Breitbart Exclusive Interview: Sen. Cruz Talks Assault on Religious Liberty and Ebola Travel Ban
Senator Ted Cruz said the City of Houston and Mayor Annise Parker have “no legal authority, no constitutional authority and no moral authority” to issue subpoenas to pastors for their sermons and personal communications. The exclusive interview below came shortly after the Senator gathered with some of the top religious leaders in Houston to speak out against this unprecedented attack on religious liberty. During the interview, Cruz also reinforced his “common sense” call for a travel ban on people traveling from countries with an active outbreak of the Ebola virus.
The meeting of pastors and the senator came after Mayor Annise Parker and the Houston City Attorney’s issuance of subpoenas to five Houston area pastors. The subpoenas included a demand for “When you subpoena one pastor,” Cruz stated, “you subpoena every pastor.” The City leaders eventually stepped back and said they will narrow the scope of the subpoena’s to not include subpoenas.
Cruz said the religious leaders called for a two-step reaction from the community. First, Cruz asked the public to “lift up our country in prayer.” And secondly he requested that people speak out against this unprecedented assault on religious liberty by this government. “Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue,” the Senator said.
On the issue of America’s Ebola outbreak Cruz said, “This is a serious danger.” He said the country needs “serious, focused leadership.” “It is past time to impose a travel ban on commercial airline flights coming from countries facing an active Ebola outbreak,” Cruz stated. He called the travel ban “a matter of simple common sense.”
Cruz said as many as 150 passengers per day travel from countries with active Ebola outbreaks. The screening process proposed by President Obama would not have stopped Eric Duncan. “It’s a matter of basic prudence,” he said. “We have seen at least one individual, Mr. Duncan, who arrived in the United States, in Dallas at DFW Airport, and sadly Mr. Duncan has passed away, but not before he passed the virus on to at least two health care workers here.”
“The screenings look for active symptoms,” Cruz explained. “They look for fever. Ebola is a virus that has an incubation period of up to twenty-one days during which the person doesn’t demonstrate symptoms. So Mr. Duncan, for example, when he landed at DFW, from what we know we don’t believe he had a fever at the time.”
Cruz said Duncan’s lack of symptoms would mean “he would have walked right through the screening and not been detected.
Cruz said the other objection to the travel ban is it would stop health care workers from traveling to the Ebola affected countries. Cruz said no one is calling for a ban on flights into these countries. He said we can also bring workers into these countries with U.S. military aircraft.
“There is a culture of confusion,” Cruz said about the Obama Administration. “They are not serious about dealing with Ebola.
They’re not serious about stopping ISIS. They’re not serious about our problems. What we need to see is a seriousness from the commander-in-chief and we need to see Republicans and Democrats come together and say regardless of our differences on other issues, we’re united on defending the health and safety of every American.”
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