Senator Ted Cruz joined me today:

Audio:

02-27hhs-cruz

Transcript:

HH: If you’re not listening to The Verdict with Ted Cruz and his co-host, Ben Ferguson, you’re missing probably the most popular podcast in the conservative world. Good afternoon, Senator Cruz. I moved to the afternoons. It’s different for me now. How are you?

TC: I’m doing great. How are you doing, Hugh?

HH: Great. I’ve got a couple of quick questions for you. I just finished watching Landman last night.

TC: Oh, it’s so good.

HH: On the scale of 1-10, where is that on the reality scale?

TC: Well, on the awesomeness scale, on a scale of 1-10, it’s about a 46. I think it’s the best show on television. Billy Bob Thornton, look, on the reality scale, I know a lot of landmen. I know a lot of oil and gas men in Midland. I would say there’s fewer kidnappings by cartels and getting fingers cut off, and less torture and murder. But other than that, pretty accurate.

HH: You know, we’ve got these grasshoppers out in Huntington Beach where I am, and I’m afraid to run by them. They’re going to blow up. It’s like there’s a grasshopper that blows up in everything. Next question for you. Pam Bondi…

TC: Yeah.

HH: …sends a letter to the FBI today. You were at DOJ. I was at DOJ a long time ago. Can you believe the FBI did not turn over the Epstein files?

TC: I think it is astonishing, and I don’t have a good explanation for it. I’ve been calling for the Epstein files to be made public for a long time, and I’m glad that Pam Bondi is following through on that.

HH: Well, they do answer to her as the Attorney General. If, in fact, someone knowingly did not turn over the files, do you believe that is justified cause for immediate termination?

TC: I think that would certainly be a prima facie case.

HH: All right. Now, let’s go to sanctuary airports, Senator. You sent out…

TC: Yeah.

HH: …a notice. You’re going to be hell on wheels on sanctuary everything. What’s up with these airports?

TC: Well, so in the previous Congress when I was the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, I sent oversight letters to a series of airports that were being used by the Biden administration to house illegal immigrants. And so I sent letters to Chicago O’Hare, and JFK, and Logan Airport on Boston, Massachusetts. O’Hare and JFK turned over, answered my questions, turned over documents in response. Logan Airport basically said go jump in a lake. We’re not answering anything, and the Senate Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over about 40% of the U.S. economy, including aviation. And so my questions were focused on all right, what are the security problems with housing a bunch of illegals, have there been security incidents, how are you keeping passengers safe? They wouldn’t answer any of that, and so next week, I’ve scheduled a vote to authorize a subpoena to force Logan Airport to submit to oversight.

HH: Well, good, because Logan Airport sucks anyway, and they ought to at least be answering your questions. Now I want to move on to Bonterra, because I was reading the press release on this.

TC: Yes.

HH: And I was unaware that they had deplatformed causes. Deplatforming makes every 1st Amendment person a little bit crazy. What do you think of this? What are you doing about it?

TC: Well, so last year, also in my oversight capacity, I issued an entire report that went through a number of tech platforms that use their terms of service to deplatform conservatives. And it’s another aspect of censorship that gets less focus. So Bonterra, for example, deplatformed the Independent Women’s Forum. And so in that investigation, and so I’ll send you the whole report, because I detail a lot of instances. And they’re following a playbook that the Southern Poverty Law Center sent out of denying what, which as you know is a left-wing, radical group that hates conservatives. And they’ve laid out a strategy of denying critical infrastructure and architecture needed for conservatives groups to communicate with their supporters, to communicate with the world. And in that oversight, Bonterra did the same thing as Logan Airport, which is they refused to hand over documents. I had noticed a subpoena vote next week for Bonterra as well, and then actually, Bonterra very quickly hired lawyers and agreed to comply with what I’d asked for. So I’m not going to vote on the subpoena next week, because they’ve agreed to comply. And if they don’t, if we don’t get everything that they’ve said they’re going to hand over, then we’ll issue the subpoena. But if they’re going to voluntarily comply, the subpoena won’t be necessary.

HH: All right, Senator, going back a little bit, Commerce does have jurisdiction over pretty much everything. You said 40% of the economy. But is there anything that doesn’t fit within your reach if you decide to reach long way?

TC: I will confess that it is difficult to find much that’s outside of our jurisdiction. So we’ve got all of the Department of Commerce, all of the Department of Transportation. We’ve got everything that moves, so we’ve got trucks and trains and cars. We’ve got all of aviation. We’ve got all of space. We’ve got all, we’ve got the FCC, the FTC. So we have all of Big Tech, artificial intelligence. We have every form of communication, whether it’s television or radio or telephones. All of that is within it. We’ve also got science, the National Science foundation. We’ve got NASA. We’ve got jurisdiction over sports, both college athletics and the Olympics.

HH: Are you going to do NIL? Are you going to do a national…

TC: It’s a real priority. NIL, we need to act on. And so you’re going to see hearings, and I’ve got legislation to try to fix the chaos in college sports. We even have jurisdiction, Hugh, over the Panama Canal. It’s explicitly written in our jurisdictional statement. So I’ve already chaired…

HH: All right, now I want to close, because you are, I rarely get a chance to talk to a Constitutional expert like you. I am all in favor on the war on Humphrey’s Executor, and the war on so-called independent agencies.

TC: Yeah.

HH: I don’t know what the Senate has to do with that, but you’re on Judiciary as well. Commerce, but you’re on Judiciary. Do you think the President is going to succeed in the effort to corral the administrative state back into the executive branch?

TC: Look, I’m very optimistic about it. We have, I’ve got to say, in the history of the republic, we have never seen a president hit the ground running the way Donald Trump has this second term. This first month has been incredible, and I’ve got to say bringing in Elon Musk, it’s really kind of captured a Silicon Valley ethos of move fast and break things. I mean, they are, there is an energy to it now. You know, you mentioned Pam Bondi a minute ago, and you mentioned the podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz. Last week, I had Pam Bondi as a guest on the Verdict podcast. And actually at CPAC, I interviewed her live on stage. And we talked about the fact that Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, is on the front lines. Every single day of this Trump administration, the President and Elon Musk and the administration are going to be sued. They’re going to be sued by Democrat Attorneys General. They’re going to be sued by left-wing activist groups. And she is leading the fight. And I asked, you know, what she said in response to that, and she said two words. We’re winning.

HH: We’re winning. Okay, last question, Senator. I believe President Biden left behind five vacancies on the Appeals Court of the United States. There might be more coming up. Maybe one or two of those tried to cancel it. Will every vacancy be dealt with expeditiously at Judiciary?

TC: Absolutely. And we saw President Trump’s first term, the judicial nominations were, they may have been the single-most consequential legacy he had from that first term, nominating principled Constitutionalists. The Senate confirming them, and it is going to be a major priority this second term as well.

HH: As I like to say, he built the trampoline. Now, he’s just jumping on it, and that’s all I need to know about. I also want to thank you for your support of the AM Radio in Every Vehicle Act. And is that going to get a vote again?

TC: So it is. I’ve already voted it out of committee.

HH: Oh.

TC: So we had a vote a couple of weeks ago in the Commerce Committee, and it came out of the Commerce Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support. It’s my bill, along with Ed Markey, very liberal Democrat from Massachusetts. And the two of us teamed up together to protect AM radio. And I’m actually hopeful that we’ll get a vote on the floor of the Senate in the next week or two. I’m pressing for, if it goes to the floor of the Senate, it will pass overwhelmingly, and then we’ll get it through the House and get it to the President’s desk for signature.

HH: Thank you on behalf of everyone who works for AM radio and depends on it. Senator Ted Cruz, the Verdict with Ted Cruz, one of the most popular podcasts in America. Like and subscribe to it, and come right back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

End of interview.