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TC Ted Cruz Ted Cruz U.S. Senator from Texas who co-hosts a political podcast and weekend radio show with Ben Ferguson, recapping the week's politics and news.

“The people leading the lobbying against it were Democrat Cory Booker and Democrat Chris Murphy, both from the far left. And they were doing everything they can to defeat this bill.”

The Ben Ferguson Podcast · US Politics · September 2026

“The people leading the lobbying against it were Democrat Cory Booker and Democrat Chris Murphy, both from the far left. And they were doing everything they can to defeat this bill.” — Ted Cruz on Cory Booker, The Ben Ferguson Podcast

Context

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on his Verdict podcast, after a Senate vote on the Protect College Sports Act that he sponsored. He describes opposition from Sens. Booker and Murphy.

Transcript

The Ben Ferguson Podcast Around 09:45 into the episode
Ben Ferguson

month of service. That's patriotmobile.com slash verdict. You can also

Ben Ferguson

…so this bill, it is passed. That's amazing. Like you said, it's been a long time in the works. You got bipartisan support. Give us some of the key highlights of what now changes in college sports to protect all of those other sports because of some of the rules that are now going to be implemented.

Ted Cruz

Yeah, I'm going to tell you what's specifically in the bill, but let's not bury the lead. So today we had a vote. It was the first time we've had a vote on college sports, and there was some furious lobbying against it. The people leading the lobbying against it were Democrat Cory Booker and Democrat Chris Murphy, both from the far left. And they were doing everything they can to defeat this bill. Well, we ended up having a massive, massive victory today. There were a total of 74 senators that voted for the bill today.

Ben Ferguson

By the way, that doesn't happen just to put it in perspective. When was the last time on a pretty intense and debated piece of legislation, not a kumbaya piece of something, like this was not kumbaya, where you get 74? I don't remember another vote that I can think of that was this significant.

Ted Cruz

Well, and I will say also, look, we said from the beginning, I've said on this podcast a number of times, my objective was not to eke by with 60. 60 is what you need to clear a filibuster. And to be clear, Cory Booker and Chris Murphy are trying to filibuster this bill. To defeat a filibuster, we…

Speaker 3

We got 74.

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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