BONUS: Obama Admin Caught in a Bombshell LIE about the Russia Hoax plus ALL THE WINS in the One Big Beautiful Bill
BONUS: In this episode of Verdict with Ted Cruz: Tulsi Gabbard’s Allegations Against the Obama Administration Gabbard released a report alleging that President Obama and senior intelligence officials knowingly fabricated the Russia-Trump collusion narrative. Claims include deliberate misinformation, suppression of contrary intelligence, and coordination with media to undermine Donald Trump’s presidency. Specific officials named: James Clapper, Susan Rice, John Kerry, Andrew McCabe. Legal implications discussed, citing potential violations of federal statutes on perjury and false statements. 2. Promotion of Crockett Coffee A segment promoting a conservative-aligned coffee brand started by Clay Travis and Buck Sexton. Emphasis on supporting businesses that align with conservative values. Includes a discount code and mention of charitable contributions to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. 3. The “One Big Beautiful Bill” Signed by President Trump Described as the most conservative legislative victory in U.S. history. 12 major provisions highlighted: Stopping a $4 trillion tax increase New tax cuts (no tax on tips, overtime, Social Security) $150 billion for border security $13.5 billion to repay states like Texas for border efforts $150 billion for military modernization $24 billion for Coast Guard upgrades Spectrum auction for telecom innovation and revenue $12.5 billion for air traffic control modernization $10 billion for NASA’s Moon and Mars missions Zeroing out CAFE fuel efficiency standards Federal school choice program with tax credits “Trump Accounts” for newborns—investment accounts seeded with $1,000 Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson and the Ben Ferguson Show Podcast Wherever You get You're Podcasts. Thanks for Listening Be sure to follow and subscribe to Verdict with Ted Cruz wherever you get your podcasts. And don’t forget to follow the show on social media so you never miss a moment! YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshow See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, Senator.
It's a big week out of Washington, D.C. You were there for a lot of it.
Tulsi Gabbard coming out and making it pretty clear.
She believes that there are people in and around the president of the United States of America at the time, Barack Obama, who may have deliberately and purposely perpetrated a hoax against Donald Trump.
People are even using the word treason at this point, and criminal referrals are actually being talked about.
Well, Tulsi Gabbard this week released a bombshell.
She released evidence that Barack Obama and his senior intelligence team deliberately lied to the American people.
They knew they lied, and they did so to undermine the incoming Trump administration, the incoming president who had just been elected in 2016.
And the bombshell, we're going to break it down for you.
She laid out chapter and verse.
She brought the receipts how for months the Obama intelligence community had assessed Russia was not trying to interfere with the election, was not trying to elect Donald Trump, which is, of course, exactly the opposite of what they spent the next four years telling the American people.
We're going to break down exactly what she laid out and what it means and what the criminal liability is, who's going to be held accountable and what to expect next.
We're also going to do something that is really important, which is break down the details of the one big beautiful bill.
It is signed into law.
President Trump signed it on the 4th of July.
We're going to tell you the major conservative victories that were in that bill.
It had, without exaggeration, more major conservative victories in that bill than any piece of legislation that has ever passed into law in the history of our country.
We're going to explain it all to you.
Yeah, it's really incredible.
We're going to have that for you in a minute.
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All right, so let's go to the bombshell center.
Uh I was in DC when this happened, and everyone was talking about the report that was released showing how the Obama administration administration in essence perpetrated the Russian hoax on Donald Trump to undermine his presidency, but also to really get him out of the White House.
Well, that's right, and it's important to understand what is new about this.
Listen, everyone has known for some time that the Obama team pushed the Russia-Russia-Russia hoax.
We've known that that's been well established.
What is new, what Tulsi Gabbard put out this week, is that they knew they were lying when they did that because the intelligence had been precisely the opposite.
And what I want to do is I want to walk through a little bit of this Timeline and give you the specific facts.
So, August 31st of 2016.
A DHS official tells former DNI director James Clapper that there was, quote, no indication of a Russian threat to directly manipulate the actual vote count.
That's in August of 2016.
Then September 2nd, 2016.
The FBI said it was, quote, uncomfortable, implying that there was definitive information that Russia intended to disrupt our elections.
Then on September 9th, 2016, quote, the intelligence community concluded that Russia was probably not trying to influence the election by using cyber means to target election infrastructure.
That continued, so that was not just through August and September of 2016, but it continued after the election.
The election happens in November of six of 2016.
On December 7th, 2016.
Here are the talking points that DI Director Clapper had prepared for him.
Quote, foreign adversaries did not use cyber attacks on election infrastructure to alter the U.S. presidential election outcome.
The next day, December 8th, Barack Obama's presidential daily brief read as follows, quote, we assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent U.S. election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.
That's an important point there, by the way.
That's what Barack Obama was briefed on December 8th.
And then December 9th, 2016, everything changed.
On December 9th, DI Director Clapper, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Deputy FBI Director McCabe, they all met in person.
And in that meeting, they reversed course entirely, 180 degrees.
They that they flipped and they agreed to recommend sanctioning members of the Russian military intelligence because of the Russia hoax.
They tasked the intelligence community with creating an assessment of the tools Moscow used to influence the 2016 election.
And that same day, deep state officials in the intelligence community began leaking false intelligence to the Washington Post.
This was a decision they made to lie to the American people.
And that's the new deliberately and orchestrated and well planned out.
This wasn't just a random let's go out there and lie at a press briefing.
This was a plan like writing a movie script of how you were going to lie to the American people and use the intelligence agencies to do it.
And what Tulsi Gabbard has now given us the receipts on is they knew they were lying.
That for months and months and months, the intelligence community had been reporting exactly the opposite.
So when they made this decision, it was a political determination.
It was a political determination because they hated Donald Trump, and it was a political determination because they were furious with the American people for electing Donald Trump president.
And this was an attempt to subvert democracy, and this was an attempt to overthrow the then newly elected president of the United States.
And and what is what is brazen about it is that they did it all of the intelligence that for months and months and months had been reported, it suddenly magically disappeared.
They didn't acknowledge it.
They simply, those facts were no longer operative.
They had a political agenda, facts be damned, and they were willing to lie to the American people and they were willing to lie to Congress.
Yeah, when you think about changing the papers, is is the way it was described in the White House press briefing, where it was like the report says one plus one equals two, and they're like, no, no, we're going to change that to equal seven.
They knew they were doing this to hurt the president, and in essence, a coup attempt.
It wasn't even one plus one equals seven.
It's one plus one equals cucumber.
Yeah.
I mean, great point.
And this is what happens when you have a rogue deep state, which goes back to what the president said.
He believed this was what had happened to him, and they said it was crazy when it happened.
Senator, I want to go back into what Tulsi Gabbard said when She went it to the White House, White House press briefing room, and she opened it up as she was introduced by the White House press secretary.
And here's what she had to say.
The stunning revelations that we are releasing today should be of concern to every American.
This is not about Democrats or Republicans.
This has to do with the integrity of our Democratic Republic and American voters having faith that the votes cast will count.
There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence community assessment that they knew was false.
They knew it would promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help President Trump win, selling it to the American people as though it were true.
It wasn't.
The report that we released today shows in great detail how they carried this out.
They manufactured findings from shoddy sources.
They suppressed evidence and credible intelligence that disproved their false claims.
They disobeyed traditional trade craft, intelligence community standards, and withheld the truth from the American people.
In doing so, they conspired to subvert the will of the American people who elected Donald Trump in that election in November of 2016.
They worked with their partners in the media to promote this lie, ultimately to undermine the legitimacy of President Trump, and launching what would be a years-long coup against him and his administration.
A years-long coup against him and his administration orchestrated with the deep state and the media.
She's indict all of them, saying they knew this was a lie.
She is, and and I will say, as she rightly pointed out, the evidence she put out shows number one, it was false that Russia was trying to interfere with the election, but number two, a second predicate of their lie is that Russia was trying to interfere to benefit Donald Trump.
That was a critical Democrat partisan lie.
And one of the pieces that she put out is that the Obama intelligence community assessed that Russia had in its possession damaging information about Hillary Clinton, uh, including DNC communication.
So this is the Democrat National Committee communicating, saying that Clinton was suffering from, quote, intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.
And by the way, that's really weird.
Well, if you've been around Hillary Clinton and cheerfulness.
If you've been around Hillary Clinton, she's not exactly the most cheerful person.
So that would be a red flag.
And what it what the DNC communications further indicated was that Clinton was placed on a daily regimen of quote heavy tranquilizers.
And while be afraid of losing, she remained, quote, obsessed with a thirst for power.
Now, I don't know if if this supposed Russian intelligence is accurate or not.
Tulsi Gabbard released it and said that the Obama intelligence community assessed that Russia had this, and here's the critical part.
Russia didn't release it.
It clearly would have been damaging to Hillary Clinton.
If they wanted Donald Trump to win, they would have put it out, presumably in October of 2016.
They didn't.
That's yet another element of the lie.
Yeah, it's it's a huge element of the lie.
So the question now becomes this where we go from here, and it seems to be moving actually very fast.
Great example of that is the Attorney General Pam Bondy, we're now being told, is forming a strike force to quote investigate disclosures from the office of the Director of National Intelligence, that would be Tulsi Gabbard, that raises allegations.
The Obama administration, quote, manufactured an intelligence assessment in 2017, promoting the Russian hoax collusion, saying, quote, the Department of Justice announcing the formation of the strike force on Wednesday.
The strike force will assess the evidence publicized by the DNI director and investigate any potential, quote, next level steps which might stem from DNI Gabbard's disclosures that's coming from the release.
And Bondi called the disclosures from Gabbard's office, quote, troubling in the statement.
Well, I'm very glad that the Trump Department of Justice is investigating this.
Tulsi Gabbard made a criminal referral to the Department of Justice and Pam Bondy launched the strike force.
and many people are asking quite reasonably.
Is anyone going to be held accountable for this?
Because it seems so frustrating to have people breaking the law over and over and over again and nobody being prosecuted, nobody going to jail.
I very much hope people are held accountable.
I hope that the Trump Department of Justice is able to prosecute and prove if there is criminal conduct that they're able to prove it and get convictions and people are held accountable.
And I'll tell you, the people who are most likely to face criminal liability are those senior members of the Obama intelligence community, those people that were in the December 9th meeting where they decided to deliberately lie to the American people.
Those names, by the way.
And in particular, so so those names.
You're talking about James Clapper, is one example.
We're talking about the biggest names there.
Yes, I'm talking about James Clapper.
I'm talking about Susan Rice.
I'm talking about John Kerry, and I'm talking about uh deputy FBI Director McCabe.
Wow.
Those were the ones.
And and in particular, also it is the senior officials who testified, falsely testified before Congress, and lied and knew they were lying.
And there are two relevant federal criminal statutes that are most relevant.
Number one is 18 USC section 1621, and that is perjury.
Whoever having taken an oath willfully states any material matter which he does not believe to be true is guilty of perjury.
That this applies to sworn congressional testimony.
And secondly, 18 USC section 1001.
Whoever knowingly and willfully makes any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive legislative or judicial branch shall be fined or in prison.
Both of these, you you've got in particular two different testimonies that are really problematic.
Number one, on May 8th, 2017, James Clapper testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the Russia collusion and what he said, according to what's been released by Tulsey Gabbard, he knew was false.
He said in particular, quote, Russia's influence activities in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election constituted the high watermark of their long-running efforts.
They must be congratulating themselves.
This episode is a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundations of our democratic system.
And then in November of 2020, Andrew McCabe testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He lied as well.
And I will say for the statute of limitations, if it was materially uh covered up, it is extended.
That's the this is the most likely area you'll find criminal liability.
It is time for us to take a moment to give you real information about the big beautiful bill.
Much of what was in it that's going to affect you and your family in a positive way.
Share this, uh, our top twelve list of things in this bill.
Share it wherever you can on social media.
Take a listen.
You can watch CNN all day long.
God help you if you do, your eyes will bleed, you will go insane and run around in circles, but you could watch it all day long and you will not get this information that you're getting right near now on verdict.
Twelve victories that are in the one big beautiful bill.
Victory number one.
We have stopped a four trillion dollar tax increase.
If we did nothing on December 31st, the Trump tax cuts would disappear, and every American taxpayer, your taxes would go up trillion dollars.
Every taxpayer, and by the way, the Democrats wanted your taxes to go up to stop a four trillion dollar tax increase is a massive victory.
That's victory one in the one big beautiful bill.
Victory two, we enacted new tax cuts.
No tax on tips.
Yep.
That's my legislation.
I drafted it.
It is in this bill.
That means if you're a waiter or waitress, if you're a bartender, if you're a barber or a hairstylist, if you work in a nail salon, if you're a taxicab driver or an Uber driver, millions of Americans rely on tips.
We're providing real and meaningful tax relief to working Americans.
That's in there.
No tax on overtime is in there, no tax on Social Security is in there.
All three of those were President Trump's campaign promises.
We delivered on all three of those, and working Americans all across Texas and all across this country will see the benefits of those major tax cuts.
That's huge.
I mean, it's just huge.
When you think about that and you think about the promise and how it was, you know, you look at the president.
I go back to the campaign.
Yeah.
And he came out and he was in Vegas and he was like, hey, uh we shouldn't be taxing people, they're working their tails off and the tips and everything else.
And then the left actually came out and immediately started attacking him for the saying it'll never happen.
This is not a good idea.
They did say it'll never happen.
They said it's an empty promise.
Yep.
By the way, I've told the story of where he came up with the idea of no tax on tips.
He was the day of his Vegas rally.
He was having lunch in Vegas.
He said there was a waitress who came up to him and was serving him lunch, and and Trump being Trump, he told us he said, She was beautiful.
I'm telling you, she was beautiful.
And and she he said she was saying how stressful it was to pay taxes on tips and how complicated it was.
And he said he just put on a piece of paper and he wrote on the piece of paper, no tax on tips.
He said, What do you think?
She says, That sounds great.
And he said, I had a rally that afternoon.
So I went out to the rally, and I said, All right, let's try it out.
And he said, No tax on tips.
Place went nuts.
It went nuts.
And it's a cheap town.
I mean, it is.
People make it.
They rely on it as their in game.
Yes, and and and so I saw it and I said, This is political genius, and I immediately drafted the legislation to make it happen.
That is part of one big beautiful bill.
Victory three.
Securing the border.
We mentioned what the president has done by enforcing the law.
What we put in one big, beautiful bill is $150 billion to secure the border.
It is the largest investment in border security in the history of America.
It will build the wall.
It will complete the wall.
We will hire more border patrol agents.
We will hire more ICE agents.
We will build more detention facilities.
We will have more detention beds, and we will employ technology, infrared, drones, helicopters.
It is, as I said, the biggest investment ever to secure the border.
That is in the bill.
One of the things that you mentioned there was technology.
It is amazing to see how far behind we've been on technology and how we didn't have the funding for the technology that we knew we needed.
That was clearly done on purpose by the prior administration, because if you don't have the technology, then you're behind.
The cartels are ahead, the human traffickers are ahead, the people are ahead of you.
They held us back on purpose to again open the border.
Yes.
So we've been playing catch up, and that's why this money was so important to this bill.
There's another strategic victory, which is every spending bill the Democrats hold border spending and military spending hostage.
Yep.
What we've done is funded the things that are critical to keeping this country safe, which means the Democrats can't hold it hostage anymore.
So it has there's a tactical advantage going forward on the next budget battle because this 150 billion dollars we have appropriated it.
It is going out the door, and there's not a damn thing Chuck Schumer or AOC can do to stop it.
That is valuable.
On the psyche aspect of it, because I do think this is one of the things that is I'm witnessing a change.
Our border patrol agents, whether it's Department of Home Security, ICE, their mentality right now has got to be on a high.
It is like a drowning man about to die, given a life preserver, lifted out, saved.
They are able to do their jobs, they're locking up the bigger.
They're fired up.
They're human traffickers, they're stopping drug traffickers.
Every time I see a border patrol agents or an ICE agent, to be honest, half the time we just hug.
I mean, the level of they're just like, thank God.
We give you your job.
Victory number four, repaying the states for border security.
$13.5 billion, over $10 billion go into Texas.
Texas taxpayers spent over $10 billion to secure the border because Joe Biden and the Democrats uh refused to do so.
I helped lead the charge to repay the states.
That is in there.
That means Texas is getting over $10 billion paid back.
That's a huge victory, victory number four.
Victory number five.
Rebuilding the military.
Over a hundred and fifty billion dollars to support our soldiers, our sailors, our airmen, our marines, to build new submarines, to build build new next generation fighter jets, to to improve our ability to to to stand up to China, to stand up to our enemies, to combat hypersonics, the next generation of warfare.
Look, with the military, often you're fighting the last war.
We're going forward, we're gonna face 10,000 drone swarms using AI.
Investing 150 billion dollars to make sure we can defend this nation.
There's no responsibility the federal government has that is more important.
And by the way, this is the money the Democrats always hold hostage, so we funded it right now.
They can't, they can no longer touch this hostage because this is done.
Huge.
Victory number six.
The Coast Guard.
Now, this is something I'm particularly proud of because, as you know, I'm the chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
Yep.
The Coast Guard is in our jurisdiction.
So I wrote the Coast Guard provision.
Twenty-four billion dollars for the Coast Guard.
This is the single largest investment in the Coast Guard in the history of the United States of America.
To give you a sense of the scope of the order of magnitude, the annual budget of the Coast Guard is about 12 billion dollars.
We're spending about 200% of the annual budget on the Coast Guard in investments.
And what are we doing?
We're buying new ships, we're buying new new helicopters, we're buying new physical infrastructure, and critically we're investing in ice cutters and polar ice cutters and Arctic ice cutters.
Right now, China is kicking our ass in the Arctic.
And the Arctic is critical for national security.
Any war ICBMs are going to come over the Arctic.
The Arctic is now, you've got the United States of the Arctic, you've got China playing on the Arctic, you've you you've got Russia playing on the Arctic, and we are losing.
This funding will enable us not only to compete to win, and by the way, a huge theme of everything I do in Congress is beat China, beat China, beat China.
This investment in the Coast Guard is to beat China and the Arctic.
But let me tell you a huge America first benefit for this, which is shipbuilding in America has almost entirely disappeared.
Yeah.
And that's scary from national security standpoint.
It is very scary, but this Coast Guard bill will bring shipbuilding back to America.
You look at Galveston, Texas.
Yeah there's a huge multi-billion dollar shipyard that is that is being built and expanded right now to build these ice cutters.
And the problem previously is if you're a private company, you couldn't make the multi-billion dollar investment because you didn't know where demand was going to come from.
Because we have $24 billion appropriated, there is a multi-year stream of buy orders coming from the Coast Guard for these ice cutters.
That is going to bring back thousands of jobs, good American jobs, right here building ships to keep America safe.
That is in the bill.
I'll tell you when I when I was in the Hill Country, when I was with the Coast Guardsmen who were rescuing Texans from the floods, every every single Coastie, every one of them, every man and woman knew exactly about this investment in the Coast Guard.
They knew it was the biggest in history, and every one of them said, thank you.
This will make a massive difference in our ability to do it.
I've got a good friend of the Coast Guard, and he said to me the other day about this.
He said, you know, the Coast Guard, he's been in for 20 plus years.
He said, We've always gotten the hammy downs.
We get the leftover equipment and the old equipment.
That's a lot of their equipment literally come from surplus from military and other things.
He said, This is the first time that we are now like on the cutting edge on our own because of what you just described.
He said not only is morale gone through the roof, we're no longer like the forgotten agency, like we're kind of like, oh, the fifth wheel of military and government.
He's like, now we matter, and it matters for national security as he described it, and I think that's a great point.
That is absolutely right.
And by the way, the Coast Guard also does drug interdiction, it does border security.
Exactly.
The Coast Guard is critical for securing our border, and so this investment, having those Coast Guard cutters to stop drug traffickers, stop human traffickers, and also to engage in search and rescue, which is hugely important.
Um that investment, something I care deeply about, and and by the way, we're at number six.
I told you I'm gonna give you twelve major conservative victories in the one big beautiful bill.
We're at six.
I actually want listeners to pause for a second.
How many of you could list the first six before this podcast?
And I just want to make the point.
What kind of job does the corporate media do?
I'm willing to bet virtually none of our listeners could have listed those first six because the news hasn't covered it, and it's why we do this podcast to give you information so that when you're talking to your friends and your colleagues, you will know what's being accomplished.
There's a reason President Trump is so excited about this one big beautiful bill, because it is massive, massive victories for America.
Number seven.
Number seven, spectrum.
Now, spectrum, What is spectrum?
Electromagnetic spectrum.
It is how we communicate.
It's how our cell phones work.
It's how Wi-Fi works.
It's how satellites work.
It's how streaming works.
It's all of electronics.
Spectrum, the largest holder of spectrum is the United States government.
The United States government has vast swaths of spectrum.
And under Joe Biden, the United States government stopped making new spectrum available to the private sector.
They ended auction authority.
It was grotesquely irresponsible.
It did massive damage to America.
It destroyed jobs in America, and it let China get ahead of America.
In this bill, I wrote the legislation that directs the federal government to auction to the private sector 800 megahertz of spectrum for private sector investment.
What does that mean?
Number one, that will generate in excess of 100 billion dollars of revenue to the federal government.
Wow.
Real money.
Now, even in government terms, 100 billion dollars is real money.
And listen, you and I are deeply concerned about the deficit in the debt.
The entire commerce title that I wrote that had historic investments in Coast Guard and a bunch of other things.
I ended up saving over 40 billion dollars, reducing the deficit in the debt by over 40 billion dollars.
And the driver was because of Spectrum Auction Authority.
We brought in, we will bring in a hundred billion dollars to pay down the debt.
That's real money, but it's not the biggest piece of this.
The biggest piece of this is by auctioning the spectrum off.
We will open up billions and billions of dollars of private sector investment.
The companies that buy this spectrum are going to invest.
It is going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
That is not an exaggeration.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs.
And you know what spectrum is all about?
Beating China to 6G.
I mentioned my consistent theme: beat China.
Beat China in the Arctic with the Coast Guard, beat China to 6G with Spectrum.
And I got to tell you, three months ago, there was nobody in Washington who thought we could get this done.
I sat in the office of the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a good friend of mine.
I said, Mike, we're going to do Spectrum on the one big beautiful bill.
And Mike laughed in my face.
He's a good friend, but he's like, there's no way.
He said there's no chance because the Department of Defense and the CIA will fight you.
They will stop you.
You cannot get it done.
We not only got it done when I cut the deal and got it in the bill.
President Trump called me the next morning.
He said, Ted, this is incredible.
This is like, how did you get such an incredible deal?
Historic Spectrum Auction Authority producing hundreds of thousands of jobs and beating China to 6G.
That's in the bill.
Number eight.
Air traffic control.
This bill invests $12.5 billion modernizing our air traffic control to keep your family safer when you fly, to keep my family safer when we fly, to stop using outdated radars, to stop using computers that have floppy disks and little stuff wire, copper wire to modernize our air traffic control, a massive investment in keeping the American public safe.
This bill, I wrote that portion.
That is also in the commerce title, so I wrote that portion that will fund and improve air traffic control, a huge victory.
Number nine, space.
Yep.
This bill has 10 billion dollars for NASA to go to the moon for the Artemis program, for the gateway program to beat China to the moon.
China has said they intend to return to the moon by 2030.
In my view, if we lose the moon to China, it would be a catastrophic loss.
It would be a loss if we woke up at a few years and China was on the moon and China established a base on the moon, which is what they said they intend to do with the Russians.
And they made that very clear.
That is the sole intent of going.
It's not just to go to the moon, it's to have a base on the moon.
Yes.
If they did that and we lost, I think it would be worse than Sputnik.
That it would be a national body blow that would crush this country.
And look, the moon is critical.
Number one for national security.
The moon is the high ground.
You look at so much of our national security and so much of our commerce depends on satellites in orbit around Around the earth.
The moon gives you the high ground.
It is very dangerous for us to cede that to China.
It is unacceptable for us to cede that to China.
But number two, there are massive rare earth minerals on the moon.
There are enormous economic advantages.
It is current U.S. law that it is the policy of the American government to have a sustained human habitation either on the lunar surface or in cis lunar orbit.
This investment in beating China to the moon.
And by the way, the moon is a stepping stone to Mars.
We will go to Mars, but we haven't landed on a celestial body in over 50 years.
So we're going to land on the moon first to make sure we know how to do it, and then we're going to go to Mars.
This investment, I wrote this investment in there.
I will say there was significant resistance.
And without getting too much into the sausage making, we won against the resistance.
This is in there.
It is a massive investment.
And China is going to notice this as well, yeah.
That is exactly right.
That's number nine.
Number 10.
Cafe standards.
The standards that mandate you keep having to have higher and higher fuel efficiency on your cars.
That's what the Biden administration has used as its tool, as one of its tools, to wage the war on the internal combustion engine to try to force every car to be electric.
As they keep jacking up cafe standards higher and higher and higher.
What does that mean?
Number one, it drives up the cost of your cars.
You notice cars have gotten a lot more expensive.
Trucks have gotten a lot more expensive.
Number two, it makes cars less safe.
Because one of the ways you get the gas efficiency higher is you replace metal with plastics.
You get a lighter.
Cheap plastic that crumbles in a crash and more people die.
In the commerce section of the one beautiful big beautiful bill, you know what we did to CAFE standards?
What was that?
Zeroed them out.
Really?
They're gone.
So it's actually, and this is so you're telling me that my car, instead of being all plastic, we have a little fingerprint and everything breaks.
They could actually go back and say, hey, we're not trying to save weight here.
We're trying to actually make safe cars again.
It can be a great American car again, made of steel, tough as hell.
And by the way, you want to buy an electric car, great.
That's your choice.
You want to buy a hybrid, great.
You want to buy a gas car, great.
It ought to be consumers choosing.
And actually, the way we did this, we very much modeled how in 2017 we repealed the individual mandate on Obamacare.
So that was a fight I led in 2017.
The individual mandate.
The way we eliminated it is under the rules of reconciliation, we could not eliminate the legal mandate to buy health insurance, which was the individual mandate on under Obamacare.
So you know what we did?
We made the penalty zero.
So you used to be the IRS fines you.
If you didn't buy health insurance, the IRS would fine you.
It is still the law.
You're required to buy health insurance.
If you don't, you will be fined $0.00 and zero cents.
We did the same thing to CAFE standards.
So they can put their standards out.
Yeah.
But the penalty for violating it is zero.
And I want to mention, look, this is again, like PBS and NPR, this has been a conservative battle for 50 years.
And Democrats have been winning for 50 years, unfortunately.
And we got this done.
I wrote this portion.
It is in the bill.
It is zeroed out, and we got this done, and I'm willing to bet fewer than one percent of our listeners even knew we had done it because we won so many victories that this falls all the way down to number 10 on the list.
Incredible.
Well done.
The final two.
Yep.
The final two, as you know, are very near and dear to my heart.
Number 11 is school choice.
In this bill, we pass the single largest and most consequential federal school choice bill in the history of our country.
I wrote this provision.
Every single American taxpayer can now contribute up to $1,700 a year to a scholarship granting organization in the States and get a dollar-for-dollar credit on their taxes.
It means the money is free.
The effect of this is going to be tens of billions of new scholarship money in the states for school choice for K through 12 school choice.
We're going to do a subsequent pod that does a really deep dive because this is part of your legacy, by the way.
This is going to be part of your legacy.
This is the issue I care more about than anything else.
I have spent 30 years fighting for it.
And we're going to do another pod where we do a very deep dive because there's some aspects Of this that I want the listeners to appreciate that are both incredible policy victories, but also massive political victories.
We are creating incentives to turn blue states red to build constituencies of parents and kids who want fantastic education.
This is, I told the president, if and when we get this done, you will go down in history as one of the greatest civil rights presidents in our nation's history.
Your critics will never acknowledge that.
Yeah.
But the reality will be you're going to change poor communities.
The reality is the school choice provision is massive, and it's in the bill.
And then the final number 12 are the Trump accounts, the Invest America accounts.
Again, I wrote this provision.
This could fundamentally change this country, by the way.
Starting next year, July 4th of next year, the 250th anniversary of the United States of America.
Every child in America will have a personal investment account.
Every newborn child will have it seated with $1,000.
Parents, family, employers can contribute up to $5,000 a year in a tax advantage account.
All of that money is invested in the S P 500, is invested in the stock market.
That enables every kid to enjoy the incredible benefits of compound growth, which will transform our kids.
The wealth creation for the next generation of Americans will be utterly transformative.
And not only that, this creates a new generation of capitalists as our kids will all be owners of the largest employers in America.
These two victories, school choice and personal investment accounts for kids, without exaggeration, Ben, and I've told the president this.
I think 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now, these will be the two things everyone remembers from this bill.
Everything else I listed, one through ten, which are massive.
Yeah.
They are conservative victories for the generations.
I think 11 and 12 will dwarf one and ten.
Because the difference we will see trillions of dollars invested in 401ks for kids in these Trump accounts that will change the future of every one of our kids and make them all have skin in the game in our capitalist society.
And school choice is going to literally provide hope and opportunity to millions of kids.
We got both of them done.
Those are victories, generational victories.
And when the president signed it on July 4th, they were victories for all of America.
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