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Transcript

The Meme Gurus · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Markets are going crazy, as the meme gurus over at
0:04
Speaker 1: Reddit dot com confound the entire financial and regulatory establishment.
0:10
Speaker 1: But the establishment is pushing back big tech, big government,
0:14
Speaker 1: big corporate America, all coming back to squeeze the little guy.
0:18
Speaker 1: We'll get into what it all means. This is Verdict
0:20
Speaker 1: with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict. I'm Michael Knowles.
0:29
Speaker 1: I am joined by the nefarious, infamous murderer himself, Ted Cruz.
0:36
Speaker 1: We have got some very very exciting news. After so
0:40
Speaker 1: long of being locked down, being kept apart, we're taking
0:44
Speaker 1: Verdict on the road. We will be at yaff's Freedom
0:47
Speaker 1: Conference in Miami Friday, February fifth, eight pm Eastern. If
0:53
Speaker 1: you're in Miami, I hope that we'll see you there.
0:55
Speaker 1: Even if you're not in Miami, we will get to
0:57
Speaker 1: speak with you. We will be taking your questions live
0:59
Speaker 1: through the YAFF YouTube channel, So if you want to
1:02
Speaker 1: submit a question and have it answered in real time,
1:04
Speaker 1: go to YouTube dot com slash yaff TV. We have
1:09
Speaker 1: been talking about a whole lot of things, but there's
1:11
Speaker 1: so much more to get to. Senator, what are we
1:13
Speaker 1: going to talk about? Well, the best thing about Miami
1:16
Speaker 1: is that we'll be with with real, live human beings
1:18
Speaker 1: out of the COVID caves to which we've all been sent.
1:23
Speaker 1: You had to flee the state of California to actually
1:25
Speaker 1: encounter other human beings, and so it'll be good to
1:28
Speaker 1: be in Florida, an actual state that is open and
1:31
Speaker 1: operating with with live, liberty loving human beings. And apparently
1:36
Speaker 1: I will continue my murderous rampage down in Miami. Yet
1:40
Speaker 1: you know, ever since northern California in the sixties, uh,
1:44
Speaker 1: you know, you know, I've had a proclivity to to
1:47
Speaker 1: be to mass murder, and so so we'll see if
1:49
Speaker 1: that continues. You got that again. This actually the most
1:53
Speaker 1: recent accusation of your murderous tendencies. It came in response
1:58
Speaker 1: to this this game style wild stock market question. I
2:02
Speaker 1: know some people are a little confused by what's been
2:05
Speaker 1: going on in the markets, and by some people, I
2:08
Speaker 1: especially mean me. I'm not exactly the most financially literate
2:12
Speaker 1: person here. What exactly is going on? There's as far
2:16
Speaker 1: as I can tell, there were these guys on Reddit
2:18
Speaker 1: who decided that there was a vulnerability at some big
2:21
Speaker 1: hedge fund and Wall Street had taken out certain positions
2:24
Speaker 1: and so they were going to make a bunch of
2:26
Speaker 1: money at Wall Street's expense, and then everything went haywire. Well,
2:30
Speaker 1: I think you actually understand it pretty well. Yeah. You
2:32
Speaker 1: had a couple of big Wall Street hedge funds that
2:35
Speaker 1: were short selling game Stop. So they were making bets
2:38
Speaker 1: in the market that game Stop was going to go down,
2:41
Speaker 1: and if the stock price went down, they made a
2:43
Speaker 1: bunch of money. And over at Reddit, at this this
2:48
Speaker 1: subreddit called Wall Street Bets, a bunch of folks got
2:51
Speaker 1: ticked off at that and said, I'll tell you what.
2:53
Speaker 1: Let's all go buy game Stop, and number one, we'll
2:56
Speaker 1: make money and drive the stock up, but number two,
2:58
Speaker 1: we'll put those other guys out of business. And miraculously
3:02
Speaker 1: they got enough people to do it that the stock
3:05
Speaker 1: started going up and going up and going up, and
3:07
Speaker 1: it went from like four bucks a share. So I
3:10
Speaker 1: think it's been as high as as as four hundred
3:12
Speaker 1: dollars a share. I mean, it's massive increase. I checked
3:16
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago. It's trading about three eighteen right now.
3:20
Speaker 1: That is enormous volatility. That did a number of things.
3:26
Speaker 1: Number One, for everyone that bought it four bucks, if
3:29
Speaker 1: you sold it four hundred, you made a lot of money.
3:32
Speaker 1: Number Two, the hedge funds that are betting on it
3:34
Speaker 1: going down, I mean they got caught with their shorts down,
3:38
Speaker 1: and they're really really unhappy. Because, Senator, when you when
3:41
Speaker 1: you take a short position, when when you're short selling
3:45
Speaker 1: a stock, you're betting against it, right, and so you know,
3:49
Speaker 1: if it goes down, you make money. But if it
3:51
Speaker 1: if it goes up, it's not like you get to
3:53
Speaker 1: just hold your position in mid air forever. You've you've
3:55
Speaker 1: got to start putting cash on the table as the
3:57
Speaker 1: stock goes up. So what has happened is if you're
4:00
Speaker 1: shorting it, you have sold the stock at a really
4:04
Speaker 1: low price, and you've already executed that transaction. You've sold it,
4:08
Speaker 1: and so if the stock goes up, you have to
4:10
Speaker 1: fulfill on that promise, which means you got to buy it.
4:13
Speaker 1: Let's say you sold it at three bucks, you might
4:16
Speaker 1: have to buy it at four hundred to be able
4:19
Speaker 1: to deliver on the stock you've sold at three. In
4:22
Speaker 1: other words, when when you're shorting a stock, you've got
4:26
Speaker 1: enormous vulnerability if there's a big delta on the upside.
4:31
Speaker 1: And so this look, this is chaotic. This is this
4:35
Speaker 1: is disconcerting. But then it took a really I got
4:40
Speaker 1: to say, screwed up step because a number of trading platforms,
4:44
Speaker 1: most prominently robin Hood. You know, robin Hood popularized itself
4:48
Speaker 1: as democratizing stock sales that you on your phone can
4:52
Speaker 1: participate with the big boys. Well suddenly robin Hood decided, no, no,
4:56
Speaker 1: you can't. The big boys they can still buy and sell.
5:00
Speaker 1: But but but you, the ordinary schmow. They prevented you from
5:06
Speaker 1: buying game Stop. You could still sell it, you just
5:09
Speaker 1: couldn't buy it. It's unbelievable. And I gotta admit a
5:14
Speaker 1: whole lot of folks, a whole lot of folks on
5:17
Speaker 1: the left, whole lot of folks on the right. I mean,
5:19
Speaker 1: we all said, all right, this is screwed up. If
5:21
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a rule, it ought to be a
5:23
Speaker 1: rule that applies to everyone. We shouldn't have one rule
5:26
Speaker 1: for rich, powerful connected hedge funds in Manhattan and a
5:30
Speaker 1: different rule for every other American that is trading your
5:34
Speaker 1: own money. And what robin Hood did is basically implemented
5:38
Speaker 1: that rule and said, all right, we're gonna screw the
5:40
Speaker 1: little guy and only favor the big guy, and that
5:43
Speaker 1: does seem to be getting the whole notion of robin
5:45
Speaker 1: Hood a little bit backwards, steal from the poor to
5:48
Speaker 1: give to the rich. Because one thing that has been
5:52
Speaker 1: so nauseating about this entire issue is when apps like
5:57
Speaker 1: robin Hood came in and protected Wall Street, basically protected
6:01
Speaker 1: these hedge funds. It was as though they were these vulnerable, innocent,
6:05
Speaker 1: poor little hedge funds, you know, and the mean old
6:08
Speaker 1: guys on Reddit were coming in, and of course that
6:10
Speaker 1: isn't the case when you've got a retail investor, an
6:13
Speaker 1: ordinary American coming in trying to play with the big guys.
6:16
Speaker 1: And then the big guys seemed to get this separate
6:18
Speaker 1: set of rules here. So the left and the right
6:21
Speaker 1: did kind of come together about this. They said, this
6:23
Speaker 1: seems a little bit rigged, guys, this seems unfair. AOC
6:28
Speaker 1: as far left to Congressman as you can get. She
6:30
Speaker 1: came out and said, we've got to look into this.
6:33
Speaker 1: You said, you know, stopped clock twice a day. I
6:37
Speaker 1: agree with this, and it could have been this moment
6:40
Speaker 1: of unity and healing and bipartisan support. And then she
6:45
Speaker 1: called you a murderer. Yeah, so so my tweet, I
6:48
Speaker 1: took her tweet where she said, this is messed up.
6:51
Speaker 1: This needs to be investigated. Congress needs to look into
6:53
Speaker 1: why Robin Hood shut down ordinary investors. But but hedge
6:57
Speaker 1: funds can continue to try to get out of there
7:00
Speaker 1: their short position and try to cover their rare ends.
7:03
Speaker 1: I read or tweet, and I was, you know, on
7:04
Speaker 1: my phone. I read it, and I said, huh, that's right.
7:06
Speaker 1: I'll be damned. That doesn't happen very often. And so
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Speaker 1: I retweeted her, and the sum total of my tweet
7:12
Speaker 1: was two words, fully agree. And then I had a
7:15
Speaker 1: finger pointing down. And by the way, no it was
7:17
Speaker 1: not the middle finger. It was the index finger pointing down.
7:21
Speaker 1: In an ordinary world, if someone retweets you and say
7:24
Speaker 1: they fully agree with you, that does suggest, gosh, maybe
7:28
Speaker 1: there's there's something to this. If people all across the
7:31
Speaker 1: ideological spectrum agree this is screwed up, maybe there's something
7:34
Speaker 1: to it. Her reaction was a little different. She sent
7:37
Speaker 1: a series of really unhinged tweets screaming that she's not
7:43
Speaker 1: willing to work with me. She'll work with other Republicans,
7:45
Speaker 1: although I'm not sure who or where. But but this
7:49
Speaker 1: theoretical Republican. But because I tried to have her murdered
7:54
Speaker 1: three weeks ago, she's not willing to work with me.
7:56
Speaker 1: And it's just a look the left right now, they're angry,
8:02
Speaker 1: they're filled with hate and and and they're they're exercising
8:08
Speaker 1: a primal scream. I mean, we are seeing ID right now,
8:12
Speaker 1: leftist ID and they're expressing hate. And it's like, all right, look,
8:17
Speaker 1: our country is really divided right now. I'd like to
8:19
Speaker 1: see us actually interact like human beings and adults and
8:23
Speaker 1: show some decency and actually address the real problems in
8:27
Speaker 1: the country. But on the other hand, you can just
8:29
Speaker 1: scream screw you, screw you, screw you, if if that's
8:32
Speaker 1: what makes you feel good. Well, this brings up a
8:34
Speaker 1: conversation that's happening right now among conservatives as as all
8:38
Speaker 1: of these kind of big powers, big big big or
8:41
Speaker 1: coming in and clamping down. It's making us rethink some things.
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Speaker 1: I think, because as you say, AOC says, I'm happy
8:47
Speaker 1: to work with Republicans, just not Ted Cruz and just
8:51
Speaker 1: not Donald Trump, and just not really any Republican who
8:54
Speaker 1: who could work with her. You know, it's just this
8:56
Speaker 1: hypothetical Republican. But but basically she's delegitimizing any Republican. You've
9:01
Speaker 1: heard this from other people on the left who say
9:03
Speaker 1: seventy five million Americans or Nazi, white supremacist whatever. And
9:08
Speaker 1: we on the right used to say things like, well,
9:11
Speaker 1: you know, Twitter as a private company, if they want
9:13
Speaker 1: to kick people off, build your own Twitter. You know,
9:15
Speaker 1: we want private people to be able to run their
9:18
Speaker 1: business however they want. But increasingly we're finding out the
9:22
Speaker 1: left won't let us build our own Twitter. We try
9:24
Speaker 1: to do that with an app called Parlor. They kicked
9:27
Speaker 1: it out of the app store, then they kicked it
9:28
Speaker 1: off the internet. Same thing. Here are we now if
9:32
Speaker 1: we're not allowed to invest in robin Hood or through
9:35
Speaker 1: robin Hood rather or really any of the other brokerage apps.
9:39
Speaker 1: Are we supposed to build our own broker dealer? Are
9:42
Speaker 1: we supposed to build our own stock market? Are we
9:44
Speaker 1: supposed to build our own account? You know, where is
9:46
Speaker 1: the end of this and how can we tackle the
9:49
Speaker 1: problem so that we're not totally ostracized from society. So
9:53
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of substance there to unpack. Let
9:55
Speaker 1: me let me take that at several levels Number one,
9:58
Speaker 1: if you look at what happened to Parlor, Parlor was
10:01
Speaker 1: kicked out of existence by essentially every gigantic tech company
10:04
Speaker 1: acting in concerts. So it was so it was Apple
10:07
Speaker 1: and Amazon and all of them just said we're shutting down.
10:09
Speaker 1: Your servers were kicking you off. And it was it
10:14
Speaker 1: was swift, it was brutal. It was obviously illegal, by
10:17
Speaker 1: the way, when giant competitors work together to eliminate another
10:21
Speaker 1: competitor that is on its face and antitrust violation and
10:25
Speaker 1: they're all going to be sued, they're all gonna pay
10:26
Speaker 1: big damages, and they don't care. They're so big, and
10:31
Speaker 1: they're now convinced the Biden administration are so in their
10:34
Speaker 1: pocket that they just don't care. It's an exercise of
10:38
Speaker 1: brute power. Secondly, you know, the AOC response is typical
10:45
Speaker 1: of how the left responds to a lot of issues
10:47
Speaker 1: which they don't actually want to talk substance. They don't
10:49
Speaker 1: actually want to want to talk about the underlying merits.
10:52
Speaker 1: They want to engage. Number one, it's all politics. You know,
10:56
Speaker 1: we talked in the Last Verdict about how this is
10:59
Speaker 1: the final scene for every Godfather movie that they are
11:02
Speaker 1: playing out Michael Corleone. They are settling the debts. They
11:06
Speaker 1: want you and me and all of us to sleep
11:07
Speaker 1: with the fishes. And so they are trying to eliminate everyone.
11:12
Speaker 1: They're trying to eliminate Donald Trump. They're trying to eliminate me,
11:14
Speaker 1: They're trying to eliminate you. They're trying to eliminate conservatives
11:17
Speaker 1: on social media. They're trying to erase the seventy five
11:23
Speaker 1: million Americans who voted for Trump. And it is completely
11:27
Speaker 1: devoid of substance. Now you talked about how does that
11:31
Speaker 1: mean we can't you know, the ordinary American can invest
11:35
Speaker 1: saying game stop through robin Hood. Look, one important caveat
11:41
Speaker 1: game Stop is almost surely a terrible investment, right, and
11:45
Speaker 1: it's worth noting. I mean there are I mean, since
11:48
Speaker 1: they've been investments, since there's been stock markets, they've been bubbles.
11:51
Speaker 1: You know, you look at and in Holland the tulip
11:53
Speaker 1: bulbs where they bid up tulip bulbs two insane amounts. Now,
11:58
Speaker 1: anytime you have a bubble, anytime you have is going
12:00
Speaker 1: wait wait, wait, wait, wait up. You can make a
12:03
Speaker 1: ton of money if you buy it a hundred and
12:04
Speaker 1: sell it two hundred that math works really well. So
12:07
Speaker 1: if you happen to catch something that is soaring on
12:10
Speaker 1: an artificial bubble, if you can time it right, you
12:13
Speaker 1: can make a good chunk of money. Now people get
12:16
Speaker 1: worried about bubbles because if you buy it a thousand
12:19
Speaker 1: and it drops to two, you can be devastated. And
12:24
Speaker 1: predictably with giant bubbles, these they soar high and then
12:29
Speaker 1: they crash precipitously. So I'll be honest, I'm not buying
12:33
Speaker 1: game stock right right, I think it is fair to
12:39
Speaker 1: say GameStop is not today a seventy billion dollar company,
12:44
Speaker 1: which is where its market cap was, given that it
12:47
Speaker 1: was a tiny fraction of that a couple of weeks ago.
12:49
Speaker 1: I mean this is this is a casino. So there
12:54
Speaker 1: are people rightly saying, look, a lot of people could
12:57
Speaker 1: lose their shirt and lose all their money on this,
12:58
Speaker 1: and that's right. But the same rules ought to apply
13:02
Speaker 1: for everyone. So if it's a casino, you know what,
13:04
Speaker 1: You or I can walk into a casino in Vegas.
13:07
Speaker 1: We can put everything we got on red spin the wheel,
13:11
Speaker 1: and if it hits, it hits. And what dismayed so
13:16
Speaker 1: many people, what I think was wrong and what so
13:18
Speaker 1: many other people think was wrong about what robin Hood
13:20
Speaker 1: did is it had differential rules. The giant hedge funds
13:24
Speaker 1: they could keep buying and selling, but ordinary Americans couldn't.
13:28
Speaker 1: And yes, there's risk, but if you want to do
13:30
Speaker 1: some dumb ass things, you ought to have as much
13:32
Speaker 1: right to do a dumbass thing as the politically well
13:36
Speaker 1: connected are. And that differential is significant. In a final
13:41
Speaker 1: point that is not being discussed at all, and I'm
13:45
Speaker 1: sure AOC this has not occurred to her remotely, but
13:48
Speaker 1: there's a very real possibility that one of the major
13:52
Speaker 1: reasons that robin Hood halted the ability of consumers to
13:58
Speaker 1: buy Game Stop is because of Dodd Frank, because of
14:02
Speaker 1: leftist regulation that came in. So, as a broker under
14:08
Speaker 1: Dodd Frank, robin Hood has a requirement essentially to put
14:12
Speaker 1: up funding and to borrow funding to cover the differential
14:16
Speaker 1: of their risk exposure. And it's set up in such
14:20
Speaker 1: a way. And listen, I'm a lawyer. I don't do maths,
14:23
Speaker 1: so I'm not going to purport to explain the mechanics
14:26
Speaker 1: of it, other than I think there are good discussions
14:30
Speaker 1: to be had about how much was robin Hood's actions
14:34
Speaker 1: driven by Dodd Frank and pressure from the regulators. Did
14:38
Speaker 1: the regulators get involved directly? To Janet Yellen, the new
14:41
Speaker 1: Treasury secretary, did she get involved directly? That's a question
14:44
Speaker 1: that needs to be asked. What did the banking regulators do?
14:47
Speaker 1: And also the fear of lawsuits. I don't doubt that
14:51
Speaker 1: A reason A significant reason Robin Hood did this is
14:54
Speaker 1: they said, well, gosh, a whole bunch of people are
14:56
Speaker 1: gonna buy the stock really high. It's gonna plumb it.
14:58
Speaker 1: They're gonna lose all their money, They're gonna turn around
15:00
Speaker 1: sue us. And they were understandably scared about being sued.
15:05
Speaker 1: And so there is if we're going to let people
15:10
Speaker 1: go to a casino and bet it does seem to
15:13
Speaker 1: me there ought to be some form of basically a
15:15
Speaker 1: liability waiver, which is, you know, you sign something saying,
15:19
Speaker 1: you know, dumb ass release. I recognize I maybe being
15:24
Speaker 1: a dumbass right now. If I am, I'm not going
15:26
Speaker 1: to sue you. Yeah, that could well make sense. And
15:30
Speaker 1: I suspect our Democratic friends will have no interest in
15:33
Speaker 1: that because that does not conform with their ideology. Well, this,
15:38
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a very important point. That game
15:40
Speaker 1: stop itself, right. This is a brick and mortar store
15:43
Speaker 1: that sells physical video games. This is a company that's
15:46
Speaker 1: going to go the way a blockbuster. And these kind
15:49
Speaker 1: of reddit boards have also targeted BlackBerry, Nokia companies also
15:54
Speaker 1: where the technology. You know, they're not the companies they
15:56
Speaker 1: once were. That was the point. I mean, it was
16:00
Speaker 1: kind of a joke to them. And they saw this
16:02
Speaker 1: massive short position and they saw that they could basically
16:05
Speaker 1: run the price up and force these hedge funds that
16:07
Speaker 1: they don't like to buy up the stock, and you know,
16:10
Speaker 1: it becomes a bubble. Some people are gonna make a
16:11
Speaker 1: lot of money, some people are going to get hurt,
16:13
Speaker 1: and the establishment is going to expose itself. To me,
16:17
Speaker 1: what's so interesting about all this volatility is a political
16:21
Speaker 1: point that you've been making now for quite some time,
16:24
Speaker 1: and we're seeing it expressed the guys on these reddit boards.
16:29
Speaker 1: I don't know them personally, it seems their politics are
16:31
Speaker 1: a little more on the right than they are on
16:33
Speaker 1: the left. I've been told my whole life that the
16:37
Speaker 1: Republicans are the party of Wall Street. Republicans are the
16:40
Speaker 1: party of the big hedge funds. Republicans are the party
16:43
Speaker 1: of these plutocrats and the establishment. And yet if you
16:46
Speaker 1: look right now, who is defending this sort of unfair
16:51
Speaker 1: set of rules that's protecting Wall Street. It's the establishment Democrats.
16:55
Speaker 1: It's not the Republicans. We're the ones who are complaining
16:58
Speaker 1: about it. Is this shift we've been talking about the
17:00
Speaker 1: difference between the Party of Paris and the Party of Pittsburgh.
17:04
Speaker 1: Is this shift settling in? And are people going to
17:07
Speaker 1: realize it? Yes, it's settling in, and it drives Democrats crazy.
17:12
Speaker 1: You are right, Today's Democratic Party is the party of
17:14
Speaker 1: the rich. It's the party of elites. It's the party
17:16
Speaker 1: of Wall Street. It's the party of big Tech. It's
17:19
Speaker 1: the party of Hollywood. It's the party of universities. That's
17:23
Speaker 1: who big tech listens to. That that's who rather Democrats
17:26
Speaker 1: listen to. I say, I can't even tell the difference
17:28
Speaker 1: between big tech and Democrats anymore. It's actually one of
17:31
Speaker 1: the reasons why today's Democrats are so pro China, why
17:34
Speaker 1: they're so in bed with communist China, because all of
17:36
Speaker 1: their patrons, all of the people writing them checks and
17:39
Speaker 1: funding what they're doing, are in bed with China, Big Tech, Hollywood.
17:43
Speaker 1: They're in bed with China, which means the Democrats are
17:46
Speaker 1: in bed with China. Who are the Democrats not supporting
17:50
Speaker 1: working men and women, blue collar workers, union members. You know,
17:55
Speaker 1: you think back. You know, you and I both read
17:56
Speaker 1: in history books. Neither one of us are old enough
17:58
Speaker 1: to remember FDR. But but there was a time where FDR,
18:02
Speaker 1: we're union workers. A steel worker was the prototypical Democrat voter. Yep.
18:09
Speaker 1: And actually, you know, you look at Joe Biden. Joe
18:13
Speaker 1: Biden's whole political career has been marketing that he was
18:17
Speaker 1: the kid from Scranton, that he was the blue collar,
18:19
Speaker 1: working class kid from Scranton. And what does he do.
18:22
Speaker 1: He gets elected and literally within minutes of being sworn in,
18:26
Speaker 1: he takes out a pen and he destroys thousands upon
18:30
Speaker 1: thousands of blue collar union jobs, just the Keystone Pipeline,
18:33
Speaker 1: which he eliminated with one executive order. That was eleven
18:37
Speaker 1: thousand jobs, eleven thousand jobs, eight thousand of those were
18:42
Speaker 1: union jobs. And with a stroke of one pen, eleven
18:45
Speaker 1: thousand people their jobs just poof go away. And you know,
18:50
Speaker 1: I've spent the last couple of weeks in confirmation hearings
18:53
Speaker 1: for Biden cabinet appointees asking them what do you say
18:55
Speaker 1: to those eleven thousand people whose jobs you just destroyed?
18:59
Speaker 1: And the answer that they've said over and over again
19:02
Speaker 1: is essentially jump in a lake. You know, we saw
19:06
Speaker 1: this week, John Carey. I gotta say, by the way,
19:09
Speaker 1: if you were to pick the perfect spokesperson to understand
19:14
Speaker 1: the travails of the blue collar working class, it is
19:19
Speaker 1: John Kerry with tuxedo and tails, riding his windsurfer, and
19:24
Speaker 1: he really does. He gave this this this lecture where
19:28
Speaker 1: he says, well, we're going to help them quote make
19:33
Speaker 1: better choices. Well, with all respect, John, screw you. You
19:40
Speaker 1: don't get to sit there with eight hundred million dollars
19:44
Speaker 1: in the bank, which, by the way, you didn't learn
19:46
Speaker 1: and tell the lowly, dirty people who have to work
19:50
Speaker 1: for a living, we're going to help you make better choices, said,
19:53
Speaker 1: they all need to make solar panels. You know, I
19:57
Speaker 1: would invite you, John, come to South to Exis, to
20:01
Speaker 1: the oil patch and talk to an Hispanic guy in
20:05
Speaker 1: a FOURD F one fifty and tell him, sorry, I
20:08
Speaker 1: don't like the choices you have. So your job has
20:10
Speaker 1: just been eliminated. Your ability to provide for your family
20:13
Speaker 1: is gone. I mean the arrogance and condescension Thurston Howell
20:19
Speaker 1: telling you I'm destroying your life. Sadly, that's where the
20:24
Speaker 1: Democrats are right now. Well, there's something that was I mean,
20:27
Speaker 1: the whole the whole carry press conference I felt was
20:29
Speaker 1: extraordinarily condescending and typically lock jawed and disturbing. But the
20:35
Speaker 1: most disturbing aspect I felt was where he presented his
20:39
Speaker 1: political plan and the Biden administration's political plan as inevitable.
20:45
Speaker 1: And you know, just a few months ago, Joe Biden
20:47
Speaker 1: was saying, I'm not against fracking, I'm not against coal,
20:50
Speaker 1: I'm not against oil, natural gas. And then we find out,
20:53
Speaker 1: you know, the rug is pulled out from under everybody. Yes,
20:55
Speaker 1: I am. We're going to kill the coal jobs, We're
20:57
Speaker 1: going to kill the energy sector jobs. But it's inevitable.
21:01
Speaker 1: It's inevitable. You have to move to solar, you have
21:04
Speaker 1: to move to wind. Go learn how to fix a
21:07
Speaker 1: wind turbine. You know, it reminds us a few years
21:09
Speaker 1: ago when when liberal journalists told American manufacturing workers learn
21:14
Speaker 1: to code. Sorry, and as if there were no choice here,
21:19
Speaker 1: but of course there is. You know, the last four
21:20
Speaker 1: years we had a different policy and we prioritized keeping
21:24
Speaker 1: energy jobs in America, bringing manufacturing jobs back. When we
21:28
Speaker 1: think about the difference between populism and elitism and all
21:32
Speaker 1: these isms that are coming up, what is the future
21:36
Speaker 1: for the Republican Party and is there any way that
21:37
Speaker 1: we can stop this, this inevitable flow of progressive history.
21:42
Speaker 1: So let me make three points on that. Number One.
21:46
Speaker 1: You know, when Joe Biden was saying in the general
21:48
Speaker 1: election he wasn't going to end fracking, everyone knew he
21:52
Speaker 1: was lying. Biden knew he was lying. Trump knew he
21:56
Speaker 1: was lying, The press knew he was lying. Everyone listening
21:58
Speaker 1: knew he was lying. And what did the press do?
22:01
Speaker 1: And this is a great illustration of how we don't
22:03
Speaker 1: have journalism anymore. The press, the fact checkers, and by
22:08
Speaker 1: the way, fact checkers among the most pernicious liars we
22:10
Speaker 1: have in our political process. The fact checkers declared it
22:14
Speaker 1: a lie if you said Biden wasn't fact in a
22:17
Speaker 1: band fracking. Because he was lying to the American people
22:22
Speaker 1: and saying he wasn't it, we were required to accept
22:24
Speaker 1: his lies. Boom, what happens. He gets elected, and now
22:28
Speaker 1: the fact checkers are saying it's a lie that he
22:31
Speaker 1: ever said he wasn't good to band fracking. I mean
22:34
Speaker 1: it is you. I wish George Orwell or old As
22:40
Speaker 1: Huxley were still alive to see the absolute fluidity with
22:45
Speaker 1: which CNN and The Washington Post they are able to
22:49
Speaker 1: tell the exact opposite lie on the flip of a switch,
22:54
Speaker 1: without even the hint of any recollection to what they
22:58
Speaker 1: were saying yesterday. YEA. Secondly, you know when the John
23:04
Speaker 1: Carries of the world tell these poor, dirty, little working
23:09
Speaker 1: class people learn to code, you know, one of the
23:12
Speaker 1: ironies is almost inevitably the politicians who are doing this,
23:14
Speaker 1: they don't know how to code. Yeah, John Carry don't
23:17
Speaker 1: know how to code. You can, I guarantee you can't
23:20
Speaker 1: program his iPhone? Look like like Joe Biden doesn't know
23:24
Speaker 1: how to code. You look at it. Politicians are exercising
23:28
Speaker 1: power to destroy other people's lives. And one of the
23:32
Speaker 1: things the Left loves to virtue signal. They love to
23:34
Speaker 1: show how virtuous they are by being willing to give
23:38
Speaker 1: away your job, never their job, never a penny out
23:43
Speaker 1: of their pocket, never anything out of their life, but
23:46
Speaker 1: your job. They are so virtuous they will obliterate your life. Look,
23:51
Speaker 1: if you actually respect people, you say you ought to
23:54
Speaker 1: be able to choose what you want to do with
23:55
Speaker 1: your right life. Listen, I'm not a steel worker. If
23:57
Speaker 1: you put me in a steel founder, I wouldn't think
23:59
Speaker 1: what the hell did it do? At probably burned my
24:01
Speaker 1: fingers off. Like I that that being a lawyer was
24:05
Speaker 1: the right call for me, that was my skill show.
24:07
Speaker 1: But but I'm not going to presume to tell you
24:10
Speaker 1: that what you chose to do is is somehow illegitimate
24:15
Speaker 1: and should be eliminated the wrong choice. And a third point.
24:20
Speaker 1: You know you talked about inevitable and and I have
24:26
Speaker 1: to say it, it brought to mind Avengers endgame. And
24:32
Speaker 1: you know, Carrie doesn't quite have the massive Thanos hands
24:35
Speaker 1: and fingers, but you could see the inevitable in the
24:37
Speaker 1: fingers snapping. And it actually what is interesting an endgame
24:41
Speaker 1: is curious. Have you noticed in how many movies how
24:46
Speaker 1: often rabid environmentalists are the bad guys, whether it's thought
24:52
Speaker 1: Os or Go to Watchman, you know where where the
24:56
Speaker 1: the The view of the left is people are a disease.
25:02
Speaker 1: They buy into the Malthusian line that there are too
25:04
Speaker 1: many people in the world, that people are bad and
25:07
Speaker 1: everything would be better if we had fewer people. I mean,
25:10
Speaker 1: Thanos wanted to eliminate fifty percent of the life forms
25:13
Speaker 1: of the universe with one finger snapping. And you know, Center,
25:16
Speaker 1: I don't want people to think that you're being hyperbolic
25:19
Speaker 1: here or that you're I mean, this has been the
25:21
Speaker 1: explicit view of very prominent leftists for a long time.
25:24
Speaker 1: You're talking about the sort of Malthusian theories that people
25:27
Speaker 1: are going to destroy the world. You saw this with
25:29
Speaker 1: the population bomb in the latter part of the twentieth century,
25:32
Speaker 1: where we were told by the top genius scientists that
25:36
Speaker 1: if we didn't have hopefully voluntary suppression of the global population,
25:41
Speaker 1: but if necessary coerced suppression of the global population, we'd
25:45
Speaker 1: inevitably have starvation famines everywhere we had to do this.
25:50
Speaker 1: You hear this with very prominent environmentalists up to and
25:53
Speaker 1: including Al Gore and others. It is a creepy point,
25:57
Speaker 1: and it seems so radical when you say it, but
26:00
Speaker 1: it is undeniable that that has been the position of
26:03
Speaker 1: prominent leftists. And Michael I had a question for you.
26:06
Speaker 1: Do you own a private jet? Not yet unfortunately, nor
26:10
Speaker 1: do I now Listen, I would love a private jet,
26:12
Speaker 1: but but but I don't have one. You know who
26:15
Speaker 1: does own a private jet? John Fragan carry Oh my goodness,
26:18
Speaker 1: you don't say so, the same person. The hypocrisy on
26:22
Speaker 1: the left on this is really screwed up. And you see,
26:26
Speaker 1: you know, you see Hollywood movie stars come in in
26:29
Speaker 1: their G five. They've got the carbon footprint of small towns.
26:34
Speaker 1: And are they willing to change how they travel? Oh no,
26:37
Speaker 1: no, no no, no no. John Carey is gonna fly in
26:39
Speaker 1: his jet. He's gonna have a caravan of suburbans carry
26:42
Speaker 1: him everywhere. He's perfectly happy to have a carbon footprint.
26:46
Speaker 1: Of Paul Bunyan, the rest of us. Your jobs must
26:51
Speaker 1: go to go away. I'm sorry. Learned something else to do.
26:55
Speaker 1: And it's driven by it's driven by money, and it's
26:58
Speaker 1: driven by power. Listen, this is not about climate. You know.
27:03
Speaker 1: One of the weird things to understand. Everything that Joe
27:08
Speaker 1: Biden is doing in the name of climate will make
27:12
Speaker 1: the climate dirtier. So as the Biden administration destroys US
27:18
Speaker 1: oil and gas production, and that's what they're doing. They're
27:20
Speaker 1: trying to utterly destroy US oil and gas production. You're
27:24
Speaker 1: not going to wake up tomorrow and magically have your
27:29
Speaker 1: car or truck in your driveway not need gasoline. You're
27:32
Speaker 1: not gonna be able to put pixie dust in your car.
27:35
Speaker 1: You're still going to go to the gas station. You're
27:37
Speaker 1: going to fill the tank. So if Biden succeeds in
27:40
Speaker 1: destroying US energy production, what does that mean? It means
27:43
Speaker 1: America is going to buy more oil and gas the
27:48
Speaker 1: Middle East from Russia. That does several things. Number One,
27:53
Speaker 1: it puts billions of dollars in countries that hate us
27:55
Speaker 1: and want to kill us. That's really bad. Why are
27:58
Speaker 1: we sending money to people who want us dead? But
28:01
Speaker 1: number two, they produce energy much dirtier than we do.
28:06
Speaker 1: So literally, what Biden is doing and what carry is
28:08
Speaker 1: doing is screwing the environment because they want to destroy
28:13
Speaker 1: American energy jobs because since they don't have a magic
28:17
Speaker 1: solution for what's going to power your car. If you
28:19
Speaker 1: get on an airplane, and you and I we don't
28:21
Speaker 1: get on our own private jets. We get on Southwest
28:24
Speaker 1: Airlines or whatever the commercial airline is. You know, jets
28:28
Speaker 1: don't operate on wind. It's really hard if you imagine putting,
28:33
Speaker 1: say a wind meal on the front of a jet.
28:35
Speaker 1: It just doesn't work. You know. I'm not a physicist,
28:38
Speaker 1: but they're just kind of a problem with that. We're
28:41
Speaker 1: going to continue to have energy needs. But what they're
28:44
Speaker 1: doing is hurting the environment, destroying jobs, and they're doing
28:49
Speaker 1: it for power and money. Every time you hear this,
28:53
Speaker 1: it's about power and money. The Keystone Pipeline. By the way,
28:59
Speaker 1: Keystone pipeline Biden just stopped. Keystone pipeline would bring oil
29:03
Speaker 1: from Canada down south to the US. Without the Keystone pipeline,
29:06
Speaker 1: you know what's happening where we're still taking that oil.
29:08
Speaker 1: We're just driving it on trucks and trains, a dirtier
29:12
Speaker 1: way to transport it that's more expensive, so it doesn't
29:16
Speaker 1: Actually every step they're taking hurts the environment. Here is
29:21
Speaker 1: a data point that the listeners of Verdict will know
29:24
Speaker 1: because y'all are engaged and educated. But it's worth underscoring
29:29
Speaker 1: because no Democrat will ever acknowledge it, which is what
29:32
Speaker 1: country had the single greatest reduction in carbon emissions last
29:37
Speaker 1: year in twenty twenty. I think I have an idea. Who, yeah,
29:41
Speaker 1: please give the answer. The United States of America by far.
29:44
Speaker 1: It's not even close, because our energy production is so
29:48
Speaker 1: much cleaner, and so literally what the Biden folks are
29:52
Speaker 1: doing is destroying the cleanest energy in the world to
29:55
Speaker 1: shift a dirtier energy because it makes californ environmentalists billionaire
30:01
Speaker 1: donors happy, and that's that doesn't make a lot of sense.
30:07
Speaker 1: You know. The tell on this, of course, is that
30:10
Speaker 1: the solutions that the left propose, they always remain the same,
30:15
Speaker 1: and their reasoning for why we need those solutions changes
30:18
Speaker 1: sometimes to the complete opposite. So you know, very famously,
30:21
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, we were hearing about the threat
30:24
Speaker 1: of global cooling and a new ice age, and today's
30:27
Speaker 1: environmentalists try to write this off and say, well, that
30:29
Speaker 1: was just a sort of media phenomenon, not within the
30:32
Speaker 1: scientific community. That isn't true. You can go back and
30:34
Speaker 1: see major scientific institutions warning about global cooling. That's where
30:38
Speaker 1: the media got it from. Then it changes to global warming,
30:41
Speaker 1: Then it changes to the population bomb, as we were
30:44
Speaker 1: just discussing. Then it changes to I don't know, climate crisis,
30:47
Speaker 1: and they come up with all these new terms. No
30:49
Speaker 1: matter what the argument, it's always the same answer. Give
30:53
Speaker 1: more power to the state, give more power to the
30:55
Speaker 1: state's favored corporations, takeaway choice from Americans, tell them to
30:59
Speaker 1: thrive less, live less, do less. It always seems to
31:02
Speaker 1: be the same thing. And you know, I guess this
31:05
Speaker 1: is related to the power grab that you're seeing in
31:09
Speaker 1: the Biden administration. You see the same inevitability talk with
31:13
Speaker 1: regard to China, and China a major polluter. Let's not
31:18
Speaker 1: forget you know, we're talking about climate but you heard
31:21
Speaker 1: from Biden and the kind of establishment consensus for decades,
31:25
Speaker 1: we need to support China, arising China. It's a good
31:28
Speaker 1: thing for the world. Sure, we might lose some manufacturing jobs,
31:31
Speaker 1: but hey, there's it's good. And even more than that,
31:35
Speaker 1: it's inevitable. Then we saw over the past few years. Well,
31:38
Speaker 1: maybe it's not necessarily inevitable. Now we're hearing this again.
31:42
Speaker 1: I know the media are not reporting on these Biden nominees.
31:45
Speaker 1: They're not really reporting on Biden's stands towards China. You
31:49
Speaker 1: happen to be in the room. What can you tell
31:51
Speaker 1: us about about that issue as it pertains to the
31:54
Speaker 1: new administration. Well, let me make two points. Let me
31:57
Speaker 1: comment on what you just said there, because it was
31:59
Speaker 1: it was very insightful. But it's even worse than that,
32:05
Speaker 1: which is the Democrats that purport to be motivated by
32:09
Speaker 1: a climate crisis by their actions, have made clear they
32:14
Speaker 1: don't actually give a damn about the climate, right Like, Okay,
32:19
Speaker 1: if you're going to put forth that the criterion to
32:22
Speaker 1: judge success is are we protecting the environment? Then under
32:28
Speaker 1: that criterion, the democratic policies are a train wreck. They're
32:31
Speaker 1: a disaster. And this is where media narratives are exactly opposite.
32:35
Speaker 1: To be honest, if you look at which parties care
32:39
Speaker 1: about actually clean air and clean water, the record of
32:43
Speaker 1: success every major environmental law in the past fifty years
32:47
Speaker 1: has been passed with a Republican president. The EPA was
32:49
Speaker 1: created with a Republican president. If you look at you
32:52
Speaker 1: look at states like Texas with a Republican leadership that
32:55
Speaker 1: clean the air and clean the water substantially improved. Look
32:59
Speaker 1: all of us, we've got we breathe, we drink water. Look,
33:03
Speaker 1: we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the environment.
33:07
Speaker 1: I want the world to be cleaner and better after
33:10
Speaker 1: we've left it than when we came. If you look
33:13
Speaker 1: at separate the rhetoric of Democrats from their actions. The
33:19
Speaker 1: actions they're taking make the environment dirtier. If you're shifting
33:24
Speaker 1: from clean energy production in the US to dirty energy
33:28
Speaker 1: production in Russia. If your criterion that matters more than
33:33
Speaker 1: anything is cleaning the environment, that is a stupid thing
33:36
Speaker 1: to do. Paris Climate Deal, and this connects to your
33:39
Speaker 1: China point. So Biden opening week rejoins the Paris Climate Deal.
33:44
Speaker 1: Paris Climate Deal is designed to destroy a whole bunch
33:47
Speaker 1: of high paying jobs in the US, and it does
33:49
Speaker 1: virtually nothing on China. China is polluting like crazy that
33:54
Speaker 1: they are using dirty coal powered production. They're dumping massive
33:58
Speaker 1: plastics in the rivers. By the way, I joined with
34:01
Speaker 1: a bunch of other Republicans in passing legislation to clean
34:04
Speaker 1: up the seas and to get plastics out of the seas.
34:07
Speaker 1: But an enormous percentage of that is coming from China
34:10
Speaker 1: and India that are dumping in rivers enormous quantities of plastic.
34:15
Speaker 1: The Democrats don't care about any of that. Their policies
34:18
Speaker 1: make it worse. So the Paris Climate Deal makes the
34:22
Speaker 1: environment dirtier. And the reason you can tell that they're
34:26
Speaker 1: not telling the truth is when you make this point,
34:28
Speaker 1: they don't care. They don't care, they don't actually even
34:32
Speaker 1: dispute it. It doesn't matter because it's not about cleaning
34:36
Speaker 1: up the environment. For them, it is about power. Their
34:39
Speaker 1: objective is to destroy those jobs because they want control
34:43
Speaker 1: and they want power. Now, you talked about China in
34:47
Speaker 1: terms of big policy shifts. I think over the next
34:51
Speaker 1: four years we're going to see a big, big shift
34:54
Speaker 1: towards embracing communist China. We've had multiple confirmation here rings
35:00
Speaker 1: for Biden cabinet nominees, one after the other after the other,
35:04
Speaker 1: has been moving back towards China. So, for example, Tony
35:08
Speaker 1: Blinkin is the new Secretary of State. Blincoln was asked
35:11
Speaker 1: if he would commit to maintain the entities list the
35:14
Speaker 1: sanctioned companies in China who were participating in genocide, participating
35:19
Speaker 1: in repressing the wagers, participating in big brother control of society.
35:25
Speaker 1: He wouldn't make that commitment. He said, no, I can't
35:28
Speaker 1: commit to that. Gina Raimondo, who's the governor Rhode Island,
35:31
Speaker 1: she was nominated to the Commerce Secretary. I asked her
35:34
Speaker 1: at her confirmation hearing. I said, all right, will you
35:37
Speaker 1: commit at least to Huawei, and we've talked about Huawei
35:42
Speaker 1: on Verdict before. Huawei is this gigantic Chinese company. It
35:46
Speaker 1: is a global espionage company. It mass trades as a
35:50
Speaker 1: telecom company, but it's it is the Chinese communist government
35:54
Speaker 1: uses Huawei to intercept communications from other countries and to
35:58
Speaker 1: engage in espionage. Whahwei is currently listed. I asked Jenna Romando,
36:02
Speaker 1: will you commit to leaving Huahwei on the list? Nope,
36:05
Speaker 1: she can't commit to that either, She'd have to review it.
36:08
Speaker 1: Alejandro Mayorcas, who Biden is nominated to be the head
36:12
Speaker 1: of DHS Department Homeland Security. When he was at DHS before,
36:18
Speaker 1: he personally arranged for a visa for a senior vice
36:23
Speaker 1: president at Uahwei and for other big Democratic donors because
36:29
Speaker 1: Tony Rodham, Hillary Clinton's brother arranged it, and he was
36:33
Speaker 1: basically in charge of making sure there were favors for
36:36
Speaker 1: big Democratic donors, including taking care of Uahwei. There is
36:41
Speaker 1: a pattern across this, and I'll tell you This week
36:45
Speaker 1: Senate Form Relations Committee, we had a confirmation hearing for
36:48
Speaker 1: Biden's nominee to UN Ambassador and Linda Greenfield Thomas. She
36:55
Speaker 1: is a career foreign Service officer. We've talked before on
37:02
Speaker 1: the podcast about Confucius institutes. Confucius institutes are owned and
37:09
Speaker 1: controlled and paid for by the Chinese Communist government. They
37:13
Speaker 1: have been opened up at US universities all across the country,
37:15
Speaker 1: and they serve as hubs for espionage, hubs for propaganda.
37:20
Speaker 1: There's actually been pretty wide bipartisan agreement that Confucius institutes
37:24
Speaker 1: are really bad and really harmful. So a couple of
37:26
Speaker 1: years ago I wrote legislation that passed had big bipartisan support,
37:32
Speaker 1: passed into law clamping down on Confucius institute. The bill
37:37
Speaker 1: I wrote has ended up shutting down dozens of Confucius
37:40
Speaker 1: institutes across the country. Well, a little over a year ago,
37:44
Speaker 1: Biden's un ambassador nominee gave a paid speech at a
37:50
Speaker 1: Confucius institute. She got paid fifteen hundred dollars to give
37:54
Speaker 1: a speech. I questioned her at the hearing about it,
37:58
Speaker 1: and it's interesting she backed away from and said, oh,
38:00
Speaker 1: it was a mistake and she was horrified, just horrified
38:05
Speaker 1: to see what the Confucian Institute was doing, to which
38:08
Speaker 1: I responded, well did you keep the money? And she
38:14
Speaker 1: was like, well, well, yeah, of course. I kept the money,
38:17
Speaker 1: but I was horrified. And I will also note the
38:23
Speaker 1: speech she gave. So she handed the speech over the
38:26
Speaker 1: Foreign Relations Committee. It's handed over to context that it's
38:29
Speaker 1: deemed confidential, so I have a copy of the speech.
38:32
Speaker 1: She doesn't say one critical word about China. So she
38:35
Speaker 1: goes to a Confucian institute and gives this puff piece
38:40
Speaker 1: praising China, praising the Belton Road Initiative, which is billions
38:45
Speaker 1: of dollars that China is investing in infrastructure the developing world,
38:49
Speaker 1: trying to make developing countries captive economically to China. And
38:55
Speaker 1: not only that, her speech says America should be more
38:58
Speaker 1: like communist China. We ought to have similar policies to
39:00
Speaker 1: what they have. This is who Joe Biden is picked
39:04
Speaker 1: to be the representative for the United States of America
39:07
Speaker 1: at the United Nations. We are in the midst of
39:11
Speaker 1: and getting ready to see a massive pivot back towards China,
39:15
Speaker 1: and that's really bad for the country. In a way,
39:18
Speaker 1: I'm sorry that I have to say this. It seems
39:20
Speaker 1: like a return to normal. You know, we're talking about
39:23
Speaker 1: this kind of crooked establishment, and you see it in
39:27
Speaker 1: stories as disparate as the game stop sort of kerfuffle,
39:31
Speaker 1: and you see it all the way in foreign policy,
39:32
Speaker 1: which you're seeing a return to this old consensus. It's
39:37
Speaker 1: pretty ugly and they are exercising political power right now.
39:41
Speaker 1: We will have to discuss how we can exercise our
39:44
Speaker 1: freedom and push back against that power. We'll be discussing
39:46
Speaker 1: it in Miami on Friday at February fifth. I've got
39:50
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of mailbag questions. Unfortunately we're out of
39:52
Speaker 1: time now. I will bring these mailbag questions with me
39:56
Speaker 1: to Miami. We will get your questions live. If you
39:58
Speaker 1: go to YouTube dot com slash yaff TV. We might
40:02
Speaker 1: see you in person there. Senator I certainly, I at
40:06
Speaker 1: least will see you in person there, very much looking
40:08
Speaker 1: forward to it, and that's just assuming that the big
40:11
Speaker 1: establishment doesn't clamp down on us before then. But hopefully,
40:14
Speaker 1: hopefully we'll at least get a week and we will
40:16
Speaker 1: see all of you in Miami. I'm Michael Knowles. This
40:19
Speaker 1: is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with
40:31
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom
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