Welcome. It is a special debate verdict with Ted Cruz and Ben Ferguson podcast. We get to do these on

big nights jointly like this. Depending on where you're listening to us right now, you get us both.

Senator, your initial reaction. You watch the debate. I watch the debate. What were your big

takeaways? Well, tonight was a big and

consequential debate, but I have to say it, before we get into it, and this entire podcast,

we're going to analyze the debate in depth and say what it showed about where the race is,

where President Trump is, where Kamala Harris is. But I do want to point out it is exactly

midnight, as you and I are recording, which means it has just become September 11th. And for our

listeners who are downloading this, you'll be downloading this today during September 11th.

And so I just want to start by acknowledging that that 23 years ago,

the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history happened. And you and I both live through 9-11.

We had friends who lost their lives in 9-11. We saw the agony. And we have talked on this podcast many times about my view that

today we have a greater risk of a major terrorist attack than we have had any time since September

11, 2001, because of the disastrous policies of the last four years. And so I want to acknowledge that at the front end.

And then we're going to walk through right now what the biggest takeaways are from the debate tonight.

Senator, this was a obviously important debate for Kamala Harris.

It was really a rollout in a sense where she could be

challenged. What we quickly saw, though, was a three-on-one debate against Donald Trump.

And ABC News, what an in-kind donation they gave. Yeah, the ABC moderators did not do a good job.

They clearly were biased towards Kamala Harris.

We saw that from their live, quote, fact-checking where repeatedly they'd follow up what Trump said by contradicting him, by disputing him. Many instances, their fact-checks were wrong, and they never

could be bothered to fact- check a word that came out of

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