Who Won The First GOP Debate?

Today on Sekulow, who won the first GOP 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're taking your calls. We want your input today, 1-800-684-3110.

We'll give you ours as well. There was the first GOP debate last night. Of course, as they call it, the elephant in the room.

The elephant that was in the room. Of course, Donald Trump did not take part in the debate. And, man, I think that after you watched it, you could clearly see why. It does seem to be not that all these folks are good people and some have done a lot of work with us here at the ACLJ, but it certainly seemed like the JV team on the stage and the varsity player wasn't there. And I say that because there was a lot of rehearsed lines, a lot of prepared statements. And when it ever came to something off the cuff, I thought the hand-raising moment was the most politician moment of the night when they all had to look at each other to say, am I going to raise my hand to say, would I still vote for Donald Trump? And Varek Ramaswami was the only person who said immediately he would do it. And then, like, you have the picture of DeSantis looking right over at him. Chris, he did it and then said he didn't do it. I was saying this. Yeah, I mean, you know what the truth is?

Donald Trump wins the debates but for the fact that no one's poll numbers are going to go up enough to be a challenge to Donald Trump after this. No, but one thing that I think was interesting is that Vivek Ramaswami did have probably the best... You're changing now. Vivek. Vivek.

I know he got all over our friend Sean Hannity about that. Vivek. Like cake, he said, right? Like cake.

Vivek. Had a good night. I mean, I thought it was rehearsed lines in one sense, but you can't argue the fact that he had a good evening.

Does it move the needle any? The winner of the debate was Donald Trump. I still want to see the ratings. I have a feeling they're very low.

Yeah, they haven't come out yet. There was hundreds of thousands of people watching online at one time, at least. A few million people. Oh, it will be... What I'm going to say is, like, does it double what primetime Fox usually is? I doubt it. We'll keep monitoring. Usually those don't come out until one or two o'clock in the afternoon, so we'll probably have some time until that comes out, but we'll see what the overnight ratings are.

And also, you know how many people texted me hours later or this morning that they're just catching up now? A lot of people didn't feel like it was worthy of watching it live. Well, I'll tell you, I had moments because it was around bedtime for the kids. I paused it.

I recited the ads. I'll tell you, some of the people that didn't make as big of a stand as I would have liked to see Tim Scott come out of his shell a little bit more. He did towards the end, but it was a slow start. The story that he has about being raised by a single mother is compelling, but everybody's heard it now a hundred times. Yeah, I think that this idea that this was the introduction for a lot of people, it's actually not.

I think that most people that are watching the Republican primary, they've now seen most of this field. Maybe they don't know the random people on the ends, the Doug Burgoms or the... They should have been there. I mean, they did fine, but it was just a waste of time. It was broken, like... Yeah, I mean, they had some fun lines. Nothing you were like screaming. I mean, Asa, I think you had some stuff. He was the only one who definitely didn't raise his hand. It was him and... Christie said he didn't, but really kind of did. I don't know. That one was a little odd.

But again, I don't love those things in general. I thought if you were not willing to back the Republican nominee, you weren't supposed to be on that debate stage. Yeah, you had to sign... A pledge.

Yeah. So did he sign the pledge and not sign it? Well, I guess they're saying if he was indicted, maybe that changes the pledge.

He goes to jail. That's what Asa said. The face of Hutchinson pivoted and said, he may not actually be legally allowed to be President, so I'm not going to say I'm going to vote for someone who's not legally allowed.

Okay, here's the truth of the matter is the people who needed to break out didn't... I still think there could be a VP amongst there. We talk about this all the time. Donald Trump is not going to pick a Vivek Ramaswamy type to be his VP. He does not.

You don't do that. Too much attention. Too much attention. But Tim Scott could be. Right. The guy who is kind of slides right through and slides right through and no one hates him.

Tim Scott. And people generally would say nice things about him. It's that kind of candidate. McCain needed Palin to bring energy to that.

He needed the opposite. Trump doesn't need that. Trump needs... Like Pence. Like Pence was. Like Pence was. Yeah. I think his performance was pretty good. Here's what we want to know. Did you watch the debate? Did you even watch the debate? And what was your reaction?

Who do you think was the winner? We'll take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. 800-684-3110. Don't forget we're in the last few days of our Life and Liberty Drive. We're talking about the issue of life in our emails going out today. A lot of cases there. ACLJ.org. You go right to the Life and Liberty Drive and your gift will be doubled.

And we will take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. I want your reaction to the debate. This is not being negative on Vivek Ramaswamy, but I will say this. The statement he made that I promise you this, the only war I will start, and then he talks about the war on the federal agencies. That is naive if you're the President of the United States because you don't know what hand you will be dealt. Ask George W. Bush that. Yeah, tell George W. Bush that. Tell Franklin Roosevelt that. George W. Bush was coming primarily as a domestic policy President focused on education.

Education was the big topic. And of course 9-11 came around and totally changed his presidency entirely over eight years. And we're just finishing those wars now. So again, I like the idea that the approach is you don't want to go to war. So you do everything possible not to go to full scale war, but you can't declare that you're not going to war. Yeah, it was clear he came out the same. I'm going to say things definitively that others are going to have to kind of politicize themselves out of. So whenever there was a definitive, he would take a definitive. You do have to give Chris Christie the line of the night.

The chat GPT. Yeah, I mean it was clearly someone wrote that I have a feeling. I don't think he probably just threw that out there. Did we have that one? But he did a good job. Let's do this.

Play it. I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like Chat GPT standing up here. And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama and I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing in stage tonight. Got boos when Chris Christie said it, some applause. I think Chris Christie got booed the majority of the time. Well, he's in there to be the boo candidate. He at least is fun to watch, was entertaining, brought some fire to it. I actually thought he made the others respond in ways that was interesting because he has no chance, but I feel like he at least was interesting to hear speak. When it comes to that line specifically, I'm curious if it flew over people's heads, if people got it.

You know, the sad thing is the entire rest of the field was having to try to take out Vivek Ramaswamy. I said that before. That memo from The Sanchez was true. The preview show, I said, this entire debate is going to be tried to get rid of him. I don't think it did. Oh, I think it backfired completely. I think who you're going to see the biggest bump for is Vivek Ramaswamy.

I think he won by a landslide. Who says nothing negative about Donald Trump. Yeah, exactly. He's the first one to come out and defend him. He is playing a certain hand. Again, I don't know if I trust him. I don't know if I like him yet, but I can at least undoubtedly say if you watch that thing unbiasedly, which I try to do my best because honestly, that field I could kind of go either way on any of them. He clearly won.

He won by a large margin. Maybe next you would have a DeSantis, but I think there's a pretty far gap between the two. Let's take calls. We're taking your calls.

We want your reaction to this. 1-800-684-3110. 800-684-3110. Who's next, Jordan? We'll go to Pamela in Texas online too. Hey, Pamela. Hi.

You're on the air. Ramaswamy is the only clear winner. All the others are a joke. Ron DeSantis needs to go back to Florida and be the governor, and that's the end of that. The man hit all the points and could have hit a lot more, but you had a lot of interruptions from the betrayal camp. Mike Pence certainly didn't shut up, I will say that, as much as he took the Donald Trump approach of let me interrupt and keep going and talk over the moderators. Mike Pence? Yeah, to the point of just being like, man, you don't, that's not your energy. I think Bret Baier and Martha McHale thought it was going to be a lot easier because Donald Trump wasn't there, and they got Mike Pence, which I never think I'd say before.

It was a wild call. I don't really get it at all. Like, he decided that that was going to be, if you're going to be the anti-Donald Trump, be the anti-Donald Trump. I didn't particularly like the, like I said, the vague comment on the two things. He made a reference to medicines that people take that need, and I thought that was tacky and not well thought out. For a pharmaceutical, yeah. Yeah. Biotech, yeah.

Yes, biotech. And I think the other thing I didn't, I think that worst statement was just naive, other than, but I'm not going to deny he had a great night. He tried to play that Israel thing.

He had a great night, but his estate tax thing is like worse than the Democrats. And the Israel stuff. Weird on the Israel stuff. All right, we're taking your calls, 800-684-3110. You want to play that Pence?

Will, is that what you want to play, a little Pence action with Ramaswami? Here we go. Let me explain it to you. Let me explain it to you, if I can. I'll go slower this time.

You know, I sometimes struggle with the reading confirmation. Look, I was a House conservative leader before it was cool. I actually pushed a deficit reduction act. That was the last time we actually reduced the national debt in the United States, when I was the leader of House conservatives.

I balanced budgets and cut taxes when I was governor. I mean, look, Joe Biden has weakened this country at home and abroad. Now is not the time for on-the-job training. We don't need to bring in a rookie. We don't need to bring in people without experience.

He got booed on that line. Yeah, I mean, he worked for a guy who was a rookie in the political sense. Yes. You could say that Donald Trump has got a lot longer success, has been through a lot more things at 70 years old. But it was a political rookie. And honestly, I'd say is today still paying some of the price for going in there as a political rookie. Not knowing how to work the system in that way.

Not bowing down to the system. No, he did not. Let's go back.

I think he was the winner of the night, Donald Trump, by the way. Yes. Because I know those numbers are funky, the 200 million on Twitter and all that.

But if there's that many impressions, I guarantee you whatever the numbers are reported under this, more people saw that. Can I say something about the new lawyer coming or do you want me to save that for later? No, I think we can do that. Okay, so because the President's being arraigned, not arraigned to his reporting today. We're not going to see much from that. Maybe a photo at 4 o'clock.

Yeah, maybe a photo at 4 o'clock. He's going to basically surrender. He hired a new lawyer this morning. And as Jordan knows, we know Steve Sadow for a long time. I've known Steve Sadow since my last year of law school when I was at Emory for my last year. And Steve was in the same office building that we were in in Atlanta at the Standard Building in downtown Atlanta for many years. He was with Ed Garland's firm. So I've known Steve Sadow for over 40 years.

Well, close to 44 years. I will tell you this, I consider Steve one of the best criminal defense lawyers in Georgia. He will bring a level of sophistication to the case that is needed. He is easy to work with. He is a collegial guy. I also think it's going to, Jordan, I think it's going to benefit the other defendants. Having somebody like Steve in there. The group that's been assembled by the various lawyers, and we've been helping lawyers get placed, have been, I think, a really good team there.

I feel confident that the right team is in place in Georgia. We'll talk more about it later, but I wanted to say that. Let's go ahead and take calls.

And we want your reaction to all this, to the debates. 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, Peter's calling from Florida on Line 6. Hey, Peter.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'll give Trump a 10. He didn't even show up. Novak crushed it at an 8.

DeSantis had a 7. Pence and Christie, I believe, are there for jeers and satire. And why is Haley acting like such a warmonger on the stage last night? Yeah. Well, I think that she definitely represents more of the neocon side of the Republican Party.

Husband's active duty and part of all of it. So I think that there's some of that side. I think she's been honest with her approach. Yeah, and I think Peter's right in the same analysis of Novak won and then DeSantis probably.

Who knows if anything will shake up. Do you think DeSantis had a strong night? I think it was okay. I think his statements were fine. Did he recover a little?

Have you isolated just those moments? I don't think he said anything that most conservatives would. He didn't do what he needed to do.

Disagree with it. He certainly didn't make a moment. He needed to win the night and he lost it by not winning it.

Yes, I think that's true. And I think his poll numbers, I think, will go down. I think because of Novak, the whole idea was to take him down. Because he's hurting his fundraising. And it didn't work. It actually, what happens with all these guys, by the way, this is when politicians don't understand and they go against someone who's a very gifted speaker and a very gifted entertainer, if you will.

It always backfires because they have a better team, likely. Likely, the 38-year-old candidate has a better group of people around him to prep him for social media zings. And people who have done it, you can see how they've been so many debates.

You can do the work on that. And also, he has no record, so you can't pop him and say, well, you did this, well, you did that. He can save whatever he thinks. Yeah, they didn't even pop him on some of the things that we've talked about. I mean, we weren't even brought up some of his maybe kind of, they brought up that he only had voted in two Presidential elections. So they brought up those kind of things that were concerning.

I think they should be. But we also know he's publicly supported some candidates that you certainly, if you're watching this show and agree with what we're saying, wouldn't agree with. But no one brought it there because they probably all have that in their background as well. I don't know. I don't think many of them have given money to Elizabeth Warren.

Elizabeth Warren or Elizabeth Warren people, related people? Yeah. And also, I think that the...

But they didn't do it. I think the toughest issue for him is they're going to keep hitting him on Israel. That's a sore spot for him and he's not willing to back away from.

No. And I think our conversation, because we had a good one with our team in Israel, which is they don't necessarily fully disagree with his statements, but I think the problem is, as you start opening up a door to letting conservatives and letting sort of that MAGA movement turn their support of Israel, that is a much bigger problem that could happen. And what I think he doesn't understand, and you'd think coming from biotech and all that he would, is that we test a lot of new weaponry and arms and the fight against terrorism in Israel. So we use our equipment and research. We built the Iron Dome. We also... We benefit from that because they've been using it and perfecting it if we ever needed to install it on a battlefield, not even just on our borders, but if we needed to put that on the battlefield to protect troops, we know it works. We know what doesn't work about it and tweaking it. So some of it is because they're on the front lines of this war on terror that never ends, we learn by being a partner and by keeping that partnership. And it's not just about the money.

It's about the research and technology. We are about to enter the final week of our Life and Liberty drive. Last week, we watched numerous would-be Presidents... Not last night, numerous Presidential candidates affirm their commitment to life. But we know what's going on in the work behind the scenes. We know that's not necessarily been a strong winning issue.

They brought that up as well. But we can fight back. We are involved in all 50 states, and you can be a part of it right now as well as we push it back against it.

Visit our website at aclj.org and join with us with the Life and Liberty Drive. All right, welcome back to SEC. We're taking your calls, 1-800-684-312.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Of course, talking about the debate last night, it is now full on Presidential. Election season, and again, I think that because Donald Trump wasn't there, a lot of less people probably too did. We'll see. So you have to question the actual impacts of these.

Will they be from kind of, like you said, Logan, kind of like what the spin was out of it almost, more than people actually... It went almost two and a half. It was over two. It was supposed to be an hour and a half. I think that's what they originally said.

That's what I thought. I think they'd scheduled it for two, it's probably an hour and a half without commercials of actual time. And then obviously they had the spin room after on Fox and everyone was doing their live commentary. So I tried to catch up what everyone was saying afterwards. Yeah, I felt like, again, we all watched it because it's part of our job to do this broadcast. It was kind of, it was tough because you're like sitting there going, none of these people are going to be the nominee. I mean, that's just my, that's my honest assessment. Yeah, it was fun to watch it with my son. Logan thinking, could some of these be the, well, for your kids, it's great education.

Could some of them be the BP? My daughter asked, was President Trump there because he's in jail? She's heard so many times over arrest. They arrested, yeah.

And you know, how to explain a rabbit to a seven-year-old. He did say, my son was like, man, all they're doing is yelling. And they didn't really, but I think he walked in the one time, he's like, they're all just yelling about Trump. And he's like, I don't know if I watched it. The only person he was familiar with, which was interesting because Trump made this impact last time on him when he was little, was DeSantis. Was that because he was driving the car with me? Yeah, well, I think it's also because in Florida, we spent a good bit of time in Florida, that he's heard that and he's heard all the Disney controversy.

Yes. So my son, and look, that impacts people. If you always look at who kids, you know, when they always say, like, kids pick the President, it's usually a pretty good indication because they're hearing from their parents, who ends up picking the President.

A lot of times it's accurate, so that could be interesting too. Does DeSantis have enough name value still to push him, to keep pushing him over life? The question is going to be, is in a month from now or two weeks from now, is DeSantis going to be number two or is he going to be number three?

I think that's his risk. All right, we're going right back to the phones. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Kevin in Texas on line three. Hi, Kevin. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call.

Sure. Regardless who wins, it was great entertainment. Everybody's excited about the horse race and that type of thing. But what I think is really important is since this Republican debate, I hope they talk about how they're going to get Republicans to win up and down the ticket. Are they putting resources in to get out the vote operation, ground game, all those things? Because I think more people are interested in the nuts and bolts of politics right now. And the Republican Party needs to invest in that starting now, not waiting just three months before the election. I think there is definitely more of an interest in beyond just your Presidential ticket. I think that's become more aware. Honestly, you can credit for that for a lot of people, is people like Joe Rogan, that group that's saying get involved in your local level even more so than getting involved in your Presidential level. No, I think that's right. And talking about getting involved, a lot of you are tuning into our social media platforms right now.

So I encourage you to subscribe and share this with your friends and people that are on your list. The interesting thing to me here is the former President Trump's called this the vice President's debate. And you look at it, and I think there's some truth to that. I think where Tim Scott is running a very positive campaign, that is a good juxtaposition of some of the harder edge that President Trump has to deal with. That could be a good team, actually, whether that will happen or not. Yeah, but listen, I think that you could see a vice President out of that field.

You could also, that field may not, maybe some cabinet members and things like that. President Trump, I could also see just ignoring this entire group because they're beating each other up. It could happen. Because they're beating each other up. He's not beating them up.

So how beaten are they going to get by the time he says these are too damaged? That was an interesting thing, Logan, was that normally the beating up comes from the top. Donald Trump going after them.

Here, it was all of them going after them. Donald Trump was not mentioned much, other than the forced times when they had to do it. Yes, I think that was a fox move more than a debater's move. They just did ask those questions. And also, they decided to turn their attention to Ramaswami 100%. Which, I will tell you all this, it's not his actual poll numbers.

It's so upsetting to him. The fundraising. The fundraising is dead for all these people.

I know that for a fact from people I know inside and all that. So if you're Ron DeSantis, who's the guy taking your $10 donors? It's Ramaswami. It's not Donald Trump. No. Donald Trump fundraises very differently.

Yep. Yeah, I think when it comes to people actually looking at who to vote for, they at least see maybe a light with the fake. They see a potential. The photo comes out today at 4 o'clock Eastern Time of Donald Trump. You know, the actual photo. The mugshot. The mugshot.

Because they've done it for all the lawyers. It all came out. So far everyone else has got a mugshot.

Some are different than others. Secret Service says they don't want it. I think we're going to get it. I think he will. And I think if he spins that correctly, it's the greatest fundraising moment of his entire campaign. Probably.

But it is a very fine line of how you look into the camera. Alright, let's take another phone call. 1-800-684-3110.

We're going to continue to take your calls. Let's go to... You want to go to Logan? Let's go to... Let's go to Amador in California on Line 2. Hey. Amador, are you there? Hello? Go ahead. Thank you for taking my call.

Mike, you get on line with me. What do you think the outcome would have been if President Trump was actually there? Hmm. Been a very different debate. Yeah, they would have focused on him. I think that would have been the difference. Instead of it being let's take out Vivek, it would be let's take out Donald Trump. So you would have had an entire field maybe except for Vivek being much more aggressive and spending more time on Trump, on COVID, on things like that that were maybe the bumps in the record.

I'll tell you where you had it. You had it where Nikki Haley in the after show, so to speak, she went after Donald Trump and said, here's why he can't be the nominee. He's going to be spending the next year in fighting court cases. Where she's wrong is he's hiring lawyers that are going to be fighting the court cases. I was going to say this, unless one of them goes to trial.

I don't think that works. When we had to do the Mueller stuff with him and those questions, I feel like that was much more intrusive of his time. That was about the President of the United States, that these will be as- There's so many motions going on that he's not have to work with. No, we were based out of the cabinet room and had to go in there and have real substantive long conversations. There's also some confusion. I tried to answer on Newsmax this morning.

It was very early seventh of the morning. We were all talking through these issues, but the denial of the stay came through for the move to federal court. But that's not on the merits of moving it to the federal court.

That will be Monday. So what the judge- That was just like you're going to have to- Judge Jones in the federal court said that he is not going to stop the surrendered detention of Mark Meadows or Jeff Clark. That doesn't mean they won't actually take the- I still think the case gets removed to federal court. Whether that's the judge in Georgia is a conservative judge. The judge, Judge Jones in federal court is not. The jury pool is probably better in the Northern District of Georgia. Of course, more sophisticated at the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. So there's a lot of countervailing, but it's one and done in Georgia.

If one goes. But Scott Grubman representing Kenneth Chesbrough said this. He filed a motion for a speedy trial. In Georgia, they have to try that case, I think it's by November 8th.

It's like eight weeks. If they do not, the charges are dismissed. And I am sure that sent shockwaves through Fannie Willis's office yesterday. Scott's a very good lawyer, very smart lawyer, and I've worked with him for many years. Very good lawyer.

He did a very bold move there. Yeah. So that could get the whole impact of- How they go to trial.

Yes. But that means we're getting to Mark Meadows mugshot. It's going to be an interesting moment because people even ask me today on Newsmax, how would you handle it? Would Jenna Ellis just smile?

I think for her younger. That worked for Tom DeLay too. Probably worked her. He just kind of ignored it then. Rudy kind of looked like he was caught off guard. Yeah, he should have smiled. Or more serious like- Like this. Yeah. And then some of those guys we know, they're just not the most fortunate people on earth. But Donald Trump is a pretty photogenic guy.

He's a pretty good opposing. When we come back, we've got a lot more to talk about, but we also want to remind you, we're in the last nine days of our matching Life and Liberty drive, where your gifts will be doubled. The email today is on the life issue. We're fighting for life across the country.

Go to ACLJ.org and join our Life and Liberty drive. First time we've done it. It's having a great success. We ask you to continue to support our work back with more in the next half hour.

Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow, second half hour.

We're going to take a lot of phone calls, 1-800-684-3110. I wanted to say this coming out of the bat, but it's talking about the debate. I think what's interesting is if a Donald Trump mugshot comes out around 4 p.m. Eastern time today, I don't know that anybody's going to be talking about this debate. I think that will be bigger news than the debate. I don't even see it.

I mean, certainly it's in the rotation of things, but it didn't take over. The potshots were mostly at each other, and they're people that are not household names. They might be household names to our list or to people's list of this broadcast, yes.

So we'll get to your calls now. What was interesting to me, I posted this poll like three different places. Very straightforward. Like, who do you think won? Most of the people said Donald Trump. I'd say 90%. 5% said they just didn't even watch it. They just watched Trump. And another 5% was Vivec or DeSantis people.

So, I mean, literally the 90% majority was a mixture of I'm not watching it, and I support Donald Trump. And that was just what came through mine. Yeah, absolutely. Should we take some of these calls? I mean, there's a lot of people have called in, and let's just try to get to them. Let's go in, because this is more related to what could happen this afternoon. Let's go to Don in California on Line 4.

Don, you there? Hi, hi, fellas. Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Sure.

Great show. I had a question. I heard a commentator suggest that Trump lawyers, I'm not sure on which case, should try entering into an interlocutory appeal. My understanding, it was to the Supreme Court. And I don't even know what that is, but... Well, you can't take an interlocutory appeal to the Supreme Court. It doesn't go to the Supreme Court. It would go, depending on if it goes... First move is, does the case stay in federal court, or does it stay in the state court? And if it's in the state court, it goes to the Georgia Court of Appeals. If it goes to the federal system, it goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit before it goes to the Supreme Court. So all of that becomes part of the decision the lawyers have to make in this, and I think that's a critical part of this.

I really do. Yeah. I still think a lot of this were just explaining to people the process. So the main process was the denial by Mark Meadows is not the end of that going to petition federal court. And the denial is very clear. I said, if President Trump's attorneys decide that's what they will do, ultimately, we think based off the case that you argued, I said, and I was always match slap, and all these folks who have been through this before in the legal attacks, we talked about that side too, how now just being associated with these politicians puts you in the crosshairs, not just of even going after bar light complaints, which they did first, but now trying to put you in jail. He's certainly dealt with that too, being the head of American Conservity.

And he's very openly supportive of President Trump in his personal capacity. But that because of the case you argued in the Supreme Court, basically, if Donald Trump makes that federal move, the judge might not give you a stay on reporting. In fact, that's not going to happen. Everybody's going to report tomorrow by 1230.

And that'll be done. The mugshots will be taken. But between now and next week, there will be decisions, I would think, on if this is going to federal court, or maybe a couple more weeks. I think you'll know by next... The argument is on Monday.

I think you're going to know by Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe even late Monday. So President Trump might not even have to take action? Correct.

And I think if it's lawyers, I mean, I don't want to disclose the conversations I've had, but I think a lot of this is you kind of look and see right now. Oh, yeah. Okay.

Logan. Yes. We are in the very... We need to say yes.

Yeah. We are wrapping up our life and liberty drive. We've got about a week left in it. And we are entering this final week. And last night, obviously, during the debate, we saw life become a pretty big issue. Came up, I think, within the first five questions, they were discussing it. A lot of would be Presidential candidates, a lot of them affirm their commitment to life.

A lot of them kind of hedged a little bit. But meanwhile, we know that our current President, what he is doing for life and weaponizing the federal government to do a lot of the dirty work of the abortion industry in some states have even allowed abortion right now up until the moment of birth. And in that battle, we've got to get involved because it's pure evil. And this is what the life and liberty drive was created for. So we're pushing back against this legislation in state courtrooms across the country and fighting at the Supreme Court.

And right now, your gift will be doubled dollar for dollar through the life and liberty drive. It's our last week coming up to fight back against this sick legislation in the state courtrooms. And, Dad, it's this incredibly important time that we have to have our people and we want to thank God for those people.

You know, listen, here's what I said yesterday and I mean this. These folks that need our help, they really need our help. And they need us and we need you because together we can actually get this job done. But without you, we can't get it done. So I want to encourage you to go to aclj.org or respond to our email and participate in our life and liberty drive where your gift will be doubled. That's aclj.org. Back with more in a moment.

1-800-6-8-4-3110, that's 1-800-6-8-4-3-1-1-0. We are joined now by Rick Rinnell as well. There's some international news. I want to talk debate first, though, with Rick. Overall, Rick, what I took away from last night's debate, we'll play a bite from President Trump in his interview with Tucker Carlson, but I think one thing you can take away, the number one decision not to be there was the right decision. Again, it gave some people opportunities. People get some bumps in the polls. But I think being there to be the target of eight people who are mostly in the teens or one percent is not politically worth it. Yeah, look, I think it was the right move for President Trump not to go to the debate. He's so far ahead.

We don't expect the prize fighter to have fights in the lower weight class. And I think it's a good analogy because President Trump is clearly getting this nomination. I think everybody realizes that he needs to debate Joe Biden about the direction of our country. And one thing that I was really struck with last night is, you know, Republicans have got to remember that Donald Trump opened up the Republican Party for the working class. And we can't go back to kind of the same old Republican line. And I felt like last night there was a whole bunch of stale talking points. Well, Asa Hutchinson reminded me of Republican Party 1993, to be honest.

I just always get confused with his brother. Yeah, I know, but I don't think there's much stomach for that. It just felt like a relic of the past on stage. Yeah, so that was kind of a non-starter, Rick. I also thought, here's the other reason I wouldn't show up if I was Donald Trump, besides the fact that he's way ahead of the poll. He's been President of the United States.

And these guys are vying for a position, and gals are vying for a position that's not likely to get. Vivek I think probably had the strongest night of that group, Rick. I don't know what your thought was. Although there were some things he said I didn't particularly like.

But I could say that about all of them. What was your sense of who the winner of the night was? I think clearly Vivek won. He was really articulating an America first policy in a different way and to a different audience. And every time he started speaking about America, I felt a sense of pride.

And we've talked about on this show quite a bit that first and second generation Americans are at the forefront of recognizing what's happening to the ruling party and the media in cahoots to crush dissenting voices. And Vivek really nailed that. And I feel like everybody else was stale. I have to say, I felt like Ron DeSantis had a lot on his shoulders to try to prove that his campaign wasn't thinking.

And I don't think that he stopped it. I think that he still came off as very unlikable and robotic. I like Nikki Haley personally. I did not love her life answer. I get what you're saying politically, but I thought Tim Scott, Rick, said it better. So I disagree a little bit.

I felt like Nikki's pro-life answer was good because look what just happened in Ohio. I know. I know. We've been talking about that.

Please be honest. Yeah. She's being honest.

If we go into this 24 election with an open border, a war in Ukraine, an economy in free fall, and all we're going to do is talk about social issues, we are going to lose. Correct. I agree with that 100%. All right. If there's not a call, we want to take it and this will get everybody's comments because it also touches on international borders. Let's take a caller number three.

All right. Line three. Yep. Gwen's calling in Georgia on line three. You're on the air. Hi, Gwen. Hi. Hey.

Thank you for taking my call. Sure. I just wondered about the vague and his stance on Israel. Is he going to support them or is he not after 2028?

Interesting question. So we'll bat this around the horn a little bit. We'll start with Rick. He talked about lowering the aid, the financial aid to Israel, which can be scary because it's our stabilizing Middle East partner. What was your sense of that one, Rick? You've been involved in international affairs for a long time. Yeah. You know, when I saw the media attention surrounding what he said, I was quite concerned. I reached out to his team. I wanted to kind of get clarification, but also maybe help educate a little bit.

I came away with a completely different impression. And what I was told by the team is that he very much views foreign aid as something that should be temporary, not ongoing, not automatic. And I actually like that. My position is that we should have a very specific request from countries as to what the American taxpayer is paying. We shouldn't just write blank text on foreign aid. And so the idea that we know exactly what's being paid and that foreign aid is on request and not automatic, and we're looking towards it to be temporary.

I like that idea. What I was concerned with is we have to understand that Israel is the only democracy in a very rough region. And if we're going to talk about phasing out, you know, in a perfect world where the world is so peaceful and everybody's doing so well that we get to phase out foreign aid, I would think that Israel would be the last country. That's what I was about to say, Rick, is why are we starting with Israel on foreign aid? I mean, again, it's the hot button. It's an issue where you can differentiate yourself. But I think if you take more of the Rand Paul approach, which is, does it focus on Israel? It's the whole idea of we need to be looking, like you said, Rick, I think that's what concerns people.

Why is he having... Starting with Israel was not a good idea for Vivek. I'm sorry. Yeah.

I mean, I think there's other, so many other places you could start with. But second point is this, I want to play a bite with President Trump while we had you, Rick, is too, because he got the direct answer from Tucker Carlson, which is basically what he'll say, but why are you not in Milwaukee tonight? Take a listen. Mr. President, thanks for joining us.

Thank you. Why are you at the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee? Well, you know, a lot of people have been asking me that, and many people said you shouldn't do them, but you see the polls have come out.

I'm leading by 50 and 60 points. And you know, some of them are at one and zero and two. And I'm saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it's going to be, and get harassed by people that shouldn't even be running for President?

Should I be doing that? And a network that isn't particularly friendly. They were backing Ron to sanctimonious like crazy, and now they've given up on him. I mean, it's a lost cause. You know, Rick, that was a very Donald Trump-esque answer. I don't think Donald Trump participates in any of these debates, is my guess. And I'm not sure, by the way, Joe Biden participates in a general election debate. You know, his people refuse, Rick, right now to confirm that he will. Look, if we go back to kind of the philosophical reason for debate, it's to be able to make sure that the public, not necessarily the media, but that the public and the voters understand where the candidates are on every position.

That's the entire philosophical idea of a debate. I think that the public really knows where Donald Trump stands. There's no secret, and he's certainly very transparent, probably the most transparent person that's ever run for public office. I think some people would argue he's too transparent, but the reality is that there's some other candidates that do need the time to be vetted.

And let's be honest. This is a race right now, last night's debate, for who possibly could be VP or in a cabinet. This is not about who's going to be the nominee for 2024.

Maybe it's a setup for 2028, but it's a little bit too early to take that so seriously. All right, Rick, we appreciate you being with us. Thanks for your insight as always. Folks, we're going to take your calls in this last segment, so we've got some lines open since we've taken calls early. You give us a call. We're going to hear from you, 1-800-684-3110, 800-684-3110.

I want to take a moment here to discuss our Life and Liberty Drive, and I want to discuss it for a couple of reasons. Number one, we've never done one of these before. This is the first time. We offered a prayer guide. We've never done that before. You can still get that prayer guide, by the way, at aclj.org slash prayer, and you can get it that way, and we encourage you to download it.

It talks about a lot of the great information, aclj.org slash pray. I think 30,000 people or more. I think we've distributed more than 30,000 of those guides. Is that about right?

That's right. Yeah, I believe it's probably more at this point. It's the last time we even did a number, but yeah, I'm sure they are. Again, that's at aclj.org slash pray. We really want you to get that, and it's a good way for you to pray for us. We're also in our Life and Liberty Drive, and we're focusing on the life issue today, and there's so many cases. I will tell you, we had a meeting before radio, and there's another big liberty case that we're looking at right now where groups have been targeted by the government for, quote, information, and we may be going to federal court on that, so there's just a lot of activity right now. This is a great time for you to participate in our Life and Liberty Drive, our first Life and Liberty Drive. We are exactly 14% ahead of last year.

We want to beat it by more than that because we've got to make up some that we, from the beginning of the year when we didn't hit some of our goals, so we're trying to make up some lost ground here, and you become a big part. These people need our help, so they need us, and we need you, and together we're going to get them the help that they need. Go to ACLJ.org, participate in our Life and Liberty Drive. Your gifts will be doubled.

That's ACLJ.org, the Life and Liberty Drive. Your gifts will be doubled. We'll take your calls at 800-684-3110. All right, welcome back to SECC. We're taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Do you want to go to another call? Do you want to go to another clip from the debate? Just kind of set the stage again for people? This was, we were talking about Israel, so I think deservedly, rightfully so, because I do think he's going to be the guy who gets the biggest bump. It'll be interesting to see if it's still a nothing bump.

If it's sizable or not. Yeah, because at some point, like if it gets down to two or three candidates, Donald Trump does think about going in there. Yeah, well, all of a sudden if they start merging, if you start knocking people off, so all of a sudden those 3%, 5%, 8% start going towards one candidate, then you have a real person to go after, a real person to actually debate with, maybe you have a Donald Trump jump in. The problem is, I don't know if any of them are going to, when is the next one? Do we know when the next debate would be? We can pull it.

I don't know if, do we know? It's in a couple weeks. Okay, only a couple weeks. There's not going to be enough time for any of them to drop out. No, they'd have to just set the standards higher, too high for them to meet. Yeah. But I'm saying for the people to drop out and then to get their backing. Right, both. Yeah, I think that that's going to be tough. I think it would be much later to me.

This would be like wintertime, not while it's 170 degrees outside like it is here. Let's play this statement back because we talked about it so much and we'll go back to your calls. Our relationship with Israel will never be stronger than by the end of my first term. But it's not a client relationship, it is a friendship, and you know what friends do?

Friends help each other stand on their own two feet. So I will lead Abraham Accords 2.0. I will partner with Israel to make sure Iran never is nuclear armed. But you know what I love about Israel, and I've been there probably in the last 10 years more than most people on this stage, you know what I love about them? I love their border policies. I love their tough on crime policies. I love that they have a national identity and an iron dome to protect their homeland.

And so yes, I want to learn from the friends that we're supporting. Half the answer is good. The other answer- He's having to say that though for a reason. He's having to defend the fact that he has controversial statements. Most people would assume- Israel's the last country on the list to take your foreign funding from. Most people would assume that a conservative wouldn't even have to even state that.

Yeah. Wouldn't even have to go, of course you're going to support Israel, that's part of the deal. I don't like the idea because I feel like it's happened in the church, I don't like the idea of you give people an out, when you start giving people an out on Israel, I get concerned because then all of a sudden the tide starts turning. Why are they always picking on Israel?

That's what I mean. That's why I'd ask Rahm Aswami, you're a really smart guy, you made a lot of money and you've been very successful. Why in your mind do you need to even, again you say all these nice things about Israel, why is that your number one country to defund? That was what was a ridiculous comment that he made. We're funding F18s to Turkey, we have, who knows what the funding is to Saudi to keep those bases there, what we pay back in returns. All the countries in Central America, the fact that we pay for 35% of the UN's total budget. I didn't like the Israel comment, I didn't like the I'll never start a war comment, I'll never engage in a war because that's, well then don't be commander in chief, you're asking for a war then.

And that's just naive. And number three, I think references to the medications that many people take for their health and kind of making fun of that, I thought that was, grow up. And I know he's 38 years old, but if you're going to, listen, he had a good night, I'm not going to say he didn't, but I found those three personally not so great. Let's go to the phones. Let's continue on, apparently the overnight ratings are about to break, so I'm monitoring that. Oh yeah, it's just like before you go to call, do you think, would you want any of those people negotiate with Putin one-on-one? Not one of them.

Doesn't that answer it for you? Would you trust GE versus any of them? Look, I would vote for most of them over Joe Biden. Oh, if they were the only option.

Right. So I mean, I think that's where I have to look at it in that way, if I would vote for most of them over the current President. But would I rather have Donald Trump sitting down negotiating with Putin versus let's say Vivek Ramaswamy, or Chris Christie or Asa Hutchinson, remember to go through the list? Now, Tim Scott, I think would be a serious negotiator. Nikki would be a serious negotiator. I'd say if you combine them to President Trump, who do you want one-on-one? There's not even, I mean, honestly, that's not a close call. I mean, if you're being honest, the tumble comes with it, but you're being honest, yeah, let's take another call. Charlie's calling from Florida on line one, hey Charlie.

Hi, thanks for taking my call. Last night on the debate, Bret Baier asked the participants, who would support Donald Trump as the GOP nominee, even if he was convicted on one of these indictments? My question is, of all the indictments, which would, if he's convicted of, would make him ineligible to run for President? Right now, I think there's not an allegation contained within the indictments. I know there are scholars that disagree.

That would be a disqualification. Some are saying the indictment that came down on January 6th out of the DC grand jury, I don't think so. But let me say something about the raise your hand thing. Please, I like Bret Baier, I like Martha MacCallum, I've represented Fox, I mean, I'm being full disclosure here, stop asking candidates to raise their hand like they're 12 years old in fifth grade. And it's ridiculous. And I thought, I thought Ron DeSantis was right when he said, please, let's not do that.

They should stop doing that. Go up on that too. Let them go at it a little bit more, I actually think is a better way to do it. You got to keep control, but go at it. Let's go to...

It's hard with that many people on the stage. Let's do another call. All right. We're still clear on a call. It's not ready just yet to go to the next call, but good time to talk about life and liberty draft. It is a good time to talk about a life and liberty job because we are eight days away from it being over. And let me tell you exactly where we are. We get a daily sheet that shows the number of support we're getting. And we've been behind this year, to be honest. This is the first month of the year where we're actually ahead of where we were last year.

And Logan, that in and of itself is significant. And a lot of that was due to research we did of you guys and you told us what was your top topics. And life and liberty always came out as the number one and number two for almost all of our supporters. You may have gotten one of those text messages.

You may have gotten an email asking you to rank them. We look at all your comments and all of that. And we know life and liberty can sound broad, but obviously we're talking about pro-life cases. We're talking about pro-life initiatives. And liberty, we were talking, we were talking about religious liberty and obviously talking about your freedom of speech and things like that.

So those are not as broad as maybe life and liberty sounds. The ACLJ does a lot of important work. And right now through our life and liberty drive, it is the last week coming up and we really could use your support. As my dad said, this was something that we thought and we hoped would engage with you and clearly has. You've been a part of this really important movement and moment and we couldn't do it without you and want to thank you for joining us to go to ACLJ.org to support the life and liberty drive right now. We want to thank you for being a part of it. Let's go to John who is now calling in Texas on line three.

John, you're on the air. Oh, thanks for taking my call. I was making some observations here. You know, Trump not going to the debate was a smart idea because now that this prosecutor did what he did, it opened up the door for Trump to subpoena whoever he wants to subpoena to prove the issues he's been trying to prove all these years. No question. I mean, if they want a full, you know, what they're going to find is that I think Donald Trump would have passed a lie detector test about his views on the election.

And so would a lot of these other peoples. I'm going to kind of say this last comment about this Fulton County thing, because I've thought about it a lot. As a lawyer that practiced in Atlanta, as a lawyer that practiced with a lot of the defense lawyers that are now representing the President. This situation in Georgia is the greatest threat to the legal profession that I've seen in my 43 years of practicing law. When you criminalize the defense of your client, you are taking an unbelievable risk for the good of the Republic. We are supposed to represent our clients zealously, creatively, aggressively.

I mean, I've been accused of being rude, aggressive, and obnoxious in courtrooms and I have a pretty good record, but I got to tell you something folks. This is the nature and scope of the fight and what they're doing to these lawyers in Atlanta is outrageous. I'm very concerned about that and I will continue to speak out about it. Logan, let's let people know about the Life and Liberty Drive again.

Yeah, it's easy. Just go to aclj.org, support the Life and Liberty Drive. It's happening right now.

We're about to head into our final week and we are focused right now on life. You've seen what our current President has done to weaponize the federal government to do Planned Parenthood's dirty work and we can stand up to it. We had Dobbs overturned or we had Roe overturned through Dobbs. However, we have seen, you may have heard it last night, what it meant also for state by state. We can use your support right now and not only your support, but you.

Go to aclj.org. Talk to you tomorrow.