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cover of episode Election Day: 3 Wins & a Loss plus Cruz's Filibuster Record Broken

Election Day: 3 Wins & a Loss plus Cruz's Filibuster Record Broken

2025/4/2
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Verdict with Ted Cruz

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Ted Cruz: 最近佛罗里达州和威斯康星州的选举结果对众议院的控制权和特朗普的议程具有重要意义。佛罗里达州的选举结果是共和党赢得两席,增加了众议院的多数席位,这将有助于特朗普的议程。威斯康星州的选举结果是参半的,共和党赢得了一项选民身份证的宪法修正案,但输掉了一场最高法院的选举。媒体对选举结果的解读存在偏差,他们关注的是威斯康星州自由派法官获胜,但忽略了共和党在佛罗里达州的胜利和选民身份证法案的通过。 在2013年,我进行了一次冗长发言以阻止奥巴马医改,这次发言对随后的选举产生了重大影响。而Cory Booker最近的冗长发言,虽然打破了记录,但我认为其影响力有限,因为它只是表达了民主党对特朗普的厌恶,缺乏新意。 我在冗长发言期间得到了Rand Paul的建议,包括穿舒适的鞋子和少喝水。冗长发言期间,我与其他参议员互动以休息,并朗读了《绿鸡蛋和火腿》给我的女儿们听。我的发言时间受到了参议院规则的限制,而Cory Booker则没有这种限制。 Ben Ferguson: 佛罗里达州和威斯康星州的选举结果显示,共和党在佛罗里达州赢得两席,对特朗普的议程有所帮助。威斯康星州的选举结果是参半的,共和党赢得了一项选民身份证的宪法修正案,但输掉了一场最高法院的选举。媒体对选举结果的解读存在偏差,他们关注的是威斯康星州自由派法官获胜,但忽略了共和党在佛罗里达州的胜利和选民身份证法案的通过。 Cory Booker打破了参议院历史上最长冗长发言的记录,超过了Ted Cruz的记录。 Cory Booker: (由于没有Cory Booker的直接发言,此处无法提供其观点。)

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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you as always. Senator, it was Election Day in some parts of America, but they were very significant, especially when it comes to controlling the House and giving Trump a little bit of breathing room. Well, we had Election Day in Florida and Wisconsin. A ton of money was spent on it. At the end of the day, the results were three wins and a loss.

We'll break it down. We'll talk about exactly what happened, the money that was spent and what the consequences are. Secondly, we have now seen, as of yesterday, the longest filibuster in Senate history. And it was done by Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, who spoke for 25 hours and frustratingly, infuriatingly beat the record of yours truly.

At over 21 hours. So we're going to break that down as well, and we're going to compare what Cory Booker was filibustering over to what I filibustered over in 2013. We'll discuss that as well. Let me tell you quickly about the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. I had the honor of speaking at one of their religious gathering meetings where they had religious leaders from

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That's 888-488-IFCJ or supportifcj.org. Senator, before we start with all the politics, I got a great text message from someone today and it said, what the hell did Ted Cruz do to his beard? They didn't remember that it was April Fool's Day and you had a great

a brilliant tweet that you put out with some nice chops. Like you'd sawed off a lot of your beard. Well, I did. I had, had some fun with, with, with April fools. And, and, and so I, I, I tweeted today, um, a very simple tweet that said Washington DC can be a hairy place.

But this morning's committee hearing reminded me just how important it is to cut waste, shave down our debt, and trim down the size of our government. And then it was a picture of my face, photoshopped, so the beard was magically gone. And instead, I had a big old honking El Chapo mustache.

And I got to say, look, look, look, as a Cuban-American, I was pretty proud of the El Chapo mustache. I mean, it kind of. It was believable. It was believable because my phone blew up. People said, did he do this? When did he do this? Why did he do it? Did he lose a bet? What happened? Did he lose his bracket? And I just kept responding with April 1, April 1. Like, get there faster, guys. Everybody apparently thought your bracket as a basketball guy sucked and it cost you your beard.

It was, you know, I don't know. I just might do it tomorrow, though. You never know. But it reminds me of when I first grew the beard, which was back, I think, 2018. Yeah.

You know, I grew the beard actually just for the hell of it. It was over Thanksgiving and on the holidays I would never shave. That's something I for years would never do. And I just came back from Thanksgiving and Monday morning came into work in the Senate and just hadn't shaved. And actually by my top political guy, who you know very well, sent me this email saying,

that said, worst decision ever. And that really pissed me off. I'm like, all right, screw you. I'm going to keep it. And I have, although I will say it was, your and my friend Benny Johnson came and wanted to record a video, asked if I would do an instructional video on how to grow a deer. I remember this. Yeah. And I said, sure. I said, come on in, come into my office. I sat at my desk. I said, all right, start recording.

And I said, everyone, this is an instructional video on how to grow a beard. And I reached in a drawer of my desk and I pulled out a razor. And I said, this is a razor. Don't use it.

And that was the end of the video. Yeah, that was that simple. Well, I got in on the action because people laugh. They're like, how often do you and Senator Cruz talk? And I'm like, during the day, he's pretty busy. We'll exchange a text here and there. But there's a long delay when you're working. And so someone sent me your tweet. I'm laughing. I'm looking at it. And then I said, all right, I got to Photoshop this. So we took your beard and

threw it on my new headshot and then i put out a tweet said i'll keep the salt and pepper alive for you that also went viral it was a fun day to mess with people all right but let's be clear you did not take my beard and put it on you you used ai to put a salt and pepper beard on you because the beard you put had way more salt than pepper no no way more salt than pepper

You noticed that because that was my little dig. I was like, is he going to write back? That's too much gray. I was kind of wondering what I could get away with there. So I was told, and I'm quoting now, Ferguson, if this is real, shave it off, shave it off right now. You cannot handle the beard. So the people have spoken. I don't think I'm growing a beard anytime soon. That I can promise you. All right. So let's get into. You know what you could carry off though is a soul patch. I'm for a little soul patch on Ben Ferguson. All right.

Can you imagine? That and a rat tail. Yeah, that's the end of my TV career. That's for sure. I did, by the way, you remember No Shave November? Do you remember that? I do.

Yeah, so when that, gosh, it was, I mean, years ago, right when that thing happened and everybody was doing it, I was like, all right, I'll do it, fine. So at the time, I was fighting the commies at CNN, and towards the end of November, I got a text, I think it was from Erin Burnett's executive producer, and I was supposed to be on her show, and they said, we also are inquiring, is the beard gone yet? Question mark.

So it was pretty patchy. I couldn't sell it. It just didn't work. I'll have to unearth that picture, and I'll throw it up on X for people to see, but it was pretty pretty. Well, look, Ben, once you hit puberty, you'll do just fine on that front.

Next time I'm going all white Santa beard when I copy yours. That's going to be my revenge here. All right. Let's talk elections. Election. We had Election Day in America. And there's two headlines here. If you watched CNN tonight and I was watching the reaction, they're saying it's a total disaster for Republicans. They spent all this money on the Supreme Court election.

election in Wisconsin. Trump was involved. Musk was involved. And this is just a referendum on Donald Trump after he's been in office for 90 days. That is their narrative. So you're saying CNN doesn't like Trump? Yes, that's exactly right. I really, I had not picked up on that. So that's that, that you're really good at reading between the lines. And, you know, both of their viewers, I think, probably picked up on that as well.

Yeah, no doubt. The results tonight were mixed. You and I are recording this. It is 1215 in the morning. So so the results are still coming in. And right now there were two congressional seats on the ballot in Florida. And one was Mike Waltz's seat, who is now the national security adviser for President Trump. The other is Matt Gates's seat, who stepped down when Trump named him as attorney general and then ultimately withdrew the nomination. And both of them.

were incredibly tightly contested. And in fact, the Democrats spent like crazy. And the result, the Republicans won both of them. Now, they were pretty solidly Republican seats. But at the end of the day, Jimmy Patronus, the Republican, won with 56.9% to 42.3%. So that was a 15-point victory.

And Randy Fine, the Republican, won with 56.7% to 42.7%. And so both of those were sizable victories. If you look at Randy Fine...

He was literally outspent 10 to 1. I mean, it was massive. I've been in races where I've been outspent 3 to 1, but 10 to 1 is a massive funding disadvantage. And so that victory is really significant. So you look at this, and let's talk about how important this was for Donald Trump's America's First Agenda. There was a razor-thin majority in the House yesterday.

And this gives a little bit of breathing room now for Donald Trump's agenda to have a chance to make it through. It's also going to help Mike Johnson, I think, significantly not have to capitulate and pander to any Yahoo that wakes up and decides either a want to be famous or be want to throw something in with pork or see just want to be a pain in his A.S. Now it gives him the ability, I think, to actually be a better speaker. Is that?

Do you agree with that? Yeah, no, I think that's right. Look, we have had an excruciatingly small majority in the House. And to be clear, that is why President Trump withdrew the nomination of Elise Stefanik to be U.N. ambassador, because she had been nominated to be U.N. ambassador. But if she...

was confirmed and she resigned, there'd be a vacancy. And the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, was was threatening to basically play games and keep the seat vacant for the rest of the year, which would which would have shrunk the majority by one. And listen, special elections are always dangerous and always risky. Strange outcomes can occur. And so the president at the end of the day, I think, quite rightly decided that that

risking the very narrow House majority was dangerous. And to Elise's credit, I think Elise would have done a terrific job as UN ambassador, but I appreciate her putting the interest of the country ahead and saying she was not going to risk the House majority. But the result as of today is the Republican majority has two more Republicans in the House, and that will help. That will give the speaker some breathing room. That will help us

to extend the Trump tax cuts that will help us secure the border, that will help us win on victory after victory. So that was a very good result. And Florida, had those been losses, had even one of those been losses, it would have been a serious setback and the media would have gone crazy.

Well, and that goes back to the money game, what you mentioned earlier. Democrats just decided we're going to just spend virtually every dollar we can get our hands on down there, throw jello at a wall, hope that something sticks, and maybe we flip one of these seats because, like you said, if that happened, it could have been catastrophic for Donald Trump's agenda. Yeah, and look, that can make...

special elections very dangerous because often the party out of power is particularly energized, they're angry, their base is agitated, and so they can be willing to pour a whole bunch of money into it, and that is certainly happening. Now, Wisconsin, look, Wisconsin is a much more purple-to-blue state than Florida. Florida's gotten quite red. Wisconsin, there were...

two major elections on the ballot and we split. We won one and we lost one.

So the one we won was a constitutional amendment to put into the Wisconsin state constitution a voter ID requirement, a requirement that you show photo ID to vote. Now, that is existing Wisconsin law, but that's just a statute. In other words, the next legislature could change that, could get rid of voter ID, and that remains a major priority for Democrats across the country. In fact, in California, they've gone so far as to make it illegal to

to ask for photo ID for voting. So they're actively and openly encouraging voters

voter fraud in California by doing so. Well, Wisconsin, the voters had on the ballot, should photo ID for voting be in the Wisconsin Constitution, and that won overwhelmingly. The vote was 63.2 percent to 36.8 percent, so it was a massive, almost a 30-point victory. That's great. That is a terrific victory for election integrity. Wisconsin is a swing state.

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So those are our three big victories.

extremely important, especially like you said on the voter ID. That's going to give a signal to other states, move forward on this. The American people want it. And we'll probably see a trend come out of that. That's good news, obviously. So let's talk about the loss. And the headline in all the media is liberal judge wins in Wisconsin.

That's what they want you to know. They don't want you to know the GOP swept Florida. They don't want you to know that voter ID law became a thing in a swing state. They're all obsessed now with this, quote, liberal judge winning. A lot of money in this race. President was involved. Musk was involved. So they're saying this is a referendum on Donald Trump. I think that's obviously going way too far. This is special election time. Everybody dial down the crazy.

Yeah. Now, to be clear, on the photo ID law in Wisconsin, it wasn't that it became the law because it is current law right now. What happened is it got added to the Constitution. So now it is much, much harder for Democrats to take it away. It's enshrined in the state constitution. And so it would take a constitutional amendment to get rid of it. And so that's that's a major victory. But the loss, the loss was a real one. And it was an election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

It was election between Susan Crawford, who is a liberal Democrat, and Brad Schimel, who is a conservative. And the result at the end of the day was that the liberal won 54.4 percent to 45.6 percent. So that was a nine-point victory. That was a sizable victory.

And the result of it is control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. So the court was in the balance. This was the swing seat. And I got to tell you, the money that was spent in this race, how much do you think was spent in Wisconsin? I'm going to guess tens of millions of dollars, knowing how important this was at minimum. Ninety eight million. Ninety eight million dollars on a judicial race in Wisconsin. Wow.

Yahoo News is reporting that according to the Brennan Center for Justice, more than $53.3 million was spent by Schimel and his backers, including $12.2 million from Elon Musk's America PAC.

And Crawford's campaign and those backing her have spent an estimated $45.1 million. So all told, $98 million. That is, to the best of my knowledge, in fact, I was going to say that that's the most that's ever been spent on a judicial race. But if I read the next sentence on the article, it would say the spending has made the Wisconsin race the most expensive U.S. judicial in U.S. judicial history, which it clearly is. I don't know what second, but it ain't even close.

That's a massive amount of money. And listen, this is an unfortunate loss. There's going to be some bad rulings in Wisconsin, including potentially redistricting rulings that have political consequences in Wisconsin. And so it is unfortunate. I'm grateful Elon leaned in hard on this. But it's worth remembering Wisconsin is a purple state. And on Election Day in 24...

We had mixed outcomes in Wisconsin. Donald Trump won Wisconsin, barely, but he won. But we lost the Senate seat. Tammy Baldwin, the incumbent Democrat, Eric Hubdy, Washington's

challenging, and he lost. Unfortunately, we didn't pick up the Senate seat, and right now, Wisconsin is one of the relatively few states that has a Republican senator and a Democrat senator, so it's split. You've got Ron Johnson, a Republican, a conservative, a good friend of mine, and you've got Tammy Baldwin, who is a liberal Democrat, and so...

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All right, Senator, so let's move to another very interesting moment. One of your colleagues in the Senate decided he was going to take away your record on a filibuster. You guys were very different in why you were filibustering, but he did beat your record today, and you even posted something that was hilarious online as well.

Well, Cory Booker, Democrat from New Jersey, has now set the record for the longest speech in history on the Senate floor. And he spoke for 25 hours and four minutes. And so it was incredibly long. It surpassed the record had been held by Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957. And he was

He was filibustering, Strom Thurmond was filibustering the 1957 Civil Rights Act. And that had been the record until last night when Cory Booker broke it. Now, fourth all time is yours truly. I used to be third all time.

But but Corey knocked me down. And so so my record in in 2013, I spoke on the Senate floor for 21 hours and 19 minutes and.

And so Corey just beat me. I will say I tweeted out right before he broke my record. And so I took to Twitter and tweeted out, as Cory Booker approaches my 21-hour filibuster record, I'm contemplating pulling the fire alarm.

hat tip Jamal Bowman. And I sent out a picture of Jamal Bowman, the Democrat congressman pulling the fire alarm in the Capitol to avoid a vote. And I will say that that that that tweet went viral. And in fact, Corey ended up at the end of his his 25 hour filibuster reading that tweet on the Senate floor, which which was a.

which I enjoyed. And I actually like Cory and he and I are friends. And so I'm glad he read it. And I will say in my 2013 filibuster, I read a number of tweets on the Senate floor. And I believe that was the first time in history a tweet had ever been read on the Senate floor. And I read a whole bunch of them. Now, there is a significant difference between what I was filibustering over and what Cory Booker was filibustering over.

What I was filibustering over was Obamacare. And I was doing so because it was right when Obamacare was going into effect.

And I was trying to stop it from going into effect because the American people, it was having the effect of driving up premiums dramatically, reducing choices. Barack Obama famously said, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. And millions of Americans discovered that was not the case. That was a lie. In fact, PolitiFact named Barack Obama's, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, the lie of the year. And for them to admit a Democrat is lying is really quite remarkable because PolitiFact lies for a living.

And so that filibuster, when I did it in 2013, I was a brand new baby freshman. And it was the theme of the filibuster was make D.C. listen. And I will tell you, it had a significant effect. And in fact, it energized people across the country. And I'll point to what the effect was in 2014.

The next year, we had an election and it was a tsunami election. Republicans ended up winning nine Senate seats. We retired Harry Reid as majority leader. And we ended up winning the biggest majority in the House of Representatives since 1928. And if you look at exit polling,

In that 2014 election, the number one issue in the country, according to the voters, that were turning out in massive numbers was Obamacare. And they were saying, finally, finally, you're fighting. Finally, Republicans are not rolling over. And so that had, I think, a very significant effect on Election Day and helped win back both the Senate and House for Republicans. I don't think Cory Booker's is going to have that same effect. And in fact...

Listen, I don't know how many people watched it. I suspect like the that CNN and MSNBC was probably gushing about it. But I'll confess I didn't turn on CNN or MSNBC. So I don't know one way or the other. I don't particularly care. The seven rabid partisans who watch those networks probably were quite happy with it.

But at the end of the day, look, what was Cory Booker talking about? As best I can tell, it was, I hate Donald Trump. I'm a Democrat. Trump bad. Orange man bad. I'm mad at the voters. Why did the voters elect Trump? Why did the voters elect a Republican Senate? Why did the voters elect a Republican House? Gosh, I'm mad at the voters. Gosh, I hate Trump. I'm not sure there's anything new there. I'm not sure. Was there a person in America who,

who was confused yesterday and didn't know that Senate Democrats hate Donald Trump? Like, was there any new information in it? And so I've got to say, I'm skeptical...

that it's going to have a meaningful impact. And I'll point out, it's not just me who said that. Take a listen to what Joe Biden's communications director, Kate Bedingfield, said about Cory Booker's speech.

The Democratic base and Democratic donors are looking for signs of life. And so I think what Senator Booker is giving them here are some signs of life. Is it going to have a tangible impact on business? I mean, if he is still alive after this, it's not like they have a tangible impact on Senator Booker. It won't have a tangible impact on business in Washington.

I mean, that's CNN saying it, Senator. And look, it was they changed. And that's Biden's communications director. It's Biden's communication director. Amazingly enough. And so so look, Corey, that's that. That's fine. Now, I will tell you. So it was funny as as Booker was giving his his filibuster remarks.

And reporters were all running up to me and then they all knew that that that he was he was aiming to beat my record. So they were asking me about it. And they said, did you have any advice? And I will I will admit, Corey didn't ask me for any advice. So now I did not give him any advice on this.

But I did share a story. So when I did the filibuster in 2013, I had gotten some advice from Rand Paul. So Rand Paul had done a 13-hour filibuster, and I was planning to do mine. And I asked him, hey, Rand, you got any advice? Because he'd just done 13 hours. And he said, yeah, two things. He said, number one, wear comfortable shoes because he said your feet and your legs will be killing you.

And I will confess, as you know, every day in the Senate, I wear black cowboy boots. The boots, I wear alligator boots, and they have the Senate seal on the front. And on the back of it, they have the come and take it flag. And so that's my standard footwear in the Senate. But for the filibuster, I went to the store and I bought some black tennis shoes.

And in the middle of the filibuster at like two or three in the morning, I confessed to the people of Texas. I said, look, I have to I just have to apologize to the people of Texas. I'm sorry I didn't have the courage of my convictions to.

to wear my boots. I weenied out and got black tennis shoes, but I was planning on standing here for a really long time. And so I will admit the tennis shoes are more comfortable for the marathon time. The second bit of advice Rand gave me. I got to ask you, though, when you're picking out the tennis shoes, did you buy brand new or did you wear them a little bit beforehand? Yeah, I didn't break them in and they were fine. And I don't think I've ever worn them since then. Like I literally wore them for the filibuster and that was it.

But fortunately, even though they were new, they were pretty comfortable. They were not bad at all. The second bit of advice Rand gave me was, if anything, even more important. He said, drink very little water. And in fact, Rand said when he ended at 13 hours, he said, my legs didn't make me give in. My bladder did.

And the most common question that I would get about the filibuster is, okay, what do you do about going to the bathroom? And the real simple answer is you don't. So the rules of a filibuster are,

You have to stand. You cannot sit. And you have to stay on the Senate floor. If you sit or if you leave the Senate floor, you relinquish the floor. And so and that's why that's why comfortable shoes matter, because you're not allowed. You're technically not even allowed to lean on the desk, although that that rule is not not heavily enforced. You can lean a little bit, but you can't.

But but you can't can't sit. And and legend has it that during Strom Thurmond's filibuster that that that he had an aide hold a bucket in in in in the Senate cloakroom and and and and he he took a leak.

While filibustering, while standing on the Senate floor, I figured in the in the era of C-SPAN, that probably wasn't the best idea. So I was not going to do that. And so for the entire course of 21 plus hours, I drank one tiny little glass of water. And that's all I basically would take a little sip just to just to moisten my throat.

And and I got to say, look, I've never gone 21 hours with go to without go to the bathroom. And, you know, I discovered a very simple principle, which is nothing in, nothing out. And so it was it was fine. But that was excellent advice.

When does your mind start to wander? I mean, at what point do you feel like you're getting a little bit, you know, delusional is the best word I can use. There's got to be a certain point where you're sitting there going, you know, it's like when you do an all-nighter in college, you kind of slap yourself on the face. You're like, I got to wake up, walk around the room and sit back down. When does that fatigue hit? Yeah, it wasn't too bad. I mean, it was, look, it was energized. And I was telling a story. I was talking about

the very real people being harmed by Obamacare. And I was telling people stories and I was laying out facts and figures and data. And so I had a lot of material that I was presenting. As I mentioned, I read tweets about the harms from Obamacare and we started the hashtag Make DC Listen, which went viral during the filibuster. And so it really was, look, just like we're doing in this podcast, it was an effort to communicate with the American people.

But it now we also had some fun. So the rules do allow you to.

to yield to another senator for a question. And so you can yield for a question without yielding the floor. And so what happens during a long filibuster is that people will come and support you. And so I had multiple senators come and support me, and they would – Mike Lee did the most heroic. He was there for a great deal of the filibuster. And what you could do is he would stand up there, and he'd say, would the senator yield for a question?

And I'd respond, I'm happy to yield for a question without yielding the floor. And then Mike could ask a 30 or 45 minute question and, you know, basically give a speech. And then at the end of it, say, don't you agree? And so it would let you rest your voice, because if you speak...

You know, I know you do radio for a living, but if you speak 21 hours without pausing, your vocal cords will be pretty ragged. So it was helpful to have folks go and spell you for a little while. And I will say, you know, at like three and four in the morning, Mike was there and he gets really punch truck when he's tired. And so we were, he was reading like bad jokes and 70s rock lyrics and

And look, one of the things people remember from my filibuster is that I read Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor. Now, what a lot of people don't know is why I read Green Eggs and Ham. Do you know why? Your daughters. Yes. So look, at the time, my girls were three and five.

And and when I was home every night, I would read them a bedtime story, which which, you know, I'm sure you do with your kids, too. But that that was my practice when they were little. And and so it was their bedtime. And and so we called home and told them, turn on the TV. And so I read Green Eggs and Ham. And there is a picture in my office which you've seen.

And it's both girls. They're in matching pajamas. And Catherine was three years old and she has her little hand on the TV and she's touching it and she's just sort of watching in wonderment her daddy read her Green Eggs and Ham on TV.

And Caroline, who was five, is just cracking up laughing. I love the picture because she's just like laughing hysterically. And look, Caroline can be cynical with her dad. Not a whole lot I've done in the Senate has impressed her. And she, when I came home,

She was five and she had her arms crossed and she was like, OK, dad, that was pretty cool. And I was like, all right. I was psyched that that that the bedtime story had earned some brownie points with the girls at home. All right. So final question on this. And this is, I'm sure, something that was going through your mind, Cory Booker's mind.

When did you know you were just going to end it? How do you decide? Are you looking at a certain time in your mind where you're like, I got to make it to X and then as soon as it hits, I'm done? What is the process of that as well?

Well, actually, I could have gone longer. And the problem was in order to do the filibuster, a pure filibuster is when the Senate floor is wide open and you take control of the filibuster. And it is the prerogative of every every senator have unlimited debate. And so if you take control of the floor, you can hold it for as long as you are able to hold it.

When I started the filibuster, unfortunately, Harry Reid, then the majority leader, the Democrats were in charge,

had locked in a unanimous consent resolution that the next day there was a vote scheduled, I think at noon, and it was locked in, which meant I had an endpoint. I had an endpoint that was a wall because that unanimous consent had been locked in, and so it trumps voting.

It it it is it's effectively a Senate rule. And so when I was north of 21 hours, I had plenty of strength. I could have kept going and I really wanted to break Strom Thurmond's record. And I actually sent one of my staffers to ask Harry Reid if he would consent. I could have asked unanimous consent.

to be allowed to complete my speech. And if Reed had allowed it, I would have been able to. So I asked my staff, I'm like, look, do you really want the record for the longest filibuster to be held by a segregationist who was filibustering against the civil rights laws? Like, you know, I'd really love to break it. And Harry Reed, being Harry Reed, he just said no. And so I was forced to end when I did. Of

Cory Booker, there was not a unanimous consent in place locking up the time, and so Cory was able to go long enough, as long as he wanted, and then he was able to break the record. Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button, and make sure you tell, again, your family and friends about this show as it continues to grow and hopefully make a difference.

and educate a lot of people about what's going on in Washington. Grab my show on those in-between days, the Ben Ferguson podcast. I'll keep you updated on the latest breaking news on those days. And the Senator and I will see you back here on Friday morning.

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I'm Rodney Williams. And I'm Travis Holloway. Welcome to the Wealth Break Podcast, a real conversation about finance.

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