Ted Cruz joined Glenn on radio today, where he took a moment to list the five things he plans on doing the first day in office if elected. First, he'll take President Obama’s executive actions to task. Next, he'll open an investigation into Planned Parenthood.
By the end, Glenn seemed even more impressed with Cruz than he was before.
Here's the full list in Cruz's own words:
1. Rescind every single illegal and unconstitutional executive action taken by President Obama.
2. Instruct the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood, into these horrific videos, and to prosecute any and all criminal conduct by that organization and its employees.
3. Instruct the Department of Justice, the IRF, and every federal agency, that the persecution of religious liberty ends today. Instead of the federal government violating and persecuting our religious liberties, the federal government will defend the Bill of Rights and our religious liberty.
4. Rip to shred this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal, which is the single greatest national security threat facing America.
5. Begin the process of moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the once and eternal capitol of Israel.
Listen to the full segment or read the transcript below.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
GLENN: Ted Cruz, presidential candidate and senator from the great state of Texas is on the phone with us now from Iowa or Idaho or one of those I states. I'm not sure.
PAT: Illinois -- something.
GLENN: Welcome to the program, Ted. How are you, sir?
TED: Well, thank you, Glenn. Great to be with you. Always cool, but I don't think I've heard a cooler show intro than, I just got a call from Chuck Norris.
GLENN: And he'll have to --
TED: You're living the life, man. You're living the life.
GLENN: I know. I know. And he'll have to kick your ass if you get out of line, I just want you to know.
So, Ted, first of all, I want to thank you for the support for Birmingham. And thank your father for being there. And you're a little busy doing something, I don't know. But we thank you for all the support you've shown us. And I know that you care desperately about these topics. You only have ten minutes. I want to talk to you real quick on one thing that is really bothering Pat a big deal. He wants to play a piece of audio from you and then see how you -- where you stand. Because we have two differing Ted Cruz -- I don't think they're differing, he does. Listen.
TED: I have spent my professional career defending the Constitution. I served five and a half years as the Solicitor General of Texas, the Chief Lawyer for the state of Texas in front of the US Supreme Court, and I've repeatedly defended the Constitution.
The 14th amendment provides for birthright citizenship. I've looked at the legal arguments against it, and I will tell you, as a Supreme Court litigator, those arguments are not very good.
As much as someone may dislike the policy of birthright citizenship, it's in the US Constitution.
PAT: Okay.
GLENN: Now, you've also said this.
PAT: That you are absolutely opposed to birthright citizenship.
GLENN: Help me out on that. Which is it?
TED: Well, sure. Both of those comments are entirely consistent. And what I said, that first recording you played, it's from 2011. In 2011, at the time -- and that's just a little segment, but at that time I said publicly I was opposed to birthright citizenship. In fact, I said in writing in 2011 when I was running for the Senate, that I was opposed to birthright citizenship. And the reason is simple: It doesn't make any sense. It's bad public policy.
GLENN: It was for slaves.
TED: That we would incentivize and reward people coming here illegally by giving their children automatic citizenship. So that has been my position today. It was my position yesterday. It will be my position tomorrow. That, as a public policy matter, birthright citizenship doesn't make any sense.
GLENN: Explain what you said then about the Constitution.
TED: There is the separate legal question about how you change that policy. And among constitutional scholars, there is a good-faith legal debate. Some constitutional scholars argue that you need a constitutional amendment to get rid of birthright citizenship. Other constitutional scholars argue that Congress could change it through a statute. There are arguments on both sides.
What I was addressing there is that if it goes through a constitutional amendment -- constitutional amendment takes many, many years. It's a long, delayed process. And so what I was saying there in the rest of that interview is, we need to solve the crisis of illegal immigration now, today. Not five years or ten years from now. And the way to do that is secure the border today. And indeed, in January 2017, if I'm elected president, on the first days in office, the administration will finally begin securing the border, enforcing the law, stopping illegal immigration. That we can do now. I still support pursuing either a statute or a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. But that is a slow and long-term process. It's not something that can be done quickly. And we need to solve this problem quickly.
GLENN: I'm sorry, Pat. I just wanted to say, I didn't hear exactly what you said off the air just a minute ago. What was that, that you said?
PAT: I said that's the explanation you gave.
GLENN: Yes, that they are not -- that's two separate arguments.
PAT: But I wanted it hear it from Ted. Because one of the things that we love so much about you, Senator Cruz, is that you're so consistent and so good on so many issues. In fact, I don't know a single issue on which I disagree with you. So...
GLENN: Would you like to make out with the man right now?
PAT: Almost. I'm pretty close to that, and you know it.
But what's so great is that you've got an -- whenever something like an inconsistency seems to arise, you usually have -- well, always, that I've heard, a good explanation for it.
But the other thing is, I wanted to ask you really quick, because we hear this so often from -- it seems that virtually every conservative really likes you. Really -- in fact, they want to make out with you like I do.
But what we hear so often is, I really like Ted Cruz, but. How do you address that with people? How do you get them to understand?
GLENN: May I rephrase your question? Ted, tell me what your first week in office, what are the things you do?
TED: Well, on the very first day in office, I had pledged to do five things.
The first thing I intend to do is to rescind every single illegal and unconstitutional executive action taken by President Obama.
PAT: Love that.
GLENN: And Bush?
TED: Sure. Although, Obama will take a good chunk of the deck.
GLENN: Yes. All right. Okay.
(laughter)
TED: The second thing that I intend to do is instruct the United States Department of Justice to open an investigation into Planned Parenthood, into these horrific videos, and to prosecute any and all criminal conduct by that organization and its employees.
The third thing I intend to do on the first day in office is instruct the Department of Justice, the IRF, and every federal agency, that the persecution of religious liberty ends today. Instead of the federal government violating and persecuting our religious liberties, the federal government will defend the Bill of Rights and our religious liberty.
The fourth thing I intend to do on the first day in office is rip to shred this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal, which is the single greatest national security threat facing America.
And the fifth thing I intend to do in office, on the first day in office, is begin the process of moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the once and eternal capitol of Israel.
GLENN: I've heard people say that that's not a big deal. To me, that's a huge deal. Explain why that's so important.
TED: Well, it is a huge deal because Jerusalem is the capitol of Israel. And we refuse to put our embassy there in an effort to nod to the Arab countries in the Middle East that dispute Israel's right to exist. And it is simply giving in to the radical Islamists who want to destroy Israel. And under federal law -- Congress passed a law providing that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem. But every president has issued a waiver, and the law has a presidential waiver built into it.
And here's one thing that I think is really striking on this point. Many presidential candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, have made the same promise I did, which is to move the embassy to Jerusalem, and when they get to the White House, their national security teams tell them, well, gosh, a bunch of the other folks in the Middle East will be really mad at you if you do that, and they don't follow through.
And, Glenn, Pat, I think the single biggest difference between me and the other very fine gentlemen who were standing on that debate stage in Cleveland, is that with me, when I tell you I will do something, I'm going to do exactly what I said I'm going to do.
GLENN: I know. I know.
PAT: You've proven that.
GLENN: So let me ask you this, because I know you have to run. But we have Johnnie Moore with us on next hour. We had Kayla Mueller, a US aid worker who was held as a sex slave by al-Baghdadi in just a horrific thing. It's clear the administration knew that -- there's no way they didn't know this was happening. Al-Baghdadi did it for a reason.
We haven't really said anything about it. Meantime, Johnnie Moore, I'm raising money right now to try to get the Christians out of the Middle East, get them out of that situation and come into the United States. The United States of America has blocked anybody coming in as Christian from the Middle East. They are not accepting them. We have Mexico that will accept them. We have Poland that will accept them. I think we have Latvia that will accept them. We won't accept them. Will you as president, stand up for the Christians and the Muslims that aren't Muslim enough and the homosexuals that are being killed in the Middle East and allow them to come here and stop giving preferential treatment to Muslims?
TED: Absolutely, yes. And we need a president who will call evil by its name. Right now, we have a president and an administration that refuses to even utter the words "radical Islamic terrorism." ISIS is the face of evil. They are crucifying Christians, they are beheading children, they are using rape, forcible rape as an instrument of terror. And it is -- and they are murdering Christians, they are murdering Jews, they are murdering other Muslims who don't embrace their radical jihad. And right now, this administration refuses to acknowledge the enemy.
Glenn, if I'm elected president, every radical militant across the face of the globe will know, if you join ISIS, if you take up arms and wage jihad against the United States of America, then you are signing your death warrant.
Right now, under the Obama administration, ISIS believes they're winning. And they're winning because this administration is not fighting a real war. It is not using military power to defeat ISIS.
GLENN: No, no. Ted, we're running seven airstrikes a day. Seven.
TED: And in contrast, do you know how many airstrikes a day we ran during the first Persian Gulf War?
GLENN: No.
TED: About 1100. 1,100 a day.
GLENN: Jeez. In a much smaller area. In a much smaller area.
TED: Yes. This is -- we have a commander-in-chief who is not attempting to defeat our enemies. Indeed, the policies of this administration are weakness and appeasement. We see this with the Iranian nuclear deal, where the administration wants to send billions of dollars to Iran, which would make the Obama administration the world's leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism. It is unacceptable.
And I do have to tell you, tonight, in Des Moines, Iowa, we have a rally for religious liberty. And one of the people that will be there is Naghmeh Abedini, the wife of Pastor Saeed Abedini, who is wrongfully imprisoned in Iran. He's an American citizen, a Christian pastor. He was sentenced to eight years in prison for preaching the gospel. We're going to have heroes from across the country who have stood for their faith and have been persecuted for religious liberty. It's at 6:30 p.m. Friday night in Des Moines, Iowa. Anyone can find that information about it at TedCruz.org. TedCruz.org.
The Newsboys, the terrific Christian pop band, is going to be playing in concert. I would encourage folks who are nearby Des Moines to join us. And you can watch it live stream online at TedCruz.org. Standing for religious liberty here and across the world.
PAT: Too bad there's no where I can contribute to your campaign if somebody really wanted to.
GLENN: It's going to be another year of this.
PAT: Where would you be able to do that if you really liked everything you just said and you didn't know where to go, what would you do?
TED: You know, funny we should ask. We've had 25,000 contributions at TedCruz.org. TedCruz.org.
And, Glenn, every time I go on your show, your listeners are incredible because they light up the internet with contributions at TedCruz.org. And it's what's giving us such incredible momentum on this campaign. Thank you.
GLENN: Ted, I will tell you that this audience loves you. We do a poll every month, and you've been number one in the poll every single time. You're dirt strong with this audience.
PAT: Every time.
GLENN: And they love you. They love you. Thank you so much, Ted.
TED: Thank you. God bless. Keep speaking the truth, my friend.
GLENN: You got it. Ted Cruz.