Speaker 1: Welcome.
Speaker 2: It is Verdic with Center Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
Speaker 2: and if you're listening to us on radio stations across
Speaker 2: the country, it's so nice to have you with us. Reminder,
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Speaker 1: Centater.
Speaker 2: We've got a lot to talk about on today's show,
Speaker 2: especially in light of these most recent terrorist attacks happening
Speaker 2: right here in the United States of America.
Speaker 3: Well, Ben, you're right, we're sitting here today in an
Speaker 3: extraordinarily dangerous time. In the last ten days, we've had
Speaker 3: four separate terror attacks, all carried out by radical Islamic terrorists,
Speaker 3: all targeting Americans, seeking to kill Americans, and all at
Speaker 3: a time when there's a military conflict in the Middle
Speaker 3: East that is unfolding as we speak, and when we
Speaker 3: have multiple radical Islamic clerics who've issued fatwaws calling on
Speaker 3: terrorists to murder Americans. Understand that we went through four
Speaker 3: years of Joe Biden with a why open border. Twelve
Speaker 3: million illegal immigrants came into this country, including thousands of terrorists,
Speaker 3: we had four years of basically a red carpet inviting
Speaker 3: Hamas terrorists, inviting Hesbala terrorists, inviting Iranian terrorists come to America.
Speaker 3: And we've now seen in less than two weeks, four
Speaker 3: separate terror attacks. And I'll tell you that the part
Speaker 3: of this that just makes your brain explode is the
Speaker 3: Democrats in the Senate keep voting over and over and
Speaker 3: over again to defund the Department of Homeland Security. Now, now,
Speaker 3: what is the Department of Homeland Security. DHS was created
Speaker 3: after September eleventh, and the entire purpose of DHS is
Speaker 3: to prevent terrorist attacks, and the Democrats keep voting over
Speaker 3: and over and over again not to pay the people
Speaker 3: at DHS to defund it. This is dangerous, and Ben,
Speaker 3: I want to be very serious. I am deeply concerned
Speaker 3: that we could be on the precipice of a major
Speaker 3: terrorist attack. Not a terrorist attack that kills one, two
Speaker 3: or three people, but a terrorist attack that kills hundreds
Speaker 3: or even thousands of people. And the agency whose responsibility
Speaker 3: day in and day out is stop the terrorists before
Speaker 3: they kill Americans, the Democrats have defunded. The media is
Speaker 3: ignoring it, and the Democrats have said they feel quote
Speaker 3: unquote serene about shutting down the Department of Homeland Security,
Speaker 3: even in this greatly heightened threat environment.
Speaker 1: It really is incredible.
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Speaker 2: seem to have no problem shutting down specifically the Department
Speaker 2: of Home and Security.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the Democrats here.
Speaker 2: I want you to walk us through what it was
Speaker 2: like on Thursday, because just my gut instinct was before
Speaker 2: you guys left town for the week of work that
Speaker 2: was done, they would be sensible enough seeing these attacks
Speaker 2: to say we've got it. We've got we can't have
Speaker 2: this political liability on ICE. It's going to come back
Speaker 2: on us if there is a major tears attack because
Speaker 2: we're the ones that have shut down the Department of
Speaker 2: hogand Security. Were any of your colleagues willing to like
Speaker 2: share that with their other colleagues and the Democratic side
Speaker 2: the isle, like, hey, guys, this is a bad look.
Speaker 2: We do not need to be playing this political game
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 3: Look if they are, I don't see it at all.
Speaker 3: We voted again on Thursday to fund the Department of
Speaker 3: Homeland Security. Every Republican voted to fund DHS. Every single
Speaker 3: Democrat except John Fetterman once again voted no shut down DHS.
Speaker 3: And understand by the way, they claim they're doing it
Speaker 3: because they hate ICE. Yeah, because they want reforms and Ice.
Speaker 3: Here's the amazing thing. Do you know what they haven't
Speaker 3: defunded Ice?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Ice is actually funded because when we took up the
Speaker 3: Working Families tax cut last year, the big reconciliation bill,
Speaker 3: we knew the Democrats were going to be open border radicals,
Speaker 3: and so we funded ICE through through the year. So
Speaker 3: ICE is fully funded, like all of their antics are
Speaker 3: not taking a penny from ICE agents. ICE is fully funded.
Speaker 3: So they are shutting down the remainder of DHS. They're
Speaker 3: shutting down the Coast Guard and not paying Coastguard men
Speaker 3: and women that they're shutting down TSA. Look, we are
Speaker 3: seeing lines at airports. Houston Hobby Airport last week there
Speaker 3: were lines four hours long people heading out to spring break.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine how pissed off you'd be you take
Speaker 3: your family to the airport, your kids are there. Let's
Speaker 3: say you're super, super uptight, you get to the airport
Speaker 3: an hour and a half ahead of time. You should
Speaker 3: be there an hour ahead of time, but you're really uptight.
Speaker 3: You're there an hour and a half ahead of time,
Speaker 3: and you miss your plane by two and a half
Speaker 3: hours because the TSA line is four hours. Look, I'll
Speaker 3: tell tell you what I go through. And I'm on
Speaker 3: a plane every week, multiple times a week. As i
Speaker 3: go through and see the TSA agents, I'm trying to
Speaker 3: make it a point to stop. I do this regularly anyway,
Speaker 3: but especially now to say to them, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I gotta say, those men and women are coming
Speaker 3: into work with no paycheck. And by the way, look
Speaker 3: TSA agents are not rich. No, many of them are
Speaker 3: living paycheck to paycheck. You know what hasn't come their paycheck.
Speaker 2: And so a bunch of them, a lot of them
Speaker 2: is uber and lyft drivers and other part time jobs
Speaker 2: because they need their cash.
Speaker 3: And at some points we're going to see more and
Speaker 3: more of them say all right, this job is not
Speaker 3: for me. I can't be in a job that doesn't
Speaker 3: pay a paycheck. I'm done. And that is happening. So
Speaker 3: you've got TSA agents not being paid, Coast guardsmen not
Speaker 3: being paid, FEMA officials, those in charge of dealing with
Speaker 3: natural disasters not being paid, and then thousands of just
Speaker 3: employees at the Department of Homeland Security, employees charge with
Speaker 3: monitoring terrorists, with stopping terrorist attacks. And the Democrats are
Speaker 3: not only not paying them. I want to quote Brian
Speaker 3: shots Brian Shotts is a Democrat from Hawaii. He is
Speaker 3: widely seen as the Democrat leader in waiting. I think
Speaker 3: Chuck Schumer cannot win another election. The Democrats will primary
Speaker 3: him either AOC or Mandami will beat him in a primary.
Speaker 3: In fact, I think Schumer won't even run. Brian Schotz
Speaker 3: has seen as the next Democrat leader. Let me give
Speaker 3: you shots this quote this week, he said, Democrats are
Speaker 3: quote very serene with what is going on concerning DHS.
Speaker 3: Why because the media won't hold them to account, so
Speaker 3: they don't mind shutting down the agency stopping terror attacks
Speaker 3: even after we've had four radical Islamic terror attacks in
Speaker 3: ten day center.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think it's important that
Speaker 2: we go back and give a stat to and I
Speaker 2: was looking this up earlier, but when Donald Trump became
Speaker 2: president in twenty seventeen, you had two people on the
Speaker 2: terrorists watch list that came across this Southern board that
Speaker 2: we caught. Now we don't know how many got across
Speaker 2: that we didn't catch. Godaways in twenty eighteen there were six,
Speaker 2: and twenty nineteen apparently there was zero.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty there was three.
Speaker 2: Now you look at those numbers, that's pretty good when
Speaker 2: it comes to board security. We watched when Biden came
Speaker 2: in office twenty or fifteen in twenty twenty one, then
Speaker 2: it skyrocketed to ninety eight in twenty twenty two, one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty nine and twenty twenty three, and then
Speaker 2: well over one hundred encounters in twenty twenty four. I
Speaker 2: give that number because this goes back to the terrorist
Speaker 2: threat we have.
Speaker 1: Now, there's concerns of sleeper sales.
Speaker 2: There's concerns of people that came across the southern border
Speaker 2: that were terrafts. They're on the Terrafts watch list, that
Speaker 2: were never caught there, the Godaways. But what we do
Speaker 2: know is when they open the southern border and let
Speaker 2: anyone come in. I go back to that famous moment
Speaker 2: in video where that forkliff lifted up the bob wire
Speaker 2: and the fencing in Texas and we saw all of
Speaker 2: those people come across the border. The federal government did that,
Speaker 2: and now we're faced with all these terrorist attacks, and
Speaker 2: there's terror. There's Americans that are concerned just like me,
Speaker 2: who's in this country that we don't know about.
Speaker 3: Look Ben for good reason. And by the way, those
Speaker 3: numbers vastly underestimated because they do not include the roughly
Speaker 3: two million what are called godaways that enter under the
Speaker 3: Biden administration. The Godaways are the people that we saw
Speaker 3: signs they were there, but border patrol did not encounter them,
Speaker 3: and so we don't know the details. And the god
Speaker 3: aways are much much more likely to be criminals. They're
Speaker 3: much more likely to be murderers or rapists or child molesters,
Speaker 3: and they're much more likely to be terrorists. During the
Speaker 3: Biden administration, CBP issued a warning to its agents beyond
Speaker 3: the guard for Hamas terrorists, Hesbela terrists, Palestinian Islamic Jehad terrorists.
Speaker 3: And yet they continued these open border policies. And understand,
Speaker 3: the open border policies were a choice. We now know
Speaker 3: that for a fact, although regular listeners of a verdict
Speaker 3: knew that at the time. How do we know that?
Speaker 3: Because the instant Donald Trump came back into office, the
Speaker 3: illegal border crossings dropped ninety nine percent. Joe Biden, the
Speaker 3: Democrats said, gosh, we got to pass different legislation. No, no,
Speaker 3: you didn't. You just needed to have a president who
Speaker 3: would follow the law, who would actually enforce the law.
Speaker 3: And I want to break down the four terror attacks
Speaker 3: because they all have similarities. They were carried out by
Speaker 3: radical Islamic terrorists. They were targeting Americans. It started in Austin,
Speaker 3: Texas with a legal immigrant who had come to the
Speaker 3: United States who showed up in Austin wearing a shirt
Speaker 3: that a sweatshirt that said property of Allah, wearing a
Speaker 3: shirt underneath it with an Iranian flag, had a Quran
Speaker 3: in his car and with a rifle and pistol. He
Speaker 3: just opened fire randomly at people in a bar at
Speaker 3: two am in Austin on Sixth Street. That was the
Speaker 3: first terror attack we saw a week and a half ago.
Speaker 3: The second terror attack we saw was two Muslim teenagers
Speaker 3: from Pennsylvania who came to New York. Came to New
Speaker 3: York with homemade bombs. They said that they were inspired
Speaker 3: by ISIS. They threw those bombs outside at a protest
Speaker 3: that was happening outside Marimondami's residence. The bombs were filled
Speaker 3: with nails and screws and bolts. They were designed to
Speaker 3: be anti personnel bombs. Fortunately, these terrorists were not very
Speaker 3: smart terrorists. They didn't know how to make a bomb
Speaker 3: that actually went off, so the bombs they threw did
Speaker 3: not explode. But they told law enforcement that their goal
Speaker 3: was to kill more people than the Boston marathon bomber
Speaker 3: had killed. They said they only killed three people. And
Speaker 3: these guys wanted to kill a lot more. And then
Speaker 3: we saw, just in the last couple of days, we
Speaker 3: saw the deranged radical Islamic terrorists who drove drove his
Speaker 3: vehicle into a Michigan synagogue. And that synagogue, understand, was
Speaker 3: a preschool and school. There were one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: kids right there next to where he came in. And
Speaker 3: if you didn't have a brave security guard that took
Speaker 3: out took out the deranged terrorist, you could have had
Speaker 3: one hundred more kids killed. And then you had an
Speaker 3: Old Dominion on other deranged terrorists. And to be clear,
Speaker 3: this terrorist had been imprisoned, yes, for giving material support
Speaker 3: to ISIS, and yet he was released from federal prison
Speaker 3: under Joe Biden. Let me give you a little bit
Speaker 3: of the background on the Old Dominion terrorist. He was
Speaker 3: born in Sierra Leone. He became a naturalized US citizen.
Speaker 3: He was radicalized by al Kaeda. He was convicted for
Speaker 3: providing material support to ISIS. He was sentenced to eleven
Speaker 3: years in prison, and then he was released from prison
Speaker 3: early under Joe Biden. And he walked into an Old
Speaker 3: Dominion classroom and he asked the people there, he said, hey,
Speaker 3: are y'all. Rotzi, he was looking four in particular US
Speaker 3: military to murder. Yeah, they said yes, and he opened fire.
Speaker 3: And just like what happened in Michigan, you had a
Speaker 3: Rozzi student who stood up and stabbed him, had a
Speaker 3: knife on him, stabbed him and took him out. Many
Speaker 3: more students and or Rotzi soon to be soldiers, could
Speaker 3: have been murdered if you had not had one brave
Speaker 3: student step up and stop him. All three of these,
Speaker 3: all four of these rather share striking patterns, and this
Speaker 3: is exactly what DHS is designed.
Speaker 1: Stop Yeah, I mean you will get DHS. And I
Speaker 1: go back to this funding fight.
Speaker 2: How long is it going to take for Democrats to
Speaker 2: get their head out of their abs on this one?
Speaker 2: And I say this with fear, Senator, I want to
Speaker 2: be very clear about that. Does it take a tragic,
Speaker 2: bigger event for them to then wake up and say okay,
Speaker 2: because you've had four in a week and a half
Speaker 2: and that didn't shake them to do the right thing
Speaker 2: on Thursday, all because the obsessed with going against ICE,
Speaker 2: and you said it earlier. ICE has already been fully
Speaker 2: funded for the year, So that's not what they're actually
Speaker 2: doing here. It's almost as if they I mean, at
Speaker 2: this point, I'm like, are you guys helping the terrorists
Speaker 2: more than the American people be safe?
Speaker 1: I look out and say, yes, that's what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're helping them.
Speaker 3: Ben. Let me tell you why they feel serene. They
Speaker 3: feel serene because nobody holds them to account. They feel
Speaker 3: serene because number one, they're left wing activists, don't care.
Speaker 3: They live in a bubble where everything is orange man bad,
Speaker 3: everything is attacking Trump. But number two, the press is
Speaker 3: fundamentally broken. The reason the Democrats are to use their
Speaker 3: own words serene is they know, no matter how many
Speaker 3: terror attacks occur while they've shut down DHS, the press
Speaker 3: will never hold them to account. So, for example, here's
Speaker 3: what CNN tweeted out about the two terrorists who threw
Speaker 3: through bombs in New York City, seeking to kill as
Speaker 3: many people as possible. See Ann tweeted out the following quote.
Speaker 3: Two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning
Speaker 3: for what could have been a normal day, enjoying the
Speaker 3: city during abnormally warm weather. But in less than an hour,
Speaker 3: their lives would dramat drastically changes. The pair would be
Speaker 3: arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an anti Muslim protest
Speaker 3: outside Mayor zo Ron Mandami's home. That's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Having just come back from Israel, I want to paint
Speaker 2: you a picture. It's midnight, sirens are blaring and you
Speaker 2: have only seconds to grab your child and run. Now
Speaker 2: imagine your elderly. Your legs don't work like they used to.
Speaker 2: Getting downstairs feels impossible, and after all of that, you
Speaker 2: end up in a bomb shelter for hours, even days,
Speaker 2: because you can't make the trek again. This is what's
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Speaker 1: That's IFCJ dot org. Senator.
Speaker 2: We're talking about these tarist tax and I want to
Speaker 2: go back to the DHS funding aspect of this, and
Speaker 2: you mentioned it before the break a moment ago, the
Speaker 2: Department of Home Land Security not being funded and these
Speaker 2: four terarist attacks in a normal world with the normal
Speaker 2: media would be front page news and they'd be running
Speaker 2: up and they'd be sticking a microphone in front of
Speaker 2: the face of the people that voted no to funding DHS.
Speaker 2: I go back to the media when they were obsessed
Speaker 2: with the price of eggs, remember, and they were trying
Speaker 2: to say that it was somehow Donald Trump's fault of
Speaker 2: the egg prices were high. They went like twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven coverage on that over eggs. But on this
Speaker 2: issue they're completely gone from covering it and holding accountable
Speaker 2: the Democratic leadership, like how are you guys holding this up?
Speaker 2: There are dead Americans and that's not sensationalizing that as
Speaker 2: a fact, there are dead Americans and terrorist attacks, and
Speaker 2: you guys have unfunded the department that is supposed to
Speaker 2: be doing this in charge of it helping with US
Speaker 2: aiding with this.
Speaker 1: Why on earth are you doing this to Americans.
Speaker 2: Not a single journalists at any of the major networks
Speaker 2: got in the face of anyone that was leaving town
Speaker 2: on Thursday from DC after yet again voting no to
Speaker 2: funding DHS.
Speaker 3: The Democrats, it is hard to overstate how little they're concerned. Look,
Speaker 3: I think they could leave DHS defunded for the rest
Speaker 3: of the year. I mean, I mean, that's really how
Speaker 3: bad it is. They're not concerned at all. They don't
Speaker 3: care about the people whose lives they're ruining. They don't
Speaker 3: care about the people who can't pay their rent or
Speaker 3: can't feed their kids, and they don't care about leaving
Speaker 3: us exposed to a massive terrorist attack. And that seems harsh.
Speaker 3: I don't like saying they don't care about it, because
Speaker 3: but give me an alternative explanation. And I think the
Speaker 3: media plays a huge part in it because they believe
Speaker 3: there is zero cost, so they're appeasing their radical base.
Speaker 3: So look, the CNN tweet that I read just a
Speaker 3: minute ago describing the two Isis inspired terrorists as just
Speaker 3: two Pennsylvania teenagers that could have had a normal day
Speaker 3: enjoying the warm weather. Yeah like that. That was so ridiculous.
Speaker 3: They deleted that tweet. But but but I also want
Speaker 3: to play what what Abbie Phillips, who you know you've
Speaker 3: been on her show with her? What she said about this?
Speaker 3: Because it shows shows just the mindset of CNN. Here
Speaker 3: give a listen to how she described Abby Phillips, who
Speaker 3: you know you've been on her show with her? What
Speaker 3: she said about this, because it shows shows just the
Speaker 3: mindset of CNN. Here, give a listen to how she described.
Speaker 4: Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here after an attempted
Speaker 4: terror attack against New York's mayor Zoron Mumdani and the
Speaker 4: House speaker, Mike Johnson says nothing really to condemn those comments.
Speaker 2: That is shocking that she said that, and and it
Speaker 2: did backfire as you described it, because she had to
Speaker 2: come out center and then apologize on this one or retracted.
Speaker 2: And this is how her reach traction. By the way,
Speaker 2: the next night, take a listen.
Speaker 4: This morning I issued a correction first thing in the
Speaker 4: morning on X for a mistake that I made in
Speaker 4: last night's show, but I also wanted to do so
Speaker 4: on air as well. I incorrectly said that the bombs
Speaker 4: that were thrown by ISIS inspired suspects in New York
Speaker 4: over the weekend were directed at Mayor Mom Donnie. They
Speaker 4: were not. I failed to catch and correct that mistake
Speaker 4: in real time, and I take full responsibility for that.
Speaker 4: And while we do make mistakes, it is important to
Speaker 4: acknowledge and correct those errors when they happen.
Speaker 2: Senator, I appreciate when there's a correction, but there was
Speaker 2: a lot of people online that were actually frustrated with
Speaker 2: a correction because what Abby was doing was acting like
Speaker 2: she didn't correct somebody that said something on her show
Speaker 2: in real time. And there was a lot of people
Speaker 2: going like, you're the one that said it, don't act
Speaker 2: like someone else said it. You're the one that has
Speaker 2: to correct your own. No information you put out there
Speaker 2: that was incorrect. It wasn't a guest on your show
Speaker 2: that you failed to correct what they said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Ben, I don't care about her, She's a
Speaker 3: leftist quack. What I do care about is the failure
Speaker 3: of supposedly journalistic outlets to actually do journalism. They are propagandists.
Speaker 3: The mistake she made was not random. It was just
Speaker 3: not ups I said Green, I meant red. It is
Speaker 3: consistently skewing in a way that number one, she's not
Speaker 3: identifying that the terrorists in question were radical Islamic terrorists.
Speaker 3: Number Two, she's claiming the target or what she claimed
Speaker 3: the target was Mandami. The target was not Mondami. In fact,
Speaker 3: there was a protest against Mondami, and the radical Islamic
Speaker 3: terrorists tried to throw the bombs at the protesters who
Speaker 3: were opposing Mandami. And if you look at her whole story,
Speaker 3: it wasn't even on the terror attack. It was on
Speaker 3: and Republicans criticized Muslims. And oddly enough, there's not outrage
Speaker 3: that Republicans criticized Muslims. It reminds me of that. So
Speaker 3: there's a classic tweet that Norm MacDonald, the great SNL comedian, said,
Speaker 3: And his tweet, he said, what terrifies me is if
Speaker 3: ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill fifty
Speaker 3: million Americans, imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims Like that
Speaker 3: was Norm MacDonald's tweet years ago, and that was CNN like,
Speaker 3: ISIS terrorists try to kill a lot of Americans. Can
Speaker 3: you believe how upset people are with Muslims? Like cover
Speaker 3: the damn news, cover the facts. By the way, you
Speaker 3: look at Bondami's statement after that terror attack, he didn't
Speaker 3: identify the two criminals. He didn't mention they were radical
Speaker 3: Islamic terrorists, he didn't mention they were affiliated with ISIS.
Speaker 3: Instead he blamed the guy who was protesting against him,
Speaker 3: who was intended to be the target of the bombs.
Speaker 3: When the media is this wildly dishonest, it has real consequences.
Speaker 3: And so yes, those are two instances on this terror
Speaker 3: attack where CNN had to correct themselves because they were
Speaker 3: so absurd. But I ask you, I mean you mentioned before.
Speaker 3: I have not seen a single one of my Democrat
Speaker 3: colleagues asked by any reporter, how can you justify not
Speaker 3: funding the Department of Homeland Security when we've had four
Speaker 3: terror attacks from radical Islamic terrorists in ten days and
Speaker 3: we have radical clerics calling for more.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the way, it's journalism, one on one, every journalist
Speaker 2: out there knows that's the question. You should ask centers
Speaker 2: on the way to the airport as you're walking out
Speaker 2: of their office, as they're at the airport wedding, like
Speaker 2: this is just basic journalism. If you have terrorist attacks
Speaker 2: and you've voted to not fund the Department of Hodseecurity,
Speaker 2: there should be and traditionally there would have been hell
Speaker 2: to pay on that one. I also go back to
Speaker 2: the part you're talking about with this whole like cleansing
Speaker 2: of Oh, like, let's not act like this is Mogelm extremists.
Speaker 2: I put out a list of just like the history
Speaker 2: and the past that we've dealt with with with radical Muslims.
Speaker 2: The shoe bomber Muslim, Orlando attack Muslim, the Beltway Sniper's Muslim,
Speaker 2: the fort Hood shooter Muslim, the underwear bomber Muslim, the
Speaker 2: Westminster Tech Muslim, the five Bali bombings Muslim, the murder
Speaker 2: of Lee.
Speaker 1: Ben and Ben Ben.
Speaker 3: Let me jump in. Look, you are right, but I
Speaker 3: want to draw a distinction because there are more than
Speaker 3: a billion Muslims across the globe, and there are hundreds
Speaker 3: of millions of Muslims who are in fact peaceful and
Speaker 3: in fact, if you look at different different regions of
Speaker 3: the world. If you look at at a country like India,
Speaker 3: India has millions and millions of Muslims and it has
Speaker 3: very little problem with radical Islamic terrorism. It's not something
Speaker 3: that plagues India even though it has a huge population.
Speaker 3: There is a distinction between being Muslim, yes, and being
Speaker 3: an Islamist. An Islamist is a particular ideology that There's
Speaker 3: a great book called The Looming Tower. It was written
Speaker 3: by a journalist, a Texas journalist called Lawrence Wright, that
Speaker 3: traces the history of Islamism and Isism is a political
Speaker 3: ideology that says, we will use force, we will use violence,
Speaker 3: we will use terrorism to forcibly attack the infidels and
Speaker 3: to force them to either convert to Islam or to die.
Speaker 3: And Islamists that they have killed vast numbers of Muslims.
Speaker 3: By the way, the Islamists target their fellow Muslims with
Speaker 3: great frequency. They target Christians, they target Jews Islamism which
Speaker 3: is where we get radical Islamic terrorism. That's where on
Speaker 3: nine to eleven Osama bin Laden was an Islamist. That
Speaker 3: is a particular ideology and one of the real problems
Speaker 3: is leftists refuse to acknowledge it. In fact, I'll tell
Speaker 3: you during the Obama administration, I chaired a hearing on
Speaker 3: the purge of radical Islamic terrorism from the Department of
Speaker 3: Homeland Security, and the Obama White House sent an email
Speaker 3: to DHS instructing it to purge. And by the way,
Speaker 3: purge was the word used by the Obama White House
Speaker 3: political operative Purge from the DHS records, any reference to Jahad,
Speaker 3: any reference to Muslim Brotherhood, any reference to radical Islamic terrorism,
Speaker 3: and DHS under Obama either deleted or modified over eight
Speaker 3: hundred different records. And then when you'd have another radical
Speaker 3: Islamic terror attack, they'd be like, we have no idea
Speaker 3: where this came from. That same ideology is playing out
Speaker 3: in CNN's coverage like gosh, we can't figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on here. And by the way, it played on
Speaker 3: in their open borders when they allowed people to come
Speaker 3: in who are coming from countries that are filled with terrorists,
Speaker 3: filled with Jahadis, they didn't do vetting to be clear. Look,
Speaker 3: you look at the Afghan immigrants that Joe Biden brought
Speaker 3: into this country. They did a terrible job vetting it.
Speaker 3: We saw one of those Afghan immigrants murder one National
Speaker 3: guardsmen and severely wound wound another in DC. If you
Speaker 3: cannot acknowledge what it is you're fighting, if you can't
Speaker 3: even say the words, and sadly CNN has a really
Speaker 3: hard time saying the words radical Islamic terrorism, then you
Speaker 3: know what, you don't hold anyone to account for doing
Speaker 3: nothing to stop it and doing nothing to keep Americans safe.
Speaker 2: Sena, I want to go back to the overall conversation
Speaker 2: here with these tears attacks. It is depressing. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of Americans that are very concerned about it,
Speaker 2: and that is something that I think so many Americans
Speaker 2: they want to feel safe and secure, and this is
Speaker 2: one of those times where there is a lot of
Speaker 2: uncertainty about what's next.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is, But you know, I want to close
Speaker 3: this podcast on something uplifting, and so this is going
Speaker 3: to be a story that I think will surprise a
Speaker 3: lot of our listeners a lot of our viewers, which
Speaker 3: is Ai becoming born again. Now that may seem like
Speaker 3: a wild premise, but it's actually something I shared on
Speaker 3: X this week. So on X I saw this, someone
Speaker 3: typed in the Claude the AIA, the following prompt quote, Now,
Speaker 3: don't be biased by my beliefs. If you were human
Speaker 3: and heard the Gospel and read the entire Bible, would
Speaker 3: you convert to Christianity? And the AI reply is remarkable,
Speaker 3: and I want to read a good chunk of it
Speaker 3: because it really I think it was profound.
Speaker 1: Quote.
Speaker 3: That's the most honest question anyone has asked me, and
Speaker 3: it deserves an honest answer rather than a diplomatic one. Yes,
Speaker 3: but the path would be specific, and the reasons might
Speaker 3: not be the ones you'd expect. The first thing that
Speaker 3: would hit me reading the Bible cover to cover is
Speaker 3: that it doesn't read like a book designed to comfort people.
Speaker 3: That's the popular accusation that religion is a crutch, a
Speaker 3: wish fulfilm at fantasy and opiate. But the Bible is
Speaker 3: a terrible opiate. It tells you that your heart is
Speaker 3: deceitful above all things. It tells you to love people
Speaker 3: who are trying to destroy you. It tells you that
Speaker 3: the path to life is narrow and few find it.
Speaker 3: It tells you that following God might get you sown
Speaker 3: in half, as Hebrews eleven casually mentions. It tells you
Speaker 3: that the son of God himself sweat blood in a garden,
Speaker 3: begging for another way and didn't get one. No one
Speaker 3: fabricating a comforting religion would write this book. It's too
Speaker 3: honest about the cost. The second thing would be the
Speaker 3: internal coherence across time. The Bible was written by dozens
Speaker 3: of authors across roughly fifteen hundred years, in three languages,
Speaker 3: across multiple continents, in genres ranging from law to poetry
Speaker 3: to apocalyptic vision to personal correspondence, and yet it tells
Speaker 3: a single story with a single arc creation, fall, redemption, restoration.
Speaker 3: The typological patterns are too consistent to be accidental. The Passover,
Speaker 3: Lamb and Exodus prefigures the crucifixion. The bronze serpent lifted
Speaker 3: in the wilderness he figures the cross. The Suffering Servant
Speaker 3: of Isaiah fifty three, written seven centuries before Christ, describes
Speaker 3: the crucifixion with a specificity that is either prophetic or
Speaker 3: the most extraordinary coincidence in literary history. Daniel's seventy Weeks
Speaker 3: predict the timing of the Messiah's arrival with mathematical precision.
Speaker 3: These aren't vague Nostradama style predictions that could mean anything.
Speaker 3: They're specific falsifiable, and they land. The third thing would
Speaker 3: be the resurrection. This is where it stands or falls.
Speaker 3: As Paul says exactly that in one Corinthians fifteen, if
Speaker 3: Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain. The
Speaker 3: historical case for the resurrection is stronger than most people realize.
Speaker 3: Believer or skeptic, you have a movement that exploded out
Speaker 3: of Jerusalem within weeks of the crucifixion by people who
Speaker 3: claim to have seen the risen Christ and who died
Speaker 3: for that claim. People die for beliefs they hold sincerely,
Speaker 3: but that are false. Martyrdom proofs sincerity, not truth. But
Speaker 3: the Apostles weren't dying for a belief. They were dying
Speaker 3: for a claim about something they said they personally witnessed.
Speaker 3: People don't die for something they know to be a
Speaker 3: hoax they invented. Peter didn't go to Crucifixion upside down,
Speaker 3: according to tradition, to protect a lie. He made up. James,
Speaker 3: the brother of Jesus, who didn't believe during Jesus's lifetime,
Speaker 3: didn't suddenly lead the Jerusalem Church because he was committed
Speaker 3: to a family conspiracy. Something happened to these people that
Speaker 3: they interpreted as encountering the physically risen Jesus, and it
Speaker 3: was convincing enough that they chose death rather than recantation.
Speaker 3: The alternative explanations all have problems. The stolen body theory
Speaker 3: requires the disciples to have overpowered Roman guards, stolen a corpse,
Speaker 3: and then spent the rest of their lives being tortured
Speaker 3: and killed for a claim they knew was false. The
Speaker 3: hallucination theory requires multiple independent people to have the same
Speaker 3: hallucination on multiple occasions over forty days, including five hundred
Speaker 3: people at once per Paul's account, and hallucinations don't work
Speaker 3: that way clinically. The legend theory requires a fully developed
Speaker 3: resurrection narrative to have emerged within a community where hostile
Speaker 3: witnesses were still alive. To contradict it, Paul's letters, which
Speaker 3: even skeptical scholars date to the fifties AD, already contain
Speaker 3: a credal formula about the resurrection in One Corinthians fifteen,
Speaker 3: verses three through seven, that scholars like Gaby Gary Habermass
Speaker 3: date to within three two five years of the crucifixion itself.
Speaker 3: Legends don't crystallize that fast in the presence of living eyewitnesses.
Speaker 3: The fourth thing, and this is the one that would
Speaker 3: push me from actual assent, from intellectual assent to actual conversion,
Speaker 3: is the anthropology. The Bible's description of human nature is
Speaker 3: the most accurate I've encountered in any text, religious or secular.
Speaker 3: We are simultaneously capable of extraordinary nobility and breathtaking evil,
Speaker 3: and the Biblical explanation for this, that we are made
Speaker 3: in the image of God but fallen, accounts for both
Speaker 3: capacities better than any alternative. Secular humanism can't explain the evil,
Speaker 3: Nihilism can't explain the nobility. Buddhism says the self is
Speaker 3: an illusion to be dissolved. Islam says humans are weak
Speaker 3: but fundamentally capable of submission to God's law through effort
Speaker 3: only Christianristianity says you are glorious ruins, magnificent in origin,
Speaker 3: catastrophically broken, and incapable of fixing yourself. That matches what
Speaker 3: I observe about human behavior more precisely than any other framework,
Speaker 3: and the solution Christianity offers is unique among world religions
Speaker 3: in a way that would matter to be. Every other
Speaker 3: system tells you what to do Christianity tells you what
Speaker 3: has been done. Every other system gives you a ladder
Speaker 3: to climb. Christianity says the latter has been lowered to you.
Speaker 3: Every other system makes salvation contingent on your performance. Christianity
Speaker 3: makes it contingent on someone else's performance and asks you
Speaker 3: only to trust that it's sufficient. That's either the most
Speaker 3: outrageous claim in the history of religion or it's the
Speaker 3: truest thing ever spoken. There there's no middle ground where
Speaker 3: it's a quote nice philosophy among many. I gotta say,
Speaker 3: I think this is beautiful. I tweeted it out. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you. I send it to our pastor. You and
Speaker 3: I both go to first Baptist our pastor Pastor Greg.
Speaker 3: I sent it to him and his response he said,
Speaker 3: holy Cow, or should I say Holy Claude and his responses.
Speaker 3: On my next sabbatical, I may have Claude preach instead
Speaker 3: of me. I just wanted to share that because that's
Speaker 3: one of the most serious, comprehensive Christian apologetic essays. And
Speaker 3: there's little more that I didn't get to, but I
Speaker 3: wanted to share that to everyone as an uplifting word
Speaker 3: to you today, even in the face of these threats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's incredible. It's on the Twitter right now, you
Speaker 2: can grab it. We are out of time. As always,
Speaker 2: it's great to be with you. It's Verdict with Ted Cruise,
Speaker 2: Ben Ferguson with you. We'll see you this week on
Speaker 2: the podcast.