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LIVE from Miami at YAF’s Freedom Conference · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:06
Speaker 1: Well, I'm very confused. If not a Joe Biden press conference.
0:09
Speaker 1: This is not a Joe Biden press conference. You know,
0:13
Speaker 1: something occurs to me sitting here seeing all these people. Well,
0:16
Speaker 1: it's not six reporters in little circles spread out alone. No, No,
0:19
Speaker 1: it's the opposite of that. Actually, it's hundreds of people here.
0:22
Speaker 1: We have been told for a year you can't go outside,
0:28
Speaker 1: you can't talk to anybody, you can't see anybody, you
0:31
Speaker 1: can't have any holidays, you can't go on social media
0:34
Speaker 1: because if you go on social media, you're obviously going
0:36
Speaker 1: to be kicked off. You can't start your own social
0:39
Speaker 1: media platforms because that's a very very bad thing. You're
0:42
Speaker 1: going to be kicked off the Internet. But you know what, tonight,
0:46
Speaker 1: live in Miami, we are here with everyone. We're going
0:48
Speaker 1: to be taking your questions. This is verdict with Ted Cruz.
1:00
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. Thank you to all the wonderful
1:03
Speaker 1: deefle in Miss Lam. Also thank you to everyone who
1:06
Speaker 1: is watching live right now on YouTube. We were going
1:09
Speaker 1: to be taking questions obviously from the people here at
1:12
Speaker 1: the Young America's Foundation Freedom Conference. We're also going to
1:15
Speaker 1: be taking questions from YouTube. If you want to ask
1:17
Speaker 1: a question, You've got to go to YouTube dot com
1:20
Speaker 1: slash Yaff TV. You have to subscribe, submit your questions,
1:24
Speaker 1: make sure they're really really good questions, and then we
1:27
Speaker 1: will be answering them a little bit later. Want to
1:29
Speaker 1: thank as always the Logan family for sponsoring this event
1:34
Speaker 1: many other events for YAFF, and I want to thank
1:36
Speaker 1: all of you for being here. Senator, you must be
1:38
Speaker 1: so happy to be in Miami right now. You have
1:41
Speaker 1: just left a place that there's chaos in the house.
1:46
Speaker 1: There's chaos at the capitol. More broadly, the whole city
1:50
Speaker 1: looks like Baghdad at this point. It's somehow Washington, d c.
1:55
Speaker 1: Seems even crazier and less pleasant than it usually does,
1:59
Speaker 1: and we get to be in Miami. The lunatics are
2:03
Speaker 1: running the asylum. It is absolutely crazy. I mean, we
2:10
Speaker 1: have fences everywhere, we have soldiers wherever you look. The
2:14
Speaker 1: entire place is locked down, and AOC is spending every
2:18
Speaker 1: day saying I'm being murdered. I don't want I don't
2:24
Speaker 1: know if we're gonna break news. Did you do it?
2:27
Speaker 1: Or are you an attempted murder urgent? I am innocent
2:31
Speaker 1: of that particular chart good. I know there have been
2:34
Speaker 1: rumors for years and years about you. Although I will
2:36
Speaker 1: decline to give answers about northern California, and that's for
2:40
Speaker 1: your own protection, there is you know, I do feel
2:48
Speaker 1: in a way like this is deja vu all over again.
2:50
Speaker 1: One year ago. I feel like I've heard you say
2:52
Speaker 1: that before. One year ago. We started this podcast because
2:58
Speaker 1: we were at the last impeachment trial. Now it just
3:01
Speaker 1: seems to happen every single year. We've got another impeachment trial,
3:04
Speaker 1: We've got all of these Joe Biden nominees coming up,
3:07
Speaker 1: You've got absolute madness going on in the House of Representatives.
3:10
Speaker 1: What is the insider of you right now? From Washington? Look,
3:14
Speaker 1: it's crazy on every front the House of Representatives. What
3:19
Speaker 1: did they do in the House of Representatives this week?
3:21
Speaker 1: You've got Nancy Pelosi driving it, But it really is
3:25
Speaker 1: AOC and it's the squad. It's their craziness that is
3:29
Speaker 1: driving the agenda. So we spent much of this week
3:33
Speaker 1: with the House of Representatives talking about some tweets that
3:36
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green had sent in years past, because that
3:40
Speaker 1: is the pressing objective. Next week in the Senate, we're
3:43
Speaker 1: going to spend the entire week impeaching a president who's
3:46
Speaker 1: already left the White House, and as a private citizen, right,
3:49
Speaker 1: it's Bunker's right because I'm actually glad you brought up
3:53
Speaker 1: the Marjorie Taylor Green of it all, because if I
3:57
Speaker 1: didn't see clips on CNN, I would have no idea
4:00
Speaker 1: who this person is. But it would seem that the
4:02
Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to contrive some kind of controversy out
4:06
Speaker 1: of old social media posts. They're now voting to strip
4:10
Speaker 1: her of her committee assignments, and I just sort of think,
4:13
Speaker 1: even beyond any question about her, why am I supposed
4:17
Speaker 1: to care? This is the people's business. Aren't they supposed
4:19
Speaker 1: to be passing laws and actually working for the good
4:22
Speaker 1: of the American people. Well, look, I have not met
4:24
Speaker 1: her yet. I imagine I will at some point. She's
4:26
Speaker 1: a newly elected member of Congress. She's been in office
4:29
Speaker 1: all of a month, right, But as I understand it,
4:35
Speaker 1: she said some pretty crazy things. And look, some of
4:37
Speaker 1: the things she said I certainly don't agree with. I
4:39
Speaker 1: don't think you should run around saying someone should shoot
4:42
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi in the head. I think threatening violence is
4:44
Speaker 1: not a good thing. But this entire circus was put
4:47
Speaker 1: forward because the Democrats in the media, they like to
4:51
Speaker 1: find somebody on the Republican side of things who said
4:54
Speaker 1: something really outlandish and then put together this entire kangaroo chord.
5:00
Speaker 1: And I will say what they did this week. So
5:01
Speaker 1: yesterday the House voted and they stripped over committee assignments.
5:05
Speaker 1: That's actually a really chilling precedent. It is, to the
5:09
Speaker 1: best of my knowledge, the first time in history that
5:12
Speaker 1: any political party has stripped a member of the opposing
5:16
Speaker 1: party of their committee assignments. And this will not be
5:19
Speaker 1: the last. You want to talk about a dangerous threshold
5:23
Speaker 1: across I'm reminded of being on the Senate floor in
5:27
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen when Harry Reid the Democrats used the nuclear
5:31
Speaker 1: option to lower the threshold for confirming judges, and more
5:35
Speaker 1: than a few of us told the Democrats you're going
5:38
Speaker 1: to regret this. Yeah, and you're going to regret this sooner.
5:42
Speaker 1: I remember telling Amy Klobuchar and the Senate floor that night,
5:45
Speaker 1: I said, because you've done this, we will end up
5:47
Speaker 1: with more antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomas's on the Supreme
5:51
Speaker 1: Court because of this step you've taken. Right now and
5:54
Speaker 1: we saw that play forward. Listen. Once this threshold has
5:57
Speaker 1: been crossed, it's not hard to imagine maybe in two
6:01
Speaker 1: years suddenly Democrats say some freshman Democrats who say some crazy,
6:08
Speaker 1: outlandish things I know would be really hard to find
6:10
Speaker 1: any I can't imagine. No, it's a level of escalation.
6:15
Speaker 1: And let make another point. Have you noticed that democrats
6:20
Speaker 1: and the media right now they're in high dungeon about
6:25
Speaker 1: how much they love democracy. Yes, they love democracy. Mind you,
6:30
Speaker 1: if there's one thing objectively that democrats do not love
6:33
Speaker 1: it as democracy. They despise democracy only every front. How
6:38
Speaker 1: do we know this because they don't actually want to
6:40
Speaker 1: let the people decide. So why did democrats want judicial
6:45
Speaker 1: activist on the courts? Because on contested public policy issues,
6:49
Speaker 1: they don't actually want the voters to decide. Right, you know,
6:52
Speaker 1: on a question of abortion, they don't want voters in
6:55
Speaker 1: the state to debate about what should the laws be
6:58
Speaker 1: on abortion? And they don't They don't want to see
7:00
Speaker 1: all fifty states having different standards. They don't want to
7:02
Speaker 1: see drug laws decided by the states. They don't want
7:04
Speaker 1: to see marriage laws decided by the states. They want
7:07
Speaker 1: to decree one rule for everyone, and you look at
7:11
Speaker 1: this Marjorie Taylor Green thing. One of the things that's
7:14
Speaker 1: striking is is what they stripped her or committee assignments for,
7:17
Speaker 1: as I understand it, or all things she said before
7:21
Speaker 1: she was elected, Right, So the voters had those in
7:24
Speaker 1: front of them and they decided to elect her. Look,
7:26
Speaker 1: if someone thinks she's nutty, there is a remedy in
7:29
Speaker 1: our system for that, which is the voters couldn't decide, Okay,
7:32
Speaker 1: we want someone else. And it is amazing. As the
7:36
Speaker 1: Democrats are acting to stifle democracy, they are at the
7:41
Speaker 1: same time piously intoning I sure do love democracy. You know,
7:44
Speaker 1: this is such an important point. And I actually haven't
7:47
Speaker 1: heard other people mention this about the whole circus that's
7:50
Speaker 1: going on in the House of Representatives right now. There
7:53
Speaker 1: is this irony that they're talking about how much they
7:55
Speaker 1: love democracy, but then of course they want to stifle
7:57
Speaker 1: the will of voters. But then there's this other aspect,
8:00
Speaker 1: which is, you know, the Democrats never go after their
8:03
Speaker 1: own members. As you alluded to, they might have one
8:07
Speaker 1: or two sort of kookie members, maybe more than one
8:09
Speaker 1: or two, and maybe a little bit more than kookie,
8:11
Speaker 1: And but they don't go after them. And this is
8:14
Speaker 1: something that I think a lot of us are seeing
8:15
Speaker 1: this week. Democrats have unified government. They already had the bureaucracy,
8:19
Speaker 1: they already had big tech, they already have the universities,
8:21
Speaker 1: on and on and on. Democrats in this country seem
8:25
Speaker 1: much more talented at wielding political power, at actually getting
8:30
Speaker 1: things done than Republicans, who are sort of busy in
8:34
Speaker 1: fighting or losing the opportunities that have been given to them. Well,
8:40
Speaker 1: there's a reason for that, which is today's Democratic party
8:43
Speaker 1: as a command and control party. It is a party
8:46
Speaker 1: of authoritarians. It is a party of statists. Now that
8:50
Speaker 1: means they follow orders, they are collectivists. They are willing
8:54
Speaker 1: to subject themselves to authority. Listen, on the right, what
8:58
Speaker 1: unites people on the right in a room like this.
9:00
Speaker 1: You'll have some people who are conservatives, some people who
9:03
Speaker 1: are libertarians, some people who are just lonely and looking
9:06
Speaker 1: to make friends. I mean, you'll you'll have a wide array.
9:10
Speaker 1: And by the way, those are not mutually exclusive. You
9:12
Speaker 1: can have some of all of that. But if there's
9:16
Speaker 1: one thing that unifies the center right, it is a
9:20
Speaker 1: respect for the individual. It is it is an understanding
9:24
Speaker 1: that you can decide what you believe, you can decide
9:27
Speaker 1: how you worship, you can decide what you do with
9:30
Speaker 1: your life, you can decide what you say. All of
9:33
Speaker 1: that individual freedom. It's great, But then our problem is
9:37
Speaker 1: we can never get everyone on the same page because
9:39
Speaker 1: we're you know, hurting cats right is unfair to the cats. Now,
9:44
Speaker 1: do you think that the Democrats have given conservatives an opening?
9:47
Speaker 1: Because this has always been a problem on the right.
9:49
Speaker 1: It's one of our strengths, but it's one of our problems.
9:51
Speaker 1: Is you know, you put a hundred conservatives into a
9:54
Speaker 1: room together, they will find the one issue that each
9:57
Speaker 1: of them disagrees with the other one, and so it's
9:59
Speaker 1: very how dare you say they won't. But do you
10:04
Speaker 1: think the Democrats have given us sort of an opening
10:06
Speaker 1: here because until the past couple of years, something like
10:11
Speaker 1: the American flag that was a symbol we could all
10:14
Speaker 1: agree on. Right. You know, no person in their right mind,
10:17
Speaker 1: even if they're on the left, is going to campaign
10:19
Speaker 1: against the American flag until they start to do that,
10:22
Speaker 1: until they start to kneel in front of the flag
10:24
Speaker 1: or disrespect the flag or not stand for it. Do
10:28
Speaker 1: you think now conservatives have this opportunity to say, well,
10:32
Speaker 1: one thing that unites us is we want to conserve
10:35
Speaker 1: the place. You know, we like this place, we like
10:37
Speaker 1: our rituals, we like our local communities. Has the left
10:40
Speaker 1: gone radical enough to give us that opening? It's probably
10:44
Speaker 1: what I'm most optimistic about is the crazies are setting
10:48
Speaker 1: the agenda. Their ideas don't work the next two years. Listen,
10:53
Speaker 1: they're gonna be a tough two years for our country
10:55
Speaker 1: because we're going to see right now, there's an anger.
10:59
Speaker 1: There's a la tree on the left. I mean, I
11:01
Speaker 1: mean there is a spirit where they're trying to destroy
11:05
Speaker 1: their enemies. Yeah, I mean it's like Robesphere setting up
11:08
Speaker 1: guillotines in the street. I mean, they're objective. You look
11:11
Speaker 1: at impeachment next week. Impeachment next week is because they
11:15
Speaker 1: hate Donald J. Trump and they want to destroy him.
11:18
Speaker 1: They want to assault the earth. By the way, remember
11:20
Speaker 1: we're talking a minute ago about how democrats love democracy.
11:24
Speaker 1: What is their stated reason for impeachment. Well, if they
11:27
Speaker 1: don't impeach him and prohibit him from running again, he
11:29
Speaker 1: might run again, and you know what, those idiot voters
11:32
Speaker 1: might vote for him. Now, you could be upset at that.
11:36
Speaker 1: I get that, yeah, but you don't get to claim
11:39
Speaker 1: you're defending democracy when the evil you're trying to prevent
11:44
Speaker 1: is the people might vote in a way you don't like. Well,
11:46
Speaker 1: And this is something ironic, also ironic with the Democrats.
11:50
Speaker 1: They accuse the right of upending precedent constitutional norms. The
11:54
Speaker 1: country is going to hell in a handbasket. They are
11:57
Speaker 1: the ones who are who are again and again destroying precedent,
12:02
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, taking a Republican congressman off of her committees,
12:06
Speaker 1: impeaching a former president. To my knowledge, that has never
12:09
Speaker 1: been done. I would like if you wouldn't mind a
12:12
Speaker 1: little insider baseball here, because you know, Senator, you're looking
12:15
Speaker 1: pretty good. You're looking pretty sprightly. Thank you you are.
12:19
Speaker 1: But I know somehow, you know, I'm the one who
12:21
Speaker 1: just had a kid, and you are getting less sleep
12:24
Speaker 1: than I am. You, so actually, in terms of delivering
12:28
Speaker 1: the kid, that one wasn't you. That was not I
12:30
Speaker 1: felt everyone kept making about my wife. I don't know.
12:33
Speaker 1: I felt like I was doing a lot of work
12:34
Speaker 1: in that room, but you, somehow were getting less sleep
12:37
Speaker 1: than I am. You basically pulled an all nighter last
12:40
Speaker 1: night in DC. You're then preparing for the impeachment impeachment
12:45
Speaker 1: next week. What is happening? I mean, there is a
12:48
Speaker 1: lot going on that it seems so opaque to a
12:51
Speaker 1: lot of us. So last night we were on the
12:53
Speaker 1: Senate floor. We were doing what's called vota rama, and
12:57
Speaker 1: that went until five twenty five in the morning, So
12:59
Speaker 1: we were there all night. Got home, I went to
13:02
Speaker 1: sleep at six, got up at nine, so I had
13:04
Speaker 1: three hours sleep and flew to Miami. So if I
13:07
Speaker 1: nod off, just kind of nudged me midway through. So
13:11
Speaker 1: what is vote arama? Look, the Senate for the past
13:15
Speaker 1: twenty years or so has been pretty rigidly controlled by
13:19
Speaker 1: whoever the majority leader is, and as a general matter,
13:23
Speaker 1: they stop really both sides from offering amendments. And we
13:27
Speaker 1: have really a rule by majority leaders on both sides.
13:30
Speaker 1: Either Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell are super senators because
13:34
Speaker 1: they shut down amendments. The Democrats want to do lots
13:38
Speaker 1: of bad stuff. The principal procedural impediment they face in
13:43
Speaker 1: the Senate is the filibuster, the requirement of sixty votes
13:46
Speaker 1: to move forward on legislation. The biggest exception to the
13:50
Speaker 1: filibuster is something called budget reconciliation. Now that's a process.
13:56
Speaker 1: It comes from a statute called the Budget Act of
13:58
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy five, and it sets out a process for
14:00
Speaker 1: passing a budget. The budget is really the side show.
14:05
Speaker 1: What is important is by statute it only takes fifty
14:07
Speaker 1: votes to pass and not sixty. So it's this big
14:10
Speaker 1: glaring exception to what otherwise is legislation that's got a
14:15
Speaker 1: clear a fillibuster. So the Democrats just took up their
14:19
Speaker 1: first budget reconciliation. We could see three budget reconciliations this year,
14:23
Speaker 1: all as vehicles to just pass bad laws they want
14:26
Speaker 1: to pass. Ye, this was the first one. Under that statute. Though,
14:32
Speaker 1: senators can offer unlimited amendments, and so the way the
14:36
Speaker 1: majority leader stops a senator from offering an amendment is
14:39
Speaker 1: a procedural mechanism called filling the tree, where basically they
14:42
Speaker 1: offer all the available amendments so no one else can
14:44
Speaker 1: offer one. On reconciliation, you can't stop it. And so
14:48
Speaker 1: we had yesterday, I don't know, we vote on a
14:50
Speaker 1: forty or fifty amendments and we just stood there. Now,
14:53
Speaker 1: what happened during most of the day is the Democrats
14:56
Speaker 1: were slow walking the votes, and so they were dragging
15:01
Speaker 1: it out. It was theoretically ten minute votes, but they'd
15:03
Speaker 1: take thirty, they'd take forty five. Then towards the end
15:07
Speaker 1: of it, we're all seated at our desks and we're
15:09
Speaker 1: doing faster votes, and each side gets up and gets
15:13
Speaker 1: to speak for a minute. Okay, And so look, if
15:17
Speaker 1: you're in the minority, which we are, it's a fifty
15:19
Speaker 1: fifty Senate they are. It is the most narrow majority possible,
15:24
Speaker 1: fifty fifty with a vice president breaking the tie. What
15:28
Speaker 1: you try to think of when you're in the minority
15:30
Speaker 1: is what are votes that would really suck to vote
15:33
Speaker 1: on them here on the other side, because because you
15:35
Speaker 1: don't really have a chance of putting forth this kind
15:38
Speaker 1: of groundbreaking, substantive legislation for your own side, there's no
15:41
Speaker 1: way that's going to get through. It is forcing the
15:44
Speaker 1: majority hates it. They don't want any of these voes,
15:46
Speaker 1: but it is forcing them to take votes they don't like.
15:49
Speaker 1: So a bunch of us filed a ton of amendments
15:52
Speaker 1: that we voted on them and voted on them, and
15:54
Speaker 1: a number of the amendments passed. Now here's a level
15:57
Speaker 1: of the kind of ridiculousness of the game. So so
16:00
Speaker 1: let me tell you three amendments that passed, and I
16:02
Speaker 1: actually wrote down the details. So three passed. One supports
16:09
Speaker 1: the Keystone pipeline, said Joe Biden made a mistake shutting
16:12
Speaker 1: down the Keystone Pipeline, killing eight thousand jobs. That passed
16:15
Speaker 1: on the floor of the Senate by a vote of
16:17
Speaker 1: fifty two to forty eight. Every Republican voted for it.
16:21
Speaker 1: Joe Mansion voted for it. Democrat from West Virginia. John
16:24
Speaker 1: Tester voted for it, Democrat from Montown. A second amendment
16:28
Speaker 1: said that any stimulus checks that go out should not
16:32
Speaker 1: go to illegal immigrants. So that amendment passed fifty eight
16:36
Speaker 1: to forty two. So I have to pause you there, Senator,
16:40
Speaker 1: forty two elected senators think that we should send our
16:46
Speaker 1: tax money to illegal aliens in the country. Look, forty
16:49
Speaker 1: of them might think we should send them only to
16:50
Speaker 1: illegal aliens. So this Democratic party is nuts. But Hassan, Hickenoper, Kelly, Mansion, Peters, Cinema, Stabeno,
17:05
Speaker 1: and Tester all voted for don't send them to le lands.
17:09
Speaker 1: And the third one was a vote in support of fracking,
17:13
Speaker 1: that we're not going to shut down fracking. So all
17:15
Speaker 1: of these Republicans offered, fracking is a good thing. That
17:18
Speaker 1: passed fifty seven forty three. So Bennett Colorado, Casey Pennsylvania, Heinrich,
17:26
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Hick and Looper Colorado, Luhan, New Mexico, Mansion,
17:31
Speaker 1: West Virginia, Tester, Montana. So you might say, hey, that's great,
17:35
Speaker 1: those are three victories. Yeah, I'm sensing a butt. You
17:41
Speaker 1: know what the last thing we voted on is it's
17:44
Speaker 1: what's called colloquially a wraparound amendment, which is Chuck Schumer's
17:50
Speaker 1: stands up as the very last amendment. It offers an
17:52
Speaker 1: amendment to strip out all of the amendments that we're
17:55
Speaker 1: adopted during the course of the night. It is literally
17:58
Speaker 1: a race every thing we just did for the last
18:02
Speaker 1: fifteen hours. Do you know what the vote was on
18:06
Speaker 1: the wrap around amendment? What fifty to fifty And we
18:13
Speaker 1: saw on that amendment to the very first vote ever
18:17
Speaker 1: cast by Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie
18:21
Speaker 1: and strip out those policies. So, by the way, and look,
18:24
Speaker 1: this is this is one of many reasons people despise politicians.
18:30
Speaker 1: Why did these Democrats vote this way? Because when when
18:34
Speaker 1: Joe Mansion and John Tester go home. When John Tester
18:36
Speaker 1: goes home to Montana, says, I voted for the Keystone pipeline,
18:41
Speaker 1: a sure bub but then you voted against it about
18:45
Speaker 1: about five hours later or ten hours later. It seems
18:48
Speaker 1: to me John Kerry like built a whole presidential campaign
18:50
Speaker 1: on exactly that I voted for it before ioted against it.
18:55
Speaker 1: But it's the ridiculous game where all of these votes
18:59
Speaker 1: were show votes because on the vote they cared about
19:03
Speaker 1: the party discipline vote. Every single one of them lines
19:07
Speaker 1: up and says, erase the amendments and go back to
19:11
Speaker 1: the Bernie Bernie Sanders spend the poloza right. Well, you know,
19:14
Speaker 1: the fracking vote is interesting to me because you'll recall
19:18
Speaker 1: so long ago, a few months ago, on the campaign trail,
19:22
Speaker 1: Joe Biden said, come on, man, I'm not gonna ban fracking.
19:24
Speaker 1: Come on man, that really doesn't sound like Joe, No,
19:28
Speaker 1: not at all. No, it's not Kamala Harris, same thing.
19:31
Speaker 1: H'm not gonna ban fracking. And then of course they're
19:34
Speaker 1: gonna ban fracking. They're gonna ban all these sorts of things.
19:37
Speaker 1: The amazing thing is PolitiFact would say you were lying
19:41
Speaker 1: when you said they were gonna ban fracking. Yeah, during
19:44
Speaker 1: the campaign, and now they'll say you're lying when you
19:46
Speaker 1: say they said they weren't gonna ban fracking. I know
19:49
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna say I'm lying when I just
19:51
Speaker 1: read the PolitiFact from three months ago. They're gonna they're
19:53
Speaker 1: gonna need to fact check me on that as well.
19:56
Speaker 1: But do you know my favorite PolitiFact? So twenty eighteen,
20:01
Speaker 1: I'm running for reelection for Senate and uh fellow ran
20:05
Speaker 1: against me, a guy named Beto Is he's that skateboarder.
20:12
Speaker 1: I think I saw him somewhere on the He jumps
20:15
Speaker 1: on tables. Um. So, when he entered the race, we decided,
20:21
Speaker 1: all right, we want to welcome him to the race
20:23
Speaker 1: with a kind, loving, gentle embrace. Um So we put
20:30
Speaker 1: out a parody song, and the song was based on
20:34
Speaker 1: if you're going to play in Texas, you gotta have
20:36
Speaker 1: a fiddle in the band. Except the one we put out.
20:39
Speaker 1: We said, if you're gonna run in Texas, you can't
20:42
Speaker 1: be a liberal man. And so we hired musicians who
20:53
Speaker 1: were really quite good and had the whole thing, and
20:56
Speaker 1: it uh and you know it begins why by saying,
21:00
Speaker 1: and Beto wants those open borders and he wants to
21:03
Speaker 1: take our guns. We put this ad out, PolitiFact fact
21:10
Speaker 1: checks it. Fact check your song, my parody song. Do
21:17
Speaker 1: you know puff the Magic Dragon actually didn't live in
21:19
Speaker 1: a land called Honely. No, it's an amazing thing. Wow,
21:24
Speaker 1: pants on fire, you know. But but they fact check
21:27
Speaker 1: it and they say it is literally pants on fire
21:31
Speaker 1: falls that Beto wants to take our guns. So fast
21:37
Speaker 1: forward to Senate race. We win, He loses minor detail.
21:47
Speaker 1: He goes to New Mexico and eats dirt. I don't
21:53
Speaker 1: ask me, I've been That's what he did. Um And
21:56
Speaker 1: then he runs for president as a Democrat. And the
22:00
Speaker 1: poor guy was so startled because his basse, by which
22:05
Speaker 1: I mean the reporters. Ye who look when he was
22:11
Speaker 1: running against me, they were like groupies at a Rolling
22:14
Speaker 1: Stone concert, throwing their underwear at it. Literally right if
22:20
Speaker 1: they were underwear, Yes to Edgy, it's a podcast. You
22:27
Speaker 1: can say whatever you want. The instant he was running
22:31
Speaker 1: against Bernie and Kamala, the heroes of the left, the
22:35
Speaker 1: press turned on him and the poor guy was, what
22:38
Speaker 1: the hell just happened? It's utterly startled. But you remember
22:42
Speaker 1: at one of the Democratic debates he said, damn right,
22:48
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take your AR fifteen. And then his campaign
22:54
Speaker 1: website began selling T shirts that's said on the front
22:59
Speaker 1: of them, damn right, I'm gonna take your AAR fifteen,
23:04
Speaker 1: at which point I couldn't resist jumping on Twitter and saying, hey, PolitiFact,
23:10
Speaker 1: when you fact checked my statement that Beta wants to
23:12
Speaker 1: take our guns and you said that was false, are
23:16
Speaker 1: you going to buy one of his teachers? Are? Yeah?
23:17
Speaker 1: Do you can? I send you a link to his
23:19
Speaker 1: Shopify account because you know they did this to us today, Actually, politifant, no,
23:23
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Was Snopes Daily Wire and my show at
23:27
Speaker 1: the Daily Wire, we ran this headline. It said, there's
23:30
Speaker 1: a report out that AOC was not in the Capitol
23:33
Speaker 1: Building during the riot on January sixth, and that was
23:37
Speaker 1: that was the whole headline, and we got a fact
23:40
Speaker 1: check mostly false, mostly Okay, So when it's mostly false,
23:45
Speaker 1: they say what's true and they say what's false? So
23:48
Speaker 1: I said, well, let's let's just see what's true about
23:51
Speaker 1: this headline was report AOC was not in the Capitol
23:55
Speaker 1: Building or the riot. What's true, AOC was not in
24:00
Speaker 1: the Capitol Building during the riot. But what's false is
24:04
Speaker 1: she was in another building that was down the street.
24:06
Speaker 1: And you know that's in DC and so and you
24:09
Speaker 1: guys are mean, so therefore mostly false. You know, Michael,
24:13
Speaker 1: I just don't know why you will not honor her
24:17
Speaker 1: individual truth. I recognize she was in her office when
24:25
Speaker 1: a police officer knocked on the door and asked her
24:28
Speaker 1: to evacuate. But if she lived that experience as a
24:33
Speaker 1: band of marauders sent by me came with murderous intentions,
24:41
Speaker 1: that is her truth. And by the way, you know
24:43
Speaker 1: what she said what you and I just did. She said,
24:46
Speaker 1: anyone that doubts her shared truth is guilty of sexual assault.
24:50
Speaker 1: Yes she did. She did say that she did it.
24:53
Speaker 1: She said, it's being like an abuser to question that
24:56
Speaker 1: you know this. This actually raises one of the central
24:59
Speaker 1: questions were to talking about here at YAFF which is
25:01
Speaker 1: for a long time, I think every conservative of every
25:04
Speaker 1: generation in this room has known about the threats from
25:06
Speaker 1: big government. But there are other threats to our freedom
25:10
Speaker 1: from other big sorts of entities, big tech, which would
25:15
Speaker 1: be polit effect, big corporations which are signing up with
25:20
Speaker 1: all of these radical left wing groups and advancing them.
25:23
Speaker 1: Big big, big, big big is big bureaucracy, all of
25:28
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. Looking forward, I mean, the conservative
25:32
Speaker 1: movement has come so far. Just think about YAFF, think
25:34
Speaker 1: about the growth of the Young America's Foundation. I mean,
25:36
Speaker 1: it's just unbelievable about all the people in this room,
25:39
Speaker 1: all the campuses that YAFF is on, the growth of
25:43
Speaker 1: so many conservative organizations. But now moving forward, it seems
25:46
Speaker 1: like the challenges are different. We're gonna have to start
25:49
Speaker 1: changing maybe some of our language, looking at these other threats.
25:52
Speaker 1: Where do we go from here? I know so many people,
25:55
Speaker 1: we're all pretty happy to be together tonight, but we're
25:57
Speaker 1: a little bit down after the election, after the inaugration.
26:01
Speaker 1: What where do we go from here? We go towards
26:07
Speaker 1: truth and light and freedom. Look the great thing about
26:12
Speaker 1: eternal truths, they're always true. Our ideas work. Freedom works,
26:21
Speaker 1: free markets work, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, free speech,
26:25
Speaker 1: religious liberty, the fundamental liberties of humanity. It is right
26:29
Speaker 1: and true. And just the next two years we're going
26:33
Speaker 1: to see wild eyed socialists trying to do enormous damage
26:37
Speaker 1: to this country. Their policies aren't going to work. They
26:42
Speaker 1: don't work. That is going to become evident. You know,
26:45
Speaker 1: I'll make a reference. This reminds me an awful lot
26:52
Speaker 1: of the late seventies. You know, Scott Walker and I
26:55
Speaker 1: are both almost exactly the same age. We were both
26:59
Speaker 1: killed in the late seventies. When Ronald Reagan was elected.
27:05
Speaker 1: I was ten when Reagan left the White House, I
27:09
Speaker 1: was eighteen. It took Jimmy Carter to give us Reagan.
27:15
Speaker 1: It took the absolute catastrophe, the disaster of the Carter years.
27:22
Speaker 1: It took Jimmy Carter giving away the Panama Canal. Ye,
27:26
Speaker 1: it's funny, you know, that's an issue that people don't
27:28
Speaker 1: even really think about anymore. But what I mean, so
27:32
Speaker 1: much was happening during those years To set up the
27:34
Speaker 1: Conservative took stagflation, enormous economic harm, misery, gas lines. It
27:42
Speaker 1: took the military being downgraded to a level that our
27:46
Speaker 1: hostages in Iran get get taken in captivity for four
27:49
Speaker 1: hundred and forty four days, and Carter sends out a
27:52
Speaker 1: military team to try to rescue them, and it crashes
27:55
Speaker 1: in the desert with no opposing fire, the abs calamity.
28:00
Speaker 1: It took Jimmy Carter putting on a sweater and saying,
28:07
Speaker 1: you know, we live in a world of scarcity. We
28:10
Speaker 1: don't have the money to heat your homes anymore. So
28:12
Speaker 1: just put on a sweater and just accept malaise, malaise
28:18
Speaker 1: the new normal, you might say. And all of that
28:22
Speaker 1: train wreck is what prepared people for a sunny, optimistic
28:29
Speaker 1: governor from California who understood the power of freedom. We're
28:36
Speaker 1: in a moment just like that. We're in a moment
28:40
Speaker 1: where we will go through some darkness. But the answer
28:44
Speaker 1: to darkness is always light. I have to tell you,
28:54
Speaker 1: a senator, when I as they turn on the lights,
28:59
Speaker 1: the light is here. When I asked you, where do
29:01
Speaker 1: we go from here, and you said, well, Michael, it's
29:02
Speaker 1: kind of like the seventies. I was feeling a little depressed.
29:05
Speaker 1: That did not sound great, But you're right. You get
29:07
Speaker 1: the seventies and then you get the eighties. I really
29:09
Speaker 1: hope Bell Bottoms don't come back. Although, to be honest,
29:14
Speaker 1: the eighties and depressingly enough, Michael, you're you're young enough
29:18
Speaker 1: not to remember. The eight was a glint in my
29:20
Speaker 1: father's eye. I owned parachute pants. Yeah, no, it really
29:26
Speaker 1: was horrible. It was these like plasticy Scott, did you
29:30
Speaker 1: have parachute pants? Okay, these plasticky pants with zippers all
29:35
Speaker 1: over them. And I do not know why. And my father,
29:40
Speaker 1: who you know, yeah, Cuban American pastor. I would be
29:43
Speaker 1: leaving in high school that he'd be like, do you
29:45
Speaker 1: want to look like a bomb? I'd be like, yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: that's I was a teenager, and that's what you say
29:51
Speaker 1: to your dad. And thankfully we grow out of that,
29:53
Speaker 1: you know, center sometimes conservatives, I think we go into nostalgia,
29:57
Speaker 1: you know, history after a few drinks when we think
29:59
Speaker 1: about he right, the eighties were You've reminded me it
30:02
Speaker 1: wasn't all great. You know, there were some issues there
30:03
Speaker 1: as well. I do also want to remind everyone who's
30:06
Speaker 1: watching right now on YouTube, head on over to YouTube
30:08
Speaker 1: dot com slash yaf TV. We will answer your questions,
30:12
Speaker 1: but only if they're good questions. If they're bad questions,
30:14
Speaker 1: we're absolutely going to ignore them. Subscribe send them in
30:18
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com slash yaf TV. I also, you know,
30:20
Speaker 1: we flew down here not just to talk amongst ourselves,
30:24
Speaker 1: as we often do. We want to talk to everyone
30:26
Speaker 1: who is out here at YAFF Freedom Conference. So let's do.
30:31
Speaker 1: Let's folk some questions. Our first question for the Live
30:38
Speaker 1: Verdict program tonight comes from YAF TV YouTube subscriber Real
30:44
Speaker 1: Truth Cactus, who asks the fact that any private person
30:48
Speaker 1: can have their lives destroyed because of their social media
30:51
Speaker 1: lives is terrifying. What can private citizens do to protect themselves?
30:56
Speaker 1: You can't take that one all rights as the private
30:59
Speaker 1: citizen in this duo here, It's very tricky. It reminds
31:04
Speaker 1: me of a question I get. Maybe we'll get it tonight,
31:06
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to get back into it, but I
31:08
Speaker 1: often get this sort of a question from students, which is, hey, Michael,
31:12
Speaker 1: how can I totally embrace my political views and be
31:15
Speaker 1: very honest about what I think and not cowtow to
31:19
Speaker 1: the liberal mob and tell my professor exactly what I
31:21
Speaker 1: think about is absolutely ridiculous anti American lessons and still
31:26
Speaker 1: get an a. I say, ah, you are asking for
31:29
Speaker 1: something that was never possible and never will be possible,
31:32
Speaker 1: my friend. You want to have it all and everything.
31:35
Speaker 1: Everything in life has consequences. It's why we remember that
31:39
Speaker 1: we have to be why is as serpents and innocent
31:42
Speaker 1: as doves. Right. This is a very tricky situation that
31:46
Speaker 1: we're living in, and I can't just give you some
31:48
Speaker 1: kind of platitude and say, you know, speak your mind
31:51
Speaker 1: and be true to yourself and you will face no
31:54
Speaker 1: consequences whatsoever. The one thing I can say, though, having
31:58
Speaker 1: never learned the lesson to my mouth shut, is you know,
32:02
Speaker 1: I certainly have spoken my mind, and I've gotten some
32:06
Speaker 1: lower grades because of it, and don't get invited to
32:08
Speaker 1: some fun parties because of it too. But I will say,
32:12
Speaker 1: from the times I have been honest about my beliefs.
32:16
Speaker 1: You don't need to be flamboyant about them. You don't
32:18
Speaker 1: need to be parading them around all the time. But
32:19
Speaker 1: when you're asked, you give an honest answer. I sleep
32:22
Speaker 1: like a baby. It is. It is not worth your
32:25
Speaker 1: integrity to keep your mouth I do. I do like
32:29
Speaker 1: like I screamed, a very odd phrase. You're the father
32:33
Speaker 1: of a new boy. Is sleep like a baby? A
32:37
Speaker 1: peaceful image? Oh? It's one of My wife feeds me
32:39
Speaker 1: multiple times in the middle of the night. Pizza. It's great,
32:42
Speaker 1: absolutely fabulous, And that's why it's really why my answer
32:46
Speaker 1: is just get married and you'll have a much better life.
32:48
Speaker 1: But it but it really, I do think it really
32:50
Speaker 1: is important in this way to have the integrity you
32:54
Speaker 1: will you will take a hit and you just have
32:57
Speaker 1: to deal with that. And being a conservative requires that
33:00
Speaker 1: you recognize reality and accept the permanent things about life.
33:05
Speaker 1: But it is worth it because in the end, all
33:08
Speaker 1: the cheap little thrills that you'll get by lying to
33:10
Speaker 1: yourself and to others, I just don't think are worth it. Well,
33:14
Speaker 1: And let me add something to that on a different
33:17
Speaker 1: because I think you're right in school, and it is
33:19
Speaker 1: a challenge in school you have liberal professors. How you
33:22
Speaker 1: handle that. Both Michael and I experienced getting your grades
33:26
Speaker 1: clips substantially with professors from the left that didn't like
33:30
Speaker 1: what we were saying. And that's a hard challenge to
33:32
Speaker 1: deal with. Let me give it a different aspect to
33:35
Speaker 1: that question, though, which is the social media component of it.
33:38
Speaker 1: You know, we're a different environment where everyone here is online,
33:45
Speaker 1: everyone here is connected, and what you say is recorded
33:51
Speaker 1: for all perpetuity. Yea, once it's on the Internet, it's
33:55
Speaker 1: for it never goes away. And I got to say, look,
33:59
Speaker 1: our daughters ten and twelve. It scares the living daylights
34:04
Speaker 1: out of me that as they start to get an engagement,
34:07
Speaker 1: I think of the dumb ass things that I thought
34:11
Speaker 1: and said when I was fifteen and seventeen and nineteen,
34:16
Speaker 1: and I am so glad that they are not preserved
34:19
Speaker 1: for all alternative. They faded, They were dumb, and they
34:22
Speaker 1: were forgotten. Yeah, y'all are living in an environment where
34:26
Speaker 1: you don't get a second chance on that. And so
34:29
Speaker 1: I'd say be careful on that. Yeah, because it is
34:33
Speaker 1: a smart Alec tweet, a smart Alec post. In five
34:39
Speaker 1: years at a job interview, you could find them pulling
34:42
Speaker 1: it out and reading it to you. And I try
34:44
Speaker 1: to explain that to you. Know, you want to make
34:47
Speaker 1: a joke, just humor, be fun and have a sense
34:51
Speaker 1: of humor, But ask yourself, do I want to see
34:55
Speaker 1: this five years from now? And if you don't, maybe
34:59
Speaker 1: don't send it out in to the world to be
35:00
Speaker 1: there forever. Because because this is the other side of
35:03
Speaker 1: the integrity aspect, which is you don't want to hide
35:05
Speaker 1: your views and pretend to be somebody who you are not.
35:08
Speaker 1: But you also don't want to do something that you
35:10
Speaker 1: will be embarrassed about. You don't want to be doing
35:12
Speaker 1: something that you'll be ashamed of five or ten years
35:15
Speaker 1: later when you look back on it, and when your
35:17
Speaker 1: prospective employers look back on it too. Hi, my name's
35:20
Speaker 1: Trip Grayby. I'm a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
35:23
Speaker 1: First of all, thank you both for being here. My
35:26
Speaker 1: question is, as you alluded to earlier, the Goop seems
35:29
Speaker 1: to be more divided than it's ever been before. And
35:32
Speaker 1: it seems as though since the election and since the
35:34
Speaker 1: riots at the Capitol, there's been a certain effort to
35:37
Speaker 1: purge Trump's skeptical Republicans from the party. Ben SaaS is
35:41
Speaker 1: expecting a censure from the Nebraska Gop. Sydney McCann and
35:45
Speaker 1: Jeff Flake, Doug Doocey were censored by the Arizona Goop,
35:49
Speaker 1: and Liz Cheney was almost ousted from House leadership recently.
35:54
Speaker 1: So my question to you is do you think that
35:58
Speaker 1: there's a path forward for Trump's skep conservatives. Of course
36:02
Speaker 1: there is. I think there's a path forward for everyone
36:09
Speaker 1: who agrees on a shared set of principles and values.
36:12
Speaker 1: You know Reagan. Reagan said, what do you call someone
36:15
Speaker 1: who agrees with you eighty percent of the time a friend?
36:19
Speaker 1: So look, we're at a weird divided time. Donald J.
36:27
Speaker 1: Trump is a unique individual and he inspires unique sentiments
36:34
Speaker 1: from virtually everybody. I do think some people have lost
36:40
Speaker 1: their minds over how much they dislike it. He says
36:44
Speaker 1: and does things I disagree with, but he also has
36:47
Speaker 1: done a lot of things I agree with that I
36:49
Speaker 1: think we're good for the country, and I try to
36:52
Speaker 1: approach it as a reasonable person to say, Okay, when
36:55
Speaker 1: he's working for good policy that's good for the country,
36:58
Speaker 1: I'll work with him. When he's saying things that are
37:00
Speaker 1: not good, I'm not going to support that. There are
37:03
Speaker 1: efforts of purging on both sides, and we're seeing it
37:07
Speaker 1: right now. And look, anytime you lose an election, there's
37:09
Speaker 1: a period of chaos, there's a period of reckoning that's
37:12
Speaker 1: fairly natural. And so you're right. There are those who
37:17
Speaker 1: are very strong Trump supporters that are saying get rid
37:21
Speaker 1: of anyone who isn't there are also those who are
37:24
Speaker 1: not fans of Trump that are trying to say get
37:26
Speaker 1: rid of everyone who was. I mean, we're seeing the
37:28
Speaker 1: purging on both ends. You know, I have this crazy
37:33
Speaker 1: view that I'd like us to win elections, and you
37:39
Speaker 1: win elections by getting fifty plus one. So I'm not
37:43
Speaker 1: really interested in taking any significant chunk of the party
37:46
Speaker 1: in purging it. I am interested in finding shared values
37:50
Speaker 1: that bring us together. And right now, these emotions are raw,
37:55
Speaker 1: these emotions are people are worked up and they're passionate. Yeah,
38:04
Speaker 1: that'll fade as time goes on. Those divisions, there have
38:10
Speaker 1: always been divisions in the party. They've always been. You know,
38:18
Speaker 1: it's interesting. I wrote a book last year called One
38:22
Speaker 1: Vote Away about the US Supreme Court, and one of
38:25
Speaker 1: the chapters in the book traces the history of the court,
38:27
Speaker 1: and it goes back to two nominees that were put
38:29
Speaker 1: on the court, and it goes back to the nineteen
38:34
Speaker 1: fifty two GOP convention and the nineteen forty eight GOP
38:42
Speaker 1: convention and the battles that were in the party, actually
38:48
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight, the battles that were in the
38:50
Speaker 1: party where you had you had Dwight D. Eisenhower, who
38:55
Speaker 1: was the choice of the New England Moderates, and you
38:59
Speaker 1: had Robert was the choice of the Conservatives, and they
39:02
Speaker 1: were at each other's throats, and you read it and
39:05
Speaker 1: you just stop and laugh. I look, most of us
39:08
Speaker 1: weren't alive then, and the same battles that we see
39:11
Speaker 1: playing out somewhere. Okay, I got a few mean looks
39:14
Speaker 1: at it. But the same battles and tensions that we're
39:19
Speaker 1: playing out now, we're playing out then, and they're going
39:22
Speaker 1: to be disagreements. And you know, some of it comes
39:27
Speaker 1: down to the difference between a parliamentary system and a
39:29
Speaker 1: two party presidential system. Parliamentary system, we could have a
39:33
Speaker 1: dozen different parties and everyone could pick a party of
39:36
Speaker 1: just people exactly like them who are left handed and
39:41
Speaker 1: ride unicorns unicycles, and you can all be hopefully not
39:44
Speaker 1: unicorns but unicycles. In a presidential system for two parties,
39:49
Speaker 1: you've got to stitch together a coalition that's sometimes uneasy,
39:54
Speaker 1: that's sometimes difficult. So, yes, these tensions are real. II
40:00
Speaker 1: The having debates about who we are and what we
40:02
Speaker 1: stand for should be good. But I also don't think
40:05
Speaker 1: we win elections by purging major parts of our party.
40:08
Speaker 1: I think we win elections by growing our party and
40:10
Speaker 1: convincing the American people that our ideas are right. I
40:13
Speaker 1: love that point, Senator. It's a really, really great point
40:18
Speaker 1: because this is an issue that has come up in
40:20
Speaker 1: the last couple of weeks. Should there be a third
40:22
Speaker 1: party for people who are I don't know, one type
40:24
Speaker 1: of conservative over the other. And of course, if there
40:27
Speaker 1: were a different party, that would immediately give Democrats every
40:30
Speaker 1: single office in the land. More or less. We saw
40:33
Speaker 1: this happen with Teddy Roosevelt gave us Woodrow Wilson and
40:36
Speaker 1: more or less destroyed the country. So you don't want
40:38
Speaker 1: that sort of thing to happen. When Bill Buckley, in
40:42
Speaker 1: conjunction with this very organization, sort of cobbled together the
40:46
Speaker 1: postwar conservative movement. He brought together libertarians, traditionalists, and the
40:51
Speaker 1: religious right and warhawk democrats. And those three groups did
40:56
Speaker 1: not have a ton in common. They all hated the
41:00
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, libertarians because of the collectivism, the traditionalists because
41:04
Speaker 1: of the atheism, and the warhawks because of the imperial ambitions.
41:07
Speaker 1: And they worked together and had an incredibly successful governing coalition.
41:11
Speaker 1: And now we're going to be debating a lot of
41:13
Speaker 1: these questions. Where do we stand on migration, what do
41:17
Speaker 1: we think that means in our national history? Where do
41:20
Speaker 1: we stand on corporate America? Where we spend all these
41:23
Speaker 1: sorts of issues. I think it's easier to debate those
41:25
Speaker 1: things when it's not just a personality contest and a
41:28
Speaker 1: contest of who was right five years ago, when you're
41:31
Speaker 1: actually talking about those issues, and there's another issue on
41:33
Speaker 1: top of that, which is do we have the courage
41:36
Speaker 1: to do the things that the people give us power
41:39
Speaker 1: to do? Will we actually do it? Or are we
41:41
Speaker 1: just going to promise something on the campaign trail and
41:43
Speaker 1: then do something else behind closed doors. Those debates, as
41:46
Speaker 1: you say, cent, those are all happening right now. That
41:48
Speaker 1: is perfectly normal, and you want to make sure you
41:50
Speaker 1: keep enough people together that you can still win elections.
41:54
Speaker 1: Our next Live Verdict mail bag question comes from yaf
41:57
Speaker 1: TV YouTube subscriber Derek Maker, who asks should Texas secede?
42:07
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting that question is getting asked more
42:10
Speaker 1: and more. It is literally being debated in the Texas legislature.
42:16
Speaker 1: I have a friend of mine from New England who
42:19
Speaker 1: actually flew down to Texas right before the twenty sixteen election.
42:24
Speaker 1: He was convinced Hillary was going to win and the
42:27
Speaker 1: world was going to hell in a handbasket, and he
42:30
Speaker 1: said Texas needs to secede. It's the only hope to
42:32
Speaker 1: save the union. And he was dead deadly serious. And
42:36
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I told him then, and it's
42:38
Speaker 1: the same thing i'd say in the answer to that.
42:39
Speaker 1: My answer is no, I don't believe Texas should secede
42:44
Speaker 1: because I think we have a responsibility to the country
42:46
Speaker 1: because I love America and I'm not willing to give
42:48
Speaker 1: up on America. I understand the sentiments behind it, I
43:01
Speaker 1: understand the frustrations as you look at lunatics running our
43:10
Speaker 1: national parties, running our institutions of government, it's frightening. And
43:15
Speaker 1: I will say, look, we're at a strange time in
43:18
Speaker 1: our country because our country is coming apart. We're living
43:22
Speaker 1: in two universes, the left and right. And this is
43:26
Speaker 1: where technology, I think has had a really significant impact
43:29
Speaker 1: because with social media, with the Internet, the left listens
43:33
Speaker 1: to left wing news, the right listens to right wing news.
43:38
Speaker 1: If someone disagrees, you unfriend them. And we don't have
43:43
Speaker 1: shared facts, we don't have the homogenizing institutions. You know,
43:48
Speaker 1: it used to be that you know, you would go
43:51
Speaker 1: you'd be a Democrat or Republican, but you'd go to
43:54
Speaker 1: church with your neighbors and there'd be some of both.
43:57
Speaker 1: You'd go to the rotary club and you would know
43:59
Speaker 1: people who were Democrats, you'd know people who were Republicans,
44:03
Speaker 1: and you discover that they didn't have horns and they
44:06
Speaker 1: weren't monsters. I worry about our country that the reality
44:12
Speaker 1: of someone in Texas is very different maybe than the
44:19
Speaker 1: reality of someone in Seattle, where everything they're hearing, all
44:23
Speaker 1: of the reinforcements, all of the facts are skewed to
44:27
Speaker 1: one side. I think the answer it's incumbent on us. Listen,
44:31
Speaker 1: the media has given up on its task. You Walter
44:36
Speaker 1: Cronkite played a role of bringing people together, and he
44:40
Speaker 1: leaned left, but he wasn't a naked partisan the way
44:44
Speaker 1: today's journalists are, to be honest. If we're gonna wait
44:49
Speaker 1: for CNN or MSNBC or the New York Times to
44:52
Speaker 1: fix itself, the country will be lost. The only way
44:57
Speaker 1: to fix it is to do what we're doing right now.
45:00
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons I love podcast is because
45:02
Speaker 1: we could sit down and do a podcast any damn
45:05
Speaker 1: time we want, and put it out there and communicate directly,
45:08
Speaker 1: and by the way, every one of you can too.
45:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's easy when you're young to think, well, gosh,
45:14
Speaker 1: you know, when I'm older, when I'm thirty, when I'm forty,
45:17
Speaker 1: when I'm established, then I'll have a voice. Then I'll
45:19
Speaker 1: be able to do something. Everyone of you has a
45:22
Speaker 1: voice right now. And not only that, your conservatives on
45:28
Speaker 1: college campuses. I mean, you are thick headed and stubborn
45:33
Speaker 1: as hell. That's great. You got them to a flaud
45:43
Speaker 1: by calling them thick headed and stubborn as hell. That's
45:45
Speaker 1: very that's very oppressive, you know, on this question of Texit,
45:49
Speaker 1: I will defer to the senator from Texas if you
45:52
Speaker 1: want to ask me about tennis, sexit or something which
45:55
Speaker 1: sounds very very taudry. But if you want to ask
45:57
Speaker 1: me about that, I'm happy to answer. But that's a
46:00
Speaker 1: good point. Howdy, gentlemen. My name is Rhydolson. I am
46:05
Speaker 1: a senior Texas A and M University him as a
46:11
Speaker 1: lifelong Texan, I too, am a survivor of the twenty
46:14
Speaker 1: eighteen hellscape known as Beatomania. So my question to you is,
46:18
Speaker 1: seeing as this is a current trend with you know,
46:20
Speaker 1: AOC becoming a basically a new celebrity, how do you
46:25
Speaker 1: fight the power of celebrity in future elections. It's a
46:30
Speaker 1: huge problem. It is a problem that stems back. I
46:36
Speaker 1: think you can go back really to the nineteen sixties.
46:39
Speaker 1: The left systematically took over the organs of the transmission
46:46
Speaker 1: of ideas. They systematically took over education K through twelve.
46:51
Speaker 1: Education is almost uniformly left. They took over colleges and universities,
46:57
Speaker 1: They took over journalism, and they look over entertainment. They
47:02
Speaker 1: took over Hollywood. By the way of all of them,
47:05
Speaker 1: if I could get one back, I'd get entertainment back.
47:09
Speaker 1: If you look at the influence of movies and TVs,
47:13
Speaker 1: and by the way, sports and video games, all of
47:17
Speaker 1: them are dominated by the left. And so what they
47:22
Speaker 1: do is they make their folks celebrities and they treat
47:27
Speaker 1: them AOC and Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian are all
47:36
Speaker 1: the same thing. And the press and big tech. Oh
47:43
Speaker 1: be still my heart. She played a video game. Well
47:47
Speaker 1: hot diggity damn. You know. I was in the airport
47:56
Speaker 1: in DC getting ready to fly down to Miami today
47:59
Speaker 1: and I up to get a I wanted to die
48:01
Speaker 1: Doctor Pepper, but they didn't have one, so I got
48:03
Speaker 1: to die coke um. And I'm just looking at all
48:07
Speaker 1: the magazine covers and every magazine cover had Joe Biden
48:14
Speaker 1: smiling ear to ear, had him happy. Jill Biden there,
48:17
Speaker 1: well except for the Kamala ones where I actually think
48:21
Speaker 1: she was glowing. I think they actually require like choir
48:24
Speaker 1: music to be played. Yeah, there's a loom on it.
48:26
Speaker 1: It's radioactive it you know, you know the Renaissance paintings
48:30
Speaker 1: where they put halos around. I mean it is, it's
48:33
Speaker 1: it's hagiography and it is designed to be and you know,
48:38
Speaker 1: you get questions, what's your favorite ice cream flavor? Scott?
48:44
Speaker 1: Did anyone ever ask you your favorite ice cream? It is?
48:51
Speaker 1: And the entertainment world? All right, So this week I
48:56
Speaker 1: got in a Twitter beef with Carrie Ellis, who says
49:04
Speaker 1: rob Pirate, Roberts and the Princess Bride, which is my
49:06
Speaker 1: favorite movie? And mind you Okay, so this it was
49:10
Speaker 1: actually caused by Verdict. So I didn't pick this one.
49:12
Speaker 1: I picked a lot of them, but I did not
49:14
Speaker 1: pick this one. I was innocently minding my own business.
49:18
Speaker 1: Last Verdict we did, I talked about I went in
49:21
Speaker 1: a digression and I said, you ever notice how many
49:23
Speaker 1: movie villains are rabid environmentalists? And I talked about Thanos
49:29
Speaker 1: and Avengers endgame who says there are too many people,
49:32
Speaker 1: they're consuming the resources, so I'm gonna snap my finger
49:35
Speaker 1: and half the people are going to disappear. And I've
49:39
Speaker 1: said that point several times before, but for whatever reason,
49:45
Speaker 1: some lefty saw it and lost his mind and tweeted
49:49
Speaker 1: it out and the thing went viral like crazy, and
49:51
Speaker 1: I actually took media matters the lefty group and I
49:53
Speaker 1: retweeted them. I said, like, yep, that's what I'm saying.
49:56
Speaker 1: Listen to what the guy's saying. He's an environmentalist. He
49:59
Speaker 1: wants to kill half every person that lives. So Carrie
50:04
Speaker 1: Olle was got mad at that. Oh, there is a
50:07
Speaker 1: very cute thing on Twitter. Someone pointed out apparently I
50:10
Speaker 1: pronounce his name wrong because I say Thanos and it's
50:14
Speaker 1: Thanos Stanos. And they actually did a clip of like
50:18
Speaker 1: twenty characters from the movie going Thanos Stanos. Thanos Thanos okay,
50:22
Speaker 1: guy with really fat fingers who can kill half the
50:24
Speaker 1: people on the universe. Uh So, Carrie, I was out
50:29
Speaker 1: of nowhere, blasts me and says, I don't know, puts
50:33
Speaker 1: that clip and says you're a moron. And by the way,
50:36
Speaker 1: everyone who made the Princess Bride. We all hate you,
50:38
Speaker 1: hate you, we all hate you. Um now, this is
50:43
Speaker 1: my favorite movie. I've seen this a lot of times,
50:47
Speaker 1: and is it so happens? In my state office is
50:51
Speaker 1: a framed picture of Karrie out was dresses the dread
50:55
Speaker 1: Pirate Roberts, signed by right Alwis two Senator Cruz best wishes,
51:03
Speaker 1: all my best wishes. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, really, dude,
51:08
Speaker 1: Like really, Yes, you're a lefty actor. You're all lefty actors. Yea.
51:13
Speaker 1: And by the way, just because you're all lefty actors
51:16
Speaker 1: doesn't mean we don't get to enjoy movies. You know,
51:18
Speaker 1: if we only listen to conservatives, okay, no movies, no sports,
51:23
Speaker 1: no TV. No, I'd like to hell with you. You
51:25
Speaker 1: don't own your art. I love your movie, even if
51:28
Speaker 1: you're a numbskull. But I did take a picture of
51:32
Speaker 1: the signed signed a picture that he had he had
51:35
Speaker 1: signed to me and apparently forgot about. And I just
51:39
Speaker 1: set the picture back and said, does this mean you
51:41
Speaker 1: want your picture back? And so he blocked me. He
51:46
Speaker 1: does pleasant never go against Ted Cruise when tweets are
51:50
Speaker 1: on the line, and never do it. Our final question
52:01
Speaker 1: comes from the Live Verdict mail bag. Blake, who is
52:05
Speaker 1: a subscriber on YAF TV, asks Biden said he was
52:09
Speaker 1: going to follow the science, but what about his refusal
52:13
Speaker 1: to follow the science that says open the schools? Are
52:16
Speaker 1: he and Cuomo just on a rampage to hold onto
52:19
Speaker 1: the power they gained under COVID. Yes, thanks everybody. No,
52:32
Speaker 1: the left is really good at weaponizing language. They do
52:38
Speaker 1: it really well, by the way. We're not nearly as
52:41
Speaker 1: good at it. Science is one of their favorite words.
52:48
Speaker 1: By the way, what they mean by science are the
52:51
Speaker 1: socialist policies they want to implement. The actual substance of
52:55
Speaker 1: the science doesn't matter. It's actually worth pointing out too.
52:58
Speaker 1: They have been using science in this way for over
53:01
Speaker 1: one hundred years. They actually radical left wing activists, following
53:05
Speaker 1: in the Marxist tradition, actually would refer to the science
53:09
Speaker 1: of history the science of politics. That is why, Actually
53:13
Speaker 1: when Bill Buckley started National Review, he said, we stand
53:15
Speaker 1: athwart history, yelling stop. Because they knew that they knew
53:19
Speaker 1: the science of history, they knew where it was going
53:21
Speaker 1: to their terrible socialist utopia. So they've been they've been
53:24
Speaker 1: doing this for a long time. But they also don't
53:27
Speaker 1: care about science exactly. Science is a club to beat
53:34
Speaker 1: the masses into submission and obedience. So it it'll be clear.
53:44
Speaker 1: I am the son of two mathematicians and scientists. I
53:46
Speaker 1: believe in science. Science actually matters. Now, how many of
53:51
Speaker 1: y'all remember the scientific method where you start with a hypothesis,
53:56
Speaker 1: you then test it with evidence, and you see to
54:00
Speaker 1: disprove it. So one of the things, right, let's take
54:03
Speaker 1: a couple of issues on science, climate change, the holy
54:08
Speaker 1: grail now of government control of every aspect of your life.
54:12
Speaker 1: A little bit of history. Nineteen sixties nineteen seventies, left
54:16
Speaker 1: wing politicians were saying, we are entering a massive period
54:20
Speaker 1: of global cooling, a new ice age. The only solution
54:26
Speaker 1: is for the government to control the economy, the energy sector,
54:29
Speaker 1: in every aspect of your life. It follows naturally. Then
54:32
Speaker 1: there was a problem. The Earth wasn't in fact cooling
54:37
Speaker 1: like it was an interesting theory, but it just was wrong.
54:42
Speaker 1: So then fast forward another ten twenty years and you
54:46
Speaker 1: have scientists, many of them the same scientists, who come
54:48
Speaker 1: up with global warming. That sounds different, sounds kind of
54:53
Speaker 1: like the opposite of the first one they had, but
54:55
Speaker 1: interesting and by the way you get the next wave
54:58
Speaker 1: of politicians and global warming. The solution is total government
55:03
Speaker 1: control of the economy, the energy sector, in every aspect
55:06
Speaker 1: of your life. Second, hold on here. But then they
55:09
Speaker 1: had another problem, which is that the Earth isn't warming.
55:14
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys can't win for losing. They just
55:16
Speaker 1: keep blowing it. So we have satellites that are orbiting
55:20
Speaker 1: the Earth that are measuring the temperature, and for eighteen
55:23
Speaker 1: years they have measured zero statistically significant warming. So that
55:30
Speaker 1: a problem. They have these computer models that show it
55:33
Speaker 1: should be warming like crazy, and the satellites actually measuring
55:35
Speaker 1: the temperature say, well, it's not warming like crazy. They
55:38
Speaker 1: actually call this the pause. If you want to enjoy
55:47
Speaker 1: a bit of humor, you can google me and Sierra Club.
55:53
Speaker 1: The head of the Sierra Club was testifying in the
55:55
Speaker 1: state and I asked him about the pause, and I said,
55:59
Speaker 1: do you know what the cause is? He said yes.
56:01
Speaker 1: I asked him what it was, and he refused to say.
56:03
Speaker 1: He simply refused to say. He refused to answer, And
56:06
Speaker 1: it's because And then did you notice think about it
56:10
Speaker 1: for a second, No one uses the term global warming anymore.
56:13
Speaker 1: It magically changed. And if you care about science. I
56:17
Speaker 1: want you to pause and think about climate change. It
56:20
Speaker 1: is the perfect pseudo scientific theory. Why let's go back
56:27
Speaker 1: to the scientific method. This is a theory that can
56:31
Speaker 1: never ever ever be disproven. If you're mapping out the
56:36
Speaker 1: sets in which it is true, it is true and
56:38
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of the circumstances. If the climate gets hotter,
56:42
Speaker 1: the theory is correct. If the climate gets cooler, the
56:44
Speaker 1: theory is correct. If the climate gets wet, or the
56:46
Speaker 1: theory is correct. If the climate gets drier, the theory
56:49
Speaker 1: is correct. There are no data, There is no evidence
56:52
Speaker 1: that can ever disprove a theory that stops changing, because well, yeah,
56:59
Speaker 1: the climate's been changing since the dawna time. If something
57:09
Speaker 1: is not susceptible to the scientific method, if it's not
57:12
Speaker 1: testable by data and evidence, its purpose is not science.
57:18
Speaker 1: And by the way, the solution to fix it. Hold on,
57:21
Speaker 1: I am gonna try to guess. Give me a second.
57:23
Speaker 1: Tell me total government control of the economy, the energy sector,
57:27
Speaker 1: in every aspect of your lives. Okay, John Carrie flies
57:33
Speaker 1: on private jets to get environmental awards because he believes
57:40
Speaker 1: in this nonsense. No he doesn't. He believes in government power,
57:45
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with science. By the way,
57:47
Speaker 1: you'll also be told the polarized caps are melting. Here's
57:51
Speaker 1: a problem. There's more ice than the polarized capts today
57:54
Speaker 1: than their watch was ten years ago. Group a lefty
57:57
Speaker 1: scientist went down with a ship to an article to
58:00
Speaker 1: measure the ice. They were told they did icebreakers. They
58:03
Speaker 1: said no, no no, no, it's all melting. They got stuck
58:04
Speaker 1: in the ice. When you bring this up, the supposed
58:11
Speaker 1: avatars of science scream denier. Let me tell you right now,
58:19
Speaker 1: denier is not the language of science. If you actually
58:22
Speaker 1: care about science, you don't speak that's the language of religion.
58:28
Speaker 1: Heretic the witch. Throw him in the water. If he floats,
58:35
Speaker 1: he's a witch. That's for science. It's science. By the way,
58:41
Speaker 1: for any of your lefty classmates, if they want to
58:44
Speaker 1: pontificate on science, here's one question you can ask them.
58:47
Speaker 1: Just just very innocuously, tell me what is a Y chromosome?
58:55
Speaker 1: How dare you there's no hate speech on this podcast, Senator,
58:59
Speaker 1: You can not ask that we believe in scientists. Tell
59:03
Speaker 1: me what what is that thing I learned? You know,
59:07
Speaker 1: we've we've had a year of good podcasts, and now
59:09
Speaker 1: you're going to get us a deep platformed because you're
59:11
Speaker 1: bringing up hate speech like our chromosomes. You know you
59:14
Speaker 1: can even you even see it in the White House
59:16
Speaker 1: press briefings. We heard this just over the past few days.
59:19
Speaker 1: Actually getting back to the specifics of that question, if
59:24
Speaker 1: you will, if you will indulge me, I would like
59:26
Speaker 1: to circle back. We have been told Biden administration, in
59:37
Speaker 1: what forty two executive orders since he's been inaugurated, three
59:42
Speaker 1: of them explicitly mention how important sciences and we need
59:45
Speaker 1: to follow the science. Biden campaign done this. So he's
59:49
Speaker 1: going to more or less outsources his policies to these technocrats,
59:53
Speaker 1: these lab coat, exalted dictators who know how to run
59:56
Speaker 1: our lives better than we all do, right, unless it's
1:00:00
Speaker 1: politically inconvenient, Because just just a couple days ago, the
1:00:04
Speaker 1: CDC director said, no reason to keep the schools closed.
1:00:07
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of great data coming out shows
1:00:09
Speaker 1: that the virus is not spreading in any particular way
1:00:12
Speaker 1: in schools. You don't need a way for teachers to
1:00:14
Speaker 1: get vaccinated. Send those kids back, educate them. Now, did
1:00:20
Speaker 1: you see the correction? Was there a correction? There was
1:00:23
Speaker 1: a correction. What was there was a fact check? Well, no,
1:00:26
Speaker 1: it's worse than that. The White House said she was
1:00:29
Speaker 1: speaking in her personal capacity in her so apparently she
1:00:35
Speaker 1: wasn't a scientist. I guess this. Now she's standing at
1:00:39
Speaker 1: the frigging White House with the podium that says the
1:00:43
Speaker 1: frigging White House on it, and she's discussing a global
1:00:47
Speaker 1: pandemic and what the science says. But here's the problem.
1:00:55
Speaker 1: She doesn't lead a union that spends hundreds of millions
1:00:57
Speaker 1: of dollars to elect Democrats. That is very interesting, and
1:01:01
Speaker 1: so suddenly what she said became an inconvenient truth. It's
1:01:08
Speaker 1: a good book title, by the way, just because someone
1:01:11
Speaker 1: should make a movie out of that. Because of course,
1:01:13
Speaker 1: these bureaucrats, these technocrats, Yeah, they might be in the
1:01:17
Speaker 1: constituency here that the Democrats want to appeal to, but
1:01:20
Speaker 1: they want to appeal to those teacher unions more. And
1:01:22
Speaker 1: the teacher unions say, science be damned, we're not going
1:01:25
Speaker 1: back to work. And that's going to be the line
1:01:27
Speaker 1: from the White House. It looks science is a wonderful thing,
1:01:32
Speaker 1: and by the way, we should embrace science as a
1:01:35
Speaker 1: wonderful tool for human learning. But part of science is
1:01:38
Speaker 1: looking to facts and data and evidence and what works
1:01:41
Speaker 1: and what doesn't. Their policies don't work, they don't want
1:01:44
Speaker 1: to talk about whether their policies work. They instead want
1:01:47
Speaker 1: to behave it has become religion. Climate changes their justification
1:01:53
Speaker 1: for a total government control. But it's about socialism, it's
1:01:56
Speaker 1: about the state having control of your lives. And they
1:02:00
Speaker 1: are statists in their core. And I think we should
1:02:06
Speaker 1: respond as happy warriors. You don't think we should just
1:02:10
Speaker 1: be furious and rip our hair out, because that's sort
1:02:12
Speaker 1: of what I'm tempted to do, is that No, no,
1:02:15
Speaker 1: we've got we've got to take a better attitude than that. Hey,
1:02:19
Speaker 1: and things can change very quickly. Um. You know, one
1:02:26
Speaker 1: of my favorite clips is a great clip of Reagan
1:02:35
Speaker 1: at the White House and he's doing a White House
1:02:38
Speaker 1: press briefly and Sam Donaldson, who was an ABC News reporter,
1:02:42
Speaker 1: was pretty obnoxious and he was pounding Reagan and he said,
1:02:49
Speaker 1: mister President, you blamed the Speaker of the House, you
1:02:55
Speaker 1: blamed Congress, you blamed Democrats, you blamed everybody else. Mister President,
1:03:01
Speaker 1: we have a lot of problems in this country. Don't
1:03:03
Speaker 1: you bear any of the responsibility for the problems we
1:03:07
Speaker 1: have in this country. And Reagan leans forward with a
1:03:11
Speaker 1: twinkle in his eye and he says, well, Sam, yes, yes,
1:03:20
Speaker 1: I do. I bear considerable responsibility because for many years
1:03:28
Speaker 1: I was a Democrat. And if you google the clip,
1:03:41
Speaker 1: it ends with Sam down Donaldson cracking up. Lad. A
1:03:45
Speaker 1: little humor goes along, even in an empire of lies.
1:03:49
Speaker 1: To borrow our friend Andrew Plavn's phrase, even living this
1:03:51
Speaker 1: empire of lies, big government, big tech, big business, big
1:03:55
Speaker 1: everything colluding against us, A conservative consolation is that reality
1:03:59
Speaker 1: will I will reassert itself a little bit. In the end.
1:04:02
Speaker 1: We can count on truth. We do need to have courage,
1:04:04
Speaker 1: though that's the prerequisite for all of the other virtues.
1:04:07
Speaker 1: Seeing a lot of young, courageous conservatives in this room,
1:04:10
Speaker 1: seeing the strength of Yaff so happy to see Governor
1:04:14
Speaker 1: Scott Walker now officially a president of Yaff. I think
1:04:19
Speaker 1: there's been such a wonderful, a wonderful decade upon decade
1:04:23
Speaker 1: upon decade here at Yeff, and I think we only
1:04:25
Speaker 1: have so much more to look forward to. Thank you
1:04:27
Speaker 1: also very much. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This
1:04:59
Speaker 1: episode Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you
1:05:02
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Speaker 1: to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help
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