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on in Washington right now. President Joe Biden demanding that Republican centers get out of the way, that they use this opportunity to push through the most radical aspects of their agenda and using the debt ceiling crisis to do it. What happens if the United States defaults on its debt. It's never happened before. We have no idea what will happen now, Washington playing with fire. This is Verdict with

Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdicts with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, and I have a whole lot of questions here, Senator. We'll get right into it very simply. I hate to ask a stupid question, but even I and I've paid a lot of attention to these things, even I don't quite understand what this is what is the debt ceiling? Why does the debt ceiling matter? Why do the debt ceiling fights come up every few years? And what happens if we do not raise the debt ceiling and default

on our debt. Well, probably the easiest way to think about it is like it's the limit on your credit card. The debt ceiling is the cap on how much money the federal government can pass, and it's a statutory limit that's passed into law that limits how much the United

States government can borrow. Just like if you have a credit card that has a ten thousand dollars limit, you can't borrow eleven thousand, And if you want to borrow more than ten thousand, you have to get on the phone and try to ask them to raise it to fifteen or raise it to money. That's the same principle as the debt ceiling. It is a tool designed to try to force Congress to confront spending and to rein in out of control spending and out of control debt.

And the debt ceiling expired on July thirty first, the end of July. Now, the Department of Treasury has the ability to kind of push the date when the US needs to borrow back a couple of months, it's called using extraordinary measures, and so Janet Janet Yell and the Treasury Secretary is able to delay the date to sometime

to mid delayed October. But if the debt ceiling is not raised, then the United States government cannot continue to borrow borrow money, and so that puts pressure on Washington. We're right now in the middle of a battle because of two things. Number One, Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have the total and complete ability to raise the debt ceiling on their own. So Democrats control the Senate, Democrats control the House, Democrats control the White House. There's a

process called budget reconciliation. We've talked about that quite a bit on this podcast. Budget reconciliation is the process that comes from the Budget Act in nineteen seventy four. The part that is really relevant and that comes up with some regularity, is it is the major exception to the filibuster. So ordinarily, to move to precede the legislation in the

Senate takes sixty votes. Under budget reconciliation, it only takes fifty, and so Schumer and Pelosi and Biden because they have control of all the elected branches of government, have the ability with just Democratic votes to raise the debt ceiling. And they could have done it a week ago, they could have done it a month ago, they could have

done it three months ago. So what's happening? Schumer and the Democrats are nervous, And they're nervous because the Democrats are in the middle of a massive spending street spree. I mean, it is reckless. It is the biggest spending spree since World War Two. It is massive. And in the face of that, Democrats don't want to vote for the debt to pay for their trillions in new spending. So what Schumer is doing instead is he keeps bringing up the debt ceiling in a legislative vehicle that requires

sixty votes. So he doesn't want to use reconciliation, which he can, and there's nothing Republicans can do to stop in from using reconciliation, but he wants to bring it up through a vehicle that requires sixty votes. Why because he wants ten Republicans to vote for raising the debt ceiling. He doesn't want it to be just Democrats who own their trillions in debt. What's amazing about that explanation, which I think spells it out pretty well, is it's the

opposite of what we're being told in the media. What we're being told in the media is that Republicans who are fanatical about spending and they're neurotic about not raising the debt ceiling, and or they're opportunistic or their cynical, they are holding America's good credit hostage because they don't want to vote for this thing. But what you're saying is, actually,

Chuck Schumer could pass this tomorrow. So it's really Chuck Schumer and the Democrats who are holding this hostage and who are drawing this out and making a big spectacle of it. What happens just at a practical level, I guess we're kind of dealing with a crystal ball here because it's never happened before. But what would happen if we just defaulted on our debt? It would be a

catastrophic impact in the market. It would cause the stock market to tumble, it would cause bonds to tumble, it would cause the credit rating of the United States to be downgraded. That the cascading effects could be enormous. It would be wildly irresponsible. No rational person wants to see the United States default on its debt. America pays our debt. And I gotta, you know, I gotta say, it's worth

stopping and reflecting it. What a wildly different position we are in today versus twenty fourteen, and and and if I can take us back to the way back machine to twenty fourteen. So twenty fourteen was was my second year in the Senate. So I was still a freshman in a newbie And the single biggest fight I have had in nine years in the Senate occurred on the debt ceiling occurred on this issue. And it's as you know,

I've written two books. Last year I wrote One Vote Away about the Supreme Court, great book, go by it. But the first book I wrote was called A Time for Truth, and A Time for Truth was my life story. I wrote it in twenty fifteen. The opening chapter of my first book, A Time for Truth is entitled Mendacity, and it is the inside story of the death ceiling fight. So let's go back to twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen, Democrats controlled the Senate. It was Harry Reid instead of Chuck Schumer,

who was the majority leader. Republicans controlled the House, Barack Obama was president, and there was another debt ceiling coming up. We were going to our Senate Republican lunch and every Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday, all the Senate Republicans we have lunch together. And at one of the lunches, Mitch McConnell, who was the minority leader at the time, he stood up and

he said, I've got a great plan. I want all of us to consent to unanimously consent to lower the threshold for Harry Reid to raise the death ceiling from sixty votes to fifty votes. Now, in the Senate, you do pretty much anything by unanimous consent. But unanimous consent, as the name suggests, takes all one hundred senators agree. So Mitch said, I want all of us to unanimously consent to lower the threshold for Harry Reid from sixty

vote to votes. And the beauty of it is, once we do that, we can all vote no, the Democrats can all vote yes, and we could all tell our constituents at home we voted no on the thing we just consented to allow happen. And I was sitting there, I was frankly expecting leadership to come up with some sort of kind of lame and tepid strategy. It had not occurred to me that their strategy was absolute and

total capitulation from the outset. And so I sat there in the room and I just raised my hand and I said, Mitch, you need to understand there is no universe in which I will consent to lowering the threshold for Harry Reid and Barack Obama to raise our debt from sixty votes to fifty votes. I was elected by the people of Texas promising to do everything humanly possible to stop the out of control spending and debt that is bankrupting our kids and grandkids. And I'm not willing

to do it. Michael. There is nothing I've done in my entire time in the Senate that has generated more rage, more fury, more red faced senators yelling and cursing at me than that simple act of objecting. It was much worse, by the way, than the Obamacare. It was much worse than the Obamacare filibuster. So leadership was mad that I had spent twenty one hours filibustering Obamacare the previous years. They were mad about that, But when I objected to

their scheme to raise the death ceiling. It the fury it caused was massive. It's fascinating how much things have changed from twenty fourteen to now. In twenty fourteen, Republican leadership carpent bomb me, attacked me, planted planted editorials criticizing me. So, for example, the Wall Street Journal, which, by the way, when Republican leadership is mad at you, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is their preferred whipping post, and it's where they take you out, and it comes

straight from Republican leadership. They go to the Journal. The Journal wrote an editorial entitled Minority Maker, and it said Cruz is going to ensure that Republicans remain in the minority in the Senate forever, and that Harry Reid remains majority leader because he is fighting and objecting on the death ceiling. Now, I point out they wrote that in twenty fourteen, and just a few months later we had

the elections in twenty fourteen. And you know, Michael, in the Old Testament, if someone came forward and said they were a prophet, the Old Testament actually just discussed what you should do. You should ask them to make short term prophecy, short term predictions, and see if they come true. Well, the Journal's prediction that I was going to make Republicans a permanent majority, it turned out just a little bit wrong,

but categorically wrong. And in November twenty fourteen, we won nine Senate seats, we retired Harry Read as majority leader, and we won the biggest majority in the House of Representatives since nineteen twenty eight. And so miraculously, standing and fighting also wins elections. The voters like it when Republicans

don't roll over and surrender to the Democrat. Well, this, I think is what really relates to what's going on right now today, because I politically, I came of age during that era from twenty ten to twenty fourteen, the Tea Party movement, your election, Actually you've politically come of age. I'm I'm still coming of age. Actually, you know, I can't wait to get a little hair on my face. I thought this was like a teen drama. Oh, I remember, even when I was fresher and facer at the time.

I remember every Republican, every Conservative who was worth his salt, was focused on the debt, on deficit spending, on this idea that the inheritance we're leaving to our kids is debt. I mean, what kind of a country does that, what kind of a generation does that. They're actually going to be responsible, We're going to get our own house in order. We're going to enact to these principles that we all like to talk about. And then your story here, I

think is very important. What happened is the Republican leadership in those back rooms just said, yeah, that was all bunk. We're not going to follow any of that. We're just going to make it easier. That was just a way to win elections. And now when we're focusing on this debt fight, it seems to me that many Republicans and Conservatives don't really care anymore. I mean that focus from you know, ten years ago, it seems to have moved

on to other issues. And I wonder if it's because we just got burned during the tea party and nothing really changed. Well, look, I say a couple of things, you know. Number one, if you go back to the twenty fourteen fight, it's important to note what I was fighting for at the time, and I was not fighting for never raising the debt ceiling. I've never been someone who promises I will never raise the debt ceiling. We've got you know, typically the figure is about forty percent

of what the government spends has borrowed money. So unless you're prepared to instantaneously cut government spending by forty percent, that's not a reasonable position to say we will never raise the debt ceiling. My position in twenty fourteen, my position today is that I'm not willing to support raising the debt ceiling unless it is accompanied by meaningful structural reforms that address spending and rain in the out of

control spending. In twenty fourteen, the case I made to the conferences, I said, look, if you look historically, the debt scene ceiling has been the lever point where we actually get spending constraints. So at the time these figures are a little bit out of date because they're twenty fourteen figures. But at the time of the last fifty two times Congress had raised the debt ceiling, so this comes up a lot. Twenty seven of those times Congress

had attached meaningful spending reforms to the debt ceiling. So, for example, the Budget Control Act in twenty ten, which made major progress reigning in out of control spending that came through a debt ceiling fight. Graham Rudman. Probably the most significant spending restraint legislation enacted in the law and modern times came through a debt ceiling fight. So it is possible to make progress on spending by using the

death ceiling as leverage. And so what I argued in twenty fourteen is let's not let this lever point go. Let's use it to actually honor our promises to the voters. Some of the differences Number one, I think Republican leadership has learned Unlike in twenty fourteen, twenty fourteen they thought I was bluffing at this point, they don't think I'm bluffing anymore. So nobody asked this time, Ted, will you

consent to lower the thresholds reporters asked. They ran up and said, hey, Cruz, are you going to object to Laurie the threshold? I was like, h of course. But what was interesting is when people learn you don't bluff, Nobody in the conference thought I would possibly not object. They They're just like, yeah, okay, Ted will object to that. So that option ain't gonna work. So leadership didn't even

try it. A second difference, and this is an important difference, is unlike in twenty fourteen when we had a Republican house, now they've got a Democratic House, so now they can raise the debt ceiling on their own without us. We can't stop them. I wish we could, but we can't stop them. There does seem to be a lot of turmoil within the Democratic Conference. I mean, I guess this is a slightly related matter, but in a very different context.

Kirsten Cinema, one of two semi moderate Democrats in the Senate, is being accosted everywhere she goes. She's being costed on airplanes. She was accosted in the bathroom by an ille alien screaming at her to push for a mass amnesty. This is a we always lament civility breaking down, and sometimes it's exaggerated and at sometimes it's real. But this seems to be crossing a line when you follow female senators

into the bathroom and start screaming at them. By the way, as a foreign national demanding that you give legal status to millions of people. Now, look that that is exactly right. And the degree to which Kirsten Cinema and Joe mansion are being harassed. You look at Cinema and these left wing activists that she teaches a university class in Arizona, and they followed her into her class, they harassed her class, and then they followed her from her class into the restroom.

She went into the stall to use the restroom and they sat there filming it and berating her. And by the way, they were so proud of what they were doing. They were filming doing it. As you noted, they all so harassed her on the airplane, the harassed her in the airport, and I got to say yesterday there was really something shameful because Joe Biden was asked about it and he just said, you know, it's part of the process.

What utter crap. No, I mean, that was an opportunity for Biden to show some leadership and say, you know, no, you don't harass someone and chase them into the ladies room. That is not the way people behave in a civilized democracy. But but the left is so angry that they believe intimidation and threats are an appropriate way of behaving. And right now they are trying to rain the nastiest pressure imaginable down on Cinema and Mansion to pressure them to

flip their votes. At least so far they haven't. This is on the big Bernie Sanders three point five trillion dollars socialist budget. Right now, Mansion and Cinema are saying they're not going to support it, that it's too big and it's too irresponsible, and the left is furious. Well, center, I do have to ask you, though I can't believe that I'm giving Joe Biden the benefit of the doubt. It feels very unnatural to me, But I do want to ask if he's got a point. Biden says, if

you're in public life, you're going to get accosted. People are going to yell at you. It's and it does happen to a lot of people. So to what degree is this historic incivility that we're seeing, not just with cinema but in recent years even on say, both sides of the aisle, And to what degree is this just business as usual? Look, it actually is markedly different. In the last couple of years. When Donald Trump got elected, left lost their mind. He broke them. Their brains are broken.

And I can tell you it is very, very different serving in public office Look, I've been in some contentious battles, but it's only been the last couple of years. Remember a couple of year years ago, Heidi and I were at a restaurant in DC at a group of screaming, angry anarchist came in harassed us. We had to leave the restaurant because we didn't want to disturb the other people who were having dinner, and they chased us down the street and into a dark alley. I mean, it

had the potential of being a very dangerous gathering. It was a dozen angry leftists with Heidi and me, and it was threatening and serious. Rand Paul and his wife Kelly Paul, the Black Lives Matter protesters when Trump gave his speech at the White House during the RNC convention. They were scared for their lives. They had police officers that were fighting back what was close to a riot, and Rand and Kelly both were frightened that they were going to be seriously injured, if not worse. This has

all gotten nastier than it used to be. I can tell you in nine years I've been in the Senate for eight of them, I never or had a protest at my house in the last year or so, I've had probably twenty five or thirty. Wow. We now have twenty four hour security at the house, which which we have to do because the protesters have gotten so nasty.

They have showed up at five in the morning, banging pots, shining flashlights in the windows of our neighbors, including neighbors who have little children, screaming profanities, dropping the F bomb at five in the morning, designed to wake people up and harass them. And so, what what is happening to Cinema? By the way, mansion mansion? When he's in DC, lives on a houseboat, and he had protesters row their kayaks up to his houseboat and engage with him at his houseboat.

This is a far nastier form of engagement than used to be typical. And I think it is as a result of Trump's presidency. The left just they convinced themselves he's Adolf Hitler, and so all rage and fury is justified in opposition to someone who they hate so much. You know, it's an interesting case study. I mean, I'm sorry that you're going through it, but you are a kind of an interesting case study here because you you were outspoken, you were something of a firebrand the minute

you got to the Senate. So it's not as though they ignored you just because you were a wallflower. And then later on they started going after you. I mean you going back to twenty twenty fourteen. Yet this never happened at twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, this never happened. Yeah, so this something clearly has changed. And you know, I mentioned to try to sound nice and open minded, I said that there is incivility on both sides of the aisle,

but we really should not make a comparison here. When when you have Maxine Waters saying, go get up in their face, go shout at them in public, meaning Republicans, when you have Hillary Clinton saying you can't be civil with your opponents, when you've got the sitting Vice president now Kamala Harris bailing out rioters and looters, that is a very different thing than what the Republicans are doing. But the Republicans are being uncivil as well, though much

less violent. And this is the way they're being uncivil as they're chanting. According to the news report, let's go Brandon, Senator, can you explain that to me? Well, it's an amazing phenomenon that seems to be occurring at college football games across the country, and it appears to be spontaneous, but very large groups of people are are chanting expletives at Joe Biden, and in particular, they're chanting F Joe Biden, but they're they're not abbreviating it. And it's a fairly

remarkable thing that seems to be springing up. And the story you're telling as there was a NASCAR race a couple of days ago, and the winner of the race was whose name was Brandon was being interviewed and the crowd behind him is yelling and yelling loudly F Joe Biden in clear and very distinct words, and and the NBC interviewer who is interviewing him says, Oh, the crowd's so excited. You can hear them channing. Let's go Brandon. And if you just watch the clip that that is

not what they're chanting. In her defense, NASCAR races are loud. Maybe she had headphones on, maybe she couldn't hear, or maybe it was one of the more remarkable examples of fake news. I you know, I did tweet nast. Is NBC News going to issue a correction because I'm quite confident they were not channing Let's go Brandon, and it's now become a thing. In fact, the Daily Wire I saw is selling let's go Brandon shirts. I got to admit I was awfully tempted to have verdict, just steal

the idea and do the same thing. We may put a Let's go Brandon shirt on our cactus friend. You know, I find it it u in the world to fake news. It was a pretty remarkable moment. It was. This was what was so shocking about the whole thing is there are a great many people in this country who believe that Brandon should go go himself. Let's put it that way. And so obviously there is something of a popular uprising here, especially when people are rowdy at games and things like that.

And it's the gas lighting. I think that got people that the media would would tell you, no, don't believe you're lying, eyes, don't believe you're lying. Ears, and even you know that this ties into something probably a little more urgent and serious to two people in the way, quick story, I'll tell you on that. So when I first ran for Senate in twenty twelve, my opponent was David Duhurst, and he was the Lieutenant governor of Texas. He's worth about two hundred million dollars. He was viewed

as unstoppable and unbeatable. He had universal name idea. I was at two percent. Nobody had ever heard of me. I didn't have any money, I didn't have a prayer. And there was a moment really when when everything flipped. So the primary, neither of us got fifty percent. On primary night, he got forty four percent. I got thirty four percent, which shocked people because no one got fifty. We went to a runoff. And in between the primary and the runoff was the Texas State Convention, about fifteen

thousand activists from all across Texas. It's the largest Republican convention in the country other than the National Republican Convention. And Rick Perry, who was a friend but in that race. Rick Perry had endorsed David Duhurst, and he was there speaking and he said in his speech, and he was speaking the day before I was going to speak, he

said everyone should vote for David Dwhurst for Senate. And the entire convention erupted in booze, loud, angry, booze and it was sort of a it was a wild moment because at that point all of our supporters felt they were alone, like this cruise character as no prayer, nobody else's voting for him, you can't win, and like each

of the activists looked in holy cow, everyone else was booing. Well. Afterwards, Rick Perry did a press conference where reporters asked, Wow, the whole convention booed you when you said David do Hurst name, and Perry, to his credit, he said no, no no, no, no. They were not saying boo They were saying do do do hers? And that was pretty damn funny. I mean, I was like, Okay, it's not true, but but that's that's a pretty clever. That's thinking on your feet though.

That is thing is Dohurst do yes? Well? You you actually you do? You do see this phenomenon, And sometimes it's to express their anger at Brandon or Joe Biden, depending on your interpretation. Sometimes it's at a political convention, and sometimes it's bubbling up from the way that the government is actually working. And this is something you've been seeing for months and months now, specifically with regard to

critical race theory and gender theory. In schools. Parents are showing up to their school boards and they're pushing back on these policies, and they're saying, no, get this nonsense out of the classroom. This is harming my child's education. We don't want any part of it. So there have been many protest movements in the history of the United States,

going back a very very long time. Very recently, we had a protest movement last year, the BLM and Antifa riots, which often turned violent and resulted in lots of people dying and lots of businesses being torn down and places being set on fire. And we were told those were mostly peaceful protests. Well, now we are hearing from the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, that the parents who were showing up to protest radical gender theory

in kindergarten classrooms are very possibly domestic terrorists. A momorandum just went out the Attorney General instructing the DOJ to watch the disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation's public schools. The Department takes his incidents seriously. And is committed to using

its authority and resources to counter them. Are we now at the point where we believe that people throwing molotov cocktails at federal buildings last year in twenty twenty, they're mostly peaceful protesters, but parents protesting radicalism and their kids' schools, they're the domestic terrorists. I wish you were exaggerating, but the statement you just made on its face is so utterly ludicrous, and it's also true. You know Merrick Garland, who's the Attorney General. He was a Court of Appeals

judge for twenty some odd years. As you recall, he was who Barack Obama had nominated to the Supreme Court to replace Scalia. But he didn't get that vacancy because we didn't take it up because it was the presidential election year and Republicans controlled the Senate and we said, the voters are going to decide who filled the seat.

Merrick Garland is now Attorney General. At his confirmation hearing, I asked Garland he actually had a reputation as a Court of Appeals judge for being relatively fair and impartial. He was not viewed as a hard partisan when he was a judge and I cross examined Garland at his confirmation hearing, and I said, look, under Barack Obama, the

Department of Justice was politicized and it was weaponized. It was turned into a weapon to target people that were perceived to be the political enemies of the White House. And that includes the IRS that went after Tea Party groups, when after pro life groups, went after pro Israel groups. That includes the intelligence community in the FBI that went so far as wire tapping the Donald Trump campaign and

sending in people wearing wires to record them. And I asked, Merrick Garland, will you commit, if you're confirmed no to use the Department of Justice as a partisan weapon to attack the other side. And he did, He made that commitment, he said he would not. That memo you're holding is really disturbing because I think he has been breaking that promise almost from the moment he got there. But that

memo is the clearest example of it. So, look, we're saying a phenomenal example of democracy and action in that parents are rising up at school board meetings and expressing dismay over critical race theory that's being taught in schools, that our kids are being taught lies they're being taught that America is fundamentally racist. They're being taught that all whites are racists. They're being taught that the entire history

of America as a history of oppression. And these lies are dividing kids based on racial lines, and parents are upset about that. They don't like it, and so they're going to their school boards and saying, don't teach this garbage to our kids. That's actually how our democratic process is supposed to work, that elected officials are supposed to be accountable to the voters. The left doesn't like accountability.

They like to be insulated. They're perfectly happy to harass people they don't like, but they themselves don't like to be held accountable. But now the Department of Justice, Merrick Garland is saying they're going to treat a parent going to a school board meeting as a terrorist and a threat, and they're going to go after them and they're going to persecute them. And this is absurd, It is a ridiculous abuse of power. And listen, you pointed out last

year the BLM and Antifa riots. They burned storefront after storefront, they robbed, they looted, they murdered police officers, and yet the Department of Justice treated it as isolated issues. Look, they were firebombing of federal courthouse night after night after night, and yet the Department of Justice that you know, this DJ under Merrick Garland traits. It is just, oh, isn't that nice that their throat literally throwing Molotov cocktails. This

is sad that the Democrats. Look, COVID has really revealed this as well. Democrats are in they are authoritarians. You want to know the basic difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals are comfortable using the coercive power of government to force you to comply, to force you to obey, whereas conservatives believe in liberty, believe in individual choice. You can say what you want, even if it is dumbass stuff. You can say it on religion, you can believe what

you want, even if it's dumbass stuff. You can go worship a golden calf in your backyard if you want to. We believe in individual choice. On vaccines, Look, you and I have talked about vaccines. I believe in vaccines. I've taken the vaccine, my family's taken the vaccine. But individual choice means it's up to you whether you get a medical procedure, whether you take a vaccine. Gavin Newsom is ordering every school child in California to get the vaccine.

That is horrific. It is a violation of medical privacy and autonomy to do that. And the Left doesn't care. And so when it comes to parents protesting the radical Marxist theories being taught to their kids, the Department of Justice will come in and threaten mom at the PTA meeting, We're going to put you in handcuffs. Holy crap, that is offensive. This is the irony is that the left is all for liberation and expression and descent is patriotic

and protesting when it suits their interests. But then, of course, the moment that a concerned parent says, actually, I don't think little Johnny should be told that white people are evil and that America's are rotten place, and that boys can become little girls, and you know, maybe we should just stick to the you know, reading and arithmetic. Maybe we should stick to the basically building blocks of education.

They are labeled as domestic terrorists. And what is so dismaying to me is as you said, and as you made clear during his confirmation hearings, Mary Garland was the moderate one. He's supposed to be one of the most moderate people in the entire administration, So that that is a great fear. And actually, something else that you touched on here is democracy in action. Who sets these kinds of standards, Who decides these things? What does our public square?

What does it look like? We only have a Let me make it. Let me make a brief point on that, Michael, let me make actually two points on that. Number one. Some of the sort of Twitter lefties who said, oh well, this is this is threats, this is let me be clear. Nobody has a right to threaten anyone. Nobody has a

right to carry out violence. And if you have someone who makes a threat of violence or carries out violence against a school member, school board member, even if they're some not elefty, if you have violence against someone, they should be prosecuted and sent to jail. That violence is not acceptable. Secondly, look, I going back to the point about you know, harassing Kirsten's cinema in the ladies room.

The parents are doing this at school board meetings that are designed to be a forum for parents to be able to express their views. They're not going to the homes of the school board meetings, they're not going into the bathroom with them. They're going to a public forum. And and I am all four listen. I mean, I've done hundreds of town halls. I've had people come and disagree with me, and I'm perfectly fine to get in in a robust discussion in a forum that is appropriate

for that. I'll tell you one time, it's kind of fun. I don't know. Twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, I was actually part of a protest at the White House against the Obama Iran nuclear deal, and there were protesters from that

showed up, Code Pink, the sort of lefty group. They were there screaming and yelling and they were angry, and I actually stopped and I said, all right, look, the First Amendment gives you a right to speak, it gives me a right to speak, but it doesn't give either one of us a right to shout the other down and prevent people from hearing what we have to say.

So I said, I'll tell you what. Pick someone from your group, You tell me who pick whoever it is, come on up here, and I'm going to hand you this microphone, and I'm going to let you tell this crowd why you think the Iran deal is a good deal. Now I'm going to give you a response, and you may not like my response. And so they selected Medea Benjamin as one of the founders of code Pink. She came up there and I said, now, look, if I give her this microphone, you guys don't get to be

disruptive and scream and yell and shout everyone down. And we proceeded to have I think it was a fifteen or twenty minute debate on the merits of the Iran deal. Was all televised. If you go online, you can google it and watch me debating the head of Code Pink on the irand deal. That that is that's democracy in action too. So I'm not saying that, you know, but there's a difference between that and following someone into the bathroom while they'll try to trying to use the facilities right.

And this actually ties in pretty directly as we think of the way our public square has changed. Now. So many of these debates happen on social media, and as big tech companies get more and more and more power, they seem to be controlling speech in the republic, and if you control speech in a republic, you basically control the whole thing. The way we govern each other is

that we persuade one another and deliberate and debate. There is a story here, and I know, as always, i'm running late and we've only got a little bit of time left, but but I really want to touch on it because you were there, you actually saw it firsthand. There was a Facebook quote unquote whistleblower. This is a woman who is calling out what she seems to think

are the most nefarious activities and operations at Facebook. But what's strange here, what has me feeling a little weird about the story is typically whistleblowers against entrenched powers are sort of quieted by those powers. They're not promoted, they're suppressed, they're pushed to the side. And yet this whistleblower is being lauded in the media by established democrats, by other people in what you might call the ruling class. So

what is going on here? A lot of conservatives don't like what Facebook is doing when they suppress our speech, But what is the angle coming out here from this whistleblower? So there are two things that are going on two major concerns about Facebook and this so called whistle whistleblowers at the intersection of them both. The first thing that is going on is that Facebook has a practice of targeting children, and in particular teenage girls and Instagram, which

Facebook owns. The algorithm is designed to appeal to teenage girls, but also to reinforce very negative trends with teenage girls. So for example, body image problems and eating disorders and suicidal tendencies, the algorithm feeds all of that. And and I don't you don't have to take my word for it,

you can actually take Facebook's word for it. So the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago broke a bombshell story that Facebook conducted its own research on what is the effect of our product on kids and their marketing to kids, and they concluded that teenage girls, in particular Instagram was really toxic and British girls thirteen percent said they had gotten their suicidal ideas from Instagram. American girls six percent of them said they had their suicidal

ideas from Instagram. And so Facebook had this research, which was handed over to the Wall Street Journal. In the Wall Street Journal reported on it, We've had now three hearings in the last couple of weeks in the Senate. I participated in all of them with Facebook witnesses. The Facebook witnesses have been terrible. They're essentially giving the Sergeant Schultz defense. I hear nothing, I see nothing from Hogan Heroes a show before you were born, Michael, but a

great show. For I was a glint in my father's eye. But I used to watch it as a little kid with my dad. Hogan's Heres was awesome. So their defense, so I've asked. I've asked. There were two witnesses from Facebook the last two weeks. I've asked them number one, is this research true? They say, well, no, it's out of context. I said, great, what's the context? Oh no, no, we won't release the research. We're not going to tell you what the research says. But but we don't like

what the journal reported. And I said, okay, the journal reported Mark Zuckerberg personally review this research. Is that true to seeing your Facebook witnesses? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what Zuckerbook knows. Who knows? Who knows? No, no, no, we're not going to say anything about what Zuckerberg knew. I asked another follow up, which is has Facebook quantified how many teenage girls have taken their lives because of

your product? Facebook witnesses refused to answer that question, and I asked the natural follow up, Okay, you got research telling you that your product is hurting children. What'd you do to fix it? What changes did you implement to fix this problem? And the short answer is the Facebook witnesses said nothing, nothing, nothing. We didn't do a damn thing. So this week, the so called whistleblower who had been an employee at Facebook was testifying. I asked her the

same questions. She was actually much more cooperative in the question. She said, yes, that's what the research said. She said, yes, Zuckerberg was aware of it. She didn't know if they'd quantify how many teenage girls had taken their lives because of the Facebook's product, But in terms of what they did to change it, she said, not a damn thing. In fact, she watched the testimony of the previous two Facebook witnesses, she said, it was amazing when you asked

them that question. She assumed they'd come out with a five point plan. We did the following five things in response to it. Which sort of anyone you would think if you got a report that you were marketing a product that was killing children, you would think you would say, all right, how can we change this so that doesn't happen. She confirmed Facebook didn't do anything so on that. The hearing we had today, there was actually bipartisan concern about that,

both Republicans and Democrats. Nobody's defending Facebook in what it's doing to teenage girls. And the analogy that most frequently gets invoked is the tobacco companies. When the tobacco companies, you know, Joe Cammell, when they marketed to kids to try to get them addicted to cigarettes as young teenagers so they would be lifelong customers. Facebook is kind of falling into the same category of deliberately engaging in business

practices that hurt kids. That's category one. Category two is political censorship, and we've talked a ton on this podcast about political censorship. In category two, there is a yawning divide between Democrats and Republicans in Congress. Most if not all, Republicans in Congress are very worried about political censorship, about Silicon Valley billionaires silencing conservative views they disagree with. Most

congressional Democrats. Not only are they not worried about it, not only do many of them deny that it exists or that it happens. Their position is, we want more of it, We want more censorships, silence every quote extremist voice. And that's their code word. When you hear liberals using the word extremist. What they mean is youth. What they mean is any conservative. What they mean is any libertarian. What they mean is Donald Trump. What they mean as

anyone who voted for Donald Trump. What they mean is anyone who's pro life. What they mean is anyone who believes that there are two genders. All of that they believe is extremist. And they want social media to silence at all. And so the hearing today and listen, my sense of this whistleblower is that she's very much politically on the left, so she wants Facebook to censor even

more so on that component. Yes, the media and yes, Democrats are jumping on this whistleblower because they're trying to use her testimony to further their preferred political outcome, which is for face book to censor every conservative view so that the only view anyone is allowed to express is the left wing view, another bait and switch, another if you focus on the legitimate problems at Facebook, which we would all acknowledge, and use that as a way to

push through even more censorship of conservatives. You're seeing this happen a lot around the country right now, a lot around Washington. There is one place where you will not be censored. That is on the Verdict Live Fall Tour. We are coming to schools hopefully near you. We're going to University Wisconsin Madison on the thirteenth of this month, so just next week, we are going to Texas. We're going to Texas A and M on the fourteenth. It's going to be a great deal of fun. I can't

wait to see everybody there. We've got more schools that are going to be announced, but get ready. So, Michael, where can they get their tickets? How can they go? If they want to come see either University Wisconsin Madison or Texas A and M. How can they come see Verdict Live. You've got to go to YAF dot org. That is a Young America's Foundation partnering up with us for this fall tour. Head on over there, click on the tour, click on your school you can go get

all of the information there. It's going to be me, It's going to be Senator Cruz. It is going to be our trusty cactus friend. We didn't get time for the mailbag. Don't worry. We're gonna have a whole lot of time for the mailbag in person with all of you. You can also stream the events live. You can do that on the Young America's Foundation, why AF or Verdict YouTube channels. We can't wait to see everybody in person, but for now, Senator, we have to say goodbye. I'm

Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.