RUSH: Ted Cruz responding to the Brussels attack, ripping both Obama and Trump. Here we go with the first of three.

CRUZ: It is long past time that we had a president who will acknowledge this evil, will call it by its name and utilize the full force and fury of the United States to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, to defeat ISIS. In the wake of Brussels, we don’t need another lecture from President Obama on Islamophobia. We need a commander-in-chief who does everything necessary to defeat the enemy, and we need to immediately halt the president’s ill-advised plan to bring in tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees. The time for the president’s political correctness is past.

RUSH: That was Cruz on the Fox News Channel this morning. They had special coverage of the terror attack in Belgium. That’s Cruz on Obama. Here is Ted Cruz on Trump.

CRUZ: The day after Donald Trump called for America weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamic terrorist attack. To withdraw from NATO, to withdraw from Europe is sadly consistent with his statement that he intends to be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians. It would be a mistake to elect another president who buys into the same left-wing moral relativism that equates the terrorist blowing himself up and murdering innocent civilians to the brave soldiers and law enforcement officers risking everything to keep us safe.

RUSH: Trump did say we need to get out of NATO. He backed it up later today by saying we can’t afford it. We can’t spend all this money. We don’t have this money to spend. Let ’em defend themselves, which has been a theme of his campaign. Let these European people defend themselves. Why should we pay for it, then they turn around they insult us all the time and don’t offer us anything in return. So let ’em defend themselves. And of course the neocons, “Oh, no, no, no!” And of course NATO is almost gospel, ’cause we are NATO. If we pull out of NATO, NATO’s not gonna exist because those nations don’t have any defense budget, as we are seeing. Brussels? They don’t have any kind of a defense budget or even an adequate police force to handle what’s happening to them. That was a news story earlier today.

They have devoted every single person they’ve got to investigating this attack. They don’t have time to police the streets for other run-of-the-mill, everyday crime like murder, robbery, prostitution, whatever the hell — well, it’s not illegal over there, right? That’s why it’s utopia.

Hercule Poirot was a fictional figure who lives in the hearts and minds of many. But give me Nero Wolfe every day. Nero Wolfe over Hercule Poirot. Of course I’d love to go to a dinner where both of them are attending. You can be damn guaranteed you’d be doing nothing but eating for six hours. Actually, I can’t do that anymore. But, anyway, Trump is making the point that we can’t afford NATO. We can’t afford to spend all this money to defend these people when they don’t know how to defend themselves, and they’ve gotta start assuming some responsibility, he said. (interruption) I know they are. I wasn’t making it up about brothels. It’s a big business. The whole thing is Nevada. Bunny ranch here, bunny ranch there. It’s big business. It’s utopia.

And now here’s Cruz on the Fox News Channel during special coverage of the Belgium attacks, back to Obama and Castro.

CRUZ: While our friends and allies are attacked by radical Islamic terrorists, President Obama is spending his time going to baseball games with the Castros and standing at a press conference with Raul Castro as a prop while Castro denies there are any political prisoners in Cuba. And then even worse, President Obama goes out of his way to agree with Castro’s attacks on America. I recognize President Obama began his presidency with a worldwide apology tour, but the people of America deserve a president who doesn’t grovel before a communist dictator who hates America.

RUSH: That’s true. America doesn’t deserve a president. Yeah. True. Okay, now, here’s Trump. (interruption) Well, no, I’m not giving that short shrift. I don’t disagree with anything he said there. It’s embarrassing, Obama, 52 seconds he gave the Brussels attacks when he did address it. The big applause line that Obama got today was that Jackie Robinson also came Cuba. Jackie Robinson came. Yay. And we have 52 seconds on what happened in Brussels. But a big applause line for Jackie Robinson. What that means to anybody? Well, to Obama it’s got symbolism out the wazoo.

Anyway, here’s Trump. We move on to Trump now. This is on Fox & Friends. He’s talking about the Brussels attack. Ainsley Earhardt, the new infobabe, anchorette there, says, “If you do become president and we’re in a situation like this, what would you do to protect America?”

TRUMP: I would close up our borders to people until we figure out what is going on. Look at Brussels, look at Paris, look at so many cities that were great cities. Paris is no longer the beautiful city of lights. All you have to do is speak to the people that live there, and you look at other places where the same thing has happened, and they’re in fear, their city is in fear, and we have to be smart in the United States. We are allowing thousands and thousands of people to come into our country and we don’t even know where they come from and who they are. I’m not gonna allow them to come in. They’re not assimilating into society and there’s something different. And we have to be very, very careful, and we have to be very vigilant.

RUSH: Brian Kilmeade, cohost, said, “What is your message to the Muslim community?”

TRUMP: It’s not to them. My message to us is we better get smart, and we better get smart fast. My message to them —

RUSH: Stop the tape! I know I’m gonna be savaged here, but this is exactly right. And it means no more than that, but, see, even the question bothers me. “What would you say to Muslims?” We didn’t do anything here. Why do we have to explain ourselves? This is like Mrs. Clinton going out there and saying, “We must maintain our values.” What in the hell are these people talking about? The Politico headline today: “Why Do They Hate Us So Much?” Mrs. Clinton out there: you better not be thinking what you’re thinking. We can’t go to war with a whole religion.

From the architect of Benghazi to the incompetence of the State Department that she ran for all those years. Kilmeade can ask what he wants, but the answer Trump gave: I’m not talking to Muslim people. What do you mean what’s our message to the Muslim people? It’s right because we’re so focused on the wrong thing. Anyway, here’s Trump’s answer to the question.

TRUMP: It’s not to them. My message to us is we better get smart, and we better get smart fast. My message to them is they have to be more open with the police. They have to become part of the community. But it’s gonna get worse and worse. In my opinion this is just the beginning. It will get worse and worse because we are lax and we are foolish. We are foolish. We can’t allow these people, at this point we cannot allow these people to come in.

RUSH: Right. Now, again, folks, in case nobody’s noticing, let me point out to you where ISIS hit today. This is not Syria. This is not Iraq. This is not the Kurds. This isn’t Libya. They hit the heart of the European Union. They hit the subway, the airport, the feeder lines right into the European Union, NATO, they blew it right up. They are moving west. They are moving to Europe. There are gonna be more attacks in Europe, and if they can pull ’em off there are going to be attacks here.

And after every attack we’re gonna get somebody like Mrs. Clinton going out saying, “We must respond within our values. We can’t go to war with an entire religion! We must recruit Muslims to help us in this important fight.” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Fine and dandy. It sounds wonderful. Except she’s been saying it since 9/11. There isn’t any evidence the people in charge have the slightest idea what to do about this. Now, we have to allow for the fact that some smart people obviously have stopped attacks we don’t know about in this country and elsewhere.

They can’t brag about that to give away techniques.

But in places not prepared and where they don’t have near the kind of intel abilities and so forth that we have, ISIS has a free rein. Paris? And now this attack happens four days after the ringleader of the Paris attack is arrested? And, by the way, you want to know something else? This is fascinating, folks. Everybody said, “Gee, why weren’t we able to decrypt their messages? Why weren’t we able to listen to their phone calls? Why weren’t they able to crack their e-mail?” They didn’t use smartphones. They didn’t use computers. You know what they used?

Burners.

They had crates and crates of burner phones: Use ’em once, throw ’em away. There is nothing to decrypt. So all this talk about back doors? They didn’t go into phones and find out what these clowns are doing. They’re not using iPhones or Galaxy S7s or whatever they are to chat with each other. They’re using burners and other techniques. There’s no way to track a burner. You don’t even know the number to the burner unless you go to the place that they’re buying them in bulk.

So you go out and buy a crate say of 48 burners, spread ’em around and start using the phone. You don’t know who’s got what phone where, if you’re any kind of intel. That’s why you need human intelligence on the ground: Infiltrators, informants, and this kind of thing. But the Europeans, they haven’t been capable of anything like that in years (outside of the UK), maybe decades.

So it’s not that. It’s not that the NSA failed to notice the chatter. It’s not that the FBI or whoever else, Interpol, wasn’t able to intercept. There’s nothing to intercept. They’ve gone way beyond that. They’ve gone backwards, in fact, with burner phones. Well, it’s not backwards. They’re not smartphones. You know what a burner is, right? It’s prepaid. Go to the store and the number is already assigned for X-number of minutes. You use it and you throw it away.