Ted Cruz responds to outlandish attack ads

July 26, 2012

Writer

There’s a lower than low attack ad running against Tea Party favored candidate Ted Cruz in Texas this week that accuses Cruz of committing crimes against children. Cruz joined radio today to talk about just how ridiculous this attack ad is - could it be the worst of all time?

Transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: All right. Who here is from Texas? Okay. Just stop raising your hands. It's radio. Stop raising your hands. One more question. One more time. Who ‑‑ don't raise your hand. Who's from Texas? By applause. Okay. Good. Now, who ‑‑ guy in the back's like, "Yeahhhhhh! Nebraska sucks!" Who here is voting for David Dewhurst? Oh, my gosh.

PAT: Is that a shutout?

GLENN: Oh, my gosh. Seriously who's voting for David Dewhurst? Not a single person? Who's voting for Ted Cruz?

CROWD: (Cheers and applause)

GLENN: That's incredible. Ted, at least with this ‑‑ Ted, are you there?

CRUZ: I am.

GLENN: At least with this crowd you've just won by 100%.

CRUZ: Well, God bless you, Glenn, and God bless everyone from Texas who's there with you and standing with you.

GLENN: So I understand, so I can translate: What he just said, everybody from the other 49 states or 56 states, whichever you choose, suck.

CRUZ: (Laughing.)

GLENN: Ted, the election is coming up next week. I'm seeing stuff from Dewhurst, which, we had this debate coming onto the show this morning where Dewhurst is running some spot where you defended some corporation over children and I don't know what happened to those children, they died, they were, I don't know, put into a sausage machine. I don't know what happened to them, but you're an evil, evil man. And I saw this ad and we were talking about it and I said, don't worry about this because I think the American people are so tired of this bullcrap, they're onto it. The people who are really motivated to go to the polls are not listening to any of this stuff that you're a racist, that you're a baby‑killer. Whatever, whatever it is, they're not listening to it anymore. They're grounded in the facts. Tell me the facts of what happened when you were killing children.

STU: (Laughing.)

CRUZ: Well, you know, I agree with you that I think Texans are tired of all of the mud and all of the character attacks from David Dewhurst. This particular ad features a grieving mother whose son took his own life, and I'll tell you as a dad of two little girls, my heart breaks for her. I mean, she experienced every parent's worst nightmare. But I think it is contemptible of the Dewhurst campaign to try to exploit her grief and use it to try to attack me in this race. He is trying to tie me to a judicial corruption scandal in Pennsylvania where I'm ‑‑

GLENN: Say it again. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What happened in this? What is this about?

CRUZ: Well, there was a terrible scandal in Pennsylvania where two corrupt judges were taking bribes and wrongfully sending juveniles to juvenile detention centers and her son was apparently one of those. The problem with the attack is that I had nothing to do with that corruption scandal. I had no involvement in the criminal proceedings whatsoever. I represented an individual who is a real estate developer who built the facilities, and I represented him in a civil appeal of a breach of contract case against an insurance company. And based on that, Dewhurst is trying to blame the entire judicial corruption scandal on me and apparently blame this child's death on me, which is just, I mean, it's shameless.

PAT: Where did you start kidnapping and beating children, though? When did that begin? Where in the story is that?

GLENN: When did it end?

PAT: I mean, this is amazing, the cash above kids scandal or whatever he's got on the websites?

GLENN: Hold it just a second.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: So you represented someone who built the detention center.

PAT: And that's it.

GLENN: And it was completely unrelated to the scandal and everything else?

CRUZ: He had no involvement with the bribery and the corruption.

GLENN: He was just a builder that built the ‑‑

CRUZ: What they are using is he did plead guilty to tax fraud and so they used the fact ‑‑ and look, I didn't represent him in that criminal proceeding, either. I represented him in a civil action against an insurance company.

PAT: Jeez. Wow.

GLENN: You know, this story led us today to Dewhurst is such an ‑‑ on this case, I don't know the man and I don't want to besmirch his, you know, his character outside of this case because I don't know him. But what a dirtbag move this is.

PAT: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

GLENN: This is, you know ‑‑

PAT: Well, this and the Chinese thing are both specious, ridiculous charges.

GLENN: I am besmirching him on this, even though I don't really know what that word means. Because this is, this is people coming after John Adams. When John Adams was representing the British.

CRUZ: Yeah.

GLENN: And here he is representing the British. Of course he's representing the British. We believe in the foundational principles of our government. That you have a right to representation. And you don't ‑‑ you don't want to defend Al Capone, but you have to defend Al Capone because that's the way it works. I don't want to defend the blind sheikh but the blind sheikh deserves representation. Legal representation, ethical representation, not lies, not distortions but legal and ethical representation. You have to have that if we're going to have a citizen ‑‑ if we're going to have a free citizenry. You have to have it.

CRUZ: There's no doubt about it. And at the end of the day what Dewhurst is employing is the same strategy that Barack Obama employs. It is trying to distract from the issues with nasty personal character attacks that have nothing to do with the grave fiscal and economic challenges our nation's facing. We're going broke. And he has spent over $10 million of his vast personal fortune flooding the airwaves with nasty personal character attacks, calling me a traitor, calling me a corrupt. I mean, using every personal vitriol and character attack he can use. And you know what, Glenn? We have not once responded in kind and we're not going to. We're keeping the focus on the issues, on his record and my record. Because the challenges facing this country are too serious and people are fed up with politics as usual, the mud‑slinging and lies and games of distraction. We need to stand up and stop the spending and get back to our Constitution.

GLENN: I will tell you this, Ted.

CROWD: (Applause.)

GLENN: You know, I support your ‑‑ I support your campaign. I support you and I urge people to look into the two candidates and not listen to the ads but look into both of them and make your own decision. I've made my decision. But the minute, the minute you get to Washington and the minute you start going awry, I just want to promise you one thing: I'll be your worst nightmare.

CRUZ: I believe you, Glenn, and that isn't going to happen. And play this back at me. I am asking you, hold me accountable. So you've got this audio clip to play back at me, and I'm going to predict that it is going to gather cobwebs in the closet.

STU: Nice.

GLENN: I hope so, too, Ted but realize I will dust the cobwebs off.

CRUZ: I know fully well. And listen, that's the power of what's going on. What you're doing and what millions of Americans are doing is standing up and speaking the truth. As you know, the truth has an incredible power over lies.

GLENN: Yeah. Ted Cruz, best of luck and we'll see you tonight at Free PAC at American Airlines center here in Dallas, Texas.

CRUZ: I very much look forward to it. TedCruz.org is the website. Early voting is this week and election day is next Tuesday, July 31st. Please, please, please, conservatives, come out and vote. If conservatives show up to vote in this runoff, we will win and Texas will lead the fight to turn this country around.

GLENN: And let me tell you this ‑‑ thank you, Ted. Let me tell you this: Conservatives all over the country, they are counting on ‑‑ because I've talked to the elites here in Texas. They've absolutely ‑‑ I've had these guys look me in the eyes and say, "You know Ted Cruz isn't going to win." And I've said, let the people decide that. I don't really know. But I think you're wrong on that but who knows what the people will do. "Oh, he's not going to win. He's just not going to win. It's just not going to work. Dewhurst is the guy. He is the party favorite." And let me tell you something. They're so arrogant in that belief that if people turn out and in election goes to Ted Cruz, it will send a bone‑chilling fear down their spine all the way to their feet. This is a huge victory for the Tea Party if indeed it happens. Huge, huge. It will send a powerful message.

Glenn: Pay attention to what the State Department's RADICAL reset is signaling

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For years, the U.S. State Department operated on inertia—an institution locked into a cycle of caution, consensus, and risk aversion.

Speeches were careful, strategies were diluted by committees, and action was often defined by what couldn’t be done. The language was always the same: "nuance," "complexity," "stakeholders." Rarely was it about results.

That has changed.

What’s come out of the State Department in the last hundred days is a complete departure—not just in tone, but in structure.

Under Secretary Rubio, the department isn’t just adjusting tactics. It’s undergoing a philosophical reset.

The most telling shift is this: the department is no longer preoccupied with managing decline or defending abstractions. It’s operating from the premise that U.S. foreign policy must serve actual national interests, not vague global norms or ideological missions.

Look at the key decisions. The Global Engagement Center—an office that claimed to combat disinformation but increasingly acted as an internal censorship tool—is gone. Not repurposed. Not renamed. Eliminated. Aid programs that masked themselves as diplomacy while undermining core U.S. positions have been cut. Contracts to NGOs with open hostility toward U.S. policy goals? Revoked.

This isn’t cosmetic. It’s structural.

The department’s reorganization is consolidating power downward—removing bureaucratic silos, emphasizing merit over ideology, and restoring clarity to diplomatic goals. This isn’t about optics. It’s about removing friction between strategy and implementation. On immigration and border enforcement, there’s now a foreign policy posture that treats visa privileges as exactly that—privileges, not entitlements. Visa holders who break laws or support terrorist groups lose their status. Period. No press conference required. Just enforcement.

Regional partnerships are now framed by expectations, not entanglements.

Countries that allow mass illegal migration into the U.S. are being held accountable. Agreements are being structured around reciprocity. When those agreements are ignored, consequences follow. China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere, long treated as inevitable, has been directly challenged. Beijing’s role in Panama, particularly regarding the canal, has been dismantled through diplomacy backed by leverage, not lectures. That wasn’t done through press statements—it required statecraft, pressure, and the willingness to say no.

In Europe, there’s been a reframing of NATO obligations. Not as symbolic unity, but as measurable responsibility. The benchmark is no longer two percent. The conversation is now five. That changes the nature of the alliance. In Africa, the posture is shifting from dependency to commercial engagement. Trade, not aid. Access, not assistance. Diplomacy with terms, not with guilt.

The contrast is stark.

This isn’t a matter of tone or branding. This is a systemic shift away from a model that rewarded process over outcomes, toward one that is rediscovering the purpose of diplomacy: to secure advantage, resolve conflict, and protect national interests.

This recalibration will not be popular in foreign capitals used to ambiguity, or in institutions comfortable with drift. It’s also not universally admirable. It’s direct. It’s unambiguous. And it signals something rare in modern American foreign policy: conviction.

That alone is worth paying attention to.

Glenn: Why Memorial Day is not just another holiday

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They wore the uniform so you could live free. This holiday, ask yourself if you're living in a way that honors that sacrifice — or cheapens it.

Your son has been a Marine for what feels like an eternity. Only those who have watched their children deploy into war zones can truly understand why time seems to freeze in worry. What begins as concern turns to panic, then helplessness. You live suspended in a silent winter, where days blur and dread becomes your constant companion.

Then, in an instant, it happens. What you don’t know yet is that your child — your most precious gift — fell in combat 60 seconds ago.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives.

While you go about your day, unaware, military protocol kicks into motion. Notification must happen within eight hours. Officers are dispatched. A chaplain joins them. A medic may accompany them in case the grief is too much to bear.

Three figures arrive at your door. One asks your name. Then, by protocol, they ask to enter your home. You already know what’s coming. You sit down. He looks you in the eye and says:

The commandant of the Marine Corps has entrusted me to express his deep regret that your son John was killed in action on Friday, March 28. The commandant and the United States Marine Corps extend their deepest sympathy to you and your family in your loss.

This moment has played out thousands of times across American soil. In 2003 alone — just two years after 9/11 — 312 families endured it. In 2007, 847 American service members died in combat. In 2008, 352. In 2009, 346. The list goes on. And with every name, a family became a Gold Star family.

Honor the fallen

For most Americans, Memorial Day means backyard barbecues, family gatherings, maybe a trip to the lake or a sweet Airbnb. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying these things. But we must never forget why we can.

Ask any veteran who lived when others did not, and you’ll understand: Memorial Day is not just another holiday. It is a solemn day set apart for reverence.

So this weekend, reach out to a Gold Star family. Acknowledge their pain. Ask about their son or daughter. Let them know they’re not alone.

This is a day for sacred remembrance, for honoring those who laid down their lives — not for accolades but for love of country and the preservation of liberty. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

They died for the Constitution, for our shared American ideals, and the worst thing we could do now would be to betray those ideals in a spirit of rage or division.

We cannot dishonor their sacrifice by abandoning the very principles they died to protect — equal justice, the rule of law, the enduring promise of liberty.

This Memorial Day, let us remember the fallen. Let us honor their families. Let us recommit ourselves to the cause they gave everything for: the American way of life.

They are the best of us.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump exposes Left’s habeas corpus hijack in border crisis

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Democrats accused the president of declaring war on civil rights. In reality, he’s defending habeas corpus while they drown it in delays and legal loopholes.

Tuesday’s congressional testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem turned heads for all the wrong reasons. Pressed to define “habeas corpus,” she stumbled. And while I respect Noem, this moment revealed just how dangerously misunderstood one of our most vital legal protections has become — especially as it’s weaponized in the immigration debate.

Habeas corpus is not a loophole. It’s a shield. It’s the constitutional protection that prevents a government from detaining a person — any person — without first justifying the detention before a neutral judge. It doesn’t guarantee freedom. It demands due process. Prove it or release them.

Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

And yet, this doctrine — so essential to our liberty — is now being twisted by the political left into something it was never meant to be: a free pass for illegal immigration.

The left wants to frame this as a matter of compassion and rights. Leftists ask: “What about habeas corpus for migrants?” The implication is clear: They see any attempt to enforce immigration law as an attack on civil liberties.

But that’s a lie. Habeas corpus is not an excuse for indefinite presence. It doesn’t guarantee that every person who crosses the border gets to stay. It simply requires that we follow a process — a just process.

And that’s exactly what President Donald Trump has proposed.

Habeas corpus, rightly understood

Habeas corpus is the front door to the courtroom. It simply requires the government to justify why someone is being held or detained. It’s not about citizenship. It’s about human dignity.

America’s founders knew this — and that’s why they extended the right to persons, not just citizens. Habeas corpus isn’t a pass to stay in America forever — it’s a demand for legal clarity: “Why are you holding me?” That’s it.

If the government has a lawful reason — such as illegal entry — then deportation is a legitimate outcome. And yet, the left treats any enforcement of immigration law as a betrayal of American ideals.

The danger today isn’t that habeas corpus is being ignored; it’s that it’s being hijacked. The system is being overwhelmed with bad-faith cases, endless appeals, and delays that stretch for years. Right now, the immigration courts are buried under 3.3 million pending cases. The average wait time to have your case heard is four years. In some places, people are being scheduled for court dates as far out in 2032. Where is the justice in that?

This is not compassion. This is national sabotage.

Weaponizing due process

The left uses this legal bottleneck as a weapon, not a shield. Democrats invoke due process as if it requires the government to play a never-ending shell game with public safety. But that’s not what due process means. Due process means the state must play by the rules. It means a judge hears a case. It means the law is applied justly and equally. It does not mean an open border by procedural default.

So no, Trump is not proposing the end of habeas corpus. He’s calling out a broken system and saying, out loud, what millions of Americans already know: If we don’t fix this, we don’t have a country.

This crisis wasn’t an accident — it was engineered. It’s a Cloward-Piven playbook, designed to overwhelm the system. Bureaucratic inertia, activist judges, and political cowardice have turned due process into a slow-motion invasion. And the left knows it.

Abandon the Constitution?

Remember, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. But how do we balance the Constitution and our national survival without descending into authoritarianism? Abandon the Constitution? No. Burn the house down to get rid of the rats? Absolutely not. The Constitution itself gives us the tools to take on this crisis head on.

The federal government has clear authority over immigration. Illegal presence in the United States is not a protected right. Congress has the power to deny entry, enforce expedited removals, and reject bogus asylum claims. Much of this is already authorized by law — it’s simply not being used.

President Trump’s idea is simple: Use the tools we already have. Declare the southern border a national security emergency. Establish temporary military tribunals for triage. Process asylum claims swiftly outside the clogged court system. Restore “Remain in Mexico” so that the border is no longer a remote court room. Appoint more immigration judges, assign them to high-volume areas, and hold streamlined hearings that still respect due process.

That’s not authoritarian. That’s leadership.

The path forward

Trump is not trying to destroy habeas corpus. He’s trying to save it from being twisted into a self-destructive parody of itself. Leftists have turned due process into delay, justice into gridlock, and they’re dragging the entire country into their chaos.

It’s time to draw the line. Protect habeas corpus. Use it lawfully. Use it wisely. And yes — use it to restore order at the border. Because if we lose that firewall, we lose the republic.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Betrayal of trust: Medicare insurers face lawsuit over kickback scheme

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Editor's note: This article is sponsored by Chapter.

The U.S. government has filed a major lawsuit under the False Claims Act, targeting some of the biggest names in health insurance—Aetna, Elevance Health (formerly Anthem), and Humana—along with top insurance brokers eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote. The allegation? From 2016 to at least 2021, these companies funneled hundreds of millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to brokers to steer seniors into their Medicare Advantage plans.

If the allegations are true, it means many Americans may have been steered into Medicare Advantage plans that weren’t necessarily the best fit for their needs—not because the plans were better, but because brokers were incentivized by illegal kickbacks.

The Kickback Conspiracy

Navigating Medicare Advantage’s maze of plan options is daunting, so beneficiaries rely on brokers like eHealth, GoHealth, and SelectQuote, who claim to be unbiased guides. But from 2016 to 2021, insurers Aetna, Humana, and Elevance Health allegedly paid brokers millions in kickbacks to favor their plans, regardless of quality. Disguised as “co-op” or “marketing” deals, these payments were tied to enrollment targets. Internal emails revealed executives knew this violated the Anti-Kickback Statute, with one eHealth leader joking that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) would miss a $15 million Humana deal for minimal enrollments. Brokers used call routing to prioritize high-paying insurers, betraying beneficiaries’ trust.

Discrimination Against the Vulnerable

The scheme wasn’t just about profits—it targeted vulnerable beneficiaries. Medicare Advantage must accept all eligible enrollees, including disabled people under 65. Yet Aetna and Humana allegedly pressured brokers to limit their enrollment, as these beneficiaries were deemed to be less profitable. Brokers complied, rejecting referrals and filtering calls to favor healthier enrollees, incentivized by bonuses. This violated federal anti-discrimination laws and CMS contracts, undermining the founding principles of Medicare by discriminating against the very people it was created to aid.

False Claims and the Pursuit of Justice

The schemes led to false claims to CMS, with insurers certifying enrollments as “valid” despite kickbacks and discrimination. The government paid billions, unaware of the fraud. Examples include Humana’s $12,477 for a 2016 enrollment and Aetna’s $79,047 for a 2020 case. On May 1, 2025, the U.S. filed suit, seeking treble damages and penalties under the False Claims Act. Aetna and others deny the allegations, per May 2025 reports, promising a fierce defense. The case, demanding a jury trial, seeks justice for beneficiaries and taxpayers.

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