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Nothing's ever perfect in politics. There are some losses, there are some dangers, there are some threats. This has been a good week. It has been a damn good week. The biggest win before we get into the case that you are actually bringing to the Supreme Court, before we get into that, before we get into the filibuster, which

lives lives to see another day, the ocean man. Yeah, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was demanding that eighty four million Americans take the fauci auchie as some of us call it, the COVID vaccine. Employers were enforcing it. Some people brought a lawsuit. One of the groups was the Daily Wire, a lawsuit, and the Supreme Court strikes effectively strikes down the mandate. Yeah. No, it was a huge victory for the rule of law. It was a

very important case. When the OSHA mandate came out. We talked about a lot on this podcast. Your employer, the Daily Wire, filed a lawsuit, was a party in the suit. So so we're actually sitting here, both of us our

parties in Supreme Court cases this past week. The Osha case was huge, and when it came out, we had a podcast at the time where we walked through the legal standards for OSHA promulgating a rule like that, and you'll recall we we said on the pod we said, number one, we said, the Supreme Court's going to strike it down. And in fact, when you and I talked about it, but when the case was being argued, I said,

I think the decision will be six three. I think there will be six votes to strike it down as beyond OSHA's statutory authority, beyond the authority of the federal government. And we also talked about Ron Klain, who was the White House is the White House Chief of STA who stupidly sent a tweet right when the ocean mandate issued where he retweeted that this was a workaround to get around the law. And you'll recall I talked about I tweeted at the time and said this was really dumb.

And I promise you number one, this edict is going to be challenged. Number two, I believe it's going to be struck down in court. At number three, this idiotic tweet from ron Klain is going to be exhibit A in the lawsuit and the Supreme Court's decision six three striking it down. What did they sit, among other things ron Klain's tweet, this seems to be a workaround, and

that's not legit. So I read the opinion of the court, I read the concurring opinion of the Court's conservatives three Thomas, Alito, and Gorsich, and I read the liberal dissent. This is obviously all great news, but it was a little confusing. I'm not a lawyer, I have no So they were they stay the mandate and then they sent the mandate back to the lower Okay, So what they did is they upheld the injunction, So the mandate is enjoined. An injunction is an order from a court, either to do

something or not to do something. So the injunction means the mandate has no legal force. Okay, But they remandered it to the lower court to have a trial to consider the claims challenging the mandate. But the reason why this is really good, one of the grounds for upholding the injunction is likelihood of success on the merits. So six Justices have said the plaintiffs are likely to succeed.

They haven't conclusively said their claims are valid, but they've said they're likely to succeed on the merits that that

the Ocean mandate, for all intents and purposes, it is dead. Unfortunately, there was a second decision that came out the same day, and that second decision was five four upholding a different vaccine mandate, the vaccine mandate that the Biden administration put on healthcare workers, and it put on healthcare workers in facilities that are receiving federal funds either through Medicare or Medicaid.

And that was five to four. It consisted of the three Liberals plus Chief Justice Roberts plus Brett Cavanaugh were the five. And you know, we talked about before the Supreme Court's decision coming out of New York with healthcare workers, where they had refused to stay the decision out of New York. I think that was a mistake. I think this was a mistake. But look, the three Libs, they

like all these mandates. Apparently the Biden can mandate us to do whatever we want to dance on one leg in a pink two two while singing Yankee Doodle Dante. The Libs more or less say that in the descent, they say there's basically no limit to what the government can do in this regard Roberts and Kavanaugh on healthcare workers, they're pretty comfortable with the federal government or the state government. The New York case was a state government issue. Here

it's the federal government. But they're pretty comfortable with the federal government forcing state workers, state healthcare workers, or just healthcare workers generally who were receiving government money to have to have to get vaccinated. I think that was a

serious mistake. I think they're undervaluing the liberty interest of these healthcare workers because I had this question when I saw Kavanaugh squish and flipped to the other side, I thought, well, do healthcare workers not have the same rights as every other employee. So you remember we talked about that. There are four different mandates that came out. There's a mandate for military service men and women. There's a mandate for

civilian employees. There's a mandate for federal contractors. There's a mandate for private employers with a hundred and more employees under OSHA, and I said, they're all in descending likelihood of surviving. Yeah, so the OSHA order was always the most vulnerable legally because the Oceans Statute doesn't allow this. That this is really a far stretch from what Congress intended on in OSHA, which is why Ron Klaine called it a workaround. To be fair the healthcare workers, there's

a stronger statutory argument there. The statutory language is different, and so there is a stronger argument. I still think that mandate should have been struck down as well, but there is a meaningful difference in terms of with OSHA, they had zero legs to stand on. With the healthcare workers, they didn't even have a leg, but maybe they had a toe. Fair enough, fair enough, and still still basically

a win. Even if it was unfortunate that the court wouldn't go all the way on this second case, still a major win. Eighty four million Americans don't need to be vaccinated against their will. Well, and I gotta say I take particular pride because not only did we predict at every stage would happen in this case on the podcast, but the lawyer argued the case was my former chief Council. So it's a fellow named Scott Keller's a great guy.

Scott was actually a student of mine. So I met Scott when I was teaching at University of Texas Law School and he was a law student there. I taught a seminar on US Supreme Court litigation and he took the class. He was excellent in the class, did extraordinary. I gave him an A plus, and then I didn't give very many a pluses. He graduated number one in his class at University of Texas Law School. He went

and clerked on the Court of Appeals. He clerked for Justice Kennedy on the Supreme Court, and I recommended him for that. And then when I several years later, when I was elected to the Senate, I hired Scott as my first chief council. So when I showed up a decade ago in the Senate, Scott we were down in the basement. I just got in here. When you first get here, you don't have a real office. You're sort of intemporary space, and you're just trying to figure out everything.

So Scott spent a couple of years with me as my chief counsel and then actually came and quit. And here's why I quit, because he'd been appointed to be the Solicitor General of Texas. Not a bad gig, and it's my old job. It's a job I loved. I did five and a half years. And when Scott gave his notice, I was really sad, like I didn't want to lose him because he's a really talented lawyer. But I couldn't complain because SG of Texas is an amazing job,

and you get to argue cases. You get to argue cases. So Scott has now argued more cases than I did. I argued nine cases. When he argued his tenth case, I called in that morning and said, all right, screw you. I just had to say that as former boss, I had to like throw that marker down. So now I have to ask you, Obviously you're not going to be arguing a case before the Supreme Court right now, but are you bringing this case before the Supreme Court just

to beat your old general counsel? Well? No, but but there was a separate case. So we're sitting here, we're recording this. On Wednesday. This morning, the Supreme Court heard oral argument. The very first case was Federal Election Commission versus Ted Cruz, and I am the plain iff. I have sued the Federal Election Commission seeking to strike down

a provision of McCain Finegold. The Big campaign finance legislation's terrible piece of legislation has all sorts of problems, but at the heart of it, McCain Finegold was all about incumbent politicians wanting to make it harder for anyone to run against them and challenge them. It was about the one thing Republicans and Democrats could agree on is nobody should beat us in an election. Mcain Finegold is throwing

barriers in the way of challenge. This doesn't make sense though, because I was reading a lot of left wing news sources today. They was telling me. They were all telling me about the case, and they say that Ted Cruz is bringing a lawsuit before the Supreme Court to make it easier to bribe and corrupt politicians and to make this swamp land even swampier. Are you telling me that the left wing media got it wrong? You're right, that's every headline as Cruise wants more bribery, and even for

the media that's a little dishonest. So there were two provisions of McCain fine Gold that were called the Millionaire's Amendment so incumbent politicians hate anyone that can challenge them. They particularly hate people who have money. So if you get a really rich person that runs against you, that's really problematic because then they can run ads and communicate,

and you get a problem. So the Millionaire's Amendment half of it said that if someone self finances and puts a whole bunch of money into his own campaign, that the federal limits for the other guy are tripled. So instead of twenty nine hundred a person, it's nearly nine grand a person, And that's entirely designed to benefit incumbents and to discourage rich people from running against them. Well, the Supreme Court a few years ago struck that half

of the Millionaire's Amendment down. Said, look, if someone decides to run for office, if they want to invest their own resources and speak, you have a right to speech. And that means spending your own money to speak. If you want to put a billboard on the freeway, if you want to run a radio add or a TV ad, all of that is political speech. So that was half of the Millionaire's Amendment that was struck down several years ago.

The other half of the Millionaire's Amendment is what this case is all about, and it's a provision that limits the ability of a candidate who's running for office to loan money to his own campaign. So the way it works, let's say Michael Knowles wakes up and says I'm going to run for Congress, and you'd say, get this man to a psychiatrist who's lost his mind. But you're incurable, and you say, I'm gonna run. I'm taken on AOC, I'm moving to New York, my old district. We're going

and I'm gonna win. Now, if you're starting, you know, you may not have a lot of supporters. You're not an incumbent politician. You don't have lobbyists probably supporting you, you don't have the infrastructure that an incumbent has. So what a lot of people do if they launch a campaign is they loan themselves some money. So they have some money, some savings, and they put some money in

to start the campaign. What McCain Feingold said is if you loan your if you loan your own money to your campaign after the election, you can only pay yourself back up to two hundred and fifty thousand of it. Okay, anything above two hundred and fifty thousand with money that is raised after the campaign, you can't pay back and you're just stuck. By the way, when when you talk especially about competitive districts, these campaigns can cost millions and

millions of dollars. So two hundred and fifty thousand is not as much as it sounds like. So, and what this is designed to do is it's designed to disincentivelenge challengers. So look, if you're a gazillionaire, and by the way, we're seeing more and more billionaires running for off as if you're a billionaire, you don't care. You can put five, ten, twenty million dollars into your campaign. You don't matter. You're so rich it doesn't make a difference. You never need

it back. So this is not a disincentive to the super rich. And we're actually seeing more and more billionaires who are running for office because they have the massive money. What this is an incentive too, is the small business owner. But this is an incentive too, is the doctor. This is the somewhat rich. It's not the super rich. It's the someone who has enough money that you could invest a substantial amount of money. You could invest five hundred thousand.

You can invest a million dollars you've saved. You put your money in the bank, you've saved, and you can invest the money in a congressional race. If you could put five hundred thousand or a million, that gives you a real shot at communicating. Yea, this is designed to punish that guy and say, well, you know what. Let's let's say you worked hard, you're a physician, You've got a million dollars in the bank, you loan it to the campaign, you spend every penny of it on the campaign.

You can pay back two hundred and fifty thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand of it. Tough luck, Michael. You have given it to the United States of America. You don't get it back. And so that's what the existing law is. And so what I did in twenty eighteen is I loaned my campaign two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Now that's a specific number, Senator, it is

it's it's ten thousand more than the limit. So I loaned my campaign to two hundred and sixty thousand right before the election, and then twenty days after the election, a little bit later than that, I repaid myself to a hundred fifty thousand, which what you're allowed to do. So there's ten thousand that under the law, it's illegal for me to pay myself back, and I did that in order to file this lawsuit. As I was just reading it, obviously you can tell it better because you

were there. The lawyer for the government is saying that this case should be dismissed, it should be thrown out because you obviously were doing something that you knew was against law. You were just trying to trigger this court case. Yeah, that was an argument that the Biden Justice Department made

that that's a really weak argument. So if you look at there are lots of cases that are test cases that if there's any legal or unconstitutional law, you're allowed to challenge it, and you're allowed to violate that law

to challenge it. You're allowed to create the facts. And there are literally hundreds of test cases where people you know, if if the government makes it illegal for Michael Knowles to defend the right to life, you know, the government said, well, you chose to say it, you chose to violate it. You could have just obeyed. Why didn't you. Yeah, So dismiss the case, and so that argument is not going to go anywhere. I'll say, the argument I think went well,

I hope. So the lawyer who argued it is a guy named Chuck Cooper who is a very close friend of mine. He was my first boss when I came out of my clerkship, and so I clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. I came out of the clerkship in nineteen ninety seven and I joined Chuck at what was then a tiny little law firm that was called Cooper and Carvin and it was Chuck Cooper's Mike Carvin law firm had six lawyers in it.

It was all of nine months old. And Chuck had been also a clerk for rink Quists, so he was a former renk Whist clerk. He's one of the top Supreme Court litigators in the country, and he was my first boss, and so I went to work for him to learn how to be a lawyer. He really taught me how to be a lawyer. And so he's representing me in this case, and he's a dear, dear friend. He did a terrific job. And I will say, look, it's it's it's never absolutely clear how a case is

going to come out. I think on the merits, there are clearly a majority of justices who agree that this provisions on constitution. Okay, the Department of Justice is trying to raise lots of procedural issues that basically are saying, don't get to the merits, don't address whether the laws constitutional, and and and so they're throwing a lot of muck in the air, trying to say, avoid the actual question to the lawsuit. I hope the Court doesn't do that.

I hope they actually answer the question, because this provision really is designed. And by the way, if you look at the proponents of it, if you look at Harry Reid, you look actually at Kay Bailey Hutchinson, my predecessor in the Senate. They got up and said, this is to

make it harder for people to challenge us. This is all about protecting incumbents and protecting the super wealthy, the billionaires, and it's about hurting the small business owner, the doctor, the entrepreneur, the person who wants to run for Congress because they want to be mister Smith going to Washington. They want to challenge the swamp. So what's the swamp want to do make it a lot harder to challenge

the swamp. Now, speaking of incumbent senators who are desperately trying to hold onto power, there has been a major push from the Biden administration and the Democrats senators and Chuck Schumer to get rid of the filibuster before they lose their elections, which increasingly it looks like is going to happen in November. They are trying to get through any legislation and they can't do that right now because they don't have enough votes to get through the sixty

vote threshold. And I think you know it more closely than I do. I think that the attempt to kill the filibuster is just as dead as the ocean mandate? Am I right? Hopefully? Yes? And I think you are okay. So you and I were recording this Wednesday late afternoon. As soon as we finish recording this, I'm going to get up literally in a half hour, I'm going to be in the Senate floor and we're having the filibuster fight tonight. So I have not yet had that battle,

but at about half hour we will. What is going to happen is that Chuck Schumer is going to file cloture on their federal election takeover legislation. Cloture takes sixty votes, It's going to fail. He will probably get all the Democrats. It'll probably be fifty fifty, but it will fail because fifty is not sixty. They then, i think, will yabber, awhile, because they want to make us listen to them. Yabber.

And then what he's going to do likely is file a motion to re consider, and he will challenge the He will inquire of the Chair whether it takes fifty or sixty votes to proceed to culture. The Chair will reject his claim. We'll say it takes sixty, assuming the Chair follows the law right, in which case Schumer will move to appeal. He will appeal the ruling of the chair. That's what's called the nuclear option. So the rules of the Senate, they're written down, they're in a book. We

all have that book in our desks. You have you have the rules of the Senate. The rules of the Senate say culture takes sixty votes. That's literally black and white typed in the type than the rules. Now, you can change the rules of the Senate. To change the rules of the Senate takes sixty seven senators, so it's a higher threshold. Sixty seven senators can agree to change the rules of the Senate. They don't have sixty seven senators. There is one other way to do it, and it's

what's called the nuclear option. So Schumer will appeal the ruling of the chair. Any ruling of the chair can be a to overturn the ruling of the chair just takes fifty votes, takes a majority, doesn't take sixty, and then the Senate is weird. If the ruling of the Chair is overturned, that becomes a precedent, and they actually keep a book of all the precedents of the Senate, and that precedent has the same force as the rules

written on paper. So, in other words, if Schumer succeeds, he will break the rules of the Senate in order to change the rules of the Senate. So now you'll have these two rules written down on the paper, and the new one beats the old one, right, and the new one is just a precedent. It's just a majority of the Senate voted that this is now the rules. So the old ones written on the paper don't matter anymright, Now, the good news is, I think the odds are extremely likely,

hopefully certain, that Schumer is going to fail. And the reason for that is that they're two senators, two Democrats who have been explicit saying they're not going to participate in nuking the filibuster. Joe Mansion Kirsen Cinema, Kirson Cinema, last week gave a speech on the Senate floor. I was sitting on the floor. I heard her speech where she drew a line and said, I will not do this.

This will destroy the Senate. It will destroy bipartisanship. Mind you, one of the illustrations of just how nasty and partisan ending the filibuster would make the Senate. That same week, Joe Biden was down in Georgia giving this right racist, nasty, divisive speech, partisan speech. He called half the country bull Connor racists. He called every Republican in America a bull Connor racist. He called Joe Mary by the way, he literally said, you are like bull Connor, you are like

George Wallace. It was hateful. Now, set aside the irony that bull Connor and George Wallace were Democrats. Set aside the irony that Joe Biden literally gave a eulogy at Robert Bird's funeral, a'd exalted cyclops the ku klux Klan. So if anyone has no standing to be on his high horse on racial grounds, it's Joseph Biden. But that kind of speech is just not only do they not want any Republicans. Susan Collins is too conservative for the mitt Romney is too conservative for them. Now they don't

even want Democrats Mansion and Cinema. Today you've got Bernie Sanders talking about he's going to support primary challengers to Mansion and Cinema, and Chuck Schumer said he didn't know if he would support his own caucus. It is ugly assuming Cinema on Mansion don't blink, and I don't think they will at this point. If it was just one of them, the risks, I would be more nervous. With the two of them, I'm hoping each bucks the other up.

And just as a matter of practical politics, person to person politics, the Democrats seem to be doing everything they can to irritate Mansion and Cinema, chasing them into bathrooms and filming them. And I'm gonna say, with Mansion, you know come on in the water's warm. As I told Joe several weeks ago, you know, one of the two

parties actually likes you right right now. You want it so, but the odds are very very high that tonight Schumer will fail to be honest, this is performance theater for Schumer's primary in New York that he doesn't want AOC to primary him, so he's trying to appease the radical left by failing tonight. So he's setting it up to fail tonight. It'll be interesting to see if Kamala Harris

is in the seat as the presiding officer. My bet issue will be because you know, if you're gonna have a big failure, you do need Kamala to presider over it. And that literally fitting. It's the way they think that it is all about appease the crazy left. This is going to fail tonight. But you want to hear something really ironic. Okay, So we were supposed to be on

recess this week. Schumer is a terrible majority leader. He doesn't actually know how to run the Senate and so he had to like cancel the recess and come back to do this performance theater and failed night. Um, I actually on my flight out here today. Rand Paul was on the flight because he was called back and I had to vote him. And we're all here. Every Republican has to be here. Um. You know, if if they could knock one of us off, they could win this

filibuster fight. So so we're like, you know, you know, we've got taste to look. Um, it's for two weeks they've given speeches about how the filibuster is a Jim Crow relic from racist times, The filibuster is evil. Do you know what the very last thing the Democrats did was for today? No, No, I have no idea Senator, let me the last thing the Democrats did last week was filibuster my bill sanctioning Russia, sanctioning Nordstream too. No,

we've talked a lot about Nordstream too. You know, if they didn't have double standards, they would have no standards at all. Literally, as they're giving speeches the filibuster is racist, let's filibuster this like simultaneously. And I got to say it was amazing. So this vote, the vote we had last week was a big, big deal on nord Stream too. So this is about this pipeline, and it's really about the future of Ukraine, Visavi Russia and Visavi the West. Yeah,

so the history of it. We've talked a lot about Ukraine on this show. We started off two years ago with impeachment in Ukraine and Bearisma, and we talked about how Ukraine used to be part of the Soviet Union and when the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine became an independent nation. Ukrainians don't like the Russians. The Russians want to control and dominate Ukraine and many of their neighbors, most of their neighbors and Putin. Look, Putin is a KGB thug.

He has said. One of the most candid things he's ever said is he said that he thinks the greatest geopolitical disaster of the twentieth century was the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And so Putin longs to reassemble the Soviet Union and have Russia. He wants Soviet greatness again. And if you're reassembling the Soviet Union, there's nothing you want more than Ukraine. Ukraine is the bread basket. Now Putin has invaded Ukraine before he did it in twenty fourteen.

You remember Crimea, that's part of Ukraine. Putin marched in and invaded it and took it over and kept it and kept it. But he stopped. He didn't continue invading Ukraine. He stopped short. Why did he stop short? Well, the reason is that right now, Russia's major export is natural gas and oil. That's Putin is basically a petro tyrant. And to get his natural gas to Europe, who's the major consumer of it, it goes through pipelines that go

right through Ukraine. So Putin's sitting there going, well, if I march into Ukraine, they could damage or destroy those pipelines. And if they damage or destroy those pipelines, suddenly Russia can't get the gas to Europe and we're screwed. So Putin was mad because he's like, I want to invade them, but they've got a stranglehold on our ability to get gas to Europe, so suddenly I can't invade them. So

what did he do? The next year Putin launched a project called Dordstream two, and it was let's build an undersea pipeline that skips Ukraine altogether, goes under the ocean and goes straight from Russia to Germany. And that pipeline wants it's complete. We don't have to worry about Ukraine and the energy infrastructure. We can march in and take it over because we can get our gas to Europe well.

Two years ago, I introduced bipartisan legislation to stop it, pass it through Congress, Trump signed it to law, and we stopped the pipeline. We won. The pipeline was dead, buried, stopped put for over a year. Then Joe Biden came into US and Biden surrendered. He capitulated to Putin. Putin began rebuilding the pipeline literally on January twenty fourth, twenty one. I'm glad he took a nice long weekend, you know, a few days, and then starts up again four days

after he Biden's worn in. So the pipeline right now is completed. So Putin has finished it because Biden formally waived the sanctions, but it's still awaiting certification in Europe, so they can't turn it on till the regulatory agents have certified it. And so I introduced legislation to reimpose the sanctions to overturn Biden's surrender to Putin. Now twice, I've introduced legislation like this before. And twice it's passed

essentially unanimous. Every Democrat has supported it twice. We had a big battle in December. I was holding dozens of State Department nominees. Were there till one in the morning. I'm negotiating with Chuck Schumer. I said, all right, I'm going to lift thirty two holes. Let these nominees go through in exchange for scheduling the vote on nord Stream two that we had just last week. Schumer gave in

scheduled the vote. They did not want that vote. They were the Biden White House was lobbying against it like crazy, because even if the Democrats win the vote, then they're all on the record of saying Ukraine see you later. That's exactly right. And they for two years had been sent had been squarely against Nordstream two. This is a vote. When Trump was a president, every Democrat was for these sanctions. The only thing that there's two things that are different.

Number One, instead of a Republican with an R behind his name, a president with an ARM behind his name, there's a president with a D behind his name. Now that it's a Democrat, suddenly the Democrats support Russia. And number two, they're over one hundred thousand troops on the border of Ukraine. Any day now we could see the

Ukrainian invasion by Russia. And they have to do it in about the next month or so, because as we get into the spring, the land starts to thaw and the Russian tanks get stuck in the mundy, so their window to invade is narrow. But we voted on it. It was amazing we ended up. So I won the vote, won a substantial bipartisan majority of the Senate. The vote

was fifty five to forty four. So every Republican voted yes except Ran Paul, and Ran Paul pretty much opposes all sanctions, so I got all Republicans but Rand and on the Democratic side, six Democrats voted with So it was fifty five to forty fours, a big bipartisan majority. We're not living in a particularly bipartisan era, so that it's impressive. Now, fifty five is not sixty, and so the Democrats fellowbustered and said, you don't have sixty, you

don't get the passage. Now here's another interesting thing. There are a number of Democrats who are in vulnerable elections, who are the ballot in November. Every single Democrat in a vulnerable election in November voted with me. So Mark Kelly and Arizona voted for my sanctions on Russia. Catherine Cortez Masto Nevada voted for my sanctions in Nevada on Russia. Maggie Hassan in New Hampshire voted for my sanctions against Russia.

Even Raphael Warnock, one of the most liberal senators in the Senate, voted for my sanctions against Russia because he didn't want to tell the voters of Georgia November. Yeah, I voted to support Putin because I'm a Democrat. We got six Democrats you know who he didn't get Mansion or Cinema. Huh, they're doing enough. So what was amazing the day of the vote, Biden came to the Capitol. He had lunch with all the Democratic senators the day of the vote, and Joe Biden was personally lobbying the

Democratic senators to vote against Cruz's sanctions on Russia. And so it's actually I mean, you said it tongue in cheek, but it's actually true. I just think Mansion and Cinema felt they couldn't stand up to the White House and anything else. They were getting so pounded on everything else, you've killed your legislative agenda. So we'll let you. And look, I didn't like that they voted no, but but I'll give them a mulligan because they are saving the republic

on other sides. But the Democrats are literally, this is not hyperbole. They are literally acquiescing in Russia, wiping Ukraine off them. So there you might say they are thumbing their nose at Ukraine, which raises one I know, we have to let you get to the Senate to go vote, but it does raise one very important story that involves a victory and a loss. You won a basketball game, you lost the use of your thumb. True enough, And

by the way, that's that's quite the segue. Um. Let me just say, if the President of Yale ever sees that segue, they will revoke your degree. They've been trying for years. Well that's true that that that they would provoke your degree for many other reasons before then. So so that's probably the least least of your sins on that front. So yeah, so I broke my thumb. Um, I don't have a cast on, so I don't I've got a splint, but you can take it off, okay.

So so I was playing, uh Friday, I play basketball up twice a week, and so Friday, because Schumer doesn't know how to run the Senate, we were still around, and so I was playing Friday morning. Uh. And I play a lot of times. Other senators play, but but I play every week with my staff. We got some good, good ball players. We've got a couple of guys who played college basketball, a couple of guys who played college football. So we're playing, and you actually haven't invited me to

this game. I did make sure I was busy that day so that I did not humiliate myself on the court. So I have joked that our game is more violent than skillful, and and it is. I mean, we play no blood, no foul, and there are regularly foul, so so there is regularly blood. And so in this instance, I was going up for a rebound and the culprit is a guy who's a law clerk in our office. You'll appreciate this as a New Yorker's name is Tony.

He's from New York. I imagine, um. He is a great guy, hard working conservative law student, but but he's from Brooklyn, and he played street ball in Brooklyn, and he tony from Brooklyn in every respect. So I went up for a rebound and he came down like a ton of bricks on my thumb and broke it right across there. So I had an X ray today, and they're like, actually, yesterday, I had an X ray. They're like, yep,

that's that's a fracture. So you you lost a little bit of the use of your thumb, but you did win the game. I did, and we actually finished the game terrifyingly enough, with the broken thumb. I tried to shoot and I couldn't. I mean, it really hurt. This is not quite at the level of Teddy Roosevelt getting shot now finishing his speech, but by the same Prince. But I will say this, I did score a layup with a broken thumb because I could use my four fingers.

I just stuck my thumb off to the side and did a little scoop layup. So so I even even scored scored a bucket with a broken thumb. Physical lesson, it's a political lesson. No pain, no gain. Sometimes you have to make some sacrifices for the wins. I hope you got a win tonight before we go. You might remember on the one hundredth episode of Verdict that we announced a contest, actually a series of contests, free merch for people who commented, an opportunity maybe to come out

and see us some some other wonderful prizes as well. Well. Now, because this is the two year anniversary of Verdict with Ted Cruz, we have the winners because we all want to celebrate. Here to introduce those winners, our very ownless wheeler, thank you for having me. I don't like to think of this as giving away free stuff though, this is this is earned merchandise. Yes, these these our community here, our community here earned this by being part of what

we do. This is oh yeah, we hit these benchmarks, by the way, most of them, and we're going to do the fun stuff. Anyway. We hit these benchmarks, which is awesome. On YouTube, we said ten people commenting on episode one hundred would get a free box of March you know, the sweet cactus hat, the laptop stickers, the T shirts. Fifteen hundred people commented, Wow, that's pretty good, right, I think that's incredible. So here are the winners. Ken

Melbourne Junior. You won Metaveria, you want Stephan Ds, you want Shelley Carter, you want Philip Paxton driving Fritz. I assume that's a user name, right, Thomas Lusty, Doctor rig Mark Erdman, Safe Spot, Andrew Clark, Megadeath till Death. Another user name still counts Todd Cole, Mary Fleshman, and Cosmic Carosella. These are the winners. By the way, if some parents actually named their child little Megadeath, yeah, he or she may be very upset right now. I think that's slavic.

So we will reach out to each and every one of you to give you your merch here, and I want to see pictures. I want to see pictures of every day wearing this merch. So that's on YouTube. Then on Verdict Plus this this was maybe the most fun one. We said that a member of Verdict plus the Verdict plus community will win an all access trip to come and see us on the road on college campuses. Well, we have a winner here. This is an Italian name, Michael.

You can tell me if I'm butchering this puzzoli, let me see it. I would say at your pronunciation was beautiful, I would say me a little more you know you get the face down putsually. Well, mister you have won a trip to see Verdict live. That's pretty awesome. We will reach out to you and then, um, this is my favorite one and I am going to buy us this poll. We are going to post this on the Verdict plus community that's Verdict with Ted Cruise dot Com

slash plus because everyone needs to vote in this. For this upcoming year, there's going to be a community based competition or Shenanigans if you will, and this is what you're going to vote on. I'm not taking part in this. I'm just going to enjoy it. You guys will have to do this. Should for an episode of Verdict The Senator where a braves Jersey, it's option number one, Option number two. Should there be an arm wrestling match between Michael and the Senator. I think we all know how

that would end. Um Should the Real Truth Cactus be a special guest on the show. I think that's a good option. Or should there be a throwdown episode trash Talking Yell versus Princeton that could go on for hours. That could go on for hours. So this poll will be posted on again Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash plus Um, can I tell you which one? I want to see? Which one? Well, I'm gonna vote for the arm You're going to vote for the art and

who do you think is gonna win? Michael, don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to polite you can vote in it now. Look, Michael may now be engaged. Now that I have a broken song. He may suddenly feel true, he sees an advantage. Providence has smiled upon me. Thank you very much. Well, congratulations to all of the winners. Thank you to everyone who has tuned in for two years. Two years a Verdict. It's wonderful. We look forward to a whole lot more episodes with you,

and we look forward to arm wrestling. 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 can In did its running for Congress and helped the Republican Party across the nation