Easter In Isolation

safe social distance. I think I am not exaggerating here when I say this might be the first time since the Diocletian Persecution that Christians have not been able to go to their churches on Easter. Is that an exaggeration? Well, you know, I gotta say it is so commonplace to have podcasts talking about the Diocletian Persecution. I mean, I mean it really I'm worried that we're going to run into the traffic online. That's true, stright through the roof, right.

We you and I have never seen anything like this in our lifetimes. And it's you know, all of us were doing everything from home. Yeah, and whether that's church, whether that's work, whether that's time with the family, it has good aspects to it, and it also makes people pretty stir crazy. This, I think is the big issue for people. I think for a while, people like taking a few days off work. Obviously that got real old,

real fast when people lost their jobs. I think people actually for the first few days of this shutdown, we're kind of excited. It was something new, it was dangerous. Maybe we were all going to band together again. That kind of got real old, real fast. The one thing that I think was always a sticking point was the churches. The government closing down the churches. To my mind, that's unprecedented in the United States. Is that what you're hearing and seeing as well? I mean, is that just a

different category. Look, it's a hard challenge because if you have, as we do, a pandemic, a public health outbreak, there is precedent for quarantining laws, there's precedent for preventing large gatherings. You know, I will say it, in this time of crisis, you know, people's real character comes out, who they are comes out. And I got to say, some of these democratic politicians are just jackbooted thugs. I mean, they're authoritarians that they believe in the power of the state. So

you know, bild de Blasio, mayor of New York. Now, listen to New York has got it worse than than anywhere else in the country. It is horrific, the deaths that have happened there, the infections, people are scared. I get all of that. But de Blasio said, listen, if any church or synagogue meets, we're going to come after you and we will permanently shut you down. Now, who the hell are you to permanently shut a church or synagogue then? And I actually understand saying okay, you can't

have a public gathering. You know what my church is doing. We're meeting virtually. Yeah, I think that actually makes good sense. But you see some of these political leaders just eager to strip away liberty and they seem to have a real, real animosity to faith. That's right if you if you look at New York. I mean, that's exactly the right example where it's not de Blasio saying we're going to shut you down for the whole of this pandemic. You are not going to be allowed back into your building,

pastor until afterwards. But that's not where they stopped it. They actually said we will permanently shut you down. And he actually singled out churches and synagogues. He didn't go after any other faith groups. He just went after churches and synagogues. How convenient. You know. It's not just de Blasio though. It's going on around the country and even for the people. I know a lot of conservatives where we want to keep our rights, but we're obviously willing

to entertain some quarantine. Pennsylvania, they arrested a woman for driving her car. Oh my god, you know, driving your car. You're not violating social distancing. You're sitting in your own damn car, like like, this is not a police state, right, And and you're seeing, you know, North Carolina that they invest arrested David Benham. David David Jason Benham. The Bennam

brothers are friends of mine. They're great guys. Um. So the North Carolina governor, a Democrat, determined that that elective abortions are essential, and so that abortion clinics could gather, they could all get together. And so the Bennam brothers went outside and and and wanted to provide pregnancy counseling, wanted to peacefully h tell moms that we're coming in that we're considering abortions. You know, they're alternatives. If if you want to pursue adoption, here are some of the

resources available to you. Right, And and they sent the police to arrest them. And actually the video I tweeted out the video. I did encourage you to watch that video because, uh, you know, David is he said, Look, we're being peaceful. He's very calm, he's not angry, he's not they're not harassing anyone. He said, we're six feet away,

we're not gathering, we're not leading social distancing. But but if the governor is going to say that that the abortion is essential, that the doctors and all the staff can gather there more than ten people in public, then how can that be essential? But yet the counseling of pregnancy alternatives is not equally essential to And it's interesting the officers are arresting him, and you could see the officers are reluctant, and David, to his credit, he's praising

the officers. He said, listen, thank you for your service. Particularly now, I mean he's polite, he's praising them, and it just shows Look, and I don't want to make this partisan. And if there are are Republicans doing it, I will happily call them out too. It just seems to be it's the democratic governors and the Democratic mayors that that in that instance, you know, he's he's hard pro abortion and hard and anti pro life, and and and so it's not if you want to say neither

of them are essential. Fine that I actually understand that determination. But you can't pick one side and silence those that would try to give it so ironic, and it totally gives away the game where they say, if you gather together to procure an abortion, that will not endanger your life. And let me tell you something, abortion one hundred percent of the time in danger's life. They say, no, that

won't endanger your life. But if you go and offer some counseling, you also gathered together, that will endanger your life. It's so backwards, it's such a power grab. You know, certain states have made exceptions, and you know, in Colorado they arrested a dad for playing t ball with his kids. I mean, that's nutty. I spoke last night to a Nevada state legislator who was complaining the Nevada governor has shut down golf courses. Now I gotta say, Michael, it's

hard to think of a sport more situated to social distancing. Listen, if you're with it, if you're closer than six feet, you ain't doing it right right like you ever, Like, I'm all for acting sensibly to protect the public safety. But but there's some that are just eager to put on that jackboot and it's scared. Now, what do you make of these different states? I mean, some states they've

been arresting pastors if they try to hold services. Other states have made an exception for religious services, and and you know at various state by state. Luckily we haven't had one national, one size fits all policy for this. I mean, how is that going to play out even after the pandemic's over. Listen, our law has always respected religious liberty. The First Amendment protects religious liberty. I think we should should do everything possible to protect people's right

of faith. At the same time, I think the responsible thing to do is to act to protect the community. So so my church, Ide and I are members of a First Baptist church in Houston. It's a big, big church. We've been going to church virtually online. Our pastor made the very I think, very sensible decision to say We're not going to bring people together and have thousands of people in a sanctuary while there's a global pandemic going on. And you know, I will say, as it's Easter Easter,

you know, you Easter Sunday. From for as long as I can remember, we would always go to church on Easter Sunday, that's and celebrate the Jesus. But it's worth also remembering, you know, for those of us who are Christians, the church is not a building. The church is not bricks or mortars. So I'm I'm sad not to be there. It's nice to be able to sing and have the music in person. It's nice to be able to worship together.

But it actually has been beautiful. So what we do every Sunday morning is we come down, come down to the living room and we put we put the live stream of our church up up up on the TV, and Heidi and the girls and I just the four of us in the living room and we'll watch and participate. You know, we have to kind of drag the girls out of bed, and you know, it's nice. I'll have a cup of coffee and I'll confess I've done church sometimes and my slippers normally did same here. I'm ashamed

to say, but I did. But you know it's interesting. Number One, I was talking to my pastor earlier this week. He said that that that the viewership has gone through the roof, that a ton of people are logging on and watching it online who wouldn't necessarily come in person. And it is interesting because we're ending up having much longer conversations with our girls about about the sermon, about

what's going on. You know, if you're in church, you don't want to talk talk in church and bother people. If you're in your living room, you can talk to each other and you can say, hey, what do you think about what he just said? And you know, you can have conversations that flow out of it. That that are you know, what the Bible said is that is the Church is the body of believers, is everyone who is a Christian? That we're the church, not the building.

Um and and so even though East Easter Sunday, most of us are not going to be at a physical church. If if we are giving thanks for Jesus's resurrection, that we're celebrating Easter and the church is celebrating and and and I hope also listen. This is a time, you know.

I remember back when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and it was devastating in Texas, second costless natural disaster in US history, and it was really amazing to see the churches all throughout Texas, especially on the Gulf Coast, coming out and helping people, helping people whose homes had been destroyed. Everything they had was lost. And it was a time when the church was doing what the church should. The church should be helping people, people in need, people who are

scared people. You know our church, we've had one member of a woman in our eighties who died of COVID nineteen and you know, the ministry for seniors. It's hard for seniors to be isolated. And this is a time, I hope and I believe the church is doing more to help people who are scared, who are in need, even if we don't gather in person. It's much more important for the church to reflect the love of Jesus

than to stand in one particular building, right. And I think there's something else going on here too with regard to the pandemic, which is people always think about Easter, but you forget that you don't get Easter without Good Friday. This is a reminder. This whole season of Lent, which by the way, has corresponded exactly with the coronavirus pandemic. Lent begins and you get ashes on your head if you're a Catholic or a certain other denominations, and they say, remember, man,

you are dust to dust, you shall return. And it's very easy in modern life to forget that someday, eventually we're all going to die. We might not die from the coronavirus, let's hope, but we will die eventually. And that reminder that, you know, I think it was doctor Johnson said, hanging concentrates the mind. You know, when you look death straight in the face, it focuses you on

the bigger questions. In a way, locking down the churches might have a pretty positive effect on religion in the country. It also brings families together, whether you whether you like it or not. Look, Caroline said, you know, I can't stand it. I've been in this house for a month, and I mean and she's eleven, and I'm like, sweetheart, I know we all had we're like ready to jump out the windows. But there have also been so every day Heidi and I. We've had had had lunch with

the girls. We've had dinner with the girls. That's never happened in the whole time we've been a family. We've never had and and I'll tell you one thing we've started. So we've started doing a couple of things. When we go for walks every evening, um sometimes family walks, we walk the dog. Sometimes it's just tidy in me, but like the whole neighborhood is out walking and and it's like like Central Houston. Now it's we're six feet apart. We stay, we stay at a distance, but it's like

Central Houston became Mayberry. I mean, it's an amazing thing. But something else we've started doing that I wanted to do for a long time is every night we're reading from the Bible and listen. I've wanted to do that regular and we've done it. Sometimes we've done it sporadically, but not with real discipline. And part of it is, you know, being in the Senate. Typically I get up Monday mornings, I fly to DC and I'm gone for

four days. I come back Thursday night. It's hard as a dad if you're in town two three days a week. It's hard to sort of have a family discipline of after dinner we sit down and read the Bible. And and I've I've been like guilty in thinking about it. We need to do more of it. And so with all this time at home, how do you and I just decid all right, we're going to do this. And our girls didn't like it. I mean, it was a big battle. It was not that this was not mild

or easy. And so we started with just Matthew chapter one and reading three chapters a night. I think the first night it took us hour hour and a half to get through three chapters. The girls were acting up. It was it was a bit of a mess. But it's interesting we've gotten through. I think we're like Matthew

chapter twenty four. Um, so, so we haven't done it that long, but it's been been each night and it has been really And what's interesting is it just so happens we're right now moving into good Friday and Easter, like like just just the timing worked out. We didn't sit down and planet like this. But but you know, last Sunday was was Palm Sunday and we were we were reading in Matthew where it talks about Palm Sunday and Jesus riding into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey.

And by the way, my pastor said something very interesting that I didn't know. I don't know if you knew. Did you know that Palm Sunday, the Sunday before Easter, was the day traditionally in Judaism when they selected the lamb to be sacrificed. I did not know that. I

had never heard that. Our pastor said that this last Sunday, and I thought that was fascinating because a lot of what we've been talking about with the girls was the parallel with Passover and and and and the entire story of Passover, which we kind of take digressions as we're reading the Bible to say, Okay, the people of Israel were in captivity in Egypt, and and the ten plagues, and so Catherine sang a song on the ten plagues

like that that that struck Egypt. But but you know we were talking about, you know that for the Angel of Death to pass over your home, that you had to put the lamb's blood on the side of the door, on the top, and and and that that that that is what Easter is all about, is that Jesus was the Lamb sacrificed for us, and the passover Lamb Jesus

was that same sacrifice and that story. Having the opportunity to talk about it at this time we're Easter's at home, it has made it, I think, in many ways more meaningful than being in a big service for the converse. So, you know, this is something that my wife and I have been doing too in our little one bedroom apartment. I think probably my greatest risk of death right now is not any pandemic. It's going to be murder when

my wife finally snaps. But if that doesn't happen, you know, in the meantime, what we've been doing, especially because we're Catholics, so we have certain icons and religious images around and when we go to church now, the church is at the kitchen table, and we live stream it in from our priests who's down in southern California, and it's just him on a live stream, and it really focuses you on these images. So it's just my wife and I

sitting in kitchen chairs. You know, there's no smells and bells, there's no beautiful music going on. It's really just us contemplating some of these images, listening to these words, listening to these prayers, and you know, it does remind you when Jesus says, when you pray, go into your innermost closet, you know, do it in solitude and really make it

about that connection to God. And it just gives you another sense when you go and pray the Rosary at night and it's just the two of you and everybody's quiet and no one's outside. In a way, it really amplifies your prayer and your spiritual connection to God, even when you can't go into your own church. Well, and

and I'll say this this also cuts across face. So some good friends of ours who are who are neighbors who are Jewish, and they celebrated this week their Passover Sader, which which ordinarily they would do with the whole extended family. And they were telling me, Okay, so we're just doing it with you know, mom and dad. And they have a daughter who's really close friends with Caroline, and they have a son is a little bit younger, and they said, what they're doing is just they're face timing on I

think iPads with their extended family. So with parents and sisters. You know they're not you know, most of us are not seeing our parents. My dad's eighty one, my mom's eighty five. I've seen either one of them and over a month because I'm not going to jeopardize their health. But it is interesting, even a passover Satyer. You know, I've been to a lot of sators and they're wonderful

and fun. But you think of them as you know, big groups of multi generational extended family, and with technology, you can even do that if it's just a few of you and you're trying to socially distance, you can still you can still have a wonderful faith and family experience together. And I suspect we'll look back at these. It wouldn't surprise me if when our girls are grown they look back to this time of spending day after day and week after week together as a family as

some of their favorite time ever. Now they wouldn't admit that now, right who, but it it is. You know, Caroline is in our front yard right now, building a little bit of a treehouse and a tree and you know, coming and pulling me out of I'm on conference calls with work and doing all just I'm in the middle of what basically a teletour across Texas, like meeting talking with all different communities. But like Caroline comes comes yesterday and says, you know, Dad, we need your help to

cut the lumber. I'm not very handy, but but thankfully I have told her, okay, no power tools. As an eleven year old, I don't want severed digits. So I got the jig saw and managed to cut the board without in fact severing any of my digits. So that was good. But it's kind of right in the middle of the day. It's like, like, come to the garage and let's cut lumber to build the treehouse. There's something

really nice about that. I've noticed the same thing as you mentioned with your friends in the Passover Sader people, family members, old friends that I have not called in a long time. Now, we're just doing calls because that's what people are doing. I mean, it's and speaking of connecting with people virtually. I know we've only got a few minutes left, but I do want to get to some of the mail bag because we've got some very important questions here. Probably this is the most important one

that I've read in weeks. Senator Amber does Ted think Joe Exotic should be pardoned? I'm serious, I want his opinion. Michael can answer to Senator, what's your answer? Well, I will say I cracked up laughing that this week at the White House Press conference, they asked if Joe Exotic should be should be pardoned, and and President Trump, I'm not sure he knew what was going on, but said yeah, yeah, we'll have to look at that. And then that was that was pretty durn funny. You know, I've got a

pet theory. Yeah that that that that the prospect of Joe Exotic being pardoned is why Obama delayed endorsing Joe Biden because you know, look, I apparently Joe Exotic ran for president in twenty sixteen against against me. I didn't know it at the time, against Trump. So who knows, maybe Joe Exotics on the ballot in twenty twenty and Obama's holding the the endorsement back uh waiting for the Tiger King endorse. This is the most brilliant political insight

I have seen in so long. I am now, I don't know my feelings on Joe Exotic getting a pardon, other than I indorse Barack Obama endorsing Joe Exotic. So I guess that means we got to spring him from the slammer. A very good point, Senator. Next question from Peter, is there any evidence that China purposely delayed and lied in their report in order to tank the world economy considering that theirs was already in shambles. So that's an

interesting question. There is absolutely evidence that China purposely delayed and that they covered up that when the Wuhan outbreak was ongoing, that that they hid evidence of it, that they punished the scientists who were trying to blow the whistle, including the doctor who courageously did it anyway and has since died of COVID nineteen. You know, I'm not aware of any evidence that they did it with the intent of tanking the global economy. I think that's probably a stretch.

Although when it comes to ascribing malign intentions to the Chinese communist you almost can't stretch two minds, no limit. But you know, I had an I had an old boss who was a federal judge who used to say, never attribute to malice what you can attribute to incompetence, and and listen, I think the Chinese covered it up because they were embarrassed, because they didn't want people to know. I think there's a very real possibility that this outbreak

occurred from from some sort of accidental transmission. There were two two facilities within miles of the Wuhan Wet Market where we think this started. That we're studying coronaviruses in bats and um. I haven't seen any evidence that this was Look, there's some internet theories that this was manufactured and is like bio terrorism. You know. Look, I'm skeptical that the Chinese government would release a virus on their

own people. We've seen tyrannical governments torture and murder their people, but doing it deliberately. I've seen no evidence of that. What strikes me as entirely plausible is that it was a screw up from one of the labs that that may have been studying this virus. As I said, we know they were studying coronaviruses from bats, and then the whole cover up was to hide their embarrassment, to hide there. And the reason that matters is if they hadn't covered

it up, we could have gone in. We could have contained this outbreak maybe and found the people who were infected and isolated them and dug the contact tracing and potentially stopped this outbreak from becoming an epidemic and then

a pandemic. That if you stop it at the origin, it is entirely possible that that that the death swirldwide and the trillions of dollars of economic destruction could have been covered up if the Chinese had it could have been stopped if the Chinese hadn't engaged in this cover up. All right, final question, this is maybe the most important one ball What are you eating on Easter? And who is doing the cooking? You know, it's funny. I don't know.

So yesterday Heidi and I were taking our walk and and and and Heidi's was like, all right, what do we want to do for Eastern I'm like, well, what do you mean what do you want to do for Eastern She's like, well, we need to like do something for Eester. I'm like, did your family do like big Easter things? And like, I gotta admit my family like we would go to church, yeah, and then we just come home and hang out as a family. It was a Sunday. I mean, we didn't like it wasn't a

put on the suit and tie. It was I mean it was not. And we had this big discussion because Heidi kept asking, we no know what do we want to do? And I'm like, what do you mean? Do like same thing we do? And she's like, all right, how about an Easter egg hunt. I'm like, okay, if we've done those for our girls. And I think Catherine, who's nine, she's more into it than Caroline, is probably

a little too cool for an Easter egg hunt. But I'm like, sure, if you want to get some plastic eggs and put candy or money in them, put in the backyard, we can do that. But um, so, I don't know what we're gonna eat, that's the short answer. Will probably Heidi and I are terrible cooks, yeah, although Caroline has begun cooking at home, so we haven't figured

it out. As the short answer, I think we'll do a nicer, nicer meal than just cold pizza, right, But but I don't know what it'll be, and maybe we'll order out. It's literally Heidi is pressing me, saying we need to have a big sort of Easter meal. You know, most Easters I would have done, like gone to church, and then like gone and taking my mom out to dinner or something and done like a brunch at a restaurant.

So we're obviously not going to do that. You can always have the mimosas, but you got to do it at home. You know. It's funny because I think what most people are gonna do is more like what you did growing up, which is it'll be the first Easter in the pajamas, and frankly, that doesn't sound so bad. A nice time to spend with family, obviously, Senator, Happy Easter to you, and happy Easter to everybody else who is listening. 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.