Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Predictions Come True
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: It is the official two year anniversary A Verdict with
- 0:05Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. We've just gotten a major win in the
- 0:09Speaker 1: Supreme Court. We've gotten a major win in the United
- 0:13Speaker 1: States Senate. There's a new, very important First Amendment case
- 0:17Speaker 1: going to the Supreme Court that Senator Ted Cruise is
- 0:20Speaker 1: actually bringing himself, and we are in the mood to celebrate.
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- 3:18Speaker 1: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator.
- 3:23Speaker 1: Nothing's ever perfect in politics. There are some losses, there
- 3:26Speaker 1: are some dangers, there are some threats. This has been
- 3:29Speaker 1: a good week. It has been a damn good week.
- 3:33Speaker 1: The biggest win before we get into the case that
- 3:35Speaker 1: you are actually bringing to the Supreme Court, before we
- 3:38Speaker 1: get into that, before we get into the filibuster, which
- 3:41Speaker 1: lives lives to see another day, the ocean man. Yeah,
- 3:45Speaker 1: the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was demanding that eighty
- 3:48Speaker 1: four million Americans take the fauci auchie as some of
- 3:51Speaker 1: us call it, the COVID vaccine. Employers were enforcing it.
- 3:56Speaker 1: Some people brought a lawsuit. One of the groups was
- 3:59Speaker 1: the Daily Wire, a lawsuit, and the Supreme Court strikes
- 4:03Speaker 1: effectively strikes down the mandate. Yeah. No, it was a
- 4:06Speaker 1: huge victory for the rule of law. It was a
- 4:08Speaker 1: very important case. When the OSHA mandate came out. We
- 4:12Speaker 1: talked about a lot on this podcast. Your employer, the
- 4:15Speaker 1: Daily Wire, filed a lawsuit, was a party in the suit.
- 4:17Speaker 1: So so we're actually sitting here, both of us our
- 4:21Speaker 1: parties in Supreme Court cases this past week. The Osha
- 4:25Speaker 1: case was huge, and when it came out, we had
- 4:28Speaker 1: a podcast at the time where we walked through the
- 4:30Speaker 1: legal standards for OSHA promulgating a rule like that, and
- 4:34Speaker 1: you'll recall we we said on the pod we said,
- 4:37Speaker 1: number one, we said, the Supreme Court's going to strike
- 4:40Speaker 1: it down. And in fact, when you and I talked
- 4:41Speaker 1: about it, but when the case was being argued, I said,
- 4:45Speaker 1: I think the decision will be six three. I think
- 4:47Speaker 1: there will be six votes to strike it down as
- 4:49Speaker 1: beyond OSHA's statutory authority, beyond the authority of the federal government.
- 4:55Speaker 1: And we also talked about Ron Klain, who was the
- 4:58Speaker 1: White House is the White House Chief of STA who
- 5:01Speaker 1: stupidly sent a tweet right when the ocean mandate issued
- 5:06Speaker 1: where he retweeted that this was a workaround to get
- 5:09Speaker 1: around the law. And you'll recall I talked about I
- 5:13Speaker 1: tweeted at the time and said this was really dumb.
- 5:16Speaker 1: And I promise you number one, this edict is going
- 5:20Speaker 1: to be challenged. Number two, I believe it's going to
- 5:22Speaker 1: be struck down in court. At number three, this idiotic
- 5:26Speaker 1: tweet from ron Klain is going to be exhibit A
- 5:29Speaker 1: in the lawsuit and the Supreme Court's decision six three
- 5:32Speaker 1: striking it down. What did they sit, among other things
- 5:35Speaker 1: ron Klain's tweet, this seems to be a workaround, and
- 5:38Speaker 1: that's not legit. So I read the opinion of the court,
- 5:42Speaker 1: I read the concurring opinion of the Court's conservatives three Thomas, Alito,
- 5:47Speaker 1: and Gorsich, and I read the liberal dissent. This is
- 5:53Speaker 1: obviously all great news, but it was a little confusing.
- 5:56Speaker 1: I'm not a lawyer, I have no So they were
- 5:58Speaker 1: they stay the mandate and then they sent the mandate
- 6:02Speaker 1: back to the lower Okay, So what they did is
- 6:05Speaker 1: they upheld the injunction, So the mandate is enjoined. An
- 6:08Speaker 1: injunction is an order from a court, either to do
- 6:11Speaker 1: something or not to do something. So the injunction means
- 6:14Speaker 1: the mandate has no legal force. Okay, But they remandered
- 6:17Speaker 1: it to the lower court to have a trial to
- 6:20Speaker 1: consider the claims challenging the mandate. But the reason why
- 6:25Speaker 1: this is really good, one of the grounds for upholding
- 6:29Speaker 1: the injunction is likelihood of success on the merits. So
- 6:33Speaker 1: six Justices have said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed.
- 6:37Speaker 1: They haven't conclusively said their claims are valid, but they've
- 6:41Speaker 1: said they're likely to succeed on the merits that that
- 6:45Speaker 1: the Ocean mandate, for all intents and purposes, it is dead. Unfortunately,
- 6:51Speaker 1: there was a second decision that came out the same day,
- 6:55Speaker 1: and that second decision was five four upholding a different
- 7:00Speaker 1: vaccine mandate, the vaccine mandate that the Biden administration put
- 7:04Speaker 1: on healthcare workers, and it put on healthcare workers in
- 7:07Speaker 1: facilities that are receiving federal funds either through Medicare or Medicaid.
- 7:12Speaker 1: And that was five to four. It consisted of the
- 7:16Speaker 1: three Liberals plus Chief Justice Roberts plus Brett Cavanaugh were
- 7:21Speaker 1: the five. And you know, we talked about before the
- 7:25Speaker 1: Supreme Court's decision coming out of New York with healthcare workers,
- 7:29Speaker 1: where they had refused to stay the decision out of
- 7:32Speaker 1: New York. I think that was a mistake. I think
- 7:34Speaker 1: this was a mistake. But look, the three Libs, they
- 7:38Speaker 1: like all these mandates. Apparently the Biden can mandate us
- 7:42Speaker 1: to do whatever we want to dance on one leg
- 7:44Speaker 1: in a pink two two while singing Yankee Doodle Dante.
- 7:48Speaker 1: The Libs more or less say that in the descent,
- 7:50Speaker 1: they say there's basically no limit to what the government
- 7:53Speaker 1: can do in this regard Roberts and Kavanaugh on healthcare workers,
- 7:59Speaker 1: they're pretty comfortable with the federal government or the state government.
- 8:02Speaker 1: The New York case was a state government issue. Here
- 8:04Speaker 1: it's the federal government. But they're pretty comfortable with the
- 8:06Speaker 1: federal government forcing state workers, state healthcare workers, or just
- 8:10Speaker 1: healthcare workers generally who were receiving government money to have
- 8:14Speaker 1: to have to get vaccinated. I think that was a
- 8:19Speaker 1: serious mistake. I think they're undervaluing the liberty interest of
- 8:24Speaker 1: these healthcare workers because I had this question when I
- 8:27Speaker 1: saw Kavanaugh squish and flipped to the other side, I thought, well,
- 8:31Speaker 1: do healthcare workers not have the same rights as every
- 8:34Speaker 1: other employee. So you remember we talked about that. There
- 8:36Speaker 1: are four different mandates that came out. There's a mandate
- 8:39Speaker 1: for military service men and women. There's a mandate for
- 8:43Speaker 1: civilian employees. There's a mandate for federal contractors. There's a
- 8:46Speaker 1: mandate for private employers with a hundred and more employees
- 8:48Speaker 1: under OSHA, and I said, they're all in descending likelihood
- 8:55Speaker 1: of surviving. Yeah, so the OSHA order was always the
- 8:59Speaker 1: most vulnerable legally because the Oceans Statute doesn't allow this.
- 9:03Speaker 1: That this is really a far stretch from what Congress
- 9:08Speaker 1: intended on in OSHA, which is why Ron Klaine called
- 9:11Speaker 1: it a workaround. To be fair the healthcare workers, there's
- 9:15Speaker 1: a stronger statutory argument there. The statutory language is different,
- 9:19Speaker 1: and so there is a stronger argument. I still think
- 9:22Speaker 1: that mandate should have been struck down as well, but
- 9:25Speaker 1: there is a meaningful difference in terms of with OSHA,
- 9:31Speaker 1: they had zero legs to stand on. With the healthcare workers,
- 9:34Speaker 1: they didn't even have a leg, but maybe they had
- 9:36Speaker 1: a toe. Fair enough, fair enough, and still still basically
- 9:41Speaker 1: a win. Even if it was unfortunate that the court
- 9:44Speaker 1: wouldn't go all the way on this second case, still
- 9:48Speaker 1: a major win. Eighty four million Americans don't need to
- 9:50Speaker 1: be vaccinated against their will. Well, and I gotta say
- 9:52Speaker 1: I take particular pride because not only did we predict
- 9:56Speaker 1: at every stage would happen in this case on the podcast,
- 10:00Speaker 1: but the lawyer argued the case was my former chief Council.
- 10:04Speaker 1: So it's a fellow named Scott Keller's a great guy.
- 10:08Speaker 1: Scott was actually a student of mine. So I met
- 10:11Speaker 1: Scott when I was teaching at University of Texas Law
- 10:13Speaker 1: School and he was a law student there. I taught
- 10:17Speaker 1: a seminar on US Supreme Court litigation and he took
- 10:22Speaker 1: the class. He was excellent in the class, did extraordinary.
- 10:24Speaker 1: I gave him an A plus, and then I didn't
- 10:26Speaker 1: give very many a pluses. He graduated number one in
- 10:30Speaker 1: his class at University of Texas Law School. He went
- 10:33Speaker 1: and clerked on the Court of Appeals. He clerked for
- 10:36Speaker 1: Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, and I recommended him
- 10:40Speaker 1: for that. And then when I several years later, when
- 10:43Speaker 1: I was elected to the Senate, I hired Scott as
- 10:46Speaker 1: my first chief council. So when I showed up a
- 10:48Speaker 1: decade ago in the Senate, Scott we were down in
- 10:52Speaker 1: the basement. I just got in here. When you first
- 10:53Speaker 1: get here, you don't have a real office. You're sort
- 10:55Speaker 1: of intemporary space, and you're just trying to figure out everything.
- 10:59Speaker 1: So Scott spent a couple of years with me as
- 11:02Speaker 1: my chief counsel and then actually came and quit. And
- 11:06Speaker 1: here's why I quit, because he'd been appointed to be
- 11:10Speaker 1: the Solicitor General of Texas. Not a bad gig, and
- 11:13Speaker 1: it's my old job. It's a job I loved. I
- 11:15Speaker 1: did five and a half years. And when Scott gave
- 11:18Speaker 1: his notice, I was really sad, like I didn't want
- 11:20Speaker 1: to lose him because he's a really talented lawyer. But
- 11:23Speaker 1: I couldn't complain because SG of Texas is an amazing job,
- 11:29Speaker 1: and you get to argue cases. You get to argue cases.
- 11:32Speaker 1: So Scott has now argued more cases than I did.
- 11:34Speaker 1: I argued nine cases. When he argued his tenth case,
- 11:38Speaker 1: I called in that morning and said, all right, screw you.
- 11:41Speaker 1: I just had to say that as former boss, I
- 11:43Speaker 1: had to like throw that marker down. So now I
- 11:45Speaker 1: have to ask you, Obviously you're not going to be
- 11:46Speaker 1: arguing a case before the Supreme Court right now, but
- 11:50Speaker 1: are you bringing this case before the Supreme Court just
- 11:53Speaker 1: to beat your old general counsel? Well? No, but but
- 11:57Speaker 1: there was a separate case. So we're sitting here, we're
- 11:59Speaker 1: recording this. On Wednesday. This morning, the Supreme Court heard
- 12:03Speaker 1: oral argument. The very first case was Federal Election Commission
- 12:07Speaker 1: versus Ted Cruz, and I am the plain iff. I
- 12:11Speaker 1: have sued the Federal Election Commission seeking to strike down
- 12:15Speaker 1: a provision of McCain Finegold. The Big campaign finance legislation's
- 12:19Speaker 1: terrible piece of legislation has all sorts of problems, but
- 12:24Speaker 1: at the heart of it, McCain Finegold was all about
- 12:27Speaker 1: incumbent politicians wanting to make it harder for anyone to
- 12:31Speaker 1: run against them and challenge them. It was about the
- 12:33Speaker 1: one thing Republicans and Democrats could agree on is nobody
- 12:36Speaker 1: should beat us in an election. Mcain Finegold is throwing
- 12:40Speaker 1: barriers in the way of challenge. This doesn't make sense though,
- 12:42Speaker 1: because I was reading a lot of left wing news
- 12:44Speaker 1: sources today. They was telling me. They were all telling
- 12:46Speaker 1: me about the case, and they say that Ted Cruz
- 12:49Speaker 1: is bringing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to make
- 12:52Speaker 1: it easier to bribe and corrupt politicians and to make
- 12:56Speaker 1: this swamp land even swampier. Are you telling me that
- 13:00Speaker 1: the left wing media got it wrong? You're right, that's
- 13:02Speaker 1: every headline as Cruise wants more bribery, and even for
- 13:06Speaker 1: the media that's a little dishonest. So there were two
- 13:09Speaker 1: provisions of McCain fine Gold that were called the Millionaire's
- 13:13Speaker 1: Amendment so incumbent politicians hate anyone that can challenge them.
- 13:19Speaker 1: They particularly hate people who have money. So if you
- 13:21Speaker 1: get a really rich person that runs against you, that's
- 13:24Speaker 1: really problematic because then they can run ads and communicate,
- 13:26Speaker 1: and you get a problem. So the Millionaire's Amendment half
- 13:29Speaker 1: of it said that if someone self finances and puts
- 13:32Speaker 1: a whole bunch of money into his own campaign, that
- 13:36Speaker 1: the federal limits for the other guy are tripled. So
- 13:39Speaker 1: instead of twenty nine hundred a person, it's nearly nine
- 13:42Speaker 1: grand a person, And that's entirely designed to benefit incumbents
- 13:48Speaker 1: and to discourage rich people from running against them. Well,
- 13:51Speaker 1: the Supreme Court a few years ago struck that half
- 13:54Speaker 1: of the Millionaire's Amendment down. Said, look, if someone decides
- 13:56Speaker 1: to run for office, if they want to invest their
- 13:58Speaker 1: own resources and speak, you have a right to speech.
- 14:01Speaker 1: And that means spending your own money to speak. If
- 14:03Speaker 1: you want to put a billboard on the freeway, if
- 14:06Speaker 1: you want to run a radio add or a TV ad,
- 14:08Speaker 1: all of that is political speech. So that was half
- 14:10Speaker 1: of the Millionaire's Amendment that was struck down several years ago.
- 14:13Speaker 1: The other half of the Millionaire's Amendment is what this
- 14:16Speaker 1: case is all about, and it's a provision that limits
- 14:19Speaker 1: the ability of a candidate who's running for office to
- 14:22Speaker 1: loan money to his own campaign. So the way it works,
- 14:25Speaker 1: let's say Michael Knowles wakes up and says I'm going
- 14:27Speaker 1: to run for Congress, and you'd say, get this man
- 14:30Speaker 1: to a psychiatrist who's lost his mind. But you're incurable,
- 14:34Speaker 1: and you say, I'm gonna run. I'm taken on AOC,
- 14:37Speaker 1: I'm moving to New York, my old district. We're going
- 14:40Speaker 1: and I'm gonna win. Now, if you're starting, you know,
- 14:43Speaker 1: you may not have a lot of supporters. You're not
- 14:46Speaker 1: an incumbent politician. You don't have lobbyists probably supporting you,
- 14:49Speaker 1: you don't have the infrastructure that an incumbent has. So
- 14:52Speaker 1: what a lot of people do if they launch a
- 14:54Speaker 1: campaign is they loan themselves some money. So they have
- 14:58Speaker 1: some money, some savings, and they put some money in
- 15:00Speaker 1: to start the campaign. What McCain Feingold said is if
- 15:04Speaker 1: you loan your if you loan your own money to
- 15:06Speaker 1: your campaign after the election, you can only pay yourself
- 15:12Speaker 1: back up to two hundred and fifty thousand of it. Okay,
- 15:16Speaker 1: anything above two hundred and fifty thousand with money that
- 15:19Speaker 1: is raised after the campaign, you can't pay back and
- 15:22Speaker 1: you're just stuck. By the way, when when you talk
- 15:25Speaker 1: especially about competitive districts, these campaigns can cost millions and
- 15:30Speaker 1: millions of dollars. So two hundred and fifty thousand is
- 15:33Speaker 1: not as much as it sounds like. So, and what
- 15:35Speaker 1: this is designed to do is it's designed to disincentivelenge challengers.
- 15:40Speaker 1: So look, if you're a gazillionaire, and by the way,
- 15:42Speaker 1: we're seeing more and more billionaires running for off as
- 15:44Speaker 1: if you're a billionaire, you don't care. You can put five, ten,
- 15:48Speaker 1: twenty million dollars into your campaign. You don't matter. You're
- 15:50Speaker 1: so rich it doesn't make a difference. You never need
- 15:51Speaker 1: it back. So this is not a disincentive to the
- 15:54Speaker 1: super rich. And we're actually seeing more and more billionaires
- 15:59Speaker 1: who are running for office because they have the massive money.
- 16:02Speaker 1: What this is an incentive too, is the small business owner.
- 16:05Speaker 1: But this is an incentive too, is the doctor. This
- 16:07Speaker 1: is the somewhat rich. It's not the super rich. It's
- 16:10Speaker 1: the someone who has enough money that you could invest
- 16:12Speaker 1: a substantial amount of money. You could invest five hundred thousand.
- 16:16Speaker 1: You can invest a million dollars you've saved. You put
- 16:19Speaker 1: your money in the bank, you've saved, and you can
- 16:21Speaker 1: invest the money in a congressional race. If you could
- 16:23Speaker 1: put five hundred thousand or a million, that gives you
- 16:25Speaker 1: a real shot at communicating. Yea, this is designed to
- 16:29Speaker 1: punish that guy and say, well, you know what. Let's
- 16:31Speaker 1: let's say you worked hard, you're a physician, You've got
- 16:34Speaker 1: a million dollars in the bank, you loan it to
- 16:36Speaker 1: the campaign, you spend every penny of it on the campaign.
- 16:40Speaker 1: You can pay back two hundred and fifty thousand and
- 16:42Speaker 1: seven hundred and fifty thousand of it. Tough luck, Michael.
- 16:45Speaker 1: You have given it to the United States of America.
- 16:48Speaker 1: You don't get it back. And so that's what the
- 16:51Speaker 1: existing law is. And so what I did in twenty
- 16:53Speaker 1: eighteen is I loaned my campaign two hundred and sixty
- 16:58Speaker 1: thousand dollars. Now that's a specific number, Senator, it is
- 17:02Speaker 1: it's it's ten thousand more than the limit. So I
- 17:05Speaker 1: loaned my campaign to two hundred and sixty thousand right
- 17:08Speaker 1: before the election, and then twenty days after the election,
- 17:11Speaker 1: a little bit later than that, I repaid myself to
- 17:13Speaker 1: a hundred fifty thousand, which what you're allowed to do.
- 17:15Speaker 1: So there's ten thousand that under the law, it's illegal
- 17:19Speaker 1: for me to pay myself back, and I did that
- 17:22Speaker 1: in order to file this lawsuit. As I was just
- 17:25Speaker 1: reading it, obviously you can tell it better because you
- 17:27Speaker 1: were there. The lawyer for the government is saying that
- 17:32Speaker 1: this case should be dismissed, it should be thrown out
- 17:34Speaker 1: because you obviously were doing something that you knew was
- 17:37Speaker 1: against law. You were just trying to trigger this court case. Yeah,
- 17:40Speaker 1: that was an argument that the Biden Justice Department made
- 17:43Speaker 1: that that's a really weak argument. So if you look
- 17:45Speaker 1: at there are lots of cases that are test cases
- 17:48Speaker 1: that if there's any legal or unconstitutional law, you're allowed
- 17:52Speaker 1: to challenge it, and you're allowed to violate that law
- 17:57Speaker 1: to challenge it. You're allowed to create the facts. And
- 18:01Speaker 1: there are literally hundreds of test cases where people you know,
- 18:07Speaker 1: if if the government makes it illegal for Michael Knowles
- 18:13Speaker 1: to defend the right to life, you know, the government said, well,
- 18:18Speaker 1: you chose to say it, you chose to violate it.
- 18:20Speaker 1: You could have just obeyed. Why didn't you. Yeah, So
- 18:23Speaker 1: dismiss the case, and so that argument is not going
- 18:26Speaker 1: to go anywhere. I'll say, the argument I think went well,
- 18:29Speaker 1: I hope. So the lawyer who argued it is a
- 18:32Speaker 1: guy named Chuck Cooper who is a very close friend
- 18:36Speaker 1: of mine. He was my first boss when I came
- 18:37Speaker 1: out of my clerkship, and so I clerked for Chief
- 18:42Speaker 1: Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. I came out
- 18:45Speaker 1: of the clerkship in nineteen ninety seven and I joined
- 18:47Speaker 1: Chuck at what was then a tiny little law firm
- 18:50Speaker 1: that was called Cooper and Carvin and it was Chuck
- 18:53Speaker 1: Cooper's Mike Carvin law firm had six lawyers in it.
- 18:56Speaker 1: It was all of nine months old. And Chuck had
- 18:59Speaker 1: been also a clerk for rink Quists, so he was
- 19:01Speaker 1: a former renk Whist clerk. He's one of the top
- 19:04Speaker 1: Supreme Court litigators in the country, and he was my
- 19:06Speaker 1: first boss, and so I went to work for him
- 19:09Speaker 1: to learn how to be a lawyer. He really taught
- 19:11Speaker 1: me how to be a lawyer. And so he's representing
- 19:16Speaker 1: me in this case, and he's a dear, dear friend.
- 19:19Speaker 1: He did a terrific job. And I will say, look,
- 19:22Speaker 1: it's it's it's never absolutely clear how a case is
- 19:27Speaker 1: going to come out. I think on the merits, there
- 19:29Speaker 1: are clearly a majority of justices who agree that this
- 19:33Speaker 1: provisions on constitution. Okay, the Department of Justice is trying
- 19:38Speaker 1: to raise lots of procedural issues that basically are saying,
- 19:42Speaker 1: don't get to the merits, don't address whether the laws constitutional,
- 19:45Speaker 1: and and and so they're throwing a lot of muck
- 19:47Speaker 1: in the air, trying to say, avoid the actual question
- 19:50Speaker 1: to the lawsuit. I hope the Court doesn't do that.
- 19:52Speaker 1: I hope they actually answer the question, because this provision
- 19:58Speaker 1: really is designed. And by the way, if you look
- 20:00Speaker 1: at the proponents of it, if you look at Harry Reid,
- 20:02Speaker 1: you look actually at Kay Bailey Hutchinson, my predecessor in
- 20:04Speaker 1: the Senate. They got up and said, this is to
- 20:07Speaker 1: make it harder for people to challenge us. This is
- 20:10Speaker 1: all about protecting incumbents and protecting the super wealthy, the billionaires,
- 20:16Speaker 1: and it's about hurting the small business owner, the doctor,
- 20:21Speaker 1: the entrepreneur, the person who wants to run for Congress
- 20:23Speaker 1: because they want to be mister Smith going to Washington.
- 20:26Speaker 1: They want to challenge the swamp. So what's the swamp
- 20:28Speaker 1: want to do make it a lot harder to challenge
- 20:30Speaker 1: the swamp. Now, speaking of incumbent senators who are desperately
- 20:34Speaker 1: trying to hold onto power, there has been a major
- 20:37Speaker 1: push from the Biden administration and the Democrats senators and
- 20:41Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer to get rid of the filibuster before they
- 20:45Speaker 1: lose their elections, which increasingly it looks like is going
- 20:47Speaker 1: to happen in November. They are trying to get through
- 20:51Speaker 1: any legislation and they can't do that right now because
- 20:53Speaker 1: they don't have enough votes to get through the sixty
- 20:57Speaker 1: vote threshold. And I think you know it more closely
- 21:02Speaker 1: than I do. I think that the attempt to kill
- 21:04Speaker 1: the filibuster is just as dead as the ocean mandate?
- 21:07Speaker 1: Am I right? Hopefully? Yes? And I think you are okay.
- 21:11Speaker 1: So you and I were recording this Wednesday late afternoon.
- 21:16Speaker 1: As soon as we finish recording this, I'm going to
- 21:18Speaker 1: get up literally in a half hour, I'm going to
- 21:20Speaker 1: be in the Senate floor and we're having the filibuster
- 21:22Speaker 1: fight tonight. So I have not yet had that battle,
- 21:25Speaker 1: but at about half hour we will. What is going
- 21:28Speaker 1: to happen is that Chuck Schumer is going to file
- 21:32Speaker 1: cloture on their federal election takeover legislation. Cloture takes sixty votes,
- 21:40Speaker 1: It's going to fail. He will probably get all the Democrats.
- 21:43Speaker 1: It'll probably be fifty fifty, but it will fail because
- 21:47Speaker 1: fifty is not sixty. They then, i think, will yabber, awhile,
- 21:52Speaker 1: because they want to make us listen to them. Yabber.
- 21:55Speaker 1: And then what he's going to do likely is file
- 21:58Speaker 1: a motion to re consider, and he will challenge the
- 22:03Speaker 1: He will inquire of the Chair whether it takes fifty
- 22:07Speaker 1: or sixty votes to proceed to culture. The Chair will
- 22:12Speaker 1: reject his claim. We'll say it takes sixty, assuming the
- 22:15Speaker 1: Chair follows the law right, in which case Schumer will
- 22:21Speaker 1: move to appeal. He will appeal the ruling of the chair.
- 22:25Speaker 1: That's what's called the nuclear option. So the rules of
- 22:28Speaker 1: the Senate, they're written down, they're in a book. We
- 22:30Speaker 1: all have that book in our desks. You have you
- 22:32Speaker 1: have the rules of the Senate. The rules of the
- 22:33Speaker 1: Senate say culture takes sixty votes. That's literally black and
- 22:36Speaker 1: white typed in the type than the rules. Now, you
- 22:38Speaker 1: can change the rules of the Senate. To change the
- 22:41Speaker 1: rules of the Senate takes sixty seven senators, so it's
- 22:44Speaker 1: a higher threshold. Sixty seven senators can agree to change
- 22:47Speaker 1: the rules of the Senate. They don't have sixty seven senators.
- 22:51Speaker 1: There is one other way to do it, and it's
- 22:52Speaker 1: what's called the nuclear option. So Schumer will appeal the
- 22:56Speaker 1: ruling of the chair. Any ruling of the chair can
- 22:59Speaker 1: be a to overturn the ruling of the chair just
- 23:04Speaker 1: takes fifty votes, takes a majority, doesn't take sixty, and
- 23:07Speaker 1: then the Senate is weird. If the ruling of the
- 23:10Speaker 1: Chair is overturned, that becomes a precedent, and they actually
- 23:15Speaker 1: keep a book of all the precedents of the Senate,
- 23:18Speaker 1: and that precedent has the same force as the rules
- 23:21Speaker 1: written on paper. So, in other words, if Schumer succeeds,
- 23:26Speaker 1: he will break the rules of the Senate in order
- 23:29Speaker 1: to change the rules of the Senate. So now you'll
- 23:32Speaker 1: have these two rules written down on the paper, and
- 23:34Speaker 1: the new one beats the old one, right, and the
- 23:36Speaker 1: new one is just a precedent. It's just a majority
- 23:39Speaker 1: of the Senate voted that this is now the rules.
- 23:41Speaker 1: So the old ones written on the paper don't matter anymright, Now,
- 23:44Speaker 1: the good news is, I think the odds are extremely likely,
- 23:48Speaker 1: hopefully certain, that Schumer is going to fail. And the
- 23:54Speaker 1: reason for that is that they're two senators, two Democrats
- 23:58Speaker 1: who have been explicit saying they're not going to participate
- 24:01Speaker 1: in nuking the filibuster. Joe Mansion Kirsen Cinema, Kirson Cinema,
- 24:06Speaker 1: last week gave a speech on the Senate floor. I
- 24:07Speaker 1: was sitting on the floor. I heard her speech where
- 24:10Speaker 1: she drew a line and said, I will not do this.
- 24:13Speaker 1: This will destroy the Senate. It will destroy bipartisanship. Mind you,
- 24:17Speaker 1: one of the illustrations of just how nasty and partisan
- 24:22Speaker 1: ending the filibuster would make the Senate. That same week,
- 24:26Speaker 1: Joe Biden was down in Georgia giving this right racist, nasty,
- 24:33Speaker 1: divisive speech, partisan speech. He called half the country bull
- 24:38Speaker 1: Connor racists. He called every Republican in America a bull
- 24:42Speaker 1: Connor racist. He called Joe Mary by the way, he
- 24:44Speaker 1: literally said, you are like bull Connor, you are like
- 24:47Speaker 1: George Wallace. It was hateful. Now, set aside the irony
- 24:50Speaker 1: that bull Connor and George Wallace were Democrats. Set aside
- 24:54Speaker 1: the irony that Joe Biden literally gave a eulogy at
- 24:58Speaker 1: Robert Bird's funeral, a'd exalted cyclops the ku klux Klan.
- 25:04Speaker 1: So if anyone has no standing to be on his
- 25:07Speaker 1: high horse on racial grounds, it's Joseph Biden. But that
- 25:13Speaker 1: kind of speech is just not only do they not
- 25:18Speaker 1: want any Republicans. Susan Collins is too conservative for the
- 25:22Speaker 1: mitt Romney is too conservative for them. Now they don't
- 25:25Speaker 1: even want Democrats Mansion and Cinema. Today you've got Bernie
- 25:29Speaker 1: Sanders talking about he's going to support primary challengers to
- 25:33Speaker 1: Mansion and Cinema, and Chuck Schumer said he didn't know
- 25:36Speaker 1: if he would support his own caucus. It is ugly
- 25:42Speaker 1: assuming Cinema on Mansion don't blink, and I don't think
- 25:45Speaker 1: they will at this point. If it was just one
- 25:47Speaker 1: of them, the risks, I would be more nervous. With
- 25:50Speaker 1: the two of them, I'm hoping each bucks the other up.
- 25:52Speaker 1: And just as a matter of practical politics, person to
- 25:56Speaker 1: person politics, the Democrats seem to be doing everything they
- 25:59Speaker 1: can to irritate Mansion and Cinema, chasing them into bathrooms
- 26:05Speaker 1: and filming them. And I'm gonna say, with Mansion, you
- 26:07Speaker 1: know come on in the water's warm. As I told
- 26:10Speaker 1: Joe several weeks ago, you know, one of the two
- 26:12Speaker 1: parties actually likes you right right now. You want it so,
- 26:17Speaker 1: but the odds are very very high that tonight Schumer
- 26:23Speaker 1: will fail to be honest, this is performance theater for
- 26:26Speaker 1: Schumer's primary in New York that he doesn't want AOC
- 26:29Speaker 1: to primary him, so he's trying to appease the radical
- 26:32Speaker 1: left by failing tonight. So he's setting it up to
- 26:34Speaker 1: fail tonight. It'll be interesting to see if Kamala Harris
- 26:37Speaker 1: is in the seat as the presiding officer. My bet
- 26:39Speaker 1: issue will be because you know, if you're gonna have
- 26:41Speaker 1: a big failure, you do need Kamala to presider over it.
- 26:44Speaker 1: And that literally fitting. It's the way they think that
- 26:48Speaker 1: it is all about appease the crazy left. This is
- 26:53Speaker 1: going to fail tonight. But you want to hear something
- 26:55Speaker 1: really ironic. Okay, So we were supposed to be on
- 26:59Speaker 1: recess this week. Schumer is a terrible majority leader. He
- 27:03Speaker 1: doesn't actually know how to run the Senate and so
- 27:05Speaker 1: he had to like cancel the recess and come back
- 27:07Speaker 1: to do this performance theater and failed night. Um, I
- 27:10Speaker 1: actually on my flight out here today. Rand Paul was
- 27:13Speaker 1: on the flight because he was called back and I
- 27:15Speaker 1: had to vote him. And we're all here. Every Republican
- 27:17Speaker 1: has to be here. Um. You know, if if they
- 27:21Speaker 1: could knock one of us off, they could win this
- 27:22Speaker 1: filibuster fight. So so we're like, you know, you know,
- 27:25Speaker 1: we've got taste to look. Um, it's for two weeks
- 27:34Speaker 1: they've given speeches about how the filibuster is a Jim
- 27:40Speaker 1: Crow relic from racist times, The filibuster is evil. Do
- 27:48Speaker 1: you know what the very last thing the Democrats did
- 27:52Speaker 1: was for today? No, No, I have no idea Senator,
- 27:58Speaker 1: let me the last thing the Democrats did last week
- 28:03Speaker 1: was filibuster my bill sanctioning Russia, sanctioning Nordstream too. No,
- 28:11Speaker 1: we've talked a lot about Nordstream too. You know, if
- 28:13Speaker 1: they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards
- 28:17Speaker 1: at all. Literally, as they're giving speeches the filibuster is racist,
- 28:22Speaker 1: let's filibuster this like simultaneously. And I got to say
- 28:27Speaker 1: it was amazing. So this vote, the vote we had
- 28:30Speaker 1: last week was a big, big deal on nord Stream too.
- 28:32Speaker 1: So this is about this pipeline, and it's really about
- 28:35Speaker 1: the future of Ukraine, Visavi Russia and Visavi the West. Yeah,
- 28:39Speaker 1: so the history of it. We've talked a lot about
- 28:42Speaker 1: Ukraine on this show. We started off two years ago
- 28:47Speaker 1: with impeachment in Ukraine and Bearisma, and we talked about
- 28:50Speaker 1: how Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union
- 28:52Speaker 1: and when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation.
- 28:56Speaker 1: Ukrainians don't like the Russians. The Russians want to control
- 28:59Speaker 1: and dominate Ukraine and many of their neighbors, most of
- 29:02Speaker 1: their neighbors and Putin. Look, Putin is a KGB thug.
- 29:07Speaker 1: He has said. One of the most candid things he's
- 29:09Speaker 1: ever said is he said that he thinks the greatest
- 29:12Speaker 1: geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century was the dissolution of
- 29:16Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. And so Putin longs to reassemble the
- 29:22Speaker 1: Soviet Union and have Russia. He wants Soviet greatness again.
- 29:26Speaker 1: And if you're reassembling the Soviet Union, there's nothing you
- 29:29Speaker 1: want more than Ukraine. Ukraine is the bread basket. Now
- 29:34Speaker 1: Putin has invaded Ukraine before he did it in twenty fourteen.
- 29:38Speaker 1: You remember Crimea, that's part of Ukraine. Putin marched in
- 29:41Speaker 1: and invaded it and took it over and kept it
- 29:43Speaker 1: and kept it. But he stopped. He didn't continue invading Ukraine.
- 29:49Speaker 1: He stopped short. Why did he stop short? Well, the
- 29:53Speaker 1: reason is that right now, Russia's major export is natural
- 29:58Speaker 1: gas and oil. That's Putin is basically a petro tyrant.
- 30:03Speaker 1: And to get his natural gas to Europe, who's the
- 30:06Speaker 1: major consumer of it, it goes through pipelines that go
- 30:09Speaker 1: right through Ukraine. So Putin's sitting there going, well, if
- 30:12Speaker 1: I march into Ukraine, they could damage or destroy those pipelines.
- 30:17Speaker 1: And if they damage or destroy those pipelines, suddenly Russia
- 30:21Speaker 1: can't get the gas to Europe and we're screwed. So
- 30:24Speaker 1: Putin was mad because he's like, I want to invade them,
- 30:27Speaker 1: but they've got a stranglehold on our ability to get
- 30:29Speaker 1: gas to Europe, so suddenly I can't invade them. So
- 30:34Speaker 1: what did he do? The next year Putin launched a
- 30:37Speaker 1: project called Dordstream two, and it was let's build an
- 30:40Speaker 1: undersea pipeline that skips Ukraine altogether, goes under the ocean
- 30:44Speaker 1: and goes straight from Russia to Germany. And that pipeline
- 30:48Speaker 1: wants it's complete. We don't have to worry about Ukraine
- 30:50Speaker 1: and the energy infrastructure. We can march in and take
- 30:52Speaker 1: it over because we can get our gas to Europe well.
- 30:55Speaker 1: Two years ago, I introduced bipartisan legislation to stop it,
- 30:59Speaker 1: pass it through Congress, Trump signed it to law, and
- 31:01Speaker 1: we stopped the pipeline. We won. The pipeline was dead, buried,
- 31:06Speaker 1: stopped put for over a year. Then Joe Biden came
- 31:10Speaker 1: into US and Biden surrendered. He capitulated to Putin. Putin
- 31:17Speaker 1: began rebuilding the pipeline literally on January twenty fourth, twenty one.
- 31:22Speaker 1: I'm glad he took a nice long weekend, you know,
- 31:24Speaker 1: a few days, and then starts up again four days
- 31:26Speaker 1: after he Biden's worn in. So the pipeline right now
- 31:32Speaker 1: is completed. So Putin has finished it because Biden formally
- 31:35Speaker 1: waived the sanctions, but it's still awaiting certification in Europe,
- 31:40Speaker 1: so they can't turn it on till the regulatory agents
- 31:42Speaker 1: have certified it. And so I introduced legislation to reimpose
- 31:48Speaker 1: the sanctions to overturn Biden's surrender to Putin. Now twice,
- 31:54Speaker 1: I've introduced legislation like this before. And twice it's passed
- 31:58Speaker 1: essentially unanimous. Every Democrat has supported it twice. We had
- 32:04Speaker 1: a big battle in December. I was holding dozens of
- 32:07Speaker 1: State Department nominees. Were there till one in the morning.
- 32:11Speaker 1: I'm negotiating with Chuck Schumer. I said, all right, I'm
- 32:13Speaker 1: going to lift thirty two holes. Let these nominees go
- 32:16Speaker 1: through in exchange for scheduling the vote on nord Stream
- 32:19Speaker 1: two that we had just last week. Schumer gave in
- 32:22Speaker 1: scheduled the vote. They did not want that vote. They
- 32:24Speaker 1: were the Biden White House was lobbying against it like crazy,
- 32:27Speaker 1: because even if the Democrats win the vote, then they're
- 32:30Speaker 1: all on the record of saying Ukraine see you later.
- 32:33Speaker 1: That's exactly right. And they for two years had been
- 32:38Speaker 1: sent had been squarely against Nordstream two. This is a vote.
- 32:44Speaker 1: When Trump was a president, every Democrat was for these sanctions.
- 32:48Speaker 1: The only thing that there's two things that are different.
- 32:50Speaker 1: Number One, instead of a Republican with an R behind
- 32:53Speaker 1: his name, a president with an ARM behind his name,
- 32:55Speaker 1: there's a president with a D behind his name. Now
- 32:57Speaker 1: that it's a Democrat, suddenly the Democrats support Russia. And
- 33:02Speaker 1: number two, they're over one hundred thousand troops on the
- 33:04Speaker 1: border of Ukraine. Any day now we could see the
- 33:08Speaker 1: Ukrainian invasion by Russia. And they have to do it
- 33:13Speaker 1: in about the next month or so, because as we
- 33:16Speaker 1: get into the spring, the land starts to thaw and
- 33:19Speaker 1: the Russian tanks get stuck in the mundy, so their
- 33:21Speaker 1: window to invade is narrow. But we voted on it.
- 33:27Speaker 1: It was amazing we ended up. So I won the vote,
- 33:31Speaker 1: won a substantial bipartisan majority of the Senate. The vote
- 33:36Speaker 1: was fifty five to forty four. So every Republican voted
- 33:41Speaker 1: yes except Ran Paul, and Ran Paul pretty much opposes
- 33:43Speaker 1: all sanctions, so I got all Republicans but Rand and
- 33:47Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, six Democrats voted with So it
- 33:53Speaker 1: was fifty five to forty fours, a big bipartisan majority.
- 33:56Speaker 1: We're not living in a particularly bipartisan era, so that
- 34:00Speaker 1: it's impressive. Now, fifty five is not sixty, and so
- 34:05Speaker 1: the Democrats fellowbustered and said, you don't have sixty, you
- 34:07Speaker 1: don't get the passage. Now here's another interesting thing. There
- 34:13Speaker 1: are a number of Democrats who are in vulnerable elections,
- 34:16Speaker 1: who are the ballot in November. Every single Democrat in
- 34:21Speaker 1: a vulnerable election in November voted with me. So Mark
- 34:27Speaker 1: Kelly and Arizona voted for my sanctions on Russia. Catherine
- 34:31Speaker 1: Cortez Masto Nevada voted for my sanctions in Nevada on Russia.
- 34:36Speaker 1: Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire voted for my sanctions against Russia.
- 34:41Speaker 1: Even Raphael Warnock, one of the most liberal senators in
- 34:44Speaker 1: the Senate, voted for my sanctions against Russia because he
- 34:48Speaker 1: didn't want to tell the voters of Georgia November. Yeah,
- 34:52Speaker 1: I voted to support Putin because I'm a Democrat. We
- 34:57Speaker 1: got six Democrats you know who he didn't get Mansion
- 35:00Speaker 1: or Cinema. Huh, they're doing enough. So what was amazing
- 35:07Speaker 1: the day of the vote, Biden came to the Capitol.
- 35:11Speaker 1: He had lunch with all the Democratic senators the day
- 35:15Speaker 1: of the vote, and Joe Biden was personally lobbying the
- 35:19Speaker 1: Democratic senators to vote against Cruz's sanctions on Russia. And
- 35:24Speaker 1: so it's actually I mean, you said it tongue in cheek,
- 35:26Speaker 1: but it's actually true. I just think Mansion and Cinema
- 35:28Speaker 1: felt they couldn't stand up to the White House and
- 35:31Speaker 1: anything else. They were getting so pounded on everything else,
- 35:34Speaker 1: you've killed your legislative agenda. So we'll let you. And look,
- 35:38Speaker 1: I didn't like that they voted no, but but I'll
- 35:40Speaker 1: give them a mulligan because they are saving the republic
- 35:43Speaker 1: on other sides. But the Democrats are literally, this is
- 35:49Speaker 1: not hyperbole. They are literally acquiescing in Russia, wiping Ukraine
- 35:55Speaker 1: off them. So there you might say they are thumbing
- 35:57Speaker 1: their nose at Ukraine, which raises one I know, we
- 36:01Speaker 1: have to let you get to the Senate to go vote,
- 36:04Speaker 1: but it does raise one very important story that involves
- 36:07Speaker 1: a victory and a loss. You won a basketball game,
- 36:12Speaker 1: you lost the use of your thumb. True enough, And
- 36:16Speaker 1: by the way, that's that's quite the segue. Um. Let
- 36:19Speaker 1: me just say, if the President of Yale ever sees
- 36:25Speaker 1: that segue, they will revoke your degree. They've been trying
- 36:27Speaker 1: for years. Well that's true that that that they would
- 36:31Speaker 1: provoke your degree for many other reasons before then. So
- 36:33Speaker 1: so that's probably the least least of your sins on
- 36:36Speaker 1: that front. So yeah, so I broke my thumb. Um,
- 36:39Speaker 1: I don't have a cast on, so I don't I've
- 36:41Speaker 1: got a splint, but you can take it off, okay.
- 36:43Speaker 1: So so I was playing, uh Friday, I play basketball
- 36:47Speaker 1: up twice a week, and so Friday, because Schumer doesn't
- 36:51Speaker 1: know how to run the Senate, we were still around,
- 36:53Speaker 1: and so I was playing Friday morning. Uh. And I
- 36:56Speaker 1: play a lot of times. Other senators play, but but
- 36:58Speaker 1: I play every week with my staff. We got some good,
- 37:01Speaker 1: good ball players. We've got a couple of guys who
- 37:03Speaker 1: played college basketball, a couple of guys who played college football.
- 37:06Speaker 1: So we're playing, and you actually haven't invited me to
- 37:09Speaker 1: this game. I did make sure I was busy that
- 37:12Speaker 1: day so that I did not humiliate myself on the court.
- 37:14Speaker 1: So I have joked that our game is more violent
- 37:18Speaker 1: than skillful, and and it is. I mean, we play
- 37:21Speaker 1: no blood, no foul, and there are regularly foul, so
- 37:24Speaker 1: so there is regularly blood. And so in this instance,
- 37:27Speaker 1: I was going up for a rebound and the culprit
- 37:32Speaker 1: is a guy who's a law clerk in our office.
- 37:34Speaker 1: You'll appreciate this as a New Yorker's name is Tony.
- 37:37Speaker 1: He's from New York. I imagine, um. He is a
- 37:41Speaker 1: great guy, hard working conservative law student, but but he's
- 37:47Speaker 1: from Brooklyn, and he played street ball in Brooklyn, and
- 37:51Speaker 1: he tony from Brooklyn in every respect. So I went
- 37:55Speaker 1: up for a rebound and he came down like a
- 37:58Speaker 1: ton of bricks on my thumb and broke it right
- 38:02Speaker 1: across there. So I had an X ray today, and
- 38:05Speaker 1: they're like, actually, yesterday, I had an X ray. They're like, yep,
- 38:07Speaker 1: that's that's a fracture. So you you lost a little
- 38:11Speaker 1: bit of the use of your thumb, but you did
- 38:13Speaker 1: win the game. I did, and we actually finished the
- 38:17Speaker 1: game terrifyingly enough, with the broken thumb. I tried to
- 38:23Speaker 1: shoot and I couldn't. I mean, it really hurt. This
- 38:26Speaker 1: is not quite at the level of Teddy Roosevelt getting
- 38:28Speaker 1: shot now finishing his speech, but by the same Prince.
- 38:31Speaker 1: But I will say this, I did score a layup
- 38:33Speaker 1: with a broken thumb because I could use my four fingers.
- 38:35Speaker 1: I just stuck my thumb off to the side and
- 38:37Speaker 1: did a little scoop layup. So so I even even
- 38:40Speaker 1: scored scored a bucket with a broken thumb. Physical lesson,
- 38:43Speaker 1: it's a political lesson. No pain, no gain. Sometimes you
- 38:46Speaker 1: have to make some sacrifices for the wins. I hope
- 38:48Speaker 1: you got a win tonight before we go. You might
- 38:52Speaker 1: remember on the one hundredth episode of Verdict that we
- 38:56Speaker 1: announced a contest, actually a series of contests, free merch
- 39:01Speaker 1: for people who commented, an opportunity maybe to come out
- 39:04Speaker 1: and see us some some other wonderful prizes as well. Well. Now,
- 39:08Speaker 1: because this is the two year anniversary of Verdict with
- 39:10Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, we have the winners because we all want
- 39:14Speaker 1: to celebrate. Here to introduce those winners, our very ownless wheeler,
- 39:19Speaker 1: thank you for having me. I don't like to think
- 39:20Speaker 1: of this as giving away free stuff though, this is
- 39:22Speaker 1: this is earned merchandise. Yes, these these our community here,
- 39:26Speaker 1: our community here earned this by being part of what
- 39:28Speaker 1: we do. This is oh yeah, we hit these benchmarks,
- 39:30Speaker 1: by the way, most of them, and we're going to
- 39:32Speaker 1: do the fun stuff. Anyway. We hit these benchmarks, which
- 39:34Speaker 1: is awesome. On YouTube, we said ten people commenting on
- 39:38Speaker 1: episode one hundred would get a free box of March
- 39:40Speaker 1: you know, the sweet cactus hat, the laptop stickers, the
- 39:43Speaker 1: T shirts. Fifteen hundred people commented, Wow, that's pretty good, right,
- 39:47Speaker 1: I think that's incredible. So here are the winners. Ken
- 39:49Speaker 1: Melbourne Junior. You won Metaveria, you want Stephan Ds, you
- 39:53Speaker 1: want Shelley Carter, you want Philip Paxton driving Fritz. I
- 39:57Speaker 1: assume that's a user name, right, Thomas Lusty, Doctor rig
- 40:00Speaker 1: Mark Erdman, Safe Spot, Andrew Clark, Megadeath till Death. Another
- 40:06Speaker 1: user name still counts Todd Cole, Mary Fleshman, and Cosmic Carosella.
- 40:11Speaker 1: These are the winners. By the way, if some parents
- 40:13Speaker 1: actually named their child little Megadeath, yeah, he or she
- 40:16Speaker 1: may be very upset right now. I think that's slavic.
- 40:20Speaker 1: So we will reach out to each and every one
- 40:22Speaker 1: of you to give you your merch here, and I
- 40:25Speaker 1: want to see pictures. I want to see pictures of
- 40:27Speaker 1: every day wearing this merch. So that's on YouTube. Then
- 40:30Speaker 1: on Verdict Plus this this was maybe the most fun one.
- 40:33Speaker 1: We said that a member of Verdict plus the Verdict
- 40:36Speaker 1: plus community will win an all access trip to come
- 40:39Speaker 1: and see us on the road on college campuses. Well,
- 40:41Speaker 1: we have a winner here. This is an Italian name, Michael.
- 40:43Speaker 1: You can tell me if I'm butchering this puzzoli, let
- 40:46Speaker 1: me see it. I would say at your pronunciation was beautiful,
- 40:52Speaker 1: I would say me a little more you know you
- 40:55Speaker 1: get the face down putsually. Well, mister you have won
- 41:02Speaker 1: a trip to see Verdict live. That's pretty awesome. We
- 41:05Speaker 1: will reach out to you and then, um, this is
- 41:06Speaker 1: my favorite one and I am going to buy us
- 41:08Speaker 1: this poll. We are going to post this on the
- 41:11Speaker 1: Verdict plus community that's Verdict with Ted Cruise dot Com
- 41:14Speaker 1: slash plus because everyone needs to vote in this. For
- 41:18Speaker 1: this upcoming year, there's going to be a community based
- 41:22Speaker 1: competition or Shenanigans if you will, and this is what
- 41:25Speaker 1: you're going to vote on. I'm not taking part in this.
- 41:27Speaker 1: I'm just going to enjoy it. You guys will have
- 41:28Speaker 1: to do this. Should for an episode of Verdict The
- 41:31Speaker 1: Senator where a braves Jersey, it's option number one, Option
- 41:34Speaker 1: number two. Should there be an arm wrestling match between
- 41:36Speaker 1: Michael and the Senator. I think we all know how
- 41:39Speaker 1: that would end. Um Should the Real Truth Cactus be
- 41:42Speaker 1: a special guest on the show. I think that's a
- 41:44Speaker 1: good option. Or should there be a throwdown episode trash
- 41:47Speaker 1: Talking Yell versus Princeton that could go on for hours.
- 41:51Speaker 1: That could go on for hours. So this poll will
- 41:53Speaker 1: be posted on again Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com
- 41:55Speaker 1: slash plus Um, can I tell you which one? I
- 41:57Speaker 1: want to see? Which one? Well, I'm gonna vote for
- 41:59Speaker 1: the arm You're going to vote for the art and
- 42:01Speaker 1: who do you think is gonna win? Michael, don't ask
- 42:04Speaker 1: questions you don't want to know the answer to polite
- 42:06Speaker 1: you can vote in it now. Look, Michael may now
- 42:08Speaker 1: be engaged. Now that I have a broken song. He
- 42:11Speaker 1: may suddenly feel true, he sees an advantage. Providence has
- 42:16Speaker 1: smiled upon me. Thank you very much. Well, congratulations to
- 42:19Speaker 1: all of the winners. Thank you to everyone who has
- 42:21Speaker 1: tuned in for two years. Two years a Verdict. It's wonderful.
- 42:26Speaker 1: We look forward to a whole lot more episodes with you,
- 42:29Speaker 1: and we look forward to arm wrestling. I'm Michael Knowles.
- 42:32Speaker 1: This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict
- 42:44Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs,
- 42:46Speaker 1: Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to
- 42:50Speaker 1: supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In
- 42:55Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to
- 42:58Speaker 1: donate to conservative can In did its running for Congress
- 43:01Speaker 1: and helped the Republican Party across the nation