Episode 588 Show Notes- Radical Extremism, Liberty, and Government Overreach
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Episode Description
As 2025 begins, The P.A.S. Report Podcast dives into two events that kicked off the new year – the Cybertruck bombing in Las Vegas and the ISIS-inspired terror attack in New Orleans. Professor Nick Giordano examines the motivations behind these incidents, the failures of government to prevent them, and the resurgence of radical Islamic extremism. He warns against empowering the government further in the name of security, emphasizing that free societies must accept certain risks to preserve liberty. Tune in for a powerful discussion on balancing freedom, security, and the principles that define America.
Episode Highlights:
- Insights into the Las Vegas Cybertruck bombing and New Orleans terror attack.
- The resurgence of radical Islamic extremism and its global impact.
- Why granting the government more power threatens American liberty.
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Show Notes- Radical Extremism, Liberty, and Government Overreach
Welcome to The P.A.S. Report Podcast
[Auto-Generated Transcript]
Hello everyone, and welcome to The P.A.S. Report Podcast. I’m your host, Professor Nick Giordano. Be sure to subscribe and follow the podcast so you never miss an episode. Also, visit The P.A.S. Report website at https://pasreport.com. And I encourage you to share this podcast with your family and friends. We talk about a lot of important issues on this podcast and this week is no different.
2025 is here and it is good to be back. I took a hiatus during the Christmas and New Year’s break, and it was good to get off social media for a little bit. I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but while politics and the news play an essential role in our lives, sometimes you have to step away and focus on things that are much more important. Every now and then, it is good to get away from all the noise, you have to disconnect from all the distractions and the demands of everyday life.
Now just because I was gone, doesn’t mean that the news stopped, and 2025 certainly picked up where 2024 left off. But after the last four years under the Biden administration, I am certainly viewing this year with optimism. In about a week and a half, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of these United States.
Republicans in the House were able to avoid the chaos and reelected Mike Johnson without any major drama. Republicans now control the Senate, and we could be off to a productive start in this new year.
Meanwhile, Democrats are still grappling with their political identity following their post-election defeat. Some want to move back to the center and moderate a bit. Others want to double down on the exact reasons they lost the election in the first place.
In any event, while I am optimistic, it doesn’t mean that we can now take a step back and relax. It is important that we hold Republicans accountable and keep the pressure on Republicans and the Trump administration to promote limited government, fiscal responsibility, and international stability.
Since I began this podcast, the core focus has been how far we have deviated from the founders’ vision, and how we have been trending towards authoritarianism for quite some time as our liberty has been under attack.
While the 2024 election may have been a course correction, it doesn’t mean the fight is over. If anything, it’s just the beginning of a long process to restore the principles of liberty, self-reliance, and limited government that made this country great.
The founders warned us about the dangers of centralized power, and as we move forward, it’s critical to ensure that we don’t simply replace one overreach with another. We must remain vigilant, engaged, and ready to call out any actions – no matter which party is in power – that threaten our freedoms, liberty, or the constitutional framework that safeguards them.
And I will continue to promote the values of individual liberty, limited government, and the importance of civic engagement. This podcast will remain a platform for honest discussions, critical analysis, and a commitment to holding those in power accountable, regardless of their political affiliation.
With that being said, terrorism returned to America in the New Year, and there were two incidents, one was the ISIS-inspired New Orleans terror attack and then you had the Cybertruck bombing in Las Vegas.
This is what I will be focusing on today. I want to talk about these two incidents, the intent, their implications, the return of radical extremism what may be coming down the pike, and most importantly, a warning. A warning to avoid the fearmongering and calls for sweeping government measures that could further erode our freedoms in the name of security like we did following 9/11.
Here’s the real question: how do we address the threats of radical extremism without sacrificing the freedoms that define us as a nation? That’s exactly what we’ll tackle in today’s episode of The P.A.S. Report Podcast. Today’s discussion will explore how we can navigate these challenges without compromising our foundational principles.
I will get to it all following this quick commercial break so hang tight, and we will be right back.
Break
Cybertruck Explosion: Terrorism or Suicide?
Welcome back to The P.A.S. Report. So, the first thing I want to talk about is the Cybertruck bombing in Las Vegas. This is a bizarre case.
You have a Green Beret Special Forces active duty soldier, Matthew Livelsberger, who rented a Cybertruck and detonated explosives outside the Trump International Hotel in Vegas. Understand, that when it comes to these types of incidents, I don’t try and speculate. I go by the information that’s been released.
In this case, and by all accounts, Livelsberger was a decorated Army veteran who served a few tours in combat and had a distinguished military career, which included a Bronze Star with Valor, an Army Commendation Medal, and five good conduct medals. Two manifestos have been released. In the first manifesto, he calls for servicemembers, veterans, and all Americans, to take over DC. He says our government is weak, feckless, and self-serving. He exclaimed that America is in need of a hard reset and that the Democrats and ideological bureaucrats, in his words, must be purged from government by any means necessary.
In the second manifesto, he rails against our cultural degradation, the lack of morales and respect, greed, corruption, the attacks on our liberty, the breakdown of the family unit, screentime, obesity, the attack on masculinity, income inequality, cost-of-living, homelessness, and again personal enrichment of our officials.
He explains that this is not a terror attack, but a wake-up call to Americans. He explains that he is doing this to “end our sickness” and that he needed to “cleanse” his “mind of the brothers [he] lost.”
Here’s the thing: while I understand his frustration with some of these issues, there is no justification for his actions. As a highly trained individual, he knew the potential consequences of detonating explosives near innocent civilians. Even if he aimed to limit the blast radius with the Cybertruck, he knowingly risked lives.
At the same time, I imagine, he could have built a much more sophisticated, and deadly bomb if he wanted to. And while he was a Trump supporter, I still don’t understand why he chose the Trump hotel. It doesn’t make much sense to me.
In any event, I don’t care what his grievances were. It doesn’t give him the right to blow up a Cybertruck, put innocent people at risk, and damage property. I started this podcast because I was fed up with what I was seeing and what’s been happening over the last two decades. If you have a problem, then get on a platform and speak out.
With that being said, this was not a terror attack. Terrorism is a word that has lost a lot of meaning because it is so overused today. I have a very strict definition of terrorism in that it is the intentional targeting of innocent civilians, in order to instill fear and pressure governments to change policies.
However, what this does represent is a profound failure of the system to identify someone in need of help before they become a danger to themselves and others.
He was diagnosed with and suffered from PTSD. He may have suffered traumatic brain injuries on the battlefield from a tour of duty in 2019. He recently sought treatment for depression and sat for three mental health counseling sessions between August and December. We still don’t know if he was deemed suicidal as a result of these counseling sessions, but I suspect we will find out sooner or later, but ultimately that’s what this was, suicide.
Far too many of our soldiers and veterans have become collateral damage of war, and this is another reminder of the toll that war can take. It’s why every single politician should think long and hard before they send our sons and daughters to faraway lands for wars that last forever and have no clear objectives.
We need to take a quick break, but when we get back, I want to talk about the New Orleans terror attack and what’s about to come. So, everyone hang tight and I will be right back.
Break
Radical Islamic Extremism Rears its Ugly Head in New Orleans
Welcome back to The P.A.S. Report Podcast. Now I want to turn to the actual terror attack that brought us into the new year down in New Orleans. There are some coincidences between Livelsberger and the New Orleans attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, that would be irresponsible to ignore. Both men were veterans of the Afghanistan war.
Both of them utilized rented vehicles from the same company, and both were stationed at the same base at some point both here at home at Fort Bragg and during their deployment to Afghanistan, and both had distinguished military careers.
While there is some overlap, there is zero evidence that they knew each other. First of all, they were in completely different units that wouldn’t interact with each other. Secondly, Fort Bragg is like a mid-sized city with a population of nearly a quarter of a million people. It’s more than likely they never even met. The similarities appear to end there.
So, Jabbar left the military in 2020 and was a civilian at the time of the attack. There is also little doubt of his motivations as recorded a message pledging his allegiance to ISIS, and attacked with an ISIS flag as he intentionally targeted and killed 14 innocent people before dying in a shootout with police.
It appears that the radicalization process was over the last year, year and a half, as he began to isolate himself and push hardline radical Islamic views more in line with the Wahhabi sect of Islam. Radical Islamic extremism is rearing its ugly head once again.
Now, there are a few things that concern me when it comes to ISIS, al-Qaeda, and radical Islamic extremism. We are beginning to see a resurgence of these organizations as they have been very active throughout the world, particularly ISIS. Over the last three years, we’ve seen attacks in the Philippines, France, Vienna, Britain, New Zealand, Oslo, Brussels, Moscow, and other countries as well. Countries that are more prone to ISIS attacks like Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda has been much quieter, but they are far deadlier. The main difference between al-Qaeda and ISIS isn’t the radical ideology, it’s how they conduct attacks. While ISIS has a sophisticated radicalization process, it conducts a lot of small-scale attacks. These attacks don’t need to be sanctioned by leadership as long as an individual pledges their allegiance to ISIS. These are much more difficult to stop given the lone-wolf nature of the attacks.
When it comes to al-Qaeda, they prefer large-scale, spectacular attacks. These attacks require a lot of planning, and training, and are designed to kill a large number of people and destroy property to garner worldwide attention. These style attacks are much more difficult to pull off due to their sophistication, but if successful, they are much deadlier.
However, both groups want to sow fear to push radical Islamic extremism in the United States.
While Jabbar was an American-born citizen who was radicalized, what concerns me is how Biden’s open border policy has allowed terrorists to infiltrate our country, and I do suspect we will see an uptick in terrorist activity and potential terrorist attacks in the coming months.
In June, it was announced that eight men with possible ties to ISIS were arrested in New York City, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. These men, originally from Tajikistan, crossed our Southern Border, and despite their criminal background checks coming back clean, they were released into the interior of the United States. They were already on the FBI’s radar.
In August of 2023, a CNN report highlighted that the FBI was investigating a Turkish smuggler with ties to ISIS, who was trafficking dozens of people from Uzbekistan across the U.S.-Mexico border. Unfortunately, we have no idea about the outcome of this investigation. We haven’t gotten a single update as to the status of this investigation or whether there have been any arrests.
In March 2023, a Somali national with known ties to al-Shabaab, an organization linked to al-Qaeda, was allowed to enter the country and was released at the border in California. In April 2023, a Uzbeki national with alleged ties to ISIS was arrested. He entered the United States in 2022 through the Southern Border.
There are more incidents, and I did a whole episode on how the Biden administration has made us less safe in June. I have the link to that episode in the show notes so check it out.
At the same time, the outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray has been warning for the last year about the potential of radical Islamic extremists conducting attacks within the United States.
The problem with Wray is that he is a tool, and I will be glad to see him go. While he has been raising the alarm bells about this, this is the same FBI that under his leadership has repeatedly warned about the amorphous threat of white supremacy that they never define. The same FBI that targeted parents attending school board meetings. The same FBI that proclaimed traditional Catholics are domestic violent extremists.
How much time did the FBI waste on nonsense rather than the real threats that exist? Kash Patel can’t get in soon enough to clean this mess up.
But it’s not just the FBI. Remember, when retired General Mark Milley was screaming about white rage? Or what about when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin launched an investigation into white supremacy and right-wing extremism in the military only to find out a year and a half later that it wasn’t an issue?
Instead of targeting phantom extremists, they weaponized the totality of government against anyone who dissented from the government narrative. Just look at the National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism that was released in June of 2021, and should immediately be rescinded when Trump takes office.
Just Sunday, DHS Secretary Mayorkas is still proclaiming that right-wing extremism is the biggest threat we face. While some of these people are delusional, some are nefarious and know exactly what they are doing. It’s about obedience and control, not liberty.
This is why we must be careful and resist the calls to empower government in the name of combating terrorism. Radical extremism exists, but we have to be careful. We have to prevent government overreach and the surrender of our liberty. I will explain that after this quick break so hang tight and we will be right back.
Break
Beware of Government Overreach
Welcome back to The P.A.S. Report Podcast. For this final segment, I want to focus on the calls we’re already hearing to strengthen terrorism laws in the wake of recent attacks. The fearmongering machine is already ramped up, but I want to be crystal clear: we don’t need new laws and we don’t need the government to usurp any more authority or anymore of our liberty.
We already have dozens of terrorism-related statutes on the books. What no one ever seems to explain is why those existing laws are supposedly inadequate. The truth is, they’re not. These calls for more laws are really calls for more government power – power that inevitably infringes on our liberties.
We’ve seen this before. After 9/11, the government was granted sweeping new powers under the Patriot Act. Those powers were supposed to protect us from foreign terrorists, but instead, they’ve been turned inward against the American people. The government’s surveillance capabilities have been abused, our private communications have been intercepted, and entire programs have been weaponized to target political dissent. This is what happens when we give up liberty in exchange for the illusion of safety and security.
Free societies come with risks. That’s the tradeoff. But that risk is worth it because the alternative – a police state – is far worse. You don’t hear about many terror attacks in places like North Korea or China, but that’s not because they’re safer. It’s because they’ve crushed all dissent and are police states. The absence of terror attacks in those societies is not a sign of peace but a result of tyranny.
The founders understood this tradeoff. They warned us about the dangers of centralized power and stressed that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. They envisioned a nation where the people, not the government, held the ultimate authority. Unfortunately, we’ve already deviated grossly from that vision. The federal government has grown into a behemoth that intrudes into nearly every aspect of our lives. The last thing we need is to give it even more power under the guise of fighting terrorism.
We must resist these calls to expand government authority. Every time we further empower the government, we chip away at the freedoms that make us who we are. A truly free society will never be without threats, but those risks allow us to thrive as individuals and as a nation. The moment we accept the premise that safety and security are more important than freedom, we surrender the essence of what makes America exceptional.
So, as these conversations continue in the coming weeks and months, we need to ask tough questions. Why do they need new laws when they already abuse the ones they have? What specific gaps are they trying to fill? And most importantly, how will this affect our liberty? The burden of proof should always be on those advocating for more power, not on those defending our freedoms.
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We’ve seen how far we’ve drifted from the founders’ vision and how much liberty we have already surrendered, but it’s not too late to push back. If we’re not vigilant now, we’ll wake up one day in a society that looks far more like China than the America the founders fought to create.
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Click here to read Professor Giordano’s latest piece at Campus Reform
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