In a climate buzzing with tension and anticipation, security concerns hang heavily in the air as the countdown to the inauguration and the Super Bowl narrows. This episode of Sekulow delves deep into the looming threats posed by ISIS and the evolving security strategies implemented to protect these significant events. Join us as we engage with voices like Jay Johnson, shedding light on anticipated security measures and the critical importance of modernizing our defenses.
SPEAKER 11 :
With only 17 days to go, massive security concerns ahead of the inauguration and the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER 09 :
Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Seculo. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110.
SPEAKER 11 :
And now your host, Logan Sekula. Welcome to Sekula. Will Haynes joining me in studio. Jordan Sekula joining me remote. We do want to cover the security concerns heading into the inauguration. I know, Jordan, you are at the Republican National Convention. You’ve seen some of these sort of massive events that have been happening recently. That was right after… the assassination attempt on president trump and then of course now this is going to be coming just days after a isis style or isis inspired or maybe just isis terrorist attack in new orleans louisiana and this is not just us coming up with these theories and thoughts i wanted to start this kick it off early with a comment it was on fox news yesterday by jay johnson who was president obama’s uh homeland security secretary so take a listen to what he had to say
SPEAKER 06 :
We’re in the midst of an evolving, heightened threat picture right now. With the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, with the attack two days ago, I’m sure ISIS feels emboldened right now. And we have several major security events coming up. The inauguration for one, the Super Bowl in a couple weeks after that. And I would say what I did say to my people at DHS when I was in office, don’t just respond to the last attack. Anticipate the next one, which may be of a very different character. Now, we’ve known for some time that the possibility of an attack with a vehicle, a vehicle is a weapon. or a mass shooting is something to anticipate and prepare for. We should not believe that we’ve seen the last of this type of vehicle attack.
SPEAKER 11 :
There are ways, Jordan, to mitigate this. I mean, we even saw it in the sense of how airport security changed post 9-11. We have never really seen another big incident occur, at least that kind of incident occur, and a lot of it is security to go through. Is it a pain? Does it become more of a difficult situation? Sure. I mean, there are times where you get frustrated, but you have to remember where we were at 20 years ago. Now we’re at these kind of events. But I know when you were there at the Republican convention, you were almost even in a bubble that was secured.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think that’s what we have to look at for some when we know that there’s threats and we see this starting to happen again with. radicalized Americans who are already here and can easily carry out a very deadly attack just by renting a vehicle and even opening fire with a weapon. And with all the attacks and the bloodshed that has occurred really since the election and the campaign and now leading up to the inaugural, and you said like the Super Bowl already in New Orleans again, you have to build security perimeters. In our office in Washington, D.C., were in the security perimeter that was created after 9-11. That means that all the streets, including the one in front of ours, locked down immediately with things that come out of the ground. There is a police station with an underground, a larger station, just catty corner to our office. And so we’ve seen when people have tried to carry out violent attacks, including using vehicles very close to our office, There were military and Capitol Hill police always ready to respond with high-powered weapons. And it’s kept everyone safe. So I think we have to rethink again, putting in larger security perimeters at these events so that we feel safe. It’s good for everyone. And then I don’t think we have to necessarily do it for 20 years. We’ve learned that as well in the battle against terrorism. We can modernize and we can change. It doesn’t have to be the exact same. And so I just think it’s a time for real reform and we’ve got to get a team in place, Logan.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of that, phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. We’re also monitoring right now. the vote for Johnson will.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. The House is about to gavel in. They actually just gaveled in the 119th Congress. First order of business will be to elect a speaker. We’ll be keeping you updated on that throughout the show. But also, we want you to sign our new petition, aclj.org slash sign. It is imperative that we get President Trump’s national security team confirmed as quickly as possible. ACLJ.org slash sign.
SPEAKER 11 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. As I said, phone lines are open and we’d love to hear from you. 1-800-684-3110. If you’re watching on YouTube or Rumble, I encourage you to not only hit that thumbs up and the subscribe button, which is a great free way to support the work of the ACLJ, but also continue to spread this message. Also put in a comment. If you don’t know what to comment, I always say comment where you’re watching from. We like to watch that and see where people are interacting from, usually around the country, sometimes around the world. Do we have people because YouTube and Rumble are international platforms? That happens. We’ll also have a new live platform to be announced starting this coming Monday. So stay tuned for that because that will be happening very soon. A new place that you could watch us live. So that would be really great. Again, phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. We are covering sort of the security fears that are currently happening. after those terrorist attacks in Las Vegas and, of course, in New Orleans as we head to not only Super Bowl but obviously the inauguration in just 17 days. Now, Will, you also brought up they have said, what, 15 minutes or so?
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right, yeah. So the House is… just opened with a prayer. Now there’s a 15-minute quorum call. So that is giving enough time for everyone to get to the floor of the House. They have to have the quorum so that then they can vote on the Speaker. So after this 15-minute period, then they will proceed with the election of the Speaker of the House. And if you right now want to call and make sure your representative’s office knows that you support Speaker Johnson, you want them to vote for him to be the next Speaker of the House so that, President Trump’s agenda can begin immediately. This also, they have to certify the election in just three days on January 6th. So there is a lot of work the House needs to get done. We don’t need chaos at the beginning. President Trump has endorsed Speaker Johnson. And so if you want to call and let them know, call 202- 224-3121 that’s 202-224-3121 that’s the capital switchboard ask for your representative’s office and let them know politely you want your representative your constituent and you want your representative to vote for mike johnson to be the next speaker of the house and jordan i think that’s very important for our people to do there are many actions we can take like signing the petition that we will deliver to the senate to get the national security picks through. But this is something you can do directly by calling your representative. And that’s one of the beauties of America.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s right. And Will and Logan, I think it’s so important today. I hope we have a smooth election of the speaker to show the American people that when you elect conservatives, President Trump and then down ballot, we are there to get the job done and not just bicker about amongst ourselves publicly. That should have been happening behind closed doors. As we know, they can do as much of that bickering as they’d like, but it doesn’t then look like to the American people that they aren’t serious about getting to work. And so that’s what I think we’ll see in the next few minutes. On the Senate side, the biggest job for every US Senator right now is to get President Trump’s cabinet confirmed. But when I say that, and I wanna say it over and over again, It’s not just the secretary or the director that needs to be confirmed. For instance, in Tulsi Gabbard’s case, you’re going to be the director of, again, national intelligence. You cannot do that job on your own without a team. Now, there’s a team of bureaucrats there right now in the DNI office, which is large, but That’s not your trusted team. In fact, we know, Will, usually those high level bureaucrats are the people you have to worry about the most. And so sending over these cabinet level folks into their new roles without staff, without their politically appointed team to carry out the mission that they’ve been instructed to by the elected president of the United States, not unelected bureaucrats, you have to get their four or five top deputies confirmed quickly as well. We’ve learned in the first Trump administration what happens if you don’t get that done. And we saw what Jim Comey did. We know what the FBI was up to. We need to get those replacements in. Pam Bondi needs to get in. Kash Patel needs to get in. Tulsi Gabbard needs to get in. We’ve got to have a secure government that is ready to go on day one with their teams. And that’s the big lift in the Senate. Right now, the House, they need to get their leader. Speaker Johnson, we’ve been very supportive of. One, Because he’s been a friend for over 20 years of the American Center for Law and Justice. He’s a constitutional lawyer who does the same work that many of our attorneys do every single day before he ran for Congress. So he cares about our issues. But he also has shown, Will, the ability to take the hits. And you have to do that if you’re going to be Speaker of the House with even a Republican majority, where you’ve got Republicans across the spectrum from very conservative to borderline conservatives. even inside the Republican Party, and he was able to do that. So President Trump wants him in there, we want him in there, we’ve been vocal about it this week. And then we can turn our attention to the Senate and our new petition to get the national security team confirmed. I don’t even like how the FBI comes to what it sounds like is a conclusion about the attack in New Orleans, that it was inspired. We don’t know yet at this point if it was inspired or if he was directed or if it’s online. We know that ISIS was recruiting people a long time ago. Think about the sophistication that’s changed and the abilities to do that in the last eight years. So I think when they come to these conclusions very quickly, it’s still to play a narrative like Islamic terrorism really isn’t, is it a, major threat in the United States. It might be happening in other parts of the world. But what we know is that when they get strongholds again in other parts of the world, that gives them the ability to spend time on recruiting Americans to carry out attacks on our soil who are already here.
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan, and you bring up that point that they say it was 100% inspired. Well, we know they also collected multiple phones and multiple devices from the individual that carried out the attack in New Orleans. And also, there’s videos online of… They went through his house. They obviously went through the scene, but independent journalists gaining access to his trailer outside of Houston, not 36 hours after the attack, doing walkthrough videos in athleisure wear, not even like in a, you know, the gumshoe journalist look, like just normal looking independent journalist walking through this attacker’s home. And then you hear this from MSNBC. And this goes into what the DC mind complex has when it comes to these attacks, because they’ve been telling us for years that really here’s the, the don’t look away from this shiny object. It’s really the MAGA Republicans that are the biggest threat to society right now. And this is what MSNBC has the gall to air just after another, even the FBI is at least going to ISIS inspired. I think that as you point out, they may be jumping to conclusions and need to let that play out before they know whether or not he was directed or in direct contact with an ISIS individual. But listen to how MSNBC is already spinning this to not look at what the reality is. And just remember, it’s the conservatives that you need to be afraid of. Bite four.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s very difficult to feel safe when on top of everything that Mayor Landrieu just said, you also have politicians that have a self-interest in lying about everything because it helps them with a political narrative, not concerned about the human narrative that could actually be really helpful.
SPEAKER 07 :
And that is the tragedy of all of this, right? There are real tragedies. There will always be crime. Unfortunately, what we try to do is to keep the crime as low as possible. All different kinds of people will commit crimes. The problem here is that you jump on one sort of crime, one crime committed by one name that sounds exotic, one brown face, rather than looking at all of the domestic terror that we face, including what the FBI says is a really big problem, which is young white men in America. We need to look at all of our domestic terrorism and say this all is a problem.
SPEAKER 02 :
Indeed, exactly. And it is Americans that we need to be talking about.
SPEAKER 10 :
MSNBC, Jordan, is saying that the real problem is Americans. And yes, this ISIS-inspired attacker was an American, but they’re still pushing this narrative that we need to be rid of.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, this is insanity. And it’s why no one’s watching MSNBC anymore, because this is not living in reality. I don’t hope, I pray, that this is a one-off, these events, that that ISIS has not been able to be successful in recruiting or inspiring attacks in the United States of America. But we know who the threat typically comes from in these incidents. How many times have we seen Islamic members of the military, former military, who have been radicalized and carried out attacks at their own bases so that they were easy access to get inside and kill other members of the armed forces. I mean, you just have to, again, you build a threat profile. But all they want to go back to is the white man. It’s all about the white males. And white males can also be recruited and inspired by radical Islamic terrorism. So this is not about the color of the skin or the name. It’s about the ideology of and the organizations who have been allowed to flourish again to recruit people to carry out attacks like this.
SPEAKER 11 :
Phone lines are open for your questions or comments at 1-800-684-3110. And they are open right now, so this is a great time to call in. And we are monitoring the House vote for Speaker, and hopefully for Speaker Johnson. It looks like that is going to happen any moment, so stay tuned. We’ll cut to it live when it’s happening to make sure you are staying as updated as possible. Make sure you’re supporting the work of the ACLJ also and sign our new petition at aclj.org. slash sign you can scan that qr code right now as well to help confirm aclj.org slash sign Welcome back to Secular. Again, phone lines are open at 1-800-684-3110. We’ve been talking about, obviously, the security threats. We were talking about the House to vote for Speaker, hopefully for Speaker Johnson here any moment. We’ll cut to that live when it’s happening. But there’s also, Will, a scoop that came out of Axios, which discussed a potential strike on Iran that could happen before… before President Trump is inaugurated, and this would be from the Biden administration, almost seeming like they could be setting up a war on the way out.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right, and Jordan, I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on this because what we’re hearing out of Axios is that Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, prepped President Biden with options for a potential US attack on Iranian nuclear facilities if the Iranians move forward with a nuclear weapon before January 20th. We already know that the Biden administration has left two wars for President Trump to deal with, that in Ukraine and that in Gaza, but now it appears that they are giving options if Iran in this sense moves forward with a nuclear weapon, which they’ve been doing for four years under the Biden administration because they removed the maximum pressure campaign of the Trump administration. So it almost seems like an arbitrary thing that they could just decide to attack Iran with 17 days left in this administration and hand on a silver platter a brand new war to the President Trump administration, of which he wants no new wars. What were your thoughts when you read this report, and what can we do?
SPEAKER 03 :
I was sickened when you realize this is a real report, because we have a president of the United States currently, and we’ve all seen the reports, and we saw what the Democrat Party did to this president, who those around him don’t believe he has the cognitive ability to be president of the United States. And we’ve learned about all these new advisors who are actually running behind the scenes, the US government, and they weren’t elected. And so Washington understands this, but he has the power as commander in chief. This, again, and we want more information, but unless there was some kind of emergency that Iran was about to utilize an actual nuclear weapon, there is no reason to… undermine the incoming president’s team to let them do the assessment unless there is a real threat to our allies and the United States of an actual use of a nuclear weapon, not the facilities that might be operating in violation of UN treaties and standards, because remember, most of those deals have not been able to be enforced anyways, but that’s nothing new. So unless they have intelligence that Iran is about to utilize some kind of nuclear weapon, starting a war with a couple weeks left in your presidency, not only is it not American, that is so dangerous for our country. our troops and even getting this out there publicly. The idea that one, why now? If you’re president of the United States, you know Iran has a nuclear program. You know they would love to be able to launch a weapon like that. So why did you just start paying attention to this in the last two weeks of your presidency? None of this will really smells good. It doesn’t feel right. And how many different ways could they try and undermine the presidency with no concern, I guess, for American lives, for Iranian lives, for Israeli lives, unless there is something, a real threat that we have not been informed about as the American people of Iran utilizing, not a proxy to carry out a more conventional attack. They’re already doing that. But actually utilizing a nuclear device, that would be the only reason to take action like this when you are running out of time. as the leader of the country. And because the new president and his team have got to be ready to make those decisions. So again, if there’s an emergency and that’s real, you need to address the American people today before you start attacks on Iran.
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan, and here’s the worst part. And back to what you’ve been saying ever since the election, since November 5th, this is the most dangerous time. And when you say that, you weren’t being hyperbolic and like most dangerous time for bad policies, most dangerous time because literally President Biden could start a war with Iran in this last stretch of time. And here’s deeper in the report. It says that their source said the White House meeting was not prompted by new intelligence or intended to end in a yes or no decision from the president in that meeting. respond to iran shouldn’t prudent scenario planning be we know there’s going to be a new secretary of defense we know there’s going to be a new cia director we know there’s going to be a new director of national intelligence let’s put together a package if we don’t think there is an impending threat of a launch of a nuclear weapon before january 20th that we can hand over in a peaceful transfer of power to the next administration. Instead, they’re talking about developing a plan and potentially acting on that plan before this new team that is so critical we get confirmed. So go to ACLJ.org slash sign to get those nominees confirmed. They’re talking about starting a war with Iran before January 20th in meetings in the White House as recent as a week ago.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, and when you’ve got Iran, you’ve got the U.S. involved with Ukraine and Russia, and you’ve got Iran picking sides there, and of course, North Korea picking sides there, China picking sides there. I mean, the fact is, you want to go into the next world war, you carry out an attack on Iran without any new intelligence force. It says this is the time you need to do it. You’ve had four years as president. Nothing has changed, I guess, in their intelligence. But they have to be ready. Something isn’t clicking here. And they wanted this out to the media. Are they really willing to put American lives at risk? Not just President Trump’s, which they did constantly with the rhetoric they used about him, basically comparing him to a Nazi leader. and a fascist constantly. And yet the American people said, no, this is the worst kind of politics. And they were just done with a team that even kind of subverted democracy itself by putting in Harris as the nominee without any Democrats actually voting, no voting for that nominee. And I just say this, listen, thank God that this isn’t going to be the team in place for the next four years, but also pray very hard. That, again, unless there is an actual emergency, which of course, that’s a different situation, this team should not be launching any new wars. Reason why? They don’t know how to bring them to an end. All we have to look at is what happened in Afghanistan at that base. You want to see that happen on a much larger scale to the world? You’d go and attack Iran when they know you’re not going to be in office in two weeks. the kind of bloodshed that could occur i just think it’s so reckless will to put and logan the next administration in this spot and it’s why the american people wanted nothing to do with this team anymore because they can’t they have no foreign policy victories like you said they’re already leaving two major wars uh to the pre the next president’s team they now want to uh uh launch war with iran and now they’ve suddenly woken up to the nuclear threat from iran give me a break jake sullivan he needs to go become a professor and i hope to god never gets to advise another president again this is dangerous very very dangerous and it’s why i always say that will We’ve got to get our new team in and pray that we have time to get them in as quickly as possible.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, you can be a part of that as well by signing our new petition to join that demand letter to the Senate to get everyone confirmed. Go to ACLJ.org slash sign right now or scan the QR code you see on your screen. We have a second half hour coming up. on seculo so make sure you stay tuned if you don’t get us on your local station find us broadcasting live every day from noon eastern on youtube rumble aclj.org and on x so do that right now and some phone lines are still open we’ll get to your calls 1-800-684-3110 short break we’ll be back in just one minute keeping you informed and engaged now more than ever this is seculo
SPEAKER 09 :
And now your host, Logan Secular.
SPEAKER 11 :
We are monitoring the house right now as they should be voting for speaker any moment. Again, a lot of talking, a lot of chat happening right now, but this could happen while we’re on air in the next half hour.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s right. They’re now having their quorum call, so they’re about to take attendance in the house. That makes sure they have enough members in the house there to actually move forward with the business of the house. And after that, if they do reach a quorum, which I agree, assume they will everyone’s there to get sworn in today so unless people have decided just not to leave their office they will be in the chamber and then after that is when they will move on to the first order of business which is voting on a speaker there’s normally nomination speeches very short yeah by both sides Speaker Johnson will be nominated as they planned that that during the conference meetings back in November after the election uh he was put forward as the nominee from the Republicans and then obviously Hakeem Jeffries will be the leader put forward for the speaker election by the Democrats and then they will vote and that will be the first round and Jordan we’ve seen these get messy of late ever since uh some shenanigans in the house I wanted to bring this up to
SPEAKER 11 :
Jordan. Now you’ve seen president Trump make a definitive stand. Now, before that, it seemed like, uh, the speakership for, for Johnson was maybe up in the air a little bit. Does it feel like that that mood has changed and calm down now that you have a president Trump standing up? Cause we even saw some comments come in. People were a little concerned, but now it feels like it’s cooled off a bit. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be smooth sailing always.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, again, we haven’t heard as much about a, a kind of, um, protest vote occurring today or someone trying to make a big stand. That doesn’t mean it’s not about to happen, by the way, and they were planning that more secretly. But we have not heard about this kind of big buildup to put someone else forward. Again, you can have criticism of the Speaker of the House. If you’re going to take that job on, you have to be ready for it. Because ultimately, you’re not going to be able to satisfy everybody when you have this many members of Congress. And you’ve got to just stick to your own principles. Sometimes it is, you do have to say no, you can’t just compromise with the Senate. And that means really fighting for what you believe in. But if you’re getting 90%, you have to make those calls about whether or not, well, we get 90% of what we want here, do we move forward? And I think that’s why, again, there might not be as many House Republicans right now who want to make this stand against Speaker Johnson because he has the backing. of President Trump. President Trump is now the head of the Republican Party. You control the RNC when you’re the President of the United States of that party. So you’re not just taking on Mike Johnson that if you are standing against him, you’re taking on President Trump and his entire team and movement. That’s very different kind of calculation, Logan, than what we saw even with Kevin McCarthy, where there wasn’t that kind of support. And it was very kind of late towards the end. President Trump did get involved with making some phone calls. But at that point, I think it was kind of off the rails. This is a very different situation we’re in. And I think it’s a great situation to be in. I don’t think we could have anyone better.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and as Logan said, no Matt Gaetz this time. The list of kind of holdouts is shorter, but here’s kind of the names that people should be watching as this vote comes in. We know that Thomas Massey of Kentucky has said very definitively, he said, you could pull my fingernails out and I wouldn’t vote for Speaker Johnson. So he’s a no. Because you don’t have Matt Gaetz and some of these other Republicans that have taken positions in the administration. The narrow majority is much narrower. So after losing Massey, you can only lose one other vote. to him to win this first round. And the ones you should look out for are Chip Roy from Texas because of the fiscal conservatism. He didn’t like the Ukraine funding. Victoria Sparks, who is a Ukrainian immigrant, and she’s been kind of a wild card of late. and then also Representative Ralph Norman from South Carolina. Those three are kind of the names to look out for as a bellwether of how this first round could go. If you pick up two of them, I think he can still get over the line, but we’ll find out here shortly as they begin to vote.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, there was thoughts that Massey may put up Matt Gaetz as his nomination. We’ll see what happens. It’s going to happen live. It’s hopefully going to happen while we’re on the air. We’re keeping… attention focused on it we’ll be right back
SPEAKER 10 :
Welcome back to Sekulow. And Jordan, we are watching the House of Representatives right now as they are preparing to move forward with voting on a speaker. You know, one of the things that the House, as opposed to the Senate, is the House is always the more unruly of the Houses of Congress. The Senate is always more structured and has more decorum. But As we look at this, and you who’ve worked in politics and your political analysis is above all what I want to hear here, is if we… move in with a new Congress and a few members of the house decide, let’s start trouble right up front. Instead of when all of the talk has been, the people have spoken. There is a mandate on president Trump’s agenda. Let’s move forward. If a few members of, of his own party decide, I want to cause some trouble and, and not move forward with that agenda when he has endorsed Mike Johnson to help move that agenda forward. What do you think that bears on their political future as well, and also the agenda moving forward in these next few months?
SPEAKER 03 :
Listen, I think if you’re Congressman Massey, you can take these stands because your voters and your constituents have elected you multiple times, knowing that you’re going to take these beliefs and you’re not going to a vote necessarily along with the team and kind of sometimes even standing alone or with just maybe one or two others but he’s lost a lot of that team like we’ve gone through in fact some of that team is now you know with president trump and on for big potentially big positions others were being considered and decided to take their name out of that consideration and also resign from Congress, if you’re talking about Matt Gaetz. You don’t have to be a member of Congress to be Speaker of the House, so they can start those, they could try to nominate, people talk about Elon Musk and others. But the truth is, at the end of the day right now, even when you went through that list, it doesn’t seem like there’s much enthusiasm from the base. And even our supporters and our listeners, we’re not seeing a lot of it anymore. Like Logan said, there was talk about whether or not it should be Speaker Johnson moving forward, you know, in the last, really since the election. But President Trump made it clear, this is who I want to work with. And so if you supported President Trump in this historic kind of four-year election that we went through, four-year campaign with all this court cases and people trying to literally put the former president, now, again, the incoming president behind bars. and some of his team that, listen, we need to be, as conservatives, make this as smooth as possible to show the American people what we know is that we can run a government that is very smooth and it doesn’t have to be chaos.
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan, another question that lingers, and sometimes I wonder if these House members aren’t super forward-thinking about what… could potentially happen next. If they’re concerned about Speaker Johnson, who was not really the establishment guy, he was the outsider that rose up and took the speakership. It is kind of like the Freedom Caucus MAGA success story of being able to obtain the speakership When you look at the alternatives that are potential that could happen, I don’t know that those holdouts would be more pleased with… You kind of look at the names. Steve Scalise, very conservative, has worked very well at the ACLJ. But I don’t know if you compare records that he’s… Because he’s an establishment guy. He’s very conservative, but he’s an establishment party guy. Tom Emmer. very establishment, not really what MAGA would be looking for in a Speaker of the House. And then there’s always the old favorite, Jim Jordan, who Jim Jordan has multiple times, I think, and rightly so, would rather be chairman of the judiciary and those committees than wade into the terrible fight that becomes with the Speaker of the House. What are your thoughts on kind of that angle?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I think that, again, the fact is, it’s, I think, really cool that we have a Speaker of the House who wasn’t out there positioning to be Speaker of the House. And I think that we have that in Mike Johnson, and it’s been kind of refreshing. Remember, this is going to be a different speakership, at least for the next two years. And why do I say that? Well, we have the White House and the Senate, not with huge majorities in either the House or the Senate, but we do have them. So this is a two years where we need to be able to get done as much as we can legislatively before everyone in the House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate has to start campaigning again. And so it’s why these first 100 days are so important, and it’s why the president getting the team in place that he needs is so key. And I think with the way the Senate is set up now, and if you get Mike Johnson in, you’ve got a team in place that is ready to go when President Trump takes the oath, and we can start working on these issues that have been plaguing the American people for four years, whether it’s the economic issues, securing our border, making sure that these threats of terrorism, again, from Islamic radical terrorism, that this is, we hope and pray, a situation that can be a one-off and not a larger movement here in the United States, but that we’ve got to be able to focus on those things. And if we’re just going to be having these political fights amongst ourselves, that’s no good. I don’t really see that happening, but you never can predict the House of Representatives. I don’t think anybody would have said going into the vote to take out McCarthy that it would have been Mike Johnson who ultimately became Speaker. Most people didn’t think he would survive for even a year.
SPEAKER 10 :
Jordan, and if you’re watching us live, currently Lisa McClain, she’s a Republican from Michigan, and the current House Republican conference chair is giving the nomination speech for Mike Johnson to be Speaker of the House. It is interesting to note, as you look at the makeup of the House, Lisa McClain is now the House GOP conference chair because our friend Elise Stefanik is now nominated to be the ambassador to the UN. That was her former leadership role within the House. And so it’s kind of a new face for many people who are used to seeing Elise Stefanik there. This is now a new leadership position, and she is nominating formally Mike Johnson for speaker. Should we cut to it live just for a minute so you can hear? Yeah, let’s roll some of this audio.
SPEAKER 05 :
Republican majority. As chairwoman of the Unified House Republican Conference, I can say proudly that we are ready to govern. It is my honor to present our conference’s nominee for the Speaker of the People’s House, the Honorable Mike Johnson from the state of Louisiana.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right, and there’s, I mean, we cut at the right time. We got a really good moment there. Good job, Logan.
SPEAKER 01 :
I know. Proud of you.
SPEAKER 11 :
I could feel it in the air. We’re also encouraging people, though, not just with this, to, as you said, call the switchboard. and to get involved when it comes to getting the confirmation done for not just obviously today with this House speaker, but to get the confirmation done for all of President Trump’s picks to get this really moving forward faster. Jordan, we know that this sometimes can get kind of hung up, but this is not the time to wait.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, this is, again, this isn’t the kind of like leadership in opposition. We have the White House in a couple of weeks. We have the House. We have the Senate. So it’s a different moment, I think, too, than when people wanted to replace Kevin McCarthy. I mean, in that situation, because we really have an opportunity now to get things done. We’re not just the opposition party with control of one House of Congress, which was the U.S. House of Representatives, and a Senate that was, again, borderline in control by the Democrats for a little bit, but very tough for them to move anything because the House. That’s not what we’re in. We’re now in the offensive. We’re not just playing defense anymore. Now, that’s what Congressman McClain was talking about there, was that we have to be governing now. We are not the opposition who just goes and puts forward the what would be the alternatives or tries to stop at least the worst parts. of the left’s ideas in legislation to carve those out. But that’s not the case. That’s what we’re in right now. We have to be the people that govern, as she said in the speech. And we need to be able to make good on as many promises and campaign ideas that President Trump made and why he got elected the way he did. We have to now turn those into reality. That takes governing, that takes keeping the Republican coalition together, and from the very most conservative members to some who are kind of on the outside. And just realize, we want to be able to govern. And if you want more than just two years, because usually that’s all you get, but if you want more than two years of this united republican house senate and white house you’ve got to show people starting today why they should keep you in place as leadership
SPEAKER 11 :
Phone lines are open. We’d love to take your calls in the next segment. If you’re on hold, stay on hold. We’ll try to get to as many as possible. 1-800-684-3110. If you’re watching on YouTube or Rumble, you can still call in. 1-800-684-3110. And encourage you to become a member of the ACLJ and become what we call an ACLJ champion, which is someone that gives on a regular, monthly, recurring basis. A great way to do is to kick that off here in January. Get a full year as an ACLJ champion. And hey, if you call in, you get bumped up to the front of the line if you’re a champion. So nice little perk there for being a monthly recurring member. We’ll be right back on Cyclone. Welcome back to Secular. We are still taking your calls. This will probably be one of the last chances to call in. So do it right now, 1-800-684-3110. Hakeem Jeffries right now is being nominated for House Speaker, so we’ve not gotten to a vote just yet. So let’s go ahead and take some phone calls. Melissa’s calling from California on line two. You’re on the air.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hi, I am calling. I think that the terror, I wanted to comment on the terror situation. We’ve seen over the last six months potential plots and, you know, the assassination attempt on the president in July. We caught the guy, and I think it was Oklahoma or Texas, who was going to carry out something at the inauguration. I think that these are interconnected. I think this is Iran, Iraq, ISIS, if you will. You know, they’ve tried to recruit in our colleges over the last year. I anticipate another attempt or two. I’m praying against it, but I do think that they’re trying to do something. And now with the current president potentially wanting to strike Iran, this is, you know, there’s something going on.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and I think you have to also think about the timeline of this. Obviously, President Jimmy Carter has been in the news a lot recently because he passed away. He’ll be lying in state at the Capitol. But you have to go back in history to 1979. On November 4th of 1979, as Jimmy Carter was about to be defeated by President Reagan in the election, there was the Iran hostage crisis. And so there was an Iranian hostage crisis at the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency. When you start to hear things and you get concerned about history repeating itself, Jordan, with a potential strike on Iran before January 20th when President Trump goes into office and you think of parallels with the economy and the foreign policy of the Biden administration, it makes you concerned that we could see history repeat itself here at the end of Biden’s term like it did back in 1979.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, I mean, listen, it’s like they’re baiting it. So now we’ve seen another Islamic terror attack in the United States. Still getting info on what was going on in Las Vegas. We’ve seen these attempted assassinations on President Trump. And we know there’s problems within the Secret Service. We know there are. And I think this is the bigger overall problem. In the political divide, you have those like we played from MSNBC. who want to make it about the color of people’s skin or their name. But we know that ISIS will recruit, they’d love to recruit white American males to carry out attacks in the name of Islam. They don’t care if you’ve got a Islamic, you know, Arabic sounding name from the Middle East or the color of your skin. They care about whether or not they can radicalize you to kill Americans and your fellow citizens. And that maybe You’ve had special training, like in the United States military, so that when you carry out an attack like that, it will be more lethal. You can’t say that’s all of this, the attacks that we saw against President Trump, the shooter there in Pennsylvania. But we also never really got answers on who these people are. And like we saw here, like you pointed out, Will, the journalists kind of trampling through within a couple of days. What is going on in the United States? You know what was going on. It’s an FBI that was obsessed with getting President Trump and a DOJ obsessed with getting President Trump. And instead of protecting Americans from individuals like the one in New Orleans, that’s where their focus should be 100% of the time, not on trying to put their political opponents behind bars, put the bad guys behind bars. I don’t, we don’t want to hear anymore. Oh, well, yeah, we saw this person at the videos and this or that, but we didn’t take any action. Uh, that’s why we’ve elected a Republican, new Republican president, a house and Senate. Let’s get to work.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. Thanks for calling. Let’s go to Lewis who is calling online. One who is an ACLJ champion in Colorado Lewis. Welcome.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. Listen, I just finished calling my representative. He’s a Democrat. But I said nicely, I want him to vote for Speaker Johnson. So people in Democrat areas don’t hesitate to call their representative and ask him nicely to vote with Speaker Johnson.
SPEAKER 10 :
And Jordan, I think that is a good reminder for people. While I don’t know that it’ll change the vote today, but you have that access to your representative, even if they aren’t your party member. And when you call with things like this and you’re polite, and you give a reason that you want, as a constituent of this individual, something to be done, you can have an impact. If you are frequently calling about issues that you care about, and especially if you have a moderate member of the Democrat Party, which is hard to believe still exists in some places, But you could have an impact. You could be the squeaky wheel that on some key issues, maybe they vote a little bit differently. That’s one of the beauties of having access to our elected members of Congress.
SPEAKER 03 :
And kind of one of the beauties, too, of a Democrat party in chaos, right? I mean, the leadership void there is huge, which means that members who in the past had to worry about dealing with You know, incumbent presidents or Nancy Pelosi types. Hakeem Jeffries, I don’t think has anywhere of the kind of political power or clout yet that Nancy Pelosi had because he’s been he’s been, again, the leader in opposition, even when there was a Democrat president, Democrat Senate. He wasn’t in the speaker’s position. And so he hasn’t been able to kind of gain that political clout. Of course, he would like to and the Democrats would like to. But I think there is a vacuum right now on the left side of the aisle and who the Democrat Party is. So our job as conservatives is not to help them figure that out. But it can be to work with those members who really do want to work with us on issues to bring them in. Again, like you said, Will, on specific issues that we know that they’re open to working with us on. The more votes, the better. I don’t think on the speaker issue necessarily. But as you said, when you’re a constituent calling your member of Congress, that is very impactful. It’s not just a person in the United States calling. It’s one of their constituents who are actually paying attention to what they’re doing.
SPEAKER 11 :
And voting has just begun. We’ll let you know for speakers. So we already are getting some of the tally in. Now we go off the air in about two minutes here. So I encourage you to follow Jordan, follow ACLJ, because you will be posting and there’ll be a lot of updates on what happens here because the first round could be completed. probably within the next half an hour or so. That’s probably what we’re looking at here. Sometimes quicker, sometimes slower, but we’ll continue to cover it on all of our social media platforms to make sure you follow the ACLJ. Let’s have just a very quick call. Chris is calling Washington State. You’re on the air. You got like 20 seconds, Chris.
SPEAKER 08 :
I would like to know why in the world Biden gets to make some of these decisions because when I go in for surgeries and I’m taking medication, they tell me not to run any heavy equipment and not to drive. So he’s making decisions and they tell you not to make very important decisions.
SPEAKER 11 :
To cut you off, I think we got your point. I think a lot of people feel that way, but unfortunately, he is still the president for the next 17 days.
SPEAKER 10 :
And if his team thought that there was an issue, there is the 25th Amendment. However, that’s not been invoked, and so he’s the president of the United States, whether you like it or not. A president of the United States who’s kind of angry right now.
SPEAKER 03 :
The only reason he should take any kind of action like this is there’s an actual emergency. Outside of that, You need to keep the incoming team briefed so they’re ready to go. In the case of him, if there’s a real emergency and he is the commander in chief right now, you should be able to make those kind of decisions. But you don’t do that because, and we know in this report, you have no new intelligence. You don’t do that to politically hamper things. you know, the incoming president of the United States and their team. That’s just disgusting.
SPEAKER 11 :
All right. Thanks for listening and watching this week. We’ll be back on Monday, but we post brand new content all the time on ACLJ.org, on all of our social media platforms. Follow those today, support the work at ACLJ.org and sign that petition.
