00:00:00.000Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz. This is obviously one of those shows that neither of us wanted to do, but it's an important one to get you information about what has happened and this horrific terrorist attack in New Orleans and also what looks to be some sort of attack in Las Vegas outside of the Trump Hotel there.
00:00:20.660Senator, this has a connection, obviously, to Texas. Many of us were celebrating New Year's Eve. You were down at Mar-a-Lago. I was with my family at the beach. And then we see and wake up to this news breaking. And I want to timestamp this for people to understand when we're recording this. We're recording this at 930 Eastern time on Wednesday. So much of this may change. So I just want you to know when we started this. But I want to get your initial reaction to what we've witnessed.
00:00:48.960Well, we're less than 24 hours out from the United States once again seeing a significant terrorist attack on U.S. soil. At 3.15 in the morning, New Year's Day, 42-year-old Shamsa Din Bahar Jabbar, who is a U.S. citizen, a Texas resident, he drove a white pickup truck into people celebrating on Bourbon Street.
00:01:15.620Jabbar was born in Beaumont, Texas. He resides in Houston, your hometown and my hometown. And he was an Army veteran. As we talk today, 15 people have been killed and several dozen more have been injured.
00:01:35.900And I will say, as is the nature of any fast-breaking crisis and fast-breaking news story, the news that is available is rapidly moving.
00:01:46.940It is changing. So we're going to talk about what's happening, what we know now, but with the caveat that we can fully expect the information we know on this to change and very possibly change significantly in the days and weeks to come.
00:02:01.080We're less than 24 hours out from this attack. But what we know now is deeply, deeply disturbing.
00:02:08.560It has been reported that this Army veteran drove the pickup truck deliberately into a crowd of revelers with the intent of killing and harming as many people as possible.
00:02:22.160It's also been reported that the pickup truck was flying an ISIS flag and that Jabbar was inspired by ISIS.
00:02:34.820Simultaneously, we have a Tesla Cybertruck that exploded in front of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, killing one, injuring several.
00:02:46.220The one who was killed was the driver. It is not confirmed that those two are linked, but both occurred early in the morning on New Year's Day.
00:02:56.480And America is now dealing with the aftermath of one or potentially two terrorist attacks, finding out who's responsible, finding out if additional actors were responsible.
00:03:09.260There have been multiple reports of additional individuals potentially placing IEDs.
00:03:16.580And at this point, the entire country is reeling from this attack.
00:03:22.140It is really sad. And this goes back to the bigger concern that we've worried about on this show and talked about.
00:03:30.080And it's something that I think so many Americans felt.
00:03:33.520You had a wide open southern border. You had a lot of people that have been able to come across the southern border that were caught.
00:03:41.620They were on the terrorist watch list. You have law enforcement that I think it's pretty fair to say is stretched extremely thin when you're having to deal with a wide open southern border and what is coming across that southern border.
00:03:52.400And this individual being an American citizen and being a Texan, as you described it, the real problem can be that we are stretched so thin with so many possibilities out there that this is one of those examples of when we've had this open door policy, law enforcement is doing the maybe in many cases the best they can.
00:04:16.080And they just don't have the time or the resources they need to focus in on these types of threats.
00:04:20.820Well, that is tragically correct. And on this podcast, we have been predicting for months now that the odds of a major terrorist attack in the United States were higher than they have been at any time since September 11th.
00:04:36.860And unfortunately, this morning's tragic events confirms that now in this instance, the facts are still coming out.
00:04:45.820What we know about Jabbar, according to the Army Liaison's Office and what he has told what they have released, he served in the Army from 2006 to 2020, including approximately nine years of active duty service.
00:05:00.180He held specialties in HR and IT. He was born in Beaumont, Texas. He deployed in Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010.
00:05:15.280He was in the Army Reserve from 2015 to 2020. And he was discharged in 2020 with an honorable discharge for unsatisfactory participation.
00:05:25.820That much we know. We also know that in his truck were found explosive devices, explosive devices, including two pipe bombs that were concealed within coolers and wired for remote detonation.
00:05:46.640That's according to the Louisiana State Police. And the pickup truck, the pickup truck, its its origin, there has been conflicting reporting on it.
00:06:00.360So earlier today, it was reported that the truck used in the New Orleans attack came through the southern border.
00:06:10.540The Daily Wire reported that early today. Fox News reported that the truck entered the U.S. two days ago.
00:06:18.300But then they then updated their story to report that the truck crossed the southern border on November 16th.
00:06:25.780So November 16th, a month and a half ago, apparently the truck crossed the southern border.
00:06:31.980It has also now been reported that the truck in New Orleans was rented using the Turo app.
00:06:41.680And one of the strange details that has been reported is that both the truck in New Orleans and the Cybertruck in Las Vegas, rather, were both rented using the Turo app.
00:06:56.560That may simply be a coincidence. It may be something more.
00:07:01.400But what has been reported, the New York Times is reporting that both were rented using Turo.
00:07:08.680Turo itself put out a statement that said that it was, quote,
00:07:13.840actively partnering with law enforcement authorities as they investigate both incidents.
00:07:18.660They also said, quote, we do not believe that either renter involved in the Las Vegas or New Orleans attacks
00:07:24.020had a criminal background that would have identified them as a security threat.
00:07:27.820threat. It's not clear as we sit here today the full details of that.
00:07:34.540But but but those are the breaking details as of 941 p.m.
00:07:40.480I want to go back to a headline real quick, and then I also want to play for everybody what Joe Biden said.
00:07:45.960But this was a headline that you and I talked about and warned about.
00:07:49.640And it was from the New York Post, October the 23rd of 2024.
00:07:55.720And it said border agents caught 300 migrants with terrorist ties, including ISIS.
00:08:02.280And it's still incredibly easy for them to enter the U.S.
00:08:08.240This report came out October the 23rd.
00:08:11.280So we're talking a couple of months ago and you and I and that's when you really talked about you felt like there was a a real chance
00:08:21.200that something like this could happen because of the of the of the idea that we have so many resources spread all over the place.
00:08:29.720When you look ahead to January 20th and Donald Trump coming in, does this now clearly become a top priority on the issue of border security?
00:08:38.040Because it's a national security issue very much and getting back to doing the way that we used to deal with,
00:08:44.000whether it was domestic or homegrown or foreign terrorism.
00:09:13.300We are three weeks away from an administration coming in that is going to be, I believe, absolutely serious and incredibly effective securing the border.
00:09:24.080But every day that border is open, Americans are at greater risk and we're at risk, number one, from terrorists crossing the southern border.
00:09:32.420But number two, we're at risk from law enforcement, the FBI, the federal government focusing on every other policy and agenda item other than keeping the American people safe.
00:09:45.360You know, I have to say one of the things that was dismaying is the FBI right after this happened in New Orleans.
00:09:52.080They went out and publicly said this was not a terrorist attack.
00:09:55.480The New Orleans police disagreed with that statement.
00:09:58.440The FBI has since gone on to say they are investigating it as terrorism.
00:10:03.820But I got to say, when a truck drives into a crowd waving an ISIS flag, I don't know what the hell you call it other than terrorism.
00:10:10.180Yeah, and that, I think, is one of the things that's so frustrating.
00:10:14.140And that moves us also to what we witnessed today with the closed circuit TV footage of the cyber truck that exploded in front of Trump Tower, killing that driver.
00:10:23.720We're now being told by authorities there that they said the driver of the electric vehicle parked in the valley area outside the hotel's lobby before it exploded into flames.
00:10:34.180The flames there, we've gotten a tweet from Elon Musk saying that this was not, in fact, the batteries or a malfunction of the car that so many immediately wanted to blame.
00:10:45.180This was a Tesla accident that just happened to happen the same day as this other attack at the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
00:10:51.800They've now said definitively in law enforcement this was not any type of battery issue or a malfunction.
00:11:57.240What it is right now is their improvised explosive devices that was found, and we are working on confirming if it's a viable device or not.
00:12:07.200As Chief Kirkpatrick said, we're asking everyone to stay away from Bourbon Street, specifically from Canal Street to St. Anne.
00:12:33.980I will say that we want our community and our visitors to continue enjoying.
00:12:39.280There's so much to enjoy about New Orleans.
00:12:42.500And we are going to make sure that our routes and the Superdome are safe today for the game, and yet we had this tragic event.
00:12:53.860And we're sorry again to everyone in our community.
00:12:58.060But we do want you to go about the day.
00:13:00.960As we say, just stay away from Bourbon.
00:13:03.860There's two parts of that, Senator, that I think are the most frustrating for many people that are listening.
00:13:10.540One, the out-of-touch-with-reality, and you want to have faith in law enforcement, but to come out and in such a hardcore way say this is not a terrorist attack, not being treated like a terrorist attack, and people are like, what's wrong with you?
00:13:24.480And the part that also went viral after that was a tweet that came out from the FBI in New Orleans, and it was them holding this summer a diversity agent recruitment event, and we want to meet you.
00:13:41.400We want diversity and equity inclusion, and people say this statement and then that tweet, and they say, what is happening at the FBI?
00:13:50.620Well, the FBI has, in far too many instances, not kept their eye on the ball, and that is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is coming into office with an agenda of fundamentally reforming the Department of Justice and the FBI, getting it back, focused on its core mission, ending the weaponization, ending the politicization, and its core mission includes preventing acts of terrorism.
00:14:16.340Now, in this instance, the terrorist in New Orleans was an American citizen, so he did not cross the border illegally, although apparently his truck did, the truck he used crossed the border six weeks ago.
00:14:31.100However, we don't know the story of how he was radicalized, someone who was an Army veteran who served for many years, who became a self-described proponent of ISIS.
00:14:43.180That is something gone profoundly wrong, and it reminds me of Nadal Hassan.
00:14:50.900Nadal Hassan, you'll recall, who murdered 14 innocent souls at Fort Hood.
00:14:55.660He was active-duty military, and he became radicalized.
00:14:58.380And during the Obama administration, they knew that he was communicating with the radical Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, and asking about the permissibility of waging jihad on his fellow soldiers.
00:15:13.000And infuriatingly enough, the Obama Pentagon, they had those communications with Anwar al-Awlaki, and they did nothing to stop Nadal Hassan from committing that mass murder.
00:15:29.480They sat on that information, and we don't know if there's any of that.
00:15:34.620We have no indication that there's any of that information now, but I will say we're dealing with another individual who is a soldier who apparently became radicalized,
00:15:44.620and I think there's a real need for transparency to figure out what happened.
00:15:49.840And I want to play my colleague John Kennedy, Senator John Kennedy, a good friend of mine.