Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
Speaker 2: and Senator let's just start with congratulations.
Speaker 1: It's official.
Speaker 2: Your new book is out, Unwoke How to Defeat Cultural
Speaker 2: Marxism in America. And I have to say when you
Speaker 2: get the book, if you haven't gotten the book, the best,
Speaker 2: the best page, just skip right ahead to page number forty.
Speaker 2: It's the best page in the book. So congrats on that.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, Senator, Page forty phenomenal. You should definitely just
Speaker 2: go right there, read that and then start the very beginning.
Speaker 3: Ben, what the hell is on page forty? I don't
Speaker 3: know what's on page forty.
Speaker 2: Page forty it says, and I will quote here. Every
Speaker 2: podcast is one alongside my co host today that's Ben
Speaker 2: Ferguson the Nationally Syndicate Radios has become a very dear friend.
Speaker 1: I got a shout out, thank you, sir. I appreciate
Speaker 1: that now.
Speaker 3: So I actually think maybe the best page of the
Speaker 3: book is the very first page of the book. Of
Speaker 3: your copy, because I gave you a copy, I gave
Speaker 3: you a signed copy. You did, and if you recall
Speaker 3: the inscription that I wrote on the front I said, Ben,
Speaker 3: you are one of the three best hosts in history
Speaker 3: of the Verdict podcast.
Speaker 2: Don't leave out the word undoubtedly. You use that word undoubtedly,
Speaker 2: there we go. I want to make sure I get
Speaker 2: that in the history books.
Speaker 3: Now. Never mind that there have only been three hosts
Speaker 3: of Verdict, and that would be you and me and
Speaker 3: Michael Knowles. But you are undoubtedly one of the three best.
Speaker 1: Yes, and that's and that's on the shelf right now.
Speaker 3: And the second sentence I actually liked even better than
Speaker 3: the first. And I said, of all of the men
Speaker 3: to play college tennis, you're one of them.
Speaker 1: There we go, you were one of them. So this
Speaker 1: is the best part when you sign this.
Speaker 2: I didn't want to travel with it, and you and
Speaker 2: I've been on the road, and we were on the
Speaker 2: road last week, and I didn't want to travel with
Speaker 2: the book because I was like, all right, this is
Speaker 2: what I want to genuinely say forever. So I got
Speaker 2: home for the trip and I didn't want to, you know,
Speaker 2: knock the book around. So I was reading all day
Speaker 2: yesterday and all day today to get to make sure
Speaker 2: that we can have a stellar interview on your own
Speaker 2: show about your book. So let's start with the title.
Speaker 2: Why did you pick the title unwoke? And also for
Speaker 2: people that don't understand what the definition of cultural Marxism is,
Speaker 2: what is that mean?
Speaker 3: Look? I wrote this book because the world has gone insane,
Speaker 3: and my reaction is the same as as millions of people,
Speaker 3: as the listeners of this podcast, that our reaction is
Speaker 3: what the hell happened? How did things get so crazy
Speaker 3: so fast? This book is my best effort to explain it,
Speaker 3: and in particular, it's explaining how the radical left has
Speaker 3: seized every major institution in America. And so the book
Speaker 3: starts Chapter one is the universities, and I call the
Speaker 3: universeverities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. The universities
Speaker 3: are where the virus was created, It's where it mutated,
Speaker 3: and it's where it spread. Each chapter the book focuses
Speaker 3: on a different institution the radical left is seized. So
Speaker 3: Chapter two focuses on K through twelve education and all
Speaker 3: the radical garbage being put in our kids, whether it's
Speaker 3: critical race theory or radical transgenderism. Chapter three focuses on
Speaker 3: journalism and how journalism has changed from covering the news
Speaker 3: to propaganda. From there, I go to big business and
Speaker 3: how big business today the Fortune one hundred are the
Speaker 3: economic enforcers of the radical left. From there, I go
Speaker 3: to big tech and how big tech is pervasively censoring speech.
Speaker 3: From there, I go to entertainment and by the way,
Speaker 3: if if I could have just one back, I would
Speaker 3: have entertainment back. Enterptains, and I think is the most
Speaker 3: consequential of all of these. And in entertainment we talk
Speaker 3: about Hollywood and movies and television and sports and music.
Speaker 3: We break it all down. From there, we go to
Speaker 3: science and I talk about how science has been corrupted
Speaker 3: and politicized. And the final chapter in the book is
Speaker 3: on China and explains how China is a nexus that
Speaker 3: links them all. And the book was really designed to
Speaker 3: do two things. Number one, explain how and why specifically
Speaker 3: the radical left took over every one of those institutions,
Speaker 3: and they did it from the inside. But secondly, to
Speaker 3: lay out a clear battle plan how we take them back,
Speaker 3: how we fight back. I believe we will take this
Speaker 3: country back. And this book is laying out how we
Speaker 3: recapture the institutions of America.
Speaker 2: You know in this book, and I encourage people to
Speaker 2: get it because there is just an incredible history in
Speaker 2: the very beginning as well about your family. I know
Speaker 2: your father and have gotten to spend some time with him.
Speaker 2: He's an awesome just individual be around. He's jovial, he
Speaker 2: can be funny. He loves this country. But there is
Speaker 2: some incredible history not only about your family, but also
Speaker 2: how your father was involved in Cuba in the students
Speaker 2: and at a young age, and what was happening really
Speaker 2: with the revolution down there, and how he was I
Speaker 2: guess you could say, brought in to this revolution with Castro,
Speaker 2: not realizing what Castro was doing, and it started at
Speaker 2: a young age where they were targeting children, and it
Speaker 2: was an incredible part of the story, not just because
Speaker 2: of what happened, but also how he was beaten and
Speaker 2: how his life was threatened, and how he was a
Speaker 2: marked man who had to get out and come to America.
Speaker 2: Talk a little bit about that story of that being
Speaker 2: your history of your family, and also it's a warning
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Speaker 2: It's the beginning of the book and it's just an
Speaker 2: It takes your breath away when you realize how close
Speaker 2: your father was to death in Cuba.
Speaker 3: Well, my family story is a huge part of why
Speaker 3: this matters so much to me. It's personal and it's real,
Speaker 3: And what I want to do is just read you
Speaker 3: the first page of the book. His white linen suit
Speaker 3: was stained red with blood, blood that had been beaten
Speaker 3: out of him with a club regularly each hour, breaking
Speaker 3: his nose, shattering his teeth. Scarlet red blood, as if
Speaker 3: his suit were emblazoned with the color of the Marxist
Speaker 3: revolution of which he was a part. As my father
Speaker 3: lay on that prison floor, crumpled and broken, not a
Speaker 3: spot of white was visible on the now torn and
Speaker 3: tattered suit he had been given for his seventeenth birthday. Instead,
Speaker 3: mud and dirt and grime and blood. To this day,
Speaker 3: my dad remembers what he was saying in that dark hole.
Speaker 3: Nobody depends on me. I have no wife, no children.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter if I live or I die. Three
Speaker 3: years earlier, when he was just fourteen, my father had
Speaker 3: made the fateful decision to join up with the revolution
Speaker 3: in his homeland of Cuba, to follow Fidel Castro. My
Speaker 3: dad was young and ignorant and naive. Raphael bim Venilo
Speaker 3: Cruz did not know that Castro was a Communist. He
Speaker 3: didn't know the horrors that would befall the Cuban people
Speaker 3: at the hands of his new comrades. He just knew
Speaker 3: that the then dictator of Cuba, full of Gensio Bautista,
Speaker 3: was corrupt and cruel and oppressive, as Francis Ford Coppola
Speaker 3: immortally chronicled in The Godfather Saga. Batista was in bed
Speaker 3: with the American mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased with
Speaker 3: the the blood beaten out of the Cuban people. Look,
Speaker 3: that's my family story. My dad at seventeen was tortured,
Speaker 3: he was in prison, he fled QBI, came to America.
Speaker 3: My aunt, my Theo Sonya whom I adore, who we
Speaker 3: actually had on on Verdict as a guest talking about Cuba.
Speaker 3: She fought in the counter revolution. After Castro succeeded, she
Speaker 3: was in prison. She was tortured by Castro's goons. I
Speaker 3: tell her story in this book too. I also tell
Speaker 3: the story of my grandmother, mi Abuela. Miabuela was a
Speaker 3: sixth grade teacher, and she told me she loved teaching,
Speaker 3: She loved teach teaching her students, and she had a
Speaker 3: pure photographic memory. Man, it was incredible. She literally everything
Speaker 3: she read she remembered word for word. She told me
Speaker 3: about when Castro took over that they almost immediately targeted
Speaker 3: the children. And one thing to understand, Marxist always begin
Speaker 3: with the kids, always, always, always, As my father told me,
Speaker 3: the revolution, like he was, were a bunch of fourteen
Speaker 3: and fifteen year old boys who didn't know any better, teenagers.
Speaker 3: And you look at every communist revolution in the world,
Speaker 3: whether you're talking about Russia or China or North Korea
Speaker 3: or Cuba or Venezuela, it is always the young teenagers
Speaker 3: who are idealistic, who believe, and who are naive, who
Speaker 3: don't have the world experience to understand they're being lied to.
Speaker 3: But communists start not just with teenagers, they go younger.
Speaker 3: And what my grandmother told me is she said, almost
Speaker 3: immediately after the revolution, they sent the army into the
Speaker 3: elementary schools, and soldiers would go into kindergartens in first
Speaker 3: grade and they would tell all of the little kids,
Speaker 3: they'd say, close your eyes and pray to God for candy,
Speaker 3: and the kids all did so, and then they'd open
Speaker 3: their eyes and there'd be no candy. And then the
Speaker 3: soldiers tell them, they'd say, close your eyes and pray
Speaker 3: to Fidel Castro for candy, and the kids did so,
Speaker 3: and while their eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly
Speaker 3: slip a piece of candy on each child's desk. That's
Speaker 3: not an aberration. Chay Gavara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer.
Speaker 3: He was Fidel Castro's right hand chay Gavara described children
Speaker 3: as malleable clay that you can take the defects out
Speaker 3: of them. You want to know why the cultural Marxist
Speaker 3: in America started in the universities. You want to know
Speaker 3: why they've gone into k through twelve, to elementary schools
Speaker 3: and junior highs and high schools, because if you take
Speaker 3: the children, you take the nation. And this book is
Speaker 3: designed to lay out how they did it and how
Speaker 3: we take them back.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was reading this book, Senator, I
Speaker 2: go back to there's certain pivotal moments and I think
Speaker 2: everyone's life that you look back on and you go, wow,
Speaker 2: if that would have gone differently, my whole life would
Speaker 2: have gone differently, or may not even exist. In the
Speaker 2: first place. I was hit by a drunk driver when
Speaker 2: I was a young kid. We were in a car wreck.
Speaker 2: He died, we lived, And I go back to that
Speaker 2: moment in my life. Many times I was in, as
Speaker 2: you know, a shooting where I was a target of
Speaker 2: a gang initiation. I wonder if I would have been
Speaker 2: hit that night in my life, would have you know,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have my kids. There's that moment in this
Speaker 2: book where you wrote my father joined up and began
Speaker 2: doing acts of sabotage, bernie government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever
Speaker 2: he could undermine the oppression of regime. That's what It
Speaker 2: landed him in prison at seventeen. But Tesus police had
Speaker 2: caught him and they were they were extracting their brutal revenge.
Speaker 2: The next day was dragging the office of a colonel
Speaker 2: who told him, I'm letting you go, but if another
Speaker 2: bomb goes off, if another fire starts, I'm blaming you.
Speaker 2: How can I be responsible for every bad thing that
Speaker 2: happens in the city, my father asked, I don't care,
Speaker 2: replied the commander, I'm holding you responsible. Your father returned home.
Speaker 2: I well wept. Her eldest child had walked in the door, beaten,
Speaker 2: cover in his own blood. As she told me when
Speaker 2: I was a child, that imagined that from that day
Speaker 2: was scared into her mind forever, forever. My boy told
Speaker 2: him get out of the country, and that was the
Speaker 2: turning point for your entire family history, because not only
Speaker 2: did he get out, but he applied to colleges in America,
Speaker 2: to the University of Miami, to LSU, to the University
Speaker 2: of Texas.
Speaker 1: Texas was the first.
Speaker 2: One that led him in, and that's how he came
Speaker 2: to America. That's how you became a Texan, and that's
Speaker 2: how your family history started anew with a clean slate
Speaker 2: in America. When you were writing that, I'm assuming you've
Speaker 2: heard the story many times, but when you put it
Speaker 2: on paper. It took my breath away.
Speaker 3: Look, the book is actually dedicated. I don't think they
Speaker 3: know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father,
Speaker 3: my Theosnia, and in my family, the original freedom fighters.
Speaker 3: I don't think Miabuela is dad, but I don't think
Speaker 3: either my dad or the Asnia have seen that yet.
Speaker 3: Now my dad listens to Verdict, so he he may
Speaker 3: find it out right now on listening to the podcast.
Speaker 3: But it was I mean when I and it's actually
Speaker 3: the very last thing I type on the book is
Speaker 3: the dedication, and that was, look's it's why I am
Speaker 3: who I am. I grew up as a kid sitting
Speaker 3: at the feet of my father in my the Asnia
Speaker 3: and hearing about freedom fighters. And it is an unbelievable
Speaker 3: blessing when you were the child of someone who fled
Speaker 3: oppression and came to America seeking freedom. Our freedom is
Speaker 3: not a joke. It's not something of that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: It is. It is incredibly serious. We either we defend
Speaker 3: our freedom here or we lose America. I hate communists.
Speaker 3: I hate them with a passion from the pit of
Speaker 3: my gut. They are evil. Communism has been responsible for
Speaker 3: more death more misery, more destruction, more poverty, more suffering
Speaker 3: than any force in the history of humanity. And this
Speaker 3: book is all about how the same philosophy that has
Speaker 3: produced such misery is taking over and has taken over
Speaker 3: the major institutions of America. And look, you've heard me
Speaker 3: say this before, but as a child, my father probably
Speaker 3: a thousand times said to me, when we lost our
Speaker 3: freedom in Cuba, I had a place to flee to.
Speaker 3: If we lose our freedom here in America, where do
Speaker 3: we go? That's what the stakes are right now.
Speaker 2: There is also a point in there that hit me,
Speaker 2: and you said that your dad did something that I
Speaker 2: think we've lost in this country. And that's admitting sometimes
Speaker 2: that maybe we get things wrong. Maybe this woke agenda
Speaker 2: is a failure. Maybe green alternative energy is in this
Speaker 2: green religion is a failure. We've tried this, you know,
Speaker 2: the government taking over our kids. It's a failure. And
Speaker 2: your dad was an advocate for Castro early on, and
Speaker 2: he was ashamed by it. He advocated for him even
Speaker 2: in America. And he set down, I'm reading from the book.
Speaker 2: He set down and he made a list of every
Speaker 2: place he'd spoken in Austin Texas in support of Castro.
Speaker 2: He then went back to each and every one of
Speaker 2: them and stood before the same people to make amends.
Speaker 2: He said, quote, I am here to apologize. He told them,
Speaker 2: I misled you. I didn't do so knowingly, but I
Speaker 2: did so. Nonetheless, I urge you to support an evil
Speaker 2: man and an evil Marxist regime, and for that, I
Speaker 2: am truly sorry for me. That's not just a point
Speaker 2: of incredible character. But why don't we have that with
Speaker 2: politicians today, where they can admit, Hey, I may have
Speaker 2: gotten something wrong and I'm sorry that I got it wrong.
Speaker 2: We tried this and it didn't work because we are
Speaker 2: now we have so many elected officials that refused to
Speaker 2: ever admit they ever make a mistake.
Speaker 1: In as humans, we make mistakes.
Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly right, And that story, likewise, my father
Speaker 3: told me thousands of times. I was probably I don't know,
Speaker 3: two or three years old the first time I heard that,
Speaker 3: and I've admired it every time I've heard it. Because
Speaker 3: to have the courage he had gone and spoken at
Speaker 3: rotary clubs and Kowana's clubs in Austin supporting Castro. When
Speaker 3: he got here, he got here it was nineteen fifty seven.
Speaker 3: He was still a young revolutionary. He didn't know that
Speaker 3: Castro was a communist, and he hated Batista. And then
Speaker 3: when Castro took over and to clarity was a communist,
Speaker 3: and in my dad saw the evil and oppression and
Speaker 3: theft and murder and cruelty, and that as bad as
Speaker 3: Batista was, Fidel Castro was a thousand times worse. He
Speaker 3: had the character to admit he's wrong. Yet you know,
Speaker 3: I'm reminded of the clip recently where Barack Obama played
Speaker 3: that he said, you know, we all, we are all
Speaker 3: complicit in the middle least because he says, well, what
Speaker 3: Hamas did was terrible, but he said, what's happening to
Speaker 3: the Palestinians? The occupation is unbearable. And I got to admit,
Speaker 3: of all the clips of Obama, that might be the
Speaker 3: one that pisses me off the most. I actually did
Speaker 3: yesterday Megan Kelly's show her podcast in New York and
Speaker 3: was talking about the book, and she played that clip
Speaker 3: for me. And I try to try to speak reasonably
Speaker 3: and respectably, and I try to limit my cursing, but
Speaker 3: she played it to me and I just said, what
Speaker 3: utter bullshit. And by the way, anytime I say something
Speaker 3: like that, my father will call or text me and say,
Speaker 3: would you please watch your language. That's that's not really
Speaker 3: a good thing to do. And my dad's right on that,
Speaker 3: but it just it's infuriating, and it's like, look, Obama,
Speaker 3: you sent over one hundred million dollars to the Iyahtola
Speaker 3: to Iran. You funded these Hamas terrorists, you set flooded
Speaker 3: money into the Gaza Strip. You put money directly in
Speaker 3: the hands of these death squads, and you say we're
Speaker 3: all complicit. And by the way, you're repeating the bigoted,
Speaker 3: racist lie that there's an occupation. The Gaza Strip is
Speaker 3: not occupied. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. Israel left the
Speaker 3: Gaza Strip. It's entirely the Palestinian There is no occupation
Speaker 3: zero in Gaza. And yet, you know, is Barack Obama
Speaker 3: capable of saying it was a mistake to send one
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars to the Iatola, who chance death to
Speaker 3: American death to Israel. No is Joe Biden capable of
Speaker 3: saying it was a mistake for him to send nearly
Speaker 3: a hundred million dollars to Iran. Subsequently, when that money
Speaker 3: was used to fund the worst terror attack on Israel
Speaker 3: in over fifty years. No, they're not capable of admitting that,
Speaker 3: and I do think admitting when something has failed is
Speaker 3: critic critically critically important.
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Speaker 2: verdict or nine seven to two Patriot. You mentioned education
Speaker 2: and how it's easiest way to change a country in
Speaker 2: one generation. But there was also one of the things
Speaker 2: you said on page sixty four. It says how to
Speaker 2: fight back.
Speaker 1: He said.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, you walked in to your daughter's
Speaker 2: bedroom and asked what she'd been learning about in school.
Speaker 2: She said she had been learning about Christopher Columbus, the
Speaker 2: quote unquote real story.
Speaker 1: I asked what that meant.
Speaker 2: For the next few minutes, I heard about the crimes
Speaker 2: of Christopher Columbus in minute detail. Every murder, Native American,
Speaker 2: transmitted disease, and stolen acre of lamb seemed to be
Speaker 2: accounted for. I heard that Columbus, who claimed the land
Speaker 2: for himself because his straight white privilege or something like that,
Speaker 2: had not actually discovered anything at all, but rather had
Speaker 2: landed on the shores of what would come to be
Speaker 2: known as America by accident. This quote unquote revolution familiar
Speaker 2: to most adults in the United Stasy. It's is something
Speaker 2: that American children encounter sooner or later in a textbook,
Speaker 2: believing that they've accessed some secret, hidden knowledge that the
Speaker 2: grown ups don't want them to have that moment. For
Speaker 2: me is the moment that terrifies me for our kids
Speaker 2: in this my kids generation, is that we have handed
Speaker 2: our children over to this school systems. And it's not
Speaker 2: just public schools now, it's private schools as well, who
Speaker 2: are indoctrinating them in this idea that America somehow was
Speaker 2: started on evil, bad motives and that you should not
Speaker 2: love this country, but you should be ashamed of this country.
Speaker 1: And you had to deal with this with your own daughter.
Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly right. And the problem is this indoctrination
Speaker 3: is happening in every school in America. It's happening to
Speaker 3: every child in America. And one I describe part of
Speaker 3: the way that this book is all about how we
Speaker 3: fight back. But you know, as she was saying that
Speaker 3: Columbus was evil and racist and genocidal and terrible, and
Speaker 3: she hated Christopher Columbus, you know, I just just sat
Speaker 3: down in her bedroom and I tried to have a conversation
Speaker 3: with her and I said, look, I'm not deeply vested
Speaker 3: in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some incredible hero,
Speaker 3: but I said, you know what, we do have a
Speaker 3: federal holiday named after him? Do we typically name federal
Speaker 3: holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs? Like might there be
Speaker 3: another side of the story? Is there anything admirable about him?
Speaker 3: And she was not not really able to see much
Speaker 3: that was admiralle I said, well, what do you think
Speaker 3: about getting in three rooky rickety wooden ships and leaving
Speaker 3: Europe and heading heading west when you think you're falling
Speaker 3: off the edge of the world to explore and discover?
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean, is that spirit, that intrepid spirit?
Speaker 3: Is that anything to be admired? And I said, secondly, look,
Speaker 3: it is true that Columbus and and and the man
Speaker 3: who traveled with him, that that that they carried some
Speaker 3: some germs that that that were that were new to
Speaker 3: to the to the western hemisphere, and that when they
Speaker 3: got here some of the some of the Native Americans
Speaker 3: died from those germs. Now, it's also true it was
Speaker 3: the fifteenth century. They didn't know what a germ was,
Speaker 3: so they didn't know they were carrying it. And when
Speaker 3: you accuse him of mass murder, does culpability matter? Does
Speaker 3: the fact that they didn't know what a germ was,
Speaker 3: They had no idea, they were doing. It is that
Speaker 3: at all relevant if you're going to call him this evil,
Speaker 3: terrible murder. And when I talk about in the book
Speaker 3: is not long thereafter Thanksgiving of that year, we were
Speaker 3: talking about Thanksgiving, and she and a friend of hers
Speaker 3: from school and this is when they were in grade school,
Speaker 3: said said likewise, oh, Thanksgiving is is terrible. It's when
Speaker 3: the pilgrims were oppressing that the Native Americans. And and
Speaker 3: you know again I made the argument, I think even
Speaker 3: more vigorously this time. And I said, and I said, listen,
Speaker 3: it is certainly right that the settlers that came to America,
Speaker 3: that they settled America, and they ultimately conquered America, and
Speaker 3: they they committed some terrible acts to Native Americans. But
Speaker 3: if you look at the history of humanity in every continent,
Speaker 3: every nation was acquired by conquest. And every time there's conquest,
Speaker 3: you have one group of people who are conquering another
Speaker 3: group of people. By the way, in the United States,
Speaker 3: before we were the United States, the Native Americans, one
Speaker 3: tribe conquered, another conquered or another conquered another. And you
Speaker 3: look at Europe, you look at Asia. That's the history
Speaker 3: of humanity. One group of people conquering another. And anytime
Speaker 3: you have conquest, there are horrible things that happen. They're
Speaker 3: terrible things that are done. But I said, look, in
Speaker 3: any war, there were atrocities on both sides. And you know,
Speaker 3: I asked, I asked my daughter. I said, you know,
Speaker 3: from whence do you think the verb to scalp was derived?
Speaker 3: The Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers
Speaker 3: who came here also, And the connection that I made
Speaker 3: for her, and that I make in the book is
Speaker 3: those two discussions are interlinked and intertwined. Which is, for
Speaker 3: all of the teachers and all of the professors and
Speaker 3: all of the people advocating that Columbus was evil and
Speaker 3: advocating that Thanksgiving is evil because the Pilgrims were stealing
Speaker 3: from the Native Americans, it comes down to one antecedent question.
Speaker 3: Was the settlement of the New World a good thing
Speaker 3: or a bad thing? Was the formation of the United
Speaker 3: States of America good or bad? And I'm not neutral
Speaker 3: or ambivalent on that question. I think the United States
Speaker 3: of America has been the greatest force for good of
Speaker 3: any nation in the history of the world. That we
Speaker 3: had produced more prosperity, more abundance. We have liberated more
Speaker 3: prisoners and captives. We have shed our blood and treasure
Speaker 3: and tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the
Speaker 3: history of the world. Do we have our flaws, yes,
Speaker 3: of course. Do we have our problems, yes, of course.
Speaker 3: But America, I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining
Speaker 3: city on a hill. And I want to make a
Speaker 3: special request of our Verdict listeners. You guys are incredible,
Speaker 3: You guys are patriots. You guys give me hope and
Speaker 3: optimism in America. I want to ask every one of
Speaker 3: you please, today, when you finished listening to this podcast,
Speaker 3: most of you are listening on your cell phones, click
Speaker 3: over to Amazon, type in Unwoke and buy the book.
Speaker 1: Right now.
Speaker 3: We have nearly a million unique listeners who listen to Verdict.
Speaker 3: If every one of you goes online and buys the book,
Speaker 3: it would soar to the very tops of the New
Speaker 3: York Times bestseller list. That would drive them nuts. By
Speaker 3: the way, and I wrote this book for the same reason, Ben,
Speaker 3: that you and I do this podcast. It is right
Speaker 3: now eleven oh three pm on Tuesday night. The podcast
Speaker 3: will come out early Wednesday morning. Why am I sitting
Speaker 3: here at eleven oh three? Why are you sitting here
Speaker 3: at eleven o three? Because we care about this. We
Speaker 3: want we want our incredible listeners to be armed with
Speaker 3: information and know how to fight to save this country.
Speaker 3: And this book is exactly in the same spirit. The
Speaker 3: book is I think, interesting and fun. It's not some
Speaker 3: abstract academic treatise, but it's designed. When you read it,
Speaker 3: you'll enjoy it. And by the way, I encourage you, Look,
Speaker 3: if I can be immodest for a second, don't buy
Speaker 3: just one. You know Christmas is coming up very soon.
Speaker 3: Buy a copy for your mom, buy a copy for
Speaker 3: your brother, buy a copy for your next door neighbor,
Speaker 3: your best friend. Because the reason that I spend the
Speaker 3: time to write these books, the reason that you and
Speaker 3: I do this podcast, is we either persuade and win
Speaker 3: hearts and minds, or we lose America. That's what the
Speaker 3: stakes are, and that's what this book is about. It's
Speaker 3: the exact same thing the popodcast is about.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that what we're up against in one of
Speaker 2: your chapters is about the newsroom revolution, and you start
Speaker 2: with a great story of a former colleague of mine
Speaker 2: that is hard to deal with Jake Tapper in a
Speaker 2: fight is he's in essence calling you a liar.
Speaker 1: And this is the new thing that the media has done.
Speaker 2: They become so sanctimonious that they are always looking for
Speaker 2: a moment to tell you why you're wrong and why
Speaker 2: they're brilliant. We've seen this in the last several days
Speaker 2: as they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists
Speaker 2: in Gaza, who who the Israelis are trying to eradicate
Speaker 2: from the face of this earth with good reason after
Speaker 2: what they did just one month ago. And we talked
Speaker 2: about this on Verdict Israel. We knew was on an
Speaker 2: artificial clock the day the terrorist attack happened, before the media,
Speaker 2: before the left started going to the aid of Hamas
Speaker 2: and the Palacinian people that were backing Homosomeny then that
Speaker 2: were and saying, okay, all right, you had a few
Speaker 2: days now to go after these terraces. Now you've got
Speaker 2: to stop it now. Now it's your your obligation to
Speaker 2: stop trying to protect yourself. And this is our media now.
Speaker 2: And it goes back to this idea that they have,
Speaker 2: which is they're better than everyone else.
Speaker 1: They're not here to report news anymore.
Speaker 2: They're here to go after people like you and others
Speaker 2: they don't like and indoctrinate a nation to believe in
Speaker 2: socialism and communism and Marxism.
Speaker 3: Look that that is exactly right. And the media has
Speaker 3: fundamentally changed. And so the chapter on journalism, I talk
Speaker 3: about how when I was first elected to the Senate
Speaker 3: eleven years ago, and I actually focus on CNN as
Speaker 3: really a case lesson eleven years ago, CNN they aspired
Speaker 3: to be journalist. If you ask them, they'd say, we
Speaker 3: want to be journalists. We want to present both sides.
Speaker 3: We want to be fair and objective and balanced, and
Speaker 3: we want to focus on facts and not our opinion. Now,
Speaker 3: they were terrible at it. They leaned hard left and
Speaker 3: they couldn't help themselves. But that was the objective. Number one,
Speaker 3: they would articulate to you they were trying to achieve.
Speaker 3: But number two, I think they believed in their heart
Speaker 3: they were trying to do that. And so when I
Speaker 3: was first elected to the Senate. You may find this
Speaker 3: hard to believe, but I went on CNN just about
Speaker 3: every week. I went on there over and over and
Speaker 3: over again, and they would give you a chance to
Speaker 3: lay out a conservative argument that they'd attack you from
Speaker 3: the left and they'd be unfair and they'd play gotcha questions,
Speaker 3: but they would give you a chance to present the
Speaker 3: other side. And what happened is when Donald Trump became president,
Speaker 3: I think it fundamentally broke the media. Their brains shattered.
Speaker 3: They hated him so much that today the media no
Speaker 3: longer views its vision as being journalists, as being fair
Speaker 3: and impartial and presenting both sides. Instead, they have embraced
Speaker 3: a vision that they are advocates. They are defenders of democracy,
Speaker 3: and what they mean by democracy is left wing radical policies.
Speaker 3: And you know. So the story I tell in the
Speaker 3: very beginning of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race,
Speaker 3: I was out on the campaign trip. I was actually
Speaker 3: in our campaign bus, and I was doing an interview
Speaker 3: with Jake Tapper. And look, I'll confess I like Jake.
Speaker 3: I've known Jake for over twenty years. I've known Jake
Speaker 3: since he was a CUB reporter on the George W.
Speaker 3: Bush two thousand campaign and I was a baby staffer
Speaker 3: on it, and so I've known him a long time.
Speaker 3: And he was interviewing me for his Sunday show, and
Speaker 3: we did an interview and it was I don't remember,
Speaker 3: probably ten minutes or so, and I had learned a lesson.
Speaker 3: It's something that I do with every Sunday show, which
Speaker 3: is that I insist that the Sunday show either be
Speaker 3: live or it be live to tape. And the reason
Speaker 3: I learned that is I had done just a few
Speaker 3: weeks earlier in an interview with Bob Scheffer at CBS,
Speaker 3: and Bob Scheffer I hadn't insist on that, and he'd
Speaker 3: done the interview, and then afterwards his show had edited
Speaker 3: it and basically cut out every good argument I made
Speaker 3: and just put this slash job where he decimated me
Speaker 3: because he excluded all my good answers and just edited
Speaker 3: it in a way that was really deceptive. And I said, okay,
Speaker 3: never again. If we do one of these, they must
Speaker 3: air what I actually say. And I said, look, if
Speaker 3: you want to give you five minutes or six or
Speaker 3: eight or ten or twelve or whatever, you can pick
Speaker 3: the time. But when we film it, you air exactly
Speaker 3: what happens during that time. So we had agreed with
Speaker 3: that with CNN, and in the course of the interview,
Speaker 3: we were talking about the shooting at Fort Hood and
Speaker 3: Nadal Hassan, who was the radical Islamist who had walked
Speaker 3: through and murdered fourteen innocent souls yelling at luhawk Bar,
Speaker 3: and I mentioned that the Obama administration knew that Hassan
Speaker 3: was a radical jahadist, they knew that he had been
Speaker 3: in email communication with unware al Alaki, who was the
Speaker 3: Islamist cleric, the radical that he'd asked al Alaki about
Speaker 3: the permissibility of waging jahad on his fellow soldiers. And
Speaker 3: yet the Obama administration did nothing until he committed that
Speaker 3: act of mass murder. And when I said all of that,
Speaker 3: Jake immediately interrupted and he said, that's not true. No,
Speaker 3: that's not right, and he said, what you're saying is
Speaker 3: fundamentally false. That's a lie, it's not true, and you know,
Speaker 3: I just kind of smiled, and I said, well, you know, Jake,
Speaker 3: as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things, and what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is entirely accurate, and you know when you
Speaker 3: research the issue, that's exactly what you're going to find out.
Speaker 3: So we do the interview, Jake and his production team
Speaker 3: leaves the bus, and I don't know five ten minutes later,
Speaker 3: there's a knock on the door of the bus and
Speaker 3: we open it. It's Jake and he's very sheepish, and
Speaker 3: he said, hey, can to come in and talk for
Speaker 3: a second. I said, yeah, sure, come on in, and
Speaker 3: he said, look, after we did the interview, he said,
Speaker 3: I went and got on the internet and I researched it,
Speaker 3: and actually, you were right, he said. I didn't know
Speaker 3: that I had missed. I just had not seen the
Speaker 3: revelation that the Obama administration knew it. It just I
Speaker 3: couldn't believe it. But turns out you were right. I
Speaker 3: was wrong, And Jake said, listen, I'll give you a choice.
Speaker 3: We can do it one of two ways. He said.
Speaker 3: I agreed we would do this live to tape, and
Speaker 3: so if you want, I will air it exactly as
Speaker 3: it happened, and then after I air it, will I
Speaker 3: will come on live and I'll say after the interview,
Speaker 3: I researched it, and it turns out I was wrong,
Speaker 3: and Cruz was right. What he said was exactly right,
Speaker 3: and I was in error when I said he was
Speaker 3: not telling the truth. He said, that's option number one.
Speaker 3: He said, option number two, which he said I'd really
Speaker 3: much prefer it is that we just edit out that segment.
Speaker 3: We just remove it from the interview, and we air
Speaker 3: everything else and just not include that segment. And I
Speaker 3: describe in the book that you know, I thought about it,
Speaker 3: and it was obviously in my self interest to pick
Speaker 3: option number one. That like having CNN having Tapper admit
Speaker 3: he was full of crap. And I was right, that
Speaker 3: was a big political victory. But I also expected that
Speaker 3: I would be doing a whole lot more interviews with
Speaker 3: Tapper and with CNN, and I frankly respected how he
Speaker 3: approached it. That he came to me and he admitted
Speaker 3: he was wrong, and he gave me that option I
Speaker 3: thought was an honorable way to handle it. And so
Speaker 3: I made what I would say is a long term
Speaker 3: play rather than a short term play, and I said, Okay,
Speaker 3: you can go ahead and cut the segment out, and
Speaker 3: so they did, so the story I recount in the
Speaker 3: book that segment never aired because CNN cut the segment out.
Speaker 3: I focus on Tapper in particular because I think he's
Speaker 3: a smart guy, and I think he wants to be
Speaker 3: a journalist, and I think in his heart right now,
Speaker 3: he knows that he's not that Trump broke Tapper that
Speaker 3: now CNN will have a panel of five experts there
Speaker 3: to discuss true or not Donald Trump is the devil,
Speaker 3: and all five of them agree, of course the devil. No,
Speaker 3: he's worse than the devil. That's the whole debate. And
Speaker 3: you know, look, CNN used to be a place if
Speaker 3: you go back to twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, I
Speaker 3: did three town hall debates on CNN with Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 3: We did one on healthcare and two on tax policy,
Speaker 3: and they were great debates. I think they were among,
Speaker 3: if not the highest rated shows on CNN that whole year.
Speaker 3: They were ninety minutes. Bernie is an unapologetic defender of socialism.
Speaker 3: I'm an unapologic defender of capitalism. And we had a
Speaker 3: real and subsim debate that CNN doesn't exist anymore, and
Speaker 3: it's bad for America, it's bad for the world that
Speaker 3: we don't have functioning journalism. And I describe all of
Speaker 3: this in the book, but I also describe how because
Speaker 3: journalism corporate media is broken, it's part of what makes
Speaker 3: the radical Democrats so extreme, why they vote for such
Speaker 3: ridiculous policy positions. That are so out of the mainstream
Speaker 3: because they know they will never ever ever get asked
Speaker 3: about it by reporters back home. They will never have
Speaker 3: to defend it, and so it's radicalized the Democrat Party
Speaker 3: in Washington.
Speaker 2: So there's another part of your book that I want
Speaker 2: to mention real quick, and it's a trend. Whether it's
Speaker 2: you talking about big tech or the schools or Marxism
Speaker 2: in Washington. The list goes on on especially and you
Speaker 2: have a lot talking here about science and COVID. That
Speaker 2: chapter is probably my favorite. As I was reading it today,
Speaker 2: I was marking it up. But there's a trend in
Speaker 2: this book and I love this. This may be my
Speaker 2: favorite part. Is you at each in each chapter, in essence,
Speaker 2: ask how do you fight back?
Speaker 1: How to reclaim control? How do we win?
Speaker 2: It's not just a book of you ranting about issues,
Speaker 2: but you actually lay out how we can succeed and
Speaker 2: get our and win on our side of the argument.
Speaker 2: And that's what empowers the reader to did not just
Speaker 2: read a book, but to take something from it.
Speaker 3: And I love that well. It is critically important. And
Speaker 3: there are all sorts of elements of how we fight back,
Speaker 3: and when one of it is transparency and sunshine. The
Speaker 3: views of the radical left are wildly unpopular. Look, no
Speaker 3: rational person supports abolishing the police. That's a nutty position.
Speaker 3: No rational person supports open borders and the chaos at
Speaker 3: our southern border. No rational person supports medically and surgically
Speaker 3: sterilizing and castrating eight year old children. No rational person
Speaker 3: is befuddled by the question what is a woman? All
Speaker 3: of those are ninety ten issues, and the radical Left
Speaker 3: is on the extreme minority position on every one of them.
Speaker 3: It's why they rely on force rather than persuasion, because
Speaker 3: their positions are out there and so often shining a
Speaker 3: light is really, really potent. And I'm gonna give an example.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna give an example from Verdict. So we had
Speaker 3: a podcast several weeks ago that was entitled black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter is Hamas, and we walk through how black Lives
Speaker 3: Matter is a statement, is a truism. It's absolutely true, yes,
Speaker 3: period the end. However, Black Lives Matter, the organization Black
Speaker 3: Lives Matter, Inc. Is a very different thing. It is
Speaker 3: found founded by a vowed Marxists who are trained Marxist.
Speaker 3: They're trained in fomenting communist revolutions. That's their own self description,
Speaker 3: not our language. Their language. They are vicious racists, and
Speaker 3: they are deeply, deeply anti Semitic. They hate Israel. Indeed,
Speaker 3: one of the co founders of Black Lives Matter has
Speaker 3: called since nineteen ninety five for the destruction of the
Speaker 3: state of Israel. And on our podcast, we laid out
Speaker 3: all of that evidence, and then we names of all
Speaker 3: of the or a number of the giant corporations who
Speaker 3: had given millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, and
Speaker 3: then included Amazon and Apple and Coca Cola, and we said, listen,
Speaker 3: do these companies do you support vicious racism? Do you
Speaker 3: support vicious anti semitism? Do you support demanding the destruction
Speaker 3: of the state of Israel? Do you support these avowed
Speaker 3: Marxists because you gave money to them? That podcast came out,
Speaker 3: I believe, October eighteenth. The next day, Coca Cola went
Speaker 3: online and they scrubbed their website to remove every reference
Speaker 3: to the five hundred thousand dollars that they had given
Speaker 3: the Black Lives Matter. And it was a direct result
Speaker 3: of this Verdict podcast. We put the podcast out and
Speaker 3: almost immediately they erased it. Now they thought they could
Speaker 3: do it quietly. They could just hide and evade responsibility.
Speaker 3: I'm calling them out. I'm calling them out, and I'm
Speaker 3: shining a light, and I'm saying, look, have you apologized
Speaker 3: to the American people for why you were funding a
Speaker 3: viciously racist and anti Semitic organization And it wasn't a secret,
Speaker 3: they were open about it. Then you just didn't care
Speaker 3: because your woke politics mattered more to you than doing
Speaker 3: the right thing. And that's one of the strategies that
Speaker 3: is inherent in this book is shining the light and
Speaker 3: calling them out. And that's how you win victories. In
Speaker 3: chapter after chapter, I talk about winning victories. Whether it's
Speaker 3: winning school board seats back, or flipping Virginia read as
Speaker 3: Parents Got Furious, or whether it's Elon Musk buying Twitter.
Speaker 3: All of these are strategies where we take these institutions back.
Speaker 2: It's an incredible book, Center and congratulations on it. It's
Speaker 2: one that I hope everybody listing will go grab. You
Speaker 2: can go to Amazon right now, you can order it.
Speaker 2: It's a fabulous Christmas gift. It is three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty six pages from beginning to end. One of the
Speaker 2: chapters that you've got to read. If you get it,
Speaker 2: make sure you read the big tech tech chapter and
Speaker 2: also science. The science chapter to me was one that
Speaker 2: as I was reading it, sentator, I know you well
Speaker 2: enough to know when you really get passionate about something.
Speaker 1: You were really really.
Speaker 2: Passionate when writing that that chapter on science and what
Speaker 2: has happened and how science has just been totally corrupted,
Speaker 2: whether it's by Fauci or others that are pushing agendas
Speaker 2: through science, and those are two chapters I just want
Speaker 2: to mark for people.
Speaker 1: Make sure you take a look at those as well.
Speaker 2: Grab the book Unwoke How to defeed a Cultural Marxism
Speaker 2: in America. You can get on Amazon, order it now
Speaker 2: wherever you get your books.
Speaker 1: Don't forget hit.
Speaker 2: That follow subscribe or auto download button wherever you're listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Speaker 2: We also have a recap pod on Saturday mornings. That
Speaker 2: is some of the things deeper in each podcast maybe
Speaker 2: you miss because of time restraint, so make sure you
Speaker 2: check that out as well, and on those in between days,
Speaker 2: I'd love for you to join me as I'll keep
Speaker 2: you update on breaking news on my podcast, the Ben
Speaker 2: Ferguson Podcasts as well on those in between days, so
Speaker 2: make sure you download that as well in the center
Speaker 2: and I will see you back here in a couple
Speaker 2: of days