Speaker 1: It's far easier to slander one's political adversaries and to
Speaker 1: demand that responsible citizens forfeit their constitutional rights that it
Speaker 1: is to examine the cultural sickness giving birth to unspeakable
Speaker 1: acts of evil. It's far less comfortable to ask why
Speaker 1: despair and isolation and violent hatred is so prevalent in America.
Speaker 1: It requires a sick soul to drive a truck into
Speaker 1: a crowded sidewalk, to plan a bomb at a marathon,
Speaker 1: or to fly a plane into a building. It requires
Speaker 1: a sick soul to open fire in a movie theater,
Speaker 1: or in a church or in a school. A speeding
Speaker 1: automobile in the hands of a madman is deadly, as
Speaker 1: is a jet airplane. Tragedies like the events of this
Speaker 1: week are a mirror forcing us to ask hard questions,
Speaker 1: demanding that we see where our culture is failing, looking
Speaker 1: at broken families, absent fathers, declining church attendant social media bullying,
Speaker 1: violent online content, desensitizing the act of murder in video games,
Speaker 1: chronic isolation, prescription drug and opioid abuse, and their collective
Speaker 1: effects on the psyche of young Americans. Today's episode of
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Speaker 1: five three two. Welcome to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm
Speaker 1: Michael Knowles. We've just had the NRA convention. This was
Speaker 1: obviously very controversial, major calls from the left to regulate
Speaker 1: guns and ban all sorts of guns. This after the
Speaker 1: shooting in Uvaldi. I have to point out a lot
Speaker 1: of people dropped out of the NRA convention. Governor Abbott,
Speaker 1: dropped out Senator Corn and dropped out Congressman Dan Crenshaw
Speaker 1: dropped out, Dan Patrick, I think dropped out the Lieutenant
Speaker 1: governor of Texas. A lot of people dropped out. Senator,
Speaker 1: you did not. You showed up. You gave a robust
Speaker 1: defense of the Second Amendment. I'm not saying it to
Speaker 1: flatter you, and you know that I hate to compliment you.
Speaker 1: You gave what I thought was a really, really powerful
Speaker 1: and important speech. I thought it was important to be there.
Speaker 1: I was disappointed to see so many others make the
Speaker 1: decision not to be there, in part because the media
Speaker 1: narrative that comes out of horrific crimes, horrific mass murders
Speaker 1: within seconds, the media immediately wants to politicize them and
Speaker 1: use them to advance their long standing political agenda that
Speaker 1: they had moments before the murder occurred. And in this instance,
Speaker 1: the media and the Democrats, they want to label anyone
Speaker 1: who believes in the Second Amendment, anyone who defends the
Speaker 1: Second Amendment as responsible for this horrific crime, and the
Speaker 1: NRA in particular is probably their favorite boogeyman. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: spoke as well. He and I spoke back to back,
Speaker 1: and I chatted with Trump right before he went on
Speaker 1: stage and thanked him for coming, and you know, I said, look,
Speaker 1: it was important that you came, It was important that
Speaker 1: you didn't back out. Thank you for being here, and
Speaker 1: he of course agreed, and he had Let me just
Speaker 1: say some choice words for some of the folks who
Speaker 1: chose not to be there. Um, you know that they
Speaker 1: were with classic Trump understatement, he expressed his views on
Speaker 1: that topic. Well, there's an irony here, which is why
Speaker 1: I really appreciated your speech. I've got to cut it
Speaker 1: out with the compliments for you. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the last episode that we'll get back to criticism next time.
Speaker 1: But I really appreciated it because when whenever anyone brings
Speaker 1: up cultural factors, something other than guns in any of
Speaker 1: these tragedies, what the left says is, well, you're just
Speaker 1: evading the question. You're just trying to distract from the
Speaker 1: real issue, which is guns. We've gone through all of
Speaker 1: these statistics. I don't see any reason to rehash them now.
Speaker 1: So all right, we've addressed the gun part. Why are
Speaker 1: you not allowing us to address the fatherlessness part? Why
Speaker 1: are you not allowing us to address the social isolation?
Speaker 1: Why are you not allowing us to address the decline
Speaker 1: in religion and faith in going to church are Why
Speaker 1: is that the part that we're not allowed to address.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that that's far more the common
Speaker 1: thread here even than the guns. You know. I will
Speaker 1: say the speech that I gave was very different from
Speaker 1: the speech I'd planned to give. I've spoken a lot
Speaker 1: of n A conventions. I know how to give a
Speaker 1: you know, barn burner of a speech, and so I
Speaker 1: decided instead to give what I hope was was a thoughtful,
Speaker 1: serious speech on the nature of evil. That that was
Speaker 1: the entire topic of my speech, both the nature of evil.
Speaker 1: Why it is that we have mass murderers, We have
Speaker 1: people who commit horrific crimes, whether it's shooting a school,
Speaker 1: or shooting a church, or shooting a movie theater, or
Speaker 1: or you have people that you know commit crimes driving
Speaker 1: a truck into a Christmas parade, murdering six people, or
Speaker 1: or setting off a bomb at the Boston Marathon. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are seeing sick, homicidal people. Many of the times
Speaker 1: they are young, disaffected men who are alienated, who are isolated,
Speaker 1: who who are angry. The per capita rate of gun
Speaker 1: ownership in nineteen seventy two was forty three percent in America,
Speaker 1: the per capita rate of gun ownership in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: forty nine years later is forty two percent. It's identical.
Speaker 1: The same percentage of Americans owned firearms today as did
Speaker 1: fifty years ago. So that hasn't changed. It's not like
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy people didn't have firearms. You had the
Speaker 1: exact same percentage of Americans owning firearms. What's changed is
Speaker 1: the culture, the loss of faith, a loss of family.
Speaker 1: And by the way, the left, you know, when I
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, homes without fathers in them, and
Speaker 1: so many of these mass murders are raised with absent fathers,
Speaker 1: often criminal fathers or abusive fathers, but absent fathers virtually
Speaker 1: all of them. Virtually every single one of these shootings
Speaker 1: involves a father outside the home. You know, it was
Speaker 1: interesting seeing some of the reactions to the left because
Speaker 1: it's almost pathological where they come back and attack me
Speaker 1: and said, well, Cruz is attacking single moms. No I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that kids do better with dads. Look, I've
Speaker 1: got a family that has a lot of single moms
Speaker 1: in them. Single moms are heroic and extraordinary people. I
Speaker 1: just wish there didn't have to be so many single moms.
Speaker 1: I wish moms had the help of a father who
Speaker 1: was a husband and a loving helpmate in raising children
Speaker 1: that are loved and appreciated and valued and not psychopathic monsters.
Speaker 1: I always thought the gun control arguments were incoherent from
Speaker 1: the same people who tell us that the cops are
Speaker 1: racist and they go around plucking off people, innocent people
Speaker 1: because of their skin color. The cops are racist, the
Speaker 1: cops are terrible, that's why they should have all the guns.
Speaker 1: That never made a lot of sense. But now, in
Speaker 1: the wake of the shooting in Texas, you're hearing many
Speaker 1: people say that the police response was incompetent, that the
Speaker 1: police response was cowardly. Again, I'm sure there will be
Speaker 1: an investigation to go through what actually happened there. But
Speaker 1: if that is the case, you're telling me that we
Speaker 1: can't rely on the cops to protect ourselves. So isn't
Speaker 1: that an even more robust defense of self defense of
Speaker 1: the Second Amendment of our right to keep and bear
Speaker 1: arms in America? The whole I'm just really glad that
Speaker 1: you stood up and you didn't let them bully you,
Speaker 1: and you didn't. You didn't cancel the speech because I
Speaker 1: think it's it's a message that people really needed to hear. Michael.
Speaker 1: The point you're making there also is an important one,
Speaker 1: which is if you look in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: we've seen gone ownership going up, and one of the
Speaker 1: major causes of that was in twenty twenty the Antifa
Speaker 1: and Black Lives Matter riots all across the country, where
Speaker 1: you had democratic politicians that refused to enforce the law,
Speaker 1: that ordered the police to stand down, that wouldn't protect
Speaker 1: people's homes, that wouldn't protect people's businesses, that wouldn't stop looters,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't stop fire bombs from being thrown, that allowed
Speaker 1: lawless rioters to declare so called autonomous zones, the Chads
Speaker 1: and the chad for weeks on end. When you have
Speaker 1: Democrat politicians who say we won't let the police protect you,
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that people will make the decision, well, heck,
Speaker 1: I'm going to protect myself if there's gonna be a
Speaker 1: mob in the street with violence as they're objective, especially
Speaker 1: if the cops aren't there to protect me, That's that's
Speaker 1: when I definitely need to keep my family safe. And
Speaker 1: all the more irony that these same politicians who were
Speaker 1: singing the praises of violent rioters and people committing assaults
Speaker 1: and fire bombings and even murders. You know, these Democrat
Speaker 1: politicians Kamala Harris raised money to bail these violent rioters
Speaker 1: out of jail, and now they're suddenly saying how morally
Speaker 1: righteous they are because they're opposed to crime. Well, you
Speaker 1: don't get to have it both ways. You don't get
Speaker 1: to celebrate violent criminals and then say, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you guys can't defend yourself when those violent criminals commit
Speaker 1: horrific acts that unfortunately they're relentless anti police rhetoric helped
Speaker 1: fuel and cause. Speaking of corruption in the criminal justice system,
Speaker 1: I do have to get your take on something on
Speaker 1: a completely separate topic that just came out today though,
Speaker 1: which is the case of Michael Sussman. Yeah, this Clinton
Speaker 1: lawyer who lied to the FBI, who planted the whole
Speaker 1: Russia hoax, apparently at the direction of Hillary Clinton. We
Speaker 1: saw the evidence, we saw the correspondence, and yet today
Speaker 1: the judge let the guy off the hook. I should
Speaker 1: clarify too, it wasn't just the judge that led him
Speaker 1: off the hook. It was it was the jury apparently down.
Speaker 1: So that's not all the judge's fault. Well, and it's
Speaker 1: you know the facts of it. This lawyer worked for
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton's campaign's law firm, and he reached out to
Speaker 1: the FBI and said, hey, I've got information that that
Speaker 1: Trump is involved with the Alpha Bank in Russia and
Speaker 1: the Trump campaign is colluding with Russia. And he goes
Speaker 1: out his way to say, I'm not doing this on
Speaker 1: behalf of any client. I'm not working for anyone. I'm
Speaker 1: just being a good citizen. I'm just a good Samaritan.
Speaker 1: I love America. Rah rah rah. So he reaches out
Speaker 1: to the top brass at the FBI under Obama and
Speaker 1: meets with them and affirmatively represents him. Now, what he
Speaker 1: told them was nonsense, and it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: the whole Russia hoax and all of that nonsense. But
Speaker 1: his statement, I'm not doing it on behalf of any
Speaker 1: client was a flat outlie. He was doing it on
Speaker 1: behalf of the Hillary Clinton campaign in the DNC, and
Speaker 1: of course, being a lawyer, he built for it. So
Speaker 1: he literally sent the Hillary Clinton campaign a bill charging
Speaker 1: his time for the time meeting with the FBI to
Speaker 1: tell them about the Russia hoax. When he told the FBI,
Speaker 1: he wasn't doing it on behalf of a client. Somehow,
Speaker 1: the client he was certainly was going to get paid
Speaker 1: for it, because he is a lawyer. After all, If
Speaker 1: you're going to be implicated in a crime, don't you
Speaker 1: think it's worth taking that, You know, eighteen minutes on
Speaker 1: the arm. Do you really need to charge in the
Speaker 1: six minute increments for when you're committing a crime? So
Speaker 1: I will confess, Michael. When I was practicing law, and
Speaker 1: one of the things I do not miss about private
Speaker 1: practice is having to think of my day in six
Speaker 1: minute increments. I would literally take a legal brief or
Speaker 1: a case with me when I went to the restroom,
Speaker 1: because I'd stand at the urinal and be reading because
Speaker 1: I wanted a bill for the time and it is
Speaker 1: I understand that sentiment. And by the way, there'd be
Speaker 1: three other lawyers standing they're holding a brief reading at
Speaker 1: the urinal too, because none of us wanted to miss
Speaker 1: billing the time. Two things on the suspend case. Number one,
Speaker 1: the judge severely limited what the prosecutors could introduce into evidence,
Speaker 1: So they severely limited the broader context of what the
Speaker 1: Clinton campaign was doing, pushing the Russia hoax and everything
Speaker 1: they were doing in the press, that this was part
Speaker 1: of a long concerted scheme. The judge kept almost all
Speaker 1: of that out, and it was a very circumscribed, narrow
Speaker 1: factual You said X was X true. Is how the
Speaker 1: prosecutor had to present it to the jury. I think
Speaker 1: there are real questions that should be asked why the
Speaker 1: judge was keeping all that context out. What it did
Speaker 1: is it protected Hillary Clinton like crazy, Like all of
Speaker 1: the judge's orders basically kept the Hillary campaign directly from
Speaker 1: being implicated and just had one rogue lawyer, well you're
Speaker 1: going to be in trouble. But then the jury, Look,
Speaker 1: the jury is from the District of Columbia. District of
Speaker 1: Columbia votes you know, ninety plus Democrat. I have not
Speaker 1: studied all of the factual evidence introduced in trial, but
Speaker 1: it certainly raises an eyebrow that this is a jury
Speaker 1: that in all likelihood voted for Hillary Clinton and hates
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. And we have seen in cases that are
Speaker 1: brought in DC, we've seen them be political the other
Speaker 1: way that they're quite happy to throw the book at
Speaker 1: someone if they disagree with the politics of it. It
Speaker 1: certainly raises a real question in this case whether at
Speaker 1: least some members of the jury didn't happen to just
Speaker 1: like the politics of the guy who was violating the law.
Speaker 1: It just makes people think that there are two separate
Speaker 1: justice systems. You know that we hear ad nauseum about
Speaker 1: a guy who cracks a corpse light in the Capitol rotunda.
Speaker 1: He's the worst terrorist insurrectionist in the history of our country.
Speaker 1: Throw him in isolated, an isolated sell and throw away
Speaker 1: the key. Meanwhile, you've got a guy who, at the
Speaker 1: direction of the Democrat presidential nominee, is lying to the
Speaker 1: FBI about a matter of what could potentially be national
Speaker 1: security and then undermining trying to rig a presidential election,
Speaker 1: undermining the actual presidency. And the guy gets off the hook,
Speaker 1: and the campaign gets off the hook, and you think,
Speaker 1: where's the justice. Well, and I'll tell you what is
Speaker 1: really worrisome is I'm concerned that that Merrick Garland, the
Speaker 1: Attorney General, is going to use this verdict as an
Speaker 1: excuse to fire John Durham, like they want to end
Speaker 1: this investigation it's the one sort of lingering that they
Speaker 1: want to sweep under the rug. What is coming, you know,
Speaker 1: My next book that's coming out in Septeptember is called
Speaker 1: Justice Corrupted, How the Left politicized our Legal System, and
Speaker 1: it talks at great length about how Barack Obama now
Speaker 1: Joe Biden are using the legal system to target their
Speaker 1: political enemies. It talks about what you just said, the
Speaker 1: differential treatment used to January sixth defendants compared to the
Speaker 1: violent rioters and Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots. And
Speaker 1: I've been pressing this Justice Department for over a year
Speaker 1: on that and they just stonewall. They refuse to answer questions,
Speaker 1: They refuse even the barest oversight. And you're right, it
Speaker 1: does suggest that there is a disparate, partisan, uneven enforcement
Speaker 1: of justice. Number one, But number two, I'm very concerned
Speaker 1: that Garland will use this as an excuse to say, Okay,
Speaker 1: Durham's done. And that would be terrible if that happens.
Speaker 1: But I think that is a very real possibility, because
Speaker 1: there is no doubt the Biden White House wants the
Speaker 1: Durham investigation over yesterday. I suppose my fear then, though, is,
Speaker 1: let's say Durham gets to keep pursuing the investigation, do
Speaker 1: we have any hope for justice? I mean, we thought
Speaker 1: Durham had this guy. We thought Durham had the Clinton campaign,
Speaker 1: and so if he couldn't get suessman, is there is
Speaker 1: there any hope that we're ever going to see any
Speaker 1: justice even if Durham does get to keep his job. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think there is power to sunlight
Speaker 1: and transparency and exposing the crimes. You know, if you
Speaker 1: think about Crossfire, Hurricane and the absolutely legal abuses of
Speaker 1: power carried out by the Obama Justice Department. They never
Speaker 1: thought they'd get caught. They thought Hillary would win, in
Speaker 1: which case it would all be buried, nothing would come
Speaker 1: come to light. It's only the accident from their perspective
Speaker 1: that their candidate, who they were trying to do everything
Speaker 1: they could to ensure she won, lost that you suddenly
Speaker 1: had the mechanism in place to provide at least some
Speaker 1: modicum of sunlight. Well, there, shockingly is a little bit
Speaker 1: of justice coming out of a liberal institution in America.
Speaker 1: I wanted to get your thoughts on it. Have you
Speaker 1: seen top Gun yet? I have? I saw it yesterday.
Speaker 1: It is awesome, It is spectacular. Did you see the
Speaker 1: back of the jacket. They put Taiwan back, They put
Speaker 1: Taiwan back, they put Japan back, and then this is
Speaker 1: fantastic astic, all right. So, folks who don't know the
Speaker 1: backstory of this, the Top Gun sequel was being made,
Speaker 1: they edited the back of mavericks jacket and the back
Speaker 1: of Maverick's jacket had the Taiwanese flag in the Japanese flag,
Speaker 1: and they erased it. They took them out, and so
Speaker 1: in the trailer that came out or I don't know,
Speaker 1: a year ago, the two flags were gone. And it
Speaker 1: was obvious why they did so, which is that they
Speaker 1: were worried about the Chinese censors, and the Chinese censors
Speaker 1: don't refuse to acknowledge that Taiwan exists, and so Hollywood
Speaker 1: was trying to sell the movie in China. It's a
Speaker 1: big movie market. I actually introduced legislation to address Chinese
Speaker 1: censorship of American movies, and it's legislation that's called the
Speaker 1: Script Act. And what the Script Act says is that
Speaker 1: so a lot of movies and Top Guns a great example,
Speaker 1: a lot of movies use US government assets. So Top Gun,
Speaker 1: used FA teens, it used aircraft carriers, It used you know,
Speaker 1: billions of dollars of federal government assets to make the movie.
Speaker 1: And that happens a lot anytime you're using military equipment,
Speaker 1: anytime you're at the border patrol. There are lots of
Speaker 1: times where you're using government assets to make a movie.
Speaker 1: And what the Script Act says is that no MovieMaker
Speaker 1: could use federal government assets if they allow the Chinese
Speaker 1: Communist government to censor their movie. So it doesn't try
Speaker 1: to prevent If you want to let the Chinese censor you,
Speaker 1: you can, but the federal government is not going to
Speaker 1: subsidize your efforts to produce Chinese censored movies by allowing
Speaker 1: you access to federal government assets. I stood on the
Speaker 1: Senate floor and I lit into Hollywood over exactly this issue,
Speaker 1: top Gun censoring, the jacket on the back of Mavericks jacket.
Speaker 1: I said, look, you know, now, Maverick is afraid of
Speaker 1: the Chinese Communists. What the hell have we come to?
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, it was beautiful yesterday watching the movie.
Speaker 1: He pulls on the jacket and there they were the
Speaker 1: Taiwanese flag and the Japanese flag. I don't ever say this,
Speaker 1: but but Paramount Pictures did the right thing. I don't
Speaker 1: ever praise Hollywood, but they grew a backbone and they
Speaker 1: stood up to the Chinese Communist and Amen, hallelujah. Top
Speaker 1: Gun Kill the Bad Guys. Awesome movie. Well, it might
Speaker 1: have been a little little bit of stick as well
Speaker 1: as a little bit of carrot. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: proposing legislation that says we're gonna make it much harder
Speaker 1: for you to make these movies, if you throw us
Speaker 1: in our allies under the bus. I don't want to
Speaker 1: sound cynical here or jaded. Maybe that had something to
Speaker 1: do with the decision. By the way, do you know
Speaker 1: how they do the aerial scenes and Top Gun? So
Speaker 1: I watched a couple of days ago a thing on
Speaker 1: YouTube where they were describing it. So they're in actual
Speaker 1: f eighteens, and essentially when they're in the aerial seats,
Speaker 1: the actors are in the second seat, so the front
Speaker 1: you know, they're two seats in an eighteen. The front
Speaker 1: seat is the pilot. It is the actual presumably navy
Speaker 1: pilot who's flying the jet and doing all the maneuvers,
Speaker 1: and in the second seat is the actor who's meant
Speaker 1: to be the pilot. But all of the like face
Speaker 1: being smushed back, those are real g forces. I mean
Speaker 1: they're like they're going through all of that. And what's
Speaker 1: fake is when they're moving the stick up and down
Speaker 1: and the controls, they don't actually have the controls. It's
Speaker 1: the real pilot doing it. But it is real that
Speaker 1: they're in the F eighteen and the footage is actual
Speaker 1: fighter jets flying through the air, and it's really cool.
Speaker 1: I don't doubt anything that Tom Cruise does in movies.
Speaker 1: I'm expecting him to walk on Mars in the next
Speaker 1: Top Gun, so that'll be something to look forward to. Senator.
Speaker 1: Before I let you go, I do have to get
Speaker 1: to speaking of Hollywood, some criticism that has come out
Speaker 1: from you. Verdict has been in the news everywhere I
Speaker 1: get alerts for this show. The alerts have been blowing up.
Speaker 1: You got in big, big trouble, sir, because you made
Speaker 1: the audacious claim that you like hot women. You made
Speaker 1: the claims some women are beautiful. You didn't understand how
Speaker 1: the guy from SNL could pick up the hot chicks.
Speaker 1: So amid all of the barrage of criticism from the
Speaker 1: liberal media here. Do you still stand by that outrageous
Speaker 1: statement beautiful women are awesome? I will say I was
Speaker 1: amused to see verdict became uh the subject of the view.
Speaker 1: They sat there and and and and you know, we're
Speaker 1: blasting us for the for that segment, and in particular
Speaker 1: so I, you know, I talked about, how did Pete
Speaker 1: Davidson get get uh, Kate Beckasdale? I get. I guess
Speaker 1: it's Beca's sale. There's no d in it, So I
Speaker 1: mispronounced her name. Um. And they went on and and
Speaker 1: and uh. You know, the women on the view were
Speaker 1: attacking me. I think they said I was creepy and
Speaker 1: gross or I don't know. It was some sort of
Speaker 1: some sort of insults, which which I couldn't help but respond. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, from from such noted experts on sex appeal
Speaker 1: as as as who Whoopee Goldberg and Anna Navarro, I'm
Speaker 1: really glad to get their views. Um. All right, So
Speaker 1: this weekend, UM, we had my family in town because
Speaker 1: we were celebrating Caroline, my eighth grader, graduated eighth grade,
Speaker 1: going into ninth grade, and so we were celebrating that.
Speaker 1: But my dad was very unhappy about that segment, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't. My dad was in town this weekend. He
Speaker 1: was very unhappy and he was like, you really shouldn't
Speaker 1: be talking about those things. You were talking about hot
Speaker 1: vampire women. I don't think my dad's seen Underworld and
Speaker 1: and and he was like, why are you talking about
Speaker 1: hot vampire women? And you know, my father and a
Speaker 1: Cuban accent, and he's a preacher, but he was he
Speaker 1: was dismayed. And I'm like, have you not watched Underworld?
Speaker 1: Because like, that's objective truth is a defense. I actually
Speaker 1: don't even really get the views criticism because you know,
Speaker 1: of course, if you had, if you had said that
Speaker 1: the women were not beautiful, they'd call you a misogynist
Speaker 1: and a terrible they'd find some way to hit you.
Speaker 1: Kind of damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
Speaker 1: But are we at the point of society right now
Speaker 1: where we're not even allowed to embrace objective standards? We're
Speaker 1: not even allowed to say that beautiful women are beautiful?
Speaker 1: What what have we succumbed to? And by the way,
Speaker 1: my point was just there's a mismatch that Pete Davidson
Speaker 1: seems to be batting out of his league. Look if
Speaker 1: Tom Cruise, Tom Cruise dates hot women, of course, I
Speaker 1: mean the guy's Tom free and cruise like that. You know,
Speaker 1: Brad Pitt, you know you understand, Michael, I will tell
Speaker 1: you my favorite toast God bless near sighted women. That's
Speaker 1: maybe that explains it. That might actually maybe Kim Kardashian
Speaker 1: and all the rest of them, maybe they just need classes.
Speaker 1: Before we go, I also have to get to some
Speaker 1: mailbag center because we've got very very good questions, as
Speaker 1: we always do from our Verdict listeners. If you haven't
Speaker 1: subscribed yet, subscribe what are you waiting for? Go head
Speaker 1: on over to Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher. We will play YouTube.
Speaker 1: You can enjoy the Verdict Plus community. Just click subscribe.
Speaker 1: Leave a seventy five star review. This question does relate
Speaker 1: to gun control. This is from long Ethernet. Will the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court strike down standard capacity firearm magazine bands so
Speaker 1: greater than ten rounds? Say? From California and Washington. I
Speaker 1: think there's certainly a possibility. There's ongoing litigation on that.
Speaker 1: The tests that comes from the Heller case, which was
Speaker 1: the case Heller versus District of Columbia that first clearly
Speaker 1: established and upheld the Second Amendment right to keep it
Speaker 1: bare arms laid out a test about whether a weapon
Speaker 1: in the same would apply to ammunition is in common
Speaker 1: usage for self defense by American citizens. In that instance,
Speaker 1: what the Court struck down in DC was a ban
Speaker 1: on handguns and on functioning long guns on rifles and shotguns,
Speaker 1: both of which were required to be disassembled or have
Speaker 1: trigger locks on them at all times. The argument with
Speaker 1: regard to ammunition would be the same thing, that it
Speaker 1: is in common usage by individuals to defend their homes
Speaker 1: and defend their families that's being litigated. My recollection is
Speaker 1: I think the California ban had been struck down in
Speaker 1: federal court, although I'm not following the litigation closely, so
Speaker 1: that's a fuzzy recollection that may or may not be
Speaker 1: right whether the Court takes it. Typically, the court will
Speaker 1: wait for what's called a circuit split to take a case.
Speaker 1: So the Supreme Court's general view on its docket is
Speaker 1: that it doesn't engage an error correction. So even if
Speaker 1: there's a decision of the Court below that it thinks
Speaker 1: is wrong, its job is not to correct wrong decisions.
Speaker 1: Its job instead is to ensure uniformity of federal law,
Speaker 1: that the answer to a question of law a federal
Speaker 1: law be the same in one part of the country
Speaker 1: as it is elsewhere, that there not be a patchwork
Speaker 1: quilt of different legal standards. So for the court to
Speaker 1: grant a case, there's got to be in almost all
Speaker 1: circumstances what they call a circuit split, which is multiple
Speaker 1: courts of appeals addressing the same legal question and coming
Speaker 1: to different outcomes. And if there's a circuit split, if
Speaker 1: it's significant and consequential, and if the case provides a
Speaker 1: good vehicle to address it, then in those instances, the
Speaker 1: court is likely to take it. Right now, there's a
Speaker 1: pending Second Amendment case before the Supreme Court out of
Speaker 1: New York dealing with New York's restrictions on carrying guns,
Speaker 1: and it's an argument about the right to keep in
Speaker 1: bear arms, and in particular the right to bear arms
Speaker 1: not just to have them in your home, but actually
Speaker 1: to carry them for self defense. That's going to be
Speaker 1: expected to be one of the big blockbuster decisions in
Speaker 1: the next month on the extended magazine size. I don't
Speaker 1: know if there's a circuit split right now. If there
Speaker 1: isn't my guess is the court would wait until a
Speaker 1: circuit split developed. That makes sense. You had mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in the conversation about why these shootings appear to be
Speaker 1: more prominent now more prevalent. There's issues beyond the guns,
Speaker 1: one of which is family breakdown. So we have a
Speaker 1: question from Ben who asks would you support a Hungary
Speaker 1: style family incentive program? So throughout the West, the birthrates
Speaker 1: have plummeted. We're blow replacement now, families are falling apart,
Speaker 1: and Hungary has implemented programs to incentivize people to get married,
Speaker 1: to have families, to create kids, or tax incentives, furious
Speaker 1: government subsidies, and it appears to have worked at least modestly,
Speaker 1: although I know a lot of conservatives recoil at the
Speaker 1: idea of government basically paying you to have kids. What's
Speaker 1: your take, Look, I think the objective is a good objective.
Speaker 1: I would be skeptical of that particular means for implementing it.
Speaker 1: I think when it comes to federal policy, we should
Speaker 1: work to limit the harmful consequences. So there have long
Speaker 1: been disincentives for marriages, what's called the marriage penalty, and
Speaker 1: I think our tax laws should not disincentivize marriage. There
Speaker 1: are also work disincentives, so you look at how some
Speaker 1: of the welfare programs work, where people at certain income thresholds,
Speaker 1: if they go get a job, they end up functionally
Speaker 1: paying over one hundred percent in taxes because they lose
Speaker 1: more government benefits than they earn in their job. Those
Speaker 1: negative tax implications are really really problematic. So I think
Speaker 1: we should not be disincentivizing strong family units. UM. Look,
Speaker 1: at some level, we do things like we have child
Speaker 1: tax credits, which are designed to make it easier for
Speaker 1: families to raise kids. I think those make sense and
Speaker 1: an important part of the tax code. UM. You know.
Speaker 1: I have also seen different proposals for things like a
Speaker 1: universal savings account for each newborn child, that that that
Speaker 1: potentially the government would populate. You have a baby, and
Speaker 1: there's a savings account that is populated with a couple
Speaker 1: thousand dollars that grows and gains in value during the
Speaker 1: child's life. Some of those ideas I think are interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't know that they're fully baked yet, but I
Speaker 1: think they're interesting ideas to to think about. UM. I
Speaker 1: think I would be hesitant to engage in the sort
Speaker 1: of micro social engineering. I don't know a lot of
Speaker 1: details about the Hungary in a program, but just as
Speaker 1: you described it, I think there'd be a danger of
Speaker 1: screwing things up. I think we ought to be doing
Speaker 1: more to encourage strong families in churches and communities in
Speaker 1: the private sector. I don't know that we should be
Speaker 1: in trusting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with that, right,
Speaker 1: there is also a middle ground where one could trust
Speaker 1: the laboratories of democracy. And you see, yeah, if some
Speaker 1: sort of program like this works in a state, if
Speaker 1: it does, great, you consider it at the federal level.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, well, you know, too bad for
Speaker 1: you Colorado or whatever state. Probably not Colorado would ride out,
Speaker 1: but that yeah, it's a very it's a very measured
Speaker 1: take on things. Finally, Senator, very important question from Chris,
Speaker 1: what is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow
Speaker 1: blue or black? There's no way the I can really
Speaker 1: even clarify this question without falling into all sorts of
Speaker 1: political incorrectness from Monty Python. So I suppose we should
Speaker 1: probably just leave it there. There is of course more
Speaker 1: to discuss for the verdict listeners, and that is on
Speaker 1: the cloak Room with Liz Wheeler. Liz, what will you
Speaker 1: be talking about? Hi, Michael High, Senator. We're going to
Speaker 1: build this week on last week's episode of Cloak Room,
Speaker 1: where we talked about the police response or lack thereof,
Speaker 1: in Uvaldi at the shooting at the elementary school. This week,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about a legal principle underpinning the
Speaker 1: law enforcement response. It's called public duty doctrine, and it's
Speaker 1: been held by the Supreme Court that police officers, law
Speaker 1: enforcement officers actually have no legal duty to respond or
Speaker 1: to be dispatched or to aid in any situation, any circumstance,
Speaker 1: that they can't be held liable for that. And we're
Speaker 1: going to talk a little bit about this legal principle
Speaker 1: because it's kind of shocking, right It sounds very It
Speaker 1: sounds very shocking that police who we count on to
Speaker 1: respond in emergencies actually have no duty to respond. We're
Speaker 1: going to talk about how that applies here and how
Speaker 1: that can be addressed legally to prevent anything like this
Speaker 1: from happening again in the future. You can join us
Speaker 1: for the Cloakroom on Verdict Plus. Go to Verdict with
Speaker 1: Ted Cruise dot Com Slash Plus you can use my
Speaker 1: promo code Cloakroom to get one month free on your
Speaker 1: annual subscription. That's Verdict with Ted Cruise dot Com slash
Speaker 1: plus promo code Cloakroom excellent. There are so many opportunities
Speaker 1: to subscribe. If you haven't done it already, I implore you.
Speaker 1: I beseech you. Go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, YouTube,
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Speaker 1: Subscribe to Verdict. Senator, thank you as always. I'm Michael Knowles.
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