The Cloakroom Preview: What if China Invades Taiwan?

and more over on Verdict Plus. In this preview of a Cloakroom, we're talking about John Stewart calling Senator Cruz a mother effort, and on the more intellectual side of things, we're talking about how the United States should respond in the event that China invades Taiwan. If you like what you hear, you can get more of Senator Cruz and more of the Cloakroom every week over on Verdict Plus.

You can head over to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash Plus, and if you use my promo code, which intuitively as Cloakroom, you can get one month free. That's Verdict with Ted Cruise dot Com Slash Plus. And promo code Cloakroom to check out all the episodes of The Cloakroom right now. We'll see you over there. In the meantime, please enjoy this preview of the Polkroom. Hey guys, welcome, I'm Liz Wheeler. This is The Cloakroom on Verdict. Plus we have a lot to talk about tonight. There's so

much happening with Taiwan this week. But first, Senator Crews, we have big news, a big announcement to make Baby Knowles number two has arrived. Huge congratulations to Michael and his wife and his entire family on the arrival of their new baby boy. Obviously, Michael is out this week spending time with his family, as he should be. I'm so excited for him. This is his second son. Yeah, no, it's awesome. He's got a second baby boy and they

are celebrating and enjoying. And you know, when Michael comes back, we'll do everything we can to make him feel at home, which means we'll do lots of crying and drooling, which frankly is a lot of what happens in the Senate too, so there's a consistency to it. But it's it's great news. And we're celebrating with Michael. Yeah, Michael posted some pictures publicly on Instagram of a little guy in man. Is he a dull? Michael's wife's did a fabulous job. Huge

congratulations to them. We're actually going to do two Cloakroom episodes this weekend of Michael's new baby. Also because Michael is out this week. It'll be an inside look into what you and I Senator Crews do on the cloak Room every week. Today we are going to talk about Taiwan, but before that, I want to talk with you about John Stewart. You seem to make John Stuart pretty mad this week. He actually made a video calling you a mother effort and he was standing in front of people

chanting when senators lie, veterans die. So, Senator Crews, maybe you can tell me to say, what exactly did you do to piss off John Stewart. Yeah, Now, this was a pretty surreal week on that front. John Stewart kind of lost his mind and did an awful lot of demagoguing and very little actually truthtelling. So let's unpack this because what happened in the past week was confusing, and I got to say the corporate media did a horrible

job reporting on any of it. The underlying bill that the Senate was considering is a bill called the pac dec And what the pack Deck does is it focused on veterans healthcare, and in particular veterans who have gotten diseases from burn pits, these giant pits that were very common in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We're all sorts of toxic chemicals and all sorts of garbage was burned, just lit on fire, and unfortunately it led off a lot

of toxic fumes. And now we've got veterans who are coming back with all sorts of health problems, including cancers and other diseases that there's significant science tracing back to inhaling the toxic fumes from these burn pits. And I have long been an advocate of providing healthcare for those veterans who were injured from exposure to burn pits. It's

something I've advocated for a long time. In this bill, in particular, is a bill that creates two hundred and eighty billion dollars in new funding for healthcare for our veterans for exposure to burn pits, and I emphatically support that bill. This bill also has four hundred billion dollars in existing funding that's our in the funding stream for healthcare for veterans. So all told, the total price tag of the bill was six hundred and seventy nine billion dollars.

I supported that in June, I voted for it. I agreed with it, and I think it's a good idea. Now, after we voted on in June, we subsequently last week we're voting on what's called cloture, which a vote on cloture is a vote to cut off debate to disallow any amendments. This was the second time the bill had come up, and this second time it came up. Pat Toomey, my colleague from Pennsylvania, raised a very specific concern about one element that was in this bill, which is an

accounting gimmick that the Democrats used within this bill. I mentioned that the bill has two components four hundred billion dollars of pre existing funding for veterans two hundred and seventy nine billion, and new funding for those exposed to

burn pits. Well, the four hundred billion pre existing funding is currently what's called discretionary funding and discretionary funding Discretionary spending is spending that has to be reauthorized by each Congress, and discretionary funding is subject to an overall cap in terms of how much discretionary spending is allowed. What the Democrats did with this bill is they shifted that four hundred billion from discretionary spending to mandatory spending. Now, why

does that matter, Well, mandatory spending. The way the federal budget works, mandatory spending is on autopilot. It goes automatically. It doesn't have to be appropriated, it doesn't have to be reauthorized. It's mandatory, and so it's just an autopilot. Why does that matter, Well, it doesn't matter in terms of ensuring that the money will be spent because look, Congress is going to spend money for veteran sealthcare. There's no prospect that Congress is going to fail to provide

the funding for veterans healthcare. The reason the Democrats wanted to do that is by shifting it from discretionary to mandatory, they as a bookkeeping matter, cut discretionary spending by four hundred billion dollars the four hundred billion they moved to mandatory. Suddenly, it created a hole on discretionary spending where our total aggregate discretionary spending is four hundred billion below the cap. The reason they wanted to do so is they want

to spend four hundred billion more in unrelated pork. Has nothing to do with veterans, has nothing to do with this bill, but the whole they just created and discretionary spending. It was their intention to fill that hole and to fill it with whatever pork projects they wanted to spend. And so Pat Toomey had an amendment, a very simple amendment, just to shift the spending back to discretionary, so so to reverse the budget gimmick that they had employed last

week when we voted on Culture. Pat had spent the entire week making the case to the conference at lunch that the only way we could get a vote and try to force them to shift it back to discretionary is if we stood together and at least forty one of us voted to deny Culture. And if we did that, if we blocked Schumer from going ahead on the bill, we would have the leverage to force a vote on

the amendment. That happens a lot in the Senate. That's how you get leverage to get a vote is you block cloture well, we did that last week, and John Stewart lost his mind and the corporate media lost their minds. John Stewart proceeded to go on this this profanity lace tirade, blasting me, blasting other Republicans, and basically his thesis was

that apparently Republicans hate veterans. Were just you know, when you think about Republicans, what is it that characterizes Republicans in the mind of a wild eyed leftist demagogue, It's that we don't like veterans. Mind you, that is facially absurd. But the problem was Stuart is not being a legitimate advocate, He's not being an honest broker, He's being a partisan hack and he saw an opportunity to use this to scream and curse an attack and try to deceive Look,

people who are not paying much attention. But just here Stuart screaming Republicans hate veterans. Some of them might be deceived into believing that it was dishonest when Stuart started. It remains dishonest today. And so what happened today as we just we voted on Pat Toomey's Amendment. I voted for Pat Toomey's Amendment. It narrowly failed, so unfortunately, the budget gimmick is still there. And then we voted on

the bill, and I voted for it. We ended up having eighty six Senators vote for it because we support the underlying bill. But it was an amazing illustration of how dishonest the press is because almost none of the corporate media actually covered the substance of what the dispute was about. So this is actually interesting because the truth of the matter is, you can correct me if this

is inaccurate. The truth of the matter is it was actually the Democrats who were temporarily, I guess, holding this money hostage from veterans to pay for their healthcare because they wanted an additional four hundred billion dollars to spend on things unrelated to veterans or healthcare, just their own

political pet projects. That's exactly right. And so actually last week when we were voting on cloture, we made very clear to Schumer, if you adopt Toomey's amendment, will prove this instantaneously, So we could have passed this last week. And one of the things Steward and the rest of the media we're saying is it's Republicans who have delayed this and veterans are dying. Well, we could have passed this last week, but the Democrats love their pork so

much they didn't want to pass it last week. And by the way, one of the reasons the media went really crazy is I was skeptical we'd get forty one Republicans to stand together try to stop yet another four hundred billion in pork spending unrelated to veterans, and we

did miraculously hold hold Republicans together. And so when that happened, Steve Danes, Republican from Montana, he and I did a fist bump on the Senate floor, which caused Stuart's pretty little head to explode and caused all of the leftists to say, you know, Twitter is covered with you know, cruizes, fist bumping, veterans dying. Yeah, that's it, Johnny boy. That's exactly what it was about, not cruises, fist bumping, trying

to stop Democrats from bankrupting the country. The four hundred billion and unrelated pork that, by the way, is fueling inflation that is making people's lives really really suck, including veterans lives who are having to pay seven eight dollars per gallon for gas. It is amazing the deception that the media played in this. And so I'll tell you tonight, when I voted yes on the bill and Steve Danes voted yes on the bill, we did another fist bump in the exact same spot. We purposely did it again

to illustrate the point. But I'll tell you something else I said at lunch. So we were discussing at lunch today before the vote what the next steps were, and we were able to get a vote on Toomey's amendment because we denied cloture last week. But I said, listen, it looks like we're going to lose the vote on Toomey's vote amendment. We knew that by lunch time that it looked like the way the whip was coming out,

we were not going to win the vote. And I said, this was still a good and worthwhile fight to have.

Why because we've now increased the political cost of the Democrats trying to use that political gimmick to fill that four hundred billion dollar hole that by focusing the fight on it, the Republican conference is now much more focused on that four hundred billion dollar fake hole that they made just by moving the money to the other side of the ledger, of the mandatory side, and maybe we've made it radioactive for the Democrats to come back in another bill and add that pork spending of that four

hundred billion in the hole. And what I also urged the conference is when Republicans take over, hopefully in January, we ought to fill the hole. In other words, we ought to lower the cap to basically eliminate this budget gimmick. And because we had this fight, I don't know if we'll succeed in lowering the cap to erase this budget gimmick, but our chances of doing so are much higher because we fought this fight and endured the dishonest demagoguery of

the left over the weekend. And by the way, I looked on Twitter right now to see if the mainstream media was giving equal coverage to your fist bump fist bumping for this healthcare for veterans, and no, it's not trending anywhere. It's it's of course nowhere, So that shows you exactly what you need to know. But speaking you know, what is trending on Twitter right now actually is Nancy

Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. And I want to ask you about this because in a previous episode of Verdict, you gave the chances of China invading Taiwan to be fifty fifty. Do you would you change your calculation given Nancy Pelosi's visit and China's threat probably an empty threat in my opinion, their empty threat of shooting down her plane or responding with their army. Do you think that they'll use that as justification to invade Taiwan? Is their higher likelihood, So

it remains a very real risk. You know, rewind over a year ago when bidenhead is disastrous surrender and withdraw in Afghanistan. The weakness and appeasement of this administration encouraged every one of our enemies. I said at the time, as you'll recall the chances of Russia invading Ukraine of risen tenfold, the chances of China invading Taiwan of risen tenfold. Our enemies are emboldened because they see the commander in chief is weak in NFL. Now, let's get to this

week and Nancy Pelosi. It is astonishing how badly the Biden administration has screwed this up. It's breathtaking. I'm a hard pressed to think of an analog in recent times. So Pelosi announced she was going to go to Taiwan. We actually had a classified briefing yesterday with senior officials from State and DD talking about this, and I chewed them out. I mean, I lit into them. I can't tell you what they said, but I can tell you

what I said because what I said isn't classified. And I chewed them out, saying it is hard to overstate how badly you guys have screwed this up. Number one, when Pelosi said she was going to Taiwan, the Biden administration leaked that the Department of Defense opposed her going. We don't know who leaked it. We don't know if it was DoD We don't even know if it was State or if it was the White House. My guesses

it was the White House. I think was probably the Biden National National Security Council that did so, but I don't know that that that's inference. I have known somebody

from the administration leaked it. Um. That was spectacularly stupid. Um. And one of the things I pressed the administration on is do you think it was beneficial or harmful to leak that the Department of Defense is telling the Speaker of the House, oh, oh please, please please don't go to Taiwan and and and make the Chinese communist angry. Of course it was harmful because it shows this White House is so weak and terrified that that that that

they're scared. But then it got and you mentioned in your question, it got truly Monty Python esque level absurd because a Chinese government run newspaper publicly called on the Chinese military to shoot down Nancy Pelosi's plane when she tried to land, And then at the White House press conference, the White House Press Secretary was asked, what do you make what is the administration's position on this Chinese government run newspaper calling for Chinese missiles to shoot down Nancy

Pelosi's plane, And the White House Press Secretary said, oh, we have no position on that, which I got to admit, Liz is friggin nuts. Listen. I'm no fan of Nancy Pelosi, but the only answer to that question should be anyone attacking and trying to murder the Speaker of the House of the United States of America if they shot down her plane, it would be an act of war and the result would be overwhelming and catastrophic. That is the only answer you can give, whether you like Pelosi or not.

And the level of weakness that you asked the Biden White House, what's your position on China murdering the Speaker of the House of the United States. Oh, we don't have a you you know's what's a little murder of senior government officials between friends? Like holy crap, that statement increase the chances of China invading Taiwan dramatically because they're taking a measure of does Joe Biden have the backbone

to do anything? And if they're not even willing to say, please, don't shoot down our speaker the House, what are the chances they're going to do much of anything else. It's it's so unreal to watch this unfolding. You and I did an episode a while back on The Cloak Room talking about your foreign policy philosophy, and you described it

as on the spectrum of isolationists to interventionists. You said, it's not somewhere in between on the spectrum, it's a third point on a triangle where you analyze what the interests of the United States are before getting involved in a foreign conflict to make sure that it's it's particularly within our interests and not just something that something that we're interested it in when we get involved, and especially

our military getting involved. So taking that and by the way, anybody watching this who hasn't watched that episode, I highly recommend you go back and look at it. Very interesting, one of our best if I do say so myself. But how would you apply that foreign policy philosophy to a scenario where China invades Taiwan? Should the United States get involved? Should they? Should we not? And if so, how much? In what way? What are our interests? So

it's a highly complicated question. And should we get involved? Absolutely yes, And actually the Taiwan Assistance Act obligates us to get involved. Now, the Act does not specify what get involved means, so there's a whole range of involvement. Anytime you're dealing with a superpower that is a threat on the order of communist China or on the order during the Cold War of the Soviet Union, your best hope is to deter aggression, and you deter aggression from

a position strength and not a position of weakness. So during the Cold War, nobody in the right mind wanted to get into shooting war with the Soviet Union. Ronald Reagan did not want to get into a shooting war with the Soviet Union, but he believed in peace through strength, that if we build up our military and we create enough to terrence, that we can defeat them without having to go to war with them. Likewise, look, only a

lunatic wants to go to war with Communist China. That a full out war with Communist China would result in massive casualties on both sides. No one in the right mind wants to see that happen Taiwan. Taiwan poses an enormous threat to the Chinese government for a number of reasons. One because it demonstrates that Chinese people can live in freedom and prosperity and with human rights. Look, the people

in Taiwan are ethnically Chinese. There's no difference in the nationality, the ethnicity, the history of the people on Taiwan from the people in mainland China. But what terrifies she and the Communist Party is the one point three billion Chinese living under communist tyranny and oppression. Look across the Taiwan straight and say, hey, wait a second, they're Chinese, just like us, but they are free, they have elections, they have free speech, they have prosperity. Their standard of living

is much much better than ours. Wait a second, that system, that free enterprise system, is a lot better than our crappy communist system. That's why the Chinese government is so terrified at Taiwan, because it emboldens their system. Now, for the same reason, we should speak out vigorously in support of Taiwan, vigorously in support of Hong Kong, because they both have demonstrated the power of freedom and free enterprise.

And what's in our interest is seeing the Chinese communist government fall, just like it was in our interest to see the Soviet Union fall. And so what I think we should be doing is number one, vigorously speaking out for Taiwan. That I think using the bully pulpit of America is really powerful and it undermines totalitarian regimes. But number two, providing weaponry, selling weaponry to Taiwan. Look, Taiwan is an incredibly successful economy. They can afford to buy

our weapons. We're not giving them stuff. It's not a case of welfare. They're incredibly successful. But we should be selling them military weaponry, sophisticated with military weaponry that they can use to defend Taiwan against China and to change that cost benefit analysis. So the Chinese generals are saying, well, wait a second, if we launch an amphibious attack, these guys have sophisticated enough weapons that they can drive up

the cost a lot. In particular, what you want is is asymmetric weaponry, the ability to have not just a bunch of tanks that are sitting stationary and are really easy to take out, but you want things that are mobile. You want things that some of the things we're seeing in Ukraine, like javelins and stingers and minds that you can put in the Taiwan strait, all of which make

an amphibious assault much more difficult. I'll mention, by the way, another reason why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be enormously harmful to the United States is a very large percentage of advanced semiconductors that are made worldwide are made in Taiwan. America produces very little of it. Hopefully we'll see more. And the Senate just passed a big bill that has tax incentives to create manufactured semiconductors. Here, I support the tax incentives. It also had corporate welfare for

big multinationals. I don't support that, so I voted against the overall bill. But if China invaded Taiwan tomorrow, it would have a stranglehold on a semiconductors on a global scale. Our military is dependent on those semiconductors. Our technology industry phone, satellites, computers, cars, the level of our economy that would be held hostage to China if China took over Taiwan would be devastating. So the right answer is not let's send in the navy to go fight the Chinese navy. That's a very

bad outcome the level. The response instead is let's be smart and proactive and deter the invasion in the first place by making clear that the cost to China will significantly exceed the potential benefits. This is why it's so important to have a foreign policy philosophy, because you can identify US interests and then you can moderate our response and how to be a deterrent first based on that structure, that framework, and not based on just the emotion of

the moment. Okay, we have a mail back question. And some contacts for this question this week. The Senate is set to vote at the end of the week on the Mansion Schumer so called Inflation Reduction Act of twenty twenty two. We know that Mansion caved to Schumer after Mansion had torpedoed build back better. This is kind of build back better light. They claim it's addressing inflation. We

know that that's not true. Craig Alexander asks, do you believe Senator Cruz that Senator Christen Cinema will vote yes for this bill? I genuinely don't know. It is the only hope of defeating it. So they're forty nine Democrats who are yes. I'm confident there are fifty Republicans who are now. So the only one who will decide it is Kirsen Cinema. I will tell you. Cinema was playing pretty coy aday. So she was on the Senate floor.

She was in the cloak room today. We were all asking her, saying, you know, gosh, a no would be a really great vote. We'd love to see it. She wouldn't tell us, so we asked her. She wouldn't tell us. She is not publicly committed, so she has not said one way or another. I think it is possible she

may insist on some changes to it. If I were to guess what's most likely, I think it's most likely she votes for something, but it's not this exact version, and I don't know what her conditions will be, but I think she will probably put a price on her yes vote, and I hope the price makes it less bad on these issues she has been Look, she's had real guts taking on Schumer and the craziest inner parties, and so I don't know what that'll be. But if I were to predict, she will have some condition and

make them change it somehow. And if they do that, I think she probably gets to yes at the end of the day. But I don't know. We'll find out in the next couple of days. Well, I think we're all going to be sitting here waiting with bated breath to see what she decides. I hope and I pray that she has the courage to reject this tremendously bad bill. But what do you guys think? Let me post tell me. Do you think Cinema's gonna vote yes? Do you think

she's gonna vote no? Do you think She's gonna put conditions on it that will be given to her and then she will vote yes. What do you think post let me know. Also, don't forget we have two episodes of The Cloakroom this week and our next episode, we're going to talk about a topic that I promised you a couple weeks we would talk about. We're finally getting to it. We're gonna talk about George Soros funded progressive prosecutors around the nation. You don't want to miss this one, Senator.

As always, it was good to chat with you. I'm Liz Wheeler. This is The Cloakroom on Verdict Plus