September 29, 2020 • 35 mins
With the nomination of United States Federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, Senator Ted Cruz talks with Newt about the importance of her nomination and his new book, One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi. This is due to the virus. I'm recording from home,
so you may notice a difference in audio quality on
this episode of News World. I am delighted to have
a close personal friend and somebody who I really admire
a great deal, a brilliant lawyer, somebody who has shown
(00:21):
enormous courage and fighting for the conservative cause. Ted Cruz
was a law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in
nineteen ninety six. He went on from there became a
US Senator presidential candidate, but in the process near two thousand,
he helped litigate the Supreme Court case of Bush versus
(00:44):
Bore after the Florida election recount dispute. He has discussed
the importance of the Supreme Court and a brand new
book just coming out and very timely one vote away.
(01:04):
I can't imagine a more timely conversation, both in terms
of the upcoming election and in terms of the President
having nominated someone to be on the Supreme Court. So
Senator Cruz, first, let me just say thank you. I
know how busy your schedule is, and I am delighted
that you would take some time to talk about your
new book and about the whole issue of the Supreme
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Court and where we are today. Well, no, thanks for
having me on. It's great to be with you. And
there's certainly a great deal of happening right now concerning
obviously the Supreme Court and the vacancy that we're right
in the midst of. Considering, given everything you do and
how busy you are, what led you to decide that
writing this book was that important, Well, I think it
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underscores the enormous stakes of this election. I wrote the
book this spring and summer while most of the country
was on COVID lockdown, and so I was working from home.
In terms of what is at stake on November third,
I don't know that there is anything more important than
the US Supreme Court. Before I was in the Senate,
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I was a Supreme Court litigator. I represented the State
of Texas before the Supreme Court. I represented big companies,
private companies, and Beth the company litigation before the Supreme Court.
And the way the book is structured, each chapter focuses
on a different constitutional liberty. So there's a chapter on
free speech. There's a chapter on religious liberty. There's a
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chapter on the Second Amendment. There's a chapter on US sovereignty.
There's a chapter on democracy and elections and telling the
inside story of Bush versus Gore. With all the chapters,
what I try to do is really tell war stories
from litigating the major landmark cases on each of those issues.
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And I was blessed to have litigated a lot of
the biggest cases on those areas, and so I try
to bring the reader inside understand how the court operates,
who are the players, what's going on, what actually led
to these major landmark cases. And it's designed also where
you don't have to be a lawyer, you don't have
to be an expert in any of this, but it's
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designed to be interesting and accessible and help you really
understand what's at stake in this confirmation battle for Judge
Barrett and what's at stake for the Supreme Court going forward,
in your own experience when you were there in one
of the most important cases in modern times in the
Gore versus Bush showdown, what is your takeaway from that experience,
(03:41):
both in terms of the process of systematic litigation going
up through the court systems to the Supreme Court and
also on the issues that were at stake. I remember
at the time it just seemed like it was an
enormously contentious moment. So it was, and it was utter chaos.
In November of two thousand, I was a young lawyer.
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I was working on the George W. Bush campaign, so
I was down in Austin, Texas. That's actually where Heidi
and I met. I met my wife on the campaign.
She was also down there as part of the campaign staff.
And I still remember election night where we were standing
out in the street on Congress Avenue at four in
the morning with light rain drizzling down, where Don Evans,
the chairman of the campaign, came out and said, it
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looks like we're not going to have a decision tonight.
It is uncertain. And shortly thereafter I got on a
plane flew to Tallahassee and was in Tallahassee for the
entire recount litigation. And it started with one lawsuit, but
it ended up with multiple lawsuits. Where George W. Bush
had won on election night, the count on election night
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showed that he won, which many won the presidency. The
whole race had come down to Florida. The Democrats came
in with an army of lawyers and brought multiple cases
trying to force recount after recount after recount, trying to
throw out votes that were favorable the Bush so that
Gore would win. And ultimately the votes were counted a
total of four times in Florida, and every time the
(05:07):
votes were counted Bush one. But the Gore legal team
didn't like that, so their view was they were going
to keep litigating until they could change the outcome. And
the case went twice to the US Supreme Court. The
first time at the Supreme Court, we won unanimously, and
in fact, the Court adopted a theory that was one
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that I'd come up with along with two other campaign lawyers,
urging the court to vacate the decision of the Florida
Supreme Court. In other words, to essentially erase the Florida
Supreme Court's decision and send it back after clarifying federal law.
That's what the Supreme Court did the first time, unanimously.
The second time it went back to the court, we
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ended up prevailing seven to two that the court concluded
that what was happening in Florida violated the equal Protection
clause of the Constitution. But then the court divided five four,
just one vote away on the remedy and the Court ultimately,
after thirty six days of chaos, said enough is enough.
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It's over. The votes have been counted. They've been counted
four times every time Bush has won. George W. Bush
is the winner that ended the matter and gave us
a clear winner. Now, the obvious importance of all of
that new this time around is I think the odds
are exceedingly high that we're going to see litigation, and
maybe not just in one state like we did in Florida.
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I think if Joe Biden loses, he has already explicitly
said that he intends to challenge the legitimacy of this election,
and I could easily see Biden filing litigation in five
different states simultaneously. That's what makes the timing of the
confirmation of Judge Barrett so important. What I believe we
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will do is that the Senate should confirm Judge Barrett
before election day so that we have a full complement
of nine justices on the Court, because otherwise, if they're
just eight justices on the court and there is litigation
over the election, the Court could easily divide four four,
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and a court that is divided four four has no
legal authority to decide anything, so we could see weeks
or months of chaos and uncertainty and a constitutional crisis.
And I think that's really the most compelling reason to
act and act swiftly, and I believe that's what the
Senate's going to do. Let me carry you back from it,
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because for a lot of folks who weren't there, and
a lot of younger people who may have never even
thought about it, could you just take a minute and
describe what it actually happened in Palm Beach County that
led to this whole total mess. Well, sure, and I'll
take it even a little bit earlier than that, which
is on election night, we're all gathered and everyone's watching
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the TV to the election results, and initially the networks
all called Florida for al Gore, and so they said
al Gore has won the state of Florida, and we
were crestfallen because the math was pretty clear that if
we lost Florida, it was very hard to get to
two hundred and seventy electoral votes, which is what's needed
to win. Amazingly enough, the networks called Florida while the
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polls were still open. People were still voting in the Panhandle,
and the Panhandle tends to be the most conservative part
of Florida. But the networks had called it for Gore anyway,
which no doubt had a real effect discouraging some of
George W. Bush's voters from coming out. Then as time
went on and the counting went on in Florida, they
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began to realize that what they had said was wrong,
and so one network after another rescinded the call and said, Okay,
we had called Florida for Gore. It turns out we
were wrong. It's now too close to call. And we
cheered at the campaign and everyone watching that. That went
on for several hours, and then late in the evening,
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the networks reversed their call and they said, we can
now call the winner of Florida is George W. Bush.
And with Florida, George W. Bush has won the presidency.
And so that was late on the night of election
night when that happened. Al Gore picked up the phone
and called Bush and conceded, And he conceded on the phone,
and then he was driving to give his concession speech
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and his team called him and said, well, wait, the
margin maybe a little bit closer than we thought. And
so Gore called Bush back and retracted his concession, and
that was the beginning of No one was sure what
was going to happen. That the margin was quite close
in Florida, which triggered an automatic recount under state law.
So they counted all the votes, but then there was
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an automatic machine recount after that. The next day, Josh Bolton,
who was the policy directory, was my boss on the campaign.
He later became the White House Chief of Staff. Josh
asked me Ted, get an an airplane fly to Florida,
be in Tallahassee, and so I sat down with Ben Ginsburg.
Ben was our outside council, and I still remember I
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was twenty nine years old and I was sitting in
a conference room with the band. We had a yellow
pad of paper, and we started assembling our legal team.
And it was literally it was like a field of dreams. Moment,
if you call them, they will come. And so we
went through and said, all right, who do we want?
And one of the first people I called was my
old boss, Mike Carvin. Mike is one of the top
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Supreme Court litigators in the country. I remember Mike was
at a wedding in Seattle. I got him on hisself
and I said, Mike, we need you here now. He
got on a plane, he flew to DC. His wife
met him at the airport with a suitcase of fresh clothes,
and he was down in Tallahassee. I don't know twelve
fifteen hours later. Another lawyer that I called was a
lawyer in private practice by the name of John Roberts.
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John I'd known for a long time. John was a
law clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, as was I. I
got John on the phone, said we need you here.
He came straight down and we assembled a team that
dealt with an onslot of litigation. I still remember. We
had a war room, and we had a chart, and
there were seven different lawsuits pending in different parts of Florida,
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any one of which could cost the President of the
United States. And it was utter and complete chaos. But
we had I think the finest legal team that has
ever been assembled. You couldn't have that many top Republican
litigators in the country. Ordinarily they'd kill each other and
the egos would clash. In this instance, everyone was so
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horrified at watching the Gore team try to steal the
election that everyone worked together and it made a huge
difference that we had a Supreme Court with nine justices
who could resolve the matter at the end of the
day and make sure that the law was followed. As
a historian, I'm fascinated was any one personality decisive and
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pulling the team together. So the leader of the entire
team was Jim Baker. And Baker is an extraordinary man.
He had been the chief of staff, He's run five
presidential campaigns, he was the Secretary of Treasury, he was
the Secretary of State. And Baker was sort of the
leading graybeard for Bush forty one, George Herbert Walker Bush.
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And it was very interesting the George W. Bush campaign.
Part of what they were trying to do is run
as conservatives and not be as moderate as his father
had been. And so actually forty three and meetings throughout
the campaign would mention to people, you'll notice who's not here.
And so Jim Baker had not been involved in the
campaign at all because he was seen as one of
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the more moderate advisors to Bush forty one. When the
recount started, George W. Called Baker and said we need you.
And it was an enormous asset because Baker is brilliant.
He's hunting. He is a statesman. He understands the media,
he understands law, he understands politics, and so he led
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the entire team. In terms of assembling the group, it
was Ben Ginsburg and me and my being there was
a happy accident. I mean, I was a kid in
my late twenties. It just happened that I was the
only person who had been on the full time campaign
staff who had been a constitutional litigator in a Supreme
Court litigator. That's what my practice had been. And so
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Secretary Baker at the outset asked me to serve on
We had seven different legal teams that were handling all
the different litigation. He asked me to be the one
lawyer who served as the conduit and as a member
of all seven in significant part to try to ensure
that what was being said in one case was consistent
with another. And I'll tell you my favorite story from
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that entire battle was the night that the Supreme Court
decision came down. It was about ten o'clock at night
and I got a call on my cell phone from
the clerk of the Supreme Court office, and the clerk said, Okay,
we have a decision, Do you want us to fax
it to you? And so that says something about the timing.
We still used fax machines, and so I said sure,
I gave her the fax number, and they faxed the
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decision over and I picked up the decision and I
carried it into Jim Baker's office. And you may remember
that night. It was a surreal night because the opinion
was about thirty pages long, and it was convoluted, and
it wasn't clear what it said. And so Baker looks
at me and goes, well, what does it say? And
so I'm sitting there reading it, trying to read it quickly.
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He is standing basically looking over my shoulder in this
small office. Simultaneously, the reporters are standing on the steps
of the Supreme Court. They're trying to read the opinion
and they can't figure out what it says. So nobody
knows what the outcome is. So I'm reading quickly, and
after a couple of minutes, I looked at Baker and
I said, it means it's over. It's done, And he
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looked at me and nodded, and he reached over he
picked up the phone. He called then Governor Bush at
his ranch and Crawford George W. Bush picked up the
phone and Baker said, well, mister President, how does it feel?
And I just had chills go down my spine. It
was a powerful moment, I gotta tell you though. The
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next day Heidi was laughing and she said, well, it's
a good thing. You were right. It's a good thing.
There wasn't some footnote buried in the opinion that you
miss and that you gave the right call. But it
turned out to be correct. And that was the end
of the thirty six day recount and we had an
election result and we had a new president. What are
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the other really big five to four decisions that you
look at, You think Tishue was changed in effect one
je Well, virtually every topic, virtually every fundamental right that
we can think of, It is five four at the court.
So free speech. One of the cases that the left
loves to demonize is a case called Citizens United. Citizens
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United upheld the right of a nonprofit organization to criticize politicians.
In this instance, Citizens United made a movie that was
critical of Hillary Clinton, and the Obama administration came in
and wanted to find Citizens United for daring to criticize
Hillary Clinton, and the case went to the Supreme Court
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and five four, by just a single vote, the court
concluded that you have a First Amendment right to make
a movie critical of a politician and that the government
can't find you for doing it. At the oral argument,
the Obama Justice Department was asked. Justice Alito explicitly asked
the Obama doj under your theory of the case, could
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the government ban books make it illegal to publish a
book that is critical of a politician? And the Obama
Justice Department argued, yes, that's what we're arguing. It's a
little stunning news that the decision there was five to four,
and Hillary Clinton explicitly pledged to nominate justices who would
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overrule Citizens United and Joe Biden has as well. One
issue that's front and center is does the federal government
have the ability to muzzle you and to punish you
for criticizing politicians? And I mean, that's our fundamental right
of free speech. Well, when you think about it, you
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also have to wonder why that lawyer answered that way.
I mean, I think they're probably an honest answer, but
in a sense of guaranteed that it was so radical
in fact, I agree with you that it's it's a
little surprising. It wasn't like nine zero given the level
of censorship they were suggesting. You are right, although the
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necessary conclusion of their argument, and this reason Justice Alito
pressed them, is because they were arguing that the government
had the power to censor movies. I suppose the lawyer
could have fought the hypo, it was the necessary conclusion
of their position. I go into a lot of detail
about the history of Citizens United, how that happened, but
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then I also describe the aftermathis Citizens United, where Senate
Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment to repeal the free speech
protections of the First Amendment and to give Congress plenary power,
which is a fancy legal term for blanket total power
to regulate political speech. And every single Senate Democrat voted
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to repeal the free speech protections of the First Amendment.
I led the fight against it in the Senate, and
so I go through the battles. Dick Durbin chaired the
Constitution Subcommittee the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I was the
ranking Republican. There was a time when there were free
speech Democrats, and in fact, in past congresses when Democrats
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have tried to amend or repeal the free speech protections
of the Bill of Rights. Democrats like Ted Kennedy bellowed,
we haven't amended the Bill of Rights in two hundred years,
and now is no time to start. Well, I'm sorry
to tell you, in today's Senate there are no Ted
Kennedy liberals left. Not a single Democrat would defend the
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Bill of Rights in free speech, and they believe in
power instead. And the same is true with religious liberty,
the right we have to worship to exercise our faith.
The same is true with the Second Amendment. The Supreme
Court five four, the Heller decision, which I helped litigate,
I represented thirty one states defending the Second Amendment right
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to keep and bear arms. There were four dissenting justices
who argued that the Second Amo it protects no individual
right whatsoever, that neither you, nor I, nor any American
has any individual right. And so it wasn't even arguing
that some gun control is sometimes okay. Look, reasonable minds
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can disagree on that. Their position was much more brazen
and radical. It was that the Second Amendment is essentially
erased from the Bill of Rights, and government can make
it illegal for you or me, or any American to
possess any firearm whatsoever. That's a radical position, and we're
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one vote away from it at the Court. Don't you
find in that sense that the entire process of governors
and county commissioners and mayors basically eliminating the Constitution during
the period of shutdown. It's an astonishing repudiation of the
core protections of the United States, it really is. And
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it's a loss. I mean, there was a time the
sixties and seven, even eighties and nineties where you had
Democrats who were civil libertarians, who actually believed in protecting liberties,
religious liberty. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects the
religious liberty of all of us, that passed the Senate
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and the House virtually unanimously. Virtually every Republican, virtually every
Democrat voted for it. Chuck Schumer voted for it, Joe
Biden voted for it. Was signed in the law by
Bill Clinton. So it used to be that Republicans Democrats,
we would disagree on, say, marginal tax rates. Okay, fine,
we can have an argument about that. But when it
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came to let's protect the religious liberties of Americans, that
was bipartisan. It isn't anymore. And I recount in the
book the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in the
Hobby Lobby case, which was protecting the right of Christian companies,
Christian employers not to be forced to violate their faith
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and to pay for abortion inducing drugs and others. Hobby
Lobby was five four. There were four justices that we're
willing to say, we're going to force them to comply.
We're going to force the little Sisters of the Poor,
which I talk about at length in the book, a
Catholic convent of nuns that the Obama administration was litigating
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to punish them and force them to pay for abortion
inducing drugs and others. And sadly, Senate Democrats took up
legislation to gut RIFRA, to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,
which had passed in the nineteen nineties. Virtually unanimously, every
single Senate Democrat voted to gut the legislation because there's
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not a single one of them, not one who will
defend religious liberty anymore. It's really an astonishing shift in
the whole nature of America. Don't you think it is.
And when I was fighting against their efforts to gut Riffra,
I gave a speech on the Senate floor and I
had behind me a poster with a quote from John F.
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Kennedy that said, I will not stand with a person
who will not protect my religious liberty, And I called out,
are there no John F. Kennedy Democrats left? And sadly
there are not. It shows how radicalized today's Washington Democrats
have become, that they are the party of Bernie Sanders
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and Elizabeth Warren an AOC. But it is stunning. This
book is really designed where each chapter helps you understand
really what's at stake and how close the balance is
that if they get one more left wing justice on
the court, the rights that we really cherish as Americans
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can be taken away. It relates directly back to the
left's attack on Judge Barrett, which essentially relates to her Catholicism,
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and at least for some people on the left, whether
or not you can be genuinely committed Christian, whether Evangelical
or Catholic, and be allowed to serve on a court.
We've shifted from freedom of religion on the left to
anti religion as to the ardsed it nude. I think
you're exactly right that today's Democratic Party has a deep
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animosity and antipathy to people of faith. That religion is
fine if it's kind of like, you know, a social membership,
but it's not fine if you actually believe the stuff. Now,
Judge Barrett's credentials are extraordinary. She graduated first in her
class from Notre Dame Law School. She was a law
clerk to Justice Anton and Scalia, one of the greatest
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justices ever to have lived on the court. She spent
twenty years as a professor at Dame. She's one of
the most respected federal appellate judges in the country. But
I still remember well in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
confirmation hearing for her to become a federal appellate judge,
where we saw Democrat after democrat target her for her faith.
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Dick Durbin asked her if she was a quote Orthodox Catholic,
which I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean,
I guess as opposed to a heretic Orthodox as an
odd modifier there, but clearly it was bad, and the
moment that really characterized the entire hearing was Senator Dianne Feinstein,
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who said about Judge Barrett's faith, said, the dogma lives
loudly in this one, and dogma was meant to be,
I think, a code word. If you actually believe your faith,
then you are not fit to serve in public office
or as a judge. Whether one is a Catholic or
an Evangelical or perhaps an Orthodox Jew. But whatever your faith,
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the view of today's Democrats is that is a disqualifier.
I think we saw real religious bigotry and bias in
Judge Barrett's first confirmation hearing, and sadly, I expect we
will see more of that in her second hearing. And
I would note the text of the Constitution explicitly prohibits
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a religious test for public office. So the framers the
Constitution anticipated that you could have this kind of religious bigotry,
and they rode into the Constitution you can't have a
religious test for whether someone should serve. They were right
then and they're right now. You may have been there
the day that Kala Harris actually asked a nominee to
be a federal judge about his membership in the Knights
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of Columbus, which is a very large Catholic benevolent charity,
and she was sort of implying that, by definition, if
you belong to the Knights of Columbus, you couldn't be
acceptable federal judge. And I just thought it was remarkable.
I do remember that well. And you're right that there
were several Senate Democrats who took the position that if
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you had been involved in the Knights of Columbus, that
was a disqualifying aspect. You think back to jfk the
Democratic Party. There used to be people of faith that
we're welcomed, that were embraced. There were pro life Democrats.
There were Democrats who believed in strong national defense and
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what we're called Scoop Jackson Democrats. This is not your
father's Democratic Party. Today's Democratic Party. Anyone who is conservative
or moderate or anything other than far left is driven out.
We're seeing them primary from the socialist and radical left,
anyone who doesn't agree with them. The head of the DNC,
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the Democratic National Committee, said there is no place for
anyone pro life in the Democratic Party. And I imagine
an awful lot of folks, particularly up and down the Midwest,
observant Catholics who were John F. Kennedy Democrats who are
being told get the hell out of our party. I
can tell you on the Republican side, we certainly welcome
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them with open arms. And I think you're seeing a
lot of people who had been FDR Democrats and JFK
Democrats who are becoming Republicans because the Democratic Party has
been so radicalized on so many issues. Let me ask
you one of the last big questions, very relevant right now.
There's been a great deal of I think mischaracterization of
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whether or not you can nominate and confirm a justice
in an election. I know you're an expert of this
and you've studied. Could you just comment from it about
the whole history of people being nominated to the Supreme
Court and what made two sixteen different than two and twenty.
But in the context of actually president, I'm happy to
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and they're very different circumstances. First of all, the question
of what to do with a Supreme Court vacancy during
a presidential election year, it's not a new question. It
turns out that it has come up frequently in the
history of our country. It has come up a total
of twenty nine times, So twenty nine times presidents have
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had vacancies during presidential elections years on the Supreme Court,
and we know what presidents do. Presidents have nominated someone
to fill that vacancy all twenty nine times, one hundred
percent of the time. So whether one is a Democrat
or Republican, it is absolutely clear that presidents, when faced
with a vacancy in a presidential election year, put forth
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a nominee. Now what does the Senate do with it?
And again here the history and precedent is clear. Nineteen
of those times the president and the Senate have been
of the same party. Of those nineteen, the Senate has
confirmed seventeen of those justices. So the precedent is if
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the President and Senator of the same party, the nominee
is confirmed, assuming they're qualified. On the other hand, ten
of those instances the president and the Senate have been
of a different party. That happened in twenty sixteen when
Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland and the Senate was in
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Republican control. Of those ten times when the President and
Senate have been of different parties, the Senate has confirmed
two of those nominees. And so the overwhelming history and
precedent is that the Senate generally does not confirm a
nominee to the Supreme Court for a vacancy that happened
in a presidential election year if they are of different parties,
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and that distinction is far more than just a partisan matter.
The reason that that history and precedent makes sense, especially now,
is that the kind of budge or justice that will
be nominated or confirmed has become a central issue in elections.
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It was a major issue between Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton as to the kinds of justices they would confirm.
My new book, One Vote Away. The book opens with
the day in February of twenty sixteen when Justice Scalia
passed away and I was in South Carolina. I was
actually with my debate prep team. We had a debate
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that evening. Were the middle of the presidential primaries, and
we had the South Carolina debate that evening, and I
got a phone call from the sheriff in West Texas
who had found Scalia's body. And this was before the
news was public. The sheriff called both me and called
John Cornin, the other senator from Texas, to let us
know Justice Scalia was dead. So we spent a couple
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of hours actually brainstorming about okay, what are we going
to do? And I put out a statement within minutes
of the news breaking publicly. I put out a statement
then saying there are no circumstances should the Senate take
up any nominee. Instead, the American people should decide why.
Because we had a Republican majority in the Senate that
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the American people had elected in twenty fourteen. They went
on to reelect in twenty sixteen and to grow the
Republican majority in twenty eighteen. And we had promised the
voters that we would stop liberal judicial activists from going
to the bench and that we would fight to confirm
principled constitutionalist That's what Donald Trump promised to do. It
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was the biggest reason I voted for Trump over Hillary
Clinton is because he promised to nominate justices in the
mold of Scullion Thomas. And it was I think a
major reason he won. And so when the President nominated
Judge Barrett, he was honoring his promise to the American people.
He was keeping his word. And when the Senate Republicans
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confirmed Judge Barrett, we are likewise honoring our promise to
the voters and keeping our word. Puts it exactly the
right framework. Listen. I want to thank you for taking
this kind of time because I know how amazingly busy
your schedule is. I want to encourage everybody who's listening
to this. If you go to our show page, there
will be a link so you can get a copy
(33:15):
of Senator Cruz's brand new book, One Vote Away. I
think you'll find fascinating, as you could tell just from
the personal eyewitness stories the Senator Cruz had here, He's
been in a number of amazing rooms. He writes about them,
as a remarkably articulate and courageous guy, as an enormous
teacher in helping shape America. So thank you for taking
(33:37):
time out of your busy schedule. Thank you new my friend,
and thank you every day for the powerful voice for
liberty and careful thought and analysis and truth that you
provide each and every day. Thank you to my guest,
Senator Ted Cruz. You can access his new book One
Vote Away on our show page at Newsworld dive. Tim
(34:00):
news World is produced by Gingwich three sixty and iHeartMedia.
Our executive producer is Debbie Meyers, our producer is Gornsey Slow,
and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show,
Who's created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
at Gingwish three sixty. Please email me with your questions
(34:20):
at Gingwich three sixty dot com slash questions. I'll answer
a selection of questions in future episodes. If you've been
enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
On the next episode of new t World, as part
(34:43):
of our Election twenty twenty series, I'll give you my
take on the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump
and Vice President Joe Biden. I'm new Gangwich. This is
new Tworld.
Hi. This is due to the virus. I'm recording from home,
so you may notice a difference in audio quality on
this episode of News World. I am delighted to have
a close personal friend and somebody who I really admire
a great deal, a brilliant lawyer, somebody who has shown
(00:21):
enormous courage and fighting for the conservative cause. Ted Cruz
was a law clerk for Chief Justice William Rehnquist in
nineteen ninety six. He went on from there became a
US Senator presidential candidate, but in the process near two thousand,
he helped litigate the Supreme Court case of Bush versus
(00:44):
Bore after the Florida election recount dispute. He has discussed
the importance of the Supreme Court and a brand new
book just coming out and very timely one vote away.
(01:04):
I can't imagine a more timely conversation, both in terms
of the upcoming election and in terms of the President
having nominated someone to be on the Supreme Court. So
Senator Cruz, first, let me just say thank you. I
know how busy your schedule is, and I am delighted
that you would take some time to talk about your
new book and about the whole issue of the Supreme
(01:26):
Court and where we are today. Well, no, thanks for
having me on. It's great to be with you. And
there's certainly a great deal of happening right now concerning
obviously the Supreme Court and the vacancy that we're right
in the midst of. Considering, given everything you do and
how busy you are, what led you to decide that
writing this book was that important, Well, I think it
(01:49):
underscores the enormous stakes of this election. I wrote the
book this spring and summer while most of the country
was on COVID lockdown, and so I was working from home.
In terms of what is at stake on November third,
I don't know that there is anything more important than
the US Supreme Court. Before I was in the Senate,
(02:11):
I was a Supreme Court litigator. I represented the State
of Texas before the Supreme Court. I represented big companies,
private companies, and Beth the company litigation before the Supreme Court.
And the way the book is structured, each chapter focuses
on a different constitutional liberty. So there's a chapter on
free speech. There's a chapter on religious liberty. There's a
(02:33):
chapter on the Second Amendment. There's a chapter on US sovereignty.
There's a chapter on democracy and elections and telling the
inside story of Bush versus Gore. With all the chapters,
what I try to do is really tell war stories
from litigating the major landmark cases on each of those issues.
(02:54):
And I was blessed to have litigated a lot of
the biggest cases on those areas, and so I try
to bring the reader inside understand how the court operates,
who are the players, what's going on, what actually led
to these major landmark cases. And it's designed also where
you don't have to be a lawyer, you don't have
to be an expert in any of this, but it's
(03:16):
designed to be interesting and accessible and help you really
understand what's at stake in this confirmation battle for Judge
Barrett and what's at stake for the Supreme Court going forward,
in your own experience when you were there in one
of the most important cases in modern times in the
Gore versus Bush showdown, what is your takeaway from that experience,
(03:41):
both in terms of the process of systematic litigation going
up through the court systems to the Supreme Court and
also on the issues that were at stake. I remember
at the time it just seemed like it was an
enormously contentious moment. So it was, and it was utter chaos.
In November of two thousand, I was a young lawyer.
(04:02):
I was working on the George W. Bush campaign, so
I was down in Austin, Texas. That's actually where Heidi
and I met. I met my wife on the campaign.
She was also down there as part of the campaign staff.
And I still remember election night where we were standing
out in the street on Congress Avenue at four in
the morning with light rain drizzling down, where Don Evans,
the chairman of the campaign, came out and said, it
(04:24):
looks like we're not going to have a decision tonight.
It is uncertain. And shortly thereafter I got on a
plane flew to Tallahassee and was in Tallahassee for the
entire recount litigation. And it started with one lawsuit, but
it ended up with multiple lawsuits. Where George W. Bush
had won on election night, the count on election night
(04:44):
showed that he won, which many won the presidency. The
whole race had come down to Florida. The Democrats came
in with an army of lawyers and brought multiple cases
trying to force recount after recount after recount, trying to
throw out votes that were favorable the Bush so that
Gore would win. And ultimately the votes were counted a
total of four times in Florida, and every time the
(05:07):
votes were counted Bush one. But the Gore legal team
didn't like that, so their view was they were going
to keep litigating until they could change the outcome. And
the case went twice to the US Supreme Court. The
first time at the Supreme Court, we won unanimously, and
in fact, the Court adopted a theory that was one
(05:28):
that I'd come up with along with two other campaign lawyers,
urging the court to vacate the decision of the Florida
Supreme Court. In other words, to essentially erase the Florida
Supreme Court's decision and send it back after clarifying federal law.
That's what the Supreme Court did the first time, unanimously.
The second time it went back to the court, we
(05:51):
ended up prevailing seven to two that the court concluded
that what was happening in Florida violated the equal Protection
clause of the Constitution. But then the court divided five four,
just one vote away on the remedy and the Court ultimately,
after thirty six days of chaos, said enough is enough.
(06:12):
It's over. The votes have been counted. They've been counted
four times every time Bush has won. George W. Bush
is the winner that ended the matter and gave us
a clear winner. Now, the obvious importance of all of
that new this time around is I think the odds
are exceedingly high that we're going to see litigation, and
maybe not just in one state like we did in Florida.
(06:34):
I think if Joe Biden loses, he has already explicitly
said that he intends to challenge the legitimacy of this election,
and I could easily see Biden filing litigation in five
different states simultaneously. That's what makes the timing of the
confirmation of Judge Barrett so important. What I believe we
(06:55):
will do is that the Senate should confirm Judge Barrett
before election day so that we have a full complement
of nine justices on the Court, because otherwise, if they're
just eight justices on the court and there is litigation
over the election, the Court could easily divide four four,
(07:16):
and a court that is divided four four has no
legal authority to decide anything, so we could see weeks
or months of chaos and uncertainty and a constitutional crisis.
And I think that's really the most compelling reason to
act and act swiftly, and I believe that's what the
Senate's going to do. Let me carry you back from it,
(07:37):
because for a lot of folks who weren't there, and
a lot of younger people who may have never even
thought about it, could you just take a minute and
describe what it actually happened in Palm Beach County that
led to this whole total mess. Well, sure, and I'll
take it even a little bit earlier than that, which
is on election night, we're all gathered and everyone's watching
(07:59):
the TV to the election results, and initially the networks
all called Florida for al Gore, and so they said
al Gore has won the state of Florida, and we
were crestfallen because the math was pretty clear that if
we lost Florida, it was very hard to get to
two hundred and seventy electoral votes, which is what's needed
to win. Amazingly enough, the networks called Florida while the
(08:23):
polls were still open. People were still voting in the Panhandle,
and the Panhandle tends to be the most conservative part
of Florida. But the networks had called it for Gore anyway,
which no doubt had a real effect discouraging some of
George W. Bush's voters from coming out. Then as time
went on and the counting went on in Florida, they
(08:44):
began to realize that what they had said was wrong,
and so one network after another rescinded the call and said, Okay,
we had called Florida for Gore. It turns out we
were wrong. It's now too close to call. And we
cheered at the campaign and everyone watching that. That went
on for several hours, and then late in the evening,
(09:05):
the networks reversed their call and they said, we can
now call the winner of Florida is George W. Bush.
And with Florida, George W. Bush has won the presidency.
And so that was late on the night of election
night when that happened. Al Gore picked up the phone
and called Bush and conceded, And he conceded on the phone,
and then he was driving to give his concession speech
(09:27):
and his team called him and said, well, wait, the
margin maybe a little bit closer than we thought. And
so Gore called Bush back and retracted his concession, and
that was the beginning of No one was sure what
was going to happen. That the margin was quite close
in Florida, which triggered an automatic recount under state law.
So they counted all the votes, but then there was
(09:48):
an automatic machine recount after that. The next day, Josh Bolton,
who was the policy directory, was my boss on the campaign.
He later became the White House Chief of Staff. Josh
asked me Ted, get an an airplane fly to Florida,
be in Tallahassee, and so I sat down with Ben Ginsburg.
Ben was our outside council, and I still remember I
(10:09):
was twenty nine years old and I was sitting in
a conference room with the band. We had a yellow
pad of paper, and we started assembling our legal team.
And it was literally it was like a field of dreams. Moment,
if you call them, they will come. And so we
went through and said, all right, who do we want?
And one of the first people I called was my
old boss, Mike Carvin. Mike is one of the top
(10:31):
Supreme Court litigators in the country. I remember Mike was
at a wedding in Seattle. I got him on hisself
and I said, Mike, we need you here now. He
got on a plane, he flew to DC. His wife
met him at the airport with a suitcase of fresh clothes,
and he was down in Tallahassee. I don't know twelve
fifteen hours later. Another lawyer that I called was a
lawyer in private practice by the name of John Roberts.
(10:53):
John I'd known for a long time. John was a
law clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, as was I. I
got John on the phone, said we need you here.
He came straight down and we assembled a team that
dealt with an onslot of litigation. I still remember. We
had a war room, and we had a chart, and
there were seven different lawsuits pending in different parts of Florida,
(11:16):
any one of which could cost the President of the
United States. And it was utter and complete chaos. But
we had I think the finest legal team that has
ever been assembled. You couldn't have that many top Republican
litigators in the country. Ordinarily they'd kill each other and
the egos would clash. In this instance, everyone was so
(11:38):
horrified at watching the Gore team try to steal the
election that everyone worked together and it made a huge
difference that we had a Supreme Court with nine justices
who could resolve the matter at the end of the
day and make sure that the law was followed. As
a historian, I'm fascinated was any one personality decisive and
(11:59):
pulling the team together. So the leader of the entire
team was Jim Baker. And Baker is an extraordinary man.
He had been the chief of staff, He's run five
presidential campaigns, he was the Secretary of Treasury, he was
the Secretary of State. And Baker was sort of the
leading graybeard for Bush forty one, George Herbert Walker Bush.
(12:23):
And it was very interesting the George W. Bush campaign.
Part of what they were trying to do is run
as conservatives and not be as moderate as his father
had been. And so actually forty three and meetings throughout
the campaign would mention to people, you'll notice who's not here.
And so Jim Baker had not been involved in the
campaign at all because he was seen as one of
(12:45):
the more moderate advisors to Bush forty one. When the
recount started, George W. Called Baker and said we need you.
And it was an enormous asset because Baker is brilliant.
He's hunting. He is a statesman. He understands the media,
he understands law, he understands politics, and so he led
(13:08):
the entire team. In terms of assembling the group, it
was Ben Ginsburg and me and my being there was
a happy accident. I mean, I was a kid in
my late twenties. It just happened that I was the
only person who had been on the full time campaign
staff who had been a constitutional litigator in a Supreme
Court litigator. That's what my practice had been. And so
(13:32):
Secretary Baker at the outset asked me to serve on
We had seven different legal teams that were handling all
the different litigation. He asked me to be the one
lawyer who served as the conduit and as a member
of all seven in significant part to try to ensure
that what was being said in one case was consistent
with another. And I'll tell you my favorite story from
(13:55):
that entire battle was the night that the Supreme Court
decision came down. It was about ten o'clock at night
and I got a call on my cell phone from
the clerk of the Supreme Court office, and the clerk said, Okay,
we have a decision, Do you want us to fax
it to you? And so that says something about the timing.
We still used fax machines, and so I said sure,
I gave her the fax number, and they faxed the
(14:16):
decision over and I picked up the decision and I
carried it into Jim Baker's office. And you may remember
that night. It was a surreal night because the opinion
was about thirty pages long, and it was convoluted, and
it wasn't clear what it said. And so Baker looks
at me and goes, well, what does it say? And
so I'm sitting there reading it, trying to read it quickly.
(14:36):
He is standing basically looking over my shoulder in this
small office. Simultaneously, the reporters are standing on the steps
of the Supreme Court. They're trying to read the opinion
and they can't figure out what it says. So nobody
knows what the outcome is. So I'm reading quickly, and
after a couple of minutes, I looked at Baker and
I said, it means it's over. It's done, And he
(14:56):
looked at me and nodded, and he reached over he
picked up the phone. He called then Governor Bush at
his ranch and Crawford George W. Bush picked up the
phone and Baker said, well, mister President, how does it feel?
And I just had chills go down my spine. It
was a powerful moment, I gotta tell you though. The
(15:19):
next day Heidi was laughing and she said, well, it's
a good thing. You were right. It's a good thing.
There wasn't some footnote buried in the opinion that you
miss and that you gave the right call. But it
turned out to be correct. And that was the end
of the thirty six day recount and we had an
election result and we had a new president. What are
(15:52):
the other really big five to four decisions that you
look at, You think Tishue was changed in effect one
je Well, virtually every topic, virtually every fundamental right that
we can think of, It is five four at the court.
So free speech. One of the cases that the left
loves to demonize is a case called Citizens United. Citizens
(16:15):
United upheld the right of a nonprofit organization to criticize politicians.
In this instance, Citizens United made a movie that was
critical of Hillary Clinton, and the Obama administration came in
and wanted to find Citizens United for daring to criticize
Hillary Clinton, and the case went to the Supreme Court
(16:36):
and five four, by just a single vote, the court
concluded that you have a First Amendment right to make
a movie critical of a politician and that the government
can't find you for doing it. At the oral argument,
the Obama Justice Department was asked. Justice Alito explicitly asked
the Obama doj under your theory of the case, could
(16:57):
the government ban books make it illegal to publish a
book that is critical of a politician? And the Obama
Justice Department argued, yes, that's what we're arguing. It's a
little stunning news that the decision there was five to four,
and Hillary Clinton explicitly pledged to nominate justices who would
(17:18):
overrule Citizens United and Joe Biden has as well. One
issue that's front and center is does the federal government
have the ability to muzzle you and to punish you
for criticizing politicians? And I mean, that's our fundamental right
of free speech. Well, when you think about it, you
(17:38):
also have to wonder why that lawyer answered that way.
I mean, I think they're probably an honest answer, but
in a sense of guaranteed that it was so radical
in fact, I agree with you that it's it's a
little surprising. It wasn't like nine zero given the level
of censorship they were suggesting. You are right, although the
(18:00):
necessary conclusion of their argument, and this reason Justice Alito
pressed them, is because they were arguing that the government
had the power to censor movies. I suppose the lawyer
could have fought the hypo, it was the necessary conclusion
of their position. I go into a lot of detail
about the history of Citizens United, how that happened, but
(18:20):
then I also describe the aftermathis Citizens United, where Senate
Democrats introduced a constitutional amendment to repeal the free speech
protections of the First Amendment and to give Congress plenary power,
which is a fancy legal term for blanket total power
to regulate political speech. And every single Senate Democrat voted
(18:46):
to repeal the free speech protections of the First Amendment.
I led the fight against it in the Senate, and
so I go through the battles. Dick Durbin chaired the
Constitution Subcommittee the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I was the
ranking Republican. There was a time when there were free
speech Democrats, and in fact, in past congresses when Democrats
(19:08):
have tried to amend or repeal the free speech protections
of the Bill of Rights. Democrats like Ted Kennedy bellowed,
we haven't amended the Bill of Rights in two hundred years,
and now is no time to start. Well, I'm sorry
to tell you, in today's Senate there are no Ted
Kennedy liberals left. Not a single Democrat would defend the
(19:30):
Bill of Rights in free speech, and they believe in
power instead. And the same is true with religious liberty,
the right we have to worship to exercise our faith.
The same is true with the Second Amendment. The Supreme
Court five four, the Heller decision, which I helped litigate,
I represented thirty one states defending the Second Amendment right
(19:52):
to keep and bear arms. There were four dissenting justices
who argued that the Second Amo it protects no individual
right whatsoever, that neither you, nor I, nor any American
has any individual right. And so it wasn't even arguing
that some gun control is sometimes okay. Look, reasonable minds
(20:13):
can disagree on that. Their position was much more brazen
and radical. It was that the Second Amendment is essentially
erased from the Bill of Rights, and government can make
it illegal for you or me, or any American to
possess any firearm whatsoever. That's a radical position, and we're
(20:33):
one vote away from it at the Court. Don't you
find in that sense that the entire process of governors
and county commissioners and mayors basically eliminating the Constitution during
the period of shutdown. It's an astonishing repudiation of the
core protections of the United States, it really is. And
(20:56):
it's a loss. I mean, there was a time the
sixties and seven, even eighties and nineties where you had
Democrats who were civil libertarians, who actually believed in protecting liberties,
religious liberty. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects the
religious liberty of all of us, that passed the Senate
(21:16):
and the House virtually unanimously. Virtually every Republican, virtually every
Democrat voted for it. Chuck Schumer voted for it, Joe
Biden voted for it. Was signed in the law by
Bill Clinton. So it used to be that Republicans Democrats,
we would disagree on, say, marginal tax rates. Okay, fine,
we can have an argument about that. But when it
(21:36):
came to let's protect the religious liberties of Americans, that
was bipartisan. It isn't anymore. And I recount in the
book the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision in the
Hobby Lobby case, which was protecting the right of Christian companies,
Christian employers not to be forced to violate their faith
(22:00):
and to pay for abortion inducing drugs and others. Hobby
Lobby was five four. There were four justices that we're
willing to say, we're going to force them to comply.
We're going to force the little Sisters of the Poor,
which I talk about at length in the book, a
Catholic convent of nuns that the Obama administration was litigating
(22:21):
to punish them and force them to pay for abortion
inducing drugs and others. And sadly, Senate Democrats took up
legislation to gut RIFRA, to gut the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,
which had passed in the nineteen nineties. Virtually unanimously, every
single Senate Democrat voted to gut the legislation because there's
(22:43):
not a single one of them, not one who will
defend religious liberty anymore. It's really an astonishing shift in
the whole nature of America. Don't you think it is.
And when I was fighting against their efforts to gut Riffra,
I gave a speech on the Senate floor and I
had behind me a poster with a quote from John F.
(23:04):
Kennedy that said, I will not stand with a person
who will not protect my religious liberty, And I called out,
are there no John F. Kennedy Democrats left? And sadly
there are not. It shows how radicalized today's Washington Democrats
have become, that they are the party of Bernie Sanders
(23:25):
and Elizabeth Warren an AOC. But it is stunning. This
book is really designed where each chapter helps you understand
really what's at stake and how close the balance is
that if they get one more left wing justice on
the court, the rights that we really cherish as Americans
(23:46):
can be taken away. It relates directly back to the
left's attack on Judge Barrett, which essentially relates to her Catholicism,
(24:11):
and at least for some people on the left, whether
or not you can be genuinely committed Christian, whether Evangelical
or Catholic, and be allowed to serve on a court.
We've shifted from freedom of religion on the left to
anti religion as to the ardsed it nude. I think
you're exactly right that today's Democratic Party has a deep
(24:32):
animosity and antipathy to people of faith. That religion is
fine if it's kind of like, you know, a social membership,
but it's not fine if you actually believe the stuff. Now,
Judge Barrett's credentials are extraordinary. She graduated first in her
class from Notre Dame Law School. She was a law
clerk to Justice Anton and Scalia, one of the greatest
(24:55):
justices ever to have lived on the court. She spent
twenty years as a professor at Dame. She's one of
the most respected federal appellate judges in the country. But
I still remember well in the Senate Judiciary Committee, the
confirmation hearing for her to become a federal appellate judge,
where we saw Democrat after democrat target her for her faith.
(25:17):
Dick Durbin asked her if she was a quote Orthodox Catholic,
which I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean,
I guess as opposed to a heretic Orthodox as an
odd modifier there, but clearly it was bad, and the
moment that really characterized the entire hearing was Senator Dianne Feinstein,
(25:38):
who said about Judge Barrett's faith, said, the dogma lives
loudly in this one, and dogma was meant to be,
I think, a code word. If you actually believe your faith,
then you are not fit to serve in public office
or as a judge. Whether one is a Catholic or
an Evangelical or perhaps an Orthodox Jew. But whatever your faith,
(26:03):
the view of today's Democrats is that is a disqualifier.
I think we saw real religious bigotry and bias in
Judge Barrett's first confirmation hearing, and sadly, I expect we
will see more of that in her second hearing. And
I would note the text of the Constitution explicitly prohibits
(26:25):
a religious test for public office. So the framers the
Constitution anticipated that you could have this kind of religious bigotry,
and they rode into the Constitution you can't have a
religious test for whether someone should serve. They were right
then and they're right now. You may have been there
the day that Kala Harris actually asked a nominee to
be a federal judge about his membership in the Knights
(26:48):
of Columbus, which is a very large Catholic benevolent charity,
and she was sort of implying that, by definition, if
you belong to the Knights of Columbus, you couldn't be
acceptable federal judge. And I just thought it was remarkable.
I do remember that well. And you're right that there
were several Senate Democrats who took the position that if
(27:10):
you had been involved in the Knights of Columbus, that
was a disqualifying aspect. You think back to jfk the
Democratic Party. There used to be people of faith that
we're welcomed, that were embraced. There were pro life Democrats.
There were Democrats who believed in strong national defense and
(27:31):
what we're called Scoop Jackson Democrats. This is not your
father's Democratic Party. Today's Democratic Party. Anyone who is conservative
or moderate or anything other than far left is driven out.
We're seeing them primary from the socialist and radical left,
anyone who doesn't agree with them. The head of the DNC,
(27:53):
the Democratic National Committee, said there is no place for
anyone pro life in the Democratic Party. And I imagine
an awful lot of folks, particularly up and down the Midwest,
observant Catholics who were John F. Kennedy Democrats who are
being told get the hell out of our party. I
can tell you on the Republican side, we certainly welcome
(28:15):
them with open arms. And I think you're seeing a
lot of people who had been FDR Democrats and JFK
Democrats who are becoming Republicans because the Democratic Party has
been so radicalized on so many issues. Let me ask
you one of the last big questions, very relevant right now.
There's been a great deal of I think mischaracterization of
(28:39):
whether or not you can nominate and confirm a justice
in an election. I know you're an expert of this
and you've studied. Could you just comment from it about
the whole history of people being nominated to the Supreme
Court and what made two sixteen different than two and twenty.
But in the context of actually president, I'm happy to
(29:02):
and they're very different circumstances. First of all, the question
of what to do with a Supreme Court vacancy during
a presidential election year, it's not a new question. It
turns out that it has come up frequently in the
history of our country. It has come up a total
of twenty nine times, So twenty nine times presidents have
(29:22):
had vacancies during presidential elections years on the Supreme Court,
and we know what presidents do. Presidents have nominated someone
to fill that vacancy all twenty nine times, one hundred
percent of the time. So whether one is a Democrat
or Republican, it is absolutely clear that presidents, when faced
with a vacancy in a presidential election year, put forth
(29:44):
a nominee. Now what does the Senate do with it?
And again here the history and precedent is clear. Nineteen
of those times the president and the Senate have been
of the same party. Of those nineteen, the Senate has
confirmed seventeen of those justices. So the precedent is if
(30:04):
the President and Senator of the same party, the nominee
is confirmed, assuming they're qualified. On the other hand, ten
of those instances the president and the Senate have been
of a different party. That happened in twenty sixteen when
Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland and the Senate was in
(30:24):
Republican control. Of those ten times when the President and
Senate have been of different parties, the Senate has confirmed
two of those nominees. And so the overwhelming history and
precedent is that the Senate generally does not confirm a
nominee to the Supreme Court for a vacancy that happened
in a presidential election year if they are of different parties,
(30:46):
and that distinction is far more than just a partisan matter.
The reason that that history and precedent makes sense, especially now,
is that the kind of budge or justice that will
be nominated or confirmed has become a central issue in elections.
(31:07):
It was a major issue between Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton as to the kinds of justices they would confirm.
My new book, One Vote Away. The book opens with
the day in February of twenty sixteen when Justice Scalia
passed away and I was in South Carolina. I was
actually with my debate prep team. We had a debate
(31:28):
that evening. Were the middle of the presidential primaries, and
we had the South Carolina debate that evening, and I
got a phone call from the sheriff in West Texas
who had found Scalia's body. And this was before the
news was public. The sheriff called both me and called
John Cornin, the other senator from Texas, to let us
know Justice Scalia was dead. So we spent a couple
(31:49):
of hours actually brainstorming about okay, what are we going
to do? And I put out a statement within minutes
of the news breaking publicly. I put out a statement
then saying there are no circumstances should the Senate take
up any nominee. Instead, the American people should decide why.
Because we had a Republican majority in the Senate that
(32:11):
the American people had elected in twenty fourteen. They went
on to reelect in twenty sixteen and to grow the
Republican majority in twenty eighteen. And we had promised the
voters that we would stop liberal judicial activists from going
to the bench and that we would fight to confirm
principled constitutionalist That's what Donald Trump promised to do. It
(32:32):
was the biggest reason I voted for Trump over Hillary
Clinton is because he promised to nominate justices in the
mold of Scullion Thomas. And it was I think a
major reason he won. And so when the President nominated
Judge Barrett, he was honoring his promise to the American people.
He was keeping his word. And when the Senate Republicans
(32:53):
confirmed Judge Barrett, we are likewise honoring our promise to
the voters and keeping our word. Puts it exactly the
right framework. Listen. I want to thank you for taking
this kind of time because I know how amazingly busy
your schedule is. I want to encourage everybody who's listening
to this. If you go to our show page, there
will be a link so you can get a copy
(33:15):
of Senator Cruz's brand new book, One Vote Away. I
think you'll find fascinating, as you could tell just from
the personal eyewitness stories the Senator Cruz had here, He's
been in a number of amazing rooms. He writes about them,
as a remarkably articulate and courageous guy, as an enormous
teacher in helping shape America. So thank you for taking
(33:37):
time out of your busy schedule. Thank you new my friend,
and thank you every day for the powerful voice for
liberty and careful thought and analysis and truth that you
provide each and every day. Thank you to my guest,
Senator Ted Cruz. You can access his new book One
Vote Away on our show page at Newsworld dive. Tim
(34:00):
news World is produced by Gingwich three sixty and iHeartMedia.
Our executive producer is Debbie Meyers, our producer is Gornsey Slow,
and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show,
Who's created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
at Gingwish three sixty. Please email me with your questions
(34:20):
at Gingwich three sixty dot com slash questions. I'll answer
a selection of questions in future episodes. If you've been
enjoying news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast
and both rate us with five stars and give us
a review so others can learn what it's all about.
On the next episode of new t World, as part
(34:43):
of our Election twenty twenty series, I'll give you my
take on the first presidential debate between President Donald Trump
and Vice President Joe Biden. I'm new Gangwich. This is
new Tworld.
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