Ben Shapiro

Balot then apparently ran toward a second 19-year-old man named Ibrahim Nik, and he grabbed a second device.

He lit that, and then he started running.

Eventually, he dropped it.

Both men were arrested.

Here is this person trying to light a second IED.

What are the cops doing?

I love that he's standing there lighting it, and they're like, um, um, and then finally they chase him down.

Well, here's the thing.

These were not smoke bombs.

According to original reporting, they were smoke bombs.

These are not smoke bombs.

They were IEDs.

According to the New York Post, those IEDs were homemade.

They were packed with nuts, bolts, and screws, and also a household concoction nicknamed by international terrorist groups the Mother of Satan.

Law enforcement sources told the Post the IEDs were so volatile they wouldn't even have needed a fuse to go off.

Well, to no one's surprise, I know no one's surprise, Balot traveled to, wait for it, Istanbul, like over in Turkey, for more than three months last year.

Nick had traveled to Istanbul in 2024.

It turns out there are a lot of people in Turkey who are really, really Islamist.

The pair admitted to the cops upon arrest they had watched ISIS videos and were inspired by ISIS.

Now...