Welcome.
It is Verdict with Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you on inauguration Day. Sit back, stretch out America. Donald Trump is back and it's going to be a glorious Monday and Center.
You're right there in the middle of all of it.
Well, I am. Today is a momentous day.
At noon today, January twentieth, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior will cease to be President of the United States and Donald John Trump will become the forty seventh President of the United States. We will see a new administration come into office. We will see the entire direction of the country, the path we're on change. We're gonna break down everything that's been happening on inauguration today and throughout the weekend. I've been up here all weekend, so we're gonna bring inside
what it's like on an inauguration weekend. That's what we're gonna start with. Then we're gonna talk about TikTok TikTok. The ban went into effect on Sunday. TikTok went down. It's now back up. What's gonna happen now next? What does it mean? We're going to break that down all of that.
In this verdict, I want to tell you real quick about our friends over at the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. On January the twenty seventh, just a few days away, the International Holocaust Rememberance date will be here, and that is a day we remember the great evil of the Holocaust, when millions of Jews were slaughtered during
the Nazis reign of terror. Now today, unfortunately, the rise in global anti Semitism and the constant attacks on Israel show us that it's more important than ever to remember the atrocities of the Holocaust to ensure that it never ever, ever happens again. And that's why I have partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. What the work they do is just truly unbelievable. Not only do they provide food and shelter and safety to Jews in Israel
and around the world, including those remaining Holocaust survivors. And that is where your donation today will help provide that food, water, medicine, and other basic necessities to the Jewish community, including bomb shelters and armored ambulances that have saved countless lives throughout the last year and a half and your gift will also send a message that you stand with the Jewish
people against this growing anti Semitism and hatred. So to give and show your support right now to the Jewish people, you can do it by going to support IFCJ dot org. That's one word, support if CJ dot org. You can also call eight eight eight four eight eight IFCJ that's eight eight eight four eight eight if CJ eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five, or support IFCJ dot org center.
All right, I gotta be honest with you.
I'm having fomo and and I were going to come up for the inauguration, and then we saw the attempts and then we saw that they can and sold it being outside, and then it was a question of all right, do we come do we not?
You're there.
I've seen your pictures, you hang out with family. You even got a picture with Snoop Dogg and your daughter the crypto ball. It looks like it's been an amazing weekend celebrating democracy and Donald Trump coming back into office.
Well, well it has, and I guess we got to start ben with you know, why do you hate America?
I set you up pretty well for that one right.
You know, you could choose to be here celebrating a new day at America, celebrating changing the course. Well, or you could stay at home and say, you know, I'm really cold.
See I can blame you for this.
Anna said, is Center Cruz going to make sure we go with him to see Snoop Dogg's That's what I want to do. And I said, he hasn't offered, honey, So technically it's your fault.
I'm going to go back hard.
You didn't ask, I would have happily brought you in. So, particularly because it's already passed. That's the easiest way is to offer things in the hypothetical after the effect. So look, look, the whole weekend we start started with Friday. So so Friday, the Senate was in session this week, and so so we voted. We voted actually on the Lake and Riley Act. We got a bunch of Democrats who voted for it as well. So we actually moved forward with the Lake
and Riley Act. And it may show that Democrats are a little bit scared of the election results, particularly their open border policies. Then Friday night we had I started the festivities with the party, the Donald Trump Junior hosted and there are a bunch of folks there, a bunch of cabinet members. There was good, good to celebrate.
Uh.
And then went from there to the Crypto Ball. And the Crypto Ball was was remarkable. It was a big black tie gala and the performer was Snoop dog And you know, it's interesting. In the first term, Snoop Dogg was not a fan of Donald Trump.
Uh.
But but this administration, he is performing at one of the inaugural galas, the Crypto Crypto Ball, and h you know, I'll tell you my daughter Caroline, as you know, she's not particularly into politics, but but I did ask her, hey, you got any interest in seeing Snoop Dogg perform?
And she was all over that that's so fun. So it was very you know, look it's good as.
A game cool yead for like a couple of hours.
And so it was a good chance, you know.
And I told her, I said, I'm pretty sure I can get you backstage and and and it turned out I could, and and so Caroline was up there, and we went back back to Snoop's bus and and he was there with his entourage.
We hung out with him for a few minutes.
He was very kind, took a picture with Caroline, and that was It was very nice and very gracious. I'm not going to say we were partying with Snoop, but we got to meet him and he took a picture with Caroline, so that was fun.
So what is a demeanor like and does it feel like it did eight years ago after sixteen or does it feel very different this time?
And explain the difference.
There's real excitement, there's a greater mandate. Look in twenty sixteen, almost nobody believed Trump would win, including Trump, and it was everyone was kind of a little shocked. And the Trump team had never done this before, and so they were trying to figure out what to do. The difference now this team is hitting the ground running one hundred miles an hour instead of two miles an hour, like
it is night and day. You look at the cabinet members have all been announced, We've already had hearings on half the cabinet members. They are hitting the ground running. I think today you are going to see somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred executive orders. They're going to
come down. It is and and the election results were so overwhelming for Trump to win the popular vote, for Trump to win of the seven swing states, all seven with a big majority in the Senate, fifty three Republicans, the majority in the House. There's a clear mandate. And so I will say, there's an excitement in the air. You also don't have the same anger and resistance that we had in twenty seventeen. It was such a resounding result that the left really is in shock, but there's
not the disbelief there was in twenty seventeen. In twenty seventeen they thought this was a clear aberration, it makes no sense and it will be over very very soon. They now recognize, wow, this is what the voters wanted. And so the feel is fundamentally different.
You know.
After Friday, on Saturday, I went then had had meetings, went and spoke to the Texas State Society, which was great to see all the folks up from Texas. And then went to a party that was hosted by Peter Teal and David Sachs, and that was kind of a tech artificial intelligence party. And as you know, Peter Teale and I and friends for twenty five years, so that was fun to see a lot of the techies. I then went to the Hispanic Inaugural Ball, which was massive,
couple thousand people. The excitement there was enormous.
And by the way, I want people to understand, these balls, it is not easy to get tickets.
I want to be clear.
It is tough for even people and insiders. So when it's a big deal, it's like, I mean, it's a really cool thing to get to do.
I've done an inauguration. It's amazing.
But it is when people like, oh, I'm gonna go to DC, Like, if you don't have an invite, it is it is very different than that if you're there and you're in the know. And that's one of the things I think is actually the excitement around it is that you may not get one of these every four years. It can be eight years in between, like we saw with Obama. So when they get to celebrate your team winning, it's a big celebration.
These are five star events.
Yeah.
Now look, I have to admit it's not my favorite thing to do. I don't really like going to black tie, big galas. I would much rather sit around the table with some good friends with with some scotch and a cigar and play poker that I'd take that a thousand out of a thousand times as compared to two thousand people in a giant auditorium all pressing up and crazy that that's not really my scene. But at the same time, I got a job to do, and so I'm i.
You know that the Hispanic Inaugural Ball. I was one of the honorary co chairmen of the ball, and so I had an obligation to be there and and talk to the folks there and congratulate everyone in the enthusiasm that's there is enormous. I went from there to the America First Policy Institute Ball, which is you know, AFPI is a big, big think tech that now that came out of Trump World.
And so was there.
And and then and then on Sunday, actually started the day by having breakfast with President Trump, and and he had breakfast with with all of the Republican senators. But in classic Trump manner, that breakfast lasted two and a half hours.
And that really was it. Where did you guys meet.
At the Blairhouse? So the Blairhouse is across the street from the White ho House.
And this is part of history of the inauguration I love.
Yeah.
So, so Blair House is it is typically where the president resides before he's sworn in. So so Trump got up to d C last night. He took Air Force one from mar A Lago up to DC and then went to Blair House. And Blair House is also where visiting heads of state will stay.
So if the.
British Prime Minister is in town, the US government will put him up in Blair House. And it's it's a very nice residence right across from the White House. So that's where Trump is until he's sworn in and moves into the White House. And we had we literally arrived at nine thirty for breakfast and we left shortly before noon, I mean, and it was he basically just kind of talked stream of consciousness for two and a half hours and we all talked back and forth and had him
really and he was in great spirits. And then on Sunday night, the big thing that is Sunday Night is black Tie in Boots, which is the Texas State Society Ball. That is always a huge It's it's typically the hottest ticket in town. That actually, the Texas Ball has always been considered, uh probably the top ball and most fun, and it's it's packed and and and then you get to Monday morning and Monday morning is is is the real shebang? When when when Trump takes the oath of office?
That will happen noon today.
So let's talk about also the big change. And there was everybody saying, hey, was it the weather? Was it security?
Was it both?
At the end of the day, we're not outside for the inauguration. It is indoor. Uh, it is something that's we've It's happened before, not that long ago. Ronald Reagan had one of his indoor because of weather at the time. Uh, when you found out about this, how much does that change things? Because for example, every every office gets x
number of tickets for the inauguration. There's a lot of people coming up, and then all of a sudden, it's like, hey, these tickets are basically something you can frame, but they're worthless now because we're moving indoors. So gets on the list indoors because it's a lot smaller.
Yeah.
So I'll tell you how I found out about it. It actually was Friday afternoon, as it so happened. I was in the office of the Speaker of the House, and I spent an hour in the Speaker's office with the Speaker and me and Lindsey Graham, the three of us talking about the issue we did a podcast on last week, which is whether to do one reconciliation bill or two reconciliation bills. And as we talked about on that podcast, the Speaker disagrees with Lindsay and me and
with just about every senator. He thinks one bill makes sense. I think two bills make sense. And we're spent about an hour talking about that. And I got to say, as I was walking into the meeting with the Speaker, we were talking about the inauguration and the fact that we were all expecting to be freezing our asses off sitting outside. You know, typically for an inauguration, you're out on the steps of the capital, you're outside, and Monday is projected to be very, very cold to be in
the teens. And I'll tell you what I was telling the Speaker. Look, I just want to make sure that they don't like Secret Service, doesn't drag us out there two hours early and have us just sit there and freeze way before the President gets there. And I'm like, you know, come on, miss a Speaker, you can get this done. We can get out there right before it starts instead of having to like turn into ice boxes
and have a bunch of octagenarians getting pneumonia. Well, while we're meeting with the speaker get he gets handed the note card and said, oh, well, problem solved. Trump just decided to move it indoor. So it was Trump's call. He made the decision. And so now the swearing in will occur in the rotunda of the Capital. That is the same thing that happened in nineteen eighty five for
Reagan's second term. In nineteen eighty five, just like this year, it was very, very cold on inauguration Day, and so they did it indoor. So that's what's going to happen here. But what it means is the number of people that will be physically present plummets. They're anticipating about six hundred people will be in the rotunda. Now give you some quick math. They're five hundred and thirty five senators and
members of the House. If you got six hundred total, there ain't a whole lot more people than the members of Congress, and an additional sixty five seventy people. So virtually everyone who was planning to go. There were thousands and thousands of seated seats that people had flown up for tickets. There were many, many more thousands of standing room only seats would that would extend for blocks and blocks. And I do feel really bad for all the folks who came up here who were planning to see it.
I mean, it's an expensive trip to fly to ec They were excited and they found out, well, okay, now we're not going to get to see it. You know, what most people are doing is going somewhere where there's a TV and it's warm to go watch it. I can tell you I had a bunch of our top supporters that flew up here and and so we've we've tried to we've been talking with them and try to help folks find find warm places. We've got some folks that we've got a sports bar where they're gonna come
come watch it there. Uh, but it a lot of people were left just just in the cold. I will say this though. If it had been outside, you would have people, particularly in the standing room only seats, who might be out there six hours or more.
And I did.
And that's one thing people don't I don't think understood because I had someone calling and like, hey, we've got seats, we're going to go, and you know it should be fine, we'll just get there right before them. Like it didn't work that way. There's incredible security protocol and you're out there for hours. I remember it during four this is I had a seated seat right up at the front, and that seat was frozen solid. When we sat down, it was a solid basically sitting on an ice cube.
And so even if you think, oh, well, you have a seat and you can sit down, I would have actually preferred to be standing so you can move around a little bit, because when it's cold Indie See and Wendy, it is cold and windy.
And look, a lot of people would be getting there at like six and seven in the morning, and the swearing in doesn't happen till noon. So that's a lot of hours to be out in the cold and wind and ice. You know, Heidi's in town for it, Caroline's in town for it. I had advised them they were gonna have heavy jackets and wrap up.
I'll tell you.
I bought a new set of Long Johns and went on Amazon and order some Long Johns and actually we had There were hundreds of tickets that I gave out of Texans who wanted to come and asked me to, and so we gave out hundreds of tickets. And one of the things I had my team do with everyone that was going to get a ticket is is I
got them handwarmers and feet warmers. I figured, all right, if they're going to be freezing, you know the things that you take skiing that like you can put in your gloves or putting your your boots and warm your feet and hands. I thought that was a nice thing to give the Texans who were coming up here. But I will say this because they canceled it.
Number one.
Look, I'm glad you've got a bunch of members of Congress who were in their eighties. I mean, you could easily have had someone catched ammonia and die. I'm sure Trump was thinking of William Henry Harrison, who was president. He gave a speech on a very cold Washington day atn inauguration speech and he died thirty days later. He is the shortest president in US history. And you know, Trump at seventy eight, I'm sure that precedent occurred to him.
You know, I can't think it would be very healthy for Joe Biden at his age and in his health to have him sit a couple hours out in the freezing cold. And for that matter, the thousands of people standing there. We probably would have had some people get frostbite, we might have had some serious health issues. So I do think that was a major factor and behind President Trump's decision to move it indoors.
So here's to put it in perspective. Your family that's up there for it, do they get to go in the rotunda for the swearing d No, So just and I knew the answer, but it was just to put in perspective. That's how different it's going to be that even senators own family members who thought they were going to watch the inauguration, they're going to be watching it on TV as well.
So what works to each member of Congress has a spouse ticket, and the spouse ticket when it's outside, they're seated nearby, and you get one ticket for that. Those tickets are not even going to be in the rotunda. They're going to be in the Capital Visitors Center, So they will be watching it on TV nearby, but they won't be physically they're able to see it.
That's incredible.
So let's talk about afterwards what's going to happen, because you mentioned this earlier that this Trump administration is just operating at a different level of sophistication than in twenty sixteen. It is a different level of readiness, and this is going to be a huge day for the country, specifically for people that voted for change and voted for safety and security and secure borders. The number of things that we're going to get done right away after Trump is torn in is significant.
It is you know, this is something I talked about. So I did two other podcasts this weekend. I went on with Barry Weiss on on the Free Press podcast and talk with her, and then I also went on the All In podcast. Both of them I talked about Verdict and then urge listeners of those podcasts come over
here and subscribe to Verdict. But but you know, we talked about what to expect today, and shortly after the president has sworn in, we are going to see a flurry of executive orders, and I think we're going to see something on the order of magnitude of one hundred executive orders signed today.
That is massive.
Those orders are prepared, they're they're drafted, the lawyers are putting the finishing touches on them right now. I don't know everyone that's coming out. We can predict a lot of them. They're going to be executive orders focusing on securing the border. CA Catch and release is going to end. When illegal immigrants are apprehended, they will be detained, they
will be ported. You're going to see law enforcement going after and apprehending and arresting criminal illegal aliens, murderers, rapist gang members.
All of that you're going to see early on.
I'm confident you will see executive orders undoing the Biden administration's war on American energy, the war on Texas oil and gas.
I think we'll see that unwind.
I'm confident we'll see executive orders unwinding DEI initiatives throughout the federal government. I'm confident that Joe Biden's artificial intelligence executive order will be rescinded.
The flurry of it will be enormous.
And the phrase that's being used is shock and awe, and I think that's exactly what it is. And I'll tell you Ben, in my view, I think there is a fixed quantum of outrage. And I actually call that quantum the arsenic quantum. And so you and I both remember the first term of George W. Bush Bush for three.
So when Bush forty three came in in two thousand and one, one of the first things the Bush administration did is it rescinded an EPA rag that had regulated how much arsenic can be in water, and it changed it from one microscopic amount of arsenic to a different microscopic about of arsenic. And for six weeks, the press lost their mind and their hair was on fire, and they said, the evil Republicans are trying to poison our
children with arsenic. Now I think today, when Trump issues all of these executive orders, you're going to see the same outrage, except instead of all directed at arsenic, it's going to be at all one hundred. And I actually think don't think the outrage gets any greater. That's how much outrage there is, which is why I'm expecting today
to be an extraordinary day. I hope and believe these orders are focused on delivering on our promises and carrying through on the mandate from the election, And if and when they do that, that's a very good thing.
There's also a different aspect of this, this winning a second time after losing, and that is if these one hundred executive orders that are signed today make the media mad, the press mad, and they lose their mind. I think there's a lot of Americans but good. He's doing exactly what I sent him back to Washington to do. And you didn't have that type of mandate feel I think in sixteen like you do now.
Absolutely, if CNN is happy at what happens today, then the incoming team will have screwed up badly. But I feel absolutely confidence. I think the odds that CNN will be happy are zero points zero percent.
So that's a good thing.
Let's move to TikTok for a second, because this has actually been a big conversation around the inauguration, elections having consequences, laws having consequences, Supreme Court getting involved. So can we take it back to square one so that people that maybe weren't paying attention to TikTok maybe don't use it. They understand TikTok is extremely important to a younger generation, and there are a lot of Americans that make a living on TikTok. There are a lot of people that
supports their businesses. There is a lot of things on TikTok that you can say are very good. There are a lot of things you can also say are very bad. But explain what happened with TikTok and why it was shut down.
Well.
Congress passed the law last year dealing with TikTok. TikTok is owned and controlled by a company called Byte Dance. Byte Dance is a Chinese company, and it's a Chinese company that is under the direct control of the Chinese Communist government. The Chinese Communist government uses TikTok and uses it in a way that I think poses a very
real national security risk to the United States. There are some one hundred and seventy million Americans that use TikTok, overwhelmingly young people, teenagers, young adults, young professionals, and the Chinese Communist government uses it number one to engage an espionage to monitor what those Americans are doing, what they're saying, potentially where they are. They have the potential to monitor
their locations. But number two, the Chinese Communist government uses TikTok aggressively to push propaganda, to push propaganda that that that is number one pro China, and they suppress content things like like Tianaman Square. They suppress content about the one million wiguers that that are in concentration camps in China. They suppress content about Hong Kong or China or Taiwan.
But but they also push anti American content. They push anti capitalist content, they push communist content, they push socialist content. They also push harmful content to young people. Uh, they push substance abuse, they push self harm that they push suicidal ideation. I got to say that the same company that owns TikTok, they have a TikTok version in China
that's very different from the TikTok in America. The Chinese kids that are on TikTok, they're getting videos on math and calculus, and they're limited in the number of hours they can do it, but it's developing the kind of skills that are going to make them really effective in life. You know, the Chinese kids are getting calculus and our kids are getting chewing tide pods.
That ain't good.
The Chinese communist government is not doing it because they love our kids that they want to see a good outcome. We also see heavily skewed political propaganda. So, for example, anti Semitism, anti Israel, pro Hamas, pro Hesbela propaganda is rampant on TikTok and at a complete differential, wildly different
ratios than on other social media platforms. And so, given China's malevolent use of TikTok, Congress passed a bipartisan bill designed to force China to divest from TikTok, and the terms of the bill said that TikTok had to shut down by January nineteenth unless it had been sold and was no longer under the ownership or control of the Chinese Communist government. Now, TikTok has done next to nothing to comply with the efforts to sell itself. In fact,
they brazenly said we will not sell. Instead, they've tried to do a couple of things. Number one, they've tried to engage in litigation. They filed lawsuits. They went all the way to the U. S Supreme Court. They argued it the US Supreme Court, and TikTok lost unanimously. The Supreme Court said, no, your First Amendment argument is not valid.
So the First Amendment protects the free speech rights of Americans, but it doesn't protect the Chinese Communist government, and the Supreme Court unanimously concluded this law is focused on national security. It's not trying to suppress any Americans free speech. It is trying to prevent a hostile government from being able to engage in espionage and propaganda in the United States. So they devoted a lot of time to litigation, a lot of time to lobbyists. They've had lobbyists descend on
Capitol Hill trying to lobby against the ban. Well, Saturday night, at midnight, TikTok turned itself off, and I will tell you there were teenagers and young people all across the country that expressed enormous dismay when it shut down. But they shut it down. And so TikTok for most of Sunday was shut down, and then Sunday afternoon they turned it back on. And they turned it back on because Trump had indicated that he intends to give TikTok an
other ninety days. The statute has a provision that the president can extend the ban for ninety days in order to help facilitate a sale of TikTok, and Trump has said that's what he intends to do. Look my view on this, If in the next ninety days TikTok follows through and sells the company to a non Chinese buyer, a non Chinese government controlled buyer, ideally to an American company,
that will be a very, very good thing. The objective of this law, it's important understand the objective of this law was never to ban TikTok. The objective of this law was to force the Chinese Communist government to end its ownership and control of TikTok.
I don't know if that's going to happen. I hope it's going to happen.
I am not certain what Trump is going to end up doing, but at least right now, he's indicating that he intends to exercise the ninety day extension to give TikTok time to consummate the sale, and so we'll see what happens in the next ninety days.
One last thing about TikTok, your opinion, if it is a threat to national security into our way of life, and that's why you say it's so important for it to be sold to a non Chinese control company.
Absolutely, that's why you had overwhelming bipartisan support for this legislation because what China is doing with TikTok is really harmful and it's a way to spy on Americans and it's also a way to really inject harmful content. They're trying to drive our country in directions that tears America down, and they're not doing it. You know, this is not complaining about well, gosh, Hollywood producers are not making wholesome movies anymore. This is an adversary that is deliberately pumping
propaganda to our children. And we would be a foolish nation if we said, hey, we're great with the Chinese communists having an open pipeline to our kids. That's why Congress acted. And as I said, I don't know what President Trump will do. Certainly my counsel to him will be use this law as leverage and let's force China to sell TikTok.
Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how this happens. Let me ask you one final question on this inauguration day.
Didn't you just have a final question?
I got no. This is overall though.
Are you like a used car salesman? One more thing? One more thing? You would you like some underco coverage?
Hey, I'm not there I get my bonus question.
That's my story and I'm sticking with it.
When you look at.
Where we are January twentieth, twenty twenty five, how much how excited are you for what we're about to witness compared to January twentieth of twenty seventeen, because of how prepared we are this.
Time much more excited Because I think we're much more prepared.
We're hitting the ground running.
As I said, the initial Trump team they'd never done this before, the initial Trump White House had never worked in the federal government. I think there's just a much great level of experience and also awareness of the deep state, awareness of the career bureaucrats who who who fight against a common sense, free market, freedom oriented agenda. And look as I look at this array of cabinet nominees, I'm
really excited. And I think the most consistent characterization of these are characteristic of these nominees is that they're change agents. They're disruptors, and they're they're going into these agencies to change and disrupt how they operate. I think that's a very good thing. Now, Listen, there are gonna be moments of chaos. They're gonna be mistakes that are made. The old Silicon Valley phrase of of you know, move fast and break things. I think that's what we're going to see.
They're going to move fast and some things, some things won't work. But I'm excited because I think the overwhelming majority of what's accomplished will be very very good for the country.
Well, it's going to be a really fun rest to day for everybody. Watch it, enjoy it. It is history, uh, and I can tell you I really think also Verdict is gonna be really fun this year. I think we're gonna have a lot of guests, uh that that because of this victory and and and get to cover a lot more victories uh than we have ever got to do before.
So get ready for that as well. Don't forget.
We do the show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We have that weekend review on Saturday. On those in between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts. I'll keep you up to date during those other big news days. There's gonna be a lot of them, so we'll have all that for you as well. And the Sinat and I will see you back here Wednesday morning.