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free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps dot com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Verdict. That's stamps dot Com promo code Verdict. Never go to the post office again. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael Knowles, Senator. They seem like very different issues. Canadian truckers and the most popular podcast are on the planet except for the week that Verdict launched,

But will digress. We leave that for a couple of years ago. They are deeply connected stories. And actually you seem to have played a role in all of this. You caused a little bit of an international incident, Senator, when you got into a Twitter spat with the mayor of Vancouver over this trucker protest going on up in Canada. Well that's true enough. The Mayor of Vancouver said, you know,

we Canadians don't want you truckers. You guys go home, And I had to point out, I said, gosh, you know, the Canucks might have a different view if the truckers actually did go home and suddenly your shelves were empty. I mean, it seems to me two years ago, people were waxing eloquent about the great heroes that truckers were, and I agree that they make our entire system, our economy move forward. But now these leftist politicians are saying, to hell with you, truckers. We don't like what you

have to say. So it's not just the little guy. It's not just the working class that is being put upon here. It's even one of the most elite, influential popular voices in the world. That would be Joe Rogan, this podcaster who's got a massive, massive audience, he's politically independent, and a big tech is shutting him down. We touched on it a little bit. Some aging hippies were trying to boot him off of Spotify, but it appears to

be sort of working well. These two stories are deeply interconnected and they represent together the most dire threat to free speech. We have Joe Rogan, you have petty government authoritarians enlisting their buddies in big tech to silence the voice of descent Canadian truckers. You have petty government authoritarians enlisting the voice of big tech and the power of big tech to silence the voice of descent and both look that this would never have happened even a year

or two or three ago. This is a new phenomenon. Let's take Joe Rogan, so Jen SAKEI publicly called from the White House podium for Spotify to take down his episodes for Spotify to silence him. I will say, let me start off by saying, I'm pissed off. Look our last podcast, we talked about how this pod was the first podcast to be mentioned from the White House podium, and incomes Joe Rogan and bigfoots us M that's true, Senator, we were the first two. We can at least hang

our hat on that. But yes, Joe Rogan has come in. He is now the third podcast to be referenced at a White House briefing. Will say in between the two, Jen Saki was asked asked about this podcast and her comment was she said she is blissfully blissfully not a spokesperson for Ted Cruise, which I have to admit. Michael I retweeted and just said the bliss is mutual, the

feeling is reciprocated, right. But I will say what we did talk about actually setting up Margarita's and kickboxing and see if we could recruit her over because she thankfully, we're not going to do that. Look stop for a second and think about the White House, the executive office of the leader of the free World, the most powerful man on planet Earth, calling for a voice of descent to be silenced and calling very specifically calling out big Tech,

calling out the oligarchs and Silicon Valley. Jensaki was very specific, Spotify take down this post. Now. Normally, when you have suppression of free beach is a big power in balance, and it's powerful people trying to silence weak people. Well, here the person they're trying to silence is Joe Rogan. Joe Rogan as many things, but not weak. He's got one hundred million listeners and viewers. That is a crap ton of listeners and viewers. And you know he gets

more viewers. He's for many episodes. He's ten x or a hundred x what CNN is and and the White House is terrified of him. CNN is terrified of him, the Blue check Marks and Twitter are terrified of him. And it's worth worth pausing. Look, you and I are unlikely advocates for Joe Rogan. I don't know Joe Rogan met the guy. As far as I know, he's not a conservative. He endorsed Bernie Friggin Sanders. Generally conservatives don't endorse wild eyed socialists. But Rogan. Look, I've really grown

to admire Rogan because he's demonstrated backbone. He's willing to speak out and on COVID he's called bullshit to the continued propaganda and the contradictions and the lies coming out of Fauci, coming out of the Biden White House, coming out of the press, and for those in power, having someone willing to dissent with a really big megaphone scares them and so they want to destroy them. In the important thing to know about Joe Rogan, this is not spontaneous,

This is not organic. This is an organized assassination of speech. It started off kind of comical, but then the White House chimed in, and then you noticed it started off with COVID misinformation because he brought in scientists and doctors who had views that differed from the enlightened view of doctor Fauci, which changes every week. But whatever it is

that week is holy scripture and cannot be challenged. Yea, But then you know this kind of hack writer Don Winslow, but I've never heard of other than he's loud, obnoxious. On Twitter puts out this video, an old video of Rogan using the N word, and look, using the N word is wrong. Neither you nor I support it. And suddenly all of the blue check marks gathered up together and Rogan is a racist for having used it. Look, that's not a word that should be used in polite society.

But I will tell you who else is used the N word repeatedly. Joe Biden, rappers like crazy Howard Stern. They're not castling Howard Stern. Why Because Howard Stern is serviling, kissing the behinds of those in power. It's truly a shame. Howard Stern started out a rebel, and now he echoes the words of the petty tyrants. If you shut up and echo what they say, you're okay. If you're Jimmy Kimmel, you can dress in black face, you can do whatever

you want because you're a mouthpiece for the regime. This has followed a familiar script, and I guess this also ties it to the Canadian trucker protest, which is the actual substantive issue that this is about. Is COVID, and so Joe Rogan questioned the COVID narrative. He brought on very respected, very well known scientists. They question the government's COVID narrative, the narrative dujure because as you say, it changes all the time, and so what happens. Then they

try to attack him. It doesn't work. Then the left calls him a racist. That is always the next card that they play. They pull it out of nowhere, they take clips out of context, they do whatever they can. They apply a standard unevenly, and they're trying to do that. That seems to have weakened him a little bit. He's made some concessions. We'll see where it goes. But I guess my question on it is what is it about this COVID issue? Because I guess what the left would

say is, Michael Senator, this is about health. People are going to die if this information gets out there, and that's why we've got to suppress the truckers. It's why why we've got to shut up Rogan. Is this a unique issue where people are not allowed to dissent? It is unique in the following way. It has revealed the authoritarianism of these government leaders. They believe they have the power to force you to comply, to force you to take a vaccine. My body, my choice doesn't matter to

them anymore. Nope, not your body, not your choice. We're going to force you to take a vaccine, to force you to wear a mask, to force you to obey, and if you don't, they will use the course of force of government to shut your business down. You know, there's a restaurant here in DC that was shut down because they refused to enforce the vaccine mandate. So local restaurant said, look, I don't want to like have my customers come in demand their papers, you know, intrude on

their medical business. And so what did DC do. District of Columbia came in and shut them down. I mean, it is arbitrary power. They will shut your business down. They will shut your restaurant down. They'll shut your bar down, they'll shut your store down. They will fire you if your active duty militarius, soldier, sailor airman, marine, a Navy seal, they will fire you. If you're a doctor, a nurse,

they will fire you. If you're a government employee, if you're an FBI agent, if you're a border patrol agent. They will fire you. It is force. And these are the same guys that during the height of COVID, when it started, we're shutting down playgrounds, we're shutting down churches. We're suing to say, if you sing amazing grace, everyone's going to die. And what COVID is done has revealed the arbitrariness, the power. And by the way, you know,

some might say, all right, you're exaggerating. Listen, all these Democratic politicians know it's crap. We all saw this week Stacy Abrams sitting in a classroom full of little kids. The kids are all masked and she's sitting there grinning ear to ear with no mask right in front. Why because she's a Democratic overlord and the rules don't apply to her. They just apply to the little people. In this case, it really was little people. It was children.

And it's all the Democratic politicians, every one of them. Gavin Newsom, you know, palling around with Magic Johnson. It's pretty cool he gets to hang out with Magic Johnson. I'm jealous about that, you know. Eric Garcetti saying saying, oh, I held my breath. I had my mask off, but I held my breath balogony. But it's the lie is so absurd. The person saying it doesn't believe it, the person hearing it doesn't believe it. But what it's really about.

And by the way, Barack Obama this week, he's having this massive house built in Hawaii, never mind global warming, never mind the environment, and he's standing there with the workers, little working people. The workers are all masks, and there's Obama, no masks, supervising the servants. That's the same as Nancy Pelosi when she does her fundraisers where the serving people must be masked. It's garbage. It is contempt of elitists. But the fact that they take their mask of I've

talked in this pot all the time. Democratic senators remove their masks all the time behind closed doors when the TV cameras aren't there, boom, the mask comes off. But as soon as they come out, they put the mask on. This is about power, and Rogan and the truckers are threats to it. And I gotta say, look, Rogan in the world of speech has a damn powerful megaphone. Spotify

is paying him one hundred million dollars. One hundred million dollars a lot of money Michael, if Spotify offered it to you tomorrow one hundred million dollars, shave your head and become an m a wrestler. I gotta say, I think we'd see Michael Knowles. Yet, you know, dressed in a red tights, you going to wrestle. I don't want to undercut my negotiation. I would do it for ninety five I would, I believe you, and I'd buy tickets to it. Well, I guess this is what's so scary.

Here is Joe Rogan. He's got this huge megaphone, and yet they can, at least to some degree, make him concede. We were always told that, yes, the government is bad and they do lots of bad things, but we've got private enterprise, We've got our own private organizations. We can do our own work in the culture, fight back, build your own Google, all that kind of stuff. And yet what we've seen here in the States and with the Canadian truckers is you're seeing the government using these these

private entities. So you've got Spotify as being pressured by the White House to boot Rogan or at least to censor him. You've got go fund me. There was a go fund me set up for these Canadian truckers. A lot of people were donating to them, and then go fund me under a lot of political pressure, says, whoops, never mind, we're going to take that money away from the truckers. Well, so, now we don't have the government, we don't have the private enterprise. What are we supposed

to do? So you look at Spotify. They haven't kicked Rogan off yet, but the goal is to kick him off entirely. That's what the White House called for. They have taken down about one hundred episodes of his show. So they've decided that you and I we don't get to see what he said those episodes. We're too dumb, we're too ignorant, we can't listen. That speech is dangerous, and so they're going to ban it. I gotta say.

Rogan responded by apologizing and listen. If if there's one lesson Donald Trump has taught us is don't apologize to the woke left wing mob, because they're not interested in apology. They're not interested in truth, they're not interested in facts. Nobody cares in the mob about the substance of what was on those hundred episodes. They don't care at all. They want to destroy him. You look at the truckers.

Listen in Canada, the Canadian politicians, you know, the mayor of Ottawa was was was reveling in calling for go fund me to pull down the site and was bragging about it. And go fund me people had given ten million dollars to support this. I mean, it was, you know, a spontaneous movement. And when the government officials called on and go fund me, just like the White House did, the government officials in Canada call on Go fund me stop this. You know, go fund me didn't have one

hundred billion dollars tied up with the truckers. If they did, they might have behaved differently. Spotify has been a little bit trying to have their cake and eat it too. Yeah. So go fund Me just said, nope, we're taking the money. And first they said we're going to give it to a bunch of left wing causes that we support. Then there was so much outrage they backed off and said,

oh it, or we'll just refund the money. Look. This weekend, I sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission asking the FTC to investigate go fund me for deceptive trade practices because if you take ten million dollars, if you steal it from people and divert it to a place that the consumers who gave it didn't intend it to go, that is deception, That is consumer fraud, and it is indicative of the arrogance of big tech and the willingness

for them to act as enforcers for government officials. Now, there was a second part of this go fund me story. So I'm very glad that you are bringing legitimate government power against go fund me. Here. I will never use go fund me again. Obviously, we can't trust it if they're going to take the money away from the causes we think we're giving to. Now, Michael, that's not fair.

If you want to support Black Lives Matter and TIEF, if you want to support rioters and people that are fire bombing police cars, if you want to support people that are taking over police stations and declaring Chad's autonomous zones, go fund me is the site for you. So if you want to support Marxists, that's the place to go. And you don't even need to donate directly to. You can donate to whoever you want. Don't worry, go fund me will redirect your money. You don't even need to

think about it. So I'm really glad that you are leading on this issue and getting the government to look into this, this obvious fraud. But there was a second part to the story here, which is that after gofund me took all the money, a bunch of people then got together and started to fund the truckers. Not through the government obviously, not even through some private enterprise an organization might go fund me. They did it through bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a powerfully revolutionary technology cryptocurrency. I am very bullish on bitcoin and on crypto generally. And i gotta tell you, the same petty authoritarians who hate Joe Rogan, who hate the Canadian truckers, they hate bitcoin and they hate crypto and their sem irony. So I've become a very vocal defender of crypto, probably the leading defender, certainly

one of the leading defenders in the US Senate. And it's interesting a lot of the bitcoin and crypto folks were Bernie bros, just like Rogan, you know, the kind of cool socialists that seem hip. And yet these authoritarians hate bitcoin and they hate crypto, and it's for the same reason. Why did they hate Joe Rogan because they can't control him. He's not subject to their authoritarian power. Why do they hit bitcoin because they can't control it. It is a system of currency outside of the monopoly

control of the US government. And I got to say, as I've addressed you know, I spoke at a big cryptoconference in Austin several months ago, and I said, listen, you need to understand this administration, I believe is going to go after you and is going to try to destroy you. And by the way, that's a pattern of authoritarians. China communist China outlawed bitcoin for the exact same reason.

Why does Elizabeth Warren hate bitcoin for the same reason that she and China hates bitcoin because neither one of them can control it. And the theme through all of this is the power of freedom to be not subject to the arbitrary whims of those in government power. Now you have convinced me on this. I don't know anything about a crypto. I'm a terrible investor. My investment strategy generally is by high sell low, that's whenever I'm involved.

But what a lot of listeners probably don't know is that you are much hipper than I am, you have been on this crypto thing for a while. It's true, and you did make headlines because well, while crypto was collapsing and I was panicked and selling all my crypto, you were apparently buying the dip that that is true. So I bought bitcoin. I own bitcoin. I think according to the public reports, they're three senators that own bitcoin, Me, Cynthia love Us, and Pat Toomey. Um. You know, I'll say,

I don't know. Six eight months ago, I didn't know a whole lot about bitcoin and crypto, and I saw that it was growing and developing, and I said, look, I need to educate myself. And so I started setting up dinners with people involved in the crypto world and just sitting down and listening to them. And I started off with, you know, all sorts of dumb questions, you know, what is it? How does it work? In learning? And

it's complicated stuff. And I certainly I would not hold myself out as an expert today, but I started learning and listening to it and being fascinated by by the development of it, by the ability that there's a book actually that Cynthia Loves recommended to me called Layered Money which I read that talks about some of the history of the development of money from the beginning. But but

crypto is the next evolution of it. And I've gotten very bullish on crypto, especially bitcoin, and really horrified at the efforts of Elizabeth Warren and big government Democrats to crush this growing industry. You know, Texas is becoming an oasis for bitcoin. We're seeing more and more crypto moving to Texas, particularly Austin. And so I started several months ago. I actually have a weekly by order in for bitcoin

that every week I just have an automatic buy. You know, look, given that there's votility, UM, I'm a fan of dollar cost averaging, which is just having a buy that occurs weekly automatically, so that high or low it averages out. UH. And then what I ended up doing, UM, I guess a couple of weeks ago is when bitcoin dropped about in half, I said, all right, I don't believe this drop and and so I made a bigger purchase. I

bought twenty five thousand worth of bitcoin. UM. Under the Senate you have to file a financial disclosure for a purchase over a thousand dollars. So I filed that financial disclosure. And you know, usually those financial disclosures don't you know, maybe they get a little bip, but they don't, they don't get a whole lot of attention. It actually fascinating, Michael. When I filed the financial disclosure, it generated a ton

of press. And listen, I am bullish on bitcoin. So I'm proud to say I got skin in the game. I believe in it, and that's that's that's why I invested in it. But but I think we ought to be encouraging. I want cryptocurrency. I want America to be the hub of cryptocurrency globally, and frankly, I want Texas

to be the hub of cryptocurrency in America. So I have been convinced by you and by other I mean Ronald Reagan's favorite economist, George Gilder was really bullish on blockchain technology years ago even and said this is kind of the future of the Internet. Yeah, And so what I'm convinced on here now is that this would be a way to avoid government control. This would be a way to avoid even the control of private businesses that are often working at the behest of the government. Anyway.

But then my final question to you is this if the government was able to clamp down on all these private businesses and build your own Google and all of that, and that hasn't worked. We saw it with the truckers, we're seeing with Rogan two. What is to stop them from clamping down on bitcoin. You've already heard rumblings out of the government. What is the likelihood that Biden does that? So look, they may well, and I am quite concerned

about it. This ad illustration could kill crypto. When I talked to the conference in Austin, you know, there are a lot of folks in the crypto world. We're a little bit utopian that they have a view that that that that we are inevitable, that that that bitcoin is inherently superior to all other forms of money. I will say one of the things I like about it is

it's a potential hedge against inflation. And given this administration spending trillions and driving up trillions in debt, I'm interested in the hedge in inflation as they're devaluing the dollar, and so I like bitcoin as a hedge against inflation.

But the point I made at this conference is you only need to understand government can destroy You asked how many of you all have heard of napster Um, you know, and they all did, and I said, listen, it's easy to think we're happily in our sort of Austin, peaceful place. And I think Bitcoin is actually where Silicon Valley was maybe fifteen or twenty years ago, which is at a fork in the road where Silicon Valley could have chosen to go towards a libertarian utopia. Leave us alone, let's

be entrepreneurs, let's have freedom. Or they could have done what they did, which is to go down the socialist woke path of we exercise power, we are totalitarian, and we're hard leftist woke, and unfortunately Silicon Valley took the wrong choice. I think Bitcoin and crypto more generally is at that same fork in the road. I hope that they go the libertarian way. I hope they go the

small business leave us alone, let us be entrepreneurs. You know, that is really potent, So I'm trying to encourage it. But absolutely there is a very real and potent threat from the Biden administration that they will go after it, that they will try to destroy it. And I'm going to fight against that because I think it is a huge, huge industry going forward, and I don't want to see the idiot politicians in Washington drive it out of America

and send it overseas. It won't disappear, But Washington is perfectly capable of sending the jobs overseas and sending sending that business overseas. I think that would be catastrophic, right, And it's especially at a moment where we're dissent against the ruling class, the liberal establishment, the regime, whatever you want to call it, where that is so difficult and where people are genuinely persecuted for it. Yes, we have to wield what political power we can. Yes, we need

to wield what market power we can. But if if there were an instrument of technology really to be able to exercise our rights in our way of life, that's something very hopeful, and so I hope that we can maintain it. We unfortunately so far, are not accepting bitcoin in the Verdict store, but I think we really should. I think that would be a great way to do it. So, Michael, I've actually introduced legislation in Congress to have the Congressional

store accept bitcoin. Rile. That's one of the pieces of legislation I've introduced as a way of spreading its acceptance. By the way, in El Salvador, I spoke with the President of Al Salvador last week El Salvador. It's it's legal currency, it's legal tender in Al Salvador, and it is Bitcoin has all sorts of potential, particularly in developing economy,

for people to have secure savings. You may not have access to a bank account, but if you have a cell phone, if you have any technology, you can have secure savings that can't be stolen from you. It can also is secure instantaneous transactions. You can transfer it, buy and sell. You know, they're massive inefficiencies right now, and the transfers of cash that crypto and bitcoin go all around, and so it is a generation skipping technology which is potent,

and that's one of the reasons. So I've introduced legislation to repeal what the Democrats did putting additional burdens on crypto. And I've also, as I said, I think the Congressional store how to accept it because it helps it helps expand the ability of this industry to grow. And I think there's enormous benefit to Texas and the country as

this industry grows. Well, it's great to know that bitcoin is good for developing economies, because if Joe Biden's policies continue to destroy our dollar and our jobs, we may soon be a developing economy ourselves. Now we have more. Just when you think it's over, there is still more. Some of you who have gone over and gone to Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash shop and headed over and subscribe to the Verdict Plus community. Some of you know about this, but some of you might not

know this quite yet. But our friend Liz Wheeler is hosting a new series with Senator Cruz, the hardest working man in show business and in politics, and that is called Cloak Room. Liz, what are you talking about? Hi? Michael Hi? Senator Yes, and Michael, you and I joke. One series is simply not enough for Senator Cruz, so there must be two. I'm so excited. This will be our second, our second episode in the series. I'm excited to introduce it. It's called the Cloak Room. It's on

Verdict Plus. It is only for Verdict Plus subscribers. You can of course join us ad Verdict with Ted Cruz dot com slash Plus. It's a it's a brand new series with Senator Ted Cruz. It's co hosted by me Liz Wheeler. Basically, how it's going to work is I'm going to pick his brain like I would in a strategy session. It's a behind the scenes peek into the details of what goes on in DC, just like the

real cloak Room of the Senate. Today, we're going to talk about Stacy Abrams and that infamous massless photo of her with kids who were wearing masks next to her. Plus the proper role, this is the nerdy part, the proper role of public health and the administrative state and the separation of powers. Doctor and now leg I said, you can join us at Verdict with Ted Cruise dot com slash plus. I also have a promo code Cloakroom

for you. If you use this promo code Cloakroom, you'll get one month free a one month free trial on

your annual subscriptions. It's going to be a good time. Then, as I have mentioned before, soon after that, we're going to have a series where it is just me and Liz and no senator, then a series of Liz and the Cactus, and we're just building out a whole universe here because as the Left tries to clamped down on us, it's more important than ever to speak out and Liz in our beneficence, in our charity, which is a theological virtue. We are not going to keep this episode behind the paywall.

In the future of the episodes are going to behind the paywall, but right now we have a sneak peek. So I'm going to get out of here. Liz. You take it away with the Cloakroom. Thank you, Michael. I'm Liz Wheeler. This is Cloakroom on Verdict plus. Senator. We have a great episode plans today, So let's start with this photograph. This is the photograph curd round the country, if you will. It is, of course, Stacy Abrams, gubernatorial

candidate for the state of Georgia. She is not wearing a mask in this photograph, which is surrounded by school children, very small children with wearing masks on their face. And not only is this a terrible look, she actually is defending this in the wake of all the outrage. So my question to you, leg I said, is purely political. Is this photograph going to be the reason that she loses her election? Is this going to disqualify her in

the eyes of her voters. Look, I think this photograph has the potential to be something like Terry mcculloff's comment at the end of the Virginia governor's race. He said in the debate, he said, parents have no right to say what's taught to their kids in school. And and I think if there was one sentence that defeated McAuliffe and elected Glen Yonken, it was that sentence. It was the arrogance that was revealed. It was you know, there's an old line that a gaff as when a politician

tells the truth, tells you what they really think. This picture shows you what Stacy Abrams really thinks. And it is I think this picture will play a central role in the election. You know, several things are striking. Number one, they put the picture out. They were proud of this picture. They saw nothing wrong with it. And then suddenly the reaction was so intense they deleted it, and they got the school to delete it too. They like tried to ban it, tried to erase it, just delete the In fact,

the school person deleted her entire account. But but then when everyone naturally criticized the self evident hypocrisy. The Abraham's campaign put out this statement, just snarling with attacks that of course people are attacking me because they're racists and it's all about, you know, undermining Black History Month because they're all just horrible racist who hate me, completely ignoring

the substance. Also, a campaign put out a statement that well, Stacy requested that everyone wear a mask and she just took hers off briefly. Well, okay, so that doesn't make it better. Maybe she held her breath like Garcetti did. Indeed, And by the way, I think it's much better. The world would be better if democratic politicians held their breath, because it would mean they couldn't talk, so that would

be an improvement. Look this picture. I was reading something today that was comparing this, saying, this is the most consequential image of a politician in a room full of kids since George W. Bush was reading a children's story to a room full of kids when they came in and told him the news about nine to eleven about

the plane flying into the twin towers. And you know, we all remember that that image and know that image, and I think this one likewise, people will remember years from now this is an image that will define the double standards, the arrogance, the hypocrisy, and it speaks volumes. I also thought it is notable, like the Washington Post wrote a story about, you know, Republican outrage over Abrams in the picture, and what's interesting is they didn't show

the picture. They had a picture of Stacy Abrams like out on the campaign trail smiling. The Washington Post very deliberately wouldn't show the picture because you actually don't need any commentary. You just need to see the image, and it tells you everything you need to know, including the fact that if everyone in the picture, the person at greatest from a serious illness of COVID was clearly Stacey Abrams. Yeah, she's the one not wearing a mask. The little children.

The odds are overwhelming. If one of those kids got COVID that there would be few, if any, symptoms, and it would not be life threatening. But what it reveals is that neither she nor the other Democratic politicians that are insisting the kids be masks. They don't believe in this stuff. No, they don't. It's worse than hypocrisy, isn't it. It's it's elitism. They actually aren't just violating rules that they think apply to themselves. They actually don't believe that

their own rules apply to themselves. And this has been This is the reason the Washington Post isn't picturing or showing this photograph is because they know it's not a Republican or a Democrat issue anymore among voters, especially parents, that parents across the aisle are outraged at how the public health establishment has treated their children and continue to

treat their children in school. And that's where I want to dive into this a little more nerdy, a little more phyllisical aspect of as we've seen up close and personal the last two years, how the public health establishment holds so much power over the American public, how much they influence politicians who issue dictates and mandates and lockdowns and masks and vaccines and all of these, all of these fairly invasive measures in the name of health, in the name of public health. And so I want to

talk to you tonight. I want to ask you, from a philosophical perspective, what is the role or what should be the role of the public health establishment in our country. Well, it depends what qualifies for public health establishment and in many ways that is functionally doctor Anthony Fauci, and and he has become the face of it so much so that that on TV he has said, I represent science. You know, it reminds me of Scripture. In the beginning was the word I mean? It is this hubers to

embody science with which Faucci. Look. Two years ago, Faucci had a pretty good reputation, he was well respected. The arbitrariness, the error against the attitude of infallibility, and the obvious contradictions that have come from Fauci. I think you've done massive and long term damage to the credibility of the CDC, of the NIH, of the public health establishment. Listen, you want to minimize the spread of disease, lock every person on planet Earth in a dungeon and never let them out.

You will reduce the spread of disease. They're just or other negative consequences, right. Well, that kind of get that kind of gets to my questions. That's why I think that we as a nation, especially the Republican Party and the Conservative movement, need to analyze, We need to be thoughtful about what the proper role of public health is.

When public health is defined as you I mean as the promise that you laid out, as as Fauci, as these government bureaucrats who weren't elected, they were appointed, who have the highest salary of all federal employees, including the President of the United States, And to me, it speaks to the administrative state because we could, we could get rid of Fauci, meaning President Biden could fire him, he could resign. I mean, he's old, He's not going to

be in this position forever. You can replace one bureaucrat with another bureaucrat. But as long as you have this system, as we do of these executive agencies that Congress defers rulemaking too, I don't see this problem, particularly now that they have cemented how they want to handle pandemics or public health. They know that they can wage this power the way that they have. I don't see this going away unless we address the administrative state specifically. Yeah, look,

I think it's a very good point. I think the Trump administration made serious mistakes as COVID broke out, and one of the mistakes was elevating Fauci and deferring to him for far too long. The Trump administration should have fired Fauci the way Fauci and the declared lord's a public health treated is is that they were infallible. Yeah, and they did it while being cynically political at the

same time. That combination is a really toxic brew. It is, and especially because if there's a doctor in the private sector who has a terrible opinion or gives you terrible medical advice, you just you go somewhere else, you go to a different practice, you go to a different provider, and that doctor. I mean, it's a meritocracy, or it's supposed to be, and that's not the case when it's

a government bureaucrat. Again, That's why, that's why I think that when we're looking at the power of these bureaucrats and federal agencies, we have to understand the history a little bit. That this idea of the administrative state was introduced, you know, at least theoretically by Woodrow Wilson. He thought that there should be this this class of neutral bureaucrats that ran our federal government. I personally don't believe that there can be someone who is politically neutral. I think

everyone has an opinion. Then LBJ and FDR expanded this administrative state. So now we have this bloated, this bloated apparatus, which a lot of people called the deep state because of all these politicos that work there that aren't accountable to the voter. In my opinion, and I want your take as a constitutional lawyer on this. In my opinion, the advent of this, or what really caused this to grow out of control, was when the Supreme Court stopped

applying the separation of powers doctrine. That, of course, was when Congress would delegate their legislative authority to the executive agency. The judicial brands used to not allow that, but then they stopped and they did allow Congress, and now look what we have. So i'd love to hear your take on that and how we reverse that. So you're exactly right.

It got exacerbated by a decision from the Supreme Court that was called the Chevron decision, where they created something that's called Chevron deference, which the courts now will defer to the judgment of an agency even if the statute, even if the law doesn't require that outcome. If the expert agency has an outcome, they will defer to it. If there's any ambiguity in the statue. I think there are a lot of folks and I would count myself among them who think Chevron was a mistake, that it

contributed to the growth of the regulatory state. And you've got a couple of things at play here. Number One, elected politicians like to shift power to the executive branch because they can avoid responsibility. They can pass a vague in general law, and then when the agency does something bad, they can say to their voters, Hey, it's not me that did it. It's it's it's it's the EPA that did it. It's it's it's the agency. It's OSHA that did it. But secondly, there's a problem that we've seen

that's called regulatory capture. And this is a notion from economics, where you have regulators that are regulating in particular industry who become captured by it. They have a revolving door where people come from the agency to the to the private sector that they're regulating, and back again, and they end up following the interests of the giant companies in

that industry. So you see it in the aviation world with the FAA and a company like Boeing, and you look at the seven thirty seven macs where there was an instance the FAA was not remotely effective enough and ensuring the safety of the seven thirty seven macs. With respect to COVID. You look at the FDA and just how in bad the FDA is With Big Pharma. I've seen some data with ivermectin and hydroxy chloroquine that have suggested good results, particularly in the developing world. But both

of those drugs are incredibly cheap. Both of those drugs are you can get for pennies, whereas Big Pharma if you look at the treatments they're pushing their thousands of dollars. And I do think there is a real question of

agency capture. Why is it that the agency favors treatments that cost thousands of dollars versus treatments that cost pennies, And particularly in the weird politicized world where the fact that Trump said hydroxychloric and good caused half the country to say it must be bad if Trump likes it, which is a really weird way to make medical or

scientific decisions. Yeah, so that's well, that's science if you're defining science as doctor fauci here, So get a little bit, get a little bit nerdier if you can on the Chevron deference here, I don't understand, Senator, why so many in the judiciary, and this is not just the Supreme Court, this is this is all levels. Why there's such deference to precedent for the sake of precedent when precedent is

so clearly unconstitutional. Now, you know, you and I have talked about Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health, we talked about Roe v. Wade, We've talked about decisions that are obviously unconstitutional that the left, there are judicial activists who actually don't want to overturn a demonstrably wrong and unconstitutional decision just because it's been quote unquote settled for decades. So I don't understand that jurisprudence, if you want to call

it a jurisprudence. But how do we undo the Chevron deference because it is incorrect and right Congress is never gonna do anything about it because it makes their jobs easier, not to be responsible for what they legislate. So there's a doctrine courts follow that's called starry decisis that is respect for precedent. It's following precedent and look stary decisis makes sense and that you want predictability in a legal system. You know, if you look at how laws are structured,

there's a tension between rules and standards. Rules are clear bright lines where you know which side you fall on them. Now, they have the advantage of predictability. They have the advantage that xante beforehand, you can know where you will be afterwards. The downside of clear bright line rules is sometimes that

are unfair. Sometimes a line where result in a particular case where you say, well, gosh, that rule resulted in an unfairness for this particular person because of some weird circumstances. On the other hand, standards where things are flexible. They can spawn to, oh, if it's unfair to do this here, let's not do it here. If it's fair to do it there, let's do it there, so you can respond to the exigencies of the circumstance. But the problem with

standards is they're unpredictable. It's hard to predict on the front end what the answer will be stared is scisis is a structural rule that you want players in our society, whether individuals, whether people looking at the civil law, where the people looking at the criminal law where their companies

to be able to predict the outcome. And so if you know, all right, there is this precedent, so the courts will follow this precedent, then you could order your behavior accordingly and say, okay, here's what the law is. You can go to your lawyers ask what the law is, and you can know what it is that that has an advantage. You want stability. You don't want the law

changing willy nilly. But the scisis is not absolute. There are times when precedents are wrong and precedents are overturned, and the courts have laid out rules for when precedents sho should be overturned, and the rules look to things like have there been has the law been settled, have people had reliance interest on it? Has the law proven administrable? As it proven Sometimes there's a bad decision that just produces chaos and the courts say, okay, this didn't work.

The courts also are more willing to follow starry descisis for a statutory question than they are for a constitutional question. Now why is that? Because a statutory question, which is the interpretation of a federal law passed by Congress, sign a law by the president. If the courts get it wrong, Congress can change the statute, and it does that sometimes. So if there's a statutory question, the courts get it wrong,

Congress has the ability to fix it. So there's a higher protection for starry descisis in that instance because you want the predictability even if the court got it wrong. With respect to the Constitution, there's more of a view that a constitutional decision, if it is wrong, can be revisited. So, for example, the most famous overturning of a precedent was Plessy versus Ferguson, which upheld separate but equal and upheld the discrimination in schools, and Brown versus Board of Education

overturned Plessy. That was the right thing to do. That Brown was the right decision. Plessy was wrong. During the argument in Dobbs, you had the Supreme Court justices asking the Council, well, okay, look here are all the decisions we've overruled, and they listed some big ones. Why doesn't Row meet that standard? But how willing a justice is to overrule precedent? That varies justice by justice? I will say, By the way, as a final point on this, the

liberals it's not that they're devoted to start descisists. They don't believe in started to at all. They're devoted to left wing outcomes yep. So they want star decisis to be followed for left wing decisions. So Row versus Way for them, star decisis is critically important because they support Row. They don't want star decisis. When it comes to Heller, which is the court's decision upholding the Second Amendment right to keep in bear arms, the Liberals would immediately over

rule Heller. They don't want stary decisis. When it comes to Citizens United, which protects our political speech and the right to engage and and and criticize politicians. They disagree with Citizens United, they would overturn it. So, particularly for the left, when it comes to stary decisis, that is usually an excuse for whatever policy outcome they want, because the left views the courts as really very little different from a super legislature enacting the policy they agree with.

Right and so we have to get to it. We don't have to. We want to get to a really funny question from the verdict usum subscribe or pool here in just a second. But let me ask you a very quick yes or no question. Is there a possibility that Chevron deference, that Chevron could be overturned at the Supreme Court level? So yes, I think there's a good possibility, especially deal Gorse, which has been quite critical of chevron a deference, and it's it's a doctrine that has come

under more and more criticism. I think I think there's a real possibility Chevron's overturn because the Left, as they have the past decade, has overshots. They've overshot on their abuse, and the American people want to reject it. Okay, this is a really funny question. I saw this one. It's not a it's not a policy question at all. This is from Paul on the Verdict plus Community. Paul says, is Ted short for Theodore, is Liz short for Elizabeth?

And is Michael short from Michael Angelo. Ooh, I like that, So I'll address my piece of it at least. So Ted is actually not short for theater Theodore. My full name is Raphael Edward Cruz. Raphael is after my father, RAPHAELBM and Evil Cruz, who's Cuban. My mental name Edward. It is after my grandfather, my mother's father, who was Edward Dara. So sometimes people refer to me as Eduardo. No, he was Irish and Italian. He was not. Actually he

was Irish. My grandmother's Irish and Italian. Um it was Edward and Ted is a nickname for Edward, and so that's that's where Ted comes from. And Liz is short for Elizabeth. I will answer on behalf of Michael and say that it's not short for my clangel. It's short for Saint Michael. Kidding, obviously kidding. This actually will be a test to see if Michael does watch this series, because if he does, you know whole comment on it.

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