The Prosecution Rests

It's funny that we're in the midst of this impeachment trial of the former president and the bigger news of the day would seem to be Disney firing one of their big TV stars, Gina Krano, other news cancel culture, not just affecting the former president, but affecting conservative journalists as well. We will get to all of that, but I do have to ask you, Senator, what is going on today. I know that the Democrats concluded their case, but unlike last year, it seems like there's just not

a lot being reported. It seems like kind of an opaque process. We don't even know how long this thing is going to go, So could you just briefly tell us about how that case concluded, and then what the Trump legal team is thinking? Well, sure, I think the kind of quick bottom line is that the Democrats failed to get the job done and they've run out of steam. So they were given sixteen hours, they were given eight hours both days. They ended up finishing four or five

hours early today, so they quit early. And I think it was because they had been number one, unbelievably repetitive, making the same points over and over again. In fact, I had fun today. Claire McCaskill, you remember, the former Democratic senator from Missouri, tweeted out that she thought the House manager's case was getting really repetitive and redundant and kept repeating itself. She didn't quite do that, but I thought you would appreciate that. And I saw that and

just hit retweet like with no commentary whatsoever. I'm just I'm sure Claire love that I was retweeting her. But she was right on that, you know, I mean even a stop plus she's right, She's right. So they ran out of steam, and the bottom line is they didn't get the job done, and so where are we now? Tomorrow the President's defense lawyers will present their case. They have a total of sixteen hours over two days. They will not take all that time. They will take substantially

less time than that. And so after we finished today, I went and sat down with the lawyers. I actually grabbed Lindsey Graham and I grabbed Mike Lee and said, hey, let's go sit down and just talk through with the lawyers what they're planning and give our thoughts. And so the three of us went in President's defense team. They're they're meeting in the LBJ room, which is actually the room where in non COVID times, the Senate minority has lunch.

So they're in what will be our lunch room. Sadly, we weren't in the LBJ room for the last six years, but we will have moved back to the LBJ room once COVID is over. With this sort of sort of smirking portrait of LBJ looking down on you, and it's it's right off the side of the Senate floor. And so what happened. Lindsay shared his thoughts, Mike shared his thoughts. Um, I I'm going to refrain from saying what they had to say, but I'm happy to tell you and and

verdict listeners what I had to say. Well, I would like to know sort of your your advice for the legal team, because I know, on the one hand, people are thinking, look, this case is over. As you made I think very clear last night, it ain't gone anywhere. They're they're not going to convict Trump. And so as a practical matter, they're obviously not going to remove him from office because that's not possible, and they're not going to convict him anyway. But as a historical matter, this

really does matter. I mean, this is setting a new precedent. I guess that you know, this could have a huge political effects into the future. So the arguments they make are going to redound throughout history, There's no doubt. And and we've had two days of the Democrats pounding their narrative, and so there needs to be a counter story. What I started out saying is actually what you just said. As I said, look, you got you got to remember

you've already won. There are not sixty seven votes to convict. There. There are fifty five votes to convict plus minus two. I think there's a low of fifty three. I think there's a high of fifty seven. And that's really the band that's in play. So my opening advice was don't do anything to screw it up, don't you know, don't piss anyone off. You know. Related to that, my advice

was be calm. I thought the jurisdictional argument, Uh, for President Trump's lawyers, at times, they got a little hot, they got a little angry, and I encourage them be calm, be reasonable, be rash and all. The way I put it is I said, think more like an appellate argument, like you're arguing to Supreme Court justices, and less like a jury argument. So we'll see if they follow through

on that. The most important advice I had, I said, look, we've had two days of the Democrat House managers arguments, and ninety percent of what they've done has focused on being emotional and powerful and telling the story of what happened on January sixth, telling the story of the assault, the attack on the Capitol, telling the story of the police officers who are physically assaulted, telling the story of Officer sick Nick who was murdered that day. And I

gotta say they did it powerfully, the Democrats. They have some good trial lawyers, they have some good storytellers, and so as they told that story over and over again. It was powerful and effective, and that was ninety percent of their argument. And my advice to the Trump lawyers disagree with none of it. Look, yes, we agree everyone in this jury, all the senators were here that day.

It was a horrific terrorist attack. It was despicable, and anyone who committed crimes of violence that day should be fully prosecuted and locked up a long long time. And so don't argue with them on that. That is indisputably true. Everyone in the Senate understands that, believes that, and everyone agrees on it. The only question before the Senate is whether President Trump committed high crimes or misdemeanors. And there's only one that is charged, and that is incitement, incitement

of violence. And I pointed out in the entire sixteen hours they had allocated, the Democratic House managers devoted about fifteen minutes to that question. And it was the second to last speech that the House managers gave. It was Congressman from Colorado is actually a talented trial lawyer, who got up and he spent about fifteen minutes laying out the legal argument why they believe this constitute's incitement and

to be honest, it's the only relevant moment. In fact, I said, in the entire time, it's the only time I pulled out a notepad and made any notes, because it was the only time they actually said anything relevant to the question before the body. What the House managers articulated was a three part standard for incitement. They said, number one was violence foreseeable, Number two did President Trump encourage the violence? And number three was the president's conduct willful?

So I wrote those three down, and the point I made to the Trump lawyers, I said, first of all, you'll notice those three elements are not found anywhere in a statute. They're not elements of a crime that they're not actually the elements of incitement. They're not found in Brandenburg, the Supreme Court case that talks about incitement and lays out the constitutional standard. They literally just made them up. Yeah,

that's a very strange way to prosecute a crime. As I said, look, you know, a lot of the lawyers on the defense team have been either prosecutors or criminal defense lawyers. The way a prosecutor proceeds if they are charging you with a crime, there are statutory elements of the crime. Here's what constitutes the crime, and the prosecutor sets out to prove each of the elements of the crime. That's not, in fact, how the house managers proceeded here

because they can't meet the statutory elements for incitement. So they just made these three up. Okay, those are the three they made up. I said, look, I'd start by pointing out where did these come from? They literally just pulled them out of whole cloth. But then here's the

critical point. I'd say, look, on any standard, the question for the Senate to assess, is there any coherent way this test can distinguish between the conduct of Donald Trump versus the conduct of countless other political figures, including a whole bunch of Democrats, Right, And and I said, look, I think you should walk through in particular Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Maxine Waters, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi.

She referred to police officers as stormtroopers, compared him to Nazis. You know, there's some rich irony that suddenly the Democrats are the defenders of cops, of course, where for a year they've been vilifying, demonizing police officers. They've been marching against cops, they've been saying abolish the police. They've been saying abolish ice. They've been embracing ACAB as a slogan, and Michael, you know what ACAB means if all cap cops are that's and that has been the Democratic base

that they've been snuggling up with. They don't get to suddenly be the great and defenders of police officers. Yeah, you know, I love this, Senator this. I guess two points here in this advice that a lot of Republicans have not recognized, which is one, don't always be on the defensive. You can go on the offensive, or you can point out inconsistencies, you can use the Democrats words against them. But but maybe even more importantly, you don't

have to accept their ridiculous premises. You know that the early premise that exactly that the Democrats are trying to get these Republicans to buy into is that somehow Republicans support riots at the Capitol. I don't know any serious Republicans who say, yeah, I loved when the guy and the bullhorns walked in there. He's my guy. Where can I vote for him? And likewise, I mean, you've just spelled it out so perfectly on the question of incitement.

If look, I'm not a constitutional law scholar. I'm not a lawyer of any sort. If if I were just listening, but you did stay at a holiday in last night, but I did stay at the right You know, if I were just listening to them lay out this standard for incitement, I guess I would say, Okay, that sounds about right. I mean, I don't know what the real standard is. So if the legal team can go in there and say, wait a second, just so you all know, they completely made that up out of whole cloth, that

is not the actual standard for incitement. There is no reason for us to accept premises that have been crafted purely to put us at a disadvantage. We're going to talk about the law. We're going to talk about what is always been true. You know what the long standing standard here for incitement. That seems much more effective than just going along with what the Democrats are trying to

lead them. I think that's exactly right. And what I encourage the Trump lawyers to do is say, all right, take their standard and apply it to the conduct of Democrats. Let's take, for example, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders uses all sorts of hot incendiary rhetoric. And you'll recall we had a crazed lunatic, a leftist who was an enthusiasm stick Bernie Sanders supporter, who came to Washington, d C. With an AAR fifteen, went and sought out the Congressional baseball

game practice asked are they Democrats or Republicans? The Republicans, so he went to kill Republican members of Congress. There were two senators there, Rand Paul and Jeff Flake that there were a dozen or so House members there, and he opened fire on them. And it was only the

coincidence that Steve Scalise happened to be there. So Steve Scalise is a member of House Leadership, so his detail was there, and there were Capitol police officers who engaged with this crazed lunatic and stopped him, but they didn't stop him before he had shot Steve Scalise and nearly killed him. I mean, Steve spent months in the hospital. I mean it was a serious wound. Steve for many

months after that couldn't walk, was on crutches. He's doing much better now, but it was a life threatening injury. And all right, let's take their three standards. Was violence for seeable? Well, given the rhetoric Bernie was using, and I encourage them, and you know, play videos show that rhetoric Bernie was using. He said, they're trying to take your health healthcare away and want you to die. Okay? Is violence foreseeable from that? Did Burnie encourage it? I?

You know, I guarantee you. Bernie has the rhetoric saying go, fight, stop it, go, has exactly the kind of rhetoric Donald Trump used. And then was it willful under that standard? Bernie's conduct apparently as incitement? I guess we're going to start the removal proceedings for Bernie Sanders. Maxine Waters who told her supporters, if you see a Republican and go harass them, engage them, yell at them, surround them. I

mean that is inviting violence. By the way, Corey Booker did the same thing, and the most compelling Chuck Schumer on the steps of the Supreme Court calling out to Supreme Court justices by name and saying, you unleash the whirlwind. You're going to pay the price. But the central example and what I encouraged them to make it exactly side by side as Kamala Harris. So, Kamala Harris did a couple of things. Number one, as we had Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots all over the country, and we

had violence going on. We had police cars being fire bombed, we had police police officers being murdered. Kamala Harris went on Stephen Colbert and was asked about it. Said, this is a movement. It's powerful, and she said, and it needs to keep going, right, it won't end, and it shouldn't end, and it shouldn't end. She explicitly encouraged that it. And this was, by the way, after the violence, after the riots. Not only that, but she raised money for bail money to bail out and by the way, it

wasn't bailing out the peaceful protesters. The people who were arrested were the people committing acts of violence. So she literally raised al money to support the violent criminals. And all right, let's look at the three standards. This is apparently the standard for incitement was violence foreseeable? It was going on right then. It was not only foreseeable, it was blazingly obvious and indisputable because it was happening as she was speaking. She knew full well did she encourage it.

She explicitly said, yes, it needs to go on. Was it willful? She raised money supporting the violent criminals? And there's no coherent way that the standard the House Democrats had put forward can conclude that Trump committed incitement and Kamala Harris didn't. You can conclude rightly that neither committed

the crime of incitement. That's actually the right answer, or you can use their made up standard, in which case, right after we finished with Donald Trump, I guess we're going to start an impeachment proceeding of Vice President Kamala Harris. Right right, But you don't get both and by the way, under their standards, in a lot of ways, Kamala's behavior was worse. Yeah, as I told him to ask, I said, listen, last I checked, Donald Trump isn't raising bail money for

the violent criminals. There are whole bunch people who have been arrested. He's not raising bail money for them. She raised money for them. So if it is, and this is another important point I made, Michael, So the House managers put a lot of emphasis on did President Trump do enough to stop the riot once it's happened? Did he denounce it? To tell him to stand down, and I said, look, you guys got to decide as president's lawyer, what you think about that. Frankly, I wish he'd done more.

When I look back at what he said that day, I wish he had been clearer, more unequivocal, saying stop this right now, immediately go home and leave. There were a lot of Republicans calling on him to do that. I wish he had been clear, But within an hour or two he sent out a tweet tolling him to stand down. He put out a video calling on him to stand down. So he did, in fact tell him to stand down. I wish it had been clear and more unequivocal, but he didn't fact do it. Come Harris

still hasn't done it? Yeah, right right. We had this week Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters marching in DC saying burn the place down. She still hasn't told them to stand down. And so if that's the test, did you tell him to stand down after the violence erupted, Look what we had in the chaz autonomous zones. We had Democrats defending it, calling it the summer of love. Remember that it's just harmless. Yes, people are being murdered,

but it's harmless because we agree politically with those guys. Yeah, and so what I urge the Trump legal team is to calmly, without emotion, just compare the conduct of Democrats to what the conduct of the president, and under the standard they're laying out, either we're going to start impeaching dozens of people, or ain't nobody guilty of this because this is a made up political persecution, which is again

the right answer to what's happening. You know, I think this is great advice, not just for the impeachment trial, though it is, but just generally speaking, reject their false premises and hold them to their own standards because this is so much bigger than impeachment. Frankly, I think impeachment isn't even the biggest news story right now. It'll have historical implications, so we really have to focus on it.

But the bigger stories right now involve cancel culture more broadly, not just canceling the former president, but canceling TV stars, canceling journalists. And we've seen this with Gina Krano, who is in the Star Wars show The Mandalorian. Disney has fired her because of their accusing her of making anti Semitic comments. I've read all the comments. I can't find

even a hint of anti Semitism in any of them. Really, I think they're going after her because broadly speaking, she's been a little more conservative, she's been a little more right wing, and they can't tolerate that, so they're going after her. We've just found out that James O'Keefe, the investigative journalist, a real thorn in the side of the liberal establishment. He's been permanently kicked off of Twitter because it turns out he's now running investigations on big tech companies.

What these people have been ostracized for and censored for would absolutely fall apart if you held the left to that same standard. It seems there's one set of rules for conservatives another one for liberals. But that's the world we live in. What are we supposed to do about it? Look, I think you're exactly right. What happened with Gina Krano

is nuts. I mean, number one, you have a strong, kick ass character on The Mandalorian, which which lots of kids, especially little girls, are are inspired by, and and you know made you know, helped made Star Wars more fun it's always been fine, and I would look. I grew up on Star Wars. I still remember standing in line with my dad on opening day of Empire Strikes Back, and we stood in line for two hours to see Empire the first day it opened up. Disney. Disney is

not the company it used to be. Disney is a giant, corporate, politically correct propaganda outfit. And you look at here. So I haven't read all of the blog posts that that that Jinnakrona put up. I've I've seen. I actually looked for it online and it was hard to find, but

I read stories quoting excerpts up it. So I read the excerpts that were quoted in stories, and what I read that she posted is she was saying, look, if you looked at the rise of the Nazis in Germany and all of the horrific things that that happened to the Jewish people that culminated in six million Jews being being murdered in concentration camps. That began because the Nazis

demonize the Jews, they dehumanize the Jews. They they they used rhetoric that caused ordinary Germans, not SS stormtroopers, but a baker or you know, a storekeeper, to view the Jews as as subhuman, as not human, to inculcate hatred. And her point was that hatred, yes, it erupted in the horrific, grotesquely evil genocide that was carried out by the Nazis, but it also manifested in day to day

barbaric inhumanity because they had been dehumanized. And from what I read of her blog post, she was saying, you know what, we're seeing that same dehumanizing happening in America where people are demonizing their other, rising their political opponents, that that if you disagree you you are not it's not valid for you to have a different point of view. Now, from what I read, she didn't say that we've become

Nazi Germany. She didn't say we're erecting concentration camps. But because she simply made the point that spreading a culture of hate and dehumanizing is really dangerous and leads in bad directions, Disney described her comments as abhorrent, and I was like, saying, we shouldn't hate each other and dehumanize each other. What am I missing? Unless they're portions of the blog posts that weren't quoted in the stories, and given that the stories are critical, I'm assuming they included

whatever the worst portions were. This is there's an irony that she's complaining, we're becoming hateful and intolerant of differences and opinions. And what does Disney say, we hate your opinion, You're fired. It would seem to me there's this even deeper irony here, which is maybe the best way I can read Disney's statement is they're saying that any comments that makes any comparison to Nazi Germany is unacceptable. It's abhorrant. We can't we can't tolerate that sort of thing. And okay,

let's just take that standard for what it is. Am I wrong? Or has the left not spent the past five years calling Donald Trump literally hitler? Right? They call him hitler. They refer to to seventy five million Americans as Nazis neo Nazis regularly, so they make the exact same analogy. And before Trump, they called George W. Bush hitler.

That's their standard. Any Republican they dislike they call hitler. Now, my view is you shouldn't actually call people hitler unless they are in fact genocientomdiacs that are murdering millions of people. But there is a unique like in Dante's circles of Hell, there is a unique hell. The Nazis are the most grotesque example of evil in certainly modern times. And maybe ever, look, there is a reason why never Forget has such power.

There's a reason why Holocaust museums are important, because it's worth reflecting on the absolute inhumanity. You know, you look at uh Hannah rant who who you know, wrote on what led to the to the evil that is the Nazis, And she had a phrase that that was really powerful, the banality of evil and and and and it's worth reflecting. And she really she talked about how it's not just you know, someone cackling with horns and a red tail, like so obviously evil that that you know, you're like, okay,

this is this is a crazy bad guy. It was the boring aspect she talked about. I think it was Eichmann, how when he testified at Nuremberg, he sounded like an accountant, that it wasn't it wasn't Hannibal lecture in Silence of the Lambs to to sort of mixed references it wasn't like, you know, Lecture's giant eyes on the screen, You're like, oh god, that guy's really creepy and evil. But it was a boring accountant simply carrying out Hitler's quote final

solution to murder six million people. It was It's worth asking what conditions led to use another movie, you know, Schindler's List, which is one of the greatest movies ever. I love Schindler's List, but it talks about how in a different world these people would be regular, ordinary people, and yet the conditions of evil made them all complicit in this grotesque horror. We should ask what causes that to happen? And from what I read, that's that's what

Gina was doing, right. I mean, just you know, take the Nazi comparison out, because that seems to be what they're objecting to. Just the circumstances and the broader point that Gina was making it seems to be perfectly true. I don't know, I don't know how you could disagree with it. And this is you know, it's not just happening at it And let me jump jump in real quick, Michael. There's also a broader pattern of evil which is that dehumanizing anyone, defining them to no longer qualify as human

invariably leads to horrific oppression. And so it was integral to what the Nazis did, but it was also integral to slavery. And you look at at all of the reasoning that was used to justify the horrific evil that was slavery in America. It was based on the proposition dread Scott. The Supreme Court decision was based on the proposition that an African American was not a human being

but instead was defined as as property. And that is incredibly dangerous and it leads to grotesque oppression and evil. And you and I have talked about this before. That is also the justification that is used to justify abortion, is to say an unborn child is not a human being that anytime you're taking and it leads to today's democrats justifying things like partial birth, abortion, delivering a child

who's living, and with cold blood taking their life. All of those begin with saying the person in question is not a person, and that is a really dangerous step one of an analysis, because step two is invariably horrific. And you know, we've been hearing on the topic of other rising or dehumanization. Half the country called deplorable, irredeemable. Going back to Obama, bitter clingers, right, you know, these people who basically ought to be ostracized from society. We're

now seeing this ostracism manifest through cancel cultures. People lose their jobs, they lose their platforms through the censorship, through the through actual d platforming on the social media platforms. The cancelation of journalists. James O'Keefe would be a key example of this. This seems to be and that's outrageous, by the way, the fact that that that social media's

banned James O'Keefe. Look, James O'Keefe, the guy has done incredible undercover journalism and they may not like that he's exposed what people on the left are doing, including exposing

big tech. By the way, this is a protect their own asses step because he's uncovered the corruption of big tech, and so they're like, well, let's just muslim that that's you know, this is trying to silence a whistleblower because he gets whistleblowers and he engages in in undercover tactics, which, by the way, sixty minutes does other journalistic outlets do.

But the difference is that big Tech agrees with their politics, so that's great, But if you disagree with their politics, this is the left is trying to consolidate power and their systematically trying to silence every single setting voice. And I think this word banality is very important because the way they're doing it. What has really impressed me most about it is how steady it is, how gradual it's not you know, people jumping out with the devil horns

and saying, Aha, it's just this slow. More and more people being kicked off of social media, not being permitted to even work, or not being permitted to go to boiling a frog. Yes, it is boiling a frog. And you know, this gets to a mail bag question that I was hoping to get to last night. But obviously there was a lot a lot going on with the trial. This is from Right Minded USA who asks he's referring to that Time magazine article where liberal establishmentarians basically said

there was a conspiracy in the twenty twenty election. It was right before our eyes. Though. It is all these groups kind of working to make the situation more advantageous tow amocrats. He says, in light of that Time article that detailed the collusion between the AFLCIO, Big Tech, and the Chamber of Commerce to win the twenty twenty election, what does the Senator think the GOP and Conservatives should be doing right now to build something to counteract it

in twenty twenty two, and more importantly, in twenty twenty four. Look, it's a great question, and that article was chilling. Number one, Time Magazine was celebrating, Yeah, that you had the titans of industry, the Fortune five hundred CEOs, teaming up with big Tech and then teaming up with the big union bosses, all of them together saying, let's work together to make sure Donald Trump can't win this election. Let's work together

to hand this election over to Joe Biden. And by the way, anyone who said this before the election, who said that that the fix was in, would get ridiculed as a crazy conspiracy theorist. And then afterwards Time Magazine said, oh, look, how wonderful the fix was in. Aren't we happy because we're part of the people engaged in this. Look, I think as conservatives we need to be not naive. You and I did a live episode in Miami last week,

and our big theme was big as bad. Big business is bad, big government is bad, Big tech is bad. Any big accumulation of power and money will be used. You know. It's like Lord Acton said, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely giant corporation. Name me one Fortune one hundred CEO, who's actually a courageous conservative. We'd be here all night. It doesn't. It's why, in fact, they were willing to get in bed with their ostensible adversary, the

union bosses, to preserve power. I think the answer is we've got to empower the people. We've got to go around big tech. I think the answer, frankly is things like the podcast. I think the answer is finding ways to empower the people and to focus on small business. Look at is the small businesses that you know the economist Chumpeter talked about creative destruction. I look, I'm interested in small entrepreneurs, people that are shattering the status quo.

And and frankly, there are more of us than there are of them. They're willing to use power to hold on to control. But there is a common sense conservative core in this country, and we've got to develop ways to mobilize, educate, energize, and turn them out. That's how we fight against it. Because you better believe they've done it once, they're going to keep doing it again and again. Those with power want to hold onto power, and the only way to stop them is to take it away

from them. And the only thing powerful to do that

is the people. You know, you're you're going to be accused of being a populist for saying these sorts of things, But what you were saying is such an important point, and it's something that has driven me crazy about the GOP for years, which is they have all too often cozied up to these big business in may case of these oligarchs who hate our values, who often have very little loyalty to the country, who push radical leftism, who abuse their power, who are cronies and crooks very often.

And there's nothing particularly conservative about that. You know, Conservatives once understood that big, unlimited power is a danger to the people into constitutional government, whether it's in a government bureaucracy or whether it's in a corporate bureaucracy. I think that's exactly right. And there's another dynamic. Look, I'm not interested in attacking a company that's a job creator and trying to destroy them. I like jobs. I want as

many jobs as possible. But if you look at what happens with big business, they almost invariably get in bed with big government. There's a reason big business wants Joe Biden wants socialism because they profit. And my view of big business and I look, I've worked with lots of companies, lots of employers. As I say, if if you want a subsidy, if you want corporate welfare, if you want

a special hand at out, I ain't your guy. Yeah, we shouldn't be in the business of corporate welfare, of benefititing corporations doesn't mean I'm going to go out and try to destroy businesses that are giving people good livelihoods. But you know, the big companies of the world, they don't need government's help. Also, what big business does, it's not just that they want subsidies and welfare. They want

government to hammer the little guys. So big business goes to government and says, you know, the only thing that can beat us is some upstart small business that might challenge us, can you shut them down? And and that pattern it is they're both focused on maintaining the power of the status quo. And it's look conservatives who believe in the free market. There's something revolutionary about the free market. You look at socialist countries and communist countries. There are

giant companies that are the status quo. Nothing changes when government has control of the economy. Who vers in charge stays in charge. It is about maintaining power. There is a a chaos that status tte in a free market society. But that's incredibly good for prosperity and opportunity because it means little guys can achieve great things. You don't have to be born into the lucky sperm club of just happening to be you know, gosh, I was born in the right family, So who I get to be a

duke or what have you? Instead, it is you succeed based on the content of your character. I did not anticipate the phrase lucky sperm club coming up on the show tonight, but I think the point is very, very important, and this is really what we're talking And by the way, if we do get sponsors and advertisers, let's turn them down. If if that's actually like, you know, sort of a CD club, let's just not take that one is they

have no place on this show. But you know that that is really what we're talking about here, is the future because this impeachment trial, this whole thing that's happening right now, it feels like we're just stuck in mud. That is coming to an end, and we'll have to look to the future, the future for the conservative movement and the future for the country. And Michael, two things to go back where we started. Two things just to close out on of advice that I gave the Trump lawyers.

Number one, I said that the House managers keep using the word insurrectionist, and my advice to the Trump lawyers is don't repeat that. I would refer to them either as rioters or violent criminals. And the reason is, look, insurrection actually has a definition under the law. An insurrection is an organized it's like a revolution. It's designed to overturn the government and to take over the country. That's the Democrats political narrative. It's why they keep using insurrectionist

insurrectionist insurrectionists. It's, by the way, why they also apologize for and brush under the rug the rioters who are burning cities all across the country because they say, oh, well, they're not insurrectionists, They're just murderers. Murderers are okay for peaceful protesters. And my advice I told the Trump players, look, don't make the argument about whether they're insurrectionists or not. That is quicksand just don't buy into the democrats phrasing

of terms. Just call them what they are, unquestionably, which is violent criminals. And then a second thing that I told them, As I said, look sitting on the Republican side of the Senate floor and talking with a lot of the Republican senators as I have been during this trial, a sentiment that is very widely felt is real frustration with the Democrats of their hypocrisy. And the hypocrisy is rich.

You know. I mentioned before how they're waxing eloquently about how much they love police officers after spending a year demonizing cops. One of the house managers did a presentation of protesters who showed up at the house of I think it was the Michigan Secretary of State, and that it was a high dungeon. Just can you believe they would come to the house. How terrible that is. And I got to tell you, most of the Republican Senators,

we've had protesters coming to our house. I had a couple of weeks ago protesters put three full sized coffins in my front yard while Heidi was at home and while my kids were at school, and virtually all of us have had this happened. Susan Collins leftist protesters dropped off. I think it was hundreds of bodybags at her home. Not only that, they threatened both Susan Collins and her

staff with sexual assault, they threatened to rape them. Eric Swalwell, who's one of the House impeachment managers, when they did that, he tweeted out in response to the threats of rape against Susan Collins and her staff, he tweeted out, boo hoo, crimea river. These guys, the hypocrisy. And by the way, Susan remembers at Yeah, so when we're listening to these democrats suddenly decry, oh, we don't like people coming to

your house. Okay, I actually agree that you shouldn't be coming to any public officials house and terrorizing their family. Engage in a free speech in the public square, but leave people's families and homes alone. But the Democrats don't. They've remained silent, and not just silent, they've cheered it on when it's their leftist supporters harassing others, and now

suddenly they discovered virtue. And I think, I think tomorrow in the president lawyer's presentation, we're going to see the theme of hypocrisy coming out pretty powerfully, and I think that will resonate certainly among Republican Senators. It's it's something that a lot of Republican Senators when we sit down for lunch before the trial, a lot of us are thinking and pretty irritated with the earlier than now since

we're getting from the House managers. Well, if that advice can in any way persuade this legal team and the Republicans more broadly to hold Democrats to their own standards, that will be a massive step forward and an advantage. We have to leave it there, but we will get into a whole lot more, I assume, depending on how long it takes to finally equit President Trump former President Trump in the impeachment trial of a now private citizen, we will obviously break down more of that. Thank you

to everyone for subscribing. If you haven't already subscribed, be sure to subscribe to Verdict wherever you get your podcasts, be that YouTube, Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify. We'll be back with a whole lot more in the meantime.

I'm Michael Knowles. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. This episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz is being brought to you by Jobs, Freedom and Secure 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.