The Wuhan Coverup

The presidents talked about it. Even the liberal governors have talked about it. I know that you are on the Restart the Economy task Force. I know you spoke to the President yesterday. What did you talk about and what is the plan. Look, we got to get Americans back to work. Americans are ready to go back to work. Texans are ready to get back to work. Yesterday I spent over an hour on the phone with the President

as part of the Restarting the Economy task Force. Talk about two things really that I emphasized to the President. Number One, testing, we need to continue to lean in and do even more on testing. The Abbot Labs quick test. You know when I went up to meet with the President a couple of weeks ago, and the energy CEOs on energy they required actually that was the first day they required everyone going in to meet with the President

had to be tested for coronavirus. And I got that they had just gotten one of those Abbot quick tests situations, you know, And it's interesting that the I know a number of people who had been tested on the old tests, and the old tests they'd stick it up your nose and like, way way way up your nose, they said, I mean it was like going to the back of

your brain. It really hurt and was unpleasant. No, thankfully, with the Abbot thing, which is what they had just gotten, just put a little swab in each nostril, ran it through a machine, and ten minutes later to get a result, so you don't have to wait four or five six days. They're producing about fifty thousand of those a day. I've spoken this week with Texas hospitals, Texas communities. We're starting to get the Abbott lab quick labs. We need to get even more and more of them, and we need

to get even more of the antibody test. One of the things the Vice President said in the call yesterday with a task force is by the end of the month, they're expecting to be producing twenty million antibody tests a month, so that'll start getting out in real numbers. And so what I emphasized to the President was two things, lean in even harder on testing, getting it out more widely available, but also we have got to get people back to work.

It's got it very geographically. Obviously, New York City has been hammered. It's been horrific, it's been heartbreaking. What's happened in New York. No one in their right mind would suggest New Yorkers should go back to work tomorrow, right. But for much of the rest of the country, the virus numbers are not nearly as bad. We have flattened the curve, we've seen the numbers moving in the right direction,

and we need to segment the population. For those who are really vulnerable, the very elderly, those with serious health issues, they ought to remain quarantined, they ought to remain protected because those are those are the communities that are really vulnerable to this virus. But for everyone else, for young, healthy people, we need to get back to work, using ppe where appropriate, using masks, using gloves, practicing social distancing.

So for example, restaurants, they may need to reconfigure their dining rooms to spread the tables out a bit so that you can socially distance between tables. But we're imposing massive harms on the economy. Twenty two million people out of work, millions of small businesses on the verge of bankruptcy. And Michael, this is something I emphasize to the President yesterday. If we keep on this path, there is a real public health consequence to killing the economy. We're gonna see

mental health issues. We're going to see depression, We're going to see increased rates of suicide. We're going to see increased rates of substance abuse and alcohol abuse, and lives

will be lost, and we got to protect lives. The objectives should be protect as many lives as possible, and on both sides of the ledgers, So be smart, follow medical science and stop the pandemic, but also don't kill the economy and destroy people's livelihoods and cause suffering and death on the economics side either, well, we've already seen some of the consequences of this. You know, for some reason, one of the responses to coronavirus in various states was

to let criminals out of jail. I guess it was so that the virus wouldn't spread in the jails. Guess what happens That criminal gets released the very next day, he committed murder and then he's re arrested. And we've seen stories like this around the country. It's very hard to quantify that. You know, we can quantify the deaths from coronavirus. Is there any way we're gonna be able to measure the fallout and end even up to the deaths caused by an overreaction, Well, we certainly need to

go back and assess that. And you're right, we're seeing that all over the country in Travis coun Annie, Austin, uh In, Texas, that they're releasing violent criminals, people charged with with with violent crimes, with assault, with with sex trafficking, and they're releasing them. That that's really dangerous. When you release violent criminals, you're gonna get more violent crime. That's

the wrong response. And you know, there's a weird backwards approach that violent criminals are being released from jail, but at the same time that they're arresting people for driving in their car, that that they tried to arrest a guy in Colorado for playing catch with a six year old daughter playing softball. Look, Catherine, my nine year old, as a softball player, as a as a softball dad, I'm offended that you'd go after a dad for simply

paying playing catch with his daughter. He wasn't endangering anyone, he wasn't near anyone. That's just stupid. And and you know, crises bring out people's character. And I got to say, there are some authoritarians, almost all its seems, on the democratic side of the ledger, that are just abusing power. You know, Tennessee and Mississippi both places you saw people being ticketed for going to church even though they stayed in their cars and they were parked there listening to

the sermon on the radio. Look in your car, You're not endangering anyone. That's just stupid. And to all of these little petty tyrants, stop it. The governor of New Jersey was was doing an interview. He was asked, well, well, does your order comply with a Bill of Rights and the Constitution. He said, well, that's above my pay grade,

that is your job. No, it's actually not. And in fact, I couldn't help but jump on Twitter and tweet out the actual goat oath that every governor of New Jersey takes, and he takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And we need to focus on defending people's liberties, letting them go go back to work and earn a living and provide for their family. We can do all of that while being smart and

mitigating the spread of this virus. Of course. And I've noticed this not even just from conservatives, not even just from people in certain cities, but all around the country, even liberal governors. It seems like over the past few days, we've reached a turning point. We're now at the pivotal moment where all of the energy is not just on shutdown, shutdown,

stay in place. But now it seems that there's a growing consensus that we have got to restart things, even as certain experts are telling us we can't leave our homes for two years. Do you think that moment has happened. We're now on the other side of this. We're at this turning point. So I do now listen. I think it varies geographically. It needs to be based on the medical science and where the virus is, and if you've got an active outbreak that is spreading, you need to

be more aggressive in your efforts to contain it. But where we are containing it, I'll give you another example. We have a lot of places that have shut down

elective surgeries, at elective medical procedures. That's having a devastating impact on hospital I've been talking to physicians hospital CEOs who are seeing their revenue cut, you know, eighty percent, and they're going broke, They're laying people off, and explain to me the reasoning of we're going into a pandemic where we desperately need our hospitals and doctors, so let's slam them and stop them from performing the procedures that generate all their revenue. And by the way, that too

will have a public health harm. Like even though something's elective, there are a lot of elective medical procedures that are nonetheless beneficial. And if we keep delaying them and delaying them and delaying them, people don't go into the doctor for other health issues, a hard issue, what have you. We're going to have more and more deaths the more we freeze and shut down our economy and we've got away life. On both sides of the ledger, maximize the

protection of life. Yeah, on the medical science front, I want to turn for a moment from the economy into the virus itself, and I want to take just a slight victory lab because I remember on this very show, Senator, on March tenth, over a month ago, you suggested that there was very likely a link between the Wuhuan Institute of Virology and this virus that just so coincidentally happened

to occur within a couple miles of that institute. During that time, the mainstream media said this was crazy, this was a conspiracy theory, There was no evidence of it. Now we are getting multiple reports all saying that the virus came from the lab. My question here is not My point is not just to take a victory lap. My question is did the US government know that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting this sort of dangerous research? And if we did know, why didn't we stop it?

Absolutely yes, the US government knew, and and in fact, when when you and I brought this up on March tenth, over the month ago, you're right, it was treated as tinfoil hat biracy theory nut jobbery. Well, it turns out

there was wasn't just one. There were two labs within miles aware this outbrook break occurred that were studying coronaviruses from bats, and that there were Internal State Department wires before this pandemic, raising concerns about the security in those labs and that an accidental a virus could escape and cause a global pandemic. But I'll tell you it's worse

than that. And let me give you some some breaking news right now, which is the US government was funding the Chinese research at the Wu Hunt Institute of Virology. Your taxpayer dollars and my taxpayer dollars, and let me give you specifics that we just got today today and inquiring of the National Institutes of Health, did any of your money go to the Wuhun Institute of Virology. The answer is yes, and and here's here's what they told

us in writing today. They ad in fiscal year twenty nineteen, the funding for the Wu Hunt Institute for Rology was seventy six thousand dollars and the three hundred and one dollars seventy six thousand, three hundred and one dollars. Now, what did it go to? And I'm repeating what NIH has told me in writing. It went to It was part of an overall three point seven million dollar funding program that went to six years in sights in China, Thailand, Cambonia, Laos, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia,

and Men March. And here's what they were studying. These are nah's words. The project included studying viral diversity in animal parentheses, bats reservoirs, surveying people that live in high risk communities for evidence of bat coronavirus infection, and conducting laboratory experiments to analyze and predict which newly discovered viruses pose the greatest threats to human health. That's what the

NIH funding was going to. And we followed up and said, okay, that's what you described as the project in all of these countries. How about at the wu Hunt Institute of Virology. What specifically did US taxpayer dollars go to at the

wu Hunt Institute of Virology. Here's what the NIH said in writing said said the project supported the following activities at the wu Hunt Institute of Virology, coronavirus screening and psyology of non human samples, viral pathogenesis, syriological testing, host receptor binding spike s, protein sequencing, and in vitro and in viva virus characterization, and it goes on to say that they had not supported the creation of recombinant viruses

at the wu Hunt Institute of Virology. I just want to make sure what your tax dollars and my tax dollars went to. I want to make sure that I have got this right, because obviously, if there were State Department memos about this, a lot of people knew about this from the very beginning of this pandemic. And what you're saying right now, according to the NIH IS for the past month and a half, two months even more, we've been told the Wuhun Institute of Virology had nothing

to do with this coronavirus. It's just a coincidence. Get your tinfoil hat off. No way that that happened. Not only do we now hear serious reports that it came from the lab, now we are learning whoopsie daisy, I guess we forgot actually US taxpayer money was being used to fund that very viral research at the laboratory. Well, and let me make clear we don't have confirmed evidence that it did come from the lab. We still don't

know that just reports. What we know is that US tax dollars were going to the Chinese government to fund this research on bat coronaviruses on how they could, how they could be infectious to humans, how they could be transmitted to humans, how they could be dangerous to humans, at the same time that the State Department was raising real concerns about the safety and security protocols at the lab that we're partially funding, and and and that I

gotta say that is nuts. And given that they were studying these bat coronaviruses, the Chinese government needs to answer the question right now where they studying the novel coronavirus? This virus, Yeah, the virus that has killed over one hundred and forty thousand people worldwide. Was that a virus that was studied at one or both of the Chinese

government labs in Wuhan. They won't answer that question. They need to answer that question, and over one hundred thousand lives have been lost while they refused to answer that question. You know, I wish the media would ask them that question. I think if the mainstream media would tune in and watch our show. They might be able to get a little ahead of the curve here on these news stories. I can't expect, And honestly, you know, it is beneficial.

You and I have an advantage that the mainstream media doesn't have, yeah, which is that our revenue stream doesn't depend on access to the Chinese market. It helps that we don't have a revenue stream, so that that makes it even simpler. But everyone, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, they make millions of dollars every single year from access to China. They're terrified, they're terrified of ticking off the Chinese look. They edit out you know, I was reading something recently.

Remember the movie Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeah, Yeah, wonderful, wonderful movie about Freddie Mercury, lead singer of Queen, lead actor one Best Actor Oscars. Fantastic movie. Do you know in China when they aired that, they edited out the fact that Freddie Mercury was gay. It's just that minor detail, Like, how do you watch a movie about Freddie Mercury and edit out that he's gay. I mean, it's kind of

a pretty central element of the guy's life. And the Chinese censors demanded it be edited out, and you know what, our free speech defending Hollywood said, okay, thank you, and they just happily edited it out. And there was an article this week that I tweeted out about Bloomberg Media silencing a story about Chinese corruption. Why because they didn't want to piss off the Chinese government. Our media needs to stop being This week, CNN wrote a story You

actually can't make this up, Michael. They took the Chinese Communist parties propaganda website. Yeah, that said, the Chinese military is doing better than the American military in fighting coronavirus. It's literally the propaganda website from the Communist Party. CNN writes a story Chinese military doing much better than American military. Thus saith Chinese propaganda. They don't even say propaganda, they treat it as news. These guys are behaving like money

grubbing purveyors of lies. Yeah, and anyone in the media who gives a damn about integrity, who gives a damn about truth, ought to be investigating these labs and ought to be speaking the truth. I'm sorry, I'm getting pissed off, but but but it the media's complicity in this and China's responsibility in this is mass. I think really CNN should just give the Chinese Communist Party the log incredentials to the website. They can just write their own stories.

You'll be able to cut out all of the middlemen. Obviously, we can't expect honest. I actually think the Chinese would make them a little more balanced. They feel they needed some credibility. They wouldn't just shamelessly reproduce the Chinese website, right right. You know at least sometimes that the Chinese Communist Party is competent. You know, we can't expect honesty out of them. Is the trouble. They've just revised up their death numbers. We know that China was lying about

the death numbers from coronavirus. They've now gotten a little bit more honest, but we obviously still don't have the whole story. Unfortunately, we can expect that from the Chinese Communist Party. Even worse, the World Health Organization, which we should be able to trust, has been parroting that very same propaganda. The President announced just this week that he is going to defund the Who What do you make of that decision? I think it makes an awful lot

of sense. The WHO sadly operated throughout this coronavirus epidemic as really a parrot, a shill for the Chinese Communist Party. In January that the WHO sent out a tweet saying no evidence of human to human transmission and China is doing a lip skip any good job. Let's see if he may not have been in there, but it was implied for the translation. Look, it's you remember Baghdad Bob. Yeah, that's right. I don't know how many people do remember

soon so so Baghdad Bob. The press secretary for Saddam Husaying or Sadam who's as forty one fabulously did as psyops who just spread their proper like we repeat their propaganda. We're winning right as they were losing. The WHO is like that there's no human to human transmission. I gotta tell you one of the things we're gonna do in

the next podcast. Yeah, we're gonna walk through a timeline of what happened in China and Jim Garrity a National Review did a fabulous timeline that we're going to spend some time walking through carefully. By the way, National Review not a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, so they actually can cover news. Where's the New York Times,

Where's the Washington Post? Where are actual people who pride themselves, who, by the way, give each other prizes for journalistic courage because they stand up and scream orange man bad Oh, you're so courageous. You're so courageous. You don't like Trump. I don't like Trump. We all don't like Trump. Yeay, how about show some real courage and stand up to the line communists who have direct responsibilities for covering up this pandemic and endangering the lives of millions across this planet.

That would be journalistic courage, even if it costs your employers a few bucks and market access. You know, Senator, I was sort of thinking that, now that you're outside of Washington for a few weeks, you might be able to take some downtime. But unfortunately, now you've got to work to restart the economy. You've got to work to get real information out of China, which is basically an impossible task. There's so much to do. Have you had any downtime whatsoever? You know, I'm having every day. I

have lunch and dinner with the girls. Two days ago was Caroline's twelfth birthday, So April fourteenth, she turned twelve, which is a bits a little traumatizing. I'm not sure how she got to be twelve so quickly. But we had planned a whole party. We're gonna go to a roller rink, all the kids, we're gonna go skating. Well, obviously you can't go to a roller rink right now, So what do you do with a sixth grader where you have a birthday party? And she's like, all right, dad,

this sucks. Um. So what we ended up doing is we did this thing where we invited all the girls who were coming to drive by the house and to wave and like they hung signs out the car windows that are with their parents and they would wave and they yelled happy birthday. And we put up three poster boards and the kids came and all wrote little sign We put them on our driveway and the kids came and wrote happy birthday, we love you Caroline. And it was fun. Like Caroline stood at the front door and

waved it's like high and jumped up and down. So I mean it was a nice thing to do to have a birthday celebration. Look, it's in the age of social distancing. But it but it but it was still it was. It was a nice and fun birthday. I hope the kids dropped off the presence too, you know. I know the economy has taken a big hit, but they better not have taken those presents away from your daughter.

That they did drop off the presence, including Heidie, and I got Caroline an electric scooter, which which both girls have been enjoying. By the way, I will confess, although we're a capitalist household, we have a little bit of socialist policies with the girls in that we told Caroline she has to share the scooter with a younger sister, which she thinks is an outrage because it was her birthdache present. But both girls they ride like crazy on

that electric scooter and it's they're having fun with you. Well, I fear that, you know, if we don't get this economy restarted soon, we're all going to be socialists. Obviously, the Democrats in the House are trying to push to extend, you know, the relief coverage to now be two thousand dollars every single month until we've got full you know

employment again. A lot of fears coming out of that. So, how long do you think I want to get to mailbag, but just briefly, how long do you think we have before we will have to restart the economy again or else face really dangerous political consequences. Look, we have got to get people back to work. You know, the last two weeks, I've done a teletour all around Texas. So I've had video conferences with with people in East Texas, people in West Texas, people down in the Rio Grand Valley,

people all over the state. It's interesting. City and government, city and county leaders. They're all going broke. Their tax revenue is plumbting, and a number of them are saying, well, well, could the Feds send us more money? And my response, and that, by the way, is what the Democrats keep saying, is let's send more money to state and local governments. I'll tell you what I keep telling them. You know what, the Feds are broke too. You know, we just spent

two point two trillion dollars. It's not like there's some safe we pulled it out of. We just borrowed it all. We're borrowing it from our kids and grandkids. And by the way, your city in county tax revenues are plumbting. Guess what Federal tax revenues are plumbing, and they're going to plumb it even more because tax revenues are a function of the economy, and right now government policies are killing the economy. You want your tax revenues to come back.

Let the economy come back, Let people go back to work, let them, let them drive economic growth in small businesses are chomping at the bit. You know, we've seen in the in the in the time of this this this crisis, hundreds of federal regulation, state regulations, local regulations suspended. We need every regulation that was suspended during the crisis should

should continue suspended during the recovery. It's a great example of you know, look for example in DC, when I was up in DC, when when the Senate was in session, you could order Mexican food and get a margharita. That used to be illegally you weren't allowed to order a margharita. And suddenly the idiotic law that prevented you from ordering a margharity did and now you could have fehed as and a margharita. Like like, why did we need that

stupid rule in the first place. All the rules against telemedicine, like like telemedicine is great. Get a world class physician to go into rural areas, underserved areas. All of these barriers that that that hurt small businesses in economic growth. We need to get them out of the way. But all all of the politicians that want more tax revenues, I got an easy way for you to get more tax revenues. Stop killing the economy, Let people get back

to work. Liberate America, Liberate small businesses, liberate American workers. Do it in a way that is smart and keeps us safe. And that's how the economy turns around. And that's how the country turns around. Right. I mean, there's a meme that's been going around the internet, and it's of somebody at the Federal Reserve churning a machine and it says, money printer go burr. You know this idea that you can print money forever. Now, the States they

don't have their own money printers. Federal government I suppose does, but the money printer can't go burr forever. Eventually you're gonna have to pay a price. And the Democrats few they just think it's it's it's sort of magic money tree. Just keep spending. Let's just give away trillions forever and ever and ever. Look it comes from small businesses and jobs. If you want this to turn around, people want to work, People want to get back to work. Their frustrated. Let

them go back to work. Let let people drive the miracle of the American economy. That's right. You know, we reacted very seriously. Of course, we've been through the first phase of this coronavirus. Now we have to get back to work very quickly before we go. We're typically tight on time, but we got to get to a little bit in the mail bag from Katherine actually speaking of staying home with your children. From Katherine, Will I be able to enjoy my empty nest this fall? Will my

freshman daughter be able to go off to college? I have no idea. I hope. So. Right now, colleges and universities pretty much all of them or most of them, have said that they're out through this semester, so we'll get through the summer. I think most colleges are planning to be back in the fall. The big question is a do we defeat this virus? And it may be we see a lot of viruses that are seasonal, that as things get hot, that may help kill it all off.

But if it is seasonal, that raises the real prospect that we'll see a resurgence in the fall, that that comes September October, we may see the numbers go back up again. If there's a big resurgence, I think there becomes a likelihood that that colleges and university shut down again. I hope not. I mean, I feel really bad for these college kids that are not able to be at school and they're going through something that I hope is is limited in time and isolated. But it's going to

depend on the medical facts and what happens. Right, And as doctor Fauci just said, the viruses don't just go away. You know, we can start to deal with them. We can develop drugs, they're new drugs on the horizon and show promise, we can develop vaccines, but they don't just disappear forever. And so we're gonna be dealing with the

fallout for this for years to come. And I guess next time we will get into exactly the timeline here, because if we want to figure out how to deal with this and prevented in the future, we've got to find out how it all began. And there's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation around on that. I did retweet someone who had a custom face mask that had the don't tread on me flag, except it said don't sneeze on me. Those are you know, I guess that's

really I've got a good chuckle from that. Yeah, we've got a balance in our response here, the don't tread on me and they don't sneeze on me. We will get into so much more of that next time. And by the way, did you see the video in Philadelphia of this guy being dragged off the bus by several officers because he wasn't wearing a mask and they're like physically man handling him. And I said a tweet, I said, well, wouldn't have been easier just to give him a mask?

Look like, at some point, just don't be stupid, don't behave like jack booted thugs. And it's kind of funny all these Twitter lefties are going, I agree with Crews. It's like, well, good, then stop elected politicians from behaving like petty tyrants. That's right. And you've seen these overreaches everywhere. I mean It's not just in Philly, it's all over the country. People seem to enjoy flexing their muscles in these power grabs. And you know that's gone on long enough.

Now it would appear that it's time to turn it around. Retake our economy, retake our society, and retake our rights. Senator, all of that for next time. In the meantime, we have run out of time on this episode. 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 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.