Is Biden Repeating Obama’s Mistakes?

Today on Sekulow is Joe Biden repeating the same mistakes of Barack Obama. We'll talk about that and more today on Sekulow. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Hey, welcome to Sekulow. Let me just first say, we've got so many supporters in Florida, listeners in Florida. I know many won't be able to listen today, but for all of us in the rest of the country, let's make sure we're praying for the people there. I know the images of the loss and destruction is what is captivating imagery, but remember the people. Buildings can be rebuilt, boats can be fixed or replaced, but human lives can't. And that's what we don't know yet. We don't know the human toll yet from Hurricane Ian. Now tropical storm, but also could revert back to a hurricane up the Atlantic. So people in South Georgia on the coast there, Savannah, Charleston area as well bracing for what could be a, not a category four or five, but even just back to a even category one hurricane. We don't know about the flood levels yet. We don't know about the water, but we know, we've seen the imagery we've seen.

I think what we can all do right now is pray for the people who need the help. And of course, I'm sure everybody listed this broadcast right now, especially if those of you on the East coast, Midwest, you have family, you might have property that might be where you vacation. So a lot of connections to Florida when you're an East coaster. I know for our West coast audience, it can seem far away, but even then with Disney World and all of the things that are in Florida and the keys, likely made that trip before.

But for those of us on the East coast, it's the go-to, one of the go-to places for vacation. So again, we're going to get more updates on that. I think as it develops and as crews are able to get in there and assess damage, because right now it's aerial, mostly aerial footage. But I saw what I saw yesterday, just the amount of flooding into people's homes where people that have two story homes, their first floor is flooded out. Well, I mean, the storm surges, excuse me, nine and some places more than the nine feet, but it does look like that they had a, Florida had under governor DeSantis, a very good pre-planning.

And I think their execution so far has been very, very good. Obviously the scope and nature of the damage will be determined today. We're going to take a look at, so again, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with our friends in Florida. We are going to take a look at, in depth today, a couple of issues. One, Iran, because the protests are growing. The Biden administration's desire for the peace, the nuclear deal is also growing.

The human rights activists are calling out the administration for a double standard. In other words, you're going to give the Iranians money that they're going to then use to squelch our civil rights protest, basically. That's what's happening right now. So we're going to look at all of this and there's another thing we are going to take a look at and that there's problems with the Nord Stream pipeline and Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us for that. And there looks like it could be sabotaged is what they're saying, Jordan.

Yeah. Well, everybody on each side is saying it's sabotage. So the question is who committed the sabotage? And it appears most likely that it was the Russians. Which they'll use as an excuse to why they can't get natural gas. I mean, they already said they were going to cut off Europe from natural gas, but now they can say, see, we're not trying to be mean, evil, freeze you out in the winter. We literally, because of, you know, they're going to blame it on the Ukrainians or NATO is there to blame. I don't know if Ukraine, anybody believes that they have the ability to do what you'd have to do to take, to carry out that sabotage. The Russians certainly do.

Of course, NATO could have been, but it wouldn't make sense. So it looks like another dramatic move by Putin, which will have consequences, which aren't even being felt yet because these are the consequences of the winter. This is going to be, it's a form of this energy issue is going to be a form of warfare.

Yeah. They will use energy as warfare and they could have it. It will have a dramatic effect on Europe. And that could cause world war. You cut people off from energy. Yeah. And they can't, uh, again, or their homes. That's how things escalate quickly.

And countries that said, Oh, we don't want to be involved. Certainly, uh, you know, suddenly want to be involved. We'll be right back on Secula.

Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110. And if you are in any of the areas impacted in Florida and you want to reach out, you've got any messages you need to share.

We want to be able to utilize our resources of radio broadcaster to do that at 1-800-684-3110. Uh, but we are going to focus on some other issues, say obviously for the rest of the country, as a storm, uh, we'll assess and see what happens on the East coast. Uh, but, uh, a lot of focus on Iran. There has been, uh, yet this, uh, another opportunity kind of handed to the world where the Iranian people on their own take to the streets. But what they're concerned about is that when they take to the streets, it's not that they want the U S to tell them what to do is that the U S and the Western world is so, uh, it is just, they, they want that nuclear deal against so bad that they're willing to ignore a lot of these protests. I they're, they're acknowledging some of the, the, the bad things that have happened during the protest, the loss of life of the Iranian woman, uh, who was really, it sparked a lot of this protest, but at the same time, uh, they, they have that idea where they, you know, they said they overthink things. They, they will not do a full throttle support of the Iranian people.

No. And this started because of a protest now based on the killing of a 22 year old woman and really created a, an environment where the people of Iran again have taken to the streets. It's reminiscent of the 2009 protests, but we hope it's not the same conclusion, which was the Obama administration. Colonel Smith saying basically to the protest or stand down. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, they failed the Iranian protesters in 2009. Hopefully that won't happen again.

Right now. The, the protests are growing each day, according to reports. Uh, and now, uh, Iranian artists and celebrities and athletes are speaking out on behalf of the protesters. That is virtually unprecedented in this repressive state. The interesting thing about the Biden administration in particular, Jake Sullivan and Jake Sullivan, just to remind our listeners was the leader of the team under secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who engaged in secret talks with Iran to get the first Iran nuclear deal signed and also to give her in billions of dollars. That's the same Jake Sullivan who now says that he can support verbally the Iranian demonstrators and also try to renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal. And that's, that's impossible. That's a break from reality. And here's part of the reason why, uh, Jay, and that is among their many responsibilities, uh, the revolutionary guard Corps, the IRGC, they are responsible, first of all, for the research and development of nuclear weapons that falls under their umbrella, but they are also responsible for defending the, uh, Tola's regime, which means they're in charge of also attacking the protesters. How can you do both?

Well, here's why let me just, let's do a set up here. Let's play Jake Sullivan statement about negotiations with Iran while these protests are going on. And then I'm going to play one of the responses from a human rights activists out of Iran. We are in negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program is in no way impacting our willingness and our vehemence in speaking out about what is happening on the streets of Iran. We have in fact taken tangible steps to sanction those morality police who caused the death of Masa Amini. Total nonsense because I want you to listen to now, um, the response of an Iranian citizen who is in the United States right now as basically a spokesperson for the, uh, people that are protesting.

There's upwards of a million people's what they're thinking. And um, let's play Masa's statement. Listen to this very carefully. You're a decent man, Jake Sullivan, when you condemn morality police and the brutality of the police are killing people.

I have a simple question. How come at the same time you're going to negotiate with the murders with the same matters? It means you're giving billions of dollars to those who killed Masa.

I don't get this contradiction. I hope I can have a meeting with you Jake Sullivan with President Biden and make it clear that Iranian people are in the streets to get off this regime. So they're talking about regime change here. That's what the people on the streets want and we're trying to negotiate at the same time with them for a nuclear deal.

Yeah. And I think when you talk about regime change and you can empower people to, if they can do that on their own, that's the best way. So it's not the U S troops having to impose regime chamber. It doesn't feel like it's the United States saying, here's what you've got to put in place. If, if we support you, I just think it's the, it's the basic support of just saying, you know what, we're taking this off the table and let's do everything possible right now to cripple that regime economically. But this is a regime to put all every section you got every section of the world can get while the people take to the streets and see what happens because you have a regime that is Andy, the largest exporter of terrorism in the world.

It is. It is the largest exporter. There's no doubt about it, but there's the one thing that I want to point out. This regime of Ayatollahs and this Muslim regime has been imposed on the Persian people. I want people to understand Persia is a known commonly today as Iran, a massive cultural, political and social territory throughout history. The Persian people have contributed greatly to art, science, literature, historical traditions. I mean, the work that they do and has been, had been suppressed by this regime is now finally coming out because the metal work, miniature illustration, textile and literature, for example, the Persian language is known to have the one, one of them in the oldest and most influential in Persian literature, the Greeks like me who are not great to say good things about other nations that they conquer.

Xenophon and his economical said the great King Cyrus II in all the districts he resides in and visits take care that there are paradise, as the Persians call them, full of good and beautiful things that the soil produces. This is the empire that is seething underneath to come out. So I got to ask this question Wes, and that is when this happened before the government of the United States failed the people on the streets, how do we prevent that again? Because what, what Mashi is saying is it's going to happen again based on the statements they're making.

Oh yeah. When, when all this happened before in 2009, what do we do? We gave Iran billions of dollars and secretly, secretly negotiated a deal. The only way that we can support them now other than of course our verbal support is to stop what we're doing in the negotiations because what President Biden has done already, he's quietly lifted a few sanctions as a token of good will. But the, the agreement specifies that if the Iranians will sign the new JCPOA, we will lift sanctions.

Lifting those sanctions will allow two things to happen for the nuclear weapons research and development to continue and for the people to continue to be oppressed. And so that's where we are. Kent, Jordan, and looking at the, just looking at what happened, cause you really studied it last time and worked on it as far as, you know, is it running in that same pattern? I mean, is there, is it, is, it's not getting the coverage it got before. No, it's not. So, I mean, that, that's, and I think again, the mainstream media doesn't want to put the Biden administration in a corner the same way they, I think they probably felt like they did to the Obama administration who then had to justify their nuclear deal after that protest movement. And that was the, again, but it's the same people and, and Jake Sullivan kept reminding everybody, they're still, they believe in nuclear diplomacy when it comes to Iran. That means two things. That means the Iranian regime stays in place. That means stability for the Ayatollah, because you can't cut a nuclear deal with a regime that's not stable.

So how do they get stable? They get an influx of, of, of pallets of cash. It's why at ACLJ Action, we've got a new email out today from, so if you're on the ACLJ Action list, you've got that. Another, a new letter writing campaign asking people to get involved at ACLJAction.org to Congress, telling them to stand up against the Biden administration's plans on Iran, that we're not going to send pallets of cash to these murders.

And that's, that's exactly, this same journalist who is speaking out, who we played, who talked about the, this, the fact that we would, we keep basically going in and giving money to the bad guys. As she said, you keep saving our murders, is one of her savings. That's a very, we don't have that. Do we have that on you?

It's very, very powerful. Yeah, but she says, we don't want you to save Iranian women. Iranian women are brave enough to bring democracy themselves and to save themselves, but we want you to stop saving our murders.

We have it. You can't do that with a nuclear deal. You've got to save the murders if you want that deal. Right.

Go ahead. We don't want you to save Iranian women. Iranian women are brave enough to bring democracy themselves, to save themselves, but we want you to stop saving our murderers. That's all.

That's all. Here's what she also said. And if the Iranian women managed to tear this wall down, the Islamic Republic will not exist. And that is a powerful statement, Andy. Well, it is. And this is exactly what the problem with the policies of this administration have been. And the prior administration under President Obama, they are not allowing the surge of cultural and political and artistic and literary and musical heritage. Iran is not a barbarian state.

It is. Leaders are barbarians, but it's people. The Persians are cultured people and they should be allowed to flourish. West quickly, this is at a tipping point. People are saying, do you think we're at that?

Are they at that tipping point? If we signed that deal with Iran, does that... If we signed the deal with Iran, it negates all that's going on in the name of freedom in that country.

Yeah, another decade till people can be able to organize. Exactly. So folks, this is... Go to ACL Action. Jordan, give everybody the website.

Very important. ACLJAction.org. And again, we encourage you to become a member, but you can write this letter to your member of Congress at ACLJAction.org right now. We are going to take your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Turning our attention to ACLJ filings in support of life. As you know, since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, there is a ton of work to do across the country. Some of it is policy, some of it is issue advocacy, some is getting out the vote, and others are going into court. And we're already seeing that in Kentucky and soon as well in Oklahoma.

And we've already seen actions all over the country. So we wanna update you on what the ACLJ is doing in these cases all across the country. So I'm gonna go to Jeff Surtee, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ, because we've got a filing for Kentucky Supreme Court. Jeff, tell us what's going on there on that particular one.

Sure thing, Jay. In 2019, the Kentucky legislature passed two pro-life laws. It passed a trigger ban, which banned abortions if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which of course it has done. And it also passed a six-week ban, banning abortions through six weeks of pregnancy. Well, three days after the Supreme Court reversed Casey, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade, two abortion clinics in Kentucky, the only two abortion clinics in Kentucky actually, filed a lawsuit saying that these two pro-life laws were unconstitutional under the state constitution. After a hearing that lasted about a week, they got a temporary injunction forbidding the state from enforcing those laws. But after going up and down through the appellate system on these emergency motions, the Kentucky Supreme Court stayed that injunction. In other words, it reversed that injunction. So these two pro-life laws are enforceable as of right now. So, Jeff, what does the Kentucky Supreme Court look like as far as judicial philosophy, conservative, progressive, liberal?

Where does it kind of fit? I would put it, Jay, fairly conservative. The Kentucky Supreme Court, yeah. Well, it did stay the injunction.

So that was a good sign. The other good sign from the Kentucky Supreme Court is that it's scheduled oral arguments in this case for November 15th, one week after Kentucky voters, including myself, go to the polls to vote on amendment two, to amend the constitution to say that, quote, I'll quote it, to protect human life, nothing in this constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion. So I think the Kentucky Supreme Court will be more than happy to moot this case if the Kentucky voters amend the constitution to allow the legislature to make laws regarding abortion and abortion regulations. And that's why we're talking about that interplay with ACLJ action, with the issue advocacy, with the voting taking place, and how it could... And a case of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Like what Jeff said, I think this is important. If the voters do the right thing in Kentucky, if we get them out to vote, then you don't have to rely on judges.

That's exactly right. And I think that's an important part of this entire strategy moving forward is we'll battle it out in court when we need to, but that's the last place you want to be. You want it up to the voters, but you want voters making good decisions. We saw a warning out of Kansas, which was, I think it was too quick, too fast, not enough time for groups like ACLJ action. We did get involved, but it wasn't enough time to do a lot of issue advocacy.

This time around these November ballot issues are going to be very different because you got a lot more money in a good way being spent on educating voters. We also have a brief that we're filing in the Supreme Court CC in Oklahoma. I want to talk about that in a moment, but also folks understand what's happening here. We've got this conversions of public policy through ACLJ action. We've got litigation through the ACLJ, media advocacy we're doing here. We just got an order out of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on our case for South Dakota to represent Governor Noem. We got a great victory there on informed consent, so post dobs, but we've got another one that we're filing at the Oklahoma Supreme Court, I think Monday.

Yes. So like you said, we're constantly working and we're working on the legislative side through the ACLJ action, and we're also working through our law firm in these state courts, and so we're filing the one that Jeff just explained in Kentucky, and then on Monday we'll file one in Oklahoma, basically saying that the legislature and the people of Oklahoma, they're the ones that get to decide that if an unborn human being is worthy of protecting or not, that's for the people and the legislature to decide not for the court to create a right to abortion. So Jeff, we took a very specific tack here in this brief that we filed with the Kentucky Supreme Court. What did we assert?

Yeah, Jay. We said that, listen, Kentucky Supreme Court, do you want to go down the same 50-year trajectory that the federal courts did after Roe v. Wade with the ad hoc nullification machine dictating whether or not judicial doctrines, well-settled judicial doctrines, stand or fall in light of a potential finding by the Kentucky Supreme Court that there's a right to abortion? We have talked about many times, Jay, it's the abortion distortion factor.

When a judicial body makes a moral political judgment, like one regarding abortion, it therefore risks all other judicial doctrines that may interfere with that paramount right, or what they do as a paramount right. And so what we're doing is basically giving a warning to the Kentucky Supreme Court, look at the experience of 50 years of the federal judiciary wrestling with this issue. Do you want to do the same thing? The answer to that question is no.

Yeah. So I'm cautiously optimistic about that one. Again, as Jordan said, on the state initiative, we were working with, I think it was the South Dakota Attorney General, on how they were wording theirs. Because when you first read it, a lot of these constitutional amendments, we'll read them, and it's very confusing. And part of it was, we're trying to bring clarity to this issue. It's one submitted by pro-abortion advocates that will appear on the ballot November for people to review, and then they'll vote in the Presidential election year. And that'll only appear on the ballot, they get enough signatures. This was just what would appear. And we just want the language to be clear. And all it needed was one sentence added, which the proponents of it can't argue with.

This creates a constitutional right to abortion in South Dakota. We were able to negotiate that. Yeah, so that's good. Jeff, overall, as you see, we only got about a minute left here. How do you view where we're going on the states right now? We've got a lot of activity, I know that. Well, it's a lot of activity, and it's a lot of important activity.

And it's real. We all knew when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs, that was not going to be the end of the abortion issue. It was in many ways going to be the beginning of a maybe even bigger round of litigation and advocacy that needs to take place in these in the courts, and in the legislatures and so forth. But what we need to do, and what we are doing through our amicus briefs is asking these courts to allow the best people to decide these fundamental issues of moral importance.

In other words, the legislature, the elected representatives, not in the case of Kentucky, a majority of seven lawyers who sit on the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Very good. Thanks, Jeff Surtees, Senior Counsel for the ACLJ. Folks, if you appreciate the work that we're doing on the life issue, let me encourage you to support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice.

You could do that at ACLJ.org. You should also be signing up for our newsletters and our email alerts and text messages if you want to stay on top of these issues. We've covered, since we've started the storm, Iran, the life issue in Kentucky and Oklahoma, the VA comments we mentioned the other day. We've got legal briefs going in on that. And coming up, we're going to be talking about what's going on in this Nordstrom pipeline, which is impacting all of Europe, with our Senior Advisor, Rick Grinnell. So we've got a lot of activity ahead. And then some interventions we've done at the UN. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org and join ACLJ Action as well.

Yeah, that's right. At ACLJAction.org, to become a member, it's an official membership group because it's a 501c4, it's $25 a year. You can donate more than that, and we appreciate that if you will. But I encourage you to join at ACLJAction.org to make that $25 donation and to take part in the tools we have so you can speak out, like on Iran, at ACLJAction.org. For decades now, the ACLJ has been on the front lines, protecting your freedoms, defending your rights in courts, in Congress and in the public arena. The American Center for Law and Justice is on your side. If you're already a member, thank you. And if you're not, well, this is the perfect time to stand with us at ACLJ.org, where you can learn more about our life changing work. Become a member today.

ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We are now taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110.

Rick Grenell is going to be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast. Listen, this could impact all of us with what's happened on the Nord Stream pipeline because energy prices are already high. And now this pipeline, which we knew Putin was threatening to cut off Europe access to in the upcoming winter, now it's been sabotaged, explosions on both Nord Stream 1 and 2.

Now, 2 was not fully functional yet, but now both are totally taken out. And this is as we approach winter. Now, what happens in Europe will also affect us, these energy prices.

So I think, again, you can't just say, oh, that'll be a European benefit. So we'll get into that with Rick Grenell. Talking about Iran as well, and I want to go to the phones right away. Lynn in Washington State online too. Hey, Lynn, welcome to Sekulow. You're on the air.

Thanks. I can't understand, and I don't know if the people do, why Joe Biden insists on this deal with Iran. Are the Americans going to benefit from this? Has he told us why he wants to sign with them?

I don't know. His reason is the same as when he was vice President and it was President Obama. They believe that by signing this deal with Iran, they're going to postpone Iran's capability to obtain a nuclear weapon. First of all, Iran is making that progress as we speak.

And the IAEA says they're constantly violating it. And by the way, the rest of the world's in that deal with Iran, and that hasn't stopped them from doing anything. But I think what the protesters are saying is the right response here. You are propping up our leaders by notching a victory. And that is what I think is the problem with all of this.

They are notching a victory politically, domestically here in the United States, and believe me, the Ayatollah is going to say it too, in Iran. And that hurts the people that are risking their lives, the billion people it looks like, throughout Iran that want this regime toppled. So I think it's a horrible policy. It's terrible for the region. It puts Israel's security at risk.

Jordan, the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, it could wreak absolute havoc. And I think the administration is making a huge mistake. And Jake Sullivan's comments, frankly, are ridiculous.

Yeah, they are. And I want to play this statement again from the Iranian journalist who has been speaking out. This is an Iranian journalist. She's in the U.S. because Iran tried to kill her. They tried to kidnap her. We know that from the U.S. inside the U.S. Take a listen because she talks about the strength of the Iranian women. But what we've got to stop doing is the United States by night. We don't want you to save Iranian women. Iranian women are brave enough to bring democracy themselves, to save themselves. But we want you to stop saving our murderers. That's all.

That's all. I mean, that's the statement right there because you cannot negotiate a nuclear deal with a regime that you don't believe is stable enough to be in power after you get the deal back. So what do you have to do to stabilize a barbaric terrorist supporting regime that's not very good at handling their economy? Because they're religious radicals. You have to give them pallets of cash.

We talk about that at ACLJ actually. They've done it before. $1.9 billion. Yeah, and if they do it again, what does that do? It entrenches the bad regime inside Iran.

The Ayatollah, the Revolutionary Guard, the current administration in Iran because it allows them to get an influx of cash to their economy to settle the people down. And that's what she says, stop saving our murderers. It's not physically saving them. It is financially bailing out Iran. This would be the second time we've done it when the people take it to the streets. No, I mean, it's absolutely correct.

And I think that this is a terrible move on the Biden administration standpoint. By the way, and talking about all these issues we've talked about, the life issue, Iran, we're going to be talking about some of the stuff in Eastern Europe in just a moment. And we talked about the brief to the Kentucky Supreme Court on the life issue I'm holding in my hands. That has now filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court of the United States versus city of Ocala versus two respondents.

It's involving a prayer vigil. We are defending the city of Ocala and that has been filed and now docketed with the Supreme Court. So your support of the ACLJ allows us to produce this broadcast, do all these issues and go to the Supreme Court at the same time.

ACLJ.org. That's A-C-L-J dot O-R-G. We'll be back with more. Rick Rinnell will be joining us in just a moment.

All right, welcome back to Sekulow. So another major story that we need to give attention to and I think again everybody's praying for the people dealing with the storm in Florida and parts of the East Coast, Georgia, Savannah, Charleston area, South Carolina that are preparing as well. So we're tracking all that as more information. We're going to get more updates for you tomorrow from some Florida officials on the area.

You can imagine how busy they are today. But this is another huge story. What's happened to the Nord Stream, both one and two, the pipeline. So the functioning pipeline and the one that was not online yet. Both appears to be acts of sabotage.

I want to go right to Rick Rinnell, part of our team at ACLJ. Rick, you've got the Russians basically acknowledging, blaming NATO or blaming Ukraine sabotage and you have NATO and the United States pushing, it looks like pointing the finger towards Russia for the cause of this. But what there is agreement on by everyone is that this was not an accident.

Yeah, look, it was not an accident. This is very deep water. Let's remember that to be able to go down and touch these pipes and to get access to them, you have to have the ability to go very deep in the ocean and break through concrete, because the pipe is not only very thick, obviously, for deep water movement, but it's encased in concrete. And so to be able to somehow penetrate it means that you not only have to have the know how, but you have to have the equipment and the people that can actually go down and do it. So there are very few countries that could actually have access to this to be able to do it.

Several of them are in Europe and we know the others around the world. I'm more concerned about what this sabotage means going forward. Really, the lack of energy now is a very serious issue for Europe and specifically for Germany, a manufacturing based economy. And this is not good for the world economy, nor for our relations with Europe. You know, Rick, I said this early in the broadcast, but this sabotage of the pipe lines is like warfare. I mean, it's energy warfare that we're seeing here. And I wonder what the repercussions of all and the ramifications of all this are at the end of the day. I mean, Russia was threatening to do this anyways, but actually doing it would have been something different. Now you've got the sabotage, whoever did it.

And what does this do to Europe in say eight weeks when it's cold? Look, it's already been happening. The squeezes has already been happening. Chancellor Merkel was wrong. Donald Trump was right about the leverage that Russia would put forward.

I think it's really important, Jay, to talk about how we got here. There were sanctions on the pipeline. That pipeline was not going to be operational under the Trump sanctions. And when Joe Biden came in, he worked with the Senate Democrats and they dropped the Trump sanctions on this pipeline quickly thereafter. It was a green light to Putin and we saw the war in Ukraine. So now what we see is a lot of kvetching and hand wringing from the Biden administration as to, oh, my gosh, how did this happen? The media need to talk about how we got here and why the Democrats dropped the Trump sanctions.

That's really important. But now I think, you know, we're in a position where the Germans are desperate for energy and they're going to start cutting deals. And I'm concerned that they won't keep to their moral compass on where to get the energy. They're going to put Germany first and do everything they can to get the energy and regardless of where it comes from.

Where will that be? Where would the Germans go, Rick? Look, my concern was always that they were going to find a way to to restart the pipeline and to try to find a way to say to the world, well, we're in this position and we've been able to work through the diplomatic issues with Russia. They want this energy coming from Russia.

And the German never doubt the fact that the Germans will go into all sorts of exercises to be able to do this. They're going to have to speed up now. U.S. LNG, some sort of energy from the Middle East, Qatar, maybe they're going to have to increase all sorts of supply, including they're going to have to restart their nuclear energy facilities. They have a couple. They put them on hold. They got to bring those up very fast. This was a political decision of Chancellor Merkel and she put them in this terrible position and now they're paying for it. They're paying for it. But the economic effects will also then reach us. I mean, so it's not just what happens to Europe.

This will directly impact the United States. And there's some thought. I mean, no one is clear who's response to. But there are people pointing the figure saying, this could be the Biden administration, too. I mean, you know, we will see, I think, as this develops, who is ultimately we might find out who is ultimately responsible. But but certainly there's all this finger pointing. But what we do know is it's going to economically impact us here at home as well.

There's no question about it. Germany is a manufacturing based economy. The German business community functions very closely with America.

You think about pharmaceuticals, you think about cars, really all types of manufacturing. We are intertwined with Germany when it comes to the German business community. A lot of German companies employ massive amounts of U.S. citizens.

I'll give you one example. The great German airline Lufthansa employs fifteen thousand Americans. You look at Tennessee, where A.C.L.J.

is based. You look at South Carolina and you look at Alabama and you have the headquarters for the three largest German auto manufacturers, VW, BMW and Daimler right here in America, employing tens of thousands of Americans. This is going to absolutely impact us, which is why we were so tough on Germany to move away from the leverage that Russia was creating on their energy source and to diversify their energy as quickly as possible. They didn't listen to Donald Trump.

They should have. I want to turn our attention to Iran. We've been talking about this earlier in the broadcast. Masih Alinejad, a human rights activist, has been very public with a million people taking to the streets. I want to play what she said about the United States propping up the she calls them the murderers. Take a listen. You're a decent man, a decent man, Jake Sullivan, when you condemn morality police and the brutality of the police who are killing people.

I have a simple question. How come at the same time we don't want you to save Iranian women? Iranian women are brave enough to bring democracy themselves, to save themselves. But we want you to stop saving our murderers. That's all.

That's all. And, Rick, when you were in office, the fact is the Iranian regime was, you know, buckling. And now we're about to, if the Biden administration gets her way, prop them back up again. And I think what Masih said is absolutely correct.

We're paying the murderers. First of all, let's say God bless to Masih. Let's let's say a prayer for her protection because the Iranian regime is absolutely after her.

We know that she is brave and courageous. What I what I would say is, is this has been a coordinated Biden administration policy. We saw at the same time that Jake Sullivan was on Meet the Press talking about having two separate tracks. The State Department loves the separate tracks where we negotiate with the Iranian regime and we condemn the violence in the streets. I hate that policy because I don't think you can decouple when a regime that you're sitting across the table with negotiating with is is systematically killing gays and women and doing human rights abuses. I don't want to sit across the table and negotiate for billions of dollars given to this regime, which will only further their terrorist activities. But when Jake Sullivan said that they can do this separately on Meet the Press, that wasn't a mistake because the State Department was absolutely, Ned Price saying the same thing.

So this was a coordinated effort from Blinken and from Wendy Sherman and from Joe Biden and Susan Rice to say, we're going to do both. And it's shameful. It's really they should be condemned. This 2009 Green Revolution already remember. Right.

And this, as Jordan said earlier, took 10 years for the Iranian people to get to the streets again. And we're about to see it get crushed. The fact is the largest exporter of US dollars. Yes.

Crushed because of US dollars. Largest exporter of terrorism in the world is Iran. And you're right.

The civil protest, the human rights protests are going on right now in Iran could be crushed by the United States cutting a deal. Yeah. I mean, this is Rick, as always, we appreciate you joining us on the broadcast. Thanks, Rick.

Check out ACLJ.org, Rick writes pieces for us as well there. But what I encourage people to understand here is that Rick said you cannot have your cake and eat it too in this situation. You have to make choices. You can't, you can't negotiate a nuclear weapons deal with a regime that you're trying to also support the protests for that want to call for regime change. It won't, doesn't work. You're not going to give money over to a regime you don't think is going to be there the next day. And by the way, they're not going to accept the deal.

No. So what they will accept though is give us the money and we can go oppress our people, but we'll also remember you can, you don't even have to oppress so much as you give them this influx of cash. Food gets a little cheaper. The inflation goes down.

People, people, uh, aren't as willing to risk their lives in the street. That's exactly right. And by the way, the ACLJ uniquely positioned here. We have an office in the middle East, in Jerusalem, the heart of the middle East, uh, that works on all of these issues because of your support of the ACLJ, we're able to do that. I want to encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

Uh, your contributions donations make a huge difference. ACLJ.org also follow us on Twitter, truth, social, uh, Facebook, YouTube rumble at J secular at Jordan secular at Logan secular at ACLJ. We encourage you to do that. We'll be back with the final segment, more action at the UN coming right up.

Welcome back to secular. If you want to talk to us on the air and get your call and I would do it now. 1-800-684-3110 is we're in our final segment, but you do have time. 1-800-684-3110 whether it's, uh, the, the Nord Stream 2 questions, whether it's Iran, whether it is even an update at a Florida, I think unfortunately most people in Florida that were in the storm area do not have access to a lot of phones right now. Uh, and, uh, uh, but listen, it impacts so much of us on the East coast. Uh, I know we have listeners all over the country, but you got, you kind of have to realize how important a Florida is to the East coast, whether it's economically, uh, whether it's the amount of people that retire there that old property there, second homes there.

Uh, and, uh, uh, of course, a lot of people move there during COVID as well, uh, to escape a lot of the Northeast, uh, and the restrictions that were in place there and move their entire families and businesses to Florida. Now we'll continue to pray for our friends in Florida. Um, we have had a lot of action at the United nations. I want to, uh, get CC to explain to you when we do these oral interventions at the UN on these countries, what that means. And we're actually going to play. You're going to, we're going to take you to a, an intervention that Jordan did regarding the situation in Afghanistan for Christians. But CC, CC explained to everybody what these, this process, we follow these reports, we do these oral interventions. We're about to do two more in Geneva actually next week.

But go ahead. Right. So the human rights council is in its 51st session currently meeting. We will submit, we are allowed to submit as an NGO, five written reports, which we did earlier. And then after we submit those reports, we have an opportunity to do oral interventions, where we get to actually physically present an intervention for these countries. We usually pick the countries where Christianity is most persecuted. We did oral interventions and we'll do our interventions. Jordan did one on Afghanistan and that's the number one country for per Christian persecution. And then we will also do, um, coming up Friday and then October 3rd, one on Pakistan and India, where we highlight persecution in those countries as well.

All right. We're going to take you to the intervention that Jordan did on behalf of Christians in Afghanistan. Folks, this is the kind of work the ACLJ is doing. Take a listen. European Center for Law and Justice, you have the floor.

Thank you, Mr. President. Afghanistan has been reported to be the worst place for Christians to live in the entire world. Since the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan, Christians and other religious minorities are at extreme risk of being persecuted by the Taliban and ISIS. Both Sunni Islamist groups are bent on the death and destruction of Christian and other minorities, including the Hazara, Shia, and the Sufi communities. In addition to religious minorities, schools and women and girls are already under attack by these groups. Under the Taliban's rule, converting from Islam to Christianity is against the law and punishable by death. The Taliban has been utilizing tactics to uncover Christians by confiscating suspected Christian phones and looking through messages and contacts. The Taliban has even used direct correspondence and social media to deliver threats of imprisonment and execution to every Christian in Afghanistan saying, quote, we will find you and we will kill your entire family to bring you the punishment you deserve and to be a lesson for others who are leaving Islam. In keeping with the very basic mandates of the UN Charter, the ECLJ requests that the international community must not allow a full scale genocide to perpetuate. This is only the beginning. If meaningful action is not taken now, the problem in Afghanistan will only worsen. So again, those interventions were able to do this way and it started to change back because we used to go to Geneva.

There was no option to do this remotely, but of course during COVID it started to change. You'll see more of our staff from the ECLJ start delivering these again as well. And we can start thinking more about the travel back because they're actually starting to encourage more in-person participation, which is a good thing for this kind of dialogue.

But it's been glad that these last few years we've been able to stay engaged. Yeah. So we've got two more coming up. Two more.

So on the 30th, we'll do, I don't know which one it's going to be, either Pakistan or India, and then October 3rd, we'll do the other one. And in Pakistan, because we have an affiliate office there, we are able to bring a specific case, which is very egregious, of a 17 year old boy who is falsely accused of blasphemy. And in fact, during the trial, the police, the head of police and all of the eyewitnesses testified that there was no blasphemous statement made and no crime committed.

But this poor young Christian man has sat in prison for five years waiting for justice. So we're able to bring those kinds of cases, which we're actively engaged in and representing, to the attention of the UN. And Jordan, we actually have, as CeCe mentioned, we have an office in Pakistan.

That's right. That office is mostly dealing with criminal matters. So not just, more similar to what I was just talking about in Afghanistan. People being kidnapped, killed, executed, raped, taken from their families, children taken from their families, and they need representation in court. And then you have to basically, almost biblical time, knock on the judge's door to get them to show up.

It's very similar to that where, honestly, it's because the judges are scared for their own life, not because they won't rule necessarily the right way, put the right opinion out, but it's just getting them to that point. You know, we're getting a lot of comments coming in on this. I'm watching some of our social media feeds and a lot of people are pointing out that Nigerian Christians are really getting hit very hard too. Right.

So let me clarify that. In our five written submissions, we absolutely brought up Nigeria and that was one of our written submissions because there are Christians killed there just all the time during the day. And so we constantly bring up Nigeria as well. But with the oral interventions, because so many NGOs and parties want to speak, you have to be, you know, very quick. And we got three oral interventions that we could do out of the five.

Yeah. So, but obviously the written submissions go forward. So our work at the UN is very, very active. And I will tell you, to be quite frank, we're not going to announce this yet, but in the year ahead, we're going to be taking some major initiatives on the global scene that I mean, are going to be very, very big and have a, I think, a dramatic impact. And we're already reaching out to various countries. We've got in developing relationships with ambassadors and staff on these various countries, because that's how you work these situations. It's country by country. And you know, for us it's case by case, but some of the issues are bigger than just a particular case, but we're about to expand that outreach significantly.

Yeah, that's right. So we continue to do that through work at the American Center for Law and Justice. So if, again, we're putting these teams together to be able to engage continuously, whether it's over in overseas or right here at home, because we've got all of these member, especially now that we're coming out of COVID, it's kind of a reminder to people. You know, the UN General Assembly just finished up in New York. People are back, meetings are back, and they're starting to, you know, be able to be able to get scheduled out.

So you've got to plan that year in advance. So we're starting to do that work at the ACLJ as well. And we're able to do it because the resources we have available for us at the ACLJ, that's because of those of you listening right now who donate to the American Center for Law and Justice. And we can't underscore enough all of this work and expanding the work.

When we say we're expanding the work, that means, of course, more resources are being utilized. We're able to do that only because of your financial support of the ACLJ. You know, you've been supporting us through COVID. You've been supporting us through this inflation moment in time. And we really appreciate that.

Yeah, we sure do. You're supporting the ACLJ, as Jordan says, absolutely critical, ACLJ.org, ACLJ.org. And folks, if you're watching us or listening to us around the country, pray for the people of Florida and now the East Coast, where it looks like Georgia and South Carolina could be the next two states that will feel the impact of this storm. So again, pray for those people.

Pray for Governor DeSantis and his staff as they execute a plan to help as many people as they can. They're saying there could be upwards of a million claims for insurance. A million. One million. Unbelievable. Fucking horrible.