Breaking: George Santos Expelled From Congress

Breaking news today on Sekulow as Republican George Santos expelled from Congress, 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. You heard the breaking news this morning and people were not sure how the vote would come down, but the entire House has now decided to vote. You have to have a two-thirds majority to expel a New York Congressman, George Santos. Now he is facing 23 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, false statements, falsification of records, but he pled not guilty.

The trial has not begun. Similar to like the situation when you have Senator Menendez, you don't see a rush to vote him out with the Senate in such a small, again, Democrat majority. So now Republicans are down to four seats.

I mean, so a couple of people get sick, a couple of people, you know, can't make it on a flight and suddenly you don't have the votes to pass things that you should be able to pass with a bare Republican vote. That's why the Republican leadership voted to keep Santos in. And there were a lot of Republicans making the case that, listen, if he's found guilty of what he's accused of, he should be removed from Congress, obviously, and will do that, but he should have his day in court. But there were enough Republicans, remember these House Republicans are all up for reelection every two years, who felt like if they didn't vote to expel him, it was going to hurt their reelection chances. So they had to take this vote. Only a couple Democrats voted against expelling him. And so you had a vote. It was two thirds majority, 311 to 114 wasn't even close.

And he is gone. You know, it's interesting because the commentary before the vote was that they thought that the momentum had actually shifted into Santos' favor. And they used the Senator Menendez situation where he's been charged federally with crimes by a grand jury in New Jersey. And they said, well, you know, you've got the Menendez matter and now you've got the Santos matter. Neither one of them had been adjudicated.

So we'll wait till the adjudication. But it was just kind of a groundswell of opposition. The problem with this politically is, as Jordan said, it narrows down the number of votes so significantly that the margin is now four.

Right. I mean, four in a Republican House, which is very, as you know, Dad, diverse. So we've got a conservative speaker right now who is trying to stay in longer than McCarthy. McCarthy's on his way out, too. By the way, he's saying he may leave in December.

Yeah. And how do those seats do in an election? Well, here's what happens for Santos. So in New York, the Democrat governor, Kathy Hochul, sets a special election to replace him. And the Republican Party chairman has been vetting candidates. And so I think it's within 10 days you set a special election.

It's got to occur within 70 to 80 days. So you're going to have a special election. I mean, this was a district that Biden won by eight and Santos won by eight. So Democrats have already been planning to take this district back. Likely they'd be able to get a temporary person in there during the special election. And then that person would be running almost like as an incumbent in November. So it could very well become a net loss for Republicans because of just all of this swirling around Santos. And I'm not sure I've heard that. Well, likely this was not a smart move.

No. Again, he was going to have his day in court. And at that point, most Republicans, if he was found guilty, were going to vote to remove him.

Yeah. But he was far away from that. And he was still a solid Republican vote on most issues.

And still, most Republicans and all Democrats voted to remove him. Let me also say for all of us at the American Center for Law and Justice, a huge thank you to our ACLJ members for your support in the month of November. We met our goal, which is great, and we exceeded our goal as it related to new ACLJ champions. These are people that donate each and every month. So we appreciate your support of the ACLJ. It's made a huge difference.

Yeah. And again, I want to thank everybody out there who has been part of the ACLJ champions, those recurring donors. You can still do that, of course, this month as well. And you can sign up with an amount you're comfortable with donating each month. So today is the first day of the month. And you can say, I want to donate the first day of the month. You have $50 each day of that month.

You go to ACLJ.org and check that box to become a recurring donor. That's right. And this is our faith and freedom year end. So this officially starts the year. This is the biggest month of the year for the ACLJ. So any amount you donate again will be matched. But if you could do that recurring as well, a recurring, become an ACLJ champion, makes a huge difference.

ACLJ.org. Come back to SecYoYo. Our team pointed out, too, that while there is no one filling the Santos seat, the GOP has a four seat majority. But if the Democrats do win that special election, which is even before the election in November, if everything works out timing wise, and we'll see if it does there, it could take the GOP majority down to three. Yeah. And then if Kevin McCarthy, there's all these discussions that Kevin McCarthy may leave during the Christmas.

And then you got to go look it out California and how that all works. And that's kind of changed a bit, that district. Yes. Well, let's turn our attention to the situation in Israel because it is a very different situation today. And that is, and I've been dealing with our Israeli colleagues and lawyers all last night and this morning. The truce is over. The exchange of the hostages is over. There's a lot of thoughts about that.

I want to give you a couple. The first priority of this enterprise, of course you want the hostages back, but is the survival of the Jewish state. That's priority one here. And I think we have to be very clear that that is the priority that has to be met, is the survival of the Jewish state. So that's number one. Number two, or one A if you want to say is the remaining hostages. Here's my concern. I've said this before.

I will say it again. I am concerned that there's not a number of hostages, that 150 or I guess 140 number that they talk about left. I just don't see it because I think Hamas would use that to at least get more chance for them to rearm themselves. No, I want to remind people last night, it was not Israel who struck first. It was Hamas.

So soon after the final hostages were released, they could not hit the number of 10. No. And which they've had difficulty with the last two days. Right. Remember, the ceasefire almost fell apart 24 hours ago.

Right. I think we were predicting it on this broadcast yesterday, and you can't ever be certain, but we said Israel could be back at war tonight. And it ended up that being the case. And what happened was a rocket was fired from Hamas into Israel, and Israel said, okay, enough.

Well, they were immediately ready to go. Negotiation off. The issue here, I will tell you, here's the legal dilemma, if you will, that Israel's in. So the International Criminal Court in The Hague has already dispatched over the last week its prosecutor to Israel and Gaza.

Yeah. We're going to be dealing with them, and we already are, actually. We filed some notices already. But the legal work that's going to entail on this is going to be vast, it's going to be significant, and it's going to be historic in scope.

Because you're going to have a dual situation. As Israel continues to move aggressively militarily, you're going to have the loss of world opinion. That's when people are going to start forgetting what happened on October 7th, and it's going to be, I can't believe Israel's flattening Gaza. On the other hand, you're going to have the international pressure of referrals from the Palestinian Authority, maybe even from the UN itself, to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. There are few lawyers in the United States of America that have been to The Hague.

Two of them are on your set right now, okay? And here's the fact. The reality is, the reality is that the legal lawfare aspect of this becomes just as significant as the military warfare. Yeah, they want to drag Israel through, they want to make it difficult for companies to do business in Israel, difficult for Israeli businesses. You see some of them being hacked in the US by Islamic groups, saying if you work with Israeli companies, we feel like your businesses are now viable targets for hacking. And so they're already trying to delegitimize Israeli companies. And listen, what's most important for Israel is not how quick they can get tourists back to the Holy Land.

That is important. But what's most important for Israel is how quick it can get back to a business as usual, which is not the same as the United States, because they're always dealing with the threat of terror, but it's certainly not a full-scale conflict like this. And I still am very concerned, and I said it to Secretary Pompeo yesterday, and he agreed that we have not seen the end of combatants join this battle. I don't think it's Egypt, and I don't think it's Jordan, and it's not Qatar. No, it's the Houthis in Syria and Lebanon. It's the Hezbollah. And the Hezbollah would be the big player. And Hezbollah, and what people need to understand, and I want you to understand this here, so Hamas obviously was very deadly. But Hezbollah takes it to an entire different dimension. I mean, it's an entire different dimension because of the lethality that they contain. So 10, 20 times, 100 times the number of rockets, rockets that could go from the border of Lebanon right into the heart of Jerusalem.

They've done this before. It not only takes out the north, we're talking about the Galilee region, we're talking about the Golan Heights. It could take out portions of Jerusalem. So this engagement has multiple risks, and I can already tell you that, and the government's not very stable right now. I mean, that's the other thing, Israeli politics.

I want people to be clear on this. You're talking about the Israeli government. Yeah, it's because they're coalition governments. Why don't we explain that?

I think it's important. So unlike here in the U.S. where we're used to one party kind of, you know, winning out the day and then being in charge of all the executive branches, of course you can deal with our version of divided government as if the legislature is different from the executive. And of course you've got an independent judiciary based on appointees for life. In Israel, no one's getting to the 51 percent, so you've got these interesting coalitions that come together. Sometimes that makes sense.

Sometimes it don't really make sense on paper, Dad. And I mean, right now it is one that was already not one of the most stable. And then with this attack, which was a failure of Israeli intelligence, I don't want to beat up on them too much right now, because their focus right now is on war. But Israel will have to do its reckoning, too. I do think we're at Israel.

I've said this multiple times. We went too far. And the U.S., listen, we're a much bigger country and it's a little bit different, is they are a democratic country, and people can vote for who they want to vote for, and they use their legal system if they feel like their politicians have violated the law. But they got a little—almost too divided. And I've heard that this has united Israelis, but we know that politics does not unite Israelis. Yeah, and I'll tell you what is going to—the concern here is you're going to have the hostage situation becomes even this much more difficult, because as long as there's this kind of military engagement in Gaza, the risk to the hostages, either they're— I have my theory that, as I've said before, that they just didn't have the number. I really believe that if Hamas had the numbers, they would have tried to carry this on for another four or five days. Well, I think if they said, listen, we can't do 10, but we can do eight, then they would have come up with something. Yeah, they didn't. And they didn't. And that was really the last two days. They got a couple of high-profile ones. That one, the young girl who they put that horrible video out, hostage video out about.

Ultimately, they were able to keep an extra day of ceasefire by releasing her. But that was it. And again, you've got Blinken making this comment, and it's already old news because, again, I don't know when it popped up on our phones. I said, was it about midnight? Yes, I was up. Yeah, it was about midnight, 1 a.m.-ish, when all of the news broke that the IDF—it wasn't just a rocket that hit Israel, but that Israel has now declared a conflict back on.

Yeah, I do a call at midnight, and that call—and we said yesterday that that call's over. So they're in military engage. So I want to play Anthony Blinken because this is the pressure on Israel, but they don't have the time. I mean, think about what he says in this comment and the fact that Israel had to decide to go back to war within 20 minutes last night of a rocket hitting. I made clear that before Israel resumes major military operations, it must put in place humanitarian civilian protection plans that minimize further casualties of innocent Palestinians. That means taking more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians, including by clearly and precisely designating areas and places in southern and central Gaza where they can be safe and out of the line of fire. That was about two hours before Hamas launched a barrage of rockets against Israel the minute the ceasefire expired.

Yeah. So he's not living reality because we were saying on our broadcast at noon Eastern time yesterday, this could fall apart tonight, and it did. I mean, we weren't hoping that they would have to go back to war.

We hoped that more hostages would get released. But he was already saying, like, they're going to have days to plan. This is not the United States.

No, it's a different kind of whole. It's a country of seven million surrounded by enemies, some who are more enemies than others, but all enemies who would like to see them abolished to some extent. You can't hold them to the standard of the U.S. military. Like, they're going to have days to plan and tell the – and that Hamas is going to follow the rules of where the civilians should go. Well, this is the ridiculous part of this, this idea that Hamas is going to play by the laws of armed conflict so that they don't use – let's talk about – you know, here's what the ICC needs to be investigating.

Is that it's known now, it's undisputed that Hamas terrorized and destroyed and killed at least 1,200, maybe 1,300 innocent Israeli civilians. That's a war crime. Number two, you want another war crime? Going in a hospital and using it as a base to destroy and send out your weapons, that's a war crime.

Going into a school and sending out your weapons, that is also a war crime. So if the ICC prosecutor wants to get real here, this was initiated by Hamas, and the investigation should be going over Hamas. Israel is defending itself, and now will be – you know, they did the ceasefire and now it's going to be a full engagement. Yes, and I do believe that there's a point, and I know it's difficult, and again, it's difficult because we represent families of these hostages. There has to be a point, and we know this is the United States, and Israel knows this is a country, too, where you have to survive, and you have to say, you know what?

But if our goal here is to eliminate Hamas, we can't have an endless ceasefire. So let me tell you what we've done. We're in our year-end challenge now, and this is important. This is our faith and freedom year-end drive. We have mobilized our offices around the globe. Our office in Jerusalem, our offices in Strasbourg, France are very active right now.

Washington, lawyers dispatched all over the world. Your support of the ACLJ keeps us in this fight. We are fighting for Western civilization right now, and your support is critical. So any amount you donate during this faith and freedom year-end drive is doubled. And if you can make that recurring, and so many of you have, you become an ACLJ champion, and that has a dramatic impact for us month after month after month.

ACLJ.org. Welcome back to Secula. Of course we've seen what's happening in the Middle East, but we've also seen the outrage happening on our college campuses and institutions here in the United States. And listen, there's always been, in parts of the far left, kind of this anti-Semitism that simmers, but for the most part, in the mainstream of the political world, of the business world, people would stay away from most forms of racism, including just object anti-Semitism. But we have seen, at our nation's top universities, some very bizarre moves in just the past couple of days.

We didn't even get to it yesterday, but I don't want to miss it again today. So at Brown University, the President of Brown University prepared a speech, and it was a speech about a Palestinian student who was injured in a protest, but they were going to give a speech that was more inclusive. And they actually put the text of the speech up online. And the Brown President was supposed to say, every student, faculty, and staff member at Brown should be able to proudly wear a Star of David or a Donacofia on the Brown campus or to cover their head with a hijab or a yarmulke. Listen to what she actually said when in front of her student body. Let me tell you how I was going to end this, which was, I was going to say that at a faculty meeting last month, I said that every student, faculty, and staff member should be able to proudly Donacofia on the Brown campus or to cover their head with a hijab.

And that Brown is a strong and loving community. But not if you wear a Star of David or the yarmulke. Which she totally admitted it. You realize she was afraid.

One, they are afraid. And when people like this, this is the head of universities, become afraid to talk to their own students, the students have taken over. That is, again, that is an absurd situation. And the second point is this, this is when their donors, and this has happened to some institutions, have got to start saying, no more money from me unless you're out. And we've seen this in a couple of places already.

Harry Hutchinson is joining us now. Harry, from this world of higher education, the hatred for Jews to the point where she knows that this speech was published online. So she knows she's going to get caught. And yet she did not want to say the word Star of David or yarmulke in front of that group of students because she thought they would at most at least boo her and at worst maybe even start violence.

Absolutely. So the President of Brown University was clearly intimidated by the students. In other words, the residents of the insane asylum have taken over campuses in the United States. And they are part and parcel, I would argue, really, of a terror campaign which wishes to whitewash the terror that actually occurred on October the 7th and the basic enjoyment of the slaughter which took place on October the 8th. And so I think if you look back in history, Jordan, the rise of on-campus semitism among college students, faculty, and the administration has become a deeply disturbing phenomena that recalls the return of the Soviet Union's terror architect, Felix Dzerzhinsky, in Moscow.

He built one of the world's most repressive political machines on earth in 1917. He argued that only a person with a coal head, a warm heart, and clean hands could become a security officer or, in the case of Brown University, the President of Brown University. But Harry, you've been in the academy for a long time, for most of your career. Why is it that these Presidents will not just say it, say the truth? And if they want to protect the Muslim students on campus, that's fine.

But you need to protect the Jewish students, too. Why will they not say it? Well, in part and parcel, because over the last 60 to 80 years, there has been a concerted attempt to diminish the notion of truth, to diminish the notion of history. So if you look at the nation state of Israel, if you look at its historic connection to Palestine, which goes back thousands upon thousands of years, they want to ignore it.

Why? Because they see a definitely different future for the rest of us. And this is ideological. It is grounded in Marxism. It is grounded in critical race theory. It's grounded in social justice notions. And these notions have basically infected first the administration, secondarily the faculty, and thirdly the students. You know what I recommend the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs does?

This is what I recommend. They send to every President of every university in the world the 45-minute video of what Hamas actually did. And have them watch it, as repulsive as it is, and then come out and say these kind of things that they're trying to say. Because I think the evidence, you hate to have to say we've gotten to this point where you have to show the evidence. But it's like you had to show the evidence of the Nazi atrocities before you could get the world to say, my gosh, they're gassing Jews in Germany.

You had to show the bodies stacked on top of each other. We're going to have to do the same thing. You'd think in 2023 you wouldn't have to do that.

But in 2023, apparently we do. So we've got to show this disgusting, vile, horrid, 47-minute video of unbelievable terror on kids, adults, grandparents, and horrible to these university Presidents so they could have a little backbone and spine. Which they don't. Yeah, and what's also bizarre to me is they're supposed to be very... That's by the way, some of the Christian campuses are having these issues too. Yes, and listen, they're supposed to be very educated, and if they were, they would know that of all these places in the world, Israel is the only one that is a truly liberal society in that sense. True academic freedom, true religious freedom, true sexual freedom for women, for men, for gay individuals. I mean, it's a very progressive country. The only progressive country in the region. In the least progressive region of the world. You see some of these videos... No one gives them that credit.

Ever. You see some of these videos these students are posting from these, you know, the left-leaning groups, and they're saying these things about, they're reading the Quran, and they're doing a Hamas. Osama bin Laden. And Osama bin Laden.

We had that. And you think to yourself, if they were there promulgating their position, which we allow in the United States of America, because we are actually a free country, if you did that in Gaza, they would throw you off the top of a building. Absolutely, but instead the university...

But we didn't say that. And students, they're committed to the following fiction. They claim that Gaza is nothing less than an open-air prison. That the Israelis are openly massacring the Palestinians. I have an idea.

You hate practicing law live on the air. But you know what we need to do? A letter needs to go to every public and private university in the United States of America, and explain to them what Title VI is, and explain to them what the ramifications are. And we need to do that at the American Center for Law and Justice, and the ECLJ needs to do it in Europe, and our other offices around the world need to do it there too. But we need to start right here in the United States of America. A letter needs to go out saying, we're putting you on notice that we don't tolerate this in the United States of America.

Okay? So I'm going to encourage you to go to ACLJ.org, support the ACLJ's efforts in our Faith and Freedom Year-End Drive. Two things we're trying to do here, folks. We're having to flow with the changing circumstances of world events that the ACLJ's engaged in.

So we're working on the hostages, we're also working on the ICC matter. This is where you come in. Any amount you donate in our Year-End Drive is doubled. But if you can make that monthly, I think 250 or 260 yesterday did, that changes radically our ability to continue this fight. So we encourage you to do that.

We want you to do that at ACLJ.org. We get into the complexities, you know, we beat back BDS, we're going to have to beat that back again. More on that when we get back second half hour.

Welcome back to Sekulow. There is news happening, of course, in the world. And one thing that's happening in the United States, the death of former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who my dad has got to appear before. This was many times, and again, she, being the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, not always getting the same attention as Justice Ginsburg. But she was the original. Yes, the original, but I think because she leaned more conservative, certainly wasn't right-wing by any of the standards of today, but of her time, was part of the Republican, like Western movement. Bush versus Gore, the election case, she voted with the conservatives. My very first case, Board of Airport Commissioners versus Jews for Jesus, she was the author of the opinion, she was the main questioner, her and Justice Scalia. She wrote the opinion in the Mergens case, which allowed for the Bible studies and Bible clubs to operate on every public school campus in the United States. She was very good on the religion clauses, very good on free speech.

Let me give you a sample. This is a long time ago, folks. This was in March 3rd of 1987, Board of Airport Commissioners versus Jews for Jesus. Mr. Sekulow, supposedly disagree with the court below and think that this is not a traditional public forum. Did you argue below that in any event under the California Constitution, it would be a public forum and must be open? Yes, Your Honor. In the district court, arguments regarding the California law on the liberty of free speech was argued extensively.

But the courts below never reached the state law question. That's correct, Your Honor. They dealt with it on a public forum. And if we decided the federal constitutional issue here against you, would it be your position that the state law might nevertheless require it to be opened? Our position would be that In re Hoffman, as Your Honor cited earlier, would stand for the proposition that First Amendment activities would be appropriate.

However, we would also assert that under the federal constitution, of course, these activities. Well, suppose we decide against you on the federal constitution. I'm trying to inquire whether you think it then is still open to you and your client to raise the state constitutional.

Yes, Your Honor. We would take the position it has. Why then shouldn't the court below have decided the state issue first? We've pointed that out in our brief. Inexplicably, there is nothing in the state, the district court's opinion here, U.S. district court's opinion regarding the California Constitution. It was argued.

It was in the briefs. It was not, the opinion did not contain any response to it. She ruled 9-0 in our favor, finding that the free speech could take place under the U.S. Constitution and that the ordinance at the Los Angeles Airport was overbroad.

And that overbreath opinion we've used, I mean, I came in countless times in our work. Listen, she was a tough questioner, but a lot of our cases, she was the main architect of the opinion. On this first moment of religious freedom and religious liberty when it came under attack, and this was the 60s, 70s, and you started fighting back in 87. I was five at that time, so just to give people perspective on this. And then you think about it again, it's not circular, it's not exactly the same, because you fight for robust free speech.

But there's always this movement in the United States to favor some speech over others. She did not. She favored, it was either constitutional or wasn't, but this was, Will Haines pointed this out, this was a historic court. You had John Brennan, you had Thurgood Marshall, Antonin Scalia, William Rehnquist, a Kennedy appointment, Byron White was on this court. A Ford appointment, John Paul Stevens was on this court. Harry Blackmun served on this court. This was a historic court, and I had the privilege of arguing before Justice O'Connor our thoughts and prayers with her family.

She served our country well, she served her country honorably, and she was a groundbreaker in the legal profession. Rick Riddell is part of our team, he's going to be joining us the next segment of the broadcast. And again, also, to have people like Rick Riddell as part of our team is because of your financial support of the ACLJ, so we thank you for what you did last month during this Faith and Freedom drive, and what you can do this month as well. And your recurring donors as well, the ACLJ champions, has really just transformed the abilities of the ACLJ to take action in just really the past couple of months because of your ability to make those recurring donations.

To check that box, go to ACLJ.org. We'll be back with Rick Riddell. Welcome back to Sekulow.

We played that by a few from Anthony Blinken. That was a couple of hours into what he knew was going to be a question about whether or not there would be another day of a truce between, or ceasefire between Israel and Hamas for another exchange of hostages. And he also knew, like we all did, because this becomes public every evening, that it was becoming more and more difficult for Hamas to meet the numbers that they would even agree to. So they would have their negotiators in Qatar agree to this number of ten, and they'd try to do seven plus three dead bodies. And they couldn't find ten people.

They'd have to find three more people. And it just got more and more difficult. And then we saw terror attacks in Jerusalem, and then we saw rocket fire come out of Gaza into Jerusalem. And that's when the Israelis said, enough with the ceasefire for now.

And remember, and I'll go to Rick Riddell on this right away, Rick. There were not any hostages released until the IDF went to war in Gaza. And then there was this momentary ceasefire where about half the hostages have been returned, a little bit less than half.

But there were none released before that. So people who were critical of Israel saying, well now that they've gone back to conflict, there won't ever be any more hostages released. One, we don't know if there's any more living hostages. But two, we also know that Hamas only responds to force. Look, I think most people who are listening to us right now are just thinking, how in the world is this weakness perpetuating itself every single day?

Why are we in this problem every single day? And I think the answer is, we don't have any negotiation leverage. We gave it all up when we gave Iran money, when we gave them credit, when we lifted the sanctions. And the Iranians know this.

They know that when they're dealing with Joe Biden, he doesn't have any power left. And so honestly, we're on the sidelines. The United States government is on the sidelines waiting for Hamas to give us something like our hostages back. We are in a terrible position. We don't have any leverage.

And Joe Biden himself is saying publicly, like, I'm waiting. I don't know. We're not sure. We're waiting. We're literally waiting on Hamas.

Think about that. You know, one, this is what I don't understand, Rick. One US hostage was released. I think that was the number, right? One?

Was it maybe two? I think one US hostage was released. Hamas could have cared less.

They didn't even respond to it. Any of the overtures from the White House or the State Department. Yeah, the spin is, is that there are four that were released because some of them were dual citizens.

And so there's a debate on whether or not it's two or four. But look, we know that there are at least 10 more Americans that are held hostage. Anthony Blinken is absolutely looking like a disaster, a weak secretary of state.

Jake Sullivan is not being asked. But again, you know, we talk about this all the time. The reason why this weakness perpetuates itself, not only because we're in a terrible negotiating position, but because our media doesn't hold this White House to account. They are getting away with it. They're getting away with being weak. And, you know, we are all suffering because the reality is the price for an American head has gone up under this administration.

We know that. I want to play Blinken for you, Rick, and I want to get your response to this, because this is how he said, you know, if Israel does have to go back to conflict and listen with Hamas, you know, Hamas wasn't going to operate their way, but Israel can't, you know, go to that level to take a listen. The way Israel defends itself matters. It's imperative that Israel act in accordance with international humanitarian law and the laws of war, even when confronting a terrorist group that respects neither.

Yeah, I want to ask this, Rick, just outright. Who makes a statement like that? First of all, Israel does follow international law. I've defended them at the International Criminal Court. We also know because you're defending the United States.

I've also defended the United States at the International Criminal Court. The International Criminal Court does not believe the United States military followed international law in Afghanistan or Iraq. They did not believe that.

And then the prosecutor wisely... But did the United States military care? Yeah, no, they did not. And by the way, neither Israel or the United States are members of that court.

I appeared, putting forward the position of the United States. And you know what? It almost didn't matter what the court said, because at the end of the day, the prosecutor said, forget this, we can't try this, which is what's going to happen in the Israel thing, too. But, Rick, what a... It's just... His statement is so ridiculous, pegging Israel as a violator of international law. My 83-year-old mother could be a better Secretary of State than this guy.

Honestly, she's so clear-eyed about what's happening. She says to me, I don't see any other country in this entire region following the Geneva Convention unless it's Israel. To have the Secretary of State somehow lecturing Israel right now is so offensive and so stupid, to be honest, because there is one country in this region that follows all of the rules and has a check and a balance on its system and it has a free media. And that's Israel. We don't need to be lecturing Israel on what to do after a terrorist attack like what they have seen.

I actually think the United States should have one answer, which is, we support Israel and we're not going to tell them how to respond to a terrorist attack. That's what we should be doing. Let's go to Gary in Maine on Line 1. Hey, Gary, welcome to Sekulow.

You're on the air with Rick. Thank you. First of all, I have to say thank you to you and your organization because in the infancy of your organization, I was living in Colorado, a rural town.

My daughter was attending high school and the new principal tried to get away, get rid of the Bible Club in high school. And so another father and I called your organization. You gave us the tools to fight that and we won. Great. That was an opinion, by the way, by the late Justice O'Connor. So, but we appreciate that, Gary. Go ahead.

All right. Second of all, you mentioned a video that's available that Israeli is sending out to college campuses. I am an army veteran and I asked a young man who answered the phone, is that available to the public?

No, it's not even available to the universities. They haven't sent it out yet at all. They've really, Rick, they've kept this very tight. They've let some members of Congress have seen it. Some of the lawyers have seen it, obviously.

But it has not been widely distributed. It's horrid. I need to say this. It's horrible to watch this. Hamas recorded their atrocities in real time. But what I'm saying is to these university professors and these university Presidents who have no backbone or spine, I think the Israeli government ministry of foreign affairs should get it to them and let them see.

You know, Rick, you dealt with this. You were an ambassador. You were director of national intelligence.

You worked at the UN. You have got to point to sometimes, because when the world is against you like this, point to the atrocities of actually what happened. It took the United States seeing what the Nazis actually did before the United States engaged.

That's the truth. I would say it's why we have Holocaust museums around the world in the United States and Israel, but around the world, that walk you through what it was like. And we even take children to these museums to say how bad this was so that this never happens again. And that video, I've talked to members of Congress who have seen it, who literally could not. There are people passed out, people who are on foreign affairs committees and have seen a lot of tough videos of even our troops in harm's way, in tough situations, people being physically ill. But that's what actually happened. That had to happen for the Holocaust too. The UN should be, everybody in the UN, every ambassador should be required to watch this before they make the ridiculous statements they make from the green podium. Yeah, look, this is all about educating yourself.

And one of the things that I have always tried to do is to force myself into looking at the truth. And sometimes it's horrid. I've seen some of these videos from Hamas.

It is incredibly hard to watch. It doesn't even feel like there's a human being that is able to do these things. It is demonic. And if there is something over demonic that's like higher than demonic, that's what this is.

But go ahead, I didn't mean to cut you off. There is no question that something has taken over these people because it is so beyond what you can comprehend. And therefore it's shocking to you to be witnessing it. And it's hard to take.

I have forced myself to do it for one reason. And that's because as a former U.S. official with a voice on these issues, I think it's incredibly important to give context and to know what you're dealing with. You've got to look at the enemy. You've got to know exactly what you're dealing with.

You have to be clear eyed. There is a responsibility to be able to know what is happening and how to respond to it. And for me, that doesn't mean just reading about it or hearing about it from someone else. I want to see the evidence for myself so that when I go in to make decisions about my opinion publicly, or as a former official I did this when I was in government, you want to be able to have a clear eye. And it takes some guts to be able to do it. I think at some point the world may have to see it.

Because at some point there was a decision made to show images of the Holocaust, not just to the troops who showed up, but to all of us. And in a way that almost is on a fairly regular basis to say let's not have this happen again to any group. It did happen again. To the same group. Never again.

It was October 7th. That's the tragedy of all of us. Thank you, Rick. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

We'll be right back. Sean, he's tough enough to jump in and tell them both to be quiet when they got too fake. When they start listing off their predetermined lies.

Leaving the answers. But having people like Sean, that's the difference between Caitlin Collins going up against Donald Trump and Sean Hannity interviewing Donald Trump. And I think what you saw last night, Gavin Newsom says neither are going to be President.

He's probably correct. This election cycle. Gavin Newsom is definitely wants to be President one day. And Ron DeSantis is still in this race.

Yeah. And I think he could be. He's not someone that also, he may be able to stick around and come back and do this again in a number of years. I mean, clearly right. Yeah, he's very young.

He's early forties. It's the relevancy of how quick we. How do you think the debate went? Overall, I thought it was good. I thought it was by far the best debate I've seen in years. I think it was refreshing to see two people on a stage, also not 20.

And like you said, especially even opposing each other, having some form of respect and talking to each other, even when blaming each other for pretty aggressive crimes against humanity, if you will. Some of the blames that were being thrown around. But overall, I thought Newsom, he's really slick, incredibly slick, would get around answering questions, maybe slicker than anyone I've ever seen in the terms of he would answer without answering over and over again. And then DeSantis, I feel like maybe a little more flappable, but had great answers. You know, unfortunately, these two guys aren't going to be the nominees. I think that's pretty obvious and pretty clear. I think he'll be facing off in 2028. Maybe, but that's a long time in politics.

It is. What's interesting is I think what you see Newsom, I think for conservatives, because again, there weren't 20 liberals on the stage, you get to see a very clear California liberal. How do they get elected? What do they believe?

You're not going to turn them into a Republican. They believe that their tax rates are the more the smart way to do taxes. Yeah, they believe they're right. Yes, they do believe they're right.

And they believe that on the other side is wrong and they're going to stick with it and say, look, I'm the governor of the biggest state in the country. Do you think the way it was set up, I thought the whole setup was great. Yeah, I thought it was. It was well lit, well shot. It looked good. I liked it.

It was calm. I think the new audience was smart as much as I didn't like it from a thought. I wouldn't like it from a entertainment point of view. I actually found myself more engaged in the two hours of watching your hour and a half that was on. And I did find that just to be an engaging experience, I look forward to seeing what the ratings are. If anyone tuned in for it, I think with Sean being in his normal spot, you're always going to have millions of people that watch. But will it go above and beyond?

I think probably will. But it also showed kind of where we are in society, but I thought it was unique. It was a fun spectacle to have the two of them go at it. And as you said, I do believe that those two guys, whether you like him or hate him, they believe in what they're saying. And they both said that about each other.

They did. And that's good. I think that's good for humanity at least to have some people out there.

I fundamentally disagree with Gavin Newsom on pretty much everything, but at least it was done well. I mean, I think this also comes at a time where you have even people like Chris Cuomo and those people now saying, well, maybe I'm going to vote for Trump. So when that starts happening, he didn't say I'm going to, but I think a lot of them, I haven't met anyone who's really excited about voting for Biden. So I think to have two fresh faces up on stage was sort of what we all kind of hoped would have happened this time in some ways before Trump got in, was that you'd have some younger, fresher people up there talking. But either party has that option.

No. And I think that's a bit of going, oh, well, yeah, maybe we're looking towards the future. But when you have a lot of prominent, what you'd say, I guess, old school Democrats now saying I'm not voting for Biden. It's pretty shocking. Can we pivot? It's December 1st. It's a Friday.

Yep. And people need a break. And Lord knows people need a break. Everybody needs a break. There's nothing wrong with that. No. Taking those mental breaks.

No. We weren't supposed to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. Until the last 25, 30 years, we didn't even know what was happening around the world until the nightly news.

You got to think about that. Most people didn't know what was happening in real time. There was no X platform.

There was none of these other ways to get in touch. So we decided to kind of throw that back. We made a brand new Christmas movie. It is called Jingle Smells. It is a Christmas comedy, but a lot of heart and a lot of messages also. Important messages for today.

And specifically, messages that you and your family can get behind. It stars John Schneider, as well as an amazing cast of characters, including all of us that are on it. You've heard me talk about it for the last week it's been out. We've been doing record numbers. Things are doing really well. We're getting great reviews. It's a great movie. I appreciate it. I think it is a great movie.

It's really fun. And it's available right now on demand at jinglesmells.movie through our premier platform of Rumble, which is the number one free speech platform. And that's where you can get it. What's the price? It's $19.99.

It is $20. You own it. It's not just a one-time view. Yeah. You can watch it.

It's a stream, but you can watch it as many times as you want. You can go to different Rumble accounts and you know, if you're this TV and you go into another room. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. If you just log in on your Rumble account, it's available.

Most TVs within the last three years have got Rumble. That's right. At least if you search. Yeah.

If you search in your app store, you're going to find it and it's available there. You make the purchase. I found it easy. Yeah. It's easy. Just go to jinglesmells.movie.

There's a big button that says order here and you can buy it again. It's got a great cast. It is about- Sean Hannity's in it.

It's about cancel culture, but in a way that's very silly and satirical, but also has a lot of heart and message in it. We may have the trailer. Do we have the trailer or any? Yeah. We can watch the trailer.

I really stretched our first stretch. I play a mayor. Jordan plays the mayor.

Suit and tie mayor. You're the drummer in the band. Yeah.

The Jay Sekula band. If you watched it last night, make an appearance in it. Yeah. I play a prisoner, so that's good. Yours was just more of a stretch. Yeah.

Mine. I don't have any lines there. I said do people notice because it's the very beginning and do the- Yeah.

Look for me in the very first scene, but there's also a lot of our friends show up throughout it. I think you're grunting. I'm grunting. It's really fun to do. We had 100,000 people watch on Rumble last night. Total. That's great. The concert. The concert.

That's great. And then we played the- For Jingle Smells, that means well over a million people. We have 900,000 plus views- Unreal. On the Jingle Smells page right now.

That includes the trailer and everything, which is awesome. That means people are reacting. And it has a message too. It has a message. Look, we're trying to send a message. We're trying to send a message to Hollywood. We want this to be the number one Christmas movie of the year, and we could do that with you and your support, not just- And by the way, a huge percentage of the movie, funds that come from the movie, goes to the ACLJ.

There's another way to help the ACLJ. So let's go ahead and listen. Watch the- Let's watch the trailer.

And listen to the trailer. You know, it's very hard to find a place that even comes close to being worthy of your beauty. It's romantic. It's about you and me alone.

Wow, look at the two of you. Merry Christmas, America. Hollywood has canceled Mason's Stone. Stone will be digitally replaced by AI. Boycott Stone! We will no longer be manufacturing Mason's Stone characters.

Get them all out of here by Christmas Eve. You gotta be kidding me. How'd you get it? Oh, fell off the truck. There was a truck involved. The mysterious gift giver has struck again. You get busted with those toys, you're done. And you made me an accessory.

Well, you know what they say, some accessories are required. Am I smiling? No. Jingle Smiles, Jingle Smiles, thinking all the way.

They call me Jingle Smiles. Yeah, I know. It is available right now on the Rumble platform. It is available to stream on demand again on Rumble. but directly the easiest way is jinglesmells.movie.

We had John Schneider on last week. Some people have asked about other options. That's going to come. Maybe DVDs will be coming next week.

You'll be able to get other options, but stream it tonight with your family. Get everyone around. It's completely clean. I want to make sure people know that too. I know there's a lot of conservatives who are making a lot of comedies this weekend. You know what? God bless them. Love them. But those aren't movies you're going to sit around and watch with your kids.

This you can. I want to make sure that that's clear. This isn't an adult comedy. This is a family comedy in the style of Christmas comedies we grew up with. You've got younger kids who are maybe not following this one.

You don't have to worry about them being in the room. And John Schneider's in it. Eric Roberts. You've got SNL's Victoria Jackson and Jim Brewer who's going to be on broadcast next week. Brad Stein, Christian comedian.

Ben Davies is our lead. You know him from The Daily Wire as well as from Courageous and War Room. So a lot of heavy hitters in this movie. Sean Hannity. And of course Sean Hannity. Our friend Sean Hannity and all of us are in it. Mike Huckabee makes a vocal appearance. Keep an ear out. Tell me if you can figure out what character before you get to the credits Mike Huckabee plays. It's pretty surprising. You can find it again on Jingle Smells. Jingle Smells dot movie.