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. Your new book
Speaker 2: is out, Unwoke, how to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America.
Speaker 2: And I have to say when you get the book,
Speaker 2: if you haven't gotten the book, the best, the best page,
Speaker 2: just skip right ahead to page number forty. It's the
Speaker 2: best page in the book. So congrats on that. Most importantly, Senator,
Speaker 2: page forty phenomenal. You should definitely just go right there,
Speaker 2: 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 1: Page forty it says, and I will quote here.
Speaker 2: Every podcast is one alongside my cost today that's Ben
Speaker 2: Ferguson the nationally Syndicate Radios has become a very dear friend.
Speaker 2: I got a shout out. I thank you, sir. I
Speaker 2: appreciate 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 signed copy. You did, and if you recall the
Speaker 3: 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 1: Don't leave out the word undoubtedly. You use that word.
Speaker 2: Undoubtedly, there we go. I want to make sure I
Speaker 2: get 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 2: There we go, you were one of them. So this
Speaker 2: is the best part when you sign this. I didn't
Speaker 2: want to travel with it, and you and I've been
Speaker 2: on the road, and we were on the road last week,
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to travel with the book because
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, this is what I want
Speaker 2: to genuinely say forever. So I was out home for
Speaker 2: the trip and I didn't want to, you know, knock
Speaker 2: the book around. So I was reading all day yesterday
Speaker 2: and all day today to get to make sure that
Speaker 2: we can have a stellar interview on your own show
Speaker 2: about your book. So let's start with the title why
Speaker 2: did you pick the title unwoke? And also for people
Speaker 2: that don't understand what the definition of cultural Marxism is,
Speaker 2: what is that mean?
Speaker 1: Look?
Speaker 3: 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: universities 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 I could have just one back, I would have
Speaker 3: entertainment back. Entertainment, I think is the most consequential of
Speaker 3: all of these. And in entertainment we talk about Hollywood
Speaker 3: and movies and television and sports and music.
Speaker 1: We break it all down.
Speaker 3: From there, we go to science and I talk about
Speaker 3: how science has been corrupted and politicized. And the final
Speaker 3: chapter in the book is on China and explains how
Speaker 3: China is a nexus that links them all. And the
Speaker 3: book was really designed to do two things. Number one,
Speaker 3: explain how and why specifically the radical left took over
Speaker 3: every one of those institutions, and they did it from
Speaker 3: the inside. But secondly, to lay out a clear battle
Speaker 3: plan how we take them back, how we fight back.
Speaker 3: I believe we will take this country back. And this
Speaker 3: book is laying out how we 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 fa family. I
Speaker 2: know your father and have gotten to spend some time
Speaker 2: with him. He's an awesome just individual be around. He's jovial,
Speaker 2: he can be funny. He loves this country. But there
Speaker 2: is some incredible history not only about your family, but
Speaker 2: also how your father was involved in Cuba in the
Speaker 2: students and at a young age, and what was happening
Speaker 2: really with the revolution down there, and how he was
Speaker 2: I guess you could say, brought in to this revolution
Speaker 2: with Castro, not realizing what Castro was doing, and it
Speaker 2: started at a young age where they were targeting children,
Speaker 2: and it was an incredible part of the story, not
Speaker 2: just because of what happened, but also how he was
Speaker 2: beaten and how his life was threatened, and how he
Speaker 2: was a marked man who had to get out and
Speaker 2: come to America. Talk a little about that story of
Speaker 2: that being your history of your family, and also it's
Speaker 2: a warning to what's happening in this country right now.
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, 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 birthdayt
Speaker 3: ed mud and dirt and grime and blood. To this day,
Speaker 3: my dad remembers what he was thinking 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 God Father Saga, Batista was in
Speaker 3: bed with the American mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased
Speaker 3: with 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 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, My Abuela. Miabuela was a
Speaker 3: sixth grade teacher, and she told me she loved teaching,
Speaker 3: She loved teaching her students, and she had a pure
Speaker 3: photographic memory. Man, it was incredible. She literally everything she read,
Speaker 3: she remembered word for word. She told me about when
Speaker 3: Castro took over that they almost immediately targeted the children.
Speaker 3: And one thing to understand, Marxists always begin with the kids, always, always, always,
Speaker 3: As my father told me, the revolution, like he was,
Speaker 3: were a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year old boys
Speaker 3: who didn't know any better, teenagers. And you look at
Speaker 3: every communist revolution in the world, whether you're talking about
Speaker 3: Russia or China or North Korea, or Cuba or Venezuela,
Speaker 3: it is always the young teenagers who are idealistic, who believe,
Speaker 3: and who are naive, who don't have the world experience
Speaker 3: to understand they're being lied to. But Communists start not
Speaker 3: just with teenagers, they go younger. And what my grandmother
Speaker 3: told me is she said, almost immediately after the revolution,
Speaker 3: they sent the army into the elementary schools, and soldiers
Speaker 3: would go into kindergartens in first grade and they would
Speaker 3: tell all of the little kids, they'd say, close your
Speaker 3: eyes and pray to God for candy, and the kids
Speaker 3: all did so, and then they'd open their eyes and
Speaker 3: there'd be no candy. And then the soldiers would tell them,
Speaker 3: they'd say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel Castro
Speaker 3: for candy, and the kids did so, and while their
Speaker 3: eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly slip a piece
Speaker 3: of candy on each child's desk. That's not an aberration.
Speaker 3: Chay Gavara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer. He was
Speaker 3: Fidel Castro's right hand chay Gavara described children as malleable
Speaker 3: clay that you can take the defects out of them.
Speaker 3: You want to know why the cultural Marxists in America
Speaker 3: started in the universities. You want to know why they've
Speaker 3: gone into K through twelve, to elementary schools and junior
Speaker 3: highs and high schools. Because if you take the children,
Speaker 3: you take the nation. And this book is designed to
Speaker 3: lay out how they did it and how we take
Speaker 3: them back.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was reading this book, Sentator, 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 1: He died.
Speaker 2: We lived, and I go back to that moment in
Speaker 2: my life. Many times I was in, as you know,
Speaker 2: a shooting where I was a target of a gang initiation.
Speaker 2: I wonder if I would have been hit that night
Speaker 2: in my life, would have you know, I wouldn't have
Speaker 2: my kids. There's that moment in this book where you
Speaker 2: wrote my father joined up and began doing acts of sabotage,
Speaker 2: berning government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever he could undermine the
Speaker 2: oppressure regime. That's what it landed him in prison at seventeen.
Speaker 2: But Tesus police had caught him and they were they
Speaker 2: were extracting their brutal revenge. The next day was dragging
Speaker 2: the office of a colonel who told him, I'm letting
Speaker 2: you go, but if another bomb goes off, if another
Speaker 2: fire starts, I'm blaming you. How can I be responsible
Speaker 2: for every bad thing what happens in the city, my
Speaker 2: father asked, I don't care, replied the commander, I'm holding
Speaker 2: you responsible. Your father returned home. My wellow wept. Her
Speaker 2: eldest child had walked in the door, beaten, cover in
Speaker 2: his own blood. As she told me when I was
Speaker 2: a child, that imagined that from that day was scared
Speaker 2: into her mind forever, forever. My bod told him get
Speaker 2: out of the country, and that was the turning point
Speaker 2: for your entire family history, because not only did he
Speaker 2: get out, but he applied to colleges in America, to
Speaker 2: the University of Miami, to LSU, to the University of Texas.
Speaker 2: Texas was the first one that led him in, and
Speaker 2: that's how he came to America. That's how you became
Speaker 2: a Texan, and that's how your family history started anew
Speaker 2: with a clean slate in America. When you were writing that,
Speaker 2: I'm assuming you've heard the story many times, but when
Speaker 2: you put it on paper, it took my breath away.
Speaker 3: Look the book, it is actually dedicated. I don't think
Speaker 3: they know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father,
Speaker 3: my Theo Sonya, and Myabuela in my family, the original
Speaker 3: freedom fighters. I don't think Miabuela is dead, but I
Speaker 3: don't think either my dad or the Asnia have seen
Speaker 3: that yet. Now my dad listens to Verdict, so he
Speaker 3: he may find it out right now 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, 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 and my Theosnia and
Speaker 3: hearing about freedom fighters. And it is an unbelievable blessing
Speaker 3: when you were the child of someone who fled oppression
Speaker 3: and came to America seeking freedom. Our freedom is not
Speaker 3: a joke. It's not something of that's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly serious. We either we defend our freedom
Speaker 3: here or we lose America. I hate communists. I hate
Speaker 3: them with a passion from the pit of my gut.
Speaker 3: They are evil. Communism has been responsible for more death,
Speaker 3: more misery, more destruction, more poverty, more suffering than any
Speaker 3: force in the history of humanity. And this book is
Speaker 3: all about how the same philosophy that has produced such
Speaker 3: misery is taking over and has taken over the major
Speaker 3: institutions of America. And look, you've heard me say this before,
Speaker 3: but as a child, my father probably a thousand times
Speaker 3: said to me, when we lost our freedom in Cuba,
Speaker 3: I had a place to flee to. If we lose
Speaker 3: our freedom here in America, where do we go? That's
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 1: Maybe this woke agenda is a failure.
Speaker 2: Maybe green alternative energy is in this green religion is
Speaker 2: a failure. We've tried this indoct you know, the government
Speaker 2: taking over our kids. It's a failure. And your dad
Speaker 2: was an advocate for Castro early on, and he was
Speaker 2: ashamed by it. He advocated for him even in America.
Speaker 2: And he set down, I'm reading from the book. He's
Speaker 2: set down, and he made a list of every place
Speaker 2: he'd spoken in Austin, Texas in support of Castro. He
Speaker 2: then went back to each and every one of them
Speaker 2: and stood before the same people to make amends. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: I am here to apologize. He told them, I misled you.
Speaker 2: I didn't do so knowingly, but I did so. Nonetheless,
Speaker 2: I urge you to support an evil man and an
Speaker 2: evil Marxist regime, and for that, I am truly sorry
Speaker 2: for me. That's not just a point of incredible character.
Speaker 2: But why don't we have that with politicians today where
Speaker 2: they can admit, hey, I may have gotten something wrong,
Speaker 2: and I'm sorry that I got it wrong.
Speaker 1: We tried this and it didn't work.
Speaker 2: Because we are now, we have so many elected officials
Speaker 2: that refused to 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 that.
Speaker 3: He said, you know, we all, we are all complicit
Speaker 3: in the Middle East because he says, well, what Hamas
Speaker 3: did was terrible, but he said, what's happening to the Palestinians.
Speaker 3: The occupation is unbearable. And I got to admit, of
Speaker 3: all the clips of Obama, that might be the one
Speaker 3: that pisses me off the most. I actually did yesterday
Speaker 3: Megan Kelly's show her podcast in New York and was
Speaker 3: talking about the book, and she played that clip for me.
Speaker 3: And I try to try to speak reasonably and respectably,
Speaker 3: and I try to limit my cursing, but she played
Speaker 3: it to me and I just said, what utter bullshit.
Speaker 3: And by the way, anytime I say something like that,
Speaker 3: my father will call or text me and say, would
Speaker 3: you please watch your language. That's that's not really a
Speaker 3: 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 Ayatola,
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 a
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars to the iatola who chanced death to
Speaker 3: American death to Israel.
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: Is Joe Biden capable of saying it was a mistake
Speaker 3: for him to send nearly a hundred million dollars to
Speaker 3: Iran subsequently when that money was used to fund the
Speaker 3: worst terror attack on Israel in over fifty years. No,
Speaker 3: they're not capable of admitting that, And I do think
Speaker 3: admitting when something has failed is critic critically, critically important.
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Speaker 2: seven to two patriot. You mentioned education and how it's
Speaker 2: easiest way to change a country in one generation, but
Speaker 2: there was also one of the things you said on
Speaker 2: page sixty four.
Speaker 1: It says how to fight back.
Speaker 2: You said, a few years ago, you walked in to
Speaker 2: your daughter's bedroom and asked what she'd been learning about
Speaker 2: in school. She said she had been learning about Christopher Columbus,
Speaker 2: the 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 murdered 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 States, is something that
Speaker 2: American children encounter sooner or later in a textbook, believing
Speaker 2: that they've accessed some secret, hidden knowledge that the grown
Speaker 2: ups don't want them to have. That moment, for me
Speaker 2: is the moment that terrifies me for our kids in
Speaker 2: this my kids generation, is that we have handed our
Speaker 2: children over to this school systems. And it's not just
Speaker 2: public schools now, it's private schools as well, who are
Speaker 2: indoctrinating them in this idea that America somehow was started
Speaker 2: on evil, bad motives and that you should not love
Speaker 2: this country, but you should be ashamed 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 what 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
Speaker 3: conversation with her, and I said, look, I'm not deeply
Speaker 3: vested in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some
Speaker 3: incredible hero, But I said, you know what, we do
Speaker 3: have a federal holiday named after him. Do we typically
Speaker 3: name federal holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs, like, might
Speaker 3: there be another side of the story? Is there anything
Speaker 3: admirable about them? And she was not really able to
Speaker 3: see much that was admirble. I said, well, what do
Speaker 3: you think about getting in three rooky rickety wooden ships,
Speaker 3: and and and leaving Europe and and and heading heading
Speaker 3: west when you think you're falling off the edge of
Speaker 3: the world to explore and discover? I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: is that spirit, that intrepid spirit? Is that anything to
Speaker 3: be admired? And and and I said, secondly, look, it
Speaker 3: is true that Columbus and and and the man who
Speaker 3: traveled with him, that that that they carried some some
Speaker 3: germs that that that were that were new to to
Speaker 3: the to the western hemisphere, and that when they got
Speaker 3: here some of the some of the Native Americans died
Speaker 3: from those germs. Now, it's also true it was the
Speaker 3: fifteenth century. They didn't know what a germ was, so
Speaker 3: they didn't know they were carrying it. And 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? That is
Speaker 3: that at all relevant? If you're going to call him
Speaker 3: this evil, terrible murder. And when I talk about in
Speaker 3: the book is not long thereafter Thanksgiving of that year,
Speaker 3: we were talking about Thanksgiving, and she and a friend
Speaker 3: of hers from school and this is when they were
Speaker 3: in grade school, said likewise, oh, Thanksgiving is terrible. It's
Speaker 3: when the pilgrims were oppressing the Native Americans. And you know,
Speaker 3: again I made the argument, I think even more vigorously
Speaker 3: this time, and I said, listen, it is certainly right
Speaker 3: that the settlers that came to America, that they settled America,
Speaker 3: and they ultimately conquered America, and they they committed some
Speaker 3: terrible acts to Native Americans. But if you look at
Speaker 3: the history of humanity in every continent, every nation was
Speaker 3: acquired by conquest. And every time there's conquest, you have
Speaker 3: one group of people who are conquering another group of people.
Speaker 3: By the way, in the United States, before we were
Speaker 3: the United States, the Native Americans, one tribe conquered, another
Speaker 3: conquered or another conquered another. And you look at Europe,
Speaker 3: you look at Asia. That's the history of humanity, one
Speaker 3: group of people conquering another. And anytime you have conquest,
Speaker 3: there are are horrible things that happen. They're terrible things
Speaker 3: that are done. But I said, look, in any war,
Speaker 3: there were atrocities on both sides. And you know, I asked,
Speaker 3: I asked my daughter. I said, you know, from whence
Speaker 3: do you think the verb to scalp was derived? The
Speaker 3: Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers who
Speaker 3: came here also, And the connection that I made for her,
Speaker 3: and that I make in the book is those two
Speaker 3: discussions are interlinked and intertwined. Which is for all of
Speaker 3: the teachers and all of the professors, and all of
Speaker 3: the people advocating that Columbus was evil and advocating that
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving is evil because the pilgrims were stealing from the
Speaker 3: Native Americans, it comes down to one antecedent question. Was
Speaker 3: the settlement of the New World a good thing or
Speaker 3: a bad thing? Was the formation of the United States
Speaker 3: of America good or bad? And I'm not neutral or
Speaker 3: ambivalent on that question. I think the United States of
Speaker 3: America has been the greatest force for good of any
Speaker 3: nation in the history of the world. That we have
Speaker 3: produced more prosperity, more abundance, we have liberated more prisoners
Speaker 3: and captives, We have shed our blood and treasure and
Speaker 3: tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the history
Speaker 3: of the world. Do we have our flaws, yes, of course.
Speaker 3: Do we have our problems, yes, of course. But America,
Speaker 3: I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining city on hill.
Speaker 3: And I want to make a special request of our
Speaker 3: vertical listeners. You guys are incredible. You guys are patriots.
Speaker 3: You guys give me hope and optimism in America. I
Speaker 3: want to ask every one of you please today, when
Speaker 3: you finished listening to this podcast, most of you are
Speaker 3: listening on your cell phones, click over to Amazon, type
Speaker 3: 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 three pm on Tuesday night. The podcast will
Speaker 3: come out early Wednesday morning. Why am I sitting here
Speaker 3: at eleven o three? Why are you sitting here at
Speaker 3: eleven o three. Because we care about this. We want
Speaker 3: we want our incredible listeners to be armed with information
Speaker 3: and know how to fight to save this country. And
Speaker 3: this book is exactly in the same spirit. The book
Speaker 3: is I think, interesting and fun. It's not some abstract
Speaker 3: academic treatise, but it's designed. When you read it, you'll
Speaker 3: 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 podcast 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 and
Speaker 2: This is the new thing that the media has done.
Speaker 2: They've 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: is they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists
Speaker 2: in Gaza. Who the who the Israelis are trying to
Speaker 2: eradicate from the face of this earth with good reason
Speaker 2: after what they did just one month ago. And we
Speaker 2: talked about this on Verdict Israel. We knew was on
Speaker 2: a on an artificial clock the day the terrorists attack
Speaker 2: happened before the media, before the left started going to
Speaker 2: the aid of Hamas and and and the Palaesinian people
Speaker 2: that were backing Hamas, many them that were and saying, okay,
Speaker 2: all right, you had a few days now to go
Speaker 2: after these terrorists. Now you've got to stop it now.
Speaker 2: Now it's your your your obligation to stop trying to
Speaker 2: protect yourself.
Speaker 1: And this is our media now.
Speaker 2: And it goes back to this this idea that they have,
Speaker 2: which is they're better than everyone else. They're not here
Speaker 2: to report news anymore. They're here to go after people
Speaker 2: like you. And others that they don't like and indoctrinate
Speaker 2: a nation to believe in socialism and communism and Marxism.
Speaker 3: Look that that is exactly right, and and and the
Speaker 3: media has fundamentally changed. And so the chapter on on journalism,
Speaker 3: I talk about how when I was first elected to
Speaker 3: the Senate eleven years ago, and I actually focus on
Speaker 3: CNN as really a case lesson eleven years ago CNN
Speaker 3: they aspired to be journalists. If you ask them, they'd say,
Speaker 3: we 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, and 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: and 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 so the story I tell in the very beginning
Speaker 3: of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race, I
Speaker 3: was out on the campaign trip, was actually in our
Speaker 3: campaign bus, and I was doing an interview with Jake Tapper.
Speaker 3: And look, I'll confess I like Jake. I've known Jake
Speaker 3: for over twenty years. I've known Jake since he was
Speaker 3: a CUB reporter on the George W. Bush two thousand
Speaker 3: campaign and I was a baby staffer on it, and
Speaker 3: so I've known him a long time. And he was
Speaker 3: interviewing me for his Sunday show and we did an
Speaker 3: interview and it was I don't remember, probably ten minutes
Speaker 3: or so. And I had learned a lesson, and it's
Speaker 3: something that I do with every Sunday show, which is
Speaker 3: that I insist that the Sunday Show either be live
Speaker 3: or it'd be live to tape. And the reason I
Speaker 3: learned that is I had done just a few weeks
Speaker 3: earlier in an interview with Bob Sheefer at CBS, and
Speaker 3: Bob Schefer I hadn't insisted on that, and he'd done
Speaker 3: the interview, and then afterwards his show had edited it
Speaker 3: and it 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 me 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 a Luha awkbar.
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 Anwar 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, Jakes,
Speaker 3: as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things, and what
Speaker 3: I'm saying is entirely accurate. And and you know, when
Speaker 3: you reach search the issue, that's exactly what you're going
Speaker 3: to find out. So we do the interview, Jake and
Speaker 3: his production team leaves the bus, and I don't know
Speaker 3: five ten minutes later, there's a knock on the door
Speaker 3: of the bus and we open it. It's Jake and
Speaker 3: he's very sheepish, and he said, hey, can to come
Speaker 3: in and talk.
Speaker 1: For a second.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, sure, come on in and he said, look,
Speaker 3: after we did the interview, he said, I went and
Speaker 3: got on the internet and I researched it, and actually,
Speaker 3: you were right, he said. I didn't know that I
Speaker 3: had missed. I just had not seen the revelation that
Speaker 3: the Obama administration knew it. It just I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 3: But turns out you were right.
Speaker 1: I was wrong.
Speaker 3: And Jake said, listen, I'll give you a choice. We
Speaker 3: can do it one of two ways.
Speaker 1: 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, I will
Speaker 3: come on live and I'll say after the interview, I
Speaker 3: researched it, and it turns out I was wrong, and
Speaker 3: Cruz was right. What he said was exactly right, and
Speaker 3: I was an error when I said he was not
Speaker 3: telling the truth. He said, that's option number one. He
Speaker 3: said option number two, which he said, I'd really much
Speaker 3: prefer is that we just edit out that segment. We
Speaker 3: just remove it from the interview, and we air everything
Speaker 3: else and just not include that segment. And I described
Speaker 3: 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 he's the devil.
Speaker 1: No, he's worse than the devil. That's the whole debate.
Speaker 3: And you know, look, CNN used to be a place
Speaker 3: if you go back to twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: I 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 substim 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 1: Senat.
Speaker 2: There's another part of your book that I want to
Speaker 2: mention real quick, and it's a trend.
Speaker 1: Whether it's you talking about big tech or the.
Speaker 2: Schools or Marxism in Washington. The list goes on on,
Speaker 2: especially when you have a lot talking here about science
Speaker 2: and COVID. That chapter is probably my favorite. As I
Speaker 2: was reading it today, I was marking it out. But
Speaker 2: there's a trend in this book and I love this.
Speaker 2: This may be my favorite part. Is you at each
Speaker 2: in each chapter, in essence, 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 not just read
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: back and win. One of it is transparency and sunshine.
Speaker 3: The views of the radical left are wildly unpopular. Look,
Speaker 3: no 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 it
Speaker 3: an example. I'm gonna give an example from Verdict. So
Speaker 3: we had a podcast several weeks ago that was entitled
Speaker 3: black Lives Matter is Hamas, and we walk through how
Speaker 3: black lives matter as a statement is a truism. It's
Speaker 3: absolutely true, yes, period the end. However, Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 3: the organization Black Lives Matter, Inc. Is a very different thing.
Speaker 3: It is found founded by a vowed Marxists who are
Speaker 3: trained Marxists. They're trained and fomenting communist rev that's their
Speaker 3: own self description, not our language, their language. They are
Speaker 3: vicious racists and they are deeply, deeply antisemitic. 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 named names of
Speaker 3: all of the or 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: to 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 Red 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 listening 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 text chapter and also science.
Speaker 2: The science chapter to me was one that as I
Speaker 2: was reading it centator. I know you well enough to
Speaker 2: know when you really get passionate about something.
Speaker 1: You were really really passionate.
Speaker 2: When writing that chapter on science and what has happened
Speaker 2: and how science has just been totally corrupted, whether it's
Speaker 2: by Fauci or others that are pushing agendas through science.
Speaker 2: And those are two chapters I just want to mark
Speaker 2: for people. Make sure you take a look at those
Speaker 2: as well. Grab the book Unwoke How to defeed a
Speaker 2: Cultural Marxism in America. You can get on Amazon. Order
Speaker 2: it now wherever you get your books. 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.