Cruz Crushes During CNBC Interview on Economy

In an interview on CNBC'S Squawkbox, a panel grilled Ted Cruz on the state of the economy. Cruz answered each question succinctly, showing a deep understanding of how the economy works --- and what it will take to get back on track.

The interview also displayed a stark difference between the two Republican candidates leading the field.

"Honestly, everybody is playing this except for Ted Cruz, and it is the victimhood card," Glenn said Tuesday on The Glenn Beck Program. "Donald Trump is saying we're a victim of China. . . where Ted Cruz is saying, 'I'm going to get the government and the tax burden out of the way for the American people because the American people can do this.'"

The Squawkbox panel asked Cruz detailed questions, demanding explanations and specifics --- and Cruz delivered every single time.

"The fed has, for those with assets, has driven up stock prices, driven up assets values, but that's not built on anything real. It's not built on an increase in the intrinsic value of those assets. It's just based on playing games with money, which means a crash will be coming," Cruz said. "It's far better, if you want to drive up the economy and jobs, it's far better to reduce the burdens on small businesses, where you're creating a whole lot more jobs and we're producing more. That's actually growth. I want asset values to go up because there's more production because it's actually worth more."

While some of the candidates whine about corruption and a rigged system or apologize for America, recommending a European style of government, there is one candidate who believes in the American people. That candidate is Ted Cruz.

Co-host Stu Burguiere also had a tip for journalists interviewing Donald Trump.

"End a lot of questions with, 'Can you explain this?' and see what [Trump] comes up with. Because he can't explain any of it because he doesn't know. He'll go back to China and everything else. Hold him to it. Make him explain those specifics. That would be really helpful," Stu said.

Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:

GLENN:  There was an interview -- there was an interview with Ted Cruz on CNBC, where he was talking about, you know, the -- the basis points in Germany and the VIX and stuff that most people don't even know.

Can you explain some of these things?  Can you explain what's happening to the economy, what's happening to the global economy and how to fix it?

PAT:  The VIX.  Yeah, you rub it on your chest when your nose is all stuffy and --

GLENN:  Does anybody know what that is?  Yeah, volatility.  Okay.  Good.  It's the spread of volatility and what the market thinks.

PAT:  You're telling me it's not a vapor rub?

STU:  Well, it's also a vapor rub.

GLENN:  Yes, yes.

STU:  You're both right.

GLENN:  You're both right.  Yes.  Okay.  Thank you so much for that, Stu.

So let's listen to some of these answers from Ted Cruz because it goes to the credibility of who can handle the economy without nationalizing the banks?  Who understands what's coming and how to fix it?

TED:  The problem with using monetary policy, it's a very ineffective way to juice the system because you create bubbles.  So you're right:  The fed has, for those with assets, has driven up stock prices, driven up assets values.  But that's not built on anything real.  It's not built on an increase in the intrinsic value of those assets.  It's just based on playing games with money, which means a crash will be coming.  It's far better, if you want to drive up the economy and jobs, it's far better to reduce the burdens on small businesses, where you're creating a whole lot more jobs and we're producing more.  That's actually growth.  I want asset values to go up because there's more production because it's actually worth more.

PAT:  Now, you tell me that Donald Trump could have had that conversation.  There's no possible way.  All he would have said was, "We're losing to everybody.  We're losing to Mexico.  We're losing to China.  We're losing to Taiwan.  We're losing to Japan.  We're losing to everybody."  That's all he would have said.

GLENN:  Because, honestly, everybody is playing this except for Ted Cruz.  And it is the -- the victimhood card.

PAT:  Uh-huh.

GLENN:  Donald Trump is saying we're a victim of -- of China.  And, really, of ourselves because we have bad negotiating tactics against China.  And I'll make China, I'll make Mexico pay.  Where Ted Cruz is saying, "I'm going to get the government and the tax burden out of the way for the American people because the American people can do this.  They've just been told they didn't build this.  They've been told that, you know, they have to do their patriotic duty and pay higher taxes.  They're not victims here.  They just need to get the government under control, and they're going to be able to do it."

And I think that's -- that is the biggest difference.  Who is a victim?  And who says, "Yes, we can.  We're going to do this.  We can do this?"

PAT:  He also shows that he understands how the system works.  He understands what makes the economy run, the inner workings of it, what the fed has to do with it.  He knows all that stuff.  And he proves it again with this.

JOE:  Growth around the world.  Economic growth --

TED:  Yep.  Yep.

JOE:  -- almost cures all ills.  It cures the sentiment that we have right now, the feeling that people aren't getting ahead.  Helps you pay down deficit.  Helps everything.

TED:  Yes.

JOE:  But we're in a weird world right now.  I checked for you this morning, the German tenure (phonetic) is at 15 basis points.  Japan, there are negative interest rates.  So it's not just the anemic recovery in this country, it's a global phenomenon that we've really never seen the likes of, and I don't know how to explain it.  I wonder if you know how to explain the cause and the cure.

TED:  Well, Joe, you're preaching to the choir.  And I wish that more of the presidential candidates would focus on growth.  Because you're right, growth is foundational.  My number one priority as president will be economic growth.  Every other problem we've got, whether it's unemployment, whether it's the debt and the deficit, whether it is strengthening and preserving Social Security or Medicare or whether it is rebuilding our military and keeping us safe, you got to have growth to make it work.

And we have been trapped in stagnation for the last seven years.  And if we don't turn that around, nothing else gets fixed.  And it's driven by a number of factors.  You know, historically since World War II, our economy has grown on average about 3.3 percent a year.  And yet from 2008 to today, it's averaged only 1.2 percent a year.

If we stay at this level of stagnant growth, one in 2 percent GDP growth, these problems are not solvable.  And that's why we need an economic agenda.  My economic agenda is focused very directly on growth.  Because if you get back to historic levels, 3, 4, 5 percent growth, suddenly the federal budget numbers turn around dramatically.  It is by far the biggest factor impacting the federal money.

GLENN:  You know, here's the amazing thing, I spent -- last week I spent seven hours with him.  And we were at my house and in between tapings of stuff they were cutting, we talked about this.  And for the first time, I was overcome with security that, we're going to make it.  We're going to make it.  He is so rooted in the facts of how an economy works, that he was like, "Glenn, I'm telling you, we have $19 trillion in debt, but we have a 17-trillion-dollar economy."

Do you know what the rate of growth was under Ronald Reagan?

PAT:  Yeah, it was -- I think we talked about this the other day.  It was like seven.

GLENN:  7 percent.

PAT:  7 percent.

GLENN:  He's like, "If we can just get us up to 5 percent, it changes everything.  You don't have to worry about it.  You have the money to pay that debt down."  He said, "The problem is, we're at this growth of 1 percent."  And he said, "We've got to stop that."  And the way to do that is to get rid of regulation and to change tax policy.  And here he is on his tax policy.

TED:  My tax plan is simple, it is a simple flat tax.  For a typical family of four, first $36,000 you earn, you pay nothing.  Zero income tax, zero payroll tax, nothing.  Above $36,000, each marginal dollar, you pay a simple flat tax of 10 percent.  No longer is a hedge fund billionaire paying a lower effective tax rate than his secretary.  Everyone pays the exact same.

Another difference, by the way, no longer do you have any differential rates between ordinary income and dividends or cap gains.  Short-term and long-term cap gains, it doesn't matter.  Everything is 10 percent, which means people actually allocate capital based on where it's efficient, rather than what the tax laws say because the tax laws are neutral to everything.

And then on the business side, on the business side, we abolish the corporate tax.  As you know, we have the most punitive corporate income tax of any developed country in the world.  We abolish the Obama taxes.  We abolish the payroll taxes, which are the single biggest tax most working Americans pay.  And we abolish the death tax, which is a tremendously unfair and punitive tax on farmers, on ranchers, on small businesses.  And we replace all of those with a simple 16 percent business flat tax.  And the effect is an incredible catalyst for job creation and wages going up and bringing jobs back to America.  That's my priority:  High-priced jobs coming back to America, wages going up for everyone.

GLENN:  Okay.  He goes into the tax plan.  Now, why will this actually work?  Listen to this.  726.

PAT:  Yeah.  Okay.

TED:  The problem is the history of the fed has not been very good in terms of being smarter than the market and I think trying to guess what's happening in the market.  I think we're far better having a rules-based monetary policy, ideally with some tie to gold so that you just have stable dollars.  So that you know that when you're investing a dollar today, you know that the dollar is going to keep a consistent worth, rather than fluctuate wildly.

VOICE:  I guess my point -- and then back to Joe's point about the growth stagnation around the globe.  What explains that?

TED:  Well, some of it is, many countries in the globe have followed the pattern of the United States of hammering small businesses with taxes and regulation, and you end up with a spiral.  That gives an incredible --

JOE:  They might have led the way, Senator.  I don't know if they followed us.

TED:  You're right.  You're right.

JOE:  Europe, you know, they invented structural --

TED:  Well, now Bernie Sanders tells us how wonderful Sweden is.

VOICE:  Don't get me -- we've been talking about that today, the -- the notion that there's big sum of money and greedy corporations and greedy rich people pull out of that.  They don't generate any of that wealth or any of that growth or any of those jobs or any of those tax receipts.  All they do is take.

But 51 percent of the country in polls is buying into that.  What have we done wrong?

TED:  So, Joe, you're telling me, you don't believe it when Hillary Clinton said, "Don't let anybody tell you businesses create jobs?"

JOE:  No.  That's another one.  Or, "You didn't build this."  I don't believe that one either.

TED:  The catalyst of our economy is small businesses.  Two-thirds of all new jobs come from small businesses.

GLENN:  Two-thirds.

TED:  If you want to have the stagnation we have, it's very simple, you do what we've done the last seven years, you slam small businesses with crushing taxes.  You know, yesterday I was in Buffalo, New York.

GLENN:  Now, listen to this.

TED:  I met with Charlie, the butcher.  He's got seven restaurants.  By the way, an incredible sandwich, the Beef on Weck, I highly recommend it.

And I remember visiting with Charlie, great example of a small business man.  And he was talking about the effect of a $15 minimum wage here in New York State.

And he said, "Listen, I've got seven restaurants."  He said, "I'd like to have 20."  He said, "I could have 20, but I can't afford at this rate."

How many jobs are you talking about, if you added another 13 jobs?  He said, "It would be about 160 jobs."  And this was a conversation I had with him, just talking to him.  That's being replicated in small businesses all across the country.  So if I'm president, my priorities will be lifting the tax burdens and lifting the regulatory burden so that small businesses, we can go from those seven Charlie the butcher shops to 20.

GLENN:  If my tax burden went from 40 percent to 16 percent, how many jobs would we create?

PAT:  Hundreds probably.

GLENN:  Hundreds of jobs.

PAT:  Hundreds.

GLENN:  Hundreds of jobs.  And we're all the same.  Anybody who owns a small business, we're all the same.  We are being -- if they cut regulations, now, not necessarily in this business, but I know just from HR, we've got three people, I think, working in HR.  What are their jobs?  Their jobs are to keep us compliant.

If we just reduce the regulation that -- that eat up so much of a small business' time and so many of our resources just keeping us in compliance with the federal government, how many jobs would we create?  Who has a compliance officer in a small business just to keep you compliant with the laws for Obamacare?

How many jobs are being eaten by the federal government?

See, they say -- Barack Obama says, "The federal government creates jobs."  And that's because, if you go to Washington, they are creating jobs.  These places are getting bigger and bigger and bigger.  And they're all federal jobs.  What do those federal workers do?  They create paperwork for people like us.  They create situations where you need somebody to stay in compliance.  That's the problem.

And nobody else is really talking about these things.

PAT:  How do you -- if you're an economic person at CNBC and you know this stuff pretty well, like they obviously do, how do you not say, "Wow.  That's our guy --

GLENN:  I don't know.

PAT:  -- that's our guy?"

GLENN:  I posted this.  This is 41 minutes of his interview.  And I have never heard a politician talk like this.  Never.  This guy smoked MSNBC -- or, CNBC.  There was nothing they could bring up on the economy that he couldn't answer.  Remember, they started with, "Can you explain this?"  And then she followed with, "Okay.  But tell us, how is this happening with Europe?"  And he answered the question.

I mean --

STU:  Yeah.  By the way, quick tip for journalists interviewing Donald Trump:  End a lot of questions with "can you explain this" and see what he comes up with.  Because he can't explain any of it because he doesn't know -- he'll go back to China and everything else.  Hold him to it.  Make him explain those specifics.  That would be really helpful.

GLENN:  Right.  Right.

STU:  By the way, you're talking about regulation, Glenn.  The average US firm, the annual cost burden for regulation is $233,000.

GLENN:  How many jobs do you create with an extra 233,000?

PAT:  50,000 a piece.  Four.

STU:  Yeah.  Four or five jobs.

GLENN:  The average place.  The average place in America.

STU:  And that's --

GLENN:  Would have money for four extra jobs and some money left over.

STU:  And, by the way, that's just federal regulation.  The total cost nationally, $2.08 trillion.  Trillion.

GLENN:  And that is just burnt money.  That is $2 trillion that is just burnt.  There's nothing -- there's nothing being created with that $2 trillion.  Nothing being created of any value.  Anything that you can take and turn into something, there's nothing that you can turn and sell to somebody else.  That's $2 trillion of burnt money.

STU:  And just to go off on manufacture specifically, because everybody talks about them, the average cost for manufacturers, just compliance, is $19,564 per employee.  $19,000 per employee.  But that hits different for the size of your firm:  A big employer, it's $13,000, it costs.  For a small manufacturer, small businesses, as you were just talking about, two-thirds of all --

GLENN:  All jobs in recessions are created by small businesses.

STU:  13,000 for big employers.  35,000 per employee for small businesses.

GLENN:  So you want to raise -- you want to raise -- you are working in the manufacturing industry, you go ahead and say, "I want -- I want Ted Cruz as president because he's going to cut all of the regulations or a lot of the regulations.  They go from $35,000 a year just to keep that employee in compliance.  And they cut it down to $10,000 a year.  What do you say those -- those jobs and those employees get a 10,000-dollar raise?"  And the rest of it is used to create new jobs, to grow their business, or to be able to reward the people that are -- are -- took the risk in the first place.

Featured Image: Screenshot of Squawkbox

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

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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.

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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.