CLAY: We are joined now by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. I spent Friday playing poker for probably five, six, seven hours against Senator Cruz. It involved Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, many other different individuals. It was an awesome time. Senator Cruz, I appreciate you coming on. You love playing poker. I have not played a lot of poker in my day, but I do know Phil Hellmuth and Doyle Brunson are two of the most iconic poker players of all time. How much fun did you have sitting down, being able to go head-to-head with those guys?

SEN. CRUZ: Well, Clay, it was just ridiculous fun. It was truly a bucket list moment. You and I were both there playing on Poker After Dark. It’ll air in a month or two and to have a chance to go up against all-time greats — you know, Doyle Brunson, “Texas Dolly,” has two World Series Championships.

He has 10 bracelets altogether. Hellmuth has 15 bracelets. Just those two guys together have 25 bracelets between them. It was crazy to be sitting at the table with them. We also had the YouTuber MrBeast who was playing with us. And I gotta say, it was one of those moments that we’ll tell the grandkids about that.

CLAY: So it was an awesome time, and I appreciate you inviting me to be a part of that table. We were playing for charity, by the way, so there are three great charities that are going to be awarded the winnings there when that thing airs and everybody can see how it goes. Now, MrBeast is a YouTuber, and I was talking about this earlier.

Lots of people may or may not know who he is, but he’s got 67.1 million YouTube subscribers. And, by the way, that’s bigger than the population of France, Italy, basically the same (chuckles) as the population of England to kind of put it in perspective how many people that is. Some of our listeners out there won’t know him, but to my kids and your kids, he might as well be Elvis.

SEN. CRUZ: Yeah, our kids were giddy about it. He was actually very cool. He recorded videos for your kids and my kids. My daughters actually jumped on a plane and flew there with me. They didn’t care about the rest of us, but MrBeast.

CLAY: Yes.

SEN. CRUZ: Our girls are 10 and 13, and they were beside themselves with excitement. So it was really cool. They got to meet him. He was really nice; he was gracious. He took pictures with the kids. He hung out with them. It was really very kind of him to do.

BUCK: Senator Cruz, it’s Buck here. Sorry I couldn’t join you guys, but I didn’t want to have to take the deeds to your houses and the keys to your cars.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: Mrs. Cruz would be very upset if the Buckster was able to run wild there at the poker table. So I wanted ask you —

SEN. CRUZ: And, Buck? Buck, I do need to ask you: Where should I park Clay’s truck?

BUCK: (laughing)

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: That’s a good question. It’s a good question.

CLAY: My wife actually said when I left, Ted, “Whatever you do, limit your losses.”

SEN. CRUZ: (laughing)

CLAY: I think you took… The best hand I had all day. We came back and played into the late-night there in the Poker After Dark studios. The best hand I had all day, you basically cleared me out because you beat me by basically one card. It was one of the best hands you had all day and we ended up with a big pile of cash between us.

BUCK: Senator Cruz, I do gotta turn us here, if I can, to what’s going on in the world around us and here at home most notably.

SEN. CRUZ: Yes. Absolutely.

BUCK: Let’s start with how does the covid madness end? You’re in the Senate. You know what’s happening here across the country. The federal government’s getting more aggressive. New York City has and is enforcing vaccine mandates for all public life, essentially. What’s going on? How do we turn this around?

SEN. CRUZ: It really is ridiculous. This disease is gonna run its course, and we’re gonna beat this pandemic. But, in the meantime, we’re seeing a whole lot of idiot politicians whose authoritarian instincts are coming out, and it seems like they’ve never met a mandate they didn’t like. My view is real simple. This disease is serious. We need to treat it seriously.

And we have. We’ve taken extraordinary steps. But I don’t believe there should be any mandates concerning covid. That means there shouldn’t be any vaccine mandates. That means there shouldn’t be any mask mandates. That means there shouldn’t be any vaccine passports. You know, when it comes to vaccines, I believe in vaccines.

I personally have been vaccinated; my family’s been vaccinated. But I also believe in individual responsibility and choice. I think if you’re an adult, you ought to be able to figure out the health care decisions you make in consultation with your doctors. And these politicians that are trying to put mandates in place — whether it’s government mandates or whether it’s your employer trying to force you to make health care decisions — I think that’s absolutely wrong.

I think the mask mandates you’re seeing from Democrats are not based on science. They’re an abuse of power, and I think we ought to respect people’s individual liberty while at the same time, continuing to take serious steps to defeat the pandemic.

BUCK: So also, the situation in Afghanistan seems to be… Well, we know it’s precarious. There were some concerning reports about some gunfire, a gunman out at the airport. The Biden administration… We know it’s a catastrophe, Senator Cruz. We’ve talked about that plenty here.

We know the withdrawal plan looks like they came up with it in a matter of minutes and didn’t bring in any actual foresight or expertise. It’s just a disaster. What do you expect to happen here and what do you want the Biden administration to do about what’s playing out right now at Kabul International Airport?

SEN. CRUZ: Well, what they need to do, number one: The first priority has to be evacuating the Americans and getting the Americans who are in Afghanistan out safely. It is clear they had no plan to do so, and it has collapsed around them. That has urgency. I would say, simultaneous with that they need to have a plan to move the Afghans who assisted the U.S. military.

There were thousands of the Afghans who risked their lives to be translators to assist the military, and we made promises to them. We need to honor those promises. And so those Afghans need to be evacuated as well. Now, at the same time, we have an obligation to protect national security at home.

So, any Afghans that are being evacuated need to be thoroughly and completely vetted before they are allowed to come to the United States. The Biden administration is bringing tens of thousands in as refugees right now without thoroughly vetting them, without accurate background checks.

I don’t think that makes sense. I think they ought to be moved to a neutral third country where they’re safe, where the Taliban can’t extract reprisals, can’t murder them. And before anyone comes, we need to have very careful and thorough vetting to ensure we’re keeping Americans safe back here at home.

CLAY: Senator Cruz, I want to circle back around a little bit on the budget. We know we talked about this some (chuckles) while we were playing poker over the weekend. But it seems that that has kind of slid under the radar now, with all of the attention on Afghanistan, with all of the attention on covid.

And a lot of people are not recognizing exactly how radical this Bernie Sanders budget is. How do you see this playing out in the weeks and months ahead? Is it a $3.5 trillion bill? Do you know if Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin are going to be willing to stand up to their own party? What is the political calculus as you see it of this bill?

SEN. CRUZ: Well, I’m very, very worried about it. It is massive. It came in initially at $3.5 trillion. It’s already been upped to $4.2 trillion. It’s liable to go up from there. It is spending on every left-wing special interest, every left-wing priority, and it is accompanied by trillions of dollars of new taxes. Every tax you can think of, the Democrats want to raise.

Whether that is individual taxes and family taxes, whether that’s small businesses or the corporate tax, whether that is the death tax or capital gains tax, they are looking to raise taxes by trillions of dollars. It is the Bernie Sanders budget. You know, it’s striking. Joe Biden spent the last year campaigning as a moderate, reasonable centrist, and now the Democrats are trying to pass Bernie Sanders’ socialist budget.

It is radical. It is extreme. We need to fight it. We need to fight it hard in the Senate. We need to pick off one Democrat. That’s not gonna be easy. You mentioned the two who are most likely, Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. I am not terribly optimistic we will succeed in picking either of them off, but I think we need to try hard. I think we have better prospects for success in the House.

There are a number of House Democrats elected in districts where Donald Trump won those districts, and I think every one of those Democrats in Trump districts, they’re nervous; they’re looking over their shoulders. We just need to pick off a few of those House Democrats to defeat Bernie Sanders’ budget. But we need their constituents lighting up the phone and telling them:

“Hey, if you’re gonna come back to the district and pretend to be a moderate and claim to be a centrist, don’t go to Washington and vote for Bernie’s budget. Don’t bankrupt the country. Don’t crush families and small businesses with massive taxes,” and all of this fight is going to be with live ammo starting really next month in September.

BUCK: Senator Cruz, Buck again. Just wanted to ask you about the border before we let you get back to the business of the Senate. It’s the worst it’s been in 20-plus years. I’ve talked to Border Patrol and ICE folks who will say it’s in some ways worse than ever because it’s pretty much the policy of the Biden administration that it be what it is.

This isn’t like it’s not working as planned. It is, in a sense, working as plan because they want an open border. Is there anything that’s going to happen that’s gonna change this? And do you think that at least it is likely there will be an electoral backlash when the time comes from the American people because of the open border the Biden administration has put into place?

SEN. CRUZ: Well, the border is an absolute disaster. We’ve had over one million people cross illegally just in the last six months. We’re on pace for over two million people. It’s the worst rate of illegal immigration in 21 years. Texas in particular is paying the price, but the entire country is paying the price. Yes, I think there’s gonna be an electoral backlash.

And, Buck, you know, there’s a real similarity, I believe, between the disaster that’s unfolding our on southern border because of Joe Biden’s mistakes and the disaster that’s unfolding in Afghanistan because of Joe Biden’s mistakes. In both instances the disasters are driven by, number one, radical ideology — and, number two, absolute incompetence.

And that is a very dangerous mix. It is reminiscent of Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. The radical ideology on the border, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have handed border policy over to the radical left that believes in open borders. That’s produced the chaos we’re seeing. On Afghanistan, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are listening to the radical left.

They believe the Taliban are our friends. You know, just this weekend I was on a conference call with the secretary of state, with the secretary of defense, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And they were talking about all the steps they believed that the Taliban need to take to be welcomed into the international community of nations.

And it was such utter and complete nonsense because these are terrorists who want to murder people. They don’t want to be welcomed into the, quote, “international community of nations.” And the Biden team on Afghanistan are naive ideologues that you might find in a university faculty lounge rather than clear-eyed leaders that can keep this country safe.

But you take that radical ideology, and you marry it with incompetence, and you produce the kinds of catastrophes we’re seeing, whether it is the failure to do anything to secure our southern border or in Afghanistan, having no plan to evacuate Americans, no plan to vet Afghan translators.

And I’ll tell you, gentlemen, the most indefensible decision that Biden and Harris made in Afghanistan was giving away the Bagram air base. Bagram is a secure facility. We’ve invested over a billion dollars in Bagram. I’ve been there. It’s safe, secure. We could safely evacuate Americans and our allies from that base. What did Joe Biden and Kamala Harris do?

They just gave it away. A month ago, American soldiers disappeared in the middle of the night. They told nobody! So the Afghans woke up, looked around and said, “Hey, wait, where are the Americans?” And now of course the Taliban has taken over Bagram air base. They’ve taken over the military hardware we had there, and this crisis in Afghanistan would be much easier to solve if we still had the air base that we built, that we secured, and that Joe Biden’s incompetence gave as a gift, wrapped up to the Taliban.

BUCK: Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Senator, we always appreciate you joining us, and we’ll talk to you soon.

SEN. CRUZ: Thank you, gentlemen. God bless.

CLAY: Thank you.