November 13, 2024 • 50 mins
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It is verdict with center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with
you and Senator it is a victory dance. It's got
some meat and potatoes with it. Donald Trump putting together
his cabinet and it is well making the media light
their hair on fire. And a lot of conservatives have
voted for Donald Trump are liking the payoff. There's consequences
(00:23):
when you win and when you lose, especially if you're
a Democrat.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Today, well, change is on the way and the change
is coming. As Trump would say, Bigley, we are seeing
major nominations for cabinet members, for senior officials in the
White House. We're going to go through all of those,
give you a sense of where the new administration is
coming out, give you a sense of what to expect
in the next two months, and then in January when
(00:49):
the new Congress is sworn in, and then when the
new president is sworn in. We're also going to tell
you particularly I just think funny story about how utterly
corrupt today's Democrat Party is, about how they paid millions
and millions of dollars for their celebrity quote endorsers. That
Kamala was basically in the business of purchasing fake endorsements.
(01:11):
And I got to say, the fake endorsements they didn't work,
but they sure did spend a lot of money giving
Hollywood celebrities cash to pretend they had political views and
to hope that that would move voters' votes.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, there was a lot of cash and donors aren't
happy about it. We're going to break that down as well.
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Well, you may not realize.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
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Making a difference.
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(03:31):
this is an interesting list of all these different positions
that have been filled by Trump. Early on, you and
I were talking before the show. We actually know these people.
I know several of them very well. You know them
well as also. And I actually want to start with
a really important post, and that is the ambassador to
(03:53):
Israel and former governor of Arkansas. Mike Cuckabee is getting
that position. That that one made me grin from ear
to ear.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Well, Mike Kakabi will do a terrific job in that regard.
Huckabee obviously was governor of Arkansas, but also was a
Baptist pastor for many years. And Mike loves Israel. He
loves the people of Israel, he loves the Jewish people.
He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel, and I
think it will be an appointment that he will enjoy profoundly.
(04:26):
It will be markedly different from how things have been
under the last four years. And I think it shows
just how important changing the page on the Biden Harris
abandonment of Israel will be because Mike Huckabee will stand
unshakably with the state of Israel. And that's going to
be also President Trump's view is to stand unshakably with Israel.
(04:48):
It's why under the Trump administration the first term, we
saw peace flower in the Middle East. It's why we
saw peace a war break out in the Middle East
because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris undermined is Real and
sent billions of dollars to our enemies. It's a great appointment.
And you know, as you're looking at the appointments that
have come out, let's start with the White House. So
(05:09):
the White House are the kind of core team right
around the president. First appointment that was announced as the
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Now, who is
Susie Wiles. Susie Wiles is President Trump's campaign manager. She's
been a political operative forever. She's going to become the
first woman to serve as a White House Chief of staff.
(05:30):
And Susie is someone who has worked for. She ran
Rick Scott's campaign, we ran for governor, she ran Ronda
santisus campaign, and in fact, if you go way back,
she was deputy director during Reagan's nineteen eighty campaign. So
(05:50):
she's a longtime political operative. I'll tell you, I know
Susie a little bit. I don't know her very well,
but her reputation is someone who's very effective, who doesn't
like the limelight, is not out seeking to be in front,
is not looking for a bunch of glowing media profiles.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
But his intern election night, when Donald Trump tried to
get her to talk, and she would, and she would,
she went she went to the back of the of
the of the stage.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Is like, she walked up, said it low, and then left.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I mean that's have you ever seen that in all
of politics? Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
No, everybody's usually clamoring to get in front of a
microphone and talk and have their moment in the sunshine.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And it was very clear there. I think her body language.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That night was We've got work to do, Like, yeah,
we just won, but now the work begins. And that
is her type of focus and also really her mo
for her entire career.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Look Susie's reputation as a serious person who gets things done.
That's a good thing, I will tell you, objectively speaking.
Trump's twenty twenty four campaign was by far his best
run campaign. It wasn't even close. It was much much
better than how the twenty sixteen campaign was run. And
it was much much better than how the twenty twenty
campaign was run. There was greater organization, there was greater discipline,
(07:06):
there was better execution. It just they played at a
different level. So that's a strong opening appointment. Now right
behind it is the deputy chief of staff, the Deputy
chief of staff for policy, and that's Steven Miller. Now
Steven is someone I know very very well. Steven used
to be a White Hill staffer. He was Jeff sessions
(07:26):
top person on immigration policy when Sessions was a Senator,
was a colleague of mine. Sessions was one of the
leading immigration hawks in the Senate. And Steven is as
smart as hell. He knows the substance of immigration law
exceedingly well. And I'm confident there's not going to be
(07:48):
literally a single person in the administration more committed to
securing the border than Steven Miller. He wakes up focused
on that that is his priority. He is someone who
he was in the first Trump White House, he was
helping drive those policies, but from a lower profile position.
Deputy chief of Staff for policy is a big deal.
(08:09):
I'm glad Steven is in that job. I think he'll
do a very good job.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, let's talk about that when you expand out from
there to some of the other positions Donald Trump is
putting together. I think a team of people that he trusts,
that he feels like is ready to go to work.
Another example of that is the deep state. We know
what the deep state has done to conservatives, we know
what the deep state has done to Donald Trump and
(08:34):
the people around him. And someone that we both know well,
a Texan, has been named CIA director and John Ratcliffe,
former congressman from Texas.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
In the Dallas area.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This is a big appointment, obviously an important one, but
also someone that saw from within in those last administration
just how corrupt the deep state could be.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I'm very glad with this pick. John Ratcliffe is
a good friend of mine. He's someone I know very well.
He's someone who candidly I urged the Trump administration to
appoint to this position. I think John is a good choice.
You know, John was in the first Trump administration. He
was he was a member of Congress, and then he
was the Director of National Intelligence, and he really did
(09:21):
an effective job taking on the deep state, and at
a level that is exceptionally rare. It's hard to do.
And John showed a seriousness. He'd been a US attorney
before the Department of Justice. He has demonstrated a courage
to take on embedded bureaucrats who were fighting against the president,
(09:43):
fighting against the agenda of the president, and I think
really fighting against the national interest. And sadly, after years
of Obama and now Biden, you have hardcore leftists who
have burrowed into two senior positions and they don't view
their roles those positions as carrying out the policy priorities
(10:03):
of the elected president. They don't view the role of
those positions as following the instructions that they're given. Rather,
they view their role as fighting against presidents they hate
and policies they hate. And I think John is a
serious guy who is going to be well positioned to
(10:26):
try to turn that around. Look, turning CIA around is
not easy, but I think John is a very, very
good choice. As I said, he was one of the
people that I've already leaned in and I urged the
transition team to make exactly this appointment. So I think
it's the next excellent one.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Let's talk about DoD Traditionally it's been someone that's been
a little bit older at the Department of Defense. It's
so funny how quick these things happen and how things
can change. You and I were at at the Republican
Convention and the night of the acceptance speech.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
That final night. Afterwards, I went on.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
To host Fox Nation with the guy who's now been appointed,
Pete Headseth as a Secretary of Defense, Jesse Waters and
Fox tonight. They were just talking about how much they
love this guy, how much, how well they know him,
how he's an individual that has not only served as
country in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he's also Ivy League educated,
(11:26):
very smart guy, family man, actually lives in Tennessee and
would go up to New York on the weekends to
host Fox and Friends Weekend. And all of a sudden,
I think he shocked the world. Trump did when he said, Hey,
I'm appointing Pete as Secretary of Defense, saying no one
loves America more than Pete does.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And he understands war.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
He understands how powerful it can be, how hard it
can be, how disruptive it can be, and how it
can hurt people's families and American soldiers as well. And
this is a guy that says, I don't want to
start wars, I want to end wars, referring to Trump.
Pete's been war in both of these countries in our
lifetime and seen a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, that's right, and Pete's someone who's a friend to
both of us. I like Pete personally. I consider him
a friend. I think he does a great job. You
know Pete's background. He was an infantry captain in the
Army National Guard and he did tours in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, and he ended up earning two Bronze Stars.
(12:25):
He is currently one of the co hosts for Fox
and Friends Weekend, and he has been since his military service.
He has been in the media world more than anything else,
including writing an important book on taking on the woke
do D culture. Look, this is a nomination that is
(12:45):
going to get some pushback. The Democrats are going to
fight against this one. I'm predicting a real battle because
typically defense secretaries are people who spent thirty forty fifty
years either in the military running major military operations or
running major logistical corporations, running big institutions, and Pete does
(13:10):
not have that background. So I expect Democrats to attack
him for that. That being said, I assume that Trump
has nominated Pete because he is in particular focused on
taking on the generals who were involved in the twenty
twenty one Afghanistan withdraw that was utterly disastrous. He has
(13:31):
also been really courageous and outspoken fighting to eliminate the
woke initiatives that have taken over the military. And so
I think Pete at DoD will do something very similar
to what Ratcliffe is going to do at CIA, which
is he's going to come in with a real mission
(13:52):
of clearing out the hardcore partisans who burrowed into senior
career positions. I think that's a good thing, but I
would also anti dissipate. At his confirmation hearings, I think
we'll see some fireworks. I think we'll see some Democrats
going after Pete, and so'll that'll be a fight I
expect in the.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Senate let's talk about arming this audience. And this is
one of the reasons why I love this show is
because we get to give people some of the talking
points that they may not hear anywhere else. And you
look at Pete in his nomination. You said there's gonna
be fireworks. We've already seen a lot of this happen
on social media over the last I don't know, six
(14:29):
seven hours since this broke, and they're like, he's unqualified.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You look at Pete.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
He graduated from Princeton, and then he has a graduate
degree from Harvard. He's an Army COMA.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Wait, let me stop you, Ben. So you're saying, I
just want to understand, as an old misgrad you're saying
it is a good thing to have a degree from
Princeton and Harvard. I just want to specify exactly the
meets and bounds of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
All Right, I feel like I'm on sitting now for
a job in the administration. What I'm let me clarify
to my remarks. So what I'm saying is it's not
necessarily a bad thing to go to an ivy school,
but obviously common sense and going to by the Way,
and that Ben is phenomenal as well.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Be Ben, I didn't get a chance to compliment you
on the record for the ass kicking that ole miss
unleashed on Georgia.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Thank you. I was waiting for the text, I really was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I thought for sure I was going to get a
text from you about that game because it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Like, holy cow, you got reason to be pretty proud.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I knew you were in that moment thinking, man, that
would have been fun to go to that school. When
you rush the field at the end, you pulled out
a goals post. Have you'll ever done a goal post
of the IVY school before? I'm serious?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
See what, we don't actually score goals, so we don't
have goalposts. That fair fair enough, So we go to
we go to the fifty yard line and we play chess.
It's it's a very different game. We do it in pads,
so but it's it's chest. Nonetheless, you know they.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Say the biggest day at a football stadium high league
school is graduation day. When you guys are actually getting
graduated graduating, You know that, right, Like that's the most
attended day there is, all right, So.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I will tell you when I was in college George
Schultz was the Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan. And
he's a Princeton grad. And the rumor which everyone acknowledges
is that George Schultz had on his rear end a
tattoo of a Princeton tiger. And so Schultz would come
(16:29):
to Princeton football games, and if you went to the stadium,
you would see the band would line up in the
shape of Schultz's.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Ass, Are you serious?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And the mascot would go and lay down on one cheek.
And I remember thinking, as a nineteen year old, all right,
you have really made it in life when your rear
end is on the fifty yard line of your alma mater.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
At an Ivy League alma mater. At that's that's a
valid point, valid valid point. You look at Pete.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He graduated Princeton and then graduate graduate degree from Harvard.
The guy's an Army combat veteran who did tours. And
again this is where I armed this audience with the facts.
Guantanamo Bay, check that mark that box, Iraq and Afghanistan.
And as you mentioned earlier, for his actions on the battlefield,
he was decorated with not one, but two Bronze Stars
(17:24):
as well as a combat infantryman's badge to boot now.
I tonight had an interesting text message from a warrior,
a Sealed Team six member, who said, it's about blanking
time that America has someone that went to war, understands
modern warfare, understands PTSD, and advocates for those that are
(17:48):
mentally wounded in our armed forces, like Pete has done
for years. I don't care what anybody says. I'll re
enlist and I will go back, and I would stand
under this man. I think there's a lot of military
veterans that have that mentality as well well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And I'll say this, Pete does not have the traditional
criterion that many prior DoD secretaries have of twenty thirty
forty years experience running massive, multi thousand, hundred thousand person
organizations and being dooda secretary is incredibly complicated because talk
(18:30):
about like turning a battleship doesn't even begin that that
analogy is not even close to how complicated it is.
That being said, what Pete brings in addition to being
a combat veteran himself is he brings experience calling out
the ideological rot that Barack Obama and Joe Biden put
(18:52):
into our military, and so I think Pete. There's a
reason I drew the analogy between Pete and John Radcliffe,
which is I think both of them, the latter has
shown and I think the former will show a willingness
to take on the corruption that is damaging the institution
they've been sent to. That courage, that clarity, that is rare,
(19:17):
and it's one of the reasons why I think the
Left is going to attack him and attack him really hard.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Let me ask one another question about this.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Does this mean that there's a real chance And we
haven't talked about this in a few months, I think
it's a perfect time to go back and really talk
about this. Is the reinstatement of men and women in
our military that were kicked out because they refuse to
get vaccinated with the Republican singer of the House, and
that's official. We haven't actually gotten to mention that on
(19:45):
the show. So let's just have that little moment of
victory that Republicans retain the House, we have, the Senate,
we have the presidency. Is there a chance that those
men and women that were kicked out of our military
could actually come back in?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Is that an issue? You think will come up in January.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I hope and pray that it does. As you know, Ben,
I am the author of the legislation that ended thexine,
the vaccine mandate in the military. The Biden administration had
thrown out thousands, if not tens of thousands of active
duty military members, and I drafted the legislation that Congress
(20:24):
passed into law that ended that COVID vaccine mandate. It
made sense, we got it done. I tried very, very
hard to make the end of the vaccine mandate retroactive.
In other words, there were some ten thousand servicemen and
women who'd been thrown out. To say, look, if you're
no longer requiring it, you ought to let back in
(20:45):
the people you threw out, particularly when we've got a
shortage of servicemen and women. These are very experienced. In
some cases, you're talking about seal team members, Army rangers,
very experienced, highly trained military men and women who were
thrown out unceremoniously. In many instances, is thrown out with
a less than honorable discharge, so they received less in
(21:06):
terms of pension and benefits. And I'll tell you when
I've fought for that we have not been able to
get that legislation to pass. Every single Democrat, all of
them voted no. They voted no, We're not going to
allow those who were thrown out of the military for
not getting the COVID vaccine back into the military, even
(21:28):
though today the military doesn't require it anymore. And sadly,
we had two Republicans who also voted no, which was
really frustrating.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What was the reason behind that? Did they give it
the time because I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So the two Republicans were Mitt Romney, met will be
gone and then Mike Rounds and I'm frustrated. I don't
know why I disagreed with it. I really was arguing forcefully.
I do have some real optimism going forward. We'll get
this fixed. I think with a Republican House and Senate,
I'm going to fight very hard to get that. In
(22:01):
the next iteration of the NDAA, the NDAA is the
National Defense Authorization Act. I also am going to press
the Department of Defense if they can just to do
it unilatterally, I'm pretty sure they can. Although I say this,
I have not studied the legal questions, so that is
an instinct rather than the result of a studied analysis.
(22:23):
But when Pete is confirmed as Defense Secretary, I'm going
to urge Pete that he at the outset says, if
you've been discharged for failure to get this vaccine, you
are invited to be readmitted and returned to your old
rank and your and your old position.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
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But what happens if you have to actually use that
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that exercise or Second Amendment right, Well, you're at risk
(23:01):
of losing everything. And that is why over eight hundred
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to use my firearm to save my life. I had
to pull the trigger, and I can tell you I
wish I would have known more about what my rights
were in the moments after that incident took place. Well,
(23:22):
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(24:07):
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Speaker 1 (24:13):
Need before it's too late. So what are you waiting on?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Text the word America right now to eight seven to
two two. That's the word America. Text it to eight
seven two two two right now. Senator, there's an interesting
and uh, I want to get your take on this
because it went viral when it happened. Donald Trump has
(24:37):
selected Elon Musk and the vic Ramaswami to lead the
Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was asked the question right after this broke on
social media. Wait, is that even an actual department of
the US government.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Or is this made up?
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I laughed, Wait, there's a lot of people that actually
want to know what is this, does it exists?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Is this something new?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And how big of a deal it is that Donald
Trump picked the Tesla CEO and ex owner Elon Musk,
and an entrepreneur and former Republican President of Canada, Vivic Gramuswati,
to lead this Department of quote Government Efficiency.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Well, it is not currently a government agency. I don't
think it's an accident that Department of Governmental Efficiency spells
out Doge, since Elon is a very vocal supporter of
the doge coin cryptocurrency. I think that was quite deliberate. Listen,
I'm very glad that Elon is going to play a
(25:38):
critical role in the administration, focusing on making government work
more effectively and more efficiently. I'm glad Viveks too. He's
a very smart guy. I know them both very well.
I'll tell you I spent thirty minutes on the phone
with Elon this week talking about precisely this mission, how
you make government operate more effectively, and Elon is dealing
(26:00):
right now with There is a major difference between government
agencies and the private sector. There are lots of differences,
and you know, one of the things I pointed out,
there's a fantastic economist man named Ludig von Misis, who
was one of the founding fathers of the Austrian School
of economics. Brilliant man wrote a lot of different things,
(26:24):
but he wrote a book called on Bureaucracy and von
Mesis and on Bureaucracy, what he argued is that inevitably
you have people who come from the private sector who
come into government and they say, we're going to make
government more efficient, We're going to make it operate like
a business. And von Mesis argued that is always, always,
always doomed to failure. And he explained why. He said, Listen,
(26:49):
government lacks the essential element of any private enterprise, and
that is the profit motive. And the analogy he uses.
He says, Okay, look, Ben, let's say you have a
private company. You have, say a barbecue restaurant in Memphis.
If you're running your barbecue restaurant in Memphis, every single
(27:11):
employee at the restaurant is motivated by the profit incentive.
If the janitor, the guy who is sweeping up the
spilled barbecue sauce in the restaurant, if he comes to
you and says, mister ferguson, I've got an idea that
can reduce our costs by ten percent and that can
(27:33):
increase revenues by five percent. So my guess is a
Ben you'd listen to him. You'd be like, Okay, I
want to hear that idea. Yeah, my guess is number two.
If his idea was right, that guy ain't going to
be sweeping floors any longer. He is immediately going to
get a promotion because for him and everyone else at
(27:55):
the restaurant, the incentive is the profit motive that that
unified the incentives of everyone in the private sector. In contrast,
and this is what von Misis argues in on bureaucracy,
in government, there is no profit motive, and in fact,
the incentives are precisely the obverse. Let's say you're running
a particular office and a government agency, and you've got
(28:21):
a million people who are receiving ten billion dollars in benefits.
Your incentives are not to reduce the number of people
receiving those benefits. Your incentives are not to reduce the
amount of benefits they're receiving. Instead, what are your incentives
in government? Your incentives and government are to increase the
(28:44):
one million people to a million, five or two million.
Your incentives are to increase the ten million dollars in
benefits to fifteen billion or twenty million. Your incentives are
to take your say, thousand people that were work for
you and increase it to two thousand or three thousand.
All of your incentives not only are they not aligned
(29:06):
on the profit motive, they are exactly the opposite of
the profit motive. So I actually I recommended Elon he
read the book. He did not know the book, and
we spent about thirty minutes talking about how do you
change this beast that is government. You're never going to
make it quickened in. But I also talked about the
fact that a huge problem with government is that you
(29:27):
cannot fire government employees. Generally speaking, there are civil service
protections in place that if you try to fire someone,
you have litigation. It's very difficult. And I pointed out
to Elon, look, when you went into Twitter, you fired
what sixty percent of the employees. That is a flexibility
(29:47):
that you have and what it means. And I tried
to lay this out to him as well. So I said, listen,
at Teslas SpaceX, my guess is you have very very
few employees who wake up every day with their mission
and life being to stop you, to frustrate the objectives
of the company, and to try to make them fail.
(30:08):
And if you did have any employees that were doing that,
you'd fire them because they work for you, and that'd
be it. In government, particularly with the deep state, there
are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of deep
state employees who wake up every day with their objective,
their mission being to stop everything Donald Trump is trying
(30:30):
to accomplish. And so I'm really glad that Elon is
doing this, and I think Vivek is very smart. I
think Vivek will add to that. We will get some
good results out of it, but it is going to
be an incredibly important and incredibly challenging endeavor. And I'll
say Elon is as smart a person as I have
(30:51):
ever encountered. And look, I've been blessed. I've actually run
in some circles where I've known some freakishly smart people,
including people like Chief Justice William Renquist and Anton Scalia,
and and Elon is just another level in terms of brilliant.
So I'm excited to see what he can do in
(31:12):
this role. But it is going to be I think
his instinct is going to be to break some China
and and we'll see how that plays out in the
government world.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, and the government world is a key point there.
Let's talk about one of the most important appointments, and
that is Tom Homan. And there are so many conservatives
that voted for Donald Trump, so many Americans that voted
for Donald Trump because they want to secure border. He's
the former Immigration and Custom Enforcement Director. He has now
been named Trump's Borders are tasked with cracking down on
(31:45):
immigration and overseeing the southern border the northern border as well.
And he said this on Fox yesterday.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Look, I've seen I've seen some of these democratic governors,
and they're going to stand in the way. They're going
they're going to make a heart for us. Well, you
know a suggestion, if you're not going to help us,
get the hell on the way when we're going to
do it. So if we can't get assistance from New
York City, and I may we may have to double
the number of.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Raises we send in New York City because we're going
to do the job. We're going to do the job
without here or with you. It's very clear.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Democrats already gearing up to fight against the government and deportations.
He has said their number one goal is what you
and I mentioned on the show. I think it was
even before election day. They're going to go after the
criminals first. They're going to go after the people that
have already had due process and have been told that
they are to be deported from this country. And again,
(32:41):
this is where I love doing the show. Let's remind
listeners and arm you guys with the facts. When when
you hear the left say it's inhumane to deport people,
do not forget Barack Obama deported more than three million
illegal immigrants while he was president. So this idea that
we're doing a million plus at or felons that have
(33:02):
been convicted of crimes that have already had due process,
don't fall for this because remind all of the people
that say otherwise, Barack Obama deported more than three million
illegal immigrants when he was president.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So Tom Homan is a serious guy. He cares passionately
about defending this nation securing our borders. I am very
very happy that Trump is named him borders are He
also named Christy Nome, the governor South Dakota to be
the Secretary of the Department Homeland Security. Homan and Nome
will work hand in hand. I think that's going to
be very effective. Tom Homan understands the border, he understands
(33:40):
what is what it takes to secure the border, and
I think he is going to be the point person
driving the agenda. As I've predicted before. But I want
people to hear this. It's November. We are still facing
an invasion at our southern border. We are going to
secure the border, and it is not going to take
a year at not even going to take six months.
(34:01):
It will be done by January and February of next year.
And in February, Ben, I want you to play this
clip back and either we're going to say the results
are in Cruz was right, or hold me to account
and say, Okay, it didn't happen. What went wrong. But
either way, that's my prediction. And I think Tom Homan
(34:23):
is going to be driving the effort to get that done,
and I also think Stephen Miller, is Deputy Chief of Staff,
will be driving it alongside him. I'm very optimistic about
what we're going to get done on that front.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And finally, when we're talking, and there's more names are
going to come out, and we will continue to let
you know what we think about them and how exciting
this moment is. But there's one of your colleagues in
the Senate, someone you know very well. There was a
lot of people that were on the short list. I
say a lot, a lot that you and I knew
that were floated for the shortlist for Secretary of State.
(34:57):
I was paying very close attention to this one, as
I know you were. And and the nominee is going
to be your colleague, the Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, I think this is terrific. I think Marco is
going to do a good job.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He is focused on foreign policy quite a bit his
entire time in the Senate. Marco is smart, He cares
about foreign policy. He cares about standing up to communists,
especially in Cuba. He cares about standing up to communist
in China. Marco is more interventionist on foreign policy than
I am. But that being said, he cares deeply about it,
(35:34):
and and and so I think he is more interventionist
on foreign policy than Trump is. And at the end
of the day, Trump is going to make the decisions.
But I think Marco is someone who is diplomatic, He
is articulate, he will be he will be a very
effective diplomat for America. I think it's a great choice.
I think it's a natural fit. I will tell you so.
(35:54):
So I sent Marco a text tonight which I'll go
ahead and and and and read to you what I
send him. I sent Mark of the following text. Congrats, sir,
A big damn deal. You join an historic roster including
John Jay Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe,
(36:18):
John Quincy, Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, William Jennings,
Bryan Charles Evans, Hughes, Henry Stimpson, George Marshall, Dean Atchison,
John Foster, Dulles, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and
James Baker. Truly rarefied air. Every Cuban is deeply proud.
(36:46):
And then I finished it with and I'm confident at
least that you'll kick the ass of Hillary and John Kerry.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yeah, well, Barr, but I couldn't agree with you more
on that one. Right, It's I have no idea. I
have no doubt I should say that Marco was going
to laugh when he reads that last part of the text.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So he did laugh, and he responded, I will almost
never out my colleagues text, but I think Marco would
forgive me for this. His response was, he said, there
is hope for the Cuban Caucus, and then he sends
me a story from Latin Times. Social media users launch
campaign to get pit Bull appointed to Marco Rubio's Senate seat.
(37:28):
Ron de Santus has only one choice, and I could
only respond to that spectacular.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You gotta love it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
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(37:56):
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(38:18):
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Speaker 1 (39:01):
Two five, Senator.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
One other story is Donald Trump is getting his cabinet
together and making appointments.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That has not gotten a lot of attention is the.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Take out the trash, everybody throwing everybody under the bus
in the Biden camp, the Harris camp. We find out
she blew through a billion dollars, she's upside down in debt.
They're begging for money with text messages to liberals saying
we need your help with accounting of the votes and
give money.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I wish I was joking, but I'm not, and I
don't know. Someone said eighteen twenty million upside down. And
then we found out where a lot of the donations
actually went. The donations were going to celebrities. Oprah's had
to come out after there was a million dollar check
given to her Quote production company for production of a
(39:52):
one day sit down interview that we many people saw
on TV with Oprah. It doesn't call it's a million
dollars to produce that, but that was the price tag.
And then we found out that there were a lot
of celebrities that were being paid to act like they
loved Kamala Harris. And there are some Democratic donors that
(40:12):
are livid right now over the price tag on this.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
You know, there's a terrific article in the Spectator World
entitled Kamala Harris ran the Fry Festival of Campaigns, and
it points out that Trump's campaign spent roughly four hundred
and eighty eight million dollars and Kamala spent more than
a billion, so she outspent Trump. More than two to one,
and Kamala's campaign ended up twenty million dollars in debt. Well,
(40:42):
it turns out where did that money go. Well, one
of the things that went to is they paid many
of the quote unquote celebrities who supported her. We were
getting paid and getting paid significant sums. So for example,
remember the Call Me Daddy podcast? Yeah, well apparently the
(41:02):
campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom
set for her appearance on the podcast, and the podcast
netted only eight hundred thousand downloads, less than a million downloads. Look, Ben,
you and I we have roughly a million unique listeners.
If she wanted eight hundred thousand downloads, I'll tell you,
(41:22):
Kamala right now, even though you've lost Ben and I
will invite you on Verdict right now. We will welcome you.
We will not charge you to build a set, so
you can save all your money. And you paid Oprah
a million dollars for production costs, we will charge you
for production costs on Verdict. What do you think fifty bucks?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Sure? I think I took a fair price. Fifty bucks.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Fifty bucks will get you a very nice coffee cup
with some Jamaican blue Mountain coffee. That's what we'll spend
the fifty bucks on and you can reach the same
number of people. All right. By the way, she also
turned down Joe so call me Daddy. Got eight hundred
thousand downloads. How many do you think Joe Rogan's interview
of Donald Trump got a lot more than that? Forty
(42:08):
seven million?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Wow, that's a lot. Okay, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
So there were also seven Swing state concerts with expensive performers,
and it turns out every one of them they got
a price. It is the world's oldest profession and they
are charging for it. So who are the performers that
got paid millions of dollars? Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, John
(42:34):
bon Jovi, Ricky Martin.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Hold on, you're.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Telling me now of these people were like doing it
for free because they were all in for Comma.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
They wanted to get paid.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
That show me the money. They ended up spending more
than twenty million dollars on event production alone. Oprah, as
you noted, charged a million dollars, and they went so
far into debt that the campaign and allegedly had to
scrap Alanis Morisset. They were planning to do a lot
(43:04):
of Morisset and they said, no, okay, we can't afford
her anymore. Nevermind. I mean it is truly stunning, and
you've got to wonder, like I gotta say, I don't
get paying millions of dollars for celebrities to fake endorse
someone she spent paid money to. What Beyonce.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Well, let's go over the big ones.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
This is coming from Fox and I'm gonna play this
this audio.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Take a listen.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
This is again from Fox, as they were going through
how much cash was spent.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I can't get over these numbers.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
Ten million dollars for Beyonce to step up and back
Kamala Harris publicly, five million for Megan the Stallion, three
million for Lizzo, one point eight million for eminem was that.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Those numbers are unbelievable if you just look at them.
And I was like, hold on a second, and I
went back and watched that clip a couple of different times,
because you look at them.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Ten million for Beyonce.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
If you're a donor and you wrote a big check Meghan,
this Stallion, five million, Lizzo three million and one point
eight million, I called on, I just raised all this
money for you and this is how you spent it.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Look, I gotta say I've run a bunch of campaigns.
I ran my first campaign for Senate in twenty twelve.
I ran my next campaign for president in twenty sixteen.
We won twelve states all over the country. I ran
my next campaign for Senate again in twenty eighteen, and
I just finished running my most recent campaign for Senate
reelect a third term in twenty twenty four. I can
(44:40):
tell you, in the whole time, I've never paid any
one a million dollars for anything. I don't think we
paid any entertainers. I don't know of any entertainers we paid.
Maybe at some point we paid five or ten grand
for someone performing at some party. I'm not aware of it.
But I can tell you this. Look our stars now,
to be clear, the stars we have at our events
(45:01):
are our international, supermodeled, global talents like Ben Ferguson. And
I gotta tell you.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
What that ten million dollar payday once in my career
like oh yeah, Beyondest say yeah, yeah, I'm all in
for the cause, but I just need ten million to.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Make it happen.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Okay, Ben, To be clear, we don't pay you ten dollars,
No that's Look, I'm a fiscal conservative. Dammit. If you
want to be there and you believe in saving the country,
stand up and save the country. And if not, get
the hell out. But like, what is it with these
lefties who ironically they want to put socialists in office
who make it impossible for people to earn a living,
(45:42):
and yet they're such capitalists that they're like, show me
the money to do it. I mean, there is an
intense hypocrisy on this.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
I believe this.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And I'm not just saying this because this moment in
this headline, but I'm being dead serious. This could be
a huge problem for democratic canants moving forward, because when
you see this type of abuse of campaign finance money
from donors, those same donors, somebody's going to be asking
them for money and four years or less than four
years from now.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
And I'm, by the way, the question the next time
Beto O'Rourke, Collin all Red jumps on a stage with
with Willie Nelson, Everyone's going to ask how much you
pay him?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
How much of my money did did I gave you?
Did you just give him for that thirteen minutes of
him singing? It's an question and.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
It undermines the entire credibility that I'm here because I
love America so much and you've got to vote for
this candidate. Look, i'll give you an example in the
presidential race. So one of the cooler people that I
got to meet and spend time with was Phil Robertson,
you know from Duck Dynasty.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Oh yeah, and here was I mean massive back in
the day, like unbelievable star.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Huge star. And so so he invited me to Monroe,
Louisiana to come stay at his place. And I went
out duck hunting with Phil, which by the way, ranks
among the coolest things I've ever gotten to do. And
we went to the duck blind. We're there at four
in the morning. Look, i'd like to hunt in Texas.
I gotta be careful about what I say because there's
so many really serious hunters that I can't overstate. I
(47:15):
go hunting a couple times a year. I enjoy it,
but I'm not someone who lives and breathes it. Phil
in that duck blind, I have never seen a person
who is a better shot with a shotgun. He would
drop birds at a distance that I wouldn't pick up
my gun. They were too far away. I'm like, yeah,
if the duck flies over here, I'll shoot it, but
I can't shoot it way over there. And he would
(47:36):
just boom and then the dogs would swim out and
grab the duck and bring it back. And Phil, I'll
tell you, So I went there and spent the day
when hunting with him. He recorded an ad for our
campaign that we put out. It remains one of my
favorite ads we've ever done. I'm all like wearing camo
grease pain and I'm in the duck blind with Phil.
(47:56):
It was really cool. But Phil, it was during the
Iowa Caucuses and we asked, Phil, will you come to
Iowa and campaign with me? And Phil, for something like
forty years, had not missed a single day of duck season.
He'd been out there every single day for four decades,
(48:19):
and we'd invited him to come. And that morning he
went to the blind at four in the morning and
he's sitting there in the blind, and I guess you know,
it weighed on his heart. I can't do this today.
I need to go fight to save America. And Phil
left the blind and he went and hopped on a
plane and he flew to Iowa and he did a
big rally with me in Iowa, and I told him then,
(48:40):
I'm like, Phil, I am beyond humboldt that you missed
the first day of duck season in forty years to
be here in campaign alongside me. Now, I didn't writehim
a damn check to do that.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I just said, if you gave him Beyonce money, you
know you're like, oh, and by the way, here's ten
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
No.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
No, I just said, come help save America. And it
meant a lot like for him to miss it. And
that day we were literally touch and go. We didn't
know who's gonna come, but it meant a big deal
when he came. If you're paying Beyonce ten million dollars,
I mean, my good I mean goodness. Who would she
not endorse for ten million dollars? No, it's a very
(49:23):
fair question.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And it's like, would any of these celebrities have showed
up for her if she wasn't paying them? Not tens
of thousands, not one hundred of thousands, but literally millions
of dollars. I think it's gonna be a very interesting
talking point in politics moving forward. It's like, is anyone
that's actually endorsing these democrats or celebrities not on the take.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Is it all just a massive payday?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
They get a chance out every four years, and it's
gonna be interesting to see how that fold, how that
is dealt with a couple of years from now, when
Democrats are on stage again with a bunch of famous
people and they're gonna have to now answer questions about it.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's gonna be really fun.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Don't forget. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I on those in between days grab my podcast. I'll
keep you update on the latest breaking news on the
cabinet positions as well. Download the Ben Ferguson podcast. There
and Senator Cruz and I will see you back here
on Friday morning.
Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
It is verdict with center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with
you and Senator it is a victory dance. It's got
some meat and potatoes with it. Donald Trump putting together
his cabinet and it is well making the media light
their hair on fire. And a lot of conservatives have
voted for Donald Trump are liking the payoff. There's consequences
(00:23):
when you win and when you lose, especially if you're
a Democrat.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Today, well, change is on the way and the change
is coming. As Trump would say, Bigley, we are seeing
major nominations for cabinet members, for senior officials in the
White House. We're going to go through all of those,
give you a sense of where the new administration is
coming out, give you a sense of what to expect
in the next two months, and then in January when
(00:49):
the new Congress is sworn in, and then when the
new president is sworn in. We're also going to tell
you particularly I just think funny story about how utterly
corrupt today's Democrat Party is, about how they paid millions
and millions of dollars for their celebrity quote endorsers. That
Kamala was basically in the business of purchasing fake endorsements.
(01:11):
And I got to say, the fake endorsements they didn't work,
but they sure did spend a lot of money giving
Hollywood celebrities cash to pretend they had political views and
to hope that that would move voters' votes.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, there was a lot of cash and donors aren't
happy about it. We're going to break that down as well.
I want to tell you about Patriot Mobile. If you
have a cell phone, and ninety nine percent of you
listening right now do how would you like to know
that every time you make a call, every time you
send a text, you're actually making a difference in standing
up for your conservative Christian values.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
Well, you may not realize.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
With the Big Mobile provider that you're paying right now,
they're actually doing the opposite of that.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
With your money.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Big Mobile has been giving massive donations to democratic causes,
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paying for abortions right now. And that is exactly why.
Over a decade ago Patriot Mobile was started. There was
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so you get the same covers you used to without
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Speaker 1 (03:09):
Making a difference.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Make the switch, and I'm gonna give you one month
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That's Patriot Mobile dot com slash verdict, Patriot Mumbo dot
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dot Com slash verdict and get one month free. So Center,
(03:31):
this is an interesting list of all these different positions
that have been filled by Trump. Early on, you and
I were talking before the show. We actually know these people.
I know several of them very well. You know them
well as also. And I actually want to start with
a really important post, and that is the ambassador to
(03:53):
Israel and former governor of Arkansas. Mike Cuckabee is getting
that position. That that one made me grin from ear
to ear.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
Well, Mike Kakabi will do a terrific job in that regard.
Huckabee obviously was governor of Arkansas, but also was a
Baptist pastor for many years. And Mike loves Israel. He
loves the people of Israel, he loves the Jewish people.
He has been an outspoken advocate for Israel, and I
think it will be an appointment that he will enjoy profoundly.
(04:26):
It will be markedly different from how things have been
under the last four years. And I think it shows
just how important changing the page on the Biden Harris
abandonment of Israel will be because Mike Huckabee will stand
unshakably with the state of Israel. And that's going to
be also President Trump's view is to stand unshakably with Israel.
(04:48):
It's why under the Trump administration the first term, we
saw peace flower in the Middle East. It's why we
saw peace a war break out in the Middle East
because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris undermined is Real and
sent billions of dollars to our enemies. It's a great appointment.
And you know, as you're looking at the appointments that
have come out, let's start with the White House. So
(05:09):
the White House are the kind of core team right
around the president. First appointment that was announced as the
White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Now, who is
Susie Wiles. Susie Wiles is President Trump's campaign manager. She's
been a political operative forever. She's going to become the
first woman to serve as a White House Chief of staff.
(05:30):
And Susie is someone who has worked for. She ran
Rick Scott's campaign, we ran for governor, she ran Ronda
santisus campaign, and in fact, if you go way back,
she was deputy director during Reagan's nineteen eighty campaign. So
(05:50):
she's a longtime political operative. I'll tell you, I know
Susie a little bit. I don't know her very well,
but her reputation is someone who's very effective, who doesn't
like the limelight, is not out seeking to be in front,
is not looking for a bunch of glowing media profiles.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
But his intern election night, when Donald Trump tried to
get her to talk, and she would, and she would,
she went she went to the back of the of
the of the stage.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Is like, she walked up, said it low, and then left.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
I mean that's have you ever seen that in all
of politics? Have you ever seen that?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
No, everybody's usually clamoring to get in front of a
microphone and talk and have their moment in the sunshine.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And it was very clear there. I think her body language.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That night was We've got work to do, Like, yeah,
we just won, but now the work begins. And that
is her type of focus and also really her mo
for her entire career.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Look Susie's reputation as a serious person who gets things done.
That's a good thing, I will tell you, objectively speaking.
Trump's twenty twenty four campaign was by far his best
run campaign. It wasn't even close. It was much much
better than how the twenty sixteen campaign was run. And
it was much much better than how the twenty twenty
campaign was run. There was greater organization, there was greater discipline,
(07:06):
there was better execution. It just they played at a
different level. So that's a strong opening appointment. Now right
behind it is the deputy chief of staff, the Deputy
chief of staff for policy, and that's Steven Miller. Now
Steven is someone I know very very well. Steven used
to be a White Hill staffer. He was Jeff sessions
(07:26):
top person on immigration policy when Sessions was a Senator,
was a colleague of mine. Sessions was one of the
leading immigration hawks in the Senate. And Steven is as
smart as hell. He knows the substance of immigration law
exceedingly well. And I'm confident there's not going to be
(07:48):
literally a single person in the administration more committed to
securing the border than Steven Miller. He wakes up focused
on that that is his priority. He is someone who
he was in the first Trump White House, he was
helping drive those policies, but from a lower profile position.
Deputy chief of Staff for policy is a big deal.
(08:09):
I'm glad Steven is in that job. I think he'll
do a very good job.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Well, let's talk about that when you expand out from
there to some of the other positions Donald Trump is
putting together. I think a team of people that he trusts,
that he feels like is ready to go to work.
Another example of that is the deep state. We know
what the deep state has done to conservatives, we know
what the deep state has done to Donald Trump and
(08:34):
the people around him. And someone that we both know well,
a Texan, has been named CIA director and John Ratcliffe,
former congressman from Texas.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
In the Dallas area.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
This is a big appointment, obviously an important one, but
also someone that saw from within in those last administration
just how corrupt the deep state could be.
Speaker 3 (08:59):
Yeah, I'm very glad with this pick. John Ratcliffe is
a good friend of mine. He's someone I know very well.
He's someone who candidly I urged the Trump administration to
appoint to this position. I think John is a good choice.
You know, John was in the first Trump administration. He
was he was a member of Congress, and then he
was the Director of National Intelligence, and he really did
(09:21):
an effective job taking on the deep state, and at
a level that is exceptionally rare. It's hard to do.
And John showed a seriousness. He'd been a US attorney
before the Department of Justice. He has demonstrated a courage
to take on embedded bureaucrats who were fighting against the president,
(09:43):
fighting against the agenda of the president, and I think
really fighting against the national interest. And sadly, after years
of Obama and now Biden, you have hardcore leftists who
have burrowed into two senior positions and they don't view
their roles those positions as carrying out the policy priorities
(10:03):
of the elected president. They don't view the role of
those positions as following the instructions that they're given. Rather,
they view their role as fighting against presidents they hate
and policies they hate. And I think John is a
serious guy who is going to be well positioned to
(10:26):
try to turn that around. Look, turning CIA around is
not easy, but I think John is a very, very
good choice. As I said, he was one of the
people that I've already leaned in and I urged the
transition team to make exactly this appointment. So I think
it's the next excellent one.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Let's talk about DoD Traditionally it's been someone that's been
a little bit older at the Department of Defense. It's
so funny how quick these things happen and how things
can change. You and I were at at the Republican
Convention and the night of the acceptance speech.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
That final night. Afterwards, I went on.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
To host Fox Nation with the guy who's now been appointed,
Pete Headseth as a Secretary of Defense, Jesse Waters and
Fox tonight. They were just talking about how much they
love this guy, how much, how well they know him,
how he's an individual that has not only served as
country in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he's also Ivy League educated,
(11:26):
very smart guy, family man, actually lives in Tennessee and
would go up to New York on the weekends to
host Fox and Friends Weekend. And all of a sudden,
I think he shocked the world. Trump did when he said, Hey,
I'm appointing Pete as Secretary of Defense, saying no one
loves America more than Pete does.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And he understands war.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
He understands how powerful it can be, how hard it
can be, how disruptive it can be, and how it
can hurt people's families and American soldiers as well. And
this is a guy that says, I don't want to
start wars, I want to end wars, referring to Trump.
Pete's been war in both of these countries in our
lifetime and seen a lot.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Well, that's right, and Pete's someone who's a friend to
both of us. I like Pete personally. I consider him
a friend. I think he does a great job. You
know Pete's background. He was an infantry captain in the
Army National Guard and he did tours in both Iraq
and Afghanistan, and he ended up earning two Bronze Stars.
(12:25):
He is currently one of the co hosts for Fox
and Friends Weekend, and he has been since his military service.
He has been in the media world more than anything else,
including writing an important book on taking on the woke
do D culture. Look, this is a nomination that is
(12:45):
going to get some pushback. The Democrats are going to
fight against this one. I'm predicting a real battle because
typically defense secretaries are people who spent thirty forty fifty
years either in the military running major military operations or
running major logistical corporations, running big institutions, and Pete does
(13:10):
not have that background. So I expect Democrats to attack
him for that. That being said, I assume that Trump
has nominated Pete because he is in particular focused on
taking on the generals who were involved in the twenty
twenty one Afghanistan withdraw that was utterly disastrous. He has
(13:31):
also been really courageous and outspoken fighting to eliminate the
woke initiatives that have taken over the military. And so
I think Pete at DoD will do something very similar
to what Ratcliffe is going to do at CIA, which
is he's going to come in with a real mission
(13:52):
of clearing out the hardcore partisans who burrowed into senior
career positions. I think that's a good thing, but I
would also anti dissipate. At his confirmation hearings, I think
we'll see some fireworks. I think we'll see some Democrats
going after Pete, and so'll that'll be a fight I
expect in the.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Senate let's talk about arming this audience. And this is
one of the reasons why I love this show is
because we get to give people some of the talking
points that they may not hear anywhere else. And you
look at Pete in his nomination. You said there's gonna
be fireworks. We've already seen a lot of this happen
on social media over the last I don't know, six
(14:29):
seven hours since this broke, and they're like, he's unqualified.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
You look at Pete.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
He graduated from Princeton, and then he has a graduate
degree from Harvard. He's an Army COMA.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
Wait, let me stop you, Ben. So you're saying, I
just want to understand, as an old misgrad you're saying
it is a good thing to have a degree from
Princeton and Harvard. I just want to specify exactly the
meets and bounds of what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
All Right, I feel like I'm on sitting now for
a job in the administration. What I'm let me clarify
to my remarks. So what I'm saying is it's not
necessarily a bad thing to go to an ivy school,
but obviously common sense and going to by the Way,
and that Ben is phenomenal as well.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Be Ben, I didn't get a chance to compliment you
on the record for the ass kicking that ole miss
unleashed on Georgia.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
Thank you. I was waiting for the text, I really was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
I thought for sure I was going to get a
text from you about that game because it was unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
Like, holy cow, you got reason to be pretty proud.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
I knew you were in that moment thinking, man, that
would have been fun to go to that school. When
you rush the field at the end, you pulled out
a goals post. Have you'll ever done a goal post
of the IVY school before? I'm serious?
Speaker 3 (15:44):
See what, we don't actually score goals, so we don't
have goalposts. That fair fair enough, So we go to
we go to the fifty yard line and we play chess.
It's it's a very different game. We do it in pads,
so but it's it's chest. Nonetheless, you know they.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Say the biggest day at a football stadium high league
school is graduation day. When you guys are actually getting
graduated graduating, You know that, right, Like that's the most
attended day there is, all right, So.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
I will tell you when I was in college George
Schultz was the Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan. And
he's a Princeton grad. And the rumor which everyone acknowledges
is that George Schultz had on his rear end a
tattoo of a Princeton tiger. And so Schultz would come
(16:29):
to Princeton football games, and if you went to the stadium,
you would see the band would line up in the
shape of Schultz's.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Ass, Are you serious?
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And the mascot would go and lay down on one cheek.
And I remember thinking, as a nineteen year old, all right,
you have really made it in life when your rear
end is on the fifty yard line of your alma mater.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
At an Ivy League alma mater. At that's that's a
valid point, valid valid point. You look at Pete.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
He graduated Princeton and then graduate graduate degree from Harvard.
The guy's an Army combat veteran who did tours. And
again this is where I armed this audience with the facts.
Guantanamo Bay, check that mark that box, Iraq and Afghanistan.
And as you mentioned earlier, for his actions on the battlefield,
he was decorated with not one, but two Bronze Stars
(17:24):
as well as a combat infantryman's badge to boot now.
I tonight had an interesting text message from a warrior,
a Sealed Team six member, who said, it's about blanking
time that America has someone that went to war, understands
modern warfare, understands PTSD, and advocates for those that are
(17:48):
mentally wounded in our armed forces, like Pete has done
for years. I don't care what anybody says. I'll re
enlist and I will go back, and I would stand
under this man. I think there's a lot of military
veterans that have that mentality as well well.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
And I'll say this, Pete does not have the traditional
criterion that many prior DoD secretaries have of twenty thirty
forty years experience running massive, multi thousand, hundred thousand person
organizations and being dooda secretary is incredibly complicated because talk
(18:30):
about like turning a battleship doesn't even begin that that
analogy is not even close to how complicated it is.
That being said, what Pete brings in addition to being
a combat veteran himself is he brings experience calling out
the ideological rot that Barack Obama and Joe Biden put
(18:52):
into our military, and so I think Pete. There's a
reason I drew the analogy between Pete and John Radcliffe,
which is I think both of them, the latter has
shown and I think the former will show a willingness
to take on the corruption that is damaging the institution
they've been sent to. That courage, that clarity, that is rare,
(19:17):
and it's one of the reasons why I think the
Left is going to attack him and attack him really hard.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
Let me ask one another question about this.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
Does this mean that there's a real chance And we
haven't talked about this in a few months, I think
it's a perfect time to go back and really talk
about this. Is the reinstatement of men and women in
our military that were kicked out because they refuse to
get vaccinated with the Republican singer of the House, and
that's official. We haven't actually gotten to mention that on
(19:45):
the show. So let's just have that little moment of
victory that Republicans retain the House, we have, the Senate,
we have the presidency. Is there a chance that those
men and women that were kicked out of our military
could actually come back in?
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Is that an issue? You think will come up in January.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
I hope and pray that it does. As you know, Ben,
I am the author of the legislation that ended thexine,
the vaccine mandate in the military. The Biden administration had
thrown out thousands, if not tens of thousands of active
duty military members, and I drafted the legislation that Congress
(20:24):
passed into law that ended that COVID vaccine mandate. It
made sense, we got it done. I tried very, very
hard to make the end of the vaccine mandate retroactive.
In other words, there were some ten thousand servicemen and
women who'd been thrown out. To say, look, if you're
no longer requiring it, you ought to let back in
(20:45):
the people you threw out, particularly when we've got a
shortage of servicemen and women. These are very experienced. In
some cases, you're talking about seal team members, Army rangers,
very experienced, highly trained military men and women who were
thrown out unceremoniously. In many instances, is thrown out with
a less than honorable discharge, so they received less in
(21:06):
terms of pension and benefits. And I'll tell you when
I've fought for that we have not been able to
get that legislation to pass. Every single Democrat, all of
them voted no. They voted no, We're not going to
allow those who were thrown out of the military for
not getting the COVID vaccine back into the military, even
(21:28):
though today the military doesn't require it anymore. And sadly,
we had two Republicans who also voted no, which was
really frustrating.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
What was the reason behind that? Did they give it
the time because I don't remember.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
So the two Republicans were Mitt Romney, met will be
gone and then Mike Rounds and I'm frustrated. I don't
know why I disagreed with it. I really was arguing forcefully.
I do have some real optimism going forward. We'll get
this fixed. I think with a Republican House and Senate,
I'm going to fight very hard to get that. In
(22:01):
the next iteration of the NDAA, the NDAA is the
National Defense Authorization Act. I also am going to press
the Department of Defense if they can just to do
it unilatterally, I'm pretty sure they can. Although I say this,
I have not studied the legal questions, so that is
an instinct rather than the result of a studied analysis.
(22:23):
But when Pete is confirmed as Defense Secretary, I'm going
to urge Pete that he at the outset says, if
you've been discharged for failure to get this vaccine, you
are invited to be readmitted and returned to your old
rank and your and your old position.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
I want to talk to you real quick about keeping
your family safe. And if you carry a firearm, you
know that that's your motive to protect yourself and your family.
But what happens if you have to actually use that
firearm to protect yourself. What happens if you're up against
an activist DA that cannot stand people just like you
that exercise or Second Amendment right, Well, you're at risk
(23:01):
of losing everything. And that is why over eight hundred
thousand Americans are members of the USCCA. Now I've had
to use my firearm to save my life. I had
to pull the trigger, and I can tell you I
wish I would have known more about what my rights
were in the moments after that incident took place. Well,
(23:22):
you don't have to worry if you remember the USCCA,
because not only will you get access to their Protector Academy,
which teaches you vital skills like precision shooting and how
to fortify your home against criminals. But you also get
access to the twenty four to seven Critical Response Team
and the included benefit of self defense Liability insurance to
(23:46):
make sure that you and your family are prepared for
anything and for a limited time. If you text the
word America right now, text the word America to eight
seven to to you're going to get the uscca's free
Life Saving Concealed Carrey and Family Defense Guide, plus a
(24:07):
chance to win seventeen hundred dollars to buy any self
defense gear you.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Need before it's too late. So what are you waiting on?
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Text the word America right now to eight seven to
two two. That's the word America. Text it to eight
seven two two two right now. Senator, there's an interesting
and uh, I want to get your take on this
because it went viral when it happened. Donald Trump has
(24:37):
selected Elon Musk and the vic Ramaswami to lead the
Department of Government Efficiency.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Now.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
I was asked the question right after this broke on
social media. Wait, is that even an actual department of
the US government.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Or is this made up?
Speaker 2 (24:55):
I laughed, Wait, there's a lot of people that actually
want to know what is this, does it exists?
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Is this something new?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
And how big of a deal it is that Donald
Trump picked the Tesla CEO and ex owner Elon Musk,
and an entrepreneur and former Republican President of Canada, Vivic Gramuswati,
to lead this Department of quote Government Efficiency.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Well, it is not currently a government agency. I don't
think it's an accident that Department of Governmental Efficiency spells
out Doge, since Elon is a very vocal supporter of
the doge coin cryptocurrency. I think that was quite deliberate. Listen,
I'm very glad that Elon is going to play a
(25:38):
critical role in the administration, focusing on making government work
more effectively and more efficiently. I'm glad Viveks too. He's
a very smart guy. I know them both very well.
I'll tell you I spent thirty minutes on the phone
with Elon this week talking about precisely this mission, how
you make government operate more effectively, and Elon is dealing
(26:00):
right now with There is a major difference between government
agencies and the private sector. There are lots of differences,
and you know, one of the things I pointed out,
there's a fantastic economist man named Ludig von Misis, who
was one of the founding fathers of the Austrian School
of economics. Brilliant man wrote a lot of different things,
(26:24):
but he wrote a book called on Bureaucracy and von
Mesis and on Bureaucracy, what he argued is that inevitably
you have people who come from the private sector who
come into government and they say, we're going to make
government more efficient, We're going to make it operate like
a business. And von Mesis argued that is always, always,
always doomed to failure. And he explained why. He said, Listen,
(26:49):
government lacks the essential element of any private enterprise, and
that is the profit motive. And the analogy he uses.
He says, Okay, look, Ben, let's say you have a
private company. You have, say a barbecue restaurant in Memphis.
If you're running your barbecue restaurant in Memphis, every single
(27:11):
employee at the restaurant is motivated by the profit incentive.
If the janitor, the guy who is sweeping up the
spilled barbecue sauce in the restaurant, if he comes to
you and says, mister ferguson, I've got an idea that
can reduce our costs by ten percent and that can
(27:33):
increase revenues by five percent. So my guess is a
Ben you'd listen to him. You'd be like, Okay, I
want to hear that idea. Yeah, my guess is number two.
If his idea was right, that guy ain't going to
be sweeping floors any longer. He is immediately going to
get a promotion because for him and everyone else at
(27:55):
the restaurant, the incentive is the profit motive that that
unified the incentives of everyone in the private sector. In contrast,
and this is what von Misis argues in on bureaucracy,
in government, there is no profit motive, and in fact,
the incentives are precisely the obverse. Let's say you're running
a particular office and a government agency, and you've got
(28:21):
a million people who are receiving ten billion dollars in benefits.
Your incentives are not to reduce the number of people
receiving those benefits. Your incentives are not to reduce the
amount of benefits they're receiving. Instead, what are your incentives
in government? Your incentives and government are to increase the
(28:44):
one million people to a million, five or two million.
Your incentives are to increase the ten million dollars in
benefits to fifteen billion or twenty million. Your incentives are
to take your say, thousand people that were work for
you and increase it to two thousand or three thousand.
All of your incentives not only are they not aligned
(29:06):
on the profit motive, they are exactly the opposite of
the profit motive. So I actually I recommended Elon he
read the book. He did not know the book, and
we spent about thirty minutes talking about how do you
change this beast that is government. You're never going to
make it quickened in. But I also talked about the
fact that a huge problem with government is that you
(29:27):
cannot fire government employees. Generally speaking, there are civil service
protections in place that if you try to fire someone,
you have litigation. It's very difficult. And I pointed out
to Elon, look, when you went into Twitter, you fired
what sixty percent of the employees. That is a flexibility
(29:47):
that you have and what it means. And I tried
to lay this out to him as well. So I said, listen,
at Teslas SpaceX, my guess is you have very very
few employees who wake up every day with their mission
and life being to stop you, to frustrate the objectives
of the company, and to try to make them fail.
(30:08):
And if you did have any employees that were doing that,
you'd fire them because they work for you, and that'd
be it. In government, particularly with the deep state, there
are literally thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of deep
state employees who wake up every day with their objective,
their mission being to stop everything Donald Trump is trying
(30:30):
to accomplish. And so I'm really glad that Elon is
doing this, and I think Vivek is very smart. I
think Vivek will add to that. We will get some
good results out of it, but it is going to
be an incredibly important and incredibly challenging endeavor. And I'll
say Elon is as smart a person as I have
(30:51):
ever encountered. And look, I've been blessed. I've actually run
in some circles where I've known some freakishly smart people,
including people like Chief Justice William Renquist and Anton Scalia,
and and Elon is just another level in terms of brilliant.
So I'm excited to see what he can do in
(31:12):
this role. But it is going to be I think
his instinct is going to be to break some China
and and we'll see how that plays out in the
government world.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
Yeah, and the government world is a key point there.
Let's talk about one of the most important appointments, and
that is Tom Homan. And there are so many conservatives
that voted for Donald Trump, so many Americans that voted
for Donald Trump because they want to secure border. He's
the former Immigration and Custom Enforcement Director. He has now
been named Trump's Borders are tasked with cracking down on
(31:45):
immigration and overseeing the southern border the northern border as well.
And he said this on Fox yesterday.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Look, I've seen I've seen some of these democratic governors,
and they're going to stand in the way. They're going
they're going to make a heart for us. Well, you
know a suggestion, if you're not going to help us,
get the hell on the way when we're going to
do it. So if we can't get assistance from New
York City, and I may we may have to double
the number of.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Raises we send in New York City because we're going
to do the job. We're going to do the job
without here or with you. It's very clear.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Democrats already gearing up to fight against the government and deportations.
He has said their number one goal is what you
and I mentioned on the show. I think it was
even before election day. They're going to go after the
criminals first. They're going to go after the people that
have already had due process and have been told that
they are to be deported from this country. And again,
(32:41):
this is where I love doing the show. Let's remind
listeners and arm you guys with the facts. When when
you hear the left say it's inhumane to deport people,
do not forget Barack Obama deported more than three million
illegal immigrants while he was president. So this idea that
we're doing a million plus at or felons that have
(33:02):
been convicted of crimes that have already had due process,
don't fall for this because remind all of the people
that say otherwise, Barack Obama deported more than three million
illegal immigrants when he was president.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
So Tom Homan is a serious guy. He cares passionately
about defending this nation securing our borders. I am very
very happy that Trump is named him borders are He
also named Christy Nome, the governor South Dakota to be
the Secretary of the Department Homeland Security. Homan and Nome
will work hand in hand. I think that's going to
be very effective. Tom Homan understands the border, he understands
(33:40):
what is what it takes to secure the border, and
I think he is going to be the point person
driving the agenda. As I've predicted before. But I want
people to hear this. It's November. We are still facing
an invasion at our southern border. We are going to
secure the border, and it is not going to take
a year at not even going to take six months.
(34:01):
It will be done by January and February of next year.
And in February, Ben, I want you to play this
clip back and either we're going to say the results
are in Cruz was right, or hold me to account
and say, Okay, it didn't happen. What went wrong. But
either way, that's my prediction. And I think Tom Homan
(34:23):
is going to be driving the effort to get that done,
and I also think Stephen Miller, is Deputy Chief of Staff,
will be driving it alongside him. I'm very optimistic about
what we're going to get done on that front.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
And finally, when we're talking, and there's more names are
going to come out, and we will continue to let
you know what we think about them and how exciting
this moment is. But there's one of your colleagues in
the Senate, someone you know very well. There was a
lot of people that were on the short list. I
say a lot, a lot that you and I knew
that were floated for the shortlist for Secretary of State.
(34:57):
I was paying very close attention to this one, as
I know you were. And and the nominee is going
to be your colleague, the Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio.
Speaker 3 (35:08):
Yeah, I think this is terrific. I think Marco is
going to do a good job.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
He is focused on foreign policy quite a bit his
entire time in the Senate. Marco is smart, He cares
about foreign policy. He cares about standing up to communists,
especially in Cuba. He cares about standing up to communist
in China. Marco is more interventionist on foreign policy than
I am. But that being said, he cares deeply about it,
(35:34):
and and and so I think he is more interventionist
on foreign policy than Trump is. And at the end
of the day, Trump is going to make the decisions.
But I think Marco is someone who is diplomatic, He
is articulate, he will be he will be a very
effective diplomat for America. I think it's a great choice.
I think it's a natural fit. I will tell you so.
(35:54):
So I sent Marco a text tonight which I'll go
ahead and and and and read to you what I
send him. I sent Mark of the following text. Congrats, sir,
A big damn deal. You join an historic roster including
John Jay Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, James Madison, James Monroe,
(36:18):
John Quincy, Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, John Calhoun, William Jennings,
Bryan Charles Evans, Hughes, Henry Stimpson, George Marshall, Dean Atchison,
John Foster, Dulles, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, and
James Baker. Truly rarefied air. Every Cuban is deeply proud.
(36:46):
And then I finished it with and I'm confident at
least that you'll kick the ass of Hillary and John Kerry.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Yeah, well, Barr, but I couldn't agree with you more
on that one. Right, It's I have no idea. I
have no doubt I should say that Marco was going
to laugh when he reads that last part of the text.
Speaker 3 (37:06):
So he did laugh, and he responded, I will almost
never out my colleagues text, but I think Marco would
forgive me for this. His response was, he said, there
is hope for the Cuban Caucus, and then he sends
me a story from Latin Times. Social media users launch
campaign to get pit Bull appointed to Marco Rubio's Senate seat.
(37:28):
Ron de Santus has only one choice, and I could
only respond to that spectacular.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You gotta love it.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
I want to tell you about the International Fellowship of
Christians and Jews. Last week, Americans voted in one of
the most consequential elections in our history, and with all
that's happening, we know that the support of Americans like
you mean so much the people of Israel, especially now.
This past year, not only have we seen the war
rage on in the Holy Land, but we've also seen
(37:56):
an alarming rise in anti Semitism. That's why I'm a
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They have been building bridges between Christians and Jews for
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(38:18):
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(38:43):
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call them to give it eight to eight for eight
eight IFCJ that's eighty eight for eight eight IFCG or
four to three.
Speaker 1 (39:01):
Two five, Senator.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
One other story is Donald Trump is getting his cabinet
together and making appointments.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That has not gotten a lot of attention is the.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Take out the trash, everybody throwing everybody under the bus
in the Biden camp, the Harris camp. We find out
she blew through a billion dollars, she's upside down in debt.
They're begging for money with text messages to liberals saying
we need your help with accounting of the votes and
give money.
Speaker 5 (39:32):
Now.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
I wish I was joking, but I'm not, and I
don't know. Someone said eighteen twenty million upside down. And
then we found out where a lot of the donations
actually went. The donations were going to celebrities. Oprah's had
to come out after there was a million dollar check
given to her Quote production company for production of a
(39:52):
one day sit down interview that we many people saw
on TV with Oprah. It doesn't call it's a million
dollars to produce that, but that was the price tag.
And then we found out that there were a lot
of celebrities that were being paid to act like they
loved Kamala Harris. And there are some Democratic donors that
(40:12):
are livid right now over the price tag on this.
Speaker 3 (40:17):
You know, there's a terrific article in the Spectator World
entitled Kamala Harris ran the Fry Festival of Campaigns, and
it points out that Trump's campaign spent roughly four hundred
and eighty eight million dollars and Kamala spent more than
a billion, so she outspent Trump. More than two to one,
and Kamala's campaign ended up twenty million dollars in debt. Well,
(40:42):
it turns out where did that money go. Well, one
of the things that went to is they paid many
of the quote unquote celebrities who supported her. We were
getting paid and getting paid significant sums. So for example,
remember the Call Me Daddy podcast? Yeah, well apparently the
(41:02):
campaign spent upwards of six figures to build a custom
set for her appearance on the podcast, and the podcast
netted only eight hundred thousand downloads, less than a million downloads. Look, Ben,
you and I we have roughly a million unique listeners.
If she wanted eight hundred thousand downloads, I'll tell you,
(41:22):
Kamala right now, even though you've lost Ben and I
will invite you on Verdict right now. We will welcome you.
We will not charge you to build a set, so
you can save all your money. And you paid Oprah
a million dollars for production costs, we will charge you
for production costs on Verdict. What do you think fifty bucks?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Sure? I think I took a fair price. Fifty bucks.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
Fifty bucks will get you a very nice coffee cup
with some Jamaican blue Mountain coffee. That's what we'll spend
the fifty bucks on and you can reach the same
number of people. All right. By the way, she also
turned down Joe so call me Daddy. Got eight hundred
thousand downloads. How many do you think Joe Rogan's interview
of Donald Trump got a lot more than that? Forty
(42:08):
seven million?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Wow, that's a lot. Okay, that's a lot.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
So there were also seven Swing state concerts with expensive performers,
and it turns out every one of them they got
a price. It is the world's oldest profession and they
are charging for it. So who are the performers that
got paid millions of dollars? Katie Perry, Lady Gaga, John
(42:34):
bon Jovi, Ricky Martin.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Hold on, you're.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
Telling me now of these people were like doing it
for free because they were all in for Comma.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
They wanted to get paid.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
That show me the money. They ended up spending more
than twenty million dollars on event production alone. Oprah, as
you noted, charged a million dollars, and they went so
far into debt that the campaign and allegedly had to
scrap Alanis Morisset. They were planning to do a lot
(43:04):
of Morisset and they said, no, okay, we can't afford
her anymore. Nevermind. I mean it is truly stunning, and
you've got to wonder, like I gotta say, I don't
get paying millions of dollars for celebrities to fake endorse
someone she spent paid money to. What Beyonce.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
Well, let's go over the big ones.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
This is coming from Fox and I'm gonna play this
this audio.
Speaker 1 (43:29):
Take a listen.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
This is again from Fox, as they were going through
how much cash was spent.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
I can't get over these numbers.
Speaker 5 (43:38):
Ten million dollars for Beyonce to step up and back
Kamala Harris publicly, five million for Megan the Stallion, three
million for Lizzo, one point eight million for eminem was that.
Speaker 2 (43:52):
Those numbers are unbelievable if you just look at them.
And I was like, hold on a second, and I
went back and watched that clip a couple of different times,
because you look at them.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Ten million for Beyonce.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
If you're a donor and you wrote a big check Meghan,
this Stallion, five million, Lizzo three million and one point
eight million, I called on, I just raised all this
money for you and this is how you spent it.
Speaker 3 (44:16):
Look, I gotta say I've run a bunch of campaigns.
I ran my first campaign for Senate in twenty twelve.
I ran my next campaign for president in twenty sixteen.
We won twelve states all over the country. I ran
my next campaign for Senate again in twenty eighteen, and
I just finished running my most recent campaign for Senate
reelect a third term in twenty twenty four. I can
(44:40):
tell you, in the whole time, I've never paid any
one a million dollars for anything. I don't think we
paid any entertainers. I don't know of any entertainers we paid.
Maybe at some point we paid five or ten grand
for someone performing at some party. I'm not aware of it.
But I can tell you this. Look our stars now,
to be clear, the stars we have at our events
(45:01):
are our international, supermodeled, global talents like Ben Ferguson. And
I gotta tell you.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
What that ten million dollar payday once in my career
like oh yeah, Beyondest say yeah, yeah, I'm all in
for the cause, but I just need ten million to.
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Make it happen.
Speaker 3 (45:19):
Okay, Ben, To be clear, we don't pay you ten dollars,
No that's Look, I'm a fiscal conservative. Dammit. If you
want to be there and you believe in saving the country,
stand up and save the country. And if not, get
the hell out. But like, what is it with these
lefties who ironically they want to put socialists in office
who make it impossible for people to earn a living,
(45:42):
and yet they're such capitalists that they're like, show me
the money to do it. I mean, there is an
intense hypocrisy on this.
Speaker 1 (45:50):
I believe this.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
And I'm not just saying this because this moment in
this headline, but I'm being dead serious. This could be
a huge problem for democratic canants moving forward, because when
you see this type of abuse of campaign finance money
from donors, those same donors, somebody's going to be asking
them for money and four years or less than four
years from now.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
And I'm, by the way, the question the next time
Beto O'Rourke, Collin all Red jumps on a stage with
with Willie Nelson, Everyone's going to ask how much you
pay him?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (46:23):
How much of my money did did I gave you?
Did you just give him for that thirteen minutes of
him singing? It's an question and.
Speaker 3 (46:31):
It undermines the entire credibility that I'm here because I
love America so much and you've got to vote for
this candidate. Look, i'll give you an example in the
presidential race. So one of the cooler people that I
got to meet and spend time with was Phil Robertson,
you know from Duck Dynasty.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Oh yeah, and here was I mean massive back in
the day, like unbelievable star.
Speaker 3 (46:53):
Huge star. And so so he invited me to Monroe,
Louisiana to come stay at his place. And I went
out duck hunting with Phil, which by the way, ranks
among the coolest things I've ever gotten to do. And
we went to the duck blind. We're there at four
in the morning. Look, i'd like to hunt in Texas.
I gotta be careful about what I say because there's
so many really serious hunters that I can't overstate. I
(47:15):
go hunting a couple times a year. I enjoy it,
but I'm not someone who lives and breathes it. Phil
in that duck blind, I have never seen a person
who is a better shot with a shotgun. He would
drop birds at a distance that I wouldn't pick up
my gun. They were too far away. I'm like, yeah,
if the duck flies over here, I'll shoot it, but
I can't shoot it way over there. And he would
(47:36):
just boom and then the dogs would swim out and
grab the duck and bring it back. And Phil, I'll
tell you, So I went there and spent the day
when hunting with him. He recorded an ad for our
campaign that we put out. It remains one of my
favorite ads we've ever done. I'm all like wearing camo
grease pain and I'm in the duck blind with Phil.
(47:56):
It was really cool. But Phil, it was during the
Iowa Caucuses and we asked, Phil, will you come to
Iowa and campaign with me? And Phil, for something like
forty years, had not missed a single day of duck season.
He'd been out there every single day for four decades,
(48:19):
and we'd invited him to come. And that morning he
went to the blind at four in the morning and
he's sitting there in the blind, and I guess you know,
it weighed on his heart. I can't do this today.
I need to go fight to save America. And Phil
left the blind and he went and hopped on a
plane and he flew to Iowa and he did a
big rally with me in Iowa, and I told him then,
(48:40):
I'm like, Phil, I am beyond humboldt that you missed
the first day of duck season in forty years to
be here in campaign alongside me. Now, I didn't writehim
a damn check to do that.
Speaker 2 (48:54):
I just said, if you gave him Beyonce money, you
know you're like, oh, and by the way, here's ten
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (48:59):
No.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
No, I just said, come help save America. And it
meant a lot like for him to miss it. And
that day we were literally touch and go. We didn't
know who's gonna come, but it meant a big deal
when he came. If you're paying Beyonce ten million dollars,
I mean, my good I mean goodness. Who would she
not endorse for ten million dollars? No, it's a very
(49:23):
fair question.
Speaker 2 (49:24):
And it's like, would any of these celebrities have showed
up for her if she wasn't paying them? Not tens
of thousands, not one hundred of thousands, but literally millions
of dollars. I think it's gonna be a very interesting
talking point in politics moving forward. It's like, is anyone
that's actually endorsing these democrats or celebrities not on the take.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
Is it all just a massive payday?
Speaker 2 (49:44):
They get a chance out every four years, and it's
gonna be interesting to see how that fold, how that
is dealt with a couple of years from now, when
Democrats are on stage again with a bunch of famous
people and they're gonna have to now answer questions about it.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's gonna be really fun.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Don't forget. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
I on those in between days grab my podcast. I'll
keep you update on the latest breaking news on the
cabinet positions as well. Download the Ben Ferguson podcast. There
and Senator Cruz and I will see you back here
on Friday morning.
Host
Ben Ferguson
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