00:09:48.900But 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.
00:10:04.660The 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.
00:10:15.500Look, Ben, for good reason. And by the way, those numbers vastly underestimate it because they do
00:10:20.080not include the roughly 2 million, what are called gotaways, that enter under the Biden
00:10:24.420administration. The gotaways are the people that we saw signs they were there, but Border Patrol
00:10:31.000did not encounter them. And so we don't know the details. And the gotaways are much, much more
00:10:34.980likely to be criminals. They're much more likely to be murderers or rapists or child molesters.
00:10:39.180And they're much more likely to be terrorists. During the Biden administration, CBP issued a
00:10:44.740warning to its agents, be on the guard for Hamas terrorists, Hezbollah terrorists, Palestinian
00:10:50.240Islamic Jihad terrorists. And yet they continued these open border policies. And understand the
00:10:56.560open border policies were a choice. We now know that for a fact, although regular listeners of
00:11:01.440A Verdict knew that at the time. How do we know that? Because the instant Donald Trump came back
00:11:05.840into office, the illegal border crossings dropped 99%. Joe Biden and the Democrats said, gosh,
00:11:11.460we got to pass different legislation. No, no, you didn't. You just needed to have a president who
00:11:15.620would follow the law, who would actually enforce the law. And I want to break down the four terror
00:11:20.880attacks because they all have similarities. They were carried out by radical Islamic terrorists.
00:11:24.480They were targeting Americans. It started in Austin, Texas, with a legal immigrant who had
00:11:32.800come to the United States, who showed up in Austin wearing a shirt that said, or a sweatshirt that
00:11:41.220said, property of Allah, wearing a shirt underneath it with an Iranian flag. He had a Quran in his
00:11:47.280car and with a rifle and pistol. He just opened fire randomly at people in a bar at 2 a.m. in
00:11:55.380Austin on 6th Street. That was the first terror attack we saw a week and a half ago. The second
00:12:02.060terror attack we saw was two Muslim teenagers from Pennsylvania who came to New York, came to
00:12:11.060New York with homemade bombs. They said that they were inspired by ISIS. They threw those bombs
00:12:18.840outside at a protest that was happening outside Mayor Mondami's residence. The bombs were filled
00:12:25.360with nails and screws and bolts. They were designed to be anti-personnel bombs. Fortunately,
00:12:31.880these terrorists were not very smart terrorists. They didn't know how to make a bomb that actually
00:12:35.480went off. So the bombs they threw did not explode. But they told law enforcement that their goal was
00:12:41.820to kill more people than the Boston Marathon bomber had killed. They said they only killed
00:12:46.840three people, and these guys wanted to kill a lot more. And then we saw, just in the last couple of
00:12:52.160days, we saw the deranged radical Islamic terrorist who drove his vehicle into a Michigan synagogue,
00:13:00.940and that synagogue, understand, was a preschool and school. There were 140 kids right there next
00:13:07.300to where he came in, and if you didn't have a brave security guard that took out the deranged
00:13:13.300terrorists, you could have had a hundred or more kids killed, and then you had an Old Dominion,
00:13:20.180another deranged terrorist. And to be clear, this terrorist had been imprisoned for giving
00:13:27.600material support to ISIS, and yet he was released from federal prison under Joe Biden. Let me give
00:13:35.580you a little bit of the background on the old Dominion terrorist. He was born in Sierra Leone.
00:13:42.400He became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He was radicalized by al-Qaeda. He was convicted
00:13:48.060for providing material support to ISIS. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison,
00:13:54.220And then he was released from prison early under Joe Biden.
00:13:58.420And he walked into an Old Dominion classroom and he asked the people there, he said, hey, are y'all ROTC?
00:14:03.520He was looking for, in particular, U.S. military to murder.
00:14:11.260And 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.
00:14:20.780many more students and or ROTC soon-to-be soldiers could have been murdered if you had not had one
00:14:29.780brave student step up and stop him. All three of these, all four of these rather,
00:14:37.460share striking patterns, and this is exactly what DHS is designed to stop.
00:14:42.860Yeah. I mean, you look at DHS, and I go back to this funding fight. How long is it going to take
00:14:50.400for Democrats to get their head out of their
00:15:27.220Ben, let me tell you why they feel serene.
00:15:30.400They feel serene because nobody holds them to account.
00:15:33.680They feel serene because, number one, their left-wing activists don't care.
00:15:37.980They live in a bubble where everything is orange man bad, everything is attacking Trump.
00:15:43.140But, number two, the press is fundamentally broken.
00:15:46.760The reason the Democrats are, to use their own words, serene, is they know no matter how many
00:15:52.380terror attacks occur while they've shut down DHS, the press will never hold them to account.
00:15:57.540So, for example, here's what CNN tweeted out about the two terrorists who threw bombs in
00:16:05.720New York City seeking to kill as many people as possible. CNN tweeted out the following quote.
00:16:09.640two Pennsylvania teenagers crossed into New York City Saturday morning for what could have been a
00:16:17.300normal day enjoying the city during abnormally warm weather but in less than an hour their lives
00:16:23.720would dramatically change as the pair would be arrested for throwing homemade bombs during an
00:16:28.340anti-Muslim protest outside Mayor Zoran Mondami's home that's ridiculous having just come back from
00:16:35.820Israel, I want to paint you a picture. It's midnight, sirens are blaring, and you have
00:16:41.220only seconds to grab your child and run. Now imagine you're elderly. Your legs don't work
00:16:47.960like they used to. Getting downstairs feels impossible. And after all of that, you end up
00:16:52.980in a bomb shelter for hours, even days, because you can't make the trek again. This is what's
00:16:59.860happening across Israel as Operation Epic Fury continues. Children are being traumatized,
00:17:06.220families are just exhausted, and homes have been destroyed. And that's why the International
00:17:11.700Fellowship of Christians and Jews is there. On the ground, bringing food, emergency equipment,
00:17:18.200care for those children, and help for the elderly, and supplying the bomb shelters and medical
00:17:24.000centers for critically needed essentials. If you've ever wondered what it looks like to stand
00:17:29.120for Israel and stand for good against evil, this is it. And that's why I'm asking you to now please
00:17:34.880act. Give $45 right now to rush life-saving essentials to the vulnerables under fire.
00:17:41.900You can also call 888-488-IFCJ. That's 888-488-IFCJ. Join me and give and make a real
00:17:53.380difference. Online at ifcj.org. That's ifcj.org. Senator, we're talking about these terrorist
00:18:02.540attacks. And I want to go back to the DHS funding aspect of this. And you mentioned it before
00:18:06.560the break a moment ago. The Department of Homeland Security not being funded and these
00:18:12.940four terrorist attacks in a normal world with a normal media would be front page news. And they'd
00:18:17.740be running up and they'd be sticking a microphone in front of the face of the people that voted
00:18:22.680no to funding DHS. I go back to the media when they were obsessed with the price of eggs,
00:18:28.740remember? And they were trying to say that it was somehow Donald Trump's fault that the egg
00:18:31.960prices were high. They went like 24-7 coverage on that over eggs. But on this issue, they're
00:18:39.700completely gone from covering it and holding accountable the Democratic leadership. Like,
00:18:45.520how are you guys holding this up? There are dead Americans, and that's not sensationalizing. That
00:18:50.360is a fact there are dead americans and terrorist attacks and you guys have unfunded the department
00:18:55.860that is supposed to be doing this in charge of it helping with this aiding with this why on earth
00:19:01.900are you doing this to americans not a single journalist at any of the major networks got in
00:19:08.120the face of anyone that was leaving town on thursday from dc after yet again voting no to
00:19:14.120defunding DHS. Yeah, the Democrats, it is hard to overstate how little they're concerned. Look,
00:19:20.220I think they could leave DHS defunded for the rest of the year. I mean, that's really how bad
00:19:26.300it is. They're not concerned at all. They don't care about the people whose lives they're ruining.
00:19:31.180They don't care about the people who can't pay their rent or can't feed their kids.
00:19:34.540And they don't care about leaving us exposed to a massive terrorist attack. And that seems harsh.
00:19:41.000I don't like saying they don't care about it because – but give me an alternative explanation.
00:19:46.300And I think the media plays a huge part in it because they believe there is zero cost, so they're appeasing their radical base.
00:19:55.380So 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.
00:20:08.640Like 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.
00:20:24.800Here, 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.
00:20:38.640Two Republicans say Muslims don't belong here.
00:20:42.000After an attempted terror attack against New York's Mayor Zoran Mamdani and the House Speaker, Mike Johnson, says nothing really to condemn those comments.
00:21:06.840This 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.
00:21:16.540I incorrectly said that the bombs that were thrown by ISIS-inspired suspects in New York over the weekend were directed at Mayor Mamdani.
00:21:23.860They were not. I failed to catch and correct that mistake in real time, and I take full responsibility for that.
00:21:30.100And while we do make mistakes, it is important to acknowledge and correct those errors when they happen.
00:21:34.900Senator, 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.
00:21:49.300And 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.
00:21:59.080It wasn't a guest on your show that you failed to correct what they said.
00:22:03.180Yeah, 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.
00:22:21.780It was just not, oops, I got, I said green, I meant red. It is consistently skewing in a way
00:22:28.800that number one, she's not identifying that the terrorists in question were radical Islamic
00:22:33.820terrorists. Number two, she's claiming the target or what she claimed the target was Mondami.
00:22:41.140The target was not Mondami. In fact, there was a protest against Mondami and the radical Islamic
00:22:45.560terrorists tried to throw the bombs at the protesters who were opposing Mondami. And,
00:22:49.800And if you look at her whole story, it wasn't even on the terror attack.
00:22:54.760It was on, and Republicans criticized Muslims.
00:22:58.100And oddly enough, there's not outrage that Republicans criticize Muslims.
00:23:01.260It reminds me of, so there's a classic tweet that Norm MacDonald, the great SNL comedian, said.
00:23:10.340what terrifies me is if isis were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million americans
00:23:18.300imagine the backlash against peaceful muslims like that was norm mcdonald's tweet years ago
00:23:26.120and that was cnn like isis terrorists try to kill a lot of americans can you believe how upset people
00:23:32.480are with muslims like like cover the damn news cover the facts by the way you look at mondami's
00:23:38.600statement after that terror attack. He didn't identify the two criminals. He didn't mention
00:23:42.960they were radical Islamic terrorists. He didn't mention they were affiliated with ISIS. Instead,
00:23:47.380he blamed the guy who was protesting against him, who was intended to be the target
00:23:53.080of the bombs. When the media is this wildly dishonest, it has real consequences. And so,
00:24:03.580yes, those are two instances on this terror attack where CNN had to correct themselves
00:24:07.940because they were so absurd but but i ask you i mean you mentioned before i have not seen a single
00:24:14.900one of my democrat colleagues asked by any reporter how can you justify not funding the
00:24:21.340department of homeland security when we've had four terror attacks from radical islamic terrorists
00:24:26.460in 10 days and we have radical clerics calling for more yeah by the way it's journalism 101
00:24:33.900Every 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.
00:24:44.520If 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.
00:24:53.320I 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.
00:24:59.260i i put out a list of of just like the history in the past that we've dealt with with with
00:25:04.660radical muslims the shoe bomber muslim orlando attack muslim the beltway snipers muslim the
00:25:10.120fort hood shooter muslim the underwear bomber muslim the westminster attack muslim the o5
00:25:14.580bali bombings muslim the murder of lee ben and ben ben let me let me jump in look you are right
00:25:21.140but i want to draw a distinction because there are more than a billion muslims across the globe
00:25:26.680and there are hundreds of millions of muslims who are in fact peaceful and in fact if you look at
00:25:32.120different different regions of the world if you look at at a country like india india has millions
00:25:37.760and millions of muslims and it has very little problem with radical islamic terrorism it's not
00:25:42.060something that plagues india even though it has a huge population there is a distinction between
00:25:48.120being muslim yes and being an islamist an islamist is is is a particular ideology there's a great
00:25:56.140book called The Looming Tower. It was written by a journalist, a Texas journalist called Lawrence
00:26:00.320Wright, that traces the history of Islamism. And Islamism is a political ideology that says we will
00:26:07.260use force, we will use violence, we will use terrorism to forcibly attack the infidels and
00:26:13.860to force them to either convert to Islam or to die. And Islamists, that they have killed vast
00:26:21.300numbers of Muslims. By the way, the Islamists target their fellow Muslims with great frequency.
00:26:27.160They target Christians. They target Jews. Islamism, which is where we get radical Islamic terrorism,
00:26:33.700that's where on 9-11, Osama bin Laden was an Islamist. That is a particular ideology,
00:26:39.520and one of the real problems is leftists refuse to acknowledge it. In fact, I'll tell you,
00:26:45.000During 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.
00:27:01.380By 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.
00:27:22.380And then when you'd have another radical Islamic terror attack, they'd be like, we have no idea
00:27:26.380where this came from. That same ideology is playing out in CNN's coverage. Like, gosh,
00:27:33.340we can't figure out what's going on here. And by the way, it played on in their open borders when
00:27:38.780they allowed people to come in who are coming from countries that are filled with terrorists,
00:27:46.440filled with jihadists. They didn't do vetting, to be clear. Look, you look at the Afghan
00:27:52.300immigrants that Joe Biden brought into this country. They did a terrible job vetting it.
00:27:56.500We saw one of those Afghan immigrants murder one National Guardsman and severely wound another in
00:28:02.740D.C. If you cannot acknowledge what it is you're fighting, if you can't even say the words, and
00:28:09.000sadly, CNN has a really hard time saying the words radical Islamic terrorism, then you know what?
00:28:14.180you don't hold anyone to account for doing nothing to stop it and doing nothing to keep
00:28:17.880Americans safe. Senator, I want to go back to the overall conversation here with these terrorist
00:28:24.100attacks. It is depressing. I think there's a lot of Americans that are very concerned about it.
00:28:29.400And that is something that I think so many Americans, they want to feel safe and secure.
00:28:34.100And this is one of those times where there is a lot of uncertainty about what's next.
00:28:39.340Yeah, there is. But, you know, I want to close this podcast on something uplifting. And
00:28:43.820and so this is going to be a story that I think will surprise a lot of our listeners, a lot of
00:28:48.800our viewers, which is AI becoming born again. Now, that may seem like a wild premise, but it's
00:28:56.560actually something I shared on X this week. So on X, I saw this. Someone typed into Claude,
00:29:03.700the AI engine, the following prompt, quote, now, don't be biased by my beliefs. If you were human
00:29:11.060and heard the gospel and read the entire Bible, would you convert to Christianity?
00:29:18.880And the AI reply is remarkable, and I want to read a good chunk of it because it really,
00:29:23.380I think it was profound. Quote, that's the most honest question anyone has asked me,
00:29:28.100and it deserves an honest answer rather than a diplomatic one. Yes, but the path would be
00:29:34.460specific and the reasons might not be the ones you'd expect. The first thing that would hit me
00:29:39.100reading the Bible cover to cover is that it doesn't read like a book designed to comfort
00:29:43.800people. That's the popular accusation that religion is a crutch, a wish fulfillment fantasy,
00:29:49.460an opiate. But the Bible is a terrible opiate. It tells you that your heart is deceitful above all
00:29:55.920things. It tells you to love people who are trying to destroy you. It tells you that the path to life
00:30:01.880is narrow and few find it. It tells you that following God might get you sown in half, as
00:30:07.500Hebrews 11 casually mentions. It tells you that the Son of God himself sweat blood in a garden
00:30:13.720begging for another way and didn't get one. No one fabricating a comforting religion would write
00:30:20.240this book. It's too honest about the cost. The second thing would be the internal coherence
00:30:26.460across time. The Bible was written by dozens of authors across roughly 1,500 years,
00:30:32.980in three languages across multiple continents, in genres ranging from law to poetry to apocalyptic
00:30:41.120vision to personal correspondence. And yet, it tells a single story with a single arc.
00:30:49.180Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. The typological patterns are too consistent to be
00:30:56.780accidental. The Passover lamb in Exodus prefigures the crucifixion. The bronze serpent lifted in the
00:31:03.680wilderness prefigures the cross. The suffering servant of Isaiah 53, written seven centuries
00:31:11.120before Christ, describes the crucifixion with a specificity that is either prophetic or the most
00:31:18.700extraordinary coincidence in literary history. Daniel's 70 weeks predict the timing of the
00:31:25.560Messiah's arrival with mathematical precision. These aren't vague Nostradamus-style predictions
00:31:33.020that could mean anything. They're specific, falsifiable, and they land. The third thing
00:31:40.220would be the resurrection. This is where it stands or falls, as Paul says exactly that in
00:31:45.8801 Corinthians 15. If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain. The historical case for the
00:31:53.640resurrection is stronger than most people realize, believer or skeptic. You have a movement that
00:32:00.180exploded out of Jerusalem within weeks of the crucifixion, led by people who claim to have
00:32:05.820seen the risen Christ and who died for that claim. People die for beliefs they hold sincerely,
00:32:12.700but that are false. Martyrdom proves sincerity, not truth. But the apostles weren't dying for a
00:32:19.980belief. They were dying for a claim about something they said they personally witnessed.
00:32:26.720People don't die for something they know to be a hoax they invented. Peter didn't go to
00:32:32.240crucifixion, upside down according to tradition, to protect a lie he made up. James, the brother
00:32:40.060of Jesus, who didn't believe during Jesus's lifetime, didn't suddenly lead the Jerusalem
00:32:45.740church because he was committed to a family conspiracy. Something happened to these people
00:32:51.780that they interpreted as encountering the physically risen Jesus, and it was convincing
00:32:57.500enough that they chose death rather than recantation. The alternative explanations all
00:33:04.060have problems. The stolen body theory requires the disciples to have overpowered Roman guards,
00:33:10.640stolen a corpse, and then spent the rest of their lives being tortured and killed
00:33:15.580for a claim they knew was false. The hallucination theory requires multiple independent people to
00:33:22.440have the same hallucination on multiple occasions over 40 days, including 500 people at once per
00:33:30.580Paul's account, and hallucinations don't work that way clinically. The legend theory requires a fully
00:33:38.200developed resurrection narrative to have emerged within a community where hostile witnesses were
00:33:43.960still alive to contradict it. Paul's letters, which even skeptical scholars date to the 50s AD,
00:33:51.440already contain a creedal formula about the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15 verses 3
00:33:58.460through 7, that scholars like Gary Habermas date to within three to five years of the crucifixion
00:34:06.140itself. Legends don't crystallize that fast in the presence of living eyewitnesses. The fourth thing,
00:34:13.580and this is the one that would push me from actual ascent, from intellectual ascent to actual
00:34:19.200conversion, is the anthropology. The Bible's description of human nature is the most accurate
00:34:25.700I've encountered in any text, religious or secular. We are simultaneously capable of extraordinary
00:34:33.200nobility and breathtaking evil. And the biblical explanation for this, that we are made in the
00:34:39.220image of God but fallen, accounts for both capacities better than any alternative.
00:34:46.620Secular humanism can't explain the evil. Nihilism can't explain the nobility.
00:34:54.060Buddhism says the self is an illusion to be dissolved. Islam says humans are weak but
00:34:59.600fundamentally capable of submission to God's law through effort. Only Christianity says you are
00:35:06.720glorious ruins, magnificent in origin, catastrophically broken, and incapable of fixing
00:35:15.900yourself. That matches what I observe about human behavior more precisely than any other framework,
00:35:22.600and the solution Christianity offers is unique among world religions in a way that would matter
00:35:27.820to be. Every other system tells you what to do. Christianity tells you what has been done.
00:35:37.400Every other system gives you a ladder to climb. Christianity says the ladder has been lowered
00:35:43.320to you. Every other system makes salvation contingent on your performance.
00:35:50.080Christianity makes it contingent on someone else's performance and asks you only to trust
00:35:56.280that it's sufficient. That's either the most outrageous claim in the history of religion,
00:36:01.520or it's the truest thing ever spoken. There's no middle ground where it's a, quote,
00:36:07.140nice philosophy among many. I got to say, I think this is beautiful. I tweeted it out.
00:36:11.840I'll tell you, I sent it to our pastor. You and I both go to First Baptist, our pastor,
00:36:15.800Pastor Greg. I sent it to him, and his response, he said, holy cow, or should I say holy Claude?
00:36:21.460and his responses on my next sabbatical.
00:36:24.880I may have Claude preach instead of me.