Senator Ted Cruz is many things: a constitutional originalist, a spinelesscoward, and most recently, a podcaster. His weekly show Verdict with Ted Cruz has raised some uncomfortable questions—not just about how many hours a sitting U.S. Senator should be allowed to whine about cancel-culture into a Shure mic, but about the ethics of monetizing a podcast while in office.

In 2023, watchdog groups filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging Cruz was illegally soliciting donations via the podcast. Although Cruz apparently receives no salary from the show, the iHeartRadio network has contributed nearly $1 million in ad revenue to a super PAC supporting Cruz’s reelection bid. The FEC, in its infinite wisdom, dismissed the complaint in early 2025. And while that may clear him legally, it raises a deeper, more philosophical question: Should politicians have podcasts at all?

In an effort to answer that question, I stumbled across something nearly as horrifying as Cruz’s beard: a page on the official House GOP website titled “Member Podcasts.” It turns out Ted Cruz is just the tip of a much darker iceberg. Republicans in Congress are podcasting in numbers that feel unsafe for democracy.

So I did the only heroic thing one can do in such a moment. I listened to at least three episodes of each available podcast and wrote a review of every single one, so that you, dear reader, never have to. The results were often incomprehensible and almost universally boring. Please enjoy the fruits of my labor, because I know I didn’t.

Get Going with Guy

Hosted by: Rep. Guy Reschenthaler, Pennsylvania

Claim to Fame: Unsuccessfullytrying to renameWashington Dulles Airport after Donald Trump.

To call this quaint series of iPhone recordings a “podcast” is a stretch, and for that, you’ve got to give Reschenthaler credit: he just wanted to join in on the fun! Get Going with Guy is described on Apple Music as a “conservative’s guide to Congress in under 3 minutes.” Because it’s difficult to say much of anything in under three minutes, Guy abandons that premise entirely after the first episode. 

Judging by the front cover, where Guy is pictured gripping a mug of coffee, the show is meant to be enjoyed as a sort of pre-work apéritif—a bite-sized pick-me-up for Americans who miss the sweet symphony of Rush Limbaugh’s laugh during their commute. The result is more like your uncle trying to send you a voice memo and forgetting halfway through that he’s also driving a car. It’s actually kind of cute: no producers, no guests, no ad breaks, and usually, no point. The only thing Guy does consistently is call his listeners “the Guy Gang.”

In one episode, Guy simply rants about how Richard Nixon wasn’t right-wing enough: “Alright Gang, you know the drill: BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front,” he says. “Here’s a notice to all you weak Republicans: Richard Nixon was not a conservative.” Guy proceeds to eviscerate Nixon, of all things, for establishing the Environmental Protection Agency:

Don’t believe me? He created the EPA, and they’ve harassed energy producers and job creators ever since. He established the council on Environmental Equality; he established OSHA, the occupational health and safety administration.

See, Guy is a real pro-blue-collar conservative who thinks it was “woke” to create OSHA, the agency that has cut workplace fatalities by 60 percent since 1971. Of course, Guy knows all about the dangers of getting beheaded by a falling piece of lumber on a job-site, since he’s a sitting politician with a law degree and a podcast. 

Get Going with Guy ended in 2021 (spoiler alert), so most of his episodes were spent ranting about crime and the Biden Administration. Unfortunately, this means my listening experience didn’t provide much insight into current events—but it did give me the power of hindsight. 

In one episode, Guy fearmongers about the rising homicide rate in American cities, attributing it to the defunding of police. And yes, it’s true that murder rates spiked across the nation in 2020—but that was true even in cities that didn’t cut their police budgets (which was most of them).  It’s almost like something else happened in 2020 that might have been nationally significant? Eh, I don’t remember. 

Guy starts spewing some very scary-sounding statistics: “Case in point, Milwaukee: homicides up 96 percent!” The problem is, that’s a total lie. There were 204 homicides in Milwaukee in 2020, and 213 the following year, a percentage change of about four. Just a casual stretch-of-the-truth by 92 percent. And yes, that was still a historically high murder rate for the city—but it wasn’t due to lack of police spending. Milwaukee’s homicide rate rose again to 227 murders in 2022, and that was after they increased the police budget by more than $20 million. Of course, there’s no time for this kind of analysis in Get Going With Guy, and since he’s making things up, it wouldn’t matter anyway. 

In a devastating turn of events—or maybe because Guy finally got pulled over on the way to White House, rambling into his phone—the podcastonly lasted five short months. In the final episode, you can feel that his heart’s not in it. Guy stumbles over the first sentence, perhaps trying to hold back tears: “You’re listening to Get Going with Guy, a, um, a podcast,” he laughs half-heartedly, plowing through the rest of the intro. It’s like watching a sad race horse try to hide a fractured ankle during its final lap around the track. 

Guy ends the episode with a hollow promise: “That’s it for today, Gang. I’ll see you next time. As always, just call me Guy.” There would be no next time. Without as much as a tender kiss on the forehead, the Guy Gang was abandoned. 

But don’t feel too bad for Guy just yet: it turns out this podcast wasn’t his first rodeo behind the mic. This little Chatty Cathy once co-hosted a radio show with Carl Higbie—a former Trump appointee and now Newsmax host who gained infamy for writing one of the most vitriolic memoirs of all time, in which he called Hurricane Katrina survivors “human parasites” and said Black people are genetically predisposed to slavery. Guy tried to distance himself from the book by claiming he never read it, but that effort is undermined slightly by the fact that he wrote the foreword. He even praised the memoir on-air, gushing about the chapter where Higbie recalled berating a “fat woman” on a flight.

So Guy, what did we learn here? If at first you fail, never, ever try again. Get Going with Guy is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, where the show has 0 stars, averaged from a total of 0 ratings.

What’s the BIGGS Idea? 

Hosted by: Rep. Andy Biggs, Arizona

Claim to Fame: Organizing January 6, denying funds to 9/11 first responders.

Rep. Andy Biggs is an Arizonan hero known for his strong and principled voting record. That has included fighting the designation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, opposing funding for 9/11 victims, and blocking a bill that would ban texting while driving. In between all of this bravery, Andy still found the time to bless us with a podcast. 

Biggs’ show actually proved a little difficult to find, as the link on the official House GOP website redirects to an empty Apple Music page. Undeterred, I put my investigative journalism skills to use and visited Spotify, where the mysterious podcast is simply described as “Podcast by Congressman Andy Biggs.” Only then did I realize that Biggs had actually taken his multimedia skills to YouTube. Video star, radio star, racist—this guy can do it all! 

What’s the BIGGS Idea? starts with an intro sequence underscored by tense music, narrated by Trump introducing Andy at some rally: “Biggs… there’s the guy… boy, oh boy…. he’s tough,” followed by a gong sound. I was on the edge of my seat. 

I shouldn’t have been. Each episode is like listening to paint dry. After the first, I considered asking the higher-ups at Current Affairs for hazard pay. For due diligence, I watched six episodes at 2x speed and literally all of them featured a guest who looked exactly like Andy Biggs. And I’m not even saying that for, like, woke DEI reasons—after the third, it genuinely became difficult to tell who was who. It was like watching a child play both parts in a puppet show. 

Biggs dutifully checks all the boxes: Biden bad, Trump good, border crisis, media lies, woke mob, rinse, repeat. The conversations are mostly low-energy interviews with interchangeable old white men, each one nodding solemnly as Biggs rambles through the usual Fox News talking points. Not once did I see Biggs and his guest disagree about anything.

In one episode, Biggs invites climate-change denier Alex Epstein on the podcast to discuss his book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less. When Biggs holds the book up to the screen, the image is reversed, and Epstein says: “Don’t worry, it looks like it’s written in Hebrew—but it’s a regular forwards book!” It’s the only time Biggs smiles all episode. He may never smile again.

Like all of us in the media, Biggs has to deal with some haters in his YouTube comments, like one Negative Nancy who wrote: “That’s a very low number of viewers and Subscribers.” Luckily, other fans have Biggs’ back, like one who wrote: “I love my Congressman Biggs! And I ain’t a homo.” Hell yeah!

What’s the Biggs Idea? is available on YouTube, kind of on Spotify, and not on Apple Music. 

Troy Talks

Hosted by: Rep. Troy Balderson, Ohio

Claim to Fame: His boyish bangs, which a toupee company has weighed in to say areprobably real.

Honestly, compared to the last two snooze-fests, I was prepared to give Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson a little credit—at first glance, his podcast has all the markings of a wholesome, salt-of-the-earth radio show for dads. The cover features Troy, a former mechanic, beaming from the seat of a classic car, where he claims: “America needs a tuneup.”

The name is likely a nod to the beloved NPR show “Car Talk,” a program hosted by two Boston mechanics who offered advice to exasperated car-owners. The whole gag of the show was that even when the hosts had no idea how to address an issue, they’d suggest a diagnosis that was "unencumbered by the thought process.” Congressman Troy Balderson, too, seems unencumbered by the thought process.

Troy takes a sort of local-journalist approach to podcasting. In one episode, he interviews a nurse practitioner at a rural Ohio clinic that primarily serves low-income patients. The nurse says, “A lot of the patients we get haven’t had good care for a lot of their life, so they pose a particular challenge.” 

Troy commends the nurse for his commitment to helping poor people—but curiously never mentions Medicaid, a program that most rural health clinics depend on. The CEO of that same clinic actually wrote an open letter to the Senate Finance Committee recently, imploring them: “Medicaid expansion is vital not only for individual health outcomes but also for the operational stability of Community Health Centers like ours.”

Of course, last week Troy voted YES on Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which completely guts Medicaid programs and is predicted to rid nearly 12 million Americans of their health coverage. Something tells me he won’t be returning to that clinic to interview the impoverished families who can no longer afford their insulin. Fuck you, Troy Balderson. You don’t care whether your constituents live or die. I suggest you quit your job and return to being a mechanic, a career that actually benefits society. 

(Side note: Once again, the official GOP website directed me to an empty Apple Music page when I tried to listen to this podcast! Do you morons want people to tune in or not?!)

Hold These Truths 

Hosted by: Rep. Dan Crenshaw, Texas

Claim to Fame: His admittedly cool eyepatch, and the time he lied to a 6-year-old with Down syndrome.

Finally, some goddamn production value! Rep. Crenshaw’s Hold These Truths has a 4.8-star-rating and nearly 16,000 reviews on Apple Music, which lets me know at least someone in Congress is taking their job seriously. 

Crenshaw has a penchant for not holding back—he was recently caught on a hot mic saying he’d like to “fucking kill” Tucker Carlson—so I was hoping this podcast would be equally R-rated. And boy, oh boy, was I right. When I tried to listen to an episode on Apple Podcasts, I was greeted by this message:

I knew Dan Crenshaw was a Navy Seal, but I didn’t know he was that cool. 

The first episode I listened to was held in classic “fun Joe Rogan” style, where Crenshaw invites guests on to shoot the breeze and plug their products. The congressman was joined by “fitness expert” Mike Israetel, who spent most of the time hawking his fitness app while the two complained about fat people. During the 57th minute of talking about protein, I was about to chalk this episode up to mindless right-wing-roid-bro-chat—when all of sudden, Mike Israetel decided to surprise me. 

“Hey, we still have some time,” Israetel says. “How about we start going through the Epstein's checklist of the, you know, plane flight and stuff? Hey, is that ever coming out? Or no, are you allowed to talk about that?

Crenshaw seems caught off guard, but manages to deflect the question:

I just don't, uh, it's not on my radar. I – look, if anybody was going to have it come out, it would be this administration, right? So it's not out for a reason. It's probably just not a lot of there, there. That's my general, like, sense, because this administration would love to expose — like, if there was something juicy, they would. They would love to do it, so…

Of course. The only possible reason the Trump Administration wouldn’t want to release the Epstein files is because they’re NOT juicy enough. Now wait for it… here comes Crenshaw’s immediate subject change…

And I don't know, there's some members of Congress who are like, like, obsessed with it. I'm just, I — I'm obsessed with healthcare policy, countering the, countering the, uh — I'm starting a, trying to start a counterinsurgency war against the cartels of Mexico. Cartels of Mexico. That's my other big priority. Like, I'm working on a, you know, I'm trying to stop a gender transition on kids. So I just got other priorities.

Israetel immediately takes the bait: “You got slightly realer problems, yeah?” he says. “So, the protein thing, If you eat as much as point seven or point eight grams per pound, you're really, good for almost every case.” And just like that, they’re back to talking about macros. It is truly incredible to hear. 

In between full-length interviews, Crenshaw nods to his military past by releasing “SITREPs,”  short for Situation Reports. These quick-and-dirty updates give listeners his take on the latest happenings in Conservative World. They’re meant to sound tactical and authoritative, and unfortunately, they do. The most dangerous thing about Crenshaw’s podcast is that he actually does sound like he knows what he’s talking about.

His calm demeanor may stand in contrast to the red-faced screamers who dominate right-wing media, but make no mistake: he’s still spreading lies. A repeat segment in these SITREPs is the “Media Bias of the Week,” where Crenshaw accuses mainstream outlets of lies and “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” In one recent “bias” segment, he tore into The Washington Post for their headline: “Israeli Troops Opened Fire on a Gaza Aid Site, Killing 30 Palestinians.” Crenshaw says:

Turns out their source was none other than Hamas' Gaza Health ministry. WaPo then quietly changed the headline, without any editorial note or correction  after it came out that it was a masked gunman, likely someone from Hamas ...

This is simply a lie. First of all, yes, the Gaza Health Ministry operates under Hamas—because Gaza is governed by Hamas, so everything in the territory does. But numerous independent studies, including one from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, have shown that the Ministry’s casualty figures have historically been accurate or even undercounted. 

The Washington Post may have changed their headline to “More than 30 killed by gunfire near U.S. aid site in Gaza” (and yeah, when outlets edit their work, they should acknowledge it) but they didn’t retract any of their reporting. There is no evidence anywhere that the perpetrator was anyone other than the IDF, let alone a “masked gunman.” WaPo also interviewed three eyewitnesses, as well as three doctors and family members of the wounded, all of whom confirmed that Israeli gunfire was the source of the deaths. One witness, local journalist Mohammed al-Gharib, was just 100 yards from the scene and saw the shots come from Israeli positions, with drones overhead.

This wasn’t an isolated incident either: Israeli newspaperHareetzhas counted 19 shootings at the distribution centers since they opened, all committed by the IDF. 

There is zero credible evidence to support Crenshaw’s claim that the incident he’s talking about was “likely” Hamas. But by calmly seeding doubt, he gives listeners exactly the narrative they want to hear, only without the frothing-at-the-mouth delivery of an Alex Jones or Steve Bannon. Then, without missing a beat, Crenshaw wraps up the segment by casually recommending:

And if you read nothing else, check this out from Breitbart: an op-ed written by myself and Chloe Cole, who is a de-transitioner.

Great. The same guy accusing the Washington Post of biased reporting sends his followers to the tabloid that once ran the headline “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy.”

Hold These Truths is unfortunately available on Apple Music and Spotify, and unfortunately has thousands of listeners each week. 

Verdict with Ted Cruz

Hosted by: Senator Ted Cruz, Texas

Claim to Fame: fleeing the state of Texas during a deadly winter storm to go on vacation in Cancún, Mexico.

If there’s one podcast that captures the essence of Republican media in 2025, it’s Verdict with Ted Cruz. Equal parts Bible camp and disaster PR hotline, the show also features an absolutely deranged number of advertisements. In between discussions of God and the Constitution, Cruz and his co-host Ben Ferguson are interrupted by ads for everything from t-shirts (“Epic Fits: snug on the arms, generous where it counts!”) to cell service providers that promise to fight for your “God-given freedoms.”

The most recent two installments have focused on the catastrophic Texas floods, which left more than 100 people dead, including dozens of children. Cruz, who recorded one episode after returning from his vacation in Greece, described the tragedy in heartbreaking detail—right after an ad for “40 percent off major appliances” at Lowe’s. His shamelessness is truly disgusting.

Perhaps the least surprising part is Cruz’s own hypocrisy. While he mourned the victims on-air, he failed to mention that he has repeatedly voted against funding for weather prediction systems that might have saved lives. It also didn’t help that this is the second time Cruz has been caught vacationing while Texans die in a natural disaster. While Cruz claimed that he flew home as “fast as humanly possible,” he was caught touring the Parthenon in Athens an entire day after the Guadalupe River flooded; all the while several earlier flights home were available, according to the Daily Beast. 

Besides the financial gain, it’s not clear why Cruz decided to start a podcast in the first place—except that he is painfully desperate for attention, both from listeners and fellow Republicans. His relentless kiss-assery is on full display throughout the episode detailing the feud between Elon Musk and Trump: “I want to be clear, I love both these men dearly and think they've done amazing things for this country,” he laments. “It was painful for all of us to watch.” 

Like the loser in a high-school movie who finally gets an ounce of attention because he witnessed the big fight in the parking lot, Cruz can’t help but remind people he was there: “We're gonna break it down. I was actually in the Oval Office with the President when the Twitter battle started.”

Jesus Christ, man, have some dignity. At its core, Verdict doesn’t even attempt to inform the public. Its only purpose is to boost Cruz’s ego, flatter the right-wing donor class, and squeeze every possible dime from its audience.

What it all means

Hosted by: Me, feeling weird.

By the end of my week-long podcast experiment, I was left with an unshakable sense of secondhand embarrassment and maybe mild brain damage. I was also angry. These deeply, deeply unserious men—who blatantly lie and spew hatred, not only in the chambers of Congress, but on the air-waves—are running our country. They have real power. They shape our foreign policy and decide who lives and dies in this country and beyond.

And sure, there are probably only twelve people who have ever listened to Get Going with Guy (13 including me) while he reads off fictional murder statistics. Butthere are thousands of dedicated listeners who believe Dan Crenshaw when he calls IDF killing sprees hoaxes. An equal number nod along when Ted Cruz washes the blood from his hands between ad-reads for protein pills.

No matter how absurd the delivery, the damage from these politicians is very real. Sometimes it’s cathartic to laugh at these losers, but what we really need to do is fight back.