Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Beating Dem Obstruction on Trump Cabinet Nominees, plus Border Executive Orders & Biden Pardons

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Beating Dem Obstruction on Trump Cabinet Nominees, plus Border Executive Orders & Biden Pardons · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome in as Verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
0:04
Speaker 1: with you. I'll start with good news. We've got Center
0:06
Speaker 1: Cruz back. You've got what i'd say, half the voice,
0:09
Speaker 1: sixty percent. Where are we right now with this?
0:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that.
0:13
Speaker 3: I got to say, doing a weekend or you go
0:15
Speaker 3: to like seven inauguration balls and you're just going from
0:20
Speaker 3: event to event to event. I've got a nasty cold.
0:23
Speaker 3: My voice was completely ragged two days ago. It's still
0:27
Speaker 3: pretty weak. I canceled pretty much all my media interviews
0:31
Speaker 3: just because I'm trying to rest my voice. But I'm
0:34
Speaker 3: back to the podcast cast because I love you guys.
0:38
Speaker 1: See, you know, we started rumors while you were gone.
0:41
Speaker 1: This was you partying too hard and we're blaming your
0:44
Speaker 1: old co host because there is a picture on the
0:47
Speaker 1: internet of you guys having cigars together at the inauguration.
0:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will confess Noles and I we're at a
0:53
Speaker 3: cigar bar smoking cigars at having scotch at three in
0:56
Speaker 3: the morning, which you know with Jeremy bourring In, Ben
1:00
Speaker 3: Shapiro at all the Daily Wire guys. And it was
1:02
Speaker 3: great fun, but it really is crappy for your voice.
1:05
Speaker 1: And it really does. Yeah, here we go. Well there,
1:07
Speaker 1: as my mom would say, did you learn anything from
1:09
Speaker 1: that experience?
1:10
Speaker 2: Senator yeah, it was a lot of fun.
1:14
Speaker 1: Good answer, good answer.
1:16
Speaker 2: All right.
1:16
Speaker 1: This is also interesting because right now you're still in Washington,
1:20
Speaker 1: d C. We're recording this late Thursday night. That's not normal.
1:24
Speaker 1: Normally we record after you get back to Houston about
1:27
Speaker 1: the same time. But you're still in d C. What's
1:30
Speaker 1: going on.
1:32
Speaker 3: Well, it looks like we're going to be here throughout
1:34
Speaker 3: the weekend. So we're in the middle of confirming cabinet
1:36
Speaker 3: nominees at this point. We confirm Marco Rubio on January twentieth.
1:40
Speaker 3: On in inauguration day, Rubio was confirmed ninety nine to zero.
1:45
Speaker 3: He was unanimous. That was not surprising. But the Democrats
1:48
Speaker 3: are already being obstructionists. They're already blocking nominees. So we
1:53
Speaker 3: confirmed earlier today John Ratcliffe to be the head of
1:56
Speaker 3: the CIA. We should have done that on January twentieth
1:59
Speaker 3: as well.
2:00
Speaker 2: It was a big vote.
2:03
Speaker 3: The vote was seventy four to twenty five, so a
2:05
Speaker 3: whole bunch of Democrats voted for Radcliffe. And yet the
2:08
Speaker 3: Democrats are trying to drag it out and delay it.
2:11
Speaker 3: We're now on Pete Hegseth, and the Democrats really really
2:15
Speaker 3: really want to defeat Pete Hegseth. So they're just the
2:19
Speaker 3: tool that the opposition party has in the Senate is
2:22
Speaker 3: they can delay, and they can for major cabinet nominees.
2:26
Speaker 3: The rules require thirty hours and so you can drag
2:29
Speaker 3: it out. And so what the Republican majority is doing,
2:32
Speaker 3: we're saying, fine, if you're going to drag it out,
2:34
Speaker 3: then we're not going home.
2:35
Speaker 2: We're going to stay here under the thirty hours.
2:38
Speaker 3: We're going to vote on Pete Hegseth, I think at
2:41
Speaker 3: nine pm Friday night, and then we're immediately going to
2:44
Speaker 3: move to Christine nom and if they want, we'll take
2:46
Speaker 3: another thirty hours and then we'll vote on Sunday and
2:50
Speaker 3: we're going to move forward, and we're going to move forward.
2:52
Speaker 3: And to be honest, this is not that unusual of
2:55
Speaker 3: a battle. You see the opposition party trying to drag
2:58
Speaker 3: things out, and the way you basically break that opposition is, listen,
3:03
Speaker 3: the Democrats want to get home. They got fundraisers, they
3:06
Speaker 3: got to see their family, they got to go do events.
3:09
Speaker 3: They're doing all sorts of things they're going to sporting games,
3:13
Speaker 3: you know.
3:14
Speaker 2: There.
3:15
Speaker 3: It makes senators very grumpy when they have to stay
3:19
Speaker 3: through the weekend.
3:20
Speaker 2: And they don't get home.
3:22
Speaker 3: And so hopefully after the Democrats do this for a
3:25
Speaker 3: little while, they'll stop engaging in unreasonable delay. And the
3:30
Speaker 3: way this ends is they say, Okay, we agree to
3:33
Speaker 3: expedite the votes and to move more swiftly through the votes.
3:38
Speaker 3: One way or another, we're going to get these cabinet
3:40
Speaker 3: nominees confirmed. I think within thirty days all of the
3:44
Speaker 3: cabinet nominees will be confirmed. Hag Seth will probably be
3:49
Speaker 3: the one that's the closest battle. The vote today on
3:52
Speaker 3: hag Seth was fifty one to forty nine, so two
3:56
Speaker 3: Republicans voted no.
3:58
Speaker 2: Susan Collins voted no.
3:59
Speaker 3: Lisamski voted no, which wasn't a terribly big surprise.
4:03
Speaker 2: They were the two most likely to vote no.
4:06
Speaker 3: But the nice thing about having a fifty three vote
4:08
Speaker 3: majority is we can lose. We could actually lose three
4:11
Speaker 3: votes and still get him confirmed because at fifty to fifty,
4:14
Speaker 3: jd Vance as the vice president would break the tie.
4:17
Speaker 3: And so if Susan and Lisa vote no, that doesn't
4:21
Speaker 3: alter the result, and so I fully expect that by
4:26
Speaker 3: tomorrow night, Pete Hegseeth will be confirmed as Defense Secretary
4:30
Speaker 3: and we're going to move through. Actually, earlier today, I
4:33
Speaker 3: chaired the Senate Commerce Committee and we voted out Sean Duffy,
4:37
Speaker 3: who is the nominee to be Transportation Secretary. And the
4:42
Speaker 3: vote on Sean Duffy was unanimous, So every Republican, every
4:46
Speaker 3: Democrat voted for it. It was interesting. The Democrats were
4:49
Speaker 3: chattering a little bit that they might oppose him because
4:52
Speaker 3: they were mad that Trump had halted the Green New
4:54
Speaker 3: Deal funding. But at the end of the day, when
4:57
Speaker 3: we came to the vote, when they did the row call,
5:00
Speaker 3: one voted no. And I sit next to John Thune
5:03
Speaker 3: on the Commerce Committee. I leaned over to Thuon and said, Huh,
5:07
Speaker 3: turns out even the Democrats want roads and bridges in
5:09
Speaker 3: their states.
5:10
Speaker 2: Funny how that works.
5:11
Speaker 1: And if you don't know Sean, Sean is just such
5:14
Speaker 1: a genuine nice guy. He's authentic, he's real. His questioning
5:19
Speaker 1: that you guys had of him, it would be really hard,
5:22
Speaker 1: and I think it looked petty if you went against him.
5:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, he's a good guy. He's going to do
5:26
Speaker 3: a terrific job as Secretary of Transportation, and that historically
5:31
Speaker 3: is a fairly nonpartisan job. When it comes to transportation
5:36
Speaker 3: and infrastructure, every state cares about it. If you're doing
5:39
Speaker 3: it right, you should be doing it fairly based on needs.
5:42
Speaker 3: So you shouldn't be favoring your buddies and punishing your enemies.
5:46
Speaker 3: And I think Sean will implement the law fairly. And
5:50
Speaker 3: that's one thing every senator does, is you go advocate
5:53
Speaker 3: for your state. And look, when it comes to the
5:55
Speaker 3: state of Texas, we have enormous infrastructure needs because we're
5:59
Speaker 3: growing crazy. Here's an amazing stat When I was elected
6:04
Speaker 3: thirteen years ago, there were twenty six million Texans. Today
6:08
Speaker 3: there are more than thirty one million Texans. We've added
6:11
Speaker 3: five million Texans in just thirteen years. That is enormous,
6:16
Speaker 3: and that means we've got huge transportation needs because when
6:19
Speaker 3: you add five million people, that's a lot more people
6:21
Speaker 3: on cars. That's a lot more people on trucks, that's
6:24
Speaker 3: a lot more people, a lot more cargo being shipped
6:27
Speaker 3: on trains, that's a lot more need for bridges, that's
6:31
Speaker 3: a lot more ships coming in and out of our ports.
6:33
Speaker 3: And so I think Sean Duffy's going to do a
6:37
Speaker 3: terrific job. And I will say also, it is very
6:40
Speaker 3: good for the state of Texas that I'm the chairman
6:43
Speaker 3: of the Commerce Committee, because I will say, it does
6:46
Speaker 3: not hurt if you're advocating for your state if you
6:49
Speaker 3: happen to be the chairman of the committee that has
6:51
Speaker 3: oversight over the Department of Transportation, and so that for
6:54
Speaker 3: the State of Texas is a good thing.
6:57
Speaker 1: It really is. So we've got a lot of talk
6:58
Speaker 1: about on the show, So a lot of executiveors on
7:02
Speaker 1: border and also I want to get to Biden's pardon issues.
7:06
Speaker 1: Donald Trump made some comments about that. We're going to
7:08
Speaker 1: play that coming up, just so people know where we're
7:10
Speaker 1: going with this. But let's go back to the politics
7:13
Speaker 1: of the of the Democrats stalling and trying to delay
7:16
Speaker 1: these votes. What is the thinking behind that and why
7:21
Speaker 1: if you're in their camp tonight, are they saying is
7:23
Speaker 1: it worth it? And how are they figuring out when
7:26
Speaker 1: do they say, Okay, enough's enough already, let's get to
7:28
Speaker 1: these votes. What's the upside? I'm trying to genuinely figure
7:32
Speaker 1: that out for them.
7:33
Speaker 3: Oh, look, at some point they'll blink. But their base
7:37
Speaker 3: is worked up, and heg Seth in particular, that they're
7:41
Speaker 3: in a frenzy over and so listen, you can understand
7:44
Speaker 3: if you're a Democrat, your base is all mad and
7:46
Speaker 3: thinks heg Seth is some radical that you got to
7:49
Speaker 3: show your fighting, and so they want to go prove
7:51
Speaker 3: to their base we're fighting. We're fighting to stop Trump.
7:55
Speaker 3: You know, Look, nine pm tomorrow night, hegg Seth will
7:59
Speaker 3: be confirmed. And so I think for some of the others. Look,
8:03
Speaker 3: Sean Duffy. We had to take up and vote on Duffy.
8:06
Speaker 3: He was just voted out of committee unanimously. Now he'll
8:09
Speaker 3: get confirmed next week. But I fully expect I'm going
8:13
Speaker 3: to go to the Senate Florida borrow and try to
8:15
Speaker 3: schedule Sean Duffy's vote immediately, and I expect the Democrats
8:17
Speaker 3: to object just because they want to drag it out,
8:20
Speaker 3: they want to slow it down. You know, it was
8:23
Speaker 3: interesting right at the beginning. Actually before Trump was sworn in,
8:26
Speaker 3: one of the senior members of his inner circle called
8:30
Speaker 3: me and said, look, Ted, we want to move super fast.
8:33
Speaker 3: We want to get every cabinet nominee confirmed. On January
8:37
Speaker 3: twentieth and I kind of laughed and said, well, well, look,
8:40
Speaker 3: I understand you want that. That's not going to happen.
8:42
Speaker 3: And they were like why, I don't understand why. And
8:44
Speaker 3: I said, well, okay, so there's this thing called the Senate,
8:50
Speaker 3: and the Senate has rules.
8:52
Speaker 2: And he said, so what we want him now?
8:54
Speaker 3: We need him now, now now, And I said, well,
8:55
Speaker 3: I understand that, and I think the Republicans would agree
8:59
Speaker 3: with you and would do everything we could.
9:00
Speaker 2: To accelerate it.
9:03
Speaker 3: But half the senator Democrats and Chuck Schumer doesn't want
9:08
Speaker 3: your cabinet nominees confirm. Neither do most of the Democrats,
9:12
Speaker 3: and so they're going to use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation.
9:17
Speaker 3: And to be fair, when Biden and Obama were president,
9:20
Speaker 3: Republicans use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation, particularly if it's
9:23
Speaker 3: a bad nominee. If it's a nominee you know, you're
9:26
Speaker 3: not that concerned about that's one thing, But if it's
9:28
Speaker 3: a nominee that you think is a terrible nominee, you'll
9:31
Speaker 3: do everything you can to fight back. Now, the way
9:34
Speaker 3: the majority exercises leverage is it's literally about inflicting pain,
9:38
Speaker 3: it's at some point one of the things we can do.
9:42
Speaker 3: So the thirty hours delay that you have on a
9:44
Speaker 3: cabinet nominee under the rules is actually broken down into
9:50
Speaker 3: each senator has up to an hour to speak, and
9:53
Speaker 3: so you can do what's called call the question, which
9:57
Speaker 3: is you can say, okay, go speak for thirty hours.
10:00
Speaker 3: You got to get thirty senators up there to speak
10:02
Speaker 3: at hour each. No senator can speak for more than
10:04
Speaker 3: an hour fulfilling that time, and once you run out
10:07
Speaker 3: of senators, you can call the question.
10:09
Speaker 1: So for the next thirty hours, you're telling me that
10:12
Speaker 1: on the hour you're going to have another Democratic center speak.
10:15
Speaker 3: Now, keep this going, no, because I don't expect we're
10:20
Speaker 3: immediately going to call the question. And the reason is
10:24
Speaker 3: they have a procedural tool to fight back. So if
10:27
Speaker 3: you call the question, the way a Democrat or anyone
10:30
Speaker 3: of the minority fights back, it is stands up and
10:34
Speaker 3: suggests the absence of a quorum. And under the Senate rules,
10:38
Speaker 3: if a senator suggests the absence of a quorum, you
10:40
Speaker 3: have to confirm that there is a quorum on the
10:44
Speaker 3: floor of the Senate, which means, let's say we're doing
10:46
Speaker 3: this at two in the morning. We got to produce
10:48
Speaker 3: fifty senators. And listen, a lot of my colleagues are
10:51
Speaker 3: in their eighties, and so getting octagenarians to appear in an.
10:57
Speaker 1: They're not outsmoking cigars with you and knows is that
11:00
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
11:01
Speaker 2: I think that would be correct.
11:02
Speaker 3: And so look, the Senate rules are built for there
11:05
Speaker 3: to be checks and balances and give and take, and
11:08
Speaker 3: so if the Democrats continue to be deeply obstructionist, at
11:15
Speaker 3: some point, I fully expect we will call the question.
11:18
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple
11:21
Speaker 3: of weeks you see Republicans showing up saying we're gonna
11:24
Speaker 3: be here all night. We're gonna have some cots, we're
11:26
Speaker 3: going to sleep on the floor of the Senate, and
11:28
Speaker 3: we're going to grind through until you guys stop this nonsense.
11:32
Speaker 3: But I think we're not doing that yet. But to
11:34
Speaker 3: be honest, staying through the weekend no senator likes that.
11:38
Speaker 2: Listen.
11:38
Speaker 3: I want to be home with my girls. I want
11:40
Speaker 3: to be back in Texas. I don't like being in
11:42
Speaker 3: the frozen tundra that is Washington on Saturday and Sunday
11:45
Speaker 3: when I could be in Texas with with by two
11:48
Speaker 3: girls and with my wife.
11:49
Speaker 1: And that's that's leverage. I mean, that's really it. That's
11:55
Speaker 1: the leverage.
11:56
Speaker 3: And I promise you the Democrat senators are complaining to
12:00
Speaker 3: their leadership. We don't want to be here. Why are
12:03
Speaker 3: we stuck here? We don't want to have to be here.
12:06
Speaker 3: And it's like, well, you guys can go home right now.
12:08
Speaker 3: If you agree, all right, we'll confirm all the people
12:11
Speaker 3: same timeframe. We'll just collapse the time. Okay, if you
12:14
Speaker 3: do that, we can go home. But like, if we
12:18
Speaker 3: move expeditiously through these you can go home. And if
12:21
Speaker 3: you want to just be obstructionists, then you're going to
12:24
Speaker 3: be stuck here and it's going to release stink and
12:27
Speaker 3: you're gonna have to show up in the middle of
12:29
Speaker 3: the night to cast votes and that that annoys everybody,
12:32
Speaker 3: but especially folks who are pretty old. And so that
12:36
Speaker 3: back and forth, and I actually think post tag seth.
12:39
Speaker 3: Like I was meeting with a Democrat senator today and
12:42
Speaker 3: I asked her, I said, so, are you guys going
12:45
Speaker 3: to relent at some point or are we going to
12:46
Speaker 3: be able to go home and just reach an agreement
12:49
Speaker 3: to move these guys forward, and she said, oh, no, no, no,
12:51
Speaker 3: because on heg Seth, we think we may get a
12:54
Speaker 3: couple of Republicans to flip. And I'm like, yeah, that's
12:57
Speaker 3: not gonna happen, Like, okay, you know, you got two,
13:00
Speaker 3: but you need four and you're not getting four. And
13:03
Speaker 3: she's like, well, maybe the fifty one that voted, maybe
13:06
Speaker 3: they'll change their mind by the time we vote in
13:08
Speaker 3: thirty hours. I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, and maybe
13:11
Speaker 3: the moon's made of green cheese. That's all right. But
13:14
Speaker 3: I think the Democrats right now are telling themselves they're
13:18
Speaker 3: holding out hope for that, which means they'll at least
13:21
Speaker 3: keep us here through Friday night. And then they may
13:24
Speaker 3: blink Friday night and agree with Christy Nome and then
13:30
Speaker 3: Scott Bessen, the Treasury Secretary, is next and Sean Duffy,
13:33
Speaker 3: the Transportation Secretary. Those are the next ones teed up.
13:37
Speaker 3: So if they agree.
13:38
Speaker 1: Fast, could that go down? Let's say that they say
13:41
Speaker 1: we're ready to go home and play out that scenario. Yeah,
13:44
Speaker 1: we've got a couple lined up. How quick can the
13:46
Speaker 1: votes happen? If it's like, all right, let's get the
13:48
Speaker 1: hell out of here.
13:49
Speaker 2: They could happen in an hour. I mean, Schumer could agree.
13:52
Speaker 3: You can do anything in the Senate by unanimous consent.
13:54
Speaker 3: So if they decide, okay, we want to go, we
13:58
Speaker 3: could tee up. Let's say Friday night at nine o'clock,
14:00
Speaker 3: we confirm heg Seth. They know Christy Nome's going to
14:04
Speaker 3: get confirmed, so they could say, you know what, we
14:07
Speaker 3: don't want to wait another thirty hours, so let's will
14:13
Speaker 3: consent to do the vote on Christy Nome right now.
14:15
Speaker 3: And I think if they did that, Thune would let
14:18
Speaker 3: everyone go home and we'd fly home Saturday mornings, and
14:21
Speaker 3: then we'd come back Monday and move on to Bessent
14:26
Speaker 3: and and Sean Duffy. So it wouldn't change anything for
14:32
Speaker 3: the Democrats. It would be perfectly rational. But Democrats aren't
14:37
Speaker 3: always rational, and to be fair, when we're in the minority,
14:40
Speaker 3: Republicans aren't always met rational. Sometimes you just want to
14:43
Speaker 3: fight if you don't like what the other side is doing.
14:46
Speaker 1: All right, I'm going to regret this question, but I
14:47
Speaker 1: feel like I need to ask it because I know
14:49
Speaker 1: there's other people listening right now that are thinking the
14:51
Speaker 1: same thing I am. Who the hell came up with
14:53
Speaker 1: these rules, and how many decades old are they and
14:57
Speaker 1: how often do they change?
15:00
Speaker 3: They are many many decades old, and the way it works,
15:04
Speaker 3: they can change, but to change the rules takes a
15:07
Speaker 3: vote of sixty seven senators, so they very rarely change
15:11
Speaker 3: because you need a big supermajority.
15:13
Speaker 1: So i'm moment was the last time something like that
15:15
Speaker 1: happened that in the rules change where there was that
15:17
Speaker 1: many votes? I mean, obviously very rare, but I mean
15:19
Speaker 1: in the history, is it happened that many times?
15:21
Speaker 3: So the way rules changes have happened have been different.
15:25
Speaker 3: The way rule changes have happened in recent history has
15:28
Speaker 3: been through what is called the nuclear options. So you
15:30
Speaker 3: may remember this back about a decade ago, the Democrats
15:34
Speaker 3: had control of the Senate. Harry Reid was the Democrat
15:36
Speaker 3: majority leader, and at the time, it required sixty votes
15:44
Speaker 3: to move to proceed to a confirmation. And that was
15:47
Speaker 3: true for executive branch nominations, that was true for judicial nominations.
15:52
Speaker 3: And in fact, when I was a brand new baby
15:55
Speaker 3: senator back in I was elected in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,
15:58
Speaker 3: I was brand new and one of the very first
16:01
Speaker 3: things I did is I led the first successful filibuster
16:06
Speaker 3: of a Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Chuck Hagel had
16:12
Speaker 3: been actually a Republican senator from Nebraska. I didn't know him,
16:15
Speaker 3: most of my colleagues knew him. I looked at his record.
16:18
Speaker 3: His record was terrible. His record in particular on Iran,
16:21
Speaker 3: had been terribly. Had consistently voted against sanctions against Iran.
16:25
Speaker 3: And I looked at it and said, this makes no
16:26
Speaker 3: sense at all. And so I led a filibuster, and
16:31
Speaker 3: as a brand new senator, got virtually every Republican to
16:34
Speaker 3: join me, and we blocked him. Now, unfortunately, the Republican
16:37
Speaker 3: Party being what it is, as soon as we did that,
16:40
Speaker 3: a bunch of Republican senators got cold feet and flipped,
16:42
Speaker 3: and then they decided to let him be confirmed. So
16:45
Speaker 3: after we blocked him, they unblocked him. But not long
16:49
Speaker 3: after that, Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option to lower
16:54
Speaker 3: the threshold to confirm executive branch nominees from sixty to fifty.
16:59
Speaker 2: Now how did he do that?
17:00
Speaker 3: The rules said, the moved to proceede. Any nomination takes
17:03
Speaker 3: sixty votes, but any rule, any ruling of the chair.
17:08
Speaker 3: So the way you do that is you stand up
17:12
Speaker 3: and you seek the presiding officer, who could be the
17:15
Speaker 3: Vice President or a senator from the majority party, seek
17:19
Speaker 3: a ruling on how many how many yes votes does
17:24
Speaker 3: it take to move to proceed to a nomination, And
17:29
Speaker 3: the presiding officer will ask the parliamentarian who's sitting right
17:32
Speaker 3: in front of him or her, and the parliamentarian would say, well,
17:35
Speaker 3: under the text of the rules, the answer is sixty.
17:38
Speaker 2: And so the chair will say the answer is sixty.
17:41
Speaker 3: And what Harry Reid did is say, I appeal the
17:46
Speaker 3: ruling of the chair. Now, any ruling of the Chair
17:49
Speaker 3: can be appealed, and the margin to overturn the ruling
17:54
Speaker 3: of the Chair is fifty votes. So what happened is
17:57
Speaker 3: the chair correctly response, did that it takes sixty votes
18:02
Speaker 3: to moood to procede a confirmation. Harry Reid appealed the
18:05
Speaker 3: ruling of the chair, and all the Democrats voted to
18:08
Speaker 3: overturn the ruling of the chair. And the way the
18:10
Speaker 3: Senate operates, once you have overturned a ruling of the chair,
18:14
Speaker 3: that becomes a binding precedent that binds the Senate going
18:17
Speaker 3: forward as a result, and that's called the nuclear option
18:21
Speaker 3: because it is essentially breaking the rules of the Senate
18:24
Speaker 3: to change the rules of the Senate, because the fact
18:26
Speaker 3: that you can appeal the ruling of the chair means
18:28
Speaker 3: you can change any rule with fifty votes if you're
18:32
Speaker 3: willing to ignore the rules. Well, the Democrats did that
18:36
Speaker 3: initially for executive branch dominations. Then subsequently they did it
18:41
Speaker 3: for judges, but not Supreme Court justices and so and
18:48
Speaker 3: in fact, I remember when they did that. I remember
18:51
Speaker 3: standing on the Senate floor as they were exercising the
18:53
Speaker 3: nuclear option for judges and lowering the threshold from sixty
18:57
Speaker 3: votes to fifty. I turned to Am Klobucha, Democrat from Minnesota,
19:01
Speaker 3: and I said, Amy, you guys are going to regret this,
19:03
Speaker 3: because the result of this is we are going to
19:07
Speaker 3: see more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomas's on the Supreme
19:11
Speaker 3: Court because you were doing this, and every Democrat will
19:14
Speaker 3: regret this. And ironically, had Harry Reid not exercise the
19:19
Speaker 3: nuclear option and lowered the threshold for confirming judges from
19:24
Speaker 3: sixty votes to fifty, there's no way Brett Kavanaugh would
19:27
Speaker 3: have been confirmed. Neil Gorsich probably wouldn't have. And Amy
19:32
Speaker 3: Cony Barrett definitely would have would not have and so
19:35
Speaker 3: literally Roe versus Wade would not have been overturned. And
19:38
Speaker 3: you want to know whose fault it is that roversus
19:41
Speaker 3: Wade was overturned. Harry Reid and every Democrat senator who
19:45
Speaker 3: voted to exercise the nuclear option. And I got to
19:47
Speaker 3: admit I told them that when they did it, and
19:50
Speaker 3: that was what year, I think, twenty fourteen.
19:53
Speaker 1: Wow, And they just didn't play the long game. I
19:55
Speaker 1: get it was that personal or they were that angry.
19:58
Speaker 1: It's time.
19:59
Speaker 3: You know, they're the Democrats will exercise power, and they
20:04
Speaker 3: rarely think about tomorrow. And we point out all the time, look,
20:08
Speaker 3: if you do this, you know, turnabout's fair play. When
20:12
Speaker 3: we get the majority, we'll do it back to you.
20:14
Speaker 3: And they live in sort of this denial of reality
20:19
Speaker 3: that they don't ever see. You know, I've been in
20:21
Speaker 3: the Senate thirteen years, about half the time i've been
20:23
Speaker 3: in the majority, about half the time I've been in
20:25
Speaker 3: the minority. Republicans actually try to focus a fair about
20:30
Speaker 3: on Hey, we want to do things that preserve the
20:34
Speaker 3: institution because we recognize there's going to be a time
20:36
Speaker 3: in the future when we're in the minority again, and
20:39
Speaker 3: we don't want to just get completely steamrolled the next
20:42
Speaker 3: time we're in the minority, so we will show some
20:46
Speaker 3: respect for the minority. So the Institution operates differently than
20:51
Speaker 3: the House. Look the House, the House majority can do
20:54
Speaker 3: whatever the hell it wants, and being in the minority
20:56
Speaker 3: in the House.
20:57
Speaker 2: Sucks because you have virtually no power.
21:01
Speaker 3: In the Senate, even being in the minority, an individual
21:05
Speaker 3: senator could exercise a lot of power and influence, and
21:08
Speaker 3: that's one of the things that makes the institution work.
21:10
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting, It is really interesting. So your gut here,
21:14
Speaker 1: your prediction. I want one. When will you get to
21:16
Speaker 1: go home? When will they get confirmed?
21:18
Speaker 3: I think it's fifty to fifty. My gut is we'll
21:21
Speaker 3: go home Saturday morning.
21:22
Speaker 2: But maybe not.
21:24
Speaker 3: Maybe not, like it's literally fifty to fifty. They might
21:27
Speaker 3: say Friday night, once excess done, okay, let's agree to
21:30
Speaker 3: speed up dome and if they do that, we'll go
21:32
Speaker 3: home Saturday morning.
21:33
Speaker 2: We'll come back Monday.
21:35
Speaker 3: If they don't do that, we'll stay through the weekend.
21:37
Speaker 3: And I got to say, like Heidi and I Friday night,
21:40
Speaker 3: we're planning to do date night. We'd already planned it,
21:42
Speaker 3: and I had to call our last night and say, hey,
21:44
Speaker 3: I don't think I can go. We try to do
21:47
Speaker 3: date night ideally once a week, but we try to
21:49
Speaker 3: do it at least every other week and go out,
21:51
Speaker 3: go out and have dinner together. And I told her,
21:53
Speaker 3: I think the odds are are very slim that I'm
21:55
Speaker 3: going to make date night tomorrow, and I think that
21:57
Speaker 3: they're basically zero right now. But I'm hoping that I
22:00
Speaker 3: get to see my kids at least Saturday and Sunday,
22:03
Speaker 3: but it will depend on if the Democrats want to
22:06
Speaker 3: see their kids.
22:08
Speaker 1: All right, let's move to the border because this is
22:10
Speaker 1: a huge payoff and I want to go through because
22:13
Speaker 1: it's been happening so quickly. It is a tsunami of
22:18
Speaker 1: executive orders to secure the border. We are now witnessing
22:22
Speaker 1: the difference in one president compared to another, and how
22:26
Speaker 1: quickly things can change. Border crossings are way down. We're
22:30
Speaker 1: grabbing violent criminals now all over the country. We're getting
22:33
Speaker 1: videos of those arrests being made in the rap sheets.
22:37
Speaker 1: This is a full court press by the federal government
22:40
Speaker 1: who's been empowered to do their damn job on getting
22:45
Speaker 1: rid of the bad guys in this country. The worst
22:48
Speaker 1: of the worst are the violent criminals that are legal immigrants,
22:52
Speaker 1: and also a securing the border mentality all into one.
22:57
Speaker 2: Well.
22:57
Speaker 3: Look, on day one, Trump signed over one hundred executive orders.
23:03
Speaker 3: And I will say there is a world of difference
23:06
Speaker 3: between this Trump administration and the one we saw in
23:09
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. Listen, in twenty seventeen, most of the Trump
23:13
Speaker 3: team had never served in the federal government. They didn't
23:17
Speaker 3: really know what they were biting off, you know. They
23:20
Speaker 3: were actually One member of the Trump family said to
23:23
Speaker 3: me over this weekend, said, yeah, we were the dog
23:26
Speaker 3: that caught the car.
23:27
Speaker 2: Look like it was.
23:31
Speaker 3: They found themselves in the White House and there was
23:34
Speaker 3: a steep learning curve. And I will say in the
23:37
Speaker 3: first term, the Trump White House made some serious mistakes,
23:41
Speaker 3: particularly with staffing, appointing some people to senior positions who
23:45
Speaker 3: ended up fighting against President Trump every step of the way.
23:49
Speaker 3: This time around, I think it is a dramatically different
23:52
Speaker 3: White House and a dramatically different administration. One of the
23:54
Speaker 3: biggest ways it's different, I think they're much more savvy.
23:58
Speaker 3: This selection of cabinet nominees, I think is very strong.
24:01
Speaker 3: I think they're looking for people who are loyal and
24:04
Speaker 3: committed to the president and the president's agenda.
24:06
Speaker 2: I think that they.
24:08
Speaker 3: Are doing a much better job avoiding appointing people who
24:12
Speaker 3: are going to fight against the president's agenda and try
24:15
Speaker 3: to undermine it from within.
24:16
Speaker 2: And there was a lot of that in the first term.
24:19
Speaker 3: I also think when it comes to the executive orders
24:21
Speaker 3: that they just they put in collectively, that the transition
24:25
Speaker 3: team and a lot of the lawyers working with them
24:28
Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of hours getting ready for it, and
24:30
Speaker 3: so many of the executive orders dealt with the border.
24:35
Speaker 3: The clearest mandate from this election was to secure the border,
24:39
Speaker 3: and I think these executive orders are all designed to
24:41
Speaker 3: do that. To build the wall, to surge manpower, to
24:45
Speaker 3: go after illegal aliens, to go after criminal illegal aliens,
24:49
Speaker 3: to go after murderers and rapists and child molesters, to
24:51
Speaker 3: go after gang members, and I think you're seeing every
24:55
Speaker 3: cabinet agency focusing on it. To restore the remain in
24:58
Speaker 3: Mexico agreement, to end catch and release. All of that
25:02
Speaker 3: happened the first day. And remember this is something that
25:05
Speaker 3: I've predicted on verdict from the beginning, which is that
25:08
Speaker 3: we would secure the border. It wouldn't take a year
25:10
Speaker 3: even six months, that it would be immediate because the
25:14
Speaker 3: damage done to the border was done primarily through executive
25:18
Speaker 3: orders and just through deliberate inaction on the part of
25:21
Speaker 3: Joe Biden the executive and so all of that could
25:24
Speaker 3: be reversed immediately. Now Congress needs to follow up and
25:27
Speaker 3: pass legislation to provide real funding for the resources we
25:31
Speaker 3: need at the border, and hopefully to put in federal
25:34
Speaker 3: law stronger protections to stop the next Democrat president from
25:40
Speaker 3: trying to repeat what Joe Biden did. But look, if
25:44
Speaker 3: you compare, it's funny. I had had reporters this week
25:47
Speaker 3: asked me, said said, well, well, is it strange that
25:51
Speaker 3: Trump's executive orders and the legislation Congress is working on
25:56
Speaker 3: this year are so overlapping and so similar. And I
26:00
Speaker 3: laughed and said, no, it's not strange at all. We're
26:02
Speaker 3: both acting to implement the mandate from the voters. We're
26:07
Speaker 3: both trying to accomplish the same agenda. And I said, listen,
26:11
Speaker 3: the advantage of executive orders and regulations and executive action.
26:14
Speaker 2: Is that it's quick.
26:16
Speaker 3: It can be done instantaneously.
26:17
Speaker 2: That's very good.
26:19
Speaker 3: The disadvantage of it is it can be reversed instantaneously.
26:24
Speaker 3: A great deal of the good Donald Trump did in
26:26
Speaker 3: the first term was reversed as soon as Joe Biden
26:29
Speaker 3: came into office because everything you do with an executive
26:31
Speaker 3: order you could undo. And by the way, a lot
26:33
Speaker 3: of Trump's executive orders were just reversing the terrible Biden
26:37
Speaker 3: executive orders. So executive orders are quick, but they're temporary.
26:42
Speaker 3: Legislation is slower, but it has the advantage of if
26:46
Speaker 3: you write it in the federal law, it's much harder
26:49
Speaker 3: to change, so it's much more of a permanent change.
26:52
Speaker 3: And so I think the Trump executive orders are trying
26:55
Speaker 3: to accomplish exactly what we're going to accomplish, or I
26:59
Speaker 3: very much hope we're going to accomplish through passing legislation
27:01
Speaker 3: through Congress this year.
27:03
Speaker 1: Let's go through what you think is the most important
27:06
Speaker 1: things that have happened so far and why it's having
27:08
Speaker 1: such a quick impact.
27:11
Speaker 3: The single most important thing for dropping the numbers is
27:14
Speaker 3: ending catch and release. There's no policy decision that There's
27:19
Speaker 3: no policy question that matters more then what happens when
27:24
Speaker 3: you apprehend an illegal immigrant at the border. In terms
27:28
Speaker 3: of illegal immigration, if the answer is you put them
27:32
Speaker 3: on a plane and you fly them home, the numbers plummet,
27:34
Speaker 3: and they plummet immediately because virtually everyone comes into this
27:37
Speaker 3: country illegally has a cell phone, and so they call
27:40
Speaker 3: back home and say, hey, don't come.
27:41
Speaker 2: They don't let you stay.
27:42
Speaker 3: If the answer is what it's been for four years,
27:44
Speaker 3: that they let you stay and go wherever you want. Again,
27:47
Speaker 3: everyone has a cell phone, so they call back home
27:49
Speaker 3: and says, hey, come on up, the border's open.
27:51
Speaker 2: You get to stay.
27:52
Speaker 3: And so ending catch and release and hand in hand
27:55
Speaker 3: with that is reinstating remain in Mexico. Now, look, reinstating
28:00
Speaker 3: remain in Mexico is a little complicated because that actually
28:03
Speaker 3: takes the cooperation of the government in Mexico. So Trump
28:06
Speaker 3: has signed an executive order saying we're going to reinstate it,
28:10
Speaker 3: but the Mexican government has to cooperate for that to work.
28:13
Speaker 3: And that's why Trump has also threatened a twenty five
28:17
Speaker 3: percent tariff on Mexico. That's how he got the Mexican
28:21
Speaker 3: government to agree to remain in Mexico in the first term,
28:24
Speaker 3: and I hope it's how he will get the Mexican
28:26
Speaker 3: government again to agree with it.
28:28
Speaker 1: Now, well, let's talk also quickly for people that just
28:31
Speaker 1: don't understand what's happening in Mexico. Mexico's in a really
28:35
Speaker 1: weird and interesting spot internally in their politics. There's so
28:40
Speaker 1: much corruption down there. Is there a chance that we
28:43
Speaker 1: could see a government stand up to these cartels because
28:47
Speaker 1: of the pressure that Donald Trump is willing to put
28:49
Speaker 1: on them, including using things to leverage like tariffs.
28:53
Speaker 3: I look very possibly and I hope so. I will
28:57
Speaker 3: say it's harder to accomplish now after four years of Biden,
29:01
Speaker 3: because the cartels are much much more powerful. Listen one
29:05
Speaker 3: stat that I pointed out many times. In twenty eighteen,
29:09
Speaker 3: the Mexican drug cartels were making roughly five hundred million
29:12
Speaker 3: dollars in revenue from human trafficking. Last year, the Mexican
29:17
Speaker 3: drug cartels made over thirteen billion dollars from human trafficking.
29:23
Speaker 3: That's a two six hundred percent increase. And so what
29:26
Speaker 3: Joe Biden and the Democrats have done is they've turned
29:29
Speaker 3: these drug cartels that are vicious, murdering, torturing. I mean,
29:33
Speaker 3: they are horrible transnational criminal enterprises that they don't care
29:37
Speaker 3: about human life at all. They commit thousands and thousands
29:41
Speaker 3: of murderers, but they turned them into multi, multi billion
29:45
Speaker 3: dollar empires. And it's had a tragic effect on Mexico.
29:50
Speaker 3: The number of murders and kidnappings there. The rule of
29:53
Speaker 3: law has been incredibly undermined. And Joe Biden not only
29:57
Speaker 3: has it done huge damage to America, he's done huge
30:00
Speaker 3: damage to Mexico by making the cartels so powerful. So
30:04
Speaker 3: it is riskier now for the president of Mexico to
30:06
Speaker 3: stand up.
30:06
Speaker 2: To the cartels.
30:08
Speaker 3: She's literally risking her life because the cartels are more
30:11
Speaker 3: than happy to murder politicians. They murdered a lot of
30:14
Speaker 3: politicians in Mexico.
30:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and good at it.
30:17
Speaker 1: I mean, now if they take pride in it, that's
30:19
Speaker 1: how they control. It's like, we'll kill anybody, we don't
30:21
Speaker 1: care who you are.
30:21
Speaker 3: They kill politicians, they kill judges, they kill prosecutors, they
30:24
Speaker 3: kill reporters. I mean, just it is lawless and terror
30:30
Speaker 3: and so listen, I think we will get Mexico to
30:33
Speaker 3: cooperate because at the end of the day, the leverage
30:36
Speaker 3: that the president has is so enormous. And I also
30:39
Speaker 3: think look Amlo, the previous president of Mexico is scared
30:43
Speaker 3: of Trump that I think he's got real credibility. When
30:47
Speaker 3: he threatens to impose the tariffs, you better believe he's
30:50
Speaker 3: willing to do that, and that I think really incentivizes
30:55
Speaker 3: Mexico to cooperate. Now, listen, I think as the United
30:58
Speaker 3: States goes after the cartels, as we cut off their money,
31:01
Speaker 3: as we throw their leaders in prison, as we kill
31:05
Speaker 3: many of the cartel leaders, I think you'll see the
31:09
Speaker 3: cartels being weakened, and that over the next four years,
31:14
Speaker 3: will make it easier for the Mexican government to fight
31:16
Speaker 3: back on them. But Biden and the Democrats' efforts have
31:20
Speaker 3: made the cartels much much more dangerous.
31:23
Speaker 1: No doubt about it. Lastly, I want to get your
31:25
Speaker 1: thoughts on something that was said in Trump's first sit
31:28
Speaker 1: down interview that he did in the Oval office. He
31:33
Speaker 1: did it with our good friend John Hannity, and he
31:36
Speaker 1: was asked about the pardons that Joe Biden gave out,
31:40
Speaker 1: and he made a comment and I want to get
31:42
Speaker 1: your reaction to it about, Hey, he may have messed
31:45
Speaker 1: up because he didn't pardon himself.
31:47
Speaker 4: Take a listen, he heard that I was going to
31:49
Speaker 4: do I didn't want to do it. I was given
31:51
Speaker 4: the option. They said, sir, would you like to pardon everybody,
31:55
Speaker 4: including yourself? I said, I'm not going to pardon anybody.
31:58
Speaker 4: We didn't do anything wrong, and we had people that suffered,
32:01
Speaker 4: their incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. You had
32:06
Speaker 4: Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail.
32:10
Speaker 4: You had people that suffered, and far worse than that.
32:16
Speaker 4: They've lost their fortunes, They've lost their whatever, their nest egg,
32:20
Speaker 4: paying it to lawyers and those people, and people said
32:25
Speaker 4: to you, and they don't even They wouldn't have even
32:27
Speaker 4: taken most of those people.
32:29
Speaker 2: They wouldn't have even taken apart.
32:31
Speaker 4: This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know
32:33
Speaker 4: that the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is he
32:38
Speaker 4: didn't give himself a part.
32:41
Speaker 1: He didn't give himself a pardon. Senator, I gotta I
32:45
Speaker 1: gotta ask you your take on that is that is
32:47
Speaker 1: that a foreshadowing comment coming from from Donald Trump?
32:51
Speaker 3: There, Well, listen, it may well be. And we've been
32:57
Speaker 3: been very clear. We've talked a lot on Verdict about
33:01
Speaker 3: how the scandal with with Hunter Biden and the Biden
33:04
Speaker 3: crime family was never about Hunter being a you know,
33:10
Speaker 3: guy who abuses drugs and has made a lot of
33:13
Speaker 3: wrong choices in life. The scandal was always that the
33:16
Speaker 3: entire Biden family made millions of dollars selling favors from
33:21
Speaker 3: the big guy, selling favors from Joe Biden. It was
33:23
Speaker 3: always about Joe Biden's corruption. And we talked a lot
33:27
Speaker 3: about how the Biden doj The tell in terms of
33:31
Speaker 3: whether they were being politicized on protecting Biden would be
33:35
Speaker 3: if they fought in the Hunter Biden investigation to protect
33:41
Speaker 3: Joe himself and to prevent any inquiry into his corruption.
33:44
Speaker 3: If they kept it focused on the drug crime or
33:48
Speaker 3: the gun crime, or.
33:49
Speaker 2: Even the the the.
33:50
Speaker 3: Income tax crimes that were personal to Hunter rather than
33:53
Speaker 3: examining the corruption, That's exactly what they did. And so
33:58
Speaker 3: I think that corruption needs to be investigated. I think
34:02
Speaker 3: we need to enforce the law fairly, regardless of party.
34:06
Speaker 3: And I got to say, by the way, we predicted
34:09
Speaker 3: on this podcast, when when the we number one predicted
34:12
Speaker 3: the Hunter Biden pardon, and in fact I put the
34:15
Speaker 3: odds of the Hunter Biden pardon at one hundred percent.
34:17
Speaker 3: We even predicted the date I said it would be
34:19
Speaker 3: December of twenty twenty four. It happened on December first
34:22
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty four. But second when that happened, we
34:26
Speaker 3: went on this podcast and predicted said he's going to
34:29
Speaker 3: pardon the rest of his family. Well he did that
34:31
Speaker 3: on the very last day, moments before he left office.
34:34
Speaker 3: He pardoned the rest of his family because they were
34:37
Speaker 3: all involved in the corruption. They were all involved in
34:39
Speaker 3: selling favors. And so right now the only one with
34:42
Speaker 3: potential liability is Joe Biden himself. And you know, Trump's
34:45
Speaker 3: right that it's interesting he didn't pardon himself. Well, we'll
34:49
Speaker 3: see if that has real consequences. By the way, one
34:53
Speaker 3: of the results of all these pardons is that Congress
34:56
Speaker 3: can now subpoena the members of the Biden fan and
35:01
Speaker 3: force them to answer questions under oath, and they don't
35:03
Speaker 3: have a Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer.
35:05
Speaker 1: Really, okay, So a lot of people to know that,
35:08
Speaker 1: including me, So explain that a little bit for everybody,
35:11
Speaker 1: because that is that is big news.
35:13
Speaker 3: So the Fifth Amendment says that you can't be forced
35:16
Speaker 3: to testify against yourself. Now that only applies if you
35:20
Speaker 3: have criminal jeopardy, if you can be prosecuted. Once you've
35:23
Speaker 3: been pardoned, you have no criminal jeopardy, which means you
35:27
Speaker 3: don't have the right to say, I'm not going to
35:29
Speaker 3: answer that because I might incriminate myself in a crime.
35:31
Speaker 3: Because if it's a federal crime, you can't be prosecuted
35:35
Speaker 3: for it, which means if you refuse to answer, you
35:39
Speaker 3: can be held in contempt and put in jail. And
35:42
Speaker 3: so it h it has changed.
35:46
Speaker 1: I will be There's there's a very old there's a
35:48
Speaker 1: very real chance that members of the Biden crime family
35:51
Speaker 1: that were pardon could be asked to come and testify
35:55
Speaker 1: in Congress and they would be forced to answer the
35:58
Speaker 1: questions for the reasons you just stated, yep.
36:00
Speaker 3: And if they don't, by the way, same is true
36:03
Speaker 3: about Fauci that you know, Biden pardon Fauci. That means
36:07
Speaker 3: Fauci doesn't have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to
36:10
Speaker 3: answer questions under oath. I certainly hope that he's forced
36:14
Speaker 3: to answer those questions. And I got to say so.
36:17
Speaker 1: Not hypothetically. You get Fauci in front of you, you
36:19
Speaker 1: start asking him questions and he just refuses to answer
36:22
Speaker 1: those questions. Is that in contempt? To Congress at that point.
36:26
Speaker 3: Well, Congress has to vote to hold him in contempt
36:28
Speaker 3: for refusing to answer those questions, and then the Department
36:30
Speaker 3: of Justice has to prosecute him. I got to say,
36:33
Speaker 3: I think if Congress voted to hold him in contempt,
36:35
Speaker 3: I think DOJ would prosecute him. And by the way,
36:38
Speaker 3: to be clear, the Biden Department of Justice Trump mentioned
36:41
Speaker 3: putting Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in prison. They did
36:44
Speaker 3: that because they held them in contempt to Congress. And
36:47
Speaker 3: that was even aside from from pleading the fifth there,
36:51
Speaker 3: they just refused to testify, and they argued that they
36:54
Speaker 3: asserted executive privilege, and DOJ prosecuted them after Congress, after
37:00
Speaker 3: the housewater to hold it in contempt of Congress.
37:03
Speaker 1: Incredible. All right, We've got a lot to watch now.
37:05
Speaker 1: Thanks for that. This is why I love doing the show.
37:08
Speaker 1: We're glad that you're back. We hope you make it
37:10
Speaker 1: home this weekend, back to the fam, and that Democrats
37:13
Speaker 1: don't hold these votes and ruin everybody's weekend with their family,
37:16
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Don't forget. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
37:20
Speaker 1: We have a week in review for things you may
37:23
Speaker 1: have missed on Saturday, so make sure you grab that show.
37:25
Speaker 1: Also grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, will keep
37:28
Speaker 1: you up to date on those in between days and
37:30
Speaker 1: The Senator and I will see you back here for
37:32
Speaker 1: obviously what's going to be a very exciting show depending
37:35
Speaker 1: on what happens over the weekend. On Monday morning,