Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review. Ben
Ferguson with you, and these are the big stories that
you may have missed that we talked about this past week.
First up, the IRS is targeting now millions of middle
class Americans, something they promised that they weren't going to
do when it came to the Biden administration. We'll expose
why you may be a target. Coming up in a moment. Also,
(00:23):
a whistleblower inside of NPR comes forward after decades of
working there, saying, now they're just out to destroy people
like Donald Trump. They're no longer just kind of a
you know, a little bit more liberal mentality in the office.
It is about destroying conservatives. I want you to hear
what he has to say. It's truly shocking. And finally,
Chuck Schumer is confident that the Myiarci's impeachment will be
(00:47):
resolved in a single day. Will Republicans actually fight back?
We'll explain that battle heating up. It is the Weekend Review,
and it starts right now. Senator, Let's talk about this
shocking data that's come out, a warning that came from
you on this show, and I want to play that
in a moment. But I want to get to the
headline here. There are two things right now that are
(01:10):
worrying many Americans. Number one, it's Bidenomics. It is a
disaster right now. We are seeing even top Biden economic
advisor bragged about gas prices which are up fifty percent
since Biden took office, saying, quote, we are pleased that
gas prices have come down. Now the media is allowing
them to lie, and the American people are not going
(01:32):
to fall for this. I don't believe. But take a
listen to this. This is coming from the White House,
from the Biden team trying to convince Americans that hey,
you're paying less of the pump right now than ever.
You should be excited.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh important for American families and a big focus of
President Biden. We are pleased that gas prices have come
down by a dollar forty relative to that peak that
was caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But as you say,
we are watching carefully to make sure that those gas
(02:05):
prices that the pump don't go up to.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Now, Senator, that's just a lie that gas prices are
not down. Anyone that goes the pump knows this. We
also know now that grocery prices are nearing forty percent
higher than they were in twenty nineteen. And to add
insult to injury, we're now being told, on top of
all of that that's hurting the middle class, there's now
going to be more than ever IRS agents that are
(02:31):
targeting specifically middle class Americans, with more audits than ever before.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Well, that's exactly right. First of all, in terms of prices,
you know, they're crowing about that. They say gasoline prices
are lower than the worse they were under Biden, but
they're still up fifty one percent from where they were
under Trump. By the way, overall prices are up eighteen
point six percent. Real average weekly earnings are down four
(02:59):
point two per real average weekly warnings earnings were up
eight point two percent under Trump. And in the month
of March zero new manufacturing jobs were added. And so look,
the economy is hurting mightily. And then you put on
top of that the IRS is doing actually what we
predicted on on this podcast is targeting the middle class.
(03:21):
The Wall Street Journal wrote that wrote just a few
days ago quote, the Internal Revenue Service got an audit
of its own in time for tax Day and two
irregularities jump out. President Biden's plan to hire a new
army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents
already at work are targeting the middle class. Those are
(03:42):
the two findings of the IRS's watchdog, the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration. The most recent data suggests the
IRS is still focused on the middle class. As of
last summer, sixty three percent of new audits target to
taxpayers with incomes of less than two hundred thousand dollars.
(04:06):
Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners,
while eighty percent of the audits covered filers earning less
than one million dollars. And as the Wall Street Journal urge,
as you don't forget to save those charitable giving receipts.
This is exactly opposite what Joe Biden promised the American people.
(04:28):
But it's what we knew was going to happen. They
were going to use the new agents to go after
the middle class. That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Let me just remind people of what you said on
the show, and this was quite some time ago. Here
is the warning when we said it here early on
that they're going to come after average Americans, not just
the elites, as they were claiming.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
For Good Friday in Easter, the IRS released the news
they dated as a news dump going into the holiday
because they didn't want people to pay attention to it
that they are right now hiring the first thirty fives
of those employees. Ten thousand of them are being hired
in the current fiscal year, and in fiscal year twenty
twenty four they're planning to double that with twenty seven
(05:10):
thousand new hires. Now, now what does that mean. Well,
let's go through a lot of different elements. The long
and short of it is, it means a whole bunch
more IRS employees there to harass you, to harass citizens,
to rass small businesses, to harass and target the political
enemies of the Biden White House.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But Senator, you look at that warning, and you look
at what you mentioned right beforehand about prices that have skyrocketed,
the costs of goods and services are up, manufacturing jobs
that are down, and there has to be a moment,
I would argue of reckoning with the average American voter
where they look at this administration and they sit there
(05:52):
and they stare at you in the face. They say, no, no,
gas prices are good, and the American people have to
know no, that's not true. When they say, oh no, no,
the price of the grocery store, they're not that bad.
They've got to have a moment where they say, no, no,
we don't believe you anymore. You travel a lot, you
talk to a lot of people on the state of Texas.
I don't believe that the American people are going to
(06:13):
be bamboozled by this much longer.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Look, I think the American people know that the Bidenomics
is a mess. And in fact, you see the Biden
White House backing away from using that term Bidenomics because
they thought it was a good thing and they discovered,
oh wait, people think it's a terrible thing. That's it. Listen,
anyone who's paying the bills, anyone who goes to the
grocery store, anyone who fills up their tank at the pump,
(06:38):
anyone who deals with health care cost, electricity costs, rent, mortgages.
I'll tell you, young people, I think one of the
most potent things is young people buying their first home,
a young married couple. They're suddenly discovering they can get
about half as much house as they thought they could get,
because a few years ago, when you had mortgage rates
(07:01):
two and a half percent, you could get actually a
pretty big, pretty, you know, a nice three bedroom house,
a backyard, a swing And suddenly young people are discovering,
holy cow, what I thought I could afford is now
out of reach.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation,
you can go back and listen to the full podcast
from earlier this week. Now onto story number two, Senator,
there was another story that broke, and this is one
that is for a guy that has spent my entire
career in media, NPR annoys me beyond a level of
(07:37):
frustration that most people can imagine, because I don't understand
why my tax dollars are subsidizing a hardcore leftist organization
and why I'm paying their salaries at NPR. That's the reality.
But now we've got a guy that was there for
twenty five years who has blown the whistle on NPR
saying that basically, when Donald Trump was elected, it completely BROKENPR.
(08:01):
And they are there every day to take down conservatives,
takedown Trump, take down anybody like him, and our tax
dollars are going to pay for MPR.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
No, that's exactly right. And this story is a big
deal because this is, as you noted, a whistleblower who
came clean and really wanted to describe what was happening
in a major media institution, one of the most important
media institutions in the country. And so the individual in
question is a guy named Uri Berliner, who was a
(08:31):
twenty five year veteran of NPR. He was a senior
business editor editor at NPR, and he wrote a column
on the Free Press that came out April ninth, and
I actually want to read from a good chunk of
it because I think it it's important what he said,
and it is very much whistleblowing. So here's how he starts. Quote.
(08:53):
You know, the stereotype of the NPR listener an ev driving,
wordle playing toe, back bag care carrying, coastal elite. It
doesn't precisely describe me, but it's not far off. I'm
Sarah Lawrence, educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother.
I drive a Subaru and Spotify says my listening habits
(09:15):
are most similar to people in Berkeley. I fit the
NPR mold I'll cop to that. So when I got
a job there twenty five years ago, I never looked back.
As a senior editor on the business desk, where news
is always breaking, we've covered upheevils in the workplace, super
market prices, social media, and AI. It's true that NPR
always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
(09:37):
tenure here, an open minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
but not knee jerk activist or scolding. In recent years, however,
that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or
read its coverage online find something different, the distilled worldview
of a very small segment of the US population. If
(10:00):
you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh,
it's always been this way, But it hasn't. For decades.
Since its founding in nineteen seventy, a wide swath of
America tuned into NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio
pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to
(10:21):
us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the
country the world radically different from our own, engaging precisely
because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more
pride within an NPR than the farmer listening to morning
edition from his or her tractor at sunrise. Back in
twenty eleven, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left,
(10:44):
it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty
six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three
percent as middle of the road, and thirty seven percent
as liberal. By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different.
Only eleven percent described themselves as very or even somewhat conservative,
(11:07):
twenty one percent is middle of the road, and sixty
seven percent of listeners said that were very or somewhat liberal.
We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates
and traditional liberals. An open minded spirit no longer exists
with n NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an
audience that reflects America. That wouldn't be a problem for
(11:29):
an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience, but
for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating
both for its journalism and its business model.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
You listen to that, and it's a guy that's almost
like he's coming clean, realizing just how damaging what NPR
is doing to the country, and he's in paving it. Yeah,
he's in pain. He also did an interview he set
down talking about this, and I want you to hear
what he had to say on honestly with BARRII Rice.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Take a listen to this.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Everyone knew that NPR had a liberal bent. It was
like saying these days, like Fox has a conservative bent.
That was obvious to anyone. But you argue that it's
really gone from having a liberal bent or a liberal
shading to really a bias. Here's one thing you write
in your essay. You write, for the majority of your
time at NPR, despite the liberal bend, an open minded,
(12:26):
curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee jerk
activists or scolding or when did that start to change?
When did the thing that everyone sort of recognized as
sort of a liberal bias start to shift into something
harder than that, into what you call a knee jerk
activist and even scolding quality.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Well, I think it was a cumulative I don't think
it was one event. I mean, I think part of
it was Trump's election. You know, I think like every newsroom,
every legacy medium is when we were shocked, disturbed, distraught,
really troubled. We assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win
and and she didn't, and it was really an unsettling experience.
(13:13):
But I also think to me it revealed that we
didn't really understand a lot of what was going on
in America, that we were out of touch. But I
think also we we kind of locked down after a while.
I think after a while we started covering Trump in
a way that, like a lot of the legacy news
(13:34):
news organization, that we were trying to damage his presidency
to even it's flying, anything we could to harm him.
And I think what we latched onto was Russia collusion,
like a lot of news organizations, which was, as I write,
sort of catnip, although it was just rumors and a
lot of it based on pretty shoddy documents. Evidence there was,
(13:57):
it wasn't really solid, but I think it was it
was compelling and for us, you know, I think a
lot of newspapers you know, used documents or anonymous sources.
We really latched onto Adam Schiff. He was like our
mused to the Trump collusion story. We had him on
constantly a lot. I think I counted twenty five times,
(14:17):
you know, and in most of those conversations he sort
of alluded to evidence he may have had or sort
of teased out, yeah, Russia, you know, he was coluding
or the campaign was colluding with Russia. And then the
Muller report came out and no collusion, and you know,
I think we sort of just sort of the story
kind of disappeared. But to me that was like a
time for like, what went wrong? Why did we miss this? Like,
(14:41):
you know, despite our feelings about Trump, this is a
story we should have sort of treated differently.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You hear him say that they he said they were
trying to harm Trump. Now that is shocking for him
to say this because in translation center that means.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And stop, stop and repeat that for a second. Stop
and stop and repeat that first second. This is a
senior editor at NPR. Mind you, they're finding funded by
US taxpayer dollars, and he is admitting the entire institution
and his words, was trying to harm Trump. I mean,
that is a damning admission. And at some level, as
(15:20):
he noted in what I read a minute ago, it
was obvious to any conservative, But it says something for
a senior editor to go and blow the whistle like this.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
This NPR reminds me of Twitter before Elon Musk bought
it in many ways, where it's bloated, it's out of control,
it's activism. It's not run like a business because it's
subsidized by government taxpayers. I'm fine with NPR existing center.
They should figure out how to do it the same
way that everybody else does in media, which is to
(15:51):
you know, make money instead of us giving them our
tax dollars to them, as he described it, try to
hurt Trump every time they could. And it won't just
be Trump in the future. It will be any other
conservative based on what he's saying. It's not like they
just went in against Trump and that was it. They're
going in against every conservative on every story out there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, let me focus on two other segments of what
Uriberliner wrote. Quote, Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity.
I looked at voter registration for our newsroom in DC,
where nprs headquartered and many of us live. I found
eighty seven registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
(16:44):
Now that's not vague or ambiguous, that's not equivocal, that
is explicit let me read this other segment quote. In
October twenty twenty, the New York Post published the explosive
report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware
computer shop containing emails about his sordid business deals. With
(17:06):
the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye.
Here's how NPR's managing editor for News at the time
explained the thinking quote, we don't want to waste our
time on stories that are not really stories, and we
don't want to waste our listeners and readers' times on
stories that are just pure distractions. But it wasn't a
(17:28):
pure distraction or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens
of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did
belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to
the corrupt world of multimillion dollar influence peddling and its
(17:49):
possible implications for his father. The laptop was newsworthy, but
the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead
was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened
as one of NPR's best and most fair minded journalists
(18:10):
said it was good. We weren't following the laptop story
because it could help Trump. When the essential facts of
the Post reportings were confirmed and the emails verified independently
about a year and a half later, we could have
(18:30):
fessed up to our misjudgment, But like Russia collusion, we
didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Why fix it? If it's your ideology, right, If this
is what the ideology is, and it's being funded by taxpayers,
why stop? Which brings me to my final question on this.
I've heard about this, and we've talked about this for
I hate to say it, twenty years. How on earth
are they getting this type of government fund especially now
(19:01):
if we know this from someone that worked there for
twenty five years. Is there any way to say the
NPR that's fine. If this is what your mission is,
go and do it, but you're not going to do
it subsidized by taxpayers.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Listen. I would eliminate the funding for NPR tomorrow. That's
the right thing to do. We shouldn't be in the
business of funding NPR. The problem is every Democrat wants
to spend your taxpayer dollars funding NPR, because why wouldn't
you if you're a leftist, Why wouldn't you be willing
to use taxpayer dollars to fund a propaganda outlet for
(19:34):
your view? And I got to tell you in the
budget battles, too many Republicans are scared of taking on NPR,
and so between the two it keeps going. Look, I
actually think it speaks volume that where Uri Berliner wrote
this was the free Press. The free press was started
by Barry Weiss. Berry Weiss resigned from the editorial board
(19:57):
of The New York Times and wrote a letter. If
you haven't read the letter, we may do a podcast
where we just read the letter because it's something I
actually think should be taught in every journalism class in America.
It is a letter where and listen, Bury, by our
own description, is left of center. She's a liberal Democrat
or voter for Obama twice, but she was horrified. And
(20:18):
actually Barry's resignation letter reads very much like Urie Berliner's article.
They're both people left of center who actually believe in
some modicum of free speech, some modicum of fairness, and
they look at the corruption of institutions they respected. I
look at Uri Berlinner and I'm reminded of John F.
(20:38):
Kennedy's famous speech at the Berlin wall Ick ben I
and Berliner, which he thought meant that he was a Berliner,
a resident of Berlin, but actually it was poorly translated German.
And what the better translation was is I am a
jelly donut, which which was not JFK's finest moment, But
(20:59):
nonetheless I feel the same sentiments. Aurie Berlinner and I
may disagree on a lot of things, but I'm proud
to stand with Arieberlinner for daring to speak the truth
because free speech matters, and I actually think it matters.
I met recently with the CEO of a major journalistic
enterprise I won't say who it is, and I told him,
(21:21):
I said, listen, I actually believe in a free press.
I defend you even when you kick the crap out
of me, even when you attack me, because I think
it's important to democracy and free speech to have a
real and vibrant press. But when you guys are just
corrupt ideologues, when you're just propagandists, it hurts the entire country.
(21:42):
And so I give a big shout out to Arib Berlinner.
Like Barry Weiss, on whose platform he wrote this there
are a handful of liberals, and I actually want to
call out listen. I don't know that many fair minded
liberals in the media listen to Verdict, although we're close
to a million listeners, maybe there are. If you're a
(22:02):
fair minded liberal working in the media and you don't
like the bias and propagan and I'm not saying you're
suddenly conservative and a right winger, that's okay, that's okay.
We can have reasonable discussions, but when people speak out
like Urie Berliner and Barry Wise, it makes a difference,
and we need more people to do that.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
As before, if you want to hear the rest of
this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the
entire thing. I want to get back to the big
story number three of the week you may have missed. Senator.
Let's talk about the confidence of Chuck Schumer. In that
clip that we played, he seemed pretty confident and set
(22:44):
it over again. I think twice that this is going
to be something we're looking for a resolution quickly, maybe
in a day. As the reporter you go back at him.
He didn't seem to push back on that at all.
So what is their game plan to basically make all
this go way? And how do we stop it? And
that seems to be your core goal here is to
(23:04):
make sure that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Schumer wants it incredibly quick, incredibly silent. He doesn't want
Senate Democrats on record, he doesn't want any of the
facts revealed to the American people. So originally the plan
was that the House had announced they were going to
transmit the articles of impeachment Wednesday night. You and I
are recording this right now. It is eleven fifty one
pm Tuesday night. The plan from the House was it
(23:29):
was going to come over Wednesday night. Now, the consequence
of that means that the Senate would have convened as
an impeachment trial Thursday at one pm. So when articles
of impeachment come to the Senate, there's actually a separate
set of rules for impeachment. They're totally different from the
legislative rules, and it's mandatory that the Senate immediately moves
(23:51):
into impeachment when articles of impeachment come over. Look, it's
only come over twenty one times in our whole nation's history.
It is an unusual moment problem with the Senate starting
this Thursday at one pm is typically senators go home
Thursday afternoon, get on a plane, and fly back.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
To their states.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Schumer wanted to do all of this Thursday afternoon because
he knew senators would be anxious to leave to get
back to their states. They have events scheduled in their state,
they're traveling around their state, and he knew they would
want to get out of here. So this morning, Tuesday morning,
I started the morning by sitting down in a meeting
with Mitch McConnell and with Republican leadership and with Mike
(24:31):
Lee and John Kennedy, and meeting with leadership about how
we can fight what Schumer is doing here. And a
point that I raised in that meeting this morning, I said,
it is really damn stupid for us to do this
Thursday afternoon. It facilitates Schumer's goal of making this quick.
(24:53):
And what I suggested at the meeting this morning is
I said it would make a lot more sense for
the House to transmit the articles of impeachment next week,
next Monday. If they transmit it Monday, the Senate takes
it up Tuesday. Tuesday is a much better time to
take it up, because it means the Senate we have
the entire week to put this issue before the American people,
and we're not doing it at a time when senators
(25:16):
both Democrats and Republicans are eager to get out of town.
The phrase is jet fumes are in the air like
Thursday afternoon is when leadership tries to ram things through
quickly because everyone wants to leave.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Well, and by the way side, note what's happening also
this weekend, which every person in America that we love
sport is going to be paying attention to as well,
that starts on Thursday the Master. So for Democrats to
be even a better time to.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Get on Thursday. So a bit of good news I
raised this morning at the meeting. I said, this doesn't
make any sense. Everyone who was meeting with us agreed,
and so I texted the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Mike Lee texted the Speaker of the House. John Kennedy
texted the Speaker of the House, and the Speaker, to
his credit, he's a great guy, he's a great friend.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
The Speaker said, okay, great, happy to do it. And
so he announced this afternoon that they were going to
delay sending the articles of impeachment until early next week,
and so we asked him to do that. He did
that at our request, and the reason we wanted it
to come early next week is so that we could
focus early on the week when we could get real
attention and focus on it. So that was a good step.
(26:22):
Now I want to pause and have you reflect a
little bit on why this motion to table is so
consequential if Schumer succeeds, if every Democrat votes for it,
and right now Schumer seems supremely confident that every Democrat
will vote for it. What that means, number one, is
(26:43):
that every Democrat is now on record supporting Joe Biden's
open borders, that they're perfectly fine with what Alejandro Mayorcis
has done. But number two, understand that they will have
participated in changing the US Senate. And so so today
I participated in a press conference with a number of
(27:03):
Republican senators where we talked about the significance of this moment.
And it is in many ways very similar to twenty
thirteen and twenty thirteen Harry Reid, the Democrat, was the
Senate majority leader, and it is when Harry Reid nuked
the filibuster for judicial appointments and for cabinet appointments and
(27:24):
nuking the filibuster, what that meant is is that Harry
Reid broke the Senate rules in order to change the
Senate rules. It used to be the case that you
needed sixty votes to move forward on judges, to move
forward on executive branch nominees. And what Harry Reid did
is he used what was called the nuclear option, which
(27:45):
is that he got a ruling from the Chair on
the floor that it takes sixty votes to proceed to
a nomination, and then he moved to overturn the ruling
of the chair. Under the Senate rules, any ruling of
the chair can be overturned. You can overturn the ruling
of the Chair with just fifty one votes. And so
what happened was Harry Reid got the Democrats to overturn
(28:07):
the ruling of the chair. And once you do that,
you change the precedence and that new ruling is binding.
The effect of that is, since twenty thirteen, nominations have
only required fifty one votes instead of sixty votes. Well,
that night that Reid was nuking the filibuster for nominations.
(28:29):
The filibuster still exists for legislation, but read nuked it
for nominations. I talked to Amy Klobuchar on the Senate floor,
and I told Amy that day, I said, you are
going to regret this decision. All of the Democrats are
going to regret this decision. And the consequence of this
decision is we're going to see more justices like Antoninscalienne
(28:51):
Clarence Thomas on the courts. And there is an irony
that the direct result of Harry Reid nuking the filibuster
is Roe versus Wade being overturned. If Harry Reid had
not nuked the filibuster, there's no way on earth that
the Senate would have confirmed Brett Kavanaugh, or probably not
Amy Coney Barrett, and maybe not even Neil Gorsuch that
(29:13):
if we required sixty votes, Roe versus Wade would still
be the law of the land. But for the Senate
Democrats nuking the filibuster in twenty thirteen, and I told
them that a number of us told them that in
twenty thirteen. Now, what Chuck Schumer is planning to do
next week is every bit as big a deal as
(29:35):
nuking the filibuster, And in many ways it's more significant.
Why because the filibuster is not asture.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
What does the cause and effect then?
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
If you're saying and you give the last example, which
is significant, and I don't think many people understood that
or remembered it, But what would it then be the
cause and effect of this? And could there be a
silver lining in it?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Well, Look, the reason it is more significant is the
filibuster is not written in the Constitution. The filibuster is
a matter of Senate procedure and Senate practice, and the
Senate rules impeachment is written into the Constitution. The obligation
on the Senate to try impeachment is mandatory. It is
in the Constitution. So what the Senate Democrats are planning
(30:17):
to do next week is nuke the impeachment clause of
the Constitution, destroy the Senate's responsibility, give away the Senate's power.
And you want to know the consequences. Listen, We've got
an election in November. I think there's a very good
chance Donald Trump will be elected president. And it is
entirely possible that Trump will be elected president. Republicans will
(30:40):
take the Senate, and yet we could lose the House.
We could end up in January with Trump and the
White House, a Republican Senate and a Democrat House. If
that happens, I'm here to predict right now. If the
Democrats have the House, they will once again impeach Donald Trump,
maybe for the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time.
I can't tell you how many times a Democrat House
(31:02):
will impeach Donald Trump. It may be the only thing
they do for two years. If that happens and it
comes to the Senate and we have a Republican Senate,
you know what we'll do. We'll table the damn thing.
And let's be clear, we didn't last time. So when
Donald Trump was impeached the first time, it was exactly
that scenario. You had a Democrat House. Pelosi ram the impeachment.
(31:25):
Through the impeachment came over to the Senate, we had
a Republican Senate. Mitch McConnell was the majority leader. We
could have tried to do what Chuck Schumer is getting
ready to do. We could have just tried to table
at the outset, but we didn't because Senate Republicans actually
took our constitutional obligation. Seriously, we followed the Constitution, we
conducted the trial, and Donald Trump was acquitted. We voted
(31:46):
not guilty. That's actually the proper constitutional way. What Chuck
Schumer is willing to do to protect Democrat senators from
accountability for the disaster at our southern border of their policies,
what he now calls a policy dispute, is break the
Senate and nuke the impeachment clause of the Constitution. That's
(32:09):
a big deal, and it's a deal that will have
consequences ten years, fifty years, one hundred years from now.
If Schumer does this next week, you will never again
see an impeachment trial when the Senate is the same
party as the president. That will be taken off the table.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So if he does this, will there be any backlash
you think come November? Or is this such inside baseball
that it just says they say, okay, so so what
he changed it? Who really cares?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Well, look, the institutional change of the Senate. I don't
think that's going to be a big voting issue. I
do think the border and the chaos and the suffering
and the death that is coming from Joe Biden to
the Democrats' open border. I think that is going to
be probably the single most important issue in November, and
(33:02):
so it is critically important we do everything we can
to number One, increase the price for Schumer breaking the Senate,
destroying the institutions of democracy. You know, there's an irony.
Democrats love to beat their chest and talk about how
they want to save democracy, and yet this is an
assault on democracy. This is an assault on the constitution
(33:26):
and the institution that is the Senate, just like the
Democrats assault on the filibuster back in twenty thirteen. The
Democrats have systematically been tearing down our institutions. But what
I think is going to resonate. So listen, when we
move to the impeachment trial, hopefully early next week, a
number of us intend to raise points of order. I
(33:46):
intend to raise probably multiple points of order, challenging what
the Democrats are doing. And let me be clear what's
supposed to happen. So here's what should happen next week.
They're one of two things that can happen. Number One,
the Senate, the full Senate could could move to could
adopt an organizing resolution and move to holding an impeachment
(34:10):
trial on the floor of the Senate. Now, when the
president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States
presides over the impeachment trial and it occurs on the
floor of the Senate. You'll recall that's what happened with
both the Trump's impeachments. That's what happened with Bill Clinton's impeachment.
And so Mike Lee has filed an organizing resolution that
(34:34):
I've co authored that would set up a trial using
exactly the same rules that the Democrats put in place
that we followed for Donald Trump's impeachment. Actually, the first
one the Republicans put in place. The second one the
Democrats had a majority, they put in place for Trump's
second impeachment. And by the way, the second impeachment of Trump,
the Chief Justice did not preside because Trump was no
(34:56):
longer president. So Pat Leahy the president pro tem because
the Chief Justice only presides when it is the sitting
president who's being impeached. That's one way of proceeding. Frankly,
if we had a Republican majority, that's the way we
would proceed is we would have a trial on the
floor of the Senate to put the facts before the
American people. There is another way that Schumer and the
(35:18):
Democrats could proceed consistent with the Constitution and consistent with
the law, which is, the Senate could appoint an impeachment committee,
a committee with an equal number of members, an equal
number of Democrats and Republicans, and the committee would conduct
the impeachment trial. Now that the trial would be public.
The House managers would present their evidence, and the committee
(35:39):
would conduct the trial. That is the way that the
Senate is handled, for example, the judicial impeachments that come over.
They've appointed a committee, the committee has heard the trial,
and then the committee makes a recommendation to the Senate
and the Senate Ultimately every Senator has to vote guilty
or not guilty. But the trial itself is not held
on the Senate floor. It's held in a committe. Now,
(36:00):
I filed an organizing resolution that would set up exactly
that process, would set up a committee to conduct the trial.
The trial would be public, so we would put the information,
we'd put the charges, we'd put the evidence, we'd put
the harms, we'd put the people hurt and killed by
the Democrats' open borders. We put all of those facts
before the American people. But it would not be on
(36:22):
the floor, it would be in a committee. I'm going
to make a motion to do that. The Democrats are
going to oppose it, I expect, and I think there
are a number of Republicans who are going to raise
points of orders, try to make motions to highlight the
enormous harms caused by the open borders. And what I'm
anticipating is every Democrat voting party line over and over
(36:45):
and over again against every motion and every point of
order we raise. Why And it's what Chuck Schumer told us,
because this is a policy dispute, and the policy of
the Democrats is they are for open borders, no matter
how many people are killed, no matter how many children
are violated, no matter how many women are sexually assaulted. Therefore,
open borders, no matter how many terrorists come into this country,
(37:08):
and how much death and destruction results. And I think
next week we're going to see that vividly before the
American people.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center,
Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts
every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each
day when you listen to Verdict afterwards, I'd love to
have you as a listener to again Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
and we will see you back here on Monday morning.
Welcome. It is Verdict with Ted Cruz Weekend Review. Ben
Ferguson with you, and these are the big stories that
you may have missed that we talked about this past week.
First up, the IRS is targeting now millions of middle
class Americans, something they promised that they weren't going to
do when it came to the Biden administration. We'll expose
why you may be a target. Coming up in a moment. Also,
(00:23):
a whistleblower inside of NPR comes forward after decades of
working there, saying, now they're just out to destroy people
like Donald Trump. They're no longer just kind of a
you know, a little bit more liberal mentality in the office.
It is about destroying conservatives. I want you to hear
what he has to say. It's truly shocking. And finally,
Chuck Schumer is confident that the Myiarci's impeachment will be
(00:47):
resolved in a single day. Will Republicans actually fight back?
We'll explain that battle heating up. It is the Weekend Review,
and it starts right now. Senator, Let's talk about this
shocking data that's come out, a warning that came from
you on this show, and I want to play that
in a moment. But I want to get to the
headline here. There are two things right now that are
(01:10):
worrying many Americans. Number one, it's Bidenomics. It is a
disaster right now. We are seeing even top Biden economic
advisor bragged about gas prices which are up fifty percent
since Biden took office, saying, quote, we are pleased that
gas prices have come down. Now the media is allowing
them to lie, and the American people are not going
(01:32):
to fall for this. I don't believe. But take a
listen to this. This is coming from the White House,
from the Biden team trying to convince Americans that hey,
you're paying less of the pump right now than ever.
You should be excited.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh important for American families and a big focus of
President Biden. We are pleased that gas prices have come
down by a dollar forty relative to that peak that
was caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But as you say,
we are watching carefully to make sure that those gas
(02:05):
prices that the pump don't go up to.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Now, Senator, that's just a lie that gas prices are
not down. Anyone that goes the pump knows this. We
also know now that grocery prices are nearing forty percent
higher than they were in twenty nineteen. And to add
insult to injury, we're now being told, on top of
all of that that's hurting the middle class, there's now
going to be more than ever IRS agents that are
(02:31):
targeting specifically middle class Americans, with more audits than ever before.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Well, that's exactly right. First of all, in terms of prices,
you know, they're crowing about that. They say gasoline prices
are lower than the worse they were under Biden, but
they're still up fifty one percent from where they were
under Trump. By the way, overall prices are up eighteen
point six percent. Real average weekly earnings are down four
(02:59):
point two per real average weekly warnings earnings were up
eight point two percent under Trump. And in the month
of March zero new manufacturing jobs were added. And so look,
the economy is hurting mightily. And then you put on
top of that the IRS is doing actually what we
predicted on on this podcast is targeting the middle class.
(03:21):
The Wall Street Journal wrote that wrote just a few
days ago quote, the Internal Revenue Service got an audit
of its own in time for tax Day and two
irregularities jump out. President Biden's plan to hire a new
army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents
already at work are targeting the middle class. Those are
(03:42):
the two findings of the IRS's watchdog, the Treasury Inspector
General for Tax Administration. The most recent data suggests the
IRS is still focused on the middle class. As of
last summer, sixty three percent of new audits target to
taxpayers with incomes of less than two hundred thousand dollars.
(04:06):
Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners,
while eighty percent of the audits covered filers earning less
than one million dollars. And as the Wall Street Journal urge,
as you don't forget to save those charitable giving receipts.
This is exactly opposite what Joe Biden promised the American people.
(04:28):
But it's what we knew was going to happen. They
were going to use the new agents to go after
the middle class. That's exactly what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
Let me just remind people of what you said on
the show, and this was quite some time ago. Here
is the warning when we said it here early on
that they're going to come after average Americans, not just
the elites, as they were claiming.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
For Good Friday in Easter, the IRS released the news
they dated as a news dump going into the holiday
because they didn't want people to pay attention to it
that they are right now hiring the first thirty fives
of those employees. Ten thousand of them are being hired
in the current fiscal year, and in fiscal year twenty
twenty four they're planning to double that with twenty seven
(05:10):
thousand new hires. Now, now what does that mean. Well,
let's go through a lot of different elements. The long
and short of it is, it means a whole bunch
more IRS employees there to harass you, to harass citizens,
to rass small businesses, to harass and target the political
enemies of the Biden White House.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But Senator, you look at that warning, and you look
at what you mentioned right beforehand about prices that have skyrocketed,
the costs of goods and services are up, manufacturing jobs
that are down, and there has to be a moment,
I would argue of reckoning with the average American voter
where they look at this administration and they sit there
(05:52):
and they stare at you in the face. They say, no, no,
gas prices are good, and the American people have to
know no, that's not true. When they say, oh no, no,
the price of the grocery store, they're not that bad.
They've got to have a moment where they say, no, no,
we don't believe you anymore. You travel a lot, you
talk to a lot of people on the state of Texas.
I don't believe that the American people are going to
(06:13):
be bamboozled by this much longer.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Look, I think the American people know that the Bidenomics
is a mess. And in fact, you see the Biden
White House backing away from using that term Bidenomics because
they thought it was a good thing and they discovered,
oh wait, people think it's a terrible thing. That's it. Listen,
anyone who's paying the bills, anyone who goes to the
grocery store, anyone who fills up their tank at the pump,
(06:38):
anyone who deals with health care cost, electricity costs, rent, mortgages.
I'll tell you, young people, I think one of the
most potent things is young people buying their first home,
a young married couple. They're suddenly discovering they can get
about half as much house as they thought they could get,
because a few years ago, when you had mortgage rates
(07:01):
two and a half percent, you could get actually a
pretty big, pretty, you know, a nice three bedroom house,
a backyard, a swing And suddenly young people are discovering,
holy cow, what I thought I could afford is now
out of reach.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation,
you can go back and listen to the full podcast
from earlier this week. Now onto story number two, Senator,
there was another story that broke, and this is one
that is for a guy that has spent my entire
career in media, NPR annoys me beyond a level of
(07:37):
frustration that most people can imagine, because I don't understand
why my tax dollars are subsidizing a hardcore leftist organization
and why I'm paying their salaries at NPR. That's the reality.
But now we've got a guy that was there for
twenty five years who has blown the whistle on NPR
saying that basically, when Donald Trump was elected, it completely BROKENPR.
(08:01):
And they are there every day to take down conservatives,
takedown Trump, take down anybody like him, and our tax
dollars are going to pay for MPR.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
No, that's exactly right. And this story is a big
deal because this is, as you noted, a whistleblower who
came clean and really wanted to describe what was happening
in a major media institution, one of the most important
media institutions in the country. And so the individual in
question is a guy named Uri Berliner, who was a
(08:31):
twenty five year veteran of NPR. He was a senior
business editor editor at NPR, and he wrote a column
on the Free Press that came out April ninth, and
I actually want to read from a good chunk of
it because I think it it's important what he said,
and it is very much whistleblowing. So here's how he starts. Quote.
(08:53):
You know, the stereotype of the NPR listener an ev driving,
wordle playing toe, back bag care carrying, coastal elite. It
doesn't precisely describe me, but it's not far off. I'm
Sarah Lawrence, educated, was raised by a lesbian peace activist mother.
I drive a Subaru and Spotify says my listening habits
(09:15):
are most similar to people in Berkeley. I fit the
NPR mold I'll cop to that. So when I got
a job there twenty five years ago, I never looked back.
As a senior editor on the business desk, where news
is always breaking, we've covered upheevils in the workplace, super
market prices, social media, and AI. It's true that NPR
always had a liberal bent, but during most of my
(09:37):
tenure here, an open minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy,
but not knee jerk activist or scolding. In recent years, however,
that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or
read its coverage online find something different, the distilled worldview
of a very small segment of the US population. If
(10:00):
you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh,
it's always been this way, But it hasn't. For decades.
Since its founding in nineteen seventy, a wide swath of
America tuned into NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio
pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to
(10:21):
us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the
country the world radically different from our own, engaging precisely
because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more
pride within an NPR than the farmer listening to morning
edition from his or her tractor at sunrise. Back in
twenty eleven, although NPR's audience tilted a bit to the left,
(10:44):
it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty
six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, twenty three
percent as middle of the road, and thirty seven percent
as liberal. By twenty twenty three, the picture was completely different.
Only eleven percent described themselves as very or even somewhat conservative,
(11:07):
twenty one percent is middle of the road, and sixty
seven percent of listeners said that were very or somewhat liberal.
We weren't just losing conservatives, we were also losing moderates
and traditional liberals. An open minded spirit no longer exists
with n NPR, and now, predictably, we don't have an
audience that reflects America. That wouldn't be a problem for
(11:29):
an openly polemical news outlet serving a niche audience, but
for NPR, which purports to consider all things, it's devastating
both for its journalism and its business model.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
You listen to that, and it's a guy that's almost
like he's coming clean, realizing just how damaging what NPR
is doing to the country, and he's in paving it. Yeah,
he's in pain. He also did an interview he set
down talking about this, and I want you to hear
what he had to say on honestly with BARRII Rice.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Take a listen to this.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Everyone knew that NPR had a liberal bent. It was
like saying these days, like Fox has a conservative bent.
That was obvious to anyone. But you argue that it's
really gone from having a liberal bent or a liberal
shading to really a bias. Here's one thing you write
in your essay. You write, for the majority of your
time at NPR, despite the liberal bend, an open minded,
(12:26):
curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee jerk
activists or scolding or when did that start to change?
When did the thing that everyone sort of recognized as
sort of a liberal bias start to shift into something
harder than that, into what you call a knee jerk
activist and even scolding quality.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
Well, I think it was a cumulative I don't think
it was one event. I mean, I think part of
it was Trump's election. You know, I think like every newsroom,
every legacy medium is when we were shocked, disturbed, distraught,
really troubled. We assumed Hillary Clinton was going to win
and and she didn't, and it was really an unsettling experience.
(13:13):
But I also think to me it revealed that we
didn't really understand a lot of what was going on
in America, that we were out of touch. But I
think also we we kind of locked down after a while.
I think after a while we started covering Trump in
a way that, like a lot of the legacy news
(13:34):
news organization, that we were trying to damage his presidency
to even it's flying, anything we could to harm him.
And I think what we latched onto was Russia collusion,
like a lot of news organizations, which was, as I write,
sort of catnip, although it was just rumors and a
lot of it based on pretty shoddy documents. Evidence there was,
(13:57):
it wasn't really solid, but I think it was it
was compelling and for us, you know, I think a
lot of newspapers you know, used documents or anonymous sources.
We really latched onto Adam Schiff. He was like our
mused to the Trump collusion story. We had him on
constantly a lot. I think I counted twenty five times,
(14:17):
you know, and in most of those conversations he sort
of alluded to evidence he may have had or sort
of teased out, yeah, Russia, you know, he was coluding
or the campaign was colluding with Russia. And then the
Muller report came out and no collusion, and you know,
I think we sort of just sort of the story
kind of disappeared. But to me that was like a
time for like, what went wrong? Why did we miss this? Like,
(14:41):
you know, despite our feelings about Trump, this is a
story we should have sort of treated differently.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
You hear him say that they he said they were
trying to harm Trump. Now that is shocking for him
to say this because in translation center that means.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
And stop, stop and repeat that for a second. Stop
and stop and repeat that first second. This is a
senior editor at NPR. Mind you, they're finding funded by
US taxpayer dollars, and he is admitting the entire institution
and his words, was trying to harm Trump. I mean,
that is a damning admission. And at some level, as
(15:20):
he noted in what I read a minute ago, it
was obvious to any conservative, But it says something for
a senior editor to go and blow the whistle like this.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
This NPR reminds me of Twitter before Elon Musk bought
it in many ways, where it's bloated, it's out of control,
it's activism. It's not run like a business because it's
subsidized by government taxpayers. I'm fine with NPR existing center.
They should figure out how to do it the same
way that everybody else does in media, which is to
(15:51):
you know, make money instead of us giving them our
tax dollars to them, as he described it, try to
hurt Trump every time they could. And it won't just
be Trump in the future. It will be any other
conservative based on what he's saying. It's not like they
just went in against Trump and that was it. They're
going in against every conservative on every story out there.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, let me focus on two other segments of what
Uriberliner wrote. Quote, Concerned by the lack of viewpoint diversity.
I looked at voter registration for our newsroom in DC,
where nprs headquartered and many of us live. I found
eighty seven registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans. None.
(16:44):
Now that's not vague or ambiguous, that's not equivocal, that
is explicit let me read this other segment quote. In
October twenty twenty, the New York Post published the explosive
report about the laptop Hunter Biden abandoned at a Delaware
computer shop containing emails about his sordid business deals. With
(17:06):
the election only weeks away, NPR turned a blind eye.
Here's how NPR's managing editor for News at the time
explained the thinking quote, we don't want to waste our
time on stories that are not really stories, and we
don't want to waste our listeners and readers' times on
stories that are just pure distractions. But it wasn't a
(17:28):
pure distraction or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens
of former and current intelligence officials suggested. The laptop did
belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to
the corrupt world of multimillion dollar influence peddling and its
(17:49):
possible implications for his father. The laptop was newsworthy, but
the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead
was being squelched. During a meeting with colleagues, I listened
as one of NPR's best and most fair minded journalists
(18:10):
said it was good. We weren't following the laptop story
because it could help Trump. When the essential facts of
the Post reportings were confirmed and the emails verified independently
about a year and a half later, we could have
(18:30):
fessed up to our misjudgment, But like Russia collusion, we
didn't make the hard choice of transparency.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Why fix it? If it's your ideology, right, If this
is what the ideology is, and it's being funded by taxpayers,
why stop? Which brings me to my final question on this.
I've heard about this, and we've talked about this for
I hate to say it, twenty years. How on earth
are they getting this type of government fund especially now
(19:01):
if we know this from someone that worked there for
twenty five years. Is there any way to say the
NPR that's fine. If this is what your mission is,
go and do it, but you're not going to do
it subsidized by taxpayers.
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Listen. I would eliminate the funding for NPR tomorrow. That's
the right thing to do. We shouldn't be in the
business of funding NPR. The problem is every Democrat wants
to spend your taxpayer dollars funding NPR, because why wouldn't
you if you're a leftist, Why wouldn't you be willing
to use taxpayer dollars to fund a propaganda outlet for
(19:34):
your view? And I got to tell you in the
budget battles, too many Republicans are scared of taking on NPR,
and so between the two it keeps going. Look, I
actually think it speaks volume that where Uri Berliner wrote
this was the free Press. The free press was started
by Barry Weiss. Berry Weiss resigned from the editorial board
(19:57):
of The New York Times and wrote a letter. If
you haven't read the letter, we may do a podcast
where we just read the letter because it's something I
actually think should be taught in every journalism class in America.
It is a letter where and listen, Bury, by our
own description, is left of center. She's a liberal Democrat
or voter for Obama twice, but she was horrified. And
(20:18):
actually Barry's resignation letter reads very much like Urie Berliner's article.
They're both people left of center who actually believe in
some modicum of free speech, some modicum of fairness, and
they look at the corruption of institutions they respected. I
look at Uri Berlinner and I'm reminded of John F.
(20:38):
Kennedy's famous speech at the Berlin wall Ick ben I
and Berliner, which he thought meant that he was a Berliner,
a resident of Berlin, but actually it was poorly translated German.
And what the better translation was is I am a
jelly donut, which which was not JFK's finest moment, But
(20:59):
nonetheless I feel the same sentiments. Aurie Berlinner and I
may disagree on a lot of things, but I'm proud
to stand with Arieberlinner for daring to speak the truth
because free speech matters, and I actually think it matters.
I met recently with the CEO of a major journalistic
enterprise I won't say who it is, and I told him,
(21:21):
I said, listen, I actually believe in a free press.
I defend you even when you kick the crap out
of me, even when you attack me, because I think
it's important to democracy and free speech to have a
real and vibrant press. But when you guys are just
corrupt ideologues, when you're just propagandists, it hurts the entire country.
(21:42):
And so I give a big shout out to Arib Berlinner.
Like Barry Weiss, on whose platform he wrote this there
are a handful of liberals, and I actually want to
call out listen. I don't know that many fair minded
liberals in the media listen to Verdict, although we're close
to a million listeners, maybe there are. If you're a
(22:02):
fair minded liberal working in the media and you don't
like the bias and propagan and I'm not saying you're
suddenly conservative and a right winger, that's okay, that's okay.
We can have reasonable discussions, but when people speak out
like Urie Berliner and Barry Wise, it makes a difference,
and we need more people to do that.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
As before, if you want to hear the rest of
this conversation on this topic, you can go back and
dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the
entire thing. I want to get back to the big
story number three of the week you may have missed. Senator.
Let's talk about the confidence of Chuck Schumer. In that
clip that we played, he seemed pretty confident and set
(22:44):
it over again. I think twice that this is going
to be something we're looking for a resolution quickly, maybe
in a day. As the reporter you go back at him.
He didn't seem to push back on that at all.
So what is their game plan to basically make all
this go way? And how do we stop it? And
that seems to be your core goal here is to
(23:04):
make sure that doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Schumer wants it incredibly quick, incredibly silent. He doesn't want
Senate Democrats on record, he doesn't want any of the
facts revealed to the American people. So originally the plan
was that the House had announced they were going to
transmit the articles of impeachment Wednesday night. You and I
are recording this right now. It is eleven fifty one
pm Tuesday night. The plan from the House was it
(23:29):
was going to come over Wednesday night. Now, the consequence
of that means that the Senate would have convened as
an impeachment trial Thursday at one pm. So when articles
of impeachment come to the Senate, there's actually a separate
set of rules for impeachment. They're totally different from the
legislative rules, and it's mandatory that the Senate immediately moves
(23:51):
into impeachment when articles of impeachment come over. Look, it's
only come over twenty one times in our whole nation's history.
It is an unusual moment problem with the Senate starting
this Thursday at one pm is typically senators go home
Thursday afternoon, get on a plane, and fly back.
Speaker 4 (24:10):
To their states.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
Schumer wanted to do all of this Thursday afternoon because
he knew senators would be anxious to leave to get
back to their states. They have events scheduled in their state,
they're traveling around their state, and he knew they would
want to get out of here. So this morning, Tuesday morning,
I started the morning by sitting down in a meeting
with Mitch McConnell and with Republican leadership and with Mike
(24:31):
Lee and John Kennedy, and meeting with leadership about how
we can fight what Schumer is doing here. And a
point that I raised in that meeting this morning, I said,
it is really damn stupid for us to do this
Thursday afternoon. It facilitates Schumer's goal of making this quick.
(24:53):
And what I suggested at the meeting this morning is
I said it would make a lot more sense for
the House to transmit the articles of impeachment next week,
next Monday. If they transmit it Monday, the Senate takes
it up Tuesday. Tuesday is a much better time to
take it up, because it means the Senate we have
the entire week to put this issue before the American people,
and we're not doing it at a time when senators
(25:16):
both Democrats and Republicans are eager to get out of town.
The phrase is jet fumes are in the air like
Thursday afternoon is when leadership tries to ram things through
quickly because everyone wants to leave.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Well, and by the way side, note what's happening also
this weekend, which every person in America that we love
sport is going to be paying attention to as well,
that starts on Thursday the Master. So for Democrats to
be even a better time to.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Get on Thursday. So a bit of good news I
raised this morning at the meeting. I said, this doesn't
make any sense. Everyone who was meeting with us agreed,
and so I texted the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.
Mike Lee texted the Speaker of the House. John Kennedy
texted the Speaker of the House, and the Speaker, to
his credit, he's a great guy, he's a great friend.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
The Speaker said, okay, great, happy to do it. And
so he announced this afternoon that they were going to
delay sending the articles of impeachment until early next week,
and so we asked him to do that. He did
that at our request, and the reason we wanted it
to come early next week is so that we could
focus early on the week when we could get real
attention and focus on it. So that was a good step.
(26:22):
Now I want to pause and have you reflect a
little bit on why this motion to table is so
consequential if Schumer succeeds, if every Democrat votes for it,
and right now Schumer seems supremely confident that every Democrat
will vote for it. What that means, number one, is
(26:43):
that every Democrat is now on record supporting Joe Biden's
open borders, that they're perfectly fine with what Alejandro Mayorcis
has done. But number two, understand that they will have
participated in changing the US Senate. And so so today
I participated in a press conference with a number of
(27:03):
Republican senators where we talked about the significance of this moment.
And it is in many ways very similar to twenty
thirteen and twenty thirteen Harry Reid, the Democrat, was the
Senate majority leader, and it is when Harry Reid nuked
the filibuster for judicial appointments and for cabinet appointments and
(27:24):
nuking the filibuster, what that meant is is that Harry
Reid broke the Senate rules in order to change the
Senate rules. It used to be the case that you
needed sixty votes to move forward on judges, to move
forward on executive branch nominees. And what Harry Reid did
is he used what was called the nuclear option, which
(27:45):
is that he got a ruling from the Chair on
the floor that it takes sixty votes to proceed to
a nomination, and then he moved to overturn the ruling
of the chair. Under the Senate rules, any ruling of
the chair can be overturned. You can overturn the ruling
of the Chair with just fifty one votes. And so
what happened was Harry Reid got the Democrats to overturn
(28:07):
the ruling of the chair. And once you do that,
you change the precedence and that new ruling is binding.
The effect of that is, since twenty thirteen, nominations have
only required fifty one votes instead of sixty votes. Well,
that night that Reid was nuking the filibuster for nominations.
(28:29):
The filibuster still exists for legislation, but read nuked it
for nominations. I talked to Amy Klobuchar on the Senate floor,
and I told Amy that day, I said, you are
going to regret this decision. All of the Democrats are
going to regret this decision. And the consequence of this
decision is we're going to see more justices like Antoninscalienne
(28:51):
Clarence Thomas on the courts. And there is an irony
that the direct result of Harry Reid nuking the filibuster
is Roe versus Wade being overturned. If Harry Reid had
not nuked the filibuster, there's no way on earth that
the Senate would have confirmed Brett Kavanaugh, or probably not
Amy Coney Barrett, and maybe not even Neil Gorsuch that
(29:13):
if we required sixty votes, Roe versus Wade would still
be the law of the land. But for the Senate
Democrats nuking the filibuster in twenty thirteen, and I told
them that a number of us told them that in
twenty thirteen. Now, what Chuck Schumer is planning to do
next week is every bit as big a deal as
(29:35):
nuking the filibuster, And in many ways it's more significant.
Why because the filibuster is not asture.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
What does the cause and effect then?
Speaker 4 (29:42):
Right?
Speaker 1 (29:42):
If you're saying and you give the last example, which
is significant, and I don't think many people understood that
or remembered it, But what would it then be the
cause and effect of this? And could there be a
silver lining in it?
Speaker 3 (29:56):
Well, Look, the reason it is more significant is the
filibuster is not written in the Constitution. The filibuster is
a matter of Senate procedure and Senate practice, and the
Senate rules impeachment is written into the Constitution. The obligation
on the Senate to try impeachment is mandatory. It is
in the Constitution. So what the Senate Democrats are planning
(30:17):
to do next week is nuke the impeachment clause of
the Constitution, destroy the Senate's responsibility, give away the Senate's power.
And you want to know the consequences. Listen, We've got
an election in November. I think there's a very good
chance Donald Trump will be elected president. And it is
entirely possible that Trump will be elected president. Republicans will
(30:40):
take the Senate, and yet we could lose the House.
We could end up in January with Trump and the
White House, a Republican Senate and a Democrat House. If
that happens, I'm here to predict right now. If the
Democrats have the House, they will once again impeach Donald Trump,
maybe for the third time, the fourth time, the fifth time.
I can't tell you how many times a Democrat House
(31:02):
will impeach Donald Trump. It may be the only thing
they do for two years. If that happens and it
comes to the Senate and we have a Republican Senate,
you know what we'll do. We'll table the damn thing.
And let's be clear, we didn't last time. So when
Donald Trump was impeached the first time, it was exactly
that scenario. You had a Democrat House. Pelosi ram the impeachment.
(31:25):
Through the impeachment came over to the Senate, we had
a Republican Senate. Mitch McConnell was the majority leader. We
could have tried to do what Chuck Schumer is getting
ready to do. We could have just tried to table
at the outset, but we didn't because Senate Republicans actually
took our constitutional obligation. Seriously, we followed the Constitution, we
conducted the trial, and Donald Trump was acquitted. We voted
(31:46):
not guilty. That's actually the proper constitutional way. What Chuck
Schumer is willing to do to protect Democrat senators from
accountability for the disaster at our southern border of their policies,
what he now calls a policy dispute, is break the
Senate and nuke the impeachment clause of the Constitution. That's
(32:09):
a big deal, and it's a deal that will have
consequences ten years, fifty years, one hundred years from now.
If Schumer does this next week, you will never again
see an impeachment trial when the Senate is the same
party as the president. That will be taken off the table.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So if he does this, will there be any backlash
you think come November? Or is this such inside baseball
that it just says they say, okay, so so what
he changed it? Who really cares?
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Well, look, the institutional change of the Senate. I don't
think that's going to be a big voting issue. I
do think the border and the chaos and the suffering
and the death that is coming from Joe Biden to
the Democrats' open border. I think that is going to
be probably the single most important issue in November, and
(33:02):
so it is critically important we do everything we can
to number One, increase the price for Schumer breaking the Senate,
destroying the institutions of democracy. You know, there's an irony.
Democrats love to beat their chest and talk about how
they want to save democracy, and yet this is an
assault on democracy. This is an assault on the constitution
(33:26):
and the institution that is the Senate, just like the
Democrats assault on the filibuster back in twenty thirteen. The
Democrats have systematically been tearing down our institutions. But what
I think is going to resonate. So listen, when we
move to the impeachment trial, hopefully early next week, a
number of us intend to raise points of order. I
(33:46):
intend to raise probably multiple points of order, challenging what
the Democrats are doing. And let me be clear what's
supposed to happen. So here's what should happen next week.
They're one of two things that can happen. Number One,
the Senate, the full Senate could could move to could
adopt an organizing resolution and move to holding an impeachment
(34:10):
trial on the floor of the Senate. Now, when the
president is impeached, the Chief Justice of the United States
presides over the impeachment trial and it occurs on the
floor of the Senate. You'll recall that's what happened with
both the Trump's impeachments. That's what happened with Bill Clinton's impeachment.
And so Mike Lee has filed an organizing resolution that
(34:34):
I've co authored that would set up a trial using
exactly the same rules that the Democrats put in place
that we followed for Donald Trump's impeachment. Actually, the first
one the Republicans put in place. The second one the
Democrats had a majority, they put in place for Trump's
second impeachment. And by the way, the second impeachment of Trump,
the Chief Justice did not preside because Trump was no
(34:56):
longer president. So Pat Leahy the president pro tem because
the Chief Justice only presides when it is the sitting
president who's being impeached. That's one way of proceeding. Frankly,
if we had a Republican majority, that's the way we
would proceed is we would have a trial on the
floor of the Senate to put the facts before the
American people. There is another way that Schumer and the
(35:18):
Democrats could proceed consistent with the Constitution and consistent with
the law, which is, the Senate could appoint an impeachment committee,
a committee with an equal number of members, an equal
number of Democrats and Republicans, and the committee would conduct
the impeachment trial. Now that the trial would be public.
The House managers would present their evidence, and the committee
(35:39):
would conduct the trial. That is the way that the
Senate is handled, for example, the judicial impeachments that come over.
They've appointed a committee, the committee has heard the trial,
and then the committee makes a recommendation to the Senate
and the Senate Ultimately every Senator has to vote guilty
or not guilty. But the trial itself is not held
on the Senate floor. It's held in a committe. Now,
(36:00):
I filed an organizing resolution that would set up exactly
that process, would set up a committee to conduct the trial.
The trial would be public, so we would put the information,
we'd put the charges, we'd put the evidence, we'd put
the harms, we'd put the people hurt and killed by
the Democrats' open borders. We put all of those facts
before the American people. But it would not be on
(36:22):
the floor, it would be in a committee. I'm going
to make a motion to do that. The Democrats are
going to oppose it, I expect, and I think there
are a number of Republicans who are going to raise
points of orders, try to make motions to highlight the
enormous harms caused by the open borders. And what I'm
anticipating is every Democrat voting party line over and over
(36:45):
and over again against every motion and every point of
order we raise. Why And it's what Chuck Schumer told us,
because this is a policy dispute, and the policy of
the Democrats is they are for open borders, no matter
how many people are killed, no matter how many children
are violated, no matter how many women are sexually assaulted. Therefore,
open borders, no matter how many terrorists come into this country,
(37:08):
and how much death and destruction results. And I think
next week we're going to see that vividly before the
American people.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center,
Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal
with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts
every other day. You're not listening to Verdict or each
day when you listen to Verdict afterwards, I'd love to
have you as a listener to again Ben Ferguson Podcasts,
and we will see you back here on Monday morning.
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