On Monday April 11, 2022, the Buckley Program at Yale hosted Senator Ted Cruz, Mr. Michael Knowles ‘12, and Ms. Liz Wheeler for a live taping of the podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz” at the Omni New Haven Hotel. A link to the podcast episode can be found here. The event was made possible by the Young America’s Foundation’s Irving Brown Lecture Series. Mr. Trevor MacKay ‘25 and Mr. Aron Ravin ‘24 had the opportunity to sit down and interview the three guests immediately prior to the event: 

<When asked permission to record, all three assented.>

Mr. Knowles:

I assume Bezos is already recording.

<Laughter>

Mr. Ravin.

I’m Aron, this is Trevor. I’m the Editor-in-Chief of the Buckley Beacon. It’s the student publication of the Buckley Program. He’s the Publications Director. We have a few questions for all three of you.

So for Mr. Knowles, the first question. A phenomena that I’ve noticed at your alma mater, Yale, is conservatives are increasingly reluctant to identify with Republicanism. And they instead try to go with the Buckley Program or with the Federalist Society, because it seems like it’s cooler or more intellectual. I’m curious why you think this is happening, if it’s specifically a Yale problem, and if there’s anything we can do to fix it?

Mr. Knowles:

This is a Yale problem, but it’s not new. This was happening when I was a student as well. The conservative students at Yale identify as conservative, but not that kind of conservative. They are all for cutting taxes. They’re a little bit slower toward progress, but they will never, they are reluctant to touch any cultural issues. 

Immigration- the majority of Americans want to drastically reduce immigration. You will not, you will very rarely hear Yale conservatives say that. Gender theory, gender ideology when I was a student here, people wouldn’t, well, that wasn’t even particularly extent at the time. <Laugh> But you know, any sort of sexual issues, wouldn’t touch it with a 10 foot pole. The reason for this is that the Yale conservatives want to be socially accepted to some degree. They don’t want to be ostracized by professors or other students, and they want to get their job at Goldman’s Sachs.

They’re a conservative, but you know, they would never vote for this guy. They’re a conservative, but in the general election, they never vote for Trump. They’re conservative, but they agree with the liberals on everything that actually matters to liberals. And so that they’ll be perfectly acceptable to whatever woke Director of Diversity and Inclusion says at Morgan Stanley. And I get why they do it tactically, but it’s sad. What’s your integrity worth to you? Young conservatives, I ask!

Mr. MacKay:

Senator Cruz, I have a question for you. Traditionally the midterm election is a very good election for the opposition party to the Presidency. So I’m wondering what do you think Republicans should focus on in this upcoming midterm in order to take advantage of that?

Senator Cruz:

Well, that has historically proven true. I think it will be emphatically true this cycle. I think we’re not just looking at a wave election. I think it will be a tsunami. I believe Republicans will retake both houses of Congress. Personally, I put the odds of retaking the house at north of 90%. And I think the real question is how big a majority it will be. Whether it is a narrow majority or it could easily be a very substantial majority: 30, 40, 50 votes. I think all of that is in play right now. We’re seeing districts as high as D plus eight or D plus ten, which means Biden carried them by eight to ten points, that are suddenly neck and neck competitive. And, and if that continues until election day we will see a massive freshman class elected of Republicans 

In the Senate, I put the odds at Republicans winning the Senate at about 65-35. I think it is substantially more likely than not. I believe it’s going to be a very good election cycle. The map is not great. There are more vulnerable Republican seats on the ballot this cycle than vulnerable Democrat seats. And so for us to take the Senate, a couple things have to bounce right. That being said, I think if the election were held today, we would probably see a Senate of maybe 53-47 Republican is about where it would be. In terms of the issues that resonate particularly in any off-cycle year, two years into a President’s term, the issues, naturally, are a referendum on how things are going. That’s been true in every cycle that I can remember. In this instance, to use military parlance, it is a target rich environment because for this administration, things are going really, really badly on almost every front in terms of the issues right now 

Mr. Ravin:

It’s impressive.

Senator Cruz:

<Laughs> It is impressive. Actually you would think just by sheer random luck, they would’ve got something right. 

Mr. MacKay:

It’s almost like they’re doing it on purpose. 

Senator Cruz:

<Laughs> If they literally set policies on a dart board and thrown darts something would have not been screwed up. The issues that are resonating most powerfully with voters right now at the top of the list are inflation and gas prices. Americans are really pissed off that it’s much more expensive to get to work, to get to school, to put food on the tables, to run your air conditioner, to pay your rent, to provide for your family. Crime is resonating powerfully. It’s almost like demonizing the police, defunding the police, calling for abolishing the police, putting district attorneys in office that won’t prosecute criminals, it’s almost like that actually has a cause and effect relationship in terms of driving up crime at homicide rates, carjacking rates. And the American people understand that. 

The utter chaos at our Southern border is resonating powerfully. It is indefensible what a disaster it is. More broadly jobs and the economy. People are dismayed about the direction our nation is going. On top of that you have the panoply of totalitarian policies we’ve seen from Democrats in COVID. Two years ago, if I would’ve suggested to you that Democrats would advocate shutting down every small business in America, shutting down restaurants and bars and stores, destroying generations of livelihoods, and shutting down schools and sending tens of millions of children home for upwards of a year, that would’ve been viewed as a wildly unrealistic proposition. That is where today’s Democrats are. Two other things I’ll throw on top of that: People are fed up with the woke authoritarianism of the left canceling them for speaking out, mandating divisive lies in schools, things like critical race theory.

And then one final thing I’ll put as an overlay on all of that. I think it’s fair to say foreign policy generally is not decisive in elections. That most elections don’t turn on a specific question of foreign policy. That being said, when an American president is profoundly weak and ineffective, when America’s enemies are on the march and the safety and security of our families is in danger as a result, that can have an incredibly potent effect at the ballot box. I was 10 when Ronald Reagan became President and Jimmy Carter’s weakness and ineptitude played a critical part in electing a strong conservative president. I think Joe Biden, likewise, is repeating the same mistakes of Jimmy Carter and miraculously doing so even more disastrously than Carter managed to do 40 years ago.

Mr. Ravin:

A question for both of you Ms. Wheeler and Senator Cruz. Identity politics are destroying discourse on this campus. Senator Cruz, you’re Cuban. I’m going to assume you’re a woman, Ms. Wheeler.

Ms. Wheeler:

Are you a biologist? <Laughs>

Mr. Ravin:

I know sue me, sue me. I’m curious, how do you think that we can kind of get away from these people that treat different underprivileged groups as monolithic?

Ms. Wheeler:

Ladies first, right? <Laughs> If in fact I am.

No, the first thing that you have to do is acknowledge the strategy, right? Acknowledge that the left plays identity politics, and refuse it, refuse that premise, refuse to take part in that premise. It’s actually been something I’ve been very critical of conservatives and Republicans for playing into the premise of identity politics. By saying, “Oh look, we have a black conservative, we have a female conservative. Therefore, you know, we’re playing, we’re winning by your standards.” We should reject that premise wholesale. It should be, you know, throwing back to Martin Luther King, Jr. It should be about the content of your character, not the color of your skin, certainly not about your gender or your gender identity as it may be. 

And we do this at several levels. We reject identity politics verbally. We call out the left when they play by these rules. And we instill these values into the next generation. I know that the most hot button topics right now are being played out in the public school system, but that’s where children’s minds and their value systems are being formed. That’s where children are taught that these immutable characteristics matter more to their identity than who they are and their values and their behavior and their family life. And so we have to get back into the public schools. We have to make sure that parents are instilling values in their children and not public schools or else any kind of these Marxist ideas- really, these divisive ideas whether it’s racism, whether it’s sexism- institutionalized are going to make a resurgence in our country. And we obviously, as conservatives, should have long ago drawn that line and said, “No.”

Senator Cruz:

The left has always been about control, inflaming conflict. The left embraces conflict because it gives them control. The heart of Marxism is what is posited as a fundamental battle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. That same frame is applied by the left, whether to gender or race or any other category of division. The left seizes power by turning us against each other and encouraging us to fight. The left also is collectivist. It does not believe in individualism. Conservatives embrace the individual. You are not simply a series of check marks on a box of whatever happens to be your race or ethnicity or gender, or what have you. You are a unique human being created in God’s image, whose legacy on this planet will be formed by what you say, by what you do, by the lives that you touch, by what you create, by what you produce, by the family you raise, by the legacy you create, by the love you express, and, as Dr. King so powerfully put it, by the content of your character. All of those are individual. We do not derive them from the pigment in our skin. 

The left also does, and always has, embraced racism. Recently, a Biden judicial nominee from the far left at her confirmation hearing, I asked a very simple question, “Is racial discrimination wrong?” She refused to answer that question. Now there’s a reason she refused to answer that question. She was a graduate of the Harvard Law School. I’m sorry to say. <Laughs> 

Mr. Knowles:

I think we’re happy to say. 

Senator Cruz:

And she had written an article for a left-leaning law review when she was a student. She happens to be Asian American and she was castigating her fellow Asian Americans for being insufficiently woke if they refused to embrace discrimination against Asian Americans. And she had imperiously explained that an enlightened Asian American would reject the neocolonialist idea (and I don’t know what that means, other than that’s just sort of a general pejorative from the left is “neocolonialist” <laughs>) that somehow you shouldn’t discriminate against Asian Americans because of their race.

I assume that’s why she refused to answer the question- because she believes we should discriminate based on race. I would note last year, I forced a vote on the Senate floor in a bill that was Democratic virtue signaling at its highest. It was the so-called Asian American Hate Crime Bill. It was based on the risible proposition that because Donald Trump observed that the “Wuhan virus” originated in Wuhan, China, that every act of violence against Asian Americans was caused by Donald Trump. It was performative politics, which dominates today’s Democratic Party. I introduced a simple one paragraph amendment. I said, “No federal funds should go to any university that discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions or the grants and scholarships.” It was a very simple amendment and every single Democrat voted “No.” Failed by one vote. [A] straight party line vote because their party embraces racial discrimination. 

The proponents of critical race theory- they champion what they call anti-racism. Anti-racism is an Orwellian doublespeak by which they mean discrimination. That’s what they mean by that. That to be anti-racist you must affirmatively discriminate against those disfavored races. I have a really radical proposition, which is we ought to judge human beings by who they are and not engage in racial discriminate. That notion, today’s left, and for that matter, yesterday’s left, and the day before yesterday’s left emphatically rejected it. They rejected it when the Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan, they rejected it when the Democrats wrote the Jim Crow laws and they reject it today.

Mr. Ravin:

And one last thing, one sentence from any of you, do you have any final comments to any of the protestors who may be outside, or hopefully don’t interrupt the event?

Mr. Knowles:

A prophet has honor everywhere but in his own country, in his own house.

Senator Cruz:

Is there a prophet in our midst? 

<Laughter>

Senator Cruz:

But what I would say is come in from the cold. Today will be a test to see whether we have children throwing temper tantrums, or we actually have young men and women capable of rational discourse. If you’re a socialist, if you’re a Marxist- don’t scream and yell and stomp your foot about it. You actually have an open mic. You have the opportunity to advocate for your views. However misguided they might be.

However, if past is prologue, the left is terrified of defending their views to actual criticism. So if they engage in screaming and yelling, that will convey volumes. If they come in and have a discussion, we will welcome them with open arms to have a reasonable and rational and civil discussion upon which the entirety of democratic discourse is based.

Ms. Wheeler:

I’ve always found that…

Senator Cruz:

(That was one sentence with lots of sentences.)

Ms. Wheeler:

<Laughs> That’s called a complex sentence. 

I’ve always found that people who are confident in their worldview are very happy to talk about it in a calm and rational manner, even to people with whom they disagree. Maybe I’m a little less gentle about it, but I challenge these folks: come in and talk to us. If you’re not afraid to talk to us, come in and defend your views, if you have anything to defend your views with. And if not, if you’re too afraid to talk to us, then that pretty much shows us that your house has been built- it’s a house of cards.

Senator Cruz:

Final point: everyone should subscribe to the podcast.

Mr. Knowles:

That’s the most important point of all.

Mr. Ravin:

Shameless plug.

Mr. MacKay:

Subscribe and hit that bell. 

<Laughter> 

 Mr. MacKay/Mr. Ravin:

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

Trevor MacKay is Publication Director of The Beacon and a freshman in Timothy Dwight College majoring in History. Contact him at trevor.mackay@yale.edu.

Aron Ravin is Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon and a sophomore majoring in History. Contact him at aron.ravin@yale.edu.