A global pandemic.

Over 16,000 Americans dead, and over 17 million Americans have lost their job.

And global energy markets crushed by collapsing oil prices.

These are extraordinary times in which we live.

This is Verdict with Ted Cruz.

Thank you. live. This is Verdict with Ted Cruz. Welcome back to Verdict with Ted Cruz. I'm Michael

Noel, Senator. You're starting us off on a little bit of a downer there, but I guess we're living

in fairly down times. I want to focus in on something you said there about the

energy markets because last I checked oil was trading at something like $22 a barrel. I mean, it was

very, very low. And I think for most people, the interaction we have with the oil industry is when

we fill up our gas tanks. So low oil prices are not necessarily a bad thing when we look at it.

What are we missing here? Well, I think right now we're facing three different crises all at the

same time. We've got a global pandemic, the coronavirus crisis. We're all familiar with the cases,

the deaths, and we're taking extraordinary steps to try to stop the spread of that virus. There's an economic

crisis, a disaster, 17 million people in the last three weeks have filed for unemployment. We've

seen entire industries decimated, and that's producing enormous damage. But at the same time,

you've got energy markets, and in particular, the global price of oil has dropped more than

in half. And the consequence of that is it potentially risk bankrupting most, if not every American

energy producer. And particularly in my home state of Texas, that's devastating. But if you end up

seeing American energy producers driven out of business,

that also has massive implications in terms of you and me, paying higher prices at the pump

in years to come, and also geopolitically, making us dependent on foreign countries in a way that we

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