Month: February 2021

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) gave an impassioned speech on Friday at CPAC in which he warned of the dangers of leftism and mocked his opponents.

“We are gathered in dark times. We’re gathered at a time where the hard left – where the socialists control the levers of government. Where they control the White House, where they control every executive branch, where they control both houses of Congress. Bernie is wearing mittens and AOC is telling us she was ‘murdered,’” Cruz said, in reference to the Democratic congresswoman claiming Cruz “almost had me murdered.”  “And the media desperately, desperately, desperately wants to see a Republican civil war,” he continued. “Liberty is under assault. And what are we going to do? I’ll tell you, we will fight.”

Cruz said that the key for Republicans and conservatives to win the battle against the tyrannical political left was to do two things: “defend liberty” and “have fun.” He went on to unpack both points at length.

“I’m going to close with these words of encouragement, these are dark days and the media tells us this is the new Galactic Empire forever and a thousand years,” Cruz said. “But already, Joe Biden and the radicals in his administration, they are already overshooting, they are already going too far. Their policies don’t work. They are disasters. They are bad. They are destroying jobs. They are stripping our freedom.”

“And there is a natural pendulum to politics. And the country will come back to sanity,” Cruz continued. “And mark my words 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year and so is 2024 as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American. In the immortal words of William Wallace. Freedom!”

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): What an amazing array of speakers here at CPAC. For a second there, I thought, we’re in Des Moines. That one took people a minute. We are gathered in dark times. We’re gathered at a time where the hard left – where the socialists control the levers of government. Where they control the White House, where they control every executive branch, where they control both houses of Congress. Bernie is wearing mittens and AOC is telling us she was ‘murdered.’ And the media desperately, desperately, desperately wants to see a Republican civil war. Liberty is under assault. And what are we going to do? I’ll tell you, we will fight.

Listen to William Wallace.

And let me tell you. The media here looks at the men and women gathered here, at the young people gathered here, as dangerous radicals. This is the rebel alliance. And Vader and the Emperor, and let’s be clear, they’re not your father, are terrified of the rebels who are here, and I’m proud to tell you, Gina Carano is standing with us.

So what do we do, what do we do at a time where the hard left is resurgent? Two very simple things, number one, we defend liberty. Look, are there tensions in our party? Sure, because we believe in diversity, we believe in individuality, different people have different views. … We don’t believe in uniformity, but I’ll tell you what can unite conservatives and libertarians and those who value the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is a love of liberty. And the left, they tell you who they are. Particularly in a global pandemic, as Rahm Emanuel said,’ you never want to waste a good crisis’ and whoo boy these guys don’t want to waste it.

You see statists in California putting 37 tons of sand in a skate park, because ain’t nobody having fun while the socialists are in charge. We see Bill de Blasio in New York sending people in to shut down parks and to throw young Orthodox Jewish kids out of the park because, God forbid, children have fun. We see leftists across the country shutting down churches. California, they’ve helpfully explained, you can go out and protest, you can scream and yell ‘abolish the police,’ and this virus, magically, no one will get infected. You can French kiss the guy next to you yelling, ‘abolish the police’ and no one will get infected. But if you go to church and say Amazing Grace – everyone’s going to die.

By the way, how many of you all have eaten at a restaurant in the last six months? Can I just stop and say how strange the rules are right now? I want to understand how this virus works. So when you walk in, you’ve got to put your mask on. Sadly, I’ve got two. You walk in, you got to put your mask on. You sit down, you take your mask off. See, apparently the virus is actually connected elevation. Now remember, this is all about science, it’s actually it may not be elevation, I think it’s that there are hormones that are released in your thighs when you’re sitting so you can sit at the table and there’s no virus being transmitted. But if you stand up, put the mask on!

And listen, let’s be clear, this is a dangerous virus. But these collectivist statists, okay, now they’re saying everybody can get immunized, we can have herd immunity everywhere and we’re going to wear masks for the next 300 years. And by the way, not just one, two, three, four, you can’t have too many masks. How much virtue do you want to signal? This is just dumb.

You know, the U.S. capital has giant fences with razor wires and 5,000 National Guards standing out front because the Democrats are convinced that political theater helps them. Let’s be clear, this is not about security at this point. This is about political theater, half the country, the deplorables are dangerous, and they’re going to turn the Capitol into a military outpost in Baghdad just to have their compliant media echo that message.

But do you know what terrifies every one of these statists? The truth. Liberty’s powerful, liberty’s persuasive, liberty is fun. You know, last week. We lost the great Rush Limbaugh. I was so blessed and so fortunate to call Rush friend. And Rush understood the power of liberty. You know, before there was Hannity, before there was Tucker, before there was Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder, before there was Donald Trump. There was Rush Limbaugh.

And before there was Section 230, there was something called the Fairness Doctrine, which gave leftists in Washington the power to silence views they didn’t like, we got rid of the Fairness Doctrine and Rush Limbaugh started by going one AM station, and then a second AM station, and then a third and then a fourth and then a fifth and the voice of liberty spread like prairie fire.

And let me tell you right now, in Los Angeles, there’s some skater kid who’s 19, who’s told that it’s hip and chic and cool to be a leftist socialist man. Who’s going to hear a message? Wait a second, these guys don’t want me to speak, think, have fun, do what I want to do. The message of liberty is profoundly subversive. The left believes in rigid conformity. We believe in diversity, free speech, you can say whatever you want, no matter how dumb it is, and by the way, in Washington, D.C., we test that proposition. Religious liberty, you can worship however you like on your knees before almighty God. Or you could worship the almighty dollar. Or you can worship, I don’t know, pink Martians. That’s the beauty of freedom. The Second Amendment, oh the left hates the Second Amendment, because they want their people docile and compliant. You know, when we saw riots all across the country, I remember there were reports that riots were going to come into suburban–mostly peaceful, fiery, but mostly peaceful–there were reports riots were going to come into the suburbs. I got to tell you, in Houston where I live, there weren’t any rioters, because let’s be very clear, if there had been they would discover what the state of Texas thinks about the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. So defend liberty.

But number two: Have fun. Have fun. You know, so many on the right, they act like they got a stick inserted somewhere it doesn’t belong. Like just lighten up. Especially now the left, they are shrill, they are angry. How many leftists does it take to screw in a light bulb? That’s not funny! Like God bless, who would want to be around these people? You know, Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t tell comedy anymore because any joke that’s funny is canceled. You know, SNL is unwatchable, the late night comedy, they stand up and say we hate Donald Trump. Yeah, no kidding.

We didn’t get that the last 9,000 times you told that. You know in 2020, The New York Times reported that 60 percent of women named Karen voted for Joe Biden. That’s actually real, you can look it up, the fact checkers, that’s what The New York Times reported and I’m willing to bet 80 percent of the men named Karen voted for Joe Biden. Just have fun.

You know, yesterday, John Boehner made some news. He suggested that I do something that was anatomically impossible to which my response was, who’s John Boehner? And you know what? There are a whole lot of voices in Washington, that want to just erase the last four years. Want to go back to the world before, where we had government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists before for the lobbyists, where are the Republicans compelling message was, ‘Republicans, we waste less.’ And they look at Donald J. Trump and they look at the millions and millions of people inspired, who went to battle fighting alongside President Trump, and they’re terrified. And they want him to go away. Let me tell you this right now, Donald Trump ain’t going anywhere. And the Republican Party is not the party just of the country clubs, the Republican Party is the party of steel workers and construction workers and pipeline workers and taxi cab drivers and cops and firefighters and waiters and waitresses and the men and women with calluses on their hands who are working for this country. That is our party and these deplorable are here to stay.

Every one of you has a platform, every one of you has a voice, the corporate media wants to silence these voices. You have a platform. You know, last year I launched a podcast, ‘Verdict with Ted Cruz,’ over twenty five million downloads in a year. By the way, please go subscribe ‘Verdict with Ted Cruz,’ ‘Verdict with Ted Cruz,’ click on subscribe, five stars, please. But you know what? You have the same platform, you have social media, you have your friends, your neighbors, your family, your classmates, speak out for freedom. Because I’m going to close with these words of encouragement, these are dark days and the media tells us this is the new Galactic Empire forever and a thousand years. But already, Joe Biden and the radicals in his administration, they are already overshooting, they are already going too far. Their policies don’t work. They are disasters. They are bad. They are destroying jobs. They are stripping our freedom. And there is a natural pendulum to politics. And the country will come back to sanity. And mark my words 2022 is going to be a fantastic election year and so is 2024 as we stand together and defend liberty, defend the Constitution, defend the Bill of Rights of every American. In the immortal words of William Wallace. Freedom!

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) said during his CPAC speech on Friday that Democrats have gotten to the point that they “hate America” because they have forgotten how special of a place America is, something that Reagan famously expressed in his farewell address.

Cotton made the remark while he was talking about how CPAC was not held in Washington, D.C. this year because officials have locked down the nation’s capital after Democrats downplayed violent left-wing riots for much of 2020.

“Now, maybe if CPAC had promised to burn down buildings and tear down statues, they would have let us up there,” Cotton said. “But just think about that contrast, that contrast strikes at the heart of our freedom, that your rights may depend on what you say, or what you believe, or the color of your skin. That’s the opposite of freedom, and conservatives everywhere, and really just normal Americans who don’t subscribe to every fad and fashion the far-left, see risk everywhere they turn. Big business may take your job away, big tech may deplatform you, your liberal college may kick you out of school, your liberal governor may shut down your church.”

“And why does the left do that?” Cotton said. “It’s because they failed to heed the warning of Ronald Reagan, in his farewell address. They lost what he called the unambivalent appreciation of America. Now, many on the left have concluded that America is a fundamentally flawed, irredeemable, wicked place. They have a lot of names for it. But whatever banner it flies under, it gets back to that anti-American idea. You can call it ‘wokeness,’ or ‘political correctness,’ ‘cancel culture,’ you can call it ‘critical race theory,’ ‘critical gender theory,’ critical whatever. Some people call it systemic racism. But here’s their point. The key word is not racism, the key word is systemic. It doesn’t matter so much what the system is guilty of only that the system is guilty, and it needs to be burned to the ground. So many liberals think that about America. And how do they plan to do that? They plan to do it by rejecting our beautiful Declaration of Independence, and the central promise of America, that we are all created equal in the eyes of God and we all have equal rights under the law. But too many of them no longer believe that. That’s why there’s no more urgent task today than the defense of America. And a simple, unapologetic patriotism.”

SEN. TOM COTTON (R-AR): Hello. Thank you all very much. Thanks for that great Florida welcome. You know, it’s great to be back at CPAC. Although something is a little different this year, you know, for the first time ever CPAC is not in our nation’s capital. That’s because they won’t let us anywhere near the nation’s capitol. Think about it. Even though cases are plummeting and vaccination rates are surging, we are still banned from getting anywhere near our nation’s capital. Now, contrast that with what happened last summer with the BLM protests there, thousands of people in the streets as cases were surging. Did Democratic politicians try to lock that down? No, they went out march with them. Now, maybe if CPAC had promised to burn down buildings and tear down statues, they would have let us up there. But there is nowhere, there’s nowhere, I would rather be than here with my fellow patriots free, than locked down in Washington, DC.

But just think about that contrast, that contrast strikes at the heart of our freedom, that your rights may depend on what you say, or what you believe, or the color of your skin. That’s the opposite of freedom, and conservatives everywhere, and really just normal Americans who don’t subscribe to every fad and fashion the far left, see risk everywhere they turn. Big business may take your job away, big tech may deplatform you, your liberal college may kick you out of school, your liberal governor may shut down your church. And why does the left do that? It’s because they failed to heed the warning of Ronald Reagan, in his farewell address. They lost what he called the unambivalent appreciation of America.

Now, many on the left have concluded that America is a fundamentally flawed, irredeemable, wicked place. They have a lot of names for it. But whatever banner it flies under, it gets back to that anti-American idea. You can call it ‘wokeness,’ or ‘political correctness,’ ‘cancel culture,’ you can call it ‘critical race theory,’ ‘critical gender theory,’ critical whatever. Some people call it systemic racism. But here’s their point. The key word is not racism, the key word is systemic. It doesn’t matter so much what the system is guilty of only that the system is guilty, and it needs to be burned to the ground. So many liberals think that about America. And how do they plan to do that they plan to do that? They plan to do it by rejecting our beautiful Declaration of Independence, and the central promise of America, that we are all created equal in the eyes of God and we all have equal rights under the law. But too many of them no longer believe that. That’s why there’s no more urgent task today than the defense of America. And a simple, unapologetic patriotism.

We face many threats in this country, whether from China or Iran, or Islamic terrorism. But there is no more pernicious threat to America than the rejection of our founding principles, and our heritage and our tradition. And all those on the left who would reject those things I have a message. We will defend America without fear, without reservation, and without apology. After all, we’ve seen what happens when people lose the nerve to defend America. Last summer, chaos and riots engulfed our streets. Police stations were fire bombed. Buildings, businesses were looted. Courthouses were attacked, statues to our heroes were toppled. The police in some cases were overwhelmed and didn’t have the numbers to stop the violence. In other cases liberal politicians refused to allow the police to restore order, you may recall, we were all told these are mostly peaceful protests, peaceful protests as entire city blocks were burned to the ground. Remember the guy on CNN, standing in front of the blazing Inferno? So, mostly peaceful protests down here tonight, Wolf. But the violence continued night after night.

So I wrote an op-ed in The New York Times. It had it had a very simple message, very simple, very common sense message, grounded in American history in law, supported by a majority of Americans arguing very simply, if the police cannot, or especially if they are not allowed to restore order, then it is time to send in the troops. And what happened next? Total meltdown with the little social justice warriors at The New York Times. All these children that have been marinated, in the language of the campus seminar room. They said things like, ‘your words put my life at risk.’ As if typing on their phones sitting on their futons was as dangerous as being a cop trying to stop rioters in the streets. Or, ‘your words are violence.’ No, I’m sorry, kiddo, words or words, violence is what your friends are doing out on the streets of America. And of course, The New York Times editors they caved and rolled over And they apologized. They said my work didn’t meet their standards. That’s one time I actually agree with The New York Times. My work did not meet their standards, it far exceeded their normally lousy standards. You know, some people, some people on the left even called for me to apologize. So let me say again, I will never apologize for defending America.

And, you know, one of the first things I learned in the Army, really one of the first things anyone learns in the Army is the five principles of patrolling. The most important of which is security because if you don’t have security, you don’t have anything. And security is what our brave police officers bring to our communities every single day across America. And that’s why conservatives should never apologize for backing the blue. And whether it’s a child mob and the New York Times, or a social media mob, or an actual mob and our streets, we will never bend the knee to a politically correct mob, ever. Now, The New York Times a laughingstock obviously, but this is no laughing matter. The Democrats expect us all to surrender, to capitulate. They want to control the terms of the debate, they even want to control our language. Have you seen that Joe Biden wants to ban the term ‘illegal aliens’? It’s true. What does he want to replace it with? He wants to replace it with undocumented non citizen. True, I’m not making it up. Why are they undocumented? Because they’re illegal. It’s simple people. And that’s just that’s just the tip of the iceberg and they’re open borders immigration agenda. They want to give amnesty to 15 – 20 million illegal aliens, with no strings attached, with voting rights, presumably in time for what they hope will be Kamala Harris’s re-election campaign. They may have halted deportations for all illegal aliens, murderers, rapists, terrorists, Ms-13 gang members are not being deported. They stopped building a wall on our border, and they put up a wall around your United States Capitol. And right now, right now as we speak, they are literally tracking down illegal aliens in Mexico, who Donald Trump turned away, to invite them to come back. That’s not catch and release. That’s recruit and release. And of course, you can’t fly into America without a negative coronavirus test but you can cross our border without one. Now I’ve got news for the Democrats again, turns out this open borders agenda is not very popular. You can see that in the polls about Joe Biden’s plans. 2020 was one of the best elections we’ve ever had with Hispanic voters in particular, and with immigrant voters in general. Reminds me of a story a friend of mine back home told me. He works with a first generation immigrant named Manuel. Manuel, told him, ‘my wife, and both my boys and I all voted for Donald Trump.’ And my friend said, ‘Oh, you didn’t vote for Donald Trump.’ And Manuel said, ‘No, we voted for Trump.’ And my friend said, ‘Why did you vote for Trump?’ And Manuel pointed at the parking lot. He said, ‘Have you seen my new pickup truck?’ And he said, ‘Did you know that both of my boys have full time jobs now?’ And he said, ‘You know, I’m not offended by what Donald Trump does.’ And like so many Americans across the country, he said, we have Donald Trump to thank for those things. So, is it any wonder that people like him, immigrants who obeyed our laws and came here the right way, who earned their citizenship and earned the right to vote are some of our most patriotic and loyal Americans? People who escaped oppression from countries like Cuba or Venezuela, or China, more than ever, we need that kind of simple, unambivalent, unashamed patriotism, the proud love of a great country because America truly is a great country, it is worth fighting for, it is worth dying for. And it is worth defending our history.

These these radical liberals, they want to erase our history, they want to replace it with their crazy Marxist theories. They may say that it’s about the civil war or racism, don’t believe them. Look at what’s happening in San Francisco. They’re trying to rename schools named after George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln, and Dianne Feinstein. People, if Dianne Feinstein is not liberal enough for you, I don’t know what to tell you. But they are more focused on renaming Abraham Lincoln High School than they are opening up so kids can go back and learn there. And remember this to, last summer, as those mobs were rampaging in the streets, they tore down statues of Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant, when they’re tearing down statues of Lincoln and Grant, it’s not about the civil war or racism, it’s because they hate America. They want to erase and rewrite our history. These liberals read 1984 and thought it wasn’t a cautionary tale, but a how-to-manual. These are the same liberals that were burning our flag over and over again, last summer in the streets. And what happened? The media celebrated them, Kamala Harris bailed them out of jail. Well, I think you all know what we should do with rioters in the street, we should lock up every last one of them.

You know, I’ll confess that it makes my blood boil when I see liberals desecrating our flag. When I was in the army, I served at Arlington National Cemetery and we performed funerals for our fallen heroes. I had to present that flag to their widows, the same flag that was burned in our streets last year. The same flag that pampered athletes disrespect by taking a knee during our national anthem. You know, those athletes are about the same age as a lot of those soldiers, a lot of our wounded warriors, though don’t have the ability to take a knee anymore. You would think it was the least those athletes could do to stand up for our flag when our national anthem plays. But if they won’t stand up, and we will stand up for our flag. Let me let me close this with just one final story about the flag. You know, I used to get asked questions a lot I still do about why the flag is backwards on the army uniform, and it goes back to the day of cavalry charges. When our soldiers would charge in the battle, the flag would fly in the wind. And if you’re on the right side of the formation, and the flag is one on the right shoulder, it would appear backwards. So our soldiers wear that flag backwards on their uniform still today to remind everyone that our army always advances it never retreats. And I think that’s a pretty good lesson for us today. When America is under assault, and conservatives are under attack, we will never retreat. We will never surrender and we will always defend and protect the United States of America. Thank you all. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.