Ted Cruz defended his plan to “patrol” Muslim neighborhoods in the United States at the Wisconsin town hall on Tuesday night. (The part of the town hall starts just before the 8:00 minute mark in the video above.)
“We need a commander-in-chief who’s actually focused on keeping this country safe,” Cruz started, responding to host Anderson Cooper’s relaying of criticism from GOP rival John Kasich.
“We had a terror attack in Brussels last week, it was a horrific attack. President Obama could barely be bothered to stop his baseball game with communist dictators to say anything about it. And when he did he followed this bizarre pattern ... where he refused to say the words ‘radical Islamist terrorists.’ Instead what he did—which he did after the Paris terror attacks, which he did after San Bernardino—is he goes on television and lectures Americans on Islamaphobia.”
“Enough is enough,” added Cruz. “How about a president who actually defends this country.”
Cooper pressed Cruz on specifics of his patrol plan.
“What it means is we target the enemy,” Cruz said.
“Now there’s a difference between Islam and Islamism. Islamism is a political and theocratic philosophy that commands its adherents to wage violent jihad, to murder or forcibly convert all infidels—and by infidels they mean every one of the rest of us. Islamism is our enemy, and when President Obama and Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic party play this politically correct game of denying it it means they don’t fight it effectively.”
Cruz noted that such a game brings consequences.
“Obama and Hillary both advocate bringing tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees...”
Cruz was interrupted by Cooper, who noted that Cruz had said the patrol of neighborhoods had worked in New York despite the city halting its patrols.
Cruz attacked New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, calling him a “left-wing radical.” He also said Bill Bratton, the police commissioner, has a political agenda.
