The hosts of CBS This Morning -- Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell, and senile Charlie Rose, leftists all -- ganged up on Ted Cruz yesterday for his suggestion that law enforcement should patrol Muslim communities in America, aggressively blaming him for “playing into the hands of ISIS” with such “anti-Muslim” policies. O’Donnell accused the candidate of simply making “political points” and King declared that his comments "are decidedly anti-Muslim.” From their eagerness to defend Muslim Americans, one would think that Ted Cruz is the problem and Muslims are the victims -- which of course is how the left views things. 

Charlie Rose introduced Ted Cruz and played him a clip of New York police commissioner Bill Bratton saying that same morning on the show that Cruz's suggestion insulted him. Rose then sided with Bratton, suggesting that patrolling Muslim neighborhoods is not in the best interest of New York or anywhere else in America.

Cruz responded, in part:

Yesterday, we saw a horrific terror attack in Brussels. And our prayers this morning are with the families of those murdered, of those wounded. But what is important is that was not a lone wolf. It wasn't an isolated attack. It was radical Islamic terrorism. It was ISIS that has declared jihad that is waging war on us. And President Obama and Hillary Clinton and sadly, Mayor de Blasio, the elected Democrats, are so bound up by political correctness they refuse to utter the words radical Islamic terror terrorism and they refuse to be serious to defeat it.

Rose said, "But the point is, you're suggesting that they should focus on Muslim neighborhoods more than any other neighborhood."

Yes, Charlie, because Muslim neighborhoods are more of a problem than any other neighborhood. Because we're talking about Islamic terrorism.

Cruz went on to explain how such patrols protect Muslims too:

Let me give an example: If you're concerned with gang violence, gang violence is a real problem in a lot of places across the country. What does law enforcement do with proactive policing? You go into the neighborhood where gang violence is a problem and you work proactively to get the gang members off the street. And by the way, the people you are protecting are the residents of those communities who are typically the victims. With gang violence, it is often African-Americans and Hispanics and low-income Americans often the victims of those violence. By having a serious police presence there, you're protecting those communities. The same is true in the Muslim community where radical Islamic terrorists don't just murder Christians and Jews, they murder other Muslims as well. And we need to fight and defeat radical Islamic terrorism.

But an agitated Norah O'Donnell declared that Cruz's plan is impractical and nothing more than scoring political points. Cruz countered her too:

Norah, actually you brought up Europe and it's a good example. If you look at the attack in Brussels, it's a direct result of the failed immigration policies in Europe that have allowed vast numbers of radical Islamic terrorists to come to Europe and they have been ghettoized in neighborhoods that have become isolated, that have become separate and they become incubators for radical Islamic terrorism.

O'Donnell asserted that that's not a problem in America, and Cruz disagreed:

You have communities — you have communities, for example, in Minnesota. You have communities in Michigan with heavy concentration and you have incidents of radical imams preaching jihadism, preaching Islamism.

America also has mosques which may not be located in European-style no-go zones, but which are nonetheless centers of Islamic radicalization.

Gayle King jumped in with more objections:

How about this point of view: there are so many people that say that your comments are decidedly anti-Muslim and that you're playing right into the hands of ISIS, that you're giving them ammunition to come after us, to really take action against us, that you're just teeing it up for people to come after us.

First, anti-Islam is not anti-Muslim, but the left knows this and that's why they keep using the phrase "anti-Muslim." Second, it's absolutely idiotic and self-loathing to claim that the enemy will stop killing us if we just stop "provoking" them by talking about stopping the enemy.

Cruz replied,

Gayle, with all respect, people are fed up with the political correctness of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, where following the Paris attacks, following San Bernardino and, no doubt, following Brussels, President Obama goes on TV. He will not say radical Islamic terrorism. Instead, he lectures Americans on Islamophobism. Islamism is a political and theocratic philosophy that commands its adherence to wage violent jihad to murder infidels, which they define as everyone else.  

"But you're painting one community with one brush," King accused. "That’s the problem."

And there it is. The tired old "painting with a broad brush" chestnut. The left never tires of using this excuse to defend Islam, and never tires of using a broad brush themselves to smear all Christians, all gun owners, all conservatives, etc. Cruz responded:

No, I'm not. There is a difference between Islam and Islamism. Islamism commands that you either murder the infidels or you forcibly convert them. You wage jihad. And here is the consequence of President Obama and Hillary Clinton and Bill de Blasio refusing to acknowledge what we are fighting. You end up with policies that don’t keep us safe.

[...]

The first obligation of the President as commander in chief should be to keep America safe. And I tell you this, I will apologize to nobody for how vigorous I will be as a president fighting radical Islamic terrorism, defeating ISIS and keeping America safe.

Newbusters has a full transcript.