Greased Lightnin' For Texas
A review of Ted Cruz's popular podcast, Verdict, and a brief tip on how you can help drain the swamp.
I grew up in the mixed tape era when music was pure. We listened to songs such as "Like a Prayer," "I Want Your Sex," and "Never Gonna Give You Up." Podcasts were called "AM Radio" and designed for blue-collar dads after the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and freed stations from the requirement to provide "equal time" to both sides of the political terrain. For the audiophiles, we flocked to FM, where "hearing both sides" wasn't political. It just meant music was played in stereo and at a preferable sound quality.
If we wanted to hear both sides, we plugged in our chorded headphones, brushed our permed locks out of our eyes, slipped the headband over our heads, and switched on bass boost for good measure. We didn't have AirPods to protect us from socializing in public places like we do today. No invisible shields protected us. No, we had sharp-edged plastic baby speakers covered in orange foam on both ends of a headband. These, after hours of use, would wear through the protective foam, and the rigid plastic edges would begin cutting into your lobes, making the high-pitched sounds emitting from your dime store speakers even more cutting to the inner ear than they are to the outer.
Today, you won't find these melon phones in stores, and unless you are an ironic influencer using old tech that was created before you were born – just to be "edgy" – you won't need 'em because, today, if you need something piercing to the ears, you have Ted Cruz.
Ted's one I've covered in the past, specifically when I had the opportunity to highlight him looking like a jackass for saying the pledge of allegiance to an inanimate object in his Washington, DC, office. That, and the time he went to war with the famous puppet Big Bird, accusing him of supplying our children and their parents with government propaganda.
If anyone is squeaking louder than the proud boot owner from Texas, it's hard to hear them, except during State of The Union addresses.
I don't make it a habit to promote the podcasts of elected officials on this show. In fact, I've never boosted my favorite civilian pods, either. Not just because my official bio describes me as someone who doesn't have a podcast (it's a core part of my identity) but also because I don't write this publication while driving when I am most likely to be consuming my favorite audio bytes. But today, I'll make an exception for Ted.
Ted's podcast is all about Truth. Social, that is.
You can consider this post a dunk on Cruz if you'd like, but let me clarify that it is no more than the equivalent of a driveway basketball hoop rather than the larger audience provided by an NBA court. But to be fair, Cruz has lowered the rim to kid practice level, especially when he offers images like this one. A brand positioning strategy to showcase his aggressive leading man image. The finger pointed, backed by an angry expression that says, "I'm fighting for the flag and the nation for which it stands, and you better get out of my way."
Daily Wire News
Ted hosts his podcast with Ben Ferguson, a cable news personality and host of his own podcast, The Ben Ferguson Show.
You can expect a series of cherry-picked data points harshly characterized to criticize the Democrat opponents. For example, in an attempt to villainize Biden for debt irresponsibility, he highlighted the growth of the national debt starting at 5 trillion when George W. Bush came into office, then 10 trillion when he left, 20 trillion following Obama, and now 32 trillion in the middle of Biden's term.
What I want to do in my review is essentially tell you how Ted, like so many other politicians on both sides of the aisle, creates a mouth-foaming narrative to push another they wish to promote.
This is excellent mud-slinging, but it fails to address the substantial debt growth under Republican leadership, including Trump's supermajority. This is the nature of all of Ted's rhetoric. The eternal flip-flopper focused on stirring up turd to get a point or two. He was among Republicans demanding Merrick Garland appoint David Weiss as special counsel, only to criticize the move as disgraceful when he got exactly what he wanted.
Considering Weiss also served under Barack Obama and Joe Biden as acting attorney general but later was appointed to his post by Donald Trump, the question of whether he is compromised is a good one. One that should have been asked by Cruz when he joined a group of Republican Senators to petition Merrick Garland to do exactly what he ended up doing.
This is the nature of everything Ted does as a Senator and now podcaster. His tired strategy is to stand up, look angry, and portray an image of being tough on the establishment, followed by being the establishment himself. Rather than a redeemer fighting for liberty, he looks more like a snake with greasy hair, if a snake could have hair at all.
Ted will be running for reelection in 2024, and if you vote in the corners of Texas he runs in, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred could use your vote.
But if you'd rather stay red, I think the Republicans can do better by draining the swamp of its snakes, liars, and criminal syndicates. And getting rid of Ted Cruz would be a great place to start because he's not just Ted Cruz. He's Ted Snooze, and that's about the rate of his podcast, too.