Sekulow

Logan Sekulow: Welcome to Sekulow. It is Wednesday, August 5th. Phone lines are open for you at 1-800-684-3110. We have Will Haynes in the studio. We have Rick Grenell joining us a little bit later, and we are going to have a packed show. This comes out of a lot to cover here. You may have seen the title. What is Gavin Newsom saying now? The first line of this post that he made on X is, "Congress is dead. MAGA has a king. Republicans killed the Constitution. If we don't win in November, democracy in America is over." Of course, we are also talking about what happened in Michigan because we saw who won. Al Sayed won. He pulled it off after a very close race. We'll get more into that later. After all the Michiganders called in and said there's no chance he's going to win, look what happens. He wins, goes out there, cosplaying Barack Obama, making a big statement. Phone lines are open for you again at 1-800-684-3110. Let's talk about why Gavin Newsom declared that Congress is dead.
Will Haynes: Remember the whole disinformation czar that the Biden administration tried to put in place? I feel like this is something that would have gotten swept up under that. Obviously, we are against that and people have the freedom of speech, but this is Gavin Newsom making a political statement out of disinformation. This comes as he responds to a post on X from Aaron Rupar. He is the left's version of one of those accounts you see that push out a lot of clips of President Trump. He's pushing out clips that people on the left would like to see. He puts out this clip of Senator Cornyn. There was a big scuffle last week where they canceled the vote in committee on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's nomination over that weaponization fund. John Cornyn and the senator from North Carolina did not want to move forward with the nomination unless they got assurances that weaponization reimbursement fund would not go into effect. They got those concessions and now Todd Blanche looks like he will be moved forward from committee. It was very standard political back and forth to get other things done. This is actually the role of the Senate. If they don't like something, they can use their authority in the Senate, checks and balances, to get something they want. Senator Cornyn was asked in this clip, "The President says he still wants this fund. You were against it. How do you rein that in?" His response is, "I can't rein in him liking something. But what we did was use our authority to stop something and get concessions, and that fund is dead." Effectively, he's using a rhetorical thing of, "I can't rein in his opinions, but I can rein in actions." The Aaron Rupar account said, "Cornyn: There's nothing we can do to rein the President in." Gavin Newsom ran with that half statement, that lie of omission, and declared Congress is dead, MAGA has a king, and Republicans killed the Constitution. Then we hear that line that has been repeated every election cycle since 2016 from the left: "If we don't win in November, democracy in America is over." It is misinformation built on a half-truth.
Logan Sekulow: He didn't even dot, dot, dot it. He could have dot, dot, doted it and been a little bit more honest. It would have been a little bit more accurate. But that's what happened here. It's still tricky. It's a lie of omission. Phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. Get yourself on the air today. Is Congress dead? Is there a king in America? That's what Gavin says. But obviously we know he's running for that position himself. We know he wants to rule over it as a supreme leader as well. That's what I hear. I saw that in a clip. The ACLJ is in our Impact Drive. We're going to talk about that a little later because we have a lot to cover. But you need to always know about the important work of the ACLJ. They put a whole list in front of me of all the things we're doing right now. I'm going to read off some of these, especially some of our pro-life work that we're working on right now. When you have people like Gavin Newsom, you know we're going to need to fight back against it.
Guest (Male): Do you even realize the impact you make? Choosing freedom or oppression, justice or corruption, faith or godlessness, life or death. One factor can make the difference. And what is it? You. As an ACLJ supporter, you have great power. You make a tremendous impact. This month, you can double that impact. Right now, your most sacred rights as an American—your freedom of speech, your freedom to pray and worship, even our free and fair election process—are being threatened. Right now, as part of our ACLJ Impact Match, you can double your support. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your tax-deductible gift doubled dollar for dollar, doubling your impact to defend faith, freedom, and innocent life. Your impact is powerful, but the time is short. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your gift doubled today.
Guest (Male): We've witnessed monumental legal victories, from defending the 14th Amendment and protecting our sacred American right to vote, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and standing up for the religious liberty of our kids and seniors. But even with the many historic wins we've achieved, the battle is far from over. The attacks on our constitutionally protected rights persist. Countless unborn babies remain in jeopardy, and across the globe, innocent Christians are being targeted and killed across this country and around the world. This fight isn't just the ACLJ's. It's all of ours. It belongs to every American who wants to preserve the values and beliefs on which this nation was founded. None of the victories we've won would have been possible without the unwavering support of ACLJ members and ACLJ champions. It's been an honor to fight for you all these years. Join us in fighting for freedom. Have your donation doubled at ACLJ.org/freedom.
Logan Sekulow: Welcome back to Sekulow. We do a few lines still open at 1-800-684-3110 if you want to call in and get your voice heard on the air. We're talking a little bit about the elections that were held last night. We are also talking about Gavin Newsom's post today on X saying Congress is dead in response to an out-of-context video clip from Senator Cornyn. At the same time, Vice President Vance, who we've heard recently, we've had our issues with some of the things the Vice President Vance has had to say, but there are some things that he's out there doing that we obviously agree with. One of those is taking out fraud. So when you have at the same time these fraudulent moments creating these political statements when you're trying to bolster yourself up for a midterm slash running for president very soon, we do actually have some important work to do, and that is stopping fraud from a lot of these governors throughout the country.
Will Haynes: That's right. This is a good juxtaposition. This morning, JD Vance, the Vice President, had a meeting with 20 members of Congress, both from the House and the Senate, about tackling fraud and how the legislative process needs to step in here. This is an important moment because at the same time that people like Gavin Newsom are calling out and saying Congress is dead, MAGA has a king, there is actually real work being done and real work that needs to happen to ensure that fraud is rooted out in this country. The Vice President announced that they had found conservatively around $230 billion in fraud that they've uncovered with a B. Then they've also stopped payment on around $56 billion in fraudulent spending that hadn't gone out yet, that they uncovered was earmarked and that they were able to stop it from going out. This is unbelievable, the amount of fraud they're uncovering. Maybe people like Gavin Newsom should spend less time campaigning for 2028 and spend more time governing in their own state to figure out how to stop this because we know that California is one of the big problems. It is heavily focused in blue states, but we've seen it in places like Ohio as well, where the governor has worked with the administration to root out a lot of this Medicare and Medicaid fraud that we're seeing. This is a time where the White House is working with Congress saying, "Look, we are uncovering this, but this got out of control. If you don't start to put in safeguards to ensure this won't happen again." He also took a little bit of shade at what happened in Michigan and said, "If in three years we have a President Al Sayed that wants to undo all of this, then we want to make sure there are stops that are in place that will stop this." Let's actually hear from the Vice President on that making that little reference.
JD Vance: As much as we've done and as much as we've had great successes, this brings me to my final point. This effort will fundamentally always have a limitation unless our colleagues in the House and the Senate are working with us. We don't want the next administration, whoever, God forbid you're going to have President Al Sayed in three years, we don't want him to undo all the incredible work that we've been doing when we've been taking out the fraudsters and saving the American people money. In order to make this really work, we need our colleagues in Congress to really codify some of this stuff to make sure that it becomes law.
Logan Sekulow: Of course, taking it to the next step here, saying now we've got to proceed forward. I know a lot of you have had big concerns about whether fraud was actually not just being addressed but that people were being held accountable. Again, it's a long process. It's a slog process. It's also something that I think people need to look at too and should be concerned with, with the midterms coming up, that things can get taken care of. There is that talk of does President Trump actually have two more years or could he actually only have two more months?
Will Haynes: In reality, when you look at what's happening and especially with a lot of these DSA candidates, these are candidates that don't even want the role of Congress or the executive branch to exist in its current framework.
Logan Sekulow: They have called specifically for, and again this isn't our hyperbole, they've called for an end to these institutions that have been around for since the founding of the country. Now you have a moment here where they're starting to really roll where you're getting a lot of feedback. President Trump put out great news for Republican Party. Al Sayed, a communist loser who hates Jews and Israel, is the projected winner in the race with the socialist. He said as usual the polls were way off, and of course goes on and on in his President Trump kind of way. But at least admitting look, here we are. This is the real present day of America.
Will Haynes: And that's what we were even talking about yesterday, how the party was at a crossroads in a state like Michigan where it was someone who was going very far left versus someone who was an establishment candidate. I wouldn't even say a moderate because I don't think that exists anymore. But it was an establishment candidate who was not able to win. One, the polls were drastically wrong. We'll talk a little bit more about it in the next segment. But this is at a time where think about what even that clip did show, what JD Vance was calling out, saying, "Hey, we have to work together, Congress, or else this is going to continue to run rampant and people can undo this." When you look at what Governor Newsom said, saying Congress is dead, then why did JD Vance invite them to the White House to try to work on a real common-sense solution to fighting fraud when $230 billion has been uncovered? As one of our producers said, remember when we couldn't afford a $5 billion border wall in the first term, and yet there was 230 billion in fraudulent spending? Even in this op-ed that was published by the Vice President in the Washington Post about fighting fraud and asking Congress to step up, there's a story out of Minneapolis where a disabled American needed 24-hour care. They sought from a Medicaid program that was administered by the state that care to be paid for. That individual received nothing. A fraudster had been taking and billing for that over a million dollars in services that they never provided to the individual. That individual was found deceased in their home because someone was stealing through the loose, lax rules that the state had. That's a horrific story. That's only one million of the 230 billion dollars of fraud that they uncovered. Fortunately, even 56 billion had been stopped from further wasted money. They found the fraud and stopped the payments. But this is the reality. When you have someone like Gavin Newsom whose state is one of the worst offenders at this type of fraud, of letting it happen and run rampant and only getting involved when they're called out by the Department of Justice and the US attorneys in their state, when he's saying Congress is dead, when he's saying that if you don't vote for us in November, democracy in America is over and saying Republicans killed the Constitution, first of all, if that were all true, if he didn't take the bite out of context, if it were all true, then this request from the Vice President to Congress would be unnecessary and everyone knows that. In reality, it is the people that are getting elected that want to dismantle the checks and balances. They're the ones that are trying to kill the Constitution, and they're actually saying it out loud.
Logan Sekulow: I mean, let's be honest. Do I think that President Trump does have quite a bit of control over where the Republican Party stands right now? Yeah, I do. I think he has become that sort of character. But now you are seeing kingmakers come out of the left. You are seeing the mayor of New York City. You are seeing how that big influence has made its way now to other states and will continue to make its way throughout the country. So while you may say MAGA has a king and all of this and democracy, it's happening the same way on the Democratic side, which is if you decide to be more nuanced, if you decide to be even Senator Cornyn, who's not necessarily known as the most MAGA conservative, being the person who is being targeted here in many ways, or you have the situation like what happened in Michigan where you have the more mainline Democrat who was supposed to win, of course, not win. Shocking. I'm not shocked at all. I have a call coming in from Alex. I'm going to take it. Let's go ahead as we lead into the next segment. Alex, go ahead in Michigan. Hopefully they'll set up our next segment. Go ahead.
Alex: Hi guys, glad you're there today. I'm from Michigan and I just wanted to ask you a question. Give me a little clarity on this. Trump last night had set a statement in relation to the two Democratic candidates in Michigan. He said he would prefer that the guy would win over the lady, Al Sayed over Representative Haley Stevens. Could you kind of frame that up for me in reference to is he trying to say that we're a little weak with the women voters and we'd rather have the guy, or he already knows that Mike Rogers is going to be a knockout over this guy? He's just going to blow him away.
Logan Sekulow: I think that's the thought, Alex, that this will be an easier person for the Republican to defeat because it isn't a more centrist Democrat candidate, a more traditional Democrat candidate. You're talking about someone who is a little bit more of an extremist. However, I throw up a big flag of caution when you do these kind of things. Because a ton of money is going to come in. We have seen what happened in New York City. They thought that was going to happen. They thought you'd have a Cuomo or one of these more standard traditional, everyone knows their name candidates come in and win, and no, it doesn't happen like that anymore. Depending on how your demographics start to shape up, you never know. Now, do I think that I understand President Trump's point of view here? Sure. Do I think it's a risky roll of the dice? Possibly. Because instead of having a moderate Democrat that you're able to work with, there is a potential that you have someone who is more akin to a Democrat socialist. Then that conversation grows and grows as we head not only to a midterm, but to and who they will pick to be the presidential candidate in the next go round. We'll be right back.
Guest (Male): We've witnessed monumental legal victories, from defending the 14th Amendment and protecting our sacred American right to vote, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and standing up for the religious liberty of our kids and seniors. But even with the many historic wins we've achieved, the battle is far from over. The attacks on our constitutionally protected rights persist. Countless unborn babies remain in jeopardy, and across the globe, innocent Christians are being targeted and killed across this country and around the world. This fight isn't just the ACLJ's. It's all of ours. It belongs to every American who wants to preserve the values and beliefs on which this nation was founded. None of the victories we've won would have been possible without the unwavering support of ACLJ members and ACLJ champions. It's been an honor to fight for you all these years. Join us in fighting for freedom. Have your donation doubled at ACLJ.org/freedom.
Guest (Male): Do you even realize the impact you make? Choosing freedom or oppression, justice or corruption, faith or godlessness, life or death. One factor can make the difference. And what is it? You. As an ACLJ supporter, you have great power. You make a tremendous impact. And this month, you can double that impact. Right now, your most sacred rights as an American—your freedom of speech, your freedom to pray and worship, even our free and fair election process—are being threatened. Right now, as part of our ACLJ Impact Match, you can double your support. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your tax-deductible gift doubled dollar for dollar, doubling your impact to defend faith, freedom, and innocent life. Your impact is powerful, but the time is short. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your gift doubled today.
Logan Sekulow: We've got quite a few lines open. I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110 as we head into the back half of our broadcast. I'm going to take a lot of calls. So again, 1-800-684-3110. Also Rick Grenell's going to be joining us a little later, so you're not going to want to miss that. But of course I want to hear from you. Let's go ahead and jump to this phone call. Let's go to Russ, who is calling in New York, who's watching on Roku, probably on the Salem News Channel or something like that. Go ahead, Russ.
Russ: That's it, the Salem News Channel, Logan. Logan, you and Will make a really dynamic duo. Logan, you have the facial hair and dark good looks to be popular as a political candidate. Will is really a scholar. But I want to ask you, Logan, because of that, are political parties bad for United States, especially with the amount of money invested like you just said? Is it political parties that are killing democracy and could we require them to disband after any given election? And Will, the question I have for you, it's a historical one. Did the UN General Assembly have the authority in 1948 to partition Palestine and did it violate democratic principles of self-determination?
Logan Sekulow: Russ, we're going to clip that. We're going to save that forever. It's the most complimentary call we've ever had. Will's a historian and I have good looks. I think that's it. But thank you, Russ. Let's break all of this down. The first question was reliant about political parties. I think here's just the truth. Do I think that the idea of the two-party system is something that is overall a bit detrimental to society as a whole? I could get there. However, I think we are so set in our ways that to have that conversation won't change in our lifetime. Every time you have had a third party pop up, it never seems to get a stranglehold. What you are actually seeing now is these third parties come up and then get embraced by the mainstream party. So you have the Democratic Socialists of America kind of getting grafted into Democrats. You have the libertarians be more grafted into a Republican, what became the MAGA movement, what became the Tea Party movement kind of moved into there. What I think you'll see is more this amalgamation of this outsider third party that somehow if it gets enough momentum, gets swallowed up by the mainstream parties. Do I think that's a good thing? No, I would love to live in a system where there was an endless amount of options and we actually had people who could have nuance. I truly believe that most of us, you may be 80% Republican and maybe you have 20% that you could see yourself in the middle. I think that's probably true for a lot of people. Flip that, I think there's a lot of Democrat friends of mine who would say, "Yeah, but I'm conservative on this issue." The problem is we have become so split apart that if you take one small position that doesn't connect with the current party, all of a sudden you're labeled the other party, and it scares people. You have celebrities going out there—I always go to that clip of Mayim Bialik or of Gwyneth Paltrow—both said the same thing, "My family thinks I'm Republican." Really what it seems to come down to is they support Israel. But that's enough to get them labeled. Do I think that it's healthy? No, I don't think any of this is healthy. Do I think it's such a large task to dismantle it that I think we're going to see any sort of major change? Let's not say in our lifetime, because Will hopefully we live a long time. But 50 years.
Will Haynes: That's right. A couple of thoughts on that before I get to the other question that he had for me. One, we have freedom of association in this country, so I think it's hard to force them to disband. That's a part of the First Amendment. I don't think that the government should get involved in it in any way. While the framers cautioned against factions, what did they immediately do? Divide themselves into political parties. So they knew the problem with it, but they also couldn't help themselves. As you mentioned, a lot of these what would be third parties, they go naturally to find ways to be insurgent within the established parties. Why? Because the structure's there. Then they change the party. It's very difficult on your own to get the fundraising platforms, to get all the requirements to even get on the ballot. It's a hard process. It's a lot easier if you go within an established framework and start to move that way. That's why a lot of times you see people taking quote-unquote the easy route to get into a party by exactly what the DSA is doing. They were a party. Now they're from within the established framework trying to take it over and they're doing a very good job of that as well.
Logan Sekulow: I mean, between the Senate and the House, what do you get? Three independents total? And what do they do? Also they caucus with the Democrats. Bernie Sanders, you know who he is actually. You know who you're voting for. You're voting for Bernie Sanders.
Will Haynes: On the UN partition, the UN mandate of Palestine in 1948, that is post-British Mandate Palestine. Whether or not they have the authority to create this, people make treaties. They can have an outcome, affect an outcome. But I do want to remember this. Those borders that they established are no longer the borders because what happened? All the Arab countries attacked Israel over and over and over again. So Israel, when they would win those wars being attacked on all sides, would maintain the land that they had won after being attacked. But we remember that it was people like President Obama that would say pre-'67 borders. What he was talking about were these 1948 borders, which were much worse for the state of Israel.
Logan Sekulow: We certainly forget that in war, a lot of this includes winning the land. Whether you agree with that or disagree with it, if you want to go historically, that's what happened. It's what Russia was trying to do with Ukraine. They just were not able to succeed. They haven't been able to figure that out yet. But that was what the attempt was. Again, I'm not saying whether war for land is the right thing to do, but if we're talking about as history has said, that is what a lot of war was over. Every time that President Obama and a lot of our supporters right now would historically go back and look, they probably voted for Barack Obama. I see that in the comments all the time. But that was always the tell. Because before anyone was talking about Israel in the way that a lot of people talk about Israel now, he would float those borders. Most people didn't understand what they were hearing. They didn't understand what happened in 1967. They wouldn't understand what happened with the wars that followed for Israel. It was not even really the issue of the day. We were dealing with a lot more things locally then. We were dealing with a crisis in 2008. We were talking about ISIS and a lot of other war that was happening that was directly impacting American lives. So that would get very swept under the rug. But we all here at the ACLJ would hear it and we knew exactly what he was saying. Now, flash forward 15 years, it's now the mainstream. That again kind of ties back to what you were saying about the political parties, which is what happens, you just got to give it time and all of a sudden some of these fringe ideas become the mainstream platform of a Democratic Party or of a Republican Party. I think you can see it both sides how the libertarians or the Tea Party movement became MAGA, MAGA kind of took over the Republican Party. That is the one truth that's in the John Cornyn statement, which is Gavin Newsom's statement: again, I don't want to say President Trump is a king. Certainly that's not true. But to act like the MAGA movement hasn't had just a massive impact is lying to your constituents, the people. It's had a massive impact and changed the Republican Party for good or bad. Same thing now has happened with Democratic Socialists of America where they are having a major impact on what was mainstream platform. Look what just happened last night. Even if you're saying President Trump was more excited that this guy won, he still won when he wasn't supposed to. Phone lines are open for you. I want to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. We got a second half hour coming up on the show. We are just kicking off our Impact Drive, the Impact Match. Your donation is doubled right now if you support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Don't go anywhere or join us live at ACLJ.org, YouTube, Rumble, however you get your podcast.
Guest (Male): As an ACLJ supporter, you have great power. You make a tremendous impact. This month, you can double that impact. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your tax-deductible gift doubled dollar for dollar, doubling your impact to defend faith, freedom, and innocent life. Your impact is powerful, but the time is short. Go to ACLJ.org/impact and have your gift doubled today.