Welcome. It is Verdical Center, Ted Cruz, it is nice to have you with us. It is official. Twelve oh one am. The United States government is shut down. The Democrats they did it on purpose. Apparently it was their plan. And the question is for how long have they been planning on doing this. This is going to be a very interesting show. This all revolves around the Senate. That is something that maybe some people don't realize. Everything's come
out of the House. We're now to the Senate side of things, and I want you to explain what it was like in the hours leading up to this shutdown. Was there ever a chance in hell that the government wasn't going to shut down?
No, there was never a chance. It is just after midnight, so the government is shut down just for a few minutes. But I think the government shutdown is going to last at the minimum of days, it may be weeks, and it may even be longer. Really, yes, this could extend for a significant period of time. And understand this is the Democrats roar that they hate Donald Trump. So I got to say we had the vote tonight. There was no surprise. Everyone knew the outcome out of one hundred
senators all of us knew the outcome. The vote was fifty five to forty five. So three Democrat senators voted to keep the government open.
You have a pretty big deal, right, I mean, did you think those three were going to go?
Where?
Did you think it was going to be a unanimous vote? I mean Fetterman and two others like that's that is significant?
Yeah, Look Fetterman, I was not surprised. So Fetterman voted to keep the government open, Cortes Master voter to keep the government open, and Angus King voted to keep the government open. That's not shocking to me. It's fifty five to forty five. Now why did the government shut down? Look, the basic operation of government is the federal government cannot continue to operate unless Congress appropriates funds. Under the Constitution, Congress has the power of the purse, so Congress appropriates
the spending of money. A typical fiscal year is October first to September thirtieth.
YEP.
This particular funding ended at midnight on September thirtieth. You and I are recording this just after minutes after midnight on September thirtieth. The appropriation, the authorization for Congress to spend money expired minutes ago. Now, there are a couple of ways you can extend the government funding. One is an appropriation and so they're typically in a good year. They are thirteen appropriation bills that fund each different kind of major segment of government. For a number of years,
the appropriation bills have not passed. The other major way that government authorization occurs is through what are called crs. CR is short for continue resolution. A continue resolution is essentially Congress saying what we are spending now, we can continue continue the status quo identically for x period of time. Now, the House of Representatives pasted a CR, a clean CR, to fund the federal government through the middle of November. So if the Senate had passed it.
Oh right. Let's be clear. When you say a clean CR, that means no political shananigans in it. It's literally saying, we're taking the twenty five budget year and we're going to say the exact same amount we spent in August, we're going to spend September, October, November until we get the new budget. There is no port barrel extras, there's no political sheanigan against from either side.
Yes, yes, yes, Okay, a clean CR says what we spent yesterday is what we'll spend tomorrow, that everything just continues the same, and that's what the House has passed. Now. The challenge is for anything to pass the Senate that is in the nature of an appropriations or a CR, it takes sixty votes because under the filibuster rule, you've got to have sixty votes to move forward on legislation. So,
as I mentioned, we got fifty five. We got three Democrats, but we need sixty, which means we need at least seven Democrats. And actually here we need eight Democrats because Ran Paul voted no. So we had fifty two Republicans vote yes, and we needed eight Democrats to vote yes to fund the government. Well, we only got three, and.
That was on purpose. And I want to pause just for a second to go back to CR historically. Let's just go back to Biden's time in office, when you guys were in the minority. If I'm not mistaken, you guys did this more than a dozen times, where you can't and say, hey, thirteen times, all right, So thirteen different times y'all came together and said we're gonna spend exactly what we spent yesterday to keep the government open, so we avoid a government shut down. And you put
the American people ahead of politics. And that is a bipartisan moment, right, They had to have some of your votes.
So look, every time we came to the end of government funding, you would have enough Republicans joined with Democrats to keep the government funded. Now what has changed, Well, several months ago we had another expiration of government funding. And what happened is Chuck Schumer and the Democrats decided, Okay, let's keep the government going, a very reasonable and very
common sense, a very normal decision. The Democratic left wing base lost their mind and Chuck Schumer nearly lost his job because Schumer allowed the government to be funded several months ago, the left wing rose up against him. And you want to understand why we have a shutdown. It's one thing. Schumer is looking over his left shoulder and he sees aoc running up behind him, and he is terrified he's gonna lose his job. So listen, Schumer knows this is not gonna work. He knows this is failures.
Just pure cover your als politics one oh one by Schumer.
So the radical left wing, they hate Trump, and they want today to be a giant f you to Trump. They want it to be we hate President Trump, and we hate President Trump so much we're gonna shut the entire government down because rar that's what we're watching now.
By the way, So then hold on, when did this become the plan? Was this weeks ago? Months ago? Was this when they had the last years? I got the next time it comes up, I have no choice. I got to shut down the government to flex my muscles. And also there is a real concern by him that AOC is going to run against him, primary him in the Senate. By the way, that is after the next president's election cycle? Was that and that isn't he up two years after? Are not mistaken?
So be.
So.
And to be clear, I predicted on this podcast the inaugural member the chairman of the AOC for President campaign is Chuck Schumer. Because he is desperate for AOC not to primary him. He's gonna say, Alexandra, you are such a big deal, you were so important. Really, the Senate's too small for you. Why do you want to bother being in the Senate. You should be in the White House. Schumer is going to be all in on that, but
he is living with absolute PTSD. He is traumatized. He sees left wing antifa crazies coming around on every side, and so from his end, this shutdown is necessary politically. Now, what did the Democrats demand? They demanded a lot of things. You know what the number one demand was, what's that? Free healthcare for illegals all over the country.
By the way, I mean when you think about at and the polling data and what it says, I don't understand why that would make your number one thing. Because it's clear that the people are behind President Trump. Securing our borders, stopping government waste for aunt of abuse dogs was a big part of it. And also making sure
that we're not giving out benefits to illegal immigrants. Like no, no, no, we want to spend one point five trillion if you want our votes, and it has to be for health care for illegal immigrants and food stamps for people that are able bodied, for example, that refuse to work. That's another thing, And they're like, no, no, no, we buy gal. You better get minded people that are just straight up lazy, that aren't that that have the ability to work, but you got to pay them to stay home.
Yeah, a huge pump chunk of this is getting rid of the work requirement for government benefits. Democrats don't want anyone to have to work. They wanted them to be able to sit at home and get government checks. But did you see the AI video of the White House put out?
Which one they put out a couple different things. Which one are you talking about?
I want you, I want I want to play this for everyone. Okay, this is fake So all the nattering nabobs, this is fake news. But it is absolutely hysterical that the White House put out. This is Chuck Schumer and a King Jeffreys explaining what this shutdown is all about.
Now, before we get to that, I want to talk to you about my friends over at Berna. If you've ever listened to the show before, you know I'm a big advocate for the Second Amendment and I've shared on numerous occasions how carrying a firearm literally saved my life from a gang related attack. But many of you out there may not feel comfortable carrying a firearm. Maybe you have a loved one that's just not comfortable. They need a way to protect themselves, and that's why I want
you to know about bernot launchers. I have them, and I've given them to many family members. Berne is a handheld pistol that fires both kinetic rounds and chemical irritants to separate you from an attacker. Josh Cherard from Berna has been with us telling stories of how Berna has helped save lives or could have been the best option for protection. Josh, this next one is incredibly sad, and I want you to talk about a father that involved with a shooting.
Absolutely so. In this particular case, sixteen year old girl was coming home late one night, about three am in the morning, entering through the garage. Unfortunately, the father, here's a noise in the garage, grabs his gun, goes out there. He's a dark figure walking through the garage, points that gun fires only that point, realizing that he had just killed his sixteen year old daughter. This is an illustration of where guns in homes, if not used properly, can
have dire dire consequences. In this case, one bullet killed two lives and the lives of many others in that family. It was incredibly tragic and unfortunately we see this situation dozens and dozens of times every year throughout the US.
Yeah, That's one of the questions that I think some people ask us, like, is this just a one off occurrence that would never happen to me? Unfortunately, as you mentioned, this happens a lot more often than people realize.
Absolutely. Unfortunately, people think that the best tool and the only tool for home defense is a gun, and they get a gun, they never train with it, they never train the tactics that requires, they don't do the other things like flashlights and all the other things that are necessary to make sure that they can use that gun properly. And then that's when you have something like this happens with a burna. If the same thing had happened you put a burner in his hands, his daughter would be
really mad. After she was done coughing for about forty five minutes, but still alive. Yeah.
If you want to get more information on how BERNA can help you or a family member protect themselves, go to burnaby RNA dot com. That's burna by RNA dot com again, burna by RNA dot com. All right, so center, here is that audio. Yes, as you mentioned earlier, this is a spoof. It is like Saturday Night Live, except it's coming from President Donald Trump's account, which is the best part about it. Take a listen to this. Look, guys, there's no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody likes Democrats anymore.
We have no voters left because of all of our woke trans bullsh Not even black people want to vote for us anymore. Even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters. And if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare here, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can't even speak English, so they won't realize we're just a bunch of woke pieces of ship, you know, at least for a while until they learn English and they realize they hate us too.
See, this is when I love AI. This is when I absolutely love the spoof from the President. And if you can't see this, you need to go look at it we put up on social media, the videos and Importphreeze has got a really nice Hannibar mustache and a sombrero on.
So look, pause for a second and realize that was released by the White House. That was released by the President of the United States. I feel a little guilty because we've got some cursewords in there. We try to avoid cursewords on this podcast. But what do you do when the president has put that out?
You put it?
And I gotta say, the video sits today at lunch. So every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, all the publican senators have lunch together. Today at lunch, John Thune met with the President, met with Schumer, met with the King Jeffries at the White House. And so Thune was giving us a download on that. And you know, Thune was talking about, Okay, the Democrats, they don't want to cut a deal. They're not willing to give it on anything. And I will confess.
I raised my hand. I question. I said, John was a King Jeffries wearing the sombrero.
And what did he say?
He just laughed. But look and everyone cracked up. But that image. Listen, the Democrats have literally shut down the federal government because they want free health care for every illegal alien in America.
Yeah, you want to.
Talk about, like on every issue that's eighty twenty or even ninety ten, they're on the twenty or the ten side. The American people do not support. If you want to have a referendum in this country, should we give illegals free health care? Wow, that will be overwhelming. But here's the secret. This shutdown is not actually about free health care for illegals. That's what the Democrats have hung their hat on because they got to say they want.
So they gotta say something, right, This is.
All about just we hate Donald Trump and it is Chuck Schumer job preservation. And that also means the end of this. Okay, there's no universe in which Chuck Schumer will get President Trump to agree to let's give free health care to illegals.
Yeah, not gonna happen. They know that.
Yeah, they're entering. There's no universe in which Republicans in Congress are going to say, hey, that's a great idea, let's give free health care to every illegal. Like that's you might as well ask for Area fifty one, like to release the Martians and let them take over the country. Yeah, that is as likely to happen as free health care for illegals from Republicans. The Democrats know that this is
not about getting what they're demanding. This is about how long do they want to demonstrate Orange Man bad?
Yeah and so and the radical base is what has put them in this scenario. Right, I guess do you actually believe. And let's go back to the history of the Senate here. I don't believe that Chuck Schumer actually wanted to shut down the government. No, No, I think he was forced to do it.
Yeah, he would lose his job. He would lose his job if the government was it.
Was self preservation.
Yes.
In other words, this is weird. Chuck Schumer is being held hostage by the Marxist communists and socialists in his party, which they did not police and they allowed to take over their party. Then he's now holding the American people hostage with a government shut down, which brings me the
big question. Even when we've had shutdowns in the past, there has been some agreement center like, hey, certain people should deserve to get paid, those that are in the military, those badges, like the list is not that long, but the essential important people that deserve to get a paycheck. We don't screw with them when they're protecting to fing this country, can you guys, at least was there an
agreement to pay them? Really? Okay, so walk us through that, because I'm assuming that came up at lunch.
So one of the things I did today is I sent a letter because under the Constitution, Members of Congress, our pay cannot be stopped. It's actually unconstitutional to reduce the compensation for members of Congress during the term we're elected to. So I sent a letter and I've done this during every shutdown, saying while the government is shut down, don't pay me. It's not fair. It's not right for an elected member of Congress to receive a paycheck when
federal workers are not. Now, to be clear, I don't lose my pay when the shutdown is over. I'll get but it's deferred.
But a lot of I don't understand that the long which if I think just asinine, and I have family members work in the federal government, and they're like, the dumb part about this that I think a lot of Americans don't understand, yep, is that you don't miss a paycheck in your calendar year. You just miss a month and then you get it back data, you get it back the next time whenever the government does open back up.
And so I know people that are in the FA for example, and they're like, dude, we just plan our vacations like great trips around shutdowns because we know we're still getting paid. We save not everybody can do that. But like they've almost pre planned for this bonus vacation and they're gonna get paid back.
Yeah, but let me make several points of clarification. Sure number one, government shutdown as a misnomer. More than eighty percent of the government will continue to operate. So the basic principle is everything that is essential keeps going. So the military, our activity and military defending the nation against bad guys, that keeps going. The FBI catching criminals, that keeps going. The border patrol and ice that keeps going.
The FAA air traffic controllers. Tomorrow, if you get on an airplane, the air traffic controllers all go to work. By the way, the air traffic controllers are not getting a paycheck, so they're going to work. But every two weeks federal government employees get paid. Air traffic controllers, coast guardsmen, military, the federal government. Nobody gets a paycheck. And so what shuts down. Every cabinet secretary was assigned designate among your
employees who is essential and who is not essential. I remember when Bill Clinton was president, we had to shut down.
Then.
Remember Knute Gingrich and the Republican Congress were fighting with Bill Clinton. We had to shut down for a number of weeks, and I remember there was a headline that said the Department of Commerce designated thirty percent of their employees is a essentral and seventy percent is non essential. I remember thinking, that's great, we just set a new benchline all those non essential that's seventy percent they ought to be done. But what that means, so what will
be shut down? Starting October one? National parks will be shut down. So I gotta say, if you were planning to take your family to Yosemite this weekend, yeah, I'm I'm sorry to say you're out of luck. Yosemite will be closed. If you were coming to d C to tour our nation's capitally, you wanted to go to the Smithsonian, go to the Air and Space Museum, it's the Smithsonian
will be shut down. If you look at things like the National Institute of Health, like research on cancer, much of that will be shut down.
All across that non essential. When people are going to say that seems insane, Why wouldn't we fix that to make sure when we have these shenanigans happen that that's not affected.
And I think this shutdown will extend I think it'll be weeks. I think it will be Schumer is trying to protect his own rear end and everything else is secondary to protecting his own political life. So I think we will see an extended shutdown.
So is this polling the I mean, how do you decide when you won or you lost if you're Schumer, Because this is not about the country hating Schumer. This is only about New York. I'm protecting a seat from AOC. So in essence, you don't care how many people hate you in the country. It's only a New York thing, is that. I mean, well, they do polling. I mean this is weird.
Yeah. Look, so this is being called the Schumer shutdown. Yeah, and I got to say, the Democrats are losing the messaging battle. It is clear this is a Democrat shutdown. There was actually exchange right before we had the vote on the CR to keep the government open, and this is a clean CR. No rioters, no nothing, this is just keep the lights.
On status quo.
Schumer stood up and was speaking, and all the Senators or most of us, were standing on the Senate floor, and Schumer said, look, there's been reference to polling, but the polling has been biased. It's been right wing polling,
for example, the New York Times. And I got to tell you, I and every other Republican we just started cracking up, laughing, and you could see Schumer he actually turned red, he looked sheepish because he just said on the Senate floor that the New York Times was a biased right wing poll.
Yeah, seriously.
And it was a moment where where like Schumer, you saw Democrats looking at him going, dude, you look like that's weak. And that's because the New York Times did a poll if the Democrats don't get everything they want, should they shut the government down? And sixty five percent of Americans said no, don't shut the government down. It was a small percentage. It was just over twenty percent of Americans that said, yeah, shut the government down. So
that's who the Democrats are responding to. But they've got Schumer's message is the New York Times is a right wing mouthpiece, and how dare you tell the American people that we the Democrats, are shutting the government down. This is headed to failure. Everyone knows that, every Republican knows that every Democrat knows that is there an outcome where Republicans say, okay, great, let's fund healthcare free illegals. No, the Democrats will give in. Three Democrats voted to fund
the government. What will happen is the government is shut down. People are going to get ticked off, people are gonna want to like use by the way, things like passport services will be greatly reduced. All sorts of government. Now listen. The military keeps going, law enforcement keep going, Social Security keeps going, Medicare keeps going, Medicaid keeps going, an awful lot of government keeps going. But the lack of government
being open will be a serious function. At some point we will see seven or eight Democrats say enough is enough, reopen the government. That will happen. But let me tell you a huge piece that is an X factor in this, which is Russ Vote, who is the head of OMB, the Office of Management and Budget works for the White House. He put out a memo a week ago that said, if there is a government shutdown, we are going to lay off federal workers. We're not going to give them a furlough.
Is hold on.
This is the brilliant game of chess that was early on preemptive ye warning you do this and here's what we were going to do. And this might be one of the best movies I've seen politically in a long time in DC, which is go ahead, do it and watch what happens, because there a lot of people are gonna get lose their jobs and that's going to be on you guys for allowing it to happen. Right, So explain all that.
Yes, So Russ is a good friend's strong conservative. He's a strong fiscal conservative. And what he said is, listen, if Congress decides not to fund the federal government, we are going to react to that by the White Houses instructed every cabinet agency to prepare a plan for a riff a reduction in force to give permanent layoffs pink slips to government bureaucrats who are left wing bureaucrats who
are advancing the priorities of the Democrat Party. So what you are going to see in the next few days, you are going to see bureaucrats at the EPA fired. You're going to see bureaucrats at the Department of Labor fired. You're going to see bureaucrats at the RS fired. And within a couple of days we're going to see Democrat senators.
They're going to be in their lunches screaming at each other because this is frankly an excuse for the Trump administration to do what they wanted to do anyway, which is get rid of left wing bureaucrats. But they now have an incredible justification, which is, hey, Congress chose not to fund them, so instead of giving them a paid vacation, stay home several weeks and then we'll pay you back pay and come back to your job. They're gonna even pick slip and say you're done. You no longer have
a job. And I think that is going to ratchet up the pressure on Democrats massively.
So how quickly can these firings take place? How massive could they be? And how much research has been done behind the scenes to get rid of a lot of these woke bureaucrats that we that we've been wanting to get rid of, that the presidents want to get rid of, the cabinet secretaries of wanting to get rid of like how I mean, I'm assuming they're burning the midnight oil
kind of like doage did. Let's find the people we want to get rid of, and this is our chance to do it, and and and by the way, once it's done, like it's not like he got one from their jobs back, like it's done.
So I think that starts happening today. I think October one, you start seeing pink slips. I think we will see left wing bureaucrats fired today. I think we'll see them fired tomorrow.
You know.
This evening, I had dinner with the Deputy Secretary of HHS who's a longtime friend of mine. He was actually a groomsm in my wedding. Great guy, I asked him. I said, okay, the White House asked every cabinet agency preparing list of people for the riff, and he said, yeah, we're doing that. He said, every agency, when the White House directs us to do that, we do that. We're going to see I think hundreds, if not thousands of
left wing bureaucrats fired in the next several days. I think that's going to put the Democrat Party in crisis. And by the way, we're not going to fire people that are critical for the priorities you and I care about. So we're not going to see border patrol agents who are securing the border fired. We're not going to see ice agents who are deporting gang bangers fired. We're not going to see FBI agents who are catching pedophiles, We're
not going to see them fired. We're not going to see soldiers and sailors at airmen and marines who are keeping this nation safe. We're not going to see them fired. We're going to see bureaucrats who are shutting down factories, who are destroying jobs, who are pursuing radical left wing agendas. They're going to be the ones fired, and ultimately the Democrats are going to cave. The only question is how long Schumer wants to go through this charade before he gives.
In, which brings me my final question, that is the media does seem to be covering this a little bit more with honesty than I've ever seen them before. Today there was a viral clip that is the tables have been turned. Democrats are now literally under fire for a clip that shows them slamming government shut down tactics, the same ones they're accused of using right now. And here's
what it sounded like back in twenty eighteen. In December of twenty eight team Donald Trump's President Chuck schimern An's posy in the Oval Office listen.
We do not want to shut down the government because you can me say something, mister President of North Dakota.
And the most unfortunate, and we came in here in good faith and we're entering into this kind of a discussion in.
The public.
Transparency.
I know, it's high transparency when we're not certipulating to.
A set of facts.
I mean, you listen to that one, they're like, we're not in favor of it. And then the speaker also put out a very interesting yes video montage reminding people the same thing, like, Hey, you guys think that it's the Democrats Mike Johnson putting this out and here he is and what he said to remind the people about Democrats in their own words, it is not.
Normal to shut down the government when we don't get what we want.
If the government shuts down, it will be average Americas who suffer most. A government shutdown means seniors who rely on Social Security could be thrown into chaos.
Families will be hurt, farmers will be hurt. It's the service members who will work without a paycheck.
I mean, it's the firefighters who will be furlough this shut down.
You know who's going to feel the pain. You know who it hurts you everyday, people and the most vulnerable seniors, veterans, working families, hungering kids.
Y'all Democratic signaling that they're ready for fight this time. Sumer told the Associated Press, Well, things have changed.
It is not normal to shut down the government when we don't get.
What we want. I mean, I love them using AOC's words, I feel like the media has changed a little bit. Here your thoughts on.
That, Well, I'm impressed that you recognize AOC's voice.
I didn't know.
I knew that was a shrill Democrat. I didn't know who that was. So I appreciate that clarity. Listen, every single Democrat, I think, without exception, has gone on record being against shutdowns. The fact that they shut it all down today demonstrates what utter hypocrites they are. And I got to say as I was walking off the Senate floor, so I voted to fund the government this afternoon. The
Democrats voted against it and caused a shut down. All the reporters were circling, and their talking point that they really wanted to press is they said, Okay, cruise. In twenty thirteen, in the fight over Obamacare, you, Ted Cruz forced to shut down. Isn't that what the Democrats are doing now? And I just started laughing at them, and I said, look, number one, in twenty thirteen, when I did a twenty one hour filibuster on the floor, I
was fighting for Americans. I was fighting for American citizens whose healthcare premiums had skyrocketed. And they had skyrocketed because Obamacare was a train wreck. It was a disaster. It caused a massive increase in health insurance premiums. It made the health insurance companies rich, and it made millions of
ordinary Americans unable to afford health insurance. And by the way, I was also fighting for it at a time when the House of Representatives that was Republican had voted to fund the federal government, fund the entirety of the federal government, but not fund Obamacare, so not fund the law that
was causing damage to American citizens. And I said, here, what's happening is Chuck Schumer is shutting down the federal government not to help American citizens who are getting hurt, but he's shutting down the federal government in order to help millions of illegal aliens and give them free health care. And he's willing to shut down your federal government to give free health care to illegals, and that fundamentally there's a hypocrisy to it. And I also said, said, you know,
the reporters were like, isn't it the same? And I said, listen, let me be clear. In twenty thirteen, it was Chuck Schumer who shut the government down. Then I was trying to fund the entirety of the federal government except for Obamacare, and Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid decided, no, we'll shut it all down because we care so much about socialized medicine. And I told the reporters we had like fifty reporters standing outside the Senate Florida. I said, look, none of
you guys reported that. You all blamed the shutdown on me because you're all left wing hacks. Yeah, today, all of you are still left wing hacks. You agree with the Democrats. But the facts are so overwhelming. It is Chuck Schumer and the Democrats who are shutting the government down that even you dishonest liars are reporting. This is the Schumer shutdown because the House has funded the government exactly the status quo. The funding yesterday has continued to tomorrow.
It is the Democrats who said let's shut it down, and I think at the end of the day they're going to lose that battle. But this is what you got to ask yourself, is how long do the Democrats have to perform for their crazy left wing activists before they allow the government.
To reopen until the poll tells them otherwise. Is my guess. It's gonna be interesting. I have a feeling you're right, we're gonna be talking about this for but but you know.
What that they're not gonna trust. They're not going to trust the polls from that right wing mouthpiece and in the New York Times. But but but but maybe I don't know. When Mother Jones and and you know, Communist Party of America as a poll that shows they're losing, maybe then they'll give up.
Maybe maybe then we're gonna cover it all. Don't forget. We do this show Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Make sure you hit that subscriber auto download button. Also share this podcast on social media wherever you are, and the Center I will see you back here. Uh under probably a government shut down on Friday morning as well.