WATCH: Ted Cruz, Michael Knowles on China, 'cancel culture,' and more

Campus Reform Digital Reporter Eduardo Neret interviewed The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to speak about, among other topics, China’s influence on American college campuses and the duo’s new podcast, The Verdict.

Cruz explained that college campuses are “naive” and unaware of the threat of Communist China.

”I introduced legislation that passed that restricted Department of Defense funds from going to universities that have Confucius Institutes, and as a result, we’ve seen over a dozen Confucius Institutes across the country shut down because the legislation I introduced, it got bipartisan support, was passed into law.”

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”It’s a little bit like the drug dealer at the junior high pulling open a trench coat and, ‘Hey. Try something, little kid.’ I mean, that’s what the Chinese are saying. We’ll give you money. We’ll give you ... look, a Confucius Institute, it’s free. We’ll teach your students Chinese. Isn’t that great? And what too many of the academic administrators don’t understand is these are bases for espionage, they’re bases for propaganda.”

[RELATED: Cruz: ‘Universities are trying really hard to raise a generation of pansies’]

”The Chinese don’t want anyone to know about Tiananmen Square. They don’t want anyone to know about Hong Kong. They don’t want anyone to know about the forced abortions in China and the one-child policy and the torture and the Uyghurs. They don’t want any of that. They want to sanitize it. And too many of the universities go along with it.”

Knowles stated, “because the fact is when China tries to infiltrate these universities, they find fertile ground. They find arms outstretched. There’s this irony, we’ve talked about it on the show, there’s this irony that the left complains about institutional oppression and yet the left controls all of the major institutions, most notably and especially higher education.”

Neret asked for their opinions on Trump’s recent decision to extend DACA recipients a path to U.S. citizenship. 

Cruz said that this legislation is a result of Obama’s presidency. 

[RELATED: Ted Cruz: Leftists used to ‘defend’ free speech. Today they ‘silence’ it.]

”And so when Barack Obama signed DACA, signed executive amnesty, it was a grotesque abuse of authority. He had been asked repeatedly by immigration advocates to create amnesty through executive power. And he’d said, ‘I can’t, I don’t have the power. I am not a king. I am not an emperor,’ is what Barack Obama said. And then as the election neared, suddenly he became an emperor. He found his scepter and he decreed it. That was wrong and it was an abuse of power.”

Knowles also commented on the DACA decision, stating that he is “pleased to see that it was being walked back.”

”This is the problem, I think, for politicians with the lockdown, I’ve noticed, is sometimes they get trapped in Washington D.C. and they don’t hear what’s going on outside around the country,” Knowles explained. 

Cruz and Knowles both spoke about “cancel culture” and the tearing down of statues. 

[RELATED: Cruz: Defund colleges that don’t support free speech]

”And we’ve seen... So it started out as a debate over Confederate monuments. But very quickly, we saw the mob start attacking George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Ulysses S. Grant. You know, ‘cause they were big Confederates, Lincoln and Grant were. And you know, and we saw Frederick Douglass defaced. This is not people standing up against slavery or racial injustice. This is... These are Marxists who hate America and are tearing down our institutions,” Cruz said.

”Because a conservative, at the very least should be able to conserve, I don’t know, George Washington? We need to conserve something. And if we’re toppling our Founding Fathers we’re not conserving very much at all,” Knowles continued, “but there’s a relationship between the past and the future. And a country that dishonors its past isn’t going to have much of a future.”

Knowles commented on the censorship of conservative viewpoints and why they are unheard of by many Americans.

”The left controls all the major institutions. And I think part of that divide and conquer strategy is not allowing the conservative arguments to get out. And so for right now, at least until we get banned at the end of this interview, for right now that avenue is available.”

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