More Biden Balloon Deceptions plus Twitter Bans a US Senator

Published Feb 10, 2023, 9:00 AM
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Welcome at his verdict of Senator Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you as well, and Senator, you just got out of classified briefings that deal with something the President refused to bring up during the State of the Union, and that is the Chinese government and their balloons and the fact that they went all the way across our country and then finally he said sorry, I'll deal with it after they pretty much got anything they wanted. What did you learn today that the American people need to know about? Well, I spent two hours today in a classified briefing in the skiff down in the basement of the Capitol. And by the way, I'll point out that when I left the classified briefing, I didn't bring any classified materials with me because you can't bring it out of the skiff, and so I don't have any at home with me. I don't have many any anywhere else. That seems to be very unlike Joe Biden, who seems to have classified materials everywhere he goes. But the two hour briefing was entirely on the Chinese spy balloon, and it was a detailed briefing. It included senior official from the Department of Defense and the Department of State and the intelligence community walking through what happened, and they revealed quite a lot because it was classified. I'm not going to repeat anything that was said there, but I can characterize the administration's position is they are spinning mightily. Number One, They're trying to diminish the seriousness of the damage to national security that happened from the espionage that China was allowed to undertake in the United States. I did not find their spinning credible. Number two, they were presenting highly legalistic arguments as to why they didn't shoot down the balloon when it first entered US airspace. And mind you, they did shoot down the balloon a week later, after it had spent a week in US airspace, after it had been able to hover over sensitive military facilities and other facilities that that implicate national security, and after it had traversed the entire United States of America. Was only when it crossed out into the Atlantic off the coast of South Carolina that more than a week later, they finally shut it down. You know, I have to say it was really striking listening to the administration give these these over lawyered answers suggesting that there were impediments to they're shooting it down in Alaska. Apparently you can shoot it down off of South Carolina, but not Alaska, which is assinine it. I practiced law for a lot of years. It was it reeked of after the fact, rationalization and trying to find a justification for impotently doing nothing for the entire week it was over the United States. And just from the public time line, there's one thing that is critically important that I don't think many people have focused on. So the public timeline, it was Saturday, January twenty eighth when the balloon began entering American territory, entering Alaskan airspace near the Aleutian Islands. And that was on the twenty eighth. By the thirtieth, two days later it left American territorium, was over Canada. Did we warn Canada? By the way? I mean, is that something that we would have done? And I know when we say we found the same coming over Alaska, but that's when the public noticed it. Do we even know if our military noticed it before then? So I know the answers to both of those questions I'm not able to answer what I will say is is that NORAAD and Northcom operates in close coordination with Canada, and so our military is in frequent consultation and discussion with their Canadian counterparts. That's as much as I can say. But here's the other piece that we know, again from public reports, not from the briefing. Today, Tuesday, January thirty first, was the first day President Biden was briefed, which means the Chinese spy balloon was over Alaska for two days, over US soil, conducting surveillance, and yet Joe Biden had not been brought in the loop. Joe Biden had not been briefed, and so a lot of us, myself included, have asked why the hell didn't they shoot it down when it first entered Alaska. And just from the public record, one of the facts that's there is when it entered Alaska, Joe Biden had no idea because the commander in chief had not been informed at that point. That that's a what is the chain of command? Because you just you just giving that information immediately brings up the question does the military get to make the decision when it's over a lask if the president doesn't notice shoot it down or does it go to the commander in chief every time? And they just said, ah, we don't need to inform him of this. I mean that that's a either way. That is a shocking reality that there could be this much of a disconnect. So that there is existing statute that governs this, that that that if if if there is an airship, an unmanned airshift with with with hostile intent, with hostile capacity, that our military commanders have the legal authority to engage and to take it out. Uh And and so the northcom commander has the authority to do that. They also have the authority to engage and take it out if it if it is engaged in hostile intelligence gathering, which which I think in this instance it plainly was. It is to some extent a judgment call when and to what extent it is reported up the chain of command to the commander in chief. So you know, in a hypothetical where where suddenly you see something that has say a bomb payload, that could do harm in an immediate circumstances, our military can engage and take it out in the instance to protect the American homeland. Well, let's talk about that you're going in a skiff for this classified briefing. Who gets invited to this is that? And what qualifies you to get this briefing? Can any senator ask to be a part of this, to be a part of this briefiefing or just based on the committees that you are appointed to that you serve on. So there are often classified briefings that are committee based, and so I serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We have many classified briefings on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Previously served on the Senate Arm Services Committee. We had many classified briefings on the Senate Arm Services Committee. So there are committee specific reasons that you'll go to classified briefings. There are also periodically all senator briefings. That's what this was. So every senator was invited. If you are a US senator, you that this was at TSSCI, so at a high level of clearance, and all senators have that clearance by virtue of being elected senators. And virtually all the senators were there. I didn't notice anyone missing, but it was certainly was a full room and there was a lot of interest. I stayed until the very end, and and I'm going to point out something else that is striking and yet not a lot of people have noticed and focused on, which is on February fourth, the same day that the Biden administration shot down the balloon. The Biden administration was getting a lot of criticism, obviously for having allowed this balloon to stay in US airspace and conduct surveillance for over a week. On the day on that day, on February fourth, the Biden administration arranged a briefing with the media with a quote senior defense official. And one of the things that I asked about in the briefing today was who that senior defense official was. And I got an answer to that, but I can't tell you the answer to that. But the transcript of the briefing from the unnamed senior defense official included the following paragraph that that individual told the reporters on the day the balloon was shut down. Quote PRC Government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration, and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time. And so you'll recall when the balloon was shot down. This paragraph suddenly became a major talking point that the defenders of the Biden White House began using, saying, well, three times there were balloons during the Trump administration. And you'll recall, as it played out, we then had a series of senior officials from the Trump administration, like the Secretary of State, like the Director of National Intelligence publicly say I don't know what these guys are talking about. That didn't happen. We don't know anything about it. In other words, they weren't briefed on it, and they see they were held in the dark. Well, it turns out that at the time the Biden administration was telling reporters that this happened three times during the Trump administration, the Biden administration knew full well that nobody in the Trump administration was aware of this. They knew that, and so they were deliberately misleading the reporters by saying, well, happened three times out under Trump. And they were speaking the truth technically, but they were omitting a major part because the obvious inference when you hear that is, oh, and Trump didn't do anything about it, And they know full well that Trump didn't know about it. The Secretary of State didn't know about it. Secretary Defense didn't know about it. And so the Biden administration was perfectly happy to spend the reporters, and the reporters were perfectly happy to be spun and to midsly the American public on purpose to cover their rear end political spin. And it was deliberate on a matter of really important national security. I want to ask you about another public report that's come out that the Chinese by balloon passing over Sense of Sites quote could have collected communications. The State Department has now revealed that. Before I ask you about that aspect of this, I want to tell you about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. If you are a conservative and you're proud to be a conservative, and you're proud to defend conservative values, and you've got a cell phone, you need to check out Patriot Mobile. Why when you switch to Patriot Mobile, you get the same exact cell phone coverage you're used to right now. 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You'll get the best deals they have right now eight seven eight Patriot or Patriotmobile dot com slash verdict center that this was for me, I think honestly shocking when this came out. The State Department is admitted that the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the United States America for these eight days, including floating over vital national security sites, was equipped they now say, with intendas that likely could collect our communications. How concerns of the American people be about that aspect of the spy balloon, Well, I think we should be very concerned. It was a balloon that was launched for the purpose of espionage, for the purpose of presumably taking photographs, perhaps using infrared or other technology, and attempting to intercept communications, attempting to gather information that can be used to undermine the national security of the United States. And if you look at the flight path of this balloon, it was very liberate that it went over sensitive sites. It went over sites, the military sites. It went over sites that are extremely sensitive from a national security perspective. And by the way that you and I, if we were in a private plane, are not allowed to fly over and if we did, it would probably be shot down. That's how secure these sites are. Well I'm not sure we'd be shot down, but they are sites that are highly secure. And the Biden administration made a decision to allow this to happen. They could have shot it down in Alaska. Mind you, no one even bothered to tell Joe Biden about it when it was over Alaska. But they could have shot it down there. They could have shot it down in the wilderness of Canada. They could have shot it down in Idaho or Montana, and they didn't. They allowed it to spend a week collecting intelligence. That intelligence presumably was sent up via satellite back to Beijing, so that Beijing has what ever information they gathered and stole. Presumably the Chinese Communist government has that information now, and it was only after the mission was complete, after the espionage was done, that they shot it down in the Atlantic Ocean. I think that was a reckless decision, but I also think it was a dangerous decision because it projected weakness. It projected weakness to the Chinese Communist government and to every other enemy of America because it told them that they could brazenly enter American airspace conduct espionage on sensitive military secrets. And this president, this commander in chief would not act to prevent that. Last question on this, I want to ask you, and this is something I just think that we should debunk very quickly. I've actually seen commentators and people on social media saying, well, you don't have to worry about what information China got, because we shot this thing down. They didn't get their balloon back. That to me maybe one of the biggest lies that I've seen that has kind of happened over the last several days. This information that they were stealing was going back up to their satellites in real time at what they didn't need to get their balloon back to basically get all the intel In all likelihood, that's exactly how this operated, was that it was sending the information back to China real time so that it doesn't have to go back to China for them to get the data. Senator, before we get to some other big news things happening on Commerce and Judiciary, which you're a member of, and I know you want to give an important update on what's happening in DC this week on that on those committees, I want to talk to guys out there listening about something that's really important, and that's about being a real American man. 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Use the promo code verdict for thirty five percent off any Chalk subscriptions for life Chalk dot com Code verdict for thirty five percent off. Senator, I want you to give us some updates on what you're working on right now on these important committees, because you've had a lot of meetings over the last twenty four forty hours. Well, today was a busy day. In addition to the classified briefing on the Chinese by balloon, we also had hearings in both the Commerce Committee and the Judiciary Committee. The morning started in Judiciary with the Senate Democrats taking up twenty nine judicial nominees who were who had been nominated last year and had not gotten confirmed, and they were moving moving them forward out of committee. Now these were these included many of the most extreme and radical nominees. These include the judicial nominee who, at a conference at actually my alma mater, Princeton University, reportedly said that police kill unarmed black men every single day. And she reportedly agreed with that statement. When she was questioned about it at her confirmation hearing, she said, well, I said that as an advocate. Now, mind you, that statement is wildly blatantly false. It's not remotely true as a factual matter, and it's an incredibly harmful statement because if people believe it, it is a lie that has real consequences and that endangers the lives of police officers. And three times she said, well, it was as an advocate, so you know, apparently, look, I spent a lot of years practicing law as an advocate. You're not entitled to lie either that It's not like you have the ability when you're just being an advocate to lie. She subsequently, after a confirmation hearing, tried to say in a letter, oh no, I don't think I said this after all, But she did it after the hearing when there was no opportunity to ask her questions. She was one of the judges. They were moving forward another judge, another district court nominee, as a judge who described himself as a wild eyed liberal and described how he is motivated every morning to get out of bed by his hatred for conservatives. And I asked the Democrats on the committee, I said, look, this is who's been nominated to be a district judge in New York. How would you feel if you were a Republican, you were a conservative in New York, there are some and you found yourself in front of a federal judge who has said he gets up every morning motivated by his hatred for you. That's a person obviously unfit and without a judicial temperament suitable to be a judge. And then I also asked about the district court nominee that we talked about on a previous podcast, who went under questioning from John Kennedy didn't know what Article five of the Constitution was, didn't know, which is not a trick question. If you miss that in our pod, go back and listen to that podcast that we did, because you explained how basic that that question is to any legal scholar, any anybody that's a lawyer, especially if you are looking to serve at this level, you would be prepared to know about this well. And the follow up, John Kennedy asked, he asked about what's an Article two of the Constitution, and she said she didn't know, she couldn't remember. Now that that is not a gotcha question, that is not obscure. That is a question that any first year law student could answer. And if you couldn't answer it, you would flunk constitutional law. It is very simple. So the first three articles of the Constitution. Article one establishes the Congress, the legislative branch of our government. Article two establishes the President of the United States, and the executive branch. An Article three establishes the judiciary. This person is nominated to be what is called an Article three judge. And yet apparently she doesn't even know what that is. She didn't know what Article two was. And I pointed out at the hearing that Dick Durban, the Democrat chairman of the committee, said after that hearing, well, there are probably a lot of members of our committee that couldn't answer those questions either, And so I brought that up, and I said, I thought that was really an astonishing statement. And I said, I'm confident that everyone on the Republican side of the aisle could answer the question what's article too? But but I find it stunning to the Democrats here that your chairman is saying you have no idea what Article two of the Constitution is it? And I had said I would do this on the podcast, so I followed through it. I said, does anyone here what who admit right now you don't know what Article two is? And they all stared away and stared at their phones, and stared at their shoes and did everything to avoid eye contact. And it's a ridiculous point, as I said, listen, it's real simple. Anyone who doesn't know what Article two of the Constitution is has no business serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and certainly has no business serving as a federal judge. And and I made a plea to my Democrat colleagues. I said, look, what is wrong with you people. You have rubber stamped every single Biden judiciariinee, one hundred percent of them in the last two years. You have voted for every single nominee, no matter how bad, no matter how extreme. And by the way, every other Senate Democrat has as well. All of the judicial nominees when they went to the floor. One hundred percent of the Democrats have voted for all of them. And I put it out. I said, look, during the Trump administration, Trump nominated some fantastic judges. We confirmed some fantastic judges, but there were several nominees that were not fantastic nominees that had problems. And as Republican Senators who actually take seriously the quality and caliber and qualifications of the judiciary, we push back and made clear to the Trump White House those nominees would not get confirmed. And I looked at my colleagues and said, are none of you willing to stand up for anything? Will you at least admit a judge should know what Article two of the Constitution is? Will you at least admit a judge shouldn't have a record of saying he has motivated by hatred for conservatives each and every day. Not a single Democrats said a word. The only substance of response I got as I said, look, your behavior suggests that if Joe Biden nominated a ham sandwich, you would vote to confirm the ham Sandwich is a judge. And the only substant of response I got is Corey Booker chimed in afterwards and he said, I just want to clarify one thing. He said, I'm a vegan, so I would not vote to confirm a ham sandwich, which he was pretty funny. Yeah that, And actually Corey Booker is a pretty good guy. He and I are get along well and are often kidding each other back and forth. But it spoke volume that neither Durban nor anyone else engaged in any of the substance. And then, like the Politburo in the Soviet Union, they all voted dah and moved on the nominees and they do not care. They'll fill the judiciary with left wing zealots and they don't even feel, as far as I can tell, a twinge of remorse or guilt. What scares me more than liberal is an ignorant liberal. And if you have these types of individuals on our court system, it terrifies me what it means when you walk into their courtroom knowing that this is who they're putting there. And I think every Americans should care about this, especially if you're listening and you have a senator that is a democratic liberal. You should be calling them and telling them that this is unacceptable. I want to move to something else, and that deals with the Twitter files. 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You look at the Twitter files that has hit the outside this week, and I want to play just one of the examples of all these former executives have been fired by Elon Musk Center had to come before the House, before the House Oversight Committee, Jim Jordan talked about when what made them decide to get rid of the Hunter Biden story, to get rid of the New York Posts article, to treat it even if you try to share it in private messages like child pornography sharing, to make sure this story got shut down and it wouldn't impact or minimize the impact to the presidential election. And this was a very interesting viral moment from Jim Jordan talking to all these fired leaders. Some of them former FBI officials who then went to work at Twitter. So the FBI didn't tell you that it was faked and tell you that it was hacked, And mister Roth, did did the story violate your policies? In my judgment at the time, No, it did not. Yeah, that's why you said, said what I would propose. Excuse me, as you said, it isn't clearly a violation of our hack materials policy, nor is it clearly the violation of anything else. So I think what a lot of people are wondering is, if it didn't violate your policies, and they didn't tell you it was fake, didn't tell you it was hacked, why'd you take it down? The company made a decision that found that it did violate the policy. It wasn't my personal judgment at the time that it did, but the decision was communicated to me by my direct supervisor, and ultimately I didn't disagree with it enough to object to you know, you know what, you know what I think happened, mister Roth. I think I think you guys got played. I think you guys wanted to wanted to take it deep down. We saw it, but the chairman put up where you said, you know everyone in the White House is as a fascist. I think you guys wanted it to be taken down. I think you meet with these guys every week. We know that's been established in the Twitter foles. You had weekly meetings with mister Chan and the run up to the election, they send you all kinds of emails. They send you documents on the super secret James Bond tell reporter you get information on that. I think you guys wanted to take it down. I think you guys got played by the FBI. I think that's a brilliant assessment of this. It was either you got played by the FBI or you knew you were getting played and you went along with it because you didn't want Donald Trump to have a chance to become the president again. Yeah, I think that's right. The only thing about there getting played by the FBI is they were so willing to get played that I think they were eager to jump in that bed along with them that it was. They hated Donald Trump, they wanted him to lose, they wanted Biden to win, and they were going to use the power they had to silence any story that was politically problematic for Joe Biden, and it was naked politics. You know, the fact that the FBI was being political and was urging them to do it made it all the worse because they were essentially conspiring with the FBI. And we've talked a lot on this podcast about the fact that Elon Musk has gone in and bought Twitter and fired these these left wing petty authoritarians who believe they had blanket authority to influence and steal elections, to silence and censor anyone they disagreed with, to coordinate and act as henchmen on behalf of the federal government, silencing their political enemies. Elon Musk coming in and firing them was a big deal. But I'll tell you, even with and Elon's fired, I think up to two thirds of the employees at Twitter and he is running Twitter day in, day out. But even so that they are still fighting him. It is It's reminiscent of the deep state in government, where during the Trump administration, there'd be good people in a political position and the deep state would fight them a rearguard action. Well, this week, one of the things that happened is Twitter spended a US senator suspended Steve Danes. Steve Danes as Senator from Montana, a good friend of mine. Steve Danes had posted on his profile picture a beautiful picture of Steve and his wife, Cindy and an antelope that they had just shot on a hunting trip. And it's it's a gorgeous picture, and he had it on his profile picture. And he woke up Monday morning to find that he was blocked on Twitter. They had shut down his senatorial account, and the message they had given was delete profile image. That he was not going to be allowed to use Twitter until he deleted that image, and it was deleted because Twitter said you may not include graphic violence or adult content in your profile header image, and and we consider graphic violence to be any form of gory media related to death, serious injury, violence, or surgical procedures. So apparently hunting qualified, and so Steve. Tuesday morning, as I was flying to DC for the State of the Union, Steve texted me and told me he had been banned from Twitter. And so I jumped on Twitter to speak up for my friend. I sent out a tweet. I said, ridiculous, my friend Steve Danes is in Twitter. Jail for posting this pick with his wife, Cindy. If you don't like hunting, fine, don't go, but don't censor others who disagree. And I'm pretty sure this is a formal job responsibility for a senator from Montana. Yeah, if you don't, If you don't hunt in Montana, it's pretty hard to get elected statewide. It is. And I'll tell you, actually, I did a follow up, which is I put a comment on it. I said, Steve also told me that he was aiming for the balloon, but he had an antelope instead. Well, that took you a minute. Ben, don't go back and editing and take that pause out. That that pause that there is a lengthy pause there is, Ben's processing. What I will give you, well played. When you make a joke that's a good one, I'll give you the golf clap for that one. I'll give you the golf clap. There we go. I'll take it. Um. But thankfully I began tweeting about it. Mike Lee began tweeting about it, and interestingly enough, Elon Musk had to get personally involved. He reached out directly to Steve Danes. The two of them talked on the phone and Elon number one reinstated Steve Danes on Twitter, but he had to do it personally. And number two he changed the policy so it is no longer their policy to ban you if you put up a picture of of of you hunting, and it was it number one, it was the right thing to do. I'm very glad Elon did it. But it speaks volumes that you think of the thousands of decisions he has to make every day that he had to get involved at that La granularity to reverse the decision that was baked into the Twitter operations. It also tells you I think about the mindset, lastly, of those working at Twitter who are just obsessed with their power to silence and censor and to shadow band people that they just don't like their life. And they're willing to do it to United States senator, which means they're obviously more than willing to do it to others. And imagine if you're not a US senator and they find you. And we've seen this through the Twitter files, and I think this is the part that Elon Musk is up against. It's almost like he has people within Twitter that are willing to have the come be destroyed and be a part destroying the company, hoping that he runs it into the ground. Actively, I would argue working against him just so they can at least make sure that conservatives or people that they disagree with how they live their lives, that they're not a vegan, that they actually go out and hunt and fish and do other things. They're willing to go all in because they had to know there was going to be a story written about this. I can't imagine they're dominant to think that elon'sco isn't going to hear about it. I just think there's a culture of arrogance that they have the ability to silence. Look, these are the same people that ban Donald Trump. If you think, okay, former President of the United States doesn't matter, I can decide to silence them. If they can ban the President, they can ban anybody. And the level of arrogance if you disagree with what someone says. Look, I think AOC says lots of things that are idiotic. I think Bernie Sanders says lots of things that are idiotic. I wouldn't ban them, I wouldn't silence them. Heck, I might even want them to get more people hearing what they say. I think it actually helps the cause of common sense when people hear the ridiculous things they're saying. But there is a culture, and it's not just Look what is so significant about what Elon is doing at Twitter, as Twitter wasn't acting alone. Facebook's doing the same thing. Google's doing the same thing, YouTube's doing the same thing. They're all engaged in it. It's just Elon is airing the dirty laundry. I'll tell you I spent more than a half hour this week on the phone with Elon talking about the challenges he's facing at Twitter. And I'm now the ranking member, the senior Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, and we are going to be focusing very directly and vigorously on big tech censorship. And I think what Elon is doing at Twitter is enormously, enormously consequential. Yeah, not just for freedom of speech, but also to see what happens in the future with big tech. Senator, It's always a pleasure to get to chat, especially on a busy week in Washington. This is why I think so many people love listening to Verdict. You get to see behind the scenes here. Don't forget to make sure you hit that subscribe button, our auto download button wherever you're listening to the show, so you get the show three days a week. We do this Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We also do a video version, so you can see that on YouTube and on Facebook, so make sure you follow this UNDERS page there on Facebook and on YouTube, the Verdict channel there, and we will see you guys back here in a couple of days.