Welcome, it is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you, and Senator, the biggest news

story of the week. Many Americans are concerned about their banks. They're concerned about banking.

They're concerned about what's happened with the fallout of Silicon Valley Bank. This wasn't a little

bank. This was a big bank. It was one of the top three failures of my

lifetime. I want to get your initial reaction to this and what you've heard, at least from those

in Washington that were supposed to be keeping an eye on this bank and many others every day.

Well, this has been a very chaotic time in the markets. We've seen two different banks fail, including

the 16th largest bank in the United States, Silicon Valley Bank, with $210 billion in assets.

That has called into question a lot of the financing for the tech industry. It's called into question

a lot of the financing for venture capital, and it

has potentially imperiled a significant number of mid-sized banks. In response to this, the Biden

administration rolled out a major bailout, conveniently bailing out the politically collected, connected friends of the Biden White House

in a way that will have lasting repercussions for the economy and will almost certainly

incentivize future bad conduct by other banks.

When you look at this from a standpoint of it being called a bailout, a lot of people have

been calling it that, but this administration keeps saying this is not a bailout.

Is this a bailout? Are the taxpayers going to have to foot the bill for this?

Is this a delayed bill for taxpayers? How should

the American people be reacting to this? This is 100% of bailout, and the Biden administration is

spinning like crazy trying to pretend that it's not. What they are arguing is the money,

there's $120 billion in a fund that is paid by banks.

And they say, well, that's not taxpayer money.

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