The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Terror Threats on U.S. Soil & NYC Security Failures

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Tudor Dixon Podcast – "Terror Threats on U.S. Soil & NYC Security Failures"

The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show | iHeartPodcasts

Date: March 18, 2026
Guest: Rafael Manguel (Fellow, Manhattan Institute; Contributing Editor, City Journal; member, Council on Criminal Justice)
Host: Tudor Dixon

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Episode Overview

This tense and timely episode centers on a series of recent attempted and actual terror attacks in the United States, especially focusing on New York City and a major synagogue in Michigan. Tudor Dixon and guest Rafael Manguel analyze the failures and controversies of urban security, immigration vetting, law enforcement, and political responsibility in the face of these threats. The conversation also dives into criminal justice, societal empathy, and radicalization within the U.S., while questioning whether the political climate is hampering America's ability to defend itself.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Backdrop: Recent Terror Plots and Attacks

• Main Attacks Discussed:
  • An attempted terror attack in New York City, outside Gracie Mansion, involving radicalized teens.
  • A car attack at Temple Israel synagogue in Bloomfield, Michigan, connected to a man with Hezbollah family ties.
  • A shooting at Old Dominion by a recently released terrorist convict.

Tudor Dixon (03:11):
“These things are, I think, scarier today because as we go after the leading sponsor of terror in the entire world, we have concerns about what could possibly stir up here at home.”

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2. New York City—Policing, Politics, and Security Failures

• New York remains a perennial terror target due to visibility and symbolism.
• Mayor Zohra Mohamadani’s anti-policing campaign—eliminating the NYPD's Strategic Response Group (SRG), opposing surveillance, and general distaste for pro-active policing—left the city exposed.
• Post-attack, questions arise about readiness, resource allocation, and competence.

Rafael Manguel (05:05):
“New York always has and always will be a prime target for terror suspects… the risk is very real, it is ever present, and it needs to be mitigated.”

Key Incident:
During the Gracie Mansion incident, the SRG was not deployed despite red flags.

Tudor Dixon (08:05):
“He made it pretty clear he’s not a fan of policing... I think his hand was essentially forced. You had a really tragic mass casualty event... but I don’t buy it.”

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3. Michigan Synagogue Attack—Immigration, Media Narrative, and Vetting

• The attacker was a naturalized citizen with direct family ties to terrorist activity.
• Media headlines framed the attack as an emotional response to family tragedy, provoking outrage from Dixon and Manguel about misplaced empathy.

Tudor Dixon (11:48):
“As if anything that we can even justify that any type of grief would be acceptable for you to then attempt to kill hundreds of children.”

• Raises the issue of poor vetting—this case should have triggered a red flag barring entry or naturalization.

Rafael Manguel (12:50):
“We have to be much more thorough when it comes to vetting... there are likely already many, many people here who are openly sympathetic to foreign terrorist organizations and are willing to die in order to attack the United States.”

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4. Radicalization at Home—The Hidden Threat

• Radicalization domestic to the US, especially among youth (referencing both recent attacks and Manguel’s classmate, Samir Khan, who became a leading Al Qaeda propagandist).
• The unpredictability and hidden nature make prevention difficult—often, families aren’t aware.

Rafael Manguel (14:47):
“These individuals could be sitting next to you right now, we wouldn’t know.”

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5. Hardening Soft Targets—Role of Private Security

• Acknowledgement that complete prevention is impossible but hardening schools, synagogues, and soft targets with security and preparedness minimizes harm.

Tudor Dixon (19:56):
“Every school seems like a soft target right now... you can be prepared. And instead of just keeping our heads in the sand... maybe there’s a way to do it that you still are protected.”

Rafael Manguel (21:24):
“There are things that we can do to harden our soft targets. Taking those steps are worthwhile... when we do get lucky and catch these individuals before they do harm, we have to do what’s necessary to keep them incapacitated.”

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6. Criminal Justice Problems—Sentencing and Early Release

• Discussion of the Old Dominion shooting: perpetrator was given a short sentence for providing support to ISIS, served only six years before being released and attacking.
• Critique of the “mass incarceration” narrative and light sentencing for terror offenses.

Rafael Manguel (23:30):
“The reality is that ending up in prison in the US is quite difficult... you have an individual who is convicted of one of the most serious things... and yet this guy still gets out before serving even a full decade.”

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7. Political Dysfunction: Homeland Security Funding and Political Posturing

• Democrats’ refusal to fund DHS (while funding ICE) is characterized as dangerous political theater.
• Notable Michigan Senator Alyssa Slotkin criticized for voting against DHS funding and then publicly calling for it.

Tudor Dixon (27:49):
“We have now three attacks under our belt and still no Homeland Security funding. It is outrageous.”

Rafael Manguel (29:49):
“It is mind boggling... when they see funding for the sort of key institutions tasked with keeping the country safe being held hostage as a political football.”

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8. Controversial Solutions: Denaturalization and Suicidal Empathy

• Is denaturalization of naturalized citizens with terrorist ties a justified option, or a dangerous precedent?
• The challenge of drawing clear lines and the risk of “suicidal empathy”—over-tolerance endangering real security.

Tudor Dixon (35:45):
“There has been discussion of Denaturalization for people who have been in some way connected to terror... should that be an option?”

Rafael Manguel (36:20):
“The idea that someone remains entitled to naturalized citizenship after pledging loyalty to a foreign terrorist organization... it would be crazy for it not to be [on the table].”

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9. Radicalization in Comfortable Suburbs

• Case studies reveal that radicalization can target well-off, assimilated families—demolishing the myth that American prosperity inoculates against extremism.

Rafael Manguel (39:01):
“This was an individual who was living a very nice and comfortable life in an idyllic Long Island suburb... a lot of people can be susceptible to it.”

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10. Limits of Surveillance and the Myth of the All-Knowing State

• The state is not omnipotent; many threats go unmonitored due to sheer scale and resource constraints.
• Criticism of both leftist and libertarian narratives that overstate government surveillance while underestimating real needs.

Rafael Manguel (41:35):
“You can have an individual who is convicted of a terrorist attack or trying to plot one, leaves prison, and then no one’s watching him... we have to invest more in all of the things that people say we’ve been doing too much of but clearly haven’t been doing enough of.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "These individuals could be sitting next to you right now, we wouldn’t know." — Rafael Manguel (14:47)
• “As if anything that we can even justify that any type of grief would be acceptable for you to then attempt to kill hundreds of children.” — Tudor Dixon (11:48)
• “It would be crazy for [denaturalization] not to be [on the table].” — Rafael Manguel (36:20)
• “We have now three attacks under our belt and still no Homeland Security funding. It is outrageous.” — Tudor Dixon (27:49)
• “America is a very large country... you can’t watch 350 million people all day, every day. There are threats that are going to go and fly under the radar.” — Rafael Manguel (41:35)

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• Intro to terrorism on US soil: 03:11
• NYC Mayor and SRG controversy: 04:27–08:45
• Michigan synagogue attack & vetting debate: 09:59–13:51
• Domestic radicalization & Samir Khan story: 13:54–14:47
• Security at schools, hardening soft targets: 19:56–22:55
• Old Dominion attacker and judicial leniency: 22:55–27:49
• Homeland Security funding politics: 27:49–31:02
• Denaturalization and boundaries debate: 35:45–37:52
• Radicalization in suburbs, family factors: 39:01–40:36
• Surveillance and state capacity: 41:35–42:40

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is sober, urgent, and skeptical of the prevailing progressive criminal justice and immigration narratives. Dixon and Manguel convey a sense of frustration over political dysfunction, soft-on-crime attitudes, media bias, and the underestimation of domestic terror risk. There is a strong advocacy for practical steps: robust vetting, more assertive law enforcement, serious sentencing for terror offenses, and hardening vulnerable locations.

The speakers emphasize vigilance and preparation over wishful thinking, warning against both misplaced empathy and bureaucratic inertia.

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For listeners seeking insight on current U.S. terror threats, urban security policies, and the national debate over how to balance liberty and protection, this episode offers a data-informed, candid, and occasionally provocative discussion.

Transcript

[Tudor Dixon]

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[Rafael Manguel]

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[Tudor Dixon]

Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. Today we are going to be talking about terrorism on US Soil. It's a tough topic. We've got. We've had a couple of attacks in the past week. We also saw an attack in New York City, an attempted attack in New York City. These things are, I think, scarier today because as we go after the leading sponsor of terror in the entire world, we have concerns about what could possibly stir up here at home. And I think it's an interesting conversation because so many people have come to me and been like, are you mad that we went to war because this is now causing people to create these terror attacks on U.S. soil? And I think to myself, well, what a naive view of things. Like, those people weren't gonna. They were just gonna sit here and silently hate us unless we provoked something. Because if they were here planning, I believe that they have always been here planning and that these people exist and that we need to be careful about it. So I thought, well, who can I talk to about this? And we found Rafael Manguel. He is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal and a member of the Council on Criminal Justice. Rafael, thank you so much for join today.

[Rafael Manguel]

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. So as we look at this, I know you've had a lot to say about what's going on in New York. New York is interesting to me because we have this mayor who was elected on essentially being like, we. I don't love policing. I don't want these special units that are going to look for terror and take care of issues like this. And I don't really want anybody to police protests. I don't want, you know, let them get out of hand if they want. That kind of all changed over the past week. So what's your opinion of what is happening in Manhattan and where Mayor Mamdani goes from here?

[Rafael Manguel]

Yeah, I mean, I wrote a piece for City Journal about this in the wake of that attack. And my basic take was that, you know, this needs to be a wake up call for Mayor Mamdani. I understand that he's young. I understand that he's only been on the job for a couple of months. But the reality is, is that New York always has and always will be a prime target for terror suspects. You know, it is very much considered the heart of the. Even though it's not the capital, Right. It's where we had not one, but two separate attacks on the World Trade center just in my lifetime. Right? So this is something that is going to be ongoing. And I think the mayor needs to be sat down by the adults in the room and made to understand that the risk is very real, that it is ever present, and that it needs to be mitigated. And now that's where we start to get into some of the steps that we can take. And one of the questions that I always get when something like this happens is, well, what can we do, right? I mean, you know, what is it that we can do about this? And when you're talking about a city like New York, you're talking about an incredibly wealthy city with a lot of resources at hand. And if those resources are invested properly in the one institution that is designed and built to protect the city, that is the nypd, then we know that we can do a good amount of work to mitigate some of these risks. It doesn't mean that we're going to see or out the risk. It doesn't mean there won't be another attack at some point in the future. But the MIPD has counterterrorism capabilities. They have people who are trained in intelligence gathering and counterintelligence. They have special units.

[Tudor Dixon]

But hasn't he said he specifically wants to get rid of those units?

[Rafael Manguel]

Well, he has come out in support of abolishing a group called the srg, which stands for Strategic Response Group. It is a special unit within the NYPD's Critical Response Command. And it's basically meant to respond to large casualty events, to do large crowd control. But their members are specifically trained in counterterrorism. And so this is why I was so perplexed by the context of the bombing. A couple of Saturdays ago, you had an individual who was leading a protest that was touching the subject matter of Islamic terrorism about a week out from the hostilities kicking off in Iran. So those are two red flags right there. That individual inspired a counter protest. He has a history of being counter protested Sometimes violently. So that's another red flag. And then all of this is set to take place outside a very sensitive location in Gracie Mansion. And yet SRG was not on the scene. They were on standby nearby. But you have to start to suspect that that decision reflected the mayor's distaste for that group. And so I'm hoping that this will be the wake up call that he needs. Certainly it's a wake up call for a lot of people in New York City. And the question's going to be, what do we do from here? It's not just the SRG that the mayor has come out against. He is someone who has been critical of other surveillance tactics, particularly in and around mosques and the Islamic Jihadist threat. But that's something that we need reconsider now that we know that these attacks are going to happen. I mean, we've had a handful in just a matter of 10 days or so.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, let's be honest. I mean, he doesn't really like the police in general. He made it pretty clear that he's not a fan of policing in the years that he was on this state. Assemblyman man. And then he gets it into. He's campaigning and he's still somewhat anti police. I think he kind of was waffling because he's trying to get everybody's vote. And people went, oh, I think what he gets into office, he's actually going to be pro police. But then just a couple weeks ago, we have that snowball fight and he made it pretty clear that he's like, I'm not going to take care of the cops. Then they're still there for him. I just want to point out that when this happens at Gracie Mansion, they show up.

[Rafael Manguel]

That's right. That's right. They always show up. And that's the thing that really is the most inspiring thing about law enforcement in this country. Right. Whenever they take action, they are by definition subordinating their own safety and security in service of the communities that they are working in at the time. And they do that knowing that it's a thankless job. They do that knowing sometimes that the people they're serving are openly hostile to their very existence. Like Mayor Mom, Donnie. But I think you're right. I think his natural disposition is to be oppositional toward law enforcement. And he has fallen right into that. After taking office, people say, well, he made these changes on the campaign trail, at least in his rhetoric, and I think his hand was essentially forced. You had a really tragic mass casualty event happen during the campaign. You had the mass shooting at 345 Park Avenue where an NYPD officer did rural Islam, lost his life. And I think that really kind of made him understand that if he was going to have a real shot at getting the vote of moderates or people who were on the fence about him, that he was going to have to at least change his tune. I didn't buy it at the time. I very much don't buy it now. And I suspect that some New Yorkers are having buyer's remorse on that.

[Tudor Dixon]

Interesting. So let's go to Michigan. Yeah, we had this attack in Michigan. It was interesting to see how this went down because obviously they went over one of the biggest. He went after one of the biggest synagogues in the entire country. It's called Temple Israel. It's in Bloomfield, Michigan. The guy had family over in Lebanon, members of Hezbollah. They were targeted in an attack and killed. They lost children in that attack, which I think is. Is a devastating situation also. This is why parents of that become terrorists, put their kids in danger, let's be honest. Like, this is not this country. This is another country. This is war. This is terror. He has obvious ties to this family that is concerning. He is a naturalized citizen here in Michigan. Then he decides that he's going to attack a synagogue, Temple Israel in Bloomfield, and he packs his car filled with fireworks. So obviously this is kind of an amateur attempt, but still we know that this is someone coming from a place of having family members who also launched terror attacks. He drives into the synagogue, has a gun. We've heard that there were shots fired. He ends up dying in the attack. He's the only one, thankfully, he is the only person. None of the children in the synagogue were hurt, but it could have been incredibly bad. The reporting after the fact is so interesting to me because these headlines are like, man drives into temple after family members are killed in Lebanon.

[Rafael Manguel]

Right. As if it was someone else's fault, but the attacker.

[Tudor Dixon]

Right. And as if anything that we can even justify that any type of grief would be acceptable for you to then attempt to kill hundreds of children.

[Rafael Manguel]

Right. And this is often coming from the very same people who, in the wake of an attack like 9 11, for example, cautioned against, you know, blaming entire groups for what a handful of individuals did. And they were right then, but they're wrong now. They're not willing to be consistent in terms of their reasoning.

[Tudor Dixon]

And it is frustrating, let me tell you. That's why I think it is frustrating that we can't do something when we know because they knew that he was connected. And that to me, is frustrating friends in that area. I have friends over in Hamtramck and Dearborn who have said, you don't know what it was like for us after 9, 11. Well, okay, so if we allow unvetted people to come in with radicalized ideology, that will happen. Those preconceived notions will come back if we don't do what the president has been talking about, making our country safe.

[Rafael Manguel]

That's exactly right. I think one of the main lessons here is that we have to be much more thorough when it comes to vetting and making decisions about who gets to come into our country. The fact that this individual seems to have had family members who were members of a foreign terrorist organization that should have been a flag red enough to stop that process in its tracks. And yet he ended up in the United States anyway. And, you know, so that's a wake up call in a way, because it just makes very clear that there are likely already many, many people here who are openly sympathetic to foreign terrorist organizations and are willing to die in order to attack the United. And look, some of these individuals, like the alleged attacker in Bloomfield, their ties are going to be clear. There are other individuals who are going to end up here who were either naturalized as young children who are going to be radicalized while on U.S. soil. And that's a risk that is not as easily mitigatable. Which.

[Tudor Dixon]

That kind of sounds like what happened in New York, right?

[Rafael Manguel]

Yeah. Right. So these are two individuals who are US Citizens. They're teenagers. They got radicalized at some point in the last few years and decide to drive from Pennsylvania to New York to carry out a terrorist attack. And that's an idea that really hits home for me. A lot of people don't know this, but I went to a high school on Long island called Clark High School, and one of my classmates was an individual named Samir Khan. And in the wake of 9 11, this individual started making comments that were very disturbing in support of the attack and kind of withdrew from mainstream life on campus. And we would all kind of whisper to each other, and it turned out that he would graduate and then go on to join Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was eventually killed in a drone strike with Amra al Awlaki. And so all that to say is these individuals could be sitting next to you right now, we wouldn't know.

[Tudor Dixon]

Or sitting next to your child in class and you don't know.

[Rafael Manguel]

That's exactly right. And so the question is what do you do about that? And the answer is, unfortunately not very much. We live in a free society, which means that we're going to have to absorb some risk. But that doesn't mean that there aren't things that we can do to hard and soft targets. Right. So I believe it was security at Temple Israel that ended up taking down the attacker. Right. So we have to think about how to use private security to our advantage, how to harden soft targets. And in cities like New York that are known terror targets, we have to make sure that we are investing in counterterrorism assets through our local law enforcement agencies and having cross agency communication so that everyone is on the same page about threats and how to approach them them.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tutor Dixon Podcast.

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[Tudor Dixon]

so it's interesting that you brought up the protecting a soft target and that there were security guards in Temple Israel that obviously when he came through they shot. There was a bit of a firefight. He ended up dying. I'm not sure that that's how he died. I don't think that's been reported yet, but it was that he was encountered immediately. We know that there had also been, like, some practice run with the FBI in Temple Israel. And I think that, you know, the folks that I've talked to, I have friends that are also. One of my friends that's over there was saying my kids were at a country day school just down the street, a Jewish country day school just down the street. And this was devastating to think that this could have been their school. I think that that's how all parents feel right now, though, about our schools in general. It's like every school seems like a soft target right now, whether it is a terror attack from another country or a terror attack from someone who is just going to go in and shoot up a school. I think of those two things as the same. And I think a lot of us across the country have said, how do we prevent? And people go, oh, you can't 100% prevent. But I think we were shown at Temple Israel that you can be prepared. And instead of just keeping our heads in the sand and saying, we don't want to have people, we don't want to have armed guards in our school, well, maybe there's a way to do it that you still are protected. I mean, I feel like there was a major lesson that we got out of Michigan this past week.

[Rafael Manguel]

No, I think that's exactly right. And I understand that it makes people uncomfortable to grapple with the risk to their own lives and to the lives of the people that they care most about. And a lot of people, they deal with that psychologically by burying their heads in the sand and pretending that the risk isn't there. But we can't do that. Right? And there are steps that we can take. And, yes, is it going to cost us some part of ourselves? Maybe. But that alternative is much more preferable to the worst possible outcomes. And so, yeah, it's true we can't zero out the risk. Yes, it's true the risk is still statistically remote. But I think that these events teach us a very important lesson, which is that there are things that we can do to harden our soft targets. Taking those steps are worthwhile. I mean, it certainly proved to be the case for Temple Israel. But there are other steps that we can take as well. And some of the other terrorist attacks that have happened recently highlight some of those lessons. I'm thinking here of the shooting at Old Dominion, where you had an individual who was previously incarcerated after being convicted of offering material support to a foreign terrorist organization in isis. And yet you have a judge giving a sentence, almost half that of what was requested, and then the individual still being eligible for early release. It's like, you know, there's just another lesson here, which is that when we do get lucky and catch these individuals before they do harm, we have to do what's necessary to keep them incapacitated.

[Tudor Dixon]

And that's another one where we don't know how bad that attack would have been had it hadn't been those students, because they wrestled him down. I mean, they took. They took care of him on their own. We still ended up losing someone and an unnecessary life loss. To your point, I've heard experts even say that he got 11 years. I think, what, he served six of those years. So he was sentenced for essentially colluding on terrorism.

[Rafael Manguel]

Yep. Yeah.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's just like being a traitor. You would think that 11 years is not even an option.

[Rafael Manguel]

Right. I mean, you know, when you consider his age at the time of sentencing. Right. We knew that this man was going to be released, given that sentence as a young person, person who. With no indication that he changed his ideology, with no indication that he would no longer be a threat, and yet he was just released into the community for what? Because he completed some treatment program. This highlights just a broader problem with the left with respect to criminal justice, one that I've been writing about for about a decade now. The left is consistently pushing this narrative that America has a quote, unquote, mass incarceration problem, that we are draconian police state, that we're too harsh, that our criminal justice system, system is just locking people up and throwing away the key. And that couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that ending up in prison in the United States is quite difficult to do. It takes some doing. You have to be either convicted of a very, very, very serious, often violent defense, or you have to have a very, very lengthy criminal history. And this is illustrative of that because you have an individual who is convicted of one of the most serious things that I think you can be convicted of, which is offering support to a foreign terrorist organization and pl against the United States of America. And yet this guy still gets out before serving even a full decade. He should never have been allowed out. Right. The option should have been either life in prison, the death penalty, or deportation upon release. And yet that wasn't the case. And so I think this is just another lesson learned here. When we do get lucky, when our systems work to identify threats before harm comes to pass, we have to do everything we can to mitigate those threats for as long as we possibly can. That individual should have received the longest possible sentence under the law, and he should have been made to serve every single day of it. Had that happened, these individuals would have still been alive.

[Tudor Dixon]

So is there a way to go back and look at other people that are in this situation? Because this was a perfect example of someone who was given a light sentence, got out early, a very light sentence. The wrong sentence. I can't even even, like, put enough emphasis on. They just gave this guy a break. He was obviously a bad dude. He came out and did exactly what he was planning on doing from the beginning. It was like, did you just give him six years to sit there and think about how to do it? You know, this was obviously a bad guy. How many other guys are like this that. I believe the left would just. I believe the left would open the prison doors of every prison in this country and just let everybody go free without asking what they did.

[Rafael Manguel]

Did. Well, I think they would certainly like to do that for a good number of the prisoners. Right? I mean, you know, just relatively recently, you had people like Joe Biden on the campaign trail promising to cut incarceration by 50%. I mean, do you understand the level of criminal you would have to release in order to get to that number? I mean, we're so often unfavorably compared to other Western European democracies on issues like incarceration. And what people don't get is that for us to match, to achieve parity with those Western European democracies, we would have to Release something like 75% of our incarcerated population. These are people who are convicted of the most serious violent offenses, who have somewhere between 10 and 12 prior arrests, five and six prior convictions, and yet are still going to get out after serving a median amount of time that hovers around 16 months in this country. Despite all of that. And yet the narrative continues. This idea that we have a mass incarceration problem. It's one that New York City's Mayor Zohra Mohammedani ran on. His rise to office was built around two things. Defunding the police and noting new jails. And again, these lessons are going to need to be learned over and over again. But this history is so recent that it really makes you scratch your head. Why on earth make these choices? I wish I had a good answer for you, but I do think that federal officials, state officials need to go back, look at who's incarcerated for these kinds of charges, reassess how we can keep them behind bars, whether it's with new charges or just really upping the intelligence gathering apparatus so that these individuals can be monitored when they're released.

[Tudor Dixon]

Well, and we need people that are in Washington who are willing to go through and do that. We have a very interesting situation right now with Democrats refusing to fund dhs. And it's a very strange situation because they've fully funded ice, but they're like, we don't want ICE to actually have money, so we're not going to pay for tsa. Nobody can travel anywhere. It's a total nightmare. We have now three attacks under our belt and still no Homeland Security funding. It is outrageous. And I'll say here in Michigan, the senator from Michigan, Alyssa Slotkin, voted against DHS funding and then went out the next day and was like, this is why we need DHS funding. Give me a break. And I say this because she is very manipulative. She is a former CIA analyst or not agent analyst. Yes, A former CIA analyst who was out there. And she knows exactly how to manipulate the words that she uses. I think she's incredibly dangerous. I think that she is a darling among the Democrat Party. And as we are going into the midterms and then the 2028 election, I heard people saying, you know who, they don't even have a candidate. There's nobody. There's nobody rising in the ranks. And I am reminded that Barack Obama came out as a freshman senator and ran for office and became President of the United States. And she is currently a freshman senator. And I say that because I also think a CIA and analyst would have information about exactly how met, how much, how many terror threats there are and how exposed we are in this country. Even former CIA analyst Sarah Adams has been reporting on this for quite a while now, saying that we have thousands of terror threats and she said she believes there will be an attack. So how does one CIA analyst come out and say we are really, truly under threat threat on US Soil, and the other who has the actual power to do something about it, doesn't do anything?

[Rafael Manguel]

Yeah. Well, I think this is the problem with politics, right? I mean, partisan politics elevates being a team player above everything else. And this is one of the things I think frustrates a lot of the American people about the individuals that are supposed to represent them. And it's one of the reasons why Congress as an institution continues to poll so low in terms of trust of the American people. I think everyone understands that government's first and foremost duty is to keep the citizen reach safe. That is what it exists to do. Right. If, you know, going back to the Federalist Papers, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. Right? That is at the core of the American idea. And so I think it is mind boggling for people when they see funding for the sort of key institutions tasked with keeping the country safe being held hostage as a political football. No one benefits from that. I think Democrats should absolutely get behind a vote to fully fund these agencies, especially in the wa of these terrorist attacks. And if you can't do that, then, then I, you know, I, I don't know what the future is ultimately going to hold, but I think it's going to be up to the American people in these next couple of election cycles to articulate to their elected representatives just how important these issues are to them.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.

[Ben Ferguson]

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[Tudor Dixon]

Let me ask you something very controversial. There has been discussion of Denaturalization for people who have been in some way connected to terror. And I think that there are a lot of people that say, if you can denaturalize someone, where does that stop? And there's a lot of fear over that concept. But if you know that the person is connected to an outside terror org, that they want to harm Americans, that they have not assimilated, they do not see this as their country, should that be an option?

[Rafael Manguel]

I think it should absolutely be on the table. Look, denaturalization is already something that exists, or it's already an option that can be exercised. The idea that someone remains entitled to naturalized citizenship after pledging loyalty to a foreign terrorist organization and trying to actively undermine and attack the very country that has given them a home. I think this is one of Those sort of 80, 20 issues where the vast majority of Americans will understand that, no, there's actually nothing really all that controversial about denaturalizing those individuals. Now, you asked exactly the right question, which is, where does the buck stop? Right. Where is the line going to be? And I think that's ultimately a question that has to be answered through the political process. I think most Americans understand that, yeah, we should give people the. The hospitality and all the rights that come with U.S. citizenship. And, you know, so denaturalization probably shouldn't be on the table for something as, you know, low level, as like, you know, a petty criminal conviction, for example. Right. Or even something more serious. Right. I mean, you know, and a regular American citizen is going to be denaturalized for, say, dui. But when you're talking about offering material support to foreign terrorist organizations, when you're talking about plotting to kill Americans, I think that absolutely has to be on the table, and it would be crazy for it not to be.

[Tudor Dixon]

It seems like anything, anything now that is not about keeping someone here. Not, you know, there's this. People have called it suicidal empathy, that we are a society that believes that everybody needs to be coddled and everybody needs to be protected and everybody is the same. And I think that is a hard thing for Americans to. That concept of other cultures are very different from our. And there are times when people from a different culture that want to do us harm do come to the United States. And I also think it is confusing when you see, like, the attack in New York. You have to somewhat say, well, where were the parents in that case? Because they came over and they became naturalized citizens. So then how far back do you look and do you connect the child and the parent to the same thing. And I think that that's something even we're seeing today in school shootings, when a child goes into school. We've now seen parents that have been prosecuted for that. That crime as well. So how deep do you think this would go if you ended up with a situation like we saw in New York?

[Rafael Manguel]

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say, right? I mean, because there, at least, as of now, there's no indication that the parents of those two teenagers, you know, shared their views. I mean, these are people who were very successful in America, you know, who by all accounts, seem to have at least checked a lot of the boxes that constitute the American dream. Right. These two individuals were raised in beautiful, very expensive home in a nice, quaint suburb of Pennsylvania. So there was every reason for them to continue the assimilation process. And the same could have been said of Samir Khan, my former classmate. This was an individual who was living a very nice and comfortable life in an idyllic Long island suburb. And so I think this just highlights the unpredictable nature of this ideology and highlights that a lot of people can be susceptible to it. I think Americans have sort of grown accustomed to this idea that life here is so good because we understand and share the sort of cultural inheritance of the United States, that it's almost impossible to come away from that, hostile to it. But there are a lot of people who don't share that ideology, whose brains and hearts are much more fragile than ours and much more susceptible to being talked into this sort of toxic, hateful, and ultimately suicidal ideology that inspires groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and Hezboll and Hamas, and we have to be wary about that. We have to understand that those threats are real. They're here, and we have to take steps in the face of them to mitigate our risks.

[Tudor Dixon]

You make such a good point about the fact that these people oftentimes don't know that their own family member is being radicalized. And this is happening in weird spaces and dark places on the Internet, I imagine. I think we watch so many movies and. And we were like, my mom will always be like, you know, if this were my afternoon show, they would confess at the end, and they would be put in jail. And I'm like, yes, I know. If life were only like, you know, whatever Tucker and Rex or Rex and Hutch or whatever it is that she watches every day. But. But honestly, I think we do think that the government has our back. You know, like, they're listening to everything. They know exactly what's going on they're in all these dark places. How much do you think the government really knows? How often are these people, I mean, for example, the guy, obviously the Old Dominion guy, they knew a lot and he wasn't being monitored. So we have this distrust for they do know or they don't know and they're not doing enough. What do you think is really happening behind this?

[Rafael Manguel]

Yeah, I mean, here again, just we have another example of how the sort of left and libertarian left critique of, you know, these institutions is so off base. Right. You have this entire narrative built around the idea that America is a surveillance state, that every single phone call, text and email is being monitored and read and the NSA is in every single room and there's no such thing as privacy anymore. And yet you can have an individual who is convicted of a terrorist attack or trying to plot one leaves prison and then no one's watching him to the point where he's able to acquire firearms, plan and then carry out an attack on a major American university. And so again, I hope that this is a wake up call for people. America is a very large country. We're talking about 350 some odd people. You can't watch 350 million people all day, every day. There are threats that are going to go and fly under the radar. We have to be attuned to that and we have to invest more in all of the things that people say we've been doing too much of but clearly haven't been doing enough of.

[Tudor Dixon]

Yeah, it's very interesting when we have situations like this that people are saying, dismantle DHS altogether. And here we're talking about this like there's never any enough ability to make sure that the bad guys are being weeded out and that we actually see them. And to think that we would get rid of an entire organization or entire agency that we founded after 911 to make sure we were safe. I mean, there is quite a bit of controversy going on right now in the country and certainly in the political space, especially as we come up to these midterms and we have people going, why are we not protecting this country? Why are we not concerned with protecting this country? And then the Democrats are very convinced in why you shouldn't. And I just never thought we would get here, especially after you see attack after attack, this, the spin that they can put on it, like I said, having people coming out and saying, well, these attacks wouldn't have happened if we hadn't attacked Iran. And I'm like, these people were here, they didn't move here yesterday. What are you talking about? So I think it's fascinating. I think what you do is fascinating. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today and thank you for all of the research that you do.

[Rafael Manguel]

Raphael, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. And thank you all for joining us on the podcast. I thought this episode was fascinating. I'm like really interested in how we are protected and how we know these things are happening. So I ask you to make sure you listen and you share it with your friends. You can get it wherever you get Your podcast, the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, Rumble or YouTubeutter Dixon, just make sure you join us and share and have a blessed day.

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[Rafael Manguel]

Loosen up.

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[Rafael Manguel]

finish up on your own?

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[Rafael Manguel]

and and hot sauce.

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[Rafael Manguel]

for an annual company retreat. The catch?

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Oh, yeah, and the company is fake. Season two arrives with bigger laughs, higher stakes, and the same heart that made season one a cultural phenomenon. Watch. Jury Duty presents Company Retreat.

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Now streaming on Prime Video.

[Tudor Dixon]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.