We've got the latest updates on the fight to confirm Trump's cabinet picks. 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. Welcome to Sekulow, everyone. This is Will Haines, executive producer. Logan's joining me. As you can imagine, it's a very busy time with everything going on in Washington, D.C. And Jordan will be joining us shortly. He, as you can imagine, we're all working very hard around the clock, even as we head into the holiday season, but he will be on momentarily.
Yeah, Jordan will be on in just a second. I just swung in here. Today was my off day.
But you know, it happens sometimes. It is a very busy time. And we'll be back, obviously, continuing our live coverage of everything that's going on.
But it's a very important time right now as we are in the middle of our faith and freedom year in drive. Thank you, I have to say, to everyone who gave yesterday on Giving Tuesday. It was an amazing amount of you that really supported our work.
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Our phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110, 1-800-684-3110. And Jordan's coming in now. Yeah, and I was just going to go ahead and get into what the news we're covering today is as kind of a surprise exclusive came out of the Wall Street Journal this morning. And that was that President Trump is considering Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a possible replacement for Pete Hegseth. Now, what we've seen over these last few days is that the media, which originally turned their ire against Matt Gaetz, Representative Matt Gaetz for his pick on Attorney General, it seems like they smell blood. They see the opportunity to try and use something and go loaded for bear against a nominee and aren't letting necessarily the Senators do their job, which is to vet and discuss advice and consent that's in the Constitution of these nominees. And so the the report that's out, we'll see what happens.
But Jordan's joining me. What was your take when you first saw this this morning? I think you look at back at Matt Gaetz and you remember the dump that was about to occur. And they were they're still fighting for it to this day. But he he removed himself from Congress to try and prevent the House committee from legally under their rules, actually releasing the report.
This doesn't apply to Pete. So this information that's been this drip, drip, drip, these are in settlements and discussions like that. Ultimately, you go to the U.S. senators and after you've done those meetings, you have a count. You have a count that says, I've got this many who are yes votes, this many who probably want a follow up meeting. And after we followed up with some that were a little bit more, maybe not hostile, but but had a little more difficult questions, if you will, that those folks again, you kind of put a no column for right now.
You put too many in a no column and maybe column. And you're, of course, going to make President Trump nervous and the transition team nervous because learning how to run the Department of Defense, even if you come from a military background like Pete does. And let me say one thing about all of these departments. The truth is many of them, unfortunately right now, could probably run themselves because of the amount of bureaucracy. The question is, you need to put someone in there who is able to bust up that level of bureaucracy. So it's not the concern that, listen, you have to know everything about what it's like to run an agency. Talk to any body from a cabinet position who had never served in one and ask them in honesty if they were ready to go on day one to walk in and manage thousands of people.
In his case, over millions of people and gigantic budgets. So there's always a learning ground. But your first job is when you're a cabinet level nominee is to convince enough senators on your side of the aisle to support you in those hearings, both through the committee level where you're getting beat up and on the floor where you're going to get beat up. But I feel like we're that day away maybe or evening away. But at any moment we can see this on Truth Social.
The last time this happened with Matt Gaetz, we were live on the air. I mean, there it goes, Will. That's right. And I also want to remind everyone, we are in the middle of our Faith and Freedom Year-End Drive. It's one of the most important times of the year for us here at the ACLJ.
So we can plan out how we can continue this fight into 2025. Have your donation doubled today at ACLJ.org. Donate today. All right, welcome back to Secular. We are taking your calls.
1-800-684-3110. So let's make a couple of points real clear here as we hear the Pete Hegseth news. One, until President Trump makes a different decision, and that is something no one can predict.
I don't think anyone at this moment even exactly knows. It sounds like this was just kind of, again, you've got to have a list. Because there are people, we saw that with the DEA yesterday. There's not a lot of story yet behind that Sheriff. He didn't seem like it was any kind of scandal in his background because he said, I look forward to running again as Sheriff. I feel like my family's here and my job is here. Listen, moving up to Washington, D.C. to run the DEA is a huge shift in life, whoever you are.
But especially if you've been a county Sheriff that's been engaged in a drug war. So, I mean, those kind of events, it's not unusual for people to take themselves out of consideration even earlier in the process when they first said yes because of the excitement level. I mean, it's hard to get that call and say no, and then you start rethinking things. You're like, can I afford this? Can my family get through this?
Is this the right decision for me in my life right now? Of course, it's always a great honor. So, then you look at something like Department of Defense. I think it's three million troops. I think 1.5 maybe are active duty and another 1.5 that are reserve. Or somewhere around that number, I may be a little off there. Yeah, so there's 1.4 million active duty service members and then there's almost another million of reserve.
So you're about two and a half million. And then there's another 750,000 civilian employees. So it's a very large department and that's where when you start to see a name like Ron DeSantis floated as a potential replacement. Now, we've also been through this game before where the media reports something and sometimes it's the transition team that likes to really mess with the media and make them look foolish because of how hard they're going against a nominee. But it wouldn't be unheard of even in this administration that someone declines their nomination after going through the Senate process and then ends up being replaced by someone else. Ron DeSantis obviously has executive experience as a governor now. He's in his second term as governor of one of the largest states in the country.
And so managing that kind of personnel is something that's within his CV, his skill set. But I did want to read a quote that was really interesting from a Republican senator that is Senator Loomis. And she had this to say about Pete Hegseth as he's going through a firestorm of the media trying to tear him down. And she said, it's very clear that this guy is the guy who at the time when Americans are losing their confidence in their own military and our ability to project strength around the world that Pete Hegseth is the answer to that concern. So there are U.S. senators that are very firmly in the Pete Hegseth camp and that understand that he's going to get in there. And when you have a Department of Defense that has failed seven audits in a row, can't account for hundreds of billions of dollars.
That's what happens to us. If you failed seven audits in a row. You couldn't get to seven audits in a row because you'd be in federal prison. I mean, that many times, you know, that would be the one of the highest level nonviolent sentencing in probably U.S. history.
I mean, you're not necessarily taking other people's money like a Bernie Madoff situation, but you are certainly defrauding the federal government. I think, again, when you go back to a Pete Hegseth or a Ron DeSantis, it makes sense, one, for both. And here's why. They both have military experience. They both think the DOD is bloated, not because we have enough soldiers, which we don't, but because we have too many bureaucrats. We have too many people in a lot of these offices. Kash Patel talked about this at FBI, that are stuck in Washington, D.C.
Yes, there's an element, of course, of cyber crime, and we know a lot of DOD is moving that way to cyber as well. So you're going to have more people in buildings than you necessarily maybe used to have. But we also know in so many of these departments that people aren't even showing up still.
It's only, what, 17 percent who work from an office? Right, are exclusively in office. Yeah, I mean, so think about that at the Department of Defense. When I imagine the Pentagon, I imagine a place that has got action going, almost like an ER, 24-7, on a big scale. All those rooms tracking everything in the world.
You hope that that is how it's running. So I think both with their military experiences make sense. Is Ron DeSantis an easier confirmation?
Maybe. But remember, he went to war with the left on some of their top issues. Like the one after Disney, the LGBT issue, some of those issues that, again, even on the moderate Republicans may think, is that a distraction? Now, what we've seen from President Trump in the past, and I think we saw this with Pam Bondi, an attorney general, is you've always got picks ready to go and people that were just as qualified. So if you feel like your first pick is already at a point where they can't dig themselves out of the hole, then you want to give them a way out to preserve their honor, to protect their family.
That's the kind of discussion that's going on right now. It's not, does Donald Trump not have faith that Pete Hegseth can do this job? It's Donald Trump and his team making sure that they're not going to put up nominees for the six or seven or eight most important cabinet positions that they know some information is out there about.
They know it's going to be nasty, and they don't have full confidence at this point in time that they have enough Republican votes to get them across the line. Well, and there's also the converse of that, too, Jordan, that sometimes the easy nominee, because they're known, maybe they're a senator. I think back to Attorney General Sessions, which was, in my opinion, for attorney general at the time, was a rock star pick. But what happens is that you get into the situation where they haven't necessarily been vetted on a national scale. Ron DeSantis has been. He's run for President. He's gone through a lot of that media vetting before where they would have found things to go after him.
But you think back to that. Attorney General Sessions, he had good colleagues in the Senate. When he went through, he didn't have to go through the trial by fire that you have to go through many times in the Senate confirmation process. So then he gets in there and the deep state turns on you part of the Senate pretty hard in the Senate sessions. You know, they made him out to be a racist.
They tried that line of attack. And so on the left, he still made it through. But but he was so damaged by the time he made it through. He felt that pressure, which set off all the bad events in the first four years of the Trump administration, which was to bow out and recuse himself because he had literally phone calls with a Russian ambassador during a transition or meetings during a transition into office. Even with the current situation with Ukraine, I don't think there should be anything wrong with a official who's a U.S. senator coming in his cabinet, talking to people who may be adversaries at this point, but you also have a relationship with so that you can improve that relationship the day your administration takes office. But we saw how he was seized upon by that.
Listen, if you go to someone like if you go from a Matt Gaetz to a Pam Bondi, you're going from warrior to warrior. So, you know, I think that's why you didn't see a lot of people so upset once they got to learn who Pam was more than just the Florida attorney general and how hard she has been working to get President Trump reelected through the PACs and things like that. DeSantis, it's another interesting move. One, it would make out Florida to be the Republican state of the country. And it's also one of the more diverse states that's gone Republican.
It's a great model to take out west where you've got some of the similar demographics that you can play. They did that this election campaign. So would Ron DeSantis be somewhat easier to confirm or do you want Donald Trump to stick with Pete Hegseth? That's not all up to Donald Trump, by the way. Pete Hegseth could decide on his own that, hey, Mr. President, I'd love that you'd stand with me on this, but I think it's going to be really painful, really tough.
It's going to end up reflecting not just on me, but on you. We're not there. We're not at that point yet. We might be in 15 minutes.
We might be tomorrow. But what it really boils down to is we've got to have fighters. So as long as we're talking about fighters, I think the base and the mandate that President Trump was given by the voters, as long as you're someone who will go in there and has the ability to clean up shop and make real change, that going from a Hegseth to a DeSantis is not a huge jump when you think about their goals in the department are to drain the swamp. They are very lockstep, DeSantis, with most MAGA policies. He just kind of got out of touch because he was the highest level contender left in that race in the primary. It also repairs that relationship and changes it very differently so that Donald Trump knows he has four years and he's going to be leaving a stable of seriously qualified candidates to be President of the United States, including his own Vice President, which we'll learn a lot more about as he begins to govern at that level, the executive level, J.D.
Vance. That's right, Jordan. And as you mentioned, the the important thing here is that President Trump has gone through this before. He learned his lessons from the very first time and he knows what he's doing and has a very competent team around him that we're going to end up with a great cabinet that is going to lead forward in that agenda. But as we look to 2025 and how we are going to engage in the fights ahead, we talked yesterday about a court case protecting a student in Nevada and her family when she was forced to read an explicit monologue. And we got a victory, but it took two and a half years almost. We need to have the resources available that that when that student comes, our next student could be calling in today needing a two and a half year fight. We have the resources ready and available to get on the ground and fight. Go to ACLJ.org today and donate. All right, welcome back to Sekulow.
We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110. Unless Pete Hegseth takes himself out of consideration, sometimes it's tough to know if that's truly the case, because usually this early in a process, the incoming President is going to let you handle that in the nicest way possible. You haven't gone through confirmation. You haven't been beat up.
You haven't beat them up. But again, it's a big question mark. And right now, Will, we've got breaking news on Capitol Hill because a good friend of ours, and not to be controversial because I know people had different picks, but this is someone we've worked with since their time in the House of Representatives. John Thune, who is the incoming majority leader of the U.S. Senate, is being reportedly is meeting with Pete Hegseth right now. And Will, the significance of that meeting is that John Thune is the one U.S. Senator on track right now who can probably give him a direct read on where Republicans are. And if you get past the committee level vote, because you don't technically have to even win the committee vote to get to the floor, but where Republicans are. So it could be a real truth moment for Pete to kind of take in and say, those that I met with that still feel like I'm on this list, is there anything I can do left to convince them? Or is it just they don't like my personal record, which again, the American people have put a lot less influence on in the past.
I'd say see Donald Trump for that about marriages and things like that. It seems to me, are you confident to fight for the good fight for the American people? And we're going to watch all of this. We have a huge team, obviously, in Washington, D.C. Will is going to always be following these stories and follow them as closely as possible.
We're not talking about this to hurt Pete Hegseth, by the way. You need bold new leadership in Washington. And I know a lot of you think of us, sometimes you see us, you say, oh, you guys would be too young for this or that. You have to realize these are people now in their 40s with families. It's actually the age where, if you look in the past, that's where cabinet officials came from. They didn't come from 75 and up. Now, we're a different time.
People stay healthier longer. We have Presidents who are older. But some of that, I think, is kind of age discrimination. Some of it is Fox News discrimination that he's been on Fox. And some is that he's just a bold speaker. Well, I mean, you could say Ron DeSantis, also Presidential candidate, certainly a bold speaker. Tough personality.
Tough guy. Has shown his ability to work across the aisle, though, in Florida and would probably be comparatively a very smooth confirmation comparatively to Pete Hegseth because he is not an unknown to Capitol Hill. Does that mean he's going to get a ton of Democrat votes? Probably not. But is it going to drag on for weeks and we're not going to have a DOD secretary? I don't think so. And by the way, I don't just assume that it's definitely him.
That's the name that popped up, but there could be others as well. And the calls I really want to get to are, you've gone through this nomination process. At this point, to our listeners, do you just trust President Trump to be making the right decisions here? And he's trying to put people in he thinks can be the most disruptive.
If they believe that they are not able to get in, you know you've got number two and three on that list that you believe could be just as disruptive. And I think that's why the conservative movement and the MAGA movement slowed down a lot after Matt Gaetz pulled out because when Pam Bondi was announced, they said, wait, okay, this is one of us. And we had all those sound bites from MSNBC saying she's our worst nightmare because she has the same ideology as Matt Gaetz, but she's run departments like this.
She's run these big organizations successfully. So now you're going to get someone who has the ideology plus the experience. So again, some of these, it's tough to know, of course, until it happens, but it's why we do our work here at the ACLJ on that government affairs side as well during our Faith and Freedom Year in Drive. We want to make sure that government affairs office is ready to go, whoever the nominee may be. We put together our own internal folders ready to go on nominees, especially as they get closer to confirmation battles.
And that is a resource, Will. That is something people are donating to as well so that our team is prepared to inform you about why this is a good pick, what to watch for in the hearings. We're not far away from those, but at the same time, I just want to let everyone know out there, it's not like we just sit here and talk about these either. We are heavily involved. We work closely with members of Congress. We work closely both with the House and the Senate. And we're getting as much intel as we can that we can share with you on the broadcast about some of these nominations that, of course, are leading the front pages and leading the headlines.
That's right. And I actually have a question for Secretary Mike Pompeo, who's joining us, Senior Counselor for Global Affairs, because the Department of Defense is kind of in the spotlight today. We're talking about the nomination of Pete Hegseth and then the Wall Street Journal report today that it may be Governor DeSantis if Hegseth has pulled his nomination. But, you know, we've talked about the Department of Defense failing seven audits in a row, and there's a new report out from the GAO that says that half the Navy's amphibious fleet is in poor condition, and it's not on track to meet their expected service lives. Secretary Pompeo, you've pushed back for years against the Biden administration's DEI initiatives in our military, warning about how it makes America less safe instead of focusing on things like, I don't know, maybe making sure the amphibious fleet is not in poor condition. But regardless of who the Secretary of Defense is, what do you think the Trump administration needs to do to right the ship, so to speak, and ensure our national security?
So exactly right question. I'm confident whoever President Trump picks and get confirmed will deliver against the following mission set, which is to return the military to its core focus. That report about the condition of the equipment mirrors the condition of the recruitment process right there. Military is missing its recruitment goals by staggering amounts, leaving the military too small, undermanned, unprepared for the next generation of leaders as well. And so whoever comes in to be the next Secretary of Defense has got a management people issue, and that is returning commission, not talking about climate change, not talking about DEI, talking about warfighting skills and how to deliver a military capable of deterring our adversaries. So the President Trump is in position to know that he's got a strong military backing up the agenda that he is laying out for our partners and our adversaries all across the world. Secretary Pompeo, we're already running out of time on this segment, but I did want to ask you this because President Biden had that very nice sit down with President Trump about a smooth transition of power, but now he's putting in a new ban on mining leases across the United States. The Trump mandate from the American people to achieve energy independence once again was very clear, but it appears that that honeymoon in the transition is over. Your thoughts?
No doubt. President Biden and his team, his entire political team is going to do everything they can the next 40 days, whatever, 45 days to deliver on the promises that they made. They think they made. They don't care what the American people said in November. They're going to drive this low carbon climate change agenda and destroying the capacity for America to be energy dominant and to use that not only for the American people, but for our national security as well. The good news is on January 20th, all this changes, Jordan.
Yeah, I mean, exactly right. And I think more than a new sheriff comes to town, but a new administration and a lot of allies like you and us that can be speaking to these decisions as well. We appreciate always your time. Our Senior Counsel for Global Affairs, former Secretary of State and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who's going to have a lot to help us weigh in on through those tough confirmation battles because he's been at the highest level of confirmation through being CIA Director and Secretary of State.
And there's not too many people who you can hear from directly who have gone through that process recently, especially with the Trump administration. We'll take your calls. Support the work of the ACLJ. A critical time for us.
ACLJ.org. Donate today. Make sure we're financially ready to fight every battle. Keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever. This is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.
Welcome back to Sekulow. I want to make this very clear. Our faith and freedom year in drive is really important. And, you know, we don't fundraise a ton on this broadcast. Usually we get right to the news. But on this segment, I want to get right to why it's important for you to financially support the American Center for Law and Justice. Because if you're listening to the broadcast, if you're watching the broadcast, that does not come for free. This is not just me, Will or Logan and some of our guests like Secretary Pompeo who are on the team or Tulsi Gabbards and Rick Grenell who will be on later in the broadcast.
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The match continues. ACLJ.org. Let's make sure the ACLJ has a bigger presence in Washington, D.C. the moment President Trump is taking the oath of office than we do even right now. And we have announcements about that, you know, coming up in the future about how we are expanding our efforts inside Washington, D.C. That's right, Jordan. And as we mentioned on the broadcast yesterday even, Secretary Pompeo talked about his time at the State Department when the work of the ACLJ helped the government do the right thing.
That many times you think about the organization, especially over the last four years, about us fighting back. But now the battle almost gets more tough because you're fighting the onslaught of attacks from the media, from the left, in court. The lawsuits are going to start getting filed on January 1st as soon as the first executive order is published. That's how quick the left is going to be attacking the moves that the United States people voted for, the mandate they gave to the new administration and the new Congress to move forward. They are going to start filing lawsuits as soon as the first executive order on January 20th or 21st, whenever President Trump issues those, goes into effect.
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Have your gift doubled by making a donation. And if you can become a champion, become a recurring donor to help us ensure that fight continues. Welcome back to Secula. I know we've got some callers hanging on the line. We'll get to your calls. 1-800-684-3110. In fact, this is a great time to call if you want to be on the air today as we bring in Rick Rinnell to the discussion.
Again, a team member here at the American Surf Law and Justice. And Rick, I want to go right to you on Kash Patel, because I don't think there's anyone in American politics who knows Kash better, because he served as your deputy at ODNI, and he's also worked with you even before that. So tell the American people who are hearing that, you know, Kash Patel is too radical to be the FBI director.
Why why the news is wrong? Well, first of all, only the people who would call Washington, D.C. a place that's always right would say that Kash Patel is wrong, because Kash Patel is somebody who is fighting for the American people, not for the Washington powerful. The Washington elite definitely are freaking out over Kash, because look, Kash is somebody and I know him very well. Kash is somebody who was a public defender when he came out of law school. He then became a government prosecutor. Tell me who in the world right now has been both a public defender, a government prosecutor and somebody who's worked on Capitol Hill to uncover so much of what the government craziness and political prosecutions have been doing to the American people. Kash Patel as the FBI director couldn't make me more excited.
He literally is the perfect pick. And what we need to do is demand that the Washington, D.C. types and U.S. senators who have to sign off on him, understand that the American people want Kash to clean up the FBI and help clean up the DOJ, because we don't trust it. He is going to restore the FBI to its glory days of working on behalf of the American people, not on behalf of the powerful in Washington. Rick, when you look at Kash Patel's resume, you would think if the left were ideologically honest, he would be someone they are celebrating everywhere in America. First generation American served as both a prosecutor and, as you mentioned, a public defender, something the left is always concerned.
We don't have enough of representative in our law enforcement agencies, people that can empathize and understand the side of the public defender. And yet you would think with that resume, just on paper, he would be the most celebrated pick of all time and would be sailing through confirmation with 100 senators. But because his ideology is wrong and because he wants less government corruption and control of American lives, he's the enemy and they make him out to be whatever they want to project on him.
Crazy, radical, any pejorative ad hominem attack you can come up with, they're going to throw at him because he doesn't share their ideology. Look, what we know is the Washington types love to throw around these charges that's racist, sexist, homophobe, or the new one, a Russian agent. We know that this is the playbook and what we really have to demand of our leaders, of our Republican senators, is to look at the facts and to understand that the American people don't want more power for Washington, D.C. types. We want people who are skeptical of the power.
We have seen hunger gain. We're very afraid of a capital that's too powerful. We need to have somebody who brings the American values to Washington and that is Kash Patel, first generation American, who absolutely looks at young, all different types of people and says, I want to fight for the people, not for the powerful. He was my deputy. I know him extremely well and I can't tell you, Will, how many times people would say to me when I brought him in at D.M., wow, I really like Kash. He's such a thoughtful guy and his media reputation is nothing like what he is in person.
I know that the Washington D.C. types try to malign people with this media narrative. I'm one person who's going to fight really hard on the front lines. I'm going to risk my own political capital to make sure that Kash Patel is the FBI director. We deserve him. He deserves to have the job. President Trump has recognized that. And I'm going to do everything I can to fight for his nomination.
I'm going to be in the front row when he's there for confirmations. I'm going all in and I'm going to be asking the public to call their senators and say, we want Kash. We want Kash Patel. Rick, also something that's maybe not making as many headlines as it should right now, but just for people that don't necessarily know Kash Patel's background as much, he did work as a national security prosecutor at the DOJ under the Obama administration, successfully prosecuting criminals that were al-Qaeda, ISIS and other terror groups.
You know, things that the American people want the FBI to actually be going after, not parents at school board meetings or Catholics that they think are too conservative. But the Iranians, there's news out that they have targeted Kash Patel in a hack already. To me, this once again tells us that if the Iranians are concerned and feel like they need to target the American, it's probably the right pick from President Trump.
But it also tells me that the DOJ better clean house very quickly so that they can continue to protect Americans from cyber attacks from the Iranians. Let me give you a little quick story about Kash Patel. Kash Patel was told by the Department of Defense, the Secretary of Defense, Esper, a whole bunch of other people in different agencies that he should not be negotiating for Americans held hostage in Syria. They told him to mind his own business, that they had it going, and Kash became very frustrated that not enough was being done. Kash went into Syria when everyone told him not to do it, and he went into Syria to negotiate for American hostages because no one else was doing it. And he was running the portfolio at the White House, was very frustrated with the agencies, and he decided to go in directly on his own, risk his life, and he helped make a ton of progress in getting out hostages. He's returned so many of our hostages. I have seen him go to the mat talking to hostages' families.
By the way, this is one angle that we need to be highlighting. The families of hostages, of American hostages, they want Kash Patel as FBI director because they know his work ethic, they know what he'll do. He is a total patriot, and the American people need to fight for him, and I'm going to be leading the charge right here at ACLJ, right in front of all of the media that I can get in front of to make sure people understand who Kash is.
Now, Rick, I think that's why it was awesome to get you on today because there's been so much talk about him, but we know because of your relationship with Kash, you could share that kind of information, those kind of stories behind the scenes that maybe don't get reported, don't make it into the news. And, of course, the establishment media is going to try and demonize every single one of these appointments. It seems like what they do is they start target one, then they have target two, then they have target three, and that's because they know if one of these gets through, like Kash Patel, he can make good because he's got a President that supports him and a Congress right now that at least says they support the idea of making serious cuts to the size of the federal government and to remake these agencies so that they actually do their job, which is not sending spies into Catholic churches. But instead is breaking up illegal cartels that we're seeing operating all over the U.S., protecting us from terrorists who may already be inside the country, helping to secure the border, as that is also a major security concern, really just getting back to the job of what the FBI was all about.
And, Rick, when you have that kind of law enforcement power, people have to have faith and trust that you are using it in an honest and balanced way, that you're not just going to target, quote, enemies of the administration or government. Look, Kash Patel has already proven that he's a patriot. He is somebody who is hellbent on reform, but not just to do reform, just to do it. He is somebody who's very, very balanced when it comes to thoughtful maneuvering. When we were at DNI, for instance, he was the one that was leading a lot of the reform efforts to make sure that we were focused on the terrorists, that we were cutting the extra, but always making sure that the agency and all of the intel agents were focused on the right priorities, not the wrong stuff.
Rick, as always, we appreciate your insight because I think people wanted to have the ability, they like Kash Patel, right? They liked that he's a fighter, but they needed that extra information. So I want to make sure we clip that out for folks so they can hear directly from someone who served with Kash as their deputy, so putting their trust in a deputy to help carry out the mission that Rick was put in as a cabinet member to carry out for the President. Rick, as always, we appreciate all of your insight into these issues and your help in preparing people to defend these nominees they really like, they just want to know more about.
And some of that's that personal side of the story. Folks, we've got people like Rick Grenell on our team to get you that information because we've got financial supporters like you who make those contributions, especially when we need it the most, like this month. And you can become an ACLJ champion. What that means is you pick a number to donate, maybe that's $25 or $100, and it donates automatically until you feel like maybe you want to up the number or that you can't make it anymore.
Do that at ACLJ.org slash champions today. Welcome back to Sekulow. Now, if you watched the broadcast, you just saw some of these media reports about, you know, various positions to the cabinet. And they were talking about, well, what if it ended up being DeSantis and FBI, which right now the Trump transition team, of course, that can change in a minute. And, you know, Kash Patel has a very close relationship with President Trump, so they're talking through this as he's going through the process as well. But, you know, DeSantis' name has emerged.
And you know what? It's very similar to what they said about Pam Bondi. Now, what you'll wonder this time around then, do they maybe pull back a little on this Kash Patel, you know, attack line, and maybe they pull back a little on this Hegseth line, because when you start doing these attacks, you end up with people who, again, similar ideology, right, but very tough to vote against. In fact, if you vote against them, it's just going to be a partisan vote.
It won't be based on actual, you know, are they competent enough? Because what they're saying about all these folks, including DeSantis, is, well, the thing is with DeSantis that you might get with him, that you might not have gotten with a Hegseth is, listen, he's run one of the biggest states of the country, and they try to use this as a negative. But certainly if you're someone who supports your governor like DeSantis, you don't see this as a negative.
You see it as a positive. So they start using words, Will, like he's very stubborn. So when he sets his mind to something, he gets it done. To me, that's the definition you'd want for any member of the cabinet, any government official. And unfortunately, the bureaucrats in Washington don't share that same stubborn commitment to carry out the policies of the President. What they do is they've got a stubborn commitment to carry out their own policies, and that's why we have to drain the swamp and figure out a way to be able to remove federal employees who are bad actors. But instead, Will, what we're seeing is a move for federal employees to stay, and we talk a lot of this about people who are here illegally who cross the border that may not be criminals other than that criminal act, so they end up living in the shadows of America, which creates a human rights issue and lots of humanitarian issues because of the resources they take from communities. I kind of see this the same way.
I think about that. When you talk about getting these things done and who you're going to get it done with, the fact that the federal government, when you want to drain it, it almost is draining itself. And I wonder if we can take advantage of the fact that only 17% of federal government employees are showing up to an actual workplace. If that's the truth, doesn't it make it that much easier to say, you know what, we can cut 50% of the staff?
Well, and that's exactly what Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk have mentioned in their proposal for Doge, for the Department of Government Efficiency. They pointed out how many people are remote working, hybrid work, and things of that nature that was a continuation of the policies that were put forward in 2020 during the pandemic, but now government has taken advantage of and said, hey, we're not going to go in ever. And what we're seeing now is the Biden administration trying to get ahead of the Department of Government Efficiency and try to block some of the easier ways that it could be allowing, laying off or saying, hey, you got to come back or else. And then people leave on their own accord because the Social Security Administration just reached an agreement with the labor union over their employees. So one of these public unions that the American Federation of Government Employees that allows for 42,000 government employees in the Social Security Administration to stay as hybrid workers until 2029. Nine years after the pandemic, when these things were put in place to try and keep the government functioning, when they had restrictive workplace policies, they're trying to allow people to stay out of the office until 2029, 42,000. Now, you and I are not at the age of Social Security yet, but we have family members that are, and I know for a fact how difficult it is to get things like updating your bank account with the Social Security Office takes two months, two months to update your bank account to get your direct deposit shifted.
To use for your Apple card in about a second, then go up and scan it and you've got a new card or new bank account being utilized for that. But the federal government takes two months. So target number one of the Department of Government Efficiency should be looking at things like that. How is our federal government in 2024 unable to do basic services efficiently for the American people? They're wasting taxpayer money across the board.
Department of Defense is failing audits. All of these things play into the fact of what the American people voted for in 2024. They want the efficiency to come back. They want the government to work for the people, not work against the people, as we've been seeing for the past four years under this administration. The bureaucracy and deep state are so entrenched, they're signing contracts at the very end of a term of President Biden to make sure that 42,000 people for another five years can work from home. It makes no sense. It should infuriate the American people.
And I think it did. I think that's why Americans went to the polls and wanted something different than this, because it's the bureaucrats that are getting to stay at home, continue to collect paychecks, be unfireable in many cases because of the way that they've set these bureaucracies up, that it's so hard to get fired from a government job because of these protections set up under the guise of not being politically retributed against. And I think we're fed up with it. Now is the time to change things like this. But the Biden administration is not going quietly.
No, they're not. And we've told you that these final days of these administrations is when they start putting in actions that then you've got to work very hard to reverse. So this idea that thousands of government employees have now landed a deal with their labor union. If you think about that for a moment, the federal government, which has paid for all these employees with your taxpayer dollars, has its own union to take more of your taxpayer dollars and make their life easier to do less work, but get paid more and get paid benefits that probably very few of us have even anything close to when it comes to what these federal employees have.
And now they've got this negotiation done where they could keep this work from home deal to continue. The Biden administration, of course, they use climate concern issues. You know what's been the difference, though, in what we've heard from these nominees like Kash Patel, like Hegseth, like others, is we need to take all these great minds that are supposed to be in Washington, D.C., and send them out to the country to do the work for the American people. If we've really got why are there that many people inside these agencies with the power of computers to track cybercrime, do you still need thousands of people?
We know a lot of these departments, so they're so outdated. Two months to get anything done. So some of it is what Elon Musk is best at, which is providing the technology to make it easier for you, the taxpayer, whether that's filing your taxes, making it easy so that you don't file the wrong way, making sure you get your return quickly, but also that the government that we're all paying for does the services that we all need. And that's it. They provide those services at a great level, and that's where it stops. And then you rely on your state for more. And we're going to be working on that at the American Center for Law and Justice. We've got an incoming Congress that we can work with so closely, but we want to add members to that team. So we need your financial support. Donate today at ACLJ.org. Become a champion. Make a monthly contribution automatically. We need it today. ACLJ.org.
