Frank Gaffney's influence is shining through Ted Cruz now, and not in a good way. After releasing a statement in response to the Brussels attacks yesterday calling for Muslim communities to be "patrolled and secured," Cruz tried as hard as he could to explain that to Anderson Cooper on CNN.

"We have seen for seven years that being afraid to confront what it is we're facing, being afraid to name it, that it is radical Islamic terrorism, has left us vulnerable to jihad, to acts of terror. We've seen that in Paris, we've seen that in San Bernardino, we've seen that in Brussels," Cruz said.

In other words, by not giving strength to terrorists by calling all of Islam radical, we're somehow in danger. Except that San Bernardino wasn't any kind of Islamic conclave, and Paris and Brussels aren't in our country. Is Cruz pretending like he's the President of Brussels? Or is he just advocating for a worldwide police state?

From there, it just gets weirder.

"If you have a neighborhood where there's a high level of gang activity, the way to prevent it is you increase the law enforcement presence there and you target the gang members to get them off the streets," he told Anderson Cooper. "I'm talking about any area where there is a higher incidence of radical Islamic terrorism."

But that's not how it works, not at all. And comparing Muslims to gang members is just an indicator of how incredibly deluded Ted Cruz is. Is he going to surround mosques? Screen people to get in and out of their communities?

And of course, all the while defending their Second Amendment rights to own and carry weapons, am I right?

It didn't take very long for the NYPD to speak up about his twisted ideas, either. Their communications director tweeted this:

Hey, @tedcruz are our nearly 1k Muslim officers a "threat" too? It's hard to imagine a more incendiary, foolish statement

— J. Peter Donald (@JPeterDonald) March 23, 2016

Here's what boggles my mind. Cruz focuses on San Bernardino, Paris and Brussels, while completely and utterly ignoring the equally awful terrorist attacks in Ankara and Istanbul. Why is that, do you suppose? Hint: It's possible Kurdish groups were responsible for those attacks, and that doesn't fit the convenient narrative Cruz has crafted for himself.