BREAKING: Gov’t Spy Program on Americans Revealed

Breaking news today on Sekulow, a new government spy program on Americans is revealed. 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. Alright, welcome to Sekulow. I definitely want to take your calls on this, so give us a call and get your comments in as well.

If you're watching the broadcast on Rumble, Facebook, YouTube, get your comments in there. Share this with your friends and family because over the weekend it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security, which is not doing its job to secure our border, but guess what they've got? A quote, this is the actual name of the program, the Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program, and under the program officials are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes American citizens. It also brings up some interesting Sixth Amendment issues because it includes incarcerated people and implies that they can go around their attorneys and go directly to people who may be in prison to talk to them. So there's constitutional concerns for incarcerated folks, but there's also constitutional concerns for you and me. Because they love to say, well this is all voluntary, but Logan, as we all know, you get contacted by DHS for an interview with one of their intel departments.

This comes from their Office of Intelligence and Analysis. Yeah, I don't think you're taking that call very calmly. You're calling a lawyer.

Yeah. Unless they try to trick you into talking, which is what they try to do first to people. Of course, cold call you. And what the issue is here, they have not explained really the purpose here. If the purpose is to fight terrorism, why do you need this? You should know the people you should be going for.

You don't need such a broad, you know what I mean? It's easy to go to family members of people that you suspect to be terrorists. One, you warn them, you say, do you know that your son or daughter's got involved in this situation, or husband or wife. Yeah, you get them on your side, if you will, you know.

Right. This is, again, just another, it seems like another attempt, they keep trying and trying. How can they spy on Americans legitimately and constitutionally?

So they'll throw in the word voluntary. But I think a lot of times when the government says that, it's like, if they knock on your door, if they call you and leave a message. One, I would mostly think these days if I got that call on my voicemail, Logan, I would think it was spam.

I thought it was fake, yeah. I mean, how many times do you… Like, so many times do you need to pay for an IRS bill, I don't know. How many times do you get a call from… A fake IRS bill. … a fake IRS or a fake FBI? You used to get the ones that would be like, hello, this is the FBI, we're coming to your home. And you always thought, okay, this is just another. But they always would give you a little pit in your stomach, and then you're always like, I don't think this is how the FBI would… Every time I get a letter from someone that looks like the IRS in my mailbox, I'm like, oh, God.

And then you open it up, and it's like, oh. Yeah, apply for more credit. Credit card, right, exactly. Yeah, so, but… But that's not what's happening here. No, and I want to understand for folks what you think about this DHS under Mayorkas running its own overt human intelligence collection program. Again, unlimited access to seek interviews with just about everyone, just—I love husband—just about anyone in the whole United States of America.

That would include citizens, non-citizens, incarcerated folks, folks who are not incarcerated, 1-800-684-3110. What do you think their purpose is here? Is it intimidation and silence of political opponents? Is it just more of the bureaucracy trying to take over running all aspects of the government? So even the elected officials have zero control because they're now spying on all of us under, I guess, they're gathering domestic intelligence. That means spying, even what they're calling it.

The other words that you would use are spying on Americans, and this is trying to get not electronic surveillance, but to come right to you. And, hey, give us a—let's just talk. Yeah, we'll give you a call. We'll cold call you, and everyone knows how that would go.

Show up at your office. Yeah, and it's not like, again, they're just showing up and just being like, hi, it's great, we'd love to just chat. Maybe they are talking like that, but it's at a point where no one feels that way. You don't feel that way when you're being spied on. You don't feel that way when you have any sort of government agency, much less the Department of Homeland Security showing up at your front door or giving you a cold call.

Like you said, you're calling a lawyer immediately. Hey, we want to hear from you. We want you to love your thoughts. 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard today. We're also in the middle of our matching challenge here in the month of March.

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All right, welcome back to Secio. So this DHS program called the Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program where DHS officials from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis are allowed to seek interviews with just about anyone in the United States. That includes people held in immigrant detention centers, local jails, and federal prison. Now it's interesting they focus there because what they don't want to focus on is everyone else that that includes. Not just people who are in prison or in immigration detention centers, but you and me. So it's not just about criminals or people being detained by the U.S. government.

They try to focus there. But by the way, that also raises constitutional issues. You have rights, certain rights as an incarcerated person in the United States, especially when law enforcement is trying to speak to you.

You have a right to counsel. And again, is this another attempt by DHS and the federal bureaucracy to use their intelligence agencies for political purposes? Because what they don't lay out here is what they're working on. Like, they have an FBI.

Right. I want to go to Andy Cahn about this. Andy, we have an FBI. We have a CIA. Why does DHS need to even be doing this?

Yeah, because it's not enough. The politicization of the U.S. government is not enough. We haven't sufficiently politicized the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Ha ha ha. We have indeed done that. But now we're going to add this other agency, a part of DHS, Department of Homeland Security, called the Office of Intelligence and Analysis. And we're going to empower them to do a little bit more spying and a little bit more inquiring into the lives and the attitudes of people in the United States.

American citizens, domestic citizens, citizens of the U.S. by having them go up to you and voluntarily ask you. I'd like to have a little chat, a little discuss with you about some intelligence gathering that I'd like to do and some stuff that I'd like to pick up. And then going into jails and detention centers where there are constitutional rights to counsel people who have been given Miranda warnings, where you don't have the right to go to somebody who has a lawyer without going through the lawyer first. We're just going to chat with you and talk with you. These are trampling constitutional rights that is really wrong.

It is really wrong, Jordan, to do this. And they call it anti-voluntary. We were just joking about that because if you get caught off guard with this, first of all, they're doing intelligence analysis. So as our producer will point out, they're not walking up to you and saying, hey, we're just doing a review.

We need some intelligence. We're spying, basically, on you. They're not going to do it that way, so they're coming up with some other way to try and get you to voluntarily talk to them. People get very concerned when they get contacted by these government agents, and oftentimes, while the first reaction should be, I'm calling a lawyer, their oftentimes is, I just want to get this handled, whatever you want, let me tell you. You get out of it. And you get yourself in trouble. Well, that's exactly right. The first inclination of any citizen is to be cooperative with the government.

Yes, what do you want? I'll talk to you. Big mistake. Don't do that. When someone says, I'm here from the FBI, I'm here from the Office of Intelligence and Analysis to help you, the answer is close your mouth. Do not discuss this. We are not a nation of people who are subjected or should be subjected to spying by our government and checking out things by just a casual conversation that is allegedly voluntary, but really isn't voluntary because they intimidate you into talking to them, and you want to be helpful, and you do that, and you end up finding yourself in trouble because of something that you said that you weren't obligated to say. The government needs to stay out of our business, stay out of our banks, stay out of our insurance companies, stay out of our finance companies, and all the things that we talked about at the last broadcast about the intrusion of the federal government.

Here's another one. DHS, Office of Intelligence and Analysis. I call it Office of Spying. Yeah, I mean, they're just using nicer words. They're talking about they've got broad authority they can go up to about any American because what they're doing is voluntary, so they don't need a warrant.

It's not secret. They're not electronically spying on you or your cause, but they're saying through this program is you have to be voluntary, so they're trying to subvert having to get court orders to approach you, and while they may be focused on those who are in prison and incarcerated, they also have rights. So if you have any family members who are in prison and incarcerated, for whatever reason, they should not be talking to officials like this who just show up at the prison without an attorney present, which is their constitutional right. Again, even those who have been found guilty of crimes have some rights remaining in the U.S., particularly to protect them from these exact kind of situations that our founding fathers were worried about even for those who have been convicted of crimes. So when you see how they try to spin this, though, is they want, Andy, everybody to say, oh, this just has to do with criminals, but their statement is this applies to nearly everyone inside, not every American, everyone inside the United States of America.

That's right. It's not just criminals. It's not people who are detained, which is bad enough constitutionally, but it's everybody who is in the United States is subject to having someone come up, say that they're from the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Intelligence, and analysis and say, let's have a little chat and a little discussion about some things. I'd like to talk to you a little bit and pique your mind about stuff. What is this?

What have we become? Stay away from me. I don't want to talk to you.

I'm not interested in discussing this, anything with you. See my lawyer. Yep. I want to go to the phones. 1-800-684-3110. Let's do it. Yep. Let's go ahead and just go in order. It comes in.

Go to Fred in Tennessee. Line one, you're on the air. Thanks for taking my call. I was going to ask about this situation where by the use of a term such as insurrection, then you do not have any rights.

You do not have anything. And so just by the throwing around of a word, then they can, by law, evidently, go into your bank account, find out where your phone was pinging and all that. How do we deal with stuff like that? Well, with that, they would need a warrant though. If they don't have a warrant for that, so you had to be involved enough in a crime, but it is, insurrection would be considered a crime, but it doesn't have to even be that high bar of a crime. But if you have to be, you know, go through that process, they've got to get a judge's side off on it. That is a different situation here.

And what we're talking about is a much lower bar because there's no court involved. These are just intelligence agents who show up, who give you a call, Fred, and say, we're from DHS. We need to talk to you. And I don't know if they go through some, you know, tests like you don't have to talk to us. You could have a right to attorney. I don't think so because they're not considering putting you under arrest at that moment, right? So Andy, you can't invoke those rights. They don't have to tell you about those rights because you're technically not, if you don't want to talk to them, they're not like, they don't have you under their control. No, you're not in detention. You're not, you're not under arrest. You are free to go. You don't have to. Therefore, they don't have to give you any rights under Miranda or any other cases the Supreme Court has pronounced with respect to this.

They just come up to you and say, I'd like to talk to you about thus and so and whatever. What, who are you and what do you want? I think the response that citizens should make, anybody should make, not just a citizen, to something like this is I'm not interested in talking to you. Go away.

Not interested. All right, back to the. Let's go Forrest in California online too. Hey Forrest.

Hey, how are you doing? Hey, although they have, we have all these rights, I would figure 90 to 95% of American citizens who are approached by a federal officer would talk, even the ones who know they shouldn't, even the ones who know the rights, even the ones who are bad experiences. Just think about it. In the first week and week of the Trump administration, uh, director Comey FBI knew that was probably too early to have the staffers have been, he briefed about the FBI and told them, whatever you say, don't, if you'll ever go to the FBI without a lawyer present. So they intentionally targeted a general Flynn, a guy as smart as general Flynn can go to the FBI and talk to be talking to and having a friendly conversation about people he knew, whatever he was, he was too tricked into making an accidental misstatement that he was later.

We'll put in the car, but ruin his life for five years. Can you quote a lie to a federal agent where the dark tried to do is if you say anything they can later say is a lie and then it got you on the hook. And the reason they did that is because they wanted to have turns in state evidence against the Trump's administration. So, you know, I don't, you know, if someone like a regular citizen comes in and suddenly he's under the carpet, he can be kept from sneaking out. He can step from voting.

Oh yeah. Here's the thing for us. I think what you, you pointed out is exactly what the FBI was doing. Remember what Jim Comey said, they actually, Flynn didn't go to them initially. The FBI agents showed up at the white house and they said, well, they knew they were just transitioning. And when you're involved in your first few days in office, you haven't got all of your procedures set up yet. And so they took advantage of that situation where white house council was just getting set up and he might, Flynn may not even met the white house council yet at that moment. And they said, okay, we're going to go in there and we're going to just take advantage of the situation and talk to Flynn like that.

And like you said, have this friendly conversation. That's the FBI. It's like how many, and I know we're going to have Rick Rinnell on later in the broadcast and we have lots of different Intel agencies and departments. And he will tell you that the reason why is because they all have a unique scope and they're not supposed to do everything. Like they're there to do this.

They're there to do that. And then that's why when they do agree on something, it's such a big deal because they're coming at it from a different point. When they're all starting to look like just another way to spy on Americans though. That's where they all start to blur.

They all start to run together. It seems very broad here. Anything that could impact Homeland Security is a very broad announcement. That's common crime. That's organized crime. That's foreign actors. That's terrorism. That's, I mean, the list goes on.

Absolutely. Hey, phone lines are open right now too. If you want to get your voice heard on the air, you heard a couple of great calls. We do have a few lines open. A few people on hold. 1-800-684-3110.

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Go to ACLJ.org as Jordan said. Rick Rinnell joining us later. Other guests coming on.

It's going to be a great rest of the show. Last call. 1-800-684-3110 to have your voice heard. We'll be right back with more on Sekulow. Alright, welcome back to Sekulow Air.

Take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. So we've talked about this DHS program. We're going to talk a little bit more about that. Of course this applies to almost everything we've been talking about for months when we talk about the weaponization of the federal government against you. This program isn't just limited to prisoners who might have links to terrorism or else we probably wouldn't be talking about it. What we're talking about is because they don't need court orders to show up to interview you because they're saying it's a voluntary process. There's nothing voluntary about the power of the government showing up at your door telling you to talk to them. Like we've heard from our callers, even people who know I should probably call an attorney will feel in that situation like they're doing that. That will make them look somehow guilty to that interviewer.

Again, they're not going to give you your Miranda rights because they're not detaining you. It's like an extreme case of when you're getting pulled over and you know you've done nothing wrong and you're still panicking as if you had broken the law. That's how it feels. Right, exactly. That still sort of panic runs through.

Now imagine that's the Department of Homeland Security. My neighbor usually says, why'd you spend so much time in the left lane? Our left lane is only for passing and turning. He might just be like, that's a cool car. I just want to check it out.

It's not even that cool a car. When I had foreign tags, I mean plates from a different state. Yes. That was a problem. What you doing up here from Florida?

Well, he's also a good red state. We do have some phone lines open. 1-800-684-31. Tim, we also want to talk a bit about a fundraiser happening right now also. Oh, if someone's launched a GoFundMe, it's Nita Jankowicz, the disinformation troll. You may remember her as the disinformation misinformation czar that they put in place a few years back that lasted all of like 60 days. She put her picture up online and then took it down. Basically, and now she wants to sue Fox News and is raising money on GoFundMe to do so.

She thinks she's about a hundred grand to go ahead with a, which is, again, very hard to sue news agencies for malicious, reckless lies. Which I don't know what those were considering she loves censoring. They said, oh, she wasn't about censoring.

Well, what would she be doing? What else is the misinformation board doing? It was making recommendations to companies to censor certain information. Yeah, so they were not really doing the censoring. They were telling the companies. They're like the DHS knocking at your door. That's not going to win you a lawsuit against Fox News when she's a public figure in such a controversial position that the Biden administration got rid of her.

Okay, so they have all the best arguments. Yeah. And so she's raised, she thinks she's a hundred grand, she's raised. What was the total, 15? Thirteen thousand. Let me tell you something, she's going to need a lot more than a hundred grand to take on Fox News for a defamation.

It's pretty hard. I think we actually should go. We should go back to when she took the job and then how she sounds now.

So here's originally Nina Jacobs right after accepting this position. We need the platforms to do more and we frankly need law enforcement and our legislatures to do more as well. And in other countries, they're looking at this. You know, the UK has an online safety bill that's being considered right now where they're trying to make illegal this currently, quote, awful but lawful content that exists online where people are being harassed.

I love awful but lawful because that's what makes America, America, is that we, you can have awful speech, but it's just as protected as your religious speech, as your good speech, as a speech you might like or the other person doesn't like, because awful is a word that, again, I get to, you get to have your own version of. What's awful to you may not be awful to me and vice versa, but that's what she wanted to do. That's what she wanted to do.

So let's flash forward to now. Restrict the First Amendment. In the last week, here's what she said about what she, what happened to her. After my position was announced, baseless claims that the board was an Orwellian ministry of truth and I was President Biden's chief censor spread, even though the board had nothing to do with arbitrating or restricting speech. See, this is where she's trying to make this distinction. She couldn't arbitrate or restrict the speech because she could only go make the recommendation to the platform to restrict the speech, which, by the way, because of their Section 230 protections under the Communications and Decency Act, they are usually going to follow.

As we've heard from Mark Zuckerberg, if Facebook comes, if FBI comes to Facebook and says do something, they've got an interest in doing things the federal government wants them to do because of the huge immunity they get from lawsuits from the federal code. So this idea that she was somehow mistreated, she was not mistreated at all because we know this happens. This Mark Zuckerberg admitted to it when he was talking to Joe Rogan. Just so you understand, what Nina Jacobowitz is saying she didn't do, this is what she was doing and she was going to be the head person for this.

Take a listen. There was a lot of attention on Twitter during the election because of the Hunter Biden laptop story, the New York Post. Yeah, we have that too.

Yeah, so you guys censored that as well? So we took a different path than Twitter. Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think, basically came to us, some folks on our team and was like, hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election.

We have it on notice that basically there's about to be some kind of dump that's similar to that, so just be vigilant. You know, and this actually, Andy, reminds me of kind of what the DHS is saying. He's saying, you know, the FBI showed up and basically told us, hey, you've got all this stuff on your, and they didn't say exactly what to do with it, but they put them on notice that, hey, we're watching and we think you've got information up that is dangerous to our country. I mean, that is really preposterous.

Which we know is a joke. It's not only preposterous, it's really scary because he ends up with saying, so be vigilant. Vigilant, which is a cognitive vigilante.

In other words, watch out what you're doing because we may be looking at you or someone else may be looking at you. This is not the role of government. This is not the role of the FBI or DHS or the Department of Justice or Homeland Security or the Office of Overt Human Intelligence Collection Program. What a scary thing.

Think about that. That is not what they ought to be doing, and that's exactly what they were doing, Jordan. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because you said vigilantism. In Nina Jacobowitz's tweet about trying to raise money, she said, Fox can't keep getting away with targeting Americans for their hateful rhetoric and lies. Which Americans are those? Politicians? Because you can say whatever you want about politicians and public figures.

So I'm not sure what she's talking about there. Trying to silence professionals, no, public figure is what you were, Nina Jacobowitz, not a normal professional, doing their jobs, not journalism. It's vigilantism.

Actually, what you were engaged in as a private citizen with these private foundations was a lot more like vigilantism, right? I mean, I wanted to play this from Dad because he said, you know, when they get rid of the board, don't think this is over. So remember, first they got rid of her, then ultimately, Mayor Orkus testified they got rid of the board. It's never over. Now we know what DHS is doing now. Take a listen. This is a flashback to 2022.

Buckle your seatbelts. They will try this again, and maybe they don't announce it this time. And what we learned is DHS didn't announce it this time. They didn't announce it. They still stopped happening. We were finding out about it. There was still essentially, it existed.

All right, we got another half hour coming up on Sekulow. You can join us online on Rumble on Facebook and YouTube. There's other sources as well.

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Take a look. We're going on. We're also in the middle of our matching challenge, Jordan.

Yeah, that's right. We encourage you. This is a very important month for us financially for the ACLJ.

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Be part of our matching challenge. We'll be right back on Sekulow. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grenell is going to be joining us in the second half hour of the broadcast. We're talking about Mayor Pete as well.

Giant cranes that are possible Chinese spying tools. So you don't want to miss that discussion with Rick coming up on the broadcast. Again, we encourage you, as always, to support the work of the ACLJ logo. We're in this matching challenge right now. And we don't do this often on our shows, a few times a year.

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It won't be featured. We have to beat the algorithms and you can do that. Help us with that. And more violence too. We saw in Atlanta, I didn't want to miss that, yesterday, where they're building this police and fire department facility for training for police officers as Antifa took it over with Molotov cocktails.

I don't even think I saw that. They broke into the news last night because right as it was getting dark, kind of at dusk, Antifa broke into one of their construction sites. Molotov cocktails are being thrown off. This happened in Atlanta, Georgia.

One of the biggest cities in the country. Again, it does not seem like the police are able to get ahead of this, so it's always in response. You see the Antifa folks just running around, doing whatever they want, burning down and destroying property. Interesting too because the city of Atlanta is trying to build this facility to better train officers. It also involves fire department, which we all need. I mean, just like we need police. Again, they want no police. They don't want better trained police. They want none.

And so they're trying to actually make it impossible for them to move forward with this construction project. Let me take a call to Warren in Idaho quickly. Hey, Warren.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my call. You know, my comment is as a regular listener, and I call in and have donated when I can. I've had friends that have been like, I can't call in because I don't want to be a target of the FBI. I don't want to be a target and have the IRS. It's the new world we live in, right? I mean, listen, it's why we don't give out your last name.

We're not trying to identify you publicly to the world. But it's a real concern. People don't have that when they sign petitions. And I get it.

Yes. I mean, we've seen that with petitions, too, is that we'll get that question often. And listen, we handle those petitions carefully because we want to make sure that right we have to petition our government in the First Amendment is utilized. Because when you don't utilize your rights, they suddenly start – even when the text is there, they suddenly start going away.

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Or you can double the impactor donations. We said matching challenge month, ACLJ.org. We'll be right back. All right, folks.

This one I had to get Rick Grenell on for. It was a Wall Street Journal exclusive report that came out again just over the weekend. And the headline is that the Pentagon Sees Giant Cargo Cranes as Possible Chinese Spying Tools. What we've done is we've purchased these giant Chinese made cranes that operate in American ports for – they were on the cheap.

They weren't as expensive. And now they believe that they may be Trojan horses that are spying and tracking and using sensors to know where – everything that we're putting in, everything that we're importing and exporting into the United States. So they're well-made and inexpensive, which makes people wonder why would the Chinese sell us such well-made cranes. And of course we talked about they love – they really focus on the importance of ports, not just their own, but tracking I guess what's going on in our own ports. Let me bring in Rick Grenell, who's the former acting director of national intelligence and our senior advisor for foreign policy and national security. Rick, this report, I mean, it's pretty shocking and surprising that even a crane utilized could now be seen by our Pentagon as another spy tool from the Chinese Communist Party. Well, first of all, let's talk about the good news. The good news is that we've got an arm of the United States government recognizing the importance of combating Chinese spying.

I applaud that. We've had a problem of trying to get these agencies to understand the threat from China. Too many people in Washington try to say, look over there, Russia, Russia, Russia, and Beijing applauds every time we do.

It's important to say that Russia is a problem, but China is a crisis. And the more we can focus on what they're doing to utilize technology to come into the United States and spy, the better. Now, I don't want to talk about this program specifically, but let me just say that we were very public about our concerns with the Chinese company Huawei. And Huawei was all over Europe.

I remember multiple conversations with Chancellor Merkel about combating this. Europeans were going for the cheap version of the technology, and we have a problem with this in the Balkans and in Eastern Europe. And I have to say even Israel buying Huawei technology.

We need to do a better job of combating Chinese spying. It's everywhere, and it's in their technology. I think people remember Huawei as kind of the first time the U.S. government said, hey, this is not a company we should be doing business with, and we need to take down their 5G sensors. I think that's where they got in is it wasn't so much their devices, which are popular in the developing world in places that don't have the same kind of economies that we do to afford $1,000 phones, smartphones. But they started to put in – they used our telecom systems to install their 5G system.

Similar to this story, Rick, they would do it on the cheap, but it would work well. And then their back end is that they're using it to track. I mean, what they're saying here is that these cranes, what they really can track is any kind of like military equipment being sent in and out of the United States, that they've got a specific purpose about what they'd want to look for. It's not really for cars. It's not really for regular devices.

It's to see where our military equipment is coming in and going out. Look, you hit it on the head. It's the cheap version. It works. It's a short-term solution.

It's certainly not going to last that long. We know that is the criteria for all of these Chinese products that come into the United States. We see it constantly.

It's a very cheap version that doesn't last that long. That's the challenge that our American diplomats overseas have had to try to convince these countries is to say it's going to be cheap and it may or may not work all the time. We saw it with COVID. I have to tell you, with the PPE, it was a huge problem. Chinese tests that didn't work, the masks that were not quite up to snuff, and we really had a problem with it. Yeah, I mean, if people remember that, their testing was never really accurate. We weren't able to rely on it, and people were trying to import the mask. Yeah, you had to be careful where you were getting them from.

It feels like the past now, but it was not that long ago. Yes, and so we've had Huawei. We've had TikTok, which a lot of government agencies now have gotten rid of, at least set off their phones. It's not illegal yet in the United States, and if you have your own Wi-Fi that you pay for, you can use it with Wi-Fi. But a lot of states and the federal government have looked at now saying it's illegal to keep it on your phone. I think most of that, if you have a government phone, you've got to delete it. But then if you're at a college campus and the state's banned or you work for the state, your phone cannot be utilized on Wi-Fi that they use.

Look, we do that here. So then it brings to the question then, Rick, do we need to start looking at these more mundane kind of equipment like a crane? So it makes sense, I think, to people when they hear spying type devices when it comes to 5G, smartphones. You're carrying around microphones and cameras on you at all times.

And your TikTok is a service that lets you see your keystrokes on anything that you make. But when you think about cranes, it's kind of a new way of thinking that like anything that's coming out of China on a scale could be something utilized for bad, for something that would hurt our country. I wish I could just go into all the examples that I'm thinking of right now. We're in dangerous territory when you're talking to a former DNI. I've got to be very careful.

But let me just say this overall. We must be vigilant about what China is bringing into this country, whether it's on our college campuses and our universities, whether it's through local government contracts. Gavin Newsom has been caught trying to do these deals on the cheap with China. I would just caution everyone when you're buying anything from Amazon. Amazon does a lousy job of filtering out the Chinese products.

You have to understand these are cheap products and many times they are very good at trying to spy on us. And I'm not suggesting that it's with every product, but it certainly exists more widespread than we know. You know, that is, to me, I think it's just a new world to operate in for all of us to be that much more, especially people that run businesses and bring in, again, heavy equipment and look at it and say, okay, they're trying to get the best price. And oftentimes that is going to come out of places like China. But to maybe second guess and say, you know, maybe there's a better option, even if it's not a U.S.-made company, but a better option from another country that I can trust. And I think it just the whole way of thinking has to change for the business community and for all of us.

Even when we're thinking about installing a new app on our phone, it's like, hey, I better check to see who's behind this app exactly. Rick, I also want to talk about this with CPAC in the news, because there's a lot of misinformation that felt like about that, because you got CPAC is at this huge hotel outside Washington, D.C. President Trump spoke, and I know he also did a side of it for his campaign, which was packed. So the media love just showing pictures, saying, oh, there's no one here, there's no one there. You were actually there. I've been to a lot of CPACs before. The reason CPAC is at the new locations is because they outgrew any of the locations in Washington, D.C., because the rooms just could not hold enough people.

What was it actually like? Because the media is trying to spin it off as, see, this part of the movement is dead. Look, CPAC has always been the really strong grassroots activists, and it was no different this time. I felt like there was a lot of grassroots people who were coming up with a lot of great ideas. So you saw lots of different booths about ideas. CPAC is a place where lots of ideas, new ideas are generated, and I love that part of it.

I like walking through the booths and seeing what conservatives are thinking are the issues of tomorrow. I think that there was a lot of college kids. There's a lot of activists that were there. That room is so ginormous that even if that room is half-filled or a quarter-filled, you still have hundreds of people there. I think that it was really well attended. It was jammed in the hallways.

You couldn't walk through. I thought it was a fantastic CPAC. I think everybody came that was thinking of running for President but DeSantis. For some reason, he didn't show up, but everybody else was there, and there was a good debate. This whole idea that CPAC has turned into Trump, I think Trump is the leader of the party.

He's the most popular person in the party, so of course he has the majority. But there were a lot of other voices and ideas that were there. Vivek was there. Mike Pompeo was there. Nikki Haley was there. There were a lot of other voices, and I think the media just likes to try to pretend.

I've always gone after CPAC. I've known a lot of different folks, whether it's the Slaps, my buddy Greg Heller, different people that have run it. I think it's part of what you said, Rick. It's because of young people. I think they saw turning points. The same reason that they go after the turning point and try to stay out of this bunch of right-wing radical kids is that when young people are involved in something, they realize that down the road that's going to have a major political impact. Yeah, I will say this. I think that if you are wanting to be an elected official, if you're wanting to be a leader within the conservative movement, you have to go to CPAC because those are your people who are the mouthpieces, and you try out issues.

If they receive it, then it can go somewhere. I think it's a perfect opportunity to try out new ideas. People absolutely have to go. Yeah, Rick, I think that's a good point you made about the opportunity to just talk through. It's like talking to friends and family, but it's your base activists who are going to get your message out, again, through all of their worlds that they've got in contact with. It's interesting to see your point because I wasn't there this time, but I was just watching the media spin, which is always interesting to see.

Of course, they come up with a new way every time to say CPAC doesn't matter, yet all these people who are pretty high profile go to CPAC. All showing up? Yeah. Rick, as always, we appreciate it. Yep, and hey, we are heading into the final segment. If you would like to have your voice heard, we're going to take as many calls as we can in this last segment, 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. We're going to hit on another topic as well. Once again, 1-800-684-3110, and support the work of the ACLJ by visiting ACLJ.org during our matching challenge. We'll be right back. Mayor Pete is reorganizing. Hey, welcome back to Sekio.

We are taking your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. Sekio Brothers will be back tomorrow. That's right. We'll be back doing a Tuesday show this week, so give you a little more time for the news to actually something to happen. You got a little bit of a Sekio Brothers today. Exactly, yeah.

So you get a little double down. We're going to finish up today with, and don't turn it off because this is, I think, actually one of the more interesting stories we're going to talk about today, which is Mayor Pete's restart. He knows he needs a reboot. He admits now to CNN, not on TV, but he did an online interview. That's a weird place to choose just print.

Yeah. There's a lot of other print outlets, but he obviously had someone there who wasn't going to be nasty to him and would just let him propaganda out. I think it's pretty interesting though that he would say this. I think he's someone who still has Presidential hopes, Presidential dreams. You're gone.

What'd you say? Almost done. Almost done if he doesn't really course correct. Yeah, because if he quits, he can't course correct. Yeah. So if he doesn't, and what's he really going to be able to do about infrastructure in two years?

Yeah, very little. So, but he has admitted- I don't think I've known our road to ever get done in two years. Like, now I'm talking about like a highway, I'm talking about like an intersection.

There's like, you know, they can't hang a traffic light, it feels like in two years. Yes. So he has admitted that it was wrong not to go to East Palestine earlier, but then he starts blaming other people, says it's really not part of his job. First of all, he's the head of DOT. Yeah, exactly.

That's literally your job. That's why people said to go and they were focusing on him. He oversees all those different branches. So he finally admits to that. He acknowledged that mistake and he should have gone there earlier. He said he failed to anticipate.

But see, this is what I want to point out first here. The political fallout from the toxic trade. This is how they're thinking. See, this is what made Mayor Pete really unqualified to be DOT. It's not even just age or incompetence.

That's probably some of it. But small town mayors shouldn't be the head of America's infrastructure and travel or transportation. But secondly is, the only reason he regrets is because of the political fallout.

Not the fallout, the actual fallout that the people are experiencing in East Palestine. Mayor Pete continues to demonstrate his incompetence with respect to the tragic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. After two years on the job, Transportation Secretary Buttigieg, better known as Mayor Pete, finally realizes that he needs to do his job and stop squealing. For the last two years, he's been living in a world of alternative reality. And he's been focused on elitist concerns such as green energy and climate change while working class people in America are struggling. So he's still whining, but at least he acknowledges that he was wrong with respect to the Ohio derailment response. But he then launches into an attack on his political opponents and again ignores the real concerns of the people in Ohio. And one of the things that I find really peculiar with respect to Mayor Pete is that he has focused so much of his time on being woke with respect to climate change and ethnicity.

And other than his ability to complain about the skin color of construction workers, I think he has few qualifications and he's demonstrated even less competence. Yeah, he said this about Fox News host Logan. Of course he wouldn't say this on the air anywhere. Yeah, we have to read it.

So somebody wrote this, he probably didn't write this. It's really rich to see some of these folks, the former President, these Fox hosts, who are lifelong card carrying members of the East Coast elite, whose top economic policy party has always been tax cuts for the wealthy, and who wouldn't know their way around a T.J. Maxx if their life depended on it, to be presenting themselves as if they genuinely care about the forgotten middle of the country. And then he goes on to say, you think Tucker Carlson knows the difference between T.J. Maxx and Coles?

Yes, because he does care about the country. And these guys have become successful, but they all started out hard working jobs. Sean Hannity was a local radio show host for a long time in his career, in Alabama, Georgia, then got back home to New York where he's from.

But again, they do know. And they're definitely not hard carrying members of the East Coast elite when they're Fox News hosts. They're banned from those kind of events in that part of society, which is why they end up a lot of times, still get harassed even Tucker Carlson, who's in Montana fishing with his kids.

Yeah, he's at a bait shop and getting harassed on video. We've all seen that. I'm sure that's what happens to a lot of East Coast elites. Yeah, right.

When they go out to Montana. So the whole idea is, Mayor Pete wishes he was an East Coast elite, but you can't be technically one when you're born in Indiana, I guess, and your whole stick is being small town mayor. But the fact is, he again is trying to make it all about politics.

And we talked about the forgotten man. He doesn't even care about the people. He never says, I should have done better for the people of East Palestine. He says, I should have done better, Harry, because it's hurt Democrats politically.

Absolutely. And he demonstrate his commitment to being the epitome of an elite individual. Keep in mind, Mayor Pete graduated from Harvard. He was a consultant for McKinsey, and he cares about elite values.

Those consultants at McKinsey went to Harvard. I mean, it doesn't really matter where you... Again, not that there's really anything wrong with it if you still care about the people. No, just don't bash. Don't try to make the people who aren't actually that, that. And then when you actually are that, and your Mayor Pete thing is just kind of a phony stepping stone to a position you certainly weren't qualified to take. I mean, the thing is, Donald Trump showed up, they bashed that. Mayor Pete bashed that. He showed up with what people said they needed from the government. Clean, bottled water. Right. He showed up with pallets full.

So they could bathe their kids and have something to drink. Yeah, exactly. And this is why there's always been a disconnect with Donald Trump. Sure, Donald Trump comes from the world of... Sure, we can say he is certainly coming from New York and all this, but has always had a different sense of reality than a lot of people.

He actually... Relates more. He relates more to the construction worker. That's what I'm saying. That's his world.

Which is different than just being some consultant to some firm that you don't actually... This was the guy they made fun of for having a McDonald's in the White House. Right, right.

He wasn't doing that just for the heck of it, you know? No, he loves his McDonald's. Or, you know, double scoop of ice cream. Who of August doesn't like their McDonald's?

Too much, clearly, you can tell. Yep. All right, we only got a couple minutes left. I think it is important also, though, to continue talking about the work we're doing and the current matching challenge. That's right. So, ACLJ right now, we have this matching challenge. We have it for the entire month. People can go online to ACLJ.org and double the impact of their donation.

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