Take Your Damn Mask Off, LIVE in Madison, WI

here on the campus at University of Wisconsin at Madison. Well, I don't did they brief you before you came out here. Well there's a yeah, there's a been a chain show. Maybe all right, you better sit down. I do a podcast. Yeah, we should do a podcast because Senator we uh, well, we're not on campus. I'll address all of you. We are not at the University of Wisconsin Madison, but we

are here in Wisconsin. We are here with a lot of great students, and we are going to flip a certain signal at all of the tyrants who want to shut us up. This is Verdict with Ted Cruise. Welcome back to Verdict with Ed Cruise. I'm Michael Noles, Senator. It's great to be with you and several hundred of our dearest friends. Brobably more than several hundred of our friends.

Thank you so much to all of the students tonight who stood up to the petty leftist administrators at the campus of the University of Wisconsin Madison who tried to shut all of us up, who don't want any conservative ideas on campus. We're all here, well, Mike, So Michael, how could that be? We announced a national tour. We pick as the opening venue a campus right in the heart of the beast. And then the students and faculty and folks who came out came out because they wanted

to hear a discussion. They want to hear an honest discussion of what's happening. So what happened? Why aren't we

on campus? This was an amazing circumstance because we've talked for a long time about how the left wants to muzzle conservatives on campus, and usually they make it difficult for YAF in particular to book classrooms or lecture halls, and they'll they'll talk about hate speech, and you know, if you defend, for instance, the first Amendment, you're a hateful, terrible bigot, or if you defend I don't know, George Washington, you're a terrible, awful, terrible person. But what happened this

time is they literally wanted to muzzle us. They wanted everybody in the lecture hall to put a mask on, including the speakers. And now I don't know how that would work, because if we had done that, the podcast would sound something like, Look, there's some people who think that would be an important think there are, and they have it to work at UW Madison. But it's even crazier because there is an exemption to this mask rule in the UW Madison Code, and they have granted it

to other speakers, they just won't grant it to us. Well, I will note that one of the exemptions and the policy is for artistic performances. So we got a letter from the dean I guess, a couple of days ago, saying the only way you can do this event on campus is if everyone is masked, including the two of us, and you can film the whole podcast while wearing a mask. But there's an exemption for artistic performance. And I gotta say, Michael, I'm really offended that you were not willing to sing

acapella for the entire podcast. You know, I all those years of cigars have not been great on the old volt tale. I thought it was mandatory there that you sing in like some some all boys club. It's a very thespian sort of place, there's no question about that. You know. This gets to something that we talked about. Gosh, going back over a year now, I think we're on the five hundred ninetieth day of fifteen days to slow the spread, and from the very beginning almost there, we're

all pretty were pretty close. You know. At the beginning, a lot of people said, put the mask on. It's just going to be a short little while. And so people were willing to take prudential measures. They're always well, you know, protect the public health, no one will. No

one wanted to see people dying. But there was always this fear that when you give in, and you give in, and now it's the sixteenth day, and now it's the fiftieth day, and now it's the hundredth day, and now everyone's got the vaccine if they want the vaccine, but you still have to wear the mask. It seems as though the mask is not intended to protect the public health anymore. It's just an excuse to take power. Well, and you look at what UW did here. I mean,

I mean the idea. There have been multiple speakers on campus they've had who haven't worn a mask, because if you're actually speaking to a crowd, it doesn't work to wear a mask, particularly when you're televising it and sending it out worldwide. They know that, and I'll point out, you know, just this weekend they had seventy five thousand football fans screaming, shearing, maybe imbibing a little bit, and somehow that didn't pose any health threat. No, but yet

the two of us are a lethal health threat. Yes, I have been called that on many an occasion. You know, there is another crazy aspect where this is a public university, so this is a taxpayer funded university. You would think, I don't know, I would think maybe I'm just old fashioned that if anybody is going to be permitted to speak to help you educate the students, it would be a United States senator. This seems like a real affront to the American system of government, to civics, to our

political tradition here. But so what they're they're going to do it anyway. Well, the provost who sent us the letter is a Democrat, he was served in Democrat administrations. He's given he gave a thousand dollars to Barack Obama, he gave a thousand dollars to Tammy Baldwin. He's given more money to Act Blue. And he sent a very thorough academic letter that said we will not grant you an exemption because there was a period out. There was

no it was a blank. It was just because because I say so, and to really call the joke out. So the university requires when you do an event on campus that you have to do the rs vps through the campus of Edbright. So when we said we're not recording a friggin podcast, we're in masks, we rescheduled, and you know what, the university said, we won't give you your RSVP list. Yeah, we're not going to tell you the students who want to see so we had I want to thank everyone here who had the ingenuity to

find us when this was rescheduled in one day. It just goes to show you, It just goes to show you what UW. Madison is interested in here, What the administrators are is not protecting their campus, protecting their students. They just don't want people to hear what we have to say. They don't want people to hear legitimate criticisms of Joe Biden, of the ruling class in this country,

of the liberal establishment. And I imagine they're trying to stifle speech in this desperate way because they feel really confident, right, because they're just so popular. Is that it look, as you know, it's an admission of weakness. If you're strong, if you're confident in what you believe, if the facts are behind you, then you're not frightened, you're not threatened, you're not intimidated by those who disagree. You. Look on the national scene, you got people like Bernie Sanders, You've

got people like AOC who are socialists. You and I don't want to silence them. We don't want to sense to them. Frankly, I want a lot more people to hear the inanities that come out of their mound. Turn the volume out, please please look like if you're the best cure John Stuart mill So, the best cure for bad speech is more speech, and the admission of the university administrators of the faculties of these Marxists, and I

love Marxists that have life tenure. They get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars forcibly paid from the taxpayers and never able to be fired. But they're terrified that anyone might disagree with them, and that ultimately it's a disservice to the students. Look, college is all about encountering ideas you disagree with. When I was in college, when I was in law school, I took classes from Marxists. My family was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba. I hate Communists

like deeply and to the pit of my soul. You know what's amazing. What's amazing is that is a controversial statement these days. That didn't used to be a controversial statement. Now it is. But if you want to be all right, so years ago, this is back, oh, fifteen years ago, I was invited, oddly enough to give the commencement speech at the University of California, Berkeley School of Governments. Did they not have Google at Berkeley? They didn't know to

type in Ted Cruise. So all right, this is long before I was in the Senate, long before anyone had any do who I was, and apparently the way it came to pass as the School of Government there had for some years had leftist speakers, no surprise, and the head of the school said, you know, we ought to have a Republican just out of diversity, and I think he basically said, I don't know any Republicans. And so then he figured, well, okay, all right, if I want to find a Republican, what do I do? And he

called a professor at the University of Texas, Texas. They got to know some Republicans there, and I think what happened is the professor I had spoken the year before at UT at their School of Government, and he said, look, you know this guy didn't suck, so why don't you invite him? And so I came out and it was interesting. It was the dawn of Facebook. It was right when it was. I think it was like three years off of Mark Zuckerberg creating Facebook to try to find girls

on campus. I mean it it was new, and there was a protest group I remember had ninety three people in it that were Berkeley students protesting that I was coming. Heidi said at the time, she said, oh god, You're not nearly important enough. To protest, but I went and gave the speech, and it was in this amphitheater, and the entire speech was on diversity, but it was on

intellectual diversity. And what I said to the Berkeley students, which I would say to Madison students, and I think, I think we probably have a lot of conservatives and libertarians here, but I hope we have some liberal liberals here. I hope we have a conversation. And what I would say to the student body writ large into professors, into people, is the passion that's out of Berkeley, that's at of Madison, the passion to change the world, like the world, to

make a difference. Don't let go of that. Keep that fire because it's powerful, and it's easy to settle into kind of middle aged complacency. Don't let go of that passion. But if you ever want to actually succeed in persuading anyone, understand how someone of good conscience, good morals would look at the issue you care most passionately about and come

to one hundred and eighty degrees the opposite conclusion. Understand how your mother could come to the opposite conclusion, and that we don't do nearly enough of that we need to all try to understand each other and then see where we're right and see where we're wrong. Well, so in the spirit of people moving into complacency and squishiness and middle age, and also to be honest about censorship and free speech, I want to make an admission to the listeners of this show about something that we did

last week. Okay, this is the first time this has ever happened on the show. Last Tuesday, we filmed an episode on this great news that the Republicans in the Senate they were standing firm. They were standing firm on the debt ceiling. They were taking this principled stand. We were so happy about this. What happened ten hours later? Yeah, so this is so. We filmed it Tuesday night, and Tuesday night we're doing Verdict, and I got to confess

I was kind of victory lapping. I was like, look, we're all used to Republicans caving and not standing up, and right now I gotta say, Republicans are standing rock rib We're united, we are all standing together saying the Democrats are going to raise the debt ceiling on their own,

We're not going to help. And we said we did a whole chunk of the podcast Victory Lapping at Tuesday night, and then Wednesday I went to lunch and Mitch McConnell stood up and said, okay, so we're gonna surrender down, Senator whyat Well, So before I answer why, I will say it forced us to do something we have never done in the history of our So we've been filming Verdict now year and a half, almost two years, ye coming up on two years, and we had this whole

segment in Verdict that hadn't been released yet, that is the news broke that the Republicans were caving. Would have made no sense at all. It would have been like, all right, do these guys not read the news? Do they not know what's happening? So they're like, all right, go to the editing room and just edit that porshit out because we can't put out a podcast that sounds like we live in a cave and are like eating mushrooms. The whole time Republicans had a spine ten hours prior

they lost it, they lost. So, Senator, it seems that right now on the economy, Biden's numbers are terrible. He's screwing everything up. Inflation is through the roof. People are quitting their jobs. There's a labor shortage. It's really really bad. They want to spend a gazillion dollars on a bunch of nonsense. And Republicans had this principle stand and now

they don't. So we were holding the line, and the line for two months that Republicans had held is that we're not going to participate in raising the death ceiling. That the trillions and death that are being added added to the national debt are coming from the Democrats. They're passing it on their own. They're using reconciliation. They don't want Republican votes, they're not interested in compromise. They're ramming

it through. And if they're going to bankrupt the country, they need to own it and vote for the debt that they're saddling on future generations. And we were united, every one of us. Mitch McConnell was saying that Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, the entire conference, all fifty of us were united. What happened and listen, Mitch got concerned that the Democrats were going to nuke the filibuster. He got scared that Biden and Schumer were going to get the votes and

actually end the filibuster. All right, Look, if they end the filibuster, the damage that will be done to this country is cataclysmic. They'll pass S One, which is the federal takeover of elections, They'll pack the Supreme Court, They'll make the district of Columbia state. I mean, it will be structural and permanent. So I agree that if they

end the filibuster, the damage is massive. I think though, that that our leadership made a mistake in believing they were going to get the fifty votes to do that, and so we gave in, and we had some pretty vigorous discussions over the next two days among the conference, including about two hour meeting of all the Republicans where we're basically I was objecting and standing up, and most of my colleagues were saying, all right, Ted, why the

hell are you doing this? And I stood there pretty much on the hot seat and said, well, let me explain. And I said, look, my view of this was the view of all fifty of us two days ago, and I think we should have held the line. Unfortunately we didn't. What happened instead is that we kicked the can down the road to December, and so we're gonna have this

debt ceiling fight again in December. But I will say, you know, periodically there are these moments Mike Lee calls it putting it, putting in the hot box, where they get mad at conservatives and they sit in a room and basically yell at you for a couple hours. Who is they? You mean the Democrats are the Republicans of course.

Um So first book I wrote was a book called A Time for Truth, and the opening chapter of it is called Mendacity, and it talks about exactly this issue in twenty fourteen, the fight over the debt ceiling and the pandemonium and bloody battles that occurred behind closed doors. I will say the battles this time were less bloody, but it's still unfortunate. We couldn't hold the line because the argument from the Democrats here is, look, a nation has to deal with its debt. It's irresponsible for the

US to default on its debt. Republicans are holding this issue hostage. Now. I think we did a good job of explaining on the podcast why that isn't the case, and Democrat can do it just with their own Yeah. Fifty votes plus a tiebreaker, But they say, look, this is a separate issue, has nothing to do with the budget, It has nothing to do with the other aspects of

the economy. But it does represent something. I think it was Patrick Deneen, who is a conservative writer who came out and he said, there's something really wrong about a society that leaves as an inheritance to its children a lot of debt, and it just keeps adding on to that debt. And there are national security implications here, and it could stifle economic growth. And so are we just never going to deal with this issue. We're just going

to keep going along and giving into the Democrats. So it's interesting with the Democrats or argue they want to eliminate the debts sailing altogether, so they want no limit on how much they can borrow. Or they're saying, let's raise it to fifty trillion dollars. Let's raise it to a number that, at least right now seems crazy high. But given the way we've gone up that even that may not be crazy high in time. You know, the debt ceiling historically has worked to at least make adding

more debt more painful. Yeah, you have to think about it, and it's been the most effective lever for meaningful spending reforms. So my view has never been that we should never raise the debt ceiling. And the reason is simple. About forty percent. And actually these numbers are old, but historically about forty percent of what we spend is borrowed unless you're prepared instantaneously, you know what you know, you know, it's interesting that classically encapsulates the left. So it's a

young lady. She came in and she screamed, let's go, Brandon. Was that that's your eye. I couldn't quite make it out, but your eye. And what I I like even better it is that she said, I don't know apparently I'm I'm the ignorant ass I've been saying, Yester, I don't know why you're not as ignorant as I am, but work on it. But then she promptly with this frison of courage. Oh, I yelled at him, and then runs out the door. You know, and we talked about the

left is terrified. Look, we're gonna have open Q and A. You know, if she wanted to, if she actually had a second sentence. But beyond let's go, Brandon, do you know, we could have had a conversation, but that would have required actual reason and deductive thought, and the left doesn't want to do that. Do you know what I think happened? Obviously I can't ask her this because she ran out of the room screaming. But what I think happened is she was waiting for us to say something really offensive.

You know, some something that the left says that we say, you know, I don't know, something vicious vibe, don't don't give an example. Yeah, I know, I'm not gonna give an example. The kittens are delicious at all. And there's the media matters flip and there it is, right there, We've got it. So she was waiting for us to say something really outrageous because I suspect that woman has never listened to a conservative speak for more than a

thirty second sound by taking out of context. And so she was waiting and we didn't say anything, and we're actually just talking about cutting government spending and these sort of arcane Senate procedures have had to raise the debt ceiling, and so she got impatient, and she probably didn't you know that the synapses were kind of frustrating and tiring and so she said, all right, it's late, you know, I go I gotta go home and watch Netflix or something.

And so she just screamed this vicious, vulgar language at us, and then before we could respond, she's gone. And I can't say I miss her, but I do wish that we could have continued to educate her. I don't know, for a moment there, it kind of felt like the House of Representatives. So maybe she'll watch the stream online. So I guess we should fit of that. I hope right now she is on her phone listening with bated breath,

because this issue I think really does matter. And well, well it might seem abstract to be talking about the debt and how that relates to the economy at large in the way our society is going to work. This is having real effects. I mean, when we talk about the economy more broadly, right now, we're looking at inflation at a thirteen year record high. This means that the dollars you were spending are worthless. They're not going as far.

We're seeing now millions and millions of people in the month of August, four point three million people just quitting their jobs. That seems kind of weird and actually people who wanted to be here tonight. I've gotten messages about this for people coming to the events. Some people were not able to make it because flights are getting caned. Why are flights getting canceled? Southwest Airlines is blaming the weather.

It looks pretty sunny to me. It's because of these issues of mandates coming from the federal government reaking havoc on the economy. So, in very dollars and sense terms, what's the future looking like for us? Well, I gotta say what you just say that said there, There is a massive concerted effort by the White House and by the corporate media to silence what you just said there, which is it is the orthodox line that nobody is

losing their job because of vaccine mandates. Look, I gotta tell you headline that I read at a hearing last week, the largest health provider in New York fired fourteen hundred people. They're firing doctors and nurses. Mind you, in the middle of a pandemic. We were saying for a year and a half doctors and nurses are heroes. You're fired? Yeah with them? A little bit incoherent, I'll tell you. I am hearing from all over the country from soldiers and

sailors and airmen and marines. I was in the Detroit airport just a couple of weeks ago, was stopped by a gentleman there who said he was a Navy seal, had been in the Seals ten years. And he said, I'm resigning from the Seals. And he said, I'm not getting the vaccine. And he said, a bunch of guys who served with me who have been in fifteen sixteen seventeen years, which for those in the military retirements at twenty. He said, they're getting ready to quit after fifteen sixteen

seventeen years. I am hearing over and over again. So a week ago I did a zoom call with the leaders of many of the big pilots unions of the airlines across the country. Just about every pilots union said, we are having pilots who are going to be quitting because they're not going to get a vaccine. Chicago Chicago Police Union is saying this Friday, so a week from now, the Chicago PD is going to be at fifty percent police capacity because the police officer are resisting this vaccine.

And the White House said none of this is happening, they insist. Note this is not happening. And so you look at what happened with Southwest and in the past week, I've spoken with the CEO Southwest, Gary Kelly. I know very well he's a Texan, he's a good friend. I've spoken with the head of the Southwest Pilots Union. There's lots of disputes about what happened. Southwest canceled a thousand flights one day, canceled several hundred flights on the days

before and afterwards. I can tell you one thing that a very senior person in the aviation sector told me. They said, on Friday, October eighth, at Jacksonville, there was a sick in among air traffic controllers and at the Jacksonville Air Traffic Control Facility, thirty three air traffic controllers were scheduled to come in that day. Three came in,

thirty stayed home. Now, Jacksonville controls a lot of the air traffic going up and down the Eastern City Board, and Southwest has an enormous percentage of its flights going through Florida, and Southwest is unique among the airlines. So the other airlines used the hub and spoke system. So I live in Houston. Houston's a hub for United, so we get lots of United flights that end up in Houston or Chicago or other hubs. Southwest doesn't have hubs,

so its planes are all over. And what Southwest has said is that when air traffic shut down, the consequence of that is it stranded a bunch of its planes, and stranded a bunch of its pilots, and it stranded a bunch of its crews. Now what's interesting is the Biden White House refuses to answer the question. It's a

very simple factual question. Is it true or is it false that on Friday, October eighth there was a sick ind at the jan at the Jacksonville Air Traffic Control facility where the vast majority of the controllers stayed home

because of the vaccine mandate. And the reason they don't want to answer it, based on what sources are telling me and Aviation is because that is absolutely true, right and on these mandates which are really on a lot of people's minds, not just for the economy, but because they want to have some control over their own medical decisions. There is the issue of the federal government saying federal employees need to get the vaccine. So that is a

direct mandate. And then there is the bizarre byzantine sort of mandate where Biden instructs the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to instruct companies with more than one hundred employees to instruct their employees to get the vaccine, where there will be fines. But we don't even really know how that will be implemented. So it's it's more a threat than an actual order. And so some companies are going along with this. Some companies, like my company, The Daily Wire,

is not going along with this. And so in a way, there you can blame Biden because Biden was the one who started it all. But some companies could just stand up and say no, we're not going to do this. You're right, and look there's a spectrum of orders coming from the White House. Now listen my view and vaccines' real quick as an aside, I'm pro vaccine. I've been vaccinated,

my family's been vaccinated. I think it is an amazing technological accomplishment that Operation Warped Speed produced multiple vaccines in record time, cutting through massive PaperWorks. I think that's fantastic and I was glad to take the vaccine because I wanted to get back out and around and with people, and I was tired of the damn lockdowns that these numbskull politicians were putting in place. But I also believe

in individual liberty, individual responsibility. Look, everyone here are adults. You have the right to make your own choice about what healthcare you're going to get. You have the right to make your own choice talking to your doctor. If you want to get the vaccine, God bless you make that decision. If you don't, that's your right too. You know, though, to play Devil's advocate Senator, that lady who ran out of ear screaming, I'm not sure that she can make

her own decisions. I don't know. There are a lot of people who you need some maturity to be able to I don't know, I don't know. I will say the problem with liberals is their masks aren't tight enough. We need to add a few more. You know, we do have a lot of mature, serious people in this audience. We want to hear from them, We want to answer their questions. So would you mind, can we take some questions from the audience with up you all right, Can

we bring our friend Liz Wheeler back out? All right, We've got a lot of people here lining up to ask these questions. We I hope have some answers for them. This is our absolute favorite part of the show. Be sure, if you have not already, subscribe to The Verdict podcast on Apple, podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you get

your podcasts. So, Michael, while we're waiting for everything to get set up, set up, I'm gonna ask is it gonna be like mail bag on the podcast typically where you get a question from some one Giuseppi, who asked, how come Michael is so handsome and so wise? Well, you know, look, I think some of those people ask very good questions. So I hope that we get them here tonight. If you see me putting on a fake mustache and running behind, maybe that that would explain how

it happens. We have our friend Liz Wheeler here, let's bring her out and let's take some questions. Well, that was a great show. This is a great show. I was entertained. Thank you, you laughed, you cried, We're gonna get us. A lot of people did. So we're about to get these questions. But first, Liz, what are you holding in your hand? I do have a question. I'd like to actually be the one to start off the questions,

if that's all right. And my question to you is, if you see right here we have this hat and it is adorned with a lovely cactus. I don't get the joke. Could you please explain that to us? Liz? Do you you don't know about the third co host of this podcast, our trusty sidekick, the cactus? Do you not the real truth? Cactus? And I gotta say I was complaining to Michael today as we've got now these fancy metal cacti, and I said, you know what, I really am offended to be upstaged by a cactus. I know,

I know that it was unfortunate. You know it very humbling. I think, Senator, you came out really strong your first podcast. It hits number one within a couple of weeks, and so we just want to keep you humble. And that's why it seems that all of this merchandise has the cactus on. I mean, I don't want to hurt y'all's feelings, but it's not your face on this hat. It's not well That's why people aware it's right. So I'm very excited to announce tonight that you can acquire one of

these hats, and not just one. If you go to Verdict with ted Cruise dot com, it slash shop and you use that promo code that I talked to you about before live, you can get ten percent off all kinds of crazy cactus gear, all kinds of crazy. I don't really want to hold this for the rest of the show. Does anybody? Does anybody want this? Can? We? Can we hear anybody want this pact us at Okay, I'm not throwing it, so okay, okay, if you can hand it up to him. You know what they say,

Enthusiasm wins every time. Enthusiasm wins every time. All right, are we ready for some live Q and A. All right, the first thing you're gonna do is introduce yourself. My name is Will Terry. I'm from Kacano, Wisconsin, moved down to Madison to work at the state Legislature. Highly revere you ever since your twenty sixteen campaign. While I certainly can't agree with every single thing that you advocate for,

but I appreciate the opportunity to have this question. So, native born American fertility rates have been below replacement for nearly half a century, so much so that the number of babies born to black women have been trending down for two decades, and the American white population has declined three million people since his last consensus. What plan, if any, does a Republican in either chamber have to create a sustainable fertility rate in America. Wow. So that's a very

good question, and it's a detailed and complex question. And I'd say several things. First of all, with what the gentleman called out, we've had over sixty million children whose lives have been taken in abortion, and this would be a much richer, a much more varied, a much more diverse country had those children had the chance to live

and had we reaped the benefits of their lives. Um. I'd also say, more broadly, some of it is the consequence of prosperity, that that that you see with prosperity, you look at a degrarian society where where if you were on the farm, you needed kids because you needed farmhands, you needed people to work work on the farm, and kids were an engine of production. And as we've gotten more prosperous people are not looking looking for their kids

necessarily to drive the plow um. There is also a difference I think between left and right in terms of our children. Are additional kids a good or bad thing? You know? You look at the Malthusian hypothesis that that there are too many people on planet Earth, that that that every child being born is a bad thing. Um, I think that is terrible and false. And I think every child is is is magnificent as an opportunity, as a benefit, is productive. And there is a difference between

left and right. So is it government's job to say you silly people aren't having enough babies. No, I don't think it's government's job to say that. It's up to you to make that decision in your life. But I do think we ought to have number one policies from the government that are conducive to families. So, for example, the marriage penalty is a terrible thing in the tax law. It shouldn't be the case that if a man and woman get married, their tax rate goes up and the

government is disincentivizing their forming a family. I think we ought to have an environment where kids are celebrated and welcomed. And also part of that is where kids can have a chance to get an education through like through school choice, where even regardless of their economic circumstances, they can have an opportunity to prosper. But you are right that without kids,

any society has no future. And you know you're so right, Senator, to mention this Malthusian delusion on the left, this idea that people are a scourge and we've got we're all going to die from over a population. There was a book came out in nineteen seventy by Paul Arelik, a still admired in some corners and still honored scientist that was just completely bogus, and it was called the Population Bomb. It said that within a decade or two there were

going to be famines. It was inevitable. You would need more abortion, more contraception, and if people wouldn't do it voluntarily, you had to force it. And actually a lot of this work was used in countries that did this, India and notably in China, and it was completely false. Since that time, the world population has doubled, we are fatter than ever, malnutrition is at an all time low. And so I think your answer is totally right, Senator. The

gentleman's answer was totally right. Un abortion, and it's a very serious issue. By the way, even beyond the issue of birthrates, you mentioned the black birthrate. Well, a statistic came out a few years ago in New York more black babies were aborted than we're born. I mean, that's a terrifying statistic. Or and you mentioned the other birthrates as well, but it's beyond that. Think about how the average life expectancy has actually declined in recent years, also

because of deaths of despair. I mean that that is a big national problem. I think, as as everyone has said, it's really important to focus on that because if we want to have a strong, prosperous future, we need to have a country. We need to have people, and we need to have people who are excited about growing that country. Well, and let me make two additional points. It's a good question, and were we should get our answers shorter than this, But well, we'll do a speed round for the beginning

of twenty people. You shouldn't come to a gathering of a radio host and a lawyer and politician and expect short answers. But two more observations you were talking about about African American fertility rates. You know, some of the most horrifying things to read are are the writings of Margaret Sanger, who was the founder of Planned Parenthood and was a unrepentant eugenicist and wrote horrible things advocating for widespread abortion precisely because she wanted to see more African

American children aborted. And it's it's it is a horrifying history behind the aggressive push for locating abortion clinics in communities where I'm not going to use the term she used to describe those children, but but they were horrific

and evil those terms that she used. And what I'd say also than that you you know, Michael used the word inevitable and and it reminded me of one of the podcasts that caused the biggest stir is You and I like to mess around in pop culture, and we pointed out how when when Hollywood does environmentalists, whether in The Watchmen or in Avenger's Endgame, that that that environmentalist or these Malthusian psychopaths, and you take thanos so and by the way, people flipped out, is it thanos thanos

I don't know whatever, it's the big guy with the giant sword. But but you look at his whole hypothesis, which was the Malthusian hypothesis. There are too many people, they're consuming our resources. Therefore I'm going to snap and murder half of the living beings on planet Earth. That is the radical left view of people and online, the sort of Hollywood world freaked out that we pointed out how absurd this, this anti human life view of the

radical left was. Yeah, yeah, really really excellent point. Yeah, thank you, thank you so much. And I don't know about you guys, but the way that I heard that answer was as Michael as the good Catholic man, that he should continue to be fruitful and multiply. So that's how that's how I heard it. Michael. Let's try to keep these answers as succinct as possible so that we can get as many questions in as we possibly can. Introduce speed round. Um. Hello, I'm Samantha Givich. I'm a

student at UW Madison. I'm a freshman studying political science and minoring in public policy. UM. My questionnaire today is I'm going to keep it to the content they had in the podcast is much of your message today was about the other side. I am personally democratic leaning, and um, how they're doing everything wrong, how they're yelling at you, how that girl ran out obviously speaking vulgar language, which I don't agree with. I think it's much productive to

speak this way. But at the same time, and not to insult you. Um you came out saying like these idiom idiots are making us wear these masks, like all these things and shouting out insults and compromising the integrity of the university. And I just want I think my question is more broad about your party in general, because that's why we're here. Is are you willing if you

is your message so important? Are you willing to compromise, like where are these faced diapers in order to put this message out that you think is so important, so more people are accessible, so it's more accessible to more people. Or are you is your message solely to oppose the other side and keep it to the people that agree with you? Good question, So, Samith, that's a very good question. Let let me start by just thanking you for being here,

thank you for having an open mind and coming. Even though you said your your political leanings are different than ours. I appreciate. I think we need to be having more of a conversation we ought to be. One of the problems today is the two sides live in like parallel worlds, and the right wing listens to right wing media, the left wings listens to left wing media. We don't talk to each other, we don't have shared facts, and we believe these caricatures of each other that that are horrible,

and they're horrible on both sides. Um The way I try to handle that it is, you know, I try not to get nasty and personal and go after the character of people who disagree with me. Now I'll disagree with them on substance and listen, I'll try to have some fun with it, and and and to make a joke, as I think, different than going straight straight to and saying they're horrible, evil people. I try on criticism to keep it lighthearted. On the question of compromise, yes, look,

I think we absolutely should look for mental grounds. You ask about wearing masks. To be honest, I'm embarrassing to say I've got two masks in my pocket. I've got a Texas flag mask, which is awesome, and you know, I might just wear that for the fun of it. And and then I have a Houston Rockets mask, which shows that I'm really believing lost causes. But I'm a die hard, die hard Rockets fan. You know, I flew up, flew up from Houston today I wore a mask. You know.

My view on Let's take COVID as an example. I think there were extremes on COVID on both sides that didn't make any sense. So there were people who would never wear a mask, never wear a vaccine, and personally I don't agree with that. I particularly at the height of the pandemic. You know, it made some sense to wear a mask. I wasn't sure how effective it was or not. But a year ago I was willing to

wear a mask, and it made some sense. Now I've been vaccinated, and it seems to me a little bit bizarre after you've been vaccinated, saying everyone has to wear a mask and pretend the vaccine doesn't work. That logic and science doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I think we should be willing to find reasonable common grounds. I think in COVID, for example, the politicians who shut down millions of small businesses shut down restaurants, shut down bars,

shut down jim shut down stores and destroyed them. And you know, people, if you have you know in Texas, you'll have a family that's say a second or third generation restaurant owner who their entire family's life work was destroyed. Yeah, politicians who shut down schools for a year, that hurt a lot of kids. I don't think that made sense. In my view, we should do reasonable common sense steps

to limit the spread of the disease. COVID is a serious disease, particularly if you're elderly, particularly if you have serious health issues. It can be fatal, and so I think we should treat it seriously. But I absolutely agree we ought to find reasonable common ground. I think most people want to keep their families safe from disease, but they also want to be able to go to work and provide for their kids, and they like their kids to go to school. And I think most Americans are

interested in that common ground. The political world is so polarized and the media world is so polarized. We don't have those conversations very often. That was a good answer. I have nothing more to add to that. No live owning or anything like that. It's really really really good question, and thank you for coming. I really we'll appreciate. Hi, guys, how are you doing. My name's THEO. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin. UM, I work in the Madison State Capitol or Wisconsin State Capitol. Ironically,

the first question asker is actually my boss. I'm his intern, so my question yeah, actually ironically it kind of is building off of his question on birthrates and whatnot. So, as we all know, yeah, I promise it's not it's not planned. It's not planned. I didn't even know there's questions. So, as we all know, the immigration policies of the Biden administration have changed drastically from the administration previously, and with the Haitian migrant caravan that transpired I don't know a

week or two weeks ago, I'm not sure. Popular conservative pundits like Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson have been theorizing something that people like Patrick Buchanan or a Jared Taylor who runs American Renaissance have said in the past, which

is replacement theory or a demographic replacement. So I kind of want not wanted to know what your guys's thoughts were on the validity of that and how that is becoming mainstream, and whether you think that it's the mass immigration of the Democratic Party is solely for electoral reasons, or if it is to change the demographics of America

and to displace the white majority of America. Well, I think if you're asking the question, or do Democrats play racial identity politics and say that, you know, straight white guys are the worst people in the history of the world, you know, I don't think they would even disagree with that they put They put that sort of thing in the New York Times, But I think the question is probably a little broader than that, right, I mean, they it would seem to me in Senator you work with

these elected Democrats more more closely, you see them more up close. But it seems to me quite clear that what they want to do is win elections, and so whatever the ethnic or racial, or sexual or geographic or whatever they're going to do. And by the way, that's just focusing on one aspect of the immigration issue, but there are obviously many other strategies that they're pursuing as well.

But whatever it's going to take them to win those elections, that's what they're out there to do, and so I don't. I don't think that is a conspiracy theory that Democrats are willing to fight dirty and to win elections, is it? So? Look, I am the son of a Cuban immigrants, and millions of Democrats wanted to replace me with a rich white guy named Beto Aurora. Um, wait on, he's not Spanish. Are you sure he's got a name like Beto? You know?

It was amusing when he launched his campaign. His name is Robert Francis and and and the the AP reported when he launched his campaign that he gave his announcement speech in his native tongue. And I couldn't help but resist saying, really, I've never heard a speech in Gaelic. I'm running to be the next senator from Texas, you know, I have to say, since the Astros are about to play the Red Sox, so you know you know that I'm looking forward to to our going back to the

World series. UM, listen on your question. I don't buy the racially charged nonsense that is in these discussions. UM. I believe in immigration. UM. I have said many times my view and immigration can be summed up in forwards, legal good, illegal bad. You know, I represent the state of Texas. We have twenty nine million people. We're seeing

firsthand the horrors of the Biden border crisis. I've been down to the border over and over and over again, when you've got one point three million people crossing the border illegally. I've been to the Biden cages that are filled with thousands of children. The last time I was in the Rio Grand Valley, the rate of COVID positivity in the Biden cages was over twenty four percent. I've seen when I brought nineteen senators down to the Rio Grand Valley and we went out on the river, we

saw an illegal immigrant floating dead in the river. I've seen the dead bodies of the pregnant women that the coyotes abandon in the desert heat. I've seen the little girls and the little boys who are sexually assaulted and physically assaulted by the vicious criminals who are trafficking them in. And so there are lots of lies and politics, but I think one of the biggest lies it is the lie you hear from the media that the Democrats open

border policy is somehow compassionate. There is nothing compassionate about a policy that has hundreds of thousands of children in the custody of vicious human traffickers that are assaulting and victimizing those kids. And so we ought to have a system that welcomes, that celebrates legal immigrants. There is a right way to come. You wait in line, you follow the rules, you come to America, but you don't have chaos at the border, which is what Joe Biden, Kamala

Harris have given us. Hello, my name is Thomas, Thank you mister Nelson, Senator Cruz for coming. One of my brothers is modeling is Beard after you? So yeah, my

question is a bit tangential. I'm a really big fan of comedy, and there's been a cultural trend toward, you know, the buzzword cancel culture, and I'm wondering what exactly is your interpretation of the line for cancel culture versus just holding somebody accountable, Say the difference between Colin Kaepernick no longer playing NFL because America is so oppressed if he makes millions and sage the guy who James Dumore, who was fired from Google because you send it a memo

saying men and women are biologically different. Where is the line, and when does it become canceling? When is it just holding someone accountable? When is it being sensitive? When is it just having preferences. Look, that's a great question, and it's it's a subtle and nuanced question. Um. You know my view, as a general matter, we should not have people being fired, uh for for expressing their political views. Now. Now there are exceptions to that, and and one of

the exceptions is we have a right as consumers. So you mentioned Colin Kaepernick. I don't like what Kaepernick said. Now. I don't think he should be censored. I don't think I don't think he should be silenced, but I'm not interested in supporting him with his message of that to me is disrespecting the American flag and as disrespecting the men and women who fought to defend the flag in our nation. Um, I don't think it's right that Kaepernick

is not a quarterback today because of his stance. To be honest, his stance was embraced in the NFL because they're such leftists. They loved it. And the guy is making tens of millions of dollars from Nike right now. He's not a quarterback because he wasn't that good a quarterback, and he had a tryout that was lousy. I will say, by the way, it is clearly political discrimination that I'm not an NFL quarterback. They don't like my views and it's the only reason I'm not a starting quarterback. It's

cancel culture if you ask me. You know. Coincidentally, I did just write a book on this very subject called speech. Let's controlling or it's controlling minds. So thank that's very kind. But thank since you know we're selling the Cactus Merged, so I might as well mention this book. And I think your question is really important. And Senator you make a good point here, which is it's a subtle and

nuanced question. You know, I don't think that we as conservatives are saying we have no standards at all whatsoever. William F. Buckley Jr. When he launched the modern Conservative movement, he did so with a book called God and Man at Yale, The Superstitions of at Academic Freedom, in which he mocked this extreme idea of academic freedom that the left pretends to embrace, but they don't even really embrace.

You know, I don't think anyone believes that if you go to your water cooler and you make a zig hile and you start reciting mind coomp that when you lose your job, that is cancel culture, and we're all supposed to cry about that. No, obviously, societies have limits. There is going to be decorum. You know. The Left tries to shut us up on certain things and says you can't say certain things. Chivalry also suggests maybe you

shouldn't say certain things. And so the questions involved are one, what should the government be involved in that's a procedural question, and then to a substantive question, what is the good? What do we want to have in our society, what do we want to look up to, what do we want to pursue, and what is really going to make us free people? You know that that distinction that our founding fathers found so important between liberty, true liberty and

li entiousness, you know, just pursuing your basest passions. And so I agree with what you brought up and obviously what you said, Senator that we need to take this question in a much more serious way. And if that means we can't dunk on the Libs quite as much, so be it. But we want to be able to move forward into a society that has a culture that we can all really be proud of and live in. Well, and let me give an example of the line drawing,

because I don't think it's just it's binary. State of Tennessee has actually a state law that, as I understand, it requires the governor every year to proclaim a Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, celebrating Nathan Bedford Forrest. And the governor a couple of years ago did that. I saw that and publicly said this is a mistake and you shouldn't do it now. For those of you who don't know who Nathan Bedford Forest was, he was a Civil War general, but he was also a slave trader, and he was

the founder of the ku Klux Klan. And I said, this is absurd that we are celebrating this man, the ku Klux Klan as a force for evil, and we should not be celebrating him. And you know, some folks came back and said, well, cruizer being unrealistic, because state law requires a proclamation about him. I said, all right, if I were governor of Tennessee, you want to see a proclamation about him, I'll make a proclamation. You'll never forget about someone who built his entire fortune selling other

human beings. Now there's a difference, I think, between not honoring the founder of the Ku Klux Klan and tearing down a statue of Thomas Jefferson. And part of it requires the exercise of judgment. It's not a clean narrow line that we should we should never express a view, or we should we should always silence views. It is somewhere in between. But but the Left. The thing to understand about cancel culture is the Left is trying to

use power to dominate the terrain of discussion. So I remember last summer, two summers ago, I was in California. Heidi's families from California. We were visiting with a friend of the family as a kindergarten teacher, and she said, look, I'm scared to speak. There's a McCarthyist wind in the air that if I say the wrong thing at school, I'm fired and my job is lost. And there are a lot of people that feel frightened to speak because the Left is so unrelenting. And so I think we

ought to have a lot of tolerance. We can draw lines at the extreme, but we ought to have a lot of tolerance for a reasoned discourse and debate, and that includes a reason discourse about our history, which is neither uniformly good nor uniformly bad, and we ought to be able to discuss that intelligently. This will be This will be the last question. But if you want to continue asking the senator more questions, you can go to

Verdict with Ted Cruz dot com slash plus. You will get exclusive access to the Senator, including the opportunity to ask him questions. If you want to introduce yourself and ask your question. Yeah, my name is Lane Witt, and I found in an organization on campus called UNMASKUW, and our goal is to get where do I sign up? How do I how do I become a member of

that club UNMASKUW dot org. So basically we just want to get rid of masks, obviously, but the university administration is not gonna help us no matter how many protests we hold. So my question basically is how do we get weaker Republicans in the state legislature to stand up, take a principle, stand and actually follow the law and get mask mandates removed from you? W Madison. Look, it's a great question. My view on all of COVID is

there should be no mandates. There should be no mask mandates, there should be no vaccine mandates, there should be no vaccine passports. That it ought to be up to individual choice. If people want to wear a mask. We've got some people here wearing a mask, right, that's your choice, that's your right to do it. You can make your own choice about your own healthcare. If people choose to get vaccinated, that's what Heidi and I have done, that's what our

parents have done. That's your choice too. But it shouldn't be the government forcing you to do that. And I would say, look, you've got a lot of folks and politics that are scared about this issue. It is a weird thing. So the way the United States Congress is right now, on the House side, Nancy Pelosi rules like a tyrant, so she forces everyone to wear a mask, and she has said that she will have the Capitol police arrest any staffer who doesn't wear a mask, and

she's finding House members who don't wear a mask. And I think it's a complete abuse of power. We did a verdict on that topic, in particular the Senate. It's interesting the Senate, you've got a little bit more kind of a hundred islands where no one tries to exercise brute force on other senators. And right now, it's the

strangest thing. It's like gang colors in the Senate. Every Democratic senator and every Democratic staffer wears a mask walking down the hall, and none of the Republican senators and none of the Republican staffers wear a mask. And it's it's it's the weirdest thing. You'll walk to the Capitol and you can literally see some intern who you've never met before, and you've been like Republican, Democrat, Democrat, Republican. It's bizarre. I mean, it's like the crypts of the

Bloods or something. And even the same colors actually red and blue. There it is. And the thing to understand about it is the left knows what they're saying as a croc the hip hop accracy. So Nancy Pelosi when she has this fundraiser in northern California with all these rich Democrats, none of them have masks on. And of course the waiters and waitresses, the serving staff are masked, which which from a Democratic perspective, yes, you little people

like Amelda Marcos. You know, let the little people do it. You know, Barack Obama is sixtieth birthday party in Martha's vineyards. Again, a bunch of rich Democrats dancing. None of them are

wearing masks. Mayor of San Francisco while dancing, same issue, she was feeling the spirit, she said, it is and I gotta tell you in the Senate, so you see these Senate Democrats when they're behind closed doors, they don't wear masks when they're having conversations, and then suddenly a camera's They're like, oh crap, I gotta put my mask on them, because you know, the virus reacts to cameras like it has become this weird virtue signal the left

is fond of projection. And all right, this is a dangerous thing because I'm gonna make a pop culture reference to a show I haven't watched. I watched a lot of shows, but I haven't watched Handmaid's Tale. So all I know is they wear those freakish outfits and they they all say Mike Pence wants to turn America into that. That's a documentary, yes, yeah, but so I haven't watched it. So my commentary is. I'm sure not informed on that show, but the left is literally like where you're burka as

a sign of that you are virtuous. In DC, I'll be walking along the road and you'll see this liberal. I've seen this several times, like a liberal woman jogging. We'll see me jogging, reach out and put on her mask and glare at me. I was doing. I was speaking at an outdoor protest in DC. It was on the border, in the open borders, and it was outdoors,

and I was at a microphone. A bunch of people gathered there and we're talking about the border crisis, and there was this angry lefty standing on the street screaming at me, and he was kind of like the young lady was here. He was cursing at me and didn't know any of the substance but was just f you, well, thank you for sharing, sir. And at one point he screamed, why aren't you wearing a mask? And I'm like, you're not wearing a mask, and it was the most bizarre.

We ought to be able to find some level of common sense. If someone wants to wear a mask, knock yourself out. But I think we ought to have leaders with the courage to say, we're not going to force you to make that decision against your wishes. And clearly you've got a lot of courage. You were refusing to muzzle yourself. That your fellow students are refusing to muzzle themselves.

All of us here, I guess, are at least in the metaphorical sense, refusing to muzzle ourselves and have these discussions. We really appreciate everyone here. I especially appreciate our friend Liz Wheeler. If you like Liz, which who doesn't? Who doesn't love Liz? Go check out here The Liz Reeler Show. Be sure to check it out. Also very exciting, Liz's partnering with YAF for her own campus speaking events, So if you want to bring Liz to your school, go

to YAF dot org slash Liz bring Liz to your school. Liz, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much. We'll see in Texas tomorrow at Texas A and M. So, Michael, what are the next stops? Where where are we headed next on this tour? So coming up next tomorrow, We're gonna be at Texas A and M can be very excitt Gigham. I can't wait very exciting. We're also going to be back in DC. We're going to Catholic University. That's going to be next week. And then we've got

three more stops yet to be decided. So if you want to bring us to your school, head on over to yaf dot org slash verdict so you can bring Verdict live to your school. But it's late, Senator, it's late. These wonderful people have taken a stand against the forces of tyranny and suppression and censorship, a stand for America, a stand for free speech. Thank you so much, thank you so much for the students and the community here

of the University of Wisconsin Madison. And I've got only one message for the administrators who tried to shut us up. Let's go, Brandon. This is vertical tech rooms.