HAPPENING NOW: Biden Impeachment Inquiry Hearing

Today on Sekulow, it's happening now, the first impeachment inquiry hearing for Joe Biden. 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. 1-800-684-3110 to join us on the air.

That's 1-800-684-3110. As we come to you live now, the House has opened its first impeachment inquiry hearing after a vote by the House Oversight Committee to officially launch. Today, they're really talking about whether or not they have the sufficiency of the information and the legality, kind of the framework for what it would look like to move forward. Obviously, it's a very partisan vote. Republicans voting to move forward to the committee, Democrats voting not to move forward.

There are issues. We've talked about it before about, and there's been court cases on and about, can you start an impeachment inquiry at just a committee level or do you have to have a vote of the full House to get the full subpoena power? That will play out really further into the impeachment when they start actually issuing subpoenas when people don't voluntarily give over information, which is likely the case when it comes to President Biden, Hunter Biden, and others associated with the White House.

And if they start asserting various privileges, you end up in court and you've got to then go through those issues. I'd love to take your calls on whether you think this is a worthy kind of move by Republicans this close to an election to move forward the impeachment. I think impeachment has been very much cheapened. And that happened because of the Democrats, the fact that they tried to impeach a former President who is no longer in office, move forward with a second impeachment, the first impeachment. This idea again, this is supposed to be a weighty decision that most people learned after the Clinton impeachment moving forward.

It was also one that could be politically backfiring when you also lay on top of the fact that the government shut down. We had the GOP debate last night without the front runner of the GOP. There's a lot to talk about. We want to hear it from you at 1-800-684-3110.

On the debate, I'd really like to know if you two did. Are you tuning in or is Donald Trump's absence a reason for you to kind of say, maybe I'll learn about it in the news. I'll see what kind of happened the next day.

Because it is two hours, Logan, of your life you've got to commit. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, maybe they tuned in for the first hour, maybe they call it highlights. I'm curious if you did watch or you didn't, just put in the chat if you're watching on Rumble or on YouTube or on Facebook right now, just put I watched and maybe put who you thought won. I'd love to hear from that. So those are just, if you're watching on one of our social media platforms, YouTube, Rumble, Facebook, just put I watched and who won.

Or put, I didn't watch, skipped, or maybe because of Trump. Give us a little information. I'd love to see that in the chat roll on. We can kind of tabulate some of that a little bit and see what the general consistency is.

You can give us a call also too, 1-800-684-3110. We're talking about the debate. We're also talking about this impeachment inquiry, which I think we need to break down for people so they understand why this is happening, why it's either a good or a bad thing, but we'll break that down coming up in the next little bit. Yeah, absolutely.

So again, to join us on the air, it's 1-800-684-3110. A lot of this too, it really is up to the House of Representatives. You can kind of make up rules as you go. Ultimately, it takes a vote of just a majority vote in the House to impeach to move it over to the trial that then occurs in the Senate where you have to have the higher bar of two-thirds, and why we haven't really seen these impeachments ever move forward. So it's a political question. I mean, it's a political move.

And it's also at a time where you get close to a shutdown. Will the left use this as a reason to say, listen, you weren't focusing on keeping the government open or people's social security checks in the mail. Instead, you're focusing on an impeachment that you know you don't have the votes for.

I mean, because that is the true case. Just like when we were fighting back under the Trump administration, and even representing President Trump, and you could go to the Senate and kind of look at the layout and say, okay, this is how many votes you can lose. And you're still not getting close to a two-thirds majority to remove a sitting President than it was a former President. I think once we got into the craziness of this Chief Justice not showing up, even though it says the Constitution, that Chief Justice has to preside over it. If you want to call that impeachment the second time around, I'm not even sure it met the definition of it constitutionally.

But we'll take your calls, 1-800-684-3110. There's more evidence leaking. Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, this time also the DOJ getting involved when Hunter was being investigated for Foreign Agent Registration Act violations. And they said, again, it's this DOJ official, I think it's Lisa Wolf. His name keeps coming up and she removed political figure one, it was believed to be President Biden, from any of the investigation.

Didn't even want it on the piece of paper that he could possibly be investigated. We're getting this from those whistleblowers from the IRS. So a lot to talk about today. Weigh in at 1-800-684-3110. We'll be right back on Sekulow. All right, welcome back to Sekulow.

We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110 to kind of the two big topics. Obviously the House opening up an impeachment inquiry hearing today, the House oversight committee, and you have people testifying mostly to whether or not the inquiry should begin. It's actually, so is there enough kind of information to even launch this inquiry before you have the full House to take a vote on launching an impeachment inquiry or the full House actually votes to impeach, then you got to take the case to the Senate. We know again how slim the margins are in the House of Representatives. I think today, if the vote was held, they would not vote to impeach. I don't think there's enough Republicans to get to the 218. I just think that it's, you've got enough Republicans who think this is politically too dangerous or they're in tough elections, which they're up for reelection every cycle in the House. And they would, I don't know that you'd get to that key number to be able to move this forward to the Senate.

I think that's why you're not seeing a vote in the full House now. But there is a kind of question for whether or not they should even be investigating. And I think that's, with all the information we've learned about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, this kind of tangled web of money and the WhatsApp messages about the big guy, all that together, I think from the top, it's a little laughable that the Democrats are saying, there's nothing to see here.

Take a listen. This is from the committee hearing this morning. It's ongoing right now between the chairman of the committee, Comer, and the ranking member, Jamie Raskin. This is going to be an informative hearing for you, Mr. Raskin, because we were going to present evidence. What evidence? There's no evidence witnesses. There are no fact witnesses. Well, just sit back and let the American people see the hearing and let the American people.

All right. We have bank records. We have wire transfers. There's new bank records actually showing that this money that came in to Hunter Biden from China, the address, the wire, on the wire transfer was Joe Biden's home in Wilmington, Delaware. I mean, that's information there.

You have the SARS reports, the suspicious activity reports. You have the former business partners who have testified and also done interviews about this, the 10% for the big guy, the WhatsApp messages, the phone calls, also kind of admitting that they have had the meetings. And what they would say is that the meetings that wasn't substantive, he was just kind of coming around saying, how was the weather? But then you look at also the firing of the prosecutor, Ukraine. I mean, I go back to the fact that I kind of laugh at Jamie Raskin because he moved forward with that impeachment the second time of Donald Trump when he was no longer President of the United States. So he's going before the House today saying there's no evidence. And yet they tried to impeach someone who was formerly in office.

But we are seeing this time and time again. I think it goes back to even the debate last night where it's all kind of tied to Trump in a way. I feel like even this impeachment covers over that and the decision yesterday by the court to say that Mar-a-Lago is worth $13 million.

I'm not trying to defend billionaires' real estate, but what I can do is a Zillow search and tell you that you could not go by Mar-a-Lago or anything close to it right now on Palm Beach for $18 million. Well, I think a lot of the impeachment inquiry stuff, it does feel like we're on repeat. And sadly, we kind of warned this. We warned this that if you trivialize the impeachment, that it will come back to bite you in some way. It will just become something that happens in politics. That if one person sways one way, one group sways the other, one branch sways the other, guess what's going to happen? You're going to have impeachment inquiries all the time.

And do I think it's right? No, unfortunately, but I feel like we've gotten to the point where it's just going to be now part of the political game. It's no longer this last case scenario to call for an impeachment. Yeah.

I think what you have to realize here is that you're probably going to lose. Right. So the left kind of doubled down. Just like they did, by the way, when they couldn't convict. Right. And they knew they couldn't convict at some point. There were never the votes there for removal from office. No. No. And they knew that going in, but still decided to do this.

And do it again when he was no longer in office. Right. Right.

And so when you cheapen it, I mean, you kind of, you reap what you sow. I mean, I see Dan Goldman up there. He's a Congressman. He's complaining about this impeachment. He was one of the lead attorneys for Adam Schiff in his capacity, wasn't elected yet, on the first impeachment. And again, that first impeachment over a phone call. This is over lots of bank records, lots, all this information.

You got DOJ stepping and shutting down investigations where they said, you know, you've got these special counselors out there who can investigate whatever they want. At the end of the day, though, we know the American people are going to vote on the economy. And I think the war in Ukraine, which is directly tied to the economy as well. And I'm not sure that the debate last night on Fox Business, interesting enough, that economic issues were talked about.

Yeah. I mean, I'm reading through the comments. Our friends at Fox, we've got lots of great friends at Fox News. Majority of the comments.

Now these are people who are on social media and they're on conservative social media, so they're going to sway more to social media. A lot of them said they did not watch. I would say that's the last majority said they didn't watch or they watched President Trump. Now, those that did watch, you can kind of see a little bit of a pattern that they thought either Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis won. Those were the two that came up.

What does keep coming back up are some of the sound bites. Things like when they tried to get them to vote someone off the island, you know, that moment. The moments that felt a little bit more entertainment based, a little more cartoon based almost. Those did not go over very well with according to the people in the comments. They thought that those were a little appropriate. I think a lot of people liked how Ron DeSantis shut that down pretty fast.

So those were those moments that felt like, you know, he won. We actually have that bite. We can play if we want to. So this is sort of a hypothetical thrown out by Dana Perino.

I mean, in fun, in a way to keep it light, but then it backfired a little bit. Let's take a listen. It's now obvious that if you all stay in the race, former President Donald Trump wins the nomination. None of you have indicated that you're dropping out. So which one of you on stage tonight should be voted off the island?

Please use your marker to write your choice on the notepad in front of you. 15 seconds starting now of the people on the stage, who should be, I'm absolutely serious with all due respect. I mean, we're here. Like, you know, we're happy to debate, but I think that that's disrespectful to my fellow competitors.

So I mean, in a way it was a gotcha. We all know you're going to lose comment, which was interesting question because it led with the question. We all know you're going to lose Donald Trump. Why are you all sticking around?

That was the question, but then it became this. I don't know what happened. You know what happened last night, Donald Trump's not there and they have to do anything possible to try to get people to even watch or even talk about it the next day. And I think it may have succeeded. I mean, our phone lines aren't jammed, if I'm being honest. No, because honestly the first hour was a bunch of people talking over each other. It was like, if you and I talked as loud as we could at the same time in a microphone for an hour.

It happens. The secular brothers podcast comes on a couple of times a week. You should listen to it. But for those who don't listen, I mean, my son watched it with me last night. He's at the age where he can. So he sat down, we're eating dinner and he about 30 minutes in when it got to part where Pence was just interrupting everyone and going over and over and over.

And so did then Tim Scott and Vivek. He said, I can't listen to this. My head is going to explode. And this is a kid who watches screaming Fortnite YouTubers most of the day. And he could not take the over talk between these two hosts or between these two candidates.

It was pretty fun to watch. All right, let's go to the phones. 1-800-684-3110. Who's first on?

Oh yeah. Let's go to Julie. Who's calling online.

One Julie, you're on the air. Hi gentlemen. Thank you for taking my call.

And as always love what you guys do. First of all, you guys don't talk over each other like that. Come on.

No, no, no, not that bad at least. My comment was that, well, I did not, I did not say this to the, to the review person, but, um, I did watch the first, uh, debate and I thought Tim Scott was a strong candidate for me. Um, I didn't watch the second debate for more than like two minutes because to me, I thought it was inconsequential. Um, I am definitely a Trump person.

Um, it doesn't mean I'm a mega person. It doesn't mean that I don't think Donald Trump has some shortcomings. Um, but I do think he is the only one who will go after, um, what I consider, you know, when you, when you look at these topics that people are saying, they're going to vote for this person or that person, the economy or Ukraine. Um, my reason for voting for Trump is I think he is the only person who will go after just the major corruption in the democratic party, some corruption in the Republican party.

And he's the only one who's going to get to the bottom of, of whatever the swamp is that is causing all of these things in addition to economy, Ukraine, Biden, corruption, um, just the, the awful mess that is our government right now and is, is greatly affecting our nation. Yeah, I know. I think, listen, I text this to our team when we were on last night. It's kind of like the phone call ad, uh, that was running. And again, do you really want any of this to group picking up the phone or does they feel like that?

Do they feel too much like the number twos? And I think by Trump not being there, they are the number twos already until the polls get tighter. And if they don't get tighter, it feels like you're, you're kind of, and then Trump came out and said, uh, which is kind of a reversal and I get, he might just be playing with this. He said, I don't think I'm gonna pick any of these people to be vice President.

Well, and then likely that's, I mean, that's not uncommon actually for them to not pick one of those. Uh, I enjoy watching the debates. I like them. So I enjoy catching up on who could be almost done in America. I think we're almost getting to a point where they will no longer be part of our political process. If you look at it as a preview of who could come down the pike for now, even the next go round, I think you have a good field of people. I think these are all qualified candidates for the most part.

There may be a couple that I disagree with completely running, but there's a five of them. I'd say that I would be totally fine with being our President someday. You know, I really don't think that there, I think it's a good field of people. Unfortunately, I think the way President Trump has removed himself and I don't necessarily think that that's a bad idea because his poll numbers indicate why would you do it? I get that totally from a strategic point of view. It does make it feel a little inconsequential as our callers said, give us a call 1-800-684-3110, but you never know what can happen.

It's always good to stay engaged and to follow up. So we'll be right back. Welcome back to second American. Continue to take your phone calls and your view of the GOP debate last night or watch the debate.

I do. I'm in that camp where I think if this is what debates are going to look like in the future, that we're not going to probably have many debates anymore. If you look at a lot of races, they've gotten less important. And now that at the Presidential level, that's completely fallen apart. So it's no guarantee that there would even be a debate between, let's say Joe Biden and Donald Trump. If those are the two candidates because that whole commission has fallen apart, the parties have moved out of the commission.

And I think a lot of people after the last round of it have said, this wasn't helpful. This wasn't something that was educated or helping voters make decisions. I think one of the issues last night was I get that they all want to secure this other border. I don't think there's any debate on that on the Republican side. So why do we need to spend an hour screaming at each other over that we need to secure this other border?

We all know we need to. And that you're going to have to convince Democrats and these other countries like Mexico. They're all coming out with very similar, the same plans too. It's not like someone really took a really completely, maybe Tim Scott, a little bit different, but most of them had the same kind of concepts. Yeah. So the craziest thing we're going to get rid of birthright citizenship.

Again, you'd have to take that to court. Tim Scott was right on that. The idea is that, again, if that's how you're going to solve it, you're not going to be solving it that way. That doesn't actually stop people from being here or human beings from being here.

But the second part of it is just, again, maybe the lack of distinction is that the economy is still at the top of people's mind. You've also then got the impeachment inquiry hearings beginning today. I want to bring in Harry Hutchinson because Harry, one of the interesting parts of this entire hearing is this kind of laughable debate that Democrats are putting forward. Many of the same Democrats who were on the impeachment teams for President Trump, either the first impeachment or the second impeachment, who are now saying, there's nothing here. There's no reason for us to even be looking at it. And yet every day we get new information. What was released yesterday was an email from an assistant U.S. attorney, Leslie Wolfe. We've heard a lot about her because of, again, a Weiss who was the U.S. attorney who then got special counsel status after it was told by these whistleblowers that he couldn't bring cases anywhere. And then we thought the DOJ was likely, someone was there to kind of prevent him from fully moving forward. Then we have these emails taking Joe Biden out of their investigation and off their warrant sheets.

Absolutely. So I think it's clear beyond question that there has indeed been a coverup with respect to President Joe Biden's involvement in the business affairs of Hunter Biden. And Jordan, often it isn't the original misconduct that implicates public figures and public officials.

Instead, it's the coverup that proves fatal. And here, I think there is clear and unmistakable evidence of a coverup that comes from the Department of Justice. Keep in mind, Merritt Garland testified under oath last week suggesting that his department hadn't interfered in the Hunter Biden affair. We now have evidence showing that that statement was a falsifiable lie. And so Merritt Garland's Justice Department, I think, interfered with the investigation of Hunter Biden.

Yet Merritt Garland continues to claim there was no interference. And so one of the things I think that upsets the American people so much is selective treatment of President Trump on one hand and preferential treatment of Hunter Biden on the other. And I think we have to solve that particular issue. We have to restore integrity to the Justice Department. And I think under the Biden watch, that's unlikely.

I want to play this sound from the, again, the back and forth between, this was Merritt Garland just last week. It was before we got this revelation, the email where you see this Assistant U.S. Attorney say there should be nothing about political figure one in here. Then later on, they established a political figure one is actually Joe Biden. When in fact, the investigators wanted to move forward, potentially with search warrants even, on Joe Biden himself and not just Hunter Biden. But then take a listen to what you heard last week from the DOJ and the Attorney General. Can you tell us about any briefings or discussions that you personally have had with Mr. Weiss regarding any and all federal investigations of Hunter Biden? I'm going to say again, I promised the Senate that I would not interfere with Mr. Weiss. So you have not, I'm just, under oath today, your testimony is you have not had any discussions with Mr. Weiss about this matter? Under oath, my testimony today is that I promised the Senate I would not intrude in his investigation. I do not intend to discuss the internal Justice Department deliberations whether or not I had them.

Or not I had them. Oh, okay. So your testimony today is you're not going to tell us whether you've had discussions with Mr. Weiss? My testimony today is I told the committee that I would not interfere.

I made clear that Mr. Weiss would have the authority to bring cases that he thought were appropriate. I mean, Harry, what it really comes down to is Weiss, I mean, he's gonna have to make it very clear, was were these people acting outside of his orders and his discretion or not, or were they thwarting? I mean, I thought a lot of the issues likely these special counsels, even when they weren't yet even greater than that status, were going to have take out Merrick Garland, take out Biden, was that you're going to have a very uncooperative bureaucracy that's going to stand in your way. But if your number two deputies are standing in your way, that's even worse than I thought.

That's worse than just the slow walking or having to deal with the bureaucracy. This is a person who's interacting with the investigators for you, telling them, don't look at Joe Biden, specifically say, don't look at Joe Biden, take him off the table. Yeah, so I think we have clear evidence of interference by the assistant attorney, a Wolf. However, what Merrick Garland is relying on is the following claim, that he did not personally interfere. Instead, his subordinates interfered. And so he doesn't want to take responsibility or accountability for their arguable misconduct.

And so under oath, he refused to essentially answer a direct question. But I think the American people are smart enough to know that Merrick Garland's department, the deep state, if you will, did in fact interfere and did in fact try to shield President Biden from an investigation. And so on the other hand, if you look at the intensive effort to implicate President Trump, it's clear beyond question that the Justice Department put its thumb on the scale. And I think at the end of the day, that is the core issue for the American people.

Do we all, are we all subject to the rule of law or are some people above the law? And I think the clear implication from Merrick Garland's testimony is that the Biden family is above the law. Second half hour, Tulsi Gabbard is going to be joining us as well on the way on this discussion.

We want you to weigh in to 1-800-684-3110. We're talking debate. We're talking the impeachment inquiry. And again, it's not that I don't think that this is something we should be looking into. I think you always have to look at the politics around.

Is this going to benefit your overall goal? And I do have news to report as well. In West Virginia, where we represent the West Virginia Republican Party, the court has granted our motion to intervene in that case to make sure that West Virginians can vote in the primary for Donald Trump if they so choose.

And of course, the far reaching implications of that in the future. And we've already moved forward so that again, the ACLJ representing the West Virginia GOP, that is moving forward. So that was the first one out of the case we filed that we've gotten that quick of notice on. So I want to keep you updated as well, fighting for your rights.

Again, you're just right to vote and have that vote counted to the ACLJ, granted the intervener status there in West Virginia. We're moving forward. We'll take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. I encourage you to share the broadcast with your friends and family. We'll be right back.

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 are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Tulsi Gabbard is going to be joining us in the next segment of the broadcast. So we've got Dooley, we got the GOP debate last night without Donald Trump. We also have, of course, this impeachment inquiry hearing, which is opening today as well. As we speak of that, hearings going on in the air.

Now, a lot of that is about kind of the framework for, is there kind of enough there there to take the next steps? And we asked you too, do you think this is the right move politically by Republicans? Not to expose the information, but to actually move forward the impeachment where I honestly believe, and I think that's why you didn't see a vote of the full House, Logan, that if Republicans today were asked to vote, I'm not sure it would even pass the House of Representatives.

I don't think it would. Yeah, which opens up a whole other problem for them even too, because then all of a sudden you have, you're splintering your own party once again. Yeah, Democrats, they all, for the most part, everyone, they had enough votes to lose.

So there are people who voted President, there's people who voted different ways, but they were able to eventually take that full vote. So I think again, we'll go to the phones though, 1-800-6-8-4-3. We got calls on both topics. All right, let's go ahead. Let's start. We'll go in order.

He came in close. Let's go to Eugene calling in New Mexico. You're on the air. Well, I'm in Monterey. Good morning.

Monterey, California. Oh, sorry. No big deal. No big deal. Just going to make it short, so I'm going to go down the list here.

A lot of us out here, and that's a clue to people on the other side, you know, discussion is that Barr and the group of them that was in office when Trump was in office had to see some of this stuff that's going on. And you know, and why isn't that addressed? What are you talking about? Eugene, go ahead, Jordan. Ah, yeah, I'm not sure.

All right, let's move on from Eugene. I'm honestly not really following what he's talking about. What you're talking about. Yeah, you can't tell on the phone screen or something else. Let's go to Carrie, who's calling in Montana on line three. You're on the air.

Yes, thanks guys. I definitely think that we think we, I agree with you and your discretion that everything is weakened, especially in the last three years with Joe Biden as President now, but I think that we need to stick with our constitutional order of law. And I think it's very critical that we go on with the impeachment. So that's my opinion. And we know that draining this law, there's only half of the house that we have hanging on by a thread.

God bless them. And they're doing a great job, but yes, I think it's critical that we prove that Joe Biden and is not above the law. So yeah, I think you could use the, if you could use it as kind of a position, maybe you use it as a platform to talk more directly to voters. The problem is it gets very complicated quickly. They put up this flow chart to this morning. Oh, very simple. It was again, you need a forensic accountant to even interpret it to the house of representatives.

So this is not like a phone call for a quid pro quo or it's not easy. This is is it- In convincing the American people. Impeachable offense for your son to take the money. And did you actually get involved in, we know you were involved in some, but were you involved in into a way that rises to an impeachable offense? And that's different than an offense you could even prove in court. I think that the tough part is if you want to use it for the platform to talk about the issues and to have the investigations, that's fine.

I think if you, but you do want to kind of set the stage for what's actually reasonable here. And also there are also Democrats, just like there were Republicans who were kind of trying to push out Donald Trump, that won't necessarily vote with this, but would be happy if this hurts Joe Biden even further. So I think that there might be some of that going on too, where even though that they're not going to vote to impeach, there's a lot of Democrats who don't want to see Joe Biden as their nominee. And so they might kind of- Let it go.

Yeah. Not be as defensive as maybe they would in the past. All right, coming up next, we got Tulsi Gabbard. You should be joining us. We do want to tell you guys that you may have got an email this morning about sort of the onslaught of your kids in school right now for their faith. And we are not taking it lightly.

A Christian kid was recently unconstitutionally suspended for telling his classmates about Jesus. Check out that email. If you didn't get it, you can also find it at aclj.org. And we're about to file a lawsuit to defend him. We can't do this without your support. Go and donate and sign our petition right now at aclj.org. Future generations depend on it, and we can't win these fights without you. Go to aclj.org, and we encourage you to share this broadcast with your friends and family.

And again, if you can support the work of the ACLJ, that's critical at aclj.org. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back to Secula. We're taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. Tulsi Gabbard, senior analyst with us on Secula is joining us now. And Tulsi, I want to start with the debate last night.

And again, it's not so much winners and losers. It's kind of a unique debate because the leading Republican candidate's not there, which I think already hurts with kind of eyeballs and viewers. But I do think that the issues that came up and maybe the issues that didn't come up that may concern the American people. What we heard about a lot was the border.

I think that there's pretty much a consensus with most Americans, I don't think it's even just Republicans, but most Americans, that it is so out of control on the southern border. We've seen the mayor of New York City, while it was hosting the UN General Assembly, get up and say, this is going to destroy New York City. And the fact that the schools can't keep up with the children that they're seeing turning up and that there's just not the infrastructure in place.

So it is this emergency. And it's kind of like, who do you think out of this group could actually work across the aisles? Because it's going to take that to get something substantively done to improve the situation on the border.

That's a really good question, Jordan. And I don't know the answer to that, quite frankly, because the debate itself was very underwhelming. I actually watched the first part of it with a friend of mine who's not involved with politics at all and I think is quite representative of that independent-minded American who doesn't really identify strongly with either party, but who really deeply cares about the country. And so she hasn't watched Presidential debates normally, but we turned it on and after probably the first 30 to 45 minutes, she just said, gosh, this is really underwhelming. They seem like kids bickering in high school.

I'm going to bed. I have a feeling there are a lot of Americans who might have tuned in for a little while who might feel the same way, which means ultimately, you know, we, the people are looking for strong leadership. We're willing to put the wellbeing and the interest of the American people and our country first, and we have the backbone and the strength to do what is necessary to accomplish that. Yeah. I mean, you've been in those debates before. So from your own experience, I mean, the petty kind of like side attacks, I think that that, and when everybody starts talking over each other and that, and it kind of gets, sometimes it kind of unravels towards the end. I think maybe that gets people who are used to that, but when it kind of starts that way and everybody's talking over each other and everybody's microphones on, and you've got kind of people jumping in and out. I think, again, most people, even if you're, even if you are a political junkie, you're not really hearing any substance and you're kind of seeing someone who never really makes an aggressive stance.

Suddenly they're very aggressive one night. You can kind of tell this is, this is coach, this is not real. But just to kind of, but your experience being there on that stage, I mean, because you've got to go into those breaks. Is it, I mean, what is it like to be there?

How to actually be standing there? Yeah, well, first of all, let's just talk about the format. The format is not constructive to meet what should be the objective of a Presidential debate or conversation, which is, hey, are the American people going to walk away knowing more about what each of these candidates is going to do to solve the great challenges that we face in this country, both here at home as well as with our foreign policy? You know, it was clear to me last night, as I experienced in the Presidential debates that I participated in the Democratic primary in 2020 is, is voters are not getting that information.

The format is not for that. It's really all about political theater. And I think that was, that was kind of clear last night as well as how do you create a situation where people are fighting with each other, you've got these gotcha questions or gotcha accusations or whatever, and it's just not focused on the substance. I think it's interesting how in these breaks, and even on the Democratic stage, when I participated in those debates, how many of the candidates see these as what they are, political theater or as a game, and go and, you know, slap each other on the back and joke around or whatever in between the breaks or afterward. You know, it's fine and great to be respectful and collegial. I just think it's a little disingenuous to call people names and hurl insults at them, which is not talking about substance, and then go afterward and just say, hey, you know, good game, good game. There's far too much at stake here to have that kind of cavalier attitude about the country and where we're going. Yeah, I don't think people want that. I don't think it's funny to say, like, who's the survivor?

Write it down. We're talking about the President of the United States here. It's just these goofy moments. It's not good for anybody either.

I mean, even if people might snicker for a moment, it's just really off-putting. When you're talking about these huge issues, there's war in Europe. There's the poorest southern border. We have inflation kind of out of control. People are worried about making their next payment or where their kids school, all these huge issues, and then we kind of turn into a survivor moment. And even last night, it was on Fox Business, and yeah, I don't think there was enough even discussion about kind of like the American people, just their checkbook. I mean, all those issues tie back to that, whether we're talking about Ukraine, whether we're talking about the border, it's security, and security, whether it's physical security or economic security. You're exactly right.

I did not feel, and I know a lot of those people on the stage, I've either met them or I know them fairly well, and I didn't feel that kind of connection. And really, that speaking from the heart to the American people at home who are facing these very, very real struggles as inflation continues to increase, the dollar is taking us a shorter and shorter distance to be able to make ends meet. And you hear a lot of pre-rehearsed lines, and you hear, again, a lot of the insults being hurled at one candidate or another. But as is usually the case too often in these elections, it becomes almost as though it's sport. It's about the political gamesmanship or the competition rather than what it should be really about, which is, hey, how will you, candidate, best serve the American people? Because that's really all that should matter to them, and it gets lost.

It gets lost in these kinds of situations. We were talking about this a little bit earlier. My son and I watched it together, and he was like your friend. He's 11 years old. He's sitting down. We're watching this. He's asking lots of questions, and it gets to the point where they are all just talking over each other, and it's just this yelling match, and he's like, turn it off.

This comes from a kid, like I said earlier, who watches YouTube videos, so pretty much kids playing video games screaming. So it's kind of like this is, you can't even translate to a 11-year-old who was watching this, trying to get just the generic idea of how American politics works. Then, of course, asking the question, where's President Trump?

How does this work? Are the Democrats going to get a debate? That kept becoming a question. It's like, well, it seems like a lot of people don't like Joe Biden. Why does he not have to come out here and debate anybody? Those were the questions that were coming up, and weirdly are the questions that I feel like Americans should be asking themselves right now.

Yeah. You know, Logan, you look at this format where you have 15 seconds to respond or 30 seconds or 60 seconds to make a statement, and really, I mean, what can really be accomplished there? And how much are these candidates being tested in their knowledge about these different issues and the kind of detail that they should be able to provide to the American people in their solutions? And even if they have that to offer, this format does not allow for that kind of substance to occur, because for me, that's what I want to see from a candidate who's offering to lead our country as President and commander in chief. I want the kind of detail and the testing of their ability to be able to answer those questions, to actually have a real debate, to have their ideas tested and exercise that kind of strength and leadership that's required for them to be able to work with members of Congress from both parties to be able to have that substantive debate based on policy rather than the cheap smears and attacks being hurled at one another. We should have strong and fierce debate.

It should be very lively. It should be substantive, though, rather than a bunch of kids in the schoolyard throwing punches at each other. Yeah, I think people would like it to be like, hey, actually, what do you mean when you say you're going to secure the border? How are you going to actually get that done with the House of Representatives? How would you actually get that done with Congress? We can all agree that it's a bad situation. We know fentanyl is bad. We know that there's too many people poor here.

We know it's destroying cities. But how are you actually going to do anything? How would you work with Democrats across the aisle? How would you get it done? You can't really do it in 20 seconds.

And also, when you're taking personal checks about the blinds that you have up in your home or your office that you had on your panel. I just think, again, it's a learning moment always through these debates. But unfortunately, I think if we continue down this road, there's not going to be any debates anymore for the American people to see. Tulsi, as always, we appreciate all of your insight as a contributor to Sekio. And actually being on those stages and being part of this, I think it's right there.

It's very difficult already because you get 15, 20 seconds. But I think what she says is key too. Once those cameras are off, it's a performance.

Remember that. These people act like they hate each other for the five minutes you watch before commercial break. They don't. No. It is all just politics. It's professional wrestling, as I've said.

It's very similar in that sense. Because if it's not like what did my son react to? He's reacted really big when Ramaswami called President Biden a hollowed out husk of a current President.

He's like, oh, he burned him. This did feel like something out of, like I said, out of the schoolyard. Those moments happened. Clearly was written down. Yeah, exactly. Like a tagline.

Do you always remember? That one did go over pretty well by him. We are going to take your calls coming up in the next segment. So give us a call today. 1-800-684-3110.

1-800-684-3110. And I want to encourage you to support the work of the ACLJ by visiting ACLJ.org and signing our petition right now. A lot of future generations are going to depend on us and depend on you, and we can't win these fights without you. So go to ACLJ.org. Again, we've intervened in a case in the West Virginia GOP to protect your 14th Amendment and this 14th Amendment case trying to remove President Trump from the ballot. So even being able to vote for President Trump in the primary or in that case or in court, again, these cases are going to be litigated.

They're not all going to stop right in the beginning. So again, your support of the ACLJ is ensuring the right to votes of the American people, to choose the candidates they want to choose, the officials they want to move forward in these major fights. Be right back on Secula. Welcome back to Secula. We are going to take some phone calls right off the top. We're also going to discuss Elon Musk and his decision to maybe visit the southern border. Let's go ahead and take these calls first. Let's go to Debra, who's calling from Illinois on line six. You're on the air.

Yes, hi. My comment was about President Trump not attending the debate. I know that President Trump believes that the election was stolen from him, and it might mostly be a matter of principle with him, more than even strategy, that he didn't join those debates. Yeah, I think, again, I think if the polls were tighter, he'd be there.

Yeah, I think it's deciding what the good and bad is. He's decided, whatever he thinks about the last election cycle, to go for it in another election cycle, where you have to win, you have to get the votes, you have to win the election. So I think whatever you say about the last election, he's not shying away from jumping into another. You have to win the primary, like we're fighting in court, just the ability to people to vote for him, as we've seen across the country. We're in Colorado, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Minnesota, we're filing an amicus brief. I mean, so all these cases, some directly representing, others amicus briefs.

We've been updating you about that. So he's re-entering the process. If the polls were tighter, he would be there. But there's not much, again, if you look at what we just talked about in the air with Tulsi, about taking just shots. If you were Donald Trump and you were standing there, there'd be six people with all their consultants just writing shots at you. And he's been through that before once and he showed he won. So does he have to be, if the polls don't, if you really want Donald Trump to be there, you have to get the support up for other candidates. I don't think it just doesn't exist. If not, he's taking shots for legitimately no reason. You're risking something for no reason.

There's no point to it. I don't necessarily like it because I would have loved to have seen him on that stage. I would love to see him and DeSantis. Instead, we're getting DeSantis and Newsom. I would love to have seen Trump versus this group of contenders because I think there is some future for a lot of this group. However, I totally understand and respect his decision not to do it because again, why?

There isn't really a good reason. Let's continue on. Let's go to Robbie who's calling in Texas on line one.

Robbie, you're on the air. In terms of the debate, I come from a deep red part of the world over in East Texas and if you have a general conversation with the population there, they're not going to watch a debate where there's no value and it takes away from their time. They can stand in the forest and they can see the trees. They're very strong in their opinions about those candidates. There's probably a place for them, but they've already made up their mind the last cycle who they're voting for this cycle. Yeah, I think, listen, there were candidates there last night who had opportunities earlier on in this process to make this a tighter race and it's kind of hard to come back from the first debate. No one really, I don't think there was really, I mean, Nikki Haley went up a little bit, but I mean, they weren't like, no one was jumping.

They were jumping ahead of each other who were all 30 points behind Donald Trump. So, you have to have this whole debate. I think if you take out the political reporters or even some of the discussion that we're having right now and you take that whole economy that exists, would anybody be talking about last night? No, I don't think so. Today? No. No, I don't think so.

Some of those people play important roles in the US government, but they're not likely, anybody there last night is going to be President of the United States. I mean, I could say that pretty strongly right now. Not this cycle. Unless there's something catastrophic that happens or something like that, we'll see what happens. Yeah, but as of this, if the vote was held today, if there's a vote tomorrow, they're just not in enough of a contest. Even if everyone, they all say, well, what if, what if we all got out and one of them won against Donald Trump, there's still 20 points behind.

It's just, it's just not there. And it gets a little goofy to commit. It is a big time, it is a big time commitment. Those debates are a lot of time for people to commit in the middle of a week. All right, let's continue on. Laura, who's calling online too.

You're on the air. Hey, I totally agree with the former caller just that, I mean, you have to have somebody that can reach across the aisle. None of those people are going to be able to reach across the aisle.

Trump is the only one that has survived the muck and the mud that has been thrown at him. And originally our founding fathers, you know, listen to each other, took the ideas from both sides. That's how we have the house of representatives. That's how we have the Senate, large States versus small States.

They listened to each other and shaped things that made our nation great. And just watching that there's this nobody that's going to respect each other. I mean, they don't care, you know, turning off the Keystone pipeline, you know, created this incredible inflation, my grocery bill. I don't know if I can pay it this next month, you know, rent can't find places to rent gasoline prices, keep going up. Who really cares about America? There's so many of us little people down here, lugging it out every day, trying to pay our bills. And it doesn't seem like Washington cares. It's just the homecoming queen, the promising queen doing their thing.

There's all of us, you know, down here in the school. No, I get exactly what you're saying. I think that that's how those debates kind of come off is honestly, it's kind of like who was the best there debate club. And I don't think that that's really what people are, uh, voting on anymore. I think that's why Donald Trump wasn't necessarily in the last time, even when he was in the debates, like that he was the best debater. He just didn't care. I mean, a lot of it was, he didn't have the polish of like who was in the debate club. He said what he wanted to say. He said, it was fun.

And it takes the first time around. It didn't fund the primaries in the general. It was, it was tougher in 2020.

Uh, but yeah, I think that first 2016. Yeah, sure. That's what made it fun was you had someone who came in and would say stuff.

No one else would say an outsider sometimes to the point that was just, it was distasteful, uh, you know, but at least it kept it entertaining. Let's go to Maria. Who's calling in New York line three. You're on the air.

Hi. Um, you know, we are living in a completely different day and age. I feel like all of these debates are becoming completely irrelevant because at this point, the question shouldn't really be who can do what for our country. You can have the best candidate in the world. And it's very clear that the democratic cabal will not permit anything positive to happen. And so the question really shouldn't be, what is your plan to, to make all these policies come to fruition?

The plan is how are you going to overcome the cabal that's going to stop you at every, at every point. There's a wide agreement on the big issues facing the country. I think the only one that's really differential is the Ukraine. There's different positions on how involved we should be there, but it's really more of like a in game scenario. I think that on the border, it's everyone agrees it's bad. Everyone agrees the drug crisis, the violence, it's all there's wide agreement. It's kind of like, okay, but who can actually do something about it?

Yeah, absolutely. And look, we only have about a minute and a half left to know. We're going to talk about the Elon Musk situation is something we'll maybe we'll cover tomorrow. But you have Elon Musk saying that this is an ex post he put out today, formerly Twitter. He put, we actually do need a wall and we need to require people to have some share of evidence to claim asylum to enter as everyone is doing that. It's a hack that you can literally Google to know exactly what to say.

We'll find out more though when I visit Eagle Pass, maybe as soon as tomorrow. So we see Elon Musk, richest man on the planet, either number one or number two, depending on the moment, is going to be headed to the Southern border. And look, I think historically there are people who have been able to affect change like this, who have been able to do it. When you have billionaires who can just unload hundreds of millions of dollars without any question, maybe you can have someone like an Elon Musk.

Look, I mean, it's George Soros in reverse in some ways. The idea is it's like problem solvers. If these are people who can build big things, the big ideas that actually come to fruition, like I'm going to build rockets. I'm going to put things in space. And people are like, you're crazy. That's the only NASA government's the only ones that can do it.

And then you become bigger than NASA. So if you got people like that, they're not bad. This is the kind of people you want looking at these huge problems that everyone agrees, whether it's the Democrat mayor of New York and the Democrat governor of New York, or it's the Republican governor of Texas, that it's wrong. But I think some of the issues that they don't know how to actually get at the problem. So they can't come to any agreement on what you actually do to solve these big problems. And that takes people who can sort of outside of just the political sphere, but in the business world who have done huge things. Look at Trump, the popularity there. The Elon Musk, this idea that they weren't lifelong politicians. They aren't necessarily as, again, protected as politicians or sleek as politicians.

And people like that about it. Support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow.