 At this point, I think it's indisputable that Republicans have made it more difficult for us as a country collectively to get COVID-19 under control because they don't take it seriously and it's not just like they're not taking it seriously. They are actively harming us by spreading misinformation about the virus. Donald Trump is a main part of the problem with regard to this issue because Cornell university researchers found that quote nearly 38% of English language news articles containing COVID-19 misinformation mentioned President Donald Trump. So when you have one, the president spreading misinformation and two, not actually taking the proper steps to mitigate COVID-19 and then when you have also three Republican governors across the country such as Ron DeSantis in Florida, just pretending as if the virus doesn't exist. Well, it makes all of us worse off. It makes it more difficult for us to get this under control. But I mean, the buck stops with the president of the United States. He sets the agenda. If he actually takes this seriously and says, we've all got to wear masks. This is important. I'm going to mandate it. That would have a transformative effect. It wouldn't make the virus go away overnight like that, but wouldn't make a difference. Yes. So in an interview with Chris Cuomo on CNN, Ted Cruz was asked about this and this got really heated really quickly and it turned kind of ugly, but I'm not going to lie. I enjoyed this because this was entertaining as hell. Well, actually, governors have taken the lead and have had much greater success. Texas record on every level is much, much better than New York and New Jersey and Massachusetts and New York's numbers. Look at the rate every day of testing. My brother puts it out every day. They were the hub of where people were coming. You guys want to celebrate China? You let in 40,000 people. It had already moved to Europe. You let in tens of thousand people. They went to the hubs. That's why we got so sick. Does it trouble you at all that New York and New Jersey had the highest death rates in the country? Does that make you pause and say God? It all troubles me, Ted. And to watch guys like you stand by and stroke you a beard like a wise man, instead of telling the president to get on it when you have power is a problem. My brother will stand for his own record. Why don't you talk to the president the way you talk to my brother, Ted? You afraid of him? You think he'll smack you down at home? Is that what it is? Like he's terrified of the Cuomo's. You guys are really tough. I'm talking about the president. My brother is not the president. I'm talking about the president, the one who called you a liar, the one who said your wife was ugly. That guy, you know, the guy now who you won't say anything about. I recognize that you like it. You actually wonder why you don't have a lot of Republicans that want to come on your show. I have more than any other show. And yell at me and insult me. I'm not yelling at you. I'm raising my voice to match your own because you want to play games, Ted. And people are dying. That's okay, Chris. You're perfectly fine to scream and yell because you know what? But you don't. You're doing it because you don't want to discuss the substance. You invited me on the show to actually talk about the Supreme Court and talk about the book, One Vote Away. And instead, you just want to repeat insults over and over and over again. But you're not. You just bring up my brother for half the interview because you're such a fair guy. You play it so straight down the middle. You were just playing in a biased way, attacking. Because the president's not at the top of the food chain. Incidentally, happened to be Republican states when the death rates, they are markedly worse. And we should ask, when the death rates are markedly worse in some states than others, we should ask a reasonable question. Yeah. Why didn't the president help sooner? That's the question. Wow. I watched that now multiple times, and I enjoy it more each time. And look, I'm not a fan of Chris Cuomo, but you've got to give him credit. You could tell that Ted Cruz was rattled. He didn't know how to respond because like as of late, he's been trying to put up like this. I'm cool. I'm not a nerd persona. He's trying to be a little bit more edgy on Twitter. But at his core, like this is a scared little boy. This is someone who got thoroughly embarrassed in 2016 by someone who ended up beating him, who had no political experience, who was a clown. And now like you're forced to lick his boots. Like you've got to eat crow and you've just embarrassed yourself even more. You've tried to basically become the Ted Cruz version of Donald Trump, but everyone sees through you. It's disingenuous. You're clearly pandering. You're trying to, you know, be an anti-establishment politician like Donald Trump. Be, you know, a little bit more aggressive in your tone. But that's not who you are, Ted. You're a nerd. You're a dweeb. And you're a loser. And you've transformed into a Trump sycophant, or at least you're pretending to be a Trump sycophant. I mean, I'm sure you hate him personally, but like to get called out, you don't know how to respond. You don't know how to respond. So it's funny that, you know, Ted Cruz brought up Andrew Cuomo to Chris Cuomo. I'm not a fan of Andrew Cuomo. I think he's terrible. I don't believe his response to COVID-19 was good or adequate. I think that, you know, he's probably better than certain Republican governors like Ron DeSantis. But I mean, the bar is really, really low. But, you know, Andrew Cuomo is a ghoul. But of course, if you bring this up to Chris Cuomo, that's his brother. So he's obviously going to get defensive and defend his own brother. But, you know, you're deflecting. Like I don't care who you bring up. You're deflecting. You won't answer the question. You won't speak to the president's inability to get this under control because you won't take it seriously. And that's when it really, it got ugly or heated, I should say, because I don't think it was too ugly. I think it was entertaining. So let's walk through the dialogue here. I actually transcribed all of this because I enjoyed it so much. Cuomo says, And to watch guys like you stand by and stroke your beard like a wise man, instead of telling the president to get on it when you have power is a problem. Right there, I have no disagreements because, you know, you have Republicans who are so afraid to speak out against Donald Trump, even if we know that they disagree with him, at least on some of the things that he's doing when it comes to optics. But they don't want to like even if people disagree with Trump's handling of COVID-19 overall, a majority of Americans don't approve of what he's doing, Republicans are afraid to speak out against the more stupid things that he's done or hasn't done because they know that that's going to lose them, not just votes, but even support in Ted Cruz's case. Because he knows that if he ever wants to run for president again, he's got to find some way to get Donald Trump's base who previously hated him on board. So if you speak out now, they're going to never forget this. In the post-Trump era, Trump is still going to have a residual effect on the Republican Party, and he knows this. So he's too afraid to speak up. He's a coward. And Ted Cruz then responds by saying, How about telling your brother to get on it as if this is some sort of a sick burn? I mean, it's so obvious that you're deflecting, like we can have an honest conversation about the plethora of ways that Andrew Cuomo fucked up. But from the standpoint of a Republican, you can't really have this conversation if your own party is fucking up worse than Andrew Cuomo. Now, Chris Cuomo then said, My brother will stand for his own record. Why don't you talk to the president the way you talk to my brother? You afraid of him? You afraid he'll smack you down at home? Is that what it is? Like he shut you up in the primary? And then Ted Cruz just kind of did a little, you guys think you're really tough, something like that. And then Cuomo then says this, I'm talking about the president, the one who called you a liar, the one who said your wife was ugly, that guy. You know the guy now you won't say anything about? Holy shit. That was uncomfortable. Like I hate Ted Cruz and I want him to squirm a little bit, but even like for me, you could just see on his face how uncomfortable that was and it made me like physically cringe. Because you can tell he's been avoiding that topic like the plague because Donald Trump did call his wife ugly. And yet he's incredibly loyal to Donald Trump. Now we know that this is all political theater and Ted Cruz doesn't actually like Donald Trump. I'm sure he loathes him deep down, but we see what he's doing. Like he is trying to maintain this facade that you know he loves Donald Trump. He's a loyalist, but we know that's not the case. And like you can really make yourself look more credible, make it seem as if you really aren't just some partisan hack like you are by calling out some of the obvious failures of Donald Trump. The way that he can't get his story straight when it comes to whether or not he believes masks are effective at the debate. We didn't get a clear answer when we need decisiveness in the face of a pandemic. Like we need real leadership, but we haven't gotten that. So your unwillingness to criticize Donald Trump, even if you're trying to you know appeal to his base when he's ultimately gone, when you want to run for president again inevitably, it still makes you look like shit because this is only one moment in time. And we are eventually as a society, including Donald Trump supporters, probably going to look back at this moment. And even if you never you know get out of the Trump cult, and even after he's long gone, you still believe that everything he did was good. You can still acknowledge how horrible his handling of COVID-19 was. It may be difficult to do that while we're in the midst of this pandemic, but looking back, we're going to see just how terrible he was. And that's going to come back to bite you. I truly believe it will. Now look, not everyone is going to be as introspective as we'd want them to be, but it's really easy to get bogged down by a current moment in history, right? A moment in time. And you feel like you're never going to get out of this, but we will be out of the Trump era eventually. We will eventually collectively as a society look back at this moment in history and just scratch our heads and wonder what the fuck were we thinking? How stupid were we as a country? Embarrassing. But you know, people like Ted Cruz, they only think about what's going to benefit them in the short term, right? It's why we don't see much action when it comes to climate change with regard to Congress, because they're not thinking 20 to 30 years ahead. They're thinking about their next reelection and how they're going to make it to that point. So this was really just, this was entertaining. Like, I hate CNN. This is a corporate news channel, but if they had more moments like this of just genuine rage against the politician who is a weasel, I would tune in more often.