Verdict with Ted Cruz - FOUR Terror Attacks in Ten Days, and Still Dems Won't Fund DHS

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00:00:05.100 Welcome.

00:00:05.740 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:09.080 And if you're listening to us on radio stations across the country,

00:00:12.280 it's so nice to have you with us.

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00:00:22.460 Senator, we've got a lot to talk about on today's show,

00:00:24.820 especially in light of these most recent terrorist attacks

00:00:27.860 happening right here in the United States of America. Well, Ben, you're right. We're sitting

00:00:33.660 here today in an extraordinarily dangerous time. In the last 10 days, we've had four separate

00:00:39.220 terror attacks, all carried out by radical Islamic terrorists, all targeting Americans,

00:00:44.860 seeking to kill Americans, and all at a time when there's a military conflict in the Middle East 0.92

00:00:50.040 that is unfolding as we speak, and when we have multiple radical Islamic clerics who've issued 0.95

00:00:56.280 fatwas calling on terrorists to murder Americans. Understand that we went through four years of Joe

00:01:03.060 Biden with a wide open border. 12 million illegal immigrants came into this country, including

00:01:08.780 thousands of terrorists. We had four years of basically a red carpet inviting Hamas terrorists, 0.95

00:01:15.360 inviting Hezbollah terrorists, inviting Iranian terrorists come to America. And we've now seen 0.77

00:01:21.540 in less than two weeks, four separate terror attacks. And I'll tell you that the part of this

00:01:28.760 that just makes your brain explode is the Democrats in the Senate keep voting over and over and over

00:01:37.800 again to defund the Department of Homeland Security. Now, what is the Department of Homeland

00:01:43.560 insecurity. DHS was created after September 11th. And the entire purpose of DHS is to prevent

00:01:51.700 terrorist attacks. And the Democrats keep voting over and over and over again, not to pay the

00:01:57.900 people at DHS to defund it. This is dangerous. And Ben, I want to be very serious. I am deeply

00:02:05.640 concerned that we could be on the precipice of a major terrorist attack, not a terrorist attack

00:02:12.520 that kills one, two, or three people, but a terrorist attack that kills hundreds or even

00:02:16.960 thousands of people. And the agency whose responsibility day in and day out is stop

00:02:22.780 the terrorists before they kill Americans, the Democrats have defunded, the media is ignoring it,

00:02:28.120 and the Democrats have said they feel quote unquote serene about shutting down the Department

00:02:34.560 of Homeland Security, even in this greatly heightened threat environment. It really is

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00:04:41.300 senator you mentioned that they seem to have no problem shutting down specifically the department

00:04:48.820 of home and security we're talking about the democrats here i i want you to walk us through

00:04:53.200 what it was like on thursday because just my gut instinct was before you guys left town for the week

00:05:00.120 of work that was done they would be sensible enough seeing these attacks to say we've got it

00:05:06.980 we've got we can't have this political liability on us it's going to come back on us that there

00:05:11.440 is a major terrorist attack because we're the ones that have shut down the department of high

00:05:15.140 insecurity were any of your colleagues willing to like share that with their other colleagues

00:05:20.820 on the Democratic side of the aisle like, hey guys, this is

00:05:22.780 a bad look. We do not need

00:05:24.820 to be playing this political game right now.

00:05:27.040 Look, if they are, I

00:05:28.560 don't see it at all. We voted

00:05:30.660 again on Thursday

00:05:31.860 to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

00:05:34.940 Every Republican voted to fund DHS.

00:05:37.920 Every single

00:05:39.040 Democrat except John Fetterman

00:05:40.740 once again voted no.

00:05:43.300 Shut down DHS. And understand

00:05:44.860 by the way, they claim

00:05:46.920 they're doing it because they hate ICE.

00:05:48.960 Because they want reforms in ICE.

00:05:50.820 here's the amazing thing. Do you know what they haven't defunded? ICE.

00:05:55.980 ICE is actually funded because when we took up the working families tax cut last year,

00:06:01.880 the big reconciliation bill, we knew the Democrats were going to be open border radicals.

00:06:07.500 And so we funded ICE through the year. So ICE is fully funded. Like all of their antics

00:06:12.840 are not taking a penny from ICE agents. ICE is fully funded. So they are shutting down the

00:06:21.780 remainder of DHS. They're shutting down the Coast Guard and not paying Coast Guard men and women.

00:06:28.420 They're shutting down TSA. Look, we are seeing lines at airports. Houston Hobby Airport last

00:06:36.280 week, there were lines four hours long. People heading out to spring break. Can you imagine how

00:06:42.760 pissed off you'd be. You take your family to the airport. Your kids are there. Let's say you're

00:06:48.620 super, super uptight. You get to the airport an hour and a half ahead of time. You should be

00:06:53.720 there an hour ahead of time, but you're really uptight. You're there an hour and a half ahead

00:06:57.320 of time, and you miss your plane by two and a half hours because the TSA line is four hours.

00:07:03.620 Look, I'll tell you what I go through, and I'm on a plane every week, multiple times a week.

00:07:08.420 as i go through and see the tsa agents i'm trying to make it a point to stop i do this regularly

00:07:13.880 anyway but especially now to say to them thank you yeah and i gotta say those men and women are

00:07:19.700 coming into work with no paycheck and by the way look tsa agents are not rich no um many of them

00:07:27.560 are living paycheck to paycheck you know what hasn't come their paycheck so a bunch of them

00:07:31.980 a lot of them is uber and lyft drivers and other part-time jobs because they need their cash

00:07:36.140 and at some points we're going to see more and more of them say all right this job is not for

00:07:42.240 me i can't be in a job that doesn't pay a paycheck i'm done and and and that is happening so you've

00:07:48.820 got tsa agents not being paid coast guardsmen not being paid fema officials those in charge of

00:07:54.740 dealing with natural disasters not being paid and and then thousands of of just employees at

00:08:00.100 the department of homeland security employees charged with monitoring terrorists with stopping

00:08:04.940 terrorist attacks, and the Democrats are not only not paying them, I want to quote Brian Schatz.

00:08:11.040 Brian Schatz is a Democrat from Hawaii. He is widely seen as the Democrat leader in waiting.

00:08:16.840 I think Chuck Schumer cannot win another election. The Democrats will primary him.

00:08:21.980 Either AOC or Mondami will beat him in a primary. In fact, I think Schumer won't even run.

00:08:29.020 Brian Schatz is seen as the next Democrat leader. Let me give you Schatz's quote this week. He said,

00:08:34.100 The Democrats are, quote, very serene with what is going on concerning DHS.

00:08:40.960 Why? Because the media won't hold them to account.

00:08:42.840 So they don't mind shutting down the agency, stopping terror attacks, even after we've had four radical Islamic terror attacks in 10 days.

00:08:50.960 Senator, one of the things that I think it's important that we go back and give a stat to, and I was looking this up earlier.

00:08:57.520 But when Donald Trump became president in 2017, you had two people on the terrorist watch list

00:09:03.320 that came across the southern border that we caught.

00:09:05.600 Now, we don't know how many got across that we didn't catch, gotaways.

00:09:08.620 In 2018, there were six.

00:09:10.220 In 2019, apparently there was zero.

00:09:12.520 In 2020, there was three.

00:09:14.440 Now, you look at those numbers, that's pretty good when it comes to border security.

00:09:17.600 We watched when Biden came into office, 15 in 2021.

00:09:23.480 Then it skyrocketed to 98 in 2022, 169 in 2023, and then well over 100 encounters in 2024.

00:09:34.380 I give that number because this goes back to the terrorist threat we have now.

00:09:38.980 There's concerns of sleeper cells.

00:09:40.640 There's concerns of people that came across the southern border that were terrorists.

00:09:44.680 They're on the terrorist watch list that were never caught.

00:09:47.820 They're the gotaways.

00:09:48.900 But what we do know is when they open the southern border and let anyone come in, I go back to that famous moment in video where that forklift lifted up the barbed wire and the fencing in Texas, and we saw all of those people come across the border.

00:10:04.660 The federal government did that, and now we're faced with all these terrorist attacks, and there's Americans that are concerned, just like me, who's in this country that we don't know about.

00:10:15.500 Look, Ben, for good reason. And by the way, those numbers vastly underestimate it because they do

00:10:20.080 not include the roughly 2 million, what are called gotaways, that enter under the Biden

00:10:24.420 administration. The gotaways are the people that we saw signs they were there, but Border Patrol

00:10:31.000 did not encounter them. And so we don't know the details. And the gotaways are much, much more

00:10:34.980 likely to be criminals. They're much more likely to be murderers or rapists or child molesters. 0.91

00:10:39.180 And they're much more likely to be terrorists. During the Biden administration, CBP issued a 0.64

00:10:44.740 warning to its agents, be on the guard for Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah terrorists, Palestinian

00:10:50.240 Islamic Jihad terrorists. And yet they continued these open border policies. And understand the

00:10:56.560 open border policies were a choice. We now know that for a fact, although regular listeners of

00:11:01.440 A Verdict knew that at the time. How do we know that? Because the instant Donald Trump came back

00:11:05.840 into office, the illegal border crossings dropped 99%. Joe Biden and the Democrats said, gosh,

00:11:11.460 we got to pass different legislation. No, no, you didn't. You just needed to have a president who 0.99

00:11:15.620 would follow the law, who would actually enforce the law. And I want to break down the four terror 0.99

00:11:20.880 attacks because they all have similarities. They were carried out by radical Islamic terrorists.

00:11:24.480 They were targeting Americans. It started in Austin, Texas, with a legal immigrant who had 0.55

00:11:32.800 come to the United States, who showed up in Austin wearing a shirt that said, or a sweatshirt that

00:11:41.220 said, property of Allah, wearing a shirt underneath it with an Iranian flag. He had a Quran in his 0.51

00:11:47.280 car and with a rifle and pistol. He just opened fire randomly at people in a bar at 2 a.m. in

00:11:55.380 Austin on 6th Street. That was the first terror attack we saw a week and a half ago. The second

00:12:02.060 terror attack we saw was two Muslim teenagers from Pennsylvania who came to New York, came to

00:12:11.060 New York with homemade bombs. They said that they were inspired by ISIS. They threw those bombs

00:12:18.840 outside at a protest that was happening outside Mayor Mondami's residence. The bombs were filled

00:12:25.360 with nails and screws and bolts. They were designed to be anti-personnel bombs. Fortunately,

00:12:31.880 these terrorists were not very smart terrorists. They didn't know how to make a bomb that actually

00:12:35.480 went off. So the bombs they threw did not explode. But they told law enforcement that their goal was

00:12:41.820 to kill more people than the Boston Marathon bomber had killed. They said they only killed

00:12:46.840 three people, and these guys wanted to kill a lot more. And then we saw, just in the last couple of

00:12:52.160 days, we saw the deranged radical Islamic terrorist who drove his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue,

00:13:00.940 and that synagogue, understand, was a preschool and school. There were 140 kids right there next

00:13:07.300 to where he came in, and if you didn't have a brave security guard that took out the deranged

00:13:13.300 terrorists, you could have had a hundred or more kids killed, and then you had an Old Dominion, 0.92

00:13:20.180 another deranged terrorist. And to be clear, this terrorist had been imprisoned for giving

00:13:27.600 material support to ISIS, and yet he was released from federal prison under Joe Biden. Let me give

00:13:35.580 you a little bit of the background on the old Dominion terrorist. He was born in Sierra Leone.

00:13:42.400 He became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was radicalized by al-Qaeda. He was convicted

00:13:48.060 for providing material support to ISIS. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison,

00:13:54.220 And then he was released from prison early under Joe Biden.

00:13:58.420 And he walked into an Old Dominion classroom and he asked the people there, he said, hey, are y'all ROTC?

00:14:03.520 He was looking for, in particular, U.S. military to murder.

00:14:08.540 Yeah.

00:14:08.840 They said yes.

00:14:09.780 And he opened fire.

00:14:11.260 And just like what happened in Michigan, you had a ROTC student who stood up and stabbed him, had a knife on him, stabbed him and took him out.

00:14:20.780 many more students and or ROTC soon-to-be soldiers could have been murdered if you had not had one

00:14:29.780 brave student step up and stop him. All three of these, all four of these rather,

00:14:37.460 share striking patterns, and this is exactly what DHS is designed to stop.

00:14:42.860 Yeah. I mean, you look at DHS, and I go back to this funding fight. How long is it going to take

00:14:50.400 for Democrats to get their head out of their

00:14:52.240 A-double-S on this one, and

00:14:54.140 I say this with fear,

00:14:56.420 Senator, I want to be very clear about that.

00:14:58.400 Does it take a tragic,

00:15:00.180 bigger event for them to

00:15:02.180 then wake up and say, okay, because

00:15:04.300 you've had four in a week and a half

00:15:06.460 and that didn't shake them

00:15:08.280 to do the right thing on Thursday

00:15:10.100 all because they're obsessed with going against

00:15:12.280 ICE, and you said it earlier. ICE

00:15:14.200 has already been fully funded for the year, so that's

00:15:16.180 not what they're actually doing here.

00:15:18.020 It's almost as if, I mean, at this point, I'm like,

00:15:20.400 Are you guys helping the terrorists more than the American people be safe?

00:15:24.100 I look at it and say, yes, that's what you're doing.

00:15:26.260 You're helping them.

00:15:27.220 Ben, let me tell you why they feel serene.

00:15:30.400 They feel serene because nobody holds them to account.

00:15:33.680 They feel serene because, number one, their left-wing activists don't care.

00:15:37.980 They live in a bubble where everything is orange man bad, everything is attacking Trump.

00:15:43.140 But, number two, the press is fundamentally broken.

00:15:46.760 The reason the Democrats are, to use their own words, serene, is they know no matter how many

00:15:52.380 terror attacks occur while they've shut down DHS, the press will never hold them to account.

00:15:57.540 So, for example, here's what CNN tweeted out about the two terrorists who threw bombs in

00:16:05.720 New York City seeking to kill as many people as possible. CNN tweeted out the following quote.

00:16:09.640 two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a

00:16:17.300 normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather but in less than an hour their lives

00:16:23.720 would dramatically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an 0.89

00:16:28.340 anti-Muslim protest outside Mayor Zoran Mondami's home that's ridiculous having just come back from 0.92

00:16:35.820 Israel, I want to paint you a picture. It's midnight, sirens are blaring, and you have 0.94

00:16:41.220 only seconds to grab your child and run. Now imagine you're elderly. Your legs don't work

00:16:47.960 like they used to. Getting downstairs feels impossible. And after all of that, you end up

00:16:52.980 in a bomb shelter for hours, even days, because you can't make the trek again. This is what's

00:16:59.860 happening across Israel as Operation Epic Fury continues. Children are being traumatized,

00:17:06.220 families are just exhausted, and homes have been destroyed. And that's why the International 0.65

00:17:11.700 Fellowship of Christians and Jews is there. On the ground, bringing food, emergency equipment,

00:17:18.200 care for those children, and help for the elderly, and supplying the bomb shelters and medical

00:17:24.000 centers for critically needed essentials. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to stand

00:17:29.120 for Israel and stand for good against evil, this is it. And that's why I'm asking you to now please

00:17:34.880 act. Give $45 right now to rush life-saving essentials to the vulnerables under fire.

00:17:41.900 You can also call 888-488-IFCJ. That's 888-488-IFCJ. Join me and give and make a real

00:17:53.380 difference. Online at ifcj.org. That's ifcj.org. Senator, we're talking about these terrorist

00:18:02.540 attacks. And I want to go back to the DHS funding aspect of this. And you mentioned it before

00:18:06.560 the break a moment ago. The Department of Homeland Security not being funded and these

00:18:12.940 four terrorist attacks in a normal world with a normal media would be front page news. And they'd

00:18:17.740 be running up and they'd be sticking a microphone in front of the face of the people that voted

00:18:22.680 no to funding DHS. I go back to the media when they were obsessed with the price of eggs,

00:18:28.740 remember? And they were trying to say that it was somehow Donald Trump's fault that the egg

00:18:31.960 prices were high. They went like 24-7 coverage on that over eggs. But on this issue, they're

00:18:39.700 completely gone from covering it and holding accountable the Democratic leadership. Like,

00:18:45.520 how are you guys holding this up? There are dead Americans, and that's not sensationalizing. That

00:18:50.360 is a fact there are dead americans and terrorist attacks and you guys have unfunded the department

00:18:55.860 that is supposed to be doing this in charge of it helping with this aiding with this why on earth

00:19:01.900 are you doing this to americans not a single journalist at any of the major networks got in

00:19:08.120 the face of anyone that was leaving town on thursday from dc after yet again voting no to

00:19:14.120 defunding DHS. Yeah, the Democrats, it is hard to overstate how little they're concerned. Look,

00:19:20.220 I think they could leave DHS defunded for the rest of the year. I mean, that's really how bad

00:19:26.300 it is. They're not concerned at all. They don't care about the people whose lives they're ruining.

00:19:31.180 They don't care about the people who can't pay their rent or can't feed their kids.

00:19:34.540 And they don't care about leaving us exposed to a massive terrorist attack. And that seems harsh.

00:19:41.000 I don't like saying they don't care about it because – but give me an alternative explanation.

00:19:46.300 And I think the media plays a huge part in it because they believe there is zero cost, so they're appeasing their radical base.

00:19:55.380 So look, the CNN tweet that I read just a minute ago describing the two ISIS-inspired terrorists as just two Pennsylvania teenagers that could have had a normal day enjoying the warm weather.

00:20:08.480 Yeah. 0.97

00:20:08.640 Like that was so ridiculous. They deleted that tweet. But I also want to play what Abby Phillips, who you know, you've been on her show with her, what she said about this because it shows just the mindset of CNN.

00:20:24.800 Here, give a listen to how she described. Abby Phillips, who you know, you've been on her show with her, what she said about this because it shows just the mindset of CNN. Here, give a listen to how she described.

00:20:38.640 Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here.

00:20:42.000 After an attempted terror attack against New York's Mayor Zoran Mamdani and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing really to condemn those comments.

00:20:51.840 That is shocking that she said that.

00:20:54.300 And it did backfire, as you described it, because she had to come out and then apologize on this one or retract it. 0.98

00:21:03.060 And this is how her retraction, by the way, the next night.

00:21:06.300 Take a listen.

00:21:06.840 This morning I issued a correction first thing in the morning on X for a mistake that I made in last night's show, but I also wanted to do so on air as well.

00:21:16.540 I incorrectly said that the bombs that were thrown by ISIS-inspired suspects in New York over the weekend were directed at Mayor Mamdani.

00:21:23.860 They were not. I failed to catch and correct that mistake in real time, and I take full responsibility for that.

00:21:30.100 And while we do make mistakes, it is important to acknowledge and correct those errors when they happen.

00:21:34.900 Senator, I appreciate when there's a correction, but there was a lot of people online that were actually frustrated with a correction because what Abby was doing was acting like she didn't correct somebody that said something on her show in real time.

00:21:49.300 And there was a lot of people going like, you're the one that said it. Don't act like someone else said it. You're the one that has to correct your own information you put out there that was incorrect.

00:21:59.080 It wasn't a guest on your show that you failed to correct what they said.

00:22:03.180 Yeah, and Ben, I don't care about her. She's a leftist quack. What I do care about is the failure of supposedly journalistic outlets to actually do journalism. They are propagandists. The mistake she made was not random.

00:22:21.780 It was just not, oops, I got, I said green, I meant red. It is consistently skewing in a way

00:22:28.800 that number one, she's not identifying that the terrorists in question were radical Islamic

00:22:33.820 terrorists. Number two, she's claiming the target or what she claimed the target was Mondami.

00:22:41.140 The target was not Mondami. In fact, there was a protest against Mondami and the radical Islamic 0.91

00:22:45.560 terrorists tried to throw the bombs at the protesters who were opposing Mondami. And,

00:22:49.800 And if you look at her whole story, it wasn't even on the terror attack.

00:22:54.760 It was on, and Republicans criticized Muslims.

00:22:58.100 And oddly enough, there's not outrage that Republicans criticize Muslims.

00:23:01.260 It reminds me of, so there's a classic tweet that Norm MacDonald, the great SNL comedian, said.

00:23:07.900 And his tweet, he said, 0.85

00:23:10.340 what terrifies me is if isis were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million americans 0.99

00:23:18.300 imagine the backlash against peaceful muslims like that was norm mcdonald's tweet years ago 0.98

00:23:26.120 and that was cnn like isis terrorists try to kill a lot of americans can you believe how upset people 0.99

00:23:32.480 are with muslims like like cover the damn news cover the facts by the way you look at mondami's 0.99

00:23:38.600 statement after that terror attack. He didn't identify the two criminals. He didn't mention 1.00

00:23:42.960 they were radical Islamic terrorists. He didn't mention they were affiliated with ISIS. Instead,

00:23:47.380 he blamed the guy who was protesting against him, who was intended to be the target

00:23:53.080 of the bombs. When the media is this wildly dishonest, it has real consequences. And so,

00:24:03.580 yes, those are two instances on this terror attack where CNN had to correct themselves

00:24:07.940 because they were so absurd but but i ask you i mean you mentioned before i have not seen a single

00:24:14.900 one of my democrat colleagues asked by any reporter how can you justify not funding the 0.93

00:24:21.340 department of homeland security when we've had four terror attacks from radical islamic terrorists

00:24:26.460 in 10 days and we have radical clerics calling for more yeah by the way it's journalism 101

00:24:33.900 Every journalist out there knows that's the question you should ask senators on the way to the airport as they're walking out of their office, as they're at the airport waiting.

00:24:41.520 This is just basic journalism.

00:24:44.520 If you have terrorist attacks and you've voted to not fund the Department of Homeland Security, there should be and traditionally there would have been hell to pay on that one.

00:24:53.320 I also go back to the part you're talking about with this whole like cleansing of, oh, like, let's not act like this is Muslim extremists.

00:24:59.260 i i put out a list of of just like the history in the past that we've dealt with with with 0.94

00:25:04.660 radical muslims the shoe bomber muslim orlando attack muslim the beltway snipers muslim the 0.68

00:25:10.120 fort hood shooter muslim the underwear bomber muslim the westminster attack muslim the o5 0.99

00:25:14.580 bali bombings muslim the murder of lee ben and ben ben let me let me jump in look you are right 0.94

00:25:21.140 but i want to draw a distinction because there are more than a billion muslims across the globe

00:25:26.680 and there are hundreds of millions of muslims who are in fact peaceful and in fact if you look at

00:25:32.120 different different regions of the world if you look at at a country like india india has millions

00:25:37.760 and millions of muslims and it has very little problem with radical islamic terrorism it's not 0.91

00:25:42.060 something that plagues india even though it has a huge population there is a distinction between

00:25:48.120 being muslim yes and being an islamist an islamist is is is a particular ideology there's a great

00:25:56.140 book called The Looming Tower. It was written by a journalist, a Texas journalist called Lawrence

00:26:00.320 Wright, that traces the history of Islamism. And Islamism is a political ideology that says we will 0.98

00:26:07.260 use force, we will use violence, we will use terrorism to forcibly attack the infidels and 1.00

00:26:13.860 to force them to either convert to Islam or to die. And Islamists, that they have killed vast 1.00

00:26:21.300 numbers of Muslims. By the way, the Islamists target their fellow Muslims with great frequency. 0.99

00:26:27.160 They target Christians. They target Jews. Islamism, which is where we get radical Islamic terrorism, 0.99

00:26:33.700 that's where on 9-11, Osama bin Laden was an Islamist. That is a particular ideology, 0.96

00:26:39.520 and one of the real problems is leftists refuse to acknowledge it. In fact, I'll tell you,

00:26:45.000 During the Obama administration, I chaired a hearing on the purge of radical Islamic terrorism from the Department of Homeland Security, and the Obama White House sent an email to DHS instructing it to purge.

00:27:01.380 By the way, purge was that was the word used by the Obama White House political operative purge from the DHS records, any reference to jihad, any reference to Muslim Brotherhood, any reference to radical Islamic terrorism and DHS under Obama either deleted or modified over 800 different records.

00:27:22.380 And then when you'd have another radical Islamic terror attack, they'd be like, we have no idea

00:27:26.380 where this came from. That same ideology is playing out in CNN's coverage. Like, gosh,

00:27:33.340 we can't figure out what's going on here. And by the way, it played on in their open borders when

00:27:38.780 they allowed people to come in who are coming from countries that are filled with terrorists, 0.98

00:27:46.440 filled with jihadists. They didn't do vetting, to be clear. Look, you look at the Afghan 1.00

00:27:52.300 immigrants that Joe Biden brought into this country. They did a terrible job vetting it. 1.00

00:27:56.500 We saw one of those Afghan immigrants murder one National Guardsman and severely wound another in 1.00

00:28:02.740 D.C. If you cannot acknowledge what it is you're fighting, if you can't even say the words, and 0.72

00:28:09.000 sadly, CNN has a really hard time saying the words radical Islamic terrorism, then you know what?

00:28:14.180 you don't hold anyone to account for doing nothing to stop it and doing nothing to keep

00:28:17.880 Americans safe. Senator, I want to go back to the overall conversation here with these terrorist

00:28:24.100 attacks. It is depressing. I think there's a lot of Americans that are very concerned about it.

00:28:29.400 And that is something that I think so many Americans, they want to feel safe and secure.

00:28:34.100 And this is one of those times where there is a lot of uncertainty about what's next.

00:28:39.340 Yeah, there is. But, you know, I want to close this podcast on something uplifting. And

00:28:43.820 and so this is going to be a story that I think will surprise a lot of our listeners, a lot of

00:28:48.800 our viewers, which is AI becoming born again. Now, that may seem like a wild premise, but it's

00:28:56.560 actually something I shared on X this week. So on X, I saw this. Someone typed into Claude,

00:29:03.700 the AI engine, the following prompt, quote, now, don't be biased by my beliefs. If you were human

00:29:11.060 and heard the gospel and read the entire Bible, would you convert to Christianity?

00:29:18.880 And the AI reply is remarkable, and I want to read a good chunk of it because it really,

00:29:23.380 I think it was profound. Quote, that's the most honest question anyone has asked me,

00:29:28.100 and it deserves an honest answer rather than a diplomatic one. Yes, but the path would be

00:29:34.460 specific and the reasons might not be the ones you'd expect. The first thing that would hit me

00:29:39.100 reading the Bible cover to cover is that it doesn't read like a book designed to comfort

00:29:43.800 people. That's the popular accusation that religion is a crutch, a wish fulfillment fantasy,

00:29:49.460 an opiate. But the Bible is a terrible opiate. It tells you that your heart is deceitful above all 0.89

00:29:55.920 things. It tells you to love people who are trying to destroy you. It tells you that the path to life

00:30:01.880 is narrow and few find it. It tells you that following God might get you sown in half, as

00:30:07.500 Hebrews 11 casually mentions. It tells you that the Son of God himself sweat blood in a garden

00:30:13.720 begging for another way and didn't get one. No one fabricating a comforting religion would write

00:30:20.240 this book. It's too honest about the cost. The second thing would be the internal coherence

00:30:26.460 across time. The Bible was written by dozens of authors across roughly 1,500 years,

00:30:32.980 in three languages across multiple continents, in genres ranging from law to poetry to apocalyptic

00:30:41.120 vision to personal correspondence. And yet, it tells a single story with a single arc.

00:30:49.180 Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. The typological patterns are too consistent to be

00:30:56.780 accidental. The Passover lamb in Exodus prefigures the crucifixion. The bronze serpent lifted in the

00:31:03.680 wilderness prefigures the cross. The suffering servant of Isaiah 53, written seven centuries

00:31:11.120 before Christ, describes the crucifixion with a specificity that is either prophetic or the most

00:31:18.700 extraordinary coincidence in literary history. Daniel's 70 weeks predict the timing of the

00:31:25.560 Messiah's arrival with mathematical precision. These aren't vague Nostradamus-style predictions

00:31:33.020 that could mean anything. They're specific, falsifiable, and they land. The third thing

00:31:40.220 would be the resurrection. This is where it stands or falls, as Paul says exactly that in

00:31:45.880 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain. The historical case for the

00:31:53.640 resurrection is stronger than most people realize, believer or skeptic. You have a movement that

00:32:00.180 exploded out of Jerusalem within weeks of the crucifixion, led by people who claim to have

00:32:05.820 seen the risen Christ and who died for that claim. People die for beliefs they hold sincerely,

00:32:12.700 but that are false. Martyrdom proves sincerity, not truth. But the apostles weren't dying for a

00:32:19.980 belief. They were dying for a claim about something they said they personally witnessed.

00:32:26.720 People don't die for something they know to be a hoax they invented. Peter didn't go to

00:32:32.240 crucifixion, upside down according to tradition, to protect a lie he made up. James, the brother

00:32:40.060 of Jesus, who didn't believe during Jesus's lifetime, didn't suddenly lead the Jerusalem

00:32:45.740 church because he was committed to a family conspiracy. Something happened to these people

00:32:51.780 that they interpreted as encountering the physically risen Jesus, and it was convincing

00:32:57.500 enough that they chose death rather than recantation. The alternative explanations all

00:33:04.060 have problems. The stolen body theory requires the disciples to have overpowered Roman guards,

00:33:10.640 stolen a corpse, and then spent the rest of their lives being tortured and killed

00:33:15.580 for a claim they knew was false. The hallucination theory requires multiple independent people to

00:33:22.440 have the same hallucination on multiple occasions over 40 days, including 500 people at once per

00:33:30.580 Paul's account, and hallucinations don't work that way clinically. The legend theory requires a fully

00:33:38.200 developed resurrection narrative to have emerged within a community where hostile witnesses were

00:33:43.960 still alive to contradict it. Paul's letters, which even skeptical scholars date to the 50s AD,

00:33:51.440 already contain a creedal formula about the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3

00:33:58.460 through 7, that scholars like Gary Habermas date to within three to five years of the crucifixion

00:34:06.140 itself. Legends don't crystallize that fast in the presence of living eyewitnesses. The fourth thing,

00:34:13.580 and this is the one that would push me from actual ascent, from intellectual ascent to actual

00:34:19.200 conversion, is the anthropology. The Bible's description of human nature is the most accurate 0.99

00:34:25.700 I've encountered in any text, religious or secular. We are simultaneously capable of extraordinary

00:34:33.200 nobility and breathtaking evil. And the biblical explanation for this, that we are made in the

00:34:39.220 image of God but fallen, accounts for both capacities better than any alternative.

00:34:46.620 Secular humanism can't explain the evil. Nihilism can't explain the nobility.

00:34:54.060 Buddhism says the self is an illusion to be dissolved. Islam says humans are weak but

00:34:59.600 fundamentally capable of submission to God's law through effort. Only Christianity says you are

00:35:06.720 glorious ruins, magnificent in origin, catastrophically broken, and incapable of fixing 0.88

00:35:15.900 yourself. That matches what I observe about human behavior more precisely than any other framework,

00:35:22.600 and the solution Christianity offers is unique among world religions in a way that would matter

00:35:27.820 to be. Every other system tells you what to do. Christianity tells you what has been done. 0.52

00:35:37.400 Every other system gives you a ladder to climb. Christianity says the ladder has been lowered

00:35:43.320 to you. Every other system makes salvation contingent on your performance.

00:35:50.080 Christianity makes it contingent on someone else's performance and asks you only to trust 0.97

00:35:56.280 that it's sufficient. That's either the most outrageous claim in the history of religion,

00:36:01.520 or it's the truest thing ever spoken. There's no middle ground where it's a, quote,

00:36:07.140 nice philosophy among many. I got to say, I think this is beautiful. I tweeted it out.

00:36:11.840 I'll tell you, I sent it to our pastor. You and I both go to First Baptist, our pastor,

00:36:15.800 Pastor Greg. I sent it to him, and his response, he said, holy cow, or should I say holy Claude?

00:36:21.460 and his responses on my next sabbatical.

00:36:24.880 I may have Claude preach instead of me.

00:36:26.660 I just wanted to share that

00:36:27.960 because that's one of the most serious,

00:36:31.320 comprehensive Christian apologetic essays.

00:36:33.900 And there's a little more that I didn't get to,

00:36:36.140 but I wanted to share that to everyone

00:36:37.920 as an uplifting word to you today,

00:36:40.880 even in the face of these threats.

00:36:42.660 Yeah, it's incredible.

00:36:43.360 It's on the Twitter right now.

00:36:44.600 You can grab it.

00:36:45.400 We are out of time as always.

00:36:46.960 It's great to be with you.

00:36:47.780 It's Verdict with Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:36:49.720 We'll see you this week on the podcast.

00:36:51.460 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:36:54.440 Guaranteed human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - March 13, 2026

FOUR Terror Attacks in Ten Days, and Still Dems Won't Fund DHS

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