Trump vs. Harvard, plus Tesla Terrorist Released from Jail BECAUSE He's Transgender
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Welcome, it is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. It's so nice to have you with us on this Monday morning. And Senator, Harvard sure is making you proud right now. It really is extraordinary. President Trump has publicly announced that the administration is going to end Harvard's tax-exempt status.

This administration is going to war with the nation's oldest and most prestigious university. The stakes are massive. They're tens of billions of dollars. The stakes are, can a university getting federal funds discriminate based on race?

Can they promote anti-Semitism? The establishment will roar back mightily. It's going to be a serious legal fight. We're going to break down what's likely to play out, what the basis is of what the administration is doing, and what the risks are of what the administration is doing. We're also going to break down a really amazing story we've covered previously.

Elon derangement syndrome and how it's led to domestic terrorism, firebombing of Tesla factories. Well, we now see a story where Elon derangement syndrome is merging with just out-of-control wokeness. And one of these domestic terrorists that firebombed a Tesla dealership has

has been released from federal custody. Why is that? Because the terrorist is transgender. And the judge ruled, well, the gender transition treatment was more important than punishing domestic terrorists, so you got to let them out of jail. It really is astonishing. We're going to walk you through those facts as well.

Yeah, it is amazing to see what can get you out of jail. If I ever get arrested, I'm just letting you guys know I'm going to identify as a chick. So just want to get that on the record. You can use it, America, how you want. And I, for one, find that very plausible, Ben. I think you look cute in tennis skirts. Just wait. If you ever get arrested.

I'm just saying there's a good chance you'll do it, too, if this is how the system's going to work. Martina Ferguson. That's right. Martina Ferguson. I love it. I want to take a moment and tell you about our friends over at Patriot Mobile. You've heard me talk about Patriot Mobile for a while. So the question is, why haven't you switched the only Christian conservative wireless provider in the country? Where every time I make a call or send a text, pay my bill, I know I'm actually fighting for what I believe in.

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dot com slash verdict and get that free month of service with the promo code verdict right now. All right, Senator, so let's get into this issue with Harvard. Donald Trump calls to remove Harvard's tax exempt status. Let's explain exactly why he's saying that and what made this all become such a big deal so quickly. Well, Harvard is the oldest university in America. It was founded in 1636. It is the wealthiest university in America. It has a $53 billion endowment.

And for a long time, it's been the most prestigious university in America. And I think President Trump is exactly right going after Harvard because it is the birthplace of woke. As you know, my last book, Unwoke, How to Defeat Cultural Marxism in America, I describe colleges and universities, and especially Harvard, as the Wuhan lab of the woke virus. It's where it was invented. It's where it mutated. And it's where it spread.

Now, going after Harvard and denying them their tax exempt status, what does that mean? If their 501c3 status is revoked, it means Harvard pays taxes, just like a for-profit institution. It also means contributions to Harvard are no longer tax deductible. So if you give money to Harvard, you can't deduct them from your taxes. Both of those are a huge, huge deal.

If that happens, if the Trump administration follows through, Harvard will litigate, they will go to court, and this will be a battle that will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on one level, the Trump administration's legal arguments are very strong, but at another level, it's an uphill fight given who the Supreme Court is. So we're going to break down both pieces of that.

Why is the legal argument strong? Well, I'll tell you the case that would be front and center if this goes to the court is a case called Bob Jones University versus the United States. And it was decided by the Supreme Court in 1983. And what happened in 1983 is the IRS revoked the 501c3 status of Bob Jones University because Bob Jones University had a policy that

that prohibited interracial dating. There was another school, Goldsboro Christian Schools, that had a racially discriminatory admissions policy, and likewise the IRS revoked Goldsboro's 501c3 exception. That case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ruled eight to one that the IRS could revoke the 501c3 exception.

And they did so by concluding that it was contrary to public policy to promote racial discrimination was contrary to public policy objectives in the United States.

And that will be the basis. It was 8-1. Chief Justice Berger wrote the majority opinion. There was only one dissent. The dissent was William Rehnquist, who wrote a dissent and said, look, under the terms of 501c3, under the statute, they don't specify whether the purposes are good or bad. And so we shouldn't allow them to do that. But eight justices said, well, yes, we should. And that's what we do. That will be the basis. Now, under that case...

Harvard has a real difficult time, and it has a real difficult time because it has for a long time openly and brazenly discriminated based on race,

And it has also openly and brazenly created an environment that discriminates against Jewish students and promotes anti-Semitism. Both of those are huge, huge factual problems. And the facts, particularly at Harvard, there was just a scathing report on anti-Semitism that walked through the incredible pattern of anti-Semitism that Harvard has...

welcomed and used to persecute Jewish students. And that on the face of it is contrary to federal civil rights laws. And so the Trump administration's legal argument on the merits is quite strong. You look at the legal arguments here and there's a lot of people that are going to just be angry about the story itself. And the fact that you're rewarding people for going,

Going after Jewish students. I mean, how is this not an award to the student by saying, hey, we're sanctioning what you did. We know you're taking a bag of rap, but hey, here's a bunch of money for you to go ahead and say we're behind you. That seems to be what the university is saying. Otherwise, why on earth would you give this cash? Yeah, look, and there are twin issues here. The Trump administration has already cut taxes.

$2 billion, frozen $2 billion in direct federal funds that it was sending to Harvard. That's a big deal. The 501c3 status is an even bigger deal. And so both of those, the basic principle is if a university is violating federal civil rights law, if they're discriminating based on race, if they're discriminating against Jewish students, if they're discriminating against Anglo students, if they're discriminating against Asian students, all of which Harvard has been doing,

Why should the federal government be giving them money and why should they get a special benefit under the tax laws? Now, why is it that I say this is an uphill fight? Because the Supreme Court is an institution that is elite and that is very much birthed of the establishment. Let me ask you, Ben, of the nine Supreme Court justices, how many of them do you think went to Ivy League schools? I'm going to go with eight of the nine.

You would be correct. Eight. How many went to Harvard Law School? Pause. I finally got one right because this is what you do in this show if you're new. I know. He likes to haze me every episode with something he knows I don't know the answer to. And I just, we all just see the best in this moment. Eight out of eight. I'm one for a thousand right now. Well, let's keep going. How many do you think went to Harvard Law School? I'm going to go with seven out of nine.

Four. Four went to Harvard Law School. Four went to Yale Law School. And we're back to normal. So of the eight justices, four went to Harvard Law School, four went to Yale Law School. Of the 18 degrees they have, college degrees and law degrees, of the 18 degrees, how many of them do you think are Ivy League degrees? I'm going to guess nine out of nine. Fifteen. Fifteen out of 18. The only one that doesn't have an Ivy League degree.

The only one that doesn't have an Ivy League degree is Amy Coney Barrett, who went to Rhodes College in Notre Dame. But if you look at it, this is an institution that is steeped, steeped in Harvard and the institution. In fact, Elena Kagan was the former dean of the Harvard Law School. And so I think they are going to be highly resistant to.

to the notion that Harvard's 501c3 status can be revoked. And I will tell you, they're also going to be concerned about the slippery slope of what happens with the next administration. All right, so Senator, here's the question that I think a lot of people listening are going to want me to ask. And that is, it sounds like this would be much of an uphill battle for the president. I think he probably knows that his staff does.

But is this also as much about sending a message to other universities that if you think that we're going to turn a blind eye to this, you're wrong and we're going to be watching you closely?

Of course it is. Look, Harvard is the big kahuna. And so going after Harvard is meant to send a message to every other school that violating the civil rights law, discriminating based on race, discriminating against students on their skin color, on their race, on their religion, is contrary to federal law and there will be real consequences.

You look, for example, Harvard just released a scathing report on anti-Semitism on campus, and it found that politicized instruction in four Harvard schools had, quote, mainstreamed and normalized what many Jewish and Israeli students experience as anti-Semitism.

And the four schools were the Graduate School of Education, the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Divinity School, because of course, if you're studying divinity, you're going to be a racist, and the medical school, all of which had been targeted by the Trump administration for, quote, egregious records of anti-Semitism or other bias. And the report concluded that at those schools, Jewish students and Israeli students were routinely ostracized,

and subject to instruction, quote, that effectively made a specific view on the Israel-Hamas conflict a litmus test for full classroom participation. And let me give you one example that's just an amazing thing. A required school course in the School of Education taught something called the Pyramid of White Supremacy.

And this document is really, it's a chart. If you look at it on Twitter or online, it'll blow your mind. But it's a pyramid of white supremacy. And here are all the things that it's describing as white supremacy. At the top is the KKK. Okay, we're agreed. KKK, very bad. I'm against. Lynching, terrible. I'm against. Burning crosses, very, very bad.

Racial slurs, jokes, terrible. Hate crimes, terrible. Anti-Semitism, kind of interesting. Bombing black churches. Japanese incarceration. Operation Wetback. Now, Operation Wetback was an Eisenhower federal government program deporting illegal aliens. So that is now white supremacy to deport illegal aliens.

And the Muslim ban, which was President Trump's policy in the first term that that was restricting immigration from countries with with high percentages of radical Islamic terrorism. All right. So that's the first part of the triangle. You can agree with some of it. You can disagree with some of it. But then it starts to get really loony. You know what the next one listed is? What is that?

The Anti-Defamation League, the ADL, the Anti-Defamation League exists to fight against anti-Semites. So the Anti-Defamation League is, according to these radicals, an example of white supremacy. What's the next one? All lives matter. So if you say all lives matter, that's white supremacy. You know what the next one was? You're going to love the next one. What's that one? MAGA. MAGA.

Well, of course, you got to add that one to the list. That just make America great again is white supremacy. This was Harvard's teaching. I'm going to just go through some of the more of these illegal aliens. That's white supremacy. Thugs read if redlining Hussein Obama, Confederate symbols, life after hate, CVE, welfare queens, the war on drugs. If you're opposed to illegal drugs, that's white supremacy.

Reverse racism, anti-affirmative action, anti-BDS. So if you are opposed to boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israel, then you're a bigot. Black identity extremist, community policeman. All right. You know what else is white supremacy? I can't wait. Liking Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan or Ted Cruz. I'll go with one of those three. Well, those are all clearly on their chart. They don't specify it, although MAGA was up right up top.

Color blindness. Now, mind you, that is literally what Dr. Martin Luther King said on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that we want a nation where people can be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But according to these radicals, Martin Luther King is apparently a white supremacist. This is like a food pyramid for hating conservatives, isn't it?

It is. I'm going to give you some other examples. Mass incarceration, TSA, random searches, police apologists. So if you defend the police, you're a white supremacist. U.S. military rescue operations. Stop and frisk. The myth of meritocracy. Understand if you believe in merit, these lunatics say that is racist. English only. Right.

The school to prison pipeline, victim blaming, anti-Kaepernick. So if you don't like Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem, you are a white supremacist.

Columbus Day. Mind you, it is a federal holiday, but never mind that. And then it gets to the bottom of the pyramid and it lists things like settler colonialism, slavery, Wall Street, the Great Recession, corporate interests, the stock market, greed, NAFTA. Did you know NAFTA is white supremacy? Unbelievable. According to this chart?

Outsourcing, McCarthyism, migrant workers, manifest destiny. The very settlement of America. Oil pipelines are white supremacy. The war on terror and the corporate media are all white supremacy. This is wackadoodle stuff. And this is taught in a required course in the Harvard Education School.

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So let's talk about the mindset of Harvard for a second and these other universities. It does seem pretty clear that they believe that they're never going to be touched. And even if they are, their endowments are so big.

that they think they're probably going to be just fine and liberals will continue to give. Does that not go back to the point the president's bringing up, which is why the hell are we giving all of these places this money? They're fine on their own. They're acting like they don't need us. They are hardcore against conservatives and others who don't... Basically...

go with this pyramid of hate of conservative ideals. So let's just decouple and say, you guys do you and we'll keep our tax dollars. Well, look, there's real value to that. I will say that there is research money that is spent in colleges and universities that is worthwhile, that is useful. There's scientific research. There's research, say, at medical schools where you're trying to research the cure for cancer. You're trying to research a cure for Alzheimer's. You're trying to cure deadly diseases.

There is scientific research that the Department of Defense pays for, for example, that is developing high-tech lasers or other equipment that has significant defense needs. And so there is a role for scientific research, and much of the scientific research that happens in our nation happens in research universities. All of that would be fine if—and this is a big if—

universities were not flagrantly violating federal civil rights laws. Let me give you more from this report at Harvard. At the Divinity School, Jewish students were subject to, quote, the embrace of a pedagogy of de-Zionization in which instructors attribute to Jews two great sins. First, in the Levant,

the establishment of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Nakba, and second in the United States, participation in white supremacy. So the Harvard Divinity School teaches Jews the existence of the state of Israel is racist, and Jews also, they teach, are white supremacists.

That is flagrantly in violation of federal civil rights laws. And sadly, it is something that Harvard openly embraces. As they fight this final question, is there an opportunity through this legal challenge for us to even be able to find out more about what Harvard is doing? Is that part of what could happen? And the upside here is, hey, we get to ask more questions. We get to see more behind the books. We get to see more of the propaganda that we are talking about right now.

That is absolutely right, and I'm going to say the facts are going to get worse and worse as they come out. Harvard doesn't want people to know the facts. So, for example, there were a whole series of stories that came out about the Harvard Law Review. Now, what is the Harvard Law Review? The Harvard Law Review is a legal journal that's at Harvard Law School that has –

80 students who are student editors and getting on the Law Review is incredibly prestigious. It is incredibly difficult to do. Typical Harvard Law School class is about 560 people. So you have about 40 people out of 560 that make it on the class, make it on the Law Review. When I was there, I was on the Law Review. When I was there, roughly half of the editors on the Law Review made it from a combination of grades,

and a week-long, incredibly arduous writing competition. Another roughly half made it from purely the writing competition, but when I say roughly half, at the time it was 32 were grades in writing, 32 were just writing, and then eight were reserved for affirmative action. That's when I was there. Now, by all appearances, it has gotten much worse. It was brazen then. It was racially discriminatory then, but it is now much worse. The Harvard Law Review now

uses race explicitly to number one, select their editors. And by the way, becoming an editor at the Law Review increases your chances of getting a judicial clerkship dramatically, increases your chances of getting a Supreme Court clerkship dramatically, increases your chances of getting hired by a big prestigious law firm that pays lots of money dramatically, increases your chances of becoming a professor at a prestigious university dramatically. So the Law Review is a major gateway to

to elite success in the legal world. And the Harvard Law Review now, in writing, they are quite open in saying that they will discriminate for editors based on race,

And they will also discriminate on the articles they pick. So, for example, in a 2024 memo, one journal article argued that the fact that the author was, quote, not from an underrepresented background was a negative when it came to evaluating the piece for publication. There is a, quote, holistic review committee.

which now selects nearly half the student editors and has made the inclusion of, quote, underrepresented groups its first priority. So to be clear, what you're saying is violates Title six. So to be clear, you're saying there's a chance now that if you were at Harvard, you wouldn't get picked. Is that what you're telling me?

You know, I don't know. And you don't know. So I say that what's interesting about it is you genuinely don't know is one of the things that they're very clever and how they discriminate because you don't know on what basis you were admitted.

I had the grades to get in on grades, and I think I did well in the writing competition, but I have no idea which of the slots I was in because nobody does. They don't tell you. They just announce the 40 editors that have gotten in. So I don't know, but I'll tell you a story I've told before. So when I was on the Law Review, there were a number of conservative editors, and we made a run at ending affirmative action in the Law Review.

And I have to admit, I sat back. We were all, 80 of us were gathered in a classroom, and we were debating this. And there were some other students that were really kind of leading the charge, some other conservatives. I agreed with them, but I also could count votes. And out of the 80 students, there were maybe 8 or 10 of us that were conservatives. We were a tiny minority. So I was like, look, we ain't going to win the vote, but all right, that's fine. Let's have the debate. So we're having the debate, and I was sitting in the back. It was fairly quiet.

And I remember this one supercilious liberal stood up and said, if we eliminate affirmative action, the Harvard Law Review will be nothing but white men. And I have to admit, I was kind of a little bit checked out in the back of the room, and I heard that, and that pissed me off. And I said, you know what? You want to understand why affirmative action is so insidious? The arrogance of that imbecile just showed it. His belief as an enlightened leftist is,

is that if merit were the only criterion, only white men would get in, that no one who is African-American would get in, no one who is Hispanic. And let's be clear, I'm Hispanic. He's sitting there. And in fact, I told him, I said, all right, big guy, you want to pull your transcript out and my transcript and drop them on the table right there? Let's see what pure merit produces. But there was something even more dripping in his leftist condescension.

which is at the time the Harvard Affirmative Action Program did not include gender. So there was not affirmative action for women. And I said to all the women editors, do you hear what he just said to you? He believes if it's pure merit, no women would make it. And by the way, historically, all the women editors who were liberals voted against adding gender to affirmative action because they recognized that if it was added to it,

that people, it would devalue what they had accomplished, but it showed the just, the...

absolute arrogance of the left when it comes to embracing racism because at the end of the day they look down on the poor benighted people that will only succeed in life with their beneficence and by the way the price for that beneficence is for them to be loyal and obedient for the rest of their lives. I mean that is the very explicit left-wing charter that affirmative action is based on.

Which brings us to another story where this stuff started on college campuses and now it's made our way into courtrooms. The Tesla arson suspect, one of them, and there's a lot of them out there, right? But this one specifically, and we'll get to the story of what happened here in a second, but has been, quote, released recently.

Because of gender transition would be at risk if they didn't release. So if you're going to jail, just say you're doing a gender transition. Apparently, then the law cannot hold you accountable for your terrorist actions. So there's an individual named Owen McIntyre who was on spring break in Missouri and he

firebombed two Tesla Cybertrucks. He threw Molotov cocktails, he firebombed it, he got caught, and he was charged, charged with domestic terrorism. And then what happened is his federal public defender argued that going to jail will disrupt his gender-affirming medical care, which began in March of this year and is likely to be interrupted or terminated entirely if he remains in pretrial detention.

And the federal magistrate judge bought that argument and let him go. And let me say one of the craziest things about this story.

You and I, Ben, spent 20 minutes trying to figure out if this defendant is male or female. By the way, he's not lying. I want to be clear about that. We literally are Googling everything. Is it a dude? Is it a chick? And we don't know what it is. Like, that's the insanity of the world we live in. And we can't tell.

And you and I actually disagree. So I think this is a person who was born female who has decided that she is a he and wants to be a man. Yeah. And the reason I think that...

The reason I think that is we've Googled it and every damn story uses he, he, he, he, he. And given the insane Orwellian world we live in, I think if ABC is referring to this person as a he and the person is transgender, that that to me means the person was born a she. Now, your argument is, Ben, this is a dude that grew out his hair and looks like a chick.

then why does all the media refer to this person as a he? Because I think everybody's lost their damn minds. That's what I think. And the fact that we even are at the point where we have to have this discussion tells you how insane the world is. You literally, every story I clicked on, I Googled it and clicked on story after story, and there's not one that actually describes the facts one way or the other. So damned if I know, but either way,

Look, the federal prosecutors argue this person is a domestic terrorist. They're throwing Molotov cocktails and it is...

It is woke politics taken to the level of insanity that that that to get a sex change treatment is now reason to be forgiven for domestic terrorism. Although, to be fair, it's not forgiven. It's released from pretrial detention, but it is still insane. Well, but it's helping you, right? It's helping you not be held accountable for your actions anymore.

And it's also, I think, pretty clear that we're saying, if you want to not be held accountable for your actions, just claim something that's woke. And these radical judges will be like, oh, we totally understand. Let's just change the rules for you because you're in our special protected class and we want to see you succeed in your transgenderism, which is not supposed to be the job of the court. Well, I got to say this insanity...

is a big part of the reason Donald Trump won in November and we got a Republican House and a Republican Senate, because I think a lot of people are looking at this and saying this stuff is crazy. Amen to that. Don't forget, we do this show Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Hit that subscribe or auto-download button so that you do not miss an episode. Please share the episode wherever you are on social media, because it really does help us reach new people. And on those in-between days, grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcast. I'll keep you updated on the latest breaking news.

And the Senator and I will see you back here on Wednesday morning.

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