How Can We STOP School Shootings - and, Maddeningly, Why Democrats Keep Blocking Real School Safety Legislation

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome. It is a verdict with Senator Ted Cruz Ben
Ferguson with you as always, and if you're a regular,
you know we put out our podcasts Monday, Wednesday and Fridays.
This is Thursday. And why are we going to day
early Because there's some legislation that's going to be introduced
by the Senator that's extremely important and it deals with
school safety and the shooting issue that just happened in Nashville. Senator,

(00:26):
this is something that is heartbreaking for me and I
know for you because what you're working on in the
legislation is exactly the same thing that could have been
done in September of twenty twenty two. Here we are
again after another school shooting where there are not guards
there to protect these kids. It was a gun free
zone without a resource officer, and we had the same outcome, unfortunately.

(00:51):
And now you're going to continue to fight to protect
our kids in their schools with resource officers and with
everything that you could possibly need to do everything you
can to keep kids safe. Well, let me say first
of all, what happened at Covenant School in Nashville. It's
just terrific. It is every parent's nightmare. A deranged lunatic

(01:16):
murdered three nine year old children, murdered three adults. I
gotta say, I cannot imagine the quantity of evil that
leads someone to murder children. It is I think it
is the worst crime there is. There is a level

(01:37):
of lunacy. And by the way, when I say someone
one thing, to be clear, I will not say the
someone's name. And this is actually a policy that I
strictly enforce on myself. I don't repeat the names of
these mass murderers. They want to be remembered, they want
to be go down in history and infamy. I think

(01:59):
they deserve to be forgotten as the deranged lunatics they are.
And I wish everyone in politics, I wish everyone in
the media would follow the same rule. And I'll refer
to the shooter. I'm happy to repeat a victim's name,
but these monsters do not deserve to have their names repeated.

(02:21):
What happened at that school is grotesquely evil. I think
of the pastor of that Christian school whose little girl
was murdered that day, the agony of the parents, the
agony of the children. It is horrific. And you know,

(02:42):
we've seen with this terrible crime, We've seen all the
pathologies of our political system. We've seen the instant the
news broke, the Democrats leaping immediately to their political objective
of gun control. They seem never as filled with joy

(03:05):
as in the wake of a horrific mass murder because
it lets them advance their political position. We saw the
media eagerly participating at that at the outset, and then
we saw a remarkable about face because when the news
came that the shooter was an individual who's transgender, who

(03:25):
appears to have been targeting the school because it's a
Christian school, Suddenly the media didn't know what to do
because that was not their preferred narrative, and so the
media has been in a bit of crisis. They haven't
been sure whether to just ignore it all together or
try to spin it. Some of the most absurd spins
that the media has tried is, this mass murder is

(03:49):
your fault. If you believe that five year old shouldn't
go to explicit drag shows, if you believe that children
and shouldn't be mutilated to try to change their biological
gender because they lacked the maturity to make that decision,
then it's your fault. This lunatic murdered those children. All

(04:11):
of that. It is infuriating, But I got to tell you, Ben,
there's something more infuriating than that, which is I believe
this could have been prevented. Look. I've been the US
Senator from Texas for eleven years now. One of the
worst and hardest aspects of this job is that I've
been on the ground at mass shooting after mass shooting,

(04:35):
after mass shooting. I was there at Santa Fe High School.
Santa Fe High School, It's about forty five minutes from
my house. I was home that morning when the shooting happened.
I got the call within minutes of the shooting, jumped
in a truck and headed down there. I was there
a little more than an hour after the shooting occurred.
I was there with the students, with the families. I

(04:56):
saw the horrors of that lunatic that murdered those children.
I was there in Sutherland Springs the sight of the
worst church shooting in the history of our country. A
deranged lunatic who came in and murdered innocent people, including
shooting point blank an eighteen month old infant. I stood

(05:21):
in that sanctuary the day after the shooting. When I
was there, there was still blood everywhere across the sanctuary.
There was shattered glass, there were pews that had been
strewn about as people terrified tried to flee for their lives.
I remember seeing a shattered cell phone covered with blood.
That mass shooting was stopped only because a heroic neighbor,

(05:45):
a plumber named Stephen Williford, heard the shooting, went and
grabbed his R fifteen, ran down and engaged with a shooter,
shot the shooter and took him out. I was there
on the ground in El Paso after that mass shooting.
I was in Midland Odessa after that mass shooting. I
was in Dallas, Texas, after a crazed Black Lives Matter

(06:06):
radical murdered five police officers. I've been to two damn
many of these, And let me start by Sam Ben.
When you and I were kids, this wasn't a thing. Yeah,
it didn't happen. Like look, when you went to school,
Maybe you worried about getting in a fight in the playground,
maybe you might get a bloody nose, But I don't

(06:29):
remember once in school worrying that some psychopath was going
to come shoot us. Yeah. I asked my dad. I said, Dad,
did you ever worry about us in school and even
in church? And he said he was in law enforcement.
He said no, never, never, once did I ever think
I need to teach you how to hide under a desk,
or hide from a shooter, or what to do if

(06:49):
you hear gunshots in the hallway of a school. This
is a new thing. Look, you're a parent, Ben, it
scares the hell out of you. Yeah. Well, my wife
and I had the conversation what do we say to
our kids now? And how do we talk to them?
My oldest is six about if this happens, what is

(07:10):
he to do? Do we have that conversation? How do
you have that conversation? This is something that no parent
wants to even have to talk about with their kids,
But the reality is now we are forced to. We
are forced to. Every parent is scared for their kids,
and every rational person wants to prevent this. And listen,

(07:34):
I've spent eleven years in the Senate number one fighting
to stop the Democrats' efforts at gun control, which are
unconstitutional and they don't work. They don't stop mass murders,
and the Democrats that's not their priority. But I've also
been fighting to stop these crimes. I don't want to

(07:54):
see another parent who's lost their kids. I've seen too
many of them. And if you want to stop violent crimes,
there's a way to do it, which is you target
the bad guys. You target target the felons, the fugitives,
those with serious mental illness. You go after them, You
prosecute them, you put them in jail. When they try
to illegally buy guns, you lock them up. You protect people.

(08:19):
You also secure our schools. If you look at ever
since Columbine, these deranged people think, okay, I can be famous,
and they go target children. And so if you want
to protect our kids, the steps that are most important
are making our schools safer, enhancing physical security, and the

(08:41):
single biggest step that matters is having armed police officers
on campus at the front door so they can stop
a lunatic before he or she gets into the campus
and is able to kill kids. That's how you stop
a bad guy. And so look in the wake of Uvaldi,

(09:03):
and I was there at Yuvaldi right after the tragedy.
It was horrific. It happened in Texas. The evil is indescribable.
After Uvaldi. I filed legislation that would provide very substantial
funds to enhance the physical security of schools. That would

(09:25):
double the number of police officers in schools and by
the way, public schools, private schools, parochial schools. It would
give the funds fifteen billion dollars to put armed police
officers on campus, so if any lunatic comes after your kids,
there'd be an officer there or multiple officers there to

(09:49):
stop them before they got in. And it also provided
ten billion dollars in funding for mental health counselors. So
many of these crimes are committed by deeply disturbed young people,
and having the counseling there to stop these troubled teenagers

(10:09):
before they commit a horrific crime of violence is incredibly important.
And here's the thing that's so frustrating. I tried to
pass this legislation and the Democrats blocked it. I forced
to vote on it. The bill was called Cruiz Barosso,
so I wrote it along with John Barrasso from Wyoming.
Every single Democrat voted no. They wanted to pass a

(10:33):
gun control bill instead, so protecting the schools was not
their priority. They wanted to take away the firearms of
law abiding citizens. After that, after every Democrat had voted no,
I went to the Senate floor and I tried to
pass the bill by unanimous consent. Now, the way unanimous
consent works is you stand up, asked to pass it

(10:54):
by unanimous consent, and if one senator stands up and objects,
it gets killed. In this instance, the person who objected
was Chris Murphy, who was the Democrat from Connecticut. He's
the leading advocate of gun control in the Senate, and
he stood up and with no justification whatsoever, objected and

(11:17):
killed the legislation that could have prevented this murder at
the Covenant School, that could have funded having a police
officer at the front door to shoot this lunatic before
the shooter killed even a single child. I cannot tell
you how angry i'm about that that we could have

(11:39):
stopped this, but the Senate Democrats weren't willing to do
what it takes to stop this. And you mentioned it,
it was because they didn't want to arm and protect
the kids. They wanted the solution to the problem to
only be one option, which was to takeaway our Second
Amendment rights. You could even see this after the shooting

(12:02):
that happened in Nashville. Immediately they said that it was
the gun's fault. It was an AR fifteen. We found
out it was an AR fifteen that she was using
in the videos. It was a car beam that uses
the same ammunition that handguns use. It was not an
AR fifteen. And then in fact, if you really want
to get into it, the only AR fifteen that was

(12:23):
used in that confrontation between the shooter and the police
was the police officer who used an AR fifteen to
take her down. And the media lied about all of it. Yep.
And I will say, Ben, I know you've watched as
I have the bodycam footage of those officers. Let me
commend those officers, those Nashville police officers who went in

(12:47):
right after the shooting it began, and the bodycam footage. Look,
they're coming onto the campus. They don't know where the
shooter is, they don't know what's happening. They're scared. Anyone
would be scared in that instance. But they're searching, they're
trying to save the kids. They're running up the stairs.
They hear the gunshots, and they don't run away, they
don't hide, they run towards the gun shots. They run
towards the gun shots, they engage with the shooter, and

(13:09):
they take the shooter down. And I gotta say, watching
that bodycam footage, those officers are heroes. And the fact
that they engage and took that shooter out saved many
lives that day. That shooter would have kept killing children,
would have kept killing adults, and the only thing that
stopped the shooter was the officer's heroism. Now imagine the

(13:30):
same thing with one detail changed. Instead of the officers
coming in fifteen minutes after the shooting began, because that's
when they got to the school, imagine the officers are
there at the front door to begin with. The shooter
came in and shot through the front door, shot through
the glass, and entered through the glass. If the shooter

(13:51):
had tried that and there'd been an officer or multiple
officers there, they would have shot the shooter dead on
the steps, and those precious children would be alive. That's
why it matters to have police officers there to protect
our kids. It's why it's so infuriating that Democrats are

(14:12):
adamantly opposed to doing what would actually work to stop
these kind of horrific crimes. Yeah, every time we see
one of these school shootings are like you mentioned the
church shooting. It always takes a good guy with a
gun to come and stop a bad guy with a gun.
I want to go back to what you said in
September September fourteenth of twenty twenty two, when you originally

(14:37):
talked about this legislation, because it's important that we look
at what we could have done and learn from these mistakes.
And it seems, unfortunately like Democrats are still dug in
now saying Okay, even though this has happened, even though
we could have had security, even though this bill was
put out there, we're still going to refuse. We're still
going to go after the guns. And I want to

(14:58):
play that first. I want to remind you about our
friends August of Precious Medals. You've been seeing what's been
going on with the economy, You've seen what's happened with
interest rates, you know what's happening on Wall Street, And
if you are concerned and exhausted from the stress of
worrying about your retirement account, you might want to talk
to August of Precious Metals. Why because they can help

(15:21):
protect your hard earned dollars. August of Precious Metals is
all about protecting iras in four one case in this
crazy economy. They do this because they know it's so
important close to retirement, because there's no time to make
up losses. Now, if you've saved one hundred thousand dollars
or more, you should call and get their free guide

(15:42):
or sign up for their web conference. Now I use
August of Precious Medals. I have set down with them.
I have done the web conference and my number one
objective was protecting what I had saved and having a
diversified portfolio. Call Augusts of Precious Metals, get that guide
and sit down with them for free. Eight seven seven
four gold Ira is the number eight seven seven the

(16:05):
number four gold IRA. Or visit Augusta Precious Metals dot com.
Say I sent you Ben and they'll pay your fees
for up to ten years. That's Augusta Precious Metals dot Com.
Eight seven seven four Gold IRA Center. I want to
play for everybody this clip of you. It's a longer clip,
it's an important clip. It's a clip from September twenty

(16:27):
twenty two where you were advocating then for exactly what
you're saying we need now and after Nashville. There's just
more proof. This is what needs to happen been legislative session.
I ask unanimous consent, that the Senate proceed to the
immediate consideration of S. Four eight four five, which is
at the desk. Further, that the bill be considered read

(16:50):
a third time in past, and that the motion to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table. Is
there objection and President sent from a Connecticut and a
President I object, objection is heard, Madame President. What we
just saw on this floor was stunning. I am genuinely

(17:13):
at a loss for words. This bill is common sense.
There is not a constituent in Texas, or Nevada or Connecticut.
If you asked, would it be a good thing to
have more police officers keeping our kids safe? Wouldn't say,
of course it would. There's not a constituents of ours

(17:34):
who if you asked, would it be a good thing
to have more mental health counselors on campus to stop
people from committing crimes, would say, of course it would.
I was informed a few days ago that when I
was going to seek unanimous consent, the Senator from Connecticut
was going to object. Now, the Senator from Connecticut styles
himself the leading advocate of gun control in the US Senate.

(17:58):
I was asked by reporters, why are the Democrats objecting
to this? And I'll tell you what I told reporters.
I have no idea. They haven't said, they haven't told
me why they object to it, and so I was
genuinely looking forward to seeing the Senator from Connecticut's remarks.
I was sitting here waiting to see, why do you

(18:19):
oppose more police officers to keep our kids safe? Why
do you oppose mental health counselors in schools. I've been
in the Senate ten years. The Senator from Connecticut and
I were elected at the same time. I've engaged in
many debates on this floor, including with the Senator from Connecticut.

(18:39):
The fact that he chose not to say a word
about why he objects is stunning. I find myself genuinely flabbergasted.
I will say one of the reasons I think the
Senator from Connecticut feels content not only not to argue,

(19:00):
but now to walk off the floor and not even
listen to the debate he's ostensibly participating in. One of
the reasons he feels free to do so is if
you look up to the Senate gallery, I can count them.
There are precisely zero reporters in this gallery. Not a
single one of the corporate media will report on this.

(19:22):
And I think the Center from Connecticut feels absolutely certain
when he walks out, he will have reporters that will say,
tell me how terrible Donald Trump is, and he'll lean
in and say, oh, Donald Trump is really terrible. But
not a one of the reporters will ask, hey, wait
a second, why don't you want police officers keeping our
kids safe? None of them will. The Democrats are protected

(19:46):
by a dishonest army of propagandists in the corporate media.
See Ann will not have a paddle sitting around discussing
why is it that the Democrats sent police do not
care to defend their positions. Let me tell you. When
there's a mass murdering and the Democrats stand up and

(20:09):
give speeches and they point at Republicans and say blood
is on your hands, it's great political rhetoric. It's dishonest,
but boy, it gins up their donors. It gets people
to go and write checks to Democrats and fund their
campaigns well. We just saw reveals the Democrats have one

(20:32):
objective when a mass murder happens, and that is to
take away the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens.
That is always, always, always their solution. Never Mind that
it doesn't work, never mind that it doesn't stop violent crime.
Never mind that if you look at the jurisdictions across
the country with the strictest gun control laws, almost every

(20:54):
single one of them consistently has among the highest crime
rates and murder rates. Earlier this year, the Senator from
Connecticut authored his big gun control package, rammed it through
this body, a package which will do nothing, zero to

(21:17):
stop mass murders. We will see another mass murder. I
pray that we don't, but evil exists in the world.
And if another lunatic attacks the school and there's not
a police officer at the front door to stop him,
remember right now, remember this moment when the Democrats said, no,

(21:41):
we will not protect our kids. There are lots of
arguments Senator from Connecticut could have made. He chose to
make none of them. Senator, it's amazing he chose to
make none of them. And what you're talking about there
clearly shows the agenda of the Democratic party, which is
not to protect kids, even when there are queer vulnerabilities

(22:04):
that we keep witnessing every time there's one of these
mass shootings and there's no one there to be a
first responder, and we have to wait on police, and
even when it's done perfectly like it was done in Nashville,
it was still what fourteen minutes in. Yeah. Look, I
will say listening to that again, it infuriates me once
again because we could do much much more to keep

(22:29):
our kids safe, and the Democrats who claim to care
so desperately much, they're the ones who block it. Now.
I will say one of the standard Democrat talking points
now is following Uvaldi. Anytime you say, if you want

(22:51):
to protect our kids, we need more police officers, they
point out the police officers didn't do what they needed
to do in Uvaldi, And I got to say, that's right.
The officers in Uivaldi screwed up badly. They sat there
forever while the shooting was ongoing. The timeline now shows

(23:11):
that it was an hour and fourteen minutes from when
the first police officer arrived on campus to when the
officers stormed into the classroom and killed the shooter. During
that hour and fourteen minutes, gunshots were going off, one
after the other after the other during that hour. In
fourteen minutes, children were calling into nine one one in

(23:32):
panicked terror. And tragically, because the officers didn't go in earlier,
we ended up having nineteen fourth graders and two teachers
murdered that day. And that makes me angry too. I
was there right after that shooting. I met with the
leadership of the police officers, who lied to us, who

(23:56):
lied to me, who lied to John Cordon, the other senator,
who lied to Greg Gabbath, the governor, and almost everything
they described to about what had happened in Uvaldi was wrong,
as we found out the several days that followed. But
the lesson that Democrat and lefty activists have taken from
that is because the police officers there did not act

(24:20):
swiftly to take out the shooter. Therefore they've concluded police
officers can never stop a shooter, and that is wrong. Look,
I wish those officers had gone in and Uvaldi within
minutes of getting there and had taken out that shooter,
and there would be a lot more children alive today

(24:40):
if they'd done that. They didn't, and that that is
a absolute tragedy. But I got to say one of
the things that Nashville shows is there talking points that
cops don't stop mass shootings is a total lie. In Nashville,
the officers did what should have been done in Vivaldi,

(25:04):
which is the instant they found out about it. They
went in, they had bulletproof vest, they went in and
they shot the shooter and they took them out. That's
what they should have done. But I gotta say it's
also what is so frustrating. The only thing Democrats want
to do if they say, you know, if we take
Ben Ferguson's guns, that'll be great. You know, Ben, You're

(25:26):
not going to be a mass murderer. I have zero
concerns about that the Democrats. To be honest, the Democrats
don't have concerns either. They don't think law abiding citizens
are going to become commit crimes. But ideologically they have
set their priorities. We want the guns. We want the
guns from law abiding citizens. We want to take away

(25:49):
your right to protect your home and your family. And look,
I have led the fight against their unconstitutional gun control
proposals from day one in the Senate. But what I
genuinely don't understand is why they pair it with an
absolute refusal to go after gun criminals. What is weird

(26:14):
is if you're a law abiding citizen who poses no threat,
they want to disarm you. If you're a gang banger
who's shooting people, they want to elect you free from jail.
They don't want to lock up the criminals who commit
crimes with guns. They just want the people who don't
commit crimes to lose their guns. I was having in
this debate earlier today. You and I were talking about

(26:35):
this before, where I was debating the issue of guns
with HARALDA riverin Piers Morgan and I went back and
I try to simplify it. I'm all right, that's when
you're yeah. But I look at them and they're they're
the mouthpiece of being anti gun. They're the mouthpiece of
obsession of taking away guns. And I asked them the
question because I try to bring it down to a

(26:57):
basic level when I'm trying to change someone's mind, I'm like,
this is what I don't understand. Why is it that
we protect our money in our banks with more security
than we protect our children in our schools. Why is
it that we defend and protect our present with guns,
but we won't protect our kids in our schools with guns.
Why is it that we defend and protect our celebrities

(27:18):
with guns, but we don't do it with our children.
We do it at our courts, We do it with
our valuables. We do it at places like jewelry stores.
We do it even at sporting events. We want to
protect people at sporting events, but we don't want to
protect our kids in our schools. We do this at
any major event, music, festival. The list goes on and on,

(27:38):
and the only thing that we seem to keep having
to quote protect our kids is this is a gun
free zone, and this is a place where you're not
allowed to bring a gun. Well, every single time someone
tests that right and says, okay, I'm not going to
buy by that rule, what happens. We usually have massive
loss and carnage. And I think it's very clear now

(27:58):
that we should protect our children with more ferocious passion
and defense than we do money in our banks. We
shouldn't value our dollars more than our children, but we do.
Every bank I've ever been to has an armed guard,
and they have really good doors to protect the valuables.

(28:20):
We're gonna learn a lot from Nashville, Senator, and you
and I both know that we're gonna We saw the
video or shooting through those glass doors. There are gonna
have to be things that change. They're already. It was
a first question I asked my kids school, Hey, we've
got some of those glass doors now, knowing that even
when they're locked, it's how easy you can get through them.
And they already said, we're on it. That's why I
was told immediately, we're on that. We're looking at this,

(28:41):
we're gonna learn from this. But when I went in
and rolled my kid, my wife and I had very
different conversations. We were looking at schools for my youngest
and she was talking about academics. She was talking about faith.
She was talking about, you know, religious teaching at the school.
These things matter. The number one thing I asked about
was I want to know about safety here. I want

(29:02):
to know that there are men and women are I
don't care who they are, that are able to protect
my child if there is some sort of circumstance. That
was my number one priority, And I'm granted I have
a different perspective. I used a gun to protect my life.
To save my life, I didn't have a gun with me,
I wouldn't be here doing the show with you today.
So I call it PTSD from that moment in my
life where I had to pull the trigger to save

(29:23):
my life. But I realize that if you don't have
a good guy there with a gun, you are waiting
on the good guy to get there, whether it's three minutes,
five minutes, eight minutes, or ten minutes or fourteen minutes,
even if you get it perfect like they did in Nashville.
This is very personal because I know that that moment
when I needed a gun, If I didn't have it
at that moment to respond at that moment, I was

(29:44):
a dead person. I was a dead man. And if
we care about all these other things so much, center
that doesn't worry you that the Democrats are this obsessed
with gun control. They can't understand that we are valuing
all these other things above the lives of children. That's
what I just can't understand. Well, look, it is very

(30:06):
much like yesterday's podcast we talked about Alejandro may Orcus,
the Secretary of Homeland Security, and his testimony before the
Senate Judiciary Committee and the cross examination that I gave
to him. You know, in respect to our southern border,
the Democrats have a political objective maximize the number of

(30:29):
illegal aliens because they think they will vote Democrat and
keep them in power. And they're willing to ignore suffering.
They're willing to ignore children being physically abused, sexually abused.
They're willing to ignore dead bodies piling up, the Biden
bodybags piling up. They're willing to ignore one hundred thousand
overdoses last year, the highest in history, because all they

(30:51):
care about is their political objective. The exact same thing
is true when it comes to guns. They have a
political objective arm law abiding citizens and it excites all
of their activists who give moneies and fund their campaigns.
They're willing to oppose the common sense steps that would

(31:12):
actually stop these crimes because the only thing that matters
to them is their political objective. And let me be clear.
You were talking about the importance of the right to
keep and bear arms, which as you know, I believe
in passionately, and the right to protect yourself and your family.
And look, in schools there are vigorous debates about, for example,

(31:32):
should teachers allowed to be armed. I think the answer
should be yes, absolutely. I pointed out in schools there
are a lot of teachers, you know, sometimes Jim teachers
or others who are former law enforcement, who are former military,
who are trained to know how to handle a firearm.
I think a school would be safer if teachers were
allowed to be armed. Now the Left comes back with
these sort of crazy hypotheticals of imagining this ninety year

(31:56):
old librarian that you're suddenly thrusting a forty four magnum
in her hands as she's teetering on her walker, and
nobody is talking about forcing teachers to be armed. To
be clear, it is about allowing teachers who have the
training and experience and know how to use a firearm
to be in a position to use it. But here's
my point on this. You and I both agree that

(32:18):
makes sense. But let's say someone doesn't. I think that's
actually an issue on which reasonable minds can disagree. Here's
my point. What I was proposing wasn't allowing teachers to
be armed. It was having police officers present on campus.
And to be clear, every damned Democrat politician who voted

(32:39):
against it, which would be every single Democrat senator in
the Senate. All of them are protected by the Capitol
police every single day. I don't understand it's why, by
the way, the reason I said in that floor speech,
I said, you couldn't find a constituent in Texas or
Connecticut or the presiding officer that day was Jackie Rosen

(33:03):
from Nevada, and the Democrat a Democrat, and the Democrat
who objected was from Connecticut. I could go to Connecticut
and I don't think you could find a parent who
would say, gosh, I wouldn't like to have a police
officer president at my school. And yet all of the
Democrats voted against it, and they objected and blocked it.

(33:28):
And it's worth underscoring what I said that day. I said, look, tragically,
there's going to be another lunatic who comes to a
school to murder kids. I wish there wasn't, but there
is evil in this world. And if there is not
a police officer at the front door, remember this day, well,

(33:48):
you know what that happened in Nashville, Tennessee, at the
Covenant School. Another lunatic came to a school and there
wasn't a police officer there. And if the Democrats hadn't
shut this down, the legislation I proposed could have put
a police officer there and could have saved the lives
of everyone murdered that day. I want to talk about

(34:09):
funding because one of the things that Democrats say is
we can't afford this, and they're gonna say back in September,
when you did this in twenty twenty two, well, this
is a pine the sky idea that we couldn't afford.
Let's talk about the financial side this. It's got to
be paid for before we do that. I want to
tell you about our friends at Patriot Mobile. If you
have a cell phone, and ninety nine percent of you do,

(34:30):
most of you are probably listening to this podcast on
your cell phone right now, or throw your cell phone
on your speakers in your car. There is a company
that you can switch to and it's seamless. You're gonna
use the same towers you're on right now, You're gonna
get the same coverage you have right now. The difference
is you may save yourself a lot of money by
switching to Patriot Mobile, and then you're going to be

(34:50):
making a difference. You're gonna be standing with a company
that actually stands up for what you believe in. If
you're tired of giving your money to companies that actually
fight against your values, switch to Patriot Mobile. They actually
reinvest They take a portion of your bill at no
extra cost to you, and they give it back to
conservative causes and organizations to protect our First and our
Second Amendment rights, protect the lives unboard, and even help

(35:12):
now with adoptions after Rovwaite has been overturned. If you
want to know that your money is going to a
company that values what you believe in, switch to Patriot
Mobile eight seven eighth Patriot. Use the promo code Verdict.
You'll get the best deals of the day. You can
keep your same cell phone number like I just said,

(35:32):
eight seven eighth Patriot. That's eight seven eighth Patriot, or
online at Patriot Mobile dot com slash verdict that's Patriot
Mobile dot com slash Verdict Center. I want to talk
about the funding side this because there are going to
be so many different people that say, well, we just
can't afford this, all right, The question is can we?

(35:53):
And you had a plan for that last year there
was money sitting there that could have been used for this.
I want to play that from your four speech. Then
I'm now going to propound a second unanimous consent bill.
There right now one hundred and thirty five billion dollars
in unspent COVID relief funds to schools. Under the rules

(36:17):
the Democrats have put in place, those funds cannot be
spent on school security. The second bill that I'm going
to ask this body to pass is a bill that
is very simple. It's one page. It says schools can
spend some of that one hundred and thirty five billion

(36:37):
on school security. They can decide what to spend it on.
But if they decide they want to hire an additional
police officer, they can spend the money on that. If
they decide they want to enhance the physical security of
their campus to make their students safer, they can spend
it on that. They can invest in school security. Right
now the Democrats have blocked them from doing this. These

(37:00):
are funds Congress has already appropriated that haven't been spent.
And this bill is unbelievably simple. It says the schools
can choose to invest in school security their Formatam President,
as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that
the Committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions be discharged

(37:23):
from further consideration of S. Four five eight six, and
that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration. Further, that
the bill be considered read a third time in past,
and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and
laid upon the table. Pretty straightforward, right, You would think
that they would say, oh, we have funds, let's do this,

(37:45):
let's give it a shot, and yet they still said no.
Chris Murphy had a very eloquent speech in response. He said, quote,
I object the Democrats. They literally don't give a damn now,
mind you, you know you said a moment ago, said, well,

(38:06):
some people will say how can we afford this? To
be honest, no Democrat would say this. They don't care
how you can afford something. They will spend trillions that
we don't have. They spend like drunken sailors. And that's
not fair to the sailors, because the sailors are spending
their own money. So no Democrat in fact asked the
question how do we pay for this? Because that could

(38:27):
not conceivably matter to them. They simply objected. And I
want you to look what I said on the Senate
floor there was one hundred and thirty five billion dollars
Congress had already appropriated for schools that had not been spent.
And all I was saying is, look, if a school
wants to it's got all this cash raining down from Washington.

(38:49):
It ought to be able to use some of it
to make the school safer. I genuinely, look, I think
I'm a fairly bright guy. I don't know how to
articulate the argument against it. Like if you tasked me,
I don't know. Maybe the CHAT, GPS, the AI program
is better than I did. If you task that, you

(39:11):
could come up with give a speech against allowing schools
to spend some of the COVID relief money on school security.
Maybe it could come up with a speech. I don't
know what I would say. I was a college debater.
I'm pretty good at debating a lot of propositions. I genuinely, ben,
do not know what arguments you would give, And you
know what, neither do the Democrats, because they know the

(39:34):
media is utterly corrupt. Look this week, as I've had
reporters stop me and ask about the shooting, and all
they say is, well, is it time to pass gun control?
And I say no, it's time to pass the bill
I introduced over a year ago that could have stopped
this mass murder by putting police officers on the ground,
by allowing schools to invest in school safety, that the

(39:55):
Democrats block. And I've asked probably a dozen reporters this week.
I've said, has any one of you asked even a
single Democrat? Why did you vote against increasing the number
of cops in schools? Why did you vote against allowing
schools to invest in school safety? To the best of

(40:18):
my knowledge, no reporter has asked any of those Democrats.
Certainly no reporter has asked Joe Biden. He doesn't get
questions like that now. He rarely answers questions harder than
what's your favorite flavor of ice cream? But the two
exchanges you played in this podcast, I will wager a
thousand dollars that nobody listening to this podcast has heard

(40:41):
those exchanges before unless you sit there watching c SPAN.
And it's kind of like twelve little old ladies that
watch c SPAN all day long and the rest of
America is busy living their lives. You haven't heard that.
And as I mentioned in the first floor speech, the
Senate gallery was empty. The reporters refused to cover it,

(41:05):
and then they come back and say, well, the Republicans
have no answer. So one of the classic back and forth.
When this horrific crime happened, I sent out a tweet
and I said, Heidi and I are praying for the
families who lost their loved ones. Were praying for the
community at Covenant School. You know, may God's peace and

(41:26):
grace be upon them. And listen. I'm a Christian as
a believer. When people are hurting, when people are suffering,
I will lift them up in prayer. I believe in
the power of prayer. I don't know that there's anything
that triggers the left more than that. And they start
screaming thoughts and prayers, thoughts and prayers, and they hate
thoughts and prayers. And one of the things that I've

(41:48):
said this week is so their standard talking point is
thoughts and prayers aren't enough. Now here's the amazing thing.
I think prayer is incredible and powerful and important. But
I actually agree with the statement thought and prayers aren't enough.
We ought to have thoughts and prayers. We also ought
to have armed police officers on campus to stop the
next lunatic because I don't want another little kid killed,

(42:12):
and yet the Democrat and media lie is well, the
only solution to this is gun control. Republicans have no
answer to these crimes other than thoughts and prayers. Well,
I have a very detailed answer, and it is the
Democrats who are blocking it from happening. How will this
go down? I know you're going to look at this legislation.

(42:34):
That's why we're doing this show a day early. Instead
of putting it out on Friday, we're doing on Thursday.
What can people be watching for and how will this work?
And who do they need to be calling? Because I
think a lot of people say tell me what to do,
give me guidance. Is it Call your senators tomorrow and say, hey,
support this. Well, the plan is this afternoon, I'm going
to go back to the Senate floor and I'm going

(42:55):
to try to pass these again by unanimous consent. So
it's going to be the same proceeding you just play.
I'm going to do it again this afternoon. As I
sit here right now, I don't know for a fact
that the Democrats will object, but I'll be astonished if
they don't. I don't know if it'll be Chris Murphy
or objects, or if they send someone else to do it.
But my plan is to go to try to pass

(43:16):
this tomorrow. And my assumption, and we'll talk about this
in the next podcast on Monday. But my assumption is
the Democrats will object, and I think they will do
the exact same thing. They will refuse to engage in
a substance of debate. They won't defend their positions. They'll
just send someone up there to say I object and
then run off the floor. By the way I talked

(43:36):
about while I'm giving the floor speech, Chris Murphy literally
walked off the floor. He did not care what I
had to say. He doesn't care about the substance of
how to stop these crimes. He's got a political agenda.
And so my assumption is the Democrats will do it
again later this afternoon, and we'll know for sure. So
you can watch it on c SPAN, and you ought

(43:58):
to highlight join the ten people, the ten little old
ladies watching c spend this afternoon and watch the exchange,
see what happens. Watch exchange, and also you can watch
how the media doesn't cover this for a second time
in another year. This is such an important moment in
our history, and that's where we do have to make

(44:20):
sure that we stay active, we focus. Wherever you're listening,
call your senator and ask them to support this obviously
because it is important. Let me tell you about Chalk.
If you haven't heard about Chalk, you need to check
them out. If you're a guy and you're dealing with
that issue of feeling like you're getting a little bit older,
losing that edge, then Chalk can help you gain what

(44:41):
you've lost back. They help men maximize your masculinity by
boosting testosterone levels up to twenty percent over ninety days. Now.
I've been taking the Chalk Mail Vitality Stack and I
can tell you it works. You can maximize your masculinity,
up your testosterone levels but up to twenty percent sent
over ninety days. Go online to chalk choq dot com.

(45:04):
They are here to help real American men get back
what you've lost. Cchoq dot com. Use promo code Ben
for thirty five percent off any Chalk subscription for life.
You can cancel anytime. Chalk choq dot com use the
code Ben for thirty five percent off. Senator always a

(45:24):
pleasure to chat with you about this good luck on
the four of the Senate with this later today, and
everybody that's listening right now, please make sure you share
this podcast or your family and your friends hit that
subscriber auto download button. We'll see you back here on
Monday morning as well,