Fiery Trump Lunch with Senate GOP plus Three Blockbuster Supreme Court WINS on Second Amendment & Immigration

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Welcome, it is Vertiquist, Ted Cruz. Ben Ferguson with you as well, and it's nice to have you with the center. We got a one heck of a show with a lot of behind-the-scenes action happening with the luncheon you were in with a lot of other senators and President Donald Trump. Well, that's right. This week, President Trump came to join the Senate Republican lunch, and he was in there for about a full hour. And it was a contentious lunch. You know, what I said to reporters afterwards, I think the adjective I used was spirited. And to use another Washington euphemism, frank and candid conversation occurred. And the president was very upset, in particular at four Republican senators that had voted to use the War Powers Act to restrict his authority in Iran to launch military actions against Iran. And he was extremely displeased with that vote. And it then proceeded. As a matter of policy, I don't. repeat what my colleagues have said, but at this point it has been universally reported that the president and Bill Cassidy, the senator from Louisiana, got into a screaming match. And it was as tense as anything I've ever seen. Bill Cassidy himself has confirmed that to the press afterwards. Now, obviously, President Trump... endorsed against Bill Cassidy in his primary in Louisiana and defeated Bill. So he is not. There's a runoff in Louisiana and Bill did not make the top two. He was third in the race. And so and Bill Cassidy in turn had previously voted to convict President Trump during the Trump impeachment. And so. The president, understandably, was not happy about the vote to convict him in impeachment and was not happy with Bill's vote to limit his ability to defend this nation and launch military attacks against Iran. That's interesting, the part there, and obviously you guys have these lunches, and I want to be respectful of you. and others that are, you know, obviously in that meeting. But I've got some questions just based on what's been in the media. And we're going to do that in a second. But first, I want to tell you about Patriot Mobile and this company that you really need to know about that's making a difference every single day. If you think wireless companies are all the same, you might need to take a look at Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile isn't just different because of its mission. It's actually built to outperform the carriers you have and use right now. They offer premium. priority nationwide service on any of the three major U.S. networks, helping you get the best possible coverage wherever life takes you. And with Patriot Mobile, you can even have two separate networks on a single device. That eliminates the need to carry multiple phones and giving you peace of mind you just can't get with the other providers.

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rather than voting for the war powers resolution. And so those two votes changed. And Rand put out a statement explaining that he was doing that. But I respected that Rand did that. In particular, look, the president's case, and I thought it was quite reasonable. is he said, we're in the middle of negotiating with Iran. And while we're negotiating with Iran, it comes over the TV that the Senate has blocked me from being able to continue with conducting the war. And he said, you completely undercut my ability to negotiate with Iran. And I think the president, that was a very understandable point and a fair point. And it ended up moving those two votes. When you're an average person listening right now, and there's a lot of people listening that are in states where these senators who have lost and others have said no, did this. How frustrated should they be? And is it justifiable? Or is it just understanding the politics of this moment? Look, the politics of this moment are unique. And Donald Trump is. a black swan event there is nobody else in public life there there is no other donald trump and and so he will say things he is regularly there there are different senators that that he disagrees with and and when he disagrees with you he can do it with with both barrels and and um You know, I've been on the receiving end of that, but that was a decade ago when we were running against each other. And to be fair, I've criticized him. He's criticized me. We're now, I'm now his strongest ally in the Senate, and we're very good friends now. But he... he is willing to take the bark off someone, and that was certainly true in the Senate lunch this week. All right, one of the reasons why I love doing this show is we get to take you behind the scenes, especially when there's big deals like this Republican lunch with Donald Trump. And Ted Cruz taking us behind the scenes about that. I know one of the big questions everyone listening right now is going to ask, Senator, is, all right, was the Save Act mentioned and what was said? Well, sure. The president urged the Senate to pass the Save America Act. And I strongly agree with him on that. I'm an original sponsor of the Save America Act. I've been making the case to my colleagues for months that we should do everything humanly possible to pass the Save America Act. And in particular, we should force the Democrats to do a talking filibuster to stand up and talk and talk and talk, just like Jimmy Stewart did in Mr. Smith goes to Washington, just like I did. when I filibustered for 21 hours against Obamacare. And we should keep the Senate in session and make them work and make them fight. The president made that case vigorously. The difficulty is there are several Republicans in the Senate who oppose him on that. And so it ended up not being a huge part of what was discussed. It was the president talked about it for a few minutes and pressed his case. And I very much agree with him on that.

But I would say 90% of the discussion was about Iran. And in particular, how mad he was at the war powers vote. He felt that that vote had really undercut him. And then it blew up, as we just described, where he and Bill Cassidy really went at each other. Senator, I want to go back to the filibuster. You mentioned this has been talked about so much on TV. You have a lot of allies that are advocating for what you just talked about and the idea of having this talking filibuster. You famously have done this before. But in this scenario, would it look just like one man talking or with so many different allies that you have that talked about this publicly? Would it be multiple people asking questions? Is that part of the reason why it's an intriguing idea? Well, look, part of what you would do is the Senate can keep itself in one legislative day for days, for weeks, for months, potentially. And there is a rule in the Senate that is the two-speech rule, which is that a senator can't. speak more than twice in a single legislative day and and so the approach would be to exhaust the democrats to make them talk to make them stand up there and and keep talking and talking they can people can ask questions and if the senator speaking wants to yield for a question they can the the challenge of doing that is it would require the republicans keeping at least fifty of us nearby to be able to produce a quorum because one of the ways the Democrats would fight us is they would suggest the absence of a quorum. And as I said, we've got several Republican senators who are resisting that. Yeah, and that's part of the reporting that's been interesting, as you described it. Look, the president knows how to count as well. He also did, and there was a moment where he came out after the meeting, and he did say this to the American people, and I want to play it for you. Great meeting and we're very proud of the party. Like everybody really in the room, I don't like a few people, but that's okay. I think you know who they are. But we, I'll give you that information someday. But for the most part, we have a really well-unified party. And I said it very strongly. We have the hottest country anywhere in the world. We're the most powerful. We're the smartest. We're the most respected. Two years ago, we were a laughing stock all over the world. We had a terrible. group of people represented every leader i just left g7 every leader and we had a lot of people in addition to g7 as you know came everyone said what we've done in a year and a half is a miracle we have the hottest country in the world and we want to keep it that way we have more factories being built right now than we have at any point at any time in the history of our country. And all of those factories are opening up soon. It's all jobs. And our job numbers are incredible anyway. I see that oil just broke the $70 number. Who would have thought that was going to happen? And that's during a war. And Iran is being very nice. They're agreeing to everything that I want. And they have to. Otherwise, we just go back and do what we have to do. Thank you very much.

By the way, the interesting part there in that is the way he described Iran doing what he wants right now, and they're being, quote, very nice. That's some breaking news. Well, that's been very much what the president has been saying. And, you know, I will say, listening to the president in that news conference, it reminds me this week. I was joking with Senator Bernie Moreno. We were like, you know, boy, the president got pretty hot under the collar. And I made a wisecrack. I said, you know, I think the president must be Latino because that was some Latin temper there. And Bernie came back and he said, you know, I think you're right. And just like a Latino, he gets mad. And then he's just fine, like moments afterwards. And, you know, by the press conference, I mean, he was pissed in that room. And then the press conference, he was rightly focusing on the unity we have, although I wouldn't say there was a ton of unity in that particular lunch, but the unity we have more broadly and everything we're getting accomplished. And so I think that was valuable. You know, it was also interesting on the Iran deal. He was mad about the war powers vote, but he did not. Listen, I've been quite public and vocal that I'm concerned that the president is getting very bad advice on this deal. And I think it is. History is clear that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is a very bad idea. And the terms of the memorandum of understanding that JD Vance negotiated say the United States with regional partners will provide $300 billion. to the Ayatollah and the mullahs in Iran. And that, I think, is a really bad idea. I don't think it is in U.S. national security interest. What was interesting about the lunch is... President Trump is well aware of my concerns and several other Republican senators have expressed concerns along those same lines. And he didn't, he wasn't arguing with those. I think he's hearing those concerns. I'm glad he's hearing those concerns because I think those who are giving him the advice of sending billions of dollars to Iran, I think are giving him poor advice. And that was not a major topic of the discussion at the lunch. All right, I want to take a moment. I want to talk to you about a really awesome organization. And if you are pro-life and you're proud to stand up for the rights of unborn children, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion drugs can keep being sent through the mail. No doctor visit. No in-person exam. No one checking whether a woman is being pressured, whether she's too far along.

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burden the right to bear arms. The plaintiffs are, the Second Amendment says the right of the people to keep in bear arms shall not be infringed. And the majority said that you can't take away that right that broadly and struck it down. This is, again, I love when we get these rulings, and it reminds people just why presidential elections are so important because these are the types of rulings that happen even after people leave the White House. And this is why it's important that we have a conservative majority on the court. I go back, I got to remind people, you've got a book coming out with Clarence Thomas. This is a perfect example of why having people like Clarence Thomas. on the Supreme Court is so important and remind people the name of the book so they can go get it. There's a side up right now where they can pre-order as well. Going further, the incomparable Clarence Thomas is the name of the book. It's coming out in August. It's a biography. It talks about his life story. It talks about his jurisprudence. And actually, a big part of his jurisprudence was highly relevant in this decision because... What Hawaii argued is it went back on historical evidence and argued that Hawaii had colonial laws. that gave it the power to do this. And the Supreme Court said no, those dealt with poaching or hunting or protecting rural land. And sure, you can't go on someone else's land and say hunt wildlife on their land. That's very different from saying land that is open to the public, like a gas station or grocery store, that you can just... turn ordinary citizens exercising their constitutional rights automatically into criminals. And Hawaii in particular pointed to an 1865 Louisiana Black Code statute as saying, well, this gives us a basis for passing this law. And Samuel Alito's majority pointed out that that was a law that was designed to disarm. freed black Americans who this was right after the Civil War. And you look at these black codes. They were driven by Klansmen. And by the way, the Klansmen were all Democrats who did not want the newly freed slaves to be able to defend themselves. Why? Because they wanted the Klan to be able to terrorize them. murder them, threaten them with violence, and if they had a firearm to defend themselves, that would be harder to do. And Clarence Thomas has written extensively about that, doing the research during Reconstruction, that the long racist history of wanting to disarm African Americans to make them vulnerable to violence, and that played an important part in this Supreme Court decision this week.

Senator, there's one red flag here I want to raise. And not only did the Supreme Court shut down what Hawaii was doing, but to be clear, Hawaii was attempting to make the Second Amendment disappear from everyday life. That is something that's concerning because this is now the Democratic Party. This is what they want to do. They want to take away your right to protect and defend yourself. They want to take away your right not only at home, but anywhere at your business or anywhere else. And they don't care about ourselves. Second Amendment right at all. That to them is meaningless, and you witness that here, and that goes back to the dissent. When you look at this decision, what were the other three saying? Because if you're dissenting to this, I would assume you'd have to make it based on the fact that, well, I don't even believe the Second Amendment is an issue that Supreme Court should even even take into consideration. Well, there were three dissenters, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Justice Sotomayor. and all three of them would have upheld the Hawaii law. And they argued that the case was really about property law. And they argued in particular that no one has a constitutional right to enter private property without consent. And so it didn't matter whether you were armed or not. It was simply property law. But there have long been, number one, laws governing. public accommodations. So, for example, you can't have a hotel that only rents rooms to white people and not African Americans. That's illegal under civil rights laws that once you open it up to public accommodation, you have to offer it freely to the people who come in. And in this instance, shutting down those, look, it's one thing, anyone can exclude someone from their property. No one has a right to enter your home or my home. But when you open up your property, when you have a store or a gas station or whatever and you're inviting people into your property, the effect of that would turn law-abiding citizens into criminals. And that's because, listen, the left is not hiding that their objective. They want to erase the Second Amendment from the Constitution. They want to ban the private ownership of firearms. And Hawaii was taking a significant step in that direction by making it extremely difficult for people to carry a firearm and be able to defend themselves. And, you know, Ben, you've got personal experience. Tell folks your experience and how carrying a gun literally saved your life. Yeah, I mean, I'm such an advocate for this. It's the reason why I ended up buying a gun store and having a gun range and having the classes to get your permit to carry. Now it's constitutional carry in Tennessee and so many other states. But being able to protect and defend yourself, if I didn't have a gun the night that I was a target of a gang initiation, you would have come to my funeral. That's not a joke. There was two gang members. It's called getting blood in the gang, and one of the senior members gets another guy in the gang, and they have to kill somebody. And they do that so they have something.

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that President Trump could reverse that, that it wasn't a permanent grant of amnesty. That decision likewise was hugely important for the successes. I mean, remember, in this second Trump term, we have seen illegal border crossings drop 99%. That's a staggering victory. And the Supreme Court upheld the president's ability to continue enforcing the law. Yeah, it really is. And I want people just to hear, Shannon Barry said this on Fox News Channel about this. I want to take a listen. Here's how she described it in front of the Supreme Court. and Syrian refugees who were here in the country. And basically what the court has said is that they can't challenge this decision by the Department of Homeland Security, by the administration, that they're the ones who get to make the assessment about whether they leave or not. I haven't read the whole thing, but they do get into some of the claims that by some of those who are advocating for the Haitians refugees, that there was some kind of racial animus. The court says they don't see evidence of that. So I'll keep reading, but it's another very fractured decision that seems to be a win. for the Trump administration, which would be the second win for them on immigration, that earlier decision that we talked about that came out just a few minutes ago saying that if you get to the Mexico border but you don't make it onto U.S. soil, you can't file an asylum claim. So the Trump administration has to be happy about what they've gotten today. We've still got eight opinions left and it looks like Monday will be. So you hear her talk about this ruling in favor of Trump. This is another example of doing the right thing. May be tough. You may go to the Supreme Court, but you're going to win in this scenario. And by the way, both of these decisions were six three, which means the liberals on the court, they don't care what the statutory language says. They just, just like in the Second Amendment case where they would effectively read the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights, when it comes to illegal immigration, they would read out the ability to secure our border. And they would instead embody the open border policies we saw during the Biden administration. Compare how Shannon Bream covered it on Fox. Compare this to MS Now, which is I guess what they're calling MSNBC now. I don't even know that anyone watches the show. But listen to the lefties on MS now losing their minds. Yeah, total meltdown. Take a listen. Alan, I want your reaction to what Fallon just laid out for us there. And the concept here that the court is ignoring the history of this administration's remarks about Haitian people in particular. I don't think there is a single American who can say they actually forget what we heard from the president, what we heard from Vice President JD Vance about Haitian people, just some of the most disgusting and racist remarks you can imagine. I know that you work with a number of Haitian clients. Break down for me just how devastating all this is about to be.

Very devastating, and I hope we stop talking about it as the Trump administration won or someone won because right now America lost. There are going to be a lot of jobs that are open and a lot of people in home health care industries that are not going to receive any service because their providers are going to be removed from the United States. There are a lot of people who are going to die and suffer because of the account of this. So I wish this court was more of a court of equity than they say they were a court of policy right now. So I am the chair of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which is the United States organization that represents these Haitians. before the Supreme Court. And we have made the argument that not just his comments, but also in the writings, and just recently even the discovered e-mails from Kristi Noem about the clear conversations they've made about Haitians and black immigrants in general when you even look at the refugee policy. And this court has said, even with that information, there's nothing for us to do here, which seems to be extremely problematic along party lines. And today, you've seen something that I haven't seen the Supreme Court in a very long time, is that you've seen the justice sort of redecents that are 35 pages from the bar. So even in the Supreme Court, you see not the harmony that generally exists there in peaceful dissent in saying that this is outside the norm. And because it is outside the norm, because it isn't about just policy and procedure, this is about people in human engagement. And the concept that people keep saying that the problem is that it's temporary status and it's been longer than temporary, well, change the word. Don't. put people's lives in danger because you feel that that arbitrarily moved something. And as stated before, there are a million so classes of TPS individuals who are here legally working. So they're authorized. They've been vetted. There's none of the concerns that you have with people who may come in undocumented, as well as they're supporting our economy. And when you remove those individuals, you draw down all of those work areas. So all those jobs are doing, all of these companies that are relying on these TPS workers to work tomorrow are going to have to make decisions about them leaving today. So this is not a big. win that we think we're going to celebrate. And there are 350 million or more Americans in the United States. A million TPS holders are not causing some economic burden on the United States. Senator, you listen to that, and you would think the sky is falling, and that is how they're covering it on MS now, the former MSNBC. Yeah, look, the left wants open borders. We saw under Joe Biden 12 million people invade this country, and that included criminals. It included murderers and rapists and terrorists and child molesters. And that's what these advocates want. And by the way, you look at from Haiti, Haiti right now is rocked with massive violence. It is all but chaos in Haiti as the gangs have taken over. And that's, those are. Those are the people that the left is trying to bring in. And let me be clear, the immigration law that was being decided on here says explicitly no judicial review of any determination. And yet, that's what the court followed. And yet the dissenters don't care what the statute says they just want open borders. It really is. Don't forget, we do this show. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, hit that subscribe or auto download button wherever you get your podcast. And the senator and I will see you back here on radio stations next week. Have a great week.