's causing me to pull my
Speaker 1: hair out. There is going to be this gay marriage vote. Now,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court in o burghfel redefines marriage, and that's that.
Speaker 1: I guess. Now the Democrats want to enshrine this in law.
Speaker 1: So I actually pass along and say, now this is
Speaker 1: the definition of marriage. And some Republicans seem to be
Speaker 1: wanting to go along with this, possibly some Republican senators,
Speaker 1: some Republican candidates. I don't see any reason to do this.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has already spoken. It's just I mean,
Speaker 1: this is to the left of Barack Obama circa twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: I just none of this is making sense to me.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at the numbers. Is this thing
Speaker 1: going to pass? So I don't know. And it is
Speaker 1: even worse than you described. So what we're hearing is
Speaker 1: that this is likely to be what's called the comeback
Speaker 1: vote next Monday. So Monday typically when everyone flies back
Speaker 1: to DC for session, the first vote of the day
Speaker 1: is at five thirty pm on a Monday, and that's
Speaker 1: late enough that even from the West coast, you can
Speaker 1: fly in and get there in time. To vote. That's
Speaker 1: called the comeback vote, and it's what brings everyone back
Speaker 1: to DC. We are hearing this week that the comeback
Speaker 1: vote on Monday is going to be the vote on
Speaker 1: this bill. And there are a couple of components of
Speaker 1: this bill. Number one, it is responding to a made
Speaker 1: up threat because, and we've talked about this at length,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court majority and Dobbs explicitly said not once,
Speaker 1: not twice, but three times that the Court was not
Speaker 1: going to revisit a burger Fell. It was not going
Speaker 1: to revisit its decision on gay marriage. You have Clarence Thomas,
Speaker 1: who wrote one concurrence, suggesting that, but the five justices
Speaker 1: explicitly said, no, we're not going to. The third time,
Speaker 1: Justice Alito, writing for the majority, says, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to say this anymore clearly, No, no, no. So
Speaker 1: as much as the Democrats and the media want to
Speaker 1: suggest that the Court is suddenly on the verge of
Speaker 1: overturning that decision, the Court's majority said unequivocally it was not.
Speaker 1: So it's not trying to do address an affirmative threat
Speaker 1: to gay marriage, which which people could be concerned about.
Speaker 1: It's engaged in politics. But you know, look, if it
Speaker 1: were empty politics, that would be problematic, but not necessarily
Speaker 1: the end of the world. But it's worse than that
Speaker 1: because if this bill passes, it repeals the Federal Defensive
Speaker 1: Marriage Act, which Bill Clinton signed in a a law it
Speaker 1: used to be Democrats would agree with defending marriage, but
Speaker 1: it also a men's federal law defining marriage to encompass
Speaker 1: whatever any state says marriage is that any state that
Speaker 1: is that makes anything called a marriage legal is automatically
Speaker 1: legal for federal law. And by the way, that's not
Speaker 1: even limited to two people. That means of a state
Speaker 1: made polygamy legal federal law would immediately recognize polygamy as
Speaker 1: federal law. I mean, I mean it is broadreaching. It's
Speaker 1: it's even worse than that, because you know, there was
Speaker 1: an oral argument that Don Varelli, who had been the
Speaker 1: Solicitor General under Barack Obama, was presenting before the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: where where Justice Alito asked, well, isn't the next step
Speaker 1: for the irs to go after the five oh one
Speaker 1: C three status of any institution that does not agree
Speaker 1: with gay marriage? And Varilli admits, oh, yes, yes, that
Speaker 1: that is the next step. And if this bill passes,
Speaker 1: the effect will be, and I'll make a prediction right now,
Speaker 1: if this bill passes and Joe Biden signs it into law,
Speaker 1: the Biden Irs will use this bill to target schools
Speaker 1: K through twelve schools, to target universities, to target charities,
Speaker 1: and to target churches that maintain a traditional definition of marriage,
Speaker 1: whether that is a Biblical definition of marriage, or whether
Speaker 1: that is a Jewish synagogue or a Muslim mosque, or
Speaker 1: any religion that teaches that marriages the union of one
Speaker 1: man and one woman. The Biden Irs, if this bill passes,
Speaker 1: will be empowered to go after them, to go to
Speaker 1: your church and say, unless you accept gay marriage, we
Speaker 1: are stripping you of your five oh one C three
Speaker 1: tax status, which you want to talk about opening up
Speaker 1: a massive new front in the assault on religious liberty.
Speaker 1: This bill is about empowering the Biden Irs to target
Speaker 1: every church and school and university and charity in America
Speaker 1: that refuses to knuckle under to their view of gay marriage.
Speaker 1: I think it's incredibly dangerous. And yet, Michael, you asked me,
Speaker 1: is it going to pass? I don't know every Democrat's
Speaker 1: going to vote for it, and there have been multiple
Speaker 1: Republican senators who said they will too. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they get to sixty or not, but given the
Speaker 1: threat to religious liberty, I think it would be profoundly
Speaker 1: dangerous if this passage. It's just unconscionable to me that
Speaker 1: a Republican senator would even consider voting for this, because
Speaker 1: to your point, even if you support gay marriage, even
Speaker 1: if you support o Bergafelt, whatever, to say that you
Speaker 1: want to empower the federal government Joe Biden's irs. We
Speaker 1: know that Biden is is pretty loose and capricious when
Speaker 1: it comes to wielding the executive agencies to crush his
Speaker 1: political opponents. That you would empower them to go after
Speaker 1: schools and churches and charities and all these organizations because
Speaker 1: they have the temerity to continue to hold the view
Speaker 1: of marriage that everyone threat all of history, all around
Speaker 1: the world held until about seven years ago. It's just
Speaker 1: I have such low expectations for people in the political
Speaker 1: establishment that I thought nothing could shock me anymore. But
Speaker 1: it's the most outrageous thing I've heard in politics in years.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, and and look, this is a very
Speaker 1: real threat to show this is not hypothetical. The City
Speaker 1: of Philadelphia denied Catholic Charities participation in adoption services because
Speaker 1: Catholic charities did not embrace gay marriage, as they believed
Speaker 1: it was contrary to their faith. And that case went
Speaker 1: all the way to the Supreme Court and the Sprining
Speaker 1: Court struck it down and said you can't exclude them.
Speaker 1: The difference is, once this bill passes, they'll go back
Speaker 1: and they'll try to exclude Catholic charities. They'll go back
Speaker 1: and they'll target any charity, any church, at a school,
Speaker 1: at a university that dares disagree, and it is a
Speaker 1: green light for religious persecution from the Zealots and the
Speaker 1: Biden Irs. Well, we were mentioning it's not just the
Speaker 1: Republican senators who were talking about this. A lot of
Speaker 1: candidates are being asked about this now. And I know
Speaker 1: that you've been hitting the campaign trail like crazy for
Speaker 1: some of these Republican candidates. You were just up in
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, I believe with is it Caroline Levitt? Who is?
Speaker 1: She was behind and then she just and she was
Speaker 1: being outspend. Then she jumps ahead. So you're you're very
Speaker 1: much you know you're you're going to all of these
Speaker 1: places you see what's happening? One, I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about that race. But two, where do we stand?
Speaker 1: I'm getting such conflicting information right now from pretty much
Speaker 1: every news source. Are we going to take the House
Speaker 1: or do we have a shot at the Senate? What's
Speaker 1: the state of the race. All right, well, let me
Speaker 1: start with your first question. So we had a great
Speaker 1: victory this week. There is New Hampshire had their primaries
Speaker 1: on Tuesday, and for one of the two congressional seats
Speaker 1: in New Hampshire, it's a very close seat. A Democrat
Speaker 1: holds it now, but it's it's a seat that could
Speaker 1: go either way, could go Democrat or Republican. And there
Speaker 1: was a contested primary. The top two candidates in the
Speaker 1: primary were number one, a woman who I supported named
Speaker 1: Caroline Levitt. Caroline is twenty five years old. She is young,
Speaker 1: She is attractive, articulate, dynamic. She worked in the Trump
Speaker 1: White House. She worked on the press team in the
Speaker 1: Trump White House. She is a New Hampshire native, grew
Speaker 1: up there, went to college there, played softball at St.
Speaker 1: Anselm's College. Is a really dynamic candidate and she's a conservative.
Speaker 1: If elected, she will be the youngest woman ever to
Speaker 1: serve in the House Representatives. She's you know, gen z,
Speaker 1: she's not even you know, she's not gen x, or
Speaker 1: even why she's gen z. Her principal opponent was a
Speaker 1: much more moderate candidate who had been Chris Christie's executive
Speaker 1: director in New Hampshire. So he was a New Jersey
Speaker 1: Republican who moved to New Hampshire to run Chris kissed
Speaker 1: Christie's campaign and was not remotely as conservative as Caroline. However,
Speaker 1: the DC party bosses, if given a primary between a
Speaker 1: conservative and a moderate, reliably almost inevitably back the MOD
Speaker 1: and put big money behind the MOD because they want
Speaker 1: conservatives to lose. We've seen the DC party bosses attacking
Speaker 1: conservatives and primaries all over the country this year. It's
Speaker 1: been really a problem. I've been fighting them in many
Speaker 1: of those races. Well, in this race, the DC party
Speaker 1: bosses and lobbyists spent five million dollars attacking Caroline Leavitt.
Speaker 1: Five million dollars flooded the airwaves with attack ads, and
Speaker 1: by the way, in New Hampshire, five million dollars buys
Speaker 1: a lot of TV ads, right right, I mean that's
Speaker 1: a lot of money for any congressional race, but especially wow,
Speaker 1: that's crazy well, and ironically, that's five million dollars that
Speaker 1: was given by Republican donors to retake the House, not
Speaker 1: to try to defeat Conservatives in primaries, but the party
Speaker 1: bosses here they want House members who will not rock
Speaker 1: the boat, who will obey them, who will just salute
Speaker 1: and take orders. Five million dollars. I saw what was happening.
Speaker 1: I endorsed Caroline early on. I'm raising money for her,
Speaker 1: raising hard money for her. And then last week, last Thursday,
Speaker 1: I got in a plane and I flew to New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and did a big rally for It was awesome.
Speaker 1: It was at a VFW VFW hall that that I
Speaker 1: hung out and drank beer and there were hundreds of
Speaker 1: people there and there was energy and there was a
Speaker 1: grassroots enthusiasm. And she was losing, she was behind in
Speaker 1: the polls, but the rally, the rally dominated the news
Speaker 1: up there. We had a lot of enthusiam. Actually, right
Speaker 1: after the rally, she went on Tucker Carlson had a
Speaker 1: fantastic interview with Tucker that we watched from the VFW hall.
Speaker 1: She was filming it outside and so we're all sitting
Speaker 1: there having a beer watching it and everyone's cheering her,
Speaker 1: and then she came in and got a hearty round
Speaker 1: of applause. Well, the election Tuesday night, she won, despite
Speaker 1: five million dollars being spent by DC party bosses. She
Speaker 1: won anyway, and she's now the candidate for the general election,
Speaker 1: and I think she's got a very good chance of winning,
Speaker 1: of defeating an incumbent Democrat, and of being a really
Speaker 1: strong leader in Washington. Senator, there's so much more to
Speaker 1: talk about, but not with me. What is left to
Speaker 1: talk about is going to be on the room with
Speaker 1: our friend Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you be discussing? Hi, Michael, Hi, Senator.
Speaker 1: We're gonna put on our legal hats for the cloakroom
Speaker 1: and discuss a very controversial ruling from the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: in which the Court is essentially forcing a Jewish university
Speaker 1: to officially give recognition to an LGBTQ club, which is
Speaker 1: in violation of that university's orthodox Jewish belief. So we're
Speaker 1: going to discuss the nitty gritty of what this ruling
Speaker 1: is and the sort of political aspect of it too.
Speaker 1: Because Roberts and Kavanaugh sided with the leftist justices. So
Speaker 1: you can join us with that discussion. Go to Verdict
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz dot com slash Plus. If you use
Speaker 1: my promo code, which is Cloakroom, you can watch for
Speaker 1: free for the first month of your annual subscription. That
Speaker 1: is Verdict with Ted Cruz dot Com slash Plus. I
Speaker 1: very much look forward to that discussion. I very much
Speaker 1: look forward to all of you out there subscribing to
Speaker 1: the show wherever you get your podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcast,
Speaker 1: all over the place. Until next time, I'm Michael Knowles.
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