Speaker 1: Welcome to Verdict Weekend Review. Ben Ferguson with you and
Speaker 1: each Saturday, we are going to give you some of
Speaker 1: the best moments of the Verdict podcast with center Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz from the past week. This week, there are three
Speaker 1: points that we want to make sure that you hear
Speaker 1: about that if you missed it, that's where this Weekend
Speaker 1: Review will come in. Number one, we're gonna be talking
Speaker 1: about climate change and the new threat of one billion
Speaker 1: people dying if we don't fix the problem. That's what
Speaker 1: Democrats are now threatening you with. Also Joe Biden do
Speaker 1: as I say, not as I do, mandating that others
Speaker 1: wear masks, but he's already taken his off after he
Speaker 1: promised he was gonna wear it, and a huge victory
Speaker 1: because of Verdict listeners. That deals with the issue of
Speaker 1: nine to eleven. It is the Weekend Review and it
Speaker 1: starts right now. Climate change has become obviously an election
Speaker 1: year issue, at least for the Democrats. You can see
Speaker 1: it over the last couple of weeks. They're kind of
Speaker 1: testing things, they're pushing things here. But now we're finding
Speaker 1: out how academia deceives people about climate change. And this
Speaker 1: is something that I think is not just disingenuous, but
Speaker 1: it's really disgusting. They put out a new report that
Speaker 1: has actually come out and they say that there's there's
Speaker 1: a new prediction that one billion deaths will happen from
Speaker 1: climate change this century, so you better get on board.
Speaker 1: Researchers from Canada Australia have published this new study predicting
Speaker 1: one billion deaths from climate change over the next hundred years,
Speaker 1: citing a scientific quote consensus.
Speaker 2: The author's analyze.
Speaker 1: They say, one hundred and eighty studies on climate change
Speaker 1: immortality covering on a one thousand ton rules. So this
Speaker 1: is a new theory which means for every thousand tons
Speaker 1: of fossil fuels burn, a person dies. Now this article
Speaker 1: is published and it contends that a future person, a
Speaker 1: future person is killed every every time humanity burns to
Speaker 1: a thousand tons of fossil carbon. They say, based on
Speaker 1: that calculation, that burning a trillion tons of fossil carbon
Speaker 1: will cause two degrees celsius of global warming or ag W,
Speaker 1: which in turn they say will cause roughly a billion
Speaker 1: future premature death spread over a period of very roughly
Speaker 1: one century. I wish they use this type of logic
Speaker 1: when they were talking about unborn children that are killed.
Speaker 1: But of course they'll never do that. But this might
Speaker 1: be the most ridiculous, fear mongering article. And they say
Speaker 1: it's a scientific consensus.
Speaker 3: Now, well, look, there is an enormous problem with the
Speaker 3: politicization of science, and particularly what it concerns climate change,
Speaker 3: the dishonesty of science. I'm going to make a radical
Speaker 3: claim right now. I predict with absolute certainty that seven
Speaker 3: billion people alive today will die in the next one
Speaker 3: hundred years of clilimate change. Now, mind you, they are
Speaker 3: a little over seven billion people alive today, and it
Speaker 3: is a virtual certainty that all of us will die
Speaker 3: in the next one hundred years. And whether there was
Speaker 3: climate change or not, that assertion is unquestionably true.
Speaker 2: It just is.
Speaker 3: Utterly disingenuous to claim it's climate change that will cause it.
Speaker 3: Let me focus on There was an article that came
Speaker 3: out on September fifth from guy named Patrick Brown. Now,
Speaker 3: Patrick Brown is a PhD climate scientist and he is
Speaker 3: the co director of the Climate and Energy Team at
Speaker 3: the Breakthrough Institute, and he wrote an article in the
Speaker 3: Free Press that I think is really consequential. I want
Speaker 3: to just read from you the beginning of the article quote,
Speaker 3: if you've been reading any news about wildfires this summer,
Speaker 3: from Canada to Europe to Maui, you will surely get
Speaker 3: the impression that there are mostly the result of climate change.
Speaker 3: Here's the ap quote climate change keeps making wild fires
Speaker 3: and smoke worse. Scientists call it the new abnormal. From
Speaker 3: PBS News Hour quote wildfires driven by climate change are
Speaker 3: on the rise. Spain must do more to prepare, experts say,
Speaker 3: And from The New York Times, how climate changed turn
Speaker 3: lush Hawaii into a tinder box? And from Bloomberg quote,
Speaker 3: Maui fires show climate change's ugly reach. Now here's doctor
Speaker 3: Brown continuing from this quote. I am a climate scientist,
Speaker 3: and while climate change is an important factor affecting wildfires
Speaker 3: over many parts of the world, it isn't close to
Speaker 3: the only factor that deserves our sole focus. So why
Speaker 3: does the press focus so intently on climate change? Is
Speaker 3: the root cause? Perhaps for the same reasons I just
Speaker 3: did in an an academic paper about wildfires in Nature,
Speaker 3: one of the world's most prestigious journals. It fits a
Speaker 3: simple storyline that rewards the person telling it. The paper
Speaker 3: I just published, climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth
Speaker 3: risk in California focuses exclusively on how climate change has
Speaker 3: affected extreme wildfire behavior. I knew not to try to
Speaker 3: quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research
Speaker 3: because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like
Speaker 3: Nature and its rival Science want to tell. This matters
Speaker 3: because it is critically important for scientists to be published
Speaker 3: in high profile journals. In many ways, they are the
Speaker 3: gatekeepers for career success in academia, and the editors of
Speaker 3: these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what
Speaker 3: they publish and what they reject, that they want climate
Speaker 3: papers that support certain pre approved narratives, even when those
Speaker 3: narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society.
Speaker 3: To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about
Speaker 3: understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving
Speaker 3: as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about
Speaker 3: the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be,
Speaker 3: it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms
Speaker 3: the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult
Speaker 3: to achieve. This is a stunning indictment of the machinery
Speaker 3: and apparatus around quote unquote science today, the journals publish
Speaker 3: quote unquote research that echoes the pre approved political orthodoxy
Speaker 3: they want published, and if you don't echo that, they
Speaker 3: don't publish you. And it is one of the many
Speaker 3: really corrupt aspects of how science and climate change reporting
Speaker 3: and academic work is really doing a disservice to the
Speaker 3: American people.
Speaker 1: When you look at not only the fact that this
Speaker 1: is how you get the money. And I do think
Speaker 1: it's an issue of follow the money as you just
Speaker 1: describe it. Certainly it's an indoctrination on college campuses and
Speaker 1: among researchers, and the cash flow is if you believe
Speaker 1: in this, we will fund you. But when you make
Speaker 1: these outlateist claims and then you treat them as fact,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do to debate this with them.
Speaker 1: When you look at what they said here, they said
Speaker 1: this is a scientific consensus, and the authors say they
Speaker 1: analyze one hundred and eighty studies, all of them, I'm
Speaker 1: sure were studies that were funded by radical left and
Speaker 1: global warming activists, right, those that raise money, etc. But
Speaker 1: when they come out and say that, you know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose a billion people. You make it sound that bad.
Speaker 1: Is there any way to overcome that with anything else
Speaker 1: but this propaganda? And I think that's why they make
Speaker 1: these outlangeous claims.
Speaker 3: Well, it's why we need people in colleges and universities
Speaker 3: and think tanks, in the academic world and in the
Speaker 3: scientific world to reject politicized science. Let me read a
Speaker 3: little more from doctor Brown. Doctor Brown says quote. So
Speaker 3: in my recent Nature paper, which I authored with seven others,
Speaker 3: I focused narrowly on the influence of climate change on
Speaker 3: extreme wildfire behavior. Make no mistake that influence is very real.
Speaker 3: But there are also other factors that can be just
Speaker 3: as or more important, such as poor forest management and
Speaker 3: the increasing number of people who start wildfires, either accidentally
Speaker 3: or purposely. A startling fact, over eighty percent of wildfires
Speaker 3: in the US are ignited by humans. I want to
Speaker 3: repeat that sentence because the corporate media will never say it.
Speaker 3: A startling fact, over eighty percent of wildfires in the
Speaker 3: US are ignited by humans. Now here's what doctor Brown
Speaker 3: continues to say. In my paper, we didn't bother to
Speaker 3: study the influence of these other obviously relevant factors, did
Speaker 3: I know that including them would make for a more
Speaker 3: realistic and useful analysis. I did, but I also knew
Speaker 3: that it would detract from the clean narratives centered on
Speaker 3: the negative impact of climate change, and thus decrease the
Speaker 3: odds that the paper would pass Muster with Natures editors
Speaker 3: and reviewers. This type of framing with the influence of
Speaker 3: climate change unrealistically considered n isolation is the norm for
Speaker 3: high profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential
Speaker 3: Nature paper, scientists calculated that the two largest climate change
Speaker 3: impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and
Speaker 3: damage to agriculture. However, the authors never mentioned that climate
Speaker 3: change is not the dominant driver for either one of
Speaker 3: these impacts. Heat related deaths have been declining and crop
Speaker 3: yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change. To
Speaker 3: acknowledge this would imply that the world has succeeded in
Speaker 3: some areas despite climate change, which the thinking goes, would
Speaker 3: undermine the motivation for emissions reductions. This is a narrative
Speaker 3: of so called scientific inquiry scientific journals academic journals that
Speaker 3: have abandoned the mission of science. Science is about examining
Speaker 3: evidence following the scientific method beginning with a hypothesis, looking
Speaker 3: to evidence to disprove that hypothesis, and determining what's happening today.
Speaker 3: An enormous amount of science is simply politics covered in
Speaker 3: scientific garb, and in no places that more profound than
Speaker 3: in the world of climate change, where there are billions
Speaker 3: of dollars connected to so called scientists telling the preferred
Speaker 3: political narrative. Facts be damned.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is no longer about facts, certainly an academya
Speaker 1: where it's supposed to be about that. Now it's about
Speaker 1: propaganda and indoctrinating people to this while they all find
Speaker 1: their private jets to climate change events, which I still
Speaker 1: laugh at the hypocrisy of that. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go
Speaker 1: back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week.
Speaker 1: Now onto story number two, Senator, I also want to
Speaker 1: deal with COVID. We were talking about the lies and
Speaker 1: they seem to be coming back. Now the White House
Speaker 1: now letting everybody know that Joe Biden is going to
Speaker 1: start wearing a mask indoors this after Joe Biden has
Speaker 1: come down with COVID. Even though Joe Biden has tested
Speaker 1: negative for COVID yesterday and the day before the day
Speaker 1: before that.
Speaker 4: President Biden tested negative last night for COVID nineteen and
Speaker 4: tested negative again today. He's not experiencing any symptoms as
Speaker 4: far as the steps he's taking. Since the President was
Speaker 4: with the First Lady yesterday. He will be masking while
Speaker 4: indoors and around people in alignment with CDC guidance, and
Speaker 4: as has been the practice in the past, the President
Speaker 4: will remove his mask when sufficiently distanced from others indoors
Speaker 4: and while outside as well.
Speaker 1: Now the funny part is Senator. This is said from
Speaker 1: the punium at the White House. Moments later, the President
Speaker 1: is on stage and ceremony. He's not the appropriate distance
Speaker 1: of the White House, says is appropriate from other people,
Speaker 1: and then he takes his mask off that they just
Speaker 1: said to everybody's gonna be wearing if he's in closed
Speaker 1: quarters with a lot of different people. And you add
Speaker 1: that in with a DC area elementary school Montgomery County,
Speaker 1: Maryland is now reinstating a mass mandate. And the mass
Speaker 1: mandate isn't just for those little masks, No, No, n
Speaker 1: ninety five masks for all their third graders because a
Speaker 1: few kids tested positive for COVID. They send out a
Speaker 1: letter telling parents that these masks, these IN ninety five masks.
Speaker 2: Are going to be mandated in class.
Speaker 1: These masks, they they have been distributed, and students and
Speaker 1: staff and identified classes and or activities will be required
Speaker 1: to mask while in school for at least the next
Speaker 1: ten days, except of course, while eating and drinking, and
Speaker 1: the mask will become optional, they claim. After the quote
Speaker 1: outbreak has dissipated, here it is mass mandates coming back.
Speaker 3: Look, this is utterly absurd. Mass mandates are wrong. And
Speaker 3: for the Left, this has become a it's a combination
Speaker 3: of a number of things. Number one, it's an article
Speaker 3: of faith. Number two, it's a virtue signal. It shows
Speaker 3: just how self righteous they think they are. You know,
Speaker 3: as I was walking down the halls of the Capitol today,
Speaker 3: one very prominent Democrat senator was walking along with his
Speaker 3: N ninety five mask, and behind him was his staffer
Speaker 3: wearing his N ninety five mask. And it shows virtue.
Speaker 3: But number three, it's about control. And this is all
Speaker 3: about controlling people. Whether it's mask mandates, whether it's vaccine mandates,
Speaker 3: whether it's having the four hundred and thirty seventh booster.
Speaker 3: Enough is enough is enough. This is crap and no
Speaker 3: look I recognize. And by the way, a year from
Speaker 3: now we are going to see the most deadly COVID
Speaker 3: variant ever seen, the election variant. And before the election,
Speaker 3: it's they're going to need to shut everything down because
Speaker 3: they want to have mail in balloting for everyone because
Speaker 3: they think it helps elect demots. Enough is enough is enough.
Speaker 3: If you want to wear a damn mask, fine, but
Speaker 3: don't be a hypocrite and don't try to force other
Speaker 3: people to. And all right, listen. So many of the
Speaker 3: people who listen to this podcast are conservatives, but some
Speaker 3: are not. Some are open minded. Someone to hear both sides.
Speaker 3: So maybe you think, all right, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: trust crews. I'm not going to trust Ferguson on this.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: If you don't trust me, listen to CNN Left Wing
Speaker 3: CNN confronting doctor Fauci this past weekend about his false
Speaker 3: claims about masks. Give a listen.
Speaker 5: There is a perception out there by many how many
Speaker 5: I don't know, that they don't work, and that the
Speaker 5: data concludes that they didn't work in the first go round.
Speaker 2: Respond to that on masks. Yeah, well that's not so.
Speaker 6: I mean, when you're talking about at the population level,
Speaker 6: that the data are less strong than knowing that if
Speaker 6: you look on a situation as an individual themselves or
Speaker 6: protecting them from spreading it, there's no doubt that masks work.
Speaker 6: Different studies give different percentages of advantage of wearing it,
Speaker 6: but there's no doubt that the weight of the studies,
Speaker 6: and there have been many studies indicate the benefit of
Speaker 6: wearing masks.
Speaker 5: I'm going to refer to one of them. You've heard
Speaker 5: about it before. I heard about it from a number
Speaker 5: of radio callers. Brett Stevens in The Times talked about
Speaker 5: Cochrane put that on the screen. The most rigorous and
Speaker 5: comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of
Speaker 5: masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illness, including COVID nineteen,
Speaker 5: was published last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the
Speaker 5: Oxford epidemiologist who is the lead author, were unambiguous. There
Speaker 5: is just no evidence that they masks make any difference,
Speaker 5: he told the journalist Mayen de Maasi.
Speaker 2: Full stop. But wait, hold on, what about the N ninety.
Speaker 5: Five masks As opposed to the lower quality surgical or
Speaker 5: cloth masks.
Speaker 2: Makes no difference, none of it.
Speaker 5: He said, Well, what about the studies that initially persuaded
Speaker 5: policymakers to impose mass mandates? They were convinced by non
Speaker 5: randomized studies, flawed observational studies. How do we get beyond
Speaker 5: that finding of that particular review.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but there are other studies, Michael, that show at
Speaker 6: an individual level, for individual, when you're talking about the
Speaker 6: effect on the epidemic or the pandemic as a whole,
Speaker 6: the data are less strong. But when you talk about
Speaker 6: as an individual basis of someone protecting themselves or protecting
Speaker 6: themselves from spreading it to others, there's no doubt that
Speaker 6: there are many studies that show that there is an advantage.
Speaker 6: When you took at the broad population level, like the
Speaker 6: Cockman study, the data are less firm with regard to
Speaker 6: the effect on the overall pandemic, But we're.
Speaker 2: Not talking about that.
Speaker 6: We're talking about an individual's effect on their own safety.
Speaker 6: That's a bit different than the broad population level.
Speaker 1: I mean, you hear there and even he's being questioned
Speaker 1: fauci by a guy who's not conservative at CNN and
Speaker 1: it's for kind and she's like, well, hold on, I'll
Speaker 1: read for you what they say. And yet Fauci is
Speaker 1: still siteing their center saying no, no, these things work.
Speaker 2: You're somehow still wrong.
Speaker 3: Well, look two things. Number one, Fauci himself knows what
Speaker 3: he's saying is wrong. And if you go back to
Speaker 3: the beginning of COVID February fifth, twenty twenty, Sylvia Burwell,
Speaker 3: who was the Secretary of Health and Human Services for
Speaker 3: three years under Barack Obama, emailed Fauci and asks asks
Speaker 3: if she should wear a mask. And by the way,
Speaker 3: his whole defense was well individually, it makes sense, just
Speaker 3: not for society. Here's what Fauci wrote on February fifth
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty. Quote. Masks are not are really for
Speaker 3: infected people to prevent them from spreading infection to people
Speaker 3: who are not infected, rather than protecting uninfected people from
Speaker 3: acquiring infection. Fauci continues, the typical mask you buying the
Speaker 3: drug store is not really effective in keeping out virus,
Speaker 3: which is small enough to pass through material. It might, however,
Speaker 3: provide some slight benefit to keep out gross droplets. If
Speaker 3: someone costs or sneezes on you, and he added, quote,
Speaker 3: I do not recommend that you wear a mask, particularly
Speaker 3: since you are going to a very low risk location.
Speaker 3: That's what he said in twenty twenty. Then he decided
Speaker 3: that it was politically beneficial to mandate that everyone had
Speaker 3: to wear a mask. And yet now look the second
Speaker 3: point I'd make, the fact that CNN is turning on
Speaker 3: this in the height of the pandemic. The words that
Speaker 3: you just played from CNN, they would not utter. There
Speaker 3: was no brooking descent from whatever Saint Fauci said. Whatever
Speaker 3: the mandate was, mask today, not mask tomorrow, mass the
Speaker 3: next day, you couldn't disagree. The fact that even CNN
Speaker 3: is turning, I think is significant. I think if the
Speaker 3: Biden administration tries another round of shutdown and mask mandates,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of the country is going to
Speaker 3: say no, and hell no. I'll tell you the state
Speaker 3: of Texas has zero interest in shutting down.
Speaker 5: And I.
Speaker 3: Think you're going to see resistance not just in Texas
Speaker 3: but all over the country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think you're right.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that worries many people is this
Speaker 1: the president and this idea that we could go back
Speaker 1: into some sort of government shutdown There was that awkward
Speaker 1: interview that he did with Kamala Harris, far away from
Speaker 1: the social distancing back in the early days of COVID
Speaker 1: and his administration, sitting next to you know, far away
Speaker 1: from David Muiror's interviewing them in a weird triangle, and
Speaker 1: he said he would have no problem if the scientist
Speaker 1: told him to shut down our entire economy.
Speaker 7: I would be prepared to do what ever it takes
Speaker 7: to save lives, because we cannot get the country moving
Speaker 7: until we control the virus. That is the fundamental flaw
Speaker 7: of this administration thinking to begin with. In order to
Speaker 7: keep the country running and moving and the economy growing
Speaker 7: and people employed, you have to fix the virus.
Speaker 2: You have to deal with the virus.
Speaker 3: So if the scientists say shut it down.
Speaker 2: I would shut it down.
Speaker 7: I would listen to the scientist.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's apparently still on the table. And if
Speaker 1: they bring the mass back where I mean, how far
Speaker 1: away are we from having another fall where they start
Speaker 1: shutting things down?
Speaker 2: And what should the American people do?
Speaker 3: Look, the Democrats want to shut it down. They want
Speaker 3: to impose mandates. And I got to say, one of
Speaker 3: the biggest lies of that exchange is I would listen
Speaker 3: to the scientists. The only scientists that he listens to
Speaker 3: are the ones who say what he wants to hear.
Speaker 3: You know, the very last podcast we did, we did
Speaker 3: a two part episode with an interview with doctor Phil
Speaker 3: and one of the interesting things look. Doctor Phil has
Speaker 3: been the number one ranked daytime TV host for a decade,
Speaker 3: and he talked about how the data are that the
Speaker 3: school shutdowns from COVID cost many, many more lives than
Speaker 3: the virus would have cost. Another ords. Listen to the scientists.
Speaker 3: The Democrats aren't listening to the scientists because if they did,
Speaker 3: they'd look at the harm from the shutdowns. They look
Speaker 3: at the harm for businesses shut down. They'd look at
Speaker 3: the harm from churches shutdown. They'd look at the harm
Speaker 3: from school shut down, the kids who face learning loss
Speaker 3: for the rest of their life. They look at the
Speaker 3: mental health numbers that have gone up. They'd look at
Speaker 3: the kids who didn't go to school and didn't have
Speaker 3: physical wellness checks, didn't have mental health checks, didn't have
Speaker 3: daily food because for low income kids, for many of them,
Speaker 3: their principal source of food is at school. They didn't
Speaker 3: have the counselors who could observe whether kids are subject
Speaker 3: to physical abuse or sexual abuse, because when they shut
Speaker 3: down schools, they sent them at home and the data.
Speaker 3: What doctor Phil told us that if you didn't listen
Speaker 3: to those two podcasts, you got to go back and
Speaker 3: listen to them. But what doctor Phil said on this
Speaker 3: podcast was that the data show that many, many more
Speaker 3: lives were lost because of the shutdowns. But the Democrats
Speaker 3: don't want to listen to the scientists. They have a
Speaker 3: political agenda, so they'll cherry pick whatever scientists repeat the
Speaker 3: politically favored outcome that support the result they want.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Centaur, last question for you, what do you think
Speaker 1: states should be doing? Because Texas has banned the mass
Speaker 1: mandate since COVID restrictions are being imposed in other states.
Speaker 1: There was a Newsweek headline, this is a ban on
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen restrictions and imposed a mandate to wear face
Speaker 1: mask in public spaces when to affect in Texas after
Speaker 1: a number of institutions across the US reinstaid the policy
Speaker 1: do to a rise in new infections fueled by the
Speaker 1: emergence of two.
Speaker 2: New variants of the virus. Now that's the GISTs of this.
Speaker 1: But Texas is saying, hey, we're going to stand up
Speaker 1: to this type of insanity. Do other people need to
Speaker 1: be calling their legislators and asking for the same thing.
Speaker 3: Look, absolutely yes, Listen. States need to embrace common sense.
Speaker 3: States need to defend liberty. States need to defend individual choice.
Speaker 3: If someone wants to wear a mask, knock yourself out.
Speaker 3: You can still You know, I flew from Texas to
Speaker 3: DC today there were still a hand full of people
Speaker 3: in the airport that choose to wear a mask. Okay,
Speaker 3: if you want to wear a mask, that's fine, you
Speaker 3: got an individual choice. You can wear a ski mask
Speaker 3: if you want. That's your choice. But government shouldn't be
Speaker 3: forcing people to wear a mask. Airlines shouldn't be forcing
Speaker 3: people to make wear a mask, airport shouldn't be forcing
Speaker 3: people to wear a mask. Restaurants shouldn't be forcing people
Speaker 3: to wear a mask. Nobody should be forcing anyone to
Speaker 3: wear a mask. And even more so, governors and states
Speaker 3: need to say not just no, but hell no to
Speaker 3: the shutdowns. We will look back in the future. Years
Speaker 3: in the future, we will look back and say, what
Speaker 3: in the hell did America do? Shutting much of the
Speaker 3: country down for a year or more. Many parts of
Speaker 3: the country, almost all Democrat parts of the country, shut
Speaker 3: businesses down, shut churches down, shut schools down, many schools.
Speaker 3: Tens of millions of kids were out of school for
Speaker 3: over a year, and the consequence was cataclysmic. It is,
Speaker 3: without exaggeration, the most catastrophic public policy decision of our lifetimes.
Speaker 3: And so states need to say we're not going down
Speaker 3: that road again. No, we're not gonna do it. Look,
Speaker 3: you know the school shutdowns were bad. When Randy Weinngarten,
Speaker 3: the head of one of the big teachers unions, is
Speaker 3: now suddenly claiming I wasn't for school shutdowns, despite the
Speaker 3: fact that she fought relentlessly for school shutdowns and caused
Speaker 3: Democratic politicians to jump on a string when she demanded it.
Speaker 3: Now even she's running away from it. States need to
Speaker 3: stand up and say we're not shutting anything down. Look,
Speaker 3: if there's another public health crisis, and at some point
Speaker 3: there will be, protect people who are vulnerable, work to
Speaker 3: provide treatment options, give people advice on how to keep safe,
Speaker 3: but respect their individual liberty, and don't engage in arbitrary
Speaker 3: shutdowns and mandates. The mandates are wrong say no to
Speaker 3: the mandates as before.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear the rest of this conversation
Speaker 1: on this time, you can go back and download the
Speaker 1: podcasts from early this week to hear the entire thing.
Speaker 1: I want to get back to the big story number
Speaker 1: three of the week. You may have missed. The listeners
Speaker 1: did an amazing job of sharing. It was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest podcasts I think we've ever done together, and
Speaker 1: it dealt with the issue of nine to eleven. You
Speaker 1: issued a statement afterwards and that also went viral, and
Speaker 1: you have a new statement and update I want you
Speaker 1: to tell you about tonight. This goes back to that
Speaker 1: letter that the doj or I should say, the d
Speaker 1: sent out to families victims of nine to eleven, and
Speaker 1: they were letting them know and a heads up that
Speaker 1: we were probably going to do a plea deal with
Speaker 1: Khalead shak Muhammad, and I think it was three or
Speaker 1: four other terrorists at Guantanamo Bay Khalead shake Mohammad. We
Speaker 1: went through the history of who he is the mastermind
Speaker 1: of nine to eleven, but also killed many other people
Speaker 1: and many other attacks around the world, innocent children, women,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And they were going to do a deal
Speaker 1: to spare him the death penalty so we could get
Speaker 1: him out of Gitmo and then close down Getmo. That's
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal for the DoD and the Biden administration.
Speaker 1: We now have an update because of the outrage of
Speaker 1: so many listeners of this show and others and that
Speaker 1: story going viral.
Speaker 2: It looks like they're not going to get away with it.
Speaker 3: That's exactly right, and I would to take a minute
Speaker 3: to thank the listeners a verdict because I actually think
Speaker 3: you guys made a real difference in something that matters
Speaker 3: enormously in this country, which is as we discussed on
Speaker 3: this podcast, the Biden administration sent out letters to the
Speaker 3: families of the victims who were murdered on September eleventh
Speaker 3: and said, hey, we're contemplating a plea deal where Khaled
Speaker 3: Shigmuhammad and other conspirators behind the mass murder on September
Speaker 3: eleventh would be spared the death penalty. They'd give it
Speaker 3: life in prison. They would be exempted from capital punishment.
Speaker 3: Despite the fact that they committed an active war, despite
Speaker 3: the fact that they killed nearly three thousand people, We'd
Speaker 3: spare them. And you know, when they sent this letter.
Speaker 3: It was initially getting almost no press coverage. No one
Speaker 3: was covering it, no one was discussing it. ABC didn't
Speaker 3: discuss it at the six o'clock news, NBC didn't discuss
Speaker 3: at CBS didn't discuss at CNN didn't discuss at MSNBC
Speaker 3: didn't discuss it. The entire corporate media ignored it. You
Speaker 3: and I were so outraged by it that we sat
Speaker 3: down to do our pod and we actually had three topics.
Speaker 3: This was topic number one. We had two other topics,
Speaker 3: and we ended up deciding, you know what, the entire
Speaker 3: podcast is going to focus on this issue on September eleventh,
Speaker 3: on the horrific terrorist attack that came after America, on
Speaker 3: what it meant, and on the outrage listen the Biden
Speaker 3: administration and we talked about in that podcast. And by
Speaker 3: the way, you got to go back and listen to
Speaker 3: that podcast. You can go back and find we did
Speaker 3: a full podcast on this September eleventh effort of the
Speaker 3: Biden administration to spare the mastermind of September eleventh, but
Speaker 3: I believe this is part and parcel of the Biden
Speaker 3: administration's effort to essentially abolish the federal death penalty, and
Speaker 3: before Joe Biden leaves the White House, I think he
Speaker 3: is going to pardon or commute the sentences of every
Speaker 3: single federal death penalty prisoner, including the racist lunatic who
Speaker 3: murdered nine African Americans at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston,
Speaker 3: South Carolina, including multiple vicious terrorists and murderers. But as
Speaker 3: a result of this podcast, we focused the entire thirty
Speaker 3: minutes of the pod on the facts behind it, and
Speaker 3: we asked you. We said, if you're outraged, pick up
Speaker 3: the phone, call your house member, call your senator, call
Speaker 3: the White House, and say do not spare the September
Speaker 3: eleventh mastermind. Well, we were about the only people shining
Speaker 3: a light on this, and it ended up people got
Speaker 3: worked up, which is good. They should have been worked up.
Speaker 3: We were worked up. It was wrong, it was outrageous,
Speaker 3: it was astonishing what they're doing. Well, I got to say.
Speaker 3: On Wednesday, the administration came out and announce that it
Speaker 3: was not going to accept the Plea deal. And here's
Speaker 3: what prosecutors said in the filing quote. The Administration declined
Speaker 3: to declines to accept the terms of the proposed joint
Speaker 3: Policy principles offered by the accused of the Military Commission's case,
Speaker 3: United States versus Mohammed at all. And so I think
Speaker 3: that is a real victory verdict listeners ought to feel
Speaker 3: proud of.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: To be clear, the Biden administration gave themselves some wiggle
Speaker 3: rooms so they may go back and take the deal,
Speaker 3: but they at least filed a court pleading saying they're
Speaker 3: rejecting the deal. That's a major victory. It was only
Speaker 3: the political pressure that came, and that political pressure was
Speaker 3: generated in very significant respect by the listeners of this podcast.
Speaker 3: But my view is the bastards that attacked America, that
Speaker 3: murdered nearly three thousand Americans, they ought to be prosecuted.
Speaker 3: They ought to be sentenced to death, and they ought
Speaker 3: to be executed because I think it's a matter of
Speaker 3: justice that people that committed horrific terrorist attacks on America
Speaker 3: they should face the ultimate punishment. But the only way
Speaker 3: we'll be sure that happens is if the American people
Speaker 3: hold this administration to account and if they're too embarrassed
Speaker 3: and ashamed to let these guys off.
Speaker 1: My next question for you is this, is this just
Speaker 1: a pause and delay strategy, Senator, And do we have
Speaker 1: to keep monitoring them or does this put this to bed,
Speaker 1: especially for the victims and the families that were affected
Speaker 1: by nine to eleven. They got these these you know,
Speaker 1: I would say horrific letters to the Department of Defense
Speaker 1: saying that they may spare these guys' lives after these
Speaker 1: men and did all that they did to kill their
Speaker 1: family members.
Speaker 3: Well, we don't know entirely. What we know is that
Speaker 3: the prisoners not only wanted to be spared the death penalty,
Speaker 3: but they wanted the Department of Defense to accept a
Speaker 3: guarantee that they would not serve their sentences in solitary
Speaker 3: confinement and that would allow them to eat and pray
Speaker 3: with other prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. They also wanted a
Speaker 3: civilian run program to treat brain disorders, to treat sleep disorders,
Speaker 3: and to treat gastro intestinal damage that they say the
Speaker 3: CIA caused during investigations. That's the demand the Biden administration
Speaker 3: turned down. There is a tiny bit of wiggle room
Speaker 3: that they could come back and say, Okay, we're not
Speaker 3: going to give you those concessions, but we are going
Speaker 3: to take the death penalty off the table. And one
Speaker 3: of the key reasons I think there are two things
Speaker 3: going on in the Biden administration. One, these left wing
Speaker 3: radicals or ideologically opposed the death penalty. They don't want
Speaker 3: anyone executed. Ever, they want to essentially repeal the federal
Speaker 3: death penalty. Now. They don't want to go through the
Speaker 3: constitutional process of supporting legislation and Congress trying to get
Speaker 3: the votes and repealing it as a matter of law.
Speaker 3: They just want to say, we the executive branch are
Speaker 3: going to refuse to enforce the death penalty and in fact,
Speaker 3: are going to commute or pardon anyone convicted of the
Speaker 3: most egregious offenses in the country. I think a second objective,
Speaker 3: and again we talked about this at length on the
Speaker 3: prior pod on this topic, is they want to close
Speaker 3: Guantanamo and listen. When it comes to foreign policy, the
Speaker 3: Biden administration is a press release administration. In other words,
Speaker 3: they don't follow coherent foreign policy objectives. They don't have
Speaker 3: a strategic vision for defending this nation. Instead, they want
Speaker 3: a simple press release that lets them at their moral virtue.
Speaker 3: So in Afghanistan, you know, you ask yourself, why was
Speaker 3: the surrender to the Taliban the withdrawal from Afghanistan so
Speaker 3: utterly incompetent such a disaster. A big part of the
Speaker 3: reason is the Biden White House viewed as hey, we
Speaker 3: want to be out of there by September eleventh, because
Speaker 3: then we can show how virtuous we are that we
Speaker 3: withdrew from the war by September eleventh. The problem is
Speaker 3: when the military said, Okay, if we leave that early,
Speaker 3: we need sufficient troops to maintain Bogram Air Force Base
Speaker 3: and also maintain Kabbal Airport, and the Biden White House said, nope, nope,
Speaker 3: we don't care. Pull them out abandoned Bogram Air Force Base.
Speaker 3: We don't need a secure airfield. We haven't evacuated anyone.
Speaker 3: We haven't evacuated Americans, we haven't evacuated the Afghans who
Speaker 3: assisted us. But we have a press release to issue,
Speaker 3: So ignore the national security imperatives. Let's issue our press release.
Speaker 3: I think in the case of GETMO, their objective is
Speaker 3: the same. They want to press release, say we are
Speaker 3: closing GITTMO. In order to do that, they've got to
Speaker 3: remove the most dangerous terrorists from GITTMO. In order to
Speaker 3: do that, they have to send them to prisons in
Speaker 3: the continental United States, and in order to do that,
Speaker 3: they either have to get a conviction or get a
Speaker 3: plea deal. And so I think part of the reason
Speaker 3: they want the plea deal is to shut Gitmo because
Speaker 3: they get a good press release from it. But I
Speaker 3: think the listeners of Verdicts and millions of Americans stood
Speaker 3: up and said no and hell no.
Speaker 1: As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with senter
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
Speaker 1: with my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast
Speaker 1: every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each
Speaker 1: day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to
Speaker 1: have you as a listener to again, Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
Speaker 1: and we will see you back here on Monday morning.