Welcome.
It is Verdict with Ted CRU's weekend Review. Ben Ferguson with you, and here are the stories that we talked about this week that you may have missed. First up, Katar spending serious money to hire pr firms in America to cover for them. We expose it all. Also, Senator Cruz talks about his new book and it's an incredible interview that he has done over hours with Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice. So what is the book about.
We'll explain it. And finally, law school students decided to not allow a fellow lawyer to actually speak on campus should they have the chance to actually even become lawyers or ever sit on a bench as a judge. We'll break that down for you as well. It's the weekend Review and it starts right now. I want to move to Katar real quick, and that is another big story here. Katar is a country that's very interesting how they spend their money. They certainly do it to influence our opinion
of them as a name. That is something that's very important to them. And they spend millions and millions and millions of dollars on our universities trying to gain favor, to have people think of them in a positive light. Qatar is now hiring pr firms, big ones in DC to help cover and to whitewash them right now with their supportive terrorist activities in the Middle East. Let's just
expose that for everybody right now so you understand. And plus, Guitar has been interesting because it also deals with our friend guy by the Navi, Tucker Carlson.
Yeah. Look, Qatar is the number one foreign funder of US universities.
And to get more than China, by the way, which is something that is a point that a massive asterisk, because China's also tried to buy a significant amount of influence in the US and our universities as well. And think about the size of China and compare it to Qatar, And that tells you just how important Guitar believes getting the minds of our kids and our colleges to look at them in some way a positive way.
Let's give give you a sense of the scope. The number one foreign donor to US university's is Cutter between nineteen eighty six and two thousand and five. What do you think they've given.
I want to say billions?
Is that too much, seven point seven billion with a bre you go, yeah, you know how much they gave in twenty twenty five?
How much?
Over one billion? Yeah, they are flooding cash. Number two is China. Where do you think China is?
I'm going to guess a little bit below them, but definitely close to a billion.
Well, in terms of the overall twenty five I'll give you the twenty five numbers in a second. In terms of the window eighty six to present, the total is six point four billion.
There you go.
The next ones or Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany and Canada. Now what about this last year? The most recent disclosures from twenty twenty five and identify cutter over one point one billion, the United Kingdom over six hundred and thirty three million, China over five hundred and twenty eight million, Switzerland over four hundred and fifty one million, Japan over three hundred and seventy four million, Germany over two hundred and ninety two million, and Saudi Arabia over
two hundred eighty five million. The top university recipients of those foreign funds in twenty twenty five are Carnegie Mellon almost a billion dollars, MIT almost a billion dollars, Stanford over seven hundred and seventy five million, and Harvard University
over three hundred and twenty four million. And if you look at the entire window from nineteen eighty six to the end of twenty twenty five, Harvard University is disclosed that it has received more money from counterparties located in countries of concern, which are countries that are enemies of America than any other institution of higher education, totaling over six hundred and ten million dollars, and Harvard is followed by MIT four hundred and ninety million, n YU four
hundred and sixty two million, Stanford four hundred and eighteen million, and Yale University over four hundred million.
By the way, translation, our universities are for sale to the people that hate America the.
Most they are and the list of those universities that receive the most money from the countries that hate us are almost exactly the list of the universities that had the worst anti Semitic protest. I mean, Cutter knows what it's getting. Seven point seven million dollars ain't cheap. And you know what is is fascinating on this also is you look at all the countries that invest real money, and if you look at that, the number one is Cutter, who,
among other things, fund from US. Do you know who is what country is not on the top seventy countries?
What is that?
Israel? Yeah, And I just want to say, for all the knuckleheads online or it's like, oh, Israel runs everything, Israel's paying for everything. Israel's the money bags.
They're buying influence.
Yeah, it actually is really funny if you look at the list of countries, I'm just going to read it in descending order because I'm going to show you all the countries that put more money in US universities than Israel does. Cutter, England, China, Saudi Arabia, Bermuda, Canada, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland, India, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France, Singapore, Australia, Kuwait, Denmark, the Netherlands, Brazil, Sweden, South Korea, Spain, Norway, Thailand. Is
there is Israel. I'm sorry, I misspoke. Israel falls right below Thailand and below even Bermuda. There you go, that's where they fall. And I separately jumped online on AI to ask, you know, just how where does Israel rank as a foreign funder of US universities? And the answer from Google AI Israel is not a top tier foreign funder of US universities by volume. Well, Middle Eastern nations
like Cutter in Saudi Arabia have donated billions. Israel's contributed significantly less, with estimates of roughly three hundred million in donations over the past twenty five years, often focused on specific research or academic partnerships. And so it just just worth underscoring because if you live in the twisted world of Twitter yeah and Twitter comments, you think Israel's pay for everything? Yeah?
Yeah, And I think they'd be ten x Qatar or any other country.
So there's a reason Cutter has hired these two Washington PR firms. So one of the firms, it's the Qatar Foundation, a state run nonprofit that Doha uses to pedal influence at American higher education, hired the Washington Media Group at a rate of forty thousand per month. So good business to be a lobbyist to provide quote strategic communications support that enhance public understanding of its long standing academic partnerships
with US universities located in Education City, Cutter. According to the firm's March thirtieth federal disclosion registering it as a foreign agent. The Washington Media Group describes itself as quote, a female and minority owned company that crafts solutions to
high profile crises and protects and repairs reputations. Its CEO and president and the agent listed on the contract with the Cutter Foundation is a woman named Crystal Patterson, who has a long history of running digital strategy and communication for Democrats such as Hillary Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and former Rep. Tim Ryan. She worked for the left wing Center for
American Progress, focusing on quote, immigration and diversity policy. According to her bio, in other words, immigration let in more anti American Islamists who hate America, so then they can destroy America like sadly they're destroying many of the countries of Europe. She also is a graduate of Northwestern University, which boasts a campus in Doha in Cutter that holds a contract with Cutter forbidding its students and faculty from
criticizing the Katari regime. Let me repeat that Northwestern has a campus and Cutter that holds a contract with Cutter forbidding its students and faculties from criticizing the Katari regime.
It makes sense. That's money well spent right there.
Look, you can't bite the hand that feeds you. The Cutter Foundation also retained the law firm Venable at a monthly rate of twenty five thousand dollars for government relations services quote pertaining to the public profile of the foundation. Thenable will quote help ensure that members of Congress and the Administration have an accurate understanding of Cutter foundation support
for education and it's work with US universities. You know what, the fact that they're freaking out and hiring lobbyists is a good thing because people are onto them. By the way, these are the same guys that host the leadership of Hamas in Cutter. They live like billionaires, they live like kings. They fund Al Jazeera. They're spreading Islamus propaganda, They're supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. They're spreading anti American garbage, they're spreading
anti Semitic garbage. They're funding these violent radicals on campuses, these communists on campus. By the way, and I will say, you know what, Cutter also funded what's the head spies spying on me. It's been publicly reported they hired spies.
They look they wanted to know what you were doing, sir.
Yeah, I got to say, my life's pretty boring. So you know, if you want to see me at home at at at what time? Is it midnight?
Yeah, it's it's it's one in the morning, service one in the morning. I hired me for fifty grand I would have told him what you were doing at one in the morning doing.
Yeah, No, it's it's really exciting. There is you know, Heidi and the girls are sound asleep, and I'm in the room sadly not too far from the cat litter for for our cats that that that that Carolina doors, so that their spies I think are pretty bored right now.
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number two.
All right.
Last week Clarence Thomas gave a speech at the University of Texas and the speech was positively magisterial. In fact, I texted Justice Thomas and I told him thank you that that was an important speech.
It was beautifully done.
I want to play a minute of the speech so you can hear. Because this was this really sort of encapsulates who he is. I was proud of UT for inviting him. I think the student body, those in attendance were enraptured. Give a listen. Listen to what Justice Thomas said last week in a speech at UT.
There isn't a single judge I know who does hard things because they get joy out of it. They do hard things because they signed up to do hard things. And they may not agree with it, and it may be difficult, they may think it's not a great law. But their job as Article three judges is to enforce the law, to interpret it, and to apply it to
that particular case. When I first became a judge, judge Larry Siverman, who's unfortunately passed away, said, ask yourself before each case, what is my role in this case as a judge? Notice how that limits you, not as a person, not as a Catholic, not as a policy maker, not as a husband, as a judge. And that is early on that required more.
Discipline, more discipline. Yeah, that's a great way of putting that from Krarence Thomas are and you said earlier being a kid in the audience at UT getting to hear this conversation truly an incredible moment.
And I will say when he's talking about being a judge and more discipline, a lot of what I talk about in the book is his approach to being a judge and it's very much Look his grandfather, he was raised by his grandfather. His grandfather worked him hard, yea. He worked. He worked delivering fuel oil, he worked on the farm, he helped build their home on the farm. He worked his fingers literally bloody. His grandfather during the bitter cold of the winter, would not let Clarence Thomas
wear gloves because he thought gloves made you soft. He wanted to make him a strong and tough and discipline. And part of what Clarence Stemas does, yes.
The school of hard knocks mentality behind a lot of great men. They had really tough people in their life that made them into great men.
And that's an example of that well. And Clarence Thomas had enormous expectations on him and his approach to being a justice. There are a lot of justices who use much more high falut and rhetoric. You look at Clarence Thomas opinions. They're plain spoken, they're very matter of fact that they are designed so they can be read by every man, so they can and look, he was growing up in Georgia with a lot of poor African Americans surrounding them, many of whom were illiterate. His grandparents who
raised him were almost functionally illiterate. They had very limited reading skills. And so he tries to write his opinions in a way that they are accessible, they're straightforward, and he approaches each opinion. I use the analogy in the book. It's like a carpenter. It's like someone building a home. He lays the foundation, he frames the house. He does it peace after peace, trying to get to the truth.
And the title of the book, going further. If you look at thirty plus years of Clarence Thomas's time on the Court, his consistent theme is we should go further. That's a quote from his dissent in the term limits case. But it is a theme that other great conservative justices would say, let's do X, and he would say, no, let's go further. And his focus is let's get back to the original understanding of the Constitution. Let's go all the way and the impact he has had has changed
law profoundly. And I want you to listen to him again at ut last week talking about the importance of the Constitution but also the importance of the Declaration of Independence, and I think Clarence Thomas emphasizes and highlights the Declaration more than any other. Justice Here, give a listen.
None of our rights come from the government. All of the government's authority comes from our consent, and the structure and limited role of government is to assure that it does not exceed the authority to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights. The Constitution is the means of government. It is the declaration that announces the ends of government. The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and our liberties from concentrated power and
excessive democracy. Our Constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism truly for the first time in modern history, to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights.
He takes his time, and that's one of the things he doesn't wing it.
He understood putting on a show speaks.
Yeah, he's these words are deliberate, and you can tell that he has just an incredible amount of passion and care for this country. And I also think when you get a little bit older, you probably are thinking about your legacy and what you're leaving behind. And he clearly speaks that way to those students, going, Hey, I'm not
always going to be here being a shepherd. Somebody else is going to have to step forward and do this, and it may take a lot of people to accomplish what he's done in his lifetime.
Well, and I'll tell you again. In that ut speech, he contrasts the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the Constitution, the immutable principles upon which our country was founded. He contrasts them with progressivism. And progressivism I think has been a poison that that that has led the United States a very dangerous direction. Listened to justice, Thomas draw in that.
Contrast, progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God but from government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premise on the transcendent origin of our rights.
Wow. I mean wow, what else can you say besides wow?
And by the way, you might say, well, gosh, is progressivism really at war with the principles of the Declaration of Independence. You may remember last year at a Senate Formulations committee when Tim Kaine, Democrat from Virginia, was questioning a nominee to the State Department of President Trump nominated the State Department who had written in his testimony that our rights come from God, not government. And Tim kin got outraged and he said, that is a radical statement.
That is a dangerous statement. That is an extreme statement. That is the kind of thing theocratic societies like a Rand build believe. We don't believe that God doesn't give
us our rights. Government does. And I walked in right as Tim Kaine was saying this, and I had a whole line of questioning that I had planned to go down on the hearing, and I threw it all in the trash, and I spoke shortly after Tim Kaine, and I said, you know, Tim Kaine said, the idea that our rights come from God is a radical and dangerous and extreme idea. And he's right, it is. It also happens to be the founding principle upon which our nation
was created. And I said, listen, if you don't believe me, maybe you're inclined. You're politically left of center, and you may be inclined not to believe me. If you don't, maybe you might believe another Virginian who wrote, we hold these rights. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator, not by government, not by the DNC, but by God Almighty, with certain unelienable rights. That among
these are life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. That was, of course Thomas Jefferson. That was in the declaration. That's what justice Thomas is referring. And part of what was so disturbing about Tim Kaine, so cavalierly dismissing the idea that our rights come from God and instead insisting they come from government. Is Tim Kaine and the Democrat Party is not some crazy radical. He's not Bernie Sanders, he's not Elizabeth Warren. He was Hillary Clinton's vice presidential nominee.
He is about as mainstream a Democrat as you can find. And it really shows how progressivism has suffused the Democrat Party and I got to say at ut last week also Justice Thomas talked about the need to engage and engage in the fight for truth. Here give a listen.
I think if we don't stand up and take ownership of our country and take responsible for it, we are slowly letting others control how we think and what we think. I think the beauty of going to school is that you learn how to think for yourselves. You develop the discipline to think things through you. If you think it's losing confidence, then you get up and you participate. You don't sit on the sidelines. You think that the that the state is being run and inconsistent with how you feel,
and you get up and you participate. You prepare yourself. If you think that the medical profession is not right, when you become a doctor or be a medical person and you deal with that. I think we need to take ownership of our country.
It's our country, it's our country, and man, you know, one of the things he said there that was interesting is he said, you know, you go to school to learn, you know, to figure out what you believe in, what you think, and those of things. I think the last and to learn how to think and learn how to think. They think, No, No, you come here so we can indoctrinate you, yep, and tell you what to think, and tell you what to say, and tell you what to protest, and tell
you what how to act. That is the difference between conservatism and liberalism on a college campus.
Well, let me say this. If you're a young person, maybe you're in high school, maybe you're in college. Maybe you're a young professional. Maybe you're not that young anymore.
Maybe you're in.
Your thirties, or your forties, or your fifties, or maybe your sixties, seventy eighty, maybe you're in your nineties. If you want a hero, I think you could do a lot worse than Clarence Thomas.
That's a great I'm putting it.
He is someone. Look, I spent the better part of a year writing this book. There's a lot of things to devote my time to. The reason I wrote this book is I believe this book needed to be written. His story needed to be told. His autobiography is great, but it was written a long time ago, and a lot of people today haven't read it. And his jurisprudence.
There have been other other books that have been written that have been academic discussions of his jurisprudence, and if you're a federal judge, if you're a law professor, that can be useful. But there's very little in terms of if you're just an American who cares about our country, who cares about truth, there's very little that explains what Clarence Thomas has stood for, what he said when he's argued on the court. And this book I've tried to do so in a way that it's fun, that is interesting,
that's telling inside stories. And so again, the website is Goingfurther dot Com, Going Further dot Com. I'd encourage you if you're listening to this podcast right now, if you're watching on YouTube, just click over on your phone to Going Further dot Com. Pre order a copy, and you know, you may even think about this. Will be August. If you have if you have a child, if you have a grandchild, if you have relative, you have a friend, Birthday's coming up, Christmas is coming up. This book I
wrote because I want people to read it. I want people to read it because I think Clarence Thomas's life, his journey, his principles, his commitment to truth, and his courage. As before.
If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week. You may have missed. There was a very interesting flashpoint that happened that was underreported or just not even touched at UCLA with a con conservative speaker that was coming to the law school. And I want to be clear, I have no problem with protests
on college campuses. I think it's great that's outside. Disrupting and silencing a conservative speaker or a liberal speaker in the venue, that is completely different. UCLA did nothing to in essence, stop this from happening, silencing a conservative speaker, and it's now gone viral on YouTube and on x thank goodness, on social media. I want to get your reaction to this because it was pre planned and UCLA they didn't do enough to stop it at all.
Well, listen, everyone has a right to protest, you have a right to speak, But what you don't have a right to do is engage in what's called the Heckler's veto. You don't have a right to silence a speaker you disagree with, and that's what the left does. The left is terrified of opposing views. They do this frequently. So
what happened. UCLA Law School invited a lawyer from the Department Homeland Security to come talk the Federalist society at the law school did leftists came and deliberately disrupted the event. And I got to say, this reminded me of an event that happened a couple of years ago at Stanford Law School, another California law school, where Kyle Duncan, who was a federal appellate judge from the Fifth Circuit, spoke and you had law students who screamed and yelled and
said that they hoped that his daughters were raped. I mean, it was really twisted. And I got to say, look, I'm a lawyer, I'm a law school graduate, member of the bar. Any lawyer, if you remember the bar, you number one have to pass a character and fitness test. And if you're in front of a judge, I got to tell you, if you're a lawyer and you scream and curse at the judge and say you hope that his daughter was raped, you will be held in contempt and go to jail like that is not compatible with
actually being a lawyer. And so if you disagree with the views some speakers saying, you can protest outside, you can express your own views, but you don't have the right to engage in in shouting them down, attacking, silencing them, preventing others from listening to those messages. Now, I mentioned just a minute ago my brand new book Going Further, the incomparable Clarence Thomas. By the way, you can order
that book at Goingfurther dot com Gooingfurther dot com. The book I wrote before that was entitled Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America. And I mentioned that because when I talk about college and universities, I talk at length about what happened at Stanford. What happened at Stanford with this federal judge that was screamed and denounced by law students. Well, you know what happened. A couple things happened. Number One at Stanford. When this happened, the administrator from
Stanford Law School came in. Now, she could have said, all right, enough, you don't get to silence the speaker. You can express your own views, but you don't get to prevent the students from hearing the views of this federal judge. She didn't do that. Instead, she gave this long, pre written speech agreeing with the hecklers and protesters and attacking the judge and saying the juice is not worth the squeeze. Now, amazingly, Stanford Law School fired her because
of what she did there, and not only that. I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, and I said, look, these are law students that want to be lawyers, some of them maybe want to be lawyers in Texas. Part of being a lawyer is character and fitness, the ability to appear in a court and not scream and yell and curse at a judge. These law students have demonstrated
their unwilling to do so. And I called on the Texas Supreme Court to inquire of any graduates of Stanford Law School of the relevant time period, did you participate in screaming and cursing and shouting down a federal judge? And if you did, we're not going to admit you as a member of the Texas Bar because that's not how lawyers are allowed to behave in front of judges,
and the Texas Supreme Court did exactly that. They said, because the law schools are not enforcing the rules, are not protecting free speech, we the state of Texas, are going to do So. I got to say, as I look at what happened at u c l A, that makes a lot of sense here and I want you to listen. Listen to these students when the lawyer from the Apartment of Homeland Security began speaking.
Today speaker is brought to us by the U c l A Chapter of the Federal Society.
First of all, thank you for having me.
My parents have.
A lot of very well most of the time. Finally, you're anyone who is coming in is paying for this, and they typically don't have them ask for it.
So typically what happens is they will basically agree the cartels will help them enter and then they maybe their final destination of the responsible pay off the dead at the time.
I mean, so when you're, you know, an a situation where you're.
Working, you look at this and and some of these that are up there. Just so people on radio and listening on the podcast, they're holding up signs. Some of these kids after doing with f bombs and other things in the face of this speaker. And these are not these are not just random kids. These are people that are in law school.
And they're playing their phones. They're holding up their phones and making noises to shut down the speaker. So the noises you heard there are are they're holding up their phones. And they did this throughout the speech. And and this is an example if you disagree with the speaker, although I point out they don't even know if they disagree with the speaker because they didn't actually listen to what he had to say.
But if you.
Disagree with this, poverty was paying for part of this?
You know that's not a crazy question.
I mean, I mean, seriously, this is the type of sting they would sponsor and pay for.
Look, the amazing thing about leftists is they're so angry and they're not willing to actually confront substance. So all right, let's say you're a UCLA liberal and you don't like the Trump administration's immigration policy. Okay, yeah, you could lay out your view of why you think you should have a different policy, but you don't see anyone there confronting was twelve million people invading this country over the four
years of Biden. A good thing was the Biden administration releasing thousands of murderers and rapists and child molesters and drunk drivers and gang bangers. A good thing. They don't address that because those are actual facts. Those are actual facts that resulted in Americans being murdered, being assaulted, and women being raped and children being raped. They don't want
to engage in that. I'm perfectly fine if these leftists want to go have a protest outside and say we love open borders invade our country, which sadly seems to be the view of the leftist, but they're not actually engaging in ideas. They're trying to use oppression. If you disagree with someone, respond with reason and logic, don't respond with bullying and force and essentially trying to stifle free speech.
And where the hell was the administration of UCLA. Why was there no administrator there saying no, you don't get to shut this event down just because you disagree.
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Center, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal with my podcast, and you can listen to my podcast every other day you're not listening to Verdict, or each day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson Podcasts, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.