On Saturday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took 30% of the vote in a straw poll at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans. He edged out Dr. Ben Carson for the honor. After appearing at the conference (you can watch his speech HERE), Cruz headed to New York City for several small fundraising events.
TheBlaze’s Mike Opelka attending one of the private events during which Cruz spoke about the actions the Obama Administration took to secure the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. Opelka recorded a portion of Cruz’s remarks, and after gaining permission from the Senator’s camp, Glenn played the comments on radio this morning.
“He's been bouncing all over this city doing fundraisers and talking to small groups… I sent it to Ted's people and they didn't have a problem with [playing] it,” Opelka explained. “I told them no faces will be seen, video is going to be shown, and no one's identified in the group. You can just hear Ted speaking.”
Listen to the audio below:
CRUZ: This morning I was on the George Stephanopoulos show. We spent a lot of the time talking about this exact exchange. Ambassador Susan Rice was on the show right before me saying what a wonderful, terrific thing it was, but it's not like we've changed our policy that we don't negotiate with terrorists.
Now, it's interesting. It had been U.S. pressure – we were pressuring the Taliban. ‘We won't talk with you unless you renounce all ties to Al-Qaeda.’ The Taliban responded, ‘Hell, no.’ And we said, ‘Okay, never mind.’ So we are negotiating with people that are openly affiliated with Al-Qaeda terrorists and negotiated for the release of five senior Taliban terrorists.
Now, one question that I would ask is: How many soldiers lost their lives to capture those five terrorists? What would this sergeant say to the men and women in his company who are dead in Afghanistan because they risked everything to go after these people, who, I might remind everyone, were responsible for slaughtering over 3,000 innocents on September 11th in New York and Virginia and Pennsylvania?
And we've also set a precedent. Every terrorist who's got someone at Gitmo, they want to set free. They know the way to do so: Just go find a serviceman. We've effectively put a bounty on our servicemen.
And so should we have gone after our soldier? Yes, we should have gone in there and killed the bastards that were holding him.
(Applause)
“I love that,” Stu said. “It's hard to disagree with that statement.”
Glenn also agreed with Cruz’s sentiment, though he admitted his statements might not go over well in some circumstances. As Glenn explained, even Jimmy Carter attempted to extricate American hostages.
“That's what the United States of America does,” Glenn said “You want your soldier back? The United States of America goes in and gets him. That's what it does. I mean you don't have a right to take our soldier.”
“Even Jimmy Carter made a lame attempt,” Pat added. “He gave it a shot. Not this guy.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP