Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you, Senator,
Speaker 2: We've got a lot to chat about, obviously, with what's
Speaker 2: going on at the border and specifically something that you
Speaker 2: have been calling for, and that is the impeachment of
Speaker 2: my Orcus that now looks like it could become a
Speaker 2: big reality on the House side.
Speaker 1: We're going to deal with that.
Speaker 2: But before we deal with that, I do want to
Speaker 2: get your initial reaction because this has been such a
Speaker 2: big story with the list and the names and the
Speaker 2: Epstein documents. A lot of it has come out. We're
Speaker 2: still waiting for more things to come out. The media
Speaker 2: has played this as oh, nothing to see here, Yes,
Speaker 2: Bill Clinton's name was in there, Yes, Donald Trump's name
Speaker 2: was in there, and acting like it's just a bunch
Speaker 2: of names. Give me your initial reaction to what you
Speaker 2: so far have seen and what you've heard and.
Speaker 1: What you think.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm glad it's finally coming out. It's taken too
Speaker 3: damn long. All of this needs to be public. At
Speaker 3: this point, we've had roughly forty documents released by the
Speaker 3: Federal District Court. There are around two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: documents in total the district Court has that the court
Speaker 3: is indicated they're going to release, so there'll be more
Speaker 3: information that comes out. But look, what is of real
Speaker 3: public interest is is who participated with Jeffrey Epstein in
Speaker 3: sex crimes and an abusing young girls, underage girls, and
Speaker 3: if they participated, if they're guilty of those crimes, they
Speaker 3: should be prosecuted. We should have the client list, We
Speaker 3: should have the list of the people who went to
Speaker 3: his island where he committed these crimes, and committed these
Speaker 3: crimes according to the testimony over an extended period of time.
Speaker 3: And the media has expressed an amazing lack of curiosity
Speaker 3: on this, and I think the reason is that Jeffrey
Speaker 3: Epstein piled around with Democrats. One of the interesting things
Speaker 3: in the document, so you know, the media desperately wants
Speaker 3: to blame Epstein on Trump, but there's one passing reference
Speaker 3: to Trump in the documents that essentially, when Epstein's playing
Speaker 3: lands in Atlantic City, says, oh, we should call Trump.
Speaker 3: And so that's the lone reference you want to talk about.
Speaker 3: The most damning thing. The most damning thing is the
Speaker 3: quote from a twenty sixteen deposition about Bill Clinton where
Speaker 3: the quote was quote he said one time that Clinton
Speaker 3: likes them young, referring to girls. Now, I gotta say, Ben,
Speaker 3: can you imagine if the document said the exact same thing,
Speaker 3: but if it just replaced the word Clinton with Trump.
Speaker 3: If there were a document here that said Trump likes
Speaker 3: some young the media would go nuts. The New York
Speaker 3: Times would have a banner headline in forty two point
Speaker 3: fought Trump likes him young. But of course it didn't
Speaker 3: say that. It said Bill Clinton likes young girls. And
Speaker 3: suddenly it's crickets the media. What no, nothing to see here,
Speaker 3: nothing at all.
Speaker 2: It was interesting that you mentioned that because I was
Speaker 2: talking with my producer in our producer this show, Diaz.
Speaker 2: This morning we went to see an in dot com
Speaker 2: live on My morning show, and some of the headlines
Speaker 2: that they had above the article that even dealt with
Speaker 2: Epstein included TJ Fridays, the restaurant abruptly closes thirty six.
Speaker 1: Restaurant see the whole list.
Speaker 2: Another one, two straight Dogs caused more than three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty in damage at a car dealership. World's most
Speaker 2: punctual airport is in the US. Kelly Clarkson says, walking
Speaker 2: in her new home of New York City helped her
Speaker 2: lose weight.
Speaker 1: These were the stories.
Speaker 2: That they had above and countless others before you actually
Speaker 2: got to the Epstein story that also mentioned Bill Clinton
Speaker 2: likes them young, referring.
Speaker 1: To young girls. That is your media for you in
Speaker 1: America right now.
Speaker 3: And also the document show that Bill Clinton flew repeatedly
Speaker 3: on the plane. We don't know how many times. And
Speaker 3: we also know, and this is something we've discussed at
Speaker 3: length on Verdict before, we know that Dick Durbin and
Speaker 3: Senate Democrats are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent a
Speaker 3: subpoena from issuing to get the flight logs of Epstein's planes.
Speaker 3: So the Senate Democrats don't want the public to know
Speaker 3: who was on that airplane. And that when you put
Speaker 3: it in that context, suddenly the media's utter lack of
Speaker 3: interest in this makes a whole lot more sense, because
Speaker 3: the media wants to protect the Democrats, and the Democrats
Speaker 3: desperately don't want people to know. Look, as we've talked about,
Speaker 3: Jeffrey Epstein had a painting of Bill Clinton in a
Speaker 3: blue dress with red pumps hanging in his house in
Speaker 3: New York. It's bizarre, but but that's that's what he
Speaker 3: put on the wall, and the media doesn't want you
Speaker 3: to know it well.
Speaker 2: And there was also another story that came out that
Speaker 2: said that there apparently were emails that were going around
Speaker 2: that we're talking about, apparently Bill Clinton going into Vanity
Speaker 2: Fair and threatening them not to write the sex trafficking
Speaker 2: articles about his good friend Jeffrey Epstein. According to an
Speaker 2: email from Virginia Giffra and Centner, if you had that
Speaker 2: same shocking emails come out tonight and it was Donald
Speaker 2: Trump walked into Vandy Fair and threatened them not to
Speaker 2: write a sex trafficking article about his good friend, quote
Speaker 2: unquote Jeffrey Epstein, and you had this in emails, this
Speaker 2: would also be wall to wall coverage. Yet tonight, as
Speaker 2: you and I are taping this, still crickets on that
Speaker 2: story of the influence that Bill Quinton had over that
Speaker 2: story at Vandy Fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Look, it's a complete obvious double standard and the corporate
Speaker 3: media is thorough corrupt. They are part of the Democrat Party,
Speaker 3: they share the same left wing agenda, and they behave
Speaker 3: in unison to protect each other.
Speaker 2: Last question on this I want to ask you, and
Speaker 2: that is I still am angered by the aspect that
Speaker 2: there's really been virtually no justice here. There has been, Yes,
Speaker 2: Maxwell who's in prison. Yes, Jeffrey Epstein was in prison.
Speaker 2: But if you go back to his first conviction, that
Speaker 2: was a slap on the wrist down in Florida, I
Speaker 2: think it was back in sixteen. One of the things
Speaker 2: you notice here is the federal government has not gone
Speaker 2: after any of those that were involved in this, this
Speaker 2: horrific abuse of young girls, underage girls, but they did
Speaker 2: seem to go out of their way to actually protect
Speaker 2: the mighty, the powerful in this country from prosecution or
Speaker 2: even investigations.
Speaker 1: How concerning is that to you?
Speaker 3: Look, I think it's deeply concerning in it anyone involved
Speaker 3: in the trafficking or sexual abuse of underage girls should
Speaker 3: be prosecuted. And and you're right, there's a complete lack
Speaker 3: of interest on the part of the Department of Justice
Speaker 3: to go after the clients, to go after the other
Speaker 3: people that were.
Speaker 1: Involved in this.
Speaker 3: There's a complete lack of interest in the media on
Speaker 3: reporting on it. They are protecting the powerful. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you another component of this. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you saw the story that broke last week that there
Speaker 3: was reporting that the arrests that were made of two
Speaker 3: brothels that were in Boston and outside of Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: In Virginia, that it appears there's evidence that they were
Speaker 3: in fact honeypot schemes potentially funded by a foreign government
Speaker 3: that included prominent politicians who were clients of these houses
Speaker 3: of prostitution and then that was used to blackmail them.
Speaker 3: And this is a story that suggests that this was
Speaker 3: being funded by a foreign government, and it's not clear who,
Speaker 3: whether China or Iran, or.
Speaker 1: Who it was.
Speaker 3: But it also raises the question with Jeffrey Epstein about
Speaker 3: with powerful people and politicians, people like Bill Clinton, what
Speaker 3: influence did Jeffrey Epstein have over them? And was any
Speaker 3: of this material used for blackmail? And given the story
Speaker 3: that just broke, I think it puts an additional urgency
Speaker 3: on answering that question.
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Speaker 2: I want to move also to the big story and
Speaker 2: it deals with the border. You have been calling now
Speaker 2: for quite some time, the impeachment of my Orcis, and
Speaker 2: there now seems to be a real momentum behind this.
Speaker 2: There have been many talking heads. As I was flying
Speaker 2: back from York today, this time it came up on
Speaker 2: Fox about you know, it's about time that they move
Speaker 2: to in p my Orcis. But there's a lot of
Speaker 2: people that don't think understand the reasons behind it. There
Speaker 2: are some that are talking about it more of a
Speaker 2: like political vengeance, like, well, he deserves to be impeached
Speaker 2: because he doesn't do his job. And I think what
Speaker 2: we need to do is go back and lay out
Speaker 2: for the listeners of Verdict the actual reasons why My
Speaker 2: Orcis you believe should be impeached and it's based on
Speaker 2: actual things within his job, not political vengeance. Because there
Speaker 2: have been some that have just been acting like this
Speaker 2: should be political vengeance. That's not how what this should
Speaker 2: be about. You should never impeach people for political vengeance.
Speaker 2: It should be because of dereliction of their duty and
Speaker 2: their job. So let's go through why you believe personally
Speaker 2: that my Orcists should be impeached for not doing his job.
Speaker 3: Well, let's be clear what the constitutional standard for impeachment is.
Speaker 3: The Constitution lays out that impeachment lies for bribery, treason,
Speaker 3: or other high crimes and misdemeanors. So you know, in
Speaker 3: your question you said that Mayorcis should be impeached for
Speaker 3: dereliction of duty. Actually, dereliction of duty alone is not
Speaker 3: enough for impeachment. And there was a debate among the
Speaker 3: Framers when they were writing the Constitution, and in fact,
Speaker 3: one of the earlier drafts of the Constitution, it was
Speaker 3: suggested that impeachment lie for maladministration, and the Framers decided
Speaker 3: against that. They didn't want a process simply to remove
Speaker 3: someone for maladministration. They wanted it to be a higher
Speaker 3: standard of high crimes and misdemeanors. But in this instance,
Speaker 3: what mayorcus has done is far greater than negligence, far
Speaker 3: greater than malad administration. It's not just that Alexandro Majorcis
Speaker 3: is bad at his job. It's not just that he's ineffective.
Speaker 3: It's that he's openly, brazenly, deliberately defying the law, ignoring
Speaker 3: the law, flouting the law. He is facilitating, He is
Speaker 3: aiding and abetting an invasion of this country. What is
Speaker 3: happening at our southern border is such a disaster that
Speaker 3: you know you asked why why should may Orcist be impeached?
Speaker 3: The simple reason is the strategy of Joe Biden and
Speaker 3: the Democrats on the border is very simple. They want
Speaker 3: to ignore it, and they know that the corporate media
Speaker 3: will be complicit in ignoring it. This is one of
Speaker 3: the many instances where the corruption and politicization of the media,
Speaker 3: the destruction of journalism, it ends up producing the extremism.
Speaker 3: With elected Democrats, their strategy is simply ignore it and
Speaker 3: cover it up. And so the most important value of
Speaker 3: impeachment of Mayorcis is to put the facts of the
Speaker 3: utter disaster that is happening at the border before the
Speaker 3: American people. So let me give you some of the facts.
Speaker 3: In all of fiscal year twenty twenty three, the Biden
Speaker 3: administration deported one hundred and forty two thousand, five hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty people. One hundred and forty two thousand, more
Speaker 3: than twice that number came across our border just last
Speaker 3: month in December. So that's one hundred and forty two
Speaker 3: thousand out of roughly three million. You look at the
Speaker 3: month of December that we just finished, three hundred and
Speaker 3: two thousand illegal alien encounters, the highest single month ever recorded,
Speaker 3: first time it's ever been over three hundred thousand. There
Speaker 3: have now been since October firs more than seven hundred
Speaker 3: and eighty five thousand migrant encounters at the southern border.
Speaker 3: Seven hundred and eighty five thousand since October first. That
Speaker 3: is the highest first quarter of the year. The way
Speaker 3: the fiscal of the federal government fiscal year measures the
Speaker 3: first quarter is from October one to December thirty first,
Speaker 3: that's the highest first quarter ever recorded. Seven hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty five thousand people is larger than the city of Seattle,
Speaker 3: and that's what crossed the southern border in the last
Speaker 3: three months. And despite all of that, what does the
Speaker 3: White House say? Kareem John Pierre describes the situation on
Speaker 3: the border as quote not unusual, its record shattering, horrific,
Speaker 3: and it is producing a line of body bags of
Speaker 3: dead illegal immigrants abandoned on Texas farms and ranches. It
Speaker 3: is producing thousands upon thousands of children, horribly abused, brutalized women,
Speaker 3: thousands upon thousands sexually assaulted drug overdoses. The value of
Speaker 3: this impeachment is to overcome the media blockade and to
Speaker 3: put the facts before the American people.
Speaker 2: You know, what's even more shocking is their excuses for
Speaker 2: why this is happening. And one of them, I just
Speaker 2: have to play it for you because I have to
Speaker 2: get your reaction. You talk about my orcist and moving
Speaker 2: forward this impeachment. It's long overdue. But listen to what
Speaker 2: my Orcus said about what's happening at the border, and
Speaker 2: more importantly, why it's happening at the border.
Speaker 1: Take a listen on from MSNBC.
Speaker 4: As you know, mister Secretary Border Patrol, in the month
Speaker 4: of December process more migrants entering the United States illegally
Speaker 4: than any month in the history of that agency.
Speaker 1: Why is that happening? How do you explain it?
Speaker 4: So we are seeing the greatest number of displaced people,
Speaker 4: not only at our southern border, not only in the
Speaker 4: Western hemisphere, but across the globe. You know, I am
Speaker 4: involved in bilateral and multilateral meetings with my counterparts from
Speaker 4: foreign countries in Europe, in Asia and the Indo Pacific,
Speaker 4: all over the world, and migration, the challenge of displaced
Speaker 4: people is a subject that comes up in every single conversation.
Speaker 4: We have the effects of climate change, poverty, increasing level
Speaker 4: of authoritarianism, the very many challenges that are at the
Speaker 4: root cause of the displacement of people around the world.
Speaker 1: Climate change. So now that's why garbage.
Speaker 2: I mean, I heard it and I almost laughed, like
Speaker 2: he didn't just say that?
Speaker 1: Did he really just say that? And he did?
Speaker 3: Look Ben, that just pisces me off, because that man
Speaker 3: is utterly full of shot. He is just lying. He's
Speaker 3: brazenly lying climate change. You know what, Joe Biden and
Speaker 3: Alejandro mayorcus inherited the lowest rate of illegal immigration in
Speaker 3: forty five years. It changed literally the month Joe Biden
Speaker 3: became president. Now, even under their idiotic ideology, did climate
Speaker 3: change suddenly occur once Biden was president, and I guess
Speaker 3: there was no climate change when Trump was president. What
Speaker 3: he's saying it is such a brazen lie. It demonstrates
Speaker 3: why he should be impeached. He's not trying to do
Speaker 3: his job. He's defying the law. So i'll give it.
Speaker 3: Give it an example. Fiscal year twenty twenty three, one
Speaker 3: hundred and thirty seven, two hundred and seventy five unaccompanied miners,
Speaker 3: little boys, little girls arrived at the Southern borderered and
Speaker 3: thirty seven, two hundred and seventy five. How many do
Speaker 3: you think ice removed in that year?
Speaker 1: Honestly, no clue because the numbers are so insane.
Speaker 3: Out of one hundred and thirty seven, two hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five, ice removed two hundred and twelve. Wow, so
Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty seven thousand plus remained. And by
Speaker 3: the way, and look, you and I talked about this
Speaker 3: on the podcast when I was last down at the
Speaker 3: border a couple of months ago, where we encountered a
Speaker 3: group with a lot of young children. A very significant
Speaker 3: percentage of those children are physically assaulted, they are sexually assaulted,
Speaker 3: and they are being trafficked and put into sex, slavery,
Speaker 3: and so I get angry when I hear May Yorkis
Speaker 3: say that because he's saying he does not care about
Speaker 3: those children being raped. And the reason he's saying that
Speaker 3: is because if he cared, he would do something to
Speaker 3: stop it. And he not only won't do something to
Speaker 3: stop it. Everything he he's doing is trying to increase
Speaker 3: the illegal immigration. His focus is on processing illegal immigrants
Speaker 3: faster and getting them on planes and on buses to
Speaker 3: every city in America. And so he is deliberately causing,
Speaker 3: causing this problem and making it worse day after day
Speaker 3: after day.
Speaker 2: You know, Speaker Johnson took a delegation of congressmen down
Speaker 2: to the border and with an eagle pass a place
Speaker 2: the president won't go, a place that you know, the
Speaker 2: White House, President tery won't go to the place the
Speaker 2: Vice President Kamala Harris won't go. Democrats won't go to
Speaker 2: where the actual crisis is. And I was on Outnumbered
Speaker 2: and they were showing the video of illegal immigrants from
Speaker 2: different countries yelling out and their native languages help to
Speaker 2: the congressmen saying, we're trying to get through the wire.
Speaker 1: I want you to hear this. It was amazing.
Speaker 5: The JP delegation went down to speak to border patrol
Speaker 5: about the unfolding crisis, only for it to unfold around them. Look,
Speaker 5: you can't make this up. You can see migrants entering
Speaker 5: our country illegally. This is just feet from where speaker
Speaker 5: Johnson was as he spoke with reporters, and as he
Speaker 5: spoke with them, there were illegal immigrants yelling aouda, which
Speaker 5: means help in Spanish. And take a look there at
Speaker 5: the barbed wire, bauda. So that's razor wire stopping the
Speaker 5: migrants from entering our country. But it doesn't keep Kreine
Speaker 5: Jean Pierre from saying this at the White House podium yesterday.
Speaker 6: Government abbotts. Razor wire does not prevent. It does not
Speaker 6: prevent non citizens from unlawfully crossing. That's not what it does.
Speaker 6: If anything, it puts at risk. It puts the lives
Speaker 6: of the border patrol at risk.
Speaker 5: Except we just saw that it did prevent. She also
Speaker 5: previously said walls don't work, and she had a rather
Speaker 5: interesting reason why.
Speaker 6: Instead of providing the needed resources for more border security
Speaker 6: technology and as silent officers and judges, it would waste
Speaker 6: taxpayer dollars on an ineffective wall again, an ineffective wall
Speaker 6: that can't even withstand heavy winds.
Speaker 1: So that's right.
Speaker 2: I mean, you hear the White House is Talking Points Center,
Speaker 2: and then you go down there and you see this,
Speaker 2: and the media did criticize Johnson, and the White House
Speaker 2: criticized Johnsday say they should be in Washington doing their
Speaker 2: job and passing a budget and spending They shouldn't be
Speaker 2: doing a photo op and a publicity stunt the border.
Speaker 1: It's not a publicity stunt.
Speaker 2: If you don't go to the border and you don't
Speaker 2: see it with your own eyes, you don't understand how
Speaker 2: bad it is. When you have a delegation of congressmen
Speaker 2: and women and the Speaker of the House and a
Speaker 2: bunch media, and these people are yelling, help help venezuela, venezuela,
Speaker 2: help help you understand that the border is in fact
Speaker 2: wide open, and no one that's coming across the southern
Speaker 2: border thinks they shouldn't be doing it or shouldn't be
Speaker 2: trying to turn themselves into Americans.
Speaker 3: Look what Karine Jean Pierre says, she doesn't give a
Speaker 3: damn about border patrol agents, and in fact, she and
Speaker 3: Joe Biden regularly demonize border patrol agents. I spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time with border patrol agents. I go down there,
Speaker 3: I go out on midnight patrol with them. I joined
Speaker 3: them for their midnight muster. These men and women, they
Speaker 3: are heroes. They are undermined daily by their political leadership
Speaker 3: who makes their job impossible to do. And she claims, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, putting putting barbier or razor wire, it endangers
Speaker 3: border patrol agents lives. You won't find a border patrol
Speaker 3: agent telling you that that that is a pure political lie.
Speaker 3: And and you know, Joe Biden was asked this week
Speaker 3: about the border, and he again with it's gotten to
Speaker 3: the point that where the dictionary defines chutzpa. They ought
Speaker 3: to have a picture of Joe Biden and Kareine, John
Speaker 3: Pierre and Mayorcis because he said it's Republican's fault. The
Speaker 3: crisis of the border is Republican's fault because they won't
Speaker 3: fund his request for funding at the border. Now, number one,
Speaker 3: understand the money Joe Biden is asking for is not
Speaker 3: to secure the border. It is to process illegal immigrations
Speaker 3: faster and to bring in more illegal immigrants. He wants
Speaker 3: money to make the problem worse. And if you want
Speaker 3: to understand that, you know, I encourage you to go
Speaker 3: back and listen you and I did, I think a
Speaker 3: little over a year ago an interview that we did
Speaker 3: at the southern border where we interviewed a very good
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Brandon Judd, who is the head of
Speaker 3: the National Border Patrol Union, and he sat down with
Speaker 3: us and he talked about the cause of the problems.
Speaker 3: And one of the very interesting things that Brandon Judd
Speaker 3: said is he said, to secure this border, we don't
Speaker 3: need an additional penny. We don't need more money. What
Speaker 3: we need is a change in policy. And here's what
Speaker 3: matters if you want to secure the border. The single
Speaker 3: most important question is the following. What happens when someone
Speaker 3: is apprehended, And it's essentially a binary choice. If the
Speaker 3: answer is you put them on a plane and you
Speaker 3: fly them back to the country they came from, the
Speaker 3: numbers plummet, and they plummet immediately. We have seen there's
Speaker 3: an instantaneous cause and effect. On the other hand, if
Speaker 3: the answer is that when you apprehend them, you let
Speaker 3: them go and they get to stay in America, the
Speaker 3: numbers skyrocket When I was last down there. We had
Speaker 3: the group of illegal immigrants that came and turned themselves
Speaker 3: into US wile we were on midnight patrol. It was mostly
Speaker 3: women and children. We asked them, how many of y'all
Speaker 3: believe that you'll get to stay in America? Every one
Speaker 3: of them, yes, yes, absolutely, we get to stay. And
Speaker 3: they laid out all the cities that they wanted to
Speaker 3: go to. They all knew where they wanted to go,
Speaker 3: and as long as they believe they will stay, the
Speaker 3: numbers keep rising. And you have to understand part of
Speaker 3: the reason it's instantaneous. Virtually every illegal immigrant who comes
Speaker 3: shows up carrying a plastic baggie. They typically have in
Speaker 3: the plastic baggie they have some form of identification, a
Speaker 3: birth certificate, a passport. They have usually a cell phone,
Speaker 3: and they have a name and number of somebody in
Speaker 3: the US. Unfortunately, often it is traffickers who are bringing
Speaker 3: them in that they're calling. When when we were talking
Speaker 3: to the kids, all of the young girls said they
Speaker 3: were calling their tos teo is Spanish for uncle, and
Speaker 3: yet that they wouldn't tell us anything when we asked
Speaker 3: any questions about who these to those were. But the
Speaker 3: cell phone is what makes it instantaneous, because when people
Speaker 3: get here and get released, they immediately text or call
Speaker 3: their friends and their families back home and they say, hey,
Speaker 3: if you come, you get to stay. If on not,
Speaker 3: the other hand, if they've gone through a horrendous journey
Speaker 3: and they've been horribly abused, and they get here and
Speaker 3: they get deported, they get put on a plane and
Speaker 3: sent back right where they started again, they text their
Speaker 3: friends and families and they say, don't come. They won't
Speaker 3: let you in. And so the reason those illegal immigrants
Speaker 3: are calling Ayuda, calling for help is because they believe,
Speaker 3: and they believe quite rightly that under Joe Biden, the
Speaker 3: Biden administration views its job as helping illegal immigrants come
Speaker 3: into this country and invade this country. We're now upwards
Speaker 3: of ten million illegal immigrants under Joe Biden. It is unprecedented.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: And the other part I think that's also so disingenuous
Speaker 2: from this White House is the fact that they try
Speaker 2: to act. As you mentioned, it's about the money, but
Speaker 2: the executive actions that the president could take instantly could
Speaker 2: change so many of the policies that are allowing for
Speaker 2: this crisis, which was created by designed by the Biden administration,
Speaker 2: and that wouldn't even take Congress. It's one of the
Speaker 2: things that Donald Trump did so brilliantly when he was
Speaker 2: in office. You could just go back to his same
Speaker 2: policies and you could do it literally with the swipe
Speaker 2: of a pen.
Speaker 3: Three decisions that Joe Biden could implement tomorrow number one,
Speaker 3: resume building the wall, number two, and catch and release
Speaker 3: number three, reinstate to remain in Mexico agreement. All of
Speaker 3: those he did the opposite his first week at office.
Speaker 3: That's what caused this border crisis. Joe Biden could solve
Speaker 3: it at an instant. He does not want to, and
Speaker 3: he's going to do I believe everything he can to
Speaker 3: prevent it. It's why impeaching mayorca should have been impeached
Speaker 3: over two years ago. I had been calling for it
Speaker 3: for virtually the entirety of his tenure, because it has
Speaker 3: been we have never seen a Cabinet member so utterly
Speaker 3: defy federal law the way may Orchis has done.
Speaker 2: I want to move to something else that is obviously
Speaker 2: important and significant. We've talked about it, and it's a
Speaker 2: big win on the border to secure the enactment of
Speaker 2: a streamline permitting process for new and expanded bridges across
Speaker 2: the Rio Grande in Brownsville, Laredo, and Eagle Pass, Texas.
Speaker 2: It is something that you were a part of and
Speaker 2: led on. It's now actually become law. You were down
Speaker 2: on Laredo, and I want to play for people part
Speaker 2: of what you had to say at this very very
Speaker 2: big moment.
Speaker 7: We're here today to celebrate bipartisan legislation that was signed
Speaker 7: into law in December of last year that will expedite
Speaker 7: building new bridges and expanding bridges between Texas and Mexico.
Speaker 7: We're here at the World Trade Bridge, the largest land
Speaker 7: port in the United States. Every year, Texas and Mexico
Speaker 7: have roughly eight hundred billion in trade and commerce that
Speaker 7: comes across this border. That's jobs in Texas, that's jobs
Speaker 7: in Mexico.
Speaker 3: That's the lifeblood of South Texas.
Speaker 2: This is obviously significant, not just from the standpoint of
Speaker 2: security that you talked about and orderly commerce coming across
Speaker 2: the border in a safer manner, but it's also a
Speaker 2: really big deal from the fact that, as you mentioned,
Speaker 2: it was bipartisan talk about how significant this is going
Speaker 2: to be for this country and for Texas well.
Speaker 3: The audio you just played was from a press conference
Speaker 3: that I did in Laredo yesterday morning, and it was
Speaker 3: right at the World Trade Bridge, right on the southern border.
Speaker 3: And I did that alongside Henry Quayar, the Democrat congressman
Speaker 3: who represents Laredo, and Henry and I worked ten in
Speaker 3: hand in this and it was a huge victory. The
Speaker 3: Texas Business Association that was down there with us and
Speaker 3: there was a large group of people celebrating this legislative
Speaker 3: victory that we had just two weeks ago described the
Speaker 3: legislation that I introduced and passed as the biggest positive
Speaker 3: step for jobs and commerce in Texas since the US
Speaker 3: Mexico Canada agreement was negotiated. It is literally billions of
Speaker 3: dollars of additional trade in commerce and tens of thousands
Speaker 3: of jobs and real quickly what happened. So, there are
Speaker 3: four bridge projects that have been proposed in South Texas,
Speaker 3: two in Laredo, one in Brownsville. Want an will pass,
Speaker 3: and the Biden administration had put bureaucratic barriers. They were
Speaker 3: delaying every one of these bridge projects. The World Trade
Speaker 3: Bridge that I was at yesterday morning that bridge right
Speaker 3: now is eight lanes. They have proposed to expand it
Speaker 3: to eighteen lanes to more than double the size of it,
Speaker 3: which enables commerce to move much more rapidly. That benefits farmers,
Speaker 3: That benefits ranchers, That benefits manufacturers, That benefits small businesses.
Speaker 3: That benefits consumers by lowering prices at the grocery store.
Speaker 3: It also benefits national security by making it easier to
Speaker 3: bring manufacturing back from China, either back to the United
Speaker 3: States or near shoring it bringing it back to Mexico,
Speaker 3: where we could have trade and commerce with Mexico rather
Speaker 3: than China. So all of those are good outcomes. And
Speaker 3: what happened. So in order to build a bridge, ordinarily,
Speaker 3: you have to do what is called Federal Environmental NEPA review,
Speaker 3: go through a process of reviewing the environmental impact of
Speaker 3: a bridge. That's true for any bridge. If you're building
Speaker 3: a bridge across an international border, there's an additional legal requirement.
Speaker 3: You need a permit from the President of the United States. Now,
Speaker 3: the way this used to be done is the President
Speaker 3: would grant that permit contingent on the completion of the
Speaker 3: NEPA review. And what that did is accelerated the process,
Speaker 3: enabled it to move through quickly. When Joe Biden became president,
Speaker 3: he announced they were reversing that policy and Biden was
Speaker 3: going to grant zero presidential permits for cross border bridges
Speaker 3: unless and until the NIPA environmental review was fully completed.
Speaker 3: The effect of that was to add two, three, four
Speaker 3: five years to these bridge projects, to delay them all.
Speaker 3: It also made it hard for them to get funding
Speaker 3: because the banks were reluctant to commit capital until the
Speaker 3: presidential permit had been granted. So there was a chicken
Speaker 3: and egg problem, and the Biden administration dug in. And
Speaker 3: so what I did is is Number One, unified the
Speaker 3: congressional delegation in South Texas. And so I brought together
Speaker 3: a coalition of myself and John Cornon, the other Texas Senator,
Speaker 3: along with Henry Quayar, a Democrat, Monica Delacruz, a Republican,
Speaker 3: Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat, and Tony Gonzales, a Republican, all
Speaker 3: of the South Texas Congressional delegation. We jointly pressed the
Speaker 3: Biden State Department reversed this idiotic policy. This is hurting
Speaker 3: Texas and hurting America. The Biden administration dug in. They
Speaker 3: refused to change, and so I authored legislation mandating that
Speaker 3: they expedite the process, got bipartisan support in the Senate,
Speaker 3: passed it out of the set, and then passed it
Speaker 3: out of the House, and Joe Biden signed it into
Speaker 3: law on December twenty second. It was actually my birthday
Speaker 3: that he signed the law, and so it was a
Speaker 3: pretty great birthday gift because it's a huge victory for
Speaker 3: jobs in the state of Texas, and it's an example
Speaker 3: of you know, I got to say, it's also an
Speaker 3: example of the bizarre hypocrisy. I mean, let me ask
Speaker 3: you seriously, Ben, explain to me the mind of a
Speaker 3: whack job liberal that you want totally open borders and
Speaker 3: ten million people invading this country illegally, including human traffickers
Speaker 3: and drug traffickers on the one hand, but on the
Speaker 3: other hand, you want to put bureaucratic roadblocks in the
Speaker 3: way of legal trade and commerce from farmers and businesses
Speaker 3: while you're allowing illegal immigrants to flow with no restraint.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes some sense, especially when every year Texas
Speaker 2: and Mexico, as you mentioned, roughly eight hundred billion in
Speaker 2: trade and commerce that come across this border, and this
Speaker 2: does it in a more early fashion, but also with
Speaker 2: the issue of national security involved in it. Keeping it
Speaker 2: orly with safety and security, especially with all the drug trafficking,
Speaker 2: FETNO and everything else coming across the border, it makes
Speaker 2: no sense.
Speaker 3: Look, that's exactly right, and we ended up building the
Speaker 3: bipartisan coalition to pass this into law. And so the
Speaker 3: way the law works is December twenty second is when
Speaker 3: Joe Biden signed it into law. On that date, which
Speaker 3: was the date he signed it, the legislation starts a
Speaker 3: shot clock of sixty days, and the State Department has
Speaker 3: a sixty day time limit to submit its recommendations to
Speaker 3: the White House as to whether he should grant the
Speaker 3: permit for these four bridges. After that sixty day period,
Speaker 3: a second shot clock starts, and the President has sixty
Speaker 3: days to make it a termination on the permit. If
Speaker 3: the President does nothing after that second sixty days, the
Speaker 3: permit is deemed automatically granted by operation of law. What
Speaker 3: that means is because it was signed on December twenty second,
Speaker 3: that by April twentieth we will have these presidential permits
Speaker 3: which will expedite these bridges going forward. That is an
Speaker 3: enormous victory despite the Biden administration putting roadblocks in the
Speaker 3: way every step of the way.
Speaker 2: Well congratulations, and like you said, it's awesome that it
Speaker 2: was done in such a bipartisan manner and it's great
Speaker 2: for commerce, great for the country, great for Texans. This
Speaker 2: is a huge win, especially when you're having to deal
Speaker 2: with an administration like the Biden administration. So congratulations on
Speaker 2: that job.
Speaker 1: Well done.
Speaker 2: I'm glad the President didn't know it was your birthday
Speaker 2: to day that he signed that, because they probably would
Speaker 2: have delayed it, but they would have said we're not
Speaker 2: giving crews that birthday gift. So well done on there.
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