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Montecristos with Bibi (and Peace in the Middle East) · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: There have been very few things harder to achieve in
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Speaker 1: foreign policy, maybe nothing harder to achieve in foreign policy
0:06
Speaker 1: than peace in the Middle East. Nobody was able to
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Speaker 1: see that coming, and yet just this past week we
0:14
Speaker 1: have had an historic deal for peace in the Middle East,
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Speaker 1: and we happen to have a guy who was there
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Speaker 1: for all of it. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator.
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Speaker 1: I have to point out that this past week we've
0:36
Speaker 1: seen not just one but two historic milestones, a pathway
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Speaker 1: to peace in the Middle East and episode fifty of
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Speaker 1: Verdicts with Ted Cruz. I don't know which one is
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Speaker 1: more historic. Look, it's been fifty episodes, and I got
0:49
Speaker 1: to say, you know, when it was clear to me
0:52
Speaker 1: you weren't paying attention, as when the fellow came up
0:54
Speaker 1: with a little clicky thing and said episode fifty, Oh,
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Speaker 1: what's that called, by the way, the clicky thing. That's
0:59
Speaker 1: called the clicky thing. Actually that's the technical term for it,
1:01
Speaker 1: and you apparently had no idea, so you weren't listening
1:04
Speaker 1: to him when he said episode fifty times of my
1:06
Speaker 1: eyes glazed over, absolutely because I was. I was focusing
1:10
Speaker 1: on this other I suppose more minor historic milestone piece
1:13
Speaker 1: in the middle of the world piece. Yet you know,
1:16
Speaker 1: I just think you need to re examine your priority
1:18
Speaker 1: in Michael, You're right, absolutely well. I wasn't there. I
1:22
Speaker 1: wasn't there for the Abraham Accord. At the White House.
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Speaker 1: You've got President Trump, bb Net and Yahoo, leader of Bahrain,
1:29
Speaker 1: leader of the United Arab Emirates. What makes this historic?
1:34
Speaker 1: And what happened? So the Abraham Accords they were signed
1:37
Speaker 1: this past week and the signing was on the south
1:40
Speaker 1: lawn of the White House. So I was there, and
1:42
Speaker 1: then they had chairs set up outside. It was beautiful
1:46
Speaker 1: September day, probably seventy degrees outside. I mean, it was
1:50
Speaker 1: as pretty a day as you ever see in Washington.
1:53
Speaker 1: And their number of US gathered on these little white
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Speaker 1: wooden folding chairs, and out out from the White House
2:00
Speaker 1: comes the President comes Bbing Nat Yahoo, the Prime Minister
2:03
Speaker 1: of Israel, and then the Foreign Minister of the UAE
2:07
Speaker 1: and the Foreign Minister of Bahrain, and they each give
2:10
Speaker 1: speeches and then they sit at a table down below
2:15
Speaker 1: and each of them signs the agreement. And what has
2:18
Speaker 1: happened is both the UAE and Bahrain have normalized relationships
2:25
Speaker 1: with Israel. In other words, they're treating Israel just like
2:27
Speaker 1: any other country, and that's a big damn deal. This
2:33
Speaker 1: is the first time an Arab country has normalized relations
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Speaker 1: with Israel in twenty six years. The last time was
2:41
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four Jordan. What about before that? Before that
2:45
Speaker 1: was Egypt nineteen seventy eight, Camp David. Wow. So this
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Speaker 1: doesn't happen very often, and I think it's an extraordinary
2:58
Speaker 1: step forward in terms of bringing East to the region,
3:00
Speaker 1: but also piece globally, because look, for a long time
3:04
Speaker 1: the Middle East has been a powder keg yea and
3:07
Speaker 1: diffusing the tensions, and it was really fitting the Bahrain
3:10
Speaker 1: piece was announced on September eleventh, and I pointed out,
3:15
Speaker 1: I said, you know, there are a few greater acts
3:18
Speaker 1: of revenge we can have on the terrorists who committed
3:21
Speaker 1: that horrific attack on September eleventh, then to bring about
3:26
Speaker 1: peace in the Middle East and make help make Jews
3:30
Speaker 1: and Arabs and Americans friends. Yeah, well, you mentioned nineteen
3:35
Speaker 1: seventy eight. So we've been working on piece in the
3:38
Speaker 1: Middle East since at least the Carter administration. I suppose
3:40
Speaker 1: further back than that. And I know this is probably
3:43
Speaker 1: a simple question, but I think sometimes when we think
3:46
Speaker 1: about our own domestic problems, we do wonder this, which
3:49
Speaker 1: is why is America always trying to broker peace in
3:52
Speaker 1: the Middle East? Why do we care? Well, Israel's a
3:55
Speaker 1: unique country. It is the world's only Jewish nation. Was
4:00
Speaker 1: founded in nineteen forty eight, so it's just over seventy
4:02
Speaker 1: years old, um seventy two. And it you look at
4:09
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, it was coming out of World War Two,
4:11
Speaker 1: it was coming out of the Holocaust, six million Jews
4:16
Speaker 1: being murdered by the Nazis and and the State of
4:21
Speaker 1: Israel was formed for many reasons, one the historical connection
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Speaker 1: of the Jewish people to Judah and Samaria and to
4:31
Speaker 1: the land of Israel, but also to ensure that that
4:35
Speaker 1: never again, what's something like the Holocaust happened, that there
4:38
Speaker 1: would always be a Jewish state where where Jews could
4:43
Speaker 1: be be safe and avoid persecution. Now, when Israel was
4:49
Speaker 1: formed in nineteen forty eight, the Arabs nations all declared war,
4:54
Speaker 1: and there was war after war after warm It was
4:59
Speaker 1: not something that happened happily. It's not that their neighbors
5:02
Speaker 1: did not celebrate. To put it mild, and you know,
5:05
Speaker 1: you think about it, you A, in Bahrain are nearby
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Speaker 1: neighbors who until this week didn't recognize Israel because because
5:16
Speaker 1: some people have been saying, well, it's not a peace
5:18
Speaker 1: deal because the UA in Bahrain they've never been in
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Speaker 1: open war with Israel. So oh, you know, guys, look,
5:24
Speaker 1: it's not a big deal. Forget about it, okay, And
5:26
Speaker 1: that's just a weird argument. Listen. Democrats are scrambling because
5:31
Speaker 1: President Trump helping broker a peace deal in the Middle
5:35
Speaker 1: East really counteracts their narrative as him as the embodiment
5:38
Speaker 1: of everything that is terrible in the world, right, And
5:42
Speaker 1: so there's a combination. Joe Biden, when the UAE deal broke,
5:45
Speaker 1: he said, well, this is really the culmination of his work,
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Speaker 1: and so it's convenient. You know, it's a big deal
5:52
Speaker 1: if Biden's trying to take credit for it, yea. And
5:56
Speaker 1: then the other sort of democratic talking point is well,
5:59
Speaker 1: it's not that important because they weren't actively in a
6:03
Speaker 1: state of war firing missiles at each other. They didn't
6:05
Speaker 1: recognize each other, they didn't acknowledge the Arab States, UAE
6:09
Speaker 1: and Bahrain didn't acknowledge that Israel existed as a nation
6:13
Speaker 1: as a Jewish state. And I think it's important to
6:15
Speaker 1: pause and reflect how this came about, because part of
6:18
Speaker 1: the reason that we're seeing the left, both the media
6:21
Speaker 1: and the academic world and Democrats pushing back so hard
6:24
Speaker 1: on this is these Abraham Accords are the culmination of
6:29
Speaker 1: a very very different approach Trump took than Obama Biden,
6:33
Speaker 1: and the Obama Biden approach doesn't work, and the approach
6:37
Speaker 1: we've taken the last four years does well. This is
6:39
Speaker 1: the issue. I remember when Barack Obama was running this
6:42
Speaker 1: is two thousand and eight, people told me if I
6:45
Speaker 1: voted for John McCain, we'd get more wars in the
6:46
Speaker 1: Middle East, which was true. I voted for John McCain,
6:49
Speaker 1: and we got more wars in the Middle East, even
6:51
Speaker 1: though Barack Obama got elected. We haven't had one of
6:54
Speaker 1: these peace deals in twenty six years, right, So what
6:58
Speaker 1: did they do wrong? What did Trump do right? Because
7:01
Speaker 1: we were told Trump was going to lead to World
7:02
Speaker 1: War three? Yeah, and to some extent, those are different
7:07
Speaker 1: issues of their parallel issues. I do think too many Democrats,
7:11
Speaker 1: including the Clintons, including Hillary and too many Republicans, including
7:15
Speaker 1: John McCain, had been too eager to get US into wars,
7:19
Speaker 1: had been too eager to use US military force. And
7:22
Speaker 1: I think that that has been an important, worthwhile shift
7:26
Speaker 1: the last four years, is to be much more restrained
7:29
Speaker 1: in terms of when we get into foreign entanglements, to
7:34
Speaker 1: use a phrase from George Washington, with respect to Israel.
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Speaker 1: I think there were two decisions early on in the
7:41
Speaker 1: first year of the Trump administration that really set the
7:45
Speaker 1: stage for this, and they were intertwined. I think these
7:47
Speaker 1: are the two most important foreign policy decisions President Trump
7:50
Speaker 1: has made. The first was moving the embassy in Israel
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Speaker 1: to Jerusalem. Now, we had our embassy in Tel Aviv. Yeah,
7:58
Speaker 1: Telvi's not the capital of Israel. Jerusalem the capital of Israel.
8:01
Speaker 1: We had our embassy in Tel Aviv because the Palestinians
8:04
Speaker 1: lay claim to Jerusalem as well, and so it was
8:07
Speaker 1: viewed as if you have your embassy in Jerusalem, you
8:11
Speaker 1: are somehow favoring Israel's choice of its capital city. Now,
8:15
Speaker 1: mind you, we have our embassies in the capitals everywhere
8:18
Speaker 1: else on Earth. Yeah, just this one exception that we didn't.
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Speaker 1: When the Trump administration began that there was a big
8:24
Speaker 1: debate within the administration about whether or not to move
8:27
Speaker 1: the embassy because presidents had been promising to do this
8:31
Speaker 1: for decades. It had beneficial US policy, and just no
8:34
Speaker 1: one actually did it. Obama promised to do it. George W.
8:37
Speaker 1: Bush promised to do it. Bill Clinton promised to do it.
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Speaker 1: Both Democrats and Republicans had broken that promise over and
8:43
Speaker 1: over and over again. In twenty seventeen, the Trump administration
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Speaker 1: both the State Department of the Defense Department opposed moving
8:49
Speaker 1: the embassy. Yeah, you had Rex Teller Senna, Secretary of State,
8:53
Speaker 1: had Jim Madness he was Secretary Defense, and they both
8:55
Speaker 1: didn't want to move the embassy. And the reason they
8:58
Speaker 1: said they didn't want to move the embassy as they
9:00
Speaker 1: said it would enrage the enemies of Israel and the
9:03
Speaker 1: enemies of America. This is a foreign policy battle I
9:07
Speaker 1: engaged in very actively, and so I mean I spent
9:10
Speaker 1: a lot of time talking to the President, leaning in
9:13
Speaker 1: making the case. Look, the enemies of Israel and America
9:16
Speaker 1: they hate us anyway. It's not like there's suddenly some
9:20
Speaker 1: other day where they break out in hosannas and start
9:23
Speaker 1: singing songs you're not going to appease them, and that
9:26
Speaker 1: appeasement word. We're going to come back to that, because
9:27
Speaker 1: that appeasement word is very, very important for understanding the
9:30
Speaker 1: shift and path that led to this piece agreement. The
9:34
Speaker 1: past week, there were voices in the White House who
9:37
Speaker 1: were arguing against moving the embassy to Jerusalem because they said,
9:42
Speaker 1: this will make peace harder to achieve in the Middle East.
9:45
Speaker 1: We want to see peace in the Middle East. If
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Speaker 1: we move the embassy, it will tick off everyone who's
9:50
Speaker 1: angry with Israel, and that makes it harder to achieve.
9:52
Speaker 1: And you saw this throughout the mainstream media as well.
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Speaker 1: This was being echoed in the popular press, and the
9:57
Speaker 1: case I made to President Trump and the case I
9:59
Speaker 1: made repeat it in the White House, as I said, look,
10:03
Speaker 1: there is virtue to clarity and lack of ambiguity. If
10:07
Speaker 1: we move the embassy, it will be seen by both
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Speaker 1: our friends and our enemies as a statement that the
10:14
Speaker 1: United States stands unapologetically in four square with Israel, and
10:18
Speaker 1: that there's a president who is not going to be
10:22
Speaker 1: cowed by the New York Times or CNN. At the
10:28
Speaker 1: end of the day, the President agreed with me. He
10:31
Speaker 1: overruled his own state department, he overruled his own defense department,
10:35
Speaker 1: and he moved the embassy. I was there when we
10:37
Speaker 1: opened the embassy in Jerusalem. It was in May of
10:40
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. It was actually on the date of the
10:43
Speaker 1: seventieth anniversary of the creation of the modern state of Israel.
10:47
Speaker 1: And it was powerful, it was emotional. There's literally dancing
10:51
Speaker 1: in the street in Jerusalem. It's I've been to Jerusalem
10:53
Speaker 1: four times. I've never seen jubilasian like there was when
10:58
Speaker 1: we opened the embassy. And what I argued to the
11:02
Speaker 1: president when he was debating whether or not to move
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Speaker 1: the embassy, is I said, listen, are Arab allies, Jordan, Egypt,
11:10
Speaker 1: the Saudi's UAE said, they will all publicly denounce the
11:14
Speaker 1: decision because they feel they have to for domestic political reasons.
11:18
Speaker 1: They'll feel obliged to denounce it. But what I argued
11:22
Speaker 1: is I said, secretly, they will be overjoyed. And here's
11:27
Speaker 1: why they will say. A president with the backbone to
11:33
Speaker 1: move the embassy, maybe, just maybe, just maybe we'll have
11:37
Speaker 1: the backbone to stand up to Iran and stop Iran
11:40
Speaker 1: from getting nuclear weapons. And there are few things that
11:45
Speaker 1: have clarified the minds of our Arab allies more than
11:49
Speaker 1: the Obama Iran nuclear deal, which put Iran on an
11:55
Speaker 1: barreling path towards getting nuclear weapons, and I sent them
11:58
Speaker 1: palettes of cash for famously over one hundred billion dollars.
12:04
Speaker 1: I do not believe it is a coincidence that the
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Speaker 1: very same week we opened our embassy in Jerusalem is
12:12
Speaker 1: the week the President announced he was withdrawing from the
12:15
Speaker 1: disastrous Obama Ran nuclear deal. Those two were connected, and
12:22
Speaker 1: the same fight played out in the Trump administration on
12:25
Speaker 1: pulling out of the Obama Ran deal. State was opposed,
12:28
Speaker 1: Defense was opposed. It was clear when President Trump was
12:31
Speaker 1: running he said I'm going to get out of this
12:34
Speaker 1: Iran nuclear deal. The base hats so he actually didn't.
12:39
Speaker 1: It is a little bit astonishing. The Iran nuclear deal
12:42
Speaker 1: is one of the issues on which Donald Trump and
12:44
Speaker 1: I sharply disagreed in the twenty sixteen primarily well, I
12:48
Speaker 1: remember you were certainly opposed to it. So when I
12:50
Speaker 1: was running in twenty sixteen, I pledged to do five
12:53
Speaker 1: things on the first day in office January twentieth, twenty seventeen.
12:56
Speaker 1: One was moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Yeah. Another was
12:59
Speaker 1: ripped the deal to shreds. So those were two of
13:01
Speaker 1: the five things I pledged to do. Trump as a
13:05
Speaker 1: candidate in twenty sixteen explicitly disagreed with me, and he said, no,
13:10
Speaker 1: I'm not going to rip the deal off. I'm going
13:11
Speaker 1: to renegotiate. I'm gonna try to get a better deal.
13:13
Speaker 1: And so we had we had, I mean, in several
13:17
Speaker 1: presidential debates we disagreed on this policy issue. So you
13:21
Speaker 1: fast forward to twenty seventeen, there's a debate within the
13:23
Speaker 1: Trump administration. Tillerson and Madis are both saying stay in
13:27
Speaker 1: the deal. Maddis kept saying a deal is a deal.
13:30
Speaker 1: America has given our word. Yeah, And I kept pointing
13:33
Speaker 1: out to Maddis, I said, no, America didn't give our word.
13:38
Speaker 1: Obama signed that agreement with the explicit opposition of the
13:43
Speaker 1: United States Congress. The America gives our word either when
13:47
Speaker 1: we pass a statute or a treaty ratified by the Senate.
13:50
Speaker 1: The Obama ran deal was neither. He made an end
13:53
Speaker 1: run to the UN to try to get around Congress
13:56
Speaker 1: and the opposition. Once again, Trump agreed with me and
14:03
Speaker 1: overruled his own state and Defense Department. Now let's fast
14:06
Speaker 1: forward and now those decisions. Part of the reasons those
14:10
Speaker 1: decisions were so important is you look at the UAE
14:13
Speaker 1: in Bahrain. You no longer had this moral ambiguity, this handwringing,
14:19
Speaker 1: This is, oh, we don't want to take a stance
14:21
Speaker 1: on Israel, we don't know what we believe, which I
14:24
Speaker 1: think prolonged conflict. You talked about appeasement. The Obama Biden
14:28
Speaker 1: path was appeasement over and over and over again. It
14:30
Speaker 1: was undermining Israel, and undermining Israel ironically produces more terrorism, tension, warfare,
14:38
Speaker 1: dissension in the Middle East. In the last couple of weeks,
14:42
Speaker 1: I've spoken with the UAE ambassador, I've spoken with the
14:45
Speaker 1: Saudia ambassador. So Saudi Arabia has not normalized relationships, but
14:49
Speaker 1: we yet We've been told there could be other countries,
14:51
Speaker 1: as many as nine countries that will join on to
14:54
Speaker 1: this sort of a piece deal. And look, the Saudis
14:56
Speaker 1: are the whale. They're they're the biggest of the players.
15:00
Speaker 1: That is outstanding, and Bahrain is very closely allied with
15:05
Speaker 1: the Saudis. Most people think that Bahrain would not have
15:08
Speaker 1: done this without the Saudis, at least giving implicit approval
15:13
Speaker 1: to it. The Saudis also announced, and this is historic
15:16
Speaker 1: as well, that they would allow Israel to have over flights,
15:20
Speaker 1: to have their airplanes fly over Saudi Arabian territory. That's
15:24
Speaker 1: a big deal. Used to be, Israel had to fly
15:26
Speaker 1: around Saudi Arabia because Saudi Arabia would not allow Israeli
15:30
Speaker 1: planes in their airspace. Both the UAE ambassador and the
15:34
Speaker 1: Saudi ambassador in the past week, when I spoke to them,
15:38
Speaker 1: they said, listen, we are doing this because we want
15:41
Speaker 1: to be friends with America, because it is important for
15:44
Speaker 1: us to be friends with America, and we know that
15:49
Speaker 1: it is important to you for us to be friends
15:52
Speaker 1: with Israel. We know where you stand. It's the clarity,
15:56
Speaker 1: and they said, that's why we're doing this. There's something
16:00
Speaker 1: called the Iran echo chamber. Okay, So that was when
16:03
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was president, they were negotiating the Iran nuclear deal.
16:07
Speaker 1: There was a so called echo chamber that it's locus
16:11
Speaker 1: was the National Security Council under Obama, but it was reporters,
16:16
Speaker 1: it was academics, it was think tanks, and it was
16:18
Speaker 1: all these lefties who were pushing the Iran nuclear deal.
16:21
Speaker 1: They viewed that as the single biggest foreign policy accomplishment
16:25
Speaker 1: of the Obama presidency. And it's all predicated on a piecement.
16:31
Speaker 1: It's predicated on if we give Iran one hundred billion dollars,
16:36
Speaker 1: they'll make nice and won't make nuclear weapons. Even though
16:39
Speaker 1: the Ayatola regularly chance death to America and death to issue,
16:43
Speaker 1: it should be made clear this is not ambiguous here.
16:46
Speaker 1: You've got a country that chants death to America. You've
16:48
Speaker 1: got a country that is an open, explicit alli of
16:50
Speaker 1: the United States, and yet or under the Obama administration,
16:53
Speaker 1: it made us all scratch our heads. They thought the
16:55
Speaker 1: path to peace was to make nice with the people
16:58
Speaker 1: chanting death to America. This obviously they look Middle East
17:00
Speaker 1: piece is perhaps the most complicated foreign policy issue. So
17:04
Speaker 1: just to simplify here, because it seems like there's so
17:07
Speaker 1: many layers. We were told for a very long time
17:11
Speaker 1: that supporting Israel was the cause of this chaos and
17:15
Speaker 1: violence in the Middle East. It would seem to be
17:19
Speaker 1: that the opposite has been proved true. We were told
17:21
Speaker 1: by the leaders of these countries that they hated our
17:24
Speaker 1: support for Israel. Explicitly, and yet behind closed doors and
17:28
Speaker 1: in their own interest, it would seem that they actually
17:31
Speaker 1: have supported American clear support for Israel. Is that right?
17:35
Speaker 1: Am I clarifying here a little? I think that's right.
17:38
Speaker 1: On the latter point, they haven't as much explicitly supported
17:41
Speaker 1: it as I think it is in their interest and
17:44
Speaker 1: they are. You know, I've joked you. Remember Barack Obama
17:48
Speaker 1: was given the Nobel Peace Prize in two thousand and
17:50
Speaker 1: nine right after he was elected. He'd literally I don't
17:52
Speaker 1: think he'd unpacked his boxes yet, he was still trying
17:55
Speaker 1: to find a stapler. I believe it was nine days
17:58
Speaker 1: after he was sworn in he was nominated for the
18:01
Speaker 1: Peace Prize, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize
18:04
Speaker 1: for not being George W. Bush, but the fact that
18:07
Speaker 1: he was. By the way, why didn't you win a
18:09
Speaker 1: Nobel Piece prize? You're not waited, I know where's my
18:11
Speaker 1: phone call? So they awarded him that prize, But you
18:19
Speaker 1: look at I've joked that in retrospect, Obama may have
18:23
Speaker 1: deserved it because he did something heretofore impossible, which is
18:28
Speaker 1: he united the Arabs and the Israelis. All he had
18:31
Speaker 1: to do was put in place a plan to give
18:33
Speaker 1: one hundred billion dollars to the Ayatola Kamnee that he
18:35
Speaker 1: could use to develop nuclear weapons to threaten all of
18:38
Speaker 1: their lives, and suddenly the Jews and the Arabs are like,
18:41
Speaker 1: holy crap, are you out of your money? Well, because
18:44
Speaker 1: this introduces an aspect that I think is often overlooked
18:47
Speaker 1: when people are trying to ravel with this, which is
18:49
Speaker 1: they think of the issue as Jews versus Muslims, and
18:52
Speaker 1: that's that's a simple. But of course we're talking about
18:54
Speaker 1: nation states here, and there are a lot of these
18:56
Speaker 1: Arab states that don't particularly like Iran. So you've instead
19:00
Speaker 1: just two and there's a divide between Sunnies and Shiites.
19:03
Speaker 1: And so Iran is a Shiite state and most of
19:06
Speaker 1: the Arab states are are Sunni states, and so there's
19:09
Speaker 1: a religious divide within Islam between the Sunnies and Shiites.
19:14
Speaker 1: And and they're fully aware of what Iran is capable of.
19:18
Speaker 1: I mean, Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism
19:20
Speaker 1: in the world. But yet both Obama and Joe Biden,
19:25
Speaker 1: who was very active in foreign policy as Vice president,
19:29
Speaker 1: they fully believed in appeasement. I've also joked there's a
19:33
Speaker 1: reason we don't see the Neville Chamberlain school of foreign policy.
19:38
Speaker 1: Neville Chamberlain was Prime Minister of Great Britain, championed appeasement
19:43
Speaker 1: of Adolph Hitler and said, if we just give him
19:46
Speaker 1: what he wants, everything will be fine. And history teaches
19:51
Speaker 1: us that appeasement doesn't work, that it's provocative, that actually
19:55
Speaker 1: weakness and appeasement to a dictator, to a tyrant makes
19:59
Speaker 1: war were more likely. This is where a lot of
20:01
Speaker 1: the media gets it backwards. Yeah, listen, I agree with
20:04
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan, who talked about and emphasized and built his
20:09
Speaker 1: foreign policy on peace through strength, that if you want
20:11
Speaker 1: to avoid war, be strong enough that no one wants
20:15
Speaker 1: to mess with you. Well, it's interesting on that point
20:17
Speaker 1: of peace through strength. And we were told at that
20:21
Speaker 1: time that Reagan's a cowboy, he's a warmonger, he's crazy.
20:24
Speaker 1: I guess we were told the same thing when the
20:25
Speaker 1: Trump administration came in as well. But there is an
20:27
Speaker 1: irony here to both of those administrations. We really did
20:32
Speaker 1: get that piece. I mean, it's not just an empty slogan.
20:35
Speaker 1: When you have weakness, you're inviting this kind of aggression.
20:38
Speaker 1: Look in eight years in the White House. The biggest
20:40
Speaker 1: nation Reagan ever invaded was Grenada. He was reluctant to
20:47
Speaker 1: use military force, as Trump has been as well, And
20:50
Speaker 1: I think that is exactly right. I think there were
20:52
Speaker 1: too many cowboys in the GOP and the Democratic Party
20:56
Speaker 1: that option A was always send the marine, yes and listen.
21:01
Speaker 1: If there's a threat to the national security of the
21:03
Speaker 1: United States, if Americans lives are being threatened, that's what
21:06
Speaker 1: the armed forces is forced to keep us safe. But
21:10
Speaker 1: being reluctant to pull that trigger, I think is the
21:12
Speaker 1: right thing to do, not to put our sons and
21:14
Speaker 1: daughters in harm's way, but also being clear and strong.
21:18
Speaker 1: It's why the moving the embassy was such an important
21:22
Speaker 1: pivot point. And you know, look, I'll give you an
21:25
Speaker 1: example of Obama Biden and their policies. Back in I
21:30
Speaker 1: think it was twenty fourteen. I was in Israel and
21:34
Speaker 1: I had a meeting set up with net and Yahoo
21:37
Speaker 1: and and I've gotten to know Bobe well. Yeah, And
21:42
Speaker 1: the meeting was set up and the US ambassador to
21:45
Speaker 1: the Obama ambassadors named Daniel Shapiro, and Shapiro told me
21:51
Speaker 1: the meeting was the next day with Babe and he said,
21:53
Speaker 1: he said, you are not meeting with Net and Yahoo
21:55
Speaker 1: without me? Did? He just said, flat out you were
21:58
Speaker 1: not going to meet with him without me? And and
22:01
Speaker 1: I said, well, listen, this this is a trip I
22:03
Speaker 1: set up. I set up this meeting. I didn't go
22:06
Speaker 1: through you, and you're not invited to the meeting. Yeah,
22:12
Speaker 1: you know, so I am a senator. You don't get
22:14
Speaker 1: to tell me what to do. Well, and Shapiro comes
22:18
Speaker 1: back and he threatens me, says, well, then i'll pull
22:20
Speaker 1: your security. So when you're traveling in Israel, you get
22:23
Speaker 1: a security detail from the embassy. Right. Um, he said,
22:26
Speaker 1: I'll pull your secure security. I said, fine, within within
22:28
Speaker 1: an hour. I'll hire a private security if you want
22:30
Speaker 1: to do that. And it was clearly a bluff. Yeah,
22:34
Speaker 1: they're not going to let the US senator go without security.
22:37
Speaker 1: But what was obvious is John Kerry, who was Secretary
22:41
Speaker 1: of State, had told Shapiro, you keep an eye on
22:45
Speaker 1: cruise and don't you dare let him in a room
22:48
Speaker 1: together with baby. That we don't want this because they
22:51
Speaker 1: they hated Net and Yahoo and they hated me, right,
22:55
Speaker 1: and the last thing they wanted was us talking to
22:57
Speaker 1: each other, right, And so but you had a picture it.
23:00
Speaker 1: So Ambassador Shapira is not a very big guy, and
23:05
Speaker 1: we were literally bumping chests standing in front of the Knesset,
23:10
Speaker 1: which is the Israeli parliament, and we're I mean, it
23:13
Speaker 1: was a junior high like chest to chest of him
23:17
Speaker 1: saying I'm coming and me saying you're not invited. And
23:22
Speaker 1: he backed down. And so the next day, well and
23:27
Speaker 1: clarity and ambiguity and and and so the next day
23:31
Speaker 1: when you when you go and meet with with nat
23:33
Speaker 1: Jah who, there's a conference room that you do all
23:36
Speaker 1: the meetings in, and so if you look at any
23:37
Speaker 1: picture of any delegations, it's in Israel. There's Israeli flags,
23:42
Speaker 1: and you take a picture with a prime minister and
23:43
Speaker 1: you sit at the conference table and talk about issues.
23:45
Speaker 1: And so I've done that multiple times. This time we'd
23:48
Speaker 1: pre arranged with with Bebe's office that we'd come into
23:51
Speaker 1: the conference room, but that Bobe would say, here, come
23:54
Speaker 1: on back to my office head And so I went
23:56
Speaker 1: back to his office, which is actually not that big
23:58
Speaker 1: an office. It's right adjoining the conference room. And we
24:02
Speaker 1: sat down and I had brought two cigars. Bibe loves
24:06
Speaker 1: to smoke cigars. I knew I liked that guy, and
24:09
Speaker 1: we lit up to Monte Cristo's and we sat there
24:13
Speaker 1: smoking cigars and for I don't know, an hour, maybe
24:17
Speaker 1: a little bit longer. We talked geopolitics, we talked Middle East,
24:21
Speaker 1: we talked Middle East, peace, America, the world. And I
24:24
Speaker 1: gotta say that may have been the single coolest moment
24:30
Speaker 1: I've had in the entire US. Like it Look, you
24:35
Speaker 1: get a chance to meet all sorts of people. You
24:37
Speaker 1: meet presidents, you meet senators, you meet cabinet officials, you
24:42
Speaker 1: meet heads of state, Bby Nanna, who was one of
24:47
Speaker 1: the most serious, impressive, brilliant world leaders I've ever encountered.
24:52
Speaker 1: And I'm sitting there smoking a montice Cristo cigar at
24:55
Speaker 1: his office, going what in the hell am I doing here?
24:59
Speaker 1: Like like like it was it was surreal. I kept
25:03
Speaker 1: thinking like it was candid camera, someone was gonna come
25:05
Speaker 1: out and say this was all a joke. But part
25:10
Speaker 1: of it is net Ye, who has a seriousness, a gravity. Listen,
25:15
Speaker 1: he leads a country that historically has been surrounded by
25:19
Speaker 1: enemies that would drive them into the sea. Yeah. Um,
25:23
Speaker 1: and he's been running it forever, it seems so let
25:25
Speaker 1: me give it an analogy from literature, and you're gonna
25:28
Speaker 1: laugh at what the literature is um, which is a
25:31
Speaker 1: children's book that I read as a kid. Did you
25:34
Speaker 1: ever read the series called The Great Brain the Grit
25:36
Speaker 1: No I had. I didn't. I read The Mediocre Brain.
25:38
Speaker 1: That's probably didn't work out, all right. So the Great
25:41
Speaker 1: Brain is it is? It's a seven book series that
25:44
Speaker 1: I read as a I don't know it's a kid.
25:46
Speaker 1: It's by John D. Fitzgerald. J D. Fitzgerald, and it
25:51
Speaker 1: he is the younger brother and it's talking about his
25:54
Speaker 1: the middle brother, Tom D. Fitzgerald, and the older brother,
25:56
Speaker 1: swind Fitzgerald. And Tom, the middle brother, is a convent.
26:00
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just a huckster and he's always coming
26:03
Speaker 1: up with these sort of scams to con the other
26:05
Speaker 1: kids out of something, and sort of think Tom Sawyer
26:08
Speaker 1: and painting the fence. But every chapter was a different
26:11
Speaker 1: elaborate Cohn. And they're growing up in Utah, if I
26:16
Speaker 1: remember correctly, at essentially the turn of the nineteen hundred,
26:22
Speaker 1: so late eighteen hundreds, early nineteen hundreds. And in one
26:26
Speaker 1: of the books, early on, Fitzgerald is explaining he said
26:32
Speaker 1: he said, you know, when we were growing up in Utah,
26:34
Speaker 1: I said, almost all the other kids were Mormon. Yeah,
26:37
Speaker 1: And he said, my family, we weren't Mormon. And he said,
26:42
Speaker 1: it really wasn't all that hard. It was simply a
26:44
Speaker 1: batter of me learning to whip all the boys my age,
26:48
Speaker 1: and Tom d learning to whip all the boys his age,
26:50
Speaker 1: and Swendy learning to whip all the boys his age.
26:54
Speaker 1: And once we did that, they were very, very tolerant.
26:58
Speaker 1: It's amazing how tolerant a boy can be when you
27:00
Speaker 1: can whip it. There's a geopolitical lesson there. I read
27:04
Speaker 1: that probably at age ten, and it's stuck in my
27:08
Speaker 1: brain then. And that's frankly Israel's view. It's amazing how
27:12
Speaker 1: tolerant their neighbors can be when Israel's military has defeated
27:15
Speaker 1: them over and over again, and the qualitative military advantage
27:19
Speaker 1: they have is part of what produces peace in the
27:24
Speaker 1: Middle East. And so this past week was a big deal.
27:27
Speaker 1: It's a big deal. I think we should celebrate with
27:29
Speaker 1: Monte Cristo's and we will hopefully bring peace not just
27:32
Speaker 1: to the Middle East but to the Southeast as well.
27:34
Speaker 1: And then rejoin you over here for the next episode.
27:38
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with
27:40
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is
27:52
Speaker 1: being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack,
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Speaker 1: a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,
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Speaker 1: and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Job's
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Speaker 1: Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates
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Speaker 1: running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.