Biden’s Failed State of the Union: China Spying, Fentanyl, Border, Inflation, War, Crime

Today on Seculo, Biden's failed State of the Union.

China spying, Fentanyl, border, inflation, war in Europe, and crime in our streets. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments.

Or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Seculo. Welcome to Seculo. As we said yesterday, just in case you didn't spend an hour and a half plus watching Joe Biden deliver the State of the Union, we would break the key points down for you today. And as you heard in the opening of the broadcast, he did not put across kind of the actual state of our country. Which is a country, when he talked about Fentanyl, he doesn't talk about where the Fentanyl comes from or why we have this Fentanyl problem. He talks about drug rehabilitation centers. That doesn't really work with Fentanyl because if you take it and you have a body type that responds negatively to it, you die. There's not like a treatment.

It's worse than heroin, which is hard to even say, but it is true. When you talk about border security, they have a plan. They have that issue. We know they don't have a plan. They've only changed their positions when a court has mandated them to extend Title 42 or keep remain in Mexico because they didn't follow the Administrative Procedures Act.

The crime problem in our streets, the violence in our streets, the fact that we have an ongoing war in Europe right now, I mean, inflation in our country. They lie about the jobs numbers. They say they created 12 million jobs.

Not true. Maybe a couple million in the last three years, but certainly not 12 million. Most of those jobs, those 10 million, were people who lost them during COVID and have gotten work again since we have been reopened.

You know, it's interesting on Title 42, by the way, while he was making the speech, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court saying, hey, the case is going to move out because we are actually going to keep Title 42 in place until the expiration of the pandemic, which we anticipate and set it subject to change in May. So, I mean, of course, they're ignoring really the 64-ton elephant in the room, which is, as you said, not getting to the root of the problem. Why do we have a fentanyl problem in the United States?

Because we have a porous border and it's easy for the drug cartels to get their product into the country and then distribute it through their networks. They go right up the interstate expressway. We've talked about that a lot here. That's how it works. Not a mention on inflation, really.

No. I mean, did the word inflation ever come up? I don't even know if it came up.

Maybe it did once. But, again, when you look at it, no solutions here. Yeah, he's like, let's finish the job was the kind of theme.

That's because he's going to run again. We haven't started. I mean, if you're talking policy-wise and implementation-wise, it doesn't feel like we've started to create solutions. I mean, the only solution to inflation is to raise interest rates.

That's it. It's the only action this administration has taken, raise interest rates. He talked about a lot of fees they're going to get rid of.

How are they going to get rid of that? The executive branch can't do that? Well, he thinks he can. He thinks he can get rid of airline fees on his own?

They're hitting their airline fees. And also, he's going to get rid of the resort tax because they're not really resorts. Yeah, that really makes sense to middle America. Well, somebody wrote this speech and thought that's what they were doing. Yeah, it's very bizarre. That resort line, to me, was really off-putting. Because what a resort is to one person is something very different to other people.

Again, that's based off your life experience, your income level. His bite on inflation was just saying that we're doing so much better than the rest of the world. Yeah. Not that I know this is a problem for most Americans. So the cost of – now, it's a State of the Union speech. Chinese spy balloons. Well, we took that down after they finished – by the way, we took the Chinese spy balloon down after they finished getting all the data that they had from the United States. We took it out over waterways, but they already got the data. And we've got our own military bidding.

They didn't catch it before. Oh, not only that, we have a gap in our domain. A gap in our domain? That's a little scary. What does that even mean, by the way?

What is a gap in the domain? You mean NORAD and the Northern Command had no access. It didn't work. Probably because they're running off systems from 1982. We get your reaction to this, too. NORAD is still running off systems from 1982. They can't track Santa Claus, though.

Even that looks outdated these days. Yes. Let's go ahead and take calls. We'll open our phone lines up. Your reaction to the State of the Union speech is 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110. We have Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee joining us with his reaction as well as Rick Grenell today, but give us a call at 1-800-684-3110.

Be on the show. Welcome back to Secchios. So it touches on issues that we're concerned about, but then doesn't add to the solution to it. And the solutions offered are just absolutely bizarre if you know anything, for instance, about fentanyl. Take a listen to Joe Biden last night discussing the fentanyl epidemic in our country by 106. Fentanyl is killing more than 70,000 Americans a year.

You got it. So let's launch a major surge to stop fentanyl production in the sale and trafficking with more drug detection machines, inspection, cargo, stop pills and powder at the border. You know what the problem is with this? How do you stop it at the border? I mean, detection machines are great. Stop illegal, unlawful entry into the United States, which includes the drug cartels and terrorists. You can smuggle 100,000 of these pills in a backpack, so what kind of machine is he talking about? A machine that doesn't exist.

He's talking about large scale, like if it's on a tractor trailer or a boat. You know, the Congress on that one sounded a little bit like, Wes, the House of Commons, right? I mean, a little bit about the House of Commons, and they said, yeah, I thought it was fine. He's coming to their place.

On their invitation, he comes in, gives a speech. Here's the thing I found interesting. He once said, secure the border. That was the problem.

Yeah, absolutely. And what we've also realized just recently, the Texas Highway Patrol has several times, just in recent weeks, stopped people who actually somehow got across the border, like you said, with backpacks or other ways, and they're carrying thousands of fentanyl pills with them. They're not only coming through ports of entry and being apprehended and sometimes the drugs confiscated at a port of entry by border patrol. They are flooding across the border because the Boris is so porous and the open border policies of the Biden administration, a direct result of that, you know, unfortunately, is 70,000 Americans a year dying from fentanyl poisoning. And yet it's not about more drug detection machines. It's about securing and closing the border. It's about, in effect, declaring war on the drug cartels to some extent, but he's not doing that. I think President Biden sees the border as a concern, but not as the true threat that it actually is to American security and to health and safety. He doesn't like a border wall, but they sure like putting up the border fence around the Capitol last night. Yeah, I think there was going to be some random insurrection last night, unplanned, hundreds of thousands of people that the security, you know, couldn't take care of a few protesters in D.C.

So that's the thing. They locked themselves down when he, and I'm sure that was at his request, which again is absurd. This is the People's House, People's Congress. But take a listen to, he tries to hoodwink Republicans on this one. If we don't pass my comprehensive immigration reform, let's at least pass my plan to provide the equipment and officers to secure the border. And a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers, those on temporary status, farm workers, essential workers.

Notice the applause line drop there. Most of those Republicans have said, until you secure the border, we're not going to handle the Dreamers. If you do actually secure the border, we will.

By the way, and that has been the plan, the position for 20 years. To get the border secure, there was going to be comprehensive, it was under George W. Bush, comprehensive immigration reform, but we got to secure the border. And it was that time, it was Harry Reid, would not allow it to take place. Now then we, so I want to switch for a moment to the abortion issue because a lot of people expected there to be a lot on it.

It was actually just one basic section. Let's go ahead and play that. Congress must restore the right that was taken away in Roe v. Wade and protect Roe v. Wade. The Vice President and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive health care and safeguard patient safety. While already more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans.

So of course he says this right in front of the Supreme Court of the United States. What's interesting is he's getting criticized from the left for not doing enough. We'll get to more in a moment, but that's where the criticism is coming in. Absolutely. So the criticism from the left is you only mentioned abortion one time in your speech and that was not enough.

I mean it is ridiculous. You know, he's very truthful. The Vice President and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive health care, which is code word for abortion.

That's exactly right. This administration, the Biden administration, has done their best to do whatever they can to push and promote and protect abortion across the board, even against states that want to regulate it. Let me play this fight. This is when he talks about a national abortion ban and I'm going to talk to Jordan about the politics. Listen. While already more than a dozen states are enforcing extreme abortion bans.

Make no mistake about it. If Congress passes a national ban, I will veto it. Oh, so he gets all this applause and every, okay, Chuck Schumer is not a passing a national abortion ban. No, but they've had to pivot from codifying Roe to flipping it and saying because they lost the House. Yes. So we still say, yeah, it wasn't the midterm elections we all wanted, but that line right there shows you just the importance of taking back the House of Representatives because the line before was we have to codify Roe.

Now that's not an option. And again, the House may be able to pass some kind of permanent restriction at the federal level, like a 16-week or something like that heartbeat. But it's not, like you said, it's not getting through Chuck Schumer's Senate, though Biden did call him the minority leader. I wish he was.

He is actually the majority leader and the Democrats are in charge there. I'm going to take, let's take Bob's call from West Virginia. This is an interesting call, Wes, for you to comment on too. Go ahead, Bob. Yes. Thank you very much for taking my call.

My call is this. My question is this. The spy balloon that flew over the United States, it flew over several states. Do the governors have the authority of those states to activate the National Guard and direct them to shoot it down?

I don't think so, Jay. I mean, a state to do that, states do not shoot down aircraft out of the skies over the state. No, and you run into the whole situation with foreign policy, which is uniquely an Article I expense, Article I power.

What's interesting, though, is this. State governments are required to keep their citizens safe. So let's say, for instance, that spy balloon had a balloon, but it had a payload that included some kind of toxin. Now we know it had explosives.

It was carrying explosive devices. So I think you could make an argument they could have shot it down. Yeah, if the citizens are in danger, the governor would have the authority to address the danger and you could do that with the Air National Guard. Well, one of the tensions in the speech is Joe Biden still does not want to cast China as our enemy. He wants to cast them as our competitor. And you know they don't see us as just a competitor.

No, they don't see us as just a competitor. And I think that we have to be clear that that was an act of provocation, which, by the way, under the law of armed conflict, is grounds to take it down. But it's a great question about whether the governor could do that. I think the geopolitical ramifications would be significant.

So there would be a lot to consider. But I don't think they're helpless. I think if it happens again and they do that, I would not put past governors taking their own action. Well, they're not going to let the stuff fly over their citizens, right?

I would think that this is a one-time move. That would be an interesting... We should research this out. That would be a very... We'll get a team on it.

That was a really good question. We're going to get a team on that because if they continue to do this, this could be problematic. I want to go back to the abortion thing for a moment. Politically it worked for them in the midterms, correct? Yeah, definitely. So they got to benefit from that. And that's why he's doubling down on it in his speech, Cece, because they got a political benefit. That helps them.

Absolutely. So when you read that, when he says, you know, we've done... Yeah, we're doing... The vice President and I are doing everything to protect access to reproductive healthcare. Of course they are. And of course he was going to mention it in his speech because it did help them in the elections. It is one of their democratic strongholds and they are owned by Planned Parenthood. And so they're never going to give up this fight. But we have to be clear that for them politically it has worked.

Yes, it seemed to work, especially when you... I mean, we got the House by five seats and we didn't get the Senate. When you create confusion on a lot of these constitutional amendments and people don't know whether a yes votes yes or no votes no, yes, absolutely, it helped them. So, you know, it's interesting to me that that... If you look at the two areas we discussed, the American Center for Law and Justice is involved in all of them. Okay?

We're going to get in, we're going to... I want to address that issue about what governor's authority is to protect our citizens from a spy balloon and payload that could be dangerous. When it came to the abortion issue, obviously we're front and center. We filed a lawsuit yesterday or day before in federal court for the incident that took place at the Air and Space Museum. We are filing another one against the National Archives and they send a letter back saying, oh, you must be talking about what happened at the National Space Museum. And they put in their letter to our lawyers, our team, a link to a Fox News article.

I said, no, it happened at your place too. So that's another lawsuit that's going to be filed in the next day or so. So on the life issue we're involved, on the geopolitical issues we're involved, on the national security issues we're involved, that's what the ACLJ does. So your support of the ACLJ makes a huge difference. I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, support the work of the American Center for Law and Justice. That is how we keep this broadcast on the air.

That's how we give you this expert analysis. That's how we do the legal work. Yeah, and again, go to ACLJ.org, stay updated with all of the issues that we're working on, the cases that we're working on, the policy issues that we're working on.

But again, those students that we represent and their parents who attended the March for Life and then went to those museums, whether it was the Air and Space or National Archives, there might have been more. You can contact us at ACLJ.org slash help if it happened to you. We do it all because of your financial support to the ACLJ.

It doesn't cost those parents or students a thing. ACLJ.org. Alright, welcome back to Secular. We're joined by a great friend of ours, Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee. Senator Hagerty, I want to get right to it. You were at the State of the Union last night. Just your thoughts generally on the speech by President Biden?

Well, it was painful, I must say. Again, this is just a continuation of the Joe Biden presidency, which has been the greatest bait and switch in American politics. You know, he ran as a moderate hiding in his basement. What he's done is he's handed over his entire administration and his presidency to a far left woke mob.

And what we see is just disinformation, you know, far left policies. And he tried to basically gaslight the American public last night with all types of misrepresentations. It was really, really hard to sit there and listen to him taking a victory lap on the economy that he's done his very best to destroy.

To mention Sentinel and talk about the crisis, but not the fact that he's made it far worse. And you just think about time and time again, Joe Biden stands there and misses it. And the compliant media, I'm sure, are saying that he hit it out of the park. But I think the person that really hit it out of the park was Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her retort last night.

She did a great job. Let me play something, Senator, from President Biden last night regarding China. I'm committed to work with China where we can advance American interests and benefit the world. But make no mistake about it. As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country.

And we did. You know, the ridiculous nature of that, of course, was that balloon would traverse the entire continental United States right through the middle of the heartland of the country, including Tennessee, by the way. And then he shoots it down when it goes over Hilton Head after it's already connected its data. And the word he doesn't want to use is enemy. And I understand the geopolitical ramifications of all this.

So he likes the word competition and all that. What was your reaction to the way that entire spy balloon situation was handled? Well, I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. He should have just confronted this head on and talked in real terms with the American people. The Chinese Communist Party has no respect for this administration. They have no respect for our sovereignty. Their affiliated entities are partnering with Mexican drug cartels and killing Americans. Joe Biden isn't mentioning that. They have no respect for our sovereignty in the air.

They clearly proved that. And I think what they were doing was testing us as a nation to see what our resolve was. And frankly, had a newspaper outlet in Montana not spotted that balloon?

I'm sorry. I don't know that we'd have ever heard about it. And I think Anthony Blinken might have been flying over to Beijing and having a photo op, which seems to be the way this administration wants to run their entire presidency, is from photo op to photo op, from press release to press release. Spin, spin, spin.

Nothing anchored in reality whatsoever. The Chinese are acting like our enemies. Think about it. We saw the administration, Senator Haggerty, try to blame this on the Trump administration, that this was happening on the Trump administration. Now we've clarified that and we've got even kind of more troubling info in your kind of oversight role as a U.S. senator. We heard from General Van Herck, who oversees NORAD yesterday.

Let's play this bite for everybody. Take a listen. It's my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. So with the American people, Senator Haggerty, here, domain awareness gap, you were the ambassador of Japan, I guess, while this was happening and NORAD was missing it and not reporting it because they didn't even catch it. Seems like there's a serious role for Congress and the Senate to jump in and say, what is going on at NORAD that you didn't catch these giant balloons? Well, there's certainly a lot more to undertake and to understand here.

You're exactly right. I think what we're seeing is a very systemic effort by the Chinese Communist Party to build out capabilities ranging from satellites to these high stratospheric balloons all the way down to planes, the same way they're doing with their Navy. They've got more ships now than we do. They're taking a very aggressive posture from a military standpoint.

We need to wake up, appreciate it, and deal with it. You know, it's interesting also that we were talking to our military analyst, Colonel West Smith, and he said that the Chinese right now have more launch capability for nuclear weapons than the United States as well. Let me ask you about the fentanyl situation, which is, of course, wreaking havoc for families across America. The President spoke about that. What he doesn't say, though, and refuses to say, is to secure the border.

He talks about having, you know, better detection machines and that kind of technology, but the fact of the matter is, as Jordan said in the last segment, you can take 100,000 fentanyl pills in a backpack. And so you've got to stop the unlawful entry at the border, which is something he refuses to acknowledge. Yeah, it's absolutely pathetic that if you think about who has been the greatest precipitant of the deaths from fentanyl in America, it's been Joe Biden and his policies have absolutely collapsed in our southern border.

And the Democrats in the Congress and the Senate are walking hand in hand with him in this responsibility. Three times last year, I brought my legislation to the floor to block Sentinel coming across that southern border. Title 42 could be and should be expanded to include what is the greatest health crisis that we face as the nation right now.

Between the ages of people between 18 and 45, the number one killer of people in that age group right now is drug overdose. We could stop it by securing that border. And each time Democrats came to the floor to block my legislation, they're willing to, you know, incur 100,000 deaths a year just so that they can get their wish list done in terms of transforming America, changing our electorate and, you know, flooding our country with now over 5 million people on Joe Biden's watch.

We don't know who they are. 160 different nationalities have been encountered, as they say, coming across that border just since Joe Biden took office and collapsed it. We have a massive national security threat there. Not only I would say, Senator Hager, you're a foreign affairs expert. You're on the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

You're also on the Banking and Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, as well as the Appropriations and Rules Committee. But I want to go to the economy then, because I think that bottom line, this is what impacts every single American, whether it's inflation or just economic uncertainty in the stock market. The Biden administration acts like they've got a plan. They act like everything's rosy. They'll say we added 12 million jobs, and then we get the actual Labor Statistics Board tell us, well, not really, we added a couple million jobs.

The other 10 million were jobs people lost during the COVID pandemic that they just returned to. Do you hear any actual economic plan to get us out of this inflation scenario? Because it seems like the only thing they do is raise interest rates. Well, they have no plan whatsoever. In fact, if you listen carefully to what Joe Biden said, all he did was tout how he's going to spend more, more, more.

We need to finish the job meeting. We need to spend trillions more. If you think about what the Fed's job is like right now, they have a very difficult time because this nation's fiscal policies under Joe Biden have been so heavily inflationary. Think about the trillions of dollars that they pumped into the economy at a time we didn't need it. The federal spending is crowding out private spending. And you've got a Fed that's probably going to have to push the private sector economy into a recession just to deal with the fact that we're overwhelming it with all of this public money spending. And there's more to come. There's over $700 billion left in unspent COVID funds in state coffers.

It's still in the pipeline, and he's still talking about spending more. Senator, we appreciate you being on. Appreciate your work for the American people and the folks, of course, of your state of Tennessee, and keep up the great work. We appreciate you. Thank you so much, George.

Great to be with you today. Thanks, Senator Hagerty. We work closely with his team as well at the ACLJ on a number of issues, one I'm not going to talk about yet that we're working on. But again, it's great to have Senator Hagerty here. Proud to have him as our senator in Tennessee along with Marshall Blackburn.

You know, I want to say this. We have ACLJ. We have ACLJ Action. So every issue we've talked about today we're involved in, either through the ACLJ or our affiliated organization ACLJ Action. So that's where you come in, folks. Your support of these organizations makes all the difference.

That's why we're able to do this broadcast every day. So we encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Brand new lawsuit filed against the Smithsonian. There's about to be a new one filed against the National Archives. They're just not aware that they were censoring speech.

Except their police officer, their law enforcement knew exactly what to say. Take the hats off. No activity like this in here.

That was unreal. We'll be back within the next half hour in just a minute. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. And now your host, Jordan Seculo. Welcome back to Seculo.

We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-31. Tim, we're just joined by US Senator Bill Haggerty. His reaction to the State of the Union was the Ambassador to Japan. Under the Trump administration, he's an economic expert, has been banking and finance and also a foreign affairs expert as well. So he's on those committees. So to hear him talk about all those issues.

And then Rick Rinnell is going to be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast. And we'll get into how these intel issues all play in to what Joe Biden was talking about last night. But I think what is clear to us is that this was a failed State of the Union address. And the reason why is we have China spying and he talks tough there, but we know we waited until it had completed its mission.

They had never sent a balloon like this over our territory ever that got onto actual US ground, over US land, not just in our territorial waters for two minutes, which they didn't catch before. So we've got a serious problem in our military. I want to talk about Rick Rinnell too. I know we have great intelligence, but I feel like NORAD, the way I'm imagining it, is like what Top Gun looked like in 1988. I'm going to play this bite, but let's wait until Rick's on.

I want to play it when Rick's on because he was Director of National Intelligence. And then, of course, the abortion issue he does to, you know, kind of gin up his base and get that going and, you know, he's going to veto legislation that provides for a national ban on abortion that's not going through any member of the United States. It's not going to go through a majority in the Senate.

So it doesn't even exist. We've got a call coming in on that. Let's take Diane's call from Wisconsin.

Yeah. Hey, Diane, welcome to Seculo. You're on the air. Thank you for taking my call.

I am a mother of six adult children, one veteran. Here's my question. I'm questioning why, by the way, I 100% support your organization, but my question is this. Why isn't ACLJ addressing personhood under the Constitution for these babies being killed up to birth and after? Yeah, well, we do. Actually, I can't even count how many briefs we filed with the Supreme Court arguing the personhood. In fact, if you look at the Dobbs opinion, now, remember, it just dealt with can a state enforce this.

There is language in there that talks about the importance of life. And there's other Supreme Court cases, too, that recognized the competing interest, they called it, between the woman seeking the abortion and what they call the fetal life. So I think, look, as the technology has clearly established, the unborn child is a child.

They don't even really argue that anymore, that it's not. So we have maintained that it's the personhood of the unborn child entitled to constitutional protection, and we're continuing to advocate that. The difference now is, Diane, we have to advocate it in the state courts, because it's not really federal litigation anymore, and we're doing that.

We've worked with state attorney generals, we have worked with legislators, Walter Weber from our office, Olivia Summers, they've been involved in drafting various bills at the local and state level. So we're doing that, and that is our position at the ACLJ. Yeah, I would say, I mean, the Supreme Court came close, but they didn't quite get the personhood.

No, not quite. Because it really is a separate issue than just overturning Roe v. Wade. And what I think most justices think should be responsible to legislators or a constitutional amendment, that kind of process, not judges. A Supreme Court is not going to decide an issue not before them, and that issue was not before them, but we do advocate that position. They got pretty close.

I mean, as close as I think we may see in our lifetime. Who knows? I mean, another case presents itself.

It's a conservative Supreme Court, no doubt. All right, we've got Rick Grenell coming up. I want to play that bite about the military saying, whoops. What was it?

Failed our domain gap? Was that at will? Okay, code word, we didn't catch it. So are we going to find out about that? Then they were saying, oh, you're mad at, you know, you're saying something about the Biden administration under Trump.

It happened 10 times, but they didn't tell anybody. No, because the military probably embarrassed and didn't even know what they were saying. We'll find out from, you know, Rick's going to know, and he'll tell us what he can tell us. And that's why, again, your support of the ACLJ, our next person on our broadcast, our next guest is not a guest, he's a member of our team, Rick Grenell. His former job, director of national intelligence, okay, and ambassador to Germany, a G5 country.

So your support of the ACLJ makes a gigantic difference, ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Seculo as we cover the State of the Union and try to get into the detail of what was said, what was not said. And also some of the lead up, you get a lot of lead up commentary from the administration and leadership within the administration to try and cover issues so that the President doesn't have to cover them. One of those was the failure to detect a lot of this Chinese action over the last four or five years, which included under the Trump administration, but it wasn't being reported to anybody because it wasn't, well, what the military is saying is it wasn't even being tracked.

I want to play, Rick's joining us, I want to play, Rick, so you hear it and our audience will hear it as well. This is General Glenn Van Herk. He made this statement about the gap.

Take a listen. It's my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. All right, Rick, you were the acting director of national intelligence for the previous administration. First of all, explain to our audience in English what he's talking about. What he is saying is that we are having either a communications problem or a technology problem.

We either can't detect it or we're not communicating what we have. So it's a crisis when you have someone who's in charge saying, you know, we didn't see it and I'm not sure why we didn't see it. So look, the Biden team immediately subscribed to this situation, an excuse-ridden messaging point. And what they tried to do from the very beginning was to say, well, this also happened under Donald Trump. It's not just our failure.

And we now know that that's not true. We now know that this is once again just like the border where they were blaming Donald Trump for their own border policies, their rewriting history. And I hope that the oversight committees in Washington will push back on them. I hope the media will, but I'm not holding my breath. Rick, one other follow up on that and without disclosing anything, obviously, but we have the capability to determine if the Chinese have a spy balloon flying over the United States, right?

For sure, 100%. And we would notice other countries doing that. We, you know, the American people should feel very confident that our intelligence agencies are very good and they can detect situations that are threats to our national security. So why do you think the general comes out that it makes that statement, Rick? Is it to cover not briefing folks like you who should have been briefed on matters like this? Is it a disconnect between the intelligence community and the US military? Look, we have intelligence failures pretty regularly and we have to be better at identifying those instead of blaming previous administrations. I think that there's no question that the DIA, the defense department, intelligence services, and other agencies are not there talking to each other. Remember, we created DNI because of that. Alright, we're going to see if we can get Rick's line cleaned up there a little bit.

He's obviously out and we're glad that he's talking to us. You know, I think that, hey, here's the one thing that's positive out of what Rick just said, and that is that in fact, and this is key, we do have the capability to do this, but it does beg the question why we've got the general who's in charge of Northern Command NORAD, says we have this gap in domain, in other words, meaning lack of communication, in other words, we may have known it was there but not communicating it as a security issue to the various agencies as an intelligence issue, or we missed it and we missed it often. Yeah, it does not make sense, this idea, this disconnect, and it's very true, American people hear this, it scares them. Yes, it was not a good statement, I mean, I don't like it. I want to play Rick for you, if we can here, the President talked a little bit about China, doesn't want to make them an enemy, obviously, the way he's approaching it makes them a competitor, take a listen to number 104. Winning the competition should unite all of us. We face serious challenges across the world, but in the past two years, democracies have become stronger, not weaker.

Autocracies have become weaker, not stronger. Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. Name me one.

Name me one. What is he, Rick, first of all, winning the competition with China should unite all of us, but what is he talking about in the rest of this? You know, I listened to him three or four times, kept replaying that, I have no idea what he is saying. It doesn't make any sense, you know, when you watched his speech, though, he couldn't even read the teleprompter, he was stumbling over words, it was so embarrassing.

And guess what? We're not the only, Americans are not the only ones who are noticing that Joe Biden cannot read his speech. World leaders like Xi, we've got enemies, we've got friends, and others who are all watching him stumble through his State of the Union speech, and it's not good. So Rick, let me, I'm really trying to figure this out, okay, what is the man possibly talking about? This is what he says, name, and he's screaming this, name me one world leader who switched places with Xi Jinping, name me one.

Do you know what he's talking about, Joe? I don't know, I feel like, Rick, you could go 50 or 60, much smaller level dictators who would be happy to be a dictator like that, over 1.3 billion people with the military they have. Well, that's Erdoğan. He might want to switch places with Erdoğan, I'll give you one.

Bashir? Yeah, I mean, just to take that kind of power? Yes.

And military strength? So I mean, Rick, someone's prepping this, right? I mean, someone's writing this stuff, and it's, you know, we previously said, and it's true, and you've said it, these are like 23-year-olds running the foreign policy of the United States. So Putin would like to have Russia's military? Yeah.

China's military right now? Yeah. Rick? Yeah, look, I think the reality is, is that he misread that line. The way that he said it does not make any sense. Of course, you know, China is a world power, and there's a lot of people that would want to, you know, switch places with Xi.

That's like saying, who wouldn't want to be Tom Brady? I'll be kind, you're being kind, I'll chalk it up to he misread the line, because that makes me feel like it's not as bad as I thought it was. What would the line, I'm trying to think.

I have no idea. Because he wanted to scream. He screamed it tough. Act tough. If that was his shot at Xi, I mean, I know the guy doesn't laugh very much, at least on camera. I bet he did laugh. Yeah.

Rick, last question here, Rick. On overall, if you look at China, you look at the border, you look at the spy satellite that came across, you look at inflation, the State of the Union is fragile, in my view. Yeah, look, I'm still puzzled as to why the speech wasn't filled with more foreign policy and global leadership, why we didn't mention Turkey or Syria. Turkey is a NATO ally since 1952. And yet, the President of the United States didn't mention the devastating earthquake, more than 11,000 people have been killed. He didn't even mention it. And, you know, it's impossible to understand how they put together a speech and didn't see the news in Turkey and Syria. You know, it's interesting to me because the world has united to help Turkey and Syria through this situation. I don't have this confirmed. But I was talking to friends of mine that do a lot of work in Israel and that the Israeli government had provided relief efforts and humanitarian aid, medical care, big numbers, devices to help locate people, and not a mention, Rick, not a mention in the speech.

Not one sentence. We're the world's leader when it comes to search and rescue. Israel is right there as well.

The Americans and the Israelis are there trying to find individuals who are trapped. This was a golden opportunity to stand up for a NATO ally. Instead of standing up for a NATO ally, he spent more time on Ukraine once again. And we don't have a treaty with Ukraine. We have a NATO obligation to Turkey. And I know we can have a long discussion about Erdogan and what's happening in Turkey, but since 1952, Turkey has been a member of NATO. We better be there for NATO allies. And it seems like this would be a good opportunity maybe to help that relationship and prepare it by showing goodwill.

That's what I was saying. The miscues here on a global scale are incredible. By the way, Turkey, ACLJ has been involved.

Israel, of course, we have an office in Jerusalem. This gives you an idea of the scope and nature of what we do. He could give out a website to support something like that. Try and rebuild the relationship with a NATO ally that's been tough.

And it's a horrible tragedy. Rick, we appreciate it. Folks, again, all these issues that we were discussing, the ACLJs involved in front and center, and your support for our work on that is critical. I want to encourage you as we get ready to go to the last segment, we're going to take your calls. Logan's going to be joining us at 1-800-6843-1110. What did you think about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' speech last night? Her rebuttal, which is a very tough job.

I thought she did a fantastic job. We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. That's 1-800-6843-110. We've opened up our phone lines for that. And then, as I said, Logan will be joining us. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. But also, follow us on all of our social media.

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But again, it's a great way to stay engaged. We're putting up shorts and reels, which Jordan, you're getting hundreds of thousands of views a day. We are, so it's a great way, again, to share a short four video with your friends and family about what we're doing and our commentary as well.

Be right back. So we played a lot of Joe Biden. I'll tell you the truth. Most of the time, the responses are not always great. I mean, from either party, by the way.

But they're very tough. There have been some that have stood out over time. I think Bob McDonald's in Virginia was really cool the way he did his with a group of people inside their legislature. And I thought Sarah Huckabee Sanders did a great job last night.

And now the governor of Arkansas. So I want to play a bite from her and then we get your reaction as well. If you want to call us, you got to call it now.

1-800-684-3110 or put it in the chat. Let's go to bite 145. America is great because we are free. But today our freedom is under attack. And the America we love is in danger.

President Biden and the Democrats have failed you. And it's time for a change. A new generation of Republican leaders are stepping up. Not to be caretakers of the status quo, but to be change makers for the American people.

So there you go. Talking about new leadership of the Republican Party. Certainly she's young, she's a mom. She's 80, she's 40. She's the governor of the state.

Governor of the state. What was your sense? The Republican media has spun the entire speech. I watched a lot of it with my son who's 10 years old and he wanted to see some of the state of the union. I said, okay, stay up. Let's watch some of it.

Made it about half hour through. You know, there was a lot of people saying that it was kind of a mess of a speech. I don't necessarily disagree with that. Just didn't seem to really ever find its footing necessarily. The terms they used, some of the phrasing, a lot of promises. I feel like there's a lot of promises that it will be very difficult to keep. It felt like a campaign speech in that sense. A lot of empty promises that are going to be impossible. Or a lot of things that set up under President Trump that now they're taking credit for. Whether that's even the insulin, you know, that's a big moment on the insulin cabinet.

$35. Well, it's something that was tried to be done multiple years ago. And then, of course, they're leaving a lot on the table in terms of some of the big issues that we all are really concerned about and focusing on a lot of the issues that I don't think the majority of America care about. How do you think Sarah Sanders did? She did a good job.

I think it's an interesting spot to see. Someone who's so young in this. I mean, obviously, she had a lot of training on the job training when it comes to her time as press secretary and really that sort of onslaught that happened in her mid 30s. So now, a few years removed from that. Governor of State can still show that, you know, she can hold her own. I think it'll be a few terms maybe until we see her run, but I think that that likely is in the cards. For her, after I'm President, I don't think it'll be in 2024. I'm curious to get your reaction to this.

800-684-3110. She got to run that state for a while, but it was good. Because it is, as you said, Jordan, it is a speech, when you're doing the reply speech, that is fraught with disaster. Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal.

I mean, I could go through the list. Bobby Jindal was just bizarre. The shot was weird. Rubio had to go for the water and the way that messed up the video feed, instead of having like a glass next to him that he could have, he had to go all easily sipped.

There would have been no issue. Again, it wasn't really their faults. It was the team around them. They learned a lot. If they know Rubio needed water that night, you put a glass so he doesn't have to move, which messes up a character.

I do think they learned that. Bob McDonald, I think, set a tone. And I think, again, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, come into the living room. I'm a mom. I'm young. I'm a governor of a state. So when you hear Republican, don't just think 60, 70, 80-year-old white guys with gray hair.

This is who Republicans are. Yeah, and I think Bob McDonald is the only one in recent history, and gosh, that's been 8, 10 years now, that I actually can kind of recall. I remember because they kind of built him like a mini state of the union where he had a crowd and it was this. And that was a big moment. And obviously it was a big moment for his potential career. It went after it right after because it was so good.

Yeah, then it was over for him. And I feel not dissimilarly where I think that this was a big moment for Sarah Huckabee Sanders if people watched it. And that will be the question to her.

For the people who do watch it are the people that vote in primaries one day. So she's not just the press secretary or the daughter of Michael. Yeah, even her voice is a little bit different, a little bit slower paced, a little bit more southern, if you will. Not as hawkish as you may have been during… Not as harsh. Yeah, because they had to be. Look, Spicer had to be. A lot of the people in that role, Kelly McEnany, had to be so intense. That's not their personality most of the time.

No, they're not them at all. They're being attacked and they had to defend. That's why we kind of sometimes say you feel bad for people in that role.

It's not an easy role. But you know what, set her up for a good job and we'll see what happens to her. We'll see what happens for this. I'm curious what the ratings were. Obviously also President Trump did a little bit of a response as well.

He did a couple minutes version, waited until she was done, then released that. And it was kind of what you'd expect. Yeah, there was no substance to that. It was a response.

It certainly was a response. He definitely spoke to where people are, which they want to hear more. They want it a little bit different. Somebody's got to get control of what's going on with the stuff they're sending out about Ron DeSantis coming out of the former President. I think it's gotten way over the top.

I'm just saying that. It's just too early for this country. Get wait till you're on the debate stage. Yeah, and argue policy.

Great. But this other stuff is ridiculous. Can I say something else?

Let's play the other Sarah Huckabee bite. Democrats want to rule us with more government control. But that's not who we are. America is the greatest country the world has ever known. Because we're the freest country the world has ever known.

We're the people who are strong and resilient. You know, you said this and you're right. Her cadence is totally different. Yeah, it's completely different. But she's not having to be the press secretary.

She's the boss now. Also, where they're recording it, it's a much calmer environment. It's an evening vibe, so you have to make sure that you are playing to the people that are watching live and they want to see this. Now, what's interesting is it was live, correct? It had to have been live. Because of the way technology has moved, it just did not feel live. And I think that's a way you decided to do the production side of it. It had a very produced vibe. The shot itself, the lighting, it's not what we're used to from what you would consider a live shot. And I think that helped her in some ways, but maybe it didn't bring us the urgency that I would have liked.

So that's just me nitpicking the production side. It looked beautiful, but I don't know if you need that. You needed something that felt like it was happening right then and that she was responding. But I thought overwhelmingly she did well. And I think Biden's speech, if I'm being 100% honest, I watched half of it live, half of it taped, half with my son. The kids had to go to bed.

I caught the last half recorded later on. Not memorable. It will not be a memorable speech.

It will not be something that we all talk about. The idea was don't even watch it. That was the message from the White House that day.

Yesterday we were playing that. It's not much to see here. I think honestly if you were a conservative, you weren't going to get anything you wanted. And liberals really did what they wanted. I mean there's this crazy judge poll that said 72% of people approve it. Of who watched it. Right.

That's going to be the main thing. How did they get that poll? Imagine how small that poll number is of how many people they had to call that actually said yes I watched the entire speech. I just think all those polls are meaningless. You've said that the polling you think is totally done now. Well that poll alone shows you right there.

It's meaningless. Because how hard is it for a pollster to find that night enough people to come up with a decent poll who actually sat for an hour and a half plus. Which I by the way was driving home from a hockey game.

I was listening to it but I had to get out of the car at one point. We're about to wrap up. I'm looking at the TV overnight ratings actually just broke. About 3 million people watched on ABC. About 3 million on CBS and another million and a half on FOX and 2 million on NBC.

It's about normal. To give you an example 4.3 million people were watching the Night Court reboot and it lost half the audience going into the State of the Union. Night Court had 4.5 million the State of the Union on their own network. No that's not good. Well it's good for Night Court it's not good for the State of the Union.

It means half the people either left or went to a cable news network. Do you like the Night Court reboot? It's pretty fun. Very 1980s.

I enjoy it. It's not as gritty as Steven. I think it's just because everything was out of focus. That's mainly what you're thinking of. Also it's the 1980s. Everything had a tone.

Everything was slightly brown. That kind of says it right there. Alright folks that does it for the broadcast today. Support the work of the ACLJ. You do that by going to ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.