Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / 14 Months to Slow the Spread ft. Steve Deace
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I never thought that I would care about who ascended
- 0:03Speaker 1: to the number three party leadership position in the House,
- 0:08Speaker 1: but believe it or not, the House Conference chair race
- 0:13Speaker 1: seems to signal a whole lot about the future of
- 0:16Speaker 1: the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Liz Cheney is out,
- 0:20Speaker 1: at least a panic is in. I'm Michael Knowles. This
- 0:22Speaker 1: is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with
- 0:31Speaker 1: Ted Cruz, Senator. Usually we talk about very heavy things
- 0:36Speaker 1: from the Senate, from the upper Chamber on this show.
- 0:40Speaker 1: Now we've got to talk about the lower chamber. I
- 0:42Speaker 1: hate to bring the tone down here, but this race,
- 0:45Speaker 1: in an ordinary year, this would be sort of a
- 0:47Speaker 1: nothing story has come to dominate the news cycle, and
- 0:50Speaker 1: it's the left is making a lot of hay out
- 0:52Speaker 1: of it because there's infighting in the GOP, so they
- 0:54Speaker 1: like that. But Republicans are paying a lot of attention too,
- 0:57Speaker 1: I think, because there's a big split here for the
- 1:00Speaker 1: future of the party. You had Liz Cheney was in
- 1:02Speaker 1: the position, and she spent a lot of her time
- 1:04Speaker 1: bashing conservatives in the Washington Post and other left wing outlets.
- 1:08Speaker 1: Then you had at least Stephanic who has a more
- 1:11Speaker 1: liberal voting record actually than Cheney, but she, I guess,
- 1:15Speaker 1: was more loyal to Donald Trump, and she was nicer
- 1:17Speaker 1: to the conservative base. You then had Chip Roy, who
- 1:20Speaker 1: I seem to recall you note quite well, indeed very
- 1:23Speaker 1: a very conservative member of the House. He was challenging
- 1:26Speaker 1: Stephanic for the position. It's a little insider baseball, but
- 1:29Speaker 1: I think that this probably could have some big effects
- 1:31Speaker 1: on the party. You know, yes, and no, I actually
- 1:34Speaker 1: don't think it's that big a deal going forward. I
- 1:37Speaker 1: think the press wants to turn it into World War
- 1:40Speaker 1: three because their favorite topic is Republicans in fight wars.
- 1:44Speaker 1: And it's also the only way Democrats can keep the
- 1:47Speaker 1: House in twenty twenty two is if we have a
- 1:50Speaker 1: civil war on the Republican side. If we don't have
- 1:53Speaker 1: a civil war, I think we are very likely to
- 1:55Speaker 1: take the House in twenty two, and I think we've
- 1:56Speaker 1: got a decent shot at taking the Senate. Look what
- 2:00Speaker 1: the House Republican Conference did. It had to do. Uh,
- 2:04Speaker 1: Liz Cheney could no longer be in a leadership role
- 2:07Speaker 1: because she had she'd lost it. Yeah. I actually liked Liz.
- 2:11Speaker 1: I get along perfectly fine with Liz. I don't agree
- 2:14Speaker 1: with her on everything. You know, when it comes to
- 2:15Speaker 1: foreign policy, Um, she's much more of a neocon. She's
- 2:19Speaker 1: she's willing to send the Marines at the drop of
- 2:23Speaker 1: a hat. I disagree with her on that one. You look,
- 2:27Speaker 1: she believes that sincerely. I just I think she's wrong. Um,
- 2:33Speaker 1: but what caused this? So she hates Trump and she
- 2:37Speaker 1: had criticized Trump, she voted doing peach Trump. And then
- 2:39Speaker 1: there was another effort to like vote her out a
- 2:43Speaker 1: couple of months ago, and it failed. It failed resoundingly.
- 2:45Speaker 1: It failed. I think two to one that I remember
- 2:47Speaker 1: that had she just shut up, she would have been fine.
- 2:52Speaker 1: It actually would have been very simple for her to say,
- 2:56Speaker 1: I've said everything I'm going to say on that, I
- 2:58Speaker 1: got nothing more to say, and she would still be
- 3:01Speaker 1: Republican conference chare. They had a vote on it two
- 3:04Speaker 1: to one. What was weird as she decided that it
- 3:07Speaker 1: was somehow made sense to spend every day attacking all
- 3:13Speaker 1: of the other Republicans. Do you think was this an
- 3:14Speaker 1: accident that her emotions ran away with her or do
- 3:18Speaker 1: you think this was strategic? No? I think I think
- 3:21Speaker 1: she was on tilt. Look if someone who is supposed
- 3:24Speaker 1: to be your leader, is attacking every other member of
- 3:27Speaker 1: the party every day. At some point, it's like, all right, enough, already,
- 3:31Speaker 1: you can't be our leader. Like you can have your views,
- 3:34Speaker 1: but you ain't leading us if you're if you say
- 3:37Speaker 1: we suck every day long like and so she forced
- 3:40Speaker 1: Republicans to vote route. I don't think it's indicative of
- 3:44Speaker 1: a broader civil war because I actually think Lizz's views
- 3:47Speaker 1: are really a tiny fraction of the party because you
- 3:52Speaker 1: hear this in the media, and I'm you know, us
- 3:55Speaker 1: media all hates Trump, and so if Liz hates Trump too,
- 3:58Speaker 1: she's in the majority position. Look, a couple of weeks ago,
- 4:02Speaker 1: Liz had a comment blasting me and saying that that that,
- 4:06Speaker 1: you know, I should be ineligible for support, and it
- 4:09Speaker 1: was funny. I actually my press team said, okay, what
- 4:12Speaker 1: kind of what kind of comment should you make on this?
- 4:17Speaker 1: And we sort of talked back and forth what sort
- 4:19Speaker 1: of comment I should give, And like I said, I
- 4:22Speaker 1: like Liz, I don't have personal animosity, and so the
- 4:24Speaker 1: comment that I came up with, as I said, you know,
- 4:28Speaker 1: I think I'll just say, well, you know, I think
- 4:30Speaker 1: she has a very promising future as an MSNBC contributor.
- 4:35Speaker 1: Beyond this intra political house race, you know, or the
- 4:38Speaker 1: meta political I guess, the politics of politics. I'm interested
- 4:41Speaker 1: in some of these other races around the country because
- 4:43Speaker 1: a lot of us are looking at twenty twenty two
- 4:45Speaker 1: and then ultimately at twenty twenty four. You've been involved,
- 4:49Speaker 1: I mean, you've made big endorsements. There have been races
- 4:51Speaker 1: that have taken place. Where does the party stand when
- 4:55Speaker 1: we're actually facing the voters. Look, I think we're in
- 4:59Speaker 1: a very good position. I told you, I believe twenty
- 5:01Speaker 1: twenty two is going to be a very good election.
- 5:03Speaker 1: There's actually an earlier moment than that, which is you've
- 5:06Speaker 1: got a couple of states that have off cycle elections,
- 5:09Speaker 1: and so Virginia, for example, Virginia's electing a new governor
- 5:13Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. And if you look historically, the
- 5:18Speaker 1: last time you had a Democratic White House, a Democratic
- 5:22Speaker 1: House of Representatives, and a Democratic Senate was two thousand
- 5:26Speaker 1: and eight. Barack Obama was elected with Democrat majorities of
- 5:29Speaker 1: both houses. They passed a radical left wing agenda two
- 5:34Speaker 1: thousand and nine. The next year, Virginia elected a Republican
- 5:37Speaker 1: as governor. Bob McDonnell, and Virginia is often a Canarian
- 5:41Speaker 1: a coal mine because it's the first chance voters get
- 5:44Speaker 1: to express their views on where things are going in Washington.
- 5:49Speaker 1: I think Biden, Schubern Pelosi are going radically left, and
- 5:53Speaker 1: I think Virginia we've got a very good shot at
- 5:56Speaker 1: electing a governor. So the Republican nominee is a guy
- 5:59Speaker 1: named Glenn Yonkin. Glenn is a friend of mine. So
- 6:03Speaker 1: I endorsed Glen in the primary, and I campaigned with him.
- 6:06Speaker 1: So last week I was on the road with Glenn.
- 6:08Speaker 1: Did I don't know, seven or eight rallies all over
- 6:10Speaker 1: the state. Interesting the way Virginia picks it's governor. They
- 6:16Speaker 1: did for a modified convention where they had delegates. They
- 6:20Speaker 1: had about fifty thousand people who were delegates to a convention,
- 6:25Speaker 1: and it was a distributed virtual convention sort of a
- 6:28Speaker 1: COVID thing was weird. So it wasn't a primary, but
- 6:32Speaker 1: it wasn't like an in person convention. So it was
- 6:36Speaker 1: a strange election to campaign because you basically got fifty
- 6:41Speaker 1: thousand people who were eligible to vote. Who are the
- 6:43Speaker 1: people who have registered to be delegates? Okay, And in
- 6:47Speaker 1: the rallies. I mean, we had the two days of rallies.
- 6:50Speaker 1: We had several thousand people come out, and I think
- 6:53Speaker 1: we ended up seeing in person in those two days
- 6:57Speaker 1: probably about ten percent of the delegates who ended up voting.
- 7:00Speaker 1: Some people are saying, I sound like president from there.
- 7:03Speaker 1: A lot of people are saying everybody's talking. Some people
- 7:05Speaker 1: are saying that your endorsement was decisive certainly for the
- 7:10Speaker 1: people that came to the rallies. I think to many
- 7:14Speaker 1: of them that was persuasive. And I do think my
- 7:16Speaker 1: going and barnstorming with him also helped him bring out
- 7:19Speaker 1: a lot more people to the rallies. So there's sort
- 7:21Speaker 1: of a double you can drive, a narrative, you can communicate,
- 7:24Speaker 1: there's a you know, a vouching process of Okay, look,
- 7:29Speaker 1: I as a voter may not know so and so,
- 7:31Speaker 1: but but if I trust you and you know so
- 7:33Speaker 1: and so, that means something. And then I do think
- 7:38Speaker 1: the particularly in this sort of weird distributed convention getting
- 7:43Speaker 1: the people to come out to the rallies. I think
- 7:45Speaker 1: there were some people that came to the rallies that
- 7:47Speaker 1: were coming because they were supporters of mine, but they
- 7:51Speaker 1: saw Glenn and he's impressive, like when you see him
- 7:54Speaker 1: in person, He's an impressive guy. He's a likable guy.
- 7:59Speaker 1: And I suspect there's some people who came to the
- 8:02Speaker 1: rally not knowing if they were going to back him
- 8:04Speaker 1: or not. Who I think when they left decided they
- 8:07Speaker 1: were going to back Now, Senator, I want to talk
- 8:09Speaker 1: for a second about two weeks to slow the spread
- 8:11Speaker 1: turned into about fourteen months. But now it seems round
- 8:14Speaker 1: the other side there's been insanity the entire journey, and
- 8:18Speaker 1: the entire journey has also been marred by a consistent
- 8:21Speaker 1: refusal to listen to science, masked in a facade of science.
- 8:29Speaker 1: And our guests today, Steve Days, who is a dear friend,
- 8:32Speaker 1: who is a brilliant thinker, a brilliant writer, a fearless conservative,
- 8:38Speaker 1: has written a book. And so Steve, tell us about
- 8:43Speaker 1: your book. There are two things that are really hallmarks,
- 8:48Speaker 1: pillars of our healthcare system that the average American, if
- 8:52Speaker 1: they were faced with a serious healthcare decision in their
- 8:54Speaker 1: own lives, would be granted automatically, and they have been
- 8:58Speaker 1: denied via public policy collectively for the last year. The
- 9:01Speaker 1: first one is informed consent. You have a right to
- 9:05Speaker 1: consent to a treatment to know whether the treatment is
- 9:09Speaker 1: worse than the disease. That's been denied us. In fact,
- 9:13Speaker 1: in the last few days, ironically, a lot of the
- 9:16Speaker 1: data that people like me were called crackpots for disseminating
- 9:19Speaker 1: for the past year about masks and lockdowns and shutdowns
- 9:23Speaker 1: and social distancing numbers and where the six feet originated
- 9:27Speaker 1: from a student's term paper and all these other things.
- 9:30Speaker 1: It's funny just in the last couple of weeks, now
- 9:32Speaker 1: suddenly they want to confirm all these things because apparently
- 9:35Speaker 1: somebody's internal polling is really really bad. The only science
- 9:39Speaker 1: that evolves that fast, guys, is political science, if you
- 9:41Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. Okay, so that's the first thing
- 9:45Speaker 1: is informed consent. We were denied that. The second is
- 9:48Speaker 1: the right to a second opinion. I mean, somebody comes
- 9:50Speaker 1: to you and says, well, you've got a really terrible
- 9:53Speaker 1: mass on an appendage, and I've got to remove that
- 9:55Speaker 1: appendage so it doesn't spread to the rest of the body.
- 9:57Speaker 1: That might be true. Before you give up an appendage,
- 10:00Speaker 1: you're probably going to go get a second opinion because
- 10:02Speaker 1: you kind of like your appendages. And there have been
- 10:05Speaker 1: experts from the very beginning at some of the most
- 10:07Speaker 1: renowned centers of academia in the world, Oxford, number one
- 10:12Speaker 1: rated university in the Earth, Stanford, Harvard Jail, some of
- 10:17Speaker 1: the top rated universities in America that have had varying
- 10:20Speaker 1: opinions and contrarian opinions from a public policy standpoint on
- 10:24Speaker 1: how to deal with this pandemic, and they have been
- 10:27Speaker 1: almost exclusively ignored. In fact, recently, Governor DeSantis in Florida
- 10:32Speaker 1: hosted a panel with them, and that panel got banned
- 10:35Speaker 1: on YouTube because apparently some skinny gene wearing avocado toast
- 10:39Speaker 1: obsessed engineer at Facebook knows more about COVID nineteen than
- 10:43Speaker 1: doctor Martin Coldorf at Harvard, who designed the Bear's Incident
- 10:47Speaker 1: website for the CDC. That is the world in which
- 10:50Speaker 1: we live, and it's why we've kind of had this
- 10:53Speaker 1: hammer meets nail, ham fisted one size fits all authoritarian
- 10:57Speaker 1: and solution over the last year and set of solutions
- 11:00Speaker 1: that might have actually solved some things. So let's talk
- 11:04Speaker 1: about lockdowns, which was a Dracronian step that was imposed
- 11:08Speaker 1: across the country. What was the scientific basis for lockdown?
- 11:14Speaker 1: Does it make any sense that we saw the entire
- 11:17Speaker 1: country voluntarily shut down and destroy trillions of dollars of value,
- 11:22Speaker 1: destroyed people's lives. What was the basis for this? There
- 11:27Speaker 1: was not really the notion of quarantining the healthy. I mean,
- 11:31Speaker 1: this has never been done in human history, quarantining the
- 11:34Speaker 1: healthy during a pandemic, during an outbreak. We did this
- 11:37Speaker 1: for two reasons. One, this was experimented. This was an
- 11:40Speaker 1: experiment that came from a student term paper that somehow
- 11:43Speaker 1: made its way into some halls of science late in
- 11:46Speaker 1: the Bush administration George W. Bush. They looked at it
- 11:49Speaker 1: and thought, wow, that's stupid. It's never going to work,
- 11:52Speaker 1: And somehow we ended up doing it last year. And
- 11:55Speaker 1: then a lot of this also came from the Imperial
- 11:58Speaker 1: College model that was really on March sixteenth of last year,
- 12:02Speaker 1: which says, by the way, that it doesn't know for
- 12:04Speaker 1: certain how coronavirus is spread. Now, I don't know, man,
- 12:08Speaker 1: I didn't stay on a holiday and at Express last night.
- 12:11Speaker 1: But I kind of think that when your model on
- 12:13Speaker 1: transmission of a virus admits it doesn't know how a
- 12:15Speaker 1: virus is transmitted, maybe that's a problem. Your model is
- 12:18Speaker 1: a problem. Okay, But it said if we didn't do
- 12:21Speaker 1: these social distancing matter issues. If we did not do
- 12:24Speaker 1: these things where we put people away for a period
- 12:27Speaker 1: of a few months and then let them come back out,
- 12:29Speaker 1: and then if they did, the virus return. So we'd
- 12:32Speaker 1: have to do waves and waves of these lockdowns and
- 12:34Speaker 1: reopenings over the course of several years. That that's because
- 12:39Speaker 1: millions and millions of people would die if we didn't
- 12:41Speaker 1: do it. Here's the problem with why this all didn't work,
- 12:45Speaker 1: because it all began from a flawed assumption. Well, really
- 12:48Speaker 1: a couple of flawed assumptions. Number one, that the Chinese
- 12:51Speaker 1: were telling the truth. That was a flawed assumption. These
- 12:54Speaker 1: were I'm really shocked that the nation that was faced
- 12:57Speaker 1: with its first open trade war from the United States
- 13:00Speaker 1: in decades and was on the heels of unprecedented civil
- 13:04Speaker 1: unrest in its chief financial district of Hong Kong when
- 13:07Speaker 1: a virus broke out, thought the best thing for the
- 13:09Speaker 1: rest of the world to do was to economically shut down.
- 13:13Speaker 1: What a weird coincidence. So we didn't have Wuhan for luck,
- 13:15Speaker 1: we'd have no luck at all, all right, So we
- 13:17Speaker 1: couldn't trust the Chinese. That's number one. These were all
- 13:19Speaker 1: their solutions, but then number two because we didn't understand
- 13:23Speaker 1: that the virus was primarily as airborne spread contagion. That's
- 13:27Speaker 1: why that's why there's no real outdoor spread. That's why
- 13:30Speaker 1: you're loose fitting cloth masks don't work. We heard about
- 13:33Speaker 1: droplets and fomites for months and months and months, when
- 13:37Speaker 1: in reality it is an airborne contagion. Steve, I want
- 13:40Speaker 1: to talk for a second about the subtitle of the book.
- 13:43Speaker 1: The title is The Faucian Bargain, but the subtitle refers
- 13:47Speaker 1: to the most powerful and dangerous bureaucrat in American history.
- 13:52Speaker 1: We're sitting here with the United States Senator, with a legislator.
- 13:56Speaker 1: I thought that the way laws were made in this country,
- 13:59Speaker 1: correct me if i'm was that the legislators legislate and
- 14:02Speaker 1: the executive, who is also elected and forces the law.
- 14:06Speaker 1: But somehow we've gotten into this position where these technocrats,
- 14:09Speaker 1: these eggheads, are governing the country and have much more
- 14:13Speaker 1: power than our elected officials. You apparently watched the same
- 14:16Speaker 1: Schoolhouse Rock Michael that I did growing up. I'm just
- 14:19Speaker 1: a Capitol hill, right, But you know it's funny. As
- 14:22Speaker 1: Congressman Thomas Massey was tweeting yesterday that he was on
- 14:25Speaker 1: a domestic flight and the flight attendant came out and said,
- 14:28Speaker 1: under federal law, you must wear your mask at all times.
- 14:31Speaker 1: And Massey's like, wait a minute, I'm the guy. I'm
- 14:33Speaker 1: the only guy on this plane that makes laws. I
- 14:35Speaker 1: don't ever remember voting on any social law, all right,
- 14:38Speaker 1: But that's one of the main points we raise at
- 14:40Speaker 1: the very beginning of the book. Michael is in the
- 14:42Speaker 1: introduction that even though there's a singular figure here in
- 14:46Speaker 1: Anthony Fauci, he has been the point person on this
- 14:49Speaker 1: all along. The reality is he's eighty. If he had
- 14:52Speaker 1: retired at seventy five seventy like a lot of other
- 14:54Speaker 1: Americans do, particularly ones looking at the pension that he's
- 14:57Speaker 1: got staring him in the face, it would have just
- 15:00Speaker 1: and somebody else that another creature would have emerged in
- 15:03Speaker 1: the black lagoon. He is pardon the theological punt here,
- 15:07Speaker 1: legion that this is what the technocratic administrative state produces.
- 15:11Speaker 1: It might have been Debbie Bedazzle your facield Burks instead,
- 15:15Speaker 1: or Francis Collins, who went from mapping the human genome
- 15:18Speaker 1: to being fully vaccinated and wearing masks outside, who who
- 15:22Speaker 1: knows who else. It would have been some other nameless,
- 15:25Speaker 1: faceless bureaucrat and no one else had ever heard of
- 15:27Speaker 1: until now. But this is the way that the system works.
- 15:30Speaker 1: We passed the buck of accountability. Well, these are what
- 15:33Speaker 1: our experts told us, These are what our technocrats told us,
- 15:36Speaker 1: This is what the bureaucrats told us. And then you
- 15:39Speaker 1: have no way of going at them. They're never elected.
- 15:41Speaker 1: Your elected officials washed their hands of it. Well, we
- 15:44Speaker 1: just did what the experts in the bureaucratic class told
- 15:46Speaker 1: us to do. And the and the and the notion
- 15:48Speaker 1: of government by the consent of the government. Michael is
- 15:51Speaker 1: just thrown, is just tossed aside. So if you write
- 15:54Speaker 1: a sequel to the book, and it's it's dacy and
- 15:57Speaker 1: bargain um. What should our leaders have done? If we
- 16:02Speaker 1: can go back in time and Steve Dass in charge,
- 16:08Speaker 1: the Wuhan virus begins, what should we have done? There's
- 16:12Speaker 1: there's two things I would have done if if I
- 16:15Speaker 1: were the oracle at Delphi and consulted in the matter.
- 16:19Speaker 1: The first is to me, I don't believe the fifteen
- 16:22Speaker 1: days to flatten the curve. I think it was I
- 16:24Speaker 1: wouldn't have made that decision, but I think it's an
- 16:26Speaker 1: understandable decision. I think it's like in a basketball game
- 16:29Speaker 1: when the other team's on a scoring run and your
- 16:31Speaker 1: coach calls the time out to thwart their momentum. And
- 16:35Speaker 1: so I think, Hey, we're getting all this unprecedented heat pressure.
- 16:38Speaker 1: Don't know if we can trust what China is telling us.
- 16:40Speaker 1: Let's just get it too, baby, and let's just set
- 16:42Speaker 1: this one out for a couple of weeks and see
- 16:43Speaker 1: what we're dealing with. The thirty days to slow the spread,
- 16:47Speaker 1: I believe was the absolute worst decision in the history
- 16:50Speaker 1: of the US presidency because the entire narrative was lost
- 16:54Speaker 1: from there during the fifteen days. That's when President Trump
- 16:58Speaker 1: and his advisors should have brought in John Ian Edis
- 17:01Speaker 1: from Stanford. Scott Atlas from Stanford, Jay I can never
- 17:04Speaker 1: pronounce his last name correctly from Stanford, sat Thank you, Michael,
- 17:09Speaker 1: appreciate it for the solid bring in Sinatra Gupta from Oxford,
- 17:14Speaker 1: members of the Center for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford,
- 17:18Speaker 1: Scientists from Carnegie Mellon, doctor Katz from Heart from Yale,
- 17:21Speaker 1: doctor Risch from Yale, doctor Colder from Harvard. Put him
- 17:24Speaker 1: in a room with Debbie Burke's put him in a
- 17:27Speaker 1: room with Francis Collins at nih and Anthony Fauci. Put
- 17:31Speaker 1: all those people in a room, put him on camera.
- 17:33Speaker 1: It's a steel cage match of expertise. There's wisdom in
- 17:37Speaker 1: a multitude of council Let them put their heads together,
- 17:39Speaker 1: let them bounce ideas off of one another. We never
- 17:42Speaker 1: did that. We never consulted a second opinion, and essentially
- 17:46Speaker 1: allowed Anthony Fauci to use the Trump White House as
- 17:50Speaker 1: his ascendency to potentate status, unassailable status. Well, and Steve,
- 17:55Speaker 1: you'll recall how a number of weeks ago, I had
- 17:59Speaker 1: reporters in Washington freaking out because I wasn't wearing a
- 18:04Speaker 1: mask while doing a press conference and talking to a
- 18:06Speaker 1: TV camera, And this one reporter in particular, through a fit,
- 18:12Speaker 1: I observed, Look, everyone here has been vaccinated. What why
- 18:16Speaker 1: you know? I watched the CDC's announcement last week, and
- 18:22Speaker 1: in particular their explanation on Sunday that the science has evolved.
- 18:30Speaker 1: Is it new science that vaccines work? Or was this
- 18:35Speaker 1: always Look, I haven't been wearing a mask for a
- 18:39Speaker 1: lot of weeks. On the Senate floor ever since I
- 18:41Speaker 1: got vaccinated. I'm like, Okay, look, I believe in science,
- 18:44Speaker 1: I have a vaccine. What the hell am I wearing
- 18:46Speaker 1: a mask for? And yet there were only as of
- 18:52Speaker 1: last week, there were only four senators not wearing mask.
- 18:54Speaker 1: There was Rand Paul who hasn't worn one throughout it.
- 18:58Speaker 1: I was the second, and I haven't worned a asked
- 19:00Speaker 1: for well over a month now after I got vaccinated.
- 19:04Speaker 1: Roger Marshall, another medical doctor, was the third who didn't
- 19:07Speaker 1: wear a mask, and actually, just starting last week, jim
- 19:09Speaker 1: risch roma Iawa became the fourth, and he finally said,
- 19:12Speaker 1: all right, to hell with it, I'm taking my mask off.
- 19:14Speaker 1: I gotta say yesterday, after the CDC announcement, I walked
- 19:18Speaker 1: onto the Senate floor and two thirds of the people
- 19:20Speaker 1: are maskless. Chuck Schumer is maskless. And I just stood
- 19:24Speaker 1: there and basked in the freedom. You know, we had
- 19:28Speaker 1: Joe Biden's you know, pseudo State of the Union address
- 19:32Speaker 1: where everyone wore a mask in a chamber where everyone
- 19:35Speaker 1: there had been vaccinated. Is this a new evolution of
- 19:40Speaker 1: science that vaccines work? Or was the CDC full of
- 19:44Speaker 1: crap when they said people who are vaccinated should wear
- 19:47Speaker 1: nineteen masks and be in an isolation Champe. Well, you see,
- 19:50Speaker 1: it's quite clear. I think it gets to Steve's subtitle here,
- 19:55Speaker 1: no science changed, but what changed were the statements from
- 19:57Speaker 1: these bureaucrats, these very power bureaucrats, and then everybody, including
- 20:02Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, fall in line. I suppose we can be
- 20:06Speaker 1: happy in the short run that we get to take
- 20:07Speaker 1: the mask off, we get to breathe the sweet air
- 20:09Speaker 1: of freedom, at least to some degree. But to your point, Senator,
- 20:13Speaker 1: and Steve to your book, we may well see a
- 20:15Speaker 1: sequel of this soon, So can we hold on to
- 20:18Speaker 1: our freedom? And I will note there at least some
- 20:20Speaker 1: of my Democratic colleagues who I think should keep wearing
- 20:23Speaker 1: the mask, and if only they could tighten it a
- 20:27Speaker 1: little bit, because some of their words are still getting out.
- 20:29Speaker 1: And if we get just tightened those masks, that really
- 20:31Speaker 1: would be a public service, you know. On that very
- 20:33Speaker 1: important medical advice, I believe we need to leave it there, gentlemen,
- 20:36Speaker 1: but I strongly recommend that everybody go out and get
- 20:40Speaker 1: the Faucian bargain, not only because you will learn a lot,
- 20:43Speaker 1: not only because it's very important as a political matter,
- 20:46Speaker 1: but also because it's a very funny title. Steve, thank
- 20:49Speaker 1: you so much for being here, Senator. We've only got
- 20:52Speaker 1: a minator two left, but I cannot let you go
- 20:54Speaker 1: without bringing up this mail bag question. I think it's
- 20:56Speaker 1: very important. And you know, we're talking about all sorts
- 21:00Speaker 1: of politics and the politics of politics and this insider
- 21:03Speaker 1: baseball stuff. So if you think that the number three
- 21:06Speaker 1: position in the House doesn't matter, let's talk about the
- 21:10Speaker 1: Prince of England. This is a question from a Carl
- 21:14Speaker 1: Carl wants to know. Senator Cruz, would you please explain
- 21:19Speaker 1: to the limey overseas how the First Amendment is most
- 21:24Speaker 1: certainly not bonkers. Thank you love the show, Carl. Yeah,
- 21:31Speaker 1: that piss me off. For those who don't know, Prince
- 21:33Speaker 1: Harry is even still a Prince the erstwhile the sometime
- 21:36Speaker 1: Prince the artist formerly known as Prince Harry called the
- 21:40Speaker 1: First Amendment bonkers in an interview. Yeah, he kind of
- 21:45Speaker 1: reminded me of King George and Hamilton as as sort
- 21:51Speaker 1: of this foppish knitwit singing to the colonies. You'll be back,
- 21:56Speaker 1: you'll be back. Please contain a little bit of I
- 22:00Speaker 1: got phone in front of you. That's only for the
- 22:01Speaker 1: subscribers that we need to have subscribers that that that's
- 22:05Speaker 1: worth talking about. Well, if the pitch is that they
- 22:07Speaker 1: get to see me do a soft shoe, I don't
- 22:09Speaker 1: know that that's going to be the strongest sales pitch,
- 22:11Speaker 1: but yes, it would be great too. So would you
- 22:14Speaker 1: do it in full costume of King George? Well, that's
- 22:16Speaker 1: the only way I would. Good, it's good, good, I'm glad. Look,
- 22:19Speaker 1: I mean, Prince Harry, I don't care if you're here.
- 22:23Speaker 1: I actually like the whole Megan Markle thing. I find
- 22:27Speaker 1: it difficult to find something I care less about, so listen,
- 22:31Speaker 1: I don't I don't necessarily fault the guy for saying
- 22:33Speaker 1: I want out. Fine, I you know, okay, you want out,
- 22:36Speaker 1: but don't be a pretentious leftist knitwit. And if you
- 22:40Speaker 1: do come to our country, fine, you want to come
- 22:41Speaker 1: to our country, great, Like, don't don't have such an arrogant,
- 22:46Speaker 1: elitist condescension to this country that you don't bother to
- 22:49Speaker 1: understand anything we're about. Um, he's ridiculing the Constitution and
- 22:55Speaker 1: Bill of Rights, and I get that that just don't
- 23:00Speaker 1: believe in free speech, that that they want government control,
- 23:03Speaker 1: because you know what, it would be really nice, I'm
- 23:06Speaker 1: sure from his perspective, if he could silence anyone from criticizing,
- 23:10Speaker 1: of course, but that's not the way it works. But
- 23:14Speaker 1: freedom is a powerful thing. And by the way, the
- 23:16Speaker 1: last British monarch who said you can't have freedom, we
- 23:19Speaker 1: threw their tea in a harbor and kick their ass
- 23:20Speaker 1: in a war, right right, And there is something to it.
- 23:23Speaker 1: I guess there actually is a bit of a through
- 23:25Speaker 1: line when we're talking about the house race or other
- 23:27Speaker 1: races around the country, or even Prince Harry, which is
- 23:30Speaker 1: there's something very unseemly about this ingratitude, you know, to
- 23:35Speaker 1: your family, to your adoptive country, to this great political
- 23:39Speaker 1: system that's given you a lot of rights, to your constituents,
- 23:41Speaker 1: that to your your words, that condescension, that arrogance, that
- 23:45Speaker 1: elitism is really whatever the future is for the Conservative movement,
- 23:50Speaker 1: for the Republican Party, for our politics, that ain't it.
- 23:53Speaker 1: If that is the future, then count me out. I
- 23:55Speaker 1: want to be out of that. But of course we're
- 23:57Speaker 1: going to see how that future is going to break,
- 24:00Speaker 1: not just in the Republican leadership, but in these races.
- 24:03Speaker 1: Twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and then ultimately twenty
- 24:06Speaker 1: twenty four, but we'll have to I suppose hold it
- 24:09Speaker 1: there for now. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with
- 24:12Speaker 1: Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is
- 24:24Speaker 1: being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack,
- 24:27Speaker 1: a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations,
- 24:32Speaker 1: and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs
- 24:35Speaker 1: Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates
- 24:39Speaker 1: running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.