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March 29, 2023 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
35:52
Ted Cruz Reacts to His Most Viral Moments Live! | Direct Message | Rubin Report
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dave rubin
12:44
t
ted cruz
21:31
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joe biden
00:04
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karine jean-pierre
00:22
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
That feeds exploitation and human trafficking.
joe biden ▲ ● ▼
So today, I applaud China for stepping up, excuse me, I applaud Canada.
unidentified
You can tell what I'm thinking.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
No, Joe, we cannot tell what you're thinking.
That's part of the problem.
I'm Dave Rubin.
This is The Rubin Report, and we are live on location here in Washington, D.C.
It is day three of our three-day bonanza tour of the nation's capital.
Of course, guys, as you know, we are live streaming on Rumble, YouTube, and Locals.
Share, subscribe, tap that notification bell.
Well, if you have not, and it really has been quite a trip here, Ted Cruz, Senator Ted Cruz, is going to be joining me for the live show.
I'm not doing an interview with him.
We are going to do a normal show, clips, what's going on in D.C., what's been happening in the news, and obviously some of the news the last couple of days has been Quite difficult with the situation in Tennessee and the shooting there, but we're going to go through what's been happening in the news and some of Ted Cruz's greatest viral hits.
He was supposed to be here two minutes ago.
He is just finishing up a vote at the Capitol.
Which is just a few minutes away from where we are so he should be here any moment.
He might just walk through the camera.
We're just going to try to get him seated as quickly as possible once he gets here.
But let me just recap you guys on a little bit of what we've been doing on this trip.
We have been interviewing everybody and anyone and everyone that we could get a hold of here and we got some great names for you.
I just want to write down a couple things here real quick.
Let me tell you a little bit about what we've done here.
So yesterday That was really the main purpose of the trip.
I did a live interview at the Capitol in the Rayburn room with Speaker McCarthy.
We did an hour-long interview.
We had a hundred members of our locals community came.
It was great seeing you guys.
We did a little hangout last night, got to drink some tequila with the fine folks in the community.
and share some good words and all that good stuff.
So that was nice.
But we did about an hour interview with Senator McCarthy, and then we took the audience, the hundred people, we broke them down into smaller groups, gave everybody tours of the Capitol.
It was really great.
And as Kevin McCarthy pointed out, and when we post the interview, you'll get to see, the people's house is now open again.
There's no more COVID nonsense.
There's no more lockdown nonsense.
They're letting the people back in and they're actually, and it was very refreshing to see, is some excitement in this town again.
There is a feeling like, oh, maybe the people's business can actually be done.
I thought the chat with him was quite good.
I think you will dig it.
And just to let you know what else we've been doing here, I mean, I'm telling you, I've sat down with anyone and everyone since we've been here.
We had J.D.
Vance this morning, Obviously, Senator from Ohio.
We had Congressman Byron Donalds alongside Congressman Jim Jordan.
They were here together this morning.
As I said, we had Kevin McCarthy yesterday.
We had Lauren Boebert from Colorado yesterday.
Later this afternoon, we have Thomas Massey and Chip Roy.
They'll be joining together.
We had Marjorie Taylor Greene.
We had Matt Gaetz.
We had Dan Crenshaw.
We had Senator Ron Johnson.
Two others that we were supposed to do that unfortunately had to be canceled.
Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee was supposed to be here, but obviously in light of the shooting, she wasn't able to do it.
And then Senator Rand Paul, I don't know if you heard about this, but one of his staffers was stabbed repeatedly the other day here in DC.
So he unfortunately had to cancel as well.
It sounds like it was completely random that it actually was not having anything to do
with the Senator or anything like that.
So that I guess is sort of nice to hear, but in any event, we couldn't get the two of them,
but really a ton of interviews.
And really the driving theme has been something that I've been talking about for a couple months now,
which is that the Republicans are starting to, dare I say, stand up straight with their shoulders back.
They're trying to message this stuff properly, show that they can be the party of competency, and it does seem to be working.
And that Florida blueprint that I'm always talking about does seem to be making its way, even here to the swamp.
So there's definitely some excitement here.
I've thoroughly enjoyed.
It's really been nice to be here.
Believe it or not, I don't leave the Free State of Florida that often, but it's been nice to be here.
Oh!
And speaking of the Free State of Florida, I did forget one congresswoman, Maria Salazar, who is my congresswoman from the Miami area in Florida.
We've never met before.
We just did the interview about 45 minutes ago.
She is an absolute, like, ball of energy and total joy.
It was really great.
To connect with her.
So you know what we're going to do since, just in case the senator gets hung up a little bit, let me go into the first story and then we're going to do everything else with him.
And to Ted Cruz's credit, this doesn't surprise me, but he, you know, basically we said to him, hey, do you need the rundown of the show?
Cause we're going to go through a bunch of stuff.
Some of it involves you, but some of it's just the news of the day.
And he was like, don't worry about it.
Like I'll get there.
You'll play some clips.
We'll make it happen.
So why don't we start with this one, and hopefully he'll just join us while we're in the middle of this one, actually.
Yesterday, there's been a whole bunch of hearings here.
The reason we came this week is because Congress is in session right now.
There are votes happening right now.
One vote that happened, the results were good, but the process is kind of ridiculous, is this parental rights bill, which we talked about a couple days ago.
Basically, every Republican, except for five, voted for it.
Every Democrat, every single Democrat voted against it.
It was for transparency and education, right?
Will you know what your kids are learning?
Will teachers be allowed to talk to them about sex and gender behind their back?
It was sort of an offshoot of Florida's HB 1557, otherwise known, unfortunately, as Don't Say Gay.
Anyway, it did actually pass, even though no Democrats voted for it, and five Republicans, as I said, didn't vote for it as well.
But really think about it.
This is what we're up against right now.
The idea that you will know what your kids are learning at school, that you will be able to review the information and the books that they will be reading and things of that nature.
That is something that every single Democrat voted against.
And then the wizard known as AOC literally called it fascist.
She called the bill fascist, and it's being passed by fascists.
And Hakeem Jeffries, who's the House Minority Leader and Democrat, said that Republicans don't want people to know about the Holocaust.
Like, it's such a level of nonsense.
And one of the things that I've been discussing with all, about a dozen or so, maybe 15 people that I've chatted with since we've been here, has been that very notion, that what do you do when one side is so disconnected from reality?
And one of the interesting things that I've been learning is a lot of them are saying, you know, if you get these people on the DL, They're a little more sane, but they're always playing to the media.
They're playing to the radical base.
And what do we do with that?
That really is the question.
Anyway, let's start with a clip of Ted Cruz.
This is Ted Cruz yesterday talking to Department of Homeland and Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over child sex trafficking on the border.
And this is something else.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
What are these wristbands?
unidentified
I don't know what they are.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
You don't know what they are?
Mr. Secretary, you have just testified to the American people you're incompetent at your job, because I've been to the southern border, and if you go to the southern border, along the southern border, you see thousands of these wristbands, because the illegal immigrants wear them.
The drug cartels, every color corresponds to how many thousands of dollars they owe the cartels.
You've turned these cartels into multi-billion dollar criminal organizations, and these are modern day leg irons.
Because these are children being sold into sex slavery and you don't even know what they are.
That is astonishing.
Mr. Secretary, how many children have been sold into sex slavery under your administration?
unidentified
Senator, we are taking it to the cartels.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
How many children have been sold into sex slavery?
Do you know how many children have been sold into sex slavery?
unidentified
To an unprecedented degree.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Mr. Secretary, I want to say to you right now.
Your behavior is disgraceful and the deaths, the children assaulted, the children raped, they are at your feet and if you had integrity you would resign.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Wow.
You don't see Ted Cruz fired up like that too often.
I mean, Cruz is known for his measured responses.
He's a Harvard-trained lawyer, right?
I mean, the guy I learned was a student of Alan Dershowitz over at Harvard Law.
I mean, he's known for measured takes, explaining things clearly.
I don't know that I've ever seen him that fired up.
I mean, basically what's going on at the border right now is that between the cartels and our inept border security, well, I don't know, inept, are they inept
or are they intentionally sabotaging border security?
You can make a call on that one.
I think the Senator is gonna be walking in in just a moment.
They, there is a business, there is a business now of child sex trafficking.
There is a business of allowing illegals into this country.
And we have a Department of Homeland Security that is doing absolutely nothing about it.
And I see Ted Cruz is here!
He's gonna walk right past the camera.
Are you ready for this, people?
He's getting hooked up.
And I'll have him comment on that, because I've never seen him that fired up.
And we'll see if we can keep that energy going.
But Mayorkas really had nothing to say.
He had absolutely nothing to say.
The end there, where the Senator basically said, you know, you should resign.
That's how bad this situation is.
I don't know that it could be much worse.
All right, the Senator is on his way in.
Senator, you're gonna walk right through the camera.
We are a professional operation here.
It's good to see you, sir.
Good to see you.
We'll just have you put in the earpiece so you're able to hear the other clips in just a moment.
So you can just stick that.
You know how to do that, right?
Oh, yeah.
You're an old pro.
So the clip that we just started, we showed the clip from, was that yesterday with the battle with Mayorkas?
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Yes, yesterday.
unidentified
We'll have one of the guys come on and take care of that for you, yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
This is called live television.
I, sir, have never seen you that fired up.
I mean, have you ever been doing one of these hearings and had sort of that kind of emotion?
I mean, that's not what you're known for.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Look, I mean, I was pissed off.
I was pissed off, A, because I've seen too much of this.
I mean, I spend a lot of time on our southern border.
I've seen too many of these children who've been sexually abused and brutalized.
I've seen the dead bodies on our southern border.
And Mayorkas has such utter contempt that it was infuriating.
He refused to answer even a single question the entire hearing.
I mean, you could ask him what day it was and he wouldn't give you a straight answer.
He was just... He had his talking points.
That's what he was going to say.
And, you know, his crocodile tears, his empty expressions of empathy, I feel for The people who are dying of overdoses?
No you don't.
If you feel for them, you would stop doing what's causing it.
He's the one who's opened up the border.
And the sad reality is the man doesn't give a damn that 100,000 people died of an overdose last year, because if he did, he wouldn't preside over a wide-open border that is turning the drug cartels into multi-billionaires.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
So many of the interviews, and I've done about 12 interviews with congresspeople and senators since I've been here, so many, one of the things that it seems to boil down to are intentions.
Do you believe they are doing this intentionally, or is this complete ineptitude on his behalf, the administration, Biden, etc.?
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
It's 100% intentional.
I wish they were more incompetent.
The problem is they are exceptionally incompetent at dismantling the border.
What the Biden White House has done, it's weird, on every issue they have handed the agenda over to the radical left.
So on immigration, it is the open border zealots who set their immigration policy.
On gender policy, it is the transgender extreme that sets their policy.
On law and order, it is the abolish the police crowd and the George Soros prosecutors that set their agenda.
And it's bizarre because the positions they're embracing are supported by a tiny fraction of Americans.
I mean, 10-15% of Americans support these policies.
I don't know why they've decided to hand their agenda over to the radical left, but if you look at what Mayorkas has done and what Biden has done, this crisis was caused starting the day Biden became president.
He did three decisions that caused it.
Number one, he immediately halted construction of the border wall.
Number two, he reinstated catch and release.
And number three, he pulled out of the incredibly successful remain in Mexico agreement.
That caused this crisis.
Mayorkas views his job not as stopping illegal immigration.
He views his job as making illegal immigration faster and more efficient.
He's trying to have even more illegal immigrants get in here more quickly.
It's not incompetence.
It is, ideologically, he wants every illegal immigrant possible brought into the U.S.
And Dave, the amazing thing is, look, Couple of observations, and I talk a lot about it.
As you know, I do a podcast three times a week, Verdict with Ted Cruz.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
That's how we knew we didn't need to give you the rundown today, because I was like, I think the guy can handle it.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
And actually, look, my pod today is entirely on the Mayorkas hearing.
So I mean, I do a deep dive on this hearing on today's podcast, Verdict.
You should download it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And you're a professional PR guy now too.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
You gotta do that.
The only thing I can't do is I can't read ads online.
The Senate ethics rules won't let me do it.
So Ben Ferguson gets to do all the ads online and I get to sit there and smile.
There you go.
Look, what is interesting about, there are a lot of things that were interesting about that hearing, but one of the things that was most interesting is Mayorkas, when he was getting lit up, and he was clearly in trouble, he turns to Dick Durbin, the Democrat chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and he seeks help.
He says, hey, will you help me out?
Now look, I've served for 11 years with Durbin on Judiciary.
Durbin is smart as hell.
He likes to fight.
He and I have battled a thousand times.
He comes after me.
I come after him.
As chairman, he loves to jump in when a Democrat witness is getting beat up and try to protect him.
And this is the first time I've ever seen it.
Durbin looked at him and was like, wow, didn't say a word.
And I think what's happening is Durbin and the Senate Dems realize, okay, this border is a disaster.
And I think they want nothing to do with it.
What is fascinating is I looked at yesterday.
As a sign that the Democrats are ready to throw Mayorkas overboard.
They're ready to see him get fired and then just scapegoat him.
Oh, it was all Mayorkas.
He's incompetent.
He's terrible.
But the talking points the Senate Democrats had, you know, none of them were actually engaging in the substance of what we were saying.
Instead, they were like, well, this has been a problem long before Biden.
Well, no.
2020, the last year of the Trump presidency, we had the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years.
What we were doing was working.
Biden and Kamala Harris and Mayorkas deliberately unwound that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
So let's show one more clip from the hearing yesterday.
You were not thrilled with his sort of stammering answers.
Here we go.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Has the crisis at our southern border made Americans less safe?
Yes or no?
unidentified
Senator, we are dedicated to the safety and security of individuals.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Has the crisis made Americans less safe?
I don't want a discourse.
It's a yes or no question.
unidentified
Senator, we have a challenge.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
You refuse to answer the question.
Mr. Secretary, let me show you how someone doing his job answers a question in a straightforward manner.
Chief Ortiz.
Is the crisis that is currently ongoing at the southern border making the border less safe for Americans and aliens alike?
Answer, yes.
One word, one syllable, three letters.
That's how someone answers a question and does their job.
You're being a politician, misleading the American people.
Let me give you a chance again.
Will you show the same integrity Chief Ortiz shows?
Is the crisis at the southern border making Americans less safe?
Yes or no?
unidentified
Senator, we have 260,000 people... You refuse to answer the question.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Let's move on.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
What's incredible about this, you sort of referenced it, you know, Biden put up a tweet the other day and obviously he doesn't tweet and they don't let him hold the phone talking about the fentanyl crisis.
Related to the border.
So on one hand, they're acknowledging it's a crisis because they're saying we have a fentanyl crisis.
We know where the fentanyl is coming from, but the guy, he's almost the perfect Democrat in an odd way, right?
Because he can sit there without falling out of his chair and he doesn't say anything.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
So it's like, Oh, look, he's, do you remember back in the Iraq war?
You remember Baghdad, Bob?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Oh yeah.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Saddam Hussein's press secretary that would get up and just say, things are going great.
That's Mayorkas.
Yep, everything is awesome.
We're doing, boy, aren't we doing a good job.
I mean, that's, it is, I don't think I've ever seen a witness who so consistently refuses to answer every single question.
And I guess his handlers have told him, whatever they ask, just repeat your talking points.
And that's what he does.
But it shows contempt.
Look, it's not just contempt for Congress.
He certainly has contempt for Congress.
But ultimately it's contempt for the American people because the reason you have an oversight hearing under a Constitution, under Article 1, Congress has an oversight responsibility for the executive.
And when I'm asking questions, what I'm trying to do, I'm not just asking the questions that pop into my head that seem interesting.
I've got a job, which is to represent 30 million Texans.
The questions I'm asking, Mayorkas, are the questions I'm hearing from Texans.
You know, Texans don't have to struggle with, is this a crisis?
Because they're seeing the misery, they're seeing the suffering, they're seeing the dead bodies, they're seeing the crime, they're seeing the drugs, they're seeing the women who are sexually assaulted.
You know, I'll tell you something that when I was last down at the border, I brought a group of senators to go go see firsthand what was happening.
I've done that a lot.
We go out on midnight patrol with the border patrol.
One of the times there we encountered a dead body floating in the Rio Grande River of someone who drowned.
The last time I was there, the border patrol agent told me about a new phenomenon, and I apologize, this is graphic, but it's something they call rape trees.
And the traffickers are bringing women across the border and in the United States they will violently rape these women.
And then they will take their underwear and hang them in the tree.
And Border Patrol agents will find trees in Texas, find trees in Arizona with 10, 15, 20 pairs of women's underwear as just trophies, but also taunting law enforcement.
You can't do a damn thing about it.
We can do whatever we want.
That is Joe Biden's fault.
That is Mayorkas' fault.
You want to know why I was pissed?
Because when I'm thinking of the atrocities that are happening, And as far as Mayorkas is concerned, those can keep happening and they can escalate.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
I have to say, I think your prediction's probably right.
If they need a sacrificial lamb here, which they probably do before 2024, so that Biden can appear tough on the border, Mayorkas is probably out.
Let's shift, because obviously the big thing over the last few days was the shooting in Nashville.
Here's Corrine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, responding to the event.
karine jean-pierre ▲ ● ▼
In his State of the Union, the President called on Congress to do something.
To stop the epidemic of gun violence tearing families apart, tearing communities apart.
How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
I don't mean to be flip on a topic like this, but I have to roll my eyes when I listen to her.
Immediately, this is about the guns.
Good people with guns do not shoot people, and a good guy with a gun did save the day here.
This is just 101 with these guys, right?
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Look, it's even worse than that.
All Democrats care about with these kind of mass murders is politics.
unidentified
What happened in Nashville is horrific.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Three nine-year-olds are dead.
Three adults are dead.
It was a sick and twisted act of mass murder.
What could have stopped it?
The number one thing that could have stopped it is if there'd been an armed police officer at the school when the killer arrived.
Now last year, I introduced legislation that would double the number of police officers in schools.
$15 billion funding for police officers in schools to double the number of police officers in schools.
It wasn't just public schools.
It was also private schools, parochial schools.
The number one way to keep our kids safe is having armed police officers at the door.
We know this shooter fired through the door, shattered the door with the gun.
If there'd been a police officer there, the shooter could have been taken down before a single child was killed.
Every single Democrat voted against my bill to double the number of police officers on campuses.
By the way, the bill also provided funding to enhance school security to put in things like bulletproof doors, which she couldn't have shot through.
But that, the Democrats blocked.
And I'll tell you, I stood on the Senate floor and I tried to pass my bill.
On the Senate floor and Chris Murphy, the leading advocate of gun control.
I stood up and presented an argument.
This bill had funding for doubling police officers, funding for school safety and security, funding for mental health counselors.
So many of the people who commit these mass murders are twisted young men who have serious mental health issues.
I gave an entire speech laying out the reasons we should support it.
Chris Murphy stood up.
He said two words.
He said, I object.
He didn't even bother to argue against it.
He presented no arguments.
Because here's the Democrats' view.
They don't want to stop these crimes.
If you want to stop these crimes, you'd put cops there to stop these crimes.
What they want to do is they want to disarm you.
They look at this and say, hey, it's an excuse to take Dave Rubin's guns.
They, all they care about, look, they're fundraising.
The left cares about gun control.
They care about disarming law-abiding citizens.
And part of the reason the Democrats can be so contemptuous, to the best of my knowledge, not a single Democrat senator has been asked once by one reporter, hey, why did you vote against doubling the number of police officers on campus?
They know that the corporate press is going to lie for them.
Corrine Jean-Pierre can stand up there and say it's the mean old Republicans.
And you know what?
No one asked.
Well, why did the Democrats in the Senate block funding to double the number of cops on campus and stop this shooter?
And I'm sure you've seen the body cam footage.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
It's incredible, the work that these guys did.
They all deserve it.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
The courage, the heroism, they're going in, they're hearing the shots fired, and they don't run away from the shots, they run towards the shots.
And they take out the killer.
That saved a lot of lives that day.
But if those officers had been there on the front end, they could have taken out the killer before even a single child was killed.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
What do you make of the fact, I suppose it's connected to what you're saying, the end goal of taking the guns, that Democrats and the media refuse to discuss anything related to mental health?
I'm sure you remember this clip.
I think the day after the Uvalde shooting, Joy Reid went on air and said, this person was not mentally ill.
This is about guns.
And it's like, by definition, if you can do something that evil, you are mentally ill.
A sane, mentally healthy person would not do that.
But there's a complete refusal to discuss that, where I know Republicans will at least discuss guns.
They may not, you know, gun rights and that sort of thing.
They may not come to the same conclusions, but they won't even discuss it.
And especially in this case where the person may, will find out, you know, there might be testosterone involved and all of the other medications, et cetera.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Look, this person, and we'll find out the story behind them, but they were clearly deranged.
By definition, anyone that comes into a school and murders a bunch of kids is crazy out of their mind.
They are crazy and they're evil.
And look, in Texas, I have been at too many of these mass shootings.
I've been there in Santa Fe.
Santa Fe High School is about 45 minutes away from my house.
I was home that morning of the shooting.
I drove down there.
I was there within about an hour of the shooting.
I saw the horrors there.
I was there in Sutherland Springs.
The worst church shooting in history.
I was there the day after it happened.
I stood in that sanctuary, that beautiful sanctuary, small church covered in blood, still glass shattered everywhere, cell phones shattered, covered in blood.
That monster stood there executing people.
He shot an 18-month-old baby.
And by the way, he was taken out.
By Stephen Williford, a plumber who lived down the road who grabbed his AR-15, ran down and shot him and saved the lives of the rest of the people in that church.
You know, there's a real similarity between the two topics we've discussed, between immigration and gun control.
On both of those, Democrats never, ever, ever want to discuss the lives they are destroying.
They don't want to talk about the kids Who are being sexually assaulted or being raped or being killed.
They don't want to talk about the human trafficking.
They don't want to talk about the murders.
They don't want to talk about the crimes.
They don't want to talk about the gang members.
The suffering they don't care about.
All that matters is their political objective of open borders because open borders means they believe more Democrat voters.
So all the rest of it doesn't matter.
Same is true in gun control.
Democrats don't want to talk about how do we stop crime.
Listen, I've spent 11 years in the Senate fighting to stop these kind of crimes.
And the way you stop crime is you go after the criminals.
You lock them up.
And for over a decade, the Democrats have passed bill after bill after bill that I've introduced that goes after gun criminals, that locks them up, that puts them in jail, that gets them off the street.
The Democrats don't want to do that.
What they want to do is disarm us.
As look, Dianne Feinstein said, if I could say to Mr. America, Mrs. America, give me your gun, I'd do it.
That's what they want.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Just on a personal note, then I want to jump over to, we could obviously do a ton on this, but I want to talk about the TikTok situation.
On a personal note, you know, having spent time in the Capitol yesterday, you're walking around the hallway with these guys.
You're probably having lunch at the commissary sitting next to some of these people.
It wasn't always like this.
Do you see any way of turning that back a bit?
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
So yes, and I will say some good news.
In the Senate, we actually get along pretty well.
The House, not so much.
My sense is the House, they really hate each other and they're nasty to each other.
I mean, it's genuinely unpleasant.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
At some point, if you keep calling someone a fascist, they start taking it personally.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
You know, the Senate has a different, number one, the Senate's older.
I think the median age is about 106.
So, you know, when you're in a walker, it's hard to be that threatening.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, you're a young buck over there.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Oh, they think I'm in short shorts and like, you know, wearing a beanie.
It's also the case the Senate, you have six-year terms.
Everyone in the Senate understands I'm going to be working with these people for a long time.
There are only a hundred of us.
And the person you're fighting today, tomorrow you may need to work with on a different matter.
And so that dynamic in the Senate, we battle like crazy, but they're actually a bunch of Democrats I get along really well with.
I'm friends with Cory Booker.
I'm friends with Kirsten Gillibrand.
I'm friends with Amy Klobuchar.
Actually, interestingly enough, the three of them in the 2020 Democrat presidential primary, all three of them ran and all three used the same joke.
On the trail, they said, Heck, I even work with Ted Cruz.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Even Ted Cruz.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Look, that is a laugh line.
If you want to run for president as a Democrat, that consistently got laugh lines.
Raphael Warnock, the very liberal Democrat from Georgia, he ran millions of dollars of TV ads in Georgia in his re-elect, talking about a bill that I authored, the Cruz-Warnock bill.
To build I-14, an interstate highway, from the Permian Basin in Texas all the way across southeast U.S., through to Georgia, through to the Atlantic.
And, I mean, he leaned in hard of, look, Cruz and I worked together, we got this done.
That does help in the Senate, that you could battle Really hard, but you try not to make it personal.
You try to have the substance be the area of disagreement rather than personal attacks.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
And then we'll move on.
Is the possible solution to that, instead of these two-year terms where you're just endlessly running, that you maybe make them, let's say, four-year, but then you're capped at two, two terms, and then you gotta go, something like that?
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Look, I think that would help, and I'm a big believer in term limits.
I am the author of a term limits constitutional amendment that would cap House members at three terms, Senate members at two terms.
I think term limits would be a game changer.
More than two-thirds of the American people support term limits.
It's upwards of 80 percent.
What's amazing is that it's more than two-thirds of Republicans, more than two-thirds of Independents, more than two-thirds of Democrats support term limits.
The one group that doesn't is career politicians in Washington.
All of the Democrats oppose it.
I've been trying to get even one Democrat senator.
All the Democrats running for president in 2020.
I was like, look, couldn't one of you break from the herd and say you're for term limits?
Your voters all support them.
But Democrats are collectivists.
They are comfortable with centralized power.
They follow orders.
I have conversations all the time where I tell Democrats, it's not that hard to stand up to your leadership.
I tell Democrats, I can't do this.
Schumer wouldn't let me.
And I start laughing.
I'm like, OK, I don't ask Mitch McConnell before I do things.
And the idea that he thinks he could tell me he wouldn't even try because he knows it wouldn't work.
Look, I think term limits would make a big difference.
I also think We're at a really fraught time in politics.
You and I have talked about this before, where we're so polarized, we're so tribalized.
I don't like that we don't talk to each other anymore.
That the left listens to left-wing news, the right listens to right-wing news, and you demonize and attack anyone who disagrees.
And if someone disagrees, you unfriend them, you block them on social media.
So everyone's in their own echo chamber.
It's a terrible situation.
Look, it's one of the things you do with your podcast.
It's one of the things I try to do with my podcast.
I try to talk to people.
unidentified
You know, we've taken our podcast... Try is the key word, because it's getting harder.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
It is, but let me give you a moment of encouragement.
So we've taken the podcast, Verdict.
On the road, we do campus tours.
We've gone to a bunch of left-wing campuses.
We were at Yale University.
We had six, seven hundred people come out to see the podcast live.
And I'd say about a third of the people who came were left of center.
I know this because it was right after Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed.
And I mentioned it, about two hundred people began applauding.
And I said to them, I said, Hey, thank you.
I am really, really glad you're here because we're not going to make it as a country if we can't talk to each other.
And if we can't have a real conversation, there were several transgender students there who I didn't know if they'd stand up and scream and have a protest and they didn't.
And we had, it's almost all Q and A and we have a policy, which you'll appreciate, which is if you have a hostile question, if you have an antagonistic question, come to the front.
And, look, occasionally we had, at University of Wisconsin-Madison, we had one leftist who, like, stood up and said, F you!
And, you know, he had this frizz on of power, then he ran out the back door.
And I said, well, thank you for bringing civil discourse to this conversation.
Like, he just... But what was interesting...
We spent 90 minutes at Yale.
Afterwards, I had drinks with an Orthodox rabbi on campus.
And he told me, he said, Ted, that was the single largest group of students that I have seen have a civil, constructive, meaningful conversation on conservative ideas, he said, in 20 years.
He said, this doesn't happen at Yale.
I think there's a hunger out there for it.
And I think what you're doing is important.
I think We've got to learn to talk to each other with a smile, not being jackasses, but actually talking about substance, and I think people want that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Well, now I'm going to ask you a favor while we're live, which is that we came down here, we requested interviews from about 20 Republicans.
Basically every single person said yes.
The only person who couldn't do it was Mitch McConnell.
He's obviously got a, he fell.
So, okay, fine.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, no, he hadn't been at work in the last couple of weeks.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Not one Democrat said yes.
So I'm going to ask you to connect us with Cory Booker.
And who'd you say Klobuchar and the other one?
And let's see, let's see.
And I would treat them exactly as I treat you, even though they would know I disagree.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
So, but they're not going to say yes.
And the bizarre thing is, look, you look at sexual orientation politics, as far as the Democrats are concerned, you're not gay.
I'm not Hispanic.
Clarence Thomas is not black.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
I'm only gay starting at 10 p.m.
usually.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Well, look, I mean, the bizarre thing is their definition, they claim to care about all these categories of people, but they don't actually.
They care only as long as you obey Their orthodoxy, you obey their dogma, you stand up and say, if you dare disagree, and the irony is they get much more angry at what they view uppity minorities.
unidentified
Yeah.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
For me to dare, Jorge Ramos on air called me a traitor to my race.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Yeah, we covered it.
We covered it.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
You know, they get, you look at the contempt that is visited on Clarence Thomas.
Contrast it to Antonin Scalia.
Now, Antonin Scalia, I knew Justice Scalia well.
He was brilliant.
He was incredibly conservative.
Look, they didn't like Scalia, but they didn't loathe him.
Thomas, I mean, you saw in magazine covers painting him as an Uncle Tom licking Scalia's shoes.
They loathe him because he's a traitor.
He's not supposed to dare disagree.
And if you're gay, you're supposed to be a leftist, socialist, authoritarian.
And if you're not, they get very angry.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
It really is as simple as that.
It's kind of unfortunate, Senator.
I know you got a crazy day.
I appreciate you swinging by.
We'll do this again.
Whether I can get Klobuchar to sit down, I'm not so sure, but I think I can get Cruz again.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Absolutely.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼
Good seeing you, my friend.
ted cruz ▲ ● ▼
Thank you, man.
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