Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Don’t Defund The Police

Transcript

Don’t Defund The Police · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: Riots have overtaken the country. Lawlessness abounds, and the genius
0:05
Speaker 1: Democrat policy proposal for dealing with all of it is
0:08
Speaker 1: to defund the police. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.
0:18
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles.
0:21
Speaker 1: We are in Washington, DC. Senator. You invited me here
0:25
Speaker 1: on our last episode. You said we could have a
0:27
Speaker 1: stogie together if I just made it out to the
0:29
Speaker 1: east coast. So I fly out to basically the rubble
0:32
Speaker 1: of Washington, d C. I actually couldn't even get to
0:36
Speaker 1: my hotel room last night in my car because the
0:39
Speaker 1: National Guard was stationed all around it. What has happened
0:43
Speaker 1: to this place since the last time I was here, Well,
0:46
Speaker 1: it's gone nuts. And on top of that, in DC,
0:49
Speaker 1: they don't even let you smoke a cigar. That's the
0:51
Speaker 1: worst part of all. It looks the crazy Democrats have
0:53
Speaker 1: banned cigars. But but here's the good news. If you
0:56
Speaker 1: did actually light one up, I'm not sure they have
0:58
Speaker 1: the police officers to come arrest you. They don't, and
1:01
Speaker 1: it seems if the Democrats get their way, then we're
1:03
Speaker 1: going to have even fewer police officers after that. You know,
1:06
Speaker 1: you have spent a good bit of your career in
1:08
Speaker 1: law enforcement. What's your take on this? Because it's it's
1:11
Speaker 1: at the most local level. The Minneapolis City Council voted
1:14
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly veto proof majority to abolish and dismantle their police department,
1:19
Speaker 1: and you're seeing Democrats at the federal level taking up
1:22
Speaker 1: an anti police legislation as well. So let me try
1:26
Speaker 1: to understate them. This is stark raving nuts. This is insane,
1:32
Speaker 1: like like like, did you see the Minneapolis mayor, the
1:37
Speaker 1: poor lefty guy who's who's trying to like, Okay, what
1:41
Speaker 1: do you want me to say? I'll say whatever you want.
1:42
Speaker 1: They're like, okay, well you abolish the whole police department.
1:45
Speaker 1: Said wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second, like they
1:48
Speaker 1: really have lost their mind now mind you, Comrade de Blasio, like,
1:53
Speaker 1: good bye me, we're cutting the cops like your city
1:56
Speaker 1: is literally on fire, right, and they're so lution is
2:01
Speaker 1: abolished police departments. By the way, these are the same
2:03
Speaker 1: morons that want to abolish ice. Yeah, you know, they're
2:06
Speaker 1: just like, okay, let's get rid of everybody charged with
2:10
Speaker 1: protecting us. That is assinine and it would end up
2:16
Speaker 1: killing a whole lot of people. If you think black
2:19
Speaker 1: lives matter, and let me be clear, black lives absolutely matter,
2:23
Speaker 1: your dumb ass idea to abolish police departments will kill
2:26
Speaker 1: a lot of black lives, will kill a lot of
2:28
Speaker 1: Hispanic lives, will kill a lot of white lives, will
2:31
Speaker 1: kill a lot of people, and it's dumb. Well, this,
2:34
Speaker 1: I think is the point here, because it's all the
2:37
Speaker 1: people who are saying black lives matter, and the people
2:40
Speaker 1: who are pushing these things are the ones who are
2:42
Speaker 1: pushing a policy that will have a very negative effect
2:45
Speaker 1: on black people. Because we spoke about this a little
2:48
Speaker 1: bit on the last show. I think there's a study
2:50
Speaker 1: out that the number of unarmed black men who are
2:52
Speaker 1: killed by the police every year is it's not a
2:55
Speaker 1: four digit number, it's not a three digit number, it's
2:57
Speaker 1: not a two digit number. Obviously, every death is tragedy
3:00
Speaker 1: and that's what they're focusing on, But the number of
3:04
Speaker 1: unarmed black men who are killed by criminals is very high.
3:06
Speaker 1: And when the criminals are in the neighborhood, who's going
3:09
Speaker 1: to take care of it? The police? What is the
3:11
Speaker 1: effect of this going to be in troubled areas around
3:13
Speaker 1: the country. It would be terrible if it happens the
3:17
Speaker 1: victims of violent crime or disproportionately low income. Yeah, they're
3:21
Speaker 1: disproportionately minority African Americans and Hispanics. And we've seen in
3:26
Speaker 1: the past, we've seen what was called the Ferguson effect.
3:28
Speaker 1: You're calling Ferguson when you had riots against the police officers,
3:32
Speaker 1: and what happened was police officers naturally. Look, if you're
3:36
Speaker 1: a copre you're out doing your job and you realize suddenly, Okay,
3:40
Speaker 1: if I have a citizen encounter and it goes wrong,
3:43
Speaker 1: my whole life is over. My family's over, my career
3:46
Speaker 1: is over. Everything could come crashing down. What cops naturally
3:50
Speaker 1: do is they pull back. They say, you know what,
3:52
Speaker 1: maybe I'll just not engage. We saw in Baltimore after
3:55
Speaker 1: the riots in Baltimore, we saw the murder rakes rates spike. Chicago.
4:01
Speaker 1: You look at the murder rates in Chicago year after
4:04
Speaker 1: year after year. And so if you end up pulling
4:08
Speaker 1: back the police and not letting them do their job,
4:11
Speaker 1: that means the criminals, the gangmagers, the violent murderers, the rapists,
4:17
Speaker 1: those the robbers have no check on them, and and
4:23
Speaker 1: the people who will pay pay the price. They're not
4:26
Speaker 1: going to be, by the way, Hollywood celebrities in Beverly
4:31
Speaker 1: Hills that they're gonna be perfectly fine and protected. It's
4:35
Speaker 1: going to be it's going to be the people who
4:37
Speaker 1: are vulnerable that need the police to keep them safe. Yes,
4:41
Speaker 1: we want the police to protect everyone's rights fairly, but
4:43
Speaker 1: if you make the police go away, those who who
4:47
Speaker 1: are in closest proximity to violent criminals, and that that
4:52
Speaker 1: is heavily in low income areas, they're the ones they're
4:55
Speaker 1: gonna pay the biggest price. There's a lot of hypocrisy here.
4:58
Speaker 1: You see this kind of radicalism being pushed by people
5:00
Speaker 1: who will always enjoy the safety and security not only
5:03
Speaker 1: of the police, but of good neighborhoods. So there's a
5:05
Speaker 1: lot of it. Michael, I got a question. Has Nancy
5:07
Speaker 1: Pelosi fired her police detail? You know, I just Chuck Schubert. No,
5:13
Speaker 1: I haven't gotten worried about that. Has Billed de Blasio? No, No,
5:16
Speaker 1: certainly not. Why not? And by the way, let me
5:18
Speaker 1: be clear, I'm not calling on them too. I don't
5:21
Speaker 1: want them to be killed, but why are they trying
5:24
Speaker 1: to cancel the police protection for their low income residents.
5:27
Speaker 1: It's a police protection for me, but not for thee.
5:30
Speaker 1: I think that's what we're hearing from a lot of Democrats.
5:32
Speaker 1: Remember de Blasio said that about the gym. You remember
5:34
Speaker 1: that during the coronavirus lockdown, he shut down all the
5:37
Speaker 1: gems and then he opened it up specially so he
5:39
Speaker 1: could go work out, because he said, you know, it's
5:41
Speaker 1: important that I'd be healthy, unlike the rest of you
5:44
Speaker 1: little people. The little people. He didn't quite say, it
5:46
Speaker 1: was just impl This was the mayor of Chicago said,
5:49
Speaker 1: no one can go get a haircut. Do not get
5:50
Speaker 1: a haircut except for me. I need a haircut because
5:53
Speaker 1: I care about my appearance. And in this hypocrisy, actually
5:56
Speaker 1: on that point in particular ties in with the coronavirus
5:59
Speaker 1: because a lot of what we've been hearing, Remember we
6:02
Speaker 1: did not do any shows in person. We social distance
6:05
Speaker 1: for months, because that's what the public health officials told
6:07
Speaker 1: us to do. Then all of a sudden, hundreds of
6:11
Speaker 1: thousands of people pour out into the streets in very
6:13
Speaker 1: close proximity in these protests, and the same public health
6:16
Speaker 1: officials who excoriated conservatives for demonstrating in any way peaceably
6:22
Speaker 1: against some of the lockdown overreaches. Those same public health
6:25
Speaker 1: officials encouraged the protests and the riots and the arson
6:30
Speaker 1: that have accompanied them. Now now all of a sudden,
6:33
Speaker 1: we see a pivot back to backing away again. How
6:36
Speaker 1: are we to understand this if not as as rank
6:40
Speaker 1: politicization of the public health there's actually science behind it.
6:45
Speaker 1: You see, the virus is woke, and this woke virus.
6:51
Speaker 1: If you are if you are protesting with Antifa, if
6:55
Speaker 1: you're arguing for abolishing the police, you can get thousands
6:59
Speaker 1: of you together. You can embrace you, you can you
7:03
Speaker 1: can kiss each other all over the place. You don't
7:05
Speaker 1: need masks and and and the virus. The virus is
7:09
Speaker 1: actually marching alongside you. Just you need a microscope to
7:13
Speaker 1: see it. But it's sitting there, like anyone's saying, regardless
7:20
Speaker 1: of your politics. You turn on the TV, you see
7:23
Speaker 1: thousands of thousands of people smashed in very very closely,
7:27
Speaker 1: and you're sitting there going, well, wait a second. Everyone
7:30
Speaker 1: said I had to stay home. Everyone said it was
7:33
Speaker 1: the end of the world. If if like my kid
7:35
Speaker 1: went to school, everyone said it was the end of
7:37
Speaker 1: the world. If I went to my grandmother's funeral, that
7:41
Speaker 1: I would apparently kill the community. Right, And then you
7:44
Speaker 1: turn on the TV and then the same public health
7:46
Speaker 1: officials are saying, oh, no, no no, this is perfectly fine, right.
7:49
Speaker 1: I mean, we were told first, do not wear masks,
7:51
Speaker 1: do not buy masks. Masks are not effective, they're actually harmful.
7:54
Speaker 1: Then we were told we all have to buy masks.
7:57
Speaker 1: We were told that the virus spreads very easily on surfaces,
8:01
Speaker 1: part of the reason why we need to wear the mask.
8:02
Speaker 1: Then we were told it does not spread very easiland services.
8:05
Speaker 1: We were told initially that asymptomatic people are the ones
8:09
Speaker 1: spreading coronavirus. The World Health Organization just came out this
8:12
Speaker 1: week and said that asymptomatic spread is very rare. So
8:16
Speaker 1: for those of us who are not scientific experts with
8:19
Speaker 1: lots of degrees, how are we supposed to think about
8:23
Speaker 1: this virus after the chaos of the past couple of weeks. Well, look,
8:28
Speaker 1: let me take both sides of that. On one level,
8:31
Speaker 1: this virus has been hard to figure out, and the
8:33
Speaker 1: experts have genuinely struggled, and so they haven't necessarily understood
8:38
Speaker 1: how it operated. They didn't know what was going to happen,
8:41
Speaker 1: they didn't know how easily it would be transmitted, how
8:44
Speaker 1: it would be transmitted, and I'm look, with a new virus,
8:47
Speaker 1: I'm understanding that the science takes some time to get
8:50
Speaker 1: out and figure it out. And you saw many leaders
8:55
Speaker 1: trying to protect people and keep people safe. It then
8:58
Speaker 1: became this this woke virtue signally where you know, ostentatiously
9:05
Speaker 1: wearing a mask and shutting everything down became it actually
9:10
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with the science, Like the whole
9:12
Speaker 1: flattening the curve. When's the last time someone actually said
9:15
Speaker 1: the phrase flattening the curve, because we did, we did
9:18
Speaker 1: flatten the curve. And then they said no, no no, no, no, no,
9:20
Speaker 1: everything must stay shut down until a cura is discovered. Yes,
9:25
Speaker 1: and the virus is eradicated from planet Earth. You're like, wait,
9:27
Speaker 1: that wasn't the explanation you gave before, and then suddenly
9:31
Speaker 1: we didn't know it was or until we want to
9:34
Speaker 1: have giant riots and burn the cities to the ground, right,
9:36
Speaker 1: So that's now it is the political hypocrisy, and also
9:44
Speaker 1: it's elected officials not giving a damn about people's livelihoods,
9:48
Speaker 1: not caring. And by the way, with both COVID nineteen
9:52
Speaker 1: and the riots were seeing the same thing, which is
9:54
Speaker 1: small business, is being destroyed by the shutdown. Yeah, democrats
9:58
Speaker 1: don't care small business. This is being burned to the ground.
10:02
Speaker 1: Democrats don't care. And not only Democrats don't care. Did
10:06
Speaker 1: you see this editorial writer with the New York Times
10:10
Speaker 1: who said property crime, So burning someone's business to the
10:14
Speaker 1: ground is not violent. It's not violence. How is that?
10:18
Speaker 1: I see? I always thought that when you have molotov
10:21
Speaker 1: cocktails and pitchforks and hammers, when you use that, that's violence.
10:25
Speaker 1: But listen, I'm not a genius like the people at
10:27
Speaker 1: the New York Times. It is well, look, I'll give
10:30
Speaker 1: you another example. Did you see the ostentatiously named president
10:35
Speaker 1: of the Minneapolis City Council. I love that the Sea
10:37
Speaker 1: Council has a president. But but she was on TV saying,
10:43
Speaker 1: if someone breaks into your garage, if someone is coming
10:46
Speaker 1: and breaking into your home and you call the cops, yeah,
10:49
Speaker 1: that's your privilege. You're exercising privilege by calling the cops. Like, okay,
10:54
Speaker 1: I want everyone to get this straight, because this is
10:56
Speaker 1: the problem. The lunatic, Yeah, have take it over. They're
11:01
Speaker 1: now saying you don't have a right, You should have
11:05
Speaker 1: no expectation that the police should protect your home from
11:09
Speaker 1: a burglar because of their crazy politics. That's nuts. Well,
11:14
Speaker 1: I want to get your thoughts on this, speaking of
11:16
Speaker 1: the New York Times, because I think there are two
11:17
Speaker 1: schools of thought on this. One school says the left
11:20
Speaker 1: has gone so insane, encouraging political violence, completely losing all
11:25
Speaker 1: credibility on the coronavirus, that they've gone so crazy that
11:30
Speaker 1: we're now at a tipping point where we're going to
11:31
Speaker 1: swing back in a more conservative direction. I think the
11:33
Speaker 1: other school of thought is we're on the brink of
11:36
Speaker 1: revolution and people are as on edge as they've been
11:38
Speaker 1: since nineteen sixty eight. The New York Times published an
11:42
Speaker 1: op ed by your Senate colleague Tom Cotton, and it
11:45
Speaker 1: was an op ed about whether or not to call
11:47
Speaker 1: in troops to deal with the riots. The editor who
11:51
Speaker 1: took that OpEd has now resigned from The New York Times.
11:55
Speaker 1: It got such blowback that The New York Times says
11:57
Speaker 1: we cannot publish any opinions that contradict leftist orthodoxy. That
12:01
Speaker 1: man's name, James Bennett. I believe that's right. And in
12:05
Speaker 1: our last podcast, you and I talked about this, and
12:08
Speaker 1: and you know, look smacking the New York Times is
12:12
Speaker 1: you know, it's kind of low hanging fruit. It is,
12:15
Speaker 1: and and they're so bad that it's easy to point
12:18
Speaker 1: out out how idiotic they are. Yeah, and then they
12:21
Speaker 1: got worse. They literally fired their editor. Why because he
12:28
Speaker 1: dared publish from someone else, not from the New York Times,
12:33
Speaker 1: from someone else and by the way, his name was
12:34
Speaker 1: on it. Uh huh. Yeah, that the lefties in the
12:37
Speaker 1: news room disagreed with. And it was the reporters. These
12:42
Speaker 1: reporters are little cry baby who we are? Suddenly we're
12:49
Speaker 1: back in like some leftist classroom where the reporters if
12:53
Speaker 1: they hear news they don't like, they start hissing. And
12:57
Speaker 1: suddenly was the New York Times too? You're fired? Let
13:00
Speaker 1: me ask you something. When is the next time the
13:03
Speaker 1: New York Times or any other of these big papers
13:06
Speaker 1: are going to publish any view other than absolute lefty orthodoxy, right,
13:15
Speaker 1: they are provda. This is a weird inversion here because
13:18
Speaker 1: typically what you might expect is at every news organization
13:21
Speaker 1: there's opinion and there's reporting, and the reporters deal with
13:25
Speaker 1: the facts, right, just the facts, and opinion interprets the
13:27
Speaker 1: facts and gives their point of view. You might expect
13:30
Speaker 1: the opinion people to complain about the reporters. That's a
13:34
Speaker 1: kind of natural view of things. But at the New
13:35
Speaker 1: York Times, it's the allegedly straight objective reporters who are
13:40
Speaker 1: throwing the hissy fit about an opinion column. This is
13:43
Speaker 1: completely flayed. The reporters are opinion journalists, but they all
13:46
Speaker 1: have one opinion. They're not allowed to disagree. You can't
13:48
Speaker 1: have any other view. And it's the rigidity of it.
13:52
Speaker 1: This is it is very much. It's something of which
13:57
Speaker 1: Communist China would be proud, except making that point that
14:01
Speaker 1: New York Times wouldn't make because that would imply criticism
14:04
Speaker 1: for Communist China. And I mean, it is ridiculous and sad.
14:10
Speaker 1: And I've often said, look, if there's somebody listening who
14:15
Speaker 1: has some money. Yeah, Sometimes people ask me, all right,
14:18
Speaker 1: what do you read to learn news? And to be honest,
14:22
Speaker 1: I don't trust any place. Every place is biased and
14:25
Speaker 1: ridiculous at this point of view. All so what I
14:27
Speaker 1: try to do is I try to read things on
14:29
Speaker 1: both sides to even it up. I actually the New
14:32
Speaker 1: York Times is unreadable. I will read the Washington Post,
14:34
Speaker 1: which they're hard lefty, but they they're trying. They're trying
14:39
Speaker 1: a little bit to be objective there, read things like
14:42
Speaker 1: National Review and try to balance it out. But look,
14:46
Speaker 1: I think somebody with resources ought to buy one of
14:49
Speaker 1: these legacy masthead things, like you know, Jeff Bezos bought
14:53
Speaker 1: the Washington Washington Post. And you know what I'd do.
14:56
Speaker 1: I'd do an editorial page. I'd have a conservative and
15:00
Speaker 1: a liberal editor. Yeah, but I have them both empowered
15:02
Speaker 1: to run stories and so instead of and to have debate,
15:06
Speaker 1: to trust the dialectic process. And I'll tell you what
15:10
Speaker 1: i'd do also, as I'd have a conservative on a
15:12
Speaker 1: liberal news editor, because so much of the bias and
15:15
Speaker 1: journalism right comes from picking which stories to run and
15:18
Speaker 1: which stories not too right. So I'd have a real
15:21
Speaker 1: rock rib conservative and a real flaming lunatic liberal and say,
15:24
Speaker 1: both of you you can have, and so people reading
15:28
Speaker 1: it through the synthesis can actually learn what's going on.
15:33
Speaker 1: None of the supposed mainstream media places are even trying
15:36
Speaker 1: to do, of course not. But you know, as the
15:38
Speaker 1: leftist media outlets run, the people who are not far
15:41
Speaker 1: far radical leftists out don't, maybe we should hire them
15:44
Speaker 1: to be producers here. I don't know. Maybe well they
15:46
Speaker 1: can come on over. We certainly I think of a
15:48
Speaker 1: more balanced perspective than some of those outlets. But on
15:51
Speaker 1: this point of the left going too far, yeah, I
15:54
Speaker 1: know that you don't spend much of your day thinking
15:55
Speaker 1: about Harry Potter, but Harry Potter actually does play into
15:59
Speaker 1: this a little bit. The author of Harry Potter, JK. Rowling,
16:02
Speaker 1: is a left winger, a left wing activist, a feminist,
16:07
Speaker 1: but she thinks that the left has gone too far.
16:09
Speaker 1: She came out, she had a whole long tweet thread,
16:11
Speaker 1: and she's signaled this point of view before. Yeah, where
16:13
Speaker 1: she said, Look, I support people who are transgender. I
16:16
Speaker 1: support my transgender friends. I want them to be happy,
16:19
Speaker 1: I want them to feel comfortable. But it is simply
16:21
Speaker 1: the case that a woman is a woman and there's
16:24
Speaker 1: something about being a woman that a man can't be.
16:26
Speaker 1: And she's trying to sort of like the Minneapolis mayor,
16:29
Speaker 1: trying to come to this accommodation with the hard left.
16:33
Speaker 1: They are furious at her. Has it gone too far?
16:36
Speaker 1: There will be no moderation with the left right, they
16:39
Speaker 1: are it's like Robespierre. Yes, it is the French Revolution
16:43
Speaker 1: and the guillotines are coming. Yea. The guillotines already came
16:47
Speaker 1: for James Bennett, the editor of the New York Times,
16:50
Speaker 1: and others as well. Well there you can't get extreme enough, Yeah,
16:57
Speaker 1: because right now they're out extreme. Listen, a week ago,
17:01
Speaker 1: if I would have said these idiots are going to
17:03
Speaker 1: call for abolishing the police department, was it? Oh? Come on?
17:06
Speaker 1: But like not possible. It's ridiculous. Look like we're at
17:10
Speaker 1: the point and it will keep going and they will
17:13
Speaker 1: keep consuming themselves. They Part of it is you don't
17:17
Speaker 1: give a damn if they come after you. They do,
17:19
Speaker 1: but but it doesn't you know, it helps that you
17:22
Speaker 1: don't wake up at night going, oh no, what are
17:24
Speaker 1: they saying about me? Now? Oh gosh, right, there's something
17:27
Speaker 1: liberating about this, of course, these folks. And look, you
17:34
Speaker 1: live in LA don't remind me, senator, please. You and
17:39
Speaker 1: I first got to know each other, among other things,
17:41
Speaker 1: through through friends of Abe. Yeah. Um, you know a
17:44
Speaker 1: group of conservatives underground in Hollywood in entertainment. And I
17:51
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, first time I spoke to friends of Abe,
17:53
Speaker 1: I think it was twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen. Yeah,
17:57
Speaker 1: so six seven years ago about four came out in
18:00
Speaker 1: lam what was striking, And there were some big famous people.
18:04
Speaker 1: There were people like you know, like John John Voight
18:06
Speaker 1: was there actually Bruce Jenner before he was Cabin Jenner.
18:10
Speaker 1: Bruce was thereative and but you also had lots of
18:16
Speaker 1: lower level folks, people who were writers, people who were gaffers,
18:20
Speaker 1: people who were makeup artists, just kind of all working
18:23
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. And the degree of terror. Yes, it's the
18:29
Speaker 1: only gathering I've ever been in. The rule is no
18:31
Speaker 1: photographs at all, No one with your phone everywhere else
18:33
Speaker 1: You're always snapping because you know what, if you're someone
18:36
Speaker 1: working in Hollywood and they got a picture of you
18:39
Speaker 1: right of center. This was seven years ago, you could
18:41
Speaker 1: lose your job and destroy your career. That's now journalism
18:46
Speaker 1: as well, that's the New York Times. If you dare
18:49
Speaker 1: disagree with their propaganda, if you're not woke enough, if
18:53
Speaker 1: you just want to fight against police brutality, but you
18:57
Speaker 1: don't actually want to abolish the police department, right, well,
19:01
Speaker 1: then off with your head. This is a great analogy.
19:03
Speaker 1: This hadn't occurred to me, but you know, you expect
19:05
Speaker 1: this from Hollywood. We've heard about this for years. But
19:08
Speaker 1: it used to be the case that if you were
19:10
Speaker 1: a serious journalist, you could be photographed with a Democratic
19:13
Speaker 1: senator or a Republican senator. What the past few weeks
19:16
Speaker 1: have shown is you can't. You can't can't you couldn't
19:20
Speaker 1: take a photo with Tom Cotton, or you couldn't run
19:22
Speaker 1: his op ed You really that the lines have been drawn.
19:25
Speaker 1: People are digging in their heels. You mentioned Robespear in
19:28
Speaker 1: the French Revolution. I did have thoughts of this the
19:31
Speaker 1: other day because ill han Omar, the congresswoman, said that
19:35
Speaker 1: we're going to abolish the police and we're going to
19:37
Speaker 1: have a new imaginative approach to public safety. And you know,
19:40
Speaker 1: the committee that chopped off everybody's head in the French
19:43
Speaker 1: Revolution was the Committee of public Safety. Well, and there
19:46
Speaker 1: is a consistency. The hard left has always been very
19:49
Speaker 1: comfortable with talitarianism. Yeah, anytime they're talking about abolishing the police,
19:55
Speaker 1: it's not like forces going to disappear, it's just they
19:58
Speaker 1: want the monopoly on who exercise of the force, and
20:03
Speaker 1: that is you know, look, you look at communist dictatorships,
20:08
Speaker 1: whether Cuba, whether it's the Soviet Union, whether China, whether
20:11
Speaker 1: whether Vietnam, I mean vicious murder, torture, oppression, Nicaragua, Bernie
20:17
Speaker 1: Sanders friends down in Nicaraguay. This is consistent. And it's
20:23
Speaker 1: because they're collectivists, yea. And they're so damn self righteous. Yeah,
20:30
Speaker 1: that they're like the Borg has ordered it. Yeah. And
20:34
Speaker 1: if you dare disagree question, you must be assimilated or
20:38
Speaker 1: destroy Yeah. Listen. On the right, one of the beauties
20:41
Speaker 1: of liberty, there are all sorts of people I disagree with. Great,
20:45
Speaker 1: all right, more like, hey, I don't really want to
20:47
Speaker 1: hang out with people just agree with me. I mean,
20:49
Speaker 1: that's utterly boring. But not on the left. On the left,
20:53
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like, you know what we're living in
20:57
Speaker 1: the left. It's Handmaid's Tale right right right down to
21:01
Speaker 1: the mask. They're not even aware. They put everyone in
21:04
Speaker 1: masks and they must all say the same thing. And
21:08
Speaker 1: that is statists. Yeah, gonna status, that's what they do.
21:12
Speaker 1: And you're you know, you're seeing some cracks. I mean
21:14
Speaker 1: the fact that this New York Times editor, I think
21:16
Speaker 1: he's waking up to this. JK Rowling, a hardened leftist.
21:20
Speaker 1: I think she's waking up and saying, gosh, this is
21:22
Speaker 1: not the left that I thought I was a part of.
21:25
Speaker 1: This has gone too far. Either that could be a
21:28
Speaker 1: healthy thing for the country, we would swing back a
21:29
Speaker 1: little bit, or it's all broken and we're just living
21:32
Speaker 1: in the rubble. It wasn't too long ago when the
21:35
Speaker 1: left believed in free speech. Yeah, you know. As you know,
21:39
Speaker 1: I've got a book that's coming out later this year,
21:41
Speaker 1: and it's a book on the Supreme Court. It's called
21:43
Speaker 1: One Vote Away. It's talking about how all of our
21:45
Speaker 1: rights are hanging literally just one vote away. There's a
21:49
Speaker 1: whole chapter on free speech where it talks about a
21:53
Speaker 1: very famous Supreme Court case where where a guy wore
21:57
Speaker 1: a jacket that said f the Draft, although he didn't abbreviate,
22:03
Speaker 1: and the Supreme Court quite rightly said that he had
22:05
Speaker 1: a First Amendment right to express that view, even if
22:10
Speaker 1: that view was profane, even if it might be distasteful.
22:14
Speaker 1: That used to be a mainstream liberal view. Yeah, no longer.
22:20
Speaker 1: No longer. Now the left not only is willing to
22:25
Speaker 1: silence anyone who disagrees, they demand right that anyone who
22:28
Speaker 1: disagrees be silenced. That's terrified, that's right. In the last
22:33
Speaker 1: moment or two that we have left. We've got to
22:34
Speaker 1: get through some very important mail, bad questions. The most
22:38
Speaker 1: important one I saw is from Gt. At the top,
22:40
Speaker 1: Senator Cruise, thank you for your service in the Senate.
22:42
Speaker 1: What is your cigar of choice? Monte Cristo number one,
22:45
Speaker 1: monte Cristo number one, it's a great cigar from Captain
22:49
Speaker 1: of the Silent Majority. That's a Twitter account. Do you
22:51
Speaker 1: support the use of force to protect historical sites and
22:55
Speaker 1: property being destroyed by rioters? I guess that means do
22:58
Speaker 1: you support the police basic like going in and stopping
23:00
Speaker 1: the rioters. I support law enforcement stopping violence, right, Why
23:06
Speaker 1: is that controversial? If you try to hurt somebody, yeah,
23:13
Speaker 1: law enforcement should stop you. If you try to destroy
23:16
Speaker 1: somebody else's property, law enforcement should stop you. Look, we
23:22
Speaker 1: saw the idiocy reach its peak when in the past
23:26
Speaker 1: few days a statue of Churchill was defaced by the
23:31
Speaker 1: way the original anti fashion. I mean, he literally I
23:36
Speaker 1: couldn't help but send out a tweet and say, okay, look,
23:38
Speaker 1: he only defeated Hitler, defeated the Nazis, saved the free world.
23:43
Speaker 1: But you know, you're young and angry and you got
23:47
Speaker 1: a can of spray paint, so your contributions to humanity
23:51
Speaker 1: and to equality. And by the way, mister social justice warrior,
23:55
Speaker 1: in terms of equality, stopping the friggan Nazis from murdering people.
24:00
Speaker 1: Frank's pretty highest there. It's impressive, and yet they still
24:03
Speaker 1: wanted to face right right. I see these things used
24:06
Speaker 1: to be uncontroversial, but I guess we're living in very
24:08
Speaker 1: strange times. From Matt, and apologies to Churchill for for
24:14
Speaker 1: going with the money christa number one. Yeah, it's true.
24:16
Speaker 1: You know he did have some other choices. We can
24:18
Speaker 1: explore those later though. I mean, he has a whole
24:22
Speaker 1: size of cigar named after him. Of the church Shill,
24:24
Speaker 1: will we ever have the gnoles? And what will the
24:27
Speaker 1: knolls be? That? You know, it's funny people ask Michael,
24:30
Speaker 1: what do you want to do? What's your envent? Just
24:31
Speaker 1: that if I could get a cigar named after me,
24:34
Speaker 1: that's it. But I don't know if I'm gonna be
24:35
Speaker 1: able to save the Western world. You know, the day
24:40
Speaker 1: is young, The day is young. That's true. From Matt Senator,
24:44
Speaker 1: Any intelligent, honest and well reasoned liberals I should follow.
24:49
Speaker 1: I want a more balanced feed. My answer precisely. Look
24:59
Speaker 1: Andrew Sullivan m smart yep um willing to question UM.
25:11
Speaker 1: Someone who used to fit into that was Michael Kelly,
25:14
Speaker 1: who wrote in The Washington Post twenty years ago sadly
25:16
Speaker 1: he was killed on the Iraq war. UM. He wrote
25:20
Speaker 1: some of the best stop heads ever. He wrote I Believe,
25:22
Speaker 1: which if you go back twenty years, laid out the
25:26
Speaker 1: cognitive dissidance that that that Clinton defenders had to put out. Um.
25:33
Speaker 1: The problem is smart, smart liberals that are actually principled.
25:40
Speaker 1: So many of them have been silent right that it
25:43
Speaker 1: it there used to be quite a few, but or
25:48
Speaker 1: they're no longer really considered liberal, Like I would Professor
25:51
Speaker 1: Alan Dershwitz that that would be an example. You know Dershowitz,
25:55
Speaker 1: drsh was my criminal law professor first year law school.
25:58
Speaker 1: So I I are drive there. It was. It was
26:01
Speaker 1: pretty wild. I'm a one L in law school. Uh
26:03
Speaker 1: dersh is defending Mike Tyson. Yeah, you know, it was
26:07
Speaker 1: when Mike Tyson's rape trial was going on. I'm like,
26:09
Speaker 1: holy cow, my professor is like defending Mike Tyson. He
26:13
Speaker 1: assigned to us as part of our reading Penthouse magazine
26:18
Speaker 1: because he had written I think it was the cover
26:21
Speaker 1: story in Penthouse think maybe the first time Penthouse had
26:24
Speaker 1: ever not had a woman on the cover. He had
26:26
Speaker 1: Mike Tyson and Dersh had written this long cover story
26:30
Speaker 1: about him and what he explained he did. What he
26:32
Speaker 1: assigned to us did not have pictures. It was just
26:34
Speaker 1: the text. Yeah, you only read so I can legitimately
26:37
Speaker 1: say we only read it for the articles because we
26:39
Speaker 1: just had the xerox pages. So we were only given
26:41
Speaker 1: the text. There were no pictures of what we were given.
26:44
Speaker 1: But but I remember he told the criminal class he said, look,
26:47
Speaker 1: I could write it off at the New York Times,
26:49
Speaker 1: and you know, a handful of people would read it.
26:52
Speaker 1: But you know, I think at the time he said
26:54
Speaker 1: Penthouse had a readership of like five million people. And
26:57
Speaker 1: he said, I'm trying to talk to jurors. Jurors are reading.
27:00
Speaker 1: So it was an interesting He was a fabulous professor.
27:03
Speaker 1: And I remember first year law school he said, listen,
27:06
Speaker 1: by any measure, this is Durst speaking. I am in
27:10
Speaker 1: the most liberal one percent of Americans in this country. Yeah.
27:14
Speaker 1: But he would do things like defend free speed and
27:19
Speaker 1: argue for look, he used to muse look Nurschowitz. He's Jewish,
27:25
Speaker 1: deeply pro Israel. He used to talk about, you know
27:28
Speaker 1: how he would think about if he was hired as
27:32
Speaker 1: a criminal defense lawyer to defend Adolf Hitler, right, and
27:35
Speaker 1: he would kind of agonize about that. Look, I'm glad
27:38
Speaker 1: when I was practicing law, I didn't defend I would
27:41
Speaker 1: not have defended Adolf Hitler because everyone deserves a lawyer.
27:45
Speaker 1: But I ain't working for him, right so, But but
27:47
Speaker 1: it's interesting. He believed in protecting the rights of the accused.
27:52
Speaker 1: He believed in stopping censorship, he believed in he believed
27:59
Speaker 1: in civil liberty in a way that there aren't many
28:04
Speaker 1: liberals left to do. There aren't and that wasn't so
28:06
Speaker 1: long ago. And now it seems that the world has
28:08
Speaker 1: gone upside down. We'll have to dig into more of
28:11
Speaker 1: that upside down. This. I've got to make it back
28:12
Speaker 1: to my hotel to see if I can get past
28:14
Speaker 1: the National Guard because about crazy things have gotten. But
28:17
Speaker 1: we'll be back here again soon. So my advice is
28:21
Speaker 1: simply protest on the way and the lecture. That's true.
28:24
Speaker 1: I'll have to find a sign somewhere. I'm Michael Knowles.
28:27
Speaker 1: This is verdict with Ted Cruz. We'll be back soon.
28:38
Speaker 1: This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought
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