Welcome to a special edition of The Texan’s Voices of Texas podcast. Our team spent most of last week covering the Texas GOP Convention, and chatted with dozens of elected officials, candidates, and insiders. We’ll be releasing a series of podcasts with those conversations, so stay tuned.

This first installment is a conversation with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). We chat about gun control proposals in D.C., his decision to speak at the NRA convention despite many other Texas Republicans bowing out, chances for GOP congressional candidates in South Texas, and why school choice is the litmus test for his endorsement in state-level Republican primaries.

MT: This is McKenzie Taylor here with Senator Ted Cruz. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. We so appreciate your time.

TC: McKenzie, it’s great to be with you. Thanks for having me.

MT: Absolutely. I would love to talk about the various gun control proposals that are floating around DC right now. We just saw Senator Cornyn, you know, a few hours ago. He's on stage here at convention, the delegates had a lot to say, they booed him there. Walk us through what is on the table in DC, and kind of what you could see happening with these proposals.

TC: Well, it's not clear what's on the table. And I've said I'm going to wait and actually see the text of something that is submitted, that I'm not going to judge a bill till I see the details. At this point we have a one page list of bullet points, and on something as fundamental as our constitutional rights, the devil's in the details. I think there's a lot Congress can and should do when it comes to violent crime. I was in Uvalde the day after that horrific shooting.

MT: Oh, wow.

TC: And I've been in too many of these. I was there in Santa Fe, I was in Sutherland Springs, I was in El Paso, I was in Midland, Odessa, I was in Dallas. It is horrific that we have monsters, that we have homicidal maniacs who commit these kind of terrible crimes. I think there's a lot we can and should do. The problem is whenever there's a mass murder, inevitably there are a bunch of voices of Democrats and the corporate media who all say do something, do something, do something. Well, it might surprise them to know I agree we should do something, but the something we should do really matters. And what works, what's effective, is targeting bad guys, targeting criminals, targeting felons and fugitives, and those with serious mental illness who try to illegally buy firearms, prosecuting them, putting them in jail, getting them off the street before they commit those crimes. That's that's how you stop these kind of horrific murders. And then on top of that, it is also making our vulnerable targets safer and more secure, in particular schools, enhancing the security at schools. And the most effective tool to do that is putting armed law enforcement in our schools so that if a lunatic comes and tries to hurt our kids, the first thing that lunatic encounters is an armed police officer who stops them before they hurt a child. Those are the steps that if we really wanted to stop these crimes, we would focus on doing. And I've repeatedly introduced legislation to do exactly that, to target the bad guys, to prosecute the felons and fugitives, to make our schools safer. And sadly, over and over again, the

Special Edition - Ted Cruz at the Texas GOP Convention