January 24, 2025 • 37 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome in as Verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you. I'll start with good news. We've got Center
Cruz back. You've got what i'd say, half the voice,
sixty percent. Where are we right now with this?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I got to say, doing a weekend or you go
to like seven inauguration balls and you're just going from
event to event to event. I've got a nasty cold.
My voice was completely ragged two days ago. It's still
pretty weak. I canceled pretty much all my media interviews
just because I'm trying to rest my voice. But I'm
(00:34):
back to the podcast cast because I love you guys.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
See, you know, we started rumors while you were gone.
This was you partying too hard and we're blaming your
old co host because there is a picture on the
internet of you guys having cigars together at the inauguration.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I will confess Noles and I we're at a
cigar bar smoking cigars at having scotch at three in
the morning, which you know with Jeremy bourring In, Ben
Shapiro at all the Daily Wire guys. And it was
great fun, but it really is crappy for your voice.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And it really does. Yeah, here we go. Well there,
as my mom would say, did you learn anything from
that experience?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Senator yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Good answer, good answer.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
This is also interesting because right now you're still in Washington,
d C. We're recording this late Thursday night. That's not normal.
Normally we record after you get back to Houston about
the same time. But you're still in d C. What's
going on.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well, it looks like we're going to be here throughout
the weekend. So we're in the middle of confirming cabinet
nominees at this point. We confirm Marco Rubio on January twentieth.
On in inauguration day, Rubio was confirmed ninety nine to zero.
He was unanimous. That was not surprising. But the Democrats
are already being obstructionists. They're already blocking nominees. So we
(01:53):
confirmed earlier today John Ratcliffe to be the head of
the CIA. We should have done that on January twentieth
as well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It was a big vote.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
The vote was seventy four to twenty five, so a
whole bunch of Democrats voted for Radcliffe. And yet the
Democrats are trying to drag it out and delay it.
We're now on Pete Hegseth, and the Democrats really really
really want to defeat Pete Hegseth. So they're just the
tool that the opposition party has in the Senate is
they can delay, and they can for major cabinet nominees.
(02:26):
The rules require thirty hours and so you can drag
it out. And so what the Republican majority is doing,
we're saying, fine, if you're going to drag it out,
then we're not going home.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
We're going to stay here under the thirty hours.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
We're going to vote on Pete Hegseth, I think at
nine pm Friday night, and then we're immediately going to
move to Christine nom and if they want, we'll take
another thirty hours and then we'll vote on Sunday and
we're going to move forward, and we're going to move forward.
And to be honest, this is not that unusual of
a battle. You see the opposition party trying to drag
(02:58):
things out, and the way you basically break that opposition is, listen,
the Democrats want to get home. They got fundraisers, they
got to see their family, they got to go do events.
They're doing all sorts of things they're going to sporting games,
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
There.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It makes senators very grumpy when they have to stay
through the weekend.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And they don't get home.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
And so hopefully after the Democrats do this for a
little while, they'll stop engaging in unreasonable delay. And the
way this ends is they say, Okay, we agree to
expedite the votes and to move more swiftly through the votes.
One way or another, we're going to get these cabinet
nominees confirmed. I think within thirty days all of the
(03:44):
cabinet nominees will be confirmed. Hag Seth will probably be
the one that's the closest battle. The vote today on
hag Seth was fifty one to forty nine, so two
Republicans voted no.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Susan Collins voted no.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Lisamski voted no, which wasn't a terribly big surprise.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They were the two most likely to vote no.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
But the nice thing about having a fifty three vote
majority is we can lose. We could actually lose three
votes and still get him confirmed because at fifty to fifty,
jd Vance as the vice president would break the tie.
And so if Susan and Lisa vote no, that doesn't
alter the result, and so I fully expect that by
tomorrow night, Pete Hegseeth will be confirmed as Defense Secretary
(04:30):
and we're going to move through. Actually, earlier today, I
chaired the Senate Commerce Committee and we voted out Sean Duffy,
who is the nominee to be Transportation Secretary. And the
vote on Sean Duffy was unanimous, So every Republican, every
Democrat voted for it. It was interesting. The Democrats were
chattering a little bit that they might oppose him because
(04:52):
they were mad that Trump had halted the Green New
Deal funding. But at the end of the day, when
we came to the vote, when they did the row call,
one voted no. And I sit next to John Thune
on the Commerce Committee. I leaned over to Thuon and said, Huh,
turns out even the Democrats want roads and bridges in
their states.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Funny how that works.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And if you don't know Sean, Sean is just such
a genuine nice guy. He's authentic, he's real. His questioning
that you guys had of him, it would be really hard,
and I think it looked petty if you went against him.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, Look, he's a good guy. He's going to do
a terrific job as Secretary of Transportation, and that historically
is a fairly nonpartisan job. When it comes to transportation
and infrastructure, every state cares about it. If you're doing
it right, you should be doing it fairly based on needs.
So you shouldn't be favoring your buddies and punishing your enemies.
(05:46):
And I think Sean will implement the law fairly. And
that's one thing every senator does, is you go advocate
for your state. And look, when it comes to the
state of Texas, we have enormous infrastructure needs because we're
growing crazy. Here's an amazing stat When I was elected
thirteen years ago, there were twenty six million Texans. Today
(06:08):
there are more than thirty one million Texans. We've added
five million Texans in just thirteen years. That is enormous,
and that means we've got huge transportation needs because when
you add five million people, that's a lot more people
on cars. That's a lot more people on trucks, that's
a lot more people, a lot more cargo being shipped
on trains, that's a lot more need for bridges, that's
(06:31):
a lot more ships coming in and out of our ports.
And so I think Sean Duffy's going to do a
terrific job. And I will say also, it is very
good for the state of Texas that I'm the chairman
of the Commerce Committee, because I will say, it does
not hurt if you're advocating for your state if you
happen to be the chairman of the committee that has
(06:51):
oversight over the Department of Transportation, and so that for
the State of Texas is a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It really is. So we've got a lot of talk
about on the show, So a lot of executiveors on
border and also I want to get to Biden's pardon issues.
Donald Trump made some comments about that. We're going to
play that coming up, just so people know where we're
going with this. But let's go back to the politics
of the of the Democrats stalling and trying to delay
these votes. What is the thinking behind that and why
(07:21):
if you're in their camp tonight, are they saying is
it worth it? And how are they figuring out when
do they say, Okay, enough's enough already, let's get to
these votes. What's the upside? I'm trying to genuinely figure
that out for them.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh, look, at some point they'll blink. But their base
is worked up, and heg Seth in particular, that they're
in a frenzy over and so listen, you can understand
if you're a Democrat, your base is all mad and
thinks heg Seth is some radical that you got to
show your fighting, and so they want to go prove
to their base we're fighting. We're fighting to stop Trump.
(07:55):
You know, Look, nine pm tomorrow night, hegg Seth will
be confirmed. And so I think for some of the others. Look,
Sean Duffy. We had to take up and vote on Duffy.
He was just voted out of committee unanimously. Now he'll
get confirmed next week. But I fully expect I'm going
to go to the Senate Florida borrow and try to
schedule Sean Duffy's vote immediately, and I expect the Democrats
(08:17):
to object just because they want to drag it out,
they want to slow it down. You know, it was
interesting right at the beginning. Actually before Trump was sworn in,
one of the senior members of his inner circle called
me and said, look, Ted, we want to move super fast.
We want to get every cabinet nominee confirmed. On January
twentieth and I kind of laughed and said, well, well, look,
(08:40):
I understand you want that. That's not going to happen.
And they were like why, I don't understand why. And
I said, well, okay, so there's this thing called the Senate,
and the Senate has rules.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And he said, so what we want him now?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We need him now, now now, And I said, well,
I understand that, and I think the Republicans would agree
with you and would do everything we could.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
To accelerate it.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
But half the senator Democrats and Chuck Schumer doesn't want
your cabinet nominees confirm. Neither do most of the Democrats,
and so they're going to use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation.
And to be fair, when Biden and Obama were president,
Republicans use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation, particularly if it's
(09:23):
a bad nominee. If it's a nominee you know, you're
not that concerned about that's one thing, But if it's
a nominee that you think is a terrible nominee, you'll
do everything you can to fight back. Now, the way
the majority exercises leverage is it's literally about inflicting pain,
it's at some point one of the things we can do.
So the thirty hours delay that you have on a
(09:44):
cabinet nominee under the rules is actually broken down into
each senator has up to an hour to speak, and
so you can do what's called call the question, which
is you can say, okay, go speak for thirty hours.
You got to get thirty senators up there to speak
at hour each. No senator can speak for more than
an hour fulfilling that time, and once you run out
(10:07):
of senators, you can call the question.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So for the next thirty hours, you're telling me that
on the hour you're going to have another Democratic center speak.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Now, keep this going, no, because I don't expect we're
immediately going to call the question. And the reason is
they have a procedural tool to fight back. So if
you call the question, the way a Democrat or anyone
of the minority fights back, it is stands up and
suggests the absence of a quorum. And under the Senate rules,
(10:38):
if a senator suggests the absence of a quorum, you
have to confirm that there is a quorum on the
floor of the Senate, which means, let's say we're doing
this at two in the morning. We got to produce
fifty senators. And listen, a lot of my colleagues are
in their eighties, and so getting octagenarians to appear in an.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They're not outsmoking cigars with you and knows is that
what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I think that would be correct.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And so look, the Senate rules are built for there
to be checks and balances and give and take, and
so if the Democrats continue to be deeply obstructionist, at
some point, I fully expect we will call the question.
And I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple
of weeks you see Republicans showing up saying we're gonna
(11:24):
be here all night. We're gonna have some cots, we're
going to sleep on the floor of the Senate, and
we're going to grind through until you guys stop this nonsense.
But I think we're not doing that yet. But to
be honest, staying through the weekend no senator likes that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I want to be home with my girls. I want
to be back in Texas. I don't like being in
the frozen tundra that is Washington on Saturday and Sunday
when I could be in Texas with with by two
girls and with my wife.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And that's that's leverage. I mean, that's really it. That's
the leverage.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And I promise you the Democrat senators are complaining to
their leadership. We don't want to be here. Why are
we stuck here? We don't want to have to be here.
And it's like, well, you guys can go home right now.
If you agree, all right, we'll confirm all the people
same timeframe. We'll just collapse the time. Okay, if you
do that, we can go home. But like, if we
(12:18):
move expeditiously through these you can go home. And if
you want to just be obstructionists, then you're going to
be stuck here and it's going to release stink and
you're gonna have to show up in the middle of
the night to cast votes and that that annoys everybody,
but especially folks who are pretty old. And so that
back and forth, and I actually think post tag seth.
(12:39):
Like I was meeting with a Democrat senator today and
I asked her, I said, so, are you guys going
to relent at some point or are we going to
be able to go home and just reach an agreement
to move these guys forward, and she said, oh, no, no, no,
because on heg Seth, we think we may get a
couple of Republicans to flip. And I'm like, yeah, that's
not gonna happen, Like, okay, you know, you got two,
(13:00):
but you need four and you're not getting four. And
she's like, well, maybe the fifty one that voted, maybe
they'll change their mind by the time we vote in
thirty hours. I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, and maybe
the moon's made of green cheese. That's all right. But
I think the Democrats right now are telling themselves they're
holding out hope for that, which means they'll at least
(13:21):
keep us here through Friday night. And then they may
blink Friday night and agree with Christy Nome and then
Scott Bessen, the Treasury Secretary, is next and Sean Duffy,
the Transportation Secretary. Those are the next ones teed up.
So if they agree.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Fast, could that go down? Let's say that they say
we're ready to go home and play out that scenario. Yeah,
we've got a couple lined up. How quick can the
votes happen? If it's like, all right, let's get the
hell out of here.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They could happen in an hour. I mean, Schumer could agree.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You can do anything in the Senate by unanimous consent.
So if they decide, okay, we want to go, we
could tee up. Let's say Friday night at nine o'clock,
we confirm heg Seth. They know Christy Nome's going to
get confirmed, so they could say, you know what, we
don't want to wait another thirty hours, so let's will
(14:13):
consent to do the vote on Christy Nome right now.
And I think if they did that, Thune would let
everyone go home and we'd fly home Saturday mornings, and
then we'd come back Monday and move on to Bessent
and and Sean Duffy. So it wouldn't change anything for
the Democrats. It would be perfectly rational. But Democrats aren't
(14:37):
always rational, and to be fair, when we're in the minority,
Republicans aren't always met rational. Sometimes you just want to
fight if you don't like what the other side is doing.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All right, I'm going to regret this question, but I
feel like I need to ask it because I know
there's other people listening right now that are thinking the
same thing I am. Who the hell came up with
these rules, and how many decades old are they and
how often do they change?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
They are many many decades old, and the way it works,
they can change, but to change the rules takes a
vote of sixty seven senators, so they very rarely change
because you need a big supermajority.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So i'm moment was the last time something like that
happened that in the rules change where there was that
many votes? I mean, obviously very rare, but I mean
in the history, is it happened that many times?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So the way rules changes have happened have been different.
The way rule changes have happened in recent history has
been through what is called the nuclear options. So you
may remember this back about a decade ago, the Democrats
had control of the Senate. Harry Reid was the Democrat
majority leader, and at the time, it required sixty votes
(15:44):
to move to proceed to a confirmation. And that was
true for executive branch nominations, that was true for judicial nominations.
And in fact, when I was a brand new baby
senator back in I was elected in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,
I was brand new and one of the very first
things I did is I led the first successful filibuster
(16:06):
of a Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Chuck Hagel had
been actually a Republican senator from Nebraska. I didn't know him,
most of my colleagues knew him. I looked at his record.
His record was terrible. His record in particular on Iran,
had been terribly. Had consistently voted against sanctions against Iran.
And I looked at it and said, this makes no
(16:26):
sense at all. And so I led a filibuster, and
as a brand new senator, got virtually every Republican to
join me, and we blocked him. Now, unfortunately, the Republican
Party being what it is, as soon as we did that,
a bunch of Republican senators got cold feet and flipped,
and then they decided to let him be confirmed. So
after we blocked him, they unblocked him. But not long
(16:49):
after that, Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option to lower
the threshold to confirm executive branch nominees from sixty to fifty.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Now how did he do that?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
The rules said, the moved to proceede. Any nomination takes
sixty votes, but any rule, any ruling of the chair.
So the way you do that is you stand up
and you seek the presiding officer, who could be the
Vice President or a senator from the majority party, seek
a ruling on how many how many yes votes does
(17:24):
it take to move to proceed to a nomination, And
the presiding officer will ask the parliamentarian who's sitting right
in front of him or her, and the parliamentarian would say, well,
under the text of the rules, the answer is sixty.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And so the chair will say the answer is sixty.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And what Harry Reid did is say, I appeal the
ruling of the chair. Now, any ruling of the Chair
can be appealed, and the margin to overturn the ruling
of the Chair is fifty votes. So what happened is
the chair correctly response, did that it takes sixty votes
(18:02):
to moood to procede a confirmation. Harry Reid appealed the
ruling of the chair, and all the Democrats voted to
overturn the ruling of the chair. And the way the
Senate operates, once you have overturned a ruling of the chair,
that becomes a binding precedent that binds the Senate going
forward as a result, and that's called the nuclear option
because it is essentially breaking the rules of the Senate
(18:24):
to change the rules of the Senate, because the fact
that you can appeal the ruling of the chair means
you can change any rule with fifty votes if you're
willing to ignore the rules. Well, the Democrats did that
initially for executive branch dominations. Then subsequently they did it
for judges, but not Supreme Court justices and so and
(18:48):
in fact, I remember when they did that. I remember
standing on the Senate floor as they were exercising the
nuclear option for judges and lowering the threshold from sixty
votes to fifty. I turned to Am Klobucha, Democrat from Minnesota,
and I said, Amy, you guys are going to regret this,
because the result of this is we are going to
see more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomas's on the Supreme
(19:11):
Court because you were doing this, and every Democrat will
regret this. And ironically, had Harry Reid not exercise the
nuclear option and lowered the threshold for confirming judges from
sixty votes to fifty, there's no way Brett Kavanaugh would
have been confirmed. Neil Gorsich probably wouldn't have. And Amy
(19:32):
Cony Barrett definitely would have would not have and so
literally Roe versus Wade would not have been overturned. And
you want to know whose fault it is that roversus
Wade was overturned. Harry Reid and every Democrat senator who
voted to exercise the nuclear option. And I got to
admit I told them that when they did it, and
that was what year, I think, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Wow, And they just didn't play the long game. I
get it was that personal or they were that angry.
It's time.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
You know, they're the Democrats will exercise power, and they
rarely think about tomorrow. And we point out all the time, look,
if you do this, you know, turnabout's fair play. When
we get the majority, we'll do it back to you.
And they live in sort of this denial of reality
(20:19):
that they don't ever see. You know, I've been in
the Senate thirteen years, about half the time i've been
in the majority, about half the time I've been in
the minority. Republicans actually try to focus a fair about
on Hey, we want to do things that preserve the
institution because we recognize there's going to be a time
in the future when we're in the minority again, and
(20:39):
we don't want to just get completely steamrolled the next
time we're in the minority, so we will show some
respect for the minority. So the Institution operates differently than
the House. Look the House, the House majority can do
whatever the hell it wants, and being in the minority
in the House.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Sucks because you have virtually no power.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
In the Senate, even being in the minority, an individual
senator could exercise a lot of power and influence, and
that's one of the things that makes the institution work.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well, it's interesting, It is really interesting. So your gut here,
your prediction. I want one. When will you get to
go home? When will they get confirmed?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I think it's fifty to fifty. My gut is we'll
go home Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But maybe not.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Maybe not, like it's literally fifty to fifty. They might
say Friday night, once excess done, okay, let's agree to
speed up dome and if they do that, we'll go
home Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We'll come back Monday.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
If they don't do that, we'll stay through the weekend.
And I got to say, like Heidi and I Friday night,
we're planning to do date night. We'd already planned it,
and I had to call our last night and say, hey,
I don't think I can go. We try to do
date night ideally once a week, but we try to
do it at least every other week and go out,
go out and have dinner together. And I told her,
I think the odds are are very slim that I'm
(21:55):
going to make date night tomorrow, and I think that
they're basically zero right now. But I'm hoping that I
get to see my kids at least Saturday and Sunday,
but it will depend on if the Democrats want to
see their kids.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
All right, let's move to the border because this is
a huge payoff and I want to go through because
it's been happening so quickly. It is a tsunami of
executive orders to secure the border. We are now witnessing
the difference in one president compared to another, and how
quickly things can change. Border crossings are way down. We're
(22:30):
grabbing violent criminals now all over the country. We're getting
videos of those arrests being made in the rap sheets.
This is a full court press by the federal government
who's been empowered to do their damn job on getting
rid of the bad guys in this country. The worst
of the worst are the violent criminals that are legal immigrants,
(22:52):
and also a securing the border mentality all into one.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Well.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Look, on day one, Trump signed over one hundred executive orders.
And I will say there is a world of difference
between this Trump administration and the one we saw in
twenty seventeen. Listen, in twenty seventeen, most of the Trump
team had never served in the federal government. They didn't
really know what they were biting off, you know. They
(23:20):
were actually One member of the Trump family said to
me over this weekend, said, yeah, we were the dog
that caught the car.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Look like it was.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
They found themselves in the White House and there was
a steep learning curve. And I will say in the
first term, the Trump White House made some serious mistakes,
particularly with staffing, appointing some people to senior positions who
ended up fighting against President Trump every step of the way.
This time around, I think it is a dramatically different
(23:52):
White House and a dramatically different administration. One of the
biggest ways it's different, I think they're much more savvy.
This selection of cabinet nominees, I think is very strong.
I think they're looking for people who are loyal and
committed to the president and the president's agenda.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think that they.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Are doing a much better job avoiding appointing people who
are going to fight against the president's agenda and try
to undermine it from within.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And there was a lot of that in the first term.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
I also think when it comes to the executive orders
that they just they put in collectively, that the transition
team and a lot of the lawyers working with them
thousands and thousands of hours getting ready for it, and
so many of the executive orders dealt with the border.
The clearest mandate from this election was to secure the border,
(24:39):
and I think these executive orders are all designed to
do that. To build the wall, to surge manpower, to
go after illegal aliens, to go after criminal illegal aliens,
to go after murderers and rapists and child molesters, to
go after gang members, and I think you're seeing every
cabinet agency focusing on it. To restore the remain in
Mexico agreement, to end catch and release. All of that
(25:02):
happened the first day. And remember this is something that
I've predicted on verdict from the beginning, which is that
we would secure the border. It wouldn't take a year
even six months, that it would be immediate because the
damage done to the border was done primarily through executive
orders and just through deliberate inaction on the part of
Joe Biden the executive and so all of that could
(25:24):
be reversed immediately. Now Congress needs to follow up and
pass legislation to provide real funding for the resources we
need at the border, and hopefully to put in federal
law stronger protections to stop the next Democrat president from
trying to repeat what Joe Biden did. But look, if
(25:44):
you compare, it's funny. I had had reporters this week
asked me, said said, well, well, is it strange that
Trump's executive orders and the legislation Congress is working on
this year are so overlapping and so similar. And I
laughed and said, no, it's not strange at all. We're
both acting to implement the mandate from the voters. We're
(26:07):
both trying to accomplish the same agenda. And I said, listen,
the advantage of executive orders and regulations and executive action.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Is that it's quick.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
It can be done instantaneously.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That's very good.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The disadvantage of it is it can be reversed instantaneously.
A great deal of the good Donald Trump did in
the first term was reversed as soon as Joe Biden
came into office because everything you do with an executive
order you could undo. And by the way, a lot
of Trump's executive orders were just reversing the terrible Biden
executive orders. So executive orders are quick, but they're temporary.
(26:42):
Legislation is slower, but it has the advantage of if
you write it in the federal law, it's much harder
to change, so it's much more of a permanent change.
And so I think the Trump executive orders are trying
to accomplish exactly what we're going to accomplish, or I
very much hope we're going to accomplish through passing legislation
through Congress this year.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Let's go through what you think is the most important
things that have happened so far and why it's having
such a quick impact.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
The single most important thing for dropping the numbers is
ending catch and release. There's no policy decision that There's
no policy question that matters more then what happens when
you apprehend an illegal immigrant at the border. In terms
of illegal immigration, if the answer is you put them
(27:32):
on a plane and you fly them home, the numbers plummet,
and they plummet immediately because virtually everyone comes into this
country illegally has a cell phone, and so they call
back home and say, hey, don't come.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
They don't let you stay.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
If the answer is what it's been for four years,
that they let you stay and go wherever you want. Again,
everyone has a cell phone, so they call back home
and says, hey, come on up, the border's open.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You get to stay.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
And so ending catch and release and hand in hand
with that is reinstating remain in Mexico. Now, look, reinstating
remain in Mexico is a little complicated because that actually
takes the cooperation of the government in Mexico. So Trump
has signed an executive order saying we're going to reinstate it,
but the Mexican government has to cooperate for that to work.
(28:13):
And that's why Trump has also threatened a twenty five
percent tariff on Mexico. That's how he got the Mexican
government to agree to remain in Mexico in the first term,
and I hope it's how he will get the Mexican
government again to agree with it.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Now, well, let's talk also quickly for people that just
don't understand what's happening in Mexico. Mexico's in a really
weird and interesting spot internally in their politics. There's so
much corruption down there. Is there a chance that we
could see a government stand up to these cartels because
of the pressure that Donald Trump is willing to put
(28:49):
on them, including using things to leverage like tariffs.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
I look very possibly and I hope so. I will
say it's harder to accomplish now after four years of Biden,
because the cartels are much much more powerful. Listen one
stat that I pointed out many times. In twenty eighteen,
the Mexican drug cartels were making roughly five hundred million
dollars in revenue from human trafficking. Last year, the Mexican
(29:17):
drug cartels made over thirteen billion dollars from human trafficking.
That's a two six hundred percent increase. And so what
Joe Biden and the Democrats have done is they've turned
these drug cartels that are vicious, murdering, torturing. I mean,
they are horrible transnational criminal enterprises that they don't care
(29:37):
about human life at all. They commit thousands and thousands
of murderers, but they turned them into multi, multi billion
dollar empires. And it's had a tragic effect on Mexico.
The number of murders and kidnappings there. The rule of
law has been incredibly undermined. And Joe Biden not only
has it done huge damage to America, he's done huge
(30:00):
damage to Mexico by making the cartels so powerful. So
it is riskier now for the president of Mexico to
stand up.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
To the cartels.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
She's literally risking her life because the cartels are more
than happy to murder politicians. They murdered a lot of
politicians in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, and good at it.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I mean, now if they take pride in it, that's
how they control. It's like, we'll kill anybody, we don't
care who you are.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
They kill politicians, they kill judges, they kill prosecutors, they
kill reporters. I mean, just it is lawless and terror
and so listen, I think we will get Mexico to
cooperate because at the end of the day, the leverage
that the president has is so enormous. And I also
think look Amlo, the previous president of Mexico is scared
(30:43):
of Trump that I think he's got real credibility. When
he threatens to impose the tariffs, you better believe he's
willing to do that, and that I think really incentivizes
Mexico to cooperate. Now, listen, I think as the United
States goes after the cartels, as we cut off their money,
as we throw their leaders in prison, as we kill
(31:05):
many of the cartel leaders, I think you'll see the
cartels being weakened, and that over the next four years,
will make it easier for the Mexican government to fight
back on them. But Biden and the Democrats' efforts have
made the cartels much much more dangerous.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
No doubt about it. Lastly, I want to get your
thoughts on something that was said in Trump's first sit
down interview that he did in the Oval office. He
did it with our good friend John Hannity, and he
was asked about the pardons that Joe Biden gave out,
and he made a comment and I want to get
your reaction to it about, Hey, he may have messed
(31:45):
up because he didn't pardon himself.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Take a listen, he heard that I was going to
do I didn't want to do it. I was given
the option. They said, sir, would you like to pardon everybody,
including yourself? I said, I'm not going to pardon anybody.
We didn't do anything wrong, and we had people that suffered,
their incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. You had
Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail.
(32:10):
You had people that suffered, and far worse than that.
They've lost their fortunes, They've lost their whatever, their nest egg,
paying it to lawyers and those people, and people said
to you, and they don't even They wouldn't have even
taken most of those people.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
They wouldn't have even taken apart.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know
that the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is he
didn't give himself a part.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
He didn't give himself a pardon. Senator, I gotta I
gotta ask you your take on that is that is
that a foreshadowing comment coming from from Donald Trump?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
There, Well, listen, it may well be. And we've been
been very clear. We've talked a lot on Verdict about
how the scandal with with Hunter Biden and the Biden
crime family was never about Hunter being a you know,
guy who abuses drugs and has made a lot of
(33:13):
wrong choices in life. The scandal was always that the
entire Biden family made millions of dollars selling favors from
the big guy, selling favors from Joe Biden. It was
always about Joe Biden's corruption. And we talked a lot
about how the Biden doj The tell in terms of
whether they were being politicized on protecting Biden would be
(33:35):
if they fought in the Hunter Biden investigation to protect
Joe himself and to prevent any inquiry into his corruption.
If they kept it focused on the drug crime or
the gun crime, or.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Even the the the.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Income tax crimes that were personal to Hunter rather than
examining the corruption, That's exactly what they did. And so
I think that corruption needs to be investigated. I think
we need to enforce the law fairly, regardless of party.
And I got to say, by the way, we predicted
on this podcast, when when the we number one predicted
(34:12):
the Hunter Biden pardon, and in fact I put the
odds of the Hunter Biden pardon at one hundred percent.
We even predicted the date I said it would be
December of twenty twenty four. It happened on December first
of twenty twenty four. But second when that happened, we
went on this podcast and predicted said he's going to
pardon the rest of his family. Well he did that
on the very last day, moments before he left office.
(34:34):
He pardoned the rest of his family because they were
all involved in the corruption. They were all involved in
selling favors. And so right now the only one with
potential liability is Joe Biden himself. And you know, Trump's
right that it's interesting he didn't pardon himself. Well, we'll
see if that has real consequences. By the way, one
of the results of all these pardons is that Congress
(34:56):
can now subpoena the members of the Biden fan and
force them to answer questions under oath, and they don't
have a Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Really, okay, So a lot of people to know that,
including me, So explain that a little bit for everybody,
because that is that is big news.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
So the Fifth Amendment says that you can't be forced
to testify against yourself. Now that only applies if you
have criminal jeopardy, if you can be prosecuted. Once you've
been pardoned, you have no criminal jeopardy, which means you
don't have the right to say, I'm not going to
answer that because I might incriminate myself in a crime.
Because if it's a federal crime, you can't be prosecuted
(35:35):
for it, which means if you refuse to answer, you
can be held in contempt and put in jail. And
so it h it has changed.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I will be There's there's a very old there's a
very real chance that members of the Biden crime family
that were pardon could be asked to come and testify
in Congress and they would be forced to answer the
questions for the reasons you just stated, yep.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
And if they don't, by the way, same is true
about Fauci that you know, Biden pardon Fauci. That means
Fauci doesn't have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to
answer questions under oath. I certainly hope that he's forced
to answer those questions. And I got to say so.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Not hypothetically. You get Fauci in front of you, you
start asking him questions and he just refuses to answer
those questions. Is that in contempt? To Congress at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Well, Congress has to vote to hold him in contempt
for refusing to answer those questions, and then the Department
of Justice has to prosecute him. I got to say,
I think if Congress voted to hold him in contempt,
I think DOJ would prosecute him. And by the way,
to be clear, the Biden Department of Justice Trump mentioned
putting Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in prison. They did
that because they held them in contempt to Congress. And
(36:47):
that was even aside from from pleading the fifth there,
they just refused to testify, and they argued that they
asserted executive privilege, and DOJ prosecuted them after Congress, after
the housewater to hold it in contempt of Congress.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Incredible. All right, We've got a lot to watch now.
Thanks for that. This is why I love doing the show.
We're glad that you're back. We hope you make it
home this weekend, back to the fam, and that Democrats
don't hold these votes and ruin everybody's weekend with their family,
that's for sure. Don't forget. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
We have a week in review for things you may
(37:23):
have missed on Saturday, so make sure you grab that show.
Also grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, will keep
you up to date on those in between days and
The Senator and I will see you back here for
obviously what's going to be a very exciting show depending
on what happens over the weekend. On Monday morning,
Welcome in as Verdict with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson
with you. I'll start with good news. We've got Center
Cruz back. You've got what i'd say, half the voice,
sixty percent. Where are we right now with this?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I got to say, doing a weekend or you go
to like seven inauguration balls and you're just going from
event to event to event. I've got a nasty cold.
My voice was completely ragged two days ago. It's still
pretty weak. I canceled pretty much all my media interviews
just because I'm trying to rest my voice. But I'm
(00:34):
back to the podcast cast because I love you guys.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
See, you know, we started rumors while you were gone.
This was you partying too hard and we're blaming your
old co host because there is a picture on the
internet of you guys having cigars together at the inauguration.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Yeah, I will confess Noles and I we're at a
cigar bar smoking cigars at having scotch at three in
the morning, which you know with Jeremy bourring In, Ben
Shapiro at all the Daily Wire guys. And it was
great fun, but it really is crappy for your voice.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And it really does. Yeah, here we go. Well there,
as my mom would say, did you learn anything from
that experience?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Senator yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Good answer, good answer.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
All right.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
This is also interesting because right now you're still in Washington,
d C. We're recording this late Thursday night. That's not normal.
Normally we record after you get back to Houston about
the same time. But you're still in d C. What's
going on.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Well, it looks like we're going to be here throughout
the weekend. So we're in the middle of confirming cabinet
nominees at this point. We confirm Marco Rubio on January twentieth.
On in inauguration day, Rubio was confirmed ninety nine to zero.
He was unanimous. That was not surprising. But the Democrats
are already being obstructionists. They're already blocking nominees. So we
(01:53):
confirmed earlier today John Ratcliffe to be the head of
the CIA. We should have done that on January twentieth
as well.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
It was a big vote.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
The vote was seventy four to twenty five, so a
whole bunch of Democrats voted for Radcliffe. And yet the
Democrats are trying to drag it out and delay it.
We're now on Pete Hegseth, and the Democrats really really
really want to defeat Pete Hegseth. So they're just the
tool that the opposition party has in the Senate is
they can delay, and they can for major cabinet nominees.
(02:26):
The rules require thirty hours and so you can drag
it out. And so what the Republican majority is doing,
we're saying, fine, if you're going to drag it out,
then we're not going home.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
We're going to stay here under the thirty hours.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
We're going to vote on Pete Hegseth, I think at
nine pm Friday night, and then we're immediately going to
move to Christine nom and if they want, we'll take
another thirty hours and then we'll vote on Sunday and
we're going to move forward, and we're going to move forward.
And to be honest, this is not that unusual of
a battle. You see the opposition party trying to drag
(02:58):
things out, and the way you basically break that opposition is, listen,
the Democrats want to get home. They got fundraisers, they
got to see their family, they got to go do events.
They're doing all sorts of things they're going to sporting games,
you know.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
There.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It makes senators very grumpy when they have to stay
through the weekend.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
And they don't get home.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
And so hopefully after the Democrats do this for a
little while, they'll stop engaging in unreasonable delay. And the
way this ends is they say, Okay, we agree to
expedite the votes and to move more swiftly through the votes.
One way or another, we're going to get these cabinet
nominees confirmed. I think within thirty days all of the
(03:44):
cabinet nominees will be confirmed. Hag Seth will probably be
the one that's the closest battle. The vote today on
hag Seth was fifty one to forty nine, so two
Republicans voted no.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Susan Collins voted no.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
Lisamski voted no, which wasn't a terribly big surprise.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
They were the two most likely to vote no.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
But the nice thing about having a fifty three vote
majority is we can lose. We could actually lose three
votes and still get him confirmed because at fifty to fifty,
jd Vance as the vice president would break the tie.
And so if Susan and Lisa vote no, that doesn't
alter the result, and so I fully expect that by
tomorrow night, Pete Hegseeth will be confirmed as Defense Secretary
(04:30):
and we're going to move through. Actually, earlier today, I
chaired the Senate Commerce Committee and we voted out Sean Duffy,
who is the nominee to be Transportation Secretary. And the
vote on Sean Duffy was unanimous, So every Republican, every
Democrat voted for it. It was interesting. The Democrats were
chattering a little bit that they might oppose him because
(04:52):
they were mad that Trump had halted the Green New
Deal funding. But at the end of the day, when
we came to the vote, when they did the row call,
one voted no. And I sit next to John Thune
on the Commerce Committee. I leaned over to Thuon and said, Huh,
turns out even the Democrats want roads and bridges in
their states.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Funny how that works.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And if you don't know Sean, Sean is just such
a genuine nice guy. He's authentic, he's real. His questioning
that you guys had of him, it would be really hard,
and I think it looked petty if you went against him.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Yeah, Look, he's a good guy. He's going to do
a terrific job as Secretary of Transportation, and that historically
is a fairly nonpartisan job. When it comes to transportation
and infrastructure, every state cares about it. If you're doing
it right, you should be doing it fairly based on needs.
So you shouldn't be favoring your buddies and punishing your enemies.
(05:46):
And I think Sean will implement the law fairly. And
that's one thing every senator does, is you go advocate
for your state. And look, when it comes to the
state of Texas, we have enormous infrastructure needs because we're
growing crazy. Here's an amazing stat When I was elected
thirteen years ago, there were twenty six million Texans. Today
(06:08):
there are more than thirty one million Texans. We've added
five million Texans in just thirteen years. That is enormous,
and that means we've got huge transportation needs because when
you add five million people, that's a lot more people
on cars. That's a lot more people on trucks, that's
a lot more people, a lot more cargo being shipped
on trains, that's a lot more need for bridges, that's
(06:31):
a lot more ships coming in and out of our ports.
And so I think Sean Duffy's going to do a
terrific job. And I will say also, it is very
good for the state of Texas that I'm the chairman
of the Commerce Committee, because I will say, it does
not hurt if you're advocating for your state if you
happen to be the chairman of the committee that has
(06:51):
oversight over the Department of Transportation, and so that for
the State of Texas is a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
It really is. So we've got a lot of talk
about on the show, So a lot of executiveors on
border and also I want to get to Biden's pardon issues.
Donald Trump made some comments about that. We're going to
play that coming up, just so people know where we're
going with this. But let's go back to the politics
of the of the Democrats stalling and trying to delay
these votes. What is the thinking behind that and why
(07:21):
if you're in their camp tonight, are they saying is
it worth it? And how are they figuring out when
do they say, Okay, enough's enough already, let's get to
these votes. What's the upside? I'm trying to genuinely figure
that out for them.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Oh, look, at some point they'll blink. But their base
is worked up, and heg Seth in particular, that they're
in a frenzy over and so listen, you can understand
if you're a Democrat, your base is all mad and
thinks heg Seth is some radical that you got to
show your fighting, and so they want to go prove
to their base we're fighting. We're fighting to stop Trump.
(07:55):
You know, Look, nine pm tomorrow night, hegg Seth will
be confirmed. And so I think for some of the others. Look,
Sean Duffy. We had to take up and vote on Duffy.
He was just voted out of committee unanimously. Now he'll
get confirmed next week. But I fully expect I'm going
to go to the Senate Florida borrow and try to
schedule Sean Duffy's vote immediately, and I expect the Democrats
(08:17):
to object just because they want to drag it out,
they want to slow it down. You know, it was
interesting right at the beginning. Actually before Trump was sworn in,
one of the senior members of his inner circle called
me and said, look, Ted, we want to move super fast.
We want to get every cabinet nominee confirmed. On January
twentieth and I kind of laughed and said, well, well, look,
(08:40):
I understand you want that. That's not going to happen.
And they were like why, I don't understand why. And
I said, well, okay, so there's this thing called the Senate,
and the Senate has rules.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And he said, so what we want him now?
Speaker 3 (08:54):
We need him now, now now, And I said, well,
I understand that, and I think the Republicans would agree
with you and would do everything we could.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
To accelerate it.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
But half the senator Democrats and Chuck Schumer doesn't want
your cabinet nominees confirm. Neither do most of the Democrats,
and so they're going to use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation.
And to be fair, when Biden and Obama were president,
Republicans use procedural mechanisms to delay confirmation, particularly if it's
(09:23):
a bad nominee. If it's a nominee you know, you're
not that concerned about that's one thing, But if it's
a nominee that you think is a terrible nominee, you'll
do everything you can to fight back. Now, the way
the majority exercises leverage is it's literally about inflicting pain,
it's at some point one of the things we can do.
So the thirty hours delay that you have on a
(09:44):
cabinet nominee under the rules is actually broken down into
each senator has up to an hour to speak, and
so you can do what's called call the question, which
is you can say, okay, go speak for thirty hours.
You got to get thirty senators up there to speak
at hour each. No senator can speak for more than
an hour fulfilling that time, and once you run out
(10:07):
of senators, you can call the question.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
So for the next thirty hours, you're telling me that
on the hour you're going to have another Democratic center speak.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Now, keep this going, no, because I don't expect we're
immediately going to call the question. And the reason is
they have a procedural tool to fight back. So if
you call the question, the way a Democrat or anyone
of the minority fights back, it is stands up and
suggests the absence of a quorum. And under the Senate rules,
(10:38):
if a senator suggests the absence of a quorum, you
have to confirm that there is a quorum on the
floor of the Senate, which means, let's say we're doing
this at two in the morning. We got to produce
fifty senators. And listen, a lot of my colleagues are
in their eighties, and so getting octagenarians to appear in an.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
They're not outsmoking cigars with you and knows is that
what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I think that would be correct.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And so look, the Senate rules are built for there
to be checks and balances and give and take, and
so if the Democrats continue to be deeply obstructionist, at
some point, I fully expect we will call the question.
And I wouldn't be surprised if in the next couple
of weeks you see Republicans showing up saying we're gonna
(11:24):
be here all night. We're gonna have some cots, we're
going to sleep on the floor of the Senate, and
we're going to grind through until you guys stop this nonsense.
But I think we're not doing that yet. But to
be honest, staying through the weekend no senator likes that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
I want to be home with my girls. I want
to be back in Texas. I don't like being in
the frozen tundra that is Washington on Saturday and Sunday
when I could be in Texas with with by two
girls and with my wife.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And that's that's leverage. I mean, that's really it. That's
the leverage.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
And I promise you the Democrat senators are complaining to
their leadership. We don't want to be here. Why are
we stuck here? We don't want to have to be here.
And it's like, well, you guys can go home right now.
If you agree, all right, we'll confirm all the people
same timeframe. We'll just collapse the time. Okay, if you
do that, we can go home. But like, if we
(12:18):
move expeditiously through these you can go home. And if
you want to just be obstructionists, then you're going to
be stuck here and it's going to release stink and
you're gonna have to show up in the middle of
the night to cast votes and that that annoys everybody,
but especially folks who are pretty old. And so that
back and forth, and I actually think post tag seth.
(12:39):
Like I was meeting with a Democrat senator today and
I asked her, I said, so, are you guys going
to relent at some point or are we going to
be able to go home and just reach an agreement
to move these guys forward, and she said, oh, no, no, no,
because on heg Seth, we think we may get a
couple of Republicans to flip. And I'm like, yeah, that's
not gonna happen, Like, okay, you know, you got two,
(13:00):
but you need four and you're not getting four. And
she's like, well, maybe the fifty one that voted, maybe
they'll change their mind by the time we vote in
thirty hours. I'm like, yeah, okay, you know, and maybe
the moon's made of green cheese. That's all right. But
I think the Democrats right now are telling themselves they're
holding out hope for that, which means they'll at least
(13:21):
keep us here through Friday night. And then they may
blink Friday night and agree with Christy Nome and then
Scott Bessen, the Treasury Secretary, is next and Sean Duffy,
the Transportation Secretary. Those are the next ones teed up.
So if they agree.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Fast, could that go down? Let's say that they say
we're ready to go home and play out that scenario. Yeah,
we've got a couple lined up. How quick can the
votes happen? If it's like, all right, let's get the
hell out of here.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
They could happen in an hour. I mean, Schumer could agree.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
You can do anything in the Senate by unanimous consent.
So if they decide, okay, we want to go, we
could tee up. Let's say Friday night at nine o'clock,
we confirm heg Seth. They know Christy Nome's going to
get confirmed, so they could say, you know what, we
don't want to wait another thirty hours, so let's will
(14:13):
consent to do the vote on Christy Nome right now.
And I think if they did that, Thune would let
everyone go home and we'd fly home Saturday mornings, and
then we'd come back Monday and move on to Bessent
and and Sean Duffy. So it wouldn't change anything for
the Democrats. It would be perfectly rational. But Democrats aren't
(14:37):
always rational, and to be fair, when we're in the minority,
Republicans aren't always met rational. Sometimes you just want to
fight if you don't like what the other side is doing.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
All right, I'm going to regret this question, but I
feel like I need to ask it because I know
there's other people listening right now that are thinking the
same thing I am. Who the hell came up with
these rules, and how many decades old are they and
how often do they change?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
They are many many decades old, and the way it works,
they can change, but to change the rules takes a
vote of sixty seven senators, so they very rarely change
because you need a big supermajority.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
So i'm moment was the last time something like that
happened that in the rules change where there was that
many votes? I mean, obviously very rare, but I mean
in the history, is it happened that many times?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
So the way rules changes have happened have been different.
The way rule changes have happened in recent history has
been through what is called the nuclear options. So you
may remember this back about a decade ago, the Democrats
had control of the Senate. Harry Reid was the Democrat
majority leader, and at the time, it required sixty votes
(15:44):
to move to proceed to a confirmation. And that was
true for executive branch nominations, that was true for judicial nominations.
And in fact, when I was a brand new baby
senator back in I was elected in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen,
I was brand new and one of the very first
things I did is I led the first successful filibuster
(16:06):
of a Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Chuck Hagel had
been actually a Republican senator from Nebraska. I didn't know him,
most of my colleagues knew him. I looked at his record.
His record was terrible. His record in particular on Iran,
had been terribly. Had consistently voted against sanctions against Iran.
And I looked at it and said, this makes no
(16:26):
sense at all. And so I led a filibuster, and
as a brand new senator, got virtually every Republican to
join me, and we blocked him. Now, unfortunately, the Republican
Party being what it is, as soon as we did that,
a bunch of Republican senators got cold feet and flipped,
and then they decided to let him be confirmed. So
after we blocked him, they unblocked him. But not long
(16:49):
after that, Harry Reid exercised the nuclear option to lower
the threshold to confirm executive branch nominees from sixty to fifty.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Now how did he do that?
Speaker 3 (17:00):
The rules said, the moved to proceede. Any nomination takes
sixty votes, but any rule, any ruling of the chair.
So the way you do that is you stand up
and you seek the presiding officer, who could be the
Vice President or a senator from the majority party, seek
a ruling on how many how many yes votes does
(17:24):
it take to move to proceed to a nomination, And
the presiding officer will ask the parliamentarian who's sitting right
in front of him or her, and the parliamentarian would say, well,
under the text of the rules, the answer is sixty.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
And so the chair will say the answer is sixty.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
And what Harry Reid did is say, I appeal the
ruling of the chair. Now, any ruling of the Chair
can be appealed, and the margin to overturn the ruling
of the Chair is fifty votes. So what happened is
the chair correctly response, did that it takes sixty votes
(18:02):
to moood to procede a confirmation. Harry Reid appealed the
ruling of the chair, and all the Democrats voted to
overturn the ruling of the chair. And the way the
Senate operates, once you have overturned a ruling of the chair,
that becomes a binding precedent that binds the Senate going
forward as a result, and that's called the nuclear option
because it is essentially breaking the rules of the Senate
(18:24):
to change the rules of the Senate, because the fact
that you can appeal the ruling of the chair means
you can change any rule with fifty votes if you're
willing to ignore the rules. Well, the Democrats did that
initially for executive branch dominations. Then subsequently they did it
for judges, but not Supreme Court justices and so and
(18:48):
in fact, I remember when they did that. I remember
standing on the Senate floor as they were exercising the
nuclear option for judges and lowering the threshold from sixty
votes to fifty. I turned to Am Klobucha, Democrat from Minnesota,
and I said, Amy, you guys are going to regret this,
because the result of this is we are going to
see more Antonin Scalias and Clarence Thomas's on the Supreme
(19:11):
Court because you were doing this, and every Democrat will
regret this. And ironically, had Harry Reid not exercise the
nuclear option and lowered the threshold for confirming judges from
sixty votes to fifty, there's no way Brett Kavanaugh would
have been confirmed. Neil Gorsich probably wouldn't have. And Amy
(19:32):
Cony Barrett definitely would have would not have and so
literally Roe versus Wade would not have been overturned. And
you want to know whose fault it is that roversus
Wade was overturned. Harry Reid and every Democrat senator who
voted to exercise the nuclear option. And I got to
admit I told them that when they did it, and
that was what year, I think, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Wow, And they just didn't play the long game. I
get it was that personal or they were that angry.
It's time.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
You know, they're the Democrats will exercise power, and they
rarely think about tomorrow. And we point out all the time, look,
if you do this, you know, turnabout's fair play. When
we get the majority, we'll do it back to you.
And they live in sort of this denial of reality
(20:19):
that they don't ever see. You know, I've been in
the Senate thirteen years, about half the time i've been
in the majority, about half the time I've been in
the minority. Republicans actually try to focus a fair about
on Hey, we want to do things that preserve the
institution because we recognize there's going to be a time
in the future when we're in the minority again, and
(20:39):
we don't want to just get completely steamrolled the next
time we're in the minority, so we will show some
respect for the minority. So the Institution operates differently than
the House. Look the House, the House majority can do
whatever the hell it wants, and being in the minority
in the House.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Sucks because you have virtually no power.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
In the Senate, even being in the minority, an individual
senator could exercise a lot of power and influence, and
that's one of the things that makes the institution work.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Well, it's interesting, It is really interesting. So your gut here,
your prediction. I want one. When will you get to
go home? When will they get confirmed?
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I think it's fifty to fifty. My gut is we'll
go home Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
But maybe not.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
Maybe not, like it's literally fifty to fifty. They might
say Friday night, once excess done, okay, let's agree to
speed up dome and if they do that, we'll go
home Saturday morning.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
We'll come back Monday.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
If they don't do that, we'll stay through the weekend.
And I got to say, like Heidi and I Friday night,
we're planning to do date night. We'd already planned it,
and I had to call our last night and say, hey,
I don't think I can go. We try to do
date night ideally once a week, but we try to
do it at least every other week and go out,
go out and have dinner together. And I told her,
I think the odds are are very slim that I'm
(21:55):
going to make date night tomorrow, and I think that
they're basically zero right now. But I'm hoping that I
get to see my kids at least Saturday and Sunday,
but it will depend on if the Democrats want to
see their kids.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
All right, let's move to the border because this is
a huge payoff and I want to go through because
it's been happening so quickly. It is a tsunami of
executive orders to secure the border. We are now witnessing
the difference in one president compared to another, and how
quickly things can change. Border crossings are way down. We're
(22:30):
grabbing violent criminals now all over the country. We're getting
videos of those arrests being made in the rap sheets.
This is a full court press by the federal government
who's been empowered to do their damn job on getting
rid of the bad guys in this country. The worst
of the worst are the violent criminals that are legal immigrants,
(22:52):
and also a securing the border mentality all into one.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
Well.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Look, on day one, Trump signed over one hundred executive orders.
And I will say there is a world of difference
between this Trump administration and the one we saw in
twenty seventeen. Listen, in twenty seventeen, most of the Trump
team had never served in the federal government. They didn't
really know what they were biting off, you know. They
(23:20):
were actually One member of the Trump family said to
me over this weekend, said, yeah, we were the dog
that caught the car.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Look like it was.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
They found themselves in the White House and there was
a steep learning curve. And I will say in the
first term, the Trump White House made some serious mistakes,
particularly with staffing, appointing some people to senior positions who
ended up fighting against President Trump every step of the way.
This time around, I think it is a dramatically different
(23:52):
White House and a dramatically different administration. One of the
biggest ways it's different, I think they're much more savvy.
This selection of cabinet nominees, I think is very strong.
I think they're looking for people who are loyal and
committed to the president and the president's agenda.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I think that they.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Are doing a much better job avoiding appointing people who
are going to fight against the president's agenda and try
to undermine it from within.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And there was a lot of that in the first term.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
I also think when it comes to the executive orders
that they just they put in collectively, that the transition
team and a lot of the lawyers working with them
thousands and thousands of hours getting ready for it, and
so many of the executive orders dealt with the border.
The clearest mandate from this election was to secure the border,
(24:39):
and I think these executive orders are all designed to
do that. To build the wall, to surge manpower, to
go after illegal aliens, to go after criminal illegal aliens,
to go after murderers and rapists and child molesters, to
go after gang members, and I think you're seeing every
cabinet agency focusing on it. To restore the remain in
Mexico agreement, to end catch and release. All of that
(25:02):
happened the first day. And remember this is something that
I've predicted on verdict from the beginning, which is that
we would secure the border. It wouldn't take a year
even six months, that it would be immediate because the
damage done to the border was done primarily through executive
orders and just through deliberate inaction on the part of
Joe Biden the executive and so all of that could
(25:24):
be reversed immediately. Now Congress needs to follow up and
pass legislation to provide real funding for the resources we
need at the border, and hopefully to put in federal
law stronger protections to stop the next Democrat president from
trying to repeat what Joe Biden did. But look, if
(25:44):
you compare, it's funny. I had had reporters this week
asked me, said said, well, well, is it strange that
Trump's executive orders and the legislation Congress is working on
this year are so overlapping and so similar. And I
laughed and said, no, it's not strange at all. We're
both acting to implement the mandate from the voters. We're
(26:07):
both trying to accomplish the same agenda. And I said, listen,
the advantage of executive orders and regulations and executive action.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Is that it's quick.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
It can be done instantaneously.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
That's very good.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
The disadvantage of it is it can be reversed instantaneously.
A great deal of the good Donald Trump did in
the first term was reversed as soon as Joe Biden
came into office because everything you do with an executive
order you could undo. And by the way, a lot
of Trump's executive orders were just reversing the terrible Biden
executive orders. So executive orders are quick, but they're temporary.
(26:42):
Legislation is slower, but it has the advantage of if
you write it in the federal law, it's much harder
to change, so it's much more of a permanent change.
And so I think the Trump executive orders are trying
to accomplish exactly what we're going to accomplish, or I
very much hope we're going to accomplish through passing legislation
through Congress this year.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Let's go through what you think is the most important
things that have happened so far and why it's having
such a quick impact.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
The single most important thing for dropping the numbers is
ending catch and release. There's no policy decision that There's
no policy question that matters more then what happens when
you apprehend an illegal immigrant at the border. In terms
of illegal immigration, if the answer is you put them
(27:32):
on a plane and you fly them home, the numbers plummet,
and they plummet immediately because virtually everyone comes into this
country illegally has a cell phone, and so they call
back home and say, hey, don't come.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
They don't let you stay.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
If the answer is what it's been for four years,
that they let you stay and go wherever you want. Again,
everyone has a cell phone, so they call back home
and says, hey, come on up, the border's open.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
You get to stay.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
And so ending catch and release and hand in hand
with that is reinstating remain in Mexico. Now, look, reinstating
remain in Mexico is a little complicated because that actually
takes the cooperation of the government in Mexico. So Trump
has signed an executive order saying we're going to reinstate it,
but the Mexican government has to cooperate for that to work.
(28:13):
And that's why Trump has also threatened a twenty five
percent tariff on Mexico. That's how he got the Mexican
government to agree to remain in Mexico in the first term,
and I hope it's how he will get the Mexican
government again to agree with it.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Now, well, let's talk also quickly for people that just
don't understand what's happening in Mexico. Mexico's in a really
weird and interesting spot internally in their politics. There's so
much corruption down there. Is there a chance that we
could see a government stand up to these cartels because
of the pressure that Donald Trump is willing to put
(28:49):
on them, including using things to leverage like tariffs.
Speaker 3 (28:53):
I look very possibly and I hope so. I will
say it's harder to accomplish now after four years of Biden,
because the cartels are much much more powerful. Listen one
stat that I pointed out many times. In twenty eighteen,
the Mexican drug cartels were making roughly five hundred million
dollars in revenue from human trafficking. Last year, the Mexican
(29:17):
drug cartels made over thirteen billion dollars from human trafficking.
That's a two six hundred percent increase. And so what
Joe Biden and the Democrats have done is they've turned
these drug cartels that are vicious, murdering, torturing. I mean,
they are horrible transnational criminal enterprises that they don't care
(29:37):
about human life at all. They commit thousands and thousands
of murderers, but they turned them into multi, multi billion
dollar empires. And it's had a tragic effect on Mexico.
The number of murders and kidnappings there. The rule of
law has been incredibly undermined. And Joe Biden not only
has it done huge damage to America, he's done huge
(30:00):
damage to Mexico by making the cartels so powerful. So
it is riskier now for the president of Mexico to
stand up.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
To the cartels.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
She's literally risking her life because the cartels are more
than happy to murder politicians. They murdered a lot of
politicians in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah, and good at it.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
I mean, now if they take pride in it, that's
how they control. It's like, we'll kill anybody, we don't
care who you are.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
They kill politicians, they kill judges, they kill prosecutors, they
kill reporters. I mean, just it is lawless and terror
and so listen, I think we will get Mexico to
cooperate because at the end of the day, the leverage
that the president has is so enormous. And I also
think look Amlo, the previous president of Mexico is scared
(30:43):
of Trump that I think he's got real credibility. When
he threatens to impose the tariffs, you better believe he's
willing to do that, and that I think really incentivizes
Mexico to cooperate. Now, listen, I think as the United
States goes after the cartels, as we cut off their money,
as we throw their leaders in prison, as we kill
(31:05):
many of the cartel leaders, I think you'll see the
cartels being weakened, and that over the next four years,
will make it easier for the Mexican government to fight
back on them. But Biden and the Democrats' efforts have
made the cartels much much more dangerous.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
No doubt about it. Lastly, I want to get your
thoughts on something that was said in Trump's first sit
down interview that he did in the Oval office. He
did it with our good friend John Hannity, and he
was asked about the pardons that Joe Biden gave out,
and he made a comment and I want to get
your reaction to it about, Hey, he may have messed
(31:45):
up because he didn't pardon himself.
Speaker 4 (31:47):
Take a listen, he heard that I was going to
do I didn't want to do it. I was given
the option. They said, sir, would you like to pardon everybody,
including yourself? I said, I'm not going to pardon anybody.
We didn't do anything wrong, and we had people that suffered,
their incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. You had
Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail.
(32:10):
You had people that suffered, and far worse than that.
They've lost their fortunes, They've lost their whatever, their nest egg,
paying it to lawyers and those people, and people said
to you, and they don't even They wouldn't have even
taken most of those people.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
They wouldn't have even taken apart.
Speaker 4 (32:31):
This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know
that the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is he
didn't give himself a part.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
He didn't give himself a pardon. Senator, I gotta I
gotta ask you your take on that is that is
that a foreshadowing comment coming from from Donald Trump?
Speaker 3 (32:51):
There, Well, listen, it may well be. And we've been
been very clear. We've talked a lot on Verdict about
how the scandal with with Hunter Biden and the Biden
crime family was never about Hunter being a you know,
guy who abuses drugs and has made a lot of
(33:13):
wrong choices in life. The scandal was always that the
entire Biden family made millions of dollars selling favors from
the big guy, selling favors from Joe Biden. It was
always about Joe Biden's corruption. And we talked a lot
about how the Biden doj The tell in terms of
whether they were being politicized on protecting Biden would be
(33:35):
if they fought in the Hunter Biden investigation to protect
Joe himself and to prevent any inquiry into his corruption.
If they kept it focused on the drug crime or
the gun crime, or.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Even the the the.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
Income tax crimes that were personal to Hunter rather than
examining the corruption, That's exactly what they did. And so
I think that corruption needs to be investigated. I think
we need to enforce the law fairly, regardless of party.
And I got to say, by the way, we predicted
on this podcast, when when the we number one predicted
(34:12):
the Hunter Biden pardon, and in fact I put the
odds of the Hunter Biden pardon at one hundred percent.
We even predicted the date I said it would be
December of twenty twenty four. It happened on December first
of twenty twenty four. But second when that happened, we
went on this podcast and predicted said he's going to
pardon the rest of his family. Well he did that
on the very last day, moments before he left office.
(34:34):
He pardoned the rest of his family because they were
all involved in the corruption. They were all involved in
selling favors. And so right now the only one with
potential liability is Joe Biden himself. And you know, Trump's
right that it's interesting he didn't pardon himself. Well, we'll
see if that has real consequences. By the way, one
of the results of all these pardons is that Congress
(34:56):
can now subpoena the members of the Biden fan and
force them to answer questions under oath, and they don't
have a Fifth Amendment right to decline to answer.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Really, okay, So a lot of people to know that,
including me, So explain that a little bit for everybody,
because that is that is big news.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
So the Fifth Amendment says that you can't be forced
to testify against yourself. Now that only applies if you
have criminal jeopardy, if you can be prosecuted. Once you've
been pardoned, you have no criminal jeopardy, which means you
don't have the right to say, I'm not going to
answer that because I might incriminate myself in a crime.
Because if it's a federal crime, you can't be prosecuted
(35:35):
for it, which means if you refuse to answer, you
can be held in contempt and put in jail. And
so it h it has changed.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
I will be There's there's a very old there's a
very real chance that members of the Biden crime family
that were pardon could be asked to come and testify
in Congress and they would be forced to answer the
questions for the reasons you just stated, yep.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
And if they don't, by the way, same is true
about Fauci that you know, Biden pardon Fauci. That means
Fauci doesn't have a Fifth Amendment right to refuse to
answer questions under oath. I certainly hope that he's forced
to answer those questions. And I got to say so.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
Not hypothetically. You get Fauci in front of you, you
start asking him questions and he just refuses to answer
those questions. Is that in contempt? To Congress at that point.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Well, Congress has to vote to hold him in contempt
for refusing to answer those questions, and then the Department
of Justice has to prosecute him. I got to say,
I think if Congress voted to hold him in contempt,
I think DOJ would prosecute him. And by the way,
to be clear, the Biden Department of Justice Trump mentioned
putting Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro in prison. They did
that because they held them in contempt to Congress. And
(36:47):
that was even aside from from pleading the fifth there,
they just refused to testify, and they argued that they
asserted executive privilege, and DOJ prosecuted them after Congress, after
the housewater to hold it in contempt of Congress.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Incredible. All right, We've got a lot to watch now.
Thanks for that. This is why I love doing the show.
We're glad that you're back. We hope you make it
home this weekend, back to the fam, and that Democrats
don't hold these votes and ruin everybody's weekend with their family,
that's for sure. Don't forget. We do the show Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
We have a week in review for things you may
(37:23):
have missed on Saturday, so make sure you grab that show.
Also grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast, will keep
you up to date on those in between days and
The Senator and I will see you back here for
obviously what's going to be a very exciting show depending
on what happens over the weekend. On Monday morning,
Host
Ben Ferguson
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