Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has given us many mic drop moments over the years. But it was one from a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday that might rank among the top five best.
The hearing was for committee members to talk to and assess nominees for various posts involving foreign relations and diplomacy, including two positions with the State Department.
Among them was Riley Barnes. According to his LinkedIn profile, Mr. Barnes has worked for the State Department in varying capacities since 2017, including as a senior speechwriter, senior advisor, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Organization Affairs.
Barnes was nominated by President Trump on June 16th to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. During his opening statement on Wednesday, Barnes quoted Secretary of State Marco Rubio from a speech he gave in the early days of his tenure:
In his first remarks to State Department employees, Secretary Rubio emphasized that, “We are a nation founded on a powerful principle, and that powerful principle is that all men are created equal, because our rights come from God our Creator – not from our laws, not from our governments.” The Secretary went on to say that we will always be strong defenders of that principle. And that’s why the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor is important. We are a nation of individuals, each made in the image of God and possessing an inherent dignity. This is a truth that our founders understood as essential to American self-government.
Barnes also emphasized natural rights, noting that “These [enduring] values aren’t an endless list of ‘rights’ that people create and change and form to meet their own needs or desires. These values aren’t identity politics. They are the historic, natural rights that we have as individuals, pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in this world.”
Hearing Barnes stress the importance of not forgetting our founding principles in ever-evolving modern times did not sit well with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA), who proceeded to compare Barnes’ words to something one would hear expressed by… the Iranian regime:
The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator… that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities. And they do it because they believe that they understand what natural rights are from their Creator. So, the statement that our rights do not come from our laws or our governments is extremely troubling.
The failed 2016 Democrat presidential nominee went on to state that “I’m a strong believer in natural rights, but I have a feeling if we were to have a debate about natural rights in the room and put people around the table with different religious traditions, there would be some significant differences in the definitions of those natural rights.”
Not surprisingly, Kaine’s comparisons of Barnes’ words to the Iranian regime did not sit well with Cruz, who went off after quoting Kaine, setting him straight:
“I just walked into the hearing as he was saying that, and I almost fell out of my chair, because that ‘radical and dangerous notion’ — in his words — is literally the founding principle upon which the United States of America was created,” said Cruz, who went on to reference the writings of Thomas Jefferson, from Kaine’s home state of Virginia.
“‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator’ — not by government, not by the Democratic National Committee, but by God — ‘with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'”
Watch:
Our rights don’t come from government or the DNC.
They come from God. @timkaine, I suggest the Dems go back and read the words of our Founding Fathers. pic.twitter.com/QRmhTcbbOH
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) September 3, 2025
Relatedly, there was also this sobering reminder:
Between Tim Kaine mocking a basic principle of the Declaration of Independence (authored by another former Virginia governor) and Mark Warner delivering mail for a criminal illegal alien (https://t.co/DGrkjmLkQm) it’s clear that sane people in Virginia don’t have a senator. https://t.co/UWigwrNj6s
— Tim Murtaugh (@TimMurtaugh) September 3, 2025
Thoughts and prayers and all that to my neighbors to the north in Virginia. I mean, honestly, this stuff should disqualify anyone seeking to hold public office. But thanks to NoVa Democrats, the current situation exists with Kaine and Warner. In fact, NoVa Dems will destroy the Old Dominion, but only if the sane contingent sits back and lets them.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is leading America into the “Golden Age” as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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