Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) discussed on his podcast “Verdict” the Democratic backlash to President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police to curb violent crime.

BEN FERGUSON, CO-HOST: It’s amazing how mad they are that he’s actually trying to fight crime. And it’s actually pretty simple. He’s saying it’s out of control. The numbers are out of control. The data shows it’s out of control. And yes, the numbers have come down this year. Thank goodness, part of that is because, I think, law and order and the president advocating for law enforcement all over the country and allowing law enforcement to be empowered to do their job, and ICE agents to do their job, but they’re actually angry at him because he’s doing something that they say is out of his job description, and they’re like: this is what dictators and tyrants do. And I go back to that line, I’m like, wait, dictators and tyrants are fighting crime. Like, that’s a bad thing, really? SEN. TED CRUZ: Well, and the federal government has authority over DC explicitly under the Constitution, Article One, Section Eight, clause 17 of the Constitution gives Congress, quote, exclusive legislation over DC, and Congress, through its delegate, the DC Council designated that the President serves as the DC National Guard’s commander in chief. And that’s in DC code section 49-409, which reads, quote, The President of the United States shall be the commander in chief of the militia of the District of Columbia. There’s an executive order from 1969 that delegates the day to day authority over the DC guard from the President to the Secretary of Defense, who further delegates it to the Secretary of the Army. So there’s explicit authority to authorize the National Guard and also Congress in in 1973 passed a law called the Home Rule act. And what the Home Rule Act does is it gives the President explicitly the power to take control of the DC police quote, whenever he determines that special conditions of an emergency nature exist which require the use of the Metropolitan Police Force for federal purposes-and that statute, the Home Rule act further, says- “The mayor shall provide, -shall not may- shall provide the police quote as ‘the President may deem necessary and appropriate. Not as the mayor deems, not as the city council deems, as the President may deem- and the authority is limited to 48 hours, unless the president sends notice to the congressional committees on DC justifying the action, at which point the authority is limited to 30 days. Trump has said he sent that notice this morning. This section’s never been invoked before, but it is explicit, unequivocal statutory authority to do what he did, and the fact that Democrats of the media are losing their mind is they don’t like the fact that he’s exercising clear legal authority, and clear legal authority that he’s using precisely because the DC mayor and the DC City Council have refused to do their jobs. FERGUSON: It’s amazing that they refuse to do their job. And even now, the police union coming out, this is part of that story, I think it’s really important so people understand reality compared to how the media is covering this. The police union has come out and said, thank you the president, and said, we need your help, because we have so many officers down. And they’re like, we are asking and telling the President, thank you. And that’s the police union who is saying this, and yet the mayor’s still like, well, I don’t know about this. I’m like, if your police union is telling you, you need the help, why would you not just say, let’s put politics aside here. Let’s work with the President. Let’s work with the National Guard. Let’s get things safe at the Metro stations, where we’ve seen a large uptick in crime. Let me tell you where I could use this National Guard, where you could put it and do this in a bipartisan way. But again, it goes back to this Trump derangement syndrome, that White Orange Man is always bad, even if he’s fighting crime. Yeah, but it’s not just that. It’s that today’s Democrat Party can’t stand the police. It used to be there was a time when police unions, many of them were Democrats, I will tell you, as I travel the country, everywhere I go, and especially blue cities, when I arrive in a city like New York, in a city like Chicago, when I got off the plane in Chicago, I’m often greeted by four, five, six, eight, police officers, unified cops, uniform cops, who will come up to me and they just say, thank you. They’ll give me their patches, and they feel so beleaguered. And I tell them, this is something I try to make a point, and you’ve traveled with me, Ben, you’ve seen this when I see a police officer, I’m in Dallas today. When I landed in Dallas, Love Field, there were several officers there. I thanked, shook the hands of every officer there said, thank you. Thank you for what you’re doing. Thank you for fighting to defend us. And I’ll tell you what I tell the officers in Chicago and everywhere else, which is, it’s my job to have your back. And why has DC undermined the police so systematically? Because the Democrat Party has been taken over by the nut jobs. It’s been taken over by the abolish the police crazies, the defund the police crazies. DC has in place a no cash bail policy so that people commit violent crimes and get released on no cash bail. That is madness, and one of the things President Trump asked Congress to do it is, is abolish DC’s no cash bail. I would certainly vote to do so. I think that’s absolutely the right thing to do. I will tell you, I think the odds are very high that Senate Democrats will filibuster any effort to get rid of no cash bail in DC, because the Democrats today are the party of criminals. And look, when I say that, Ben, that sounds hyperbolic, that sounds oh, come on. How can they really be the party of criminals? Well, they’re the ones that tell you they are. They’re the ones that their dismay is, how dare the President be committed to arresting murderers and rapists and gang members? And I want to be clear about something, DC is qualitatively different. So there’s a statute, long standing statute called Posse Comitatus. Posse Comitatus bars the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement, except when authorized by the Constitution or another provision of federal law. And so if the President were to do this in New York City or Chicago, there would certainly be a challenge under Posse Comitatus, that using the military for law enforcement violates that. Importantly, however, the Department of Justice in 1989 the Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that found that President George Herbert Walker Bush could use the DC guard to carry out law enforcement missions in DC as part of the so called war on drugs. And so you’ve got a Department of Justice opinion long standing from decades ago that says DC is different because it’s not a state. It is a federal enclave. The federal government has blanket authority over DC, and so this is an instance where the President is acting pursuant to his authority, and I expect that his actions are going to prove highly effective, which I got to tell you, Ben, I think that scares Democrats even more.

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