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Transcript

America On Fire · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: The news cycle always makes it feel like the world
0:03
Speaker 1: is on fire, but sometimes the world is actually on fire.
0:07
Speaker 1: And we have seen riots breakout across this country coast
0:10
Speaker 1: to coast, arson buildings burning down, all stemming from the
0:15
Speaker 1: killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. This is now spread
0:19
Speaker 1: out into a much larger movement, much larger action, to
0:22
Speaker 1: the point the National Guardsman troops have been called in
0:25
Speaker 1: to help maintain the peace. Very very overwhelming for a
0:30
Speaker 1: lot of us. Luckily, we will break down the whole
0:33
Speaker 1: story and what it means. This is verdict with Ted Cruz, Senator.
0:45
Speaker 1: A lot has happened since last Friday, since the last
0:47
Speaker 1: time we spoke. I can't even believe. I mean, it
0:51
Speaker 1: seems like just a completely different political situation now. And
0:54
Speaker 1: you see it everywhere, not just on the news. You
0:56
Speaker 1: see it on social media, people posting various hashtags and
1:01
Speaker 1: if you don't post a certain hashtag, you're smeared. Is
1:03
Speaker 1: a bigot and a racist. We're at each other's throats.
1:07
Speaker 1: I mean, literal buildings are on fire. I know you
1:09
Speaker 1: spoke on the Senate floor about this this week. What's
1:14
Speaker 1: your take? Well, listen, this has been a tough week
1:17
Speaker 1: in our nation's history. What we've seen all across the
1:20
Speaker 1: country has been really, really hard. How do you think
1:25
Speaker 1: through this, Well, I mean, let's start with some first principles.
1:29
Speaker 1: Don't murder people, don't hurt people. Yeah, don't steal from people.
1:37
Speaker 1: You know, when it comes to the constitution, every one
1:40
Speaker 1: of us has a right to free speech. Every one
1:43
Speaker 1: of us has a right to protest, to speak. But
1:45
Speaker 1: what you don't have a right to do is commit
1:48
Speaker 1: acts of violence. What you don't have a right to
1:50
Speaker 1: do is shatter store windows. What you don't have a
1:55
Speaker 1: right to do is burn police cars. What you don't
1:57
Speaker 1: have a right to do is murder police, all officers.
2:01
Speaker 1: And so we're seeing all of these come crashing in.
2:05
Speaker 1: It started with something truly horrific. What happened to George Floyd.
2:09
Speaker 1: It was wrong, it was evil, it was grotesque. At
2:15
Speaker 1: this point, all of us have seen those eight minutes
2:17
Speaker 1: of video. What happened to George Floyd was wrong, and
2:21
Speaker 1: the criminal justice system needs to hold those who violated that,
2:26
Speaker 1: which in that instance was four Minneapolis police officers, one
2:31
Speaker 1: who put his knee on his neck and took mister
2:33
Speaker 1: Floyd's life grotesquely, and three others who stood around and
2:37
Speaker 1: didn't stop him. But then we saw the anger, the
2:42
Speaker 1: paroxysms that came out of that initially manifesting protests. Now, look,
2:48
Speaker 1: protests are perfectly legitimate. They are are quintessentially American. We
2:56
Speaker 1: have the right under the First Amendment to speak out
2:58
Speaker 1: and to speak out for racial equality, to speak out
3:01
Speaker 1: for equal justice under law. The law should apply to
3:05
Speaker 1: everyone fairly, regardless of your skin color, and and and
3:09
Speaker 1: the protests calling for standing for racial equality. We were
3:18
Speaker 1: in the best tradition of America. But then we saw
3:23
Speaker 1: violent criminals. Then we saw terrorists. Then we saw looters
3:29
Speaker 1: and thieves infiltrate these protests and begin rinking mayhem, begin
3:37
Speaker 1: destroying communities, begin committing acts of violence. And I gotta
3:42
Speaker 1: say to every one of those violent criminals who slipped
3:49
Speaker 1: into the otherwise peaceful protests and began rioting and committing
3:54
Speaker 1: acts of terror, what they did was not only wrong
3:57
Speaker 1: when criminally was bigoted, because what they did is they
4:01
Speaker 1: tried to corrupt a legitimate expression of free speech and
4:06
Speaker 1: and a laudable goal, a goal this nation was built
4:10
Speaker 1: on the proposition that all of us are created equal.
4:14
Speaker 1: They tried to corrupt it and it was wrong, and
4:17
Speaker 1: and and I got to say, watching our country burn
4:23
Speaker 1: this past week, it's been horrifying, it has been, and
4:28
Speaker 1: it's got to stop. Senator. I'm actually struck by the
4:33
Speaker 1: simplicity of your observation because it's something that we're we
4:37
Speaker 1: actually haven't gotten from the mainstream media, we haven't gotten
4:40
Speaker 1: from a lot of politicians, which is, let's go back
4:44
Speaker 1: to first principles. It's wrong to murder, it's wrong to steal.
4:48
Speaker 1: It's wrong to commit violence against innocent people. It's good
4:51
Speaker 1: to voice your own expressions of anger and injustice, it's
4:55
Speaker 1: good for justice to be served. Still wrong to steal,
4:58
Speaker 1: still wrong to murder. I was watching CNN. That's a
5:01
Speaker 1: statement that I rarely utter, but I was watching CNN
5:04
Speaker 1: and Chris Cuomo, the brother of the Democratic governor of
5:08
Speaker 1: New York, Chris Cuomo, came out and explicitly defended violent
5:14
Speaker 1: protest which also known as riots, also known as domestic terrorism.
5:18
Speaker 1: I mean, he said, actually, show me where it says
5:21
Speaker 1: that protests have to be polite and peaceful. Could you
5:25
Speaker 1: show him where it says that, Senator, Well, there is
5:28
Speaker 1: this little thing called the United States Constitution. Oh, Yeah,
5:31
Speaker 1: the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment protects the right
5:35
Speaker 1: of the people to peaceably assemble peaceably. To assemble peaceably
5:41
Speaker 1: is right in there. So there's a difference. You can
5:44
Speaker 1: stand up and protests, and by the way, some of
5:47
Speaker 1: the most effective protests in the world have been peaceable,
5:51
Speaker 1: non violent protest. I want to touch on Antifa, and
5:55
Speaker 1: I think you've actually honed in here on what lies
5:58
Speaker 1: at the heart of this. It's not just Chris Cuomo
6:01
Speaker 1: going out and saying protests should be violent. It's at
6:04
Speaker 1: Keith Ellison, the Attorney General of Minnesota, held up a
6:08
Speaker 1: photo smiling with a book called the Antifa Handbook, smiling
6:12
Speaker 1: in photos with people in Antifa. Antifa stands for anti fascist.
6:17
Speaker 1: They don't behave like anti fascists. I mean they do
6:19
Speaker 1: in the sense that they behave like radical communists and anarchists.
6:22
Speaker 1: When you march in and violently assault people, you were
6:26
Speaker 1: being FA. You're not Antifa, You're FA. You've gone full
6:30
Speaker 1: FA here, and you know, I think the President this
6:33
Speaker 1: week said that he wants to classify them as a
6:36
Speaker 1: terrorist organization and a very very basic definition of terrorism.
6:39
Speaker 1: They're using violence against civilians to achieve political ends. It's
6:43
Speaker 1: as simple as it gets. It seems pretty clear. What
6:46
Speaker 1: is the role of Antifa here and what does it
6:49
Speaker 1: say about the state of our country that you've got
6:50
Speaker 1: elected officials voicing support for them. Well, listen. For two years,
6:55
Speaker 1: I've been calling on the Trump administration to designate Antifa
6:59
Speaker 1: as a domestic terrorist organization. I introduced a resolution last
7:03
Speaker 1: year in the Senate calling on Antifa to be designated
7:06
Speaker 1: because they go in and they commit violent assaults. They
7:09
Speaker 1: commit violent attacks, and these typically are our young anarchists.
7:15
Speaker 1: They're often rich white college kids who wear masks. And look,
7:23
Speaker 1: you know that they're sitting there with their thousand dollars
7:26
Speaker 1: iPhones saying capitalism is evil, let's burn it all to
7:32
Speaker 1: the ground. And interestingly enough, they're not burning their dorm
7:35
Speaker 1: room to the ground. No, no, no, no no, no, that
7:37
Speaker 1: that would be too much. They're going into the inner
7:40
Speaker 1: city and they're burning to the ground the communities that
7:43
Speaker 1: that people have to live in it and it is
7:47
Speaker 1: it's grotesque, it's wrong. And look, Keith Ellison's son is
7:53
Speaker 1: a city council member in Minneapolis. He tweeted out that
7:57
Speaker 1: he stands with Atifa. There Antifa, they're literally burning his
8:01
Speaker 1: city to the ground, and these Democratic politicians. And I'll
8:04
Speaker 1: tell you if anyone behave worse than that, it's Hollywood celebrities.
8:12
Speaker 1: So Hollywood celebrities are all engaged in this virtue signaling
8:17
Speaker 1: where they're giving money to bail the rioters out of jail.
8:22
Speaker 1: And this is literally so, you know, I engage with
8:28
Speaker 1: some of these celebrities and asked, hey, hey, wait a second.
8:31
Speaker 1: You know, justin Timberlake was like, oh, give money to
8:33
Speaker 1: this fund to bail the writers out of jail. How
8:36
Speaker 1: about you give money to a fund to rebuild the
8:39
Speaker 1: African American and Hispanic owned small businesses that have been
8:43
Speaker 1: burned to the ground by these violent criminals, instead of
8:46
Speaker 1: bailing the criminal out of jail. Right, help the innocent victims.
8:52
Speaker 1: And let's take another component of it, the words black
8:57
Speaker 1: lives matter. Ye, this has been at inchous point. Yeah
9:03
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be. Do black lives matter, absolutely, yes, unequivocally period,
9:09
Speaker 1: Black lives matters. But here's the part that's deemed, Oh,
9:12
Speaker 1: you can't say that. You can't say black lives matter,
9:14
Speaker 1: Hispanic lives matter, Asian lives matter, White lives matter, human
9:18
Speaker 1: life matters. Right, and and Okay, so why is that
9:21
Speaker 1: a political statement? This is so. I actually had this
9:24
Speaker 1: conversation with with my daughters today where they were talking
9:27
Speaker 1: about some YouTuber that raised a bunch of money for BLM.
9:31
Speaker 1: Of course, my daughters already know the acronym BLM. I like,
9:34
Speaker 1: so tell me what what does BLM stand for? And
9:37
Speaker 1: you know, my daughter said, what you know? Equality? Equality
9:39
Speaker 1: is good and I was like, yeah, that's that's certainly true.
9:45
Speaker 1: But if you look at the radicals who are co
9:50
Speaker 1: opting the message black lives matter, what they're advocating is
9:55
Speaker 1: number one, an absolute assault on police. I'll tell you
10:00
Speaker 1: who it hurts. It hurts African Americans, It hurts Hispanics
10:03
Speaker 1: because you know why, because when this happens, if you
10:06
Speaker 1: look at what happened in Ferguson, you look at what
10:07
Speaker 1: happened in Baltimore, there's something called the Ferguson effect, which
10:11
Speaker 1: is essentially that when cops feel like, okay, if I
10:14
Speaker 1: get it in an interaction, maybe with a criminal, and
10:18
Speaker 1: somehow it gets violent, my whole life can be destroyed
10:22
Speaker 1: by career, can be destroyed by family can be destroyed,
10:24
Speaker 1: And the perfectly rational thing to do is, hey, I'm
10:26
Speaker 1: going to step back. I'm not going to engage, of course,
10:29
Speaker 1: And what you see happen over and over again as
10:31
Speaker 1: the murder rate skyrocket. Right. We saw that happened in Ferguson,
10:34
Speaker 1: we saw that happen in Baltimore, and you end up
10:37
Speaker 1: with a laite. If you are committed to the proposition
10:40
Speaker 1: black lives matter, demonizing the cops will end up with
10:44
Speaker 1: more Black lives being lost more because, by the way,
10:47
Speaker 1: the people being murdered most frequently right by violent criminals,
10:52
Speaker 1: by gangs are people in low income neighborhoods, and often
10:58
Speaker 1: they're African Americans or Hispanic Well, this is I think
11:01
Speaker 1: the key point here, because you know, people see that
11:04
Speaker 1: phrase black lives matter, and they say, if you don't
11:06
Speaker 1: support this organization and the most radical leaders of this organization,
11:11
Speaker 1: then somehow you don't care about black lives. And the
11:13
Speaker 1: fact is virtually statistically nobody in this country thinks black
11:18
Speaker 1: lives don't matter. Anybody with any political influence it believes
11:23
Speaker 1: black lives matter. Anybody with any media influence believes black
11:25
Speaker 1: lives matter. Anybody with any business influence, right, major corporations
11:29
Speaker 1: don't any millions and millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter.
11:31
Speaker 1: Anybody with an Instagram account or a Twitter account or
11:33
Speaker 1: Facebook believes black lives matter. Everybody agrees on this point.
11:37
Speaker 1: But some radicals, some people pushing things that are not
11:41
Speaker 1: so great, that are not so popular, are co opting
11:43
Speaker 1: that very basic message that everybody agrees with and using
11:46
Speaker 1: it to put push radical leftist ideas that the vast,
11:50
Speaker 1: vast majority of Americans don't want. And it's so cynical,
11:54
Speaker 1: and it's so bullying, and it's so intimidating that I
11:57
Speaker 1: think a lot of people are just lost on what
11:59
Speaker 1: to do. So, Michael, I'll give an example. One of
12:03
Speaker 1: the agenda items of the radicals that are leading this
12:07
Speaker 1: movement is to use their phrase defund the police. This
12:13
Speaker 1: past week that was tweeted by Hillary Clinton's former press secretary,
12:16
Speaker 1: defund the police. Let me ask you for a second,
12:20
Speaker 1: how good do you think it would be for African
12:23
Speaker 1: American communities if there were no police officers? Yeah, not quit.
12:26
Speaker 1: Just the drug dealers could run free, if the street
12:28
Speaker 1: gangs could run free. It's already the murder rates are
12:31
Speaker 1: are are horrific. How good would it be for your
12:34
Speaker 1: family or mind? How many Americans this week, as you
12:37
Speaker 1: watch the rioting, thought about the right to keep in
12:40
Speaker 1: bear arms. I'm sure the lines are around how many?
12:44
Speaker 1: How many? How many? Thought about what happens if that
12:48
Speaker 1: mob comes to my house? Right, and that that is
12:55
Speaker 1: an extreme agenda and it's not right. You know what,
13:04
Speaker 1: here's the name. The media doesn't want to talk about it.
13:08
Speaker 1: David Dorn. David Dorne was a retired police officer in
13:14
Speaker 1: Saint Louis, Missouri. David Dorne was shot by rioters. He
13:19
Speaker 1: was protecting the pawn shop. He's a small businessman. He
13:22
Speaker 1: was shot and murdered. David Dorn spent four decades serving
13:27
Speaker 1: honorably as a police officer. And David Dorn was murdered
13:31
Speaker 1: by this rioting, and yet the media didn't want to
13:35
Speaker 1: talk about him. Yeah, if you believe in black lives matters,
13:39
Speaker 1: David Dorn's life matters, give you another name. David Underwood,
13:43
Speaker 1: who was another law enforcement officer, was murdered Las Vegas.
13:48
Speaker 1: You had another law who was also David under was
13:50
Speaker 1: African American as well. We had two African American police
13:54
Speaker 1: officers murdered by this rioting, and yet the woke virtue
13:59
Speaker 1: signal allerts in Hollywood on CNN, on Twitter, those lives
14:05
Speaker 1: don't matter to them at all, right, and it's wrong. Look,
14:08
Speaker 1: we should protect everybody's life, and we should have a
14:11
Speaker 1: passion in this whole racial issue and this whole issue
14:14
Speaker 1: of the protests and the riots. I mean, in the
14:17
Speaker 1: fact of the riots and the protests. Probably the most
14:20
Speaker 1: outrageous cynicism is that just a week ago, we were
14:24
Speaker 1: told if you go outside to do anything, you're killing grandma,
14:27
Speaker 1: You're endangering people because of the coronavirus. If you go
14:31
Speaker 1: God forbid to protest any of the lockdown orders, you
14:35
Speaker 1: are a terrible, no good, awful person. And then this
14:38
Speaker 1: week we're told by the very same public health experts,
14:40
Speaker 1: by the very same politicians, everybody should go out by
14:43
Speaker 1: the hundred thousand to protest in this left wing narrative.
14:48
Speaker 1: I mean, people look at that, and I think our
14:50
Speaker 1: capacity for outrage just goes out the window. Right. Well, Look,
14:54
Speaker 1: one of the more ridiculous hypocrites on this has been
14:56
Speaker 1: Billed de Blasio in New York who de Blasio was
14:59
Speaker 1: asked this list last week, So if you can come
15:02
Speaker 1: and protest and get much much closer than six feet apart.
15:06
Speaker 1: Can we go to church, can we go to synagogue?
15:08
Speaker 1: And de Blasio said no, no no, no, no, no, because
15:11
Speaker 1: because there's a history of racial discrimination in America, but
15:14
Speaker 1: there's no history of religious discrimination. What utter crap. By
15:19
Speaker 1: the way, not mean you want to talk about millennia
15:22
Speaker 1: of racial of racial discrimination, yes, but but a religious persecution.
15:29
Speaker 1: I mean, we are in a country that was literally
15:32
Speaker 1: founded by people fleeing religious persecution. You look at the
15:36
Speaker 1: pilgrims who arrived here. They arrived to come to a
15:38
Speaker 1: land where they could practice their faith. And by the way,
15:41
Speaker 1: you want to talk about people persecuted for faith, you
15:44
Speaker 1: look at the Jewish community in New York City, who
15:46
Speaker 1: do Blasio has singled out for persecution over and over
15:50
Speaker 1: and over again. You know, Jews in World War two,
15:54
Speaker 1: six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. To say
16:00
Speaker 1: there's no history of religious discrimination, it's absurd. Is a
16:05
Speaker 1: political leftist, anti American narrative. That is nonsense, and the
16:13
Speaker 1: hypocrisy of it is really coming out amid all this chaos.
16:17
Speaker 1: Two point five million jobs added in May. The economy
16:23
Speaker 1: is now, I mean the stock market surged when we
16:26
Speaker 1: got this news. Is there a chance that we could
16:28
Speaker 1: see something like a V shaped recovery. Is there a
16:31
Speaker 1: chance that we could come out of this thing pretty strong? Look,
16:35
Speaker 1: I hope. So the job numbers are fantastic. We're seeing
16:38
Speaker 1: states all across the country reopening. Texas is reopening. And
16:42
Speaker 1: let me say that this is a powerful sign. Open
16:45
Speaker 1: up the economy. Now, yeah, let people go back to work. Now,
16:50
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean ignore all of the efforts we're doing.
16:53
Speaker 1: You look, we can engage in social distancing, we can
16:56
Speaker 1: continue to be prudent, but open it up. Let people
16:59
Speaker 1: go back to work. Two and a half million new jobs. Now,
17:02
Speaker 1: we've had forty million people lose their jobs, so two
17:05
Speaker 1: and a half million. But you know what, it's the
17:07
Speaker 1: first time in a long time we haven't seen job
17:09
Speaker 1: numbers that were several million going down, right, So instead
17:12
Speaker 1: of going down, they're going back up sharply. And I
17:14
Speaker 1: hope we keep seeing it go back up. The forty
17:18
Speaker 1: million jobs that went away were self inflicted. We did
17:20
Speaker 1: this to stop the pandemic. Now let's let people open up.
17:25
Speaker 1: Let's let them get back to work and and and
17:28
Speaker 1: get the economy movie again that these job numbers are
17:31
Speaker 1: really encouraging and we need to keep keep moving in
17:35
Speaker 1: that direction. That's great news. And before we get to mailbag,
17:37
Speaker 1: because I do want to hit the mailbag, there is
17:40
Speaker 1: there is one more story on the subject of destruction
17:43
Speaker 1: that I've got to get back to. Obviously, destruction has
17:46
Speaker 1: been in the news a lot, but it's important, I think,
17:48
Speaker 1: to talk about your absolute destruction of Rod Rosenstein's testimony
17:54
Speaker 1: before the Senate when when you were discussing the gross
17:59
Speaker 1: mishandling of things over the past several years at the DOJ,
18:04
Speaker 1: Could you just tell us a little bit about this
18:06
Speaker 1: because I think for those of us who have been
18:08
Speaker 1: gasolit for years and years on this subject of how
18:11
Speaker 1: the DOJ was going after Trump, I think it was
18:15
Speaker 1: just so refreshing to see you shed light on what
18:18
Speaker 1: was really happening. What we now know, as more and
18:20
Speaker 1: more information has got in public, is that the Obama
18:23
Speaker 1: Biden administration politicized the FBI, politicized the Department of Justice,
18:30
Speaker 1: politicized the intelligence community, and targeted at the Trump campaign.
18:36
Speaker 1: Targeted them at Donald Trump directly. They targeted them with
18:41
Speaker 1: wire taps, directed at a Carter Page, a senior adviser
18:44
Speaker 1: to the Trump campaign. They targeted it with spy sent
18:47
Speaker 1: in wearing wires confidential import formance to the Trump campaign.
18:51
Speaker 1: They're opposing campaign, and they went after in particular, General
18:54
Speaker 1: Michael Flynn, a three star general who'd spent his entire
18:58
Speaker 1: life fighting for this country, and they directly targeted. We
19:02
Speaker 1: now know that the decision to target them went all
19:06
Speaker 1: the way to the top. On January fifth, twenty seventeen,
19:09
Speaker 1: there's a meeting in the White House in the Oval Office.
19:11
Speaker 1: Barack Obama was there, Joe Biden was there, James Comey
19:15
Speaker 1: was there, the head of the FBI, and he reported
19:18
Speaker 1: to the President and to the Vice President about their
19:20
Speaker 1: targeting of Michael Flynn, the incoming National Security Advisor. Sally Yates,
19:24
Speaker 1: who was the acting Attorney General, said she didn't know
19:26
Speaker 1: anything about it. So she learned that the FBI was
19:31
Speaker 1: targeting the incoming national security advisor from Barack Obama. Because
19:35
Speaker 1: the FBI was briefing the president directly. That is such
19:41
Speaker 1: an abuse of power. And if you look at everything
19:46
Speaker 1: that has come out, the Inspector General report at the
19:48
Speaker 1: Department of Justice showed that the FBI was totally politicized.
19:52
Speaker 1: It showed seventeen material misstatements that were made to the
19:57
Speaker 1: FISA court. It also showed that that a senior FBI
20:01
Speaker 1: lawyer fraudulently altered evidence and so, and here's what he did,
20:07
Speaker 1: because it's worth her memory. I mean, it really is.
20:09
Speaker 1: It's like out of a bad spy movie. So they're
20:13
Speaker 1: trying to get a warrant to wire tap Carter Page,
20:17
Speaker 1: and they're trying to renew the warrant, and Carter Page
20:20
Speaker 1: is talking to a bunch of Russians. And so, look,
20:22
Speaker 1: if you're talking to a bunch of Russians, that's ordinarily
20:25
Speaker 1: kind of suspicious. Why are you talking to a bunch
20:27
Speaker 1: of Russians? Now he is a Russia expert, so but
20:30
Speaker 1: even so there's a little bit of suspicion there. So
20:33
Speaker 1: the FBI sent an email to the CIA, said, hey,
20:36
Speaker 1: is this guy working for you? Because if you're working
20:40
Speaker 1: for the CIA on going after the Russians, then you
20:43
Speaker 1: probably ought to be talking to the Russians if you're
20:45
Speaker 1: working for the CIA. CIA sends an email back, Yep,
20:48
Speaker 1: he's working for US. So CIA says in writing, Carter
20:52
Speaker 1: Page is working for the United States government when he's
20:54
Speaker 1: talking to the Russians. The FBI lawyer takes that email
20:58
Speaker 1: and alters it and literally changes that one hundred and
21:01
Speaker 1: eighty degrees the opposite. Instead of yes, he's working for us,
21:06
Speaker 1: he alters it and creates a fraudulent document, No, he's
21:09
Speaker 1: not working for us, and that gets submitted to the court.
21:12
Speaker 1: If you or I did that in any court in
21:14
Speaker 1: a traffic ticket, right, if you created a fraudulent document
21:18
Speaker 1: and submitted it, you would go to jail. I would
21:21
Speaker 1: go to jail. And so Rod Rosenstein was testifying. And
21:25
Speaker 1: by the way, Rosenstein signed one of those applications, and
21:34
Speaker 1: I laid out that history that I just walked through,
21:36
Speaker 1: and I said, listen, you were coming into a deeply politicized,
21:41
Speaker 1: corrupted law enforcement environment. There are two and only two possibilities.
21:46
Speaker 1: One you were complicit in the weaponization of law enforcement
21:52
Speaker 1: against one political party, or you were grossly neglighent. Those
21:59
Speaker 1: are the only two choice. And when we walked through,
22:02
Speaker 1: I said, look, did you did you know about the
22:06
Speaker 1: Steel dossier that was the basis of this whole application.
22:09
Speaker 1: The principal witnessed behind it and said, oh, it's not reliable.
22:11
Speaker 1: It was all just a bunch of guys talking at
22:13
Speaker 1: a bar. It's not reliable. Did you know that. No,
22:17
Speaker 1: did you know that there was a bunch of exculpatory information. No,
22:20
Speaker 1: did you know that this lawyer had fraudulently created this document? No?
22:25
Speaker 1: Did you know that the guy was working for the
22:26
Speaker 1: CIA at the time. No, did you know that the DNC,
22:30
Speaker 1: the Democratic National Committee, had paid for this oppo research
22:35
Speaker 1: pile of lies? No? And Rosenstein just didn't ask any
22:39
Speaker 1: of it. He was just a rubber stamp. He just said, well,
22:42
Speaker 1: the FBI told me that, so I just listened to them.
22:44
Speaker 1: And what it raised Now, it's interesting, Rosenstein testified. He said,
22:48
Speaker 1: if he knew what he knew now, he never would
22:50
Speaker 1: have signed it. He would not have approved the wire tap.
22:54
Speaker 1: That now means the next step is to go ask
22:56
Speaker 1: people like James Comby, go ask people like Andrew McCabe,
22:59
Speaker 1: the happy at the FBI, because there were people lying
23:06
Speaker 1: and complicit and the responsibility I believe goes all the
23:10
Speaker 1: way to the top. And I got to say in
23:13
Speaker 1: this hearing, one of the most interesting things Michael Senate
23:17
Speaker 1: Democrats so desperately wanted to change the topic that they
23:22
Speaker 1: I mean, you could see the panic. No, no, no, no,
23:24
Speaker 1: don't ask they and they just didn't care about law
23:27
Speaker 1: enforcement being abused. And look, I understand why Joe Biden
23:31
Speaker 1: is their nominee. They don't want anything that touches Joe Biden.
23:35
Speaker 1: They want zero fall. And they've elevated Obama the sainthood
23:38
Speaker 1: so so so in their narrative, Obama could never do
23:41
Speaker 1: anything wrong and and and Biden is their only hope.
23:46
Speaker 1: And but I gotta say so, I asked this week yesterday,
23:51
Speaker 1: actually it is a Senate here, and I said, look,
23:54
Speaker 1: what would you guys think if Donald Trump did exactly
23:59
Speaker 1: what Obama and Biden did? What would you think if
24:03
Speaker 1: Donald Trump today sent the FBI to wire tap the
24:06
Speaker 1: Joe Biden presidential campaign? Right? What would you think today
24:09
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump sent in FBI spies wearing wires to
24:14
Speaker 1: the Joe Biden presidential campaign? What would you think today
24:17
Speaker 1: if Donald Trump's directed the FBI to submit fraudulent evidence
24:24
Speaker 1: to a federal court to target the Biden campaign. And
24:28
Speaker 1: by the way, we also know that General Michael Flynn,
24:30
Speaker 1: that his identity was unmasked, was revealed by Joe Biden
24:35
Speaker 1: himself personally and directly. Joe Biden did that. That's stunning.
24:41
Speaker 1: And I got to say also, so one of the
24:43
Speaker 1: things that became public in recent weeks. There's an email
24:48
Speaker 1: from Susan Rice. It stated January twentieth, twenty seventeen. Now, Michael,
24:54
Speaker 1: you and I both know what that date is. That
24:56
Speaker 1: is the date Donald Trump was being sworn in. So
24:59
Speaker 1: Susan Ry, this is a national security advisor. She's on
25:01
Speaker 1: her way out. Now. Think about it. Usually your last
25:04
Speaker 1: day in the office. What are you doing. You're packing
25:06
Speaker 1: up your desk, picking up the plants, take the photos down.
25:12
Speaker 1: She sends an email to herself. Just pause to think
25:17
Speaker 1: for a second. Your last day in the office. What
25:19
Speaker 1: do you want to do? You send an email to yourself.
25:22
Speaker 1: It's one of the funniest CYA emails you've ever read.
25:26
Speaker 1: She says three times that President Obama has directed this
25:31
Speaker 1: investigation into Flynn, and she says three times it's by
25:34
Speaker 1: the book, by the book, by the book, by the book.
25:39
Speaker 1: The only reason you send that is you're sitting there going,
25:41
Speaker 1: oh crap, the new guys are gonna come in and
25:43
Speaker 1: they're gonna find out about all this. Let me write
25:45
Speaker 1: an email to say we're doing everything by the book.
25:49
Speaker 1: It The only reason you write that email is indicative
25:56
Speaker 1: of a deeply guilty conscious. I think I think we
25:59
Speaker 1: need to know who abuse the political process. There needs
26:03
Speaker 1: to be accountability, and those who broke the law need
26:05
Speaker 1: to be prosecuted. That's right. It's evidence of a guilty
26:08
Speaker 1: conscience and the cleverness to realize this isn't going to
26:10
Speaker 1: be looking very good when the new guys get into power.
26:13
Speaker 1: Before we go, I've just got to get to a
26:15
Speaker 1: few maale back questions here. First one from Margo, why
26:19
Speaker 1: are you two still socially distancing? Go get a cigar together,
26:23
Speaker 1: Senator your thoughts damn straight? Come to DC next week?
26:28
Speaker 1: Will film that works for me? All right? John asks?
26:32
Speaker 1: What are the effects this will have on the twenty
26:34
Speaker 1: twenty election? Do you think this hurts Trump, Moore or Biden?
26:40
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think twenty twenty is incredibly volatile. Yeah,
26:45
Speaker 1: I think it depends Number one, on what happens with coronavirus.
26:48
Speaker 1: If the numbers suddenly starts skyrocketing, that is really bad
26:54
Speaker 1: for America, but that's also probably bad for Trump as well.
26:58
Speaker 1: Number two, what happens with the account me If if
27:03
Speaker 1: we see massive job losses between now and election days,
27:06
Speaker 1: that's really bad for Trump. If we see with the
27:08
Speaker 1: sort of thing we just saw in these job numbers,
27:10
Speaker 1: the economy coming back, that's really good. And and this
27:14
Speaker 1: this racial divisioning and division and rioting. Um look, rioting,
27:20
Speaker 1: I think scares people. I think it as it also
27:26
Speaker 1: shows just radical, how radical and extreme the Democrats are.
27:31
Speaker 1: It's really unmasked them that that that I don't think
27:36
Speaker 1: has helped Joe Biden. If a Democratic presidency means the
27:43
Speaker 1: radicals who want to burn our cities to the ground
27:46
Speaker 1: or put in charge, that ain't good. So how all
27:50
Speaker 1: of this plays out. I look at this election and
27:52
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge delta. What I hope we
27:55
Speaker 1: will see is I hope we will see the economy
27:59
Speaker 1: coming back, optimism coming back, hope, and the promise of America.
28:04
Speaker 1: And if that's the case, we could see a really
28:06
Speaker 1: good election. We could see the president reelected by a
28:09
Speaker 1: big margin. We could see the Republican majority in the
28:12
Speaker 1: in the Senate grow, and we could see Republicans taking
28:15
Speaker 1: the House. That's what I hope will happen. That people
28:17
Speaker 1: will look at this craziness of Nancy Pelosi and the extreme,
28:22
Speaker 1: radicalized left and say, we don't want any of that.
28:27
Speaker 1: But this is uncharted territory, and so if if things
28:33
Speaker 1: go really badly, we could end up with a terrible
28:36
Speaker 1: election right uncharted territory in many ways. Darrell asks, what's
28:40
Speaker 1: your take on the use of military personnel to help
28:42
Speaker 1: quell the riots. I know your senate colleague Tom Cotton
28:46
Speaker 1: got the New York Times and a lot of trouble
28:48
Speaker 1: because he weighed in on this, and some of the
28:50
Speaker 1: younger Time staffers were very upset by it. Well, okay,
28:55
Speaker 1: so so let me take two different issues there, because
28:57
Speaker 1: they're both worth addressing. The New York Times you literally
29:02
Speaker 1: can't write satire about them anymore. They're so ridiculous an extreme.
29:07
Speaker 1: So Tom Cotton wrote an op ed in The Times
29:10
Speaker 1: that said, send the troops in, advocated for sending in
29:13
Speaker 1: the military to bring peace to the cities, and the
29:16
Speaker 1: New York Times began to have an epileptic fit. Like
29:22
Speaker 1: like like, their reporters began began trembling, and one after
29:27
Speaker 1: the other, they were triggered and they were mad. How
29:30
Speaker 1: dare you publish this view? This view is violence to me.
29:34
Speaker 1: And you've got reporters. You know, you remember that the
29:37
Speaker 1: old archetype of the tough grizzled reporter Shane Smoking was
29:42
Speaker 1: going to speak truth to power, was gonna uncover whatever's
29:45
Speaker 1: going on. You've now got these pansies who are reporters
29:50
Speaker 1: that are just like Mommy. Scary words. Scary words hied
29:53
Speaker 1: me from the scary words like Okay, if you disagree
29:58
Speaker 1: with Tom Cotton, all right, buckaroo, here's a crazy idea.
30:03
Speaker 1: Man up and argue why you think he's wrong. That's okay,
30:07
Speaker 1: that's called free speech. And by the way, listen, I
30:10
Speaker 1: actually think Tom, I don't. I don't agree with everything
30:12
Speaker 1: Tom said, and you actually look at the substance of it.
30:16
Speaker 1: How do you keep cities safe in terms of how
30:18
Speaker 1: it operates under the law. The first line of defense
30:22
Speaker 1: are our police officers. It's why I'm so vigorous and saying,
30:25
Speaker 1: don't undermine our cops. Let let law enforcement do its job.
30:28
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of democratic politicians basically tying police
30:32
Speaker 1: officers hands behind their back, preventing them from keeping cities safe.
30:36
Speaker 1: And so the first line of a line of defense
30:40
Speaker 1: are the police. The second line of defense is the
30:42
Speaker 1: national guard. And so if the police are overwhelmed, you
30:45
Speaker 1: can call up the national guard that provides an additional
30:48
Speaker 1: wave of strength, and the military is available. Look, there
30:51
Speaker 1: is a long tradition of the military in a case
30:53
Speaker 1: of violent insurrection, in case of rioting, coming in, but
30:58
Speaker 1: the military is the third and final step. And so
31:03
Speaker 1: I think there's some Republican politicians that are showing how
31:06
Speaker 1: tough they are by saying sending the Marines on day one. Well, look,
31:11
Speaker 1: if we need to, yes, we need to do whatever
31:13
Speaker 1: is needed to keep people safe, but let's start with
31:18
Speaker 1: not handcuffing the police officers and let them actually protect
31:21
Speaker 1: our communities. And the military should only be a last resort,
31:25
Speaker 1: I believe right, fair point much more. We'll have to
31:29
Speaker 1: leave it there. We'll have to wait until the next episode.
31:31
Speaker 1: But Senator, if that Stogy invitation is real, I will
31:34
Speaker 1: call the airline right now. I will book a ticket
31:36
Speaker 1: and I will see you in DC. Together. You and
31:38
Speaker 1: I are gonna light some fires. That works for me.
31:42
Speaker 1: See on the East coast. Senator, I'm Michael Knowles. This
31:45
Speaker 1: is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with
31:55
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom
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