HAPPENING NOW: House Votes for New Speaker - Live Coverage

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The house votes for a new speaker and we have live coverage. 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, Logan Sekulow. Hey, this is Logan Sekulow. We are here with live coverage of what's happening right now in Washington, D.C. Will Haynes sitting in, also executive producer of this broadcast to discuss what could be the end of the circus. That's right, finally. Are we at the time where it's over? Where we actually could see a new speaker of the house?

A lot of people think so. And a vote could be coming at any minute. So we're going to be keeping you updated with this live coverage as they have submitted Mike Johnson. Represented Mike Johnson from Louisiana late last night.

Your phone may start buzzing if you're like me to get these push notifications. Mike Johnson was put up to be the potential speaker. Now Will, what we do know about Mike Johnson is someone that our audience would like, presumably.

Right. So this is good, but a lot of people maybe don't know this name. Well, fortunately for our audience, they have probably heard Mike Johnson more than maybe some of the rest of America. He's been a frequent guest on the secular broadcast. He's a strong conservative. He's a constitutional attorney. He sits on the Judiciary Committee with Chairman Jim Jordan, as well as that select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government. He's got great conservative chops. He is very well liked within the conference, as well as being someone who's a lot more policy focused. So he hasn't necessarily been out there on television as a congressional character, as you may have seen. But if you see photos, he's always there right in the mix with Jim Jordan, with those that our listeners and audience really like in Washington, D.C.

So again, I guess that raises the question is if Jim Jordan couldn't make it through after round upon round upon round, why would Mike Johnson make it through? And I guess you're saying is because maybe he's got a bit more of that. He's got a little bit more of everybody, a little more of the Freedom Caucus people and the other side. So you have the people like Matt Gaetz, who kind of started this, who are on board already. Right. And there is that question once again, until the votes are tallied, who's there, how it will shake out.

We'll see that hopefully soon. But he is a little bit more of a policy wonk. And because he's not as out there, it may be a little bit easier for some of the people who had issues with the polarization that a Jim Jordan speakership could bring. We were all in favor of it. We were all on board.

We were excited about the possibility of a Speaker Jordan. Now that that is passed, I think that this is a good option. I think that he is someone who's got a plan for the spending. We can get into that later that he's already laid out how he wants to separate the appropriations from being a giant omnibus. And he has a plan on how to get that forward, even with these upcoming spending bills.

It's someone that I think could at least appease people in the the vast array of the Republican Party. But we'll see how it shakes out. Once again, we've got a lot coming up ahead. We're going to talk about that. We also got Rick Grenell joining us. Even the fact that Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan may be working together on something else.

So maybe if this doesn't go through with Johnson, maybe there is another option for the two of them as sort of a co-speaker situation. We'll discuss that coming up in the next segments. But hey, I want to hear from you.

What do you think about this? Obviously, we're still dealing with the war in Israel becoming more and more of a threat. We're seeing the rise of attacks on American troops and Americans throughout the world. We're going to discuss that a lot more with Rick Grenell.

But also, I want to hear from you, your thoughts on not just Mike Johnson, because again, you may not even be that familiar with him. But are you ready for this to come to an end? Are you ready for the Republican Party to actually get something done? Give us a call.

1-800-684-3110. You're also going to have President Biden's going to be holding his first presser since the attacks by Hamas, where he's going to have some open questions. So we'll see how that goes.

I won't hold my breath, but we'll see. I'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear them actually ask President Biden?

1-800-684-3110. We know a lot of members of the press watch this broadcast so they can hear from you. What do you want them to ask? What do you feel is important? Also, we are in the middle of our push right now in October here talking to you about becoming an ACLJ champion, which is a reoccurring donor, someone who says they stick up for the ACLJ every month. We'll discuss that more at length coming up in the next segments. But here's the deal. We are only 367 short of our goal, and we have just seven days left to meet it.

So you can be part of that ACLJ.org slash champions. Welcome back to Sekulow. Again, we're going to take some of your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110.

I'd love to hear from you on a couple issues. Number one, right now as we speak, it is about to happen. We're about to have a vote for House Speaker. What that ends up looking like, obviously we don't know. But currently Mike Johnson is potentially going to be our new speaker.

That would be Mike Johnson from Louisiana, which we all think is a good pick. But, you know, we've been down this road before, so we don't know how it's going to shake out until it actually gets there. And, Will, right now they are starting the sort of preliminary procedures. They're filing in. It's starting to happen.

That's right. So the House of Representatives is gaveling in today at noon, so that's already happened. And what they first have to do is take a quorum vote. So they vote basically a roll call to see who all is there. And once they decide that there is a quorum, meaning enough people to proceed to do business within the House, then they will, that also sets kind of the bar that Mike Johnson would have to get over to get the speakership, to get a majority.

217 has been the number we've seen. If there are some people that are absent today, then that number can actually decrease in how many votes he needs to get. Now, the Washington Post is actually kind of forecasting, based off their reporting, that they think that this could happen, that Mike Johnson could secure enough votes to win. They had a headline that came out just before we went to air that said the Republicans appear to put the speaker fight behind them. That would mean that he would become the new speaker of the House. There is also some talk behind the scenes that we're seeing reported that Kevin McCarthy had floated a proposal to return him to the speakership and make Jim Jordan assistant House speaker. What we've seen thus far is that the Republicans rejected increasing the power of the speaker pro tem, Patrick McHenry. I think that they would also not go for some conjured up plan as well.

I feel like that's just pushing it for no reason. Let's actually hear from President Trump. President Trump weighed in on this earlier today, so you can hear what he said this morning about the potential of a Mike Johnson bid.

I'll just read it to you because that sound quality was just rough. He said he's respected by everybody. I hear one negative comment about him.

I think that's a little bit incorrect. I don't hear one negative comment about him. Everybody likes him, respected by all, and everyone should be very happy about it. Positive words coming from President Trump, obviously in the middle of his campaign. A lot of people even suggested that he be potentially go for speaker. You see him now putting his weight potentially behind Mike Johnson as he did earlier, putting his weight behind Jim Jordan. Clearly something he doesn't want, I would say.

I don't know if that's true, but it just seems like he wouldn't do it unless really, really necessary. Because I know we see that a lot in the comments. Again, we're going to take your phone calls. A lot of people are lined up to talk right now, whether it's about what's going on in Israel, what's happening in the speakership. We do have a question going on from Robert in Maryland on Line 1. Let's go ahead and take Robert. I encourage you all to call in.

Yeah, hi. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions. As far as the Israel-Hamas War is concerned, the Israeli Defense Force is continuing the airstrikes in Hamas to try to do what they can to prepare for a ground invasion. And the other question that I have is concerning American troops being attacked overseas, particularly in Syria. I believe over the last couple of years, since 2021, there have been 83 attacks against American troops, I think, in Iraq and Syria. And if that's the case, what is the United States going to do about it? We can't continue to allow our troops to be attacked.

And also, Israel, at some point, even with the hostages, they've got to go in for a ground invasion into Gaza. Yeah, we're going to actually talk about that a lot in the next segment, the specific on the attacks on Americans. We've actually had 13 times in the past week the U.S. have had troops attacked in Iraq and Syria. So, yes, it may be that number overall, but just in the last week, we've seen a significant uptick. What does that mean? So stay tuned for that.

We're going to really discuss that with Rick Grenell coming up, someone who's an expert in that area. When it comes to your first question about the IDF, yes, I believe right now there are still aerial strikes. There are strikes happening at strategic locations when necessary.

So if they see a target that needs to be taken out, again, they'll go and do it. The ground troops have not gone in as long as this show is you're still listening to it live. As we know, right now it hasn't happened. I think it's still, personally, I feel like it's inevitable.

It's just when and where. They are obviously weighing, getting out some of the hostages and what they need to do first before doing it. I honestly personally thought it would have happened much earlier, heading towards three weeks now since the attack. I thought we probably would have been well more into this conflict, if you will, as pressure is mounting. I honestly think for Israel, what happened is the longer they wait, somewhat, the more the Western world may turn against them.

So I'm nervous about that situation. And we are going to get into that a little bit later in the show. But to confirm for Robert, yes, Israel has continued to do airstrikes. As a matter of fact, they were showing on the news right before the show today a large airstrike that took place in Gaza.

Don't have a lot of information about what the target was there yet. But also overnight they conducted airstrikes in the West Bank and Syria. So they are continuing to use an air campaign to hit back at Hamas and Iranian proxies wherever they may be where they are targeting Israel. They actually killed a Hamas commander overnight.

So that campaign is still continued. There's also news that the United States is sending more Iron Dome capabilities to Israel. We have that joint venture with Israel on the Iron Dome. And part of some analysis why they haven't gone in yet is they may need more protection because we've seen Hamas' capability being a little bit stronger than we would have expected even just a few weeks ago. So therefore they're waiting before they get that ground invasion. We have more advisors from the U.S. over there helping them out in their planning stages that there is some of that. The hostages needing some extra backstop from the Iron Dome in order to protect more Israeli life and citizens before they go in on a full ground invasion. Yeah, because when they do that they also know that there's a war potentially breaking out amongst the entire Middle East.

And we know that that's a little bit different. That is not just like the idea of going in and taking out a small terrorist group. The terrorist group is the prevailing regime. Plus that terrorist group is likely funded by much larger countries with much more capabilities in the area.

So what does that look like? Probably it looks like a full scale war. So yes, they are being a little bit more careful right now.

But you are still seeing them take out, as you said, heads and commanders of Hamas and other groups like that in the area, the IDF doing strategic attacks to take out command centers or wherever it may be. Again, a lot of these are hiding in plain sight, if you will. So they have to be very careful on it.

But you see from the media, you never would have heard post 9-11 after 9-11 that America's got to be careful. We've got to go in there with kid gloves. We've got to make sure we're not doing this. And this is only because it's Israel. Only because it's Israel is this everyone's got to be careful. We've got to make sure that Hamas isn't operating by some sort of code of conduct. But Israel, you've got to.

You've got to be there and be humanitarians as much as possible. You know what? They are.

That's the weird part. You won't actually see any of those stories coming out of Israel. Very few.

Here and there you'll see it come up. A lot of times it's propaganda coming from Hamas or coming from the West Bank or the terrorist regimes that are a part of that entire region. So again, hopefully people learned their lesson on the hospital bombing, I'll put it in quotes.

You know, when the media jumped really quick on that. We do have obviously some updates too going on as the new speaker vote should be happening at any moment. We are continuing that live coverage. We've got a whole team watching to make sure that we get you all the information you need. We're going to also make sure that we have calls coming in. So 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110 coming up in the next segment. We also have Rick Grenell. I did want to take a minute here as we head into a break before we do that, before we get Rick all set up, to tell you about becoming an ACLJ champion.

You've heard us pushing it the last month. It's the label you can put on yourself to be proud of wearing of being an ACLJ champion simply is someone who's saying, I am going to be a recurring donor to the ACLJ. I've decided to give $5 a month, $10 a month, $100, whatever it may be at any level.

You can do it right now at ACLJ.org slash champions. You can stand with Israel. We obviously have our big office going on in Jerusalem. We have offices around the world that we are fighting for you, fighting on behalf of you at the UN, everywhere we can be. We are there, whether it's defending Israel, working on Capitol Hill in the courts to defend your freedom.

We need your support every month. And we're facing a lot of new major challenges, whether that's the 14th Amendment cases, whether that is what's going on with Jewish students and Christian students. All over college campuses. I know you guys seeing that in the news that has been such a horrible realization, but hopefully a wake up call. We've been talking about it for decades.

We've been talking about a lot the last few years. We've represented so many students, so many teachers do who are being told what they have to say, what they can't say in terms of the connection to Israel and their feelings on that or their feelings on life. We defend them.

So go to ACLJ.org right now. Some of these cases can take years, and with your monthly donations, we can start planning accordingly. So it's not just running it. Look, we appreciate all the single donors. They are actually the bread and butter of this organization. They're the ones who keep everything running on time, making sure that we're good to go. But we would love to be able to plan accordingly, and we could do that by knowing a little bit, projecting what's going to come in the next month. What kind of places we can put our resources.

All you have to do is go to ACLJ.org slash champions and get this. We are only 367 people short of our goal for the month. We've got seven days to do it. I think we can do it. Let's meet that goal.

Become an ACLJ champion today. We are going to take a lot of phone calls coming up. Rick Grinnell is going to join us next. We are going to talk what Robert Maryland actually asked about, which is some of those ongoing attacks that are happening in Iraq and Syria against U.S. troops. We've seen that 13 times in the past week.

What does that look like? What's the Pentagon saying? And a surprising meeting between Governor Gavin Newsom and President of China, Xi Jinping. Welcome back to Sekulow. We're going to be joined by Rick Grinnell shortly. Do we have him yet?

No, not yet. We'll have Rick Grinnell joining us here in just a minute. We're also going to take some more of your phone calls.

1-800-684-3110. They have called a quorum vote going on right now. We know a lot of you are watching for the live coverage of what's happening with the speaker nominee currently representative Mike Johnson as the GOP has decided that is their pick. There is a lot of talk. A lot of people think that this could finally be it. It came out late last night. Again, Mike Johnson, someone who has been on this broadcast many times.

If you're not familiar with him, very conservative, has a lot of friends in the whole world, the whole conservative world. So maybe this could be it. Again, we're going to take your calls here very soon and we're going to get Rick joining us here in just a moment. I will say it does look. They were just showing the floor of the House of Representatives and Mike Johnson does look very happy and excited and a lot of people congratulating him. That could be a signal of what's coming. Yeah, that's a much better look than it was maybe the last few weeks where there was panic deals happening. I always go back to those deals with the original time McCarthy was going when, you know, Gates was meeting with AOC and trying to pull stuff.

This one, maybe this could be it. I'm not holding my breath. We'll see. We are now joined by Rick Grenell, who is calling us live. Rick, there's a lot happening in the world right now. Obviously, we're talking about the current vote right now for speaker, but we're also talking about Israel, the war in Israel and how that's impacting even our U.S. troops. We know that there has been an uptick in attacks. We've seen 13 attacks just in the last week in Iraq and Syria. According to what the Pentagon say, I want to get your expertise and your thoughts on this uptick in violence. Look, I think this war in the Middle East and the war in Europe is obviously making our troops a target. I believe America is less safe because of these wars. We've got a President who is incredibly weak and inviting others because of his weakness.

And so this is a very serious time. I hope that our intelligence agencies are also watching. We still, you know, have not. Logan, we've not answered the question. What did U.S. intelligence know about the war in Israel? The attacks from Hamas? What did we know? Did we know any pieces of this? Did we miss the analysis but have certain pieces of raw intelligence?

We need these questions answered. And April Haynes, who's the director of national intelligence, has not come forward and given us any answers. I don't actually see anybody in Congress demanding answers from the intel community. There's been some questions, but we need more action to understand if U.S. intelligence missed this. Or did we just once again, you know, do something that is highly political?

And I hate to say that, but right now we have a bunch of agencies that are being highly partisan. Rick, we saw Admiral Kirby yesterday and he gave a response to Iran, whether or not they're thinking about jumping in and deepening and widening and escalating the conflict. He gave the same answer that President Biden did when he was talking about Hezbollah engaging against Israel or other bad actors engaging against Israel. He said, don't. Don't do it.

Don't. He said that over and over again. Are the words of the President and also echoed by Admiral Kirby, don't? Is that enough to deter Iran from using their proxies to attack Americans? Well, this is a really good question and it's an insightful question because you go back and you look and you compare what maybe Donald Trump said, maybe what Barack Obama said.

But you need more words than just a little don't. There is a difference between a threat of military action from a President and a credible threat of military action. It reminds me once of sitting with Chancellor Merkel and her complaining to me when I was U.S. ambassador to Germany that one of the difficulties that she had in the relationship between Germany and the United States was that she just couldn't figure out what President Trump was going to do next.

He was highly unpredictable and she was complaining to me about that. And I remember thinking to myself, don't smile too big as she's complaining about this because I've waited my whole life to have a President that is completely unpredictable where our enemies, our allies and others had no idea what he was going to do. I actually think that's a good thing and President Trump had mastered the art of a credible threat of military action.

I think Joe Biden has not. Yeah, is that what needs to happen to deter this threat? You need to have essentially just a different form of leadership and a different form of honestly candor in the room.

Well, look, Logan, you know, we've talked about this in the past. You and I both know that if Donald Trump were President, we would not have this war in Europe and Ukraine. We would not have a war in the Middle East. We would not have a conflict in the Balkans that is developing. I'm here in Belgrade, Serbia, and all people can talk about is the rising crisis with Kosovo. And, you know, we had that situation almost solved at least on a really good normalization path. And now we're talking about adding NATO troops. Yet again, I don't think that there's a part of the world that is in better shape under Joe Biden than under Donald Trump. The world in every single region has gotten worse.

Absolutely. And, Rick, one of the things I wanted to bring up, and we know that's true, by the way, it's not hyperbole. Look at the Abraham Accords, look at everything that happened in the Middle East. None of us were even thinking about, I mean, some of us always are thinking about it, but most of the world was not thinking about terror in the Middle East. We're not talking about war in the Middle East.

Not nearly what they're talking about now. ISIS was wiped out and essentially those threats were gone. And then all of a sudden we all forgot about it. And that's what always happens, specifically it happened under President Trump. Everyone forgot about the Middle East as much as I was sitting here going, don't forget what happened. Because this was probably the most impactful thing that the Trump administration did for me was the Abraham Accords. But, of course, now look what's happened.

Now, I do want to move a little bit. I know you're overseas right now, but you're obviously a Californian always about it. We did see your governor, Gavin Newsom, make a surprise meeting with President Xi Jinping in China. And I just wanted to know, what is your reaction to this meeting? Is this a good thing?

What do you think? Well, look, you know, Governor Newsom has decided to completely ignore all of the California problem and go on this tour pretending that California is in great shape and he can start giving advice to a whole bunch of other countries. California is not doing well. We've got the highest taxes.

It's so expensive to live in California. Homelessness is out of control. They're telling us to take quick showers because we don't have enough water. They're telling us to cut back on electricity after five o'clock. Unplug your appliances in your home because we don't have enough electricity. But yet he is completely controlled by the far left radical environmentalists.

That's why we don't have enough water, but we live on the ocean. Governor Newsom is literally ignoring the problems of California. And here is the kicker. The media in California are largely covering for him. He doesn't get pushback, so it's only going to get worse. He's going to continue traveling, pretending like everything is fine in California. Yeah, obviously he was over there. He was talking a lot about Finsdell exports and the climate and a lot of things like that. But what was always very interesting with him, with Governor Newsom, is you're right. His spin is incredible and the guy can talk. So if you've never visited, if you haven't visited California in the last few years, you may go, oh, well, yeah, of course, this guy seems like he could be a good fit for one of these positions. Could be that he's secretly running for President.

He puts off that vibe. But if you've been there or maybe you're the thousands of people, we're here in Nashville, Tennessee, the thousands of people that have left Southern California and moved here, which I think is unfortunate, by the way. I don't mind people coming and moving here.

I think it's unfortunate they felt they had to leave because I love California and sad to see what it's become. Hey, Rick, thanks for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your trip.

We are going to be back for a second half hour on Sekulow. If we lose you here, I want to encourage you to become an ACLJ champion. Go to ACLJ.org slash champions.

Only a few hundred away, 300 or so away from meeting our goal for the month. You can be a part of that group right now. Be an ACLJ champion today. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Logan Sekulow.

Hey, everybody. You may be joining us live right now. I'm here with executive producer Will Haines. We are discussing currently the vote is about to happen for speaker and they put up GOP. They put up Mike Johnson from Louisiana late last night. It's been a lot of confusion happening, but finally it looks like maybe, again, I'm not holding my breath, but maybe we will have a speaker here today. We're going to keep you updated on that.

They should be voting any minute. We've got a whole half hour coming up on the second half hour of the broadcast. We appreciate all of you joining in. We also have phone lines open for you. I know a lot of you called in. We had to talk about what's going on in the Middle East.

We talked with Rick Grenell. Now we've got our back half of the broadcast. We're going to take some more calls. 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Scott, who's calling in Oklahoma right off the bat. Scott, you're on the air.

Hey, thanks for taking my call. I'm curious how the Speaker of the House position kind of evolved over time. I always had the impression they kind of were over the debates, over the discussion, kind of keeping order in the general discussion of things, but now it's got to the point where they can control what bills get held or not within that party, and it sounds like the rules are pretty free for all as far as how the party wants to run that.

How did this develop over time to be so divisive? Well, I guess that's true, Scott, in the sense of the rules are kind of evolving as we've seen them evolve over the last year with McCarthy getting that new way of how he can be voted out. Look what happened. If one person brought up something, this is what can happen. Chaos can ensue. Now when it comes to historically, I'm no historian, but Speaker of the House, you're second in line for the presidency. So you're President, vice President, Speaker of the House. So yeah, it was made to be a position of power in our branches of government.

That's right. The Speaker of the House. The second in line of succession after the vice President, then you have the Speaker of the House. Also, there is a lot of power in controlling the legislative calendar.

Absolutely. So the Speaker of the House controls which bills come to the floor, when they come to the floor, how they're voted on. Though it's not equal to the President, it's certainly not out of the realm. Right, but they are three co-equal branches, and it is the leader of that, and legislation begins in the House of Representatives. It's the people's house. It was made to have a significant amount of power to be able to be a check on the presidency, on the executive branch and the judicial branch, because that's the way our constitutional republic was formed. So yes, we are talking about the Speaker a lot more, but throughout history, Speakers of the House have had a lot of power. They control the majority party within the House of Representatives.

So there's a lot of power there as well. This isn't really a new phenomenon. What is a new phenomenon is the way that some members of the House of Representatives took power away from the Speaker by being able to so easily unseat a Speaker of the House, and that's what we saw. This chaos hasn't happened, not because the Speaker of the House was a bystander and a ceremonial role.

Instead, we haven't seen these chaos because the Speaker of the House was a much more powerful role, and the rule changes that the GOP adopted when Kevin McCarthy became Speaker actually took power away from the Speakership, which is what we're seeing play out now. We're going to keep that conversation going. We'd love to hear from you.

Your thoughts on Mike Johnson coming up. We also know that President Biden will be doing his first press conference taking actual questions from journalists since the attack by Hamas. That is going to be happening just this afternoon, just a little bit after we go off the air. I would love to hear from you. What questions would you like these journalists to ask? What's on the top of your mind?

Do you want answers for President Biden? Over. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. So it could be about what's going on in Israel. It could be what's going on in the Speakership. Then what questions would you have for President Biden knowing this is the first time he's going to be pushed? We'll see if he's actually pushed. We'll see who in the mainstream media actually can get a word in and actually do their job. Sadly, we know how this goes. A lot of times they'll take some friendlies in the room and then wrap up.

But maybe, maybe some of them will actually ask a real question. Again, call us 1-800-684-3110. Become an ACLJ Champion today.

Go to ACLJ.org slash champions. I know I'm pushing it hard today, but we are only 367 people short of our goal. And we have just seven days left to meet that goal. And I think we can do it.

All you need to do is go to ACLJ.org slash champions. Maybe we can update a number, see if any of them come on over the air. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula.

We are going to take your phone calls at 1-800-684-3110. I do have a little bit of news to report. This is actually coming from Newsmax Reporter. This is a statement from, again, from Newsmax saying that they believe Mike Johnson has the Magic 217 and will win the Speaker's Gavel on the floor today. Again, it has not happened yet, but they believe due to who they've seen vote present in the past and who have all committed to saying they're going to vote for Mike Johnson, including people from Kentucky, Nevada, Arkansas. Again, representatives who have voted present in the last vote also, they will vote for Mike Johnson. So that should change the number and that should actually get you to that 217, making a Speaker of the House final today.

Mike Johnson probably wouldn't even have thought this just 15 hours ago or even late last night when it broke. But now we are finally moving forward. I hope we can just move forward. This is something that needed to be done and it's a very intense time to not have leadership really in control of what's going on. They need to get that done quick. We're joined in studio by Senior Counsel, C.C. Heil. We're going to discuss what's going on also in terms of Israel and our work there and our work with the U.N. Will, there have been some updates.

That's right. Yesterday there was an emergency meeting at the U.N. that was called and we saw actually really strong comments out of our Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken. We played that on air. Your dad gave a very strong endorsement of the words that Anthony Blinken gave. There was another speech that didn't have as good of words in them. And this comes from the U.N. Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.

And we're going to play that and then we're going to get C.C. 's comments on it. Let's go ahead with bite one. It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence. Their economy is stifled. Their people displaced and their homes demolished.

Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing. But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. C.C., this is what we see time and time again at the U.N. and why it's so important the ACLJ works at the U.N. Is this false moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas? Yeah, so the U.N., this is not shocking at all, this statement. Sadly, it's not shocking at all because as we have repeatedly said, the U.N. has more resolutions condemning Israel than any other member state. They can just continually to falsely attack Israel and paint a false picture.

They spin it. And so it's so funny because now the U.N. secretary general is saying, oh, well, my comments were taken out of context or they've been misrepresented. I don't know how you can misrepresent when he specifically says that it is important to also recognize that the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum but after 56 years of suffocating occupation by Israel.

You don't misinterpret those words. And once again, after we've seen such a horrific attack by Hamas, an absolute evil attack, unjustified attack, now that Israel wants to defend themselves, we see the U.N. once again coming to the defense of a terrorist group, Hamas. And as well as that, the ignoring of the history that in 2005 Israel pulled out of Gaza and the people in Gaza elected Hamas to their legislature and then Hamas took over.

They got rid of the Palestinian Authority's presence within Gaza. So for almost 20 years, Hamas has been the oppressor within Gaza. But instead, now we're seeing Erdogan of Turkey say that they're not terrorists.

They're a liberating force. They're Mujahideen protecting their land is what Erdogan said. And once again, if you're not careful and if you don't fight back, then these narratives creep and you see it in the United States where on college campuses, they're having a walkout across the country in support of the Palestinian cause today. And it's all coming from the rhetoric of those like Antonio Guterres and President Erdogan of Turkey that are feeding lies about the reality of the situation on the ground. Yeah, and sadly, again, it's not shocking what Erdogan said because he is absolutely pals again with Hamas.

And it's funny when he's saying, oh, they're not terrorists. They're protecting their land, protecting their land from whom? Israel's not attacking them. Israel has not done anything to attack them. And then they try to blame Israel for at least keeping the Gaza Strip, keeping people in there, not coming across. But Egypt does the same exact thing. They don't want Hamas and terrorists in Egypt either. But you don't see Egypt being attacked about that. So again, they never treat Israel like they treat everyone else.

They always make them the bad guy and they're not. They are simply doing, again, we hear proportionality all the time saying, you know, oh, they have to do it by proportionality. And Israel's response is not proportional.

That's wrong. The law of proportionality, the standard is that Israel is the victim and they have the right to absolutely exterminate the threat. So, yes, proportionality, Israel has the right to defend themselves and they have the right to exterminate the threat, which is Hamas. Yeah, we're seeing those walkouts happening on college campuses today all over the country. We're seeing footage of it right now as we speak, as these moments start happening. I guess there is some thought process when it comes to our work in the U.N. saying, well, maybe the ACLJ and by proxy the ECLJ and all of our international affiliates can actually get something done. And I think that is where we come in that's a little bit different.

As we talk about becoming an ACLJ champion, be a monthly supporter of the organization, some people ask you, well, where does this money go? What's the point? You know, is it going to putting on this broadcast?

Is it going to work domestically? Well, sure. I mean, obviously you have to pay for a crew. Again, if I always say if you turn around the camera, you'd see the dozen people working on this broadcast each and every day. Plus you have 50 or so that are working just on our media operation exclusively in this office. Then hundreds of lawyers, all of this other group throughout the entire world. But the U.N. specifically is where we are uniquely able to really influence a lot of what's going on in the world. Yeah, so we are a voice for Israel at the U.N. And I know a lot of people don't like the U.N., they don't accomplish a lot, they are liberal leaning.

And we understand that, absolutely. We are not saying the U.N. is this bastion of justice. However, it is where the world stage, the world leaders come. And so we need to be there because if we're not there, no one's speaking up for Israel. And we're very successful, like even when they have a commission of inquiry, again, condemning Israel's what they call occupation. And I'm using air quotes for that of, you know, these Palestinian lands. We are there to absolutely draft responses that are factual, that underline and, you know, just support Israel's right to what they are doing.

And that's very important. Right now they're showing footage, we have all the news channels up, of George Washington University. They literally have projections right now on their buildings. Last night saying, you know, George Washington, the blood of the Palestinians is on your hands. The last one they said was, you know, your tuition is, this is all like the dorms or the buildings saying your tuition is funding genocide in Gaza. This is what's happening around the world. We have to be there though. We have to have a voice.

I think this is something, I try to drill home as much as I can to a lot of you. We put our content everywhere. Sure, we're on Rumble, which is our preferred platform. We are on ACLJ.org.

That's great as well. But we're also on YouTube. We're also on Facebook. We're also on Instagram.

Why? Because we have to make sure our voice is heard. And really it's not our voice, it's really your voice. And your voice actually gets heard to people who could influence the future. We know that there's a strong group of people that watch this broadcast each and every day who support us, who understand the issues in depth. But we have to also provide resources for you to then take this content and share it with people who maybe disagree with you.

Or maybe they don't disagree with you, they just don't know enough to agree with you yet. And with the ACLJ, we can do that. It is just as important, in my opinion. It helps that I'm the director of media here. To me, our legal work and our media work go hand in hand and they can't exist without each other. And the media work is just as important because without it, without creating that content that you can share, without creating alternative news media, without creating all these different things, the blogs, the articles that get put up each and every day, without having an incredible visual team, an incredible team doing social media or doing anything we do here, all of the different divisions and departments here, your voice is not heard worldwide.

Your voice is not heard worldwide without that, as well as you hear about our work at the UN. How do you hear about that? Through these kind of broadcasts. So we can't do that without having an ongoing full-time staff.

A lot of these broadcasts, a lot of productions, they have freelancers that come in, do their job, they're out in a few hours. That is not the way we run here. We have an incredible staff, some of the best of the best. People who left some of the biggest organizations, the biggest media and legal organizations said, I want to spend my time and the time I have on this earth doing something important. So I've come to work here at the ACLJ. We have some of the best and brightest and we can't do that without your ongoing support.

So I'm going to ask you this. As we head into our last segment, two things. One, you can give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. I'm going to take as many calls as I can in that next segment. But number two, become an ACLJ champion. Support the work of the ACLJ on a recurring, ongoing basis.

We are only 367 people short of our goal for the month. You can be a part of that right now. It's very easy. Just go to ACLJ.org slash champions.

Takes you a couple of minutes and you're good to go. We'll be right back taking your calls, 1-800-684-3110. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. Just to update on that ACLJ champions, I told you I'd get you an updated number. Before we started this broadcast, we were at 367 short of our goal.

Now we're only at 350. That means 17 of you have come in and said, I will be an ACLJ champion. That may not sound like a lot of people, but what that is, those are people saying, I'm dedicated to becoming a recurring donor. So long-term for us, that is incredible. So I want to say thank you to all of you who've done that already.

And you can go to ACLJ.org slash champions to do that today. We're going to take some more calls. A couple of you on hold. We've got a couple of lines open.

It's the perfect time to call, 1-800-684-3110, posing to you a couple of questions. Mike Johnson, likely going to be your speaker of the house. Any thoughts or feelings? Number two, President Biden about to hold his first press conference.

Since the war in Israel broke out, since his attacks from Hamas happened, what do you want him to answer for? Those are the two questions I'm going to ask you. 1-800-684-3110. If you have a question or comment on another topic, if we can get to it, I'll do my best. Give us a call too. Let's go quickly to the phones. We'll go to John who's calling.

Watch it on YouTube, on Line 1. That's why we're on YouTube for people like John. John, you're on the air. Hi there.

Thank you for your time today. I wanted to express that on Mike Johnson, I see a man who is consistent and civil and knows how to get things done. He seems to be able to go on both sides of the aisle and really find solutions instead of finding turmoil. And I'm excited. I'm actually excited to see this vote occur. I think a lot of us are excited, John, mainly because it's finally gotten here and maybe it's going to be over. We can move on. So, yeah, I think Mike Johnson's a great person, a great pick.

At this point, it's not that I would take anybody. That's certainly not true. But I am happy to see this start to – look, again, you may be hearing this an hour from now.

And you're like, Logan, it failed, because you never know what's going to happen. But as of right now, it's at least – it's exciting to see this start to wrap up. This is also one of those members of Congress that Mike Johnson is someone who's a friend of the broadcast, very in line with the ACLJ and the work we do, and is a constitutional attorney himself. It's one of those people that when you're thinking about who could be the Speaker of the House because of how rigid it is with the, you know, wait your turn, you have to be in leadership. It's typically if you're in the minority party, when you become the majority party, you're the minority leader then goes up for speaker. So, there's all these traditional wait your turn kind of things that you wouldn't normally say, oh, who do you want to be Speaker of the House? Mike Johnson wouldn't be at the top of your head.

But if you were to say dream pick, he could be someone that a lot of our audience would say because of the conservative values he has, because of his ability to communicate those and to stand strong for them. Right now, we're looking at him needing to get to 215. So, 217 votes has been the number that we were looking at prior to today when the House is a little bit more full. So, clearly there are some absences there. Some Democrats maybe didn't show up. He's got to get to 215. There are 220 Republicans that are present based off the quorum call.

So, he can lose only five Republicans to win the speakership. Based off the optics of him on the floor just moments ago, very excited. There was a lot of people congratulating him, patting him on the back. It was a difference.

It was an optics different that we hadn't seen. Right now, they're giving the nominating speeches and he's getting a standing ovation. So, this could be the breakthrough that we've been looking for for three weeks. One other thing I did want to bring up before we get to this other caller about- Can we hear you that? Can we go to it a little bit?

Maybe check in. I'd like to see if we can- But I do want to bring up one thing we've heard from callers that were upset about the government shutdowns, about the appropriations not being ready and then members of Congress going back home for their district time, for their recesses. In his proposed plan for how appropriations will be going forward, he has a very detailed list of when they look at different appropriations bills and he breaks it up based off of almost like topic or where the funding is going. But in August of 2024, it says, do not break for district work period unless all 12 appropriations bills have passed the House. So, not only is it an omnibus bill is out the window where it's not just all the spending in one, it's 12 different appropriations bills and it will be- they won't be able to go home if they're not done. I think that's something a lot of our people, we've heard it. They want to see that. If that happens, if that goes forward, that's a win right there for the American people, not just for Republicans or conservatives. That is a win for the American people to get rid of this endless cycle of they go home but yet the government's going to shut down and what are we going to do? I like that.

Yeah, for sure. Let's go ahead and listen to, right now, Representative Elise Stefanik is doing the official nomination speech. Can we go to that for just a moment here? You can hear the clapping, the applause. Maybe that applause is something positive here, folks.

Now we're getting another standing O. Maybe it's not worth listening. I like hearing applause.

It makes me feel happy. But let's go ahead and then we'll come back to it. Let's go to Daniel who's calling on Maryland on Line 4. Daniel, you're on the air.

Well, thank you for having me, taking my call. You know, I'm very happy that Mike Johnson will be the Speaker of the House. Well, we're hoping that he'll be. But you know, I'm very concerned. I'm very concerned about the division that exists in that party. You know, how can he get his job done if the people in his own party is not supporting him? That is my concern.

Can you answer that question for me? Well, we'll see if the people of his party support him because they have to vote for him right now. Yeah, we're going to go. What's going to happen here is we're going to go off the air in about two and a half minutes. We're going to have lunch and watch an exciting House vote. So I'm excited for that.

You know, something that's at least somewhat positive. Again, they are loving the applause right now. They're giving.

I would cut to it live for you folks. Right now, it's just ovations. Now, it's going to be happening at the same time, allegedly. We'll see if President Biden delays so he can get more coverage. What do they have to do? What if there's some sort of decision? You know, all the news.

MSNBC is good. I know where they're going. They're clearly going to. Well, I don't know, though they may not want it to be an awkward question and answer time for the President. They'll play it edited later on.

That's right. Look, there's only a couple of minutes left this broadcast. Number one, I want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for watching.

Appreciate it. Tell your friends about this show. We do it each and every day and have for the last 25 plus years. So, you know, we do our best to keep you guys informed, keep you educated, but also entertained here. But also to tell you about the amazing work that goes on at the ACLJ.

That is why we are here. The work of the ACLJ goes far beyond just the courtrooms. We do amazing work in the courts. We are there for you.

We are there. We are your lawyer if you need it, or we're the President's lawyer if you need it. So all you need to do if you get any help, you go to ACLJ.org slash help.

Submit it if it's within our scope. Absolutely at no cost. Now, how does that work?

How can you get free legal help from some of the top attorneys in the nation? Well, that is because people are continually supporting. I watch it. I can see when people donate and support every time. Very thankful for it.

And it's every few minutes I'll see another one that comes in. It's pretty remarkable the support that we have. Now, we have built the ACLJ on individual donors. People saying, today I'm going to give $10 tomorrow. Maybe next month I'm going to give $20. I'll give $10 the next month. What we are trying to do right now is build what we call ACLJ champions, which is people who kind of can create a baseline for us, can create that budgetary reason.

So what they do is they do say, I want to be an ACLJ champion. What that means is you will say, I want to become a recurring donor. It will automatically charge whatever it is, automatically donates to the ACLJ each and every month.

You can cancel it at any time, though, of course. But that gives us an idea, because instead of going, we're reliant on knowing that random donations are coming in. We know thousands of you are supporting the ACLJ monthly, and that's really our goal to get to. And we are only 350 away from our goal for the month.

That's less than a quarter of the people watching right now just on Rumble. So we could really use your support. Go to ACLJ.org slash champions today. You're going to stand with us, stand with Israel, be a champion. Some of these cases can take years. These media operations are vast, and we want to continue creating incredible content, as well as getting your voice heard at the UN, at the White House, around the world, and making sure that people know that people with standards, with beliefs like yours, Christian beliefs, are being heard all over the world. We'll be back tomorrow with more on Secular.