Rand Paul previews tonight’s GOP debate

In anticipation of the first debate of the 2016 presidential campaign, Glenn interviewed Senator Rand Paul on radio Thursday. Listen to the radio segment below.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it may contain errors.

GLENN: Well, I don't think there's much to say here this hour. We have Rand Paul with us to talk about tonight's debate. We start there now.

(music)

GLENN: Welcome to the program. Senator Rand Paul. Rand, how are you, sir?

RAND: Very good. Thanks for having me.

GLENN: You bet. I want to talk about a couple of things. I want to start with some surprising news. I believe Pat Gray who is a partner on the show is about to give you a promise ring.

(laughter)

RAND: I don't know what to say.

GLENN: I know. He has not been a fan of yours for a long time. Didn't not like you. Just not been a big fan. Then you came out with your tax proposal, and he now cannot -- literally he said, I can't even remember why I didn't like him.

(laughter)

So let's start there.

RAND: That's a success. Mesmerized with the one-page tax return.

PAT: Yeah. Indeed

GLENN: I will tell you, your tax return is truly shock and awe for anybody who has heard it. It is the kind of bold moves that the country really truly needs. Will you just take a few minutes and explain what you're proposing?

RAND: You know, we have a 70,000-page tax code right now, and I think it chases American jobs and companies overseas because, one, it's complicated, but, two, we have some of the highest rates on businesses in the world. So we just want to get rid of the whole thing. Get rid of the whole thing. We end up with one rate. Fourteen and a half percent for business. Fourteen and a half percent for the individual. And we do something that no other flat tax has ever done. We get rid of the payroll tax. So a worker making $40,000 would have $2,000 more in their paycheck.

PAT: Yes! Wow. That's phenomenal.

STU: You would think too the left would be in support of this. Because that's a regressive tax. It goes away as you get to higher incomes. I mean, the FICA tax is a great thing to target. And I don't know that I've ever heard anyone do it.

PAT: Except that they don't want any tax to go away, and that's the problem with the left.

But, Senator, does that fund the government at current levels?

RAND: Well, that's the thing, Glenn, I think the government needs to be a lot smaller. So it will fund over about 10 years, two to trillion dollars less government. But that's what I want. I want a much smaller government. In fact, I say starve the beast. Government is not good for us. Government, for the most part, gets in the way of business. Gets in the way of prosperity. And Thomas Paine it's a necessary evil. That's what it is. A necessary evil. So we should minimize government. Starve the beast. Have lower taxation. But here's what would happen, you would have a boom, an economic boom like you've never seen before in this country. And you also have to realize how old this tax proposal is. Not one leader in Washington among the Republican Party is for tax cuts anymore. I know you get frustrated with the leadership. You want to get really frustrated with Republican leadership. They're all for revenue neutral tax reform, which is shifting the burden around. And I tell people, if that's what we're for, I'm going home. Let's cut taxes. The last one who was really for it was Reagan. We haven't had a real Republican nominee since Reagan.

GLENN: Well, what you're proposing is something along the lines of Calvin Coolidge, which lead to the Roaring Twenties. And I know the left wants to say how horrible that was, but the Roaring Twenties -- in a ten-year period, we went from people having no refrigerators and electricity to almost everyone having refrigerators and electricity. It was a --

RAND: It gets us to the fundamental debate of, where are jobs created, and where is money best spent? And when you tell people in New Hampshire, you know what, I want to leave money in New Hampshire and never send it to Washington. But I also do the same in the south side of Chicago. I was with an African-American minister who has a private school on the south side of Chicago, across the street from the most dangerous intersection in the country. This is a man who is really trying to clean up the south side of Chicago and to help people. And he understands that the poverty programs, the war on poverty, doesn't help them. The money is stolen by the Chicago machine. If you're a cousin of somebody related to the mayor, you get money. The poor people never get the money anyway. And the poor people keep getting poor. But when I tell him, look, I'm going to leave 2 to $3 billion in the south side of Chicago that's not going to Washington, you don't have to beg to get it back. I'm just going to leave it in your community. People are starting to sit up and take notice.

GLENN: Okay. Let me switch topics. Hillary Clinton came out and she said she is absolutely proud and not moving on her support of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood says these are extremists that are trying to distort what they have done. They're mounting an attack on the Center for Medical Progress. The ones that made the videos over a three-year period.

Honestly, this to me is the clearest mark of evil I have ever seen. This puts us into killing factories. I mean, it's -- it puts us into a category I haven't seen since possibly Germany in the western world. And Congress doesn't seem to be moving -- you know, you try to mount that campaign. And that didn't really go anywhere.

RAND: See, the reason it didn't go anywhere is because we don't have enough votes yet. We will not be able to beat them until we get more people up there. You still have to have the battle. And we'll battle again on defunding. But we still don't have the votes on defunding also. You have to get to 60 votes to do anything. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't fight.

GLENN: No, I know.

RAND: And to me, there's some defining characters of a civilized people. And one is having respect for life. And if you don't have respect for life or you don't think there is something bigger than us or greater than us or something special about human life, then you're not getting it. And I think we'll lose everything else we have. Material prosperity. Everything else that goes along with civilization if we don't respect where life comes from.

And this is a tough debate for Planned Parenthood. These are fully formed babies with kidneys, livers, lungs. And when that doctor callously says, livers are popular for sale, not really even understanding that she's talking about a baby, that lack of humanity, I think, they can't -- they can't buy a PR campaign to overcome that callousness and that evilness.

GLENN: Let me ask you, because I think we're being shown -- you know, you just said. We can't long survive if we don't respect life.

We're not respecting life with Planned Parenthood. It's amazing how callous this conversation is going, you know, across the country on Planned Parenthood. Then you also have ISIS. They're crucifying children. And we don't seem to really be awake. Then we're being told, instead of choosing life and choosing the people who say, hey, I don't want to annihilate everybody, we're being told that we should side with the people in Iran, give them money, give them access -- our soldiers cannot even carry a gun, but Iran can have a nuke while they're saying they will vaporize Israel.

RAND: The first thing we have to decide is, are we going to quit arming our enemies? You would think a basic precept of foreign policy would be don't arm your enemies. This is a real problem we have. It's not just with Iran. It's with ISIS too. We armed the allies of ISIS. We sent arms over there, knowing that these people were fighting alongside al-Qaeda. Fighting alongside what became ISIS. And we did it anyway.

We continue to send arms -- right now, Saudi Arabia is mad about the Iran deal, so they want more arms. Who attacked us on 9/11? Sixteen of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia. Where did the funding come from? There's still some question whether or not Saudi Arabia was involved in that as well.

But what do we do? We continue to send arms to people who hate us. The Islamic rebels in Syria, none of them will recognize Israel. None of them really like us. And when they're done with whoever is in front of them, they'll come for us next.

But right now, ISIS has a billion dollars' worth of US Humvees they stole from us, from us giving those to allies. They also pay their soldiers with a billion dollars' worth of cash they stole. And they also have antitank weapons that they point at us and point at Israel. And they are US antitank weapons that we gave to the allies. So we have to quit funding and arming our enemies.

GLENN: Is it going to pass?

RAND: The Iran agreement I think will initially be disproved -- disapproved. I'm going to vote against it, and I think 60 will. The president will veto it, and I think there is some question -- I don't think it's a certainty. I think he may have survive a veto. We'll see what happens.

GLENN: Let's -- let's go to illegal immigration.

Donald Trump is making an awful lot of noise right now just by saying that he wants to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it. I don't know exactly how that works. But --

RAND: Didn't he also say he was going to send them all home, then he's going to bring them all back? That's what I read the other day. He said, yeah, I'm going to send them all home, but then I'm going to let most of them come back.

GLENN: Yeah. I don't know.

RAND: I don't know what he's going to do with that, and how the Mexicans are going to pay for the wall. But there's a lot of questions I have, and I might ask one or two of them tonight.

GLENN: Right. What is your solution -- you know, the Blaze just did a documentary called the Sun City Cell. Where we have documented and ABC and everybody else will pick it up probably about a year from now as they usually do, like we did with Benghazi. We have documented that drug cartels and al-Qaeda operatives are in El Paso, and they have connections all across the country, and they are planning a large attack. There is evidence now that this is happening. This is not about good families coming across the border. What are we going to do to -- if you're president, what is President Paul do on the border?

RAND: The first thing I would do is say that the border is a national security necessity. And you have to be prepared to defend your border as a national security necessity. The second thing I would say is, we haven't had a president, Republican or Democrat, that's enforced immigration law ever. I mean, going back to 1986, what was the tradeoff? They said, oh, if you would accept these 3 million illegals and you would give them status, we'll end up adding border security. Well, it never came.

And even some people who voted for that bill in '86 that are still up there now, that's why they won't vote for another bill until it comes. But there really needs to be a president that enforces the law. This president has overtly, selectively, and aggressively decided not to enforce the immigration law. But even the previous Republican administration really did not enforce immigration law either. So, no, I think you can't have open borders in a welfare state, and that's where we are now.

GLENN: How do you feel about the idea that our soldiers, when they're back home, cannot carry guns?

RAND: I've introduced legislation to end that. I've been talking about this since the Fort Hood mass murder. I said then, and I continue to say now, and I've actually introduced an amendment -- they didn't let me have it -- on the highway bill, but I introduced an amendment to allow our soldiers to be armed on base and at the recruiting centers and to say that if the state law allows for conceal carry, the military shouldn't prevent it. It seems crazy that we're going to let everybody else except for our soldiers carry weapons.

GLENN: So how are you feeling about tonight?

RAND: You know, pretty good, Glenn. I'm ready to mix it up. I hope I'm still that way at 9 o'clock tonight. I'm kind of a morning person. So we'll see you at 9:00. But I plan on mixing it up. I don't think there's any reason to hold back and play nice. So we'll mix it up and hopefully differentiate ourselves.

GLENN: When you say there's no reason to play nice, who are you referring -- to whom are you referring?

RAND: I think to anyone that wants to take on the issues of the day. I mean, I don't mean it in a petty just way to take on, just to take on someone. But I think it's crazy to sit back and just say, oh, yeah, we'll just let this thing short itself out over nine months or so. I think I need to stand up, say what I believe in, and stand my ground. And the chips fall where they may. I think people do want people who will stand for what they believe in. And that's been my history, as far as standing against the president, you know, collecting our records, standing against the illegal drone strikes, et cetera. So I think you'll see me stand my ground tonight and hopefully find a way to present my message.

STU: Is there a way you're walking into this thing just because of the format, there being so many people and I would assume probably such little time to get into the meat of this, is there a way you approach this strategically to try to break through?

RAND: Yeah, I'm going to have fruit in my pockets. And if no one is listening to me, I'm thinking about throwing fruit.

(laughter)

GLENN: The last time there were eight people, the last time there were eight people, we were just talking about this. Was it Rick Santorum --

PAT: He got about ten or 15 seconds.

GLENN: Yeah, 15 seconds. Do you have a -- I've only got 15 seconds kind of idea in your head?

RAND: Yeah, we'll see. Hopefully it will be better spread than that. But it can be difficult. And, you know, we're going to have to see -- but ten people is a lot. And really to tell you the truth, the format that I like better is a couple of people with longer answers in an interview style. But we're not going to have that luxury tonight. You have to make it through the end of February next year and the early primaries probably to get down to five or six candidates. You have to make it through March of next year to make it down to two or three candidates probably.

GLENN: How did you prepare for this?

RAND: By the big, fat tome. Big, fat book I stick under my pillow every night. I've been doing that for months, and I think a lot of ideas are seeping through the pillow and into my brain.

GLENN: I think you're supposed to read it. Sure. Yeah.

RAND: No, I read a lot. I read every day on current events. Every day on foreign policy. Every day on the economy. And then we have a great team. We have discussions. Plus, I interact with the voters. I actually talk to voters. We do something extraordinary in our town hall. We take questions from the audience. And we don't rope the reporters off like Hillary Clinton. And we do interact with the voters.

GLENN: Great.

Rand, we'll watch for you tonight. Best of luck.

RAND: Thanks, guys.

Is the U.N. plotting to control 30% of U.S. land by 2030?

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

A reliable conservative senator faces cancellation for listening to voters. But the real threat to public lands comes from the last president’s backdoor globalist agenda.

Something ugly is unfolding on social media, and most people aren’t seeing it clearly. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — one of the most constitutionally grounded conservatives in Washington — is under fire for a housing provision he first proposed in 2022.

You wouldn’t know that from scrolling through X. According to the latest online frenzy, Lee wants to sell off national parks, bulldoze public lands, gut hunting and fishing rights, and hand America’s wilderness to Amazon, BlackRock, and the Chinese Communist Party. None of that is true.

Lee’s bill would have protected against the massive land-grab that’s already under way — courtesy of the Biden administration.

I covered this last month. Since then, the backlash has grown into something like a political witch hunt — not just from the left but from the right. Even Donald Trump Jr., someone I typically agree with, has attacked Lee’s proposal. He’s not alone.

Time to look at the facts the media refuses to cover about Lee’s federal land plan.

What Lee actually proposed

Over the weekend, Lee announced that he would withdraw the federal land sale provision from his housing bill. He said the decision was in response to “a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies,” but also acknowledged that many Americans brought forward sincere, thoughtful concerns.

Because of the strict rules surrounding the budget reconciliation process, Lee couldn’t secure legally enforceable protections to ensure that the land would be made available “only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.” Without those safeguards, he chose to walk it back.

That’s not selling out. That’s leadership.

It's what the legislative process is supposed to look like: A senator proposes a bill, the people respond, and the lawmaker listens. That was once known as representative democracy. These days, it gets you labeled a globalist sellout.

The Biden land-grab

To many Americans, “public land” brings to mind open spaces for hunting, fishing, hiking, and recreation. But that’s not what Sen. Mike Lee’s bill targeted.

His proposal would have protected against the real land-grab already under way — the one pushed by the Biden administration.

In 2021, Biden launched a plan to “conserve” 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030. This effort follows the United Nations-backed “30 by 30” initiative, which seeks to place one-third of all land and water under government control.

Ask yourself: Is the U.N. focused on preserving your right to hunt and fish? Or are radical environmentalists exploiting climate fears to restrict your access to American land?

  Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor | Getty Images

As it stands, the federal government already owns 640 million acres — nearly one-third of the entire country. At this rate, the government will hit that 30% benchmark with ease. But it doesn’t end there. The next phase is already in play: the “50 by 50” agenda.

That brings me to a piece of legislation most Americans haven’t even heard of: the Sustains Act.

Passed in 2023, the law allows the federal government to accept private funding from organizations, such as BlackRock or the Bill Gates Foundation, to support “conservation programs.” In practice, the law enables wealthy elites to buy influence over how American land is used and managed.

Moreover, the government doesn’t even need the landowner’s permission to declare that your property contributes to “pollination,” or “photosynthesis,” or “air quality” — and then regulate it accordingly. You could wake up one morning and find out that the land you own no longer belongs to you in any meaningful sense.

Where was the outrage then? Where were the online crusaders when private capital and federal bureaucrats teamed up to quietly erode private property rights across America?

American families pay the price

The real danger isn’t in Mike Lee’s attempt to offer more housing near population centers — land that would be limited, clarified, and safeguarded in the final bill. The real threat is the creeping partnership between unelected global elites and our own government, a partnership designed to consolidate land, control rural development, and keep Americans penned in so-called “15-minute cities.”

BlackRock buying entire neighborhoods and pricing out regular families isn’t by accident. It’s part of a larger strategy to centralize populations into manageable zones, where cars are unnecessary, rural living is unaffordable, and every facet of life is tracked, regulated, and optimized.

That’s the real agenda. And it’s already happening , and Mike Lee’s bill would have been an effort to ensure that you — not BlackRock, not China — get first dibs.

I live in a town of 451 people. Even here, in the middle of nowhere, housing is unaffordable. The American dream of owning a patch of land is slipping away, not because of one proposal from a constitutional conservative, but because global powers and their political allies are already devouring it.

Divide and conquer

This controversy isn’t really about Mike Lee. It’s about whether we, as a nation, are still capable of having honest debates about public policy — or whether the online mob now controls the narrative. It’s about whether conservatives will focus on facts or fall into the trap of friendly fire and circular firing squads.

More importantly, it’s about whether we’ll recognize the real land-grab happening in our country — and have the courage to fight back before it’s too late.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

URGENT: FIVE steps to CONTROL AI before it's too late!

MANAURE QUINTERO / Contributor | Getty Images

By now, many of us are familiar with AI and its potential benefits and threats. However, unless you're a tech tycoon, it can feel like you have little influence over the future of artificial intelligence.

For years, Glenn has warned about the dangers of rapidly developing AI technologies that have taken the world by storm.

He acknowledges their significant benefits but emphasizes the need to establish proper boundaries and ethics now, while we still have control. But since most people aren’t Silicon Valley tech leaders making the decisions, how can they help keep AI in check?

Recently, Glenn interviewed Tristan Harris, a tech ethicist deeply concerned about the potential harm of unchecked AI, to discuss its societal implications. Harris highlighted a concerning new piece of legislation proposed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz. This legislation proposes a state-level moratorium on AI regulation, meaning only the federal government could regulate AI. Harris noted that there’s currently no Federal plan for regulating AI. Until the federal government establishes a plan, tech companies would have nearly free rein with their AI. And we all know how slowly the federal government moves.

  

This is where you come in. Tristan Harris shared with Glenn the top five actions you should urge your representatives to take regarding AI, including opposing the moratorium until a concrete plan is in place. Now is your chance to influence the future of AI. Contact your senator and congressman today and share these five crucial steps they must take to keep AI in check:

Ban engagement-optimized AI companions for kids

Create legislation that will prevent AI from being designed to maximize addiction, sexualization, flattery, and attachment disorders, and to protect young people’s mental health and ability to form real-life friendships.

Establish basic liability laws

Companies need to be held accountable when their products cause real-world harm.

Pass increased whistleblower protections

Protect concerned technologists working inside the AI labs from facing untenable pressures and threats that prevent them from warning the public when the AI rollout is unsafe or crosses dangerous red lines.

Prevent AI from having legal rights

Enact laws so AIs don’t have protected speech or have their own bank accounts, making sure our legal system works for human interests over AI interests.

Oppose the state moratorium on AI 

Call your congressman or Senator Cruz’s office, and demand they oppose the state moratorium on AI without a plan for how we will set guardrails for this technology.

Glenn: Only Trump dared to deliver on decades of empty promises

Tasos Katopodis / Stringer | Getty Images

The Islamic regime has been killing Americans since 1979. Now Trump’s response proves we’re no longer playing defense — we’re finally hitting back.

The United States has taken direct military action against Iran’s nuclear program. Whatever you think of the strike, it’s over. It’s happened. And now, we have to predict what happens next. I want to help you understand the gravity of this situation: what happened, what it means, and what might come next. To that end, we need to begin with a little history.

Since 1979, Iran has been at war with us — even if we refused to call it that.

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell.

It began with the hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were seized and 52 were held for over a year by the radical Islamic regime. Four years later, 17 more Americans were murdered in the U.S. Embassy bombing in Beirut, followed by 241 Marines in the Beirut barracks bombing.

Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, which killed 19 more U.S. airmen. Iran had its fingerprints all over it.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Iranian-backed proxies killed hundreds of American soldiers. From 2001 to 2020 in Afghanistan and 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, Iran supplied IEDs and tactical support.

The Iranians have plotted assassinations and kidnappings on U.S. soil — in 2011, 2021, and again in 2024 — and yet we’ve never really responded.

The precedent for U.S. retaliation has always been present, but no president has chosen to pull the trigger until this past weekend. President Donald Trump struck decisively. And what our military pulled off this weekend was nothing short of extraordinary.

Operation Midnight Hammer

The strike was reportedly called Operation Midnight Hammer. It involved as many as 175 U.S. aircraft, including 12 B-2 stealth bombers — out of just 19 in our entire arsenal. Those bombers are among the most complex machines in the world, and they were kept mission-ready by some of the finest mechanics on the planet.

   USAF / Handout | Getty Images

To throw off Iranian radar and intelligence, some bombers flew west toward Guam — classic misdirection. The rest flew east, toward the real targets.

As the B-2s approached Iranian airspace, U.S. submarines launched dozens of Tomahawk missiles at Iran’s fortified nuclear facilities. Minutes later, the bombers dropped 14 MOPs — massive ordnance penetrators — each designed to drill deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers. These bombs are the size of an F-16 and cost millions of dollars apiece. They are so accurate, I’ve been told they can hit the top of a soda can from 15,000 feet.

They were built for this mission — and we’ve been rehearsing this run for 15 years.

If the satellite imagery is accurate — and if what my sources tell me is true — the targeted nuclear sites were utterly destroyed. We’ll likely rely on the Israelis to confirm that on the ground.

This was a master class in strategy, execution, and deterrence. And it proved that only the United States could carry out a strike like this. I am very proud of our military, what we are capable of doing, and what we can accomplish.

What comes next

We don’t yet know how Iran will respond, but many of the possibilities are troubling. The Iranians could target U.S. forces across the Middle East. On Monday, Tehran launched 20 missiles at U.S. bases in Qatar, Syria, and Kuwait, to no effect. God forbid, they could also unleash Hezbollah or other terrorist proxies to strike here at home — and they just might.

Iran has also threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the artery through which nearly a fifth of the world’s oil flows. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament voted to begin the process. If the Supreme Council and the ayatollah give the go-ahead, we could see oil prices spike to $150 or even $200 a barrel.

That would be catastrophic.

The 2008 financial collapse was pushed over the edge when oil hit $130. Western economies — including ours — simply cannot sustain oil above $120 for long. If this conflict escalates and the Strait is closed, the global economy could unravel.

The strike also raises questions about regime stability. Will it spark an uprising, or will the Islamic regime respond with a brutal crackdown on dissidents?

Early signs aren’t hopeful. Reports suggest hundreds of arrests over the weekend and at least one dissident executed on charges of spying for Israel. The regime’s infamous morality police, the Gasht-e Ershad, are back on the streets. Every phone, every vehicle — monitored. The U.S. embassy in Qatar issued a shelter-in-place warning for Americans.

Russia and China both condemned the strike. On Monday, a senior Iranian official flew to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin. That meeting should alarm anyone paying attention. Their alliance continues to deepen — and that’s a serious concern.

Now we pray

We are either on the verge of a remarkable strategic victory or a devastating global escalation. Time will tell. But either way, President Trump didn’t start this. He inherited it — and he took decisive action.

The difference is, he did what they all said they would do. He didn’t send pallets of cash in the dead of night. He didn’t sign another failed treaty.

He acted. Now, we pray. For peace, for wisdom, and for the strength to meet whatever comes next.


This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Globalize the Intifada? Why Mamdani’s plan spells DOOM for America

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If New Yorkers hand City Hall to Zohran Mamdani, they’re not voting for change. They’re opening the door to an alliance of socialism, Islamism, and chaos.

It only took 25 years for New York City to go from the resilient, flag-waving pride following the 9/11 attacks to a political fever dream. To quote Michael Malice, “I'm old enough to remember when New Yorkers endured 9/11 instead of voting for it.”

Malice is talking about Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist assemblyman from Queens now eyeing the mayor’s office. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state representative emerging from relative political obscurity, is now receiving substantial funding for his mayoral campaign from the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

CAIR has a long and concerning history, including being born out of the Muslim Brotherhood and named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. Why would the group have dropped $100,000 into a PAC backing Mamdani’s campaign?

Mamdani blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone.

Perhaps CAIR has a vested interest in Mamdani’s call to “globalize the intifada.” That’s not a call for peaceful protest. Intifada refers to historic uprisings of Muslims against what they call the “Israeli occupation of Palestine.” Suicide bombings and street violence are part of the playbook. So when Mamdani says he wants to “globalize” that, who exactly is the enemy in this global scenario? Because it sure sounds like he's saying America is the new Israel, and anyone who supports Western democracy is the new Zionist.

Mamdani tried to clean up his language by citing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, which once used “intifada” in an Arabic-language article to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. So now he’s comparing Palestinians to Jewish victims of the Nazis? If that doesn’t twist your stomach into knots, you’re not paying attention.

If you’re “globalizing” an intifada, and positioning Israel — and now America — as the Nazis, that’s not a cry for human rights. That’s a call for chaos and violence.

Rising Islamism

But hey, this is New York. Faculty members at Columbia University — where Mamdani’s own father once worked — signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas after October 7. They also contributed to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. And his father? He blamed Ronald Reagan and the religious right for inspiring Islamic terrorism, as if the roots of 9/11 grew in Washington, not the caves of Tora Bora.

   Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

 

This isn’t about Islam as a faith. We should distinguish between Islam and Islamism. Islam is a religion followed peacefully by millions. Islamism is something entirely different — an ideology that seeks to merge mosque and state, impose Sharia law, and destroy secular liberal democracies from within. Islamism isn’t about prayer and fasting. It’s about power.

Criticizing Islamism is not Islamophobia. It is not an attack on peaceful Muslims. In fact, Muslims are often its first victims.

Islamism is misogynistic, theocratic, violent, and supremacist. It’s hostile to free speech, religious pluralism, gay rights, secularism — even to moderate Muslims. Yet somehow, the progressive left — the same left that claims to fight for feminism, LGBTQ rights, and free expression — finds itself defending candidates like Mamdani. You can’t make this stuff up.

Blending the worst ideologies

And if that weren’t enough, Mamdani also identifies as a Democratic Socialist. He blends political Islam with Marxist economics — two ideologies that have left tens of millions dead in the 20th century alone. But don’t worry, New York. I’m sure this time socialism will totally work. Just like it always didn’t.

If you’re a business owner, a parent, a person who’s saved anything, or just someone who values sanity: Get out. I’m serious. If Mamdani becomes mayor, as seems likely, then New York City will become a case study in what happens when you marry ideological extremism with political power. And it won’t be pretty.

This is about more than one mayoral race. It’s about the future of Western liberalism. It’s about drawing a bright line between faith and fanaticism, between healthy pluralism and authoritarian dogma.

Call out radicalism

We must call out political Islam the same way we call out white nationalism or any other supremacist ideology. When someone chants “globalize the intifada,” that should send a chill down your spine — whether you’re Jewish, Christian, Muslim, atheist, or anything in between.

The left may try to shame you into silence with words like “Islamophobia,” but the record is worn out. The grooves are shallow. The American people see what’s happening. And we’re not buying it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.