Welcome.
It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and Senator let's just start with congratulations.
It's official.
Your new book is out, Unwoke How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. And I have to say when you get the book, if you haven't gotten the book, the best, the best page, just skip right ahead to page number forty. It's the best page in the book. So congrats on that. Most importantly, Senator, Page forty phenomenal. You should definitely just go right there, read that and then start the very beginning.
Ben, what the hell is on page forty? I don't know what's on page forty.
Page forty it says, and I will quote here. Every podcast is one alongside my co host today that's Ben Ferguson the Nationally Syndicate Radios has become a very dear friend.
I got a shout out, thank you, sir. I appreciate that now.
So I actually think maybe the best page of the book is the very first page of the book. Of your copy, because I gave you a copy, I gave you a signed copy. You did, and if you recall the inscription that I wrote on the front I said, Ben, you are one of the three best hosts in history of the Verdict podcast.
Don't leave out the word undoubtedly. You use that word undoubtedly, there we go. I want to make sure I get that in the history books.
Now. Never mind that there have only been three hosts of Verdict, and that would be you and me and Michael Knowles. But you are undoubtedly one of the three best.
Yes, and that's and that's on the shelf right now.
And the second sentence I actually liked even better than the first. And I said, of all of the men to play college tennis, you're one of them.
There we go, you were one of them. So this is the best part when you sign this.
I didn't want to travel with it, and you and I've been on the road, and we were on the road last week, and I didn't want to travel with the book because I was like, all right, this is what I want to genuinely say forever. So I got home for the trip and I didn't want to, you know, knock the book around. So I was reading all day yesterday and all day today to get to make sure that we can have a stellar interview on your own show about your book. So let's start with the title.
Why did you pick the title unwoke? And also for people that don't understand what the definition of cultural Marxism is, what is that mean?
Look? I wrote this book because the world has gone insane, and my reaction is the same as as millions of people, as the listeners of this podcast, that our reaction is what the hell happened? How did things get so crazy so fast? This book is my best effort to explain it, and in particular, it's explaining how the radical left has seized every major institution in America. And so the book starts Chapter one is the universities, and I call the
universeverities the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. The universities are where the virus was created, It's where it mutated, and it's where it spread. Each chapter the book focuses on a different institution the radical left is seized. So Chapter two focuses on K through twelve education and all the radical garbage being put in our kids, whether it's critical race theory or radical transgenderism. Chapter three focuses on journalism and how journalism has changed from covering the news
to propaganda. From there, I go to big business and how big business today the Fortune one hundred are the economic enforcers of the radical left. From there, I go to big tech and how big tech is pervasively censoring speech. From there, I go to entertainment and by the way, if if I could have just one back, I would have entertainment back. Enterptains, and I think is the most
consequential of all of these. And in entertainment we talk about Hollywood and movies and television and sports and music. We break it all down. From there, we go to science and I talk about how science has been corrupted and politicized. And the final chapter in the book is on China and explains how China is a nexus that links them all. And the book was really designed to do two things. Number one, explain how and why specifically the radical left took over every one of those institutions,
and they did it from the inside. But secondly, to lay out a clear battle plan how we take them back, how we fight back. I believe we will take this country back. And this book is laying out how we recapture the institutions of America.
You know in this book, and I encourage people to get it because there is just an incredible history in the very beginning as well about your family. I know your father and have gotten to spend some time with him. He's an awesome just individual be around. He's jovial, he
can be funny. He loves this country. But there is some incredible history not only about your family, but also how your father was involved in Cuba in the students and at a young age, and what was happening really with the revolution down there, and how he was I guess you could say, brought in to this revolution with Castro, not realizing what Castro was doing, and it started at a young age where they were targeting children, and it was an incredible part of the story, not just because
of what happened, but also how he was beaten and how his life was threatened, and how he was a marked man who had to get out and come to America. Talk a little bit about that story of that being your history of your family, and also it's a warning
to what's happening in this country right now. I tell you what, men, the holidays are here, and if you're like me, you're already tired and you're fatigued because of the holidays, shopping the Black Friday shopping, just the countless and endless events you got to go to, in all the boxes you got to check over the holidays. Well I got something can help you out. And this year I feel a lot different than I did last year. Why because of my friends at Chalk choq dot com.
The reality is right now, strength and vitality among men is at an all time low, where weakness and complacency have set in, and the problem is men's at stoss from levels are off the cliff historically. Thankfully, the patriots at Chalk are helping real men, just like you, take back your right to proudly maximize your masculinity by boosting TESTOSTERM levels up to twenty over ninety days now, I've been taking Chalk and you can go right now to choq dot com and you can see just how amazing
the difference is, especially with a male vitality stack. It's manufactured right here in the US of A. Chalk's natural herbal supplements are clinically proven to have game changing effects on your energy, your focus, and your mood. So get rid of that weakness and complacency and replace it with strength and vitality. Go right now, to Chalk choq dot com and use the promo code Ben. You're gonna get thirty five percent off any Chalk subscription for life. That's
choq dot com. Use promo code Ben for thirty five percent off and boost your tsaw from levels up to twenty percent over ninety days. Center talk about this family history. It's the beginning of the book and it's just an It takes your breath away when you realize how close your father was to death in Cuba.
Well, my family story is a huge part of why this matters so much to me. It's personal and it's real, And what I want to do is just read you the first page of the book. His white linen suit was stained red with blood, blood that had been beaten out of him with a club regularly each hour, breaking his nose, shattering his teeth. Scarlet red blood, as if his suit were emblazoned with the color of the Marxist
revolution of which he was a part. As my father lay on that prison floor, crumpled and broken, not a spot of white was visible on the now torn and tattered suit he had been given for his seventeenth birthday. Instead, mud and dirt and grime and blood. To this day, my dad remembers what he was saying in that dark hole. Nobody depends on me. I have no wife, no children.
It doesn't matter if I live or I die. Three years earlier, when he was just fourteen, my father had made the fateful decision to join up with the revolution in his homeland of Cuba, to follow Fidel Castro. My dad was young and ignorant and naive. Raphael bim Venilo Cruz did not know that Castro was a Communist. He didn't know the horrors that would befall the Cuban people
at the hands of his new comrades. He just knew that the then dictator of Cuba, full of Gensio Bautista, was corrupt and cruel and oppressive, as Francis Ford Coppola immortally chronicled in The Godfather Saga. Batista was in bed with the American mafia, enjoying wealth and power purchased with the the blood beaten out of the Cuban people. Look, that's my family story. My dad at seventeen was tortured, he was in prison, he fled QBI, came to America.
My aunt, my Theo Sonya whom I adore, who we actually had on on Verdict as a guest talking about Cuba. She fought in the counter revolution. After Castro succeeded, she was in prison. She was tortured by Castro's goons. I tell her story in this book too. I also tell the story of my grandmother, mi Abuela. Miabuela was a sixth grade teacher, and she told me she loved teaching, She loved teach teaching her students, and she had a
pure photographic memory. Man, it was incredible. She literally everything she read she remembered word for word. She told me about when Castro took over that they almost immediately targeted the children. And one thing to understand, Marxist always begin with the kids, always, always, always, As my father told me, the revolution, like he was, were a bunch of fourteen and fifteen year old boys who didn't know any better, teenagers.
And you look at every communist revolution in the world, whether you're talking about Russia or China or North Korea or Cuba or Venezuela, it is always the young teenagers who are idealistic, who believe, and who are naive, who don't have the world experience to understand they're being lied to. But communists start not just with teenagers, they go younger.
And what my grandmother told me is she said, almost immediately after the revolution, they sent the army into the elementary schools, and soldiers would go into kindergartens in first grade and they would tell all of the little kids, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to God for candy, and the kids all did so, and then they'd open
their eyes and there'd be no candy. And then the soldiers tell them, they'd say, close your eyes and pray to Fidel Castro for candy, and the kids did so, and while their eyes were closed, the soldiers would quietly slip a piece of candy on each child's desk. That's not an aberration. Chay Gavara, who was a vicious, bloodthirsty murderer. He was Fidel Castro's right hand chay Gavara described children as malleable clay that you can take the defects out
of them. You want to know why the cultural Marxist in America started in the universities. You want to know why they've gone into k through twelve, to elementary schools and junior highs and high schools, because if you take the children, you take the nation. And this book is designed to lay out how they did it and how we take them back.
You know, when I was reading this book, Senator, I go back to there's certain pivotal moments and I think everyone's life that you look back on and you go, wow, if that would have gone differently, my whole life would have gone differently, or may not even exist. In the first place. I was hit by a drunk driver when I was a young kid. We were in a car wreck. He died, we lived, And I go back to that moment in my life. Many times I was in, as you know, a shooting where I was a target of
a gang initiation. I wonder if I would have been hit that night in my life, would have you know, I wouldn't have my kids. There's that moment in this book where you wrote my father joined up and began doing acts of sabotage, bernie government buildings, throwing cocktails, whatever he could undermine the oppression of regime. That's what It landed him in prison at seventeen. But Tesus police had caught him and they were they were extracting their brutal revenge.
The next day was dragging the office of a colonel who told him, I'm letting you go, but if another bomb goes off, if another fire starts, I'm blaming you. How can I be responsible for every bad thing that happens in the city, my father asked, I don't care, replied the commander, I'm holding you responsible. Your father returned home. I well wept. Her eldest child had walked in the door, beaten, cover in his own blood. As she told me when I was a child, that imagined that from that day
was scared into her mind forever, forever. My boy told him get out of the country, and that was the turning point for your entire family history, because not only did he get out, but he applied to colleges in America, to the University of Miami, to LSU, to the University of Texas.
Texas was the first.
One that led him in, and that's how he came to America. That's how you became a Texan, and that's how your family history started anew with a clean slate in America. When you were writing that, I'm assuming you've heard the story many times, but when you put it on paper. It took my breath away.
Look, the book is actually dedicated. I don't think they know this yet, but it is dedicated to my father, my Theosnia, and in my family, the original freedom fighters. I don't think Miabuela is dad, but I don't think either my dad or the Asnia have seen that yet. Now my dad listens to Verdict, so he he may find it out right now on listening to the podcast. But it was I mean when I and it's actually the very last thing I type on the book is the dedication, and that was, look's it's why I am
who I am. I grew up as a kid sitting at the feet of my father in my the Asnia and hearing about freedom fighters. And it is an unbelievable blessing when you were the child of someone who fled oppression and came to America seeking freedom. Our freedom is not a joke. It's not something of that's kind of interesting. It is. It is incredibly serious. We either we defend our freedom here or we lose America. I hate communists. I hate them with a passion from the pit of
my gut. They are evil. Communism has been responsible for more death more misery, more destruction, more poverty, more suffering than any force in the history of humanity. And this book is all about how the same philosophy that has produced such misery is taking over and has taken over the major institutions of America. And look, you've heard me say this before, but as a child, my father probably a thousand times said to me, when we lost our freedom in Cuba, I had a place to flee to.
If we lose our freedom here in America, where do we go? That's what the stakes are right now.
There is also a point in there that hit me, and you said that your dad did something that I think we've lost in this country. And that's admitting sometimes that maybe we get things wrong. Maybe this woke agenda is a failure. Maybe green alternative energy is in this green religion is a failure. We've tried this, you know, the government taking over our kids. It's a failure. And your dad was an advocate for Castro early on, and he was ashamed by it. He advocated for him even
in America. And he set down, I'm reading from the book. He set down and he made a list of every place he'd spoken in Austin Texas in support of Castro. He then went back to each and every one of them and stood before the same people to make amends. He said, quote, I am here to apologize. He told them, I misled you. I didn't do so knowingly, but I did so. Nonetheless, I urge you to support an evil man and an evil Marxist regime, and for that, I am truly sorry for me. That's not just a point
of incredible character. But why don't we have that with politicians today, where they can admit, Hey, I may have gotten something wrong and I'm sorry that I got it wrong. We tried this and it didn't work because we are now we have so many elected officials that refused to ever admit they ever make a mistake.
In as humans, we make mistakes.
Look, that's exactly right, And that story, likewise, my father told me thousands of times. I was probably I don't know, two or three years old the first time I heard that, and I've admired it every time I've heard it. Because to have the courage he had gone and spoken at rotary clubs and Kowana's clubs in Austin supporting Castro. When he got here, he got here it was nineteen fifty seven. He was still a young revolutionary. He didn't know that
Castro was a communist, and he hated Batista. And then when Castro took over and to clarity was a communist, and in my dad saw the evil and oppression and theft and murder and cruelty, and that as bad as Batista was, Fidel Castro was a thousand times worse. He
had the character to admit he's wrong. Yet you know, I'm reminded of the clip recently where Barack Obama played that he said, you know, we all, we are all complicit in the middle least because he says, well, what Hamas did was terrible, but he said, what's happening to the Palestinians? The occupation is unbearable. And I got to admit, of all the clips of Obama, that might be the
one that pisses me off the most. I actually did yesterday Megan Kelly's show her podcast in New York and was talking about the book, and she played that clip for me. And I try to try to speak reasonably and respectably, and I try to limit my cursing, but she played it to me and I just said, what utter bullshit. And by the way, anytime I say something like that, my father will call or text me and say, would you please watch your language. That's that's not really
a good thing to do. And my dad's right on that, but it just it's infuriating, and it's like, look, Obama, you sent over one hundred million dollars to the Iyahtola to Iran. You funded these Hamas terrorists, you set flooded money into the Gaza Strip. You put money directly in the hands of these death squads, and you say we're all complicit. And by the way, you're repeating the bigoted, racist lie that there's an occupation. The Gaza Strip is
not occupied. Hamas controls the Gaza Strip. Israel left the Gaza Strip. It's entirely the Palestinian There is no occupation zero in Gaza. And yet, you know, is Barack Obama capable of saying it was a mistake to send one hundred million dollars to the Iatola, who chance death to American death to Israel. No is Joe Biden capable of saying it was a mistake for him to send nearly a hundred million dollars to Iran. Subsequently, when that money was used to fund the worst terror attack on Israel
in over fifty years. No, they're not capable of admitting that, and I do think admitting when something has failed is critic critically critically important.
For the holidays, a lot of you are probably thinking about Black Friday deals and you're thinking about ways to get maybe a new cell phone. Well, how would you like to get that new cell phone and every time you use it, stand up for the values you believe in, getting rid of the woke propaganda of Big Mobile. You may not realize this, but Big Mobile gives big donations to hardcore lefties running for office at the local, state,
and national level. They also give massive donations to Plan Parenthood. Well that's why I want you to know and make the switch with your cell phone to Patriot Mobile. For more than a decade now, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider. And when I say only trust me, they are the only one. My friends at Patriot Mobile had one mission in mind, and it's a mission that immediately made me want to work with them.
It was to give people dependable nationwide cell phone coverage. And they do that by giving you the ability to access all three major networks, which means you get the same coverage that you've been accustomed to without funding the left. Now, when you switch to Patriot Mobile, you're also sending a very cleer message that you support free speech, religious freedom, the sanctity of life, the Second Amendment, as well as supporting our military, our veterans, and our first responder heroes.
They have one hundred percent US based customer service team that makes switching easy and you can keep your same cell phone number, keep your phone, or upgrade to that new phone you've been wanting. Now here's the part I love the most. We every time you pay your bill, they take a percentage of that bill at no cost to you and give it back to conservative causes and organizations that fight for our values. So don't wait any longer, make the switch and get rid of that woke company
that you're on right now. Nine seven to two Patriot is their number. That's nine to seven to two Patriot. Use the promo code Verdict. Not only do we get the best deals of the year, but you'll also get free activation. That's nine seven to two Patriot or Patriot Mobile dot com slash Verdict's Patriot Moobile dot Com slash verdict or nine seven to two Patriot. You mentioned education and how it's easiest way to change a country in one generation. But there was also one of the things
you said on page sixty four. It says how to fight back.
He said.
A few years ago, you walked in to your daughter's bedroom and asked what she'd been learning about in school. She said she had been learning about Christopher Columbus, the quote unquote real story.
I asked what that meant.
For the next few minutes, I heard about the crimes of Christopher Columbus in minute detail. Every murder, Native American, transmitted disease, and stolen acre of lamb seemed to be accounted for. I heard that Columbus, who claimed the land for himself because his straight white privilege or something like that, had not actually discovered anything at all, but rather had landed on the shores of what would come to be known as America by accident. This quote unquote revolution familiar
to most adults in the United Stasy. It's is something that American children encounter sooner or later in a textbook, believing that they've accessed some secret, hidden knowledge that the grown ups don't want them to have that moment. For me is the moment that terrifies me for our kids in this my kids generation, is that we have handed
our children over to this school systems. And it's not just public schools now, it's private schools as well, who are indoctrinating them in this idea that America somehow was started on evil, bad motives and that you should not love this country, but you should be ashamed of this country.
And you had to deal with this with your own daughter.
Look, that's exactly right. And the problem is this indoctrination is happening in every school in America. It's happening to every child in America. And one I describe part of the way that this book is all about how we
fight back. But you know, as she was saying that Columbus was evil and racist and genocidal and terrible, and she hated Christopher Columbus, you know, I just just sat down in her bedroom and I tried to have a conversation with her and I said, look, I'm not deeply vested in making the argument that Christopher Columbus was some incredible hero, but I said, you know what, we do have a federal holiday named after him? Do we typically name federal
holidays after evil, racist, genocidal maniacs? Like might there be another side of the story? Is there anything admirable about him? And she was not not really able to see much that was admiralle I said, well, what do you think about getting in three rooky rickety wooden ships and leaving Europe and heading heading west when you think you're falling off the edge of the world to explore and discover? I mean, I mean, is that spirit, that intrepid spirit?
Is that anything to be admired? And I said, secondly, look, it is true that Columbus and and and the man who traveled with him, that that that they carried some some germs that that that were that were new to to the to the western hemisphere, and that when they got here some of the some of the Native Americans died from those germs. Now, it's also true it was the fifteenth century. They didn't know what a germ was, so they didn't know they were carrying it. And when
you accuse him of mass murder, does culpability matter? Does the fact that they didn't know what a germ was, They had no idea, they were doing. It is that at all relevant if you're going to call him this evil, terrible murder. And when I talk about in the book is not long thereafter Thanksgiving of that year, we were talking about Thanksgiving, and she and a friend of hers from school and this is when they were in grade school, said said likewise, oh, Thanksgiving is is terrible. It's when
the pilgrims were oppressing that the Native Americans. And and you know again I made the argument, I think even more vigorously this time. And I said, and I said, listen, it is certainly right that the settlers that came to America, that they settled America, and they ultimately conquered America, and they they committed some terrible acts to Native Americans. But if you look at the history of humanity in every continent,
every nation was acquired by conquest. And every time there's conquest, you have one group of people who are conquering another group of people. By the way, in the United States, before we were the United States, the Native Americans, one tribe conquered, another conquered or another conquered another. And you look at Europe, you look at Asia. That's the history of humanity. One group of people conquering another. And anytime you have conquest, there are horrible things that happen. They're
terrible things that are done. But I said, look, in any war, there were atrocities on both sides. And you know, I asked, I asked my daughter. I said, you know, from whence do you think the verb to scalp was derived? The Native Americans did some horrible things to the settlers who came here also, And the connection that I made for her, and that I make in the book is
those two discussions are interlinked and intertwined. Which is, for all of the teachers and all of the professors and all of the people advocating that Columbus was evil and advocating that Thanksgiving is evil because the Pilgrims were stealing from the Native Americans, it comes down to one antecedent question. Was the settlement of the New World a good thing or a bad thing? Was the formation of the United States of America good or bad? And I'm not neutral
or ambivalent on that question. I think the United States of America has been the greatest force for good of any nation in the history of the world. That we had produced more prosperity, more abundance. We have liberated more prisoners and captives. We have shed our blood and treasure and tears fighting tyranny more than any nation in the history of the world. Do we have our flaws, yes, of course. Do we have our problems, yes, of course. But America, I believe, like Reagan said, is a shining
city on a hill. And I want to make a special request of our Verdict listeners. You guys are incredible, You guys are patriots. You guys give me hope and optimism in America. I want to ask every one of you please, today, when you finished listening to this podcast, most of you are listening on your cell phones, click over to Amazon, type in Unwoke and buy the book.
Right now.
We have nearly a million unique listeners who listen to Verdict. If every one of you goes online and buys the book, it would soar to the very tops of the New York Times bestseller list. That would drive them nuts. By the way, and I wrote this book for the same reason, Ben, that you and I do this podcast. It is right now eleven oh three pm on Tuesday night. The podcast will come out early Wednesday morning. Why am I sitting here at eleven oh three? Why are you sitting here
at eleven o three? Because we care about this. We want we want our incredible listeners to be armed with information and know how to fight to save this country. And this book is exactly in the same spirit. The book is I think, interesting and fun. It's not some abstract academic treatise, but it's designed. When you read it, you'll enjoy it. And by the way, I encourage you, Look, if I can be immodest for a second, don't buy just one. You know Christmas is coming up very soon.
Buy a copy for your mom, buy a copy for your brother, buy a copy for your next door neighbor, your best friend. Because the reason that I spend the time to write these books, the reason that you and I do this podcast, is we either persuade and win hearts and minds, or we lose America. That's what the stakes are, and that's what this book is about. It's the exact same thing the popodcast is about.
You mentioned that what we're up against in one of your chapters is about the newsroom revolution, and you start with a great story of a former colleague of mine that is hard to deal with Jake Tapper in a fight is he's in essence calling you a liar.
And this is the new thing that the media has done.
They become so sanctimonious that they are always looking for a moment to tell you why you're wrong and why they're brilliant. We've seen this in the last several days as they've been demanding a ceasefire to protect the terrorists in Gaza, who who the Israelis are trying to eradicate from the face of this earth with good reason after what they did just one month ago. And we talked
about this on Verdict Israel. We knew was on an artificial clock the day the terrorist attack happened, before the media, before the left started going to the aid of Hamas and the Palacinian people that were backing Homosomeny then that were and saying, okay, all right, you had a few days now to go after these terraces. Now you've got to stop it now. Now it's your your obligation to stop trying to protect yourself. And this is our media now.
And it goes back to this idea that they have, which is they're better than everyone else.
They're not here to report news anymore.
They're here to go after people like you and others they don't like and indoctrinate a nation to believe in socialism and communism and Marxism.
Look that that is exactly right. And the media has fundamentally changed. And so the chapter on journalism, I talk about how when I was first elected to the Senate eleven years ago, and I actually focus on CNN as really a case lesson eleven years ago, CNN they aspired to be journalist. If you ask them, they'd say, we want to be journalists. We want to present both sides. We want to be fair and objective and balanced, and we want to focus on facts and not our opinion. Now,
they were terrible at it. They leaned hard left and they couldn't help themselves. But that was the objective. Number one, they would articulate to you they were trying to achieve. But number two, I think they believed in their heart they were trying to do that. And so when I was first elected to the Senate. You may find this hard to believe, but I went on CNN just about
every week. I went on there over and over and over again, and they would give you a chance to lay out a conservative argument that they'd attack you from the left and they'd be unfair and they'd play gotcha questions, but they would give you a chance to present the other side. And what happened is when Donald Trump became president, I think it fundamentally broke the media. Their brains shattered.
They hated him so much that today the media no longer views its vision as being journalists, as being fair and impartial and presenting both sides. Instead, they have embraced a vision that they are advocates. They are defenders of democracy, and what they mean by democracy is left wing radical policies. And you know. So the story I tell in the very beginning of the journalism chapter is during the presidential race,
I was out on the campaign trip. I was actually in our campaign bus, and I was doing an interview with Jake Tapper. And look, I'll confess I like Jake. I've known Jake for over twenty years. I've known Jake since he was a CUB reporter on the George W. Bush two thousand campaign and I was a baby staffer on it, and so I've known him a long time.
And he was interviewing me for his Sunday show, and we did an interview and it was I don't remember, probably ten minutes or so, and I had learned a lesson. It's something that I do with every Sunday show, which is that I insist that the Sunday show either be
live or it be live to tape. And the reason I learned that is I had done just a few weeks earlier in an interview with Bob Scheffer at CBS, and Bob Scheffer I hadn't insist on that, and he'd done the interview, and then afterwards his show had edited it and basically cut out every good argument I made and just put this slash job where he decimated me because he excluded all my good answers and just edited it in a way that was really deceptive. And I said, okay,
never again. If we do one of these, they must air what I actually say. And I said, look, if you want to give you five minutes or six or eight or ten or twelve or whatever, you can pick the time. But when we film it, you air exactly
what happens during that time. So we had agreed with that with CNN, and in the course of the interview, we were talking about the shooting at Fort Hood and Nadal Hassan, who was the radical Islamist who had walked through and murdered fourteen innocent souls yelling at luhawk Bar, and I mentioned that the Obama administration knew that Hassan was a radical jahadist, they knew that he had been in email communication with unware al Alaki, who was the
Islamist cleric, the radical that he'd asked al Alaki about the permissibility of waging jahad on his fellow soldiers. And yet the Obama administration did nothing until he committed that act of mass murder. And when I said all of that, Jake immediately interrupted and he said, that's not true. No, that's not right, and he said, what you're saying is
fundamentally false. That's a lie, it's not true, and you know, I just kind of smiled, and I said, well, you know, Jake, as John Adams said, facts are stubborn things, and what I'm saying is entirely accurate, and you know when you research the issue, that's exactly what you're going to find out. So we do the interview, Jake and his production team leaves the bus, and I don't know five ten minutes later, there's a knock on the door of the bus and
we open it. It's Jake and he's very sheepish, and he said, hey, can to come in and talk for a second. I said, yeah, sure, come on in, and he said, look, after we did the interview, he said, I went and got on the internet and I researched it, and actually, you were right, he said. I didn't know that I had missed. I just had not seen the revelation that the Obama administration knew it. It just I
couldn't believe it. But turns out you were right. I was wrong, And Jake said, listen, I'll give you a choice. We can do it one of two ways. He said. I agreed we would do this live to tape, and so if you want, I will air it exactly as it happened, and then after I air it, will I will come on live and I'll say after the interview, I researched it, and it turns out I was wrong, and Cruz was right. What he said was exactly right, and I was in error when I said he was
not telling the truth. He said, that's option number one. He said, option number two, which he said I'd really much prefer it is that we just edit out that segment. We just remove it from the interview, and we air everything else and just not include that segment. And I describe in the book that you know, I thought about it, and it was obviously in my self interest to pick option number one. That like having CNN having Tapper admit he was full of crap. And I was right, that
was a big political victory. But I also expected that I would be doing a whole lot more interviews with Tapper and with CNN, and I frankly respected how he approached it. That he came to me and he admitted he was wrong, and he gave me that option I
thought was an honorable way to handle it. And so I made what I would say is a long term play rather than a short term play, and I said, Okay, you can go ahead and cut the segment out, and so they did, so the story I recount in the book that segment never aired because CNN cut the segment out.
I focus on Tapper in particular because I think he's a smart guy, and I think he wants to be a journalist, and I think in his heart right now, he knows that he's not that Trump broke Tapper that now CNN will have a panel of five experts there to discuss true or not Donald Trump is the devil, and all five of them agree, of course the devil. No, he's worse than the devil. That's the whole debate. And you know, look, CNN used to be a place if
you go back to twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen, I did three town hall debates on CNN with Bernie Sanders. We did one on healthcare and two on tax policy, and they were great debates. I think they were among, if not the highest rated shows on CNN that whole year. They were ninety minutes. Bernie is an unapologetic defender of socialism.
I'm an unapologic defender of capitalism. And we had a real and subsim debate that CNN doesn't exist anymore, and it's bad for America, it's bad for the world that we don't have functioning journalism. And I describe all of this in the book, but I also describe how because journalism corporate media is broken, it's part of what makes the radical Democrats so extreme, why they vote for such
ridiculous policy positions. That are so out of the mainstream because they know they will never ever ever get asked about it by reporters back home. They will never have to defend it, and so it's radicalized the Democrat Party in Washington.
So there's another part of your book that I want to mention real quick, and it's a trend. Whether it's you talking about big tech or the schools or Marxism in Washington. The list goes on on especially and you have a lot talking here about science and COVID. That chapter is probably my favorite. As I was reading it today, I was marking it up. But there's a trend in this book and I love this. This may be my favorite part. Is you at each in each chapter, in essence, ask how do you fight back?
How to reclaim control? How do we win?
It's not just a book of you ranting about issues, but you actually lay out how we can succeed and get our and win on our side of the argument. And that's what empowers the reader to did not just read a book, but to take something from it.
And I love that well. It is critically important. And there are all sorts of elements of how we fight back, and when one of it is transparency and sunshine. The views of the radical left are wildly unpopular. Look, no rational person supports abolishing the police. That's a nutty position. No rational person supports open borders and the chaos at our southern border. No rational person supports medically and surgically sterilizing and castrating eight year old children. No rational person
is befuddled by the question what is a woman? All of those are ninety ten issues, and the radical Left is on the extreme minority position on every one of them. It's why they rely on force rather than persuasion, because their positions are out there and so often shining a light is really, really potent. And I'm gonna give an example. I'm gonna give an example from Verdict. So we had a podcast several weeks ago that was entitled black Lives Matter is Hamas, and we walk through how black Lives
Matter is a statement, is a truism. It's absolutely true, yes, period the end. However, Black Lives Matter, the organization Black Lives Matter, Inc. Is a very different thing. It is found founded by a vowed Marxists who are trained Marxist. They're trained in fomenting communist revolutions. That's their own self description, not our language. Their language. They are vicious racists, and
they are deeply, deeply anti Semitic. They hate Israel. Indeed, one of the co founders of Black Lives Matter has called since nineteen ninety five for the destruction of the state of Israel. And on our podcast, we laid out all of that evidence, and then we names of all of the or a number of the giant corporations who had given millions of dollars to Black Lives Matter, and then included Amazon and Apple and Coca Cola, and we said, listen, do these companies do you support vicious racism? Do you
support vicious anti semitism? Do you support demanding the destruction of the state of Israel? Do you support these avowed Marxists because you gave money to them? That podcast came out, I believe, October eighteenth. The next day, Coca Cola went online and they scrubbed their website to remove every reference to the five hundred thousand dollars that they had given the Black Lives Matter. And it was a direct result of this Verdict podcast. We put the podcast out and
almost immediately they erased it. Now they thought they could do it quietly. They could just hide and evade responsibility. I'm calling them out. I'm calling them out, and I'm shining a light, and I'm saying, look, have you apologized to the American people for why you were funding a viciously racist and anti Semitic organization And it wasn't a secret, they were open about it. Then you just didn't care because your woke politics mattered more to you than doing
the right thing. And that's one of the strategies that is inherent in this book is shining the light and calling them out. And that's how you win victories. In chapter after chapter, I talk about winning victories. Whether it's winning school board seats back, or flipping Virginia read as Parents Got Furious, or whether it's Elon Musk buying Twitter. All of these are strategies where we take these institutions back.
It's an incredible book, Center and congratulations on it. It's one that I hope everybody listing will go grab. You can go to Amazon right now, you can order it. It's a fabulous Christmas gift. It is three hundred and fifty six pages from beginning to end. One of the chapters that you've got to read. If you get it, make sure you read the big tech tech chapter and
also science. The science chapter to me was one that as I was reading it, sentator, I know you well enough to know when you really get passionate about something.
You were really really.
Passionate when writing that that chapter on science and what has happened and how science has just been totally corrupted, whether it's by Fauci or others that are pushing agendas through science, and those are two chapters I just want to mark for people.
Make sure you take a look at those as well.
Grab the book Unwoke How to defeed a Cultural Marxism in America. You can get on Amazon, order it now wherever you get your books.
Don't forget hit.
That follow subscribe or auto download button wherever you're listening to this podcast. We do this podcast Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
We also have a recap pod on Saturday mornings. That is some of the things deeper in each podcast maybe you miss because of time restraint, so make sure you check that out as well, and on those in between days, I'd love for you to join me as I'll keep you update on breaking news on my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts as well on those in between days, so make sure you download that as well in the center and I will see you back here in a couple of days