Keith Malinak (00:00.682)
Welcome to this edition of At the Mic. I am your host, Keith Malinak, and I have a very special guest today. It's an honor to talk with Larry Taunton coming up here. Just a moment. Before we do, want to tell you, I have been so moved by this story of the genocide of Christians in Nigeria. a couple of weeks ago,

I saw this post on X from Larry where he was recapping. If you recall, earlier this year, he had a dust-up in Egypt with USAID. And I should probably let Larry tell this story. But that's what he explained there. Hey, we need to go back and revisit this tweet of mine and what had happened to me earlier this year. And it was related to what was happening to Christians in Nigeria. And

I'm telling you, Larry, thank you for making time. If you're not familiar, he's a writer, he's a columnist. Larry is the host of the Ideas Have Consequences podcast, and he has carved out time today. I'm so grateful. Let me mute this for just a second, get a little bit of feedback there. But Larry, please go back to the USAID situation in Egypt, how that relates to what's happening in Nigeria, and shame on me for not only, it wasn't until

I see the last couple of months really that I've even been aware of what's happening in Nigeria. Sir, this has been going on for what, a quarter of a century now. I know you have all the information. Thank you so much for making time.

Great to be with you, Keith. Yes, you know, in my work, what I try to do, Keith, is I try to combine, you know, real research, academic, you know, research with boots on the ground. And that's because it's very important.

Larry Taunton (01:59.192)
that you're not just simply in your ivory tower pontificating about what's going on, but actually going downstream from where the ideas are packaged to where they're actually delivered and how they're actually impacting lives. And so to that effect, I go to places like the World Economic Forum where I've been the last few years and will again be.

God willing, in January in Davos, Switzerland, where all these people meet to create policy that will affect the lives of tens, hundreds, and even billions of people. And one of those ideas has been open borders. It's been mass migration, moving whole peoples from one continent

to another from one country to another. So that meant that I was in South America following what USAID has been doing for about the last five years, just the beginning, at least since the beginning of the Biden administration, running the largest human trafficking operation in modern history, moving people, facilitating the movement of people, chiefly in South America through Central America straight up.

to and through the US border. I was trying to get that information to the President of the United States. And what do you know? I'm an interview with Steve Bannon when President Trump, discussing this very thing, because earlier this year, USAID, shortly after Trump's inauguration, a lot of people didn't even know USAID existed. And Musk was tweeting about it.

you know what Doge was doing and they were talking about how USAID was, you know, funding things like, you know, naked twister in, you know, Kenya, you know, and transgender surgeries and all these kinds of things. And I was thinking they don't know the half of it. They're they're the ones who are facilitating the these millions of people who are crossing our border. So I'm doing this interview with a text to Steve Bannon. said, Steve.

Larry Taunton (04:14.254)
If you get me on the show, I will explain something that's going to blow your mind. Well, what do know? Trump is watching and Trump texts Bannon during a commercial break and says, tell that guy that this is useful because we didn't know this and we're going to do something about it. now from there. Yeah. Well, you know, of course, you know, you, you're, you, you need.

That has to make you feel good, huh?

Larry Taunton (04:43.264)
a little wind in your sails from time to time to feel like what you're doing is meaningful. I think of what I do, Keith, as there's this wonderful scene in an otherwise kind of okay movie based on the book by Tom Clancy, Clear and Present Danger, where you have these, interestingly enough, in Central America, South America, you have this band of special forces who

are locating, you know, these, these narcotics, you know, these drug dealers and they don't have the firepower to take them on. What they do is they shine their little laser, you know, on a Hacienda or some, you know, drug manufacturing place and a cruise missile is shot from hundreds of miles off the coast and blows the whole thing up. Well, I kind of think of myself as that guy sort of crawling through, you know, jungle territory shining.

pointing a laser at these things and the hope that people with the bigger platforms and with the power to do something about it, to act on it. And so, yeah, in this case that President Trump can say, yeah, we'll do something about this. And then of course, recently the same thing happened with Nigeria. We've been screaming about Nigeria and what do you know, it percolates up to where Trump hears it and becomes aware of it. And he tweets, hey, we're going to invade Nigeria.

keep this kind of stuff up. But anyway, I went from South America to the World Economic Forum and then from the World Economic Forum to Cairo. And I was actually going to Cairo, not for the purpose of USAID, which became an absolute mess. But I was going there to meet with the Zabalim, the Egyptian Arabic, which means the garbage people.

They're Coptic Christians, is just Coptic just simply means, you know, it's an old name for an ancient name for Egypt of the Egyptian Christians. And I was going because these are persecuted people. It's more of a soft persecution in the sense that they are they are excluded from mainstream society. They they aren't, you know, murdering them on mass. But they're they're a discarded, you know, people on the literal periphery of society. I was going to

Larry Taunton (07:08.95)
meet with them because I want to tell their story. And also with some Nigerian Christians. I'd been in Nigeria and had reported for Fox News on the persecution there, going into areas of that country that are extremely dangerous. And when I tried to go back last year, the Nigerian government effectively blocked my entry. Well, the Nigerian Christians I wanted to meet with

They didn't have visas. You know, this is still the Biden administration. They could get visas into the United States or into Europe, even though they're genuinely persecuted people. But hey, that's the way it works. So I said, no worries. I'll meet you somewhere in Africa. You know, I'm going to Cairo. Why don't you meet me there? Your passport should be good enough to get you in to that country. But you need to kind of downplay the fact that you're Christians because Egypt, while it is a

isn't an Islamic state, it is a Muslim majority country where Islam is the state religion and they're not real keen on Christians. Western Christians they just think of as tourists and milk toast, but African Christians, especially black ones, Islam is a very racist religion. Arab Muslims look down on black people as

not their equals. so anyway, I scheduled to meet them there in Cairo and we flew them there. And while I was there, I thought, well, I'll go over to USAID and see if I can get an interview and poke around that facility. did I didn't get the interview, but I did poke around their facility and that embarrassed them because I wasn't using this wasn't mission impossible. wasn't

climbing through ventilation shafts or rappelling down from the ceiling. If I do that, it's illegal. My approach is to these kinds of things, like the World Economic Forum, is to approach the... just go through the front door and just act like I own the place. And it will amaze you. People get out of my way. They move, they will open the door. Yes, sir, come right in. This kind of thing. I've almost never stopped. And that's what happened at USAID.

Keith Malinak (09:09.378)
you want to I know

Larry Taunton (09:34.892)
We came to their barrier. opened, you they lifted the boom gate. We drove in, went through the Saris suicide barriers. My driver dropped me at the front door. I walked straight past security through the front door. And then that's when things started to go sideways. And what ended up happening was this almost three hour standoff with the Egyptian secret police outside of USAID.

in the city of Cairo, where they were demanding that I give them my passport, my phone, and I get out of the car. And I said, no, no, no. you can't have my phone. can't have my passport and I'm not getting out of the car and they weren't sure what to do with me. And this is all on video. I wrote a piece about this on, the federalist, and, video of some video of what happened is online because I was very surreptitiously videoing all this. But of course,

That went crazy. And the next thing you know, I'm getting calls from the congressional oversight committee asking me what's going on USAID and Cairo. But what I couldn't say at the time, by the way, and I got to throw this in, the Egyptian secret police accused me first of terrorism and then of, or let me rephrase that USAID security, which is paid for by tax dollars and your tax dollars, accused me of terrorism.

and Egyptian and Egyptian police, know, Cairo police. Then when the secret police arrived, they accused me of espionage. And so I'm thinking this is going to end pretty badly for me here. I'm going to disappear. So I kept trying to take as much video as I could with my phone and firing it off to people like Steve Bannon and other people, because if they say, well, gosh, we don't know what happened to Larry Taunton, you know, then somebody has video that says, we know very well.

what happened to him. But the part I couldn't say was that I was really in Cairo, not for USAID. I was there to meet with these persecuted Christians. And now that I can't go back to Cairo, which was going to be, can't go back to Egypt, I'm sure I'd be arrested. I thought, okay, well now I can finally tell the story because that was going to be the place where I was going to meet in future. So I couldn't get back into Nigeria. I was going to meet with these persecuted Christians from time to time there where we try to supply them.

Larry Taunton (11:54.766)
with some modest means, some encouragement, help strategize with them, try to tell their story. And so now I can't even do that. So that's kind of where we find ourselves. But the persecution of Christians in Nigeria is very, very real. Yes. It has been going on for decades. What Nigerians would tell you is this. Is it worse now than it's been?

Five years ago, ten years ago, they would say no. They would say, this is business as usual for us. But they're grateful for the fact that it is, for whatever reason, back in the news and in our media. this is because, listen, the Westerners do not understand Islam. They do not understand Islam at all.

Yeah, and I want you to get into that because the Islamic caliphate is real and and that is the core issue of what's happening in Nigeria or Sudan or fill in the blank across the planet and and and I want you to talk about how they operate in places like Nigeria. I've heard you talk about children and and and how they are dumped in villages and then and then all chaos ensues.

Yeah, well again, this is this is a part of what Westerners Europeans Americans most of all do not understand Keith and that is that according to Islamic law, the average excuse me, a Muslim man may is allowed to have legally as many as four wives, but he can have countless concubines, mistresses. So your average African Muslim man.

will have 25, 50, 75, even more than a hundred children. This is part of, again, part of the strategy to breed the opposition out of existence by reproducing like this. It's why the demographics in Europe, London in particular, are changing so radically for these kinds of reasons, mass immigration and then mass reproduction.

Larry Taunton (14:13.93)
And so they can't possibly care for all those children. A Muslim cleric of some sort shows up at dad's door and says, look, we'll provide for these children, but we have to take them away to school for education. Well, dad says, well, yes, sure, by all means. So they put them on trucks. They take them to neighboring Christian majority cities or villages where they're pushed out onto the street.

and a mom, a cleric shows up and he will provide them with some modest food because the idea is to sort of make them resourceful fees and some trinkets for them to sell on the streets. And so when this was happening, started happening about 25 years ago in the north of

Nigeria and Nigerians were going, what in the world is going on here with all these kids everywhere? You know, they're I've seen them. They they when you pull into like a gas station and don't think like your circle K, these are these are, you know, shacks where you in in in the desert where you maybe get some gasoline when your car pulls up these kids, you know, they mob the the vehicle. They're all pressing their faces.

against the window. in my case, when I see a white man, which is rare in the north and central part of the country, it just draws that much more attention, which itself can be dangerous. And these kids are all holding little trinkets they're trying to sell. But the Imam is also teaching them, meaning he's radicalizing them. And when the time comes for an attack,

Boko Haram or the Falani herdsmen militia, both Islamic terrorist groups, up, armed these kids, usually with machetes. The machetes killed more people in Africa than the AK-47. They're very cheap to reproduce. They're very easy to use. They teach these kids and say, tell us where the vicar lives. Tell us where this person lives. By that time, the kids now know the town.

Larry Taunton (16:38.508)
Yeah. Our village very, very well. They know who lives where and they lead the assault. They're the end of the spear. So that's, that's the way this, works.

Yeah, and one thing that I've only recently learned, and again, shame on me, but half of Nigeria's population, at least at this point, is still Christian. And the population of the country is about 100 million. And so, I mean, that's a substantial number. But my goodness, you're absolutely right about the mass migration and the reproduction of inside the Islamic culture. Who is arming these gangs?

Is it accurate to say that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, because I think I saw you somewhere said something along the lines of there was a former African president who referenced where the funding is coming from for Boko Haram. And I apologize if that wasn't you, but it was alluded to that Saudi Arabia and Qatar are behind.

No, Listen, Boko Haram is Sunni. There's not Shia. Shia is Iran. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, they are Sunni. And Boko Haram is Sunni. The Falani-Herdsmen militia are mostly Sunni, not entirely, but a majority of them. And they are being funded. These imams are being funded.

out of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, they're being funded by Sunnis. Oil money is funding this. listen, this is all part of the strategy. And so that people would understand the strategy in Africa is only just a little different from the strategy that has been used throughout Western Europe, London, Dearborn, Michigan, and will be used in New York City. And that is this.

Larry Taunton (18:36.91)
If we can use the political system that is, you know, Muslims, if we can use the political system to achieve and gain power, to gain territory, then we will. If we can't, then we'll use terror, you see. And in London, it's in Western Europe, it's a combination of both. So you have Saqib Khan in London, let's say you have Mondani in New York City. And you see the

Muslims have cracked the code to the West. realize that the key to power, the pathway to power in the West isn't by marketing Islam because they know that Islam, at least right now, does not sell to a Western public. Socialism does. They have seen the polls the same as we do. Gallup, Pew,

and so forth. They've seen these polls that show that millennials, Gen Zers have a favorable view of socialism. so socialism has become the Trojan horse in which the jihadists hide, like Ilhan Omar, for instance, she's not socialist. Mondani is not chiefly a Marxist or socialist. This is merely the Trojan horse to get in through the gates.

and then to the gates for Islam. And that's the goal. That's what they're doing. what's happening in Africa, what is really important that your listeners, people understand is that when I'm talking about Nigeria, there are some who go, and I've seen some stupid people commenting on this in my YouTube channel or on Twitter and saying,

We need to focus on what's going on here. Well, first of all, these, they're, they're not mutually exclusive. you can, you can do both. we have the means of doing both. But secondly, what I want people to understand is what's happening in Nigeria is what's happening all over the West. And now it's coming to a neighborhood near you and it has to be stopped. Islam is not, you know, these people say this all the time, but even the ones who are saying it, I'm not sure.

Larry Taunton (20:55.256)
fully understand the weight, the import of the sentence. People will say Islam is incompatible with Western values. Well, yes, of course, obviously so. But it's more than that. cannot be allowed. Islam in any form cannot be allowed into the United States because it's unconstitutional. And I know some people will say, well, freedom of religion.

You know, isn't that so? No, because it is an ideology that is at odds with our Constitution. It does not believe in freedom. It does not believe in free speech. It does not believe in religious freedom. It believes that, you know, Islam teaches that it's okay to rape non-Muslim women. In fact, it's a moral good. It's a moral good that all the, you know, the girls who are, you know, being trafficked and raped

you know, in rather on and all over Britain are saying that their rapists were quoting the Quran while they were raping them. Yeah. So this is, this is, it's not that violence, suicide bombings, beheadings, knife things, sex gangs are somehow, an un, an un

wanted byproduct of Islam, they are Islam. Right, right. That's the thing that people don't get. It is part of Islam. And the people that we call radical Muslims, they're not radicals. They are orthodox Muslims who take seriously the Quran, the Hadith and the life of Muhammad, which they're all supposed to model their lives after. And by the way, Muhammad, if he ever exists, and my dear friend, Jay Smith, an Islamist, a Christian scholar of Islam,

He's increasingly pointing out that Mohammed didn't exist. let's just say that he did. Mohammed's life modeled all of this. And you see, we as Christians are supposed to model our lives after Jesus Christ. Did Jesus Christ fight battles? No, Mohammed did. Did Jesus Christ rape anyone? No, Mohammed did. Did Jesus Christ encourage peace? Yes, Mohammed did not. And this is the part that people don't get.

Larry Taunton (23:17.974)
the pedophilia within Islam. Muhammad married a six-year-old and consummated the relationship at nine.

If you weren't gonna say it, I was. mean, seriously.

Unfortunately, know, my, my YouTube channel gets choked like crazy because I say all the things you're not supposed to say. And my dear friend, Lawrence Fox, you know, well-known British actor and activist. He's always saying, you can't say these things. Well, I don't know how to not say them.

You have to, you have to know what's happening. And a guest on the show a month or two ago, George Hill, he said something so simple yet so profound for me. And it was, we have to stop referring to Islam as a religion and refer to it as a political movement.

It's an ideology.

Larry Taunton (24:07.52)
It is well, it's I wouldn't even go further than that. would say it's an ideology of conquest. That's what it is. It is an engine of war. That is what it is. And by the way, that's what Muslims themselves, at least the ones who actually know their, you know, their so-called holy writings. That's what they believe. And I want to be clear on this point. I'm not saying that every Muslim is a terrorist or would be terrorist.

I have good Muslim friends, let me rephrase that, I have good friends who are Muslims in the Middle East. In fact, who aided me at USAID Cairo. But it's not because they're Muslims that they're my good friends, it's because they choose not to take on board all of what Islam is. They're what I call cultural Muslims.

Kind of like Methodists. mean, there are people who don't take their holy writings particularly seriously and they're Muslims in the cultural sense in their heredity. You know, they have a Muslim heritage, but they're not the sort of people who are going to strap a bomb to their chest and run in to a shopping mall. That doesn't describe, you know, who they are. And they take friendship, you know, quite seriously.

But Islam itself, when taken seriously, is every bit as dangerous as Nazism, as communism. It's a very, very, very dangerous, poisonous ideology.

Absolutely, and so well said, Larry. So with Nigeria and what is happening there in the pictures, I mean, they're absolutely disturbing. I mean, this is the pastor at the mass graves, which is just...

Larry Taunton (25:58.356)
It's very typical. This is actually very typical.

Yeah, yeah, and I mean, here's a church, no, I'm sorry, here's another mass grave there. I mean, it's it's nonstop. It doesn't take much to find these pictures. Like you said, it's very typical of what-

I've saved you a few myself, so yeah.

And I mean, look at this. I mean, it's absolutely horrific. And this is a genocide. And this is genocide against Christians. And I don't know, I guess because they're Christians, it's not that big of a deal to the rest of the world. And it's sad and it's tragic. So I guess my, and it's not just, and like you said, it's not just Nigeria. In fact, I think this is Sudan, if I'm not mistaken. This was an image that was circulating a couple of weeks back of a mom and her little babies. And it's absolutely horrific.

And so I guess my question is, and I don't know that it's a simple answer, because I struggle with this. What as Americans can we do to help these people and at the same time stem the tide of Islamists who are making inroads everywhere around the globe?

Larry Taunton (27:13.548)
Well, I'm not a policymaker, but there are a few things if I were advising the president of the United States that I would say. I would say, first of all, don't believe anything the Nigerian government tells you. They're lying. The Nigerian government is controlled by Muslims. They are lying. Don't trust them anymore. You trust Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden.

Second, we have to get out of the UN. The UN is facilitating a number of these attacks. I outline that in the thread that I think you read on on X. The United Nations is a bogus cover for nefarious activities. And one of the things they're facilitating is the slaughter of Christians. So we have to get out. Don't believe anything the UN tells you. Thirdly, I think we have to

either defend these Christians with brute force, lethal force, or we have to equip them and train them to do it themselves. One of those things, they must be allowed to defend themselves. And the UN disarmed Christians when Christians were armed by other Christians who gave them AK-47s, who gave them machetes and such so that they could defend themselves.

against the next Falani attack, the UN stepped in and said, nope, this is a human rights violation. Disarm them so that the slaughter could continue. That must stop. That must stop. And we must become better educated in the West about what Islam is. It's amazing to me, Keith, that at this late date, I know of virtually no seminary that is equipping

Christians to understand Islam, to understand Arabic, to defend the gospel against Muslims, but also to take the offensive against them ideologically speaking and attack their belief system. Muslims are reading the Bible. That is, are producing apologists, polemicists for their faith.

Larry Taunton (29:28.876)
They have English speakers, people who are reading the Bible and who are engaging Christians because they know how to do it and because they are learning strategies for doing it. They know that the average so-called Christian doesn't know the Bible. And when they come along, like Jehovah's Witnesses or something, begin pointing out perceived

inconsistencies in scriptures or contradictions that it begins to unsettle people. And seminaries aren't training. They're just not doing it. And I'm not even talking about woke ones. I'm talking about what we would consider to be solid seminaries. There's almost nothing going on in that regard. And to me, that is astonishing. That is astonishing. Roughly two billion people on this planet are Muslims. And how in the world?

is it that we are not equipping people to take on that ideology? But I'll go further than that. I think one of the reasons is because the kind of Christianity that is being promoted these days, again, even among solid, reasonably solid Bible-believing churches, is very beta male. It's a very beta male, melt-toast kind of Christianity.

that's about avoiding confrontation. I think, did you guys even read the Bible? mean, Jesus made a point of healing a man at the pool of Bethesda on a Sunday. Did he not know it was a Sunday? And the law said you can't heal people on a Sunday. He was picking a fight. And he did it on numerous occasions. The prophets, the apostles, that's what they did.

And it's one thing to be confrontational, just to be confrontational. We're not about that or just being a jerk, but we have there. There needs to be a much more muscular Christianity that says we're not afraid of a fight. We're not afraid of a fight in, in, in, in Christians have to literally in some cases fight back. pacifism is not biblical, self-defense.

Larry Taunton (31:48.294)
is a biblical concept. We have a right to self-defense. We have a right to force on behalf of other oppressed peoples. And I think that the West has been nurtured on pacifism for decades now. And it has left us wide open to the virus that is infecting the West that is called Islam on the one hand.

and very aggressive, a very militant secularism on the other.

Well said. Absolutely. Larry Alex Taunton. You mentioned the YouTube channel. It's youtube.com slash.

I don't know. no. I'm the worst in this regard. up Larry Taunton, Larry Alex Taunton. My podcast is called Ideas Have Consequences. You'll also find me on Twitter where I don't mind mixing it up and being a bit of a smart aleck every now and then. But Keith, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for having me.

Same with you, sir. Thank you so much for making time. God bless.