Biden Administration CAUGHT Rewriting History

This is Logan Sekulow. The Biden administration's been caught rewriting history, keeping you informed and engaged.

Now, more than ever, this is Sekulow. Let's talk about the Defense Department's annual report, because it is saying that Biden's fumbled withdrawal from Afghanistan was a propaganda gift to China. Do you agree with that? No, I do not. And I don't know that that's the Pentagon's assessment that it was a propaganda gift to China. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments.

Or call 1-800-684-3110. If anything, nations like China and Russia took a look at what we did in Afghanistan, and we've talked about this many, many times over the last year, and had to marvel at the speed, the efficiency, the effectiveness that a very small number of troops, Brian, you listen to me now, hear me out. A very small number of troops were able to move that many Afghans safely out of that country.

No other nation in the world can do that. And now your host, Logan Sekulow. Logan Sekulow, yeah, we're talking about that now infamous quote that just happened.

That was on Fox News. You had Admiral Kirby, which, Will, what's his title now? National Security Council Coordinator? Yeah, he's the National Security Council Coordinator for the Strategic Communications. So he used to be the Defense Department or the Pentagon spokesperson, but he was moved over to the National Security Council, which is actually inside the White House. Yeah, and he was in that role at the Pentagon during the famous now infamous botched Afghanistan withdrawal. But what did he say?

He said, no, it wasn't botched. The Chinese and the Russians, they marveled at how good of a response we had, how quick, fast, and effective it was. How do you feel about that? Did you feel that way about one year ago when all of this was going down? And we did a whole documentary series, Revenge of the Taliban.

It's available on iclj.org and on YouTube and Rumble as well, I believe. Did you feel that way? I didn't. I still don't. I still think it's one of our biggest marks of shame in recent history. And we can't let the Biden administration go about rewriting that history, pretending it never happened.

So give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. I'm going to replay this byte, though, just in case you're just tuning in. This is Admiral Kirby on Fox News, Fox and Friends. He was up there with Brian Kilmeade and the whole group. You'll hear Brian Kilmeade as well. Take a listen.

If anything, nations like China and Russia took a look at what we did in Afghanistan, and we've talked about this many, many times over the last year, and had to marvel at the speed, the efficiency, the effectiveness. Oh, please. At least he responded.

I find it pretty abhorrent and disgusting. They decided that you're not just admitting the fact that this went horribly wrong. We know this. People died. You had those planes of people holding onto aircraft as it was pulling out of the country, falling to their deaths. That all happened. But they marveled.

They marveled at the speed, the efficiency, and effectiveness of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And what he's responding to is the annual report to Congress from the Department of Defense on military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China. So it's an entire 196-page report on all of the security landscape goes into nuclear weapons and the advancements that China is doing. And we'll get into some of that later in the broadcast with Secretary Mike Pompeo.

But this is one angle of it. It says in 2021, the PRC, which is People's Republic of China, employed multiple diplomatic tools in an attempt to erode U.S. and partner influence, such as highlighting U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. So they were using that around the world to spread, to use as propaganda that look what the United States did. They're not necessarily trustworthy partners. They're not necessarily the leaders on the global stage that you think they are. And we're going to find out whether other people think that this is the case. Were they effective at eroding it? But instead, Admiral Kirby decided to say, no, they marveled at it.

They were envious. Look, it's the last day also of our matching challenge in the month of November. We're up against some big goals, big budgets. We really could use your support right now.

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Go to ACLJ.org. Give us a call also if you want to be on the air. Welcome back to Secula. We are bringing in Colonel Wes Smith back to the broadcast to talk about this situation and this conversation they had. Again, we're going to replay it again to kind of reset up this segment for those who are just tuning in. Again, this was Admiral Kirby, now currently the National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications inside the White House. And this was this morning on Fox News. On Fox and France, you'll hear Admiral Kirby as well as Brian Kilmeade and his response. In the end, we've got to give it up to Brian Kilmeade actually for pushing back. I believe it starts actually with Ainsley Earhart. So we'll start with that with Byte 8.

Let's go. Let's talk about the Defense Department's annual report, because it is saying that Biden's fumbled withdrawal from Afghanistan was a propaganda gift to China. Do you agree with that?

No, I do not. And I don't know that that's the Pentagon's assessment that it was a propaganda gift to China, if anything. Nations like China and Russia took a look at what we did in Afghanistan, and we've talked about this many, many times over the last year, and had to marvel at the speed, the efficiency, the effectiveness of a very small number of troops.

Brian, you listen to me now, hear me out. A small number of troops were able to move that many Afghans safely out of that country. No other nation in the world can do that. Yeah, so I want to get your thoughts after hearing that statement. Obviously, we know really what happened. We all lived through it just a year ago.

And you know what a visceral reaction? I mean, I listened to him, listened to a retired admiral trying to defend the indefensible. And my gut reaction was he is an embarrassment to any of us who have ever worn the uniform.

The Department of Defense's annual report, called the China Military Power Report, came out last week. And the report clearly stated that China used the debacle of our withdrawal from Afghanistan to tell the world that we are an ally that cannot be trusted, that we are not a reliable partner in the world, and this is in the report. It is a fact, and Kirby danced all around it trying to say that it is not so. I mean, he has sacrificed any credibility he had left as a retired flag officer in order to become a political hack. And I couldn't believe he actually was doing it. And, you know, it's amazing because look at what happened. And you referenced it, you know, Logan, 13 American troops died, 160 Afghan civilians, thousands of U.S. citizens and Afghan partners were left behind. Biden's own senior military officers at the time told him not to do it, told him to keep Bagram Airfield, to use that as an evacuation point, don't use the Kabul airport, and President Biden overruled all of them. And now we have two years later a retired admiral trying to say that the decision was a good one. Yeah, not even two years later.

It's insulting. Well, and part of the problem I see as well is that his former job was to be the communications person, the spokesperson for the Pentagon, for the Department of Defense. This is a Department of Defense document to Congress that he's responding to and trying to spin as not what they're saying.

And Ryan Kilmeade actually pushed him a little bit. And to me there is a little bit of irony we can discuss after this because at first he's saying China and Russia marveled at what we did. But then when there's pushback, he tries to downplay what the report says. No, they attempted to capitalize on this.

So let's hear what he has to say and then we can respond by 11. The way we promised that government would stand up, the way we're going to leave and have a transition, the disaster that took place is one of the many problems along with the soldiers that are suffering now by the way you ended that 20-year war, not you but the administration, is that China is using it. And you could argue that Russia invaded Ukraine because of it. Brian, so the report said that China attempted to capitalize on it. That's a big difference from saying that they did or were able to capitalize on this. I mean they spread propaganda about everything.

Brian, you know that. So first they're marveling about it. Then he's admitting, yeah, maybe they tried propaganda.

But it doesn't mean they were successful. Good work, yeah. This is ridiculous. How is he able to take himself seriously in this moment? I mean I guess good for him for going on Fox and Friends, for going on Fox News, because he knew it was going to have an easy time on there, especially knowing these were going to be the talking points. But again, this is not, we live actually thankfully in America in somewhat of as much as the press can be a mess. There was that sort of unity that happened around the withdrawal in Afghanistan where everyone kind of agreed that this was a mess. And this was very poorly done. But now to just be a year and a couple months out for him to pretend that we all didn't see it, we all didn't live through it, it's just remarkable.

And it feels very insulting. And we did a whole series on this. You were on it Wes, and a lot of great people were on it from the entire War on Terror. We had from the originators, from someone like John Ashcroft who was there, all the way up into people who like Mike Pompeo and Colonel Smith. And we had on Tulsi Gabbard and Rick Grenell and I believe there was a lot, I mean it was a lot of people that were on it. Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley. We had Jameson or James Langford.

James Langford from Oklahoma. And they're long form interviews, 20, 30 minute interviews. And they're all available if you go to aclj.org slash Taliban or you can find it on the YouTube channel.

They're absolutely free. Thousands of people have watched it. I conduct these interviews.

They're really powerful. It puts you back in that mindset because we've recorded these during the withdrawal. We started filming them in August of, I guess it was 2021 when all of this was starting to happen. And then we released it just a few months later.

So it kind of could bring you back to where you were. And we lived it very, because we made these documentaries, we spent a lot of time on it. But we also know that Americans easily forget and are easily persuaded by people like Kirby going on there and saying things that are vehemently wrong but then become the talking point of the day.

Yeah. And he's like me. He served over 25 years in the military. And to stand up in front of a camera, the former, basically the press secretary for the Pentagon, he knew at the time what the inner workings were at the Pentagon and to stand up there and like I said, try to defend the indefensible.

To me, it's not only breaking with reality and it's insulting to anyone who knows what happened. And we all do listening to him today. But I thought about the 13 Gold Star family that were created that day and for him to parrot the President and calling it successful. I mean, Joe Biden in September of 2021 not only said it was successful and Kirby almost said it the same way. He's got his talking points down. The President at the time said no other nation in history has never accomplished anything like this.

And I thought you're probably right. No other nation in history has ever messed something up to this degree trying to get out of a country. Yeah.

20 years after the war began. It's not it's not even like the Vietnam situation. It's a different kind.

It was different kind of moment instead of owning up to it, which I think we could all be not OK with it. But at least if you had some I don't love the no sympathy kind of approach to this. I'm going, yeah, you're right. What about the Gold Star families? What about all these people?

They think they don't even matter. And you just go, no, it was great. It was a success. Remember, everything was fine. We got everybody out. You guys wanted them out, too.

Yeah, but this wasn't the way. No, and Americans are very forgiving people. If they say, hey, I messed up, this was a bad thing. People would get that.

They would respect that. But that is exactly not what is happening. You know, when President Biden, before all this was taking place in the spring of that year, he said, you know, reporters had asked him, is this going to be like the withdrawal from Vietnam and the embassy in Saigon to which the President said, you know, very interesting.

It will be nothing like Saigon. And he was exactly right. It was like 20 times worse than anything we saw at the embassy in Saigon. And as a communicator, Admiral Kirby should have known in this interview, he fielded a tough question. He could have said, you know, we have discussed this. There's been an IG investigation into the inspector general investigation. And we understand that in the fog of war, that things aren't all perfect. He could have glossed over it and moved on in the interview. Instead, he welcomed more criticism by the absurd statement that the Chinese and Russian governments had to marvel at the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of what the United States did.

The only marveling they probably did is how is the leader of the world able to pull off something this terribly and this embarrassingly? And that's unfortunately the legacy there. And he had to have the conversation continue because he didn't just get out of the conversation. Yeah. Hey, we only got a couple of minutes left.

I know there are some people who are calling. I don't know if we have time to take one real quick. Let's try to take Kerry real quick in Montana on Line 1. Kerry, you're on the air.

Hi, brothers. I'm just appalled like you are. And I just believe that Biden administration, he's been doing this for 60 years, just like Obama, Clinton.

I believe that they studied the Constitution so that they could break it. My my distress is how long are we going to talk about what's going on and what's happened in Afghanistan and what's happening in our own country and not do something to stop the Biden administration or anybody like him? Look, it's a great point. We just got done with the midterm election. Didn't go the way a lot of people hoped it would go.

Obviously, we did. You know, the conservatives took control of the House. That's a that's a positive, you think, to potentially stop a lot of these kind of things from happening. But the President has a lot of power. Executive orders.

He's commander in chief. We have to keep bringing things to light and then obviously legally fight where we can. And that's why, look, you brought up that's why we are at the last day of our matching challenge for the month. Which means all donations are effectively doubled. That means there's someone matching your donations. If you have one hundred dollars, it becomes two hundred dollars to the organization.

You need to go to aclj.org slash donate or just aclj.org. You'll see a big button. You're smart. Just do that.

Find it. You donate. Your gift is matched any donation in the month of November. So we really appreciate that. As we head into there, there's also a J secular band concert p.m. Eastern Time tonight.

All our social media, our social media channels, that's usually we do at the end of the month and the end of the matching challenges. So, again, we hope you all tune in for that. And right now, if you could, we appreciate donation. Thanks, Wes, for sitting in this segment. We're going to change topics coming up, but stay tuned.

Welcome back to secular. We do know there's people calling about the topic we were just on. We'll take some of those towards the end of the show. If you can hold on.

If you're not, I understand. If you want to give us a call, one eight hundred six eight four thirty one ten, shift our focus a little bit to what's going on in the media landscape. As you know, there has been a lot of shakeups going on just as we were going on. The air CNN announced that there will be a large cost cutting layoff starting immediately in the next few days.

CEO Chris Lick told staff in an email Wednesday it'll be a difficult time for everyone. This obviously comes from mass layoffs for all your social media platforms as well. As people start restructuring media, I kind of thought this was coming. One of the big changes they had is a controversial one to some sense is the shakeup at the Walt Disney Company, which was you saw CEO Bob Chapek be essentially, you know, resigned in quotes as Bob Iger, who had been running Disney previous last few years pre pandemic free for years and done a pretty good job at it. Stock prices were up was a lot of controversy within the Disney Company at the time. And he took Bob Iger had a sort of a this a press state.

This was during the town hall for employees to cast members. So people asked questions and they asked a lot of questions of Bob Iger specifically about some of the politics that has been seeping into media. And we've seen obviously that get more aggressive as time has come. And you've seen that we're coming to a Disney where its legacy, by the way, is a conservative company, if you will, the original legacy of the Walt Disney Company. Also, you want to look back really was sort of the just the home for family entertainment. Now, they're also coming out of this past weekend being the biggest financial failure I think they've had in a very long time with the release of their film Strange Worlds. Now, Bob Iger asked some questions. People asked specifically about those controversies that came up the last few years. And so, look, I mean, what you had really for going to break down a little bit of history is you had Disney kind of having a no response to a lot of the a lot of the pushback, to be honest, on them getting more involved politically. And then you had the CEO of Disney before this saying because he got so much pressure going so far the other direction, it it became almost absurd. And that became within the organization. If you worked at Disney or work at Disney or if that came if you were a consumer of their product.

So here's Bob Iger, the new CEO and former CEO and also new CEO, when pressed about how politics will be involved in the upcoming new wave at Disney. I don't think when you were telling stories and attempting to be a good citizen of the world that that's political, just not how I view it. Do I like the company being embroiled in controversy?

Of course not. It can be distracting and it can have a negative impact on the company. And to the extent that I can work to kind of quiet things down, I'm going to do that. But I think it's it's important to put in perspective what some of these subjects are and not just simply brand them political. So in that spot, he essentially said, you know, some of these statements we've made, some of the moments we've we've embraced aren't necessarily political. They're just cultural shifts. But then he kind of gets put into the corner a little bit about the fact that, look, you have financially a difficult time at Disney. You have one of your biggest financial failures just happened over the weekend. So what does that mean?

Does that mean you're getting disconnected? And I think we could say that for sure, that mainstream media, not just Disney, but Hollywood in general, has become more and more disconnected from what the average American audience wants. And here's what his response to that. We also when you tell stories, it's a delicate balance. You're talking to an audience, but it's also important to listen to an audience. It's important to have respect for the people that you're serving, that you're trying to reach and not have disdain for it. That's an interesting line, Will, when you say when you say that you're trying to respect the people that you're serving, that you're trying to reach and not have disdain for them.

So specifically saying if you are making products for a family audience, you can't also hate that family audience. The proof will be in the pudding. We'll see if he actually can live up to some of this. I hope so for the sake of what I think is actually a great legacy. A hundred years of Hollywood legacy.

I would hope that there can be some course correcting, not just within Disney, but within Hollywood in general, that they can see what are the biggest movies of the year and what are the biggest flops of the year. Biggest movie of the year? Top Gun.

You know why? Brought everyone together. Super fun. Americana. Very patriotic.

Inspiring. Very pro-America. And what are some of the biggest bombs of the year movies that came out this weekend? And plenty of others. We've seen historic lows at the box office, and I think that he knows this. Well, and we've had this discussion many times before.

At the end of the day, it also is these are, while they sound like they're cultural statements, they are very much financial statements for the company. There is a reason Baba here was brought back, and he's a savvy person. He is someone who has considered politics before. He admitted he considered running for President as not a Republican, not a conservative. No, but he did work with the Trump administration early on, and then inevitably the pressure was too built. And look, the appetite for some of President Trump's rhetoric, whether you liked it or not, as a CEO of one of the biggest companies in the world, I can understand where you would probably have gotten that pressure and probably didn't necessarily want to be associated with it. Well, and I think part of the problem that I think the liberal mainstream in this country is not taking to heart, but what hopefully Bob Iger is taking to heart is that there seems to be a disdain for the American family right now. Whether it is any sort of media you're consuming or it is the people that are in Congress that there is this or even the bureaucracies, the FBI going to monitoring school board meetings that the American family values that have been so dear to us are looked at with disdain. And the audience of Disney traditionally is the one that is now looked at with disdain by popular culture, by popular media, by politicians of the left. And so if he can take that to heart, maybe others will as well instead of pushing propaganda or other preachy material. We're seeing that at CNN. You're seeing mass layoffs.

It is not only because they're in a financial hardship, which they are. But they're not liberal, by the way. By the way, yesterday you had Don Lemon going on Stephen Colbert saying, no, CNN was never liberal.

Yeah, we have the bite. Let's play it by one. Now he's got a really hard job, which is running CNN. The word on the street is that you guys aren't allowed to be liberal anymore. Is that the case? I don't think we ever were liberal. What? Yes, I don't think we ever were.

Not me saying that. That's the people out there saying that he's not letting you be liberal anymore. Yeah, I think really that was Colbert covering. Is Don Lemon trying to save his job, trying to say, ah, we never were liberal?

Yeah, I mean, who knows what happens over the weekend? I mean, that's just true. You're seeing mass layoffs from reporting staff to internally a lot of staff at CNN.

But the fact they're even having to go out there and say that, saying we were never liberal. The fact that you have Disney saying we don't want to be in politics and we don't want to be offending our audience when you because they were the number one travel destination for families and the number one studio for family films. The tide may be turning because it's all driven by the box office. And I mean, the box office, not just the filmmaking box office, it's all driven by the scoreboard.

If the scoreboard says money's down, you're going to have a lot of companies making some pretty wild shifts. I think they see what other companies have done in the sort of Christian conservative landscape, whether that's what's going on. Even the great American family, you've seen that big push where they started kind of becoming the new home for the Christmas movie genre that's happened over the last few months. And you have Bill Abbott, who's run that, who who ran the Hallmark Channel, left, became President. What was great American country turned into great American family, which essentially is a Christian network without saying it. They pretty much said, who's our audience?

Middle American conservative Christians. And they've had massive success in the last few months. That is not going away. And we really interesting to see. I'm curious your thoughts on that. Also, your thoughts on the response from Admiral Kirby about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. We're going to take some calls towards the end of the show. I'd love to have you on 1-800-684-3110. If you don't get the next half hour of the broadcast, Mike Pompeo is joining us.

You'll love to hear from him. Find us on ACLJ.org and on all your favorite social platforms and on Rumble. And last, there will be a Jay Sekulow Band concert tonight. Make sure you tune in that 8 p.m. Eastern on all our social media channels. And support the work of the ACLJ Match Challenge right now.

ACLJ.org. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.

Welcome back to Sekulow. We are resetting the show a little bit. We're going to be talking specifically about, we talked about media in the last segment. What was going on with Bob Iger in the Disney Shakeup. What's going on with the massive layoffs at CNN. And maybe finally the media turning a bit towards the middle because they see their numbers dropping. So if you have a question or comment about that, we'll take some of those towards the end of the show.

1-800-684-3110. I did want to start off with a call from Timothy, which was about the situation that happened if you didn't hear the beginning of the broadcast. Where Admiral Kirby went on Fox and Friends saying not only was it a success, but that China and Russia marveled at how effectively and efficiently we did on the Afghanistan withdrawal. And we all know, we all lived it. It was only a year and a couple months ago. Last August.

We know that's not the case. We did a whole documentary series on it. Timothy's on the air from Texas. Timothy, welcome. Sir Logan, and thank you for taking my call. God bless you and your ministry there at ACLJ and your vocation.

And we'll take advantage of that matching challenge posthaste. Hey, I wanted to add, China and Russia are marveling at how we've handled the refugees since they got dropped off in America, in the United States. Our church has a whole ministry dedicated to helping the Afghani refugees because the US government just drops them off in our city and says, good luck. Yeah, there's been a few papers that they can't read. Yeah, go ahead, Timothy.

I think you're right. There's been a lot of discussion about the way the Afghanistan refugees have been treated in this country already. Some not so great.

And people like your ministry or what you're involved in in your church is very important. And look, there were states that said, we want your refugees, bring them to us. We had James Lankford on from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford. He said, look, one of our biggest thriving communities have been refugees that have come to Oklahoma where there's a lot of land, a lot of places that need it, and they become thriving parts of the community. They have large populations from pretty much every war kind of time.

Oklahoma has been one of those places. But you're right, Timothy. The church really has had to do this because we're good about the, we got them out of there.

It's great. You know, load up some planes. But as soon as people get here, especially if they are deemed, you know, not the best, not the best because of obviously we want to vet them and go through checks.

But if they're, you know, they don't seem like they're being thriving members of our community. It does feel like the government drops the ball and says, church, as you figure it out. And thankfully there are good ministries that do that. Well, and if our audience listens to or watches the series Revenge of the Taliban, I do want to highlight that episode with Senator Lankford because while he is a U.S. Senator, he's in the federal government, he did point back to the work of Oklahoma. And that's one of the more interesting angles of that whole series is that not only was it talking about the beginning of the war on terror, the withdrawal, the disaster, the future.

But you were able to kind of peel everything back and look at every angle of it. And one of those was the refugee crisis that's going to come out of and did come out of that as Timothy highlighted. And it is nonprofits, it is churches, it is individuals, it is state governments and local governments that really pick up the ball and thrive because the federal government has done such a poor job of assessing the needs and the problem that is going to fall out after that. We know that there was a disaster, the whole rollout of withdrawing and the refugee crisis that followed soon after.

But it takes the church, it takes organizations and it takes individuals and local governments to pick up the slack because the federal government wasn't able to stand up to the task here. Yeah, and thousands of people arrived here. And look, the situation happened in Ukraine as well. Thousands of Ukrainian refugees showed up also around the world and they do seem to be treated differently than those from the Afghanistan crisis. Look up some of the stories that are happening.

I encourage you to and see what's happening for them and support where you can. Coming up in the next segment, we're going to have Mike Pompeo on. We're going to talk about that infamous statement now from Kirby as well as what's going on around the world and what's happening in China right now. Obviously, as we've talked about before, it's hard to get some news straight out of China. There's a bit of a cultural uprising happening. Something that's very shocking, very emotional, very moving for a lot of people that are following this because this is something you didn't think you'd see out of China as they are standing up finally. We'll be right back with Mike Pompeo.

Welcome back to Secular. We are joined right now by Senior Counsel Global Affairs, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the broadcast. Secretary Pompeo, we've been spending the last half hour really discussing what came out of that Defense Department, sort of admitting that the withdrawal from Afghanistan became this sort of gift, a propaganda gift.

And then you had a response from Kirby going on Fox and Friends and saying, no, no, no. They actually marveled at our incredible response that we did something that no one could do and an effective withdrawal from Afghanistan was what we did. It was effective. It was faster.

It was better than anyone had ever done. Pulling the wool over our eyes as if we didn't all live through it a year ago. What was your initial reaction to this?

Oh, goodness. I mean, that's that's just simply gaslighting Americans who know better, who know the facts. I'm still heartbroken by the fact we lost 13 Americans at the gates there in Afghanistan, but the implications go far beyond that. Not only was it a gift to the Chinese Communist Party, but Chairman Kim would have seen that.

Ayatollah in Iran would have seen that the Taliban are surely still measuring the curtains all across the country, knowing that the United States is weak and not prepared to do the things we've always done. We've never left folks behind before, and we did. And so to hear Kirby out there this morning saying this wasn't the gift to so many didn't frankly when you say gift, it weakens America puts us in a more difficult position to deter our adversaries. Americans know that's not true. I wish they wouldn't try to pretend that it wasn't. So it's it's embarrassing and it's not factual. And it further weakens the credibility of the United States to our friends and allies around the world as well.

It's incredibly disrespectful, as you said, also to those Gold Star families who who all lived through, you know, quite literal hell to to be a part of this just botched withdrawal. And will that's part of this. But there's so much more. Right. Well, in that report as well. So is the military and security developments involving the People's Republic of China is what the Department of Defense sent to Congress. And one of the items in that that I noticed as well, besides this the Chinese government using the propaganda tools, but that their rapid nuclear expansion by the Chinese military that's happening and how quickly they're ramping up with new types of weaponry as well as expanding their nuclear stockpile. My concern is when you see the movements by the Chinese government, as well as capitalizing on the failures of the Biden administration, I'm concerned, is the United States doing what it needs to do to keep up with our adversaries at this point? So these are absolutely twin risks.

You identify that exactly right. There is the perception risk and deterrence is all about real capabilities backed up by a demonstrated willingness to use them. That's how you deter the bad guys. We talked about earlier withdrawal from Afghanistan. Now we've got Vladimir Putin who wasn't deterred in Ukraine. The Chinese Communist Party surely sees that as well.

And then you have the hard power problem itself. I read a little bit of that report. They're roughly going to triple their nuclear capability. The Chinese Communist Party every month conducts more missile testing than the rest of the world combined. They have advanced space systems now.

This is a truly capable flow. And the United States has been sitting on our back foot. We've allowed this to happen.

We've not matched it. We're still in a good place. Our military remains the greatest military in the world. But the gap is certainly closing and the Chinese Communist Party is accelerating in closing that gap and building out a capability in the Pacific that will rival our own.

Yeah. And Secretary Pompeo, I do think that I'd love to get your read on what's happening also in China in general. If you have been obviously you have been. But if people who are listening maybe haven't seen because it is hard to sometimes get the footage out, people to see what's happening. But they're calling it sort of the biggest uprising in protest since Tiananmen Square happening in China right now. My question to you is, and that's a lot of that's a response to the zero COVID policy. And to kind of give people a brief, they are looking to eradicate it completely, which means if there's one case or a few cases, things going back into full shutdown, full lockdown. You had people trapped in Shanghai Disneyland for an undetermined amount of time till they all tested negative before they could leave.

They had this situation where a fire broke out and the fire department was not able to go stop it. And the 10 plus people died because of COVID policies. This is what's happening in China.

Obviously, they're using COVID as a cover for their control, but you actually do see this sort of uprising as someone who obviously served as secretary of state and was deeply involved in a lot of situations. When you see this response from the people of China, what is your read on it? Does it give you hope?

Does it mean anything? Just your thoughts. So it's pretty remarkable to watch both the scope and the scale and the nature of these protests. They are unique. They are historic.

They do go back at least 30 years since we've seen anything. But even this is different. These are middle class people. This is a broader, deeper set of socioeconomic conditions that the Chinese Communist Party is putting on the deal. The deal always was you give up your political freedom, we'll make your life better. And they're not doing that. They're not making lives better for Chinese citizens all across the country. And these uprisings are a direct result of that.

You know, there's this irony, right? That's the Chinese Communist Party that foisted this virus upon the world and now it's coming. Everybody thought, oh, they solved it there. They knew how to build hospitals in China.

Well, it turns out all they did was delay the challenge that's in front of them. I pray for the Chinese people that are protesting. It is likely to end with the Chinese Communist Party putting their foot down and bringing tanks to the streets, much like they did in 1989.

I hope that's not what happens. And I hope the Chinese Communist Party will see that people simply want basic freedoms, the capacity to go out and build their families, and they begin to change the way they deal with their own people. The Chinese Communist Party doesn't represent them, and it needs to change its ways.

Yes, I feel kind of ignorant to that. I feel actually, seeing this, I get very emotional watching some of this because I'll be honest, maybe I bought in a little to the propaganda that, like you said, the deal with the people is, you know, you don't get political freedom, but we make things better. And it kind of felt like, from all the footage you've seen and all this, that the people of China are on board with the way that their government is run. Even if it's horrible, even if we know how non-free it is, it did have that feeling that a lot of people, like you said, the middle class kind of there, was on board for this.

So to see that response in the streets is pretty moving. And hopefully, as you said, it's unlikely to, like you said, they're likely to put their foot down. But what you hope is this is a spark that really could cause a more significant change in these areas of the world.

Yeah, I pray that it's so. I think in the short term, it's going to be incredibly difficult. The struggle inside will be difficult. But in the medium and long term, I think what this shows is that basic human dignity is something that people demand everywhere. The Chinese people have been suffering under this for a long time. They can watch Xi Jinping be coronated to be the leader for life, and they can see something's got to give. And I hope there will be. And I hope the United States will firmly come out in support of the Chinese people.

Something's got to change. And if it does, then that's fantastic for the Chinese people. It's great for the world, too. 1.4 billion people cannot live in a surveillance state like Xi Jinping has been driving, and his intentions are global. The United States needs to take this threat incredibly seriously, and supporting the Chinese people is one of the ways we can reduce the risk to us here at home.

Absolutely. Pray for those people. Pray for the church that's in China, a lot of the underground church, because there's so much that's happening that we just don't see.

Will, you got something? Well, and you brought up that you hope the U.S. government would speak out in support of the protesters. What we did see was a very weak statement from the spokesperson out of the National Security Council earlier this week that basically said, you know, zero COVID is not a policy we're pushing here in the United States. And then did say, we've long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest here in the United States and around the world.

A very weak statement out of our National Security Council in response to the issues that were going on, the protests that were going on. Are we doomed to see out of this administration, unless something very much changes, a very tepid, green revolution in Iran-style response from the Biden administration? Boy, it sure looks that way. And the history, when now coming on two years of this administration, would suggest that's the case.

Will, I regret it. I saw that comment. By the way, the comment shouldn't come from the National Security Council or its spokesperson. It should come from the President himself. And it should be strong and clear and should be a clarion call for freedom for the people of China. It's pretty easy to do, unless you're President Biden who's watched, who's had a meeting with Xi Jinping just a few weeks ago in Bali and said, can't we all just get along? The truth is, Xi Jinping has no intention of just getting along. And we can see not only what he does to his own people, but the risk he poses here to our homeland. And I wish this President had the capacity to just make the simple statement that we're supporting the people of China in their quest for freedom. Thank you so much, Secretary Pompeo, for joining us.

I do want to say this before we head into the last segment of the broadcast. We've opened up some phone lines, and I would love to hear from you. We can talk about any of these topics. Remember what's happening in China? We can talk about Kirby's response to that situation and then the botched Afghanistan withdrawal and how we're all being told now that it was such a massive success from the White House.

We can talk about the changing media landscape, whether that's the CNN changes, the CNN layoffs, the Disney changes in tone. I want to hear from you on all of it. 1-800-684-3110. We're going to take as many calls as we can in the next segment. Those who are on hold, stay on hold. We'll get to you.

But if you want to call in, it's a great time to have your voice heard. Also, this is the last day of our matching challenge. So make a donation at ACLJ.org.

Will someone send the comments? If I said, go dogs, they would give a donation. That's right. So I'm going to say, go dogs. I'm wearing my Georgia hoodie. A lot of people are saying, was that from Georgia's Bulldogs? Is that what's going on in Georgia with the runoff? You know what? Take it as you will. SEC Championship this weekend.

Yeah, exactly. SEC Championship this weekend. If it helps you support the work of the ACLJ, hopefully they didn't just deter a bunch of people, then go dogs as well.

Go to ACLJ.org. Make that donation today. Again, it's matched for today as we end the month of November.

Be right back. Last segment of the day. If you want to call in 1-800-684-3110, we'll jump into some calls. We'll also get some comments on social media. Let's go to Kathy. She's been on hold for a while in the state of Kentucky.

You're on the air. Thank you for taking my call. There it is shameful and even sinful that this administration has not called out the Chinese Communist Party for what it's doing to its own people that are the cause for these up this uprising that we're seeing going on. And I do believe that are the forced organ harvesting on black people is a big stake in that. Kathy, I think we all can agree that the response to the China uprising, if you will, has been very weak.

And as you said, well, that statement, I think you still have it. The words were not we support the people. We are on your side.

We are here. It was we don't agree with the COVID policies. We don't agree. It said we've said that zero COVID is not a policy we are pursuing here in the United States. And as we've said, we think it's going to be very difficult for the People's Republic of China to be able to contain this virus through their zero COVID strategy. For us, we are focused on what works.

And that means using public health tools like continuing to enhance vaccination rates, including boosters and making testing and treatment easily accessible. We've long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest here in the United States and around the world. This includes the PRC. It's not even the focus of what the protest really is. It's it's like burying the lead, you know, where it's like, here's the story over here and their statements over here.

It's completely wrong. It's very political. You know, you move the ball, you don't answer the question, you don't ever actually answer the need and the questions that come up. Some other calls are coming in. We'll take some more coming up.

And there is some lines still open. 1-800-684-3110. I did want to thank the person who said on Rumble that they would make a donation if I said, go dogs. And they made $100 donation. So I want to say thank you to them.

That effectively just became $200 to the organization. So you know what? If it's within reason, I'll do birthday greetings. I'll do whatever you want right now. You know, I'll do I'll do cameos for you, whatever it is.

I'm happy to do it because, you know, this is the last day of our matching challenge. That's important to me. Should be important to you. I know times are tough.

I'm not going to be joking around about that and say a lot of people have a lot of extra income right now. I know that things are on a downturn when it comes to this administration, but that is why we are here. We are here to fight back whatever we can legally. And in the media, as I always say, I wish I could turn this camera around and you could see the rest of our media center here. You could see the incredible team that we have working on this.

Don't think that this is some, you know, operated by robots, you know, kind of broadcast here. There are a dozen or so people I'm looking at right now. There are 30, 40 people out there working on the next projects that you'll see and the stuff they'll come up today.

That's just here in the media center. Then you have some of our offices in Washington, D.C., and you have around the world, legitimately around the world, there is work going on. Some we can talk about, some we can't, if I'm just being honest. There is incredible work going on in Pakistan. I know we don't talk about that all that much, but you're going to see a lot of incredibly moving content that's coming out of Pakistan. There are real human rights violations happening. There is real Christian persecution. We talk about that here in America. You may hear people talking about Christian persecution.

And sure, there are times where it feels that way, but not compared to what's going on around the world where people are literally dying just for their faith. And you bring up all the time that people need to go to ACLJ.org not just to give during the matching challenge and to make their contribution, but also to take in the content. Many times it's things we don't have the time to even get to because there is so much work and content going on with the ACLJ. But there is an article up that is by Jordan on ACLJ.org. It's Pakistan sentences a young Christian man to death by hanging for alleged blasphemy as a minor. I'd encourage people to go look at that and read to hear about that work.

We're going to get to it more on the show in the coming days and weeks. But that's our Pakistan affiliate. One of the fights we have right now is a young Christian man was sentenced to death by a Pakistan court for an alleged offense of blasphemy against the Islamic faith when he was a minor. And we're fighting. We're going to fight the appeals process. We're going to fight to try to save the life and stop the execution for a blasphemy charge. We have our tools at the U.N. We have our office in Pakistan. We have our mechanisms within the U.S. government that we can try to reach out to the State Department, to Congress now that there's a more favorable Congress to fighting persecution in the house.

Things like that. That's how widespread the work of the ACLJ is and on just one issue. When you take it and we have that nimbleness and the ability to go into all these different spheres to have influence, that's what you're supporting when you support the work of the ACLJ.

And right now, during the match, it's a very important time to do it. Yeah, absolutely. So make that donation to ACLJ.org. We appreciate it. I appreciate everyone who's commented and said they're going to donate.

I really appreciate that. Let's go ahead and take another phone call. Let's go to Justin in the State of California. Justin, welcome.

Hey, thanks for taking my call, everyone. Yeah, so that statement by this administration regarding the zero COVID policy in China just sounds like a completely cover yourself legal statement, like hot air, like is that the strongest message we can project to those people suffering over there through these insane policies by the administration in China? Right. This is the zero COVID policy that they're talking about is where there have been reports that the government is welding doors shut on apartment buildings. People can't leave Disneyland in Shanghai. It's not just, hey, we don't want COVID.

Everyone wants that. Everyone wants there to be no more COVID. This is when they're using oppressive humanitarian abuses in China.

We know that China commits genocide against people. This is how bad it is. And what the government is saying is we've said that zero COVID is not a policy we're pursuing here in the United States. Right. Hopefully that you're not sending the federal government to weld doors shut on apartment buildings.

Yes. There was a lot of craziness that happened during the lockdowns and everything that came out of it. And look, we learned a lot and we learned a little more now than we did then. And I think that's smart for everyone to go, okay, yeah. I mean, we all lived through a very interesting time, but still a lot of people are going through it right now.

So I get that totally. There are a lot of people who are calling in still. We're going to try to get to a couple more calls, but again, I want to tell you this. We only got a minute and a half left later on in the day, 8 p.m. Eastern time and work yourself back.

I don't have to do the time zones for you. You're smart people. Eight o'clock Eastern today, we'll be having a J-Sekulow band live performance.

It's usually kind of our end of the month fundraiser. They have a lot of fun. They had some brand new songs. You know, you may not be familiar with the J-Sekulow band, but it's my dad. He plays the drums, plays a little guitar. You also have John Schlitt from Petra. You have John Elefante from Kansas. You got John Lowry from Petra. You got Mark Townsend, who was in the DC Talk band, was musical director and an incredible producer, as well as the whole rest of them.

They're all great. And they'll be doing that live show tonight on all your social media platforms. So make sure you tune into that. And it's also a great time to donate.

It's always fun, especially at the end of November, being our last day of a matching challenge. And I appreciate that. And I appreciate everybody. A lot of comments have come in with support saying that they just donated. So I want to thank all of you who've done that, each and every one of you.

I don't call people out necessarily by name just because I don't know if you want all that publicized, but know that I'm watching and I'm reading all the comments and I really do appreciate it, especially right now. We know it's tough. We know that there is inflation.

We know that we are potentially headed towards the recession if they don't want to stay under no... But we know that there are incredible people like you who keep this going and keep this work going. So again, I want to thank you. And if you do want to make that donation now that the broadcast is wrapping up for the day, visit ACLJ.org today. Again, for the rest of the day, it is matched. So we appreciate that. We'll see you tonight for the Jay Sekuloban concert.