#423 Israel and Hamas, Radicalization of Education, $105 Billion Aid package, with Lt. Colonel Matt Crouch of Heritage Action

October 20 at the White House requested more than $105 billion in funding for Ukraine , israel , processing illegal , illegal immigrants at the border , global humanitarian aid $105 billion . Get your mind wrapped around this right . This is a supplemental spending in addition to what Congress has asked for for 2024 . You know it's amazing . And so how do you look at this ?

You know , you know that there's so much corruption in governments all over the place , and how do you set these priorities ? So I asked Lieutenant Colonel Matt to come on to talk a little bit about Heritage Action and the Heritage Foundation's kind of view on this and how we separate this out .

It was $61 billion for Ukraine , $13.6 billion for open border policies , $14.3 billion for Israel , $10 billion for global humanitarian aid and etc . Etc . Well , I'll just add this quickly Mike Johnson has become our new House Speaker and I'm excited about this . You know , initially I thought man . I hope Jim Jordan gets in there . I really respect him .

I didn't know much about Mike Johnson , but two things come out clearly . Mike Johnson is a faithful Christian . I mean , he gets down on his knees and he prays . This is one of the first things that he does . He brings God back into this mix . If we don't bring God back into this mix , you know the world's spinning out of control , as we can see .

So that's a positive thing . And second thing is he's a constitutional lawyer , and so that's another person that we need . So there's some confidence there I have in him . Of course , he can't do everything , so we all have to be able to call . It's amazing when you call and write your congressman and your senators , it has more pull than you think .

You know you get groups of people to do this , and the left is always doing this . You know the Biden administration has plenty of people out there that will follow up and call these senators and congressmen . So a lot of times they're only here in one voice because the rest of us are just too quiet sometimes . That's going to have to change .

So Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action supports all those efforts , including the grassroots efforts that are so important today . One last thing when we're talking about God and countries , alexander Schultz and Niedsen I pulled up an article from a talk that he gave when he was receiving the Templeton Prize for Progress and Religion in May of 1983 .

So think about this 1983 he's given this talk , and the talk was called Men have Forgotten God . So let me just read a little bit about that . More than half a century ago he starts out his talk . While I was still a child .

I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that have befallen Russia Men have forgotten God . That's why all this happened . Since then I've spent well nine , 50 years working on the history of our revolution .

He's talking , of course , about the Communist Revolution , and in the process I've read hundreds of books , collected hundreds of personal testimonies and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval .

But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our own people , I could not put it more accurately than to repeat Men have Forgotten God . That's why all this has happened . It's amazing , right .

Take God out of the of your individual human heart , out of the , out of your marriages and families , out of the culture , and and then this all pushes out into all these countries and the men have forgotten God . So , while while we're talking about all these things , keep that in the back of your mind .

If we don't bring this to prayer , if those of us who believe in God , especially Christians today , don't get active in taking our country back and taking the culture back , then there's not going to be much hope for our kids and grandkids , and and you know that's going to be a tragedy because God's going to not only hold us responsible , but just personally .

You know we , we , we really need to look at our kids and our grandkids and the legacy that we're going to leave behind . You know it's it's a lot more than worrying about your next time on the golf course or worrying about your next vacation . It's time to really buckle down and work on saving this country .

So God bless you , buckle up and get ready for today's episode . I'm honored to be with Lieutenant Colonel Matt Crouch today . Matt's recently retired Marine Aviator with tours to Iraq and Afghanistan . A graduate of the Naval Academy , the University of Maryland , the Hong Kong University , fudan International Management Business Administration program .

He's an Olmstead scholar and the current state director for Missouri , arkansas and Illinois , with heritage action for America . Matt's married to Jenny Marie Crouch . Together they have five children ages 21 to 16 . So , colonel Matt , lieutenant , colonel Matt , it's so good to be with you and it sounds like you still got got some work at home with kids , huh .

But I'll tell you what you know I feel like I can't retire or I can't go anyplace , because I just too many things are going on right now , and so I don't think you're going to be able to retire either . I think you love the country too much .

I think you've got a strong faith life and and we worry about our kids , right , we worry that they're going to have a country left , and so it's great to have you on here , I mean here . It is just such an incredible organization instilling these values that we need so desperately , and so I'm excited to be with you today .

I want to I was hoping and I know that you agreed to talk a little bit about Israel , hamas , what's going on there , the funding that's going on there , the funding that we're just throwing money around . Maybe you could help us make sense of all this . It seems like the Biden administration . Things were just made out of money .

And , of course , getting back to our kids , we are leveraging their you know , their their future here . And I guess the last thing I would just say is that we're seeing these attacks , man coming within the family , coming with our educational system . I think this is one big battle really , so maybe you could help us make sense of that .

So , step in anywhere you want and and we'll , and we'll try to make some sense of this .

I think for folks like us , we were very fortunate to come of age in a time when I feel like the country as a nation and culturally still had a good sense of its own identity , still very confident in America and the American dream and confident that the Constitution was an inspired , divinely inspired document that really set America apart as exceptional .

And I think that increasingly , that's not a message that kids hear from the community and from , in particular , the school system , unless parents are very deliberate about how they educate their kids .

So yeah , I mean , parents and grandparents have a , I think , a bigger burden right now bring up children in the right way , and I feel like one of the great examples that we're experiencing as we record this today is watching the argument over right and wrong and the left , the political left's attempt to establish a moral equivalency between the terrorists at Hamas

and the nation of Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces .

They begin this process of defending themselves in the wake of those October 7th attacks , which I think were just horrific , and I think that , as an outside observer here and I think , speaking for the United States we just don't recognize some of the important elements of that right versus wrong , that good versus evil struggle that's going on , and partly because

we've lost the ability in our culture to say what those things are . Last time we talked , we talked about one element of that struggle as it relates to our kids and protecting their innocence and establishing the truth about gender and sex .

So I think you see some more of this and a big link in the leftist sort of neo-Marxist thought that we roughly described as critical race theory . We also see that manifesting today , right now , in some pretty horrific anti-Semitism on our campuses .

You know the terror and the destruction that takes place when we literally torture a maim , drag human beings , you know , in the most despicable ways through and you said something when we no longer know the difference between good and evil .

And really let's talk about truth , is there a truth when we no longer can recognize somebody's sex right , when our culture and I think this is just a barometer of it , not to beat up this issue but when I can look at a person's body and no longer understand if they're a male or female , it's going to be very hard to look at Israel and Hamas as a country

and decide , right to your point , to decide you know who's right in this battle or not .

You know , and for me you know these , look at these are all human beings right and unfortunately , there's many innocent Palestinians to get caught up in this , you know , and it's just like the Israelis were caught up in this , but if we don't understand that Israel was invaded by really barbarian actions of a terrorist group , you know what do you do and how do

you react to that , and you served a lot of time in the Marines . So how do you look at this , matt ?

You know , when you see that , knowing of course there's innocent people on the other side , but yet you have to go after those people , right , you have to go after those terrorists because you know they're coming back again , you know that they'll gladly die , right , doing this kind of thing , and you see the abject hatred I mean the hatred and unfortunately we're

seeing some of that hatred on college campuses . You know , it's almost like you know they're swimming in this right .

Right , these are folks that decided they were going to perpetrate an attack , and I heard an interesting comment about it that , I think , really speaks volumes about what we're dealing with , what the Israelis are dealing with in this situation , which is , hey , what .

The difference between the last time we saw this kind of extensive attempt to kill Jews in the Holocaust and today is perhaps one of shame . Right , that the Nazis in Germany were attempting to hide what they were doing . But Hamas is not doing that . They're actively seeking to publicize . They're recording these things , and who are they recording them for ?

They're recording it for their own population and for what they perceive to be their own glorification . And so it's frightening that , and so I'll one survey more than half of Americans under the age of 30 , between 30 and 18 . Believe that what Hamas did was justify .

And then you look across at the campuses here in America and you see large groups being allowed to conduct themselves with impunity , whether it's a place like Cooper Union , where they've got their Jewish classmates hiding in the library and secreted away via tunnels , or some of the abuse that we've seen on the Harvard campus this past week .

Across the country , at the institutions that are supposed to be a font of knowledge and rational thought and intellectual skepticism for the best of purposes , what we're actually finding is that the radicalization of the institution is complete , that you have school administrators that are either part of the equity or diversity section , that are outright supportive of Hamas

and their public statements , or you have leadership that at best can issue a tepid condemnation , if they even get to that point In some instances .

You've seen Presidents of University's Tufts as the example I'm thinking of here , where only after donors , in shock from their initial statement failing to condemn Hamas , have these school Presidents come back and issued a stronger statement , which I think at best can be described as mealy mouth , trying to placate both sides , and it leaves one shocked that we're

struggling to draw a clear line between right and wrong on this , and I think you trace that back to CRT and the way it's been taught in the schools for a generation .

I mean hatred comes right through that and it shows really what these ideologies have done . Laying that aside , matt , what are these professors , without getting in the weeds too much here , what are they telling them about the history of these people that can get the students to this point ?

I mean , are they actually talking about the actual history in that country or are they just living on the surface here ? And just how are they getting these people riled up ? Or are there enough Arabs or Muslims or Palestinians in these schools to do it themselves , or how is that happening ?

I think that you have to have a clear understanding that there is a continuous threat of thought that I have described before as Neo-Marxist thought that comes out of that school of thinking , that critical race theory school , where they have decided to put us all on a ladder with oppressors at the top and the various level of oppressed which are , in this case ,

defined by those what I think are irrelevant features of how you look in your ethnicity , but they consider those to be definitive and so they link any of the peoples or ethnic groups that they feel have been put upon . And that's right .

I think you have to understand that there are , in the BLM movement , for example , close ties to the pro-Palestinian movement , and that those were forged initially over the issues of Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson , missouri , as that now went almost four years ago , I think .

So this movement is not just about one ethnic group , it's about a broader ideology that's designed to tear down the structures that lead us towards harmony , divide us in order to put certain groups in power over others , and it's incredibly unhealthy and right now the language being used is this idea of decolonization .

So you asked about a specific way that they riled up . That's the way and it's , to your point , not based on an accurate understanding of the history of the region at all .

But at the end it is promoting hate and murder . And you just see the again . I just see the barbarity of this thing . No matter where I am in this , from a Christian standpoint , you can't glorify murder and dismembering people .

We hear these tragic tales of families that sitting in their home where they come in and they gouts the father's eye out in front of the family , they cut off the young girl's foot , they cut off the mother's breast , they cut off the fingers of the young boy while they're tied up . While they're tied up , I mean this is disgusting stuff .

And then they ate breakfast and you just go again . If I could just go right to the heart of this thing and say you know what ? I don't . Whatever happened in the past , you cannot treat a human being like that .

You know something has to happen right to do that , but anyways , I guess I don't want to take you off too far , let me throw it back in your corp and really , because we want to talk a little bit about all this aid package , I want to help people a little bit .

We know that the White House requested more than $105 billion in funding for Ukraine , israel , processing illegal immigrants on the border , global humanitarian aid . You know , this is a lot of money , matt , a lot of money , and they tie it all together .

Should it all be tied together like this , and how should we , as voters and people that are going to make calls to our congressmen and our senators , how should we be looking at this from a standpoint of the Heritage Foundation and from , maybe , your personal outlook on this too ?

I'm concerned , of course , about the comment yesterday made by the president that we should be seeking a humanitarian pause , and we're in the midst of a discussion about how are we going to support Israel with aid , and I think the current speaker , speaker Johnson , has done the right thing .

He's asked for this to be considered separate from the other issues , because they are separate , they're different and they deserve , because of that , a separate discussion about how and to which degree we're going to support Israel , and I was glad to see that he took a kind of balanced budget approach by planning in some offsets , by taking away funding from the

Internal Revenue Service in order to have this about $14 billion of aid go to Israel to support it for their Iron Dome and David's Sling and Iron Beam systems .

So I think that is one separate issue that the Congress needs to deal with and I think to combine in some sort of aid omnibus issues as separate as Ukraine , which I think is very different scenario over there . We at Heritage have articulated very clearly that not only does Ukraine need to be dealt with separately .

Before we send more money there , there needs to be better accountability for how that money is spent . There needs to be a clear strategic goal established and a plan to bring that fighting in Ukraine to an end for the interests of the United States and her allies and the people of Ukraine . There is just not that forthcoming .

To continue to fund what is often described as an endless war I think is an irresponsible way to approach that problem . I think both of those two issues totally separate again from the border .

To be clear , anything that the administration is proposing in terms of funding for the border is not funding for the security of the border , which is the solution that we truly need down there To tie it back to Israel . Frankly , the unchecked border is creating as we saw in testimony from the FBI director just this week is creating a security threat .

We have no idea who's come in the country since President Biden has been in power . We have no idea to what extent that represents a threat , just that we know it represents I think Director Ray said the greatest threat that we've seen since the Caliphate was established by ISIS last decade .

A bunch of 50 and 60-year-old gray-haired guys standing up for the Constitution and just morality in the country , to make sure that everything's on the up and up . Now they've changed . Now it's amazing , matt , how this thing is swinging .

It shows you that when you don't have a moral base , when you don't really have an objective way to look at truth , good and bad , you can get into the weeds very quickly here and makes a lot of bad decisions which just rolled , don't they ?

You were in the military for a long time , you see when bad decisions when we go into war , like you just said , with Ukraine and there was never a plan . We know that right from the very beginning , everybody had a sense that there was no plan . Here we're just throwing money at this for maybe even the various reasons .

I don't want to get into all that , but at the end of the day , there was never a plan . And no , the border . We can have a plan on the border that should be able to be taken care of , even if you're just giving money back to Texas and Arizona to reimburse them for the money that they're spending down there .

Israel , if we don't defend Israel , matt , who defends them ? They're not a natal . What does natal say ? Do you hear anything ? Have they ever really come to the aid in a big way to Israel ? Where do they stand on this ?

But the UN is an organization , frankly , that hasn't been able to bring itself to condemn Hamas and , frankly , what people need to understand is that many of the actual terrorists that perpetrated the attack on October 7th were taught the level of hatred that they have in UN administered schools in Gaza .

So I think that , in many ways , this is really an issue where , if the United States doesn't lead and doesn't lead in support of Israel , the one democratic nation in the region will be on its end .

I cannot reinforce enough that , when you consider the Middle East , you always need to start with the fact that the only place where there is freedom , the only place where there are both Arabs , muslims and Jews living together in the entire region in any numbers , with any kind of semblance of equality , is the nation of Israel , and if you were to go to the

other places in that region , that's not what you would find , and so it's incumbent upon the United States if we're going to stand up for our values , that we support our ally in Israel and allow them to do what is necessary for their own safety and security , which at this stage really clearly is they have to eliminate Hamas .

So the idea that prematurely stop that effort , I think , is not only harmful in the moment , but it's harmful in the long term and creates a cycle of repetitive violence , because it actually encourages groups like Hamas to do what they've done right Use their own people as not just human shields but human sacrifices for their cause , which , again , is the genocide of

the Jews . When you hear people shouting from the river to the sea , palestine will be free , recognize that that is a euphemism for there not being a nation of Israel and eliminating the Jewish people .

And so you would think , right , you mentioned deterrent man in the beginning , and if we have that sense , or the world has that sense that we are no longer will help them provide that deterrent , this thing could be a real bloodbath , couldn't it Very quickly . I mean worse than it is . I mean right , I mean it is a bloodbath , but worse than it is .

The problem set needs to be understood holistically , and I think you traced this back to an administration that , from day one , decided that they were going to cozy up to Iran .

They decided that they were going to leave Afghanistan at all costs , and what they demonstrated in the way that we left Afghanistan was that we were not prepared to deal with certain types of threats and aggression effectively , and we opened up the door to Vladimir Putin to take action in Ukraine , because why would he expect us to do anything if we were going to

turn tail and run from Afghanistan ?

Right Billions of dollars in ammunition guns and again you don't have to answer this , but in the back of my mind , I think I wonder if there's some players in the country and again I don't want you to get in trouble here but left that stuff on purpose , those weapons there . In other words , didn't just I mean you have to make a conscious decision .

We're leaving all of that stuff and that's going to get into whose hands , you know ? I mean , that's probably maybe a discussion for another time , but in the back of my mind , you know , those weapons , most probability , are being used right now against the Israelis .

I think that the $6 billion that was given to Iran was a huge signal that they could go ahead and begin provoking chaos in the Middle East .

Let's back up and say that while that $6 billion is a frustratingly high amount of money , it dwarfs in comparison to the $60 plus billion that we know they've been able to profit on in oil sales since the administration changed the restrictions and sanctions on Iran .

I think it makes us look , as a nation , both feckless and weak , and I think we're reaping the fruits of some really , really poorly orchestrated policies .

I mean , it's not gonna take many years from here that , if these young people are our future leaders here , there are enough people out in the workplace already that are supporting Hamas and Marxism and Neo-Marxism and all these different shades , and it's like a Hydra and coming at us in so many different ways .

So this can really be a mess , but we're gonna have to take a stand here , because if we don't support Israel here and this gets run over , I mean this isn't not gonna stop there . This is gonna just continue to spread . This evil is gonna continue to spread .

And the last thing I think is that a lot of young people grew up with this nuclear umbrella over them thinking that , well , we were not gonna go to war with these big nations because we all have nuclear bombs . But once Iran starts , if they detonate something , and North Korea detonates something , it's gonna be amazing how quickly this thing could escalate .

I would encourage them instead to have faith that there are enough of us that still care about the country , care about the constitution , leave in the differences between right and wrong , and that there are things that we can do at our local level , and one of the elements of what I do at Heritage Action is work with grassroots at the community level to help

them get organized , to take action , to influence things in their community for the better , to help them with getting ready to run for school board , and so we talked a lot about radicalism , and I really believe that our priority of educational freedom and parental rights and education at Heritage Action is the right issue for the time to help us start clawing back

our culture , ensuring that parents can teach their values to their kids and that they have the ability to wrestle with these issues in a way that makes sense and prepares those kids to be responsible citizens in the future . And so it's not about being afraid of what's out there .

I think it's about having the wherewithal , the band together to do the work , to take the fight to the enemy and reclaim our institutions for the righteous .

I just got shut down from a local library just for talking about showing parents how to look up books that contain pornography for young children . I mean , this is what we were there for is to show them , predominantly to show them research , how to research their own books . We weren't even taking a side .

We just said we want to show you what's in some of these books . You may not be aware of it . Here's how you look them up , here's how you read it for yourself . And yet we were banished . So parental rights is a big deal .

Do you actually come and talk to groups , or could we do a podcast on parental rights , or does heritage have a special person for that ?

How does that work so that we can get a show and get some notes and get some things for people on parental rights , because I think too many of them are reluctant to stand up because they don't know what their rights are .

Certainly we have a lot of resources about parental rights and what parental rights protections should look like , whether that's in the form of what your school board policy should be or whether that's in the form the types of laws that you should have in your state and in your community to protect your kids and ensure parents are the ones in authority the way that

they're supposed to be . But we also , beyond having those resources available to anyone , at either heritageactioncom or heritageorg for Heritage Foundation , we also have me to come and speak to groups to help them get connected with those resources .

And then oftentimes we also make available our policy experts who actually draft and develop those ideas and can convert them into sort of a useful articulation for folks to use out , as I said , in their communities or actually in practice model legislation as an example for certain states .

Is there a chance , or what do you think the chances are before we let you go , matt , on Mike Johnson being able to split this up and get Israel , the package for Israel , separated from the rest of these requests by the Biden administration ?

I'm not sure , but I do think that , for those of us who are conservative , what we're seeing is deliberate and effective management from the new speaker to forward the priorities in an inappropriate way and force the discussion to at least be at .

I'm personally very happy with the outcome and I look forward to Speaker Johnson making an effort to advance a conservative agenda and I have a high degree of confidence that we're going to see the kind of movement that folks at Heritage Action and other conservative groups have been hoping for .

You said to be optimistic , matt , at the end , and I think , mike Johnson I was pulling personally for Jim Jordan there and I didn't know Mike Johnson really , but the more I see it in fact almost immediately I just go I think this might have been divine providence that we get a guy like him in , that's not only a man that seems to be able to figure out

what's good versus what's evil , but also a constitutional lawyer and someone that has roots that understand really how our country was built and formed . And I get back to that John Adams in Madison , right off the bat , saying this republic was made for a religious and a moral people .

And in essence , you have to know right from wrong , you have to be able to stand for something or the thing falls apart . And I think we're fortunate there that we've got someone like Mike Johnson .

I would just remind people that our country came into existence at a time when they were politically divided in rough thirds A third sitting on the fence , a third loyalist to the British crown and a third patriots ready to have independence , and I'm confident that we have more than 30% of .

Americans today that want to see a return to common sense and an understanding of right and wrong , and so I have great confidence in the future out in front of it , and I think people should take heart in that .

Attorney Colonel Matt Crouch , thank you for being with us . We really appreciate your time . Weekend's coming up , I hope you don't have to travel too much , and thanks again . I appreciate it .