>>JERRY FALWELL: We're honored to have with
us a very special guest: Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. I was on the Gulf Coast with my family for
a short vacation about ten days ago when I was contacted by a representative of Senator
Cruz, expressing his desire to spend this historic day in his life at Liberty University. I was thrilled and honored that Senator Cruz
held Liberty in such high esteem. We immediately called the office of the governor
of Virginia who had been scheduled to speak and informed them that Senator Cruz would
be sharing the stage with the governor this morning. David Nasser and I also offered to move Senator
Cruz's speech to later in the afternoon as a second option. The governor's office graciously explained
that Governor McAuliffe had an important message that he wanted to deliver to you, the students
of Liberty University, and that he preferred to do it on another day without these distractions. We're looking forward to the governor's visit,
and are working to reschedule it as soon as possible. Your warm reception of Senator Cruz when he
spoke here last year was instrumental in his decision to choose to come here and address
you first. As you know, Liberty University does not support
or oppose candidates for public office and Senator Cruz's appearance here should not
be interpreted by any as an endorsement of his candidacy. We are proud that we can offer a platform
at Liberty where our students are able to hear regularly about public policy issues
and ideas from public servants at the highest levels. Born into a working-class family after his
father had escaped Cuba during the Communist Revolution in 1957, Ted's call into public
service was inspired by his own family's pursuit of the American Dream. After graduating from Princeton and then Harvard
Law School, Ted became the first Hispanic to ever clerk for a justice of the US Supreme
Court. In 2003 he became the Solicitor General of
Texas, the youngest in the country at that time. He left only after becoming the longest-serving
Solicitor General in the history of Texas, achieving an unprecedented series of landmark
national victories before the US Supreme Court. Elected to the US Senate following a tremendously
successful grass-roots campaign that the Washington Post called the biggest upset of 2012, Ted
quickly became recognized as one of the strongest, most principled Conservative leaders in the
country, and while many in the Senate bend to the tremendous pressure to compromise,
Ted has been one of the few voices fighting to protect the freedoms that our forefathers
fought and died to secure. It is easy to lead the charge when you have
an army at your back, but I've watched as Senator Cruz dared to stand on principle while
only a handful of senators were standing behind him. Ted Cruz has gone against the tide, has taken
the road less traveled and has proven himself to be a man of great character. Today, Ted arrives on our campus with his
wife Heidi and their two young daughters, Caroline and Catherine, all of whom we are
honored to have with us today. So please join me in welcoming back to Liberty
University Senator Ted Cruz. >>TED CRUZ: Thank you so much, President Falwell. God bless Liberty University. I am thrilled to join you today at the largest
Christian university in the world. Today I want to talk with you about the promise
of America. Imagine your parents when they were children. Imagine a little girl growing up in Wilmington,
Delaware during World War II; the daughter of Irish and Italian Catholic family, working-class,
her uncle ran numbers in Wilmington. She grew up with dozens of cousins because
her mom was the second youngest of seventeen kids. She had a difficult father, a man who drank
far too much and frankly didn't think that women should be educated, and yet this young
girl, pretty and shy, was driven, was bright, was inquisitive, and she became the first
person in her family ever to go to college. In 1956, my mom, Eleanor, graduated from Rice
University with a degree in math, and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s
and 1960s. Imagine a teenage boy, not much younger than
many of you here today, growing up in Cuba. Jet-black hair, skinny as a rail, involved
in Student Council, and yet Cuba was not at a peaceful time. The dictator, Batista, was corrupt, he was
oppressive, and this teenage boy joins a revolution. He joins a revolution against Batista. He begins fighting with other teenagers to
free Cuba from the dictator. This boy, at age seventeen, finds himself
thrown in prison, finds himself tortured and beaten, and then at age eighteen, he flees
Cuba. He comes to America. Imagine for a second the hope that was in
his heart as he rode that ferry boat across to Key West and got on a Grey Hound bus to
head to Austin, Texas to begin working washing dishes making fifty cents an hour, coming
to the one land on earth that has welcomed so many millions. When my dad came to America in 1957 he could
not have imagined what lay in store for him. Imagine a young married couple living together
in the 1970s. Neither one of them has a personal relationship
with Jesus. They have a little boy, and they're both drinking
far too much; they're living a fast life. When I was three, my father decided to leave
my mother and me. We were living in Calgary at the time; he
got on a plane and flew back to Texas, and he decided he didn't want to be married anymore,
and he didn't want to be a father to his three-year-old son. And yet when he was in Houston a friend, a
colleague from the oil and gas business invited him to a Bible study, invited him to Clay
Road Baptist Church, and there my father gave his life to Jesus Christ. And God transformed his heart, and he drove
to the airport, he bought a plane ticket, and he flew back to be with my mother and
me. There are people who wonder if faith is real;
I can tell you in my family there's not a second of doubt because were it not for the
transformative love of Jesus Christ I would not have been saved and I would have been
raised by a single mom without my father in the household. Imagine another little girl living in Africa,
in Kenya and Nigeria--it’s a diverse crowd--playing with kids, they spoke Swahili, she spoke English. Coming back to California, where her parents
who had been missionaries in Africa raised her on the Central Coast. She starts a small business when she’s in
grade school baking bread. She calls it Heidi’s Bakery. She and her brother compete baking bread. They bake thousands of loaves of bread and
go to the local apple orchard where they sell the bread to people coming to pick apples. She goes on to a career in business, excelling
and rising to the highest pinnacles, and then Heidi becomes my wife and my very best friend
in the world. Heidi becomes an incredible mom to our two
precious little girls, Caroline and Catherine, the joys and loves of our life. Imagine another teenage boy being raised in
Houston, hearing stories from his dad about prison and torture in Cuba, hearing stories
about how fragile liberty is, beginning to study the United States Constitution, learning
about the incredible protections we have in this country that protect the God-given liberty
of every American, experiencing challenges at home. The mid-1980s, oil prices crater and his parents
businesses go bankrupt. Heading off to school over a thousand miles
away from home, in a place where he knew nobody, where he was alone and scared, and his parents
going through bankruptcy meant there was no financial support at home, so at the age of
17, he went to get two jobs to help pay his way through school. He took out over $100,000 dollars in school
loans, loans I suspect a lot of you all can relate to, loans that I’ll point out I just
paid off a few years ago. These are all of our stories. These are who we are as Americans. And yet, for so many Americans, the promise
of America seems more and more distant. What is the promise of America? The idea that--the revolutionary idea--that
this country was founded upon, which is that our rights, they don’t come from man. They come from God Almighty. And that the purpose of the Constitution,
as Thomas Jefferson put it, is to serve as chains to bind the “mischief of government.” The incredible opportunity of the American
dream, what has enabled millions of people from all over the world to come to America
with nothing and to achieve anything. And then the American exceptionalism that
has made this nation a clarion voice for freedom in the world, a shining city on a hill. That’s the promise of America. That is what makes this nation an indispensable
nation, a unique nation in the history of the world, and yet so many fear that promise
is today unattainable. So many fear it is slipping away from our
hands. I want to talk to you this morning about re-igniting
the promise of America: 240 years ago on this very day, a thirty-eight year-old lawyer named
Patrick Henry stood up just a hundred miles from here in Richmond, Virginia and said,
“Give me liberty or give me death.” I want to ask each of you to imagine, imagine
millions of courageous conservatives, all across America, rising up together to say
in unison “we demand our liberty.” Today, roughly half of born-again Christians
aren’t voting. They’re staying home. Imagine instead, millions of people of faith
all across America coming out to the polls and voting our values. Today millions of young people are scared,
worried about the future, worried about what the future will hold. Imagine millions of young people coming together
and standing together, saying, "We will stand for liberty.” Think just how different the world would be. Imagine instead of economic stagnation, booming
economic growth. Instead of small businesses going out of business
in record numbers, imagine small businesses growing and prospering. Imagine young people coming out of school
with four, five, six job offers. Imagine innovation thriving on the Internet
as government regulators and tax collectors are kept at bay and more and more opportunity
is created. Imagine America finally becoming energy self-sufficient
as millions and millions of high-paying jobs are created. Five years ago today, the president signed
Obamacare into law. Within hours, Liberty University went to court
filing a lawsuit to stop that failed law. Instead of the joblessness, instead of the
millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who’ve lost their health
insurance, lost their doctors, have faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums, imagine
in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare. Imagine health care reform that keeps the
government out of the way between you and your doctor and that makes health insurance
personal and portable and affordable. Instead of a tax code that crushes innovation,
that imposes burdens on families struggling to make ends meet, imagine a simple flat tax
that lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard. Imagine abolishing the IRS. Instead of the lawlessness and the president’s
unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president that finally, finally, finally
secures the borders, and imagine a legal immigration system that welcomes and celebrates those
who come to achieve the American dream. Instead of a federal government that wages
an assault on our religious liberty, that goes after Hobby Lobby, that goes after the
Little Sisters of the Poor, that goes after Liberty University, imagine a federal government
that stands for the First Amendment rights of every American. Instead of a federal government that works
to undermine our values, imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity
of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage. Instead of a government that works to undermine
our Second Amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition, imagine a federal government
that protects the right to keep and bear arms of all law-abiding Americans. Instead of a government that seizes your e-mails
and your cell phones, imagine a federal government that protected the privacy rights of every
American. Instead of a federal government that seeks
to dictate school curriculum through Common Core, imagine repealing every word of Common
Core. Imagine embracing school choice as the civil
rights issue of the next generation, that every single child, regardless of race, regardless
of ethnicity, regardless of wealth or ZIP code, every child in America has the right
to a quality education. And that’s true from all of the above, whether
it is at public schools, or charter schools, or private schools, or Christian schools,
or parochial schools, or home schools--every child. Instead of a president who boycotts Prime
Minister Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of
Israel. Instead of a president who seeks to go to
the United Nations to run Congress and the American people, imagine a president who says,
“I will honor the Constitution, and under no circumstances will Iran be allowed to acquire
a nuclear weapon.” Imagine a president who says “We will stand
up and defeat radical Islamic terrorism, and we will call it by its name.” “We will defend the United States of America.” Now, all of these seem difficult, indeed to
some they may seem unimaginable, and yet if you look at the history of our country, imagine
it’s 1775, and you and I were sitting there in Richmond listening to Patrick Henry say,
"Give me liberty or give me death." Imagine it’s 1776 and we were watching the
54 signers of the Declaration of Independence stand together and pledge their lives, their
fortunes, and their sacred honor to igniting the promise of America. Imagine it was 1777 and we were watching General
Washington as he lost battle, after battle, after battle in the freezing cold as his soldiers
with no shoes were dying, fighting for freedom against the most powerful army in the world. That, too, seemed unimaginable. Imagine it’s 1933 and we were listening
to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tell America at a time of crushing depression,
at a time of a gathering storm abroad, that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Imagine it’s 1979 and you and I were listening
to Ronald Reagan, and he was telling us that we would cut the top marginal tax rates from
70 percent all the way down to 28 percent, that we would go from crushing stagnation
to booming economic growth, to millions being lifted out of poverty and into prosperity
and abundance. That the very day that he was sworn in, our
hostages who were languishing in Iran, would be released. And that within a decade we would win the
Cold War and tear the Berlin Wall to the ground. That would have seemed unimaginable, and yet,
with the grace of God, that’s exactly what happened. From the dawn of this country, at every stage,
America has enjoyed God’s providential blessing. Over and over again, when we faced impossible
odds, the American people rose to the challenge. You know, compared to that, repealing Obamacare
and abolishing the IRS ain’t all that tough. The power of the American people when we rise
up and stand for liberty knows no bounds. God’s blessing has been on America from
the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn’t done with America yet. I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous
conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today I am announcing
that I’m running for president of the United States. It is a time for truth. It is a time for liberty. It is a time to reclaim the Constitution of
the United States. I am honored to stand with each and every
one of you courageous conservatives as we come together to reclaim the promise of America,
to reclaim the mandate, the hope and opportunity for our children and our children’s children. We stand together for liberty. This is our fight. The answer will not come from Washington;
it will come only from the men and women across this country, from men and women, from people
of faith, from lovers of liberty, from people who respect the Constitution. It will only come as it has come at every
other time of challenge in this country, when the American people stand together and say
we will get back to the principles that have made this country great. We will get back and restore that shining
city on a hill that is the United States of America. Thank you and God bless you. >> DAVID NASSER: Can we thank the senator
one more time? Let’s give him a hand and just thank him
for being here. Real quickly, let’s pray together. Can we do that? Let’s have a word of prayer together. Father, thank you for this great land, this
country called America. Lord, thank you for the freedom that it affords
us. Father, thank you for a godly man who would
first recognize that leadership begins at your feet. We pray for him, his family, Lord. We pray that you would guide them, protect
them, give them wisdom, give them discernment. God, we pray for rest in the next few months. I can’t even imagine, Lord, the pressure
that will be on this family and this team, and so we pray, Father, just for grace, and
peace. We love you, Jesus. Thank you for dying on the cross for us. Thank you for the salvation that you bring
us. We pray this in your name. Amen. God bless you, students. Thank you.
