BREAKING: Sec. of Defense Warns of Attacks on Americans

Today on Sekulow Breaking News, the Secretary of Defense warns of attacks on Americans. 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. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. A lot to talk about today on the broadcast involving Israel. There's election updates to get to as well.

We're going to get to experts like Rick Renell. Why is the Israeli invasion not yet begun? There's questions about that. Is the U.S. pressuring Israel directly not to send in troops deep inside Gaza because of hostage negotiations that are still ongoing? We did see over the end of Friday and over the weekend two hostages that were released.

But many said, hey, don't make this change your mind. Don't think differently about who Hamas really is. Though they might have released those two hostages, remember they've still got 200 more hostages including children and the elderly that they are willing to trade with or put in harm's way or kill if Israel invades. And there's now reports that Israel is saying that there is upwards of 230 hostages. Yes, that number keeps growing. With Hamas and with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

So the number is growing. They're still finding bodies. There's also still concerns that there's actually cell groups, terror cell groups from Hamas still inside the borders of Israel. So, look, I mean, this is very complicated and we've handled hostage negotiations before so we can give you a perspective. If you're in the position that we were in, which was as a negotiator trying to get someone out, you remember this with Nara Akani, you remember with Saeed Abedini, you remember with Rick Brunson, you want time.

So you don't want the governments engaging in a military operation that would interrupt and somehow change the negotiating factors that you're dealing with when you're trying to get someone out. No, with the Ayad family, that military engagement was actually the push that finally got them out. Yes, interesting enough. We should cover that.

Let's talk about that one for a moment. Yes, that was directly involving Palestinians who were in the Gaza Strip and he oversaw the Palestinian Bible Society in Gaza and he was killed by Hamas and his family wanted to link up with their family in the West Bank, which would require an OK from Israel to leave the Gaza Strip, travel across Israel and then enter the West Bank, which is, again, involves both Hamas opening up gates and Israel opening up gates. And we were negotiating all this. They actually said, hey, time for you guys to get over here.

We think this is about to happen. While we were landing, a war broke out between Hamas and Israel. I mean, literally Operation Cast Lead was beginning and this is why we needed to get her across the border crossing. But we were able to get that done just as the war was breaking out. Now, that was a much smaller scale war, Dan. That was those kind of indiscriminate rocket attacks we saw going into Israel, those small rockets that we saw that basically Hamas has been left with.

It's been interesting. Hamas is back to you because they have decimated so much of their supplies. What they have left if they're shooting into Israel is more similar to what we saw in Cast Lead, which is rockets that they make inside the Gaza Strip that don't have great tracking devices, aren't as strong, aren't as killer in a good sense. But Hezbollah to the north, they've got the sophisticated weaponry and an even more trained military. So we were able to see the family cross through Israel and get into the West Bank while there was war in the Gaza Strip. And we were able to get inside the West Bank while there was that war inside the Gaza Strip, which I think underscores the importance of that failed meeting last week when Joe Biden couldn't meet with Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. That was unfortunate because we know that in the West Bank, even though they're anti-Israel to an extent, it's a different level of hatred.

Because there's cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israelis. So look, here's what you've got. You've got to be nimble. And that's what we're talking about. When we come back from the break, we've got a lot more ahead. Rick Grinnell is going to be joining us on the broadcast and also support the work of the ACLJ. Our ACLJ Champions Program is going great.

I encourage you to go to ACLJ.org. We're fighting for Israel. We're fighting for life, literally at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

We're fighting for freedom. You become a champion when you commit to a monthly donation in any amount to the ACLJ. We encourage you to do it at ACLJ.org. Do it today. Become an ACLJ Champion.

ACLJ.org forward slash champions. Welcome back to Secule. You know we're taking your calls as well to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. There's no bad questions when you're talking about this complicated of a situation, which I believe gets more complicated as each day goes by. As each day goes by, there's a new player in the Middle East that we have to talk about. Whether it's Iran more involved. Whether it's Hezbollah more involved. Whether it's the Lebanese government more involved. And the fact that south Beirut, basically south of Beirut down to the southern border with Israel is controlled by Hezbollah both politically and militarily. So people are trying to learn about Hezbollah. At the same time they're learning about Hamas. And Israel had to take airstrikes out on the runways in Damascus. The major airports in Syria have been taken out by Israel. We know that's also a base for Hezbollah operatives and Iranian operatives. So Israel is surrounded by these Iranian proxies to the west, to the north, and to the east.

And then to the south, the question is always what will Egypt do? So in this context, I understand something. Jordan mentioned the Ramayyad case where we actually were involved in an active hostage negotiations for a family during a war, Operation Cast Lead. It tells you the nature and scope of the ACLJ. And I need to say this, and I don't know if we have a current number of the number of ACLJ champions we've added this month so far. We started this program in October at the beginning of the month to add what we call ACLJ champions. These are people that are standing with the ACLJ each and every month through their contributions. We have about 15,000 of those over the last couple of years, but we wanted to see if we could see that double.

So here's the, this is actually very encouraging. Since we've launched the program three weeks ago, we've added 1,515 new ACLJ champions. Now look, this is what a champion does. A champion supports the work of the ACLJ every month with their donations, which are, of course, tax deductible. We've seen the devastation that's been inflicted on Israel, but here's the interesting thing. Because of our ACLJ champions, we're able to maintain an office in operations in Jerusalem. In fact, we share our offices with CBN News. Chris Mitchell has been on this broadcast about Israel many, many times. But we're fighting battles on so many other fronts as well.

I've got a letter going to Benjamin Netanyahu of support this week. We've got a big case at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on the abortion issue. We've got the 14th Amendment case, by the way, going to trial next week where they're trying to keep Trump off the ballot under some 14th Amendment insurrection theory.

It's crazy. ACLJ lawyers are out there. We've expanded our ACLJ team. We've added a bunch of lawyers, including lawyers I worked with when Jordan and I were representing the former President. And we're working tirelessly to defend life, Israel, your right to vote, religious freedom. None of this happens without you.

So we want you to become a champion too. Like I said, we're at 1550. 1550. I would love to end the month, and I know this will be tough, at 2000. That would be an unbelievable accomplishment.

So we're about 485 short. And Jordan, this is a great way for people to do it. They go to ACLJ.org forward slash champions. It takes minutes to do it. And any amount you donate monthly, you become an ACLJ champion. Yeah, and again, you choose that amount that's good for you. Again, it's going to be impactful, but it's going to be that kind of amount that you can do monthly without having to worry about it. And we think, again, you will actually be increasing. You might think, well, I think I give more the other way. You'll likely be giving more this way without even having to think about it by locking in your donation.

And then the ACLJ is that much more prepared to deal with not just the fact that there's still no Speaker of House in Washington, D.C., and then upping our government affairs team there to deal with what level of expectations do we expect legislatively from the House of Representatives. When's the money running out when it comes to Israel? It's this week. At the end of this week, the money's gone for Israel.

And there has to be something done by Congress that gets the money appropriated, whether that's giving the Speaker pro-Tim the power to bring that for Patrick McHenry or getting a Speaker chosen this week, the money for Israel runs out at the end of this week. It's Friday. So you've been working with our government affairs team and we've got a great government affairs team.

I was up in Virginia over the weekend and people were bragging about how great this team is. What is their sense right now? You know, I think, again, there was a lot of hope that Jim Jordan could get across the line, but a lot of realization that he was going to have a tough time getting there. And it looks like he's now out of that race. The question now is who emerges with a big enough block other than Patrick McHenry, who has led a Speaker pro-Tim? And that's a pretty quiet role, or supposed to be a pretty quiet role, and just kind of a placeholder role.

I think it's anybody's guess right now. But what you know is it's not going to be McCarthy, it's not going to be Scalise, and it's likely not going to be Jim Jordan. So do you end up going too far down the list, and I think this is where our supporters get nervous, and do you end up with a real moderate?

Or just an untested conservative? I mean, if you've got all the Democrats and five Republicans, you're going to end up with a very moderate. That hasn't happened yet.

That's interesting. That hasn't happened yet. Democrats have stuck with Democrats. We were worried about some votes even over this weekend where they might be looking for times when there were less Republicans in the House that they could go in and actually get Hakeem Jeffries voted. But we are losing the ability to govern here, and I think this is the problem. So you look at the Israel situation, and you've got to look at that one and say, okay, you've got the situation in Ukraine, who knows what else is coming down the pike?

You don't know. I mean, any day Iran escalates this to a level we haven't never seen before. Well, the expectation is if you monitor the situation, and I talked to our people in Israel this weekend, even late last night, the chances of this escalating are almost baked in. I mean, people think there's going to be a major, there will be a major escalation.

There's two front more definitely. Yeah, and that would be Lebanon to the north, which is Hezbollah, Hamas to the south border, and then you could have an issue with the West Bank, with the Palestinian terrorists. They usually do the suicide bombings and this, although the Israelis went in there and found all kinds of munitions that they were going to plan terrorist attack. There's also reports that Hamas does have access to chemical weapons. You can guess that they're getting them from Iran, who is probably getting them from Russia.

Yeah, Russia, North Korea, and other bad actors. But what we are worried about is that we're sending troops to the region, we're sending carriers to the region. We want to make sure those carriers have the supplies they need and that our ally Israel has the supplies it needs, just for the Iron Dome to continue to work. Because a lot of people, they question, they say, why do people talk so much about the U.S. and the Iron Dome? The U.S. really had Israel, built the Iron Dome together. For Israel to test it on how it would protect Israel as a country on a small scale, it was built so that you could use that technology to protect U.S. troops out in the field.

So basically, how do you build a mobile Iron Dome system that would protect U.S. military bases? A good way to test it would be in a place with close contact like Israel. Also, I think, for most people dead, you get three weeks out from a conflict, even a horrific event like what happened in Israel with the 1400 that got killed, and people are less and less clued in on what's going on every day, and they felt like at any moment they were going to wake up and there was going to be war raging. Now it feels like maybe there won't be. Well, there's 360,000 troops in Israel that have been activated. Most of them are on the southern border. There are groups, and there's always a permanent presence in the north, so we don't know the number of that, and the Israelis are not announcing that. You know, every night on the air, the Israeli spokesperson is being asked, when are you going in? Well, they're not going to tell you when they're going in, but I do think that the hostage negotiations, and look, we'll get your opinion on this.

Feel free to call us at 800-684-3110. We've done it. They need time. They got the two released.

Are they going to get the 230? I actually think that we've had a huge intelligence failure here. I mean, it's been a huge intelligence failure, probably the biggest intelligence failure in Israel's history.

So in one sense, Jordan, you're operating in a very new paradigm. This is not the way Israel generally operates. No, usually they've got the intelligence, so they're not caught off guard. They're catching someone off guard. Again, they've seen terror attacks happen and occur in Israel. We've seen the suicide bombers get through, the bus stations, the knife attacks, but not a scale this large.

No. There's also a lot of problems going on in college campuses, and we want to talk to you about that, and we've got calls coming in on that. 1-800-684-3110. By the way, if you're a college student, we want to hear from you, or if you're a parent of a college student and want to know what's going on in your campus, we'd love to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110.

This is a real problem. The Palestinian society, these different groups, which, by the way, George Washington University published a tremendous piece on who Hamas really is. It's Jordan's alma mater. On extremism and the real face of Hamas, and it was covered actually last night in great detail on Fox News, and I'm starting to read the report.

GW did a great job. There's a university, it's fair to say, Jordan, that really tries to not get politically, I mean obviously it's very political because they're in D.C., but not take Republican, Democrat sides, so to speak. No, there's plenty of students on both sides who go there, and big political programs that have Republican and Democrat students out, they recruit from both, but what you are seeing is the activists left, how quick they can mobilize on the streets for the Palestinians. Now it's bizarre, you'll have the gay and lesbian groups marching on the streets for Palestinians, which makes no sense to the Palestinians. Because what they did in Gaza, they were throwing gays and lesbians off the roof of the buildings. But, so quickly they mobilized. Well, we saw that. There was a big event in Geneva, a pro-Israel event that the team that we're working with put together, they had almost a thousand people there, but let me tell you what else was there.

6,000 pro-Palestinian groups. So this is what's happening. Alright, we've got a lot more. I want your phone calls. Phone lines are now open, Will?

Yes. 1-800-684-3110, your reaction to all of this, and we'll talk about the politics of it. Don't forget to support the work of the ACLJ at ACLJ.org. That's ACLJ.org. Become an ACLJ champion. It takes tremendous resources to do all this, folks, and thanks to your continued monthly giving, we're able to continue this fight and this broadcast.

ACLJ.org champions goal, 2,000 by the end of the month. Hey, welcome back to the broadcast, everyone. I want to change topics just for a moment.

We're going to take some fun facts. Let's go ahead and take a phone call first. And then we've got Harry Hutchinson's joined us. Ken is calling from New Hampshire. He's on Line 1. Ken, welcome to the broadcast. You're on the air.

Thanks. So, I'm at a university. We have pro-Palestinian students peacefully meeting with folks on campus and in the streets, and I've talked to them and it's raised the question to myself is how to learn more about the conflict and find out what's true. Well, look, I mean, there's a long history. I did a book.

In fact, we're going to put you on hold when we're done. I'm going to send you my book, Jerusalem, which outlines the whole thing. But you have to understand what's going on here. The conflict is both a political conflict and a social economic conflict. And there's, when you're dealing with Hamas and Hezbollah, you're dealing with Iran. So that makes the, and they don't ever, when these students address this, they try to ignore that part or ignore the fact that when the gay and lesbian students at the Jordan Center are marching with the pro-Palestinian groups, that Hamas was throwing them off of buildings just three years ago. Literally, that was, if you were found to be that person, you were then removed.

Harry, you know, we'll go to your professor Hutchinson had here. You've been on college campuses, you know, student protests, but there is a, they are very organized, the left on this, especially these pro-Palestinian groups. They are, but the real issue is that they have learned fundamentally over the past 20 to 30 years to favor individuals and groups that are classifiable as victims. And the Palestinians have done a fabulous job of creating the view that the Palestinians are oppressed by a so-called apartheid state, Israel. Now, this is nonsensical, but the Palestinians, I think, have won that fight. There is a recent article that was published, I believe today in the New York Post, suggesting diversity, equity, and inclusion is the gateway drug to allowing the Palestinians to see themselves, at least in the eyes of the public, as being oppressed by the Israelis. And many of these individuals no longer favor a two-state solution. They favor the elimination of the state of Israel. So it's very, very important to note that the framing of this dispute between oppressor and oppressed favors the Palestinians, both politically, socially, and particularly on academic campuses. I will tell you this also, that there was a big event in Geneva, a group of lawyers that I'm working with and policy analysts from the Middle East had this big event, and it was almost a thousand people. That's a lot for an event in Geneva in front of the UN, pro-Israel, but the pro-Palestinian side was about 3,000. I mean, they're just better at activating, and there's more of them there, frankly.

They're in these countries, so it makes it easier for them to activate. I want to switch gears for a moment, and we're going to go right back to this. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, we've got a major case that we lost at the district court level, won at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, because that court has become more conservative. But then the full Ninth Circuit is going to hear the case, called an en banc review, which has now stayed the opinion.

Harry, what's the latest with that? Well, essentially, the Ninth Circuit en banc has reinstituted, if you will, the district court opinion. With respect to the district court, it's important to note that the Department of Justice used a fairly obscure law suggesting that Idaho's ban on abortion, which bans abortion except in cases of rape, incest, and where the mother's life is in danger. That law was challenged by the DOJ.

Why? Because the federal government claims that it conflicts with federal law requiring hospitals receiving Medicare funding to administer emergency care to patients regardless of their ability to pay. So the law in question at the federal level has nothing really to do with abortion, but it's simply a workaround by the federal government, which is pro-abortion, to intervene in this particular case. So now, after a three-judge panel issued a stay in the lower court's decision, the federal appellate court at the Ninth Circuit level has basically intervened and said it will rehear that opinion.

What does that mean? It means from a practical standpoint, the lower court's decision is still in effect, and so the ACLJ is fighting for life with respect to that particular case. So right now, if you go on the screen, I'm putting up for people, this is the brief that we have filed at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Very important case. Could end up, Destiny could be the Supreme Court of the United States.

Now, at the same time, I want you to understand what's going on. That's being filed. Then, at the same time, we have a team of lawyers out in Denver, Colorado, because of a major case there involving the Fourteenth Amendment challenges, Jordan, to putting President Trump on the ballot. And as I said, whether you're for Trump or against Trump, the idea that some secretary of state on their own initiative could just remove somebody from a duly qualified candidate from the ballot is outrageous. Yeah, these challenges haven't moved very fast in other states, but Colorado's been different, and we knew this from the beginning, which is why we got involved in the Colorado case right from the start. We represent the Colorado GOP, the Trump campaign is involved, and of course an organization in Washington, D.C. called CREW. And we said, this is the one to watch, because the secretary of states basically said, court, tell me what to do. Exactly.

If you think he's committed insurrection, I'll take him off the ballot. So very different than other states that have basically been tossing these cases pretty quickly, or at least are setting up the stage to toss these quickly. It looks like this one in Colorado, the judges said they think this is going to be best decided through a trial, which means this is going through part one and likely will be in part two, part three, and they could ultimately end up, interestingly enough, you're talking about the Supreme Court again, at the U.S. Supreme Court. Yeah, so what's interesting here is the judge has also said, he said not only does it have to be tried, but the judge said, hey, look, I'm not going to be the final decision on this. This is going to the Supreme Court of the United States. So we've got a senior ACLJ team out, Jane Raskin, who's a special counsel to the ACLJ, was Jordan and our colleague during the Trump impeachment hearings and the Mueller probe, and we worked on a lot of cases together.

She's part of our team. Nathan's going out from our office in Washington who did a great job of briefing this. So they're going out to do the trial.

We've got great lawyers in Colorado that are helping on this as well. Again, this points to the fact that at the ACLJ, whether it's a Middle East situation in Israel, that we've got an office in Jerusalem with Jeff Balaban, heads up, who's been on this broadcast many, many times, or whether it's a trial going on in Colorado on a major constitutional issue involving elections, or it's the abortion issue that Professor Hutchinson was just talking about in California. We're involved in all of it.

And then, of course, we're bringing you this broadcast five days a week. And again, I want to say thank you to the 1515 of you who have become ACLJ champions. We had 15,000 when we started this. We've been doing this for years. But in less than a month, we have added 10 percent to that. So we're at 16,000.

And my goal is to double it in the next year. So you're going to be hearing us talk about this a lot. But you can become an ACLJ champion, and we encourage you to do it.

Yeah, we do. And when you go to ACLJ.org slash champions, and what it means is you're a recurring donor. You're a champion for life, liberty, the unborn, a champion for Israel, all these issues.

You see how quickly we're able to pivot with our team. It's because we have a team of experts that know the issues that well. You can fight out the case of the 14th Amendment in Colorado. You can then fight out the case on life in the Ninth Circuit.

You can also go to overseas and go to European Union, the Council of Europe, and get them to identify Hamas as a terrorist group and stop funding Hamas. And do all of that at the exact same time, these domestic cases and international work. But we need more ACLJ champions. Go to ACLJ.org slash champions.

Become a champion today. Welcome back to Sekulow. We are taking your phone calls to 1-800-684-3110.

You can, again, put your questions in on rumble, Facebook, YouTube as well. We do have a lot of calls coming in, both issues that we have going on here domestically. We just talked about some cases working in the U.S. and, of course, the international news that has been so dominant. Of course, we have an office in Jerusalem. But our European Center for Law and Justice also with a great victory at the Council of Europe. Let's talk about that one for a minute.

Folks, I want to set this up and then Jordan will give you details. When you're fighting in the Council of Europe, you're in a hostile zone. But our team in France does an amazing job, and they've been with us for many decades. And this is a really great victory, unprecedented victory politically at the Council of Europe. I mean, this was a big, big win. Yeah, I mean, so you've got the European Parliament, and we went to the parliamentarians.

And this was something we'd never be able to pass before. You'd get some support from some parliamentarians, but not a majority. The European Parliament has both recognized Israel's right to self-defense. But when a bigger step and called for the elimination of Hamas, these are parliamentarians from many countries that still fund Hamas. They have called for the elimination of Hamas. They are using the same language as the state of Israel, saying that there is no longer a way forward to work with Hamas, the political group. Hamas must be eliminated.

It must be destroyed. So they're using that language. The ECLJ was key there in getting that language to the parliamentarians, then getting it up for a vote, and making sure we utilize where a lot of places on the right would just say, I will give up at these institutions. We don't.

We don't. And our team there, because of the years they've had of practice there, came up with all these ideas and all these things they could do in support of Israel inside Europe, where you've seen the protests have been, you know, furious. You've seen governments which are much more hostile to Israel. You've seen communities much more hostile to Israel. And so they want to fight back.

Yeah. And the truth is they did. And this was a great win. And it shows you if you put your mind to it, you put your teams to it. And again, our ACLJ champions, thank you. Those of you that stand with us each and every month, that's why we can keep an office fully functioning in Strasbourg, France, which is where the European Union meets. So thank you for that. We could not do it without you again.

ACLJ.org forward slash champions. Let's go ahead and take a phone call, Jordan. Yeah, we'll go right to the phones. We'll go to Ephraim in Virginia on line three. Hey, Ephraim. I worked with the 7th Special Forces Group for 14 of my 20 years in the military. Yes, sir.

I chase these guys all around. My son, my question is, my son is a junior at the New School in Manhattan. He lives in Brooklyn. They had massive protests in Brooklyn this weekend. My son is telling me that there are professional agitators on these campuses and with these young people who I would assume, especially after having read some of this George Washington University report, that they are fomenting and funding professional agitation on our campuses. Is that your perspective as well? That is exactly correct.

And let me tell you this, that George Washington University report is phenomenal, and it gets into that. It even says that some of these student groups that sound like they use a student group name, but the reality is they're not student groups. They're being led by these others.

Right. I mean, you've always seen this with groups like Hamas, and they've worked with the Muslim Brotherhood. They've worked with the Islamic Society of North America. They've worked with gay students for Palestine. I mean, they will come with every name possible and unite Jewish students for Palestine. Are there any Jewish students in the group?

No, but they put that forward as the name of a group. And then they make it feel like when you're on that campus, if you have a different opinion, you're evil. You better not say anything. Whether you're a professor, we've seen professors run into problems with that. We've seen students. I mean, I cannot imagine today being an average student on these campuses.

Very difficult. And thinking, you know what, I think that I'm pro-American. I think I support Israel. I guess these atrocities that happen to them. And you feel like you're going to be the one ostracized.

Well, here's the thing. We are representing students. I was talking to one of our lawyers this weekend in Virginia, and she said we're getting student representation requests on these campuses. And we are setting up basically, I'm going to set up almost like a hotline for these students. It's really that significant so we can help these students out on these college campuses. The ACLJ will be there.

We were when they did the BDS, Boycott, Divestment, Sanction. We'll be here again. Also, coming up, Rick Grinnell. And become an ACLJ champion right now. ACLJ.org forward slash champions. We are fighting the good fight. We're standing with Israel. We're fighting for life. We're fighting for freedom. We need your help.

ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secchia. We are taking your call to 1-800-684-3110. Rick Grinnell is joining us as well by phone. He's traveling the world during these conflicts. We've been able to go to Rick during this situation in Ukraine and Russia, but also with Israel.

And these issues at home here in the United States. And Rick, something we're hearing more and more about this week and over the weekend. Is that it was kind of clear, but I think now Rick it's came to just be that much more apparent. That the U.S. has played a very strong role in encouraging Israel not yet to begin a larger ground incursion into the Gaza Strip. Mostly because of hostages. We did see two hostages be released, but there weren't a hundred hostages released.

And I think that's important to point out, Rick. Is that we can't be, I guess, misguided by who we're dealing with, with these organizations. And at some point the U.S. has got to, I think, step out of the way and let Israel do what it needs to do. Look, I think it's really important for the Americans to realize that when you have a terrorist attack against a country like Israel, Israel has to be able to respond.

It seems crazy that somehow we're trying to tell them their own strategy. I think that what really needs to happen is the American government, Biden's administration, needs to concentrate on our hostages. Get our hostages home. That doesn't necessarily mean that we tell Israel to not do its strategy. It means that we go in diplomatically and get our hostages back. What is so frustrating is why did we have Blinken and Joe Biden in the region and world leaders were canceling meetings on them? I don't understand why they just can't go in and say, we want our hostages back. Go to Egypt, go to Qatar, go to these places and say, get the American hostages out right now. That's our priority.

They still went forward with $100 million. Yes. So, Rick, we have handled high-level negotiations for hostages, Americans held captive. And you know that because you've helped us on these in the past and when you were within government. You met one of them.

You were the first American he saw. Andrew Brunson was held in Turkey. This is different because you've got a large number, 230, and they're being held by multiple groups. Hamas as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. So, part of the strategy maybe here is that they're trying to buy time to do hostage negotiations. But Jordan and I did a hostage negotiation utilizing help within the Israeli government during a war, during Operation Cast Lead. So, they're like, I'm with you.

These are not mutually exclusive. Look, Jay, you know that the way we negotiated for Pastor Brunson was Donald Trump to Erdogan. That's how you do it.

You get this at a very high level. Joe Biden went all the way over to the region and the world leaders wouldn't meet with him. How about that? They literally wouldn't have a meeting with him. How are we supposed to get the American hostages back when Joe Biden can't get a meeting?

With the different players. I still believe that if Joe Biden picked up the phone and negotiated with the leaders of Qatar, Egypt, and Jordan. And made this a priority and said you will face consequences if we don't get our Americans back.

They could go in and do this. Remember Hamas is a terrorist organization, but it's also the government of Gaza. Well, I mean, I think, Rick, the truth is what we're trying to figure out here and what people want to understand, ultimately. Is that when all those meetings were canceled and ultimately you got two people released. The US was still very clear that we're getting $100 million of aid to Hamas. And don't worry, they're not going to use it for anything bad.

This is after they had carried out these horrendous attacks on Israeli civilians, children, women, and the elderly. And, Rick, the thing is this administration made sure, even after they canceled their meetings, made them look kind of foolish on the international stage. That in every chance they had, hey, don't worry, you're going to get $100 million from the US taxpayers. Yeah, that's the whole problem is that when you are giving the money before you negotiate, whether it's to Iran or to the government of Gaza. And the only thing you have is Joe Biden saying, you better give it to the people.

And I'm serious, you better do it. What you're really saying is, is you trust them. You trust the government to do what's right. And we've seen the Biden administration's policy with Iran is absolutely trust them and not really ever verify. Rick, we also know, I mean, Iran in this situation, we just were talking to a caller about this.

We were talking about it individually as well. I mean, Hamas doesn't take on this kind of aggressive action. Hezbollah doesn't consider opening another front of conflict. Syria doesn't, that hasn't been talked about as much, but both of their airports have been pretty much decimated, taken out by the IDF, which would be also militants operating from Iran, utilizing those airfields, utilizing a friendly Syria to do that. So you've got who the country surrounding Israel, Israel's made some incursions into, but all are considering full scale attacks on Israel at this moment.

Not just Hamas, but also Hezbollah, which is Iran's top proxy. And Iran is saying that they're in favor of it and supporting it. Makes you think that the $6 billion credit given to Iran didn't really help us.

It hurt us. And now talking about, you know, billions more to the government in Gaza, which happens to be a terrorist organization, Hamas also isn't helped yet. These are just, this is common sense, but the death of common sense from the Biden administration is beyond belief. They've worked very hard over the years to tell Americans that we need to cut a deal with Iran because Iran could be trusted. Iran just caused the most horrific, brutal terrorist attack that Israel has seen.

And I'm sorry, but we've got to get much tougher with this administration to say your strategy of funding people who don't like us is not working. So there's one thing that, of course, is another overriding thing, and that is humanitarian aid, this talk about humanitarian aid and getting humanitarian aid in. And, of course, Hamas controlling the borders makes the disposition of that humanitarian aid very difficult.

But listen to, this was the deputy NSA, John Finer, on CNN yesterday. Getting assistance into Gaza is a complicated undertaking. It involves essentially securing an understanding among Hamas fighters who control the checkpoint on the other side of the border, among the government of Israel and among the government of Egypt. And the agreement the President secured will enable these trucks to flow as soon as the roadway can be repaired. But the President was also quite clear that if this assistance goes in, it cannot be misappropriated, cannot be taken by Hamas fighters for their own purposes. And so we're going to be watching that very closely. It has to get to Palestinian civilians who need it.

It has to. But the question is, from what you just said, is the U.S. then essentially in a position where it has to take the word of Hamas that it will not be taken? I mean, what other guarantee can there be? We believe there is an understanding now among all of the players who control that crossing, the Rafah crossing in Egypt. Rick, to me, that is so absurd to say we have an understanding with Hamas who just committed the most heinous brutality against Jewish people since Adolf Hitler. This is a foolish administration. They're terrible negotiators. They trust the wrong people. They're tougher on Republicans than they are some of our enemies.

It's disgusting. And we can't get rid of these people fast enough. All right, Rick, as always, we appreciate your insight, your support, and always check out ACLJ.org. Dad, you mentioned that number, 2,000 ACLJ champions.

We're over 1,500 for the month, and we've launched. These are going to be folks, and if you're an ACLJ champion, it means you're a recurring donor, so you choose the amount that will automatically contribute each month to the ACLJ. What does that let us do? Well, it lets us know exactly, plan exactly, okay, we know from our ACLJ champions this much is going to be coming through to the ACLJ right now. So we know that if we've got a new case to work on, we've got this available. We know if a war breaks out, we have this available. If an office needs more resources, we have this available. So you see how becoming an ACLJ champion isn't just the short-term benefit to the ACLJ, but that it allows us to plan.

It allows us also to pivot quickly. You know, until this October 7th attack began, most of the talk on this broadcast was domestic political issues involving the former President of the United States and the current President of the United States' son, and all the legal issues surrounding that. Then it was the 14th Amendment, and it's not like all those issues are done. They are far from over. But then we saw this intervening event, and I'm sure some people are new to the ACLJ case.

Maybe they'll just talk about it, but that'll just be news to them. And then they realize we've got these international offices and work at these institutions that's been there for decades so that we've not only developed a plan of what to do in the U.S. with our domestic political machine, what to do in Europe, what to do in Israel. And that's why these ACLJ recurring donors, champions, are so important. 1515 of you have said, yes, I am an ACLJ champion. That adds to the 15,000 we have, so we're at 16,000, 1550.

Next year, this time, I want to be telling you we're at 30,000. To do that, we need your help. If you could give a recurring monthly gift to the ACLJ in any amount, you become an ACLJ champion. You'll stand with us, stand with Israel, stand for life, freedom, and liberty. Go to ACLJ.org forward slash champions. We've got lawyers in Denver, Colorado this week coming up for a trial. We've got our legal teams filing briefs at the U.S. Court of Appeals from the Ninth Circuit right now. We're dealing with our European office.

Handle the matter with Israel in the European Parliament. ACLJ.org forward slash champions. Welcome back to Second Hill. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Let's go first to Susan in Maryland on Line 2. Hey, Susan.

Hi. I saw former speaker Paul Ryan at DCA on Wednesday, and this is the question I asked him. If both parties claim to be friends to Israel and anti-Hamas, then why don't we have a speaker of the House today? What did he say? I'd like to know what he had to say.

What did he say? He said they were working on it. We're on it.

Yeah, we're on it. And this is the problem because you've got a non-functioning government right now, and I think that when you've got – listen, I believe, Harry, that you had up our policy. When countries see that we have this kind of disarray, it does show a tremendous weakness in our governance, which makes, I think, us vulnerable and our – and I say this hesitantly, but even our allies more vulnerable. I think you're precisely correct, but if you look at the Republican Party, it has been fractured for quite some time between what might be called the establishment wing and the populist wing, and I don't think they have been able to successfully reconcile their inherent policy differences, which are probably not on display with respect to Israel but are on display with respect to Ukraine. And so many Republicans want to put American interests first.

Other Republicans are more interested in a globalist agenda, and I'm not sure those things in the long term are reconcilable. Yeah, no, I think Harry's right. All right, we're taking your calls at 800-684-3110. Let's go ahead and take Laura's call out of Montana. She's on Line 1, and if you want to talk to us, 800-684-3110. Hey, Laura.

Hey, thank you for taking my call. I'm so interested in this conflict. It's just so tragic. I served as a volunteer in Israel for two years, and this is a long time in coming. The 2014 war was so complicated, but this seems like if they can eradicate Hamas, it will give them freedom for years. So I'm asking, how do we financially support them during this war?

Well, here's what Congress has to get back into business, because this is going to take a lot. Look, Israel's called up 360,000 reserves. If you were to multiply that times the population of the United States, it would be millions and millions of troops have been called up. Almost 10 million, more than that, would have been called up.

That's how significant this is. They're going to need money. They're going to need resources.

We've already dispatched some military aid, and Secretary of Defense Austin is saying more is coming, but we've got to do that. And this is where the issue of not having a speaker comes into play, because if you don't have a speaker, you can keep having these votes to elect a speaker, but what you can't put forward is resolutions or budgets. So if it's a continuing resolution that includes funding for Israel, that can't come through right now. Now, Dad, there is a way Republicans could move forward and give the current speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry, a temporary power to act as speaker and bring these votes forward.

I got to think that if we don't have a speaker by this week, that's got to happen, like Patrick McHenry or not. We've got to be able to get substantive legislation moving through Congress, especially when it involves our number one ally. You know, we look at the situation right now. We've got that situation in Washington. Then we've got a very unique election contest starting. You've got the Republican Democrats obviously going to be Joe Biden, no question, unless they make a switch at the end.

Okay, then leading right now is President Trump. However, the move by some Democratic controlled states to not have Trump on the ballot has picked up steam. They started filing these lawsuits. They dismissed some.

We got involved at the ACLJ because it's a very significant constitutional question. Because number one, they're basing it on an insurrection. You can be removed from the ballot under the 14th Amendment Section 3 if you were involved in an insurrection. Yet, Harry, Trump's been charged with a lot of things. Insurrection is not one of them.

Absolutely. And in fact, it makes no sense to claim that President Trump was ever involved in an insurrection or rebellion. What would that mean? It would mean that he is leading a rebellion or he led a rebellion against his own administration. And so if you look at Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution, and if you look at it clearly with unbiased eyes, you find that it is an easy constitutional question. Keep in mind that the 14th Amendment Section 3 was aimed at former officers of the Confederacy.

There is no evidence, at least that I have found, that President Trump ever served as a Confederate soldier. Number two, it's important to keep in mind that it is clear beyond question that he did not commit a qualifying offense within the meaning of Section 3. In order to commit a qualifying offense, he would have to do one of two things. One, participate in an insurrection or rebellion, or secondly, give aid and comfort to an enemy. Let's take the second point first. In order for President Trump to give aid and comfort to an enemy, you need what? You need a war. There was never a war, so therefore he could not have given aid and comfort to an enemy. So I think that is really, really clear.

And then if we go back to the first question, which I answered earlier, did he engage in an insurrection or rebellion? I think that claim is laughable. They want this to be self-authenticating, though. They're not saying a court has to decide this or a legislature. They're saying just an elected official won. So anytime you got a Democrat secretary of state and Democrat officials, you got a Republican on the ballot they don't like or they're threatened by, and your state may be important for the primary, even if it's a Democrat state and it's not going to help in the general conservatives or Republicans, but it's important in the primary, your state secretary is likely a Democrat.

And what they want is the power to say, this person cannot be on the ballot because I think what they've done is wrong. Exactly. By the way, Flo on Rumble asked a very good question, and she said, I am a monthly donor before this campaign. Am I now a champion as well?

And the answer to that is yes. We had going into this campaign 15,000, roughly, champions. These were people that support the ACLJ every month with recurring donations. Our goal over a 12-month period, and this is a big goal and it's a stretch goal, was to double it. We have added 1515 as of this morning. We've added another six or seven just since we've been on the air. Now that doesn't sound like, you know, does that sound like a six or seven? We'll probably get 40 today, 30 to 40 new monthly donors.

Over the course of a year, it's a huge revenue source for the ACLJ, which allows us to do everything we're doing. Let me say this on the Israel thing, okay? Look, at any moment, this engagement is going to change drastically in a very significant way. Is it tonight? Is it tomorrow?

Is it next week? That I can't predict, but I could tell you the escalation here is going to be real. So for the Republicans in the House of Representatives, let me say this on behalf of the ACLJ.

Pick a speaker. Get this done. You're impacting global events. This is not funny.

This isn't, you know, politics as usual and they think it's great and posing for photos in front of the cameras with a big grin. This is a real fight. We need you to be operational. So listen, we've got 1521. Let's end the day with 1551.

That would be great of new ACLJ champions. I want to encourage you right now. You know the devastation that's been inflicted in Israel. You know what they're going to be faced with. But we're fighting for Israel with letters and documents and briefs to the International Tribunals. We've got a case at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for life. We've got the 14th Amendment case on elections in Denver, Colorado all this week. While we work tirelessly to defend life and liberty, you can join with us. Become a monthly donor at ACLJ.org.