Welcome in his verdict with Ted Cruz the Weekend Review, Ben Ferguson with you as always, and my, oh my, do we have a lot of big stories that happened this week, especially before Donald Trump is inaugurated on Monday. First up, Bernie Sanders and the President Joe Biden going out with a bang, saying to any rich person in America, you better be careful before you work with Trump, because when we get back our power, we're coming after you. They even use the word ola garks. Yes, we'll explain
that for you in just a moment. Also, shocking news coming out about rape gangs in the UK and how this is a very concerning issue, especially for what's happened in the United States of America with so many kids being lost that have come across the southern border. So what will the administration do about that. We'll explain that for you as well. And finally, Donald Trump went to
Capitol Hill to meet with leaders on the Hill. How to sit down with the Senate Republican So what was said behind closed doors and what does it mean for the Trump agenda.
It's the Weekend Review and it starts right now.
It is also goes back to this other narrative when we heard it from the President of the United States of America the other night. He was obsessed with this idea of oligarchs. I actually think this was a little bit different. And Bernie Sanders started naming names when he was doing the confirmation hearing for the man who's up for Treasury Secretary, and I want to get your take,
and we're going to play Bernie. But one of the things I felt was really kind of icky about this was the fact that it's like, hey, we're warning some of you that have stepped out of line from the Democratic Party that we're coming after you when we get our power back if you step out too far into the conservative side of things. And that's why we're warning you that if we name you as an oligar, then if we get our when we get our power back, there's going to be some sort of hell to pay.
And you better be careful how much you work with Donald Trump and you support freedom of speech, and you support freedom of expression online and the able the ability to post things, and that's what it was boiling down to, and it was I think even more weird. It was in a back and forth with the guy for Treasury secretary. It's like, wait, are you trying to weaponize Treasury to say, hey, your job is to now make sure there's no billionaires in America.
Well, look, it's it's worth giving a listen. So listen to this back and forth. And in terms of the demagogic language of the Democrat Party, this is a great example, give a listen.
When you have a small number of multi billionaires who have enormous economic, media and political power. Would you agree with President Biden who last night stated, and I quote and Oligauki is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom. Send of coot. That's what President Biden said last night. I agree with him, do you.
I enjoyed our visit and I hope you got my follow up materials that we on the discussions, my predicious thinkings on the terrorists and China and the three billionaires who you listed that all made the money themselves. Mister Musk came to the country as an immigrant.
I understand that. But what I'm asking you is when you have a handful of people like Musk who will soon be part of the Trump administration and others. When you have three people owing more wealth than the bottom half of American society, when these people have enormous influence over the media, when they spend huge amounts of money in both political parties to elect candidates. What Biden said last night is we're moving toward an oligarchy. I'm asking
you that question. Do you think, forget how they made their money, do you think that when so few people have so much wealth and so much economic and political power, that that is an oligoxic form of society?
Well, I wouldn't note that they. President Biden gave the Presidential Metal of Freedom to two people who I think would qualify for his oligarchs.
So this is not a condemnation of any one individual. I'm just asking you when so few people have so much wealth and power, But do you think that that is an oligarchic form of society?
Senator? I think it depends on the ability to move up and down the end.
No, that's not really d answer. I mean, even if you had that mobility, no matter who those individuals might be. All right, but let me ask you another question.
I love there how he's like, all right, I'm gonna move on because this isn't landing, and just threw it back in my face that we just gave medals of the highest level of metal you can give to a civilian, to two of the people that would be categorized oligarks. One of them, by the way, is a hard core radical by the name of George Soros.
George Soros just got the Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden. He celebrated. He also gave it to Hillary Clinton, and and by the way, before that, Barack Obama gave the Medal of Freedom to Bill Gates. And listen, the position of Bernie Sanders is we hate billionaires. Unless you're billionaires who support socialists and the Democrat Party, then you're okay. But to be clear, you're only okay if you're buying absolution.
The instant you stop buying absolution, we will demonize you and we will burn you an effigy in the streets. And I gotta say, I like Scott Besson's point. He's like, wait, you're attack these people. None of these three people you're attacking none of them inherited wealth.
You know.
Elon Musk came as an immigrant from Africa, like he built amazing companies and and to a socialist, they don't care what you did to build wealth. They're going to demonize you. They're going to attack you. And it's an example of and and by the way, it's it's why you get so many incredibly rich, so many billionaires who backed the Democrat Party because they're basically paying for protection from Roba spear from from from the guillotine in the French Revolution. And and I got to say that that
is where the Democrat Party is. But I'll give Scott Besson a shout out. He responded with fantastic answers, which is why Bernie ran ran to the hills and ran away because he realized it wasn't going the way he wanted. Scott Besson's going to get confirmed. Every Trump cabinet member members going to get confirmed.
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number two. I want to move to another story you mentioned earlier. And this is a story that on face value, it's something that's in the UK, and there's somebody that say, well,
like this is the UK, why does this matter? To me, and I want to connect it to what has happened in this country because of our open borders and the number of miners that we have released in this country to non family members through the Biden Harris program, and when we go back to check on them, they are nowhere to be found. There are tens of thousands of children.
Over three hundred thousand, ten thounds, over three hundred thousands that's in the United States that the Biden administration has lost, that they do not know where they are, that they came as unaccompanied miners and they were handed over to adults, and they have no idea where they are, and many of them are, no doubt being abused. And the corrupt corporate media could not care less. The Democrats could not
care less. I don't know a Democrat senator who's ever asked about the three hundred thousand children that this administration lost. They don't care about it. But look, I want to say, what's happened in the UK and is happening right now is horrifying and it's a real warning sign here. I want to start by reading from an article in the Free Press because it sums it up really effectively. It's entitled the biggest peacetime crime and cover up in British history.
The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It went on for many years, it is still going on, and there has been no justice for the vast majority
of the victims. British governments, both conservative and labor, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the twenty tens, and it looked like they had succeeded until Elon Musk read some of the court papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on x over the new year. Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public's suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry and demands for accountability. The
scandal is already reshaping British politics. It's not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It's that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover up. Social workers were intimidated into silence, local police ignored excus used and even embedded pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called quote community relations.
Local councilors and members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs and labor MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and islamophobia. The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain's media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and
its self serving priorities. They did this to defend the failed model of multiculturalism and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilar They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or islamophobic. They did this because Britain's traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness. All of which is why no one knows precisely how many thousands of young girls were raped in how many towns across Britain
since the nineteen seventies. What we do know is that the epicenter was in the post industrial mill towns of England's North and Midlands, where immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh settled in the nineteen sixties. White locals say the grooming and rapes began soon after. In Rotherdam, the run down Yorkshire city where the scandal first broke. Local police and councilors were notified about systematic grooming and sex abuse by
two thousand and one. The first convictions did not occur until twenty ten, when five men in Pakistani background were jailed for multiple offenses against girls as young as twelve years old. The breadth of what occurred is staggering and the systematic willingness to look aside is truly horrific.
And let's be clear.
The reason why they look the other way you mentioned it is really from a pr standpoint. They wanted to have quote, good relations and not have a stigma related to people that were coming from the Middle East that were there, so they said, all right, we'll just look the other way and that'll make it easier.
It's actually less Middle East than real, primarily Pakistan Pakistan, and it's Pakistani Muslims and what we've seen. So we have seen since the nineteen seventies the grooming and serial rape of thousands of children. And the issue is in particular relevant because Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was England's Director of Public Prosecutions between twenty eight and twenty thirteen, and so he was actively involved in looking the other way.
And all right, so let's break down a little bit of the facts of what happened, because the story sounds so extreme as to not be be credible. But the child sex rapes weren't just individual instances done by rogue individuals. Rather, in nearly all the cases, there were groups of mostly Pakistani men that cooperated and conspired to groom and sexually abuse girls over decades, and they targeted mostly vulnerable girls,
poor orphans, children in care homes. They raped the girls, they passed them around network, so raping them one after the other after the other. Some of these child rapists had roles in local governments. The leader of one of the rape gangs in Oldham, individual named Shabir Ahmed, worked for the local council as a quote welfare rights officer and ran his gang from the council's welfare office. And let me give you some of the facts because they're
just just horrifying. One of the victims a girl named Victoria Agaglia. Victoria was a fifteen year old teenager and she was subject to the governments round the clock caretaking, but she went missing nineteen times in three months, from up to two weeks at a time. Instead of trying to find her, the welfare worker simply messaged her saying when are you coming back?
Wow.
It turns out she would was forced into a Pakistani sex ring by older women who raped her in exchange for cash, alcohol and hard drugs. She was sometimes abused by up to twenty five men in a single night. Victoria wrote wrote a heartbreaking letter to the police documenting her abuse, but it was ignored and eventually ignored, and she was found dead from a fatal dose of heroine given by an abuser. And she was repeatedly drugged and raped the night she was killed. I'll give you another example,
Charlene Downs. In Blackpool. In two thousand and three, fourteen year old Charlene Downs disappeared. Police had a lead that Charlene's body had been dismembered and disposed of at a kebab shop in Blackpool. Police uncovered evidence that Charlene had been the victim of child sexual exploitation after being groomed by a gang. The criminals have not been found and her body is missing. Twenty years later, Lucy Lowe in Telford, an individual named Azar Ali Mahmood groom Lucy Lowe from
the age of twelve and impregnated her at fourteen. He burned her alive in her own home with her mother, her disabled sister, and her unborn second child, also fathered by Mahmood. Me Mood was jailed for life in two thousand and one for murder, not for the sex crimes.
For murder.
Reports indicated that South Asian men were targeting teenagers in Telford since the nineteen eighties. I'll give you one other example. Sophie in Oldham in two thousand and six, a twelve year old girl named Sophie entered a police station and reported that she had just been molested in a graveyard by a man named Ali. A desk officer told her to come back with an adult when she was sober. Mind you, she was twelve. Two men a cop rusted her in the police station, joined by a third, they
raped her in their car. When they dumped her on the street, she asked a man named Sarwar Ali for directions. He took her to his home, raped her, and gave her money for bus fare home. Sarwar Ali was arrested and remanded to prison over his attack on Sophie. However, he was then released following a bail application to a judge, despite being an illegal immigrant in the United Kingdom. He subsequently failed to attend his appointment with the Immigration Service
and is still at large. Then a man named Shaquille Chowdery pulled up in his car and offered to take Sophie home. He abducted her, took her to a house, fed her alcohol. Soon after, he and four other men repeatedly raped her. Only Shaquille was convicted six years in prison. During his trial, Chowtery named two of the other men involved in the rapes of Sophie as part of his mitigation, but these were not followed up by police at the time.
One of the men named by Chottery was subsequently convicted in two thousand and nine of the attempted.
Murder of his wife.
This pattern happened over and over and over again. And the numbers are staggering. We are talking about thousands of girls systematically, repeatedly raped and the entire British government looked the other way for decades.
So sata the question that I'm sure everyone listening is thinking to themselves like, A, has anything changed now? And B what should happen the fact that now this is all out in the.
Open, Well, what has changed is Elon Musk has started tweeting about it, and Elon has over two hundred million followers and it has drawn attention to it in a way that is really important, and it has become, thankfully a political crisis in the United Kingdom. But I want you to listen to Keir Starmer, this is just about a week ago addressing this crisis, and listen to what he had to say. This is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
And when politicians and I mean politicians who sat in government for many years a casual of our honesty, decency, truth and the rule of law, poling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right, and that affects politics because a robust debate can only be based on the true facts.
So there you have it. The sitting Prime Minister is saying that if you're concerned about the ongoing rape of thousands of girls in the United Kingdom and the complicity of government, he says, you're jumping on the bandwagon of the far right that continues to be the multiculturalism political correctness that he does not want to acknowledge. And by the way, he was the chief prosecutor for many of
these years. He was the one who who was directly involved in looking the other way, so naturally he doesn't want an inquiry. Now, I'll give you the response of Nigel Farage, one one of the leaders. And actually Nigel Farage we've had had on on the on this podcast. He's been a guest on this podcast before. Nigel Farrag obviously led the fight for Brexit UH in the United Kingdom, and and and and listened to Nigel Farage's response to what Kiers Starmer said, Well, so.
Much talk over the last few days about grooming gangs or should I say great gangs, and Kirs Starmer today saying that anyone is calling for a full public inquiry is jumping on the bandwagon of the far right. Wrong Prime Minister, the vast majority of people in this country are absolutely mortified by what has gone on, but even worse the cover up we've had from the police, social
services and both conservative and labor governments. The inquiries that have happened so far have been nothing more than a whitewash. There needs to be a full public inquiry. Let us find out the truth of the scale of this. I'm told that in up to fifty British towns these gang rapes were going on. I believe the public need the truth. We must have an inquiry.
Say you hear the frustration there from Nigel, but it also and this is where I say, let's bring it back to the US.
I worry that we're going.
To have this same type of conversation in the not too near distant future about all the children that we've lost in this country.
So the answer to both needs to be the same, which is there needs to be an inquiry. That needs to be transparency in the United Kingdom. You know, Nigel Faraj mentioned that their allegations of up to fifty towns where these rape gangs were ongoing for years and years
staggering scale. So there needs to be full transparency. The opposite of a whitewasher a cover up, but real transparence in the United States, the over three hundred thousand children that the Bide the administration lost, we need full transparency. We need to find those kids, those kids who are being abused right right now. We need to get them out of harm's way and sunlight and transparency is powerful, but there also needs to be accountability for those who are culpable.
As before, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and dow the podcasts from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week you may have missed. Let me ask you this just to paint the picture of the room. When you guys meet with him, are you seated?
Yep? And then when you talk to him when you're making your points, do you stand? How does it what does it look like? Is it very chill room? Is it a is a casual room or very formal?
So we're in a room called the Mansfield Room, which is a room named for Mike Mansfield, former Senate Majority Leader, Democrat senator from Montana. Has a big picture of Mike Mansfield holding a pipe, the big painting on the wall. It is a large room in the Capitol, and when we met with him, there's a table that's basically a giant table set in a rectangle, so we're all facing each other. So you know, fifty three of us plus
the president around a table looking at each other. And it's a very nice room, and it's where we have lunch every days.
It is.
It's actually one of the perks of being in the majority. So the majority has lunch in the Mansfield room. The minority has lunch in the LBJ room, which is smaller. So when we became a majority, we got into the bigger room, which is nice because the LBJ room it's pretty tight quarters and so there's a lot more space in the Mansfield room. So look, I made a case to him because he came in and he'd been told by the House, Hey, this is the only way we can get it done. And I said, miss President, I
want you to understand something I said. We had a meeting of earlier today of all of the Senate committee chairs, all of us, every single one of us, agrees that doing this with two bills is the only way to get it done, and one bill has a massive, massive risk of failure and extending it to eight months. And I pointed out to him, I said, look, they're fifty three of us in this room. I want you to look around the room. Every single one of us agrees.
All of us I agree, John Thune agrees, Lindsey Graham agrees. Said look, you've got Susan Collins and Ran Paul. They agree on nothing. They agree on this. I want you to understand why. And one point that I made to him is I said, look, you need to understand I love the House of Representers. I love Mike Johnson. He's a great man, he's a good friend. He has a nearly impossible job. So I feel for how difficult that
job is. The House of Representatives. More than sixty percent of the House was not here when we pass twenty seventeen texts.
Wow, that a significant number.
So they do not understand what goes into it. They do not understand the thousands of hours of back and forth. Look, they're passionate, they believe in what they're saying, but they don't have the experience of having gone through this. By the way, they also many of them don't understand the rules of reconciliation of what the Senate could do. Remember I talked about we can do budgetary things and not policy things. There's always a battle between the House and
Senate because the House gets mad at the Senate. You damn senators, you won't do what we want. It's like, well, there's a statue that governs what we can do, and it does limit what the Senate could do on reconciliation. That'll be a back and forth. It always is. Every reconciliation there's a battle between the House and Senate because the House wants to do things that the Senate is not allowed to do under the terms of the statue.
What I told President Trump is I said, listen, if we put this all in one bill, we have a massive risk of film. If we do it in two bills, we can start with a huge victory securing the border, rebuilding the military, unleashing American energy, and then we will get tax cuts past.
It's just going to take longer.
And and you know on the argument that, well, gosh, this is the how House leadership's argument, we need each pieces a sweetener to get the votes. What I've said in response is okay, show me this magical unicorn of a House member, cause I know most of these guys. Yea, So show me. Don't talk about Well, I got members. I can't get their vote without it. All right, tell me who you're talking about, crazy right wing knuckle draggers. Okay, I'm a crazy right wing knuckle dragger. Those are my peeps.
I'll go talk to them. I'll go talk to them.
But when I'm talking to them, they're not saying that. Are you talking about really moderate Republicans? All right, Fine, that's a different that's a different, different problem to solve. But we talk about that. One of the issues that complicates this is what's called.
The salt Explain that.
Okay, So the salt tax is state and local tax deduction. So one of the things that happened when we passed the twenty seventeen tax cut is we eliminated initially, we eliminated deducting state and local taxes. So it used to be before twenty seventeen, if you're in California and you pay a crap ton of taxes to the state of California,
you could deduct all those taxes on your federal taxes. Now, what that ended up doing was having the federal government subsidize big blue states that tax the hell out of their constituents and big blue states that have massive taxes. You just got it deducted from your federal taxes. And so we were, like Gavin Newsom, keep raising taxes, the feds will subsidize you on that. So in twenty seventeen we eliminated that. Now we eliminated it, but we actually
allowed some deduction. We put a cap of ten thousand dollars, so you can deduct up to ten thousand dollars of state in local taxes. Are both homeowners in Texas. The biggest state tax we pay is property tax. Yeah, so you and I deduct our property tax on our federal income tax. But it's capped at ten thousand dollars. So if you're paying more than ten thousand.
Dollars, it's on you. It's on you.
Now, what's the political problem. The political problem is there are a number of House Republicans who come from blue states, in particular New York and California, and the blue state Republicans, the New York and California Republicans have a problem because eliminating the salt deduction really impacted people in high tax states because unfortunately they're big government Democrats keep taxing the hell out of them.
We talked about this in California this past week.
Those New York and California Republicans feel an obligation to do something to help the problem of not being able to deduct.
More than ten more than ten now.
And so the argument is, well, if we add border security to it, they'll have to vote for it because they can't vote against border security. So this is where the argument makes no sense. I'm like, all right, first of all, we tee up the first bill, secure in the Border, rebuilding our military, unleashing American energy. I don't know a Republican is voting against that. The mandate out of this election was secure the border. Show me the idiot Republican who is going to say, no, I'm for
open borders. That that is a recipe for disaster. You're retiring when you're doing that, because you ain't running again.
And if you do, you're gonna get primary, you'll get killed.
None of them will vote against border security. They're just not going to.
They know the American people, they know what they want.
On the salt issue, Look will there have to be an accommodation for New York and California. Republican, sure, there will. There will have to be an accommodation. I understand that that's part of why this takes a while. You got to negotiate. There are geographic and regional issues that you have to negotiate, and there's a trade off. Now, will the accommodation be restoring in full the state and local tax deduction? I don't believe it will be, because that's
terrible tax policy. That means the red states are all subsidizing the blue states and they're bad tax policy. Here's what I think the resolution will be. This action idea I got from Northquest. Grover Norquist runs America's for Tax Reform. He's a longtime friend of mine, one of the leading thinkers when it comes to tax policy. And Grover's idea. So right now, there is a marriage penalty in how
you deduct state and local taxes. You as an individual, if you fire your tax return, you could deduct up to ten thousand dollars of state and local taxes. If you are married, as you are, you and your wife can deduct a total love ten thousand dollars on state and local taxes. What Grover suggested as a fix is eliminate the marriage penalty, which means you and your wife would be able to deduct No. Twenty thousand, so it doesn't hurt you.
You're not being penalized for being married.
Right now, that's good tax policy as well, getting rid of the marriage penalty. One of the negative things federal law does is discourages marriage, and marriage is a very good thing for our society. I think will end up if I were to predict the bill that gets enacted, I think will end up eliminating the marriage penalty on the salt deduction, which lets the California and New York Republicans go back and say.
Hey, big win, big win, we double the deduction. Now.
What it doesn't do is give a multimillion dollar tax break to Michael Bloomberg. What it doesn't do is give a massive benefit to billionaires in New York and California who have massive taxes. And I think that's where we'll end up. But again, that takes time, and so I don't know how we resolve this. I think we'll end up seeing the two per seed on parallel tracks. I think we're gonna see the set the House for a while, go forward and say we're doing one big, beautiful bill.
And I think the Senate's gonna say, yeah, that's fine, we're moving forward.
We're not wasting time.
You're going to forward with our bill on the border, on the military, and on energy because we can get it done. We want a victory and this is how you win. And look, I don't know how it resolves, but I can tell you I think it is an enormously consequential question. And frankly, this is exactly the reason I think people listen to Verdict for sure, because there is not another show. There's not a news no, one's
not a podcast. People don't understand this. And I will tell you this is the single biggest topic that the Senate and House and President Trump are discussing right now, and nobody is covering it in the news. But the reason it's the single biggest topic is I believe it is the difference between succeeding on Trump's legislative agenda and winning massive victories or losing and having a crushing failure.
And in my view, failure is not an option. We cannot fail, which means we've got to do it right.
As always, thank you for listening to Verdict with Sentner, Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson podcasts and we will see you back here on Monday morning.