BREAKING: Massive COVID Reporting Scandal Uncovered in Nashville

This is breaking news, a massive COVID reporting scandal uncovered in Nashville, Tennessee. Our guest today, John Rich.

Live from Washington, DC, Jay Sekulow live. On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems, more than a thousand cases traced to each category.

At bars and restaurants, a total of just 22 cases. Leslie Waller from the Health Department asked, quote, this isn't going to be publicly released, right? Just info for mayor's office?

Correct. Not for public consumption, answers the mayor's senior advisor, Benjamin Eagles. Phone lines are open for your questions right now. Call 1-800-684-3110. We raised taxes 34% and we put literally hundreds and thousands of people out of work that are now worrying about losing their homes, their apartments, et cetera. And we did it off of false information and bogus data.

That should be illegal. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Welcome to the one and only flag waving, God praising, trailblazing, hick raising. Radio show takeover of Jay Sekulow live today. We are rejoined in just a few segments by my buddy, John Rich, you know him from Big and Rich. You know him as a Nashville icon, the owner of a bar affected greatly by the COVID-19 shutdown and lockdowns.

That's obviously the Redneck Riviera Bar in grill downtown Nashville on Broadway. We're going to have him because I think he's got some words to say about what's happening in Nashville. And you don't know late last night, and obviously we're in the Nashville area, Will and I are based there. It's big news amongst us, but I think you all need to know nationwide, this is probably what's happening. You know, it's definitely a potential Will to have this uncovered everywhere across the country as the numbers have not been reported accurately. And what we saw was leaked emails that came out of the mayor's office and to the mayor's office really specifically saying, don't let the public know that the spread and the outbreak was amongst nursing homes and construction sites. It wasn't amongst Broadway, downtown Nashville, the bars and restaurants. And this has been a pretty shocking revelation as we've seen the city decimated in terms of issues, whether you go back early this year with tornadoes, then there was the lockdown and then our lovely mayor of Nashville, Tennessee requested a 34% tax increase on property taxes.

It's been rough time and look restaurants recently and bars, bars just went up to in Nashville as of a couple of weeks ago, went up to, oh, they can have 10 people inside then it was, oh, you can have 25 people. And now guess what? Just a few minutes ago after they were caught red handed by essentially not reporting the data. I mean, in the emails, Will, it says on there, this isn't going to go public, right? This is internal?

That's right. Leslie Waller from the health department specifically asked the mayor's office representative, this isn't going to be publicly released, right? Just for mayor's office and Benjamin Eagles, who is the senior advisor to mayor Cooper said, correct, not for public consumption. And what that revealed was that when they were doing the contact tracing and seeing that thousands of cases were seen to have come out of both nursing homes, which has been the case. It was the case in New York. It was the case in a lot of places because in a lot of places, the right attention wasn't given to that, but also construction sites and which is the common places we've seen this spread. We saw that New York nursing homes and construction sites and look, we're not downplaying the virus here. I want to make sure you know that we very much take this seriously, right? But at that point when this email went, there were just 22 cases attributed to bars and restaurants.

So not just focusing on the bar angle, but the entire hospitality bar and restaurant industry, only 22 of the thousands of restaurants potentially in the city. Yeah. Unbelievable.

This is the kind of corruption that may be happening in your hometown too. Look at the ACLJ, there's some stuff that we can do and we're working on that right now. We've got a lot of people in place to start looking into some of the legal responses to all of this. Give us a call.

I want to know what you think. 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. A couple of segments from now, our buddy John Rich is joining us.

We'll be right back on the Reprogram. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. 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.

And we have an exceptional track record of success, but here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms. That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. 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.

Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, play on parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back to the Logan Succulo reprogram takeover of J Succulo Live. How you doing this morning and this afternoon and this evening, however you get this show, whenever you listen to it. But guess what, Will? We just did a couple minutes there about this breaking news story out of Nashville, Tennessee, where the numbers for COVID-19 have been greatly skewed, where they were not even shown to the public exactly what was being said in the mayor's office. They knew this is what was going on and I think we should walk through it. We got about 10 minutes right now.

Let's walk through everything that led to honestly, eventually today, probably just to save his job, sorry for Christian Radio, save his job, had to come out today say, oh, we were always planning this. Guess what? 50% now. You go 50%.

Bars, they can open up 50%. No big deal. You want, oh, you guys didn't like the fact that I didn't allow there to be any fans in the Titans stadium. Guess what?

Titans, we already said no season for the entire season. Guess what? 10% now.

10%. So, you know, talking about covering yourself and trying to keep yourself, keep a job here. I'm going to let Jon Rich do some more of that talking. See where he goes. He's an owner, a business owner, downtown Nashville.

I think it's important to hear from him, but Will, let's, let's walk through this. Well, essentially we all know that back in March was when things started to be closed. We had, we had lockdowns going in place. We had things shutting down. That's because of how rapidly the virus was spreading and we saw the spikes. We had the two weeks to flatten the curve and so this was around the country. Things like bars and restaurants were closed down and went to essential workers only.

But a lot of those places that did remain open were construction sites and we had nursing homes that they're, they're long-term care facilities are places that you can't, you don't shut them down. But some of the problem that I see is a lot of the states and localities, they didn't necessarily look for ways to mitigate the spread of the virus within those communities. And instead that's where it became very much spread throughout. So, you go through, we had, throughout April, there was the Safer at Home order was extended in Nashville. You had, in May 18th, there was a mask mandate announced in the city.

But also throughout this time, it's a metropolitan area. There was a lot of these marches, these protests that were going on in Nashville and the mayor- He attended one, right? He attended one that had 10,000 people. There was chanting, there was shouting, and he even said then there was no evidence- That they caused- That that's how things would spread when you're close together, shouting and things like that. Now, that's fine if that's the narrative he wants to play out, but that's also, he was simultaneously saying that people being loud, close together in bars and restaurants, if they were talking elevated because it's noisy, that is how it spread. So, he has always been trying to have it both ways, both politically supporting the protests and it did get violent in Nashville at one point. There was damage to the federal courthouse.

Yes, lit it on fire. Most of the restaurants on Broadway had glass shattered out. Look, in all of this, if you go back to just Nashville, there were tornadoes at the beginning of the year in March, just like a week or two before lockdown that wiped out an entire, sort of one of our most popular areas of East Nashville was just decimated. So, you had that whole disaster, then on top of that, you have the shutdowns, the lockdowns. And then, like you said, the hypocrisy that comes out of these mayors where they're okay with the protests, okay with the riots, but they're not okay with business going on. And this is where it does turn political, unfortunately.

And I hate it. Look, I'm pro-protester, I'm pro going out there and speaking your mind. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I am against violence when in terms of that, I'm against violent protesting, I'm against rioting and looting, totally against all of those. But if you want to protest, that's fine.

If the hypocrisy of it will, when you then put in a mandate, then you're out there doing it yourself. I think it was in June, he was out there protesting and marching, and then he had to get himself tested because of that and say, but no, yeah, I don't think that's how it spread. Then as of recent, they loosened up and kind of locked back down the bars. Right.

So that was around the... He said the bars are kind of, that we're going to have a bar owner on here next, John Rich. Bars are kind of thrown under the bus here as the main culprit.

And really that is just an easy target. So it was in July that they started to allow things to start reopen and they went to like a phase three and then they had to quickly revert back to a modified two because they were once again blaming the bars and restaurants for this. And then it went to August, they were more stringent and now we're seeing all the way here in September that magically today he's announcing that we were going back to phase three in Nashville after getting caught last night. But the problem was throughout July when all this was happening, when they were modifying phase two and going to three and all these movements within the uncertainty within the hospitality industry. So a lot of people just didn't even... Even if they were allowed to be open, people were like, eh, is it worth going?

Because we don't know if we're supposed to, because that's how people spread it. But yet their internal data was showing how low... Like literally... The chances are so low. And that's the... In July, 88 cases of 20,000 in Davidson County, which is Nashville's County, were attributed to a bar or restaurant. So think of how broad that category is, 88 of 20,000.

That's not even a half of a percent. Yeah. And look, I don't want to downplay the virus and pretend here that we're saying, no, it's not... No, none of that. The COVID-19 coronavirus, we've all had friends now have been affected, very real, it is a real thing. The question is though, is when do they start controlling you for political and their own motivations? Not because of them trying to protect you.

And also... If they're trying to protect you and there really is real... It's for a real cause, then I'm fine with it. The problem is when the data starts showing they aren't protecting you, that means their data is showing that you are safe or safer than you thought you were.

Like Will said, 88 people, 88 cases. However, you decide not to report that to your own local area. You decide not to report that to the news who's in panic mode or the restaurants that are closing down, the small businesses that are getting shuttered.

That means you're doing it for other motives. And there's only a few, personal gain or professional gain for your own career to look like the savior, or because you know there's an election coming up. And John Cooper, the mayor, came into Nashville kind of in an odd time for Nashville in general. There was our mayor. She had to step... Out of a scandal. Yeah, there was a scandal. She had to step down.

He stepped up. And now he's been our mayor for a while, or for those who live in Nashville. But back to your point, what's the end game?

Why say that this is the reason, but you're hiding the ball over here. One of the major categories, the construction category, is while they said thousands of cases were contact-traced back to that, it is no secret that Nashville is a booming metropolitan area. There's a lot of construction. If they focused on making it safer to go to work as a construction worker, which is a very vital portion of this economy, and an essential worker, if they put their efforts and focused on making it safer for that category instead of being more concerned maybe with those projects getting done quickly, under budget, all of the... Because there's...

I mean, road construction, building construction, if they put their focus on that instead of shuttering an entire segment of the economy that the city is very reliant upon, perhaps they could have actually done more for the people and saved lives and saved people getting infected. A lot of you are watching right now. A lot of you. If you have friends and family in the Nashville area, or just basically anyone who's dealing with this kind of situation, I encourage you to share this broadcast. In the next segment, we're going to be joined by our buddy, John Rich.

You know him from Big and Rich, the country music act. You know him as the owner of Redneck Riviera, which is a bar out of whiskey, but he's going to be talking about that bar that is currently, right now, as of a few weeks ago, was shut down, then allowed to reopen, then reshot down, and now it's back open at a much smaller scale. It's been 25 to 10 to 25 people, and now finally the day, not even a day, not even 12 hours after the controversy breaks, all of a sudden the mayor decides, oh yeah, we can open up at 50%.

We can actually start bringing in people, and the Titans can now have fans. I do want to hear from you too, 1-800-684-3110. And the mayor did address this just before we went on air in that press conference you're talking about.

And he's slick. And he was asked by a reporter, and I think this is a lot of times when there's a categorical denial of something. This is where politicians can get tripped up, but let's play by 27, a local reporter asking the mayor if they were withholding information. News 4 was recently denied an open records request for information when we asked about the 10 bars that had had COVID-related outbreaks. The open records response said no records existed of which 10 bars those were. Is that true that no records existed?

And has there been a deliberate attempt to withhold information about COVID numbers in bars and restaurants? Thank you. Thank you.

Can you hear me? Thank you Nancy for the question. Of course there's no effort to withhold information. We'll do all we can to open up all information. Open up all information, anything they can do.

Well, I think a certain bar owner would love to hear your thoughts as well. He'll be on our next segment, country music icon John Rich is joining us in the next segment again 1-800-684-3110 to get your voice on the air. Also us at the ACLJ, we're not just taking this and giving you the information. We're actually looking to see what we can do legally, whether that's through local FOIA requests or whatever it is to find out more information.

So support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Hey, I'm wearing the shirt right now. If you're watching online, bald beagle, that's our new kids' YouTube channel to keep America history going for your kids, elementary school. We're working on production today for the first big video coming up.

We have the promo video on there. You can support that work at baldbeagle.com. We'll be right back with more on this and our guest, John Rich. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected, is there any hope for that culture to survive? And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support. And the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today online at ACLJ.org slash gift. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. 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. And we have an exceptional track record of success.

But here's the bottom line. We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms.

That remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. 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. Welcome back to the Logan Sekulow reprogrammed takeover of Tony Sekulow Live. We're joined by my buddy, who I was texting with this morning, really bright and early because I think both of us couldn't believe what was going on. It's my friend, John Rich from Big and Rich and also the owner of Redneck Riviera, the whiskey, but also the bar in downtown Nashville on Broadway, someone who has been deeply a affected by the COVID-19 crisis. You've heard us talk for the last two segments about this scandal, this controversy just recently opened up from the mayor's office. And John, if there's anything I know about you, you've been pretty vocal about some issues you've had with the mayor. I'm just gonna let you talk for a minute. How do you feel about this latest news? Well, well, well, um, you know, it's so, it's so egregious that you can kind of say, well, well, well, and put a grin on your face and go, gotcha.

So what the damage has been done. There are thousands upon thousands of people in Nashville that work one way or another around Broadway and around all these places that the mayor shut down with this bogus information, as you put it. And I'm talking about, you know, remember Logan, this is called what music city. That's what this town is called. There's a reason it's called that it's called music city because the vast majority of our economy and this town revolves around music. That's why people come here, right? To come here from all over the planet, to come to Nashville, to hear live music.

So the mayor knows that he's got numbers that don't support the actions that he's taking yet continues to take those actions and not just take them for a little while, take a month after month after month. Well, let me tell you what that's resulted in. There are musicians, bartenders, people in the service industry, security guys, cleanup crews, you name it. Everybody involved with that, that are now that literally, I know of musicians that have sold every instrument they have, pawned every amplifier they could get their hands on, sold their cars, moved in five, six deep into an apartment with other musicians and then eventually couldn't even do that and went back home.

There's people that were playing my bar, uh, you know, earlier this year that are now back in Iowa and Texas and Nevada and wherever they came from, they are gone. And another thing that it did, I am personally aware and have personally been trying to help several people affected by this that have slipped into serious alcoholism, serious drug abuse, and some of them even suicidal tendencies because of this resulting from this. And so to find out that the mayor knew that there was this minuscule level of cases that were traced back to Broadway, yet he crushed us like that and put his foot on our neck like that for that long. I agree with the statement earlier, in my mind, it ought to be criminal what he's pulled off here.

Yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people calling from, you know, you called for the recall of John Cooper. I think there's a lot of people that are calling for resignation.

There's a lot of people who are really concerned and John, you bring up really great points. Do you think it's easy for us to get wrapped up in the, they closed bars, they closed restaurants. So you even brought up that bars kind of have been unfavorably targeted, even in the way they've talked about it today, which is not necessarily, these were coming from Broadway. These are just, they've defined small areas and small restaurants and bars that have such a small case count. The optics of it, they're pointing out one of the most recognizable features of our city. Instead of also thinking about just the vastness of the entire county with restaurants and bars, but they're targeting that one tourism district. And you see how low the case number is. It's really frightening.

Yeah. And John, I mean, I've been to your bar many times and I've heard people perform. I know personal also friends who have moved, who have left Nashville because again, that was their whole career. People don't know how that system works even for the performers. This is not a, they get a full-time salary from these restaurants and bars. They're moving place to place, working for tips and making a living doing it. So it did shut down that. I've been, you've seen people from your bar.

People just think of country music, obviously, mostly it's country music, but people from Australia, people from all over the planet, as you said, who perform there or who performed there nightly. Now we did, of course, John C after this came out and maybe even maybe they knew this was coming a little bit because you know, yesterday they announced the Titans couldn't, they went from no one could ever be there, no tickets to a little bit of ticket sales. And then they announced just today, bars can move in October to 50% capacity. What's your response to that? Too late, too late is my response to that.

The damage has been done. You're talking about now, if there's a class action lawsuit with all the businesses that he unfairly targeted without data to back it up, remember that's been his whole argument guys. I know you don't like me shutting your businesses down, but Hey, these numbers are out of control and I have no choice and I have to do it. And now all of that has proven to be an absolute lie based on his own inside communications with his team.

So the, the, the, the amount of money, if you tie all that together, not only employees that lost their jobs, lost their income, but building owners, bar owners, all the people that work down there, I would, I would guesstimate a class action lawsuit reaching into the billions with a fee of dollars that has damaged that many people. You can't put that horse back in the barn that, that, that is over with. That has already happened and there's nothing he can do about it at this point. Yeah.

Resignation would be a, would be the immediate thing he should do. Um, but that's still not going to fix it. I mean, when I tell you the damage that has been done, buddy, it is not funny what people have gone through and, and I will tell you this, if the numbers had been legit, like they were really through the roof like that low and they were really through the roof, we would have all went, man, this is brutal, but what are you going to do? I mean, you know, you have to shut down and people's lives are at risk here. You know, business be damned.

You have to do it. And you know, these are the numbers, but then you find out those aren't the numbers. Those aren't the numbers. This was a lie.

This was a hoax. You gotta ask yourself this, why would a mayor of music city kill the one thing that keeps his city alive? Music. Why would he do that when he had the numbers right in front of him that told him, you don't have to do that. You don't have to kill all the music in our town, but he did it anyway. So I'd like to give him a new moniker. I want to say that a John Cooper is now the de Blasio of the South.

Yeah. That's what he is. He's our de Blasio. Now in Nashville, the most ruthless mayor in the history of Nashville, not only what we learned today, but in the middle of a pandemic, 34% tax increases.

I mean, how much more can you brutalize a city and what this mayor has done to us. And then of course, like you said, gets caught, you know, surprise, surprise gets caught, but I said the damage is done and hopefully there is a road to recovery for everyone. And maybe because of this, you know, this is such a horrible thing that happened today. It's breaking news, we've talked about it. Well, we'll go over it again, by the way, in the next segment, a lot of people are joining us right now for John and really explain what happened, but hopefully there will be something coming up, John. Cause even early on, I mean, we were talking, stay home, you had the song, we were all in it together. We were going to do this and great, but now that the tide has turned.

Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me now seeing how Cooper operates that he says, well, now that we've got a $2 billion lawsuit, we're going to have to raise your taxes again to pay for it. Well, he's already asking the state for $80 million extra.

He's already asking the state for $80 million extra to help cover a budget shortfall. It's endless. I've had a lot of my Democrat friends actually call me today and say, please light this mayor up. We cannot believe this.

Same here. People are outraged. They are ready. They are done. They are done.

And now I want to plug it though. Redneck Riviera is partially open right now and will be continuing to open and roll out more. We've got a new song coming out in just a couple of weeks. We'll make sure we promote that as well. John, thanks for joining us. Thanks boys. It was good talking to you, buddy.

All right. We'll be right back. We're on J-Sec.

You're live. If you want your voice heard, 1-800-684-3110. We'll take some calls coming up. 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.

Talking about freedom, talking about freedom, we will fight for the right to live in freedom. Live from Washington, D.C., Jay Sekulow Live. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.

Welcome, everybody, to the Logan Sekulow reprogram takeover of Jay Sekulow Live for your Thursday. We have an incredible amount of information to get to you. I know some of you were just joining us for the second half hour. We just had my buddy John Rich on. Thanks to the 11, 12, 13,000 people that are watching on Facebook.

Thank you. And the millions that are listening on radio. Make sure you share this with your friends. Phone lines are lighting up. We're going to take some phone calls, Will, but we're also going to break down what went on in Nashville. Maybe we need a reset. Give everybody a little bit of a, what happened last night, about 10 o'clock, I started texting you.

You're never going to believe this, Will. Well, what we had was a local news channel, Fox 17. We have to give them credit, and it shows the importance of local reporting in times like this.

I know the executive producer at Fox 17, so good on them for pulling this off. But they were able to get some emails, and these were internal documents between the Department of Health in Davidson County and the mayor's office of Nashville and Davidson County. It's a consolidated metropolitan area, so sometimes you hear county and city, but essentially the council and the mayor is for both the county and the city, even though there's some other smaller cities dispersed throughout Davidson County. But essentially what it shows is that in June and then also in July, they were discussing back and forth how to respond to the data they were receiving about the low amount of contact tracing back to the bars and restaurant industry. That's what was shut down and then reopened partially. But they had been warning forever, this is what's going to cause the super spreading in Nashville, that it is going to cause exponential spread and death and injury and infection. And what it shows is that the Department of Health was asking, this isn't going to be publicly released, right? This is just info for the mayor's office.

And the senior advisor to Mayor Cooper of Nashville, Benjamin Eagles, he said, correct, not for public consumption. However, the mayor, as far back as April 24th and as recently in their reopening order on September 1st, they have been driving home the theme that reopening Nashville will be data-driven, not date-driven. Essentially saying that you have to wait to see how the data comes in to actually have a plan. So don't think it's going to be a month or two months.

And now it's been what, six months? So what, and so, but yeah, but the data they hid from everybody shows that they were hiding was that the bars and restaurants, and that's a broad category. That's a lot of potential businesses, a lot of potential interaction. In June, there were only traced to 22 cases back to bars and restaurants. And then in July, when there was more questions coming from reporters saying, hey, you've only had 80 so far. Some of that was that the contact tracing found more cases because it's an investigation, essentially.

You have to talk to this person, to this person, find where it originated. But only 80 cases had been traced in July back to bars and restaurants when thousands had been to construction and to nursing homes. A reporter from the local paper asks, if it's 80, and this is the figure, and there's been over 20,000 positive cases, doesn't that mean that your data is showing that this isn't the problem? We need to focus on other areas?

And they're asking, please advise, how do we deal with this? And someone says, in this discussion, my two cents is we don't want to give a per restaurant count. We don't want to talk about it. Just see the numbers going up all the time.

They're trying to hide the ball. They are hiding the numbers, it's not even a conspiracy, people. This is not some sort of theory.

There's evidence. This is real. This is really happening. So much so they're having to cover their tracks quickly. All of a sudden we're moving into phase three. All of a sudden these places can go up to 50% capacity as of an hour ago.

They announced this after this all broke last night. It's insanity. It just shows political corruption at its highest form to control you, control your life because they want to, and it's all for political gain.

Financial and political gain. We know this. And again, there's no more theories.

This guy has been bad news the whole time. Time to do something about it. Hey, a lot of you called in, a lot from Tennessee. We're going to take those coming up in the next segment.

So take a listen. Give us a call 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of ACLJ, ACLJ.org and check out Will and I on the Logan Sekula reprogram every day. The challenges facing Americans are substantial at a time when our values, our freedoms, our constitutional rights are under attack. It's more important than ever to stand with the American Center for Law and Justice. 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, and we have an exceptional track record of success, but here's the bottom line.

We could not do our work without your support. We remain committed to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms, and that remains our top priority, especially now during these challenging times. 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. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive, and that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free, powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn. It's called Mission Life. It will show you how you are personally impacting the pro-life battle through your support, and the publication includes a look at all major ACLJ pro-life cases, how we're fighting for the rights of pro-life activists, the ramifications of Roe v. Wade 40 years later, Planned Parenthood's role in the abortion industry, and what Obamacare means to the pro-life movement. Discover the many ways your membership with the ACLJ is empowering the right to life.

Request your free copy of Mission Life today, online at ACLJ.org slash gift. Welcome back. I was waiting for the breakdown on that song. I feel like it's coming and it never does. It's like we're waiting. It is the breakdown. I'm waiting for like the back into it.

Instead, it's just a drum circle. It's fine. It's fine. This is Logan Sekulow Live. This is Logan Sekulow. Will and I are filling in today.

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You'll get a notification. If you ring the bell that I've always wanted to say that, that every time a video gets published each afternoon, we post a new clips and new full episodes. But well, obviously there's a lot of outrage going on. People are really, as we can see from the response, people are taking this very seriously as they should. There are a ton of phone calls coming in.

I think we should take some of those. We got something for them. I just think it thinking about what John was saying about how many people he as an employer sees the real impact this has had on individuals in the city. And to me, the most telling thing about the email conversation was that today, John Cooper tried to say, you know, we were just following what the CDC was saying.

He tried to cover his tracks, but if they truly believed what they were doing was helping and that the lockdown of the restaurants and bars was the answer, that email would have read completely different because you could say 22 cases. We did it. That's great. Look at what we've done. They could have been touting that and saying, make sure this gets out for public consumption.

Let's celebrate a victory. But they knew that wasn't the case because you wouldn't be having an internal conversation. You don't expect people to ever see. That's when you're the most vulnerable and most truthful is when you're how do we deal with this? And what they come out with is this. Don't let the public see this or let's let's say, oh, they're getting worse every day. That just proves they knew that that wasn't the answer. They should have been focused on something else, but they didn't. And they ruined lives. They ruined jobs.

They ruined an economy by focusing on the wrong thing for political gain. Yeah, if we were shut down in March and then this was, you know, May. That's one thing. It was eight weeks. First time we had John on was right before the right when lockdown started happening. It was in March. He was saying they were hoping to get, you know, concerts going back. He's like, they're, they're hoping maybe July. And now we're into nearly October and some live events started to go up.

The Ryman, the Ryman auditorium has opened up to a very limited crowd, you know, a hundred and less than a hundred people are right around a hundred people. So we're trying, the businesses are trying, people are trying. Now it's time for the government to start to try to step up and maybe it's time for some of them to step down. Let's take some phone calls. Let's go to Mark in Tennessee. Thanks for holding Mark. Welcome from Nashville. How's it going? Hey, good. You're on the air.

Well, thank you very much. So I, um, I, I'm not in the music, I'm not a musician, not the music business. I do own a guitar. I don't invest here, but I work on second Avenue inside the loop and, and so the business I work in is advertising and it's affected every market in Nashville. The shutdown has, I was telling someone I worked with yesterday, you know, you know, this is a big hoax and they looked at me like I was sort of star crossed and now it's, now it can be proven that it's not a hoax and this is really just a micro or an example for the whole country and the whole country has been, has, has wool, the wool pulled over his eyes about this and shameful, shameful, right? I think when you say hoax and when people say hoax, they're immediately thinking you're thinking the virus is a hoax and that's, we're not saying that. I want to clarify, we're not saying the virus is a hoax. We're saying that the virus is very real.

I know personal people who, friends who have gotten, who've gotten very ill, some friends of friends who have passed away. I know that it's real. I'm not here. I'm not that person.

I'm not the person saying that this isn't real. In fact, we're very safe. We make sure Will and I are at distance. We are being very protected here and protective as we do these shows. However, what is a hoax is this crazy shutdown that ends up causing so much damage when there's now proof. When they got those numbers, they should have even, Will said, said, great, look, we're doing it right.

Or number two said, okay, well then now we need to start moving into it. Instead they waited until the day it gets released, until Fox 17. Good for them. I want to give them all the love in the world for coming up with this story and finding all this information, digging up all this dirt. It's great.

I love Fox 17. They've always been very good to me. I love the people there. Great. I know some of the executive producers and they are hard, hardworking.

They work 24 hours a day for stuff like this. I am, I, what is the problem Will is when you, when you then do something like this, it's such a quick pivot. This even to me, the biggest moment when it's a pivot because today's press conference was supposed to be about like sports and the Titans.

That was, if you look at the background, it's like the big Titans logo, but now they're having to talk about, guess what? Also open to phase three and there's always been these rules, you know, Broadway, our big downtown area, our tourist district has been closed as to close at 10 PM right now. That's been one of the rules, but I guess, but because I think there's a lot of reasons they say your immunity drops.

There's some reasons that are behind that. There's some science in it, but then, you know, when the Titans played away games, they got to open late, stay open late if they chose to Monday night, but guess what Monday night, which is such an arbitrary, like it shows when he said data, not dates, but the Titans are playing away game. That's just, that's arbitrary because who are they playing?

The Broncos. I would play Monday. Yeah. Monday. And the bars, a lot of them couldn't stay open though. I read a bunch of, they were like, look, we're not going to stay open because nobody's here. It's Monday night football.

No one is here. Why is somebody watching home? But they gave them permission. They gave them permission, bars and restaurants.

You can stay open until the Titans game is over. And when you start doing that, it's so controlling. It is so manipulative. That is the biggest concern because they're doing stuff just to mess with you. And we're not going to just step by and listen and just take it and go, this is crazy.

Look at these documents. We're showing them to you. Now here at the ACLJ, I think it's important to find out more information, find out what the proof is when there's political corruption and all of these things start happening. There's a reason behind it, and we're going to do our best to figure out what kind of resources and recourses we can take.

I want to point something out as well. So on July the third, right before fourth of July, when Nashville canceled a lot of its festivities, they had the mayor tweeted out something called the serious six. And now this comes after these emails on June 30th, which point out to us that it is mostly construction and nursing homes. But he tweets out the serious six and it says, Nashville Health has identified these six sources as common ways COVID-19 has been spreading in Nashville. It's vital to wear a mask, practice social distancing, and wash your hands frequently.

That's all fine. But here's what the serious six are. Greetings, faith-based group activities, essential work sites, which is construction, food production, healthcare. So we know that that was an accurate one, bars, small gathering and parties, and household contacts.

Now, essential workers going back to their household contacts, that makes sense. Small gathering and parties, makes sense. Love it says faith-based group activities, not just group activities, things with multiple feeders.

Specifically faith-based. If they think this is political, if this is a part of the agenda, they're putting on church activities and bars. And that's what we're talking about. But we know from the emails, they knew... The top two places that conservatives go to. They knew that they were not the biggest problems. Also, if it was, once again, back to the whole marching in the streets issue. If it were close proximity, elbow to elbow, chanting, faith-based activity, why is that not on here?

Why couldn't it just be the serious seven and say, be careful, be careful when you're out there. Remember, this is in Tennessee. I've lived here for a long time now. I've lived here majority of my life, almost in Tennessee. Nashville is one of the more... It's a couple of liberal cities, more liberal cities, I'd say moderately liberal cities. Nashville's one of them. The actual metropolitan Nashville, you go anywhere into the burbs and it's maybe the most conservative place in America. But beyond that, so this is coming out of Nashville. Imagine these cities that are dealing with so much more and are dealing with these power hungry people who really are trying to, not that John Cooper's not, but really trying to not... Who can't just affect just the little town, but they also affect the big town. They affect the suburbs, they affect the little towns. They shut everything down and we can't just stand by anymore.

And there's news like this that breaks, I rarely weigh into a lot of this stuff. You've watched the reprogram, Will and I do it each and every day. We dip our toe in politics, we call it hypocrisy when we see it, but largely we have a lot of fun. It's a goofy show. It's kind of a comedy slash conservative talk show.

I think we do a good job at it. You should listen to it. Logan Secular Reprogram. Find it on all your favorite podcast players are on YouTube. You can watch us each and every day.

There's just a plug there. You can also join the Logan Secular Reprogram. But when stuff like the Facebook group, when stuff like this comes up, we cannot remain silent. You have to call hypocrisy when you see it. And if you look at this document, the documents, the entire timeline, Aaron Gilbranson, our office did for us. When you look at this timeline, it's just hypocritical move after hypocritical move and attacks specifically on people for political and personal and faith based ways. When you see this list and Will shows us that Sirius six or whatever it was called. It's a lot of places that are intentionally targeted at people of faith and people who love the country.

People like to have a lot of fun and tourism for your town. We got one more segment coming up on J Secular Live's Logan Secular Reprogram takeover. We're gonna take a lot more calls coming up. 1-800-684-3110. Support the work at ACLJ.org. Only when a society can agree that the most vulnerable and voiceless deserve to be protected is there any hope for that culture to survive. And that's exactly what you are saying when you stand with the American Center for Law and Justice to defend the right to life. We've created a free powerful publication offering a panoramic view of the ACLJ's battle for the unborn.

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Become a member today, ACLJ.org. Welcome back to the last segment of the Logan secular reprogram. Take over at Jsecula Live for your Thursday. Thanks for listening.

I know it's been a pretty intense show, but it's been a one that's pretty darn informative and hopefully it opens your eyes a little bit. Let's take some phone calls, Will, and let's start in the great state of Tennessee. Yeah. We're going to go to Tina on line three.

Tina, welcome to Jsecula Live and the reprogram takeover. Coming from Nashville. Welcome. Yes. Hey, how are y'all doing today? Good. How are you doing? I'm doing well.

My little puppy dog say hello as well. Fine with that. Fine with that. I just wanted to point out that while we can jump up and down on Cooper's head and scream about how awful the Democrats and everything are, the Tennessee Republican party has really let us down. When Riley got recalled and we had the new election that Cooper was put into office, the Republican party was nowhere to be found. Carol Swain, bless her heart, she stepped up and fought the good fight. And ran a great campaign, actually, as well. Yeah, yeah.

I'm a fan of Carol Swain. Right. And you're right. I don't want to say you're right necessarily in candidate, but you're right that I do think they think that Nashville is kind of a lost cause, Will, in some of these places just in terms of getting a conservative to be running the town. Right. And I feel like that narrative hopefully will be shifting some.

I think today is a game changer. I have not heard from so many of my friends that are on both sides of the political spectrum saying, you can't do this. Because again, it affected everyone. It's not like everyone who's playing on Broadway is sitting there as a conservative. This affects everyone who works there, everyone who works at the bars, everyone who works at restaurants, everyone who serves, all your valet, all your parking attendants, all the people at Bridgestone Arena has not had an event in six months.

That's insane. I understand there are situations, but when you are specifically calling out these businesses that are, look, if you've been to Nashville, some of these bars on Broadway and in restaurants are very large. Some are not. Some are very intimate, small spaces.

So to say that those people can only have 25 people, okay, but then you go to some of these ones that are humongous, you can't keep the lights on. So thankfully we are seeing some movement today, but it's only because they were caught. And I love the knee jerk reaction when you're caught. That's my favorite thing. Just being like, oh, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?

Tell them to open it up 50%. It's hilarious. It really is. It's sad, but it's hilarious because you look and go, you're just, it's essentially an unofficial admission of guilt that there was corruption here. So here's another bite from Mayor Cooper today at that press conference where he announced quite a few things, but this is still responding to the reporter that was calling out, were you hiding information?

This is bite 31 because I think the very tail end of it. Listen carefully about one, who he tries to give some credit to and also how he tries to spin it. We're here today celebrating pretty good news for Nashville. We should not be 81st in the state.

We should still be based on our density and our population and how people live. We should still be the most affected County in the state, but we took action. We took action ahead of time in response to careful information sent to us by the White House to do what we did and it has been effective. So again, thank you, Nancy, for your question. Of course, we're happy to share all information, but we want the right interpretation behind all of this. Thank you.

So they're happy to share all the information, but first you've got to make sure the right interpretation of the information they're going to release is out there. Don't blame us. Also. I mean, that's what it feels like. It was the White House. It was the White House.

Dealing with your local area of politics and a local area of shutdowns. Yeah. I don't know if that's how that works. I mean, yes, there were obviously guidelines and rules that were put in place by.

But also if you had the data, you had your data, you have your department of health. You were supposed to be making these decisions based off the data is what you said. It also doesn't seem like in the way he's like, we should be higher. It's almost as if he wishes it was higher.

Well, and that's also how you read those emails. We should be higher than this. Tell them that it's getting worse every day. Tell them it's, yeah, it may only be 80 today, but it's getting worse.

We shouldn't be this low ranked. This is ridiculous. All right, let's go finish up with some phone calls.

Let's go, James. You're on the airline for hi, thank you for taking my call and forgive me for speaking in generalizations, but my question is, is how does this help the democratic party? Um, when we have local politicians, governors, state, um, holding everybody back and even in the great state of Michigan here, we're just a few petitions away from recalling our governor. I'm just wondering how, how do they think they don't care? They don't care about your local race.

They don't. They care about the Presidential race. They care about showing an America that's falling apart, taking an economy, right? Destroying everything to win an election. It's sadly the truth it is.

This is almost undeniable proof. And that's true. What do they have to gain? They don't care about your local mayor. They don't care about John Cooper. They don't care about the mayor of the small town mayors or the governor.

Even they don't, they care about winning the general election and what's the best thing for that. It's for Nashville to be bare for cities to be empty for you. Look at pictures of times square and it's disgusting. It makes you upset. It hurts your stomach because you look at it and go, we can't live through this anymore. And guess what they say? Well, the solution is a different President and that's politics. One-on-one it's unfortunate. It's sad, but it's the truth.

They will sacrifice your local community to have overall and overarching power. Let's finish up with some more phone calls. Michael line five. You're on the air. Hi, Jay. Thanks for taking my call. Just calling. You think you need to expand your class action suit. I've been watching the thing.

The population of Oregon is 4.3 million. Crunch the numbers. There's no pandemic here. Yeah.

It's sturgis. You know, nobody was wearing a mask except Antifa and 30,000 to 300,000 people there and 126 people got sick. Well, Michael, yeah, go ahead. And that's why part of the reason we thought it was important to talk about this, even though this is a Nashville issue, we're seeing this in cities across the country where they have a narrative and they're going to push that narrative regardless of what the data says, even though they, the, the leftist mayors say they're the data, the science, that's what drives their decisions.

We're seeing more and more that it's not, it's just politics. Let's jump quickly to Mary Alice. She's my home for 20 minutes. I'm sorry. We are running out of time, but go ahead with your statement. Yeah. My statement is I really think this is going to backfire on them.

And I think Nashville's the first state, but there's going to be more states that are going to, or cities that are going to come up with the secretive stuff. I think you're right. As John Rich, our buddy said, and I can tell you just by my phone blowing up this morning and late last night, I think you're a hundred percent correct. There are plenty of people who are going to see this and they are going to respond and realize they've been had and we have to have a voice in this. You can't just remain silent. Listen, we are going to be doing some work on this. We have a legal team right now who's looking into how we can respond. Okay. Just broke. We are, we are getting into it right now.

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