goodness of americans standing up when it counts the most. we must be one american family. number two, we must be energy-independent. because energy security is national security. and with economic dominance, the next american century starts with us, it starts right now, and it starts with you. god bless you. [cheers and applause] >> thank you, sir. >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome united states senator from texas, ted cruz. ♪ [applause]

sen. cruz: god bless the rjc! [applause] good morning. what a blessing to be with so many incredible friends, so many incredible warriors. that start with some good news. nancy pelosi is out of a job. [applause] that's a big deal. that is cause for celebration. but at the same time, i want to ask a question that i know is on the mind of every person here. how do you win?

the stakes are too high. the damage being done in washington is catastrophic. how do we win? [indistinct shouting] sen. cruz: that's a big part of it. yes. i'm going to lay out four things. think fight, persuade and mobilize. let's start with think. listen, understanding the battles we're facing is important. [indiscernible] [applause] sen. cruz: ibm. big blue.

they have a one-word motto. [indiscernible] sen. cruz: think. [laughter] [applause] sen. cruz: somewhere, some poor audio tech is having a heart attack right now. [laughter] we need to understand the battles we are facing. when i first arrived in the senate 10 years ago, i set a goal to be the leading defender of israel and the united states senate. [applause] that is a goal i have worked every single day to achieve. now, all of us here celebrate the incredible, the historic achievements for peace that came in the abraham accords. [applause] we need to stop and ask

ourselves, why did those come? there is a difference in strategy. for a long time in washington, all of the democrats and a number of the republicans believed in strategic ambiguity. you're like, oh, i'm a little for the israelis. i'm a little for the palestinians, i'm a little this, i am a little back. they have all got problems. and all of the enlightened beards of foreign policy said that's how you keep peace in the middle east. it's an absolute disaster. it is wrong. you want to know how you keep peace in the middle east? you draw a line in the sand and absolutely and unequivocally say , the united states stands with israel. [cheers and applause] two decisions lead to the abraham accords. number one, under president trump, moving the embassy to jerusalem.

the state department and the defense department and the trump administration both were against moving the embassy. [crowd booing] sen. cruz: all right, i will try that. ladies and gentlemen, i give you the audio tech. [laughter] when you matt was so versatile. -- who knew matt was so versatile. [laughter] that was a battle within the trump administration. both the state department and the defense department fought against moving the embassy. i went straight to the president , made the case vigorously, and president trump had the courage to overrule his own secretary of state, his secretary of defense, and move the embassy. and the day we opened the embassy, i was there in jerusalem on the anniversary,

the 70th anniversary of the creation of the modern state of israel. [cheers and applause] the second decision just like that was pulling out of the iran deal. the exact same fight. the state argued against it, the defense argued against it. i went repeatedly to the president. again, the president had the courage to overrule his own state department and his defense department and pulled out of that deal. [applause] why does that matter the day the abraham accords were assigned? i was at the white house, i was talking with the foreign minister in the ambassador of bahrain in the uae. they both said almost exactly the same thing. they said, we want to be friends with america. it is now clear that america stands unequivocally with israel.

therefore, we will stand with israel. that is how clarity works, but you have to understand what you are doing. what has joe biden done, he has gone right back to the same ambiguity, undermining the israelis, which moves us backwards, which is why within months of his becoming within months -- which is why within months of his becoming president, thousands and thousands of rockets began raining down on israel. or let's take another example, ukraine. why did the war in ukraine happen? didn't have to happen. it's a completely unnecessary war. it happened because of two specific mistakes joe biden made . number one, the disastrous surrender to the taliban that made every enemy of america look

to the oval office and say our commander in chief is weak. i said at the time the chances of russia invading ukraine has just increased tenfold and the chances of china invading taiwan has also increased tenfold. but then secondly, a very specific mistake that biden made on ukraine -- look putin didn't , wake up yesterday and decide he wanted to invade ukraine. he has wanted to for decades. he desires to reassemble what he sees former glories of the soviet union. he did in fact invade ukraine previously in 2014, he invaded crimea, but he stopped. why did he stop? he stopped because russia's major source of revenue is oil and that natural gas goes on pipelines right through ukraine. and if he invaded it, he risked damaging or destroying those pipelines and eliminating their ability to get revenue. so what did he do? so what did he do the next year, 2015, putin began a project called nordstream 2, an undersea pipeline that goes straight from russia to germany. it circumvents ukraine. the entire purpose of nordstream 2's when it is complete, it let him get asked to europe without

having to worry about ukraine, which meant he could invade ukraine. everyone in washington knew this was a terrible idea, but they all wrung their hands and said there's nothing we can do about it. i didn't believe that. so i drafted legislation in 2019, targeted sanctions that would bankrupt any country helping to build nordstream 2. [applause] in december of 2019, i brought together republicans and democrats. got the support of the chairman and ranking member of the senate foreign relations committee, the support of the chairman and ranking member of the senate banking committee, the support of chuck schumer and mitch mcconnell. and then i did the same thing in the house with the same eight players there. all 16 came together behind my legislation, it passed congress . and putin stopped building the nord stream 2 pipeline, the day president trump signed my sanctions legislation into law.

the pipeline was dead. it was dead for over a year. laying as a hunk of metal over the bottom of the ocean. and then joe biden becomes president. biden became president on january 20, 2021. putin resumed deep-sea construction of the nord stream 2 pipeline on january 24, 2021. four days later. the reason is biden signaled , weakness that he intended to waive the sanctions. it was absolutely catastrophically stupid. in the spring of last year, he in fact did waive the sanctions. and so putin completed the pipeline. i responded by putting a hold on every single state department nominee, and they lost their minds. democrats began screaming at me.

reporters began screaming at me. wobbly republicans began screaming at me. they planted an article in one paper that says "right now, it mentions in the capitals of europe are laying empty without american ambassadors." apparently, they haven't met a lot of texans, if they thought would be we that rich democratic donors were not currently throwing wine and cheese parties in glamorous mansions. [applause] but in december of last year, they were desperate getting their nominees through and so i cut a deal with sen. schumer:. i said, i will cut a deal. i will lift the hold on them and ended up 32 of these nominees in exchange for a vote on the floor on reinstating the sanctions on nordstream 2. schumer gave in and agreed i

cleared 32 of the nominees in january of this year. we had that vote. every single democrat had voted not once, but twice in favor of my sanctions legislation that had stopped the pipeline. the day of the vote, president zelenskyy publicly called on the senate, "pass cruz's sanctions legislation. it is the only thing that will stop putin from invading ukraine." the day of the vote, the government of poland publicly called on the senate, "pass cruz's sanctions legislation. it's the only thing that will stop the invasion." i stood on the senate floor and said, if you don't pass this, we will see tanks in the streets of kyiv. that day, joe biden came to capitol hill. it's the only time i know of where he's done this. he came to capitol hill to personally lobby the democratic senators. and 40 for democrats flipped their vote and voted against sanctions on putin against sanctions on russia, voted as a political favor to the biden white house.

and just a couple of weeks later, the tanks rolled into ukraine. we need to be smart and think about why these fights happen. but number two, we need to fight . look, if you want to win, republicans need to stand and fight. we have got to stand for something. don't rollover at everything. [applause] as you know this past week, we had a leadership battle in the u.s. senate, first time it has happened in 16 years of mitch mcconnell being leader. i stood up and made a motion to delay the election until after december 6, after the georgia runoff, because herschel walker, i think, deserved a say in our leadership. but the even bigger reason is, we need a real debate about how are we going to lead during the next two years in a minority in the senate? and the questions i posed mitch mcconnell is very simple, is there anything on which we are

willing to fight? i stood in front of congress and he said, people are dispirited and demoralized because they say it republicans in the senate don't fight. and the reason for that is because republicans in the senate don't fight. [laughter] i am not saying fight on everything. if you fight on 1000 things, you aren't fighting on anything. i'm saying, pick two or three or four things that matter and say, we believe in it. you look at the last two years, the senate has passed over and over again. bill supported by every democrat , 100% of the democrats, by the way the democrats never do that. >> when we had the majority there were no pills passed -- no bills passed. they actually believe in the crazy stuff they say and they

are willing to stand up and fight. so i asked my leadership, is there anything? how about the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that joe biden is firing because they chose not to get a covid vaccine? how about we say were going to stand up and fight for those american heroes and not throw them out of the military. and to stand and fight means using the leverage you have to force that fight. or how about next year, we stand together and fight and say under no circumstances are we going to find the 87,000 new irs agents to harass the american people? and we are going to take that money and put it on our southern border. we need to fight. of why do the democrats do

better than expected? a big part of the reason is they went hard at left, they energize their base, they governed and they were rewarded by showing up in big numbers. we need to behave like we believe what we are saying and that means having the guts to stand and fight. the third thing we need to do, persuade. we spent far too much time preaching to the choir, talking to the same 2.6 million people watching fox news every day. the choir needs love, but we need to talk to young people and hispanics and african-americans and suburban moms. some of you may have seen a few weeks ago i went on the view. they kind of lost their minds. but look, there is value to that because all of the moms at home who watch that show are listening every day to left-wing propaganda and there is power in

being a happy warrior. there is power to being smiling and happy and bringing truth. we've got to do it in a way that goes around the corrupt corporate media. three years ago, i launched a podcast called verdicts with ted cruz. we did it three days a week and it became the number one ranked podcast in the world. we had over 50 million downloads. every week, we beat cnn, their morning show. i want to ask everyone here to do something, i want to ask you to pull out your cell phone right now. pull out your cell phone -- for those of you who can. for those of you who can, pull out your cell phone. pull out your cell phone and text the word verdict to 24005.

let me do that number again, it is 24005. text the word verdict. what you will get back is a link to subscribe for free. my dad said if you say subscribe, people my age think it is like a magazine subscription and we are going to charge you. subscribing is free. and you will get the podcast, because what it is designed to do is give you the tools, the information to persuade your friends and colleagues and neighbors. each of you has more influence in your own sphere of influence than anyone else possibly can. and the podcast is designed to go around the media to equip you directly. the final thing we need to do is mobilize. we need to mobilize people to stand up and fight. we needed to empower them to stand up and fight. when barack obama was president,

i led the fight against the iran deal with a giant rally on capitol hill. thousands of people came out and i invited donald trump to come to that rally. now at the time donald trump and i were running against each other and i remember he looked at me and said why would you invite me to come to your rally? and i said well, when you come you bring about 200 tv cameras. and the whole point is to get the message out to the people. look, we need to mobilize, especially this election cycle. about two months in a nationwide 17 state national bus tour, doing over 35 events for candidates of the house and candidates for the senate. and we won some big degrees -- big victories. 11 challengers won open seats or be democrats. that is why nancy pelosi is out of a job.

i raised and spent over $10 million last cycle supporting those candidates all over the country. but here is where also mobilizing takes resources. this cycle, i am on the ballot in texas for reelection in the senate. when i ran it six years ago in 2018, it was the most expensive u.s. senate race in history. over 120 million dollars of hard money was spent in that race and i was outraised and outspent three to one. to give you an idea of what that means in q3 of 2018 i set a record for fundraising in a senate race. at $12 million in that quarter. if the old record was seven or 8 million. i felt pretty good about my record. the record showed more precisely -- stood for two hours. until my democrat opponent announced his fundraising, mine

was 12 million, a record. what do you think is was? 38 million. more than three times as much. what does that mean? it meant my campaign had 19 paid campaign staffers. his campaign had 807. that is the differential. i can tell you right now out of a hundred u.s. senators, there is no senator the democrats want to beat more than yours truly. there is no senator the people who hate israel want to be more than yours truly. and so, we are going to say over $100 million spent in this cycle. i want to ask everyone here, i need your help, i want to ask you. many of you have supported me in the past. i want to ask you to go to the website, ted cruz.org, ted cruz.org.

one lesson i need you learn from lindsey graham is to say that a lot more. hi, how are you doing, my name is ted cruz.org. very good to see you, what lovely shoes you are wearing, ted cruz.org. but everyone here has an amazing ability to go to ted cruz.org and make a contribution. maybe it is 50, 100, maybe 500, bid yet thousand, maybe you max out. but i can tell you this is a fight worth fighting, a country worth saving. you believe that, i believe that and this is the fight of our lifetime, so i close as i opened, by saying to the men and women here who are warriors for freedom, thank you for the victory on election day in the house of representatives and let's finish the job and retake the senate and retake the white house and retake the country, because that is what the stakes are. thank you, god bless you. [applause]

>> on tuesday oral argumentsn the case where the justice depa is challenging a lower court's appointment of a special master to review documents the fdic's from former president trump's home in august. from attorneys for the formerr presand the assistant to the u.s. solicitor general. watc tuesday at 2 p.m. eastern on c-span. you canlso watch on our free mobile video app, c-span now. or online at c-span.org. ♪ >> c-span is your unfiltered view of government. we are funded by these television companies and more, including cox. >> homework can be hard. squatting in a diner for internetwork is even harder, that is why we are providing lower income students access to affordable internet. so homework can just be homework.