BREAKING: National Archives REMOVES Security Guard, Special Counsel Makes Aggressive Move, and GOP Sets First Debate

Breaking news today on Sekulow, the National Archives removes Security Guard.

Special Counsel makes an aggressive move and the GOP sets its first Presidential debate. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. Hey, welcome to Sekulow.

We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Remember yesterday we talked about the Smithsonian's response. This is specifically to members of Congress, our good friends both in the Senate and the House.

Really led by Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Chip Roy. But a lot of our friends are on these letters and we're really appreciative that they did it to both of these entities. And the National Archives responded last night after we were on the air.

So everybody knows what we're talking about here. So remember we represent those pro-life students, parents, some law students, some who are adults, some who are minors who attended the March for Life and after the March for Life or before the March for Life, went to visit federally funded museums like the National Archives to see the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and the D.C. Air and Space Museum. And these are different clients in different instances were harassed because of either a beanie that said pro-life or because of pro-life shirts. And other people were in these facilities with other political messages on. They were just walking through as visitors, not trying to do any kind of protest there. And so it did not violate any policies at all, technically, of the Smithsonian or the National Archives. But they were harassed, told to take their either beanies or shirts off or turn them inside out.

They were escorted out. In one instance of the Smithsonian, the security guard said, you made my day. I can't wait to report this, which is a real threat, especially if you're a young person about to apply to college.

You can imagine how that could impact you. So the Smithsonian situation, they wrote back yesterday to Congress saying this was wrong, we are re-educating the security. National Archives took a little bit of a different approach, Dad.

Yeah, the museum there. The National Archives wrote this to members of Congress. The security officers involved in January 20th incident are actually private contractors at National Archives. So our vendor conducted its own investigation of the incident and determined a supervisor that employed who was working that day provided instructions to other security officers who worked for the same vendor that were contrary to our policy. So there is a policy and the supervisor took action that they say is contrary. The vendor has removed that supervisor from the National Archives contract so that person will no longer be there who was obviously there was someone there instructing those other security guards to act this way at National Archives. In National Archives also we already have a preliminary injunction. We have the federal court, got a consent decree, which is a federal preliminary injunction, which means they can't enforce a policy that discriminates against these students or anyone engaged in wearing a passive shirt that has a message on it. The interesting part of this, and this is where the discovery of the case will come in, will be this individual officer probably didn't come up this on his own.

Somebody said something to him and that's where discovery comes in. Now then go to the Smithsonian because this is the other case we have. No preliminary injunction. We haven't moved for a preliminary injunction yet on the Smithsonian.

Now that started to change. So over the weekend we started the process of getting ready for a preliminary injunction on the Smithsonian. What's interesting about that case and what's important about that case is it's a separate government agency, federal entity it's called. We're in those discussions right now with the Department of Justice to negotiate out the preliminary injunction. Once we have that, both cases will then proceed into what they call mediation and discovery. And while you call them separate entities, they are all being represented by the same DOJ attorneys. Yes, so one's a federal entity. We'll get into that in the next segment. One's not even a federal agency and still represented by the Department of Justice. Alright folks, we're going to take your calls, but you always ask, what do you think happened to these people?

Yeah. It's already starting to happen. That person will never be at National Archives again in a supervisory security role. So action already being done, but these cases are far from over to make sure your constitutional rights are protected now and in the future. Support the work of the ACLJ. Donate today at ACLJ.org. Share the broadcast with your friends and family. We'll be right back on Secula. Alright, welcome back to Secula. We are to your phone calls as well.

1-800-684-3110. So we're starting to see movement in the lawsuits we filed both against the Smithsonian and specifically the incident that happened at the Air and Space Museum with the pro-life students and at the National Archives, all on January 20th, which was the March for Life. And the interesting action here is we're getting responses back from congressional inquiries. We got the Smithsonian's yesterday.

We talked about that on the air. Today we have the National Archives, which came in last night, and they have actually removed the security supervisor who gave the instruction to other security guards there to harass and tell those who had the pro-life t-shirts on, in that case it was mostly t-shirts and buttons, to either take the shirts off, which is pretty absurd, or turn them inside out. And harassment continued throughout National Archives as well. So they're saying that supervisor who told that other security to act that way. So it's, again, always admitting to all of our allegations.

That's important, too. Everything we alleged, they have confirmed, either through their responses back to Congress, through the consent decree order in the National Archives situation, that supervisor will no longer be at National Archives. And it comes from a private vendor, they said, so that might be different from Smithsonian, but they will not be no longer there to supervise security at the National Archives ever again. You know what's so interesting about all that, Jordan? It's not over.

No. Oh, it's far from over because we didn't even start discovery yet. But you've got the Smithsonian, which is considered under law, not a federal agency like the Department of Justice or the National Archives. It's considered a federal entity. It's got federal control. And everybody was under the assumption that means they'll probably have outside lawyers. Well, it ends up they've got the same Department of Justice lawyers that are representing the National Archives Museum. It's the same interpretation we have, which is because the majority of their funding is federal. First Amendment applies, everything applies.

Exactly. So the First Amendment applies, constitutional protections apply. So what happens, and I think this is the key part of this, is we've got now a preliminary injunction in one on the National Archives case. So now we go into what's called a mediation phase, where you try to work out, we've sued them for damages, we've sued for changes of policy, we've got the temporary win on that. That case goes into mediation for 90 days. If it's not resolved in mediation, it then goes to full-blown hearings and trials.

So we've got that process going on. In the National Smithsonian, different because we have not sought a preliminary injunction. In fact, we just decided this weekend to seek the PI in the case because people are talking about coming back up there and they want to know what their rights are. So our lawyers are again talking to the Department of Justice lawyers about that very issue because that's a big deal.

Good question came in from Rumble. Is the security guard barred from employment at any security position or just the museum? Now the museum, National Archives contracts, and Smithsonian has not alleged this yet, but National Archives said they contract their security out to a company. So that company, the National Archives instructed that company to remove this supervisor from National Archives ever being and working at any National Archives facilities. National Archives does not have, I don't think, the ability to tell that company they have to fire that supervisor.

That will be then internally discussed within that company. But we're always very wary too when they try to lay the blame on one person. A hundred percent.

So don't think that like, I like this move by the way. I like the speed at which we're starting to see responses to from National Archives. Maybe they're getting used to having to respond quickly because of all those classified documents, all those other things. But I just want to reiterate to people, this is the tip of the iceberg.

They start taking these actions. It actually raises more questions usually. Yeah, because somebody had to tell that supervisory security personnel what the policy was.

And remember, somebody at the gift shop said it too, those are not the same companies. Right. Okay, so that's why we got to get to the bottom of it. Another great question came in on rumble.

Take your calls on Air 2 at 1-800-684-3110. Does the ACLJ have clients that are planning on going back with pro-life clothing to actually witness the problem? The answer is yes. It already happened at National Archives. National Archives, yes, because they went back on that week ago Friday when we were hosting Anody.

And now we've got people that want to go back, plaintiffs that want to go back to the Smithsonian. We just want to make sure before... I don't want an incident. Yeah, there's not another incident.

So that's why we're in those discussions now. They were very aggressive. The security personnel at the Smithsonian were very aggressive against the students. Yeah, I mean they followed them around, cursed at them. I mean the worst curse words you could use and there were miters there.

Wringed their hands saying, you've made my day. We had clients that did not want to go on the pleadings because they thought it would affect their applications to college. Yeah, I mean it's a sad state of the world in the country right now, but we do have brave clients who did stand up and they will then ensure that everyone's rights are protected, even those who are quieter and less inclined to join lawsuits. Correct.

Because it protects, when we win these, it protects everybody and all speech. But we've got to get into the next phase of this, which is the discovery phase. Let me tell you what that means, folks. That means you start taking depositions. You send written questions. We want to know who authorized the policy. What is the actual policy? How was it interpreted? How did the supervisor find out that what it was wrong?

How did you tell them it was wrong? They said they investigated their insurance company, the security company. We'd like that investigation because some security personnel is going to say, hey, that wasn't me.

I got this from somebody else. So that's where the trial prep comes in. Now, we've got a three-month window, we're two weeks into it already, to try to resolve it. If it doesn't get resolved, we will go to a trial. We are already in federal court on two of these, and we will go on trial if necessary right now. So, again, whether it is at a city council hearing in Boulder, Colorado, on the pro-life issue, or standing up for students' free speech rights in a district court, or representing the city of Ocala at the Supreme Court of the United States, case that's still pending, we'll see what happens with that one that you may know today. The fact is, as you look at all of these, ACLJ is involved front and center. And then coming up in the next segment, we got to talk about the special counsel move that, for those of you following this litigation against the former President and against, and trying to compel testimony from the former vice President, Mike Pence, there is some big, big constitutional issues about to break on that. I don't know if we have Andy with us or about to get him in a moment.

He's going to be joining us, but this is Jordan. The special counsel, Jack Smith, is moving very aggressively. He subpoenaed Jared and Ivanka, which is interesting because in a situation like that, that's a daughter and the son-in-law of the former President. And they want it.

They're compelling. Andy's with us. So you've got a very unique situation here, Andy, with Jack Smith as the special counsel that's been appointed by the attorney general to investigate January 6th litigation. There's a grand jury impaneled for that. There's a grand jury impaneled for the handling of documents. He tried to get a contempt order on the documents and lost that in federal court, interestingly, in Washington, D.C., not the judge in Florida. Now he is preemptively going in against Mike Pence on an issue there.

So let's talk about that for a moment. Vice President of the United States clearly can assert, and the former President will assert, executive privilege, but there's another privilege here, and that is speech and debate clause. That's exactly right, Jay. The Constitution provides that the vice President of the United States, in his capacity as President of the Senate, presides over the Electoral College and the electoral votes, the tabulation of the votes, the announcement of the results. Vice President Pence will likely assert, if he hasn't already, that the speech and debate clause of the Constitution, which is a clause that says anything that a legislative official does, senator or U.S. representative, says or does in the debates, speech, proceedings, or deliberations, as a member of their respective houses, going to and returning from same, and any speech or debate in either house, shall not will, not may not, but shall not be questioned in any other place. That's what we've got on our screen right now. So you cannot have the executive branch of government through Jack Smith, his special counsel, appointed by Merrick Garland, asking Vice President Pence, because of the separation of powers in our Constitution between the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of government, Jack Smith, we would contend, Mike Pence would contend, has no right to be asked what he did as presiding officer, vice President, sorry, President of the Senate in the Electoral College.

So let me put this into perspective for everybody to understand, because it's a very, we're going to get into this more in the next segment, we'll take your calls on this too at 800-684-3110, but let me get you to understand this. The vice President of the United States has a very unique role because he is, of course, a member of the executive branch when you're vice President. You have the President, the vice President, those are constitutional offices under Article II, the executive branch of government. But interestingly, and only, the vice President of the United States is also an officer of the Article I branch of government, the legislative branch of government.

He is the President of the Senate. That is Article I, Section III, and Clause IV. I want to get into this, folks, because this is a constitutional challenge. We're going to get involved on briefing this at the ACLJ because, folks, this is a huge constitutional issue, and it affects members of Congress and it affects vice Presidents, and that's what the ACLJ does.

So we're going to get into this in greater detail in the next segment of the broadcast. A lot of you have just joined with us. Share it with your friends if you're on any of our social media feeds. We encourage you to do that.

Do that right now. And, again, support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. And, of course, follow us on social media as well.

Yeah, that's right. We've got great stuff. Reels and places like that, like on my official Jordan Sekulow Instagram.

I think you'll really enjoy that, the reels that we're putting together, because they're great to share with your friends and family members, younger people who utilize Instagram as well, and young at heart, because you can share those comments really quickly and those videos really quickly. All right. Welcome back to Sekulow. We continue to take your calls to 1-800-684-3110 if you've got calls about the new move with the National Archives and their latest statement to members of Congress, which in that letter cites our ACLJ legal action. We appreciate Senator Cruz, Congressman Roy, for leading the charge of getting a lot of members of Congress, both from the House and the Senate, on both letters to the Smithsonian and the Archives.

The Archives responded by taking a bit more action already. They have taken the supervisor, who was from a private security company, removed that supervisor after an internal review from being at any National Archives facilities. Now, we know that supervisor told other people how to act. We even had someone in the gift shop acting inappropriately, which, again, may be someone who was employed through a private company by National Archives, but wouldn't have been a security individual. This is, by the way, just the beginning, because sometimes we see in these situations blame being put on the folks who are the lowest on the totem pole.

And here, nothing against security guards. What I'm saying is they are privately contracted out, so it's easy for the Archives to say, see, it was no one at the actual National Archives who came up with the bad policy. So that raises, of course, our suspicion, and we'll get into that, and it raises further questions. But the good thing about both these responses to Congress, Dad, everything we alleged in the lawsuits has been confirmed by Archives and Smithsonian, two members of Congress. It has, and we have in place right now a preliminary injunction in the one, and that is the case involving the Archives Museum.

We don't have one yet on the museum at the Smithsonian, but those are coming. So good news on the update there. Now, the Special Counsel, Jack Smith, that's investigating the January 6 events and has grand juries impaneled, has taken a very aggressive move. He, the Vice President, former Vice President Pence, has stated that he believes that his comments, they want testimony from him, he believes that the Special Counsel's not entitled to those, in other words, the grand jury's not entitled to those, because of what is called the Speech and Debate Clause.

And I wanted to set this back up. The President is an Article II branch of government's executive power. That's where the executive comes from. The Vice President is under the executive. He is the only officer of the United States that also forms as a function Article I, that's the legislative branch of government, powers. And that is Article I, Section 3, Clause 4 says the following, the Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but should have no vote unless they be equally divided. In other words, if there's a tie. But we also know from the Election Clause of the Constitution, you've got to put this together, that the Election Clause of the Constitution gives the Vice President the authority to oversee the tabulation of the Electoral College.

So you've got all of that. Then, so Jack Smithson wants the testimony from Mike Pence. What is interesting is Article I, Section 6 says, the Senators and Representatives shall receive, and it talks about compensation, it talks about protection that they get in cases except for treason, they'll be privileged from arrest during their attendance in session, and in going to and from the session, and for any speech and debate in either the House, they shall not be questioned in any other place, which would mean an Article II court. Now, here's the legal question that's going to be for the Supreme Court of the United States. It says, Andy, the Senators and Representatives, Mike Pence is the President of the Senate, but he is not a Senator per se. That's exactly correct, Jay.

You've analyzed it properly. But what Vice President, former Vice President Pence is going to be saying and what his counsel, who is a very eminent and qualified Constitutional lawyer, will articulate is that he is de facto a United States Senator when he is presiding over the House of Representatives and is engaging in speech or debate in that body. When he is tabulating the votes in both houses, rather before the Electoral College, which convenes in the House of Representatives, he is performing legislative functions. And because he is performing legislative functions, he cannot be questioned, as the Constitution says, cannot, will not be questioned, may not in any other place. In other words, Jack Smith, the Special Counsel, cannot interrogate, cannot demand that Vice President Pence, in his capacity as presiding officer of the Senate, because that's what he's doing when he's presiding over the Electoral College. He's not acting as Vice President, he's acting as President of the Senate. You cannot question him about anything that he did, said, deliberated or had anything to do with when he was presiding over the Electoral College as President of the Senate. And that's why he would say that the subpoenas should be quashed and that he should not be compelled to be questioned in any other locale. Of course, Jordan, he also has executive privilege, and that President Trump, former President Trump, is asserting that as well. So you've got two privileges at issue here. You've got both executive privilege and then speech and debate. Both of those will be important.

Here's the problem that Jack Smith has. His time clock is running, because as we're going to talk about later in the broadcast, the first debates for the GOP start in August of this year. Yeah, I mean, just to make it clear to everybody, I know that can sound pretty soon.

People are probably doing summer planning right now, or already have. In August, in Milwaukee, there will be the first GOP Presidential primary debate. And right now there's two declared candidates. Which will be 14 months ahead of the election. Yes, 14 months ahead of the election. And again, it will be interesting to see how many candidates we have, what will be the parameters. I don't know if we have all of that yet. Do we will?

Do we have the actual parameters to qualify? No, this is just the general, because they usually do that. Especially if you get 14, they might have to have two. But all this runs into, the issue with this is though, you're in the middle of a political season already, Andy.

You're a year and a half out by then. And then you've got the legal component here, and the Department of Justice policies did not interfere with an election. And they're running smack dab in it here. The Justice Department has said, we don't do anything that is going to interfere with, or may affect the outcome of an election that is forthcoming. James Comey notwithstanding.

That's a good point, to bring that back up. James Comey notwithstanding, because James Comey violated DOJ guidelines when he said, we're opening an investigation of Hillary Clinton, we're closing an investigation of Hillary Clinton, and then reopening it again. He violated DOJ guidelines. Of course, James Comey was above the law. James Comey was a law unto himself. He made his own decisions as to what he was going to do, and he was proud when he made those decisions, even though they were false and contrary to the policies of the Department of Justice. But as you pointed out properly speaking, the Justice Department does not interfere in anything that may be election or outcome determinative, and yet Jack Smith's got a very short window of five or six months in which he's got to do whatever he's going to do before the Presidential debates on the Republican side begin in August.

That's a pretty short timeframe to litigate a case that may end up in the Supreme Court. I think Vice President Pence, Emmett Flood is his lawyer. He's a great lawyer. We've worked with him. He's in the White House Counsel's Office. He's a brilliant lawyer. I'd say one of the top handful in Washington to handle something like this.

He'd be a great one to go to. We'll file a brief if warranted, if he does go to court like this, because I think the speech and debate clause issue is really significant here. All right, we've got another 30 minutes of the broadcast coming up. We're going to talk about the situation in China. Folks, the Chinese and the Russians and this whole idea of what they're talking about.

We've handled cases in Beijing and China. We know what's going on there, folks. We've got a lot to talk about. Stay engaged at ACLJ.org. Share this feed with your friends and support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We've got a political deep dive coming up as well, the second half hour for the GOP primary. Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

All right, welcome back to Sekulow. As we discussed, we have gotten more action in our case against the National Archives of the Smithsonian for those who had pro-life messages, whether on a beanie, who visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in D.C. the same day as the March for Life on January 20th, and those who had pro-life T-shirts and buttons who visited the National Archives that morning of the March for Life. And each situation you had harassment, told to take this off, turn it around, put it on inside out by security officials. And while we've got a preliminary injunction in one case against the National Archives, and people have already returned who are our clients with their pro-life messages on and were able to, again, were not treated the way they were and were able to attend and without kind of any disruption the way they should be able to. National Archives also responded to the congressional letter that was led by Senator Cruz and Congressman Roy and a number of our good friends in both the House and the Senate. And National Archives responded that we actually have a private security company and they've done an investigation and the supervisor there acted inappropriately and has been removed from all National Archives properties. So that's as strong as they can go on that supervisor who was telling the other security officials because they were more than one person with bad action at the National Archives, even included someone who worked at the gift shop.

But it's a positive side. Now, again, we take all this with a grain of salt because a lot of times in these situations they try to blame it on someone who is the most indirectly tied to the actual government agency or entity. Well, that's what they're doing here. Yeah, so what they've done is they're doing a little blame shifting. At least they acknowledge that our facts and the complaint are correct, which is a big win.

We've got a preliminary injunction, another big win. We want to find out how this policy started. The security company that the National Archives Museum contracts with said they did their own investigation. I want that investigation.

I want that material. I'm going to depose those investigators. So they've told us all this. We're going to depose the investigators that did this. We're going to find out if the National Archives sanctioned this because there was an interesting dialogue at the gift shop at the National Archives. Now, I don't know if they were National Archives employees. Federal employees are contracted.

Don't know. But they said the same kinds of things. And it also happened at the Smithsonian. But in the archives we've got an injunction. We're in mediation.

So we're going to tell them in that mediation, here's what we want in mediation. We want the report from your security company. They did an investigative report. We want that report. We want to know what investigative action was taken. We want to know who communicated this policy. We want to know why the National Archives gift shop personnel were saying the same thing.

Interesting dynamic. Then we're going to go over to the Smithsonian. And in the Smithsonian, no injunction in place. We're in federal court. We're in federal court.

Lawsuits filed on both of them. We are going to be moving for a preliminary injunction this week. We've given the opportunity for the National Smithsonian Institute to consent. If they do not consent, we will then take action. So that's where that is.

For then consenting there for a preliminary injunction. We talked about that. Then we said Jack Smith, the special counsel, wants Mike Pence in. He's gone very aggressive. He wanted Jared Ivanka in as well.

Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump Kushner. They wanted them in. And on top of that, preemptively he's gone to court to compel the former vice President to testify. And as I said, uniquely Article I, Article II, speech and debate clause. Big issues there.

But he's moving aggressively. I want to play this quickly as a flashback from an interview I did with Fox News about how the ACLJ action works. This involved the National Archives and Smithsonian.

Take a listen. These apologies they issue, they only issue after we come out to the public and say what happened. So these are not proactive apologies. None of this would happen without the work of the ACLJ and our clients.

There would be no apology. No one would have been removed from the National Archives and they'd still be harassing people who are pro-life. 100% with pro-life here. And that's why for 40 years we've gone to federal courts, the Supreme Court in the United States, district courts, state courts, around the country, frankly around the globe. To stand up for people who don't have the legal resources to stand up for themselves. And that's where you come in folks. Your support of the ACLJ makes all of that possible.

ACLJ.org, that's ACLJ.org. Also like our Facebook, social media, Truth, wherever you're getting it. Rumble of course, YouTube, at Jay Sekulow, at Jordan Sekulow, at Logan Sekulow and at ACLJ. If you're watching us right now, especially our friends on Rumble, continue to share this with your friends. It's a great way for us to stay in their feet and also get more eyeballs on this and more people watching.

Alright, welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your calls as well. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. We wanted to get into it. We're going to get into politics as well.

In fact, in a few minutes you should start giving us a call. Because the first GOP debate, you may think, oh that's still a while off. August.

Not so long. And when you're making summer plans, they were making plans. So you're going to have the first GOP Presidential debate, which we know at least Donald Trump and Nikki Haley will be there. I suspect many more. My question to you is, kind of one, who are you most interested in seeing in that debate and who are you supporting? Are you supporting anyone at this point?

A lot of folks haven't gotten in yet, but there's a lot of indication by who will. So give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. There's no right or wrong answers there by the way.

Just give us a call. Alright, so let's go to China because, breaking news alert, China has come up with a 12 point peace plan for Russia and Ukraine. Colonel Westmith has evaluated this. I think China is in a very strategic and unusual spot and they are trying to show that they are the leaders of the free world. Don't kid yourself for a minute.

What do we have here, Wes? Absolutely. They have declared that they intend to outpace the United States and to be the only superpower within the next two decades. And they meanwhile are buying and exerting influence in Africa, in Asia and now in Europe as well. This 12 point plan, you know, today is the one year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

People who are experts have been studying for a year how to end this conflict never fear the Chinese have a plan. It includes of course lifting all sanctions on Russia. All sanctions. But it also includes protecting the sovereignty of all countries even though Russia invaded Ukraine. It also has a clause here that the safety of civilians, women and children must always be protected even though Russia attacks civilians, civilian facilities, children are shipped off to Russia away from their parents and women are being raped and assaulted in all the Russian occupied territories.

It goes on and on like that. It talks about the necessity for humanitarian warfare and not violating the laws of war. But these are all the things the Russian government though has done. They are doing it now today and yet China is writing this out like this is some new concept and meanwhile, and this is the part that is so disconcerting about this 12 point plan, one of the many parts, and that is President Xi is scheduled in April to visit Vladimir Putin in Russia. But two months ago they signed an agreement with Russia about their long lasting cooperative friendship and yet so after that Xi is going to Russia and they put this out. They are not only trying to make America look weak, they also have a plan together to actually support Vladimir Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. I'm going to tell you this.

This is interesting to me. We had a discussion before we went on air and our Director of Policy, Harry Hutchinson, already has a very interesting strategic discussion here and that is what is really up here with the Chinese government? When I say that, it's the Chinese Communist Party.

Harry? Well Jay, there are two quintessential questions that the West needs to think about. First, is the West prepared for eternal war in Ukraine? And second, is China setting up the West for a protracted war in Europe in order to drain the West financially and militarily and emotionally? So at the same time we should keep in mind, where are China's eyes focused? They are focused on Taiwan. So I think the answer is clear to the first question. Europeans and Americans are not prepared for an eternal war in Ukraine. Already citizens in Germany, Hungary, and in some areas of the United States are tired of the war. They support Ukraine, but there's less and less support for the continuation of sending weaponry to Ukraine. But the second question I think is the most interesting.

Okay, what is that one? It seems, and that is whether or not China is setting the West up. And I think that's precisely, I think there's an affirmative answer to that particular question. Well here's the concern with that. We've done legal work in China years ago. This is very complicated. When we're talking about 9 dimensional chests, the Chinese invented 9 dimensional chests. So they are draining resources from the United States as this conflict goes on with Ukraine.

We've talked about that Jordan. There is a fundamental cost to the United States as this war goes, both in dollars and in resources. Right, and of course we're draining our military assets, actual federal dollars, and we're not taking care of Americans at home. And the problem with the U.S. assistance has been the assistance has not come with a plan to end the conflict. So now the Chinese are coming in with their plan.

So Harry, phrase the question as your concern, because this is what you said, the second issue is really what? The second issue is whether or not China is setting up the West for long term failure so that the West is so drained of resources, they cannot help Taiwan in their hour of need. So we're already running short of ammunition in the United States.

We're running short of missiles and now we're sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine. This is very helpful I think to the Chinese government. Also keep in mind that Russia has a long term perspective on Ukraine. And so they can, I think, prevail in the long term. There was a recent article published this morning in a publication called Unheard. And this individual had in-depth conversations with military and political experts in London, in Paris, and with Americans indirectly.

And he cannot see a way out of a protracted conflict. This helps China. So could China be doing this, Les? I think the answer is… Are they doing it?

I guess is the way to say it. They are doing this. They are looking at this whole situation and they are trying to turn it to their own advantage. You know, we're arming Ukraine.

Another huge package was announced this week by President Biden and Harry's right. We're sending them weapons. For example, we're sending them multi-millions of 155 artillery rounds again this week was announced.

We are short on those. The manufacturer, when we have one manufacturer for our 155 artillery rounds, they are running behind and yet we're sending them ours. The same thing goes with cruise missiles and what have you. And so China is depleting the arsenal so that they do have an advantage if and when they attack Taiwan. What we should be doing, Jay, is not just arming Ukraine.

I am dead serious. We need to be arming Taiwan because when China attacks Taiwan… Do we have the capability to do that right now? Yes, absolutely. With the resources going to Ukraine, though, can we do both? And keep our army maintained at appropriate levels? We would if President Biden would do what other Presidents have done because the world is on the brink of a world war. And he needs to put our manufacturing capacity, our defense contractors, on a wartime footing.

He has not done that. But yes, we can do that. Here's the thing. We're slow walking aid to Taiwan the same way we did Ukraine. Two years ago, we approved $19 billion for Taiwan.

They still haven't received the arm. So here's the problem. And it goes right into the political discussion we're about to have. We have in two and a half years gone from a situation where we had no global conflict like this, certainly not a world war scenario, to in 28, 26 months we have gone to a possible, almost contemplating a significant uptick in this war between Russia and Ukraine. It's already impacting all of Europe and especially Eastern Europe. It's affecting our ability to arm ourselves and our allies, Taiwan.

The Chinese are playing us like a fiddle. And then you ask yourselves, this is leadership. And on top of that, August 1st GOP debates, folks. So we are right back into now Presidential politics.

And we do want to hear from you in this next segment at 800-684-3110. What are you thinking right now, folks, on where this is going? Yeah, I mean, spending money, taxpayer dollars with no plan is not leadership. Just handing over weapons without a plan is not leadership. It's not leadership when you're not making sure our military is getting the weapons it needs or replenishing the weapons we have sent and making sure that we're staying on par or better than what the Chinese are developing as well. It's just not leadership.

It's really easy just to send money around the world and not worry about inflation and how it affects your domestic situation. But the President's job is to protect Americans first. And when you fail to do that, Ukraine will fail. Taiwan will fail because the world won't respect you if you can't take care of your own folks, especially because the United States is built on that. China is not built on that. Russia, not really built on that. But the U.S. experience is that we take care of these rights that we have and we take care of Americans. And by being strong at home, we are the number one superpower abroad.

When we are not strong at home, we start losing that status abroad. And that is what I think we have seen under the Biden administration from the very early days, the Afghanistan withdrawal to today in Ukraine, sending over weapons, sending money, but no plan in sight. I'll tell you folks, this is fascinating. Well, next segment, we're going to be talking about politics, Presidential politics. Where are you thinking right now?

Who are you liking right now? What policies do you like? We're taking your calls at 800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. If you enjoy this broadcast, then support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

That's ACLJ.org. You help keep this broadcast on the air. Again, follow us on all your social media apps.

The great way to stay engaged. We'll be back with more in a moment. So folks, we've been talking about a lot of serious issues, obviously, with ACLJ, the pro-life students and attendees of the March for Life we represent, who were harassed both at the National Archives Museum and at the Smithsonian. That's moving forward and we talked about that.

We talked about China. We've talked about, again, we've talked about the special counsel asking Mike Pence to testify and what he may be asserting, which is his congressional role as President of the Senate. He can vote as the vice President to break a tiebreak.

So the speech and debate clause and the protections that come with that in light of this subpoena by Jack Smith for him to testify. Now we want to just remind you about how close we are. I mean, we're already entering the next Presidential cycle because we have two candidates, three Republican candidates now announced, Trump, Nikki Haley, and one who is more of an unknown but a billionaire businessman who is kind of an anti-woke in the biotech world, Vivek Ramaswamy, who is pretty kind of well-known amongst the grassroots. He's announced he will run. There's that whole big list with plenty of friends of ours, too. But the first debate, okay, this August, that could be hard for everybody to wrap their hands around.

So this August, the first GOP Presidential debate will be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which will ultimately hold the RNC. Yeah, so we're asking your opinion on this. It's a Friday afternoon. We'll let you vent and let you talk. 1-800-684-3110, where are you on this? Let's go ahead and take a call. Sure, we'll go first to Cindy in New York on Line 1. Hey, Cindy. Hi, how are you doing? Great. Hey, Cindy, you're on the air. Hi, can you hear me?

We're going to go back to you in a moment. Let's go ahead to Lynette in New York as well. Lynette, go ahead, you're on the air. Hey, Lynette. God bless you.

Thank you so much for taking my call. And I would like to see President Donald J. Trump. I would like, I still support him.

I'm an evangelical conservative, black college educated woman, and I have always supported Donald Trump and still support him. I like the other people also, but in their positions that they are now in. As example, Governor DeSantis, I think is an excellent governor. I'd like to see him remain as governor. Mickey Haley was excellent in the UN, very pro-Israel, et cetera, under President Trump, but I don't like the fact that some of her events recently have...

Okay, so you're basically saying you're ready for Trump presidency 2.0. We're taking your calls on this too, folks. 800-684-3110.

You can also get your comments in on Rumble, but again, 800-684-3110. There is polling data. It's very interesting.

Jordan, you want to circle it? Yeah, this is a real clear average. Politics average shows Trump at 43%, DeSantis at 30%, and then it starts getting much smaller. So, I mean, a significant drop after those two. Let's go to who they are. Mike Pitts at 6%.

Do you surprise Mike for that eye? I think that that's this kind of evangelical vote that's there that never really liked Trump, that also doesn't blame Pitts for anything. I don't know that he goes much higher than that. Nikki Haley at 5%, and she just made her big announcement, so again, she's gone up a little bit because she was not at that number yet.

Pompeo at 3.5%. And he is not announced yet. He is not announced.

So, some of these are just names. Rubio, I'm not sure he's even running. He's at 2.5%. Cruz is a maybe at 2%. Tim Scott. Certainly making rumblings. Just now at 1%, but I will tell you, Tim Scott, if he does run, will not remain at 1%.

Yeah, I want to focus on that. So, Tim Scott, who we know very well. Listen, everybody on this list we know well. Tim Scott will not remain at 1%. He has made no announcement.

No, he hasn't made an announcement. The question that people ask, if you had a head-on-head Trump-Dissantis, if the others weren't in it, but that's not the world we live in, it would be very close. It would, because that's the real clear politics average of polls. Then you start looking at some of the other polls. The most recent poll came from Harvard, and it showed Trump at 46 and DeSantis at 23. So, it would mean that DeSantis really would have to get everybody else. And that just doesn't happen. Yeah, because people will split.

Even if they don't split 50-50, he needed to split like 90-10, and that's even difficult. So, I think right now, Donald Trump's in a good position. That's right now. We also know that he's got a serious possible contender in DeSantis. If everyone else after Trump... And DeSantis has raised a lot of money. Yeah, if everyone else after Trump was at 10 or below, then I'd say, okay, it's Donald Trump's 100%.

It's not yet. If you read these numbers, and I think it's why Trump is out there doing his thing, it's why he's in East Palestine, it's why he went to McDonald's. Got the McDonald's for all the first responders. Told McDonald's employees he knows the menu better than they do. If you remember the amount of McDonald's at the White House and on his plate, yes, he is a fan. And I think that's endearing to people.

A guy who could afford... Do you remember what it was? He just loves the Big Mac. He loves the Big Mac with cheese. It's the best diet coke. Everyone knows it's the best diet coke.

I don't know what they do to it, but it's the best. Let's go ahead and take some more calls. What I was saying is a guy who can afford whatever he wants to eat has still got that kind of working class connection. And I think that just shows who he is as a guy who, yes, very successful, obviously, becomes that campaign or two. Yeah, so we'll see. It's early, but it's not that early now. It's going to be turning quick. No, because by this August that means that people will have campaign apparatuses and people will start choosing sides.

You've been in those campaigns, you know. Cindy's calling from New York. Cindy, go ahead, you're on.

Cindy dropped. Okay, I'll tell you what. Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to do this. I want to give you a kind of a bottom line analysis of what it looks like today. It could change drastically. Things can change drastically, but I'll tell you right now the contender, the leader of it, is clearly Donald Trump. Yeah, and that wasn't necessarily the case a few months ago.

It was even closer. He's actually going up in the polls right now. Yes, which is interesting, with all the legal stuff going on. Some of that I think his name is out there again a lot more. The media tried to kind of shun him, and they can't.

Right, so you've got that going on. DeSantis is clearly a contender here if he announces. Yeah, the question is can he get above... He's got to have a change in Florida law to do it.

Yes. Because he cannot serve as governor. Or he could resign.

Do you think he would do that? I think it's usually the right thing to do if you're going to actually run a full-fledged Presidential campaign. If you're going to run a full-fledged Presidential campaign, it's pretty hard to govern a state.

One thing to be a senator. Well, we've got a colleague, Mike Pompeo, who has not announced by the way. I don't think he's made a final decision. Nope, he will poll well. Yeah, already at three without announcing.

The sleeper in this, and I don't think he's a sleeper by any stretch of the imagination, and I think would be a real contender, is Tim Scott. But here's the interesting analysis. All of that collectively helps one person. Donald Trump.

Yeah. Oh, the more people at that first debate, the better for Donald Trump. The more people who make it to the first ballot, the better for Donald Trump. His difficulty would be if it was him and DeSantis, or him and Tim Scott, one-on-one. Well, it's always more difficult. For any candidate.

Yeah, for anybody. Head-on-heads are going to be closer. But on the Harvard-Harris poll, he's up by 23%.

Yes. And remember, DeSantis is not... He's making the moves that look like an announcement, but he hasn't made that final call either. When do you think they have to, Jordan?

We've only got 30 seconds left. You're going to be debating in August, which means you've got to have a prep team. You've got to be ready to go. So I would say... May? Latest?

Yeah, because you want to have a couple months to get ready just for that. All right. Everybody, have a great weekend, and support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. Everybody on that list that's running, we're friends with and we work with, so we know them well. ACLJ.org, and follow us at Jay Sekula, Jordan Sekula, Logan Sekula, and of course, at ACLJ on all social media. And we will talk to you next week. Have a great weekend.