How close is the Texas race? Should we worry about that and the governor's race? Senator Ted Cruz joins us, and what advances are we making in cancer? Dr. Patrick is back with us. Welcome to The Sean Spicer Show. Let's get into it.
All right, guys. Good Friday to you. What a show. Sit back, relax. We're taking you into the weekend. Ted Cruz is here. He's going to give us the inside skinny on the race in Texas for the US Senate: Ken Paxton versus Tom O'Rourke. Plus, do we need to worry about the governor's race? Ted Cruz is going to spill all the tea. Plus, the latest on the cancer cure that Dr. Patrick's been working on. He just got some great news out of the UAE and Saudi Arabia. He's going to share it with us. Plus, what we need to know about how to prevent cancer and what we should be asking our doctor. This is going to be a humdinger of a show, folks. Taking you to the weekend.
I got a brand new newsletter out at seanspicer.com. The president was in Texas yesterday and today. So, what a great day to introduce the junior senator from Texas, who's also the author of a brand new book on Clarence Thomas called Going Further, Senator Ted Cruz. Senator Cruz, welcome back to the show. Congratulations, a bestseller out of the gate. A little jealous, little jealous, got to admit. Congratulations, that's awesome.
Well, thank you, Sean. I'm excited that my new book has come out. It is a biography of Clarence Thomas, an extraordinary American, an extraordinary justice, a ferocious defender of the Constitution, someone who I know very well. Justice Thomas has been a friend of mine for 30 years, and I wrote this book because I wanted to tell his story. Young people should know his story. Every American should know his story.
He rose from abject poverty in Georgia, from nothing, facing bitter racism. He rose all the way up to the pinnacle of American law. He is right now the second-longest serving justice on the Supreme Court. Within less than two years, he will be the longest-serving justice in American history. And so what I try to do in this book is, number one, tell his story in real and personal ways so you can understand the journey that he traveled. For many years, he studied to be a priest. He thought he wanted to be a priest, and before he was a judge, when he was in college and law school, he was a left-wing radical and an angry young man. And so this book chronicles his journey from left-wing angry radical to one of the greatest conservative thinkers the world has ever seen.
On top of that, it takes 30 years of Clarence Thomas's jurisprudence and tries to explain it in ordinary terms. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand this. You don't have to be a constitutional litigator. This is designed so a smart high school kid could read it and understand it and get why Clarence Thomas is so extraordinary. And I will say I was gratified, Sean, we released it this week and it immediately skyrocketed to number one, the number one bestseller in the country on Amazon. And so that, I think—
I saw it. It's impressive. Hats off to you. By the way, you mentioned the part about him joining the priesthood. I found that I was actually very disappointed in my own faith. He's Catholic. I know Ginni, his wife, and I've always admired their faith. When I read the part about the racism that he faced, that people were leaving him notes and he finally walked—I mean, that is what caused him to walk away from a religious life in seminary. I was really disappointed, to be honest with you. In one way, I'm glad you put it in the book, but in another way, I was really disappointed in my own faith and that this late in our journey as a country and as a faith that we still had those tendencies for somebody that wanted to spend their life dedicated to serving Jesus.
Well, it is a painful chapter of his life, and he very, very much wanted to be a priest. He did seminary for both high school and then also college, and he did encounter vicious racism within the seminary. The story you referenced, when he was in seminary in high school, he was one of only two Black students in the school, and another student passed him a note, the front of which said, "I like Martin Luther King." And he turned it over and the back said, "Dead."
And I will say this. Listen, this is ultimately why he left the seminary: he was disappointed with the church in being unwilling to stand up against racial discrimination, stand up for civil rights. It was the Catholic Church, it was the Protestant Church, it was the church writ large. A point that I think is important to remember is that Dr. Martin Luther King was also Reverend King. He was a pastor, and you read the Letter from Birmingham Jail, many people forget to whom that was addressed. It was addressed to the clergy of America. It was addressed to the priests and pastors and reverends, saying, "Look, as Christian leaders, you should be standing up against injustice."
Sadly, this was a blind spot for the church for many years, and it caused Clarence Thomas to leave God, to get angry at God, to leave the church. Now, in his journey, he comes back. He is a very devout Catholic now. His faith is integral to who he is now, but he had a period where he left. When he was an angry young liberal, that was the same period where he walked away from God and refused to go to Mass for years because he was so angry about it.
You mentioned your friendship with him. Did you tell him you were going to write this book, and did he okay that?
About a year and a half ago, I went by his chambers and sat down and said, "I'd like to write a biography. I'd like to tell your story." And I asked him if he would agree to sit and do interviews with me. He kind of chuckled and he said, "Ted, if it were anyone else, if you were a law professor, if you were someone else, I'd say no." Clarence Thomas famously does very few interviews. He doesn't give a lot of speeches. He said, "If it were anyone else, I'd say no, but because it's you, I'll do it."
I do think I have a fairly unusual set of experiences. I started my career as a law clerk at the US Supreme Court, clerking for Chief Justice Rehnquist, and so I've known Justice Thomas for 30-plus years. Much of my career before the Senate was litigating cases before the Supreme Court, arguing before Justice Thomas and the other justices. And now for 14 years, I've been in the Senate, and I'm a senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, so I've been deeply involved in judicial confirmations for 14 years. What Justice Thomas said is that he thought I could tell the story effectively. So, very generously—Sean, we spent nine and a half hours in one-on-one interviews where I'd come over to his chambers about 8:00 a.m., just him and me in the office. I'd set down a tape recorder, and we'd talk a couple of hours. I'd just try to ask him everything I could think about about his life, about his work on the court, about his legacy, and that forms a lot of what became this book.
I mentioned the story of the seminarian and turning away from the church and his experience there. If somebody was asking you, "What is something that I don't know about Clarence Thomas that you reveal in this book?" what would that be?
Many people don't know just how destitute his beginnings were. He was raised as a young boy by a single mom. They lived in a tenement that didn't have indoor plumbing. They had an outhouse outside; they used a chamber pot. One story Justice Thomas tells is as a little boy, he was carrying the chamber pot full down the stairs, and he tripped and fell and it dumped on top of him, and he was at the bottom of the stairs covered in stale urine. That's not a typical beginning for a Supreme Court Justice. There's never been another justice raised in that kind of poverty.
He was born in 1948, so just a couple of years after World War II, before Brown v. Board of Education had been decided, so schools were still segregated in Georgia. English was a second language; he actually did not speak English as a first language. He grew up speaking what's called Gullah, which is a Creole dialect that you find on the border islands in Georgia and South Carolina. He ended up, though, being raised not by his mom, but by his grandfather and his grandmother, because his mom was no longer able to care for Clarence and his brother.
His grandparents took him in, and his grandfather—his name was Myers Anderson and is an extraordinary person. There's no one in Clarence Thomas's life who had a greater impact than Myers Anderson. Thomas's own autobiography is called My Grandfather's Son. He called his grandfather Daddy, and his grandfather was a tough, driven, disciplined man. His grandfather was the son of a freed slave. So think of that journey from slavery to being on the Supreme Court. Myers Anderson was an incredibly tough disciplinarian with the boys. He made them work. He delivered fuel oil, so he would get Clarence up at 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning, and they'd go out in the bitter cold to deliver fuel oil. Myers Anderson would not let the boys wear gloves. He thought wearing gloves was for the weak and they needed to toughen it up.
It is interesting. Myers Anderson did not think of himself as a conservative, but he embraced common sense self-reliance. For example, he and his wife, his grandparents, were functionally illiterate. They couldn't read or write, and they struggled financially their whole lives, but they never once took welfare. One of the things his grandfather told him, he said, "Clarence, if you take welfare, it gives the government an excuse to come into your home, to come into your home and tell you what to do with your life. And you don't want to do that. Your home is your home."
That self-reliance, even when Justice Thomas went to the left, I think those common sense principles brought him back. One of my favorite quotes that his grandfather said that Justice Thomas lives by is, "Boy, if it don't make no damn sense, it don't make no damn sense." And there's a wisdom, a reality that runs as a through line through Clarence Thomas's jurisprudence.
How long do you think he stays on the court?
I don't know. I don't think he's going anywhere. I feel extremely confident he will be there at least until May of 2028 when he'll be the longest-serving justice. And I'll tell you, I think he loves what he's doing. He's healthy. He's not going anywhere as long as his health holds up. I think he intends to keep serving.
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Looking forward, as a senior member of this, are you worried that if we lose control of the Senate and we have a vacancy, we will lose the ability to get another justice of his ilk?
Yeah. Look, I'm going to take it a step further than that. If Democrats take control of the Senate, I think they will shut down all confirmations from Donald Trump for the next two years. I think they'll shut down cabinet members. I think they'll shut down sub-cabinet members, and I think they'll shut down judges. It used to be the case—it was always the case—that when you had a president of one party and a Senate of the other party, that you would move some judicial confirmations, particularly district court judges. I think the Democrats have been so radicalized that my assumption is if there's a Supreme Court vacancy and Chuck Schumer's in charge, nobody can get confirmed, and I just think that's where the Democrats are.
You look at the landscape right now beyond Texas: Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, Michigan. I hate to say this, I think Georgia and North Carolina are pretty close to being gone, gone. How concerned are you that the Senate is truly in play and you guys may lose the majority?
Yeah, I'm very concerned. It is a rough political environment right now. I actually think there's a greater likelihood of our losing the Senate than there is of the House, which is a little bit contrary to conventional wisdom.
I don't disagree with you on that. The math actually works a little bit when you look at where the House is. I do this every Wednesday: we've got 212 in the bank, we only need six of 19 toss-ups.
Well, and the Republicans in the battle over redistricting gained likely 10 to 15 seats. There are only maybe 30 to 40 seats that are even arguably competitive, so 10 to 15 out of 30 to 40 moves the margin. Now look, if it's a bad election, we could lose the House. I'm not saying that's not on the table. But the Senate, I'm really worried. As you mentioned, North Carolina, the numbers are rough; Georgia, the numbers are rough. But we have very competitive races in Maine, Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas. All of those races are within a couple of points of each other. And so it could be a real—I hope it's not, but it could be a really rough election.
I'm glad you're saying this because I say this on my morning show, The Huddle, and I'm like, "Guys, I'm the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is high. Here are the things you can do. I'd rather ring the alarm bell 70 days out than say, 'I told you so' two days after." You mentioned Texas. You have said that this race in Texas between Talarico and Ken Paxton is going to be close, expensive, and a fight. Give people a sense of how worried they should be, because there is not a public poll that I can find that shows Ken Paxton leading. I think public polls suck, but there's nothing that someone says, "Oh yeah, don't worry, Paxton's got this secret strategy that we're not aware of."
Yeah, look, Texas is a very serious fight, and I'm very worried about it. Virtually all the public polling shows Talarico leading, typically one to two points, but ahead a little bit. And there's a reason for that, which is Ken Paxton just went through a really vigorous primary. He had $200 million of attack ads run against him. If you look at his fave/unfave, that's comparing his favorables to his unfavorables, he's at a minus 15. It turns out $200 million of attack ads, that leaves a mark. Talarico went through a very easy primary. Nobody has hit him. Talarico's fave/unfaves are plus nine. That differential is a problem.
Now, the good news, Sean: Talarico's record is radical, it is extreme. This guy is a woke left-wing zealot, but most of the voters don't know it yet, and so that's what the campaign needs to be about. More broadly, and this is a Texas problem, but it's a problem in every one of the states we talked about: the left is energized, they're pissed off, they hate Donald Trump, they are showing up. On the right, some folks on the right are demoralized or dispirited or angry or fighting back and forth. If conservatives and just common sense normal people stay home and the radicals and zealots show up in big numbers, that's how you get a terrible election and end up, instead of 53 Republicans, with 45 Republicans in the Senate. I hope that doesn't happen, but I'll tell you, if our people stay home, that's exactly what will happen.
What about the governor's race? Do we need to worry about Greg Abbott at all, or is he going to be okay?
It's a real race. The polling in the governor's race shows it is a one-to-two-point race, as well. It is a challenge when you have one side that is really worked up and energized, the left, and another side that is divided amongst itself and angry. We need to unify and turn our voters out. You and I both talk to President Trump frequently. That's something when I'm talking to him, I'm like, "Mr. President, we need all of us to be rowing in the same direction, because if our voters stay home, November would be an utter bloodbath."
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This issue of data centers has gotten huge attention. I live in Virginia; Northern Virginia's just home to them. You guys in Texas, Governor Abbott put a moratorium or is trying to call for a moratorium. How big of an issue? I see this popping up in races all over the country. I think it's a sleeper issue. What do you think Republicans should say about it? How do they message it, I guess is what I'm asking.
Well, listen, this issue is certainly rising in the polls and it's not doing so organically. China is putting real money behind the anti-data center movement in this country. There's a guy, Neville Roy Singham, who is a Marxist, a communist who lives in China, an American billionaire, who is funding the anti-data center movement because let's be clear: China wants us to build no data centers and to simply rely on theirs and to cede AI to China, which would be devastating to the American economy.
That being said, the reason this issue is getting traction is people are understandably concerned, number one, about electricity prices, and number two, about water. Now, on the water front, most people don't know that new data centers being built are built on what's called closed-loop cooling, so they just recycle the same water over and over again. They use almost no water. Most people don't know that. They're looking at social media and being told that they consume a ton of water; that's factually inaccurate.
On the electricity side, it is a reality that power plant power prices have gone up more than 30% since 2021. What Greg Abbott has done that I very much agree with him is to say, "No data center can be built in Texas if the effect is to increase someone's power bill even a penny." And I'll tell you, Sean, I'm telling the companies building the data centers that they're getting killed on the PR battle here, and they need to make the benefits of a data center transparent and massive.
Here's what I told them: send people checks. Send them 100 bucks a month, 500 bucks a month, 1,000 bucks a month. If you open up the mailbox and got 1,000 bucks a month, suddenly you'd be like, "Hot diggity damn, I kind of like that data center. I like my 1,000 bucks a month." Or here's another thing I've told them to do: say, "If you're going to go build a data center, every home in that community, your electricity bill is zero for the rest of your life. The data center goes in and you don't pay electricity bills ever again." You want to change the politics on this? These companies and these leaders need to get proactive and lean in. That's what I'm encouraging them to do.
You're right. They are so behind the curve on the PR of this. You bring up the issue of affordability, though. I got to ask you: in Texas, the president announced 30% beef tariffs on imports. I got to believe in a place like Texas where you guys have a ton of cattle, that didn't go over well.
Yeah, look, the cattle ranchers are not happy about that, and that's true in Texas, that's true in the Midwest where folks are raising cattle. They're not happy to see that. Now, folks are happy to see beef prices go down, so there's a give and take on that. But look, what I have encouraged the president to do is use tariffs as leverage to open up other markets so that our cattle ranchers can export American beef, so that our farmers can export corn and wheat and soybeans. The more markets we open up, the better it is for
American farmers and ranchers and manufacturers. And as you know, there are differing camps within the Trump administration. There's a camp that agrees with me and says, let's use these tariffs to open up markets. There's another camp that just wants high tariffs forever. And I very much hope that second camp doesn't prevail because I think that policy is not helpful.
Last thing I want to ask you, I was shocked this week to find out that Texas is the third largest state that trades with Canada. I mean, you guys are big, I get it. Everyone loves to talk about how much bigger everything is in Texas. I get it. But I don't know, I just figured it's so far south. How concerned are you about the breakdown of talks between the US and Canada over the USMCA agreement?
Well, look, it's one of the things that I think has driven some of the tight poll numbers. If you notice the states that I mentioned where there are competitive Senate races—Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas—it's kind of up and down the middle. It's ag states, it's farmers and ranchers. And I will say the tensions with Canada and Mexico on the trade front, that has contributed to the discontent. And so I think I'm certainly pressing the president, and the president is focused on affordability, but it needs to be front and center. We have seen policies that have made a real difference in people's lives, but there's no doubt farmers and ranchers in particular are hurting right now.
Senator Ted Cruz, congratulations on an amazing book, another bestseller, and I again, I just say from what I've gotten through so far, it really does bring to life a man who has served this country, who's rooted deeply in his faith, and I hope people get a sense of appreciation for the magnitude of his life. And I appreciated your relationship with him being that catalyst that's brought it to life. So, thank you for sharing it with us. I hope everyone gets out there on Amazon and purchases it.
