The Opinion of the Court

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eight three, or text the word cactus three two. Welcome back to Verdicts with Ted Cruz. I am Michael Knowles, Senator. This has been a big couple of days for you and for the First Amendment. And for conservatives, especially heading into the midterms, you had a major victory not in the capital, but in another branch of government at the Supreme Court. Well, that's right, I final lawsuit against the federal government and one a six three victory at the

US Supreme Court based on the First Amendment. And what I was challenging is a part of McCain Finegold. Remember McCain Finegold was the big so called campaign finance reform bill that passed twenty some odd years ago, and it's a terrible bill. It has all sorts of terrible provisions. The Supreme Court is struck down a bunch of those provisions. Many of the provisions were designed with one thing in mind,

to protect incumbent politicians. And you think about it, campaign finance laws are written by incumbent politicians and the one thing they can all agree on is they don't want anyone to beat them on election day, and so campaign finance many of these provisions, including the provision I challenge, are designed to make it hard for challengers to win.

In particular, what this provision said is, if you're a candidate for office, let's say Michael Knowles decides to run for Senate in the state of Tennessee, and you're a first time candidate. You don't have a lot of name I d but you've saved some money and you decide, let's say you're a small business owner, and you decide to put five hundred thousand dollars into the campaign to loan your campaign five hundred thousand dollars to jump started,

to run your first ads, to get started. Well, what McCain fine Gold provided is if you loan your campaign five hundred thousand dollars on campaign day, you were capped on what you could pay yourself back at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and everything beyond that was essentially a gift to the taxpayers. So if you loan your campaign five hundred thousand dollars, you're out two hundred and

fifty thousand dollars. You can pay yourself back to fifty but not a penny beyond that with money raised after election day. The purpose of it was real simple. They didn't want people loaning themselves money to run against incumbents, and so I saw this as a practical matter when I first ran for senate. So I ran for Senate in twenty twelve, my opponent, David Duhurst, worth over two hundred million dollars, a gazillionaire. He put over thirty million

dollars zone money and just wrote a massive check. I'm sitting I don't have thirty million dollars. I've got no name, I d no one's ever heard of me. I'd never run like, I'd never been elected office. This was the last thing I was elected to was student council. So I'm running this, this grassroots campaign, and the week before the primary campaign manager comes to me and says, okay, the only way you can survive is if you liquidate all of your quod net worth and drop it into

the campaign and alone. And so Heidi and I we'd worked a number of years. We had one point two million dollars in savings, and I went by the way. I went to Heidi and said, sweetheart, what do you think about putting our whole liquid net worth into the campaign. I don't advise this conversation. This is a dangerous conversation to have with your spouse. Astonishingly, Heidi and second said, yes, do it. We did. That got us into the runoff, which ended up getting me into the Senate. This law

was designed to say you can't pay yourself back. So I filed a lawsuit challenging this provision of McCain fine Gold, saying it's unconstitutional, saying it restricts political speech. We won in a three judge district court and won unanimously, and then it went to the US Supreme Court, was argued earlier this year, and just this week we won six three.

Chief Justice Roberts wrote a terrific opinion said this was clearly designed to stifle political speech, to stop challengers from taking on incumbents, to benefit career politicians, and so they struck the law down, the result of which is it's now easier for challengers to run for office and for challengers to take on and beat career politicians. Well, it's

a great win. I'm glad that given the amount of money you had donated to your own campaign to really just to test this law, presumably you'll get back something like ten thousand dollars these days in the Biden economy, I think that'll pretty much just buy you a nice steak dinner, but I hope you enjoy it to celebrate. What I'm really interested in is what does this mean, practically for candidates who are running right now in the twenty twenty two midterms, how do you think it's going

to affect the landscape? So it has a big impact. I got to tell you, in the Senate and in the House, I cannot tell you how many current Senators and current House members have come up to me said thank you, thank you, Like like I have I loaned my campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars or maybe even a million dollars or more, and I've never been able to repay myself. Like the level of gratitude among Republicans,

but even among Democrats. They can't admit it because their side is a big fan of stifling the free speech, but they're grateful. And you know, it's amazing. The corrupt corporate media the way they cover this, Like the headlines from all of the media is like, now it's legal to bribes senators. I saw that headline. It's like, well, no, the contributions to pay back the loan or under the same contribution limits of twenty nine hundred dollars a person,

same limit applies. So the idea is eighty six contributions at twenty nine hundred a piece, adds up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So eighty six contributions were just fine to pay yourself back, but the eighty seven was clearly corruption. It was all a croc. By the way, it's interesting if you look at the debate on the Senate floor, both Pete Domenici and Kay Bailey Hutcheson, my predecessor on the Senate floor, they were very candid why

they wanted this provision. They said, look, we don't want someone to run against us and loan their campaign a million bucks or five million bucks. They might beat us. And it's interesting some of the coverage where they say, well, gosh, this is benefiting the candidates because they can put the money in their own bank account. The descent says you can take the money and use it to buy a car or join a country club. And this is the classic classic leftist like the ultimate definition of evil is

joining a country club. I'm not a member of a country club, but it's how the left defines it. The one thing they seem to be omitting is it's your damn money. Like this is not that that's the funny thing. It's like, all right, you start out with in the hypothetical five hundred thousand you had it to begin with, you loaned it to the campaign that pays you back. You got the same damn money you started with. None

of these leftists and the media acknowledge that at all. Now, speaking of money flying around the Capitol, there is a vote that just occurred. I think that seems to have divided the right, the Republicans, the Conservatives, and it's this vote over funding for Ukraine. And you voted for the funding in Ukraine. There is a lot of confusion about what this funding is for, what's included in the bill.

So what do you have to say about that? Yeah, look, so we just had a vote on forty billion dollars in additional funding for Ukraine, and there are a lot of folks, a lot of grassroots activists, probably a lot of viewers of this pod, who are skeptical of that funding. I think the vote for the funding was the right thing to do. I voted yes. I think there were a total of eleven no votes, So it was a relatively small group of Republicans that voted no, but it

was most of the Conservatives. And look, if you ask a grassroots activist, I was up in Pennsylvania campaigning on Thursday and Friday, and the activists there, they're like, all right, forty billion dollars sounds like a ton of money. Anything going to something in a foreign country sounds like a waste of money. We got chaos in our southern border

and people are pissed off. How come these jerks want secure the southern border and yet they want to send money overseas and then people are frustrated at all the other things like inflation and the baby formula shortage and everything else. They're like, focus on at home, not abroad. I understand all the sentiments. Here's why I voted yes the war in Ukraine. It is in America's national security interest for Vladimir Putin to lose. If Russia wins, it's

bad for America. Now, as you know, we shouldn't have been in this war. This war is unnecessary. Biden's weakness caused it. Biden's waiving the sanctions on Nordstream too caused this war. We talked a lot on this podcast about Nordstream two, the sanctions legislation that I wrote that stopped that pipeline, that prevented the war. Until Joe Bidenate came in, waived the sanctions surrendered to Putin and caused the invasion. That being said, if Putin succeeds, it hurts America. It

is bad for America. Putin wants to reassemble the old Soviet Union. We want our enemies to be weaker. We don't want our enemies to be stronger. If Putin conquers Ukraine, he will be stronger. He will have more of a stranglehold over energy. That's bad for America. We've seen energy prices skyrocketing. Putin controlling Ukraine gives him more of a stranglehold over our energy prices, and that is we will

end up spending much more battling against Putin. If he wins, then if we provide Ukraine the weapons to beat him, of the forty billion, nine billion of it is replenishing US military stocks. So in other words, it's it's replenishing stingers and javelins and weapons that the American military has that have been given to Ukraine. And our stocks are depleted. And I don't know of anyone rational that can argue against those nine trillion that we obviously should be have

the weapons necessary to defend ourselves. A total of twenty four billion. Of this amount is military aid to Ukraine. So it's bullets, it's missiles, it's stingers, it's javelins, it's the weapons that Ukraine is using to win victories and defeating putin in battles ongoing. That's good for America to have the Ukrainians defeating Russia. There's an additional portion of this, it's about four and a half billion dollars that is focused in particular on food aid. And one of the

consequences of this war. You know, Ukraine is called the bread basket of Europe, grows enormous quantities of grain. This war has shut down that food production and that the projections are that we could be facing massive famines throughout Africa, throughout Egypt, throughout the developing world as a consequence of this. I think providing some funding to prevent mass starvation and

mass famine makes sense. Now, there's also in this bill about eight billion dollars that goes to the government of Ukraine for economic assistance. I think that's crap. I would delete that. I think it is almost certain a lot of that is almost certain to go to waste. I think some of it will go to corruption. You know, some of that who knows, could end up in some

oligarch's yacht in the Baltic Sea. That's possible. It's also the consequence of having a bill that is drafted by Democrats, that's drafted by Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. So I'm faced with a binary decision. I don't like that eight billion. I would cut that waste, I would get rid of it. But I think it would be

a mistake. I don't think it would be the responsible decision, particularly when Ukraine is beating Russia, to say, Okay, we're going to cut off your bullets and cut off your missiles and put you in a position where the inevitable result is putin wins. That's bad for America, putin wins, and I don't want our enemies getting stronger because that ends up hurting us. Well, I think I think this

is the strongest argument for the bill. I know a lot of conservatives roll their eyes when the arguments for funding the war in Ukraine are that Ukraine is this thriving, wonderful democracy, and you know, in the abstract, we need to defend you know, this flourishing republic, when in fact it's obviously a lot of corruption. Probably some of that money is going to go to that corruption. But I like the way you're putting it. You're saying, Look, it's

a simple question. What is better for America. Is it better for America at Vladimir Putin run Ukraine or for Zalinski and the rest of these guys to run Ukraine. One of the frustrating things is I think a lot of the Republicans defending this, you were pretty kind a second ago. I think they're eye bleedingly horrible. And how they defend this, and they get up and say things like we must protect democracy, we must protect international norms.

That's all hogwash, that's the kind of garbage, John Kerry says. And so one of the problems is some of the people who voted with me are saying things that I think are imbecilic, and I hate their justifications. It's not why I support the military a you know, it used to be all Republicans were agreed, we support a strong military, we stand up to our enemies. But let me give you what I think is the single best argument for this aid package. Listen, Rush is a very real danger.

Putin is a very real danger, but there's a bigger danger, and that's China. Communist China is watching this. She is watching this, as you remember, And I said this on the podcast when Joe Biden surrendered to the Taliban and had the disastrous failure in Afghanistan. I said at the time, the chances of Putin invading Ukraine have just risen tenfold. And I said, the chances of China invading Taiwan have risen tenfold because they've looked at the man in the

Oval office. They've taken the measure of the man. Well, right now, she is watching what happens in Ukraine and if Putin wins, and even more importantly, if Putin wins, because America lost the stomach for supporting our allies decided, you know what, even though the Ukrainians are heroically defeating the Russians, even while outmanned little old Grandmother's throwing Molotov cocktails, the Americans were so feckless we said, sorry, we're cutting

off your bullets and missiles. Good luck winning a war, you know, with no bullets. I think the chances of China invading Taiwan. Skyrocket dramatically and you want to talk about profoundly dangerous. One of the reasons we don't want China to invade Taiwan. If they invade Taiwan, it gives communist China a stranglehold on semiconductors produced worldwide. Vast percentage of the semiconductors produced in the world are produced in Taiwan. It literally puts US in a position where we're dependent

on China for essential electronics. And they're one of two outcomes in that. Either one they sell us chips that they put spywear on to monitor everyone, and that's the best case scenario. Best case scenario is China now has spywear everywhere. Worst case scenario as they say, screw you, no more chips for you. You know, it's like the soup Nazi and Seinfeld. No soup for you, no chips for you. That is a terrible outcome. And I believe look,

she is watching this. At the outset of this Ukraine war, the Biden administration told Congress repeatedly said this war is going to be over in two three days. Russia is going to roll in conquered Ukraine. It's all going to be over. Nothing to see here turned out the entire

Biden admin was spectactularly wrong. Every day this war drags on, every Russian casualty, every dollar that the Russians pour down a rat hole in this war A hurts Russia and Putin, which is good for America, but b I think increases the deterrence on China of further military aggression. So I don't want America to project so much weakness that we

invite China to be aggressive an invader neighbors. And by the way, invite Venezuela to do the same thing, Invite North Korea to do the same thing, Invite a Rand to do the same thing. There are a lot of bad guys in the world. Yeah, that's a much stronger argument than some of your colleagues. And I think if you, if you just view foreign policy not just but primarily view it through what is in the national interest of the United States, that that's a reasonable way to approach

this question. And people's eyes won't glaze over in the way that they do when you hear the peons to you know, democracy in the abstract, which in reality often doesn't really exist. Now, speaking of democracy, speaking of the will of the people, we get questions on this show, Senator. We get questions all the time from our listeners, and we never get to more than one or two of them per show. So I've got a lightning round of questions for you from the mail back from our great listeners.

Our listeners, of course, can join the Verdict Plus community. They can subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, YouTube, my Space, I don't know. You can subscribe wherever leave a five star review. Let's get to the first question. I think probably the most pressing question. This is from Jonathan. The Women's March was this weekend. We are seeing women like Amber Heard, Jada Pinkett Smith, Meghan Markle, Kim Kardashian.

Is it time we start talking about toxic femininity? So look, Jada Pinkett's Peggott Smith. It seems unfair to blame her for the fact that that that Will Smith went and took it, took a swing at someone. So I'm not sure you know he has he has agency, so I'm not going to blame her for that. Um, Amber Heard, I'll confess I haven't watched this trial. I've seen like snippets of it, and it seems a little bit like watching a celebrity car crash. But but I haven't actually

watched it. I do not want to confess, Senator, that I've watched this trial. It's riveting. It's riveting. It's the best thing on television right now. I believe you. And Johnny Depp seems like a weird dude. And I know, like if twitters to believe, Amberhard is kind of really bizarre and more in the wrong than people thought. But I don't know that that that that is truly an ignorant statement. Um, Kim Kardashian, she didn't done anything lately. I mean she seems Kim seems fine. She Uh the

SNL guy, I don't, I can't, I don't know. I'm team Kanye. I know, what can I say? Uh? I mean Pete david said, all right, how come that dude gets all of these like hot women because of toxic femininity? Senator? That is the evidence that something has gone wrong. Pete Davidson was dating Kate Beckinsdale. I mean, you're talking underworld, You're talking like super hot vampire in black leather trench coat, and you're like, really this an l dude? Like wow? Um?

And who was the fourth one. Uh. The fourth one was oh oh, the the former Duchess and future President Megan Markle. I am happily in a Royal free zone. I cannot stand their antics. They're sort of they seem left wing as a matter of social virtue, socialist because they've inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, and as best I can tell, trivial and not focused on actually things that matter. Although again I say that with a degree

of ignorance. Maybe they're doing wonderful things in charity that I don't know. But everything I see in the headline seems to be inane vanities and trying to prove to leftist that they're as woke as anyone wants them to be.

I've always been a great defender of Her Majesty the Queen, but I now have a conspiracy theory that actually the whole mexit phenomenon was a plot by the royal family to send this woman and Prince Harry to America to rise through the political ranks to become president, to undo the American Revolution and return the United States to the Commonwealth. I don't I can't prove it yet. You'll be back, You'll you'll be back. I've seen Hamilton, and that's that

the That's that's what our predecessors says. That's true. Okay, Well, now that we've covered that important topic. Uh, next question. This one's a bit more trivial from Galen. I would like to know Senator Cruiz's position on civil asset forfeiture, the legalized theft of personal property by the government with no crime alleged. Very good question. Um, I've got real concerns about civil asset forfeiture. I think it is abused

with some frequency. UM. I think there is a role for civil asset forfeiture for an asset that was used in carrying out a crime. Um. That's where it's legitimately applied. I think it can be abused. The threshold is far less than than than convicting someone beyond a reasonable doubt. And I think there's been lots of allegations of law enforcement abusing it because they want to seize a bunch

of assets even if someone hasn't done anything wrong. I look, my basic view is if you commit a crime, if if you're living on a you know, in a fancy mansion and selling drugs out of the mansion, you can lose the mansion and that that's part of the criminal law, and I think it is an appropriate ancillary to a criminal conviction. But I have long been vocal about the abuse of civil asset forfeiture, and I think it needs

to be rained in. There's a question that we've heard a whole lot about with regard to this overruling of Roe v. Wade. This has become one of the top Democrat talking points. Questions from Pittsburgh, who says, do you believe that interracial marriage would be at risk if Roe v.

Wade is overturned? Absolutely not, It's utterly absurd talk. Last podcast, I made fun of the New York Times, which suggested that that if Roe was overturned, that there are several states that would in fact ban in a racial marriage. Which which what is it? I think I had some sort of long that they were like crazy, moronic, full of crap. I don't even remember. It was a whole string of adjectives making fun of the New York Times because they have this view that only Manhattan could have

of tripping contempt for the rest of the country. No, no state wants to ban in a racial marriage. No, there's no risk of that No, there's no risk of the law allowing it. That that that's all an absurd slippery slope. And I can quantify precisely the chances of that happening, and it's zero point zero zero. What about zero point zero zero zero point zero zero zero one? I mean, is are you saying there's a chance now? No? No, not not even the dumb and dumber stand standard. I'm

not even saying there's a chance. There is zero chance. Yep. From Kim, Let's be the last question. Why isn't the Biden administration changing course? This, I think is a really good political question. She says, the regime has dismal poll numbers, worsening economics, and are obviously completely incompetent. So, even just from a purely political perspective of self preservation, why isn't the Biden administration changing on anything? So? I don't know for sure, but I do have a theory, which is

that the kids are in charge. I think Biden is truly checked out. I think his mental capacity is so diminished that he's not running things. And when I really became convinced of that, oddly enough, was at the State of the Union and the state of the Union. Biden was competent in reading what was on the teleprompter, but any president looking at where things are now, it is not rocket science to recognize that the Democrats are headed to a blood bath in November. At this point, everyone

knows this. Republicans know this, Democrats know this. The State of the Union was Biden's best opportunity to try to change course. And by the way, we saw Bill Clinton masterfully use State of the Union addresses to change course and pull the Democrats path out of the gutter, Biden didn't even try. I mean the question that was asked

that they're not trying to change course. They're doubling down on crazy ass left wing radical Any principle would say, hold on a second, let's not accept that we're headed to a blood bath and losing the House. Let's not accept that we're probably losing the Senate. Let's at least try to hold onto a majority somewhere. They're not doing this, and I think what is happening is you have people like Ron Klaine, the chief of staff that's running it,

that they're like you're seeing the movie Doctor Strangelove. They're like the guy with the cowboy hat, riding the bomb down. They're just gonna take it all the way down and blow the hell out of it. And if there were a responsible principle running things, they'd at least try to save them. For people who are unfamiliar with the term, when you say principle, you're talking about the guy, the elected guy, the person who's supposed to be in charge,

the elected official, and it's just it's fundamentally different. I've been a staffer, but it is fundamentally different when your name is on the ballot, when you are the elected official, when you've got the election certificate. There's just an awareness of Okay, let's think through what the consequences are, what the next steps are. Any president who was aware of

his surroundings would at least try to save this. The fact that they're not, I think the children, the staffers are running it, and they're just like, strew it, screw it all the way, let's go on like we don't care, let's ram everything through. And oh well, if we lose the House and Senate Cowboy hats On ride the bomb all the way down, that is very scary. Well really, I guess scary for them, it's wonderful news for conservatives.

We don't always get wins, especially when conservatives raut of power, but there have been a lot of wins. Congratulations on your court win, Senator, thank you all right, and before I go, you have more to talk about. We've got our wonderful show the Cloakroom with Liz Wheeler. Liz, what are you guys going to talk about? Hi, Michael High, Senator, Yes, we have a fascinating topic that we're discussing on cloak

Room today. So, in the wake of Nina Jenkowitz and the Disinformation Governance Board coming down from the Biden administration, there's this idea on the left that there's limits on free speech, and they always use this phrase you're not allowed to yell fire in a crowded theater as their justification as the precedent that they point to for these limits on free speech. And we are going to examine the actual history of that phrase and whether or not

it actually does impose limits on free speech. You can join us on Cloakroom if you go to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash Plus. It's for Verdict Plus subscribers only. Verdict with Tedcruise dot Com slash Plus. If you use my access code, which of course is Cloakroom. You can get your first month free on your annual subscription Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash Plus. Make sure to go check out the Cloakroom. It's going to be a lot of fun. Until next time. I'm Michael Knowles.

This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruise is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Security Pack, a political action committee dedicated to supporting conservative causes, organizations, and candidates across the country. In twenty twenty two, Jobs Freedom and Security Pack plans to donate to conservative candidates running for Congress and help the Republican Party across the nation.