Exclusive Preview: Welcome to The Cloakroom

Slash Plus. Use my promo code Cloakroom to get one month free on an annual subscription without further ado. Here is The Cloakroom. Hello and welcome. I am so excited to introduce today The Cloakroom on Verdict Plus. This is only for Verdict Plus subscribers. If you are a member, go ahead and become a subscriber so you can see all the cool stuff that we're going to be talking about over here. This is a brand new series with

Senator Ted Cruiz. It's co hosted by me, Liz Wheeler. Basically, what's going to happen is I'm going to pick his brain like I would in a strategy session. It is a behind the scenes peek into details of what goes on in DC, just like the cloakroom of the actual Senate. Today, we're going to talk about how to apply a constructed foreign policy to a situation, a real life situation like Ukraine. We're also going to talk about Whoopi Goldberg, and we're

going to talk about Tom Brady again. If you are a member of the Verdict plus community already, then become a subscriber so that you can join us. If you're not, then obviously go to Verdict with Ted Cruz dot com slash plus to join us, use promo code Cloakroom for a one month free trial on your annual subscription. Senator, I'm pretty excited about this. Yeah, I think this is going to be awesome and in fact, it may be a good thing to start. Do you know what the

actual Senate cloakroom is? I do, but I have to tell you I don't know a lot of details, except it has this sort of cloak and dagger connotation. It's a back room right where you guys go to have your off the floor, off the record conversations. So you know, if you turn on c SPAN, you see the floor of the Senate, and so that's where they're a hundred desks, and that's where we go to vote, and that's where when we're speaking on the Senate we debate. And that's

all on CSPAN. And if you look at someone who's speaking and you're kind of in the middle of the floor or the Senate, behind you are a couple of doors, and there are two cloak rooms actually, so there's a Republican cloak room and a Democratic cloak room. And the Republican cloak Room, to the surprise of nobody, is behind where all the Republicans sit, and the Democrats are behind where all the Democrats sit. So you go through those doors and basically the cloak room is a room in

the back. There there are a bunch of couches, their leather chairs like this. There's still a bunch of ash trays. I don't think anyone has actually smoked in the cloak room for decades, but there's still ashtrays from back in the days when they did. And then you go around the corner and there are a bunch of phone booths, and the phone booths are where you can go and you can get on your cell phone, call someone, you can call your staff, you can call ever you want

if you want to have a private conversation. And so people gather and talk in the cloak room, their TVs up there. There's cloak room staff that is sort of paying attention to what's happening on the floor. But it's basically the room and the back of the Senate floor where you gather when you're not on the floor, but you're not back in your office, which is far away.

So let me ask you this, is this like a normal staffing room or is this where you go when you really want to be off the record and you want to wheel and deal if you will. Is this is this where shady deals are made? You know, I wouldn't say shady deals, but it's just kind of like if you're having a whole series of votes, it's where

you'll go hang out. There's usually a little bit of food in there, like their peanuts, and that actually goes back and forth, like in the Republican cloak room, the Georgia senators would want Georgia peanuts there, there'd be North

Carolina peanuts. There'd be a little back and forth. There's some candy in there that you kind of grab, but it's mostly it's also where they put things like condolence books, Like we just had a few weeks back Johnny Isaacson, who had been the Republican senator from Georgia, he passed away, so we had a condolence book where we all went in and each of us signed something to Johnny's family

and just thanks him for his service. So the cloak room is a place you'll find something like that, but it's it's kind of where you sit around and hang out. People will tell jokes, people will talk about sports. I mean, it's where you get senators hanging out in a more relaxed context. So it's real. It's really behind the scenes, which means that this series on Verdict plus is very aptly named because that's exactly what it is, behind the scenes.

So one of the things that is going to be unique to this series is I want to talk about the philosophy of the political philosophy and sometimes the moral philosophy of some of the things that are happening in

our nation. So not just the practicalities, which are also important, and we discuss those all the time in a public area, but the philosophy and So what I mean by this is Whoopie Goldberg on the View this week said that the Holocaust was not about race, and she faced an immediate backlash for this, as she should, and she ended up apologizing for this, and she just said, I apologize, I was wrong about this. I stand corrected. I think were her words. So my question to you is, obviously

not was she wrong? Of course she was wrong. Obviously the Holocaust was about raised. Obviously the Democratic Party is a little bit too cozy to anti Semites, and so they tend to they tend to play footsie a little bit with these folks. My question to you is, given the cancel culture that's become pervasive in our nation, when should we accept the apologies of people in the public eye who make really nasty comments like this, like the

claim that the Holocaust is not about race. Oh look, I think when it comes to public comments on left or right, we should be pretty forgiving, particularly when someone says I misspoke. I'll tell you one reality of living a life where you have a TV camera pointed at you all day long. What you do and I do is if you say enough millions of words, some of them are going to come out wrong, and so you know, look is the left. Are there too many anti Semites

among the hard left, people like the squad who hate Israel? Yes, I have no indications that that describes Whoopi Goldberg. I don't know anything. It was a dumb thing to say, but she said it was a dumb thing to say, So I'm gonna give credit for a sort of backing.

I mean, you know, the Holocaust is one of the most grotesques evils in the history of humanity, and it is driven by the explicitly racist ideology of Hitler and the Nazis that viewed viewed Jews and viewed to others, but Jews in particulars as an inferior race and as subhuman. And in fact, we've talked about on Verdict how that justification of this group of people does not qualify as people.

In the history of mankind has almost always been a predicate for horrific evil, whether it is the Holocaust and the Nazis believing that Jews did not qualify as human beings, whether it was the justifications of slavery and believing that African Americans were not people but were property, or whether it is justifications behind row that unborn children are not children. That any time you take a human being and say they're not a human being, that history has shown is

usually the predicate to terrible evil. And and so you know, I'm glad that will be apologized for that. But as a general matter, I don't think we ought to be silencing people for stumbling over what they say, are saying something stupid. No, That's that's why I think this is a good discussion actually, because I mean, like you said, we both we both worked in the public eye. Hear every one of us has said something that came out wrong for whatever reason, or misspoke or made an error,

and correcting that or apologizing for that is fine. But there's also the matter of someone betraying their true colors, I guess, or betraying a poisonous ideology, one that is as poisonous as you just described. And perhaps that's good for people for people to know. But like I said, the philosophy of cancel culture is sometimes it is sometimes

interesting to discuss, as I think it is here. I want to move along these topics kind of quickly though, because this one, are you ready, I mean, when I warned you that we were going to nerd out on this series. This is exactly what I meant. So you gave a speech in the spring of twenty nineteen about foreign policy. Now this wasn't about a particular real life event that was happening around the world. This was a presentation of foreign policy philosophy. And this is something that

I think is a lost art in the Senator. It used to be that all senators had a constructed foreign policy. Now most politicians, even in the highest offices in our land, don't have a constructed foreign policy. And I think that's why we're seeing as when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, why we're seeing this this differing of opinion, this spectrum

among conservatives. Some people are very interventionists, some people are very isolationist, and there's not there's this disagreement on how to handle what's happening in the world right now because people don't have a preconstructed philosophy on foreign policy. And you do yours is and you say it's not actually a middle ground between isolationism and interventionism. You say, it's

actually like a triangle. It's a third point. So first of all, can we talk just for a minute about what your philosophy all world, real life events aside what your philosophy on foreign policy is. Yeah, look, I'm happy to And you know, the conventional wisdom looking at Republican foreign policy is that it's it's it's binary, that they're one of two approaches. That you're either what's typically called an interventionist or a neo con which is your approaches.

We got to go defend democracy, we got to go use our military, we got to invade countries, we got to get engage in nation building. There been a lot of Republicans who have embraced that, that that had it's it's assent under the presidency of George W. Bush, but there have been people from John McCain and Lindsay Graham to Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton that are explicitly interventionists.

On the other side are the isolationists, and the most notable proponents of that are Ron Paul and Ranpaul, both of whom but there are others, particularly in the House, there are several other people who I think would fall into the more isolationist camp. And it used to be that if you're a Republican you had to be one of the two. I think both of those are wrong. I disagree strongly with both of those, and as you noted, I've described my views as a third point on the triangle.

I describe myself as a non interventionist hawk. Now what does that mean. It means that the central touchstone for all US military involvement and for foreign policy should be protecting the vital national security interests of the United States. What does that mean as a practical matter? Means we should be very, very reluctant to engage in military conflict. But we should also focused on the purpose and the objective. So let's make it specific, because that's very abstract. So

let's make it. Let's bring it to concrete matters. And let's take a couple of foreign policy disputes in the past, and then I'll actually do one that is going on right now in a discussion we had today that illustrates this this point. Yeah, apply it to Ukraine. So let let me let let me let me first start start with history and then go to Ukraine. When Barack Obama

was president, he wanted to attack Syria. When Bashar Assad crossed Obama's red line and used chemical weapons, Obama drew a red line, said if you used chemical weapons, we're going to attack you, Asad did, and Obama says, let's go attack. I was in the Senate at the time, and my view was, Okay, I'm gonna keep an open mind. I want to hear how the commander in chief justifies this.

Explain to me the vital US national security interest in attacking and I press the Obama administration both publicly and classified settings. I said, okay, at the time, there were nine major rebel groups. But shar saw it is a monster. He killed four hundred thousand of his own citizens. He's a bad, bad guy. But I said, all right, if we attack him and you topple him, he has a big chemical weapon stash and they fall into the hands of the rebels. There were at the time nine major

rebel groups. Seven of them were affiliated with radical Islamic terrorists. They were people like al Qaeda, al Nustra. And I said, well, if chemical weapons fall into the hands of people like al Qaeda and Isis who want to kill us, that's worse for America. I don't want people who want to kill us to have weapons to kill us. The Obama administration could not give a coherent answer in terms of

how they prevent that from happening. So I opposed military intervention in Syria because they said, it's not protecting America, it's not protecting our lives. Rand Paul and I agreed on that. We were both on the same page on that. Now Rand and I were for very different reasons. Ran just from the beginning said no, no, absolutely not. I could have imagined a military mission that I would have supported. If Obama had said, look, there's a chemical weapons cash here.

It's big, it's significant. We're going to come in and either destroy it or seize it and take it away so they can't be used against us or our allies. I could have seen a mission focused on protecting America that might have made sense. That was not what Obama did. On the other hand, Iran, the Ayatola Kama need getting a nuclear weapon, I think is an existential threat to the United States. I think the risks are too high that the Ayatola, who chants death to America and death

to Israel, would use a nuclear weapon. And that's why I'm the leading opponent of the Iran nuclear deal. It's why I've said, if need be, if Iran is on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon, we should do whatever it takes to stop it, including military force. Now, to be clear, when I send military force, I don't mean go in vade Iran and spend twenty years they're

trying to turn it into a liberal democracy. I mean bob living crap out of it and level what they're doing and leave, like the focus should be protecting America. And another way of phrasing it, Liz, is peace through strength, which is what Reagan's philosophy was that if you're strong enough, you don't have to use military force. Biggest country Ronald

Reagan ever invaded was Grenada. Because he was so strong, our enemies didn't want to mess with And by the way, Trump's foreign policy was very much with me on that third point in the triangle where you think about it. He wanted to withdraw from foreign conflicts. He didn't want to leave our soldiers and sailors and airmen and marines

in foreign theaters getting shot at. But at the same time he was strong and took out, for example, General General Suleimani, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in Iran. And so that's peace through strength or being a non interventionist talk. Yeah, President Trump called it America first, you call it national interests. It's essentially as you say, the same thing. Yes, here's where it becomes a little more nuanced.

So here's my question here as it applies to Russia building up or amassing troops on the border of Ukraine, how do you determine under your foreign policy philosophy, how do you determine what the national interests of the United States are in either aiding Ukraine or becoming militarily involved in Ukraine. Because there certainly are arguments to be made that the United States has an interest in helping enforce international law or defending a country's right to self determination.

On the other hand, there are also arguments that that's not a vital national security interest to the United States to do that. So what are the elements that you use to determine that? How do you apply to Ukraine? So in Ukraine, I think, under no circumstances should we send the US military to fight Russia and Ukraine. I don't think that's our job to go fight Russia. I don't want to send the military. If Biden or anyone else supports it, I will oppose it. I'm not willing

to risk our sons and daughters in that military conflict. Now, given that that doesn't mean, though that I'm willing to walk away from Ukraine and abandon it. There are all sorts of tools that America has, short of sending in the Marines. What I can't stand about the neo kons of their solution to everything is invade. We've talked a lot on Verdict about Nordstream too, and the sanctions that I drafted that were targeted sanctions that shut down that pipeline.

Using our economic might to target the bad guys is a great and powerful tool. I think we also ought to be providing lethal weaponry to the Ukrainians. Look, the Ukrainians want to defend themselves, I'm happy to help arm them. So if the Ukrainians want to fight the Russians, have at it. I'm just not willing to risk Americans in that fight. And you know I mentioned there's sort of a real time application of it. So today we were

having Launch Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. All the Republican senators have Launch and we've spent a lot of the time talking about Ukraine, and one of the Repubublican senators asked. Several other senators said, how would you justify in thirty seconds or less, how it's on our interest to defend Ukraine?

And I got to say. One of my colleagues, who will remain nameless, but he is someone who is a prominent neo Khon gave this talk about, well, we have these norms now that we don't allow countries to invade other countries, and if they do, we've got to protect those norms and protect the international order and prevent the ability of one country to invade the other country. And I'm sitting there at lunch going what a load of shit? Like I disagreed with every word he said, and like

I literally had to stake. I didn't argue with him at the moment. I just sort of clenched my fists and let him talk. But about fifteen minutes later I got up and I went back to the question that one of my colleagues at ASS and I said, listen, I don't agree with any of what so and so said about the justification. You want to know why we have an interest in Ukraine because Vladimir Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union was a

formidable and terrifying enemy of America. It is in our interest not to have the Soviet Union rebuilt because I don't want Putin in Russia stronger because they hate American wanted to feat us. I want to keep Putin in Russian weaker, and so allowing Putin to reassemble the Soviet Union is really bad because it threatens the safety and security of the United States. So we ought to use what tools we can to prevent Putin from getting stronger. By the way, we ought to prevent the Chinese Communists

from getting stronger. We ought to prevent North Korea from getting stronger. We ought to prevent Cuba from getting stronger. We are to prevent a rand from getting stronger because our enemies getting stronger threatens us. But I'm not interested in sending the Marines to any of those places to fight the bad guys. I want to use other tools to weaken our enemies and strengthen our friends because that

protects American lives. Well. This is one of the interesting things I think about having a preconstructed, meaning a well considered foreign policy philosophy, because then you can take the tenets of that philosophy and you can apply it to real life circumstances instead of letting the emotions of whatever conflict is happening on that day and that time sway whether you think that you should send in the United

States military to crush whoever it is. And the other thing I think worth noting here is that the same thing happened in Afghanistan. Actually where we got to this point where the choices almost seemed like a lose lose either in Ukraine, for example, it's a lose if we send in our troops, and it's a lose if we allow Putin to take over Ukraine to try to rebuild the Soviet Union. And it is worth noting too that it doesn't have to be that lose lose, It doesn't

have to be that binary decision. But we're at this place where we're at this binary lose lose because elections have consequences. Because Biden also doesn't have a well constructed foreign policy philosophy, and he's allowed it to get to this point. Well, it's even worse than that, because Biden's foreign policy is weakness. If you look at what he's doing every enemy to America, he's showing weakness too. He believes in appeasement. I mean it is the left wing

Democratic Party believes the enemies of America. They think everyone wants to get along. They're all nice, and if you just give in to Russia, to China and North Korea to Iran, they're are right. It's why Biden is perfectly fine with Iran getting a nuclear weapon, because they're like, oh, they'll be fine with a nuclear weapon. They don't understand evil, and so you look at Russia. One of Biden's first acts was surrendering on Nordstream too and waiving the sanctions

that had worked, that had stopped Putin. I wrote them, I authored them, Trump signed him in the law they worked. Biden came in and just gave them away, just gave Putin this gift. And I got to tell you right now, the Biden administration is so panicked about the Ukraine invasion, which they've caused, that they are in full on appeasement mode. So they are in the process I fear of dismantling NATO where they're offering to Putin. You want us to pull our troops out of Europe. You want us to

abandon the Baltics, you want us to abandon Poland. You want us to abandon Romania, you want us to abandon Estonia and Lithuania and Latvia, We'll pull out, We'll pull missiles out, we'll pull troops out, we'll stop exercises, we will abandon Europe if you just promised to be nice to us, mister Putin. And weakness invites conflict. It's the left believes if you're weak, you don't have military conflict.

I actually think weakness makes military conflict more likely. Why do you think our enemies didn't attack us when Donald Trump was president because they thought he was backcrap crazy and he'd like blow him off the face of the planet. And he was strong enough that enemies of America didn't want to mess with us. Why is it that we're facing a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why is it the na is preparing to invade Taiwan because they think Biden's so weak that they run all over him. And so

I think the leftist weakness creates more military conflict. It does weakness and Bolden's authoritarians and dictators. We can see that with what's happening, what's with the behavior of Vladimir putinam the Chinese honestly, and the North Koreans. Okay, that's our nerdy deep dive into foreign policy, and now we're going to do a hard pivot into Tom Brady quarterback.

Tom Brady announced his retirement this week. And I gotta tell you, I'm not a huge football fan myself, but my husband is a diehard, lifelong Patriots slash Tom Brady fan, to the point that I had to ask him when Tom Brady left the Patriots and went to the Bucks whether he was going to root for the Patriots or whether he's going to root for Tom Brady at the Bucks. And you know, I have to say his answer was

tom Brady here. However, the controversy here is that Tom Brady when he announced his retirement, he thanked the Bucks organization and all the Bucks fans and his teammates, and he didn't thank Patriot Nation. He didn't thank his old teammates, he didn't thank his old coach, he didn't thank his fans. He laid or did on Twitter, but only after backlash. Um, what do you make of that? Was that? Was that a deliberate diss You think I don't know that it was a disc to the fans and in fact, I

doubt that it was. I mean, I mean, Tom Brady is so beloved to New England, um that that that I can't believe he was dissing his fans up there was it a disc to his old team? Was it a disc to Bill Belichick? I'm sure it was that that was quite quite deliberate. And look, there was always I always like Brady. I always thought he was a heck of a quarterback. You know, there's there's a constant

debate in sports over the goat the greatest of all time. Uh. In basketball, the debate is between Michael Jordan and Lebron James. I am emphatically on team Jordan and that although some of that generation. I'm fifty one, I you know, I grew up watching Jordan dominated. I'm not a big Lebron fan. Although he's ridiculously talented. I will concede his talent, but I think Jordan had more hard and was more of a champion. UM. In football, the goat, you could argue

different players. Some might say Joe Montana. He was certainly someone that had a strong claim to it. Brady was unbelievably winning with the Patriots. I mean he would win over and over and over again. But you could give all these sorts of excuses. He had an amazing supporting cast around him. Bill Belichick's a great coach, he had great receivers, he had I mean, he just had an amazing team around him. So some credited Brady's success to, well,

look at everyone he's playing with. And Brady did something that's phenomenal, which as he left the Patriots and he went and joined Tampa Bay and he basically said, to help with you guys, I'm out of here. The Patriots said, you're too damn old, you can't win, and he went and joined Tampa Bay and won the Super Bowl with them, Like it was one of the biggest hoss moves I've ever seen. To leave, you got all your stars, I'm

going to Tampa Bay. Watch me do it again. Gronk came out of retirement to play with him, which was awesome and it was spectacular. I tweeted at the time. I just tweeted a emoji of a goat, like, like, you go and win with another team and do it again and not in like when Lebron James left Cleveland to go to Miami. It was a temper tantrum of a spoiled star. You know, he did this whole show of who gets Lebron like, oh, piss off? Like you know,

you're not all that. Brady was very different. He went and just one and so I'm a huge Brady fan. I'm sure that the disc was meant to Belichick and the Patriots themselves, but I would be astonished if Brady had anything but respect and adoration for the fans who loved him and who continue to love him. And I will say, based on the experience of my own household, at least you are correct about one things. The fans

do not take it personally. They forgive him for tweeting about it after and consider it just a disk to the team and not to them. All right, Senator, we have one mail bag question from one of our Verdict plus subscribers. This is from the Steve forty two. Steve asked what are Senator Cruis's thoughts on Conservatives and the Republicans finding a way to unify for the twenty twenty

two and twenty twenty four elections. Republicans have an amazing ability, he says, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with these golden opportunities on the horizon. How do they how do they not just fff it up? Ooka. It's a very good question. And you know there's an old cartoon back before you and I were born, Hoogo had a line this cartoon from the fifties. We have met the enemy and they is us. There's a lot of truth to that. We manage to shoot each other. Listen

twenty two. I think we're gonna be fine. I think we're gonna win. I think Republicans are going to retake the House with a big margin. I think it's going to be like a tidal wave year. And I'm getting more and more confident we're going to retake the Senate. Also, the one danger that could screw it up is a civil war between Trump and Senate Republicans. I don't want to see that happen. I hope that doesn't happen, because that's if we're just, and that means we need some

restraint on both sides. We need There are some Senate Republicans that desperately want Donald Trump to go away. He's not going away. That is delusional, and the Senate Republicans who want it need to shut up and stop provoking him, and then I hope that President Trump exercises some restraint and doesn't unload on the Senate Republicans he's irritated with. If we avoid going to war with each other, we'll win in twenty two. After we win in twenty two,

then we need to actually do something. If we have majorities, we've got to actually deliver on our promises and fight. Are we going to be able to pass great new legislation? No, because Biden will veto it. But we need to have some backbone to fight against Biden. And there will be will there be Republicans wanting to roll over and surrender. Do I expect that I'm going to be fighting tooth and nail against them. Yes, there is a difference of philosophy.

Republican leadership in Congress often believes the way you win is don't rock the boat, don't make an issue, don't don't cause too much fuss. Look on the Biden Supreme Court nomination. I've had several of my Republican colleagues say it'd be good if this just went through quickly and we just let it happen and didn't didn't make a mess. And I'm like, are you out of your mind? He's going to nominate a leftist who wants to destroy the Constitution, and we need to fight like hell. Now. We may

not be able to beat it, beat the nominee. We may not be able to beat the nomination, but just stand up and fight for what you believe in, so that even now is a fight. Once we have majorities, it'll be a bigger fight. But I think the way we win in twenty four is fighting for something that matters and that you know, if Donald Trump doesn't run for president, we'll have a big, crowded primary in twenty four. Look, I think primaries are good and healthy. We'll have a

discussion about what's the right direction to go. The advice I give candidates, the advice I give both House members and senators is real simple. Do what you said you would do. Just just follow through and your promises, whatever you told the voters you'd do, do it. Too often politicians don't do that, particularly Republicans. And if we do what we said we would do, I think that's a path to winning. Yeah, and like you said, I agree

one hundred percent. Force that veto show the American people, not only what that you're doing what you would promised, and that Biden is vetoing it. But it also puts on record all of these squishy Republicans who won't vote for a conservative agenda and the Democrats who are voting against what people want. It's a very powerful tool. Senator Cruise, this was a really fun inaugural discussion for this series. Thank you for sitting down. We're gonna do this again.

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