Verdict with Ted Cruz - May 15, 2026


Defending Police Heroes, Passing Trey’s Law & Fighting for Imprisoned Christians in China, plus Israel Sues the NYT


Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

159.37

Word count

5,929

Sentence count

324

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

11

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) delivers a heartfelt tribute to the heroic law enforcement officers who responded to the Santa Fe High School shooting, and calls on Congress to support legislation that honors the lives of those who lost their lives in service.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:36.740 Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. It's so nice to have you with
00:00:41.060 us if you're listening on the radio around the country. Senator, we've got a lot to chat about
00:00:44.660 on today's show, including something we haven't seen in a long time. We are celebrating at the
00:00:49.800 White House and in Washington, D.C., law enforcement not trying to defund them.
00:00:54.680 Well, that's exactly right. This past week was police week. We had police officers from
00:00:59.480 all across the country come to Washington, D.C., come to the Capitol, and we celebrated,
00:01:05.880 celebrated the heroism. We celebrated and remembered the officers who gave their lives,
00:01:11.540 gave their lives in duty defending us. And it really, after all of the vilification,
00:01:18.780 after all of the attacks that are directed at police officers, it was nice to have a time
00:01:22.840 just to say thank you. And it was also a time that was recognized the Senate Judiciary Committee
00:01:27.860 this week. We passed a series of bills out of the Judiciary Committee, including two different bills
00:01:34.040 that I authored, one directed specifically to police officers and a second protecting child
00:01:41.760 victims of sexual assault. And both of those victories are significant. Both of them are now
00:01:47.020 going to the floor of the Senate. I think we'll get both passed into law. It's going to be really
00:01:50.800 awesome we're going to break that down for you in a moment i also want to tell you about a
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00:03:52.760 All right, Senator, so let's talk about something that's just exciting for me.
00:03:57.060 My dad still is involved in law enforcement.
00:03:59.660 I am so glad to see the Republican Party moving to put law enforcement where they deserve to be,
00:04:06.460 which is in a great light instead of a dehumanizing, attacking, defund.
00:04:11.880 And every time something happens, we immediately go after law enforcement.
00:04:15.540 That has changed.
00:04:16.600 And something else that's really significant, a bipartisan piece of legislation that your name is on,
00:04:22.760 that is going to do something incredible for people that protect and serve.
00:04:27.720 Well, this week, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed my legislation.
00:04:32.780 It's entitled the Officer John Barnes and Chief Michael Ansbrough Public Safety Officers Benefit Program Expansion Act of 2026.
00:04:41.680 Now, it is named for two tremendous heroes.
00:04:45.960 First of all, Officer John Barnes.
00:04:47.640 Officer John Barnes was the police officer at Santa Fe High School, where you'll recall, Ben, the horrific school shooting that happened.
00:04:57.340 Santa Fe is just outside of Houston, and it's the morning of that shooting.
00:05:02.640 I was actually at home when that shooting happened, and so I jumped in a truck and headed down to the school.
00:05:08.160 I was on campus about an hour after the shooting happened, and I will tell you the horror of what transpired there.
00:05:17.640 as that deranged gunman shot and and murdered multiple students and and officer john barnes
00:05:24.680 was on duty and when the shooter began his rampage uh officer barnes rushed the shooter he put himself
00:05:34.200 between the shooter and the students he saved multiple students lives yeah and and the shooter
00:05:40.200 had one of the weapons he was armed with was a shotgun and he fired the shotgun and it hit
00:05:45.720 hit Officer Barnes in the arm and did permanent damage to his elbow, to his arm.
00:05:52.080 He had massive blood loss, and he ended up actually flatlining twice and being resuscitated
00:05:59.840 twice. And I've got to know Officer Barnes, and he's, the man is a hero. He risked his life and
00:06:06.640 almost gave his life to protect the students that he had been charged with protecting. And so
00:06:12.600 So this bill honors him, and it also honors Chief Michael Ansbrough, who was a hero on 9-11.
00:06:21.920 And he was one of the first responders in 9-11 who rushed into the building, rescued people, risked his life.
00:06:28.960 He survived 9-11 and the collapse of the towers, but in the course of that, he inhaled so much toxic material that ultimately Chief Ansbrough died from cancer from all of the poison he inhaled on 9-11.
00:06:47.800 With both of them, they submitted applications to the Public Safety Officers Benefit Program.
00:06:56.020 Now, the Public Safety Officers Benefit Program is created within the Department of Justice, and in particular, the Bureau of Justice Assistance, and it does several things.
00:07:07.720 Number one, it provides death benefits to survivors of officers who've died in the line of duty, and that's something I think we owe their families to say thank you for that.
00:07:18.500 And then secondly, it provides assistance to people who are permanently disabled as a result of in the light of the duty injury.
00:07:29.380 And the problem is that the program has historically been very, very slow and very, very delayed.
00:07:37.680 You look at the Santa Fe shooting.
00:07:39.940 The Santa Fe shooting happened in 2018.
00:07:45.080 Officer Barnes' application is still pending.
00:07:48.080 It's eight years later, and it hasn't been adjudicated.
00:07:52.180 The same is true for the application for benefits for Chief Ansbrough's family,
00:07:58.540 is that it's delayed and it's still pending long after he passed away.
00:08:03.760 And so what this bill that I did, along with Kirsten Gillibrand,
00:08:07.600 Kirsten Gillibrand is a Democrat from New York.
00:08:09.560 She's a friend.
00:08:10.660 She and I have actually done quite a bit together.
00:08:12.540 And so she, this was originally the Officer John Barnes bill,
00:08:17.440 because he's a Texan and someone I know, and we teamed up,
00:08:21.020 and she brought in Michael Ansbrough to honor a 9-11 hero as well.
00:08:26.860 And what this bill does is speed up the determination of benefits.
00:08:30.560 And so it puts a shot clock of 270 days.
00:08:34.860 It says the Department of Justice must make a determination within 270 days.
00:08:39.580 You can't have it drag on for eight years.
00:08:41.680 And it also expedites the processing, and it also expands the coverage.
00:08:48.460 So it extends partial eligibility to officers who are permanently but not totally disabled.
00:08:55.860 So if you have a permanent disability, you qualify.
00:08:59.260 It expands the number of officers, the number of officers' families who qualify, and it speeds it up.
00:09:04.840 We got this through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:09:07.240 The next step is to move it on the floor of the Senate.
00:09:09.220 it, then we'll move it through the House, and I'm confident President Trump will sign it into law.
00:09:13.900 Before we get to Trey's Law Center, I want to ask you a couple questions. Just, I think,
00:09:18.740 when Americans see this type of bipartisan leadership, and you see that this is about
00:09:25.220 benefits of those that have risked their lives or given the ultimate sacrifice of their life,
00:09:30.480 and to see how many loopholes there are to jump through to clearly get the benefits the family
00:09:37.000 needs there if you've ever sat with an officer and i have and it's a miserable moment um or let
00:09:43.920 me rephrase that a family of a fallen officer in that miserable moment even after all of all the
00:09:51.300 the people go back home and life gets back to normal that is when the real turmoil they say
00:09:56.520 sets in because you're waiting for so many things that you've been promised to come through and then
00:10:02.940 you compare that center to the waste fraud and abuse that we're finding where there's just
00:10:07.380 billions here another billion here another million here another 20 million here another 30 million
00:10:11.820 here these daycare centers hospice centers it would make you go insane if you are a family
00:10:18.160 that's just waiting on the benefit because your loved one gave their life to protect and serve
00:10:23.480 how frustrating is that for you when you see that this is how we treat our heroes and yet the
00:10:29.240 villains, these con artists, they can get their hands on billions and billions of dollars.
00:10:33.820 Yeah, it's deeply frustrating. Listen, if an officer tragically loses his or her life in the
00:10:40.000 line of duty, there's nothing we can do to bring them back. There's nothing we can do to bring that
00:10:45.200 officer back to their loved ones. But we do owe honoring our commitments to them. We do owe being
00:10:51.580 there for their family. The men and women in blue who put themselves on the line, like John Barnes,
00:10:58.800 They literally stand in harm's way. They stand between someone who would harm or kill us and ourselves or our loved ones.
00:11:08.660 And unfortunately, bureaucracy is one of the few constants in the world, and dealing with the federal government is frequently maddening and infuriating.
00:11:20.040 That being said, the PSOB process, this benefit process, is notoriously slow.
00:11:26.400 It is notoriously backlogged.
00:11:29.100 And so this is a common sense bill just to speed up the process to ensure that whether it's an officer who's lost his life, like Chief Ansborough,
00:11:38.600 or whether it's an officer who is permanently disabled, like John Barnes,
00:11:44.340 that we make the determinations quickly and we provide them the benefits they've been promised.
00:11:52.040 Yeah, absolutely right.
00:11:52.940 I want to move on to Trey's Law as well.
00:11:54.820 And we've talked about this before on this show.
00:11:57.220 But for people that are listening, many are listening on the radio around the country to this show,
00:12:01.260 can you give us a recap of Trey's Law, how it became about, and now what's happening moving forward?
00:12:06.860 Well, Trey's Law is named for a Texan, named for Trey Carlock.
00:12:10.540 Trey Carlock grew up in Dallas, and as a kid, he went to a Christian summer camp.
00:12:16.700 And at the summer camp, tragically, an adult man groomed him and then for years sexually abused him.
00:12:26.140 And ultimately, that sexual abuse resulted in a lawsuit.
00:12:30.920 That lawsuit was settled.
00:12:32.140 and one of the terms of the settlement was that Trey Carlock signed a non-disclosure agreement
00:12:38.220 where he committed to not disclose to anyone the details of his years of sexual abuse.
00:12:45.340 Well, the abuse continued taking a toll on Trey, and tragically, he took his own life.
00:12:52.620 And he was silenced. He shared with his therapist how frustrated he was about being silenced
00:12:57.820 and not being able to speak the truth of his experience of the abuse that he suffered.
00:13:05.740 Trey's Law has risen up in the wake of that, and Trey's Law is very simple.
00:13:09.740 What it does is it prohibits enforcement of non-disclosure agreements
00:13:14.540 concerning victims of child sexual assault,
00:13:18.120 so that legally you cannot enforce a gag order that if a child is sexually assaulted,
00:13:24.580 And I will say sexual assault of kids is an epidemic in this country.
00:13:28.440 It happens far too often.
00:13:30.400 And litigation and nondisclosure agreements are commonplace features that the people who are assaulting kids will put in place to silence the victims.
00:13:42.020 And nobody should have a right to do that.
00:13:44.560 You know, Trey's law was championed by Trey's sister, Elizabeth.
00:13:48.240 And we had Elizabeth on this show.
00:13:49.740 She talked about her brother.
00:13:51.560 She talked about her effort.
00:13:52.980 She went in Texas. The state legislature in Texas has already passed Trey's law.
00:13:57.880 The legislature in Alabama has passed Trey's law. Missouri has passed Trey's law.
00:14:01.680 A number of different states have passed Trey's law.
00:14:04.160 And I introduced it in the U.S. Congress so that we could pass it nationally.
00:14:11.040 And again, I joined with Kirsten Gillibrand. She and I did both of these bills together.
00:14:15.740 And it is designed to ensure that any child victim has the right to speak out,
00:14:25.120 and the court system will not be used as a tool of a second round of abuse.
00:14:31.280 Because when you're silencing a child victim, that is once again abusive.
00:14:37.240 And in Trey's case in particular, he described at great length to his therapist how he felt silenced and agonized that he wasn't able to speak about it.
00:14:47.800 His sister Elizabeth told us on this podcast how much of what happened to her brother, she didn't even find out about until after he was dead.
00:14:57.640 Until after he'd taken his own life because of the gag order, he didn't share it with his sister.
00:15:03.420 He didn't share it with his family.
00:15:05.840 And so Trey's Law, we passed it unanimously through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
00:15:10.140 We'll get it on the floor.
00:15:11.640 We'll get it through the House.
00:15:12.700 And once again, the president's going to sign this.
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00:17:21.760 All right, Senator, I want to talk about the president's big trip to China.
00:17:25.940 And specifically, you had some notes, some requests, some advocacy for some Americans that are being held.
00:17:34.120 And this was a really big moment that people should be talking about.
00:17:38.040 Yeah, so this was a meaningful legislative week.
00:17:41.320 We've already talked about the two victories we had in the Senate Judiciary Committee passing two bills I authored.
00:17:46.640 We had a third victory on the Senate floor, which is the entire Senate passed a resolution that I authored along with Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, concerning the president's China trip and in particular urging the president to prioritize the release of political prisoners, the release of people who are wrongfully imprisoned in China, including Jimmy Lai, who's the great democracy activist in Hong Kong.
00:18:12.280 I met Jimmy Lai when I traveled to Hong Kong.
00:18:15.400 I met with him.
00:18:16.400 His health is failing.
00:18:18.020 He is being imprisoned because the Chinese communist government views him as a threat to their communist oppression.
00:18:24.880 And then also focusing on the Christian pastors, including Pastor Ezra Zinn, who have been targeted, who have been arrested.
00:18:33.340 China has been cracking down on Christian pastors.
00:18:36.780 And so Dick Durbin and I together introduced this resolution.
00:18:39.960 We took it to the Senate floor, and this week it passed 100 to nothing.
00:18:43.900 So the entire Senate, with a bipartisan voice, urged the president, prioritize the releasing of these political prisoners.
00:18:52.260 It matters.
00:18:53.600 How much political, I think, pressure in a positive way does that create for the conversation that happened? 0.64
00:19:01.220 Because when you meet with an adversary like China, and if you've ever been around these meetings, I was around a couple of them in the Bush second term.
00:19:10.840 A lot of it is very much scripted. 0.58
00:19:12.940 You have State Department that gets with their equivalent, the State Department, they decide what will and will not be talked about at the table in these meetings.
00:19:19.080 But when you have a 100-0 vote, you have Dick Durbin, you have you, and is that giving the ammo extra to the president saying, hey, you've got all of the United States Congress behind you.
00:19:29.600 It gives you a reason, even if you need to, in essence, to break protocol on what's been agreed to in the meetings and say, hey, this just happened and we got to talk about it.
00:19:38.580 Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And this is something when I put this resolution on the floor, I'm working in coordination with the White House, with the administration.
00:19:48.260 And the president had already indicated an openness to raising these political prisoners.
00:19:54.800 And what this does is give him additional ammunition. It lets him say to Xi, look, the Senate, 100 to nothing.
00:20:03.500 We may have political disagreements in our country and other topics, but not on this.
00:20:07.280 Every single senator, from the most conservative to the most liberal, they're all on the same page.
00:20:12.980 And I'll use an example that's actually a very similar circumstance, which is Mark Swidan.
00:20:17.420 So Mark Swidan is a Texan who was wrongfully imprisoned in China for over 10 years.
00:20:25.120 He was thrown in prison.
00:20:26.820 His health failed badly.
00:20:29.380 And I led the fight in the Senate for years to free Mark Swidan, including sitting down with a Chinese ambassador in a one-on-one, leaning in very hard, urging China to release him, that civilized countries don't keep political prisoners.
00:20:46.960 Joe Biden was president during much of this time.
00:20:50.000 And so I repeatedly pressured President Biden and and and the State Department to raise Mark Swidane.
00:20:58.260 Mark Swidane's mom is it lives in Texas.
00:21:00.920 I talked to her multiple times and I did the same thing.
00:21:04.480 I introduced a resolution calling for the release of Mark Swidane.
00:21:08.900 And it passed the Senate just like this one did 100 to nothing.
00:21:11.820 that gives real force and and it ended up uh joe biden followed through and and pressed it uh the
00:21:19.040 state department followed through and finally the pressure was enough that china released mark
00:21:23.420 swadan so he is no longer in a chinese prison he has been released he came back in fact he came to
00:21:28.780 my office i i had the opportunity to meet him and embrace him and this is someone who for years
00:21:34.220 i was speaking his name and demanding his release and and and it's you know often when you're dealing
00:21:41.040 with with with a government like like the chinese communist government it's a question of ratcheting
00:21:46.480 up pressure and and any one step typically is not enough but the more pressure you put on the more
00:21:54.080 leverage you put on the more likely they are to to to comply so you know here's what the resolution
00:22:01.220 said expressing the sense of the senate that the president should prioritize securing the release
00:22:06.340 of Pastor Jin Mingri, Pastor Guo Guanfu, and his wife Pangju, Jimmy Lai, Dr. Gulshan Abbas,
00:22:16.040 and Ek Parasat detained by the People's Republic of China during future engagements with Chinese
00:22:21.500 President Xi Jinping. Whereas the government of the People's Republic of China has arrested
00:22:27.260 Chinese, American, and British citizens for the peaceful expression of free speech or religion
00:22:32.960 or such acts by family members, whereas such arrests have been widely condemned by the
00:22:39.380 international community and human rights organizations with repeated calls for the
00:22:43.720 release of the detainees, whereas on May 17, 2025, Pastor Gao Kuanfu of the Light of Zion Church
00:22:53.580 in Xi'an City was detained and is being held on charges of, quote,
00:22:58.820 using superstitious activities to undermine the implementation of law. 0.96
00:23:04.360 In other words, being a Christian is what they're holding them for, 0.99
00:23:07.320 and also, quote, fraud. 0.94
00:23:09.480 Whereas Pastor Gao's wife, Pang Yu,
00:23:12.080 who was subsequently detained on June 7, 2025,
00:23:16.000 remains held despite holding no official position in the church
00:23:20.020 and has been denied access to critical prescription medication.
00:23:24.440 Whereas on or about October 10, 2025,
00:23:27.320 authorities of the People's Republic of China detained Pastor Jen Mingri, founder of Zion Church,
00:23:34.740 along with other church leaders, on equally dubious charges of, quote,
00:23:39.800 illegal uses of information networks.
00:23:44.080 Whereas Pastor Jen continues to be detained without access to critical medications to treat diabetes
00:23:49.560 or contact with family members in the People's Republic of China and the United States.
00:23:54.880 Whereas on November 7th, 2025, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 463, calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all detained members of Zion Church, including Pastor Jen.
00:24:09.200 And by the way, that was my resolution as well that I introduced and passed last year.
00:24:14.160 And for the government of the People's Republic of China to end harassment and intimidations of the relatives of Zion Church members and their relatives.
00:24:23.940 Whereas in 1995, Jimmy Lai founded the Apple Daily newspaper in Hong Kong and subsequently faced repeated harassment and arrest, including a 69-month sentence in 2022 on dubious fraud charges that were later overturned and a subsequent 20-year sentence in February 2026 on dubious national security charges.
00:24:47.640 Whereas, in December 2025, President Donald Trump said he had asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to consider releasing Jimmy Lai.
00:24:56.160 Whereas, on December 4th, 2025, House Resolution 930 was introduced commemorating Jimmy Lai and calling on authorities of the People's Republic of China to immediately and unconditionally release Jimmy Lai and all other Hong Kong pro-democracy advocates in prisons.
00:25:12.000 And it goes on.
00:25:13.380 There are a whole series more of whereas provisions.
00:25:15.860 But then it says resolved that the Senate calls upon the president to prioritize securing the humanitarian release of Pastor Jin Mingri, Pastor Gao Quanfu and his wife, Pang Yu, Jimmy Lai, Dr. Gulshom Abbas and Ek Parasat and other wrongfully detained individuals on the agenda for engagements with President Xi Jinping, including the anticipated May 2026 summit.
00:25:43.940 and urges the president to seek verifiable proof of life
00:25:49.080 and access to independent legal counsel, family communication,
00:25:53.360 and medical care for such detainees,
00:25:55.860 and reaffirms the commitment of the United States
00:25:58.480 to defend political and religious freedoms worldwide.
00:26:02.640 Incredible. It really is.
00:26:04.760 And look, this is an administration, as you know,
00:26:08.120 that has really been about getting back Americans all over the world.
00:26:11.900 They've made it a priority.
00:26:12.820 With great success. President Trump is very effective at this.
00:26:16.360 And that's the reason why I think it's going to be very interesting to see what comes out of this.
00:26:20.020 Quickly, what is your definition of success of overall this big meeting with China?
00:26:25.560 Look, it depends. There are a number of things that President Trump is trying to accomplish.
00:26:30.340 One of the things he's trying to do is to get China to assist with Iran.
00:26:35.520 And China is the main purchaser of Iranian oil.
00:26:38.820 And so China could exert a lot of leverage over Iran.
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00:28:28.840 All right, Senator, this is a very interesting story.
00:28:35.700 It deals with the New York Times, not saying you say every day, being sued by a foreign country and a lawsuit that I think many are going to be very excited when they hear exactly who's suing the New York Times and what it's all about.
00:28:50.220 Well, let's start with the proposition that the New York Times is a garbage newspaper, that they are not, in fact.
00:28:56.540 You need a second for that? I second that. Amen. 0.97
00:28:58.840 Look, they are not journalists. They are not objectively reporting on facts. They are not trying to tell the truth. They are dishonest. They are propagandists. They are hard left. They are frequently pushing anti-American propaganda, left-wing propaganda. And in particular, the New York Times hates the state of Israel.
00:29:16.980 So they are routinely, any way they can slander Israel, they're eager to do so.
00:29:22.340 And that has been the case for many decades.
00:29:25.140 That being said, they reached a new low with a column by Nicholas Kristof that was truly repulsive.
00:29:34.200 And let me read to you how National Review reported on this issue.
00:29:37.760 The Israeli government is suing the New York Times over columnist Nicholas Kristof's thinly sourced report accusing Israeli soldiers and prison guards of using rape and other forms of sexual violence against Palestinian prisoners as part of an organized state policy.
00:29:54.820 Christoph's column, which goes so far as to accuse Israeli soldiers of using trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, cites a number of obviously conflicted organizations and individuals whose accounts are not backed by documentation or supporting eyewitnesses accounts.
00:30:17.620 Now, understand this for a minute. Christoph wrote that the Israeli government uses dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners' men. Let's just start with a fairly obvious proposition. Dogs don't rape people. That's not something dogs do.
00:30:34.320 That's not, like, even in the world of anti-Semitic Israel hate, making up stories that they've trained dogs to rape human beings, there is zero evidence of that.
00:30:49.180 That is not something, and by the way, Christoph had no evidence of it.
00:30:52.940 He just cites, well, here I'll read a little more.
00:30:55.800 quote following the publication by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times of one of the
00:31:00.400 most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the state of Israel in the modern press
00:31:04.860 which also received the backing of the newspaper Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign
00:31:09.600 Minister Gideon Sire have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against
00:31:15.320 the New York Times so Israel is suing the New York Times for defamation the column cites 14
00:31:22.920 individuals who claim to have been raped or otherwise sexually assaulted by Israeli settlers
00:31:28.480 or members of the security forces, only a few of whom agree to be named. Of the name sources,
00:31:34.120 several have changed their accounts over time, and at least one has a history of promoting Hamas
00:31:38.700 terror. The column also relies heavily on claims made by human rights watchdogs such as Euromed
00:31:44.540 Human Rights Monitor, a group with close ties to Hamas, and a history of gross and unsubstantiated
00:31:51.380 claims against israel the times is standing by christoph saying in a wednesday evening statement
00:31:57.680 that the column is based on quote on the record accounts and cites several analyses this is look
00:32:04.580 the the slander and just the bias of the new york times that they don't report facts and i'll tell
00:32:11.520 you christoph's column came out right before a detailed report came it came out of the sexual
00:32:19.900 abuse by Hamas on October 7th and afterwards of the hostages they took. And I guarantee you,
00:32:27.620 Kristoff and the New York Times, they knew this report was coming. And so this is exactly out of
00:32:33.880 the Saul Alinsky playbook. This is exactly how leftists operate. What it is, what they are doing,
00:32:41.100 they accuse others of doing. In this instance, Hamas used rape at a massive level. Now, mind you, 0.86
00:32:48.360 And it was pre-planned and well-organized, to be clear.
00:32:51.200 It was part of the attack.
00:32:53.420 And so people understand this, the reporting that was coming out, which is why, of course,
00:32:56.700 the New York Times would publish what they just published.
00:32:58.540 The report was very clear that they had pre-planned and orchestrated to use rape and sexual assault
00:33:07.480 during and after the attacks on October 7th on the people that were going to be taken hostage.
00:33:12.920 Like, this wasn't organic.
00:33:14.440 It was purposely planned to take place.
00:33:17.340 and that's part of the reporting and so like you mentioned a moment ago we will accuse the other
00:33:22.000 side of doing literally what we did and what they did the terrorists did that went in there and took 0.99
00:33:27.540 people is they said we're going to rape them we're going to kill some of them we're going to rape 1.00
00:33:31.800 others and we're going to keep raping them and we're going to hold them hostage and keep sexually 1.00
00:33:35.400 assaulting them that was all part of their terrorist plan yeah and and to give you a sense 0.99
00:33:40.020 you may say well look kristoff he's he's a columnist in the new york time surely he's objective
00:33:44.720 Surely he's not biased.
00:33:47.240 And that would, of course, be wrong and stop calling me Shirley.
00:33:52.080 Let me give you an amazing fact about Nicholas Kristof.
00:33:55.740 Okay, this is from a story in the Free Beacon.
00:33:57.720 Headline, Times columnist Kristof's father fought on Nazi side in World War II.
00:34:06.040 Hamas prison rape dog propagandist dad also defended Vichy war criminal,
00:34:11.040 then committed suicide after decades of nightmares.
00:34:14.720 Now, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose article accusing Israel of using dogs and carrots to rape Palestinian prisoners, is being denounced by the Israeli foreign minister as a Hamas propaganda fabricated in a baseless blood libel, had a father who served on the Nazi side during World War II.
00:34:33.780 In Kristof's 2024 memoir, Chasing Hope, he writes,
00:34:37.920 When I was growing up and other kids talked about their dads heroically battling the Nazis, I kept quiet.
00:34:44.760 I didn't want to admit that my father had actually fought for a year on the same side of the Nazis.
00:34:51.560 Christophe's father also wrote a letter to the editor of the Times in 1989 defending Paul Toubier,
00:34:57.860 the intelligence chief of a pro-Nazi militia in Vichy, France, who was convicted of killing seven Jewish hostages.
00:35:06.700 Now, look, I got to say, I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, 0.89
00:35:11.700 but it is still a little amazing to have someone who fought alongside the Nazis 0.52
00:35:17.260 have his son now spreading Hamas propaganda, attacking Israel.
00:35:23.800 And I guess the question you would ask is, is there anyone responsible at the New York Times?
00:35:28.620 Is there any editor?
00:35:30.300 The fact that you have the state of Israel suing them for defamation.
00:35:34.380 So one of the things Israel is going to get in this litigation is they're going to get the emails and discussions of, hey, is there any fact checking?
00:35:42.920 Is there any basis for these extraordinary and ridiculous and absurd claims?
00:35:49.940 And I think it is likely that you're going to see that the editors didn't care if there was any basis. 0.94
00:35:56.200 This is the political story they wanted to tell because they knew that the damning report of Hamas's use of rape was coming out.
00:36:06.480 And so they decided, let's put it all on Israel and blame Israel.
00:36:10.500 It is it's disgraceful. But but sadly, it is not very uncommon for The New York Times.
00:36:16.640 No, it's not. And by the way, go grab that free briefing article. You can read all about it.
00:36:20.200 It's Hamas propaganda. New York Times writer Christoph's sexual violence column caps a career of corrections.
00:36:26.200 retractions and apologies going back 25 years it's a great read don't forget we do this show
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00:36:36.520 wherever you get your podcast and the senator and i will see you back here next week on this
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